Say Anything Blog

From Politico, which originally headlined this article: “Lesbian Lawyers Eyed for Supreme Court.”

President Barack Obama is looking to advance diversity with his pick to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter — and early speculation has focused on whether he’ll pick a woman, or perhaps the first Hispanic justice.

But gay rights groups — disappointed that Obama didn’t pick an openly gay man or woman for his Cabinet — are pushing him to put the first openly gay justice on the Supreme Court.

Within hours of word of Souter’s departure, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund was hailing the candidacy of a First Amendment scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan. “Out lesbian a contender for Supreme Court,” one of the group’s web sites declared.

Another Stanford law professor on the “frequently mentioned” lists, Pam Karlan, has been open about being a lesbian, colleagues and former students say. In response to an e-mail from POLITICO, Karlan expressed no reticence about discussing her sexual orientation, though she downplayed talk about being a possible nominee.

“It’s no secret at all that I’m counted among the LGBT crowd,” she wrote, using a common acronym for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. As for the possibility she’d be nominated, Karlan said, “Given the landscape, I’m flattered, but not fooled, by having my name tossed around.”

Jennifer Rubin comments:

...this, I suppose, is what comes from treating the Court like a policy seminar. If the Court is not simply going to determine what the law says but make it up, groups are right in some sense to push for “their person” on the bench. If the name of the game is for judges to find the most deserving of empathy, then you want to make sure those deciding have your interests in mind.

The result is the annihilation of rule of law. It is all about “who has the votes”. And that, sadly, is really what the headline should be.

What’s troubling is that liberals seem to see all of society this way.  Companies scramble to fill their ranks with members of all the various victim groups so that they can be in line with the nation’s overall demographics.  Even here in North Dakota there’s been a push to hire more black police officers so that the racial makeup of our law enforcement agencies is more in line with the racial makeup of the population as a whole.

And all of this comes at the cost of merit-based decision making, and personal accomplishment.  More and more, getting ahead in this country depends more on what you are (black or gay or Hispanic, etc.) as opposed to who you are.

Forty years after the civil rights movement and it seems as though making decisions based on skin color (not to mention gender and sexual orientation) is more mainstream and acceptable than it ever was before.  As long as you’re doing it in the liberal-approved fashion.