Gay activists applaud Kagan – tepidly

Gay legal activists are applauding President Obama’s second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court [1]: Solicitor General Elena Kagan. But it could hardly be described as a standing ovation.

Former Clinton White House aide Richard Socarides called Kagan a “brilliant, pragmatic progressive interested in listening to all sides and building coalitions.”

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Executive Director Kevin Cathcart called Kagan “a strong position” in opposing the military’s ban on gays but noted that Obama administration has also “taken legal positions on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ with which we strongly disagree.”

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese applauded her selection as fulfilling Obama’s promise to promote “diversity” on the court.
If confirmed, Kagan would become only the fourth woman ever named to the court –out of 104 justices in the history of the court.

Kagan is of particular interest to the LGBT community. While serving as dean of Harvard Law School, she took sides with gays against military recruiters because the military would not abide by the school’s non-discrimination policy. That policy prohibited recruiters who discriminated based on sexual orientation.

Kagan clerked for one of the Supreme Court’s staunchest liberals, Thurgood Marshall, and was a research assistant for one of the greatest legal defenders of gay civil rights, Laurence Tribe.

Single and 50, she was also the subject of a CBS News website blog report last month which claimed that, if named to the court, Kagan would be the “first openly gay justice.” But Kagan has not publicly identified with any sexual orientation, and the White House moved quickly to say the report was “inaccurate.”

The president announced his selection at a 10 o’clock press conference this morning.

Socarides called Kagan “one of the smartest people I know” and “someone the country will come to like and respect.”

“Her thinking is well within the mainstream,” said Socarides, and “very much in keeping with Obama’s overall philosophy…. Pretty much a home-run appointment.”

Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights called Kagan “well-qualified” and said members of his organization “strongly support increasing the number of women on the court.”

Lambda’s Cathcart said he did not expect Kagan “to answer questions about how she would rule on specific issues such as these that will come before her.” But he said Lambda does “expect that she will respond to questions about her judicial philosophy and her understanding of core constitutional principals of equal protection and privacy that are so crucial to the civil rights of people who face discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and/or HIV status.”

Long-time gay legal activist Paula Ettelbrick, an adjunct professor of law at New York University Law School, said Kagan’s nomination is “most historic” and that “it moves women’s representation on the Court to a more meaningful plurality.”

Mainstream news organizations immediately set about assessing her odds for confirmation. MSNBC speculates both conservatives and liberals could criticize her. Commentator-reporter Chuck Todd said conservatives would fault Kagan over her opposition to military recruiters at Harvard. He said liberals could fault her for defending some policies put in place by the administration of President George W. Bush.

In introducing Kagan to the press conference Monday morning, Obama praised Kagan for having sought conservative views to balance liberal views at Harvard. During her confirmation process for Solicitor General last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee received letters in support of Kagan from such well-known conservatives as former Solicitor Generals Charles Fried and Kenneth Starr, and such well-known liberals as Eleanor D. Acheson.

Her confirmation as Solicitor General was opposed, as expected, by some ultra-conservative groups, including Concerned Women for America, who faulted her for opposing military recruiters, as well as Focus on Family and more than a dozen other groups who said she could not be counted on to defend “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Kagan, an attorney, has never served as a judge but is widely respected as a legal scholar.

NCLR’s Minter said, “Because she has not served previously as a judge, it will be important to hear more about her judicial philosophy and whether she has a strong commitment to enforcing constitutionally protected rights and liberties. “

Given that she filled out the Senate Judiciary Committee’s lengthy questionnaire just last year, the vetting of her by various senators should go fairly rapidly.

In response to questions from the Judiciary Committee last year, Kagan said she views as “unjust the exclusion of individuals from basic economic, civic, and political opportunities of our society on the basis of race, nationality, sex, religion, and sexual orientation.” But she also said she was “fully convinced” she could defend U.S. laws even when they do not reflect her personal views, including the federal law which penalizes universities which ban military recruiters.

Kagan’s questionnaire also indicated that she delivered a welcoming address to introduce panel members at a Harvard University Gay and Lesbian Alumni event in September 2008. And in April 2006, she moderated a panel of the LAMBDA Student Organization concerning the “Relationship between Law Schools and the Military.” Such participation is fairly typical of law school deans and her list includes an even greater number of appearances before groups promoting civil rights for black law students.

Senators Orrin Hatch and Jon Kyl, two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who voted for Kagan as Solicitor General, issued statements

Monday morning saying their vote is not guaranteed for the Supreme Court appointment.

If confirmed, Kagan will become the third woman on the U.S. Supreme Court today and the second unmarried justice. Justice Sonia Sotomayor,

Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, was married briefly but divorced in 1983.

A press release from HRC applauded Kagan’s “commitment to fairness and equality.”

“Specifically, we applaud Elena Kagan’s vocal opposition to the Solomon Amendment and the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law.

HRC said it would continue examining Kagan’s record on issues that affect the LGBT community.

Kagan’s nomination is being made to fill the seat of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his retirement last month.

The composition of the Supreme Court is increasing critical to the LGBT civil rights movement. Three important cases seeking equality in marriage rights are winding their ways to the high court and it seems nearly inevitable that the high court will choose to weigh in on at least one, if not all three. The court will also hear a case this fall that will determine whether a virulently anti-gay protest group has a First Amendment right to stage their demonstrations in ways that disrupt private funeral services.

While many nominees introduce close members of their family at the press conference, Kagan noted that her parents had already passed away and said she was “thankful for my brothers and other family and friends” for being there with her.

[1] http://www.365gay.com/news/ap-source-elena-kagan-picked-for-supreme-court/

Prop 8 trial judge has history with gay rights activists

(San Francisco) The appointment of Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Richard Walker to the bench was held up for two years during the late 1980s in part because he had angered gay rights activists.

Now, he is presiding over the most important gay civil rights case in a generation.

Like a lot …

RI gov reconsiders gay civil rights

Thanks to a meeting with gay activists, Rhode Island Gov. Carcieri now says he’s open to a domestic partnership bill – just two days after vetoing a bill which would have given domestic partners the right to make funeral arrangements.

Reports The Providence Journal:
“Maybe it’s something we should consider,” said Carcieri, …

Analysis: Supreme Court update

There is no dramatic sit-in demonstration planned by this weekend’s March on Washington for the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was there, during the 1987 March on Washington, that one of the movement’s largest and most intense moments of direct action was staged.

Thousands of gay civil rights supporters …

A Long Road Traveled

The last time I got as close to the White House as I did this week was many years ago—six years after the Stonewall riots, when I was a 13-year-old National Spelling Bee participant from St. Margaret’s School in Lowell, Mass. We spelling bee kids didn’t make it into the White House that day—we stood outside as first lady Betty Ford spoke to us from a balcony. By then I already knew I was gay. Raised in a staunch Catholic home and taught (and tormented) by nuns, I was certain that an open homosexual (that was the only term I knew back then) could never be allowed inside the White House. I knew nothing of the nascent gay-rights movement—it hadn’t reached Lowell in 1975. All I knew was that that whatever words there were to describe what I was, it would have to be suppressed forever. I assumed that I would have to either become a priest or figure out some other way to hide.

Thankfully, time marched on, and I eventually became a politicized college student rather than a candidate for the priesthood—and ultimately I kicked open my closet door and came out. But I can’t help thinking about that personal history as I replay the reel of yesterday’s visit to the White House in my head. As the executive director of SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBT senior citizens, I was invited, along with some 200 other LGBT leaders, to join the Obamas in commemorating gay pride—which falls this year on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

I was accompanied by three SAGE members: a lesbian couple who are 86 and 91, who reminisced about voting for FDR and described Barack Obama as “the most inspiring politician since Adlai Stevenson,” and a Stonewall veteran and founder of the Gay Liberation Front, an activist group formed in the aftermath, who proudly chose his SAGE T shirt over the ties worn by every other man in the room.

Apart from celebrating, we had gone to the White House to make a point: that older people have to be included in the Obama agenda for LGBT progress. And we did what we came to do, with one of our members (the Stonewall vet) even receiving a personal meeting with the president and Mrs. Obama. But as I stood with my partner, in the front row, some five feet from the presidential podium, I realized how intensely personal this experience was for me. I thought about how each member of the SAGE contingent has had our own life’s journey—and each of us was moved deeply and differently by that moment.

See A Long Road Traveled Newsweek

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Obama Admin References Incest, Child Rape in DOMA Defense

Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.

At AMERICABlogs, John Aravosis writes:
“despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush’s top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn’t just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn’t motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn’t be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn’t discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can’t).He actually argued that the courts shouldn’t consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.”

See Obama Admin Defends Federal Gay Marriage Ban In Court Filing

References Incest, Child Rape… DOJ Defends

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Calif. Gay rights leader rejects inauguration invite

(San Francisco, California) The head of California’s largest gay civil rights organization has declined an invitation to attend the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama because Rev. Rick Warren will deliver the invocation.

“It is extremely disappointing and hurtful that President-elect Obama has chosen California Rev. Rick Warren, who actively supported Prop …