Day: May 27, 2009

The two prominent attorneys who were on opposite sides of the Bush V Gore Supreme Court case over the Election of 2000 have united to fight in federal court against Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, and was just upheld by the California Supreme Court yesterday.

Theodore Olsen (certainly a conservative) and David Boies declared that gay marriage was another civil rights campaign, and that no one should be denied basic rights, and that gay Californians should be allowed to marry again as the federal case moves forward.  It is certainly a bold move for these two opposing lawyers to come together to promote what they see as a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which promotes due process and equal protection.

Ultimately, the movement for equality under the law regarding marriage, the military, and general discrimination in many areas of American society for gays  must be addressed in the federal courts, and NOT in the votes of Americans, who if left to their prejudices in the past, would still deny equality to African Americans, women, and other religious and racial and ethnic minorities.  There should NOT be a vote on whether individual Americans should have basic rights.  It should be guaranteed as part of the promotion of human rights, the basic story of American history since World War II.

The Republican party’s conservative champions seem to have no level to which they will not stoop in the self destruction of their party.

It is an outrage that Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo are labeling Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee,  a "racist" because of a speech years ago in which she said that her life experiences as an  Hispanic woman made her qualified to see things differently than a white male.

What is wrong with that statement?  Each person’s background and experiences gives them different perspectives, and certainly the Supreme Court needs more than just the white male perspective, which has been totally dominant to now,with only two women and two African Americans to supply a small level of diversity, and that only since the late 1960s to the early 1990s by date of appointment to the Court. 

To call Sotomayor an "affirmative action" appointment implies that she has insufficient background, education and experience, and nothing could be further from the truth.  It is interesting how Republicans who are not elected office holders are making these statements, while the Republicans in the Senate seem to be much more cautious in their reactions.  IF the Republicans in the Senate follow the trend of thought that Limbaugh, Gingrich and Tancredo have pursued, then the party may as well just throw in the towel and become an historical oddity,  such as the Whig Party which died in the 1850s. 

It would be a shame to stain the Republican historical record as represented by such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln,  Charles Sumner,  Theodore Roosevelt,  Robert La Follette, Sr., Robert Taft,  Arthur Vandenberg,  Dwight D. Eisenhower,  Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.,  Jacob Javits,  Charles Percy, Mark Hatfield,  Clifford Case,  Charles Mathias,  Gerald R. Ford,  Nelson Rockefeller, and Jack Kemp, among many others.