February 7, 2010
by David Link
I come not to praise the distinction between status and conduct, but to bury it.
Differentiating between conduct – doing homosexual things – and status – being homosexual – has been with us for most of the modern gay rights debate. That’s in part because of a fundamental tenet of the law that says you can’t convict someone of a crime based on their status, only their bad conduct. The government can’t criminalize alcoholism, but it can convict an alcoholic of doing otherwise criminal things.
Sodomy has historically been the bad thing that homosexuals did. Theoretically, heterosexuals could also engage in the same form of bad behavior, but because sodomy has so conventionally been used against homosexuals, that has tended to be the focus of the public discussion.
In 1986, Bowers v. Hardwick seemed to erase that distinction. The majority’s almost obsessive focus on the phrase “homosexual sodomy” when analyzing a law that applied to sodomy without reference to the genders of the participants, appeared to give permission to discriminate against homosexuals. If not, why spend so much time talking about homosexual sodomy when the statute didn’t?
That is exactly how Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt read Bowers. In one of the pre-DADT cases of military discharge for homosexuality, Judge Reinhardt would have ruled against Sgt. Perry Watkins. The majority opinion (later overturned) had distinguished the spanking-new Bowers because that was a case about homosexual conduct, and Watkins’ case was about sexual orientation as a status. They found homosexuals to be a suspect class for equal protection purposes, and ruled that the military could not constitutionally ban all homosexuals simply because of their status as homosexuals.
Judge Reinhardt found the distinction an unconvincing reading of Bowers:
I do not believe we can escape the conclusion that "homosexuals", however defined, cannot qualify as a suspect class. Even if we define the class as those who have a "homosexual orientation", its members will consist principally of active, practicing homosexuals. That the class may also include a small number of persons who are or wish to be celibate is irrelevant for purposes of determining whether the group as a whole constitutes a suspect class. I simply see no way to say that homosexuals defined broadly (by status) are a suspect class, but that the same group, if more narrowly defined (by conduct) is not. Whether the group is defined by status or by conduct, its composition is essentially the same. In short, "homosexuals" are either a suspect class or they aren't.
He concluded that the fairest reading of Bowers allowed open discrimination against homosexuals, period, and that as a judge on a court inferior to the Supreme Court, he could not depart from their ruling – or what he believed to be their bias.
I had the privilege of working in Judge Reinhardt’s chambers the year after Watkins. It had caused quite a stir in his office, and I had the opportunity to discuss my own views (supporting the majority) with him. He was unshakable, and I came to believe he was right. The overreach in the Bowers majority is nothing but the conventional understanding that, whatever the specifics, homosexuals should not have sex with one another. The fact that they do have sex gives rise to all the peripheral prejudice against them. If (as Bowers ruled) the law can prohibit homosexual sex, its inferential and attendant prejudices against the group must also be permissible.
Judge Reinhardt did not personally believe it was appropriate (or constitutional) to treat homosexual sex differently than heterosexual sex:
[T]he fact that homosexuals (or persons of "homosexual orientation") engage in or seek to engage in homosexual conduct is as unremarkable as the fact that "heterosexuals" (or persons of "heterosexual orientation") engage in or seek to engage in heterosexual conduct. To pretend that homosexuality or heterosexuality is unrelated to sexual conduct borders on the absurd.
That brings me back to Sprigg/Fischer/Bahati. They want to love the sinner but hate the sin. While that’s as suspect in theology as it is in law, they are free to condescend to us as a religious belief. But here in the secular world, Bowers is no longer the law, and the civil world has to take us as we are, conduct and orientation together.
It remains fashionable to dismiss Judge Reinhardt as a knee-jerk liberal (and, to be fair, he has a long track record to that effect). But Watkins stands as one crystal clear example where he knew what result he wanted, and found the fairest reading of the law did not permit that result.
Lawrence is now controlling, and Justice Scalia articulated a thought similar to that of Judge Reinhardt in his Watkins dissent. Overturning Bowers is a pivotal step for the equal protection challenge that the Watkins majority prematurely forged. Why do our lives have to be dissected into discrete legal arenas and sectors? We’re whole human beings, sex and love included. Lawrence helped put our lives back together again.
Lawrence applies to criminal laws, and marriage is quite different. But Justice Scalia thought that overturning Bowers would inevitably lead to a fuller equality that would have to include marriage. I agree. We will see if Justice Scalia hews to the same kind of principled respect for his court’s authority that Judge Reinhardt exhibited when he was put to the test.
Permalink | 16 Comment(s)
February 7, 2010
by David Link
Even those of us who believe the Constitution protects us know that a ruling in our favor will only be as secure as at least 2/3 of the states will let it be. That's why we have to keep up our efforts to change the political culture.
This is how we are doing it: A brief conversation in South L.A., where an African-American woman, who obviously does not feel comfortable even talking about the subject is kindly but firmly helped to actually think about the issue directly.
I don't know who Jay, the lesbian canvasser is, but hers is the face of the last mile in this revolution. Thanks to all the Jays out there.
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February 6, 2010
by David Link
We are indebted to Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association – not to mention David Bahati, sponsor of Uganda’s Anti-gay bill – for returning us to a debate that should have been put out of its misery in 2003: Should homosexual conduct be against the law?
Lawrence v. Texas answered the question for constitutional purposes. The government has no legitimate business making particular sexual acts a criminal offense if they are voluntary, adult and in private.
But the constitution isn’t everything. For centuries, criminal prohibitions provided the foundation for official (i.e. legal and governmental) discrimination against homosexuals. The premises about homosexuality in those laws are what most older people, in particular, take for granted. We may no longer be criminals under the law, but in some people’s minds we are certainly doing something that is wrong.
The unambiguous desire of Sprigg/Fischer/Bahati to reestablish a legal regime where homosexual conduct is criminal lets us look at the issue from today’s entirely new perspective: Why is some sexual conduct between consenting adults in private wrong. By “wrong” I do not mean “a sin,” since I am talking about the law here, not theology. Religious adherents are free to believe, among themselves, what their religion teaches about sin, whether it’s murder or adultery or dancing. There is much overlap between criminal laws and theological transgressions, but the two realms are not identical. Criminal laws in a pluralistic society of varied religious beliefs have to have justifications beyond sinfulness, since there is inconsistency between, and even within religions, and since many people belong to no formalized religion at all, a choice the constitution requires all of us to respect.
Sprigg distinguishes between homosexual conduct and homosexual orientation. Homosexual conduct is bad, but mere orientation is no problem. Ironically, this is a distinction gay rights supporters have drawn as well, when it has been advantageous. But it doesn’t answer any questions.
Justice Scalia illustrates the problem in his dissent in Lawrence: “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home.”
Look how casually the thinking here moves from the notion of homosexual conduct as sex to homosexual conduct as – well, as being gay. It’s safe to assume, I’d think, that few, if any of those business partners, scoutmasters, teachers or room-renters would be observing any sexual activity by these particular homosexuals (though the last category comes very close, which is why it is given universal exemption in housing discrimination laws). In the quote, it’s not even necessary that any of those people have a partner at all. The homosexual conduct Justice Scalia is concerned about people so “openly” engaging in is living their lives without hiding their sexual orientation. Simply being gay, the way heterosexuals are straight, is to “openly engage in homosexual conduct.”
The closest to “openly” engaging in conduct that could be considered sexual is when homosexuals kiss or hold hands while walking down the street. That’s openly being gay, but it’s not different (in the view of the people Scalia is worried about) from sodomizing your partner right there at the corner of Pico and Sepulveda.
There is no such concern about heterosexual kissing or hand-holding. More to the point, no sodomy law ever prohibited such acts. So why the difference for gays?
That difference is everything. In general, most people don’t spend a lot of time imagining the sex lives of others; or when they do, it’s considered impolite if not outright rude. Yet speculation like this is taken for granted when homosexuals are the subject.
It is that permissive speculation about sexual conduct that brings the bedroom right out into the open, and makes gays ripe for this kind of condemnation. It reaches its zenith of absurdity in DADT. DADT strays so far from a requirement of actual conduct that simply speaking about being gay is sufficient to have a servicemember ejected. The theory is that this shows a “propensity” to engage in homosexual conduct, and therefore a mere statement gives the military sufficient evidence of someone's unfitness.
Yet heterosexuals have a propensity to engage in heterosexual conduct – and “propensity” may be understating it for many of them. Some of their conduct will be the same kind of sodomy as homosexuals might engage in – specifically oral or anal sex. Yet for heterosexuals, we don't (as the kids say) go there.
The debate about sexual conduct is not about sexual conduct at all, but about being openly gay. It is that honesty which is objectionable. Even Peter Sprigg acknowledges that some people have a homosexual orientation. The criminal law has as little effect on that as it could have on preventing the tide from coming in. All it can do is prevent people from being honest – or, in Justice Scalia’s words, of “openly” engaging in what he calls “conduct.” But as we see in the debate over DADT, when honesty is a problem the law is trying to solve, there is something deeply wrong with our priorities.
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February 4, 2010
by David Link
There’s been a lot of gloom and doom around here lately, and this morning seems like a good opportunity to look on the bright side of life.
- Both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton spoke out against the Uganda anti-gay bill – at the National Prayer Breakfast! Obama used the word “odious” to describe it.
- Senator Orrin Hatch is open to repealing DADT.
- Colin Powell is not just open to the repeal, he now “fully supports” it.
- Gayle Haggard (wife of Ted) believes the government “should provide equality under the law” for same-sex couples, and to that end supports civil unions.
None of these is without qualifiers and wiggle-room. But every one of them goes against some pretty widely held notions about the public figure involved. It behooves us to acknowledge what each of them has said. That simple courtesy is an important aspect of progress.
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February 2, 2010
by Jonathan Rauch
OK. It doesn't come much clearer than this. Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg says homosexuals should be menaced with arrest and imprisonment. Transcript and video here. We must not let the public forget that this ugly reality—they want to make us criminals—is what lies behind these guys' insistence that they mean us no harm.
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February 1, 2010
by Stephen H. Miller
When I saw this headline in the DC Agenda (successor newspaper to the Washington Blade), Filibuster threat makes ENDA unlikely in 2010, I wondered if it could possibly be saying that LGBT activists couldn't find a single Republican to support the measure. But no, it means that even assuming a few mostly northeastern GOP senators were on board, enough Democrats would vote no to defeat the non-discrimination act. In other words, even if the Democrats had kept their Senate supermajority, it wouldn't have been enough.
"The Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and National Center for Transgender Equality — three leading groups working on ENDA — say they are confident the House of Representatives will pass ENDA in the summer or early fall. ... But in the Senate, LGBT civil rights lobbyists have been reluctant to reveal the findings of their highly confidential head counts, including leanings of the 17 Senate Democrats that have not signed on as co-sponsors. Among them are Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner, both of Virginia."
A gay non-discrimination act was first introduced in 1974 when Bella Abzug and Ed Koch were in Congress, and it still can't pass when Democrats have overwhelming majorities in both Houses? Majorities that are certain to shrink come November. I'd say yet again it's past time to revisit the pledges of free gay votes (and dollars) to Democrats just because they're Democrats (both Webb and Warner received support from local and national LGBT lobbies — the HRC web site still brags how it "mobilized its members to vote for U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb"). But my beating that drum wouldn't do much good, would it.
Then again, without the vague "gender identity" add-on that could require employers to add unisex bathrooms, the odds for passage would be much greater. That's another self-inflected political wound that activists are intent on gouging deeper and deeper.
More on Jim Webb. MetroWeekly reports, "Webb...had in the past been an opponent of equal treatment for women in the military. When asked about the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy in an interview during his 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Webb said, 'That's a policy that's working,' and left it at that."
So why the campaign support from the Human Rights Campaign? As long as you've got that "D" after your name, it's "don't ask, don't tell" about gay equality over at the Democratic Party's favorite free-money machine.
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February 1, 2010
by David Link
Jon Rauch takes a liberty with the constitutional arguments about same-sex marriage I don’t think we have any more; he wants to set them aside for a moment.
We have, in fact, set them aside since they first came up explicitly in the 1970s and 80s. We’ve been doing nothing but setting them aside for the last thirty years. That has always been for political, not legal reasons. All of the powerful cultural misconceptions about homosexuality, embodied particularly in the criminal sodomy laws, still pervade the imaginations of the generations that grew up with them. That will inevitably affect how the constitutional arguments about full equality will be seen in the political sphere, and we have deferred to that powerful force.
But we can’t set the constitutional arguments aside any more because they are front and center at an actual federal court in an actual case. The political decision about whether to raise them has been made -- for better or worse, you might say, and on that score I think Jon perfectly articulates the dilemma in his final line.
But Jon makes an assumption I think he doesn’t need to make. No one can reasonably doubt that, despite its varied forms throughout history, marriage has been understood as an arrangement between one man and one woman. But for constitutional purposes, that’s not the right question -- though it clearly is for the political purposes of the right. Cultures that didn’t have a modern conception of sexual orientation obviously couldn’t have taken into account what to do about the rights of same-sex couples. There is no bigotry in marriage laws that simply ignore a group they were unaware even existed.
But that’s not the world the court is now addressing. Among the many revolutions of the 20th Century, homosexuals rejected their historical invisibility, both in the culture and in the law, and planted their feet firmly in the public world. That was an unprecedented change.
Even more important than that is the changes – under the constitution, itself – to marriage. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that heterosexual married couples had a right – a constitutionally guaranteed right – to use birth control, it said something profound about the relationship between the government and individuals. The government has no legitimate business telling married couples whether they can or can’t procreate, or when. That is for the couple to decide for themselves. That’s what the constitution demands.
Griswold v. Connecticut recognized a changed technology of birth control, and in connection with the then emerging gay rights movement, it paved the way for the question now before the court. Whatever the history of marriage has been, what is the role of the government today with respect to same-sex couples? If procreation is not the government’s business, why should the law recognize only opposite-sex couples?
Jon implies, and I agree, that California’s fully equal domestic partnership law is a compromise we can live with. I think he minimizes the political calculation of Prop. 8’s proponents, though, when he says the voters “gave” us those rights. The proponents knew full well that they couldn’t have won in California if the initiative had taken them away. They very intentionally left the legislatively passed rights in place. That was a political choice, and a smart recognition of the many years of work we’ve done here to establish same-sex couples in the law.
That might be another way of saying what Jon did, but I think the emphasis is important. Domestic partnership is a political compromise that, itself, has required tremendous work. It was not the voters being benevolent in Prop. 8, it was the proponents being savvy. And that middle ground isn’t always successful. Hawaii is only the most recent example where politicians view even the compromise of civil unions as too much equality.
It is that kind of politics that the equal protection clause was designed to minimize (if not entirely eliminate). Jon’s political concerns are all absolutely valid ones. But we have a constitutional case now, and have to deal with that.
Setting aside the politics, is it possible for a Supreme Court decision in our favor to be the right constitutional resolution, or are we as convinced as our opponents that the constitution does not have room for this kind of equality? That is the question I am focused on. And I am concerned that if we concede the constitution, we may be conceding an important part of the politics as well.
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January 31, 2010
by Jonathan Rauch
I wish I could agree with my IGF colleague David Link that Brown v. Board of Ed, not Roe v. Wade, should be the governing precedent in the California gay marriage lawsuit—which, to remind ouselves of the stakes, seeks to impose same-sex marriage nationwide by Supreme Court order.
Alas, I cannot.
There are issues of constitutional law which come into my thinking, but let's set those aside. The more basic point is this: Just as abortion raises a fundamental question about the definition of a human person, so gay marriage raises a fundamental question about the definition of marriage. Obviously, I believe that a same-sex union can and should be regarded as a true marriage—but that is the question before the Court. In order to conclude that the unavailability of SSM deprives gay couples of an equal right to marry, the Court must conclude that a same-sex marriage is a marriage.
In Brown, no one disputed that an integrated school was in fact a school. In Loving v. Virginia, the case which overturned bans on miscegenation, some people said an interracial marriage was unnatural or immoral, but in 1967 virtually no one said it wasn't in fact a marriage. In those instances, schools and marriage were being hijacked for the extrinsic purpose of white supremacy. It was precisely because segregationists knew that an integrated school was a school, and an interracial marriage was a marriage, and for that matter a black vote was a vote, that they were so determined to exclude blacks.
(Thought experiment: imagine suggesting to a white supremacist in 1955 that blacks and whites would go to school together, sit side by side, study the same things, be treated identically—except that what blacks were getting would be called "training" instead of "education." No segregationist would have accepted that deal.)
The California gay marriage case is different. Remember, California offered (and still offers) civil unions which are marriages in all but name. In the separate-but-equal South, the intention of segregationists was to hide the reality of discrimination behind a mask of equality. In California, the public's intention was more like the opposite: hiding the reality of equality behind a mask of discrimination. All that the people of California were asking to do was retain the traditional definition of the word "marriage." They gave us everything else.
Of course, I think the people of California were wrong. I think gay couples deserve to the designation "married" and that the arguments for denying it to them are weak. David and I agree on that.
Where we disagree is over the unwisdom, as I see it, of the Supreme Court's imposing what a majority of Americans will regard as a new definition of marriage. That could cause a backlash which I think David is too casual about when he says, in effect, "They'll get used to it." Our marriages could end up in the political crosshairs for a generation or more. To tell all of America's voters that they cannot pause to think for a while before changing the very meaning (for most of them) of marriage strikes me as judicial brinksmanship of a dangerous order.
The case thus puts me in an awful bind. I can't decide which would be worse for gay equality: winning or losing.
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January 31, 2010
by David Link
The constitutional contest over same-sex marriage alternately invokes two foundational principles embodied in very different landmark cases: Brown v. Board of Education’s equality doctrine and Roe v. Wade’s principle of autonomy. Of the two, it is Brown that should properly dominate, and ultimately decide the case.
Brown was initially controversial because it flew in the face of a still prominent prejudice of the time, that African-Americans were inferior to, or at least so profoundly different from Caucasians that a separate set of rules was necessary to deal with them. Even when the prejudice was couched in condescending terms (“We’re just trying to help them;” “Segregated schools benefit the whole society”), it depends, ultimately, on error. Whatever commonality blacks may have in skin color, they are still, every one of them, individual humans with individual backgrounds, lives, psychologies and aspirations. The very existence of a benevolent exception (for “Good Negroes”) demonstrates how situated the preconceptions were about the group.
The controversy over Brown has faded as that error has been exposed. It is now not only settled law, but iconic. While there is still prejudice based on skin color alone, it continues in spite of Brown. The existence of that prejudice shows only that some people remain impervious to facts, remain wedded to fencing minorities off rather than accepting their unique humanity – or humanities.
Roe has been controversial since it was issued in 1973, but for very different reasons. Its central theory was an amalgam of constitutional provisions that protect a right I think was misnamed “privacy.” I obviously believe that individual liberty as against government is what gives life to our constitutional democracy, which is why I think the result of Roe is ultimately correct. But I can’t say the constitutional criticisms of it are without merit.
But Roe is controversial for a second, and more important reason. It is based on a moral judgment about abortion that is beyond the realm of facts. People who believe life begins at the moment – the instant – of conception are not making an error, they are making a judgment. No one can prove whether that judgment is accurate or not.
This is the disconnect on same-sex marriage. Its supporters believe opponents are making an error about homosexuals in general, viewing them as a group in ways that ignore, and even suppress individual humanity. Marriage is one of the most human -- and humane -- institutions imaginable, and its denial to same-sex couples causes tangible harm to them and to their children. This is hard to prove, but it is provable.
Opponents believe same-sex marriage is a matter of judgment, needing no proof beyond a firm belief. It is no accident that so many religious believers are also opponents of same-sex marriage.
The disconnect between these two views helps explain the wealth of evidence the Olson/Boies team put on, and the relative evidentiary silence of Prop. 8’s defenders. Just as no proof can determine when life begins, so (the defenders argue) no proof could possibly justify allowing marriage for members of the same sex.
A ruling favorable to same-sex marriage will certainly have repercussions similar to Roe in the short term. Californians, better than anyone, can testify to that. On this political axis, abortion and same-sex marriage do have things in common. The question is for the long-term. The error of prejudice eases over time, and I think that’s observable in the culture. This makes Roe quite distinguishable. There is a difference of opinion about abortion, but no verifiable error.
I have to favor Brown as the more apt model in the Prop. 8 trial. Now that we’re out of the closet, I think the evidence of our lives will make it clear how wrong the judgment is, and always has been. A ruling in our favor, while controversial among many people at first, over time will necessarily prove to have been right all along.
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January 30, 2010
by Jonathan Rauch
In a recent newsletter, the National Organization for Marriage cites a new government study as evidence that gay marriage will hurt kids, because the research finds that kids suffer less abuse with married biological parents than with a single parent, a parent living with an unmarried partner, or a parent and step-parent.
They got it half right. Having two married biological parents is good for kids, and better than the alternatives the study examined. We here at IGF are all for it. But that doesn't make having, say, an unmarried mom and mom better than having a married mom and mom. As a correspondent points out:
Does NOM never, ever learn? These same figures indicate that for either two-adult family structure (both biological parents, or one biological and one step-parent) the chance of abuse to the child goes down drastically IF THE COUPLE GETS MARRIED. For the first kind of family, the risk drops 80 percent. For the second kind of family, the risk drops nearly 60 percent. Even for single biological parents, the child's risk drops by about 15 percent if that single parent finds and marries someone.
So they jump to the conclusion that if a child is living in a gay household, the way to protect the child is to NOT let the parent get married.
It would at least be consistent if they used this data to say gays (and singles and steps) shouldn't be allowed to care for kids in the first place. But that's not Maggie Gallagher's position! She acknowledges that the parenthood is OK, but is just against protecting the kids.
For years, opponents of same-sex marriage have traded on a non-sequitur: if SSM is not optimal, then it should not be legal. If you believed that, though, you would have to ban marriages that create step-families, which lots of evidence shows are not as good for kids. Thank goodness, the real world doesn't work that way.
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January 29, 2010
by David Link
Dale makes a good point that many minorities view the courts in heroic and almost mythic terms. But Newton’s law has its legal counterpart: For every myth there is an equal and opposite counter-myth. The anti-gay right, in particular, has done a splendid job of not just de-mythifying the courts, but of delegitimizing them for “activism” on gay equality; it’s seldom you will hear them utter the word “court” in the gay rights context without its now joined-at-the-hip modifier, “activist.” And, in Newtonian fashion, the left responds in kind when the opportunity presents itself, as it did in the Citizens United case about corporate speech.
Both sides are now positioned for their entirely predictable frenzy on this case. So I’d like to make my usual plea that we not convict judges of politics (usually someone else’s) without some kind of due process. In this case, that could be accomplished by actually reading the opinion any judge or group of judges offers.
Dale may be a bit guilty of prejudging in responding to one of the comments to his post, where he says that a very narrow ruling posited by the commenter could look “nakedly unprincipled.” That is possible. It’s also possible it could look entirely reasonable. Most likely, its bottom line (supporting or opposing marriage equality) will guide people to their conclusion about the judge’s principles. While I’d trust Dale to make that decision at the appropriate time, I have a feeling such niceties won’t bother the partisans.
Dale’s skepticism, though, comes from having read previous opinions on this subject, and I think it’s fair for me to disclose that I have some predispositions of my own -- in the opposite direction. To the extent the courts have been political in dealing with homosexuality, it is sometimes against gays.
The fact that we don’t know what level of scrutiny sexual orientation should receive from the courts is the tip-off. The courts do – and, frankly, should – make the narrowest decisions that will decide the case before them. Courts shouldn’t decide issues (and particularly constitutional issues) unless they have no other choice.
But the question of whether sexual orientation is a suspect class or not has been hanging around the federal courts since the military discrimination cases back in the 1980s. Federal opinions have nibbled around the edges of this, but have taken advantage of the military’s unique factors to sidestep the question. The military’s vital functions give them constitutional authority to override even fundamental rights like freedom of religion in order to carry out their duties.
For those of us not in the military, though, the question is still unresolved. Some courts have assumed without deciding that sexual orientation gets the lowest level of review. I think that comes from the politcs. Everything we know about equal protection law from the U.S. Supreme Court would and should lead to a finding that laws distinguishing among citizens based on sexual orientation are entitled to the highest level of court scrutiny.
The California Supreme Court is the only one that concluded sexual orientation is entitled to that level of review. It explicitly goes through the neutral principles courts have established for this kind of case, and I think provides a credible and persuasive analysis of each one. Compare their analysis to the dismissal given the issue by New York's highest court.
The retreat to rational basis review can be seen as a response to the heightened politics surrounding sexual orientation. On this issue, the charges of activism will come mostly from the right, and the only defense is for courts to adopt the most deferential posture possible.
But that’s not what the precedents say, at least with respect to minorities who have a documented history of irrational discrimination. Laws making a group criminals (some laws still on the books into the present century) would seem to suggest that kind of history.
If this case is decided on equal protection, a responsible opinion would seem to require application of the longstanding principles of equal protection, and a conclusion of whether sexual orientation is entitled to strict scrutiny, middle-tier scrutiny, or rational basis scrutiny – with reasons stated, so those of us so inclined will be able to decide, based on the reasoning, not the result, how neutral (or not) the judge was.
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January 28, 2010
by Stephen H. Miller
As I predicted, Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) is the one gay issue that has a chance of moving forward — Obama's State of the Union made no mention of pushing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or repealing/modifying the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). What if he had moved on legal equality last year when he and his party were riding high, instead of squandering his political capital on a massive expansion of government? Spilt milk.
On DADT, conservative pundit Jim Geraghty blogs:
I'm a bit of a squish on this issue. If you told me the guy who was the best pilot and who had the best shot of putting a J-DAM bomb on the Iranian nuclear program's main facility was Harvey Fierstein, I'd say get that goatee airborne over Persian skies pronto.
But the politics of this issue are pretty clear, and so after pledging to repeal DADT and pledging and promising and promising, Obama's big step on this issue for the gay community is to say, "Now is precisely the moment for all of you red state and red district Democrats to vote to end 'don't ask, don't tell,' nine months before an election that's already looking miserable for our side." Somehow, I suspect they'll be less than fully enthusiastic.
Geraghty links to the LGBT left site AMERICAblog, which posts:
The President needs to do more than call for gays to serve openly. He needs to announce he will insert repeal language in the defense authorization bill he will submit to Congress in the next few months. Then, he needs to actually go out and round up the votes like he's doing on health care.... You will tell how serious the President is about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell not by a bland, fleeting mention, but by what he does to go out and get it done...
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January 28, 2010
by Dale Carpenter
In case you'd forgotten, Barack Obama still opposes the ban on gays in the military. Here's the President tonight, in his first State of the Union speech:
This year -- this year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It's the right thing to do.
If your heart still flutters at the sound of words like this, you should really get it checked. 2009 was a squandered year for gay equality. Now 2010 starts with a pledge to "work" on the problem. It can't really be fact-checked and can't easily be broken.
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January 27, 2010
by Dale Carpenter
David’s constitutional equal-protection analysis is a respected one with a long pedigree in the Court’s cases and in gay-rights legal theory. My aim is not to comment on the merits of that argument, but to make a somewhat different observation: for all the heroic feats of the Warren era and a few other decisions here and there, the federal courts have not been white knights riding in to save beleaguered minorities. As David knows well, we cannot rely on courts alone, or even on courts primarily, as a way to advance policies (or rights, if you prefer) resisted by popular majorities.
The Olson-Boies litigation is an act of faith in the heroic myth of the courts. It is faith-based litigation. Veteran court observers and litigators in gay-rights circles knew better than to act on this faith right now, which is one big reason they initially opposed the suit (another big reason is that they did not want to lose control), although they certainly share the commitment to the constitutional arguments.
Solely as a tactic to advance the cause of gay marriage, the Prop 8 litigation has offered two possible gifts. First, it might actually result in a constitutional win, giving us nationwide gay marriage decades ahead of legislative action. I doubt this will happen, even more now than when it was filed last year, for reasons I outlined yesterday.
Second, the process of litigation itself, win or lose, might educate the public about gay marriage. Through lawyers’ arguments, brilliant briefs, landmark published decisions, and the live testimony of witnesses on both sides -- the sacraments and holy texts of lawyers -- the public might come to see how compelling the case for SSM is, and how thin or even hateful the opposition is. That has been the theory.
Now the theory meets fact. Other than those with committed views on SSM, nobody is paying attention to this trial. True, the pro-SSM and anti-SSM blogs are full of "coverage," which consists mostly (David excepted) of hooray- for-our-side commentary. Yesterday, while we reveled in the latest devastating analytical blows to Prop 8, its supporters were deriding the trial as a "desperate" attack on religion, which was halted by an "impenetrable roadblock" from their expert witness.
The public is oblivious to all of this. The Supreme Court precluded any possibility of a wider educative impact by stopping even limited broadcast. Now all we have is a transcript, in all its black-and-white glory. There has been no coverage of the trial on television and very little of it in major newspapers. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a three-paragraph story in the lower right-hand corner of page A13. That’s been about it. Meanwhile, there’s Haiti. There’s healthcare. There’s the ongoing meltdown of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. But even if these things weren’t happening, something else would be sucking the oxygen out of the image-less Prop 8 trial.
At this point, the best outcome for SSM in the Prop 8 litigation might well be a loss in the Ninth Circuit. This would limit the harmful precedential effect of the case, allowing the Supreme Court to defer consideration of the constitutional claims so ably defended by David and others.
We don't need more faith-based litigation. We need to do the hard political work of persuading people that they have nothing to fear from the happiness and security of gay families. That is being done in only a very limited and indirect way in the Prop 8 trial, at potentially high cost. We need much more focus on democratic processes. Fortunately, that work has begun and is showing signs of success, both in polls and in legislatures.
Permalink | 10 Comment(s)
January 26, 2010
by David Link
I can’t disagree with Dale Carpenter’s thoughts about the Prop. 8 trial. But I think they ultimately just reiterate the problem: we can’t rely on the constitution when it promises equal protection, and that’s mostly because of politics.
I know Dale has reasons he believes a court could find rational enough to support inequal marriage laws, and as a professor of constitutional law, he speaks with some authority on that point. But here, his concerns are almost all political ones: about liberal and conservative justices; the mercurial Justice Kennedy; the filibuster rule on a possible replacement for Justice Stevens (should he ultimately need replacing; he’s proven to have some kind of stamina).
Dale’s not kidding about any of that. But the constitution does make a promise, and the courts were established as the branch most immunized from politics so that such constitutional promises would be reviewed by cooler heads.
The equal protection clause in particular doesn’t need to mean a lot to mean something. It obviously isn’t necessary for political majorities. It must protect minorities from something. The questions are (a) which minorities, and (b) what somethings? As an extremely small minority, and one that has a long history of quite vivid discrimination, both in the law, itself, and in the culture, I think lesbians and gay men have to qualify somehow under (a). Perhaps marriage isn’t one of (b)’s somethings, but all of the court cases declaring marriage as a fundamental right tell me that state recognition of marriages has to be one of the laws that ought to be applied equally to all citizens, not just the majority.
As we learned with Bowers v. Hardwick, politics and pretty offensive notions about homosexuals still color the opinions of some judges at even the highest level. I have no doubt that the uglier language and insinuations in that case would not appear so publicly in an opinion upholding unequal marriage rights today. But the opinion would have to use the highest level of deference to the political will of the majority (which in the case of Prop. 8 is the voters themselves), and would have to accept reasons I think are little more than other ways of saying “Because we said so.”
And that is taking it for granted that laws discriminating based on sexual orientation should be given no special regard at all. Sexual orientation doesn’t need to be entitled to the highest level of scrutiny in order to fit into the middle tier of review, where laws have to be supported by something more than wink-and-a-nod rationality. There is more than adequate evidence already in the record that the proponents of Prop. 8 knew the value of misinformation and untruths in courting the votes they needed.
That’s hardly unusual in politics, but there’s a difference between when a politician loses an election because of unfair – and even unethical – reasons, and when a constitution is being altered to take away a right from a minority that had been specifically recognized. One person is affected unfairly in the former, but a whole group of people bears the burden of the latter.
This will be a hard case for any court. Same-sex marriage is acutely political. But that’s exactly the reason we need courts – to tell us, every now and then, that politics has prevailed over justice, not achieved it. In those uncommon cases, if courts, too, bow to politics, we have little need for them.
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January 26, 2010
by Dale Carpenter
As a legal strategy, the Prop 8 litigation was always a high-stakes bet. The bet was that there were either five votes on the Supreme Court to strike down Prop 8 or that, by the time the case works its way up, there would be five votes to do so. And let's face it: if the lower courts strike down Prop 8 the pressure on the Supreme Court to consider the case will be overwhelming. A successful outcome for David Boies and Ted Olson means a successful outcome in the Supreme Court -- not merely a win in Judge Walker's trial court or even a win in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Like many others, I was dubious from the beginning about this bet. I don't see how you get to a 5-4 majority on the current Court to strike down Prop 8. The hope has been that Justice Kennedy would join the Court's liberal wing in such a decision. I'm not completely convinced that even this liberal wing -- Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor -- will take on the marriage laws of 45 states. Whatever else one thinks of their constitutional philosophies, the Court's liberals are not nearly as adventurous or as aggressive as their liberal forebears.
But even if they voted to strike down Prop 8, it's even less certain that Kennedy would side with them. If nothing else, the recent decision he joined to prohibit the broadcast of the Prop 8 trial -- a decision that diminished whatever political salience it might have had -- suggests that Kennedy believes the beleaguered group needing the extraordinary protection of courts is the supporters of Prop 8.
Now two factors have made a favorable outcome in the Supreme Court even less likely than when the litigation was filed last year. The first is the election of Scott Brown to the Senate from Massachusetts. This denies the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority. The second is the likely retirement this summer of the most stalwart of the Court's liberals, Justice Stevens.
The possibility of a filibuster of the president's nominee to replace Stevens will likely have a moderating effect on Obama's choice, which means the replacement will be somewhat less likely to vote to strike down Prop 8. With Republican gains in the Senate this fall, any hopes for strongly liberal nominees to replace conservatives before the 2012 election seem even more vain.
All of this is speculation. Maybe Kennedy is on board. Maybe Justice Stevens won't retire. Maybe his replacement, or a replacement for a conservative in the next couple of years, will surprise us. Earl Warren the nominee wasn't Earl Warren the Chief Justice. Maybe the Republicans won't mind letting one strong liberal be replaced by another and will let it go just as the fall election approaches. Maybe lions will lie down with lambs.
But as of now, the Prop 8 litigation bet just went from bad to worse.
Permalink | 7 Comment(s)
January 26, 2010
by David Link
It’s not really so important that Prof. Kenneth Miller is not as much of an expert on gay political power as the defense was hoping. The general landscape is obvious enough. We have garnered more support over time than we started with, and working with our allies (particularly in California) have been able to get laws passed in the legislature to provide some basic and necessary protections.
But we’ve also lost two elections here on gay marriage, which fit right alongside the 29 other elections we’ve lost in states across the country.
What Prof. Miller wanted to avoid, and what David Boies steered him directly into on cross-examination is the difference between legislative support and electoral losses. Miller actually does have cogent thoughts about that difference, and unfortunately for the defenders of Prop. 8, they are at the core of our case.
Here is what Prof. Miller has written:
"In allowing proponents to eschew compromise and accommodation of competing interests, the initiative process fosters polarization rather than consensus building."
That single sentence expresses what Karl Rove knew and deployed so well on behalf of his boss, a tactic that continues to have life in it. The residual prejudices about homosexuality are still potent within many people, even if they are not publicly articulated. Many legislators have identified and abandoned those outdated notions, and even the ones who retain them (or cynically wish to exploit them) don’t often say them out loud. (Here’s a good example of why they don’t)
It is not necessary to announce anti-gay prejudice in public to appeal to it, though. In fact, an election on gay rights (and specifically marriage), polarizes voters by its very nature, and undermines the consensus building that gays have been patiently working on for decades. The fact that the proponents of anti-gay marriage initiatives don’t openly proclaim such motives shouldn't be very surprising.
The trick is to take the focus off of their own motives. Because Prop. 8 was, in fact, dominated by religious groups, its defenders have insisted that opposition to Prop. 8 must therefore be anti-religious. But that leaves out something important. Religion can be a perfectly adequate motivation for any individual citizen’s vote. Voters can cast their ballots for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all. They can flip a coin, if they choose.
But courts have an obligation to determine (on behalf of all of us in the aggregate) whether a law is supported by at least one good, constitutionally sufficient reason. And our secular courts can’t accept religious reasons, or else they would find themselves intruding into theological disputes within and among religions.
It is that fact – that courts can’t accept religious reasoning – that is made to appear to be anti-religious. To be fair, there is no shortage of anger among gays and gay supporters about how religions treat homosexuals. But it is not our side that has to defend the law.
That leaves non-religious reasons as the only ones the court can consider. This is the task the Prop. 8 defenders are struggling with. There is ample evidence of Prop. 8’s leadership baiting voters behind the scenes with polygamy, pedophilia (and more general fears about children), bestiality, religious prejudice, etc. Again, like them or not, those are reasons any individual voter can find adequate. But aside from prejudice and theological beliefs, what reasons support the majority favoring itself and disfavoring an extremely small minority, particularly in the context of something as personal and profoundly important as the decision whether to marry one other person?
Prof. Miller’s observation shines a glaring light on the reason that, while gays have been successful in the legislative arena, where compromise and consensus are possible, their power dissipates in elections over marriage equality. If there is a good reason to discriminate, the court can accept it. But Prop. 8’s defenders do have to provide something the court can rely on. The next couple of days will give them that opportunity.
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January 25, 2010
by David Link
I try to give myself some political and emotional distance from the arguments in the Prop. 8 trial (I’m not always successful) so I can better assess what the other side’s best case could be, in order to figure out how to respond appropriately. Good lawyers have to know the strength of the other side’s case, not to mention the weaknesses of their own.
But sometimes life gets the better of you. As I was posting about Dr. Tam’s testimony, a not unrelated drama was playing out closer to home. One of my cousins told her father he could have only supervised visits with her very young children. He is gay, and she believes he might molest them.
Many years ago, my uncle married a woman, though it was reasonably clear to most of us (even back then) that he was gay. My grandmother knew, and she was born in 1907. We nevertheless supported the marriage, and the two great kids it produced, and when the inevitable happened and my uncle met a partner more suited to his natural homosexual orientation, everyone hunkered down for that transition, as solid families do. I can’t pretend it was easy, particularly for the kids. That’s why I am such a strong proponent of eliminating social and religious pressure on lesbians and gay men to deny their sexual orientation, which so often results in wrong marriages – the best evidence (for those who want to believe it) of heterosexuality. Kids should have two parents who have the same sexual orientation. If you honestly don’t want homosexuals to marry each other, and want to avoid them marrying heterosexuals, come right out and say you’d just rather they be single.
My cousin eventually got married, and my uncle adores the grandchildren, whose photos he prominently featured on the Christmas card he sent out last year. But his daughter has been drifting deeper into an evangelical sect, and they have now helped her convince herself that there is too much of a risk her father will molest her children.
The most amazing thing is her belief that her father would accept her low opinion of him. She told him he is free to see his grandchildren, as long as the visits are supervised, and she was nonplussed to learn that he wasn’t taking that well.
This is the divide we face. People like my cousin view the assumption that gay men will probably molest children as eminently reasonable, even uncontroversial. They expect us – everyone – to accept that fact. That is why they view themselves as compassionate when they fail to prohibit gay relatives (even fathers) from having any contact whatsoever with their children. Supervised visits seem like a reasonable compromise.
Similarly, Dr. Tam believes he is being more than fair in supporting the political compromise of domestic partnership. Of course homosexuals shouldn’t have access to marriage – everyone believes that. They get their due (maybe even more than their due) under the law. Why are they complaining?
This is how our willingness to compromise is used against us. If my uncle were to accept the insulting offer his daughter has put on the table, she will be confirmed in her unreasonable beliefs about gay men. For my uncle’s part, his self-respect is being pitted against his love of his grandchildren. His daughter can’t imagine he would have self-respect.
This morning, the dilemma was resolved. My cousin, based on her religion-based-on-love has cut off all contact with her father. Once again, offhand comments in Leviticus, which are decidedly not about pedophilia, trump a specific demand in the Ten Commandments that says in no uncertain terms (and I believe I am quoting here) “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
This pedophilic spin on homosexuality is our own contribution to the theology of sexual orientation. At the very least, it is highly arguable that Leviticus or Genesis, or even St. Paul, were primarily concerned about pedophilic homosexuals. It took a lot of time and effort to figure out how to turn the one into the other.
Permalink | 27 Comment(s)
January 24, 2010
by David Link
The last thing I’d have expected from the people defending Prop. 8 was for them to be post-gay; but they seem to have at least one attorney who’s there.
On Friday, Howard Nielson cross examined Prof. Gregory Herek extensively about the scientific literature that shows “erotic plasticity” and the idea that “the very concept of sexual orientation may be misguided.” To my mind, this was the most rigorous cross-examination the defense has offered, and the most intellectually honest.
There is scientific evidence, some of it offered by our own witnesses, showing that some people’s sexual orientation is, indeed, fluid. It’s not like this should come as any surprise, since the “B” in “LGBT” is now quite taken for granted.
But Nielson was going further with this. He was trying to blast open the entire notion that homosexuality even exists as a category. That, of course, is what the post-gays have argued -- that we should move past this insistence on categorizing ourselves based on sexual orientation. Some ex-gays, too, have found it more convenient to latch onto this term.
Nielson’s insistent drumbeat of questions to Prof. Herek suggested very strongly that this will be offered, somehow, to support Prop. 8’s rationality. My guess is that the argument would go something like this: The post-gays are right. It’s a waste of our time to try and divide ourselves up based on a factor that (the literature shows) is so indeterminate. The marriage laws don’t discriminate against homosexuals because even homosexuals can’t figure out for certain who counts as one of them. How can you discriminate against a group you can’t define?
Well, it’s hard to define race, too, in a pluralistic society that doesn’t mandate racial uniformity through marriage laws, but that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as racism.
But even at its strongest, I’m not sure this argument takes Nielson where he wants to go. If homosexuality doesn’t exist as a category, then neither does heterosexuality. As Prof. Herek repeatedly noted in his testimony, though, Nielson was focusing a bit obsessively on the margins. Most people do, in fact, know and identify themselves with one of the two primary sexual orientations.
And that’s for a very good, and solidly practical reason. It’s easy enough to decline to state a sexual orientation when you’re single – though there’s certainly no shortage of people willing to declare a major. But when it comes time to commit, and specifically to marry, you can only pick one of the two available options. That returns us back to the original question: should the government be steering people into one of those options and away from the other through the force of law? If so, why? It’s not enough simply to say the government is not discriminating against a group of people because we don’t know if some of those people really are “those people.” The government is, in fact, discriminating against every individual who is willing to declare him or herself, not only a member of that group, but a publicly identifiable member. It’s hard to be a closeted homosexual after you’ve obtained the marriage license with someone whose gender looks suspiciously like your own.
Just because the law isn’t discriminating against every conceivable member of a group doesn’t mean it isn’t discriminating against the group, and (particularly when it comes to marriage) the individuals in the group. Marriage, unique among most civil rights issues, involves two people who must individually agree that this is the course for both of them. If the government chooses to recognize such relationships, can it prefer the relationships that heterosexuals wish to enter to the relationships homosexuals wish to enter?
Nielson’s argument seems to be trying to recreate the closet in plain sight. As in days gone by, there are no gay people in it, and no straight people either – just people who get married to members of the opposite sex or don’t get married at all. That’s not a justification for the status quo, it’s just a reiteration of it.
Permalink | 15 Comment(s)
January 23, 2010
by David Link
There are a couple of things right up front that should be said in favor of Hak-Shing William Tam. On Thursday, he testified under oath at the Prop. 8 trial that he does not think bestiality is related to homosexuality. He supports domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. He might even support gay adoption, though he hasn’t yet made up his mind about that.
That’s a lot for a man who believes homosexuals are twelve times more likely than heterosexuals to molest children, and that same-sex marriage will necessarily lead to – might even be intended to lead to -- the legalization of prostitution and sex with children.
Whatever the satisfactions of judging Dr. Tam, I think there’s more value in a gimlet-eyed look directly into the contradictions and paradoxes of his testimony.
Start with that “twelve times more likely.” It’s absurd on its face, contradicted by both science and common sense. But that’s not the half of it. It doesn’t matter where it actually came from (Dr. Tam doesn’t know, attributing its provenance vaguely to the internet), to know that it lumps into its prepackaged assumptions one of the most obvious and often ignored of all the misunderstandings about homosexuality.
It doesn’t include lesbians.
Attributing the supposed predisposition toward sexual misconduct of gay men to lesbians is something of a blood sport among our opponents, and they seldom get called on it. The courtroom would have been an ideal opportunity to explore that, but you can’t have everything.
David Boies obviously had bigger game to go after when questioning Tam (and came home with a bounty), but I’d love to have heard Tam’s answer about whether he thinks lesbians are as voracious as he seems to assume gay men are in their appetite for molesting children. If not, can they get married?
It’s possible, maybe even likely, that he does believe they are sexual predators, too. That is the nature of belief: it not only doesn’t require facts to support it, it exists independent of, and sometimes contrary to facts. People often believe in God, not because their lives are so good, but because they are not. There are very few facts for the survivors in Haiti to look to that can give them comfort about the future, but faith can sustain them through the grim reality. It has sustained others.
Dr. Tam seems to have the same unshakable faith in his understanding of homosexuality as he does in his understanding of God. He would violate that faith if he questioned it. When he testified that he does not believe he is hostile to lesbians and gay men, there’s no doubt he believes that. That’s why he supports domestic partnership, protections against discrimination, and other gay-supportive laws.
But would he support laws protecting child molesters in any other context? If gay marriage will really lead to “falling into Satan’s hands” as he dramatically wrote, why is domestic partnership okay? Groups in Hawaii don’t see any difference at all, which is why they are demonstrating against the civil unions bill now in the Legislature there.
I doubt Tam can explain that difference. But as a voter and even as a political activist, he doesn’t need to. Voters can vote for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all.
But the equal protection clause in the constitution is not just puffery. It doesn’t have to mean a lot for it to mean something. Dr. Tam is not the only person who worked very hard to get Prop. 8 passed, and his testimony embodies the most common, irreconcilable discords about homosexuality. No matter what any individual voter believed, it is possible – and necessary under constitutional rules – to ask whether there are any consistent reasons, any rational ones, that would support a majority treating a minority differently, and less favorably, than itself.
Dr. Tam did not provide anything like that on Thursday. But Friday’s cross-examination of Prof. Gregory Herek provided a glimmer of such an argument.
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