This morning, I blearily padded outside to retrieve today’s Burlington Free Press and was greeted by the best front-page news I’ve seen in at least a month: Beth Robinson was sworn in yesterday as an associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.

As we noted in October when the office of Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin announced her appointment, 46-year-old Robinson is an accomplished attorney who served as co-counsel (with her equally notable colleague Susan Murray) for the landmark Baker v. Vermont case that resulted in the passage of the nation’s first civil union law in 2000, and also spearheaded the campaign to achieve full marriage equality for Vermont’s same-sex couples, a milestone reached in 2009. Robinson and Murray also co-founded the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force in 1997.

David Badash notes that the 2009 Vermont marriage equality victory that Robinson helped to engineer came despite a veto from then-Governor Jim Douglas, making Vermont the first state to legalize marriage equality legislatively rather than by a court order, and also the first state to override a gubernatorial veto in order to do so.

The Free Press adds:

Robinson developed a reputation for staying above the fray during her decade-plus campaign for same-sex marriage. As head of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force she exhibited a deliberate patience in building her case, helping those who supported the cause win election to the Legislature and winning over reluctant lawmakers. Though the 2009 same-sex marriage bill won by only a single vote as the Legislature overrode the veto of then-Gov. Jim Douglas, the fight under Robinson’s leadership never turned angry.

Nor did the debate ever focus on Robinson personally, though she and partner Kym Boyman had a civil union ceremony in 2001 and married in 2010. Boyman joined Robinson in the celebration at Monday’s swearing-in. “It’s an incredible honor,” she said…

As she accepted congratulations after Monday’s ceremony, Robinson said it occurred to her that the two pinnacles of her career had occurred on the same 9-foot patch of carpet in the Supreme Court chamber. Once, she had stood facing the five justices while arguing the Baker case. Now, she faced the other way addressing the crowd as she was sworn in to serve on the court, where her name plaque was already in place.

Congratulations, Justice Robinson. Your ascension to the Vermont Supreme Court is just another reason Truth Wins Out is proud to call the great State of Vermont home!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: John Becker, Director of Communications and Development
Phone: 920-265-6023
Email: john@truthwinsout.org

Truth Wins Out Lauds Appointment of Beth Robinson to Vermont Supreme Court

BURLINGTON, Vt – Truth Wins Out applauded Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin today for appointing Beth Robinson to the state Supreme Court. Robinson, who is openly lesbian, served as co-counsel for the landmark Baker v. Vermont case that resulted in the passage of the nation’s first civil union law in 2000, and also spearheaded the campaign to achieve full marriage equality for Vermont’s same-sex couples, a milestone reached in 2009. She has served as the governor’s chief legal counsel for the last ten months.

“We are thrilled that Governor Shumlin has appointed Beth Robinson, a tireless advocate for equality on behalf of Vermont’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, to the state’s highest court,” said John Becker, Director of Communications and Development for Truth Wins Out. “Robinson’s appointment underscores the commitment of the State of Vermont and the Shumlin administration to protecting and upholding the rights of LGBT people, and is yet another reason Truth Wins Out is proud to call this great state home.”

In an announcement yesterday, Gov. Shumlin praised Robinson’s background and qualifications:

“I am proud to appoint Beth Robinson to the Supreme Court,” the Governor said. “Beth’s strong legal background, experience with crafting legislation at the State House and commitment to the equal rights of all Vermonters will make her an exceptional justice on the Vermont Supreme Court. While I am thrilled to see Beth go to the Court and believe her to be the best qualified of an extraordinary pool of candidates, I am also sad to lose Beth as my legal counsel. In addition to depending on Beth’s sound legal advice, it is a pleasure to work with her every day.”

According to an interview with Vermont Public Radio, Robinson will wrap up work in the governor’s office in the coming weeks and go before the Senate next month, where confirmation of her appointment is virtually assured.

Truth Wins Out is a Burlington, Vermont-based national non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

– 30 –

One line from Amanda Marcotte’s piece this morning on the New York marriage win, and its concomitant right wing hysteria, grabbed me:

There are 44 more states to go, and the usual suspects in the South will be the biggest struggle, but the size and influence of New York will help usher this process along. Once straight people start to realize nothing is really going to be that different from them, they’ll stop caring. Many people are quietly adjusting towards a less bigoted point of view about gay people.

A recent poll out of Iowa showed that fully 61.3% of Iowans support marriage equality. That’s a couple of percentage points above public support in New York, which was around 58% right before the law passed.  Wait, that doesn’t make sense, does it?  I think it does.

One of the most important things for us to grasp, as marriage laws are expanded to include gays and lesbians around the country, is that absolutely nothing that the Religious Right promises — none of their scare tactics, none of their sky is falling Chicken Little Chickensh*t hysteria — ever comes to pass.  Ever.

Now, in the small minds of the wingnuts who fervently hate gay people, who spend an inordinate amount of their lives obsessing over what their religious masters tell them about gay people, that sky is falling and will always fall.  Before Iowa, all of the equal marriage laws were in New England, a “cultural elitist” place that, for the common wingnut, is sort of an exotic destination that may or may not actually exist, much like Europe.  So they can sort of compartmentalize what they’ve heard is happening — gays are forcing children to dress up as drag queens in preschool while taking fisting classes from GLSEN! or whatever — and imprint it upon themselves because they have, truly, very little experience with these places.  An obvious parallel came out during the fight over healthcare, where wingnuts went absolutely insane at the suggestion that nations in Western Europe had better health outcomes, for less money, than we do.  It’s, of course, completely true, but those facts had little bearing on wingnuts, most of whom couldn’t pick out the nations of Western Europe on a map.  To them, “France” is not a real place, but a target for their childish resentments.

But now Iowa has had marriage equality for a little while, and over 60% of the people in that heartland state couldn’t care less.  I would suggest that, as Amanda said, sane, reasonable people who were once on the fence or even opposed to marriage equality  have now had an opportunity to see that absolutely nothing — nothing! — has happened.  All the screaming and caterwauling from the Religious Right is just that — the hysterical moaning of liars who are losing their cultural influence.  Meanwhile, nice and normal gay and lesbian couples are getting married and raising families and regular Iowans are going, “Well hell, I guess the world didn’t end after all.”

I predict that this will happen in every state.  Oh sure, there will be a backlash when the Supreme Court finally and ultimately, in the tradition of Loving v. Virginia, declares that anti-gay marriage laws and amendments are unconstitutional and states like Georgia and South Carolina are forced to grow up real fast.  I mean, for a lot of Georgia wingnuts, Atlanta is exotic.  And that’s where a large percentage of that state’s gays and lesbians live.  But even in those places, public acceptance of LGBT equality will grow exponentially when we actually have equality in those places.

Because people hear the hysterical warnings from the Religious Right, and it works for a bit, for as long as the bigots can keep the harsh light of reality away from their followers.  But once that light starts to shine in, once those warnings are exposed as the insane lies that they are…

And that’s how you get a larger percentage of the population supporting marriage equality in Iowa than in New York.  To be sure, New York will zoom by Iowa once marriage equality has been the law of the land for a little bit.  In a way, we should thank our opponents for being such craven, hysterical, and most importantly, dishonest bigots.  They’re helping us more than they will ever understand.

This morning, like many of our readers, I watched Obama’s press conference, where he said this about marriage equality, New York, and the general state of the fight for equality [via Queerty]:

This administration under my direction, has consistently said, we cannot discriminate as a country against people on the basis of sexual orientation…

What I’ve seen happen over the last several years and what happened in New York last week – I think was a good thing because what you saw was the people of New York having a debate, talking through these issues. It was contentious, it was emotional – but ultimately they made a decision to recognize civil marriages. And I think that’s exactly how things should work. And so I think it is important for us to work through these issues – because each community is going to be different and each state is going to be different – to work through them. In the meantime, we filed briefs before the Supreme Court that say any discrimination against gays, lesbians, transgenders is subject to heightened scrutiny and we don’t think DOMA is unconstitutional (sic – they do think DOMA is unconstitutional). So the combination of what states are doing, what the courts are doing, the actions we’re taking administratively, all are how the process should work…

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays, lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

Many have taken this as a full-throated endorsement of states’ rights, going so far as to compare it to anti-miscegenation voices in the days before Loving v. Virginia. I think this is misguided, for a lot of reasons, and I have a theory as to why the Obama administration is playing the political game they are playing on marriage equality.

Now, disclaimer:  like all self-respecting gays, I surely do wish he would just come out and support marriage equality.  It would be nice for the President to add his voice to the growing chorus of support for full, simple equality.  However, the fact that he hasn’t really isn’t bothering me all that much.  I think there’s a bit of a long-view, meta game going on here [which is fully in line with Obama's actions on lots and lots of issues], and I’m not necessarily endorsing said game, but rather simply explaining what I think is going on.

Disclaimer two:  I’m not even entertaining the notion that Obama secretly hates gay people or anything like that, as I see it as a psychological problem on the part of the one who holds the opinion, rather than a rational, informed opinion based on anything.  Obama’s statements on marriage equality don’t deviate one bit from the historical statements of other Democrats in lesser positions who have straddled the line on marriage equality until finally coming out in support.

So, to offer my analysis of what I actually think is going on, I’m going to springboard off Andrew Sullivan’s piece on the subject from this morning.  While I rarely agree with Andrew on anything, god love him, I think he’s on the right track here:

[The Obama administration] withdrew legal support for DOMA. Again, a critical factor, along with moves in the states, to get the Supreme Court at some point to acknowledge that equal protection means equal protection; and that the logic of banning marriage for two percent of the population evaporates upon close rational inspection. Again, this was in the presidential bound of authority. And Obama did the right thing in the end.

Some now want this president to be Andrew Cuomo, a heroically gifted advocate of marriage equality who used all his skills to make it the law in his state. But the truth is that a governor is integral to this issue in a way a president can never be. Civil marriage has always been a state matter in the US. That tradition goes all the way back; it was how the country managed to have a patchwork of varying laws on miscegenation for a century before Loving vs Virginia. The attack on this legal regime was made by Republicans who violated every conservative principle in the book when they passed DOMA, and seized federal control over the subject by refusing for the first time ever not to recognize possible legal civil marriages in a state like Hawaii or Massachusetts. Defending this tradition is not, as some would have it, a kind of de facto nod to racial segregation; it is a defense of the norm in US history. And by defending that norm, the Obama administration has a much stronger and more coherent case in knocking down DOMA than if it had echoed Clinton in declaring that the feds could dictate a national marriage strategy.

More to the point, until very recently, if we had had to resolve this issue at a federal level, marriage equality would have failed.

That basically captures the gist of what Sully is saying, and as I said, I think he’s right.  There are several layers to consider here, when looking at the national battle for full marriage equality.  Firstly, of course, are the various DOMA challenges working their way through the courts.  The reason DOMA is flatly unconstitutional is precisely because it upends the states’ abilities to make their own marriage laws, as they always have, and have them recognized by the federal government.  But the flipside of that coin is that in all other instances of marriage law, the various states recognize each others’ contracts.  So, your Alabama marriage might be technically illegal in Massachusetts, but if you get married in Alabama and move north, the state of Massachusetts will recognize your marriage.  However, if you are a gay couple from Massachusetts and find yourself faced with a move to Alabama, you have no such luck.  The Constitutional principle being violated here is Full Faith and Credit, and the part of DOMA that violates it is Section 2.

You all know this.  Barack Obama, a constitutional lawyer, also knows this!  So when Obama says, “I think it is important for us to work through these issues – because each community is going to be different and each state is going to be different,” I don’t see it as an endorsement of a completely federalist approach to marriage.  For one thing, the words directly following those sort of negate the notion that he’s looking at it from a purely states’ rights point of view.  Now, we already know that Obama and his Justice Department have judged Section 3 — the part preventing the federal government from recognizing a state’s same-sex marriages — to be unconstitutional.  But for those of us who have become accustomed to the knowing smirk of Barack Obama, my feeling is that he is well aware that Section 2 is also unconstitutional, and that he knows exactly what is going to happen as these DOMA cases move higher and higher through the court system.  Moreover, most of the most significant challenges so far have focused on Section 3.   Yes, I know there’s a weird thing going on with the Department of Justice suddenly appealing the bankruptcy case that found Section 3 to be unconstitutional, but I’m suspecting a strange parsing of words in their original decision to stop defending the law is at play, and I’m still studying that one.  Confusing, yes, and also bizarre, but I’m still not losing it.  Let’s say I’m raising my eyebrows.  More on the role of the courts in a minute.

The other major case making its little way through the court system right now is the Prop. 8 case, which has the potential to make waves far beyond the bigoted anti-gay marriage amendment passed by California voters.  Anti-gay marriage amendments fall purely into the category of discrimination, by the states, for the states, differentiating them from DOMA, which deals with states’ relationships with each other and with the federal government.  The judge in the Prop. 8 trial found California’s constitutional amendment — which is more or less the same as anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments in quite a few other states — to be a violation of both the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the United States Constitution.  The anti-gay side in that trial made a damn fool of itself, and continues to do so.  At this rate, we have no reason to believe they will not continue to do so.  The difference here is that, depending on how far up the case goes, and how narrowly or widely the Supreme Court rules, it could have a huge, possibly nullifying, effect on the anti-gay constitutional amendments of the other states.  Now let’s revisit what Obama said directly after his comments on states’ rights:

In the meantime, we filed briefs before the Supreme Court that say any discrimination against gays, lesbians, transgenders is subject to heightened scrutiny and we don’t think DOMA is unconstitutional (sic – they do think DOMA is unconstitutional). So the combination of what states are doing, what the courts are doing, the actions we’re taking administratively, all are how the process should work…

Obama is right there on the record saying that discrimination against LGBT people is subject to heightened scrutiny, AND they think DOMA is unconstitutional.  [Note that he did not specify which section of DOMA he was talking about.]  The administration’s statements on heightened scrutiny apply both to the fights against anti-gay marriage amendments on the state level and federal laws like DOMA.  This can be shortened simply, as Daniel Villareal said in his headline earlier today, to encapsulate Obama’s feelings on constitutional amendments banning marriage equality:   “Of Course I Don’t Support Prop 8, You Dummies.”

Obama alluded in his statement to the idea that this process is working itself out on several fronts — state legislatures, court cases, the actions of his own administration that actually fall under his own set of responsibilities.  President Obama simply cannot wave his magic wand and declare full equality for LGBT Americans.  And I agree that it’s great that states like New York have used their legislative branch to move us forward.  However, those who think that the civil rights of minorities should be solely left up to the whims of either voters or their elected representatives are idiots, as there comes a time in civil rights battles where the Supreme Court has to come in and gently explain to Mississippi that it’s time to stop playing with its own poop in the corner and join the other well-behaved children at the lunch table.  [Can you imagine if we had waited around for Mississippi to deal with anti-miscegenation laws on a legislative level?  My god.]

This brings us to why I think President Obama is deliberately being cagy on the subject of full marriage equality, at this point in time.  Again, we all may not like it, but I do believe there is a method to the madness here.  Going into the 2012 elections, the Obama administration is, unfortunately, more vulnerable than I think it should be, due to the economy, and due to the goldfish memories of many American voters, who do not remember where the shitty economy came from, but who simultaneously think that Obama should have been able to snap his fingers and fix it.  And though the economy is improving, there are still a hell of a lot of Americans who are first and foremost concerned about the fact that they don’t have jobs.  If that situation hasn’t improved much by the time next year’s election rolls around, he could be more vulnerable than we might have expected, especially if the GOP manages to nominate someone who at least doesn’t appear to directly communicate with their Evangelical Mothership on a regular basis.  And believe me, the administration is conducting their own internal polling to figure out where they stand, especially in swing states like North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.  These states all went for Obama last time, and they also each have a decent share of unhinged anti-gay bigots.  Now, those bigots weren’t going to vote for Obama in the first place, but if they end up sort of not all that excited about their nominee [Romney, for instance], they might not be too excited about voting.  Oh, but hell, if Obama is actually running around before the election, as Daniel Villareal said in the piece linked above, “guns blazing with a red, white, and blue hard-on for the queers,” I can imagine a scenario where that could tip one or more of those states into the red column.  As it is, he’s letting the process play out and staying a bit above the fray, seemingly to me, to avoid handing the GOP that easy wedge issue going into the election.  Now surely, he could come out for full marriage equality next week and prove me wrongity-wrong-wrong, but my gut just sort of says that’s where things are right now.

Back to the courts for a minute.  Let’s say he wins in 2012 and then comes out fully supporting marriage equality.  Lots of cases involving DOMA and Prop 8 and god knows what else that hasn’t even been filed yet, are going to find their way to the Supreme Court in the next few years.  As the court stands right now, I believe, we have a delicate 5-4 balance tipping in our direction, emphasis on the delicate.  Over the next few years, there will be a couple of Supreme Court retirements, most likely.  Unless we luck out, I don’t think they’re coming from the conservative wing.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg has pancreatic cancer, so she will be leaving the Court at some point in the near future, most likely.  The other one who may possibly retire before too long would be Stephen Breyer.  That’s about it.  Barack Obama has a 100% record when it comes to appointing Supreme Court justices who seem to safely be on our side on these issues.  If reelected in 2012, he’ll make either one or two more appointments, which will simply preserve the delicate 5-4 balance.  If there’s a surprise conservative retirement, well, that looks good for us as our cases start making their way to the high court.

Let’s say he loses.  Let’s say Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann [doesn't make a damn bit of difference because the wingnut judge-making machine is in full flower, regardless of which GOP stooge sits in the Oval Office] is President, and just one of those judges retires.  Setting aside the fact that the ladies of this nation can kiss Roe goodbye under that scenario,  it also creates a fairly shitty situation for any cases involving DOMA, Prop 8, equal rights of any kind for LGBT Americans, and a host of other issues which, I always feel I have to remind single-issue gay voters, actually do exist.  And that court is where so much of our equality will be ultimately decided.

I feel that Obama would like to be the one making those appointments, for myriad reasons.  I am eminently more comfortable having Obama make those appointments.  So the “process” goes as it goes for right now, and my gut feeling — I have always sensed that support for marriage equality would be a second term issue anyway — is that, as long as he is reelected, we’ll be in a pretty good situation, all across the movement, through the various court cases working their way through, to achieve full equality.  If a wingnut takes the keys the Oval Office, all our work over the last several years could go directly down the tubes, and fast.

So that is my theory as to what game the Obama administration is playing.  As I said before, surely I would love it for President Obama to hold a press conference where he announces that his “evolution” on marriage equality is complete, that he supports it wholeheartedly.  That would be wonderful.  But at the same time, everything I’ve written up to this point explains why I’m just not that worked up over the fact that he hasn’t said it yet.  I sense that the Obama administration is playing the long game here, and I, as a young-ish politically involved gay American, am too.  I’m far more concerned about the make-up of the Supreme Court in the year 2013 than I am about hearing those three special words from Barack Obama right now.  They’d be nice to hear, but if I have to wait a little longer in order to make sure the gay community doesn’t get screwed sideways due to a stupid misstep, well, I’ll wait a minute longer.  As I said before, it’s not like the President can wave his magic wand and give me full equality and a pony anyway.

Strategery!  It’s part of politics.  It’s not always fun, but it is what it is in the system that we have.

Today the Supreme Court handed down an almost unanimous decision upholding the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist Church:

The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-to-1 decision.

“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”

But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

It sucks, but protecting freedom of speech means protecting grotesque speech, too.

Anyway, here is the funny part. Jack Stuef at Wonkette found Sarah Palin’s reaction to the ruling, on Twitter, which is one of the places where the Quitter works:

Uh, Sarah?

Log out of Facebook, sign out of Twitter, get up off your hind end and find a public square. There’s probably one close to where you used to work, before you quit because A. it was too hard and B. reality teevee was calling. Stand there and say “God” a bunch. Insert some word salad, dangling participles and dropped ‘G’s around it. Oh, look, you CAN do it!

Funny, though, that she seems to have a problem with this ruling which was supported by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, the other Antonin Scalia and everybody else save for Sam Alito.

Never forget this about anti-gay wingnuts: they want nothing more than to control the sexual activity of all people, at all times. They hilariously think this is their right in a free society. In a long, stupid article about Judge Roger Vinson’s cut-and-pasted ruling against healthcare reform [which he calls "MussoliniCare," because he's too dumb to understand either healthcare reform or Benito Mussolini], Bryan Fischer says this:

It’s time to start dismantling egregiously wrong precedents such as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas and Wickard v. Filburn, and the sooner we start dumping them in a landfill somewhere the better. Judge Vinson has shown us the way. May his tribe increase.

Ain’t gonna happen, Bry. If this hurts your fee fees, I’ll say it again: convert to Islam, move to Iran. You will be happier.

[h/t Kyle]

Too bad, so sad!

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a case seeking to force the Washington, D.C., government to hold a referendum on the city’s gay marriage law.

The high court declined to hear an appeal filed on behalf of opponents of a March 2010 law that made the District of Columbia the sixth jurisdiction in the United States authorizing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

The justices did not comment on the action. Their refusal to take up the case leaves in place an appeals-court decision upholding an earlier rejection of the planned referendum. The court ruled that the city was justified in rejecting the referendum because it sought to authorize a form of discrimination barred by the city’s Human Rights Act.

“Today’s action by the Supreme Court makes abundantly clear that D.C.’s human rights protections are strong enough to withstand the hateful efforts of outside anti-LGBT groups to put people’s basic civil rights on the ballot,” said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, in a written statement.

This is why wingnuts don’t like the judicial branch. It’s one thing to convince a bunch of yahoos to vote against gay people’s fundamental rights, but in courts of law, they have to actually be able to back up their arguments. In this case, the Supreme Court simply said “nah, we’re busy.” As I said, too bad, so sad!

If you’ll remember, Bishop Harry Jackson, who doesn’t seem to really live in the District of Columbia, has his panties in a wad because the DC City Council won’t allow a popular referendum on their equal marriage law, arguing that it violates the District’s Human Rights Act.  The appeals court agreed.  Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the case is even worth hearing:

According to the court’s public docket, the nine justices scheduled a private conference among themselves for Friday to discuss the case known as Jackson v. the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. Under longstanding court rules, the justices usually announce a decision on whether to accept or reject a case on the Monday following such a conference.

“Generally, if a case is considered at a conference, viewers can expect that the disposition of a case will be announced on an Orders List that will be released at 10 a.m. the following Monday,” the court’s website says.

[...]

Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of a Beltsville, Md., Christian church, and other same-sex marriage opponents filed a petition with the Supreme Court Oct. 12 asking the court to consider hearing the case in a process known as a petition for a Writ of Certiorari. The case consists of their appeal of a lower court ruling that rejected their contention that the city must allow voters to decide the marriage question in a ballot initiative.

The D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the Board of Elections and Ethics’ decision to bar Jackson and his supporters from organizing a ballot initiative on grounds that, if approved, the initiative would violate the city’s Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

If the SCOTUS rejects the case, the lower court’s ruling will stand and Harry Jackson will probably start crying, but he will live through the ordeal.

It’s sort of a slow news day, but there are three interesting pieces sitting here as open tabs on my screen, so I will share them with you so that I may then close them:

1. Damon Root has an interesting analysis at Reason about the state of the Prop 8 case and its chances when it inevitably reaches the Supreme Court.  Reason is often an intellectual wasteland, but this is one case where their libertarian perspective and analysis is worthwhile reading, especially as it pertains to Anthony Kennedy:

As for Monday’s proceedings, the outcome looks likely to be favorable to Prop. 8’s opponents. Earlier this week the 9th Circuit announced that Judges Michael Hawkins, Stephen Reinhardt, and N. Randy Smith will hear the appeal. Hawkins and Reinhardt are both widely known as judicial liberals. Indeed, National Review’s Ed Whelan promptly denounced Reinhardt as arguably “the most aggressive liberal judicial activist in the nation.” But perhaps more importantly, as George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr pointed out, “Reinhardt writes like there is no Supreme Court, and as a result his opinions have a remarkable ability to annoy the Justices.” That makes the chances of Perry reaching the Supreme Court even higher.

Assuming that happens, much will depend—as it often does—on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And when it comes to gay rights, Kennedy leans libertarian. In Lawrence v. Texas, for instance, Kennedy declared that “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.” Similarly, in his 1996 majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, Kennedy struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment forbidding state officials from taking any action designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. As he wrote, “the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint.” Together, these decisions suggest Kennedy will once again join the Court’s liberal bloc.

2. Re: the Wingnut Freak-out over gay things at the Smithsonian, a writer named Mark Judge has a piece at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller which is, somehow, worth reading.  This is officially the first time I’ve read anything at that site that made any sense.  It’s interesting because Judge is, like Bill Donohue, a conservative Catholic, but somehow his panties aren’t all in a wad about the gay stuff!  Indeed, he appreciates the art for what it is, and, unlike Bill Donohue, Judge is intelligent enough to understand the controversial installation about AIDS:

“A Fire in My Belly” shows a crucifix being covered by ants. To me — a conservative Catholic and supporter of Bill Donahue and the Catholic League — it made perfect sense. Christ took on our sins, which meant enduring the terrible humiliation that can come with suffering. This doesn’t mean one needs to resort to blasphemy or scatology, as (yawn) avant-garde artists have done in the past; but it also means that showing Christ with sores, or bruises, or even bugs on him can be an expression of faith and solidarity. If David Wojnarowicz was identifying a friend’s suffering with the suffering of Christ, he was just doing what Christians are called to do. Of course, liberals love to identify their suffering with Christ while ignoring the Lord’s call to conversion, of rejecting sin and becoming a new man. And gay art can particularly suffer from watch-me-suffer kitsch and bombast — “Angels in America,” etc.

He’s wrong about Angels in America, and he’s wrong about the value of blasphemy [I would argue that blasphemy is an extremely appropriate subject matter for art], but it’s nice to see a conservative religious person who hasn’t completely checked his brain at the door.  The writer actually loved much of the art in the Hide/Seek exhibit, and even talks about which piece of art in the exhibition was his favorite and why.

3.  Finally, former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has a message for troops who would complain about having to serve with people they know are gay:  Deal with it.

Happily, the vast majority of service personnel will do what they’re told. Which will not be a hard sell given that most have already gone on record that they will not mourn the inevitable death of DADT.

Of course, if what bugs you as a pro-DADT warrior is the idea (or the reality) of being forced to get naked in a shower or jammed into a tight submarine or fox hole with someone who’s attracted to members of the same sex, the answer for you is simple: Deal with it. That brother or sister is a human being, you are a human being: Work it out. Straight cops across the country have been lathering up with openly gay colleagues for a long time now. Yet, incidents of locker room misconduct are so uncommon as not to register at all in internal affairs data.

Having spent three-and-a-half decades in a paramilitary institution, I can attest to the rarity of a policy, any policy, that is embraced by all. But I can also confirm that most police personnel adhere to even those policies they find onerous. Why? In part, because they’re made to understand the penalty for not following orders. There’s every reason to believe military personnel will likewise comply.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who served with many gays throughout his long and distinguished service, pointed out, military personnel who can’t or won’t accept the new policy will have to find another line of work. (Don’t look for a mass exodus.) The same is true for those considering military service in the future.

Yep.  The whole piece is great, so read it.

Behold, the limited mental worldview of The Constitutional Originalist. Joe Jervis:

Speaking on Friday at the University of Richmond, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia denounced the concept of a “living Constitution” and said the 14th Amendment was not written with the intent of granting equal protection to ALL Americans. Just the heterosexual ones.

“The due process clause has been distorted so it’s no longer a guarantee of process but a guarantee of liberty,” Scalia expounded. “But some of the liberties the Supreme Court has found to be protected by that word – liberty – nobody thought constituted a liberty when the 14th Amendment was adopted. Homosexual sodomy? It was criminal in all the states. Abortion? It was criminal in all the states.” “The way to change the Constitution is through amendments approved by the people, not by judges altering the meaning of its words,” he added.

Joe points out that Scalia also believes women’s rights fall under the same category. Basically, he’s a misogynistic, homophobic pig. Excuse me, YOUR HONOR is a misogynistic, homophobic pig.