News for the Week Ended April 27, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW
DOMA Defenders Change Their Minds
Well, I’ve been procrastinating this morning, and in the course of aimless web surfing, I discovered that Judgment Day is going to be May 21 and after six months of judgments the world will end on October 21. So says a California-based Biblical scholar who has figured out the schedule from his reading of Scripture.
In view of this pending apocalypse, I feel a certain complacency about our concerted communal struggle for equality. DOMA? Do we really care under the circumstances whether we’ll be ripped off by estate taxes if our spouse somehow manages to die before the October deadline? Does it matter if gay couples can adopt in Virginia given that we’ll all be shedding the mortal coil before the end of baseball season, babies and parents alike?
On the off chance that the man’s dates are off, I will pretend that the Earth survives for a few more decades and that the news of this week carries some significance.
And here’s the big news, which you’ve probably read about already. On Monday, the law firm of King & Spalding reversed course and decided not to defend DOMA on behalf of House Republicans. Lead counsel Paul Clement resigned from the firm, and took the DOMA contract over to a new firm, Bancroft, a small and conservative DC-based outfit that appears to have only a handful of attorneys available for the task.
King & Spalding’s chairman, Robert Hays, took responsibility for the about face, explaining vaguely that “the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate.” His firm was soon buried in scathing critiques from the legal community, which generally felt that King & Spalding should not have agreed to the contract in the first place if they weren’t going to see it through.
King & Spalding were also accused of caving to political pressure, levied by the Human Rights Campaign and other gay groups. Indeed, HRC had started a campaign against the firm, calling other K&S clients, riling up law students and planning a protest. The firm, which has a good reputation for diversity and promoting respect, may have been caught off guard by the backlash. Rumor had it as well that Coca Cola, a major K&S client, had expressed dismay at the idea of its law firm riding to the defense of the antigay statute.
No one knows exactly what transpired at King & Spalding during the ten days between when the contract was signed and when the firm filed a motion to withdraw from the defense of DOMA in the New York case of Windsor v United States.
But it seems pretty obvious that the decision to work on the antigay side was made by a few people at a high level, and that the announcement caused a stir within the firm. Under the terms of contract, no employee of King & Spalding would have been allowed to speak on behalf of same-sex couples rights for the duration of the litigation, up to two years.
Further, although principles of the legal profession embrace the tenets that cold-blooded murderers deserve a defense and that good lawyers may well fight for unpopular causes, the decision to defend DOMA transcends those ideals. Who wants to be employed by the firm that defends the Board of Education against Brown? Who wants to be Bryan rather than Darrow? The Defense of Marriage Act is probably the most clearly discriminatory law on the books of the United States, and the fight against it is at the core of the gay civil rights movement. This is not just another client.
The Human Rights Campaign would like to take full credit for King & Spalding’s reversal, and I’m sure their nascent campaign had an impact on the decision to bag the case. But basically, it was all of the above. It was everything, and I take Hays at his word that the original decision to take the case was not “properly vetted.” In the end, they got out so fast, basically in a matter of one week, that little damage was done.
Plus, the House still has super-lawyer Paul Clement, and Clement now has another firm’s resources at his disposal. No harm, no foul in my book.
So, will HRC go pester the people at Bancroft? Not likely. While King & Spalding had over 800 lawyers, Bancroft only has a few. Plus, they’re all conservative and presumably knew exactly what they were getting into by taking on DOMA.
Finally, someone has to defend DOMA, just as someone defended the Board of Education and just as William Jennings Bryan stood up for Adam and Eve and the State of Tennessee. We can’t defeat the law in court without an adversary. I’m guessing as well that a conservative legal group will not hesitate to present the antigay case for DOMA, so we may be in for some stark contrasts between the briefs.
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This Bud’s For Us
In other legal news, I should write a long section on the latest development in the Prop 8 case, where the bad guys have asked the Ninth Circuit to toss out the entire case on the basis of Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation. Judge Walker, who remained in the glass closet during the Prop 8 trial, has since retired and made public statements confirming that he is gay and has a partner of ten years. According to the Prop 8 people, this means he had a personal stake in the trial, and that the outcome was biased.
But this absurd motion is going nowhere, so it’s not worth the ink. If you follow that rationale, women can’t rule on abortion cases and Blacks can’t rule on affirmative action, etc. etc.. Indeed, even heterosexual judges could be accused of bias by our side, since they have a personal stake in maintaining their preferential marital rights.
By the way, I just saw a Budweiser commercial online that may or may not be directed at the gay community, according to reports.
May or may not? There is nothing ambiguous about this ad, which is pretty damn gay and even ends with the tag “Proudly serving those who serve” or something like that. Well, it uses the word “proudly” anyway.
The ad shows a soldier talking to his male friend (split screen) and telling him “I’m coming home.”
We then see scenes of the soldier on a plane and in a bus, mixed in with scenes of the friend cleaning out the barn, buying a lot of bud, and setting up a big welcome home party. Mom and Dad are involved, which could indicate that the other man is a brother. But not really. The ad ends with the two men in an extended embrace. And as I said, there’s the giveaway tagline. Plus, it’s almost pride season!
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Was Obama’s Left Foot Amputated? Have You Ever Seen It?
I’m watching MSNBC with the sound off this afternoon, and I can report that up to 80 percent of today’s coverage has concerned Obama’s long form birth certificate, which he presented to the media this morning with an air of disgust. Obama made clear that he dug out the paper in order to move the media onto another topic. So far, the plan has failed, since the gesture has only served to make the birth certificate Topic Number One all day long. That said, maybe it will slowly go away.
But really. Did we actually need to see this document in order to be convinced that Obama was born in Hawaii, the state where his parents met and lived and studied and got married? And more to the point, why should this certificate have the slightest meaning to people who seem to think that the Obamas traveled to Africa in order for Mrs. Obama to give birth, and then went back to Hawaii to continue their studies?
I’m assuming that’s how they think he managed to be born in Kenya. But for all I know these people may think the whole family lived in Kenya to begin with. Because his father was Kenyan! At any rate, when you have no contact with reality and no need for facts, why should the actual birth certificate make a dent in your delusions?
Now I’m hearing that Trump doesn’t necessarily believe the President got into Columbia or Harvard, because he “heard” that Obama had bad grades. So are we to assume Harvard is in on the scam and the whole bit about being head of the Law Review and graduating magna cum laude is another fabrication? And someone ghost wrote all those books?
What’s next, I wonder? Do we really know that Barack and Michelle are married? Have we seen a license? Wedding pictures? Are the girls really his kids? Why won’t he take a simple DNA test so we can know for sure and put the issue to rest? Oh, and where was Michelle born anyway? Maybe in Africa as well! She looks African.
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Tennessee House Passes Useless Antigay Bill
There’s a really nasty bill making progress in the Tennessee legislature, two of them actually. The one I really loathe would ban local entities from passing laws that protect against GLBT bias, and indeed would revoke any such laws that are currently in effect. Nashville just expanded its laws to mandate that city contracts be reserved for those with GLBT protections in place, so that would be gone.
If this sounds suspiciously unconstitutional it’s because it was this kind of charter amendment that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Romer v Evans back in 1996. I am assuming that the Tennessee lawmakers have found a way to preempt gay rights laws without running afoul of Romer, but maybe not. Maybe they’re just thumbing their noses at the whole crazy theory that gays and transpeople should have a role in the political process.
The other Volunteer State bill would ban the discussion of gay sexual orientation in elementary or middle school, where to my knowledge, we don’t have sexual discussions in the classroom to begin with. The law, however, puts a taboo sign on any reference to gay people whatsoever, even for middle school kids up to 12 or 13 years old.
Although the bill’s author says the measure is “neutral,” it’s not much different from a bill that mandates teaching that being gay is bad and being straight is good. Because that’s exactly what it does.
Oh, we’ve also got a new anti-marriage amendment up for debate in Minnesota. And the Rhode Island legislature will not be passing marriage equality, because too many GOP lawmakers stand in the way.
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Grotesque Attack Kills Gay Man’s Horses
I just have a general sense of bad news around the country this week. I can hardly bear to tell you about the arsonist who set a barn on fire in rural Ohio, killing eight beloved horses including a pregnant mare and a one-week old colt. The barn’s ruins were defaced by anti-gay slurs directed at the man who owed the farm, who was devastated. The man had rushed out and tried to save his horses, but the fire—which melted a tractor—was too hot. He could hear them trying to escape, but could do nothing.
Isn’t that excruciatingly sad?
I’m sorry to spring it on you like that. It makes you wonder why the far right continues, not just to oppose gay rights, but to encourage bigotry. Those bills in Tennessee, for example. Who cares if Nashville holds its contractors to high standards of fair play? Tennessee already has strict rules about what can be said in a classroom, so why go further and erect a wall of silent disapproval around the word “gay” and the human beings that word represents?
And why, in a country where thriving gay families can be found in every state and in every town, why go out of your way to make sure those families are seen as inferior?
This arsonist was a madman. But his hatred isn’t so rare. I read quite a few conservative blog entries this week about the King & Spalding story, and I read several hundred comments that followed and after a while the venom leaches off the screen and makes me feel a little sick. Then I read about this horse murderer and as is the case with any good hate crime, I feel a bit as if those were my horses, or maybe my dogs, because I’m just as gay as that guy in Ohio and there are people out there, sane or not, who hate me just as much.
Wonder how that guy will be judged on May 21.
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arostow@aol.com
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