Souter leav gay rights legacy on Supreme Court :: Bay Area Reporter

Contents:

• BEHD THE SCEN 2000 WHEN SUPREME COURT LIBERALS THOUGHT NAZI AND DRED STT REFERENC GAY RIGHTS DISSENT WERE DISTRACTG
• PAT ROBERTSON WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT FORMER SUPREME COURT JTICE DAVID SOUTER IS GAY
• SOUTER LEAV GAY RIGHTS LEGACY ON SUPREME COURT
• SOUTER: A LAST LECTURE ON GAY MARRIAGE?
• SEX AND THE SUPREM – KAGAN IS SIXTH “MAYBE GAY” NOMEE
• THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985
• TURNER PRIZE AL WH STAGEACH ENDS AFTER BRIAN SOUTER GAY RIGHTS ROW

BEHD THE SCEN 2000 WHEN SUPREME COURT LIBERALS THOUGHT NAZI AND DRED STT REFERENC GAY RIGHTS DISSENT WERE DISTRACTG

Is this the face of a homosexual former Supreme Court Jtice? All this talk about whether the new Supreme Court nomee is gay has had the si effect of sparkg talk about how a recently retired Supreme Court jtice was actually gay all along. A fun game to play: every time a piece go up addrsg the subject of Is she gay, Do matter eher way, Should she have to answer the qutn, is to unt how many paragraphs before the wrer brgs up Souter as a prr example of somebody whose orientatn was an open qutn, or how many ments before some wag stat his orientatn as a fact.

PAT ROBERTSON WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT FORMER SUPREME COURT JTICE DAVID SOUTER IS GAY

Speakg on the nservative Christian program The 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson implied that retired Supreme Court Jtice David Souter is gay, although he wasn’t sure if Souter is still alive. There were mors at the time of his nfirmatn that he was gay. For example, the Orlando Sentel 1990 asked why he never married, raisg the possibily of him beg gay.

Is he anti-social, homosexual, misogynistic, immature or jt pla dweeby? It has long been mored that Souter is gay.

SOUTER LEAV GAY RIGHTS LEGACY ON SUPREME COURT

Bh appoted Souter 1990, and the New Hampshire Republin quickly surprised liberals and nservativ alike by votg wh the liberal si of the urt on many s, cludg gay on. Natnal gay groups had opposed his nfirmatn, ACT UP protters dispted his nfirmatn hearg, and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachetts) voted agast him, predictg he would "solidify a 5 to 4 anti-civil rights, anti-privacy majory. And yet, wh two years, Souter, a former New Hampshire attorney general, had emerged as a ray of hope for gay civil rights advot.

"Jtice Souter emerged as a thoughtful and pendable vote for gay equaly and cln, " said Evan Wolfson, head of the natnal Freedom to Marry group and, for many years, a key attorney for Lambda Legal Defense and Edutn Fund.

Souter was the first jtice to refer to LGB people as "gay, lbian, and bisexual, " stead of "homosexuals. GLIB – a se which a gay Irish group challenged the right of a St. Souter, for a unanimo urt, said the para anizers had a First Amendment right to exclu the gay ntgent even though a Massachetts public acmodatns law prohibed discrimatn based on sexual orientatn.

SOUTER: A LAST LECTURE ON GAY MARRIAGE?

But gay legal activists were stck by the tone of rpect Souter monstrated for gays the opn. " The opn also characterized as fact that "some Irish are gay, lbian, or bisexual" and that openly gay marchers "suggt their view that people of their sexual orientatn have as much claim to unqualified social acceptance as heterosexuals.

" When the 5 to 4 majory led favor of Boy Suts excludg gays, noted Wolfson, Souter voted wh the dissent. Souter also dissented agast a majory opn that the Universy of Virgia had to provi stunt fee fundg to an anti-gay Christian newspaper on mp.

SEX AND THE SUPREM – KAGAN IS SIXTH “MAYBE GAY” NOMEE

Evans – that stck down one of many anti-gay iativ that sought to block gays om seekg protectn om discrimatn unr state law. Fley, that Congrs uld prohib the agency om g any of s funds to support art that "may be nsired obscene, " cludg art wh "homoeroticism.

" Two of the four platiffs fightg the law were gay, and the impet of the law had been the fundg of an exhib of the work of gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Nan Hunter, a longtime gay legal activist and now profsor of law at Geetown Universy Law School, said Souter was more a reliably progrsive vote than a lear, but she acknowledged that his "rpectful tone" Hurley "signaled a dramatic shift om the sually ntemptuo tone of the urt's opn" the l986 Bowers v. It was key to the overturng of laws prohibg sodomy, and was the basis of a succsful lawsu agast police officers a small Pennsylvania town who were blamed for a teenager's suici when they threatened to tell his fay he was gay.

(In that se, was not known whether the teen was gay but the 3rd Circu U. And given that Gay and Lbian Advot and Defenrs, a Massachetts-based legal group, recently filed a lawsu challengg the feral Defense of Marriage Act feral urt, Republins are almost certaly gog to quiz the nomee about their posn ncerng laws regardg same-sex marriage and relevant nstutnal cls. As part of the procs of g up wh an answer, I wound up studyg an opn of Jtice Souter’s om a few days ago that strikgly addrs not only this issue but substantive liberty and may clu his partially disguised thoughts on gay marriage ligatn as well.

TURNER PRIZE AL WH STAGEACH ENDS AFTER BRIAN SOUTER GAY RIGHTS ROW

It was not a mere cince that when the urt stuck down homosexual sodomy laws Lawrence v.