Closet Politics:

[Joanne98]

Is Kagan Gay or Just Looks as Though She Might Be? Obama's Awful Pick
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Sexual politics command passions in American political life far more powerful than those currently focused on Wall Street bankers or on BP. By conventional measures Elena Kagan should sail through her nomination by President Obama to one of the most influential jobs in America -- a seat on the US Supreme court -- in a walk. If Obama had nominated a liberal, the right wing would be gleefully hunkering down for a battle royal, charging that Obama was putting up a fellow-communist intent on trashing the US Constitution. But by any normal measure Kagan is not a liberal. She’s a right-winger cheered by Republicans through her nomination to her current job as Solicitor General.

As dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan made 32 tenure-track appointments. 25 went to white men. Six went to white women, and one to an Asian woman. She didn’t hire a single black, Latino or Native American tenure track law professor. Several of her hires were prominent members of the right-wing Federalist Society.

The right is trying to raise dust about her running military recruiters off the Harvard Law School’s premises. Kagan did nothing of the sort. The recruiters were there, albeit without the School’s official imprimatur. Kagan objected to the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays (until it got judicial sanction, whereupon she gave an official imprimatur to the recruiters) -- a nice insight into the relationship of sexual politics to the U.S. war machine. “Don’t tell” has been Kagan’s consistent policy regarding her beliefs and preferences, at least since that first photo of the youngster in judge’s robes, smoking a cigar.

Before she went to Harvard she was Clinton’s deputy domestic policy advisor, in which capacity she oversaw, among other assignments, welfare “reform”, kicking poor women, many of them single mothers, off the welfare rolls.

From 2005 to 2008, she was a paid advisor for Goldman Sachs. In those same confirmation hearings for the Solicitor General’s job she took the hard Bush-Cheney line that the world is a “battlefield” and kidnapping America’s presumptive enemies is just fine. As Jeffrey St Clair and I wrote in our newsletter recently, “There’s zero evidence that Kagan would do anything to redress the right-wing tilt of the Court and plenty that she might exacerbate it in the areas of executive power, civil liberties, and assertion of presidential war powers.”

But amid rumors that she might be gay, the Christian right is now saying that her true mission will be to swerve the US Supreme court into overturning California’s Prop 8 vote (that limits marriage to men paired with women) and into striking down constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in 31 states, most of which were the result of similar Prop 8-type votes. Her right-wing assailants don’t openly hang their onslaughts on her possible gay preference. They say piously, in the words of Michael McManus of Marriage Savers, “What matters is not her personal life but evidence that she has elevated her pro-gay ideology above the law of Congress.”

Is there any such evidence? No. In her confirmation hearings for the Solicitor General job she was asked flatly, Do you believe that there is a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage? Her answer: “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05142010.html

[FrenchieCat]

1. I think I'll go with the NAACP and HRC over Cockburn and St. Clair!

NAACP Backs Supreme Court Nominee Kagan

WASHINGTON (CBS) ― The NAACP gave its backing Saturday to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, expressing confidence in President Barack Obama's pick after early hesitation that she might not be a forceful defender of civil rights.

The nation's oldest and largest civil rights group voted unanimously at a board meeting in Florida to endorse Kagan, in line to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. It was an early endorsement by a major interest group for Kagan, who is solicitor general, the government's top lawyer at the Supreme Court.

The NAACP's president, Benjamin Jealous, told The Associated Press that the group initially was concerned because Kagan, who never served as a judge, had little direct evidence or a record that she would actively promote civil rights. Many were worried that she might have an overly expansive view of executive power at the expense of individual liberties, and the group also had hoped to see a black woman appointed to the high court...

Jealous said the group ultimately was swayed by Kagan's work as a solicitor general as well as her tenure as White House aide during the Clinton administration, where she sought to strengthen hate crimes legislation and civil rights enforcement. He also noted that Kagan, who clerked for Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, was effective in boosting enrollment of black and Hispanic students when she was at Harvard.

"We don't think any Supreme Court nominee walks on water," Jealous said. "It was not an issue of whether we could live with her on one thing or another, but the question was whether we believed she would be an asset to the court."

"We looked at her record, we spoke to people who worked with her as well as the civil rights community as a whole. The discussions painted a portrait of someone committed to civil rights and civil justice," he said.
http://wjz.com/politics/elena.kagan.naacp.2.1696635.html

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"Today President Obama nominated United States Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the nominee for the opening on the United States Supreme Court created by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. Issues that are critical to the LGBT community may reach the Supreme Court in the next few years, including issues related to marriage equality, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the new federal hate crimes law. When issues like these come to the Supreme Court, it is vital that we have fair-minded judges to rule on these cases.

HRC President Joe Solmonese made this statement:

“We applaud President Obama for choosing Elena Kagan to become our nation’s next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. The U.S. Supreme Court decides cases that intimately affect the lives of all Americans. We are confident that Elena Kagan has a demonstrated understanding and commitment to protecting the liberty and equality of all Americans, including LGBT Americans.”

In addition, we commend President Obama for his commitment to diversity and expanding the number of women on the Court. Diversity on the Court brings a broader view of the way that the law affects real people, including LGBT people. Once confirmed, Elena Kagan would be the fourth woman to serve on our nation’s highest court and would be the third woman sitting on the current Supreme Court, marking the highest representation of women on the Court in its history."
http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2010/05/hrc-praises-nomination-of-elena-kagan&utm_source=Convio&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HRCnews-May-2010/