Hullabaloo

Monday, May 10, 2010

 
Don't Go There

by digby

So Andrew Sullivan is on one of his quirky crusades against Elena Kagan, to force her to answer questions about her sex life so that people will know how that affects her judgment on gay rights issues. And yet, except for a lot of Harvard whispering, there's no evidence that Kagan is gay. As Richard Kim says:

I don't know if Elena Kagan sleeps with women or men. I don't know if she sleeps with anyone at all. I don't care. What I do know is that she has never claimed to be a lesbian, that she's never spoken out in the first-person as an advocate of gay rights and that she has never publicly discussed a romantic relationship with a woman. Gay isn't some genetic or soulful essence; it's a name you call yourself--and Kagan has not done that. So in my book, case closed. Elena Kagan is not gay. Is she straight? I don't know, and again, I don't care. Why does she have to have a sexuality at all?

Kim asks whether or not we should have asked John Roberts about how his heterosexual life experiences affect his decisions making and I do recall lots of talk at the time about about Roberts' "late marriage" and odd views toward women. (This picture raised eyebrows for the same reason Kagan's hairdo raises them today.) But aside from a lot of sniggering, I don't recall anyone suggesting seriously that it should be brought up in the hearings.

This is not a door anyone should want to open. If we are going to ask presidential nominees how they will apply their sex lives to cases, it's not going to be pretty. In fact, it's downright alarming.

I wrote about this topic a couple of weeks ago and don't really have anything of substance to add. The woman has a right to be a single, middle aged career woman without being forced to answer questions she doesn't want to answer about her intimate life. If she's not out there crusading against gay rights, there absolutely no reason to assume anything or even bring it up.


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digby 5/10/2010 05:30:00 PM |