How Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's Gay Mentor Influenced His Views, Beliefs

Huffington Post/AP ^ | April 14 2014 | Mark Sherman

[WilliamIII]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Irish Catholic boy who came of age in Sacramento after World War II is an unlikely candidate to be the author of the Supreme Court's major gay rights rulings.

But those who have known Justice Anthony Kennedy for decades and scholars who have studied his work say he has long stressed the importance of valuing people as individuals. And he seems likely also to have been influenced in this regard by a pillar of the Sacramento legal community, a closeted gay man who hired Kennedy as a law school instructor and testified on his behalf at his high court confirmation hearings in Washington.

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

People change, but the Constitution says what it says. PERIOD.

[campaignPete R-CT]

the “enforcement mechanism” is failing and has been for quite a few generations.

[castlebrew]

Anyone else, and I would expect a recusal.

Bit not from this “swing vote” (pun intended) attention whore.

[castlebrew]

“Bit” = “But”

[jonrick46]

Does this make Anthony Kennedy a gay blade?

[BenLurkin]

The “pillar” of the Sacramento bar was a queer?

Explains a lot.

[Unam Sanctam]

I can’t forgive Justice Kennedy for his dicta that bigotry is the only possible motivation for opposition to same sex “marriage”.

[nathanbedford]

This article illustrates the problem with Supreme Court Justices ruling with their "gut" rather than by resort to originalist understanding of the Constitution.

Justice Kennedy will no doubt write an opinion prohibiting states from prohibiting gay marriage and he will do so by resort to conceptions and feelings nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Homosexuality, unlike the Internet for example, was part of the Constitution when it was written in 1787 and when I was amended after the Civil War by the 14th amendment. The constitutional fixing of the power to regulate marriage on those occasions will be the last thing Justice Kennedy resorts to in rationalizing his opinion which will be very emotionally satisfying to him but which will represent one more departure from constitutional exegesis toward constitutional editing and rewriting.

Like so much else that goes on in America, this process is decried by conservatives when we see it from the top down but we have lost this case long before it got anywhere near the Supreme Court. It is the organs of opinion in America which have substantially changed the popular view of homosexuality and homosexual marriage which will carry the day rather than the most compelling brief that might be written in opposition to gay marriage.

For the record, my personal view is that it is unconstitutional to prohibit the states from prohibiting gay marriage. I also believe that it is unconstitutional to prohibit states from permitting gay marriage. In any event, the matter is not to be determined by a court, either on the state or the federal level, but by state legislatures in the normal course. When we decide these things in the courts, when the courts decide these things by resort to popular will (or better put, pop culture), we have politicized the court process and we have certainly degraded it. We have not got the results pleasing to conservatism, that was lost on the street level, we have simply moved pop culture into the court where some very great minds translate street patois into high sounding legalese.

[jimfree]

I found that particularly disturbing. Slander is not guidance.

[cynwoody]

Bit not from this “swing vote”

There are three branches of government: the legislative, the executive, and Anthony Kennedy.

[Susquehanna Patriot]

I agree with your summary opinions - that marriage law belongs to the states. With regards that it would be unconstitutional to prohibit states from permitting gay (or homo) marriage - the problem then becomes, as was predicted, what happens when parties to such marriage move across state lines.

What has really happened here is more than a perversion of Constitutional law. While I would agree that it would be unconstitutional to prohibit states from permitting homo- “marriage”, it would seem that no state would do so as no government has the power to change the definition of words, words with multi-jurisdictional legal and cultural significance. If a state wants to create a relationship between two people of the same sex, they have the power to do so - but they should be prohibited from imposing such acts on other jurisdictions by changing the definition of a single word, “marriage” - with all of its legal and cultural significance in all other states. The new protected state relationship should be called something else, and the rights assigned to it would be limited to that state.

But you hit on the key point why we are here - the battle was lost in the culture. The last bulwark of the defense of marriage (WWII and Korea War generations) is rapidly decreasing (the loss of voting its traditional morality). The younger generations in their place voting the new morality - having raised in the post-1960s sexual revolution, a culture of devalued “marriage” (out of wedlock births, divorce etc), the post 1960s sexual revolution, and the relatively recent public education indoctrination pushing acceptance that homo-marriage is a matter of fairness, or civil rights, etc. The courts have stepped into a role similar to Pontius Pilot (”What is truth?) and actually are in fear of the cultural mob if they ruled as they know they should. Instead they will give the mob what it demands - they shall rule accordingly. They just have to find the words to make it look like it is legal.

[odawg]

“I also believe that it is unconstitutional to prohibit states from permitting gay marriage.”

This antiseptic objectivity about the Constitution has its limits.You seem to be up on the issues; five years from now a further depravity you have read about will be promoted. The same argument could be used. Obviously, gay marriage is not addressed in the Constitution. I don’t think the concept ever entered their hearts, just like it never entered the hearts of any society since recorded time, and there have always been homosexuals. As Richard Nixon stated, no healthy society flirts with homosexuality. History has shown that a society that does, declines, as is so apparent now. And I think a declining society causes it, a vicious cycle.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Proving once again that Ted Kennedy knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he decided to bork Bork.

[conservativejoy]

How about Ginsberg and Hagan? They’ve both performed gay marriages. Christian groups have been asking them to recuse themeselves.