"...I don't know any firm that would force one of its attorneys to do pro bono work on behalf of a cause or client that the attorney is uncomfortable supporting."
Below is a summary of the case argued. Would you honestly support discriminating against gays in jobs and housing? I am very conservative and would work on this case in a NY minute. Now if it were gay marriage, that's a different matter. Are you against women's suffrage and blacks integration? I mean, conservatism HAS changed a bit (IMHO) over the last 100 years. Sorry sport, but you sound like a radical bigot to me, not a conservative.
"The case before the Supreme Court, Romer vs. Evans, dealt with a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing."
The framing of the issue in these terms is slanted to elicite the desired result. The actual text of the initiative to amend the Colorado Constitution said:
"No Protected Status Based on Homosexual, Lesbian, or Bisexual Orientation. Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing."
The Supreme Politburo ruled that,
"Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause..." Justice Kennedy writing for the majority.
Scalia in the dissent wrote,
"The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any substantive sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment. Amendment 2 is designed to prevent piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality favored by a majority of Coloradans, and is not only an appropriate means to that legitimate end, but a means that Americans have employed before. Striking it down is an act, not of judicial judgment, but of political will."
Cordially,
There is NO Constitutional right to rent someone else's property or work for a privately-owned business.
The ruling was yet another ruling of judicial activism and Roberts sided with the left-wing activists and against the originalists on the court in this case.
I would never frame the issue the way you have just framed it.
The way you have framed it assumes without evidence that homosexuality is fundamentally the same as race. Thus, in your mind there is this distinct human form called a "gay" that through no choice of its own has been bequeathed by God or genetics an obvious but passive, pervasive, unchangeable, morally neutral, and benign quality of gayness that defines its root existence.
If that's how you view homosexuality, then it's understandable that you would lump "gays" into the same category as blacks who had to fight for their civil rights in the 1950s and 60s. For you, the Romer decision makes sense.
The evidence as I see it is that there are males and there are females. There is no exotic male form called a gay, or female form called a lesbian. Homosexuality is a behavior choice that is practiced, sometimes abandoned, and sometimes resumed by some males and females. Indeed some males and females adopt a behavior choice called bisexuality that covers both bases.
Blacks cannot cease being black by ceasing to behave like blacks, whatever that might mean. Every physiological study will show them to be black regardless of how they behave. Not so with men who call themselves gay or women who call themselves lesbian, or either one that calls him or herself bisexual. Every physiological study will show them to be male or female, nothing more and nothing less.
Moreover, I do not view homosexuality as benign or morally neutral. The drastically shortened life expectancy of men who engage in the homosexual lifestyle is powerful evidence that it is not benign. The sterility and pointlessness of lesbian behavior as a reproductive strategy or adaptation is evidence that it has no "good" to offer. And homosexuality is not morally neutral because the more it is openly embraced by society and made morally equivalent to heterosexuality within the traditional family unit, the more it cheapens and weakens the traditional family unit (an ultimate "good" if ever there was one) the same way the value of money is cheapened by flooding the market with counterfeit money.
The majority in Romer placed homosexuality on the same physiological, legal, and moral footing as race. Their justification was based on emotionalism and crooked reasoning, not empirical evidence. To the extent that Roberts helped to stoke the fires of that emotionalism or contributed to twisting logic and reason to get the majority result, I believe conservatives are right to be concerned by his nomination.