Thune: Gay and Lesbian Jurists Need Not Apply
Of course I doubt John Thune would vote for a breeder nominee either:
[C]onservative leaders have warned the nomination of a gay or lesbian justice could complicate Obama’s effort to confirm a replacement for Souter, and another Republican senator on Wednesday warned a gay nominee would be too polarizing.
“I know the administration is being pushed, but I think it would be a bridge too far right now,” said GOP Chief Deputy Whip John Thune. “It seems to me this first pick is going to be a kind of important one, and my hope is that he’ll play it a little more down the middle. A lot of people would react very negatively.”
I assume that Obama will get 38 or 39 “no” votes no matter who he picks, so I don’t think any of this should be taken very seriously. But it’s nice to see some old-fashioned, un-subtle bigotry.
52 Responses to “Thune: Gay and Lesbian Jurists Need Not Apply”
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May 6th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
The itinerary of one’s genitals is the most important thing …
… to this kind of third-world superstitious filth.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
So justice is blind, but it can’t be fabulous?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Thune went on to say that Jews and Irish were also not acceptable nominees.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Can somebody refresh my memory: are 60 votes needed to confirm a judge, or is it just 50?
May 6th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
@4 – Google is your friend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Confirmation
Alito was confirmed by a 58-42 vote.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5181091
May 6th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The modern Republican party is so fucking awesome!
May 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I really like his choice of metaphor. Most people know the original “bridge too far” was a Rhine river crossing, the objective of the audacious, but unsuccessful, WWII offensive Operation Market Garden. Is the cause of equal rights for gays really like Allied campaign in Western Europe, Sen. Thune? Or is this just concern trolling?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Breeder? I’m not up on lib lingo. What is a breeder?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“Can somebody refresh my memory: are 60 votes needed to confirm a judge, or is it just 50?”
That depends. If there is a Republican President and Senate majority, then a filibuster… while technically allowable… is an outrageous violation of tradition and a vile obstruction of democracy. Elections have consequences, you know. Every Presidential nominee deserves an up or down vote. (Sternly waggle finger at liberals) UP OR DOWN VOTE!!!
If there is a Democratic President and Senate majority, then of course a 60 vote super-majority is necessary to confirm a Supreme Court Justice, and always has been. Any attempt to circumvent this most hallowed of legislative procedures is an outrageous violation of tradition and a vile suppression of democracy. Bipartisanship requires the President to make concessions to the minority, you know. You must not cram partisan decision down our throats. (Sternly waggle finger at liberals) DOWN OUR THROATS!!!
May 6th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The “first pick”? So he might be OK with a gay/lesbian for a later pick?
I know, I know, expecting consistency from Republicans. My bad.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Not that this will go anywhere, but, food for thought (from the EEOC’s webpage):
In the federal government the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), as amended, prohibits federal employees who have authority to take, direct others to take, recommend or approve any personnel action from discriminating against applicants and employees on the bases of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, marital status or political affiliation and from discriminating against an applicant or employee on the basis of conduct which does not adversely affect the performance of the applicant or employee. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has interpreted the prohibition of discrimination based on “conduct” to include discrimination based on sexual orientation.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
shooter242, let me google it for you:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=breeder+slang
May 6th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
What if, hypothetically, Obama were to pick a gay conservative? Would Thune be OK with that?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Please, please, please: Obama, put a Latina pre-op tranny on the Court. Time for the Dems to practice some bitch-slap politics for a change.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Breeder? I’m not up on lib lingo. What is a breeder?
It’s generally used by people who don’t plan on ever having children to refer to those who do. I don’t really care for the term myself as it smacks of douchiness but I assume Matt was using it snarkily, so whatever.
The point remains of course that I doubt there is any nominee John Thune would vote for, so I’m a little amused at the statement. If he nominates a mainstream liberal there will be 38 no votes, but if he nominates a gay Muslim abortion doctor there will be…38 no votes made very vociferously? Even more Republicans appearing on CNN to decry him?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
@LaFollette Progressive:
Thanks for that… awesome.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
The “first pick”? So he might be OK with a gay/lesbian for a later pick?
I know, I know, expecting consistency from Republicans. My bad.
Yeah, see, it’s ok to have a gay person on the court. We just can’t have one right now. That would just be way too soon to, um, have a gay person interpreting laws. They need to wait their turn in line.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I like how they phrase their objections too. Not, “We will not confirm a homosexual justice,” but just giving the President a nice friendly reminder that “some people” would be polarized by this.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Of course, a bisexual Justice might swing both ways in too many ways.
Deirdre McClosky for CEA!
May 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Well, now I want a lesbian nominee just to see them do this in primetime.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I think he should pick a gay nominee just to provoke this fight. Are Republicans going to vote against someone just because they are gay? Do they think that will be popular? There is still a residual anti-gay element to American politics no doubt, but the country is not that extreme and if the person is qualified and seems otherwise to be a great pick, then I say go for it.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Damn it, Thune is on to us! How are we ever going to impose our homosexual agenda of forcing you all to gay-marry with sharp cookies like him in the Senate?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Obama definitely needs to select a gay or lesbian justice now. The GOP will shoot itself in the foot if they fight the nominee on that basis.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
How sure are we that there aren’t gay or lesbian Justices now or tjhat there haven’t been in the recent past?
May 6th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
How sure are we that there aren’t gay or lesbian Justices now or tjhat there haven’t been in the recent past?
Well, there’s always been a fair amount of speculation about Souter. Although, as one professor put it to me: “I think he’s probably gay. Whether he’s actually had sex with another man is a totally different question.”
May 6th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I think Obama should pick whoever the hell he wants. I hope by now he recognizes that every Republican is going to vote against everything he does every single time. I hadn’t considered a gay/lesbian for the bench until Thune opened his mouth, but now that I think about it: fuck him and his retarded bigotry.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Re: Well, there’s always been a fair amount of speculation about Souter. Although, as one professor put it to me: “I think he’s probably gay. Whether he’s actually had sex with another man is a totally different question.”
Yes, Glenn. Because clearly in our enlightened, sex-positive age, a person could not possibly to embrace celibacy as an ascesis and discipline of the flesh. Of course not. Celibacy is not Stuff White People Like.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
If you read the article that Matt links to, you will find that Thune is the only Senator to oppose the idea of nominating a homosexual, and even Thune didn’t say he wouldn’t vote to confirm a homosexual nominee. So the answer to your question appears to be “no.”
May 6th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Interesting the press is acting like there hasn’t already been a gay Justice. The real point is that the country advances if we have an openly gay Justice.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
“How sure are we that there aren’t gay or lesbian Justices now or that there haven’t been in the recent past?”
I can’t speak to the recent past, but it’s a well known fact that Roger B. Taney had a torrid boyhood affair with Nathan Bedford Forrest.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
[...] UPDATE: Matt Y. [...]
May 6th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
How will we know the difference between 40 votes against a straight justice and the same 40 votes against a gay one? Will their anti-gay 40 votes be given with extra pander?
May 6th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
“What is a breeder?”
That’s a joke, right? The term pretty much speaks for itself. Not being gay, I hadn’t heard it until I was twenty. I was visiting my brother and wanted to go to a bar. Being underage, my choices were somewhat limited. But good fortune smiled upon me, and my brother said that there was a perfect place just two blocks from his apartment. He explained that it was a gay bar, but they had a great beer selection (200 brands), and they never checked IDs. So we went there and I had an Augustiner. Being an underage male with blond hair, I immediately became the star attraction. Turns out, I have a cute ass. I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or not. But when the first guy started hitting on me, the bartender came to the rescue. And he said: “don’t mind those two, they’re just breeders here for the beer.” And then I said: “but you’re welcome to talk to us, we breeders don’t bite.” So less than ten seconds elapsed between when I first heard the term and when I used it for the first time. Since then, I’m proud to be a breeder, even if I don’t actually breed.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Thune has the right idea– I feel the same way about Christians. I would consider the nomination of a Christian to the Supreme Court a declaration of war.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Recdc
Thune went on to say that Jews and Irish were also not acceptable nominees
Hey, Senator Thune sounds like Don Williams kind of guy.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Rachel Maddow for Supreme Court Justice!
May 6th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
C’mon everyone likes hot lesbians, even Thune.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
What possible nominee is Thune talking about here? Or is this simply Thune setting himself up to take credit for blocking a gay nominee, when there was none in the offing anyway?
May 6th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Ah, it’s Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan. I’d not even known Sullivan was gay, it doesn’t seem to be an important feature of her legal career.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Does the stick up your ass have a stick up its ass? I guess humor is too post-modern hipster-doofus for you.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Glenn,
If that feeble bloviation is your attempt at humor, then the postmodernists are less witty than I thought.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:46 am
I know Dean Kathleen Sullivan (Stanford) is an out lesbian, but is Dean Elena Kagan (Harvard) also out?
May 7th, 2009 at 5:18 am
If Obama could find a well credentialed gay or lesbian nominee who was up for a fight, wouldn’t a high-profile showdown with intolerant Senate Republicans be a political boon to Democrats? Who would be damaged by Jeff Sessions asking explicit questions on a nominees sexual proclivities more than the few remaining sane-ish Republicans who are trying to distance themselves from this kind of bigotry?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:50 am
I’d love to see a cross-dressing SJC. Bet Rudy G would too….maybe
May 7th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Breeder? I’m not up on lib lingo. What is a breeder?
A breeder is a gay person (as in they breed immorality), so if someone refers to you as a breeder, make sure you set them straight!
May 7th, 2009 at 11:13 am
my hope is that he’ll play it a little more down the middle
Clearly, Thune is endorsing the nomination of a bisexual justice, which I think is very open-mined of him.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Yes, Glenn. Because clearly in our enlightened, sex-positive age, a person could not possibly to embrace celibacy as an ascesis and discipline of the flesh. Of course not. Celibacy is not Stuff White People Like.
Hector, you make that sound like a bad thing.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
He should nominate Deborah Batts, just for the effect of seeing heads explode at the mention of a black openly gay, women. Of the 1300 sitting federal judges Batts one of only a few, if not the only openly gay federal judge.
But I don’t have that good a handle on Batt’s professional qualifications (the last thing the Court needs is a poorly adept, AKA Bush 41 nomination). Sullivan and Kagan (I thought only Sullivan was [openly] gay?) tend to get mentioned a lot because they have very solid professional qualifications. Kagan also has a lot of media experience, providing commentary on PBS and others IIRC. Kicking around the web is her giving professional commentary on what she thought the Lawrence v Texas ruling, a case that Sullivan presented in, might mean.
Ironically Batts, if she is fully qualified, might actually be easier to get confirmed because of the other’s relatively high profile. Her sexuality is more a matter-of-fact, no real sign of “agenda” (I know, I know, that’s why I put quotes around it). Not with the GOP members of course, I can’t imagine them doing anything but spitting fire with any of those three. But on the Democratic side of Congress the “agenda” nominations might cause problems.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[...] in this post about how John Thune says he won’t vote for a gay Supreme Court nominee, I used the term [...]
May 7th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
How sure are we that there aren’t gay or lesbian Justices now or that there haven’t been in the recent past?
Considering that there’ve been 110 judges on the Supreme Court, statistically speaking there’s got to be at least one homo- or bi- sexual among them, whether or not said Justice had ever done anything about it.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Yeah, like smegma-nibbler Perez Hilton directed at Carrie Prejean. Nothing like a little bigotry to liven things up (and you on the left are experts at it!)
May 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
[...] truths are taking place on an even greater scale in Europe only the “breeders” as Mr. Yegleias will be Islamists who will not be content to outvote our friends of the left: Some guys like Andrew [...]