The main attack that appears to exist against Elena Kagan at the moment has to do with her actions as Dean of the Harvard Law School and policies concerning military recruiters. The basic position is well represented by Newt Gingrich’s statement today Fox News Sunday (as transcribed by HuffPo): “I think the president should withdraw [...]

Archie Bunker informed us decades ago that “England is a fag country.” Andrew Sullivan — an Englishman and proud homosexual — verifies this for us: The Conservative Party in Britain now has eleven openly gay members of parliament and nine more in a glass closet. Compare that with zero for the Republicans and three for [...]

A few weeks back, in a post titled “Elena Kagan Lesbian Rumor Smear Neither Smear Nor Rumor,” I weighed in on the kerfuffle surrounding Ben Domenech’s “outing” of the then-prospective Supreme Court nominee as gay.   The essence of the piece is that, according to several credible accounts, Kagan was widely known in both Cambridge and [...]

As Doug Mataconis predicted yesterday, the opening gambit of conservatives seeking a reason to deny Elena Kagan confirmation to the Supreme Court is to charge that she’s hostile to the military, as demonstrated by her decision as dean of Harvard Law School to deny military recruiters the right to officially visit the campus because the [...]

UPDATE: See Elena Kagan Not Gay After All? A week ago, Ben Domenech wrote a blog post about ten candidates rumored to be on the short list of nominees for replacing John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.  He asserted that Elena Kagan, Obama’s Solicitor General who is reputedly at the top of said list, [...]

The big news overnight is that President Obama has ordered hospitals to allow partners of gays and lesbians to visit and be allowed to make critical decisions. Michael Schear, WaPo: “Obama extends hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners of gays” President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of [...]

Barney Frank and I seldom see eye-to-eye but he’s echoing a longtime theme of mine in an interview with Kelly Ocamb for something called LGBT POV. BF: The only thing people should do if they want to get this bill passed is call their representatives, call their senators and after they’ve called — get other [...]

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates today issued an order sharply limiting the enforcement of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Clinton-era regulation governing how the military deals with homosexual troops.  Spencer Ackerman has details. In a major victory for opponents of the military’s ban on open homosexual service, Defense Secretary Robert Gates significantly revised how the [...]

Apparently, this front-page photo made 27 people mad enough to cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post: So, why did nearly half of WaPo’s subscribers cancel?  A few people wrote  ombudsman Andy Alexander using anti-gay slurs. Mostly, though, it was mothers who didn’t want their kids exposed to such displays and grandmothers who really didn’t [...]

“Support for Gays in the Military Depends on the Question,” Kevin Hechtkopf informs us in the No Duh Headline of the Week. But the specifics are interesting: It seems people are much more sympathetic to “gays and lesbians” than to “homosexuals.” A new CBS News/ New York Times poll finds that the wording of the [...]

Both Steve Chapman and Ilya Somin argue that, since other countries let gays serve in the military without harming unit cohesion, America can, too. Chapman: It’s not completely implausible that in a military environment, open homosexuality might wreak havoc on order and morale. But the striking thing about these claims is that they exist in [...]

Two tangentially related stories that have gotten a lot of play in the blogosphere this week are Pat Robertson’s declaration that Haiti’s horrific earthquake was punishment from God for an alleged “pact to the devil” [sic] and the revelation that Sarah Palin wasn’t the bit nervous about being under the sudden spotlight of a national [...]

Laura Sjoberg informs us that she is working to form a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, and Allies  Caucus of the International Studies Association (the premier organization of academic IR scholars) in order to: A. To promote fair and equal treatment of members of the Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Bisexual, and Queer and Allies (hereafter LGBTQA) [...]

Tyler Cowen points me to an interesting discussion on the subject “Why So Few D.C. Residents Are Married.” Washington City Paper‘s Amanda Hess cites a Pew survey finding that “Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide. The rates in D.C. [...]

Republican Bob McDonnell enjoys a rather sizable lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds in his race for Virginia’s governorship. But the Washington Post, which went after George Allen with amazing fervor in his 2006 race against longshot Jim Webb, is doing what it can to fix that. First, it ran a series of articles about a [...]

Since well before I thought the matter one for serious consideration, Andrew Sullivan has been making insightful, compelling arguments in favor of same-sex marriage.  This, alas, is not one of them. A reader makes an excellent point: One thing that struck me about the DOJ’s argument that DOMA does not violate the equal protection clause [...]

Ana Marie Cox interviewed John McCain this afternoon and reports via Twitter that “if he were POTUS, he would have already ordered Joint Chiefs of staff to investigate efficacy of DADT.” DADT is, of course, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military that has been in place since the early days [...]

Gays looking to get the Supreme Court’s help in being allowed to openly serve in the military have been rebuffed. The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to the Pentagon policy forbidding gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, granting a request by the Obama administration.  The court said it will [...]

UCSB political scientist Aaron Belkins‘ HuffPo piece “Obama To Fire His First Gay Arabic Linguist” has drawn quite a bit of blogospheric attention. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about [...]

Kevin Drum observes, When the subject has anything to do with sex, the right in America is the party of moral absolutes.  We know what’s right, we know what’s wrong, and even if there’s a price to pay we can’t shirk our responsibility to set a proper example and do the right thing. But when [...]

Matt Yglesias, responding to my statement yesterday that “We’ll always have a strong ‘conservative’ movement. It’s just that Ronald Reagan and Alex P. Keaton wouldn’t quite recognize it,” one-ups me and posits that “American politics in the future will mostly be dominated by a center-right political coalition just as it always has.” While he’s riding [...]

I’ve followed the discussion about the Bill Moyers “scandal” (see, for example, today’s (WSJ piece “Bill Moyers’s Name Is Linked to J. Edgar Hoover’s Abuse of Office”) out of the corner of my eye for the last couple of days  and am having trouble seeing what the big deal is. Basically, as I understand it: [...]

The last Democratic president began his administration by starting the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military.  His successor may start by ending it. President-elect Barack Obama will allow gays to serve openly in the military by overturning the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that marred President Clinton’s first days [...]

My Palin Derangement Syndrome post got a number of thoughtful responses, especially for a weekend post. My fellow Jacksonville State alumnus Stacy McCain, a Palin fan, thinks the internal debate on her role in last week’s defeat and her future as a Republican Party standard bearer is one we should have.  He objects strenuously, though, [...]

Tyson Homosexual ran 100 meters in a wind-aided 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials today, in what would have been world record time. I mean, Tyson Gay. Leftie People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch blog reports that, In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses [...]

A group “dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’” reports that Darren Manzella has been discharged under said policy. Decorated Army Sergeant Darren Manzella has been discharged under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans from military service, effective June 10. [...]

In reference to James’ post below, it’s worth pointing out that a biological cause for homosexuality does not, in any sense of the word, make for a birth defect, and we should be careful how we define the phrase. Calling homosexuality a “birth defect” (as some will no doubt begin to do so), implies that [...]

Some people are right-brained. Others are left-brained. Apparently, some are gay-brained. What makes people gay? Biologists may never get a complete answer to that question, but researchers in Sweden have found one more sign that the answer lies in the structure of the brain. Scientists at the Karolinska Institute studied brain scans of 90 gay [...]

Some supporters of John McCain accuse the Obama campaign of using “code words” to imply that McCain is old. “It is code; there is no question it is,” Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who helped lead President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, said when age surfaced as an issue. “They are trying to raise doubts.” [...]

Kevin Drum, responding to Jonah Goldberg‘s argument that George Packer‘s “The Fall of Conservatism” erroneously conflates conservatism with the Republican Party, retorts: No political ideology lives in isolation. We judge communism by how Mao and Stalin implemented it, we judge 60s-era liberalism by how LBJ and the Democratic Party implemented it, and we judge social [...]

Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick has an amusing if ultimately silly column on the gay marriage ban in California and people’s decrying of “activist judges”. She snarks about “activist citizens” and an “activist legislature” and concludes, “That makes everybody an activist in California, just by virtue of the fact that they are acting.” Ha! So clever! Let’s [...]

Of the most Popular pages in Conservapedia, “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia,” 7 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 50 have variants of the word “homosexual” in their titles. 2. Homosexuality (2,391,500 views) 3. Teen Homosexuality (417,124 views) 5. Arguments Against Homosexuality (332,492 views) 6. Homosexual Agenda (331,597 views) 8. Ex-homosexuals (317,296 views) 9. [...]

John McCain has a nice, pithy response to his endorser Rev. John Hagee’s claim that the “sins” of New Orleans and the city’s acceptance of homosexuality were the reasons why God punished the City by sending Hurricane Katrina: “It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. I dont have anything additional to say. [...]

Absolut Vodka has got some ‘splainin’ to do: Laura Martínez found the ad in the print edition of Quién magazine in Mexico City and it’s going viral. Jim Hoft has picked it up, calling it an “Absolut-ly Outrageous Ad,” Pierre Legrand profanely calls for a boycott, and Brian Ledbetter goes with “Absolut-ly Insulting.” Michelle Malkin [...]

It will come of little surprise that Christopher Hitchens uses the Obama-Wright controversy to take another whack at organized religion. Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been—and were—applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. . [...]

Yesterday, John McCain announced that he was “honored” to receive the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, a Texas-based preacher who can probably be most charitably described as “pro-Apocalypse”. McCain lavished praise on him for being “pro-Israel”, but as Sarah Posner (via Matthew Yglesias) points out, what he actually stands for is the destruction of Israel [...]

Andrew Sullivan appreciated the late William F. Buckley, Jr.’s civil tone on matters of homosexuality, especially as contrasted with other conservatives of his era, but laments that “Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necessary moral and social injunction against gay love, marriage and sex.” GayPatriot‘s B. Daniel Blatt is more charitable, noting that, [...]

Erik Wemple reports that new Washington Times editor John Sullivan has ended the use of scare quotes for everyday words. He sent out this All Staff email: Here are some recent updates to TWT style. 1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. 2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred [...]

Megan McArdle explains why she prefers Barack Obama to John McCain despite the former’s protectionism and “his insanely bad economic ‘patriot act.’” I might not vote for Obama; I will not vote for McCain. There are some things more important than the economy, and free speech is among them. Yes, I don’t like Obama’s stance [...]

A study (or, rather, a report on said study) by two law professors on the relationship between the availability of high-interest payday loans and representation by Christian conservative legislators is generating some blogospheric commentary. The study’s abstract: The culture war has become a national moniker describing a variety of policy debates between social conservatives and [...]

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse on the issue, but the continued high pitched battle between conservative Republicans who have rallied around conservative-come-lately Mitt Romney in hopes of defeating Teddy Kennedy’s Good Friend John McCain remains the most interesting story this election cycle. Conservatives Love Romney The most recent Rasmussen poll shows that [...]

While New York does not allow gay marriage, it must recognize marriages performed elsewhere — even other countries — a appeals court judge has ruled. A New York appellate court ruled Friday that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as the law recognizes those of heterosexual couples [...]

Floridians are being treated to some robo-calls attacking Mitt Romney that HuffPo’s Sam Stein and some homosexual activist leaders call “gay bashing.” Here’s the ad in question: Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he [...]

Mike Huckabee is coming under quite a bit of fire for some remarks he made on yesterday’s “Meet the Press” about homosexuality: MR. RUSSERT: But this is what concerns people. This, this is what you did say about homosexuality: “I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.” That’s millions of Americans. GOV. HUCKABEE: [...]

Peggy Noonan sizes up the presidential field for “Reasonable Person” qualities and passes all of the major candidates except Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Her reasoning on Clinton is, frankly, unreasonable: Because she’s polarizing, she wouldn’t be able to rally the nation in a crisis. By that standard, of course, the current president isn’t “reasonable,” [...]

Christopher Hitchens praises the Constitution’s prohibition on religious tests for public office, along with the right to worship as one pleases. But he wishes to be precise: However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I [...]

Wow, some Military Members are Gay. “60 Minutes” must be scrambling for ratings in its latest “don’t ask, don’t tell” report. A gay soldier says he disclosed his sexuality to his superiors, even offering graphic proof, and was neither discharged nor reprimanded, despite the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. What, the military [...]

David Brooks has a sober and thought-provoking take on Mitt Romney’s “Mormon speech,” simultaneously praising its intricate weaving of philosophy and worrying that his method of arguing for inclusion of Mormons in the political sphere was at the cost of excluding non-believers. When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with [...]

Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argue in today’s WaPo that a libertarian revolution is afoot, as evidenced by Ron Paul’s having risen to five percent in the polls and raised a substantial sum of money. The piece has gotten substantial blogospheric attention, little of it positive. John Little sees not a revolution but [...]

Two pieces today give insights into the longshot presidential bid of Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and the role of evangelical leaders in the Republican Party. Michael Gerson notes Huckabee’s irritation that demonstrably less conservative opponents are garnering endorsements that should rightly be his. When I asked former pastor and current presidential candidate Mike Huckabee his [...]