Very good column by Dale Carpenter about how the Gay Left has somehow hijacked the push for gay rights and linked it to the pro-abortion agenda. But this shouldn’t be a big surprise when the Human Rights Campaign picks a pro-abortion lobbyist and fundraiser as its new leader, right?
Abortion Rights are Not Gay Rights – Independent Gay Forum
Typical of gay activists’ reaction to the Roberts nomination was that of Joe Solmonese, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign. Writing for the online edition of the Advocate, Solmonese warned that Roberts “has an extremely disturbing record in opposition to Roe v. Wade,” the historic 1973 Supreme Court decision announcing a constitutional right to abortion. Indeed, abortion has become the litmus test for gay groups in deciding whether to oppose him.
But that’s okay…. the Gay Lefty activists repeatedly align themselves (in our name) with the most fringe elements of society anyway. Pro-communist, anti-capitalist, pro-terrorist, and anti-War on Terror organizations. So why would we be surprised that the pro-abortion movement would hijack our supposed largest gay rights organization and that our so-called gay leaders would blindly consent?
-Bruce (GayPatriot) – gaypatriot2004@aol.com
UPDATE (from GPW): Over at the Independent Gay Forum, Steve Miller writes: (scroll down to “CNN’s Odd Ad Policies”)
According to the AP, “other abortion rights groups including the National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Majority all have announced their opposition to Roberts.” They should have added the Human Rights Campaign, the abortion rights lobby that targets gay and lesbian donors.
Isn’t this mostly due to an old alliance with NOW and similar groups, not really some principled ideological stand? I am really asking. And next question – how soon before NOW’s man-hating tendencies in the form of distorted domestic violence legislation, support for slanted child custody rulings, and such, finally force gay organizations to cut links with what has become an enemy?
The modern-day gay Establishment traces its roots to the Gay Liberation movement of the early 1970s (or, since Stonewall in 1969). “Gay Liberation”, at the time, was conceived/expressed as something similar to Black lib, women’s lib, Vietnamese “lib” (read: Communist domination), Che Guevara and all that.
In other words: The fight for gay rights took its Great Leap Forward as a very left-dominated, left-wing enterprise. There were gay rights groups before Stonewall and “gay lib” that were much more centrist, and they did important early groundwork; but many of their members and key leaders willingly let themselves be absorbed into left-wing “gay lib” when that came along and seemed to be engaging a lot more people.
There is nothing inherently left-wing about the idea of gay freedom and equality, of course. Its exemplars in ancient Greece and Rome were anything but left-wing. It’s a *human* idea; part and parcel of the idea of liberty. But I’m trying to say, yeah, in America, the gay rights Establishment is reflexively left wing, because of their old (old to them) alliances.
I don’t think anyone can predict when the gay Establishment will finally realize that its tight links to left-wing politics are neither productive nor essential, and loosen them.
I think the two issues are so intrinsically tied together because of the notion of “privacy” and that a woman’s choices regarding what she does with her body should be no more the focus of government intervention than the choices we make when we choose to enter into personal relationships with those of the same sex. I don’t think it’s a very strong tie personally. I know many gay guys who would say it isn’t their business if a woman has an abortion, doesn’t concern them. Personally I believe in a woman’s right to choose, but I don’t necessarily see how that affects me. I don’t plan on having an abortion, but who am I to tell someone they can’t. It’s none of my business.
Actually, Britton, where I wish you would center that, “Well, I would never do it myself, but I support the right of others to choose” is on the act of unprotected sex, not on eliminating the consequences of it.
I put it this way. If HIV/AIDS could be cured by a transplant of an organ from an otherwise-healthy baby, would you argue for the right to kill that baby to protect your right to choose unprotected sex?
“I don’t plan on having an abortion, but who am I to tell someone they can’t. It’s none of my business.”
Why have laws against murder, then? If somebody kills or rapes somebody, it’s none of your business, right?
But of course it’s your business. And if it’s wrong for someone to kill an adult (just because it makes their life more convenient), it’s equally wrong to kill a child. If it’s wrong to kill a child, it’s wrong to kill a newborn baby. If it’s wrong to kill a newborn baby, it’s wrong to kill a baby as it’s coming out the birth canal. If it’s wrong to kill a baby as it’s coming out the birth canal, it’s wrong to kill a baby the day before it’s born. If it’s wrong to kill it the day before it’s born….it’s probably wrong to kill it the week or month before it’s being born. Now when does it stop being wrong, or stop being a matter for public concern?
I accept that there *is* a line in there somewhere, and I think it’s *not* all the way back at the moment of conception. I accept that a newly conceived blastocyst isn’t a person. I personally am willing to allow early-term abortions – while banning late-term or partial-birth. I concede that any such line we draw is arbitrary, and probably the wrong one. I just assert that we have got to draw it somewhere, and if we draw it at conception (or the first week or month), we will get outcomes as unjust as if we drew it at 9 months. Ultimately, it is a matter for honest debate. I reject the idea that it isn’t. If I want to live in a civil, murder-free society at all, then all killing of human life in that society (sanctioned or unsanctioned) is my business, and yours.
So the governement should be giving out condoms and teaching 4 year olds how to use them, but they better not dare tell you that you can’t crush the skull of an infant?
Britton has a point. Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas were both decided on the right to privacy — the fact that the Constiution does not grant the powers of the State to interfere with people’s private choices. The two cases stand or fall together, and so the right to choose, whether it’s an elective abortion or sexual enounters, go hand-in-hand. Thus, unless you want a theocratic police-state to encroach further into our privacy and rights to self-determination, the right to choice in abortion is inextricably connected to the rights of GLBT.
The Constitution states that women have the right to murder their offspring. Right to privacy is not the same thing as right to murder.
Please show me where in the Constitution that women have the right to murder. The Constitution clearly states that we have the right to life, but where does it state that women have the right to murder?
In any case, gay or straight, males have ro rights with regard to the abortion issue since your balls were castriated in 1973.
Stephen-
Actually, the two cases do not “stand or fall together”.
It’s true that a 7-2 majority struck down the law based on Griswold-style privacy arguments similar to those relied on in Roe.
However, there was a 6-3 majority (the one switching vote being Justice O’Connor) for striking down the law based on the much stronger (for gay rights) equal protection ground.
Additional flaw in your claim: Overturning Roe specifically wouldn’t affect even the 7-2 case in Lawrence, unless the Court went further — all the way to overturning Griswold, which is much less likely.
If Roe were overturned, it would likely be through an increased focus on whatever rights a fetus may acquire at some point during gestation — so it probably would be based on a balancing of rights, not on striking down the Griswold-based privacy rights completely.
Contrary to NARAL, there’s no one out there who believes passionately that abortion should be outlawed because women shouldn’t be allowed to decide what to do with their own bodies. Passionate pro-lifers are motivated by the belief that the fetus is a baby. Any conceivable overturn of Roe would necessarily reflect that.
Take syn’s comment as a case in point of the above.
Whoops. I keep getting O’Connor’s dissent mixed up.
Please replace 7-2 with 6-3 everywhere above, and 6-3 with 7-2. O’Connor supported the equal protection argument, but refused to go along with the Roe-like argument.
Obviously, this actually strengthens the point I was making — that our rights hinge on the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, just like everyone else’s do.
Bruce, the reason they are linked is because the court has cited the same right to privacy in Roe v. Wade as in Lawrence v. Texas.
If a potential justice doesn’t see a right to privacy in Roe, then they’re very likely to overturn Lawrence and allow cops to go back to arresting consenting adults engaged in sexual activities in their own residences.
But why address that issue when it’s so much easier just to blame it on Solmonese?
Oh and to clarify my first point above, I do not believe abortion is murder because I do not believe that a fetus is a living entity capable of sustaining life without the use of a womb that is the sole property of the female. The female has the right to terminate a pregnancy. I have personal issues with late term abortions but like I said, I’m not one to say a woman can’t make a decision about something that is undeniably part of her own body. So to answer the criticism above about privacy versus murder, I don’t think it’s murder. Even your own President believes an abortion is acceptable when the woman’s life is at risk or in cases or rape and incest. So if he and you believe it is murder, it’s murder even if the conception is by force or risks a mother’s life.
One more attempt to clarify the Lawrence argument:
Lawrence did NOT rely on Roe v. Wade. Lawrence mentioned Roe as little (and as tangentially) as possible.
Lawrence’s argument relied on earlier cases such as Griswold (for the 5-4 majority – not 6-3 Clint, sorry). Mainstream legal scholars consider its reasoning sound (or acceptably close to it).
Roe also relied on Griswold, but, by most accounts Roe was very badly reasoned. Mainstream scholars are embarassed by how badly reasoned (in terms of legal craft) Roe was.
That raises the intriguing possibility that Roe could/should fall, but, perhaps abortion rights would still be preserved in some form at the federal level, based on better reasoning. But regardless: It is a mistake to claim that Lawrence and Roe somehow stand or fall together.
It it not a mistake however to say they both rely on the argument of privacy rights, even if one was not argued specifically using the other.
Also – even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which is will not be, even with Roberts on the Court, it does not make abortion illegal. It just allows the states to determine the law in regards to abortion. I’m sure some states would still allow women to have abortions.
Joe-
Thanks. Last time I try to post on a Supreme Court ruling before I’m fully awake.
Ken, that’s not a fair comparison. The “right to privacy” in Roe comes from Griswold and from Eisenstadt, both of which are far more defensible cases.
Griswold invalidated a Connecticut law that prevented married couples from obtaining contraception; Eisenstadt invalidated a Massachusetts law that prevented unmarried individuals from receiving contraception. Roe perverted both of these logical decisions, which simply point out that the state should not be in the business of telling people that the only sexual choice they have is unprotected sex, into making unprotected sex more attractive because you don’t have to deal with one of the obvious consequences.
I read Dale Carpenter and had some words to say about abortion and its link to the privacy rights gays and straights now take for granted in a post that shortly followed Justice O’Connor’s announcement of her pending retirement.
Mr. Carpenter is in theory correct. Gay privacy rights need not rely upon Roe v. Wade or Casey v. Planned Parenthood. A future Supreme Court may use the the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down as uncosntitutional abortion practices because they deprive the fetal being of the right to life, a life that is in significant ways, similarly situated to that of an infant that no one would think right to kill. The pregnant woman’s right to bodily integrity and privacy, however significant, cannot supersede that of another person’s rights so the Court, considering the opposing rights at issue, could weigh heavily in favor of the latter, more vulnerable member within the community without otherwise undermining the woman’s privacy and bodily integrity liberty interests in other areas like contraception.
But the question at issue is not whether but how Roe and Casey are undermined and that is why the gay liberal itnerest groups have every reason to concern themselves with President Bush’s Supreme Court pick. Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist dissented in Casey and in Lawrence because they believe there is no general right to privacy or bodily integrity. They believe these divisive social issues can and should be handled by the legislators in each state or through popular referendums.
In their dissents, these three justices voted to uphold restrictions on abortion and sexual activitiy because they found no such right to privacy in the Constitution. If indeed, they eventually win a five-member Supreme Court majority and overturn Roe and Casey using that logic, then Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception rights for married couples), Eisenstadt v. Baird (equal contraception rights for unmarried couples), and Lawrence v. Texas (gay intimacy) would be undermined as well.
Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist dissented in Casey and in Lawrence because they believe there is no general right to privacy or bodily integrity. They believe these divisive social issues can and should be handled by the legislators in each state or through popular referendums.
Works for me. Why is the gay left so terrified of having to work with voters?
Very nice
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