Who might that be? Or better yet, does the redundancy mean heterosexual?
I sign up for lots of right wing email newsletters because I want to see how they think. I realize that some believe that President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court because she is "confirmable." Others because she ONLY got 31 Republican votes against her a year ago in the confirmation vote for Solicitor General.
But I know that the Christian Right tends to go more than a little crazy over single women. Much more than they do over Dr. George Reker, self-described Christian activist and co-founder of the Family Research Council, who paid a "rent a boy" to carry his bags on a European vacation.
The headline of the newsletter Pray in Jesus Name Project from retired Chaplain Klingenschmitt said it all to me:
Obama Nominates Lesbian Homosexual Elena Kagan to Supreme Court
And it got much worse from there. You can see the whole newsletter here but be warned that it is pretty extreme.
I do not know Elena Kagan. I know some who do, and they uniformly think quite highly of her. I follow constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald as well, and he has a lot of problems with the nomination.
I realize that the whisper campaign about Kagan being a lesbian started really early. It probably was a clear sign that the White House immediately fired back with quite a blustery release damning the "false charge" that she was a lesbian.
My response to that was since when is it a charge to be lesbian? Pretty strange choice of words for the White House.
Clearly I have no idea about Kagan's personal life. I hope that she has a happy one.
But I care far more about her views on executive power and whether corporations deserve all the rights of a person. That is, I hope that her legal views are that the President has limited powers and that corporations are artificial assemblages for the convenience of capital and should have none of the rights - particularly none of the free speech rights - of individuals. These seem like basic matters.
Ms. Kagan would not have been my first choice for President Obama. It is hard to see her fulfilling the role of that moderate Republican Justice Stevens, who she is replacing. It seems likely that she is to the right of Justice Stevens.
But she seems far more than qualified and I hope that the Senate confirms her quickly and with as little homophobia and sexism as possible.
And as to retired Chaplain Klingenschmitt, all I have to say is that Jesus would not have recognized you as a follower. He no doubt would have prayed for you but would have hung out with Elena Kagan. You give Jesus and Christians a really bad name.