\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat would it mean to have a gay person on the Supreme
\nCourt?\u00a0 <\/span>Nothing and everything of
\ncourse.\u00a0\u00a0Personal i<\/span>dentity shouldn’t play
\ninto a justice’s decision-making process, but it probably does.\u00a0 <\/span>Justice Scalia can’t help but be
\ninformed by his Catholic identity, and Justice Thomas is informed by being
\nAfrican American, if only in reverse.\u00a0\u00a0Thurgood Marshall was the first African American Justice and he was a strong advocate for equal protection under the law and was an ardent supporter of affirmative action. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Would a lesbian or gay Supreme Court nominee be
\naffected by their identity?\u00a0 <\/span>Yes,
\nbut it wouldn’t overwhelm their ability to be judicious.<\/p>\nI have a particular perspective on this debate as my
\ngreat-grandfather, Louis D. Brandeis was nominated to the court as the first
\nJew and the six month long vicious confirmation battle that followed had some
\nanti-Semitic overtones.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Was
\nJustice Brandeis influenced by his being Jewish?\u00a0\u00a0Probably.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>But the
\nonly time I remember him having to excuse himself from a case in front of the
\ncourt was when one of his daughters was arguing it. \u00a0I had the occasion to meet Justice\u00a0Ginsburg\u00a0recently and she reminded me of her article entitled: “Is there a Jewish Seat on the Supreme Court?” \u00a0I wonder if there will ever be a gay seat?<\/p>\nIt may be that gay marriage will rise to the highest court
\nin the country sometime during the future nominee’s tenure.\u00a0 <\/span>This fact begs the question of whether
\nor not a gay person could rule on the issue – the answer is, of course,
\nyes.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Supreme Court Justices
\nare complete human beings whose intellects are informed by every aspect of
\ntheir lives as well as their rigorous understanding of our constitution and
\nthe freedoms guaranteed within.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI don’t know all the people on President Obama’s list but I
\nhope that Ms. Sullivan and Ms. Karlan are not excluded for any reason aside from
\nthey aren’t the best minds\u00a0available.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soon after Justice Souter announced his retirement from the Supreme Court the nomination speculation game began.\u00a0\u00a0Two of the names that quickly surfaced were Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan and either one of them would represent the first lesbian on the Supreme Court.\u00a0\u00a0 What would it mean to have a gay person on the Supreme Court?\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homosexuality"],"yoast_head":"\n
Lesbian Justice on the Supreme Court - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/05\/lesbian-justice-on-the-supreme.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lesbian Justice on the Supreme Court - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Soon after Justice Souter announced his retirement from the Supreme Court the nomination speculation game began.\u00a0\u00a0Two of the names that quickly surfaced were Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan and either one of them would represent the first lesbian on the Supreme Court.\u00a0\u00a0 What would it mean to have a gay person on the Supreme Court?\u00a0…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/05\/lesbian-justice-on-the-supreme.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-12T17:50:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul Raushenbush\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lesbian Justice on the Supreme Court - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}