Via Joe Carter:
In order to make sure gays and lesbians are adequately represented on the judicial bench, the state of California is requiring all judges and justices to reveal their sexual orientation, reports The Weekly Standard.
This is of course astoundingly invasive and rather indifferent to the situation of those who feel same-sex attraction but choose for whatever reason to not identify as gay, lesbian, or bi.
February 24th, 2012 | 1:20 pm
And what about those who feel the attraction, but choose not to act on it?
Why do so many people insist on defining a person based on a preference he has, especially when people can either choose to exercise that preference or not? Since when did sex become the defining characteristic of our beings?
February 24th, 2012 | 1:28 pm
Good grief!
Only reasonable thing for judges to do with a mandate of that sort is to falsify the data. Safest–claim to be bisexual. Or perhaps all of them could simply claim to be homosexual. That should satisfy the PC police!
February 24th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Saint Louis,
I’m not sure how sex became a defining characteristic, but when it is one of the few recognized characteristics that one can “participate” in our passive world, it gives people a locus of control which they cling to.
What other characters are we allowed to act as nowadays? I can be “religious” in my mind but not in society; I can be “male” but what that means is ill-defined and ultimately futile; I’m an American but too much patriotism is looked upon as too much of a bad thing; what I produce and consume has a simulacrum of participation, but these are things were indulge in privately…
The job you choose and who you become conjugal with are the only two actual outlets of communal activities in the modern world. This sad state of affairs leads to the sort of intrusion we see in the California Courts.
February 24th, 2012 | 1:50 pm
I thought “what kind of person you love” was an incidental part of one’s private life, that shouldn’t affect anything that would require “adequate representation.” I mean apparently it’s trivial as far as marriage is concerned, so why is it important to how you serve on the bench?
February 24th, 2012 | 2:03 pm
If I hadn’t read it in The Weekly Standard, I wouldn’t have believed it!
Although it’s true the information is to compile statistics, not to “out” gay judges, it does seem bizarre, even for California.
February 24th, 2012 | 2:30 pm
How about writing on the form “None of your business, and if you think different, see you in court”?
February 24th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
One wonders how they are defining, “adequate representation”. If they mean “proportional representation”, then we’re only talking about 1-3% of judges being homosexual, depending on which study one uses.
There would be a delicious irony if they were hoisted on their own petards, and lost seats. Too bad they’d just find some other way of rigging the system…
February 24th, 2012 | 3:05 pm
I thought “what kind of person you love” was an incidental part of one’s private life, that shouldn’t affect anything that would require “adequate representation.”
pentamom,
While I think keeping statistics on the number of gay judges is bizarre, in 21st century America we allegedly believe that whether you are a man or woman, black or white, Christian or Jew, and so on, what should matter is your ability to do the job. But let’s be honest and realize that both liberals and conservatives agree to some extent that “diversity” and “balance” are important. We’re almost certainly never going to see a Supreme Court again that is made up entirely of white males, for example.
February 24th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
Too bad they’d just find some other way of rigging the system…
Artaban,
I am not sure what you mean here. Are you saying the system is rigged already? In favor of gay judges?
February 24th, 2012 | 3:11 pm
Truth is stranger than fiction to be sure.
What’s next, are we going to start categorizing people by BMI (Body Mass Index)? Or how about making sure vegans are properly represented? Maybe we should collect information on favorite sports teams, so no Oakland Raiders fans will be offended.
February 24th, 2012 | 4:52 pm
I believe Artaban is wondering why this should be a dimension and how is it intended to be used. Diversity is one thing but how should it play out? I think you’re right about the immediate future regards the Supreme Court. But, I also think that same “desire” effectively limits the number of “blacks” to one. Given the possibility of a number of superbly qualified black jurists, I think that is unfortunate.
I might ask how am I represented on the Court. As a Catholic, I’m more than covered. As an Hispanic, I’m not so sure. What about my French-Canadian side? I guess it may be in there. In the end, you wind up with artificial means to attempt to reach laudable ends.
Back to Artaban’s point, these means are constantly distorted for political purposes.
February 24th, 2012 | 9:16 pm
Some categorizations are relevant to matters of law and justice and some are not. Almost nobody denies that race is relevant; the unique historical circumstances of Americans of African descent (slavery, state-enforced segregation and disenfranchisement, etc.) makes their representation on courts indispensable. Justice necessarily appears compromised when no African-Americans are judges. One could argue that indigenous peoples, although a very small fraction of the population, should be represented for similar reasons.
The indispensability of female representation is probably self-evident to almost everybody, although some would say “self-evidently yes” and others “self-evidently no.” It is somewhat harder to justify the category “Hispanic,” when one considers the multiplicity of different historical experiences the category represents (Puerto-Rican, Mexican, Cuban, etc.)
Vegetarianism, sports teams, height, weight, baldness and religion are not relevant in this way. The question the California policy raises is whether sexual preference is more like race or like baldness.
February 24th, 2012 | 9:57 pm
David, my point is that it appears that the same people want to claim that sexual orientation is the most trivial characteristic imaginable when it suits the marriage argument, but something that qualifies for measuring diversity balance in this case.
Diversity is great, though I’m suspicious of this way of measuring it. But there have to be some limits on the characteristics we find worth diversity-balancing — height? Weight? Hair color?
If sexual orientation is trivial, it raises such comparisons. If it isn’t trivial, then those who would claim that it is in order to defend same-sex marriage might be well-served to adjust their arguments.
February 24th, 2012 | 11:55 pm
David Nickol:
it does not seems bizarre at all given the ideological premises of contemporary liberalism.
Given that there is such a thing as “sexual orientation” which is unchangeable and defines people’s identity just as much as “race” or “etnicity”, and given that this same identity is the object of “oppression” by bigoted, authoritarian forces (also known as “religion’), it seems perfectly reasonable that the state should make sure that members of this “oppressed minority” are not “underrepresented” in the California judiciary.
I will grant you that the premises are absurd, but once you accept them (and the liberal intellighentsia seems to have accepted them) there is nothing bizarre about this particular implementation.
February 25th, 2012 | 12:12 am
I wonder how far they want to take the category of “sexual orientation.” It seems like an ever-expanding universe of categories. Some news show did a half hour on people who self-identify as “a-sexual” in their orientation. They have no inclination to have sex with anyone, but they do apparently date people (they interviewed a man who was dating an a-sexual woman). I wonder if we will ever see an “asexual pride parade.” (we’re here, we’re asexual – get used to it!!)
February 25th, 2012 | 1:30 am
It’s gotten to the point where I’m just looking forward to seeing California crash.
Entities are like people: sometimes they need to hit bottom before they see the error of their ways.
California was a nice place to live, once. When I first left there, people were astonished that I would leave such a place. I’d never met any other “expats”, and most of the people I met had never met anyone who’d voluntarily left California to come to the midwest. The idea was novel. Now, you meet former Californians all over the place, and when you mention being from California originally, people just laugh, and sometimes make a joke about how lucky I was to get out.
So many places run by liberals (unchecked) are either wrecked or on their way to being wrecked. I wonder how much more we’ll have to endure before people figure out that isn’t a coincidence.
February 25th, 2012 | 2:43 am
California’s ruling party, the Democrats, has a “don’t call it a quota” quota system for LGBT delegates – I believe it is 12 percent. We are witnessing a self-replicating bureaucratic imperative. As much as I fear the results, I would love to see a good study of the quota-like effects this phenomenon has on media and higher education.
February 25th, 2012 | 2:50 pm
Given that there is such a thing as “sexual orientation”
Carlo,
Of course there is such a thing as sexual orientation. But there is a very good argument that there is no such thing as race.
February 25th, 2012 | 9:06 pm
David writes: “Of course there is such a thing as sexual orientation. But there is a very good argument that there is no such thing as race.”
But if someone believes he was born of a certain race, has always had feelings that he belonged to a certain race, and can’t imagine his life without that self-understanding, and thus seems so integral to his character and identity, how can you say there is no such thing as race for him? Isn’t it somewhat arrogant to tell another person that what he believes to be true about himself is wrong? It seems so genophobic.
February 26th, 2012 | 5:27 pm
It seems so genophobic.
Thomas Aquinas,
According to Wikipedia, “Genophobia is the physical or psychological fear of sexual relations or sexual intercourse.” I don’t have a clue what you mean or how genophobia could have anything to do with race. I also don’t have a clue what it could have to do with homosexuality, although I am guessing your intention was somehow to mock gay people.
February 26th, 2012 | 7:41 pm
This is interesting. Felapton thinks that race matters while David Nickol thinks it doesn’t exist. I’m not sure what to make of it.
February 26th, 2012 | 11:40 pm
Of course there is such a thing as sexual orientation. But there is a very good argument that there is no such thing as race.
If sexual orientation exists, then why does homosexuality “count” as an “orientation” but other forms of sexual deviance do not?
“Because I said so” and “if you have to ask, you’re obviously too ignorant to be worth answering” are the only explanations I’ve heard so far to explain why it’s just self-evident that there is such a thing as “sexual orientation” to describe why some people have maladapted and inappropriate sexual desires with regard to gender, but the same phenomenon does not and cannot explain why some people have maladapted and inappropriate sexual desires of various other types.
Until I hear an explanation that is actually capable of explaining this, I will assume that “sexual orientation”, if it exists, applies to all persons who are born with inappropriate, involuntary sexual desires – or else it isn’t real at all, but is just a political myth made up by a powerful, sexually decadent political lobby.
February 27th, 2012 | 5:59 am
Felapton thinks that race matters while David Nickol thinks it doesn’t exist.
Mike Melendez,
Actually, what I said is that “there is a very good argument that there is no such thing as race,” which is not the same thing as saying it doesn’t exist. Consider this from the OMB:
As I noted, President Obama had a white mother and a black African father, and in the United States he is considered black or African American. I am not saying his “race” doesn’t matter to him or to the rest of the country. I am saying that race is largely a social construct. If Obama had married a “white” woman, his children would almost certainly still be considered black or African American. This is not because “blackness” is genetically dominant and “whiteness” recessive. It is, I would argue, the result of racism in a society in which, if you are not a “pure-blooded” white person, you are black.
February 27th, 2012 | 9:20 am
“I am not sure what you mean here. Are you saying the system is rigged already? In favor of gay judges?”
I don’t know whether the system is already rigged or not–I don’t have enough info to make such a judgment. But it seems to me as soon as people start pushing for P.C. requirements like this, they are trying to rig the system to fit an agenda.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact