Thursday, November 03, 2005

New Nominee May Not Be Anti-Queer

(Link) Samuel Alito, Dumbya's latest nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench, recommended decriminalizing sodomy and said homosexuals should not be discriminated against in the workplace. Will his views of 34 years ago still stand?

1 comment:

LNewsEditor said...

JIC Post:
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com

A homosexual advocacy group sees a "hopeful sign" that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito may not be hostile to "gay rights."

On Tuesday, the Boston Globe reported that Alito -- as a senior at Princeton University -- chaired a student task force that recommended decriminalizing sodomy and said homosexuals should not be discriminated against in the workplace.

"This is a hopeful sign that may provide insight into his philosophy," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese in a press release.

"There were very few people standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago, and most who did have evolved even more since."

Solmonese said his group expects to learn more about Alito's views before the confirmation hearings begin. "It's crucial that we find out more about his views on the right to privacy and other constitutional issues," he said.

According to the Boston Globe, Alito and 16 other Princeton students wrote a report in 1971 as part of a class assignment to examine the "boundaries of privacy in American society" and ways of protecting individual rights.

Alito wrote in the report's forward, "We sense a great threat to privacy in modern America. ... We all believe that privacy is too often sacrificed to other values; we all believe that the threat to privacy is steadily and rapidly mounting; we all believe that action must be taken on many fronts now to preserve privacy."