I believe what irked some people was that the expression "the homosexual agenda" has a history. It is a form of code often used by Jesse Helms and other social conservative politicians to whip up resentment against moderates and liberals who support gay rights. The use of the term "homosexual agenda" has been a shrewd way of intimating without overtly stating that people who supported gay rights were somehow disloyal to the country (like the hidden communist agenda) because they were assisting in the destruction of America by destroying its moral fibre, or extremist, because they supported a deeper, hidden agenda whose real goals cannot be openly announced and are instead disguised in the plausible sounding garb of equal rights:
Here's a representative quote from Sen. Helms in support of a bill he introduced to roll back President Clinton's executive order prohibiting discrimination against gays in federal employment:
"Mr. President, for many years the homosexual community has engaged in a well-organized, concerted campaign to force Americans to accept, and even legitimize, an immoral lifestyle. This bill is designed to prevent President Clinton from advancing the homosexual agenda at the expense of both the proper legislative role and the free speech rights of Federal workers.
From the standpoint of constitutional theory, (pace Eugene's concern that we not get off topic) what is interesting here is the extent to which such rhetorical appeals have any place in a Supreme Court decision. If Justice Scalia began speaking in code in a case involving race relations, one assumes he would be roundly condemned. But the social movement for gay rights has not won out in the same way that the Civil Rights Movement has. (As Trent Lott recently learned. Remember that Lott also said that gays were mentally ill like kleptomaniacs, and he wasn't thrown out of the Senate for saying *that.*).
If, as I suspect, in the long run, homosexuals are going to gain legal protection by legislatures and courts from most forms of discrimination, Scalia's reference to the homosexual agenda and Lott's equation of homosexuality with kleptomania will take on a very different cast for future generations. In the meantime, however, my prediction is that we are going to see a lot more code talk about gay rights in the future precisely because gays are gradually winning the battle for equal rights, and so the most overt forms of name calling and hate mongering won't be permitted. It will no longer be permissible to call Barney Frank "Barney Fag," as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey once did. Rather politicians will have to say that Representative Frank has worked all his life to promote the radical homosexual agenda that is slowly destroying America from the inside.
Finally, although many people are quite annoyed at Scalia's reference, my own view of what Scalia was doing is that he was simultaneously using this form of code and distancing himself from it through irony. He is well aware of what the words "homosexual agenda" mean when they are invoked by social conservatives. That is why I think he used the prefix "so-called."
Jack Balkin
At 12:00 AM 7/10/2003 -0700, Automatic digest processor wrote:
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 13:07:44 -0400 From: David M Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: "Agenda" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
The socially conservative Scalia remarked, from the depth of his heart, I have no doubt, that the majority in Lawrence seems to have signed on to "the homosexual agenda." I think the combined majority in Lawrence would be almost amused to think that's what they'd done.
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I believe Scalia's words were "the so-called homosexual agenda."
But what's the big to-do about the existence of an agenda, anyway? Of course there's a homosexual agenda. And there's a conservative agenda. And a libertarian agenda. And a feminist agenda. And an Islamist agenda. Etc. etc. (Of course there is more than one agenda under each heading, but the word "agenda" is already plural -- the singular is "agendum" = thing to be done).
I can see getting passionate about one agenda over/against others, but why the flying feathers over the EXISTENCE of an agenda?
One can always do a word-play on "agenda" that makes it look silly: this consists of deliberately confusing "agenda" in the sense of "list of political and social goals" with "agenda" in the older sense of "a piece of paper or other medium of communication detailing my appointments for the day, or, as the case may be, the topics to be dealt with at this meeting."
I've used this word-play myself. Once at a meeting, the mild-mannered facilator began by asking, "Does everyone here have an agenda?" -- meaning, of course, the paper kind. I said, "This is Washington: OF COURSE everyone here has an agenda." But it was, like, a JOKE.
-- David Wagner
