Interesting political intervention from a group of list members who describe themselves as:
*"Some of us are Republicans; some of us are Democrats. Some of us are religious; some of us are not. Some of us oppose same-sex marriage; some of us support it. Nine of the eleven signers of this letter believe that you should sign the bill; two are unsure.** But all of **us believe that many criticisms of the Arizona bill are deeply misleading.* Unless you followed the politics of gay rights very closely, you would never know that this core group of activists/scholars have a low threshold for outrage as they bombard Governors, legislatures, City Councils, etc. with these parade of horribles whenever same sex marriage (who are we kidding - anything to do with gay rights as proven by this instance) is debated. Most of their letter campaigns fall on deaf ears and they have been criticized by others for presenting a very skewed legal analysis. It was heartening when recently (seriously thanks for the help but what took you so long) another group of law professors openly criticized them for their errors and suggested working together in the future to offer a more balanced presentation of the law in this area. The responses I have seen so far don't offer much hope that they will change their tactics. What is surprising in this instance is the the explicit right wing memes of "liberal media bias" and "sinister gay mafia oppressing poor powerless christian martyrs" are front and center without the usual pseudo-academic pas de deux. ADF certainly know how to work the outrage buttons of the right wing blogosphere and the knives were out for this one. This is pure political spin on what we were assured was a minor, technical bill that would in no way further discrimination against gays & lesbians. I always assumed Laycock was above the nastier types like the ADF but all is fare in love and war I suppose... In the past, Laycock, et. al. have insisted that they were not taking sides in the culture war against gays, were not motivated by partisanship, and had no hostility to gay & lesbian rights - they just were moved by the plight of right wing christian wedding service industry. the invisible victims of those litigious gays. Most of us saw them as foolish and patronizing at best and sugar coated homophobes at worst. Guess we know the answer now... http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/gays-twisting-arizona-bill-say-top-law-profs/ http://www.adfmedia.org/files/SB1062LegalProfsLetter.pdf PS - First rule of PR: know exactly who your marks are. In this tea party era, touting your academic credentials in a bid to gain the ear of Jan Brewer was an odd strategy. What got her attention were the financial threats to the state from corporate interests, who were not motivated by their embrace of gay rights so much as their fear of litigation expenses from cranky employees. Corporate power and money make strange bedfellows.... PPS - Second Rule: Don't BS David Catania http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/11/12/david-catania-puts-the-smackdown-on-anti-gay-marriage-law-prof/ PPPS - One of the few redeeming qualities of the Volokh blog is the comment section, where you have a blend of libertarian He-Men, Black helicopter Alex Jone fans, and a small but hilarious band of witty liberals who are pulling their hair out whilst shouting that the emperor has no clothes...Hardly any of them were convinved by a certain "guest editorial" http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/27/guest-post-from-prof-doug-laycock-what-arizona-sb1062-actually-said/ ---Jimmy Green
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