Kagan and the 'Gay Question' Controversy

[IScreamSundays]

Source: ABC

When Elena Kagan goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee this summer, she'll be asked dozens of questions by probing senators eager to understand the influence her education, career path, family life and personal views would have on her judicial philosophy.

The women dismiss rumors that high-court nominee Elena Kagan is a lesbian.
What she almost certainly won't be asked, based on decades of precedent and confirmation hearings, are questions about her sexuality. But that hasn't stopped a mixed cast of gay and conservative bloggers from doing it instead, sparking a boisterous debate about a nominee's personal life never seen before.

No evidence has proven that Kagan herself is gay, which both her college friends and administration supporters have flatly denied. Before the nomination, White House consultant Anita Dunn said assertions by a conservative blogger for CBS News that Kagan is gay amounted to "people posting lies," while White House spokesman Ben LaBolt called them "false charges."

Moreover, it's clear from a recent ABCNews/Washington Post poll that most Americans -– 71 percent -- would find a nominee's sexual orientation irrelevant in determining his or her suitability for the Supreme Court.

end>

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/elena-kagan-supreme-court-nominee-subject-rumors-sexual

[bigworld]

1. I don't remember Souter coming under scrutiny for his personal life

[Tumbulu]

4. mainly women are pried upon regarding personal subjects

somehow just being female seems to invite speculation on private matters.

[Guilded Lilly]

5. Agreed

Goes back to CONTROL. A basic core of some men's thought processes revolve around being able to control women and to those men any woman perceived as being homosexual means that they aren't sexually attracted (and thus less affected/controlled) by the male organs and are to be feared...and bullied and mocked and accused...etc etc etc. But mostly feared.

[marshall]

6. Souter's faced his share of raised eyebrows

see:
http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/lawrence/lwnews014.htm

"Souter had barely left the podium in the press room of the White House before Republican Party officials were raising ‘the 50-year-old bachelor thing,’ which was widely interpreted as a way of introducing speculation that Souter is homosexual," Margaret Carlson wrote in Time magazine in August 1990, shortly after Souter’s nomination.

[QC]

7. Yes, I remember there being some speculation about Souter.

That was pre-Internet, though, and the media then, as now, tended to take sort of a DADT attitude toward gay public officials.

[suston96]

2. Can't find link to this article or story........Is there a sub-title? nt

[IScreamSundays]

3. It is here

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/elena-kagan-supreme-court-nominee-subject-rumors-sexuality/story?id=10634611