I signed the letter. It was legal advice we gave to universities that was consistent with what five attorneys general before me had given. State universities are not free to create any specially protected classes other than those dictated by the General Assembly. Your question is, why is that not a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Frankly, the category of sexual orientation would never have been contemplated by the people who wrote and voted for and passed the 14th Amendment. There are judges who think these things ‘evolve,’ is the word they like to use [but the correct approach to making such a change would be a constitutional amendment].
—Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, responding to a student’s question about the letter he sent to state universities saying they cannot include protections for The Gays, a group he’s already stated he doesn’t want having sex [via]
stevenelliot
uh no. they were thinking of all american citizens. even asswipes like you, ken
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
The amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all people within their jurisdictions.
Cuccinelli: Funny those who drafted and voted on the 14th ammendent didn’t specifically mention women and Blacks or the Italian immigrants which I am willing to bet some of your forfathers were either who are all afforded protections under it.
You vile dispicable, hate spewing, reprehensive, pandering lowlife pathetic scumbag………
Vman455
Funny he says “there are judges who think these things ‘evolve'”, because that’s exactly what has to happen in order for the Constitution to remain a viable document in a changing society. Or does Ken think the Constitution isn’t relevant anymore? After all, the writers of it and the amendments weren’t thinking of a lot of things at the time because no one can predict the future! This is precisely why a tripartite government was put in place, with one branch specifically commissioned to interpret the laws of the US–so douches like Ken can’t keep us trapped in a nineteenth-century mindset of bigotry.
Tom
Why would we need a constitutional amendment when it already says, “all citizens”?
It seems to me that it is “judicial activists” that have introduced the whole concept of “protected classes” into the 14th Amendment. There’s no mention of them in the text.
Mark
What an duplicitous scumbag.
Lanjier
What is desired is equality. No constitutional provision has to — or could – specifically name all of the millions of instances where equality is denied, and where the courts must remedy the loss of equal rights, like the right to marriage. What is guaranteed is the right, not who gets the right, and certainly not the public nor legislators or attorneys general can cherry-pick out unpopular people on the basis that they were always unpopular. EVERYONE get equal rights, including us.
Hey, Attorney General fucktard, remember that saying? ALL (remember that word!) men are created equal and endowed with certain INALIENABLE rights — that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Rock
Am I the only one who thinks this guy seems to be another of those self-hating right wingers who probably hangs out in saunas and rest areas?
Someone needs to start a non-profit fund which would pay a reward to anyone who can catch and document one of these scumbags with his pants down (literally). I’d contribute to that kind of charity in a freakin’ heartbeat.
Mark
I would wish to ask Cuccinelli exactly what my status is as an American – I was born here – my family has been here since before the pilgrims landed on plymouth rock. Pray tell me, if I’m not an American citizen then exactly what am I? the amendment says “all citizens.’ End of story you sophomoric twit.
GayLawStudent
Actually, and this is not legal advice, nor a legal opinion, but merely what I learned in law school, Attorney General Cuccinelli is correct. The Constitution is flexible, but it does not evolve. The meaning is static, though adaptable. In other words, the Constitution was meant to embody a set of principles and guidelines, and has a set core meaning that cannot be rendered irrelevant, but can adapt to changing understanding and technology.
As regards the 14th Amendment, the Amendment itself was meant only to protect racial minorities. If it gave equal treatment to any other group, then another amendment would be rendered irrelevant. As one of the most liberal Justices ever on the Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis, noted, if the 14th Amendment protected all people, than the 19th Amendment, the one allowing women the right to vote, would be rendered irrelevant. It was clear that women should have the right to vote, and the Constitution did not guarantee equality, so Congress put forth a bill mandating that women be given equal voting rights. That is also why the feminist movement pushed so hard, at one time, for an Equal Rights Amendment, because they understood that the 14th Amendment does not apply to them. It is only in recent years as a number of academics have begun to deny the Constitution the status of law, i.e. a governing document of fixed meaning, that the notion of an evolving, or in more common language, “living,” Constitution has come to exist.
Simply put, the framers of the 14th Amendment were thinking only of racial minorities, not women, not the LGBTQQIA community, not those with disabilities, and so, they drafted an Amendment to the Constitution that does not apply to any but racial minorities.
geoffrey
and how does he know they WEREN’T fags? seems to me like we probably have our hands in that – just as a special moment of human history. like the renaissance, first century rome. i’d say we had an unacknowledged but DISPROPORTIONATE presence
slobone
@GayLawStudent, I suggest you shop around for another law school, if that’s the kind of nonsense they teach you there. Who’s your professor, Antonin Scalia?
There’s so much wrong with your comment, I hardly know where to begin. First of all, if you want to play “If they had wanted to… they could have…”, you can play it the other way around as well. If the writers of the 14th amendment had wanted it to apply only to “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, they could have used that phrase, as they did in the 15th amendment. But they didn’t. What they said was “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That’s it.
And in fact the Court itself ruled, as far back as 1886 (Yick Wo v. Hopkins) that the 14th amendment does not apply only to African Americans. Since then there has been a lot of proliferation of classes entitled to equal protection under various levels of scrutiny.
The Constitution may be a sacred text, but like all sacred texts it has to be intepreted by mere mortals before it can applied. And mere mortals have been known to change their minds.
It’s true that at present homosexuals are not a suspect class as interpreted by the US Supreme Court (although they are in California, for example). But why in the world would you think that can never change?
Lanjier
@GayLawStudent
Time for you to read a few more books, and to take that class called Constitutional law. Like Slobone, your better, above states, the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment reads, in plain English: “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
But just as important than that, the caselaw from every court in every territory in the nation agrees — without a single dissenting voice — that the equal protection clause is binding upon all jurisdictions to draft laws that apply equally to every citizen, only with exception where there is a rational excuse for doing so, or in the case of protected classes — a very great excuse. (See the Scrutiny tests).
If you are looking for a primer on gay applications of the due process clause, read, and in your case, re-read fourteen times, the cases of Lawrence v. Texas (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas/Opinion_of_the_Court) and Romer v. Evans (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Romer_v._Evans/Opinion_of_the_Court)
mykelb
Cuccinelli is one religionist fucktard who got into office based upon the greed of Virginians. The rethugs ran on a platform of no new taxes and that’s what Virginians got. Civil rights doesn’t pay in VA.
Steve
But his “logic”, freedom of speech doesn’t apply to television or the internet. The founding fathers clearly weren’t think of those things when they wrote the Bill of Rights!
whatever
conservatard gays support his originalism “logic.” just saying…
Steve
It says, “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
If they had intended “any black person”, they would have said so. They didn’t. They wrote, “any person”. They also did not define the word “person” in any unusual way. That word, “person”, is used with the usual meaning, denoting any member of the species homo sapiens.
That it has taken more than a hundred years, so far, to enact enabling legislation and policy, does not imply that the authors meant anything other than what they plainly wrote.
The notion that every person, without exception, should have equal protection of the laws was revolutionary at the time. Cuccinelli wants to create an exception which was clearly not intended, based entirely on his own prejudices.
ksu499
Liberty University has a law school. I’m just sayin’.
Bill Perdue
@GayLawStudent: Son of a ‘B’.
JamesStone
I certainly would “bet the farm” there is gay porn on the hard drive of this guy’s personal computer! Gay closet cases are very dangerous especially when they are in positions of power…
Rudy
@GayLawStudent: That may have been true prior to Loving vs. Virginia, but in that decision, the Supreme Court revisited the 14th Amendment and decided that it provides “equal protection under the law” to ALL persons. In their decision, the court specifically said that “The Fourteenth Amendment requires the FREEDOM of CHOICE to marry may not be restricted by invidious RACIAL DISCRMINATION.” Yet, nowhere in the 14th Amendment will you explicitly find the words FREEDOM OF CHOICE or RACIAL or RACE or DISCRMINATION.
Back to the lawbooks my friend!
Rudy
Okay, I just remmebered about the President right before the Civil War, James Buchanan, and that destroy’s Cuccinelli’s notion that the category of sexual orientation would not have been contemplated.
James Buchanan, President between 1857-1861 (all the framers of the 14th Amendment lived through then), was the ONLY US President never married and remained a bachelor. He lived 15 years prior to his Presidency with Alabama Senator William Rufus King. In Buchanan’s letters, he spoke of “the affection of a special friendship” and of his “communion” with his housemate. Their relationship was talked about constantly by politicians not just in DC, but all over the country. Andrew Jackson refered to King as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”, while the governor of Tennessee spoke of the two as “Buchanan and his wife”.
The notion that homosexuality was completely unknown and “uncontemplated” during the authoring of the 14th Amendment is historically inaccurate. This is just an excuse for Cuccinelli to assert his UN-American prejudice to codify discrimination against the last group of people he thinks he can legitimately categorize as sub-human. The man needs to be impeached.
Rudy
In the words of Justice Kennedy in Lawrence vs. Texas:
“Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”
So, what does it matter WHAT was contemplated by the framers of the 14th Amendment!
Rudy
I’ve been doing some more research and these are the prevailing opinions written by Supreme Court Justice Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans regarding homosexuals and the 14th Amendment:
Lawrence v. Texas: “Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”
So it really DOESN’T MATTER if the category of sexual orientation was contemplated by the framers of the 14th Amendemnt, according to current Supreme Court rulings.
Romer vs Evans: “We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is affirmed.
Jay
@GayLawStudent: The Cooch wants to read the 14th Amendment very narrowly. It’s been tried, but hasn’t succeeded. After Hernandez v. Texas in 1954, and US v. Virginia in 1996, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was extended to other racial and ethnic groups, as well as other “historically disadvantaged groups.” US v. VA specifically extends it to “women,” regardless of what the 19th states. In any case, as regards homosexuality, the Lawrence case specifically cited the due process clause of the 14th to prohibit anti-sodomy statutes. The Cooch’s case rests on very weak legal grounds. In essence, he’s wasting VA’s money on promoting his own bigotry, the dumb fuck.
B
No. 9 · GayLawStudent wrote, “Simply put, the framers of the 14th Amendment were thinking only of racial minorities, not women, not the LGBTQQIA community, not those with disabilities, and so, they drafted an Amendment to the Constitution that does not apply to any but racial minorities.”
They may have been thinking only of racial minorities, but what they wrote was, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Regardless of whether “privileges or immunities” implicitly includes the right of women to vote, the 14th Amendment also says, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Obviously those who wrote the 14th Amendment didn’t think they had solved all the problems – otherwise they wouldn’t have explicitly given Congress the right to enforce equal protection by suitable legislation when needed.
You can argue that the 14th amendment provided the motivation for the 19th Amendment – congress simply decided to give women the right to vote via an amendment rather than legislation – even if implied by the 14th Amendment, in some cases (particularly when bigotry is an issue) it is worth spelling it out in full detail, if only to get it through some thick sculls.
fbookz93
im a medical blogger, favorite topic to write is about health and medical assistant