As reported earlier, Attorney General Jerry Brown submitted his response to three lawsuits made my marriage equality advocates seeking to overturn Prop. 8. The Attorney General:

"Steered clear of taking a position on the validity of the voter-approved ballot measure, which restored California's ban on gay marriages. Instead, the attorney general argued that the justices must agree to review legal challenges to Proposition 8 to "provide certainty and finality in this matter."

While Brown's position is that all the marriages performed before Nov. 4 are still legal, he asked the court not to issue a stay on the gay marriage ban as it would cause further confusion. None of the proceedings today dealt with the issue of the validity of Prop. 8, but rather, whether the court should address the question.

CONTINUED »

Taxes, health care and energy dominated the presidential debate this week. As important as those domestic topics may be to our nation's future, voters must also remember the President's power over the Supreme Court.

We've already stressed the scariness of John McCain's conservative judicial vision - one he reiterated during Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum - but it's a point that deserves to be hammered. Paul M. Smith definitely agrees.

CONTINUED »

Via NY Times:

In a decision of sweeping importance to educators, parents and schoolchildren across the country, the Supreme Court today sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.
…
The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., declaring that the districts had failed to meet “their heavy burden” of justifying “the extreme means they have chosen — discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court.

Of the worrisome decision, Justice Paul Stevens wrote, “It is my firm conviction that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision."

38-years after Stonewall and here we stand, America.

With the debut of The Totally Frightful Issue, you're probably pretty shaken up right now, so let's bring you some good news. Alright, maybe it's not good news, but it's kind of uplifting.

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a case brought up by the Sea Scouts - the nautical division of the viruently anti-gay, pro-Christian Boy Scouts - against the city of Berkeley.

It seems the city, known far and wide for its leftie tendencies, once offered free boats to non-profit organizations, but later amended its practices to ban such goodies to openly discriminatory groups, such as the Sea Scouts. Refused their free ride, so to speak, the Scouts attempted to sue.

Though the Cali Court reached a decision last March upholding Berkeley's ban, the Scouts weren't satisfied and took their case to Washington. As we've seen already, the Supreme Court's not fucking around this season, so it comes as no surprise that they gave the case the ol' heave-ho. 365 Gay reports:

"We agree with Berkeley and the court of appeal that a government entity may constitutionally require a recipient of funding or subsidy to provide written, unambiguous assurances of compliance with a generally applicable nondiscrimination policy," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for the court.

City officials told the Sea Scouts that the group could retain its berthing subsidy, valued at about $500 monthly per boat, if it broke ties with the Boy Scouts or disavowed the policy against gays and atheists.

The Sea Scouts, which teaches sailing, carpentry and plumbing, refused to do so and maintained that such an edict was unconstitutional because it compelled speech it did not agree with.

Would it be in poor taste to refer to the Sea Scouts as the SS? It would probably offend a few of you other there, but we think it fits like a glove.

Should the official meaning of BS be changed, such that the first letter stands for Bush, while the second letter continues to stand for poo-poo? BS dust was thick in the air in the Supreme Court this week as the so-called justices debated whether the Solomon Act can be allowed to prevail over a university’s right to enforce its human rights policies.

The whole argument is taking place on unfair terms; academics who oppose “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” have IQs over 120, government officials who love “DADT” on the other hand . . . .

Queerty at any rate encourages you to stay out of the military. Dropping cluster bombs on innocent civilians in foreign countries isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, particularly not from a moral standpoint. Even if the military had a Show and Tell policy, their exercise routines do not emphasize proper development of pecs and glutes. As for the food: not for nothing is it called a mess hall. And their idea of entertainment; when the highlight of the year is Jessica Simpson squeaking out a generic pop number at you, it’s time to trade in the fatigues for some tight-assed Diesel jeans to take a stroll around the Village. Who knows; you might even come nose to pink nose with the Lady Bunny!

Tuesday, December 6. Save the date. John Roberts and the Supremes will be hearing his first case involving those delightful human beings known as fags and lezzies. At issue is whether universities have the right to ban military recruiters from their campuses.

Many universities have of late banned military recruiters because the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy violates their own policies regarding human rights. Dropping cluster bombs on innocent Iraqis’ houses might also be considered a violation of somebody’s rights, but is somewhat separate from this case. The case hinges on whether the Solomon Amendment, which forbids schools receiving federal do-re-mi from barring military recruiters, violates the schools’ freedom of speech.

Queerty wants to stand up, snap an arm forward, click heels and bark “Sieg Heil!” at the Bush administration for bringing this case to court. Clearly, what most concerns Bush in this case is that maximum intellectual and cultural progress be made in universities. Don’t ask, don’t tell, as regards the truth about anything, would seem to be the Bush administration’s M.O. And there’s nothing Queerty loves better than a big old MO.

• Leave it to Michael Lucas to give us a reason to buy the video iPod. Madonna videos and porn in our pockets? Flawless.

• Someone please help Toby fix his website. We kinda miss him. Kinda.

• The B Squad sends you a Happy Halloween. It’s funny, but sadly features no anal sex like their last video.

• Bush nominates extremist Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. We normally would be all bent out of shape, but we have a costume to hot-glue gun together. And that is so much more important.

• Gerard Depardieu is ending his acting career. Um, didn’t he ten years ago?

The second Queerty heard that Harriet Miers had been nominated to the Supreme Court, we Googled. Her name, and “gay rights.” 310 hits, not a one without Harriet’s name together with a phrase like “Gay rights groups promise vigorous scrutiny of next justice.”

Yes or no; are gay rights the salient civil rights question of our era? Yes or no: even if gay rights were below importance to rebuilding levees and making the nation energy independent, would they still be essential?

What kind of a throwback nominates to the Supreme Court somebody who has not spoken in favor of gay rights at a time like this? Could it be the same W. who spoke in favor of amending the constitution to ban marriage for gay people? This Harriet lady did, after all, serve as a key legal advisor to Bush on legislation such as the anti-marriage amendment and the Marriage Protection Act. Pardon us, but we’d like to know where she stood. Wondering what you can do? Contact your Congress-people and Senators. Let them know you don’t want your rights Mier-ed in a retrogressive Supreme Court “justice.”

We can’t imagine why you’d want to look at a scripted Q&A with Harriet in which most of the Q’s begin “Congratulations to the Bush administration” but the farce is available here.

• Bush nominates spinster Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Honestly, how many dykes does the Court really need?

• You've seen the grainy pics, now see the shaky grainy video. Kate Moss + Coke = 4 minutes of snorting fun!

• We helped liberate Poland from the Nazis just to end up with the possibility of having homophobic twin brothers in power?

• Margaret Cho announces on her own blog that the gay-free All-American Girl DVD will be out in January. Let the bitch-fest commentary begin.

• Who needs marriage legalized in all 50 states when we can all just skip over to Massachusetts and get hitched? Well, sort of.