When the White House goes after the media, usually it’s Fox News. Yesterday, it was CBS — for letting former Bush aide Ben Domenech publish a blog post outing Elena Kagan as a lesbian.
Domenech, who authors the New Ledger blog, from which CBS re-published his item, might easily be using Kagan’s sexuality as a way to slime her. But is he lying?
Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would “please” much of his base by picking the “first openly gay justice.” An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.
CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: “The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010.” She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger “with a history of plagiarism” who was “applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers.”
The network deleted the posting Thursday night after Domenech said he was merely repeating a rumor. The flare-up underscores how quickly the battle over a Supreme Court nominee — or even a potential nominee — can turn searingly personal. Most major news organizations have policies against “outing” gays or reporting on the sex lives of public officials unless they are related to their public duties.
Why was the White House so upset? Because Kagan is not a lesbian, claims spokesman Ben LaBolt, and saying she is amounts to “false charges.”
Which is funny, because Kagan is, in fact, a homogay, and is out among personal friends, a handful of Kagan know-it-alls keep insisting to Queerty. But not the public, evidently — which explains the White House’s bold reaction to anyone claiming she is. Most curious, then, that the White House would come to her “defense” (should we call it that?) so quickly. Might we interpret that as a clue she really is on Obama’s short list of potential Supreme Court nominees, whose reputation he wants to protect?
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[WaPo]
Moot
Because she’s a carpet muncher. That’s why.
greenluv1322
I don’t like people who are in the closet! So I as a open lesbian do not want her on the Supreme Court if she is closeted. There is no reason whatsoever to be closeted if you are grown person. So boo to her if it is true.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
GUESS WHAT:
There’s far greater reason to oppose her than her simply being publicly closeted in 2010 for Christ’s sake [and the WH reinforcing the idea that saying someone’s gay is like accusing them of a being dishonest or a criminal].
Elena Kagan is the equivalent of one of those closet gay politicians who vote against gay rights, who run on antigay platforms to get elected.
Is a publicly closeted Democrat who FIGHTS TO KEEP DADT any more deserving of our protection and support than a Republican who does the same thing would be?????????
Is ELENA KAGAN’s HYPOCRISY in suddenly switching last Spring from years of personally fighting DADT, including joining a lawsuit against it, to DEFENDING IT IN COURT only because ObamaRahm gave her the plum Solicitor General’s job something gay media and the community should ignore?
Obama has been attacked by gay media for having abandoned his years-ago support for marriage equality the closer he got to running for President. Is ELENA KAGAN’s HYPOCRISY to be ignored because she MIGHT be close to being nominated for the very Court she convinced last year to dismiss a lawsuit against DADT???????
Last year ELENA KAGAN told the Supremes that the lower court “PROPERLY UPHELD” Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in ruling against the lawsuit by DADT victim Jim Pietrangelo who was arrested at the White House last month with Dan Choi.
[img]http://boyculture.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c2ca253ef01310fbb955a970c-400wi[/img]
ELENA KAGAN insisted that the bar on gays serving openly is “RATIONALLY related to the government’s LEGITIMATE interest in military DISCIPLINE and COHESION.”
Thus, ELENA KAGAN, was saying that out gays would HURT military discipline and cohesion….the SAME argument as John McShame and Elaine Donnelly and Sam Nunn and the Marine Commandant and Gen. Mixon and Gen. Pace and the old dinosaur who blamed GENOCIDE in Bosnia on Dutch gay troops.
But BEFORE she got that golden White House job and an entry in Star Search for the Supremes, when she was Dean of Harvard Law School, she was helping SUE THE GOVERNMENT over DADT HERSELF for the right to keep banning military recruiters!
For years, she’d been saying:
“[Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a] wrong [that] tears at the fabric of our own community,” and it’s a “DISCRIMINATORY employment policy,” and “I BELIEVE THAT POLICY IS PROFOUNDLY WRONG—both unwise and unjust—and I look forward to the day when all our students, regardless of sexual orientation, will be able to serve and defend this country in the armed services.”
Well, apparently she stopped looking forward to that day when she started looking forward to being on the Supreme Court.
Where is it written that homopocrisy by ELENA KAGAN while SHE’s working against gay people’s lives is ok but the same by the Larry Craigs of the world isn’t?
If we must support her simply because she’s gay then we must support him and Mark Foley and Gov. Crist and that self-loathing Sacramento nut in the CA legislature ad nauseum.
Cam
So the White House Lied, she is a lesbian, and she seems to be the type that to PROVE she isn’t will make semi-anti gay rulings.
Reminds me of SEnator Barbara Mikulski. She was voting in a not very gay friendly way, when Michaelangelo Signoreli shouted out at a book signing “AS a Lesbian, How can you vote like this?!” And apparently let her know that as long as she voted anti-gay he would be on her. Her voting pattern swiftly changed.
Kieran
I don’t see why any Supreme Court nominee wouldn’t welcome being called gay. 99.9% of Americans would enthusiastically welcome having a gay American on the Supreme Court. I mean afterall this is America, where Homophobia is virtually non-existent among the people.