Thurgood Marshall

• Adam Weinstein: Meet Kagan's Astroturf Military Attackers.
• Think Progress: Coburn Has ‘No Idea’ Whether He Would Have Voted To Confirm Thurgood Marshall.
• Towleroad: NH GOP Congressional Candidate Bob Giuda Compares Gay Marriage to Marrying 'Men and Sheep', 'Women and Dogs'.
• Adele Stan: Right-Wing Bloggers Kicked Out of ‘For Profit’ Sarah Palin Speech.
• Jed Lewison: Sharron Angle hits a grand slam for right-wing extremism.
• Texas Freedom Network: Group’s Leader: Houston Mayor a ‘Sodomite’.

In my last post, I noted that it was rather odd that a group like the Judicial Crisis Network would team up with a rabidly anti-gay Religious Right group like the Traditional Values Coalition ... but apparently right-wing judicial groups are not particularly choosy about the sorts of groups with whom align themselves, which explains why Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice was a guest on Bryan Fischer's radio program last Friday:

As it turned out, the discussion was not all the interesting, as Levey rattled off the standard right-wing anti-Kagan talking points while calling Justice Thurgood Marshall the biggest judicial activist in American history.

So instead of recording that rather boring exchange, I recorded this rambling anti-gay rant from Fischer instead in which he tries to explain that because gays can't have children, they have more free time to engage in political activism and press their agenda ... of course, he also argues that gays, and single people, shouldn't be allowed to adopt children either, and that gays should just keep sexuality in the bedroom and stop "sticking it in our faces": 

You think about the typical conservative, probably you, and most of the people listening to me right now, and me in this camp, the conventional conservative. We care about God, we care about the faith community, we're committed to our families - what we're involved in is were involved in nurturing our marriages, we're involved in helping our kids with their homework, we're involved in coaching our kids in soccer and Little League, we're involved in parent-teacher meetings, we're involved in going to school concerts and tracking them around watching them play their games, going to their recitals and all that. And then we're involved in going to choir practice, or our cell group, or our Bible study, and to church on Sunday, and to taking care of our homes and our laws. That's what occupies our time and attention.

But Andy's point was, look, you've got homosexuals who, by nature, cannot reproduce; it's impossible for them to reproduce, which is one of the reasons why we shouldn't have same sex marriage. Marriage really ultimately is about the right place for sexual expression to take place where procreation of children can take place, where children can conceived, they can be born, and they can be raised. That is what marriage is about. It's about a legitimate moral place for sexual expression to occur that occurs in conjunction with the procreative act that brings children into the world so they can be raised. Marriage ought to be reserved for those kinds of relationships, where they is a natural kind of sexual interaction, sexual capacity.

But homosexuals cannot reproduce, so the great majority of them don't have children. They are allowed to adopt in some places, which I think ought to be contrary to public policy. We should not have same-sex couples adopting children - you're deliberately placing kids in a home with a missing parent. This is a terrible thing to do to a child. It's a travesty to do to a child. If that child's up for adoption, they've already undergone, they've already experienced some kind of trauma already, which is the reason they're in a position where they need to be adopted into a home. The last thing in the world that you want to do is inflict an additional trauma on these children by deliberately choosing to put them in a home with a missing parent. I think our public policy should not be to adopt children into single parent households; that's a mistake, that's a tragedy, that's a disservice to those children. So they shouldn't go into single-parent homes as adoptive children and they shouldn't go into same sex homes.

But the point is, and I keep getting myself off track here, the point is that we know from studies that have been done that homosexuals have a higher per capita income than the rest of the population; they have time on their hands because they do not have children to tuck into bed at night, they do not have children to feed in the morning, they do not have children to take to school, they do not have children to take to soccer and Little League practice - so that time is available to them to put into political activism. And he's exactly right - they've just go time on their hands and that's where they put it; they put it into pressing their political agenda.

Homosexuals are the ones who are bringing their behavior out of the bedroom. You know, they always say "why do conservatives want to invade people's bedrooms?" The answer is "we don't." You can do whatever you want in your bedroom, nobody is going to barge in, nobody is going to break down your door and arrest you in your bedroom. You're the ones who are bringing it out of the bedroom and into the streets, You're sticking it in our faces, you're telling us we have to accept this, we have to normalize this, we have to sanction this, we have to promote it, we have to endorse it. If you would take your sexual behavior back in the bedroom, nobody would be bothering you.

As I said before, you really have to marvel at the groups with whom these right-wing judicial organizations like CJF and JCN are willing to associate themselves.

Back in April, the Texas Freedom Network reported that the Texas State Board of Education had named both David Barton of WallBuilders and the Rev. Peter Marshall, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality, to its social studies curriculum “experts” panel.

When Barton and Marshall released their recommendations for changing the curriculum, they suggested, among other things, dropping mentions of both César Chavez and Thurgood Marshall.

"Review committees" are now putting together a draft of a new curriculum based on recommendations from the "expert" panel and it looks they are set to fill their history books with figures like Newt Gingrich, James Dobson, and Phyllis Schlafly:

Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks, but nothing about people or groups considered more liberal.

...

The first draft for proposed standards in "United States History Studies Since Reconstruction" says students should be expected "to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority."

...

Conservatives form the largest bloc on the 15-member State Board of Education, whose partisan makeup is 10 Republicans and five Democrats.

David Bradley, R-Beaumont, one of the conservative leaders, figures that the current draft will pass a preliminary vote along party lines "once the napalm and smoke clear the room."

But not all conservative board members share that view.

"It is hard to believe that a majority of the writing team would approve of such wording," said Terri Leo, R-Spring. "It’s not even a representative selection of the conservative movement, and it is inappropriate."

Another board conservative, Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, said he thinks that students should study both sides to "see what the differences are and be able to define those differences."

He would add James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, conservative talk show host Sean Hannity and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to the list of conservatives. Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.

Mercer says he would also mention groups like the National Education Association, MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood and the Texas Freedom Network so that students will be "able to identify what’s conservative ... [a]nd what is liberal in contrast."