Antigay hypocrites in the news:

According to the Times, antigay lawyer Robert Skolrood has died.

He fought against gay rights by helping to word an initiative on the Colorado ballot in 1992 that would have barred any special protection for homosexuals. The amendment to the state’s constitution passed but was struck down by the United States Supreme Court four years later.

Mr. Skolrood helped to draft an amendment to the Cincinnati City Charter to similarly deprive homosexuals of specific legal protections; voters approved the measure in 1993.

A federal appeals court upheld the result, and the United States Supreme Court in 1998 refused to hear an appeal.

And of course,

In 2002, when he was semi-retired, Mr. Skolrood was arrested on charges of uttering obscenities and making sexual advances toward a male undercover police officer at an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He denied all the charges at a trial before a federal magistrate in Roanoke, Va., but he pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and paid a $125 fine.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Texas district attorney who argued to uphold the state’s sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas has engaged in extra-marital relations. Because it doesn’t count if you’re straight.

Karl Rove spoke to students on Monday at Choate Rosemary Hall, the well-known Connecticut prep school. One student challenged him on gay marriage. He couldn’t seem to give a good reason for banning it. Go figure.

[Marla] Spivak, a senior from Hamden, was one of the students invited to have lunch earlier with Rove. That left her somewhat emboldened as she stood before the crowd and asked Rove to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.

Rove took issue with the way the first gay marriages came about, through the Massachusetts Supreme Court. An issue as important as the definition of marriage should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court, he said.

Gay couples could gain the legal rights of married couples through legislation without actually getting married, he said.

But wouldn’t creating a separate body of legislation for gay people be creating a separate but equal system, a step back?, Spivak asked.

Rove replied with an answer about Mormons changing their views on marriage to conform with the nation’s laws.

Spivak kept pressing. “You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?” she asked.

Rove asked, what’s the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?

What, Spivak countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.

Then Rove invoked the Declaration of Independence before Spivak interjected that its reference to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” seemed to support her claims.

Their verbal pingpong match tapered off after Rove brought up polygamy and Spivak acknowledged that she did not know enough about polygamy to answer. Rove later asked when she planned to run for political office.

Karl Rove, of all people, couldn’t come up with a good reason for banning gay marriage.

I love this Marla Spivak. I’ve sometimes fantasized about debating some of these people face to face. She was able to do it and didn’t let him off the hook (at least until it came to the lame argument about polygamy).

You go, girl!

I just finished reading The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election, by Howard Gillman. It’s a well-balanced focus on the court decisions involved in resolving the 2000 election – the lower courts, the Florida Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

I checked to see if I could find a diagram online of all the complex litigation surrounding the Florida recounts, and boy did I find one.