Posted 1:55 AM by Jason
Thanks Dean, I didn't want to study for finals anyway.

Here is a defense of the Law School’s position on the Solomon Amendment from Dean Alex Johnson, Prof. Dale Carpenter, and Prof. Beverly Balos, who is chair of the Solomon Amendment Amelioration Committee.  While it is noted at the end that they are writing in their capacity as individuals (to the extent that the Dean of a law school can really be separated from that school), I doubt that it is far from the law school’s real position, except that they feel the need to separate themselves for official reasons.  Some points of contention:

“It is precisely because we respect and support our armed forces that we want them to be stronger by including all qualified and loyal Americans, whether black, female, or gay.”

Is it really necessary to toss in a laundry list of approved victim groups here?  Last time I checked this issue was only about the last.  The others may have been issues to differing degrees in the past, each for their own reason, but they are not here, and serve only to muddle the issue.  Why couldn’t they have just said “whether gay or straight”? or something like that.  

“In wartime, expelling thousands of service members (like Arab linguists) who happen to be gay hurts national security, wastes our tax dollars on needless investigations into their private lives, and unfairly discriminates against our students.”

Is there data on this somewhere?  Does the military expel thousands of gay service members every year? (actually, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is dedicated to abolishing dadtdpdh, the most servicemembers expelled in any single year, across all branches, was 1273) Are Arab linguists disproportionately gay? If not, does “like Arab linguists” really need to be there?  Are there really expensive, shady, in-depth investigations going on? In wartime this isn’t ok, but it might be in peacetime? (the statement leaves that possibility open)  This statement, like others, boils down really to one thing, “unfairly discriminates against our students”, which is a fine position to have, but has so many extras tacked on that the only point is lost in the clutter of misdirection.  The wasting of tax dollars comes up again:

“In an age of expansive federal budgets increasingly leveraged to pressure dissenters to conform, we must preserve liberty at home just as our military defends it abroad.”

Oh yeah, the U is really worried about federal budgets being too big.  $351 million dollars came to the U last year alone.  Now, I do think they have a point about the law school not being dependent on federal funds (though I imagine with the exception of federal student loans), and that the reason the schools follow Solomon requirements is that they’re essentially being nice to the parent institution.  The text of the Solomon Amendment does not mention law schools specifically, but it is the law schools (or rather, law schools under FAIR, and law profs under SALT) and not the parent institutions (who have a lot more to lose) that are challenging it (though there are probably a good number of the latter affiliated with FAIR).  Furthermore:

“Since we are compelled by the Solomon Amendment not only to permit but to assist in this on-campus discrimination, the faculty joined FAIR”

Again, read the text.  They are required to assist by not having a policy that explicitly or effectively denies military recruiters access to:

Names, addresses, and telephone listings.  Date and place of birth, levels of education, academic majors, degrees received, and the most recent educational institution enrolled in by the student.

But of course:

“Students who disagree with the law school's non-discrimination policy, or with our commitment to enforcing it, are free to speak up.”

Yeah, I’ll go ahead and do that, I heart discrimination, and would love to be identified as such.  As I’ve said before, and I have been a total hypocrite in this regard, I think this issue is being beaten to death.  For my part, while civilian control of the military is essential for the preservation of a free society, I cannot presume to know or say what would be best for the military in this area.  Apparently the Dean and these Professors feel comfortable doing so.  Though they profess to want to make the military stronger, their course of action will do nothing to remedy what they see as the real problem, “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.”

Overturning Solomon would accomplish just the opposite of what they claim to want: it would reduce the military’s ability to get the best people, whether they be black, female, or gay, or heavens, white, male, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Native American, asexual, Inuit, whatever, because there will be schools that don’t just “not assist” recruiters, but close the doors to them altogether.  I reckon FAIR et al. think that a victory here would push the military to get rid of DADTDPDH, and though I doubt it, it could.  A more honest, more legitimate, and probably more effective way to do that would be to work to change public, military, and legislative opinion of the ban on open homosexuality.  Alas, like supporters of so many lefty causes, they have decided to use the least democratic, least representative, and least accountable branch instead.  And Hamilton thought the judiciary was weak.

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