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Trump Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch Opposed Same-Sex Marriage in 2004 Oxford Dissertation

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  • Gorsuch Believes There Is No Right to Privacy, and Thus No Right to Abortion or Same-Sex Marriage

  • Gorsuch Senate Confirmation Hearings Begin Monday Morning

It may be unsurprising that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee opposes marriage for same-sex couples, but the extent to which his world view opposes marriage equality, and why, may be.

In his 2004 PhD. Oxford University dissertation Neil Gorsuch, now a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, made clear he believes the U.S. Constitution does not support the right of marriage for same-sex couples. The dissertation, which spans 579 pages and includes nearly 100,000 words, focuses on “The right to receive assistance in suicide and euthanasia, with particular reference to the law of the United States.”

In a TIME magazine op-ed Saturday, Brown University professor of political science Corey Brettschneider notes that “Gorsuch’s statements…reveal that he thought it obvious that the United States Constitution did not protect a right to same-sex marriage. If he still holds this view, he could join forces with other justices to reverse the Court’s protection of this right.”

Like the justice he hopes to replace, Gorsuch is a so-called “textualist,” or “originalist.” Both Scalia and Gorsuch, unlike many constitutional scholars, believe the constitution is not a living document. They believe its words are not subject to interpretation, that it was not written with an unknown future in mind but rather, the words on the paper mean exactly and only what they say, and in only that point in time.

Such beliefs mean there is no right to privacy, because the word does not exist in the Constitution. 

That means there is, in Gorsuch’s mind, no right to abortion, no right to same-sex marriage, no right to anything not specifically named in the Constitution. And, as is the focus of his dissertation, no right to “assistance in suicide.”

Why?

As Professor Brettschneider writes, Gorsuch’s “dissertation advisor, who deeply influenced his work, was John Finnis.”

Finnis, a prominent law professor at Oxford and Notre Dame, is a critic of the Court’s decisions about choice in intimate matters, specifically its support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Finnis rejects the idea that the state should protect individuals’ ability to make autonomous choices in these areas. Instead, his natural law theory calls for the state to promote a list of “basic goods.” He argues that such a philosophy is incompatible with same-sex marriage or abortion, both of which he thinks should be prohibited by law. Indeed, he refers to heterosexual marriage as the only “real” kind of marriage.

Gorsuch invokes Finnis’ natural law framework in his dissertation, which focuses on the legal debate around physician-assisted suicide. Stressing the importance of “human life as a basic good,” Gorsuch argues that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. Instead, he claims that the government can protect the basic good of life by preventing the seriously ill and their doctors from making the choice to end it. He writes, “ruling out a ‘bad choice’ does not necessarily evince disrespect for the chooser, but for the choice he or she made; after all, parents punish children who make bad choices, not because they disdain them, but because they love them and do not wish to see them make bad decisions.”

Gorsuch’s criticism of choice in the context of assisted suicide includes a broader attack on the idea of a constitutional right to autonomy in intimate personal matters. This attack focuses on the Court’s Casey decision, critiquing the opinion from Casey quoted above and negatively referencing same-sex marriage. Casey upheld the right to abortion and confirmed the Constitution’s protection of individual autonomy in intimate personal matters. Gorsuch argues that recognizing this right to autonomy would mean that the state would have to allow every type of voluntary adult intimacy, even those he thinks should clearly be illegal. He writes that Casey’s invocation of a constitutional right to personal choice is “open to question on the ground that it proves too much.”

There is a lot of legal theory we could delve into, but here’s the bottom line.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee posted by Buzzfeed, Lambda Legal and 18 other LGBT organizations wrote that Gorsuch’s “views on civil rights issues are fundamentally at odds with the notion that LGBT people are entitled to equality, liberty, justice and dignity under the law.” They note his philosophy of originalism “essentially writes LGBT people out of the Constitution,” and conclude, “Judge Gorsuch poses a significant threat to the LGBT community.”

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Image by Elvert Barnes via Flickr and a CC license

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2020 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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12 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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15 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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