William Hubbs Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, died late on September 3 at age 80 after serving 33 years on the Supreme Court. He was undoubtedly one of the most steadfast opponents of lesbian and gay rights during his lengthy tenure, and the author of two particularly demeaning and homophobic opinions.
<snip>
For example, he was one of only two justices who dissented from the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, recognizing that a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy during the first trimester could not be regulated by the state, an opinion supported by the other Nixon appointees. When he rose to the post of chief justice in 1986, Rehnquist lost the distinction of the court’s most conservative member upon the appointment of his successor as associate justice, Antonin Scalia, whose venomously homophobic dissents in Romer v. Evans, a 1996 case overturning an anti-gay Colorado voter initiative, and the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case marked him as the court’s most strident opponent of the gay community.
Rehnquist participated as a member of the Court in the three most notable sodomy law decisions of recent history—Doe v. Commonwealth’s Attorney for City of Richmond Virginia (1976), Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003). In each of those cases, the last as a dissenter, Rehnquist voted to reject constitutional challenges to sodomy laws. He did not write, either for the Court or in dissent, in any of those cases, however, joining opinions written by others in Bowers and Lawrence.
Rehnquist cast a dissenting vote in Romer v. Evans (1996), the landmark Colorado case in which the Court first recognized an equal protection claim on behalf of lesbians and gay men, in which he joined the stinging dissenting opinion written by Scalia.
http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_436/rehnquistwasarchfoe.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
