The following comes from a July 17 story by Anne Hendershott on Catholic World Report.
Lawyers have learned that the way to frame a Supreme Court argument intended to persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is to tell love stories—the kind of stories that begin with powerful barriers that threaten to thwart the lovers’ desires and dreams, but always end with “living happily ever after.” In Justice Kennedy’s world, lovers—especially gay and lesbian lovers—are just a Supreme Court decision away from a perfect life.
In his June 26th decision to strike down any barriers that would keep same sex couples from “marrying”, Justice Kennedy wrote that there is “no legitimate purpose” for federal laws keeping these couples from marrying. Going even further, Justice Kennedy stigmatizes anyone who might disagree with such marriages by writing that the federal statute that had been enacted to bar the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages was intended to “disparage and to injure.”
Putting himself in the role of protecting the same sex protagonists from the barriers imposed by those he views as bigots who want to deny happiness to those who only want to love and be loved, Justice Kennedy appears to view himself as the conquering hero of his own life story. He has said so himself. In an article for the New Republic, “Supreme Arrogance: The Arrogance of Anthony Kennedy” (June 16, 2007), Jeffrey Rosen recalls that before handing down his decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the ruling that affirmed and strengthened the right to an abortion, Kennedy told a reporter, “Sometimes you don’t know if you’re Caesar, about to cross the Rubicon, or Captain Queeg, cutting your own tow line.” He then channeled Hamlet, excusing himself by saying that he needed to “brood.”
Justice Kennedy has often described himself as having been shaped by novels and plays—many of them love stories. Rosen’s New Republic article suggests that Kennedy, “apparently uncomfortable with real conflicts among real people,” took refuge from an early age in the morality tales he found in fiction. In an interview with a reporter, Kennedy once said: “I think fiction is very important because it gets us into the mind of a person. Hamlet is a tremendous piece of literature. You know Hamlet better than you know most real people. Do you know the reason? Because you know what he’s thinking. And this teaches you that every human has an integrity and an autonomy and a spirituality of his own, of her own, and great literature can teach you that.”
Born in 1936, and raised in Sacramento, California during the postwar economic boom. Justice Anthony Kennedy enjoyed a golden childhood in the golden state. According to Rosen, Kennedy once told an audience at the Academy of Achievement, “It was a wonderful town and a wonderful time.” Recalling the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, Kennedy implies that such a world can be recaptured—if only the right laws are in place. Rosen’s judgment is perhaps surprising, but makes sense of Kennedy’s body of judicial judgments: “Kennedy is not a systematic thinker but a utopian moralist; and, like many sweeping visionaries, he is unwilling to accept the radical implications of his own abstractions.”
When writing his decisions, the Roman Catholic Kennedy approaches them more as morality plays, with characters who are either good or evil. The evil ones are those who impose their morality on others they wish to control. In 1996, in Romer v. Evans, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion striking down a Colorado constitutional amendment—passed by the people in that state—that would have outlawed giving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals status as a protected class. Kennedy wrote that the law “identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.” For Kennedy, Coloradans who supported the amendment depriving gay men and lesbian women of special protections were motivated by “animosity” to the GLBT community.
A few years later, an even more passionate plea for the rights of same sex couples, was contained in Justice Kennedy’s decision in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas—a case challenging the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. Continuing his commitment to finding love in all the wrong places, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Lawrence held that “when sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring.” What Justice Kennedy did not know then was that the love-story narrative surrounding the plaintiffs in Lawrence was always a lie. Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, a book published in March by Dale Carpenter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, revealed that Lawrence was never a case about what Justice Kennedy would have defined as a loving relationship.
Catholic World Report readers may recall my story, “House of Lies” (March 26, 2013), which describes the sordid story of the plaintiffs, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner. Both men had been charged with engaging in deviant sexual activity. Realizing how difficult it would be to find a case to challenge the Texas sodomy statute, national gay-rights advocacy groups effectively repackaged the story of Lawrence and Garner’s drunken one-night-stand into a love story—with heroic lovers struggling to solidify their bond in a society that despised them.
It was a brilliant strategy, specially designed for Justice Kennedy, the lover of love stories. As Dahlia Lithwick wrote in a New Yorker review of Carpenter’s book, “Nobody had to know that the gay-rights case of the century was actually about three or four men getting drunk in front of a television in a Harris County apartment decorated with bad James Dean erotica.” And until Carpenter’s book was released in 2012, no one ever knew—including Justice Kennedy.
In his June 26th ruling on, Justice Kennedy turned his protective powers to the children of same sex couples. Implying that these children are all cowering in the shadows of a society that wants to deny them the “integrity and closeness” all families deserve, Justice Kennedy wrote of the “humiliation” such families suffer because of the laws keeping their parents from marrying.
But life is not fiction. For example, Robert Oscar Lopez, a man who was raised from the age of three by a lesbian couple, rejects the claim that the problems that the children of same sex couples face have their origins in a society that rejects them. Rather, he wrote in a Public Discourse essay, “Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View” (August 6, 2012), that “growing up with gay parents was very difficult—and not because of prejudice from neighbors … I grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.” None of this, Lopez explained, has to do with discrimination because same sex couples were unable to legally marry.
To read entire story, click here.
So, the author is implying that Justice Kennedy is certifiably insane and needs to be put in an asylum?
I don’t think so, the point is that Kennedy has joined the other D.C. “catholic” politicians who have consistently voted against the Magisterium. (Of course, none of the bishops, including Cardinal Wuerl, has done or will do anything to all these politicians).
So the beat goes on….
Well, Bob, rationally, yes, you put it well. But I’m launching a counter attack on these people using the same sort of force which they use, namely nonsense. Who knows, maybe irrational jive will strike up a conversational chord with some of them, get them to search for true answers after becoming bored with their incessant nonsense.
““Kennedy is not a systematic thinker but a utopian moralist; and, like many sweeping visionaries, he is unwilling to accept the radical implications of his own abstractions.”” Fancy way of saying that Kennedy is experiencing the mid to late stage of spiritual dementia.
I like a good love story, but reality is reality. It sounds as if Justice Kennedy cannot face the real world. Too bad he did not read St. Thomas More’s version of Utopia and, like he did, defend marriage between one man one one woman. Now that kind of romance Is my kind of romance — good for the couple, their children and society also.
I also wonder if he married someone his parents did not like or he had a lost love.
“Utopian moralist”: man serves the state, instead of state serves the man; therefore, Kennedy is a communist, and not a loonatic after all.
This is a fascinating story and only strengthens the conviction felt by many that sometimes in history certain people pop up who are saturated by intense passionate but false beliefs, and are in positions of extreme power so that they may IMPOSE these false beliefs upon, in this case, the rest of us. I believe such a man is Kennedy. And he sure sounds like a cafeteria Catholic to me. Now because he he has involved himself in so much “gay” litigation as a Supreme Court member, with his very romantic yet “gay” reasoning, can this possibly mean that he should RECUSE himself from all homo cases coming before the Supremes because he’s not ABLE to render a dispassionate and fair verdict due to his proclivity for feeling such (false) compassion for “downtroddens” like the gayreich mafia so bold and vociferous for their “rights” here in the U.S.? Strong possibility. IN THIS REGARD, the “rights” of homos, who at times seem to have MORE rights than the heteros who are in the majority do, I’m just a little perplexed by Pope Francis and his very recent remarks re organized homodom, He seems to feel like they’re an OPPRESSED minority and entitled to some kind of weird “respect.” ReallY? Weren’t all peoples better off in many ways when they, the “gays,” were kind of in the closet, so to speak, and there were only gay pride events on a peripheral level, usually in major American cities? Are they really to be pitied because they’re so-called “marginalized?” Not that gays s/be brutalized and treated w/uber harshness societally. Not at all. But should they and their miserable “rights” be SO emphasized that eventually it winds up to be that we’re CONSTANTLY, UNCEASINGLY bombarded by their latest “travails” as homos by the professional grievance left who obviously have an agenda to “normalize” that which should NEVER be normalized? Like sexual deviancy, i.e., sodomy? And just WHY is the new Pope involving himself to such a degree in worrying about their welfare? And doesn’t he have his OWN problems w/the “gay mafia” inside the Vatican? Just asking, don’t have a cow. GOD BLESS ALL, MARKRITE
Oooooopszz, great apologeez … Now with this morning’s news that Pope Francis has ok’d gays in the priesthood, then gay marriage would only be the way for them to go, since as the Pope says gays can simply confess and be forgiven and sins forgotten. But he maintains that we still cannot have pedophiles since that is a crime. What he has not said is whether the pedophiles’ crimes can be forgiven and forgotten once they’re out of jail. I guess also we’ll have to forget all the banter about Church leaders being intimidated by the corrupt gay mafia in the curia … after all, intimidation can be forgiven and forgotten too … daily if need be.
Skai, Pope Francis was talking about those who go to confession and are truly trying to change their ways to adhere to the Commandments. He in no way okayed homosexual or lesbian practice.
Juvenile Justice System
One of the reasons I attended McGeorge Law school (2003 w-Dist) was my desire to understand something about both that mysterious notion of ‘The Law’ (which as it turns out isn’t really mysterious, just politically biased and ultimately bogus), as well as the background of the notorious ‘swing justice’ Tony Kennedy.
I entered law school at the age of 44 (twice the age that Kennedy and Most of my class did) and spent three years in the day division with what I often thought of as the ‘children’s crusade”.
The near total lack of life experience, including actually having ever supported themselves (aside from student loans) or held a ‘job’ – job (where regular attendance and hard labor were expected, daily – for months & years even), meant that many of them were absolutely clueless of the underlying human reality of the cases and people before them – and treated them more as morality plays than real world problems.
This is IMNPHO a tremendous achilles heel of the system, and one of the big reasons why the ‘law’ is more and more simply seen by its victims and targets as the radical political whim of the moment, enforced by other means.
The Diversity of ‘reasoning’ permitted in class is now Heavily Limited – and the most insightful jurist of our age – Justice Scalia, is Heavily Censored. Indeed, Scalia’s warning to Law Students about the Radical Homosexualist Biases in Law School and the legal ‘profession’ are central to his landmark Dissents in the Romer / Lawrence cases – and yet were Censored from the legal textbooks, and mention of them brought political retaliation by the Faculty.
I myself was harassed by other students in Constitutional Law class over support for Scalia, and threatened with extreme physical violence by a Professor at McGeorge for daring to object to thought policing in class. The response of the Administration to my complaint of Violent Threats by Staff was to strip me after graduation of all Alumni benefits. This is the political atmosphere at Tony Kennedy’s bastion of Tolerance where he taught so long, and still rakes in a few bucks spending summers in Austria.
Consider the following brief Bio of Phony Tony – he went from high school to undergraduate to law school in 7 years, and then took over his lawyer daddie’s practice, and became a professor of “Constitutional Law” – without once ever leaving the confines of school and office or doing something that didn’t let him sit on his (cum loud) brains all day.
Like a lot of his peers, Kennedy looks old enough to be ‘wise’ – but his kind are actually more cloistered than most Nuns, who at least tend to rub elbows with the poor (if not rich sinners / lawyers) – more often.
To my eyes he is simply another of the type of hapless callow youth who Matriculated through school without Maturing, and like Mandarins of old has neither understanding or empathy for a world of lesser beings lacking his moral insights, which he sees more as a toy for his ego to play with.
This expensive suit and tie arena of black robes and big ego perks (like telling everybody else what to think, or else) – is so removed from any reality for the Citizens whose lives He so wantonly trashes – that he might as well be the Wizard of Oz, heck bent on giving the ‘Friends of Dorothy’ all their wishes and then some.
That these jumped up Lawyers have become Not the appliers of the Constitution envisioned by the Founders – but the self anointed ‘moral conscience of the Nation’ (despite the near universal, and oft well justified, disregard for Attorneys) – is a tribute to their power to enforce whatever notion of the moment they call the ‘law’ – which they regularly reverse themselves about…
– And Not their ability to either Reason or Persuade an Electorate they routinely demean and degrade, while over-ruling their lawful votes on valid measures based on pretentious juvenile judicial pretexts.
*BTW – the Lawrence Decision was also dissected as a fraud by Judge Janice Law in her book: “Sex Appealed”. Compare the ‘standing’ issues in Lawrence with the Prop.8 decision, if you really want to see how the scam works.
……………………………………………………..
“Kennedy graduated from C. K. McClatchy High School in 1954. He was an undergraduate student at Stanford University from 1954–58, graduating with a B.A. in Political Science, after spending his senior year at the London School of Economics.[8] He earned an LL.B from Harvard Law School, graduating cum laude in 1961.
Kennedy was in private practice in San Francisco from 1961 to 1963. In 1963, following his father’s death, he took over his father’s Sacramento practice, which he operated until 1975.[7] From 1965 to 1988, he was a Professor of Constitutional Law at McGeorge School of Law, at the University of the Pacific.[8]
He continues to teach law students at seminars during McGeorge’s European summer sessions in Salzburg, Austria. He remains Pacific McGeorge’s longest-serving active faculty member.
Michael McDermott I am not surprised that you were threatened, it seems like a lot of good people that makes them feel threatened, they tend to do that to them. You obviously seek the truth and they are not, they deceivers and are lead by confusion and fear.
Even from those men who have left the homosexual lifestyle, at least the ones I know, where threatened with much violence too for speaking up and sharing their story.
So in law school or most colleges, I think that there isn’t much reasoning allowed. From what you have shared here, it does give plenty of evidence that people are trained what to think or feel. But sooner or later, this will have to back fire on them.
Thank you for sharing with us, you are a good soul and may the Lord bless you for your honesty and doing what is right. My prayers are with you.
My time at UCDavis coincided with the rise of sodomy power, which I witnessed. Many of the older professors were combat veterans and at least one expressed to me his growing dissatisfaction with the way university culture was changing. That campus, as I later realized, was a leader in the development of feminism … but when the proportion of coeds to young men was 3 to 2, I should have expected there’d be a price to pay later. UCDavis was the first university/college campus in the USA to have coed dorms including the showers. The City of Davis had a Marxist mayor, who was the youngest in the USA, was one time the president of all the associated student body Univ of Calif presidents, and fomented and carried out successfully a number of train track sit ins where the trains stopped to avoid running over students, faculty and other citizens … important because all war goods, equipment, munitions transported by rail into San Francisco for shipping to Viet Nam came through the City of Davis. UCDavis was reputed an ag college, but it was an up and coming radical think tank, less than an hour from Berzerklee, and influenced heavily in those days by countless free concerts by all the SF bay area hippy rock bands. Today I often wonder what happened to the intelligentsia I knew there and then. Am I the only one of them who took up the Cross and began the long painful walk up the Avenue of Sorrows? There were some who pointed the way, albeit in hard to see gestures and puzzling words … how did their lives turn out, I wonder?
My post, long and boring as it is, and the one that drove me to wit’s end enough to complain about the software acting up at times.
The mention of UC Davis in connection to the gender politics of phony tony kennedy is indeed ironic, as the UC System has provided much of the Misandrist Hate Propaganda used by the Gaystapo to trash – ‘the enemy’.
Consider the following story – which was Censored by all other media outlets, despite its great relevance to State & Federal Legislation pushed by the twysted systerhood and their ‘male feminist’ stooges like tony:
……………….
Jail For UC Davis Embezzler
By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY CalWatch 6/6/11
Former UC Davis official Jennifer Beeman was sentenced on Thursday to 180 days in jail and five years probation
Beeman Pled No Contest to two Felony counts of embezzlement and falsifying accounts. Neither charge involved her falsification of campus sexual assault statistics
Beeman “significantly over-reported the number of forcible sex offenses” For 16 years Beeman headed the UC Davis Campus Violence Prevention Program (CVPP)
UC Davis officials would not tell CalWatchdog whether the university had disciplined or censured Beeman over the falsified statistics. She remained in her job
https://davisvanguard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4261%3Aucd-official-cops-plea-in-embezzlement-case-faces-probation&Itemid=100
Former CASA Director Pleads Guilty to Four Felony Charges, Receives Three Years
https://davisvanguard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4298:former-casa-director-pleads-guilty-to-four-felony-charges-receives-three-years&Itemid=100
Reasoning is not allowed by the liberals, Abeca, as a rule. Surprisingly, those who welcome the application of reason are those who respect the freedom of others, discovery, and are quick on their toes.
Kennedy is an awesome guy, very influential on the Court, composed of majority Catholics, by the way.
good cause, kennedy is batty in the belfry, or didn’t you read the article?
Actually it is “Batson’s Belfry” – and the story of it use during the ‘Great Train Robbery’ (see Michael Crichton’s excellent book) provides serious psychological insight in to all sorts of human frailties and foibles.
Speaking of which – the Church Militant TV segment on “Supreme Irony” does a great job of exposing the (Small ‘c’) ‘catholicism’ of Phony Tony Kennedy, and I recommend watching it:
Supreme Irony 7-23-13
https://www.churchmilitant.tv/daily/?today=2013-07-23
Good Cause, Justice Kennedy is living in denial of the harm those who pracitice homosexual behavior, whether “married” or not, do their bodies. It is irresponsible of him.
The disgusting types who are lawyers, which McD character(less)izes vote out of fear. They fear the multitudes, and so they vote to appease the most apocalyptic face of the public … ie, the marxist face.
Wow, I worded that take on McD’s post poorly; didn’t mean that McD himself characterizes badness. Rather I meant that McD describes reality challenged lawyers pretty good, showing what corruptive natures they’ve made of themselves.
… and the solution to the problem is ???
Skai asks an important question. … “and the solution to the problem is ???”
Third Message of Our Lady of Akita. “As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity.
The third message on October 13, 1973, the actual anniversary of the final visions and miracle of Fatima is as follows: “As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by my Son. Each day, recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and the priests. The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their Confreres. The Church and altars will be vandalized. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.”
North Idaho, here I come!!! Guess I’ll have to take up bow hunting in case the day arrives when there won’t be any ammo left. Or maybe black powder rifles, since it is easy to make black powder … I guess, as long as saltpeter is obtainable.
Change your world view . . .
The Gospel of John, Chapter 15
[16] You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. [17] These things I command you, that you love one another. [18] If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. [19] If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. [20] Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also.
Skai,
That’s simple, REAL CATHOLICISM!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Kenneth, I have been looking for an opportunity to agree with you. This may be it. How do you, simply, define REAL CATHOLICISM?
Being holy, B.O., which btw has nothing to do with committee meetings common to bureaucracies.
What is with this extremely irritating website malfunctioning “name box”? you get used to your pen name in it and then all of a sudden it is not there, you do not notice this, spend a lot of time and effort creating a post, and click send, and then it disappears! This has been an ongoing problem for a year or better … anybody know how to fix it permanently???
I apologize for my frustrated tone … sort of :)
It’s not Kenney’s fault, he’s been listening to USCCB mush for 50 years.
Excellent observation, dude!!!
May I recommend another thoroughly insightful insider expose of the ‘legal’ system by one who knows whereof he speaks:
“The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault”
by Robert H. Dierker
The ‘law’ is something of a split personality now a days, in that when the political agenda of the Gaystapo is Not implicated, it can actually be rather ‘fair’ and even handed in the application of ‘blind justice’.
By Contrast – when it involves the agenda of Misandry (Hatred of Men & Boys, Masculinity and Normal Heterosexuality) – the ‘feminist coin toss’ is about as close to impartial as even the ‘male feminist’ stooges like phony tony approach – Meaning ‘Heads Womyn Win / Tails the Pigs of the Patriarchy Lose.
That being said – I would be amiss had I failed to mention the Greatest Book on the ‘law’ ever published, which I thoroughly recommend for anyone wanting to understand the ‘evolution’ of the law and lawyers from ancient antiquity to the modern antiquated.
“Devil’s Advocates – The Unnatural History of Lawyers”
(by Andrew & Jonathan Roth, NOLO Press) – provides Brief stories, quotes and maxims outlining the history and development of a process that produced some of the finest legal minds anywhere, and also the likes of Kennedy, The Kagan, the Wise Latrina, von-wanker and so many more of the other kind.
The book is easy to read, and easier to understand – yet insightful beyond anything I have ever read about the ‘law’ and its self serving convolutions.
Here is just a snippet about the subject of ‘special pleading’, one of the more lucrative forms of ‘help’ rendered:
“The accumulated chicanery and blundering of several generations, called in forensic language the ‘wisdom of successive ages’, brought special pleading… into its present endless forms…”