How Elena Kagan helped "queer" Harvard Law School

Will she now help "queer" the US Supreme Court's decisions?
POSTED: June 28, 2010 UPDATED: June 30, 2010
by Amy Contrada and Brian Camenker, MassResistance
with Peter LaBarbera, Americans for Truth about Homosexuality
(c) 2010 MassResistance

Introduction
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is committed to the radical campaign pushing acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism as “civil rights." Her unprecedented activism supporting that view as Dean of Harvard Law School (2003-2009) calls into question her ability to judge fairly and impartially on same-sex “marriage” and other homosexuality- or transgender-related issues that may come before the nation’s highest court.

Kagan’s record while Dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) demonstrates her agreement with the goals of the radical GLBT (gay lesbian bisexual transgender) movement and her solidarity with those activists. Working hand in hand with students to expel military recruiters in protest over the Armed Forces’ ban on homosexuals (a “moral injustice of the first order,” she wrote) is only the most obvious example of Kagan’s passionate dedication to this controversial and immoral agenda.

Kagan’s celebration and active promotion of the radical homosexualist and transgender worldview has profound implications. As a Supreme Court Justice, she could be expected to overturn traditional law and understandings of family, marriage, military order, and even our God-given sex (what transgender radicals call “gender identity or expression”). She is a most dangerous nominee who must be opposed by all who care about religious freedom, the preservation of marriage and traditional values.

There should be grave concern over Kagan’s issues advocacy concerning “sexual orientation.” Even before her nomination to the Court, her enthusiastic and committed pro-homosexuality activism at Harvard (including her recruitment to the faculty of radical “gay” activist scholars like former ACLU lawyer William Rubenstein and elevation of radical out lesbian Professor Janet Halley) was highly significant for the nation. Now, it is imperative that Senators and the U.S. public gain an accurate understanding of the radical, pro-homosexual environment that was Kagan’s home at Harvard – and the GLBT legal agenda that Kagan herself helped foster as Dean.

Kagan did her best to change a generation of Harvard-educated lawyers. Will she do the same to America?

Highlights of Elena Kagan’s Record as Dean at Harvard Law School, 2003-2009 (documentation in following section):

Kagan accelerated and legitimized the GLBT “rights” concept and law studies at Harvard Law School and in the larger community.
Kagan encouraged Harvard students to get involved in homosexual activist legal work. At a time when she as Dean pushed students to engage in “public interest law” and to get “clinical” legal experience, the Harvard Law School established the LGBT Law Clinic. How could a "Justice Kagan" on the Supreme Court be impartial involving cases brought by “gay” legal activists -- when she so openly advocated for homosexual legal goals and integrating homosexuality into legal studies and practice at Harvard?
Kagan recruited former ACLU lawyer (and former ACT-UP activist) William Rubenstein to teach "queer" legal theory. Few Americans can comprehend the radical nature of “queer” academics. Rubenstein described one of his courses as taking up “newer identities (bisexuality, trans, genderfuck)” as well as "polygamy, S&M, the sexuality of minors."
Kagan promoted and facilitated the “transgender” legal agenda during her tenure at Harvard. In 2007, HLS offered a Transgender Law course by “out lesbian” Professor Janet Halley and Dean Spade, a transsexual activist attorney. (Halley’s extremism and contempt for natural gender boundaries is illustrated by her calling herself a “gay man.”) Kagan also brought in Cass Sunstein (currently Obama's regulatory czar) who has written in support of polygamy and other free-for-all marriage relationships.
Kagan engaged in ongoing, radical advocacy opposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and demanding an end to the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. Her highly partisan actions are unbecoming of a future judge – especially one who would be called upon to adjudicate such weighty and divisive matters.
Even after Kagan and Harvard lost their legal campaign to ban military recruiters and Harvard Law School was forced to let them back on campus, she encouraged ongoing student protests against them -- deputizing the radical Lambda group to come up with ideas of how to harass the recruiters legally. Kagan’s actions blatantly disrespected our military and exposed her as the out-of-touch, socially leftist academic that she is.
Kagan attended functions of radical homosexual (GLBT) groups at Harvard University, absorbing and apparently agreeing with their goals.
Kagan followed the wishes of campus homosexual organizations -- within a month of meeting with a Harvard Law School GLBT student group, she was agreeing with their demand to ban military recruiters on campus.
Radical “trans” activism at Harvard: Kagan’s active promotion of the GLBT agenda at Harvard likely accelerated the campus environment so “tolerant” of homosexuality and gender confusion that there was even a campaign (during her tenure) to make the campus “trans inclusive” -- using Harvard’s “gender identity” nondiscrimination policy (in place since 2006). This included discussions between GLBT student activists and the law school administration (i.e., Kagan) “to make our restrooms safe and accessible for people regardless of their gender identity or expression.” (Read: allow men who identify as “women” to use female restrooms and locker rooms, etc.)
As a likely result of Kagan's engagement, Harvard has become so committed to radical transsexual activism that its health insurance policy now partially covers “sex-change” breast “treatments” for transsexuals (either men taking hormones to develop breasts, or women having their healthy breasts removed to become the “men” they believe they are). Where does Kagan stand on transgenderism and transsexuality and the law today? It's very possible this question will come before the courts as trans activists make their demands on government health care.

The following is a more in-depth treatment of the pro-homosexuality and pro-transgender activism that took place during Kagan’s tenure as Dean of the Harvard Law School (2003-2009):


. Kagan accelerated and legitimized the GLBT “rights” concept and law studies at Harvard Law School -- and the larger community.

Kagan moderated panel on "GLBT Law" (with Chai Feldblum) at Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus event.
In September 2008, Kagan was a major participant at the 25th reunion of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus, titled “A Celebration of LGBT Life at Harvard." She was Moderator for their panel discussion on "The State of the Law: Reflections on the Past Twenty-Five Years and Thoughts about the Future -- A discussion of LGBT legal developments and trends by leading legal scholars." Note that “trends” were discussed along with “developments” -- which could have included “gay marriage”, adoption by homosexuals, overturning remaining state anti-sodomy statutes, homosexuals in the military, etc.

Among the panelists at the HGLC 25th Anniversary panel was Professor Chai Feldblum (from Georgetown University), an open lesbian and leading GLBT legal strategist. (She graduated from Harvard Law School the year before Kagan.) Feldblum claims advocating for homosexuality is a “moral” issue, and admits that the battle for legal “rights” between pro-homosexual advocates and people of faith (seeking to protect their legal right as Americans to oppose homosexuality) is a “zero-sum game.” She openly advocates legalizing polygamous households.

Moreover, Feldblum, who has since been appointed by President Obama to be a Commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has stated that she can think of few situations in which religious rights (to act on one’s opposition to homosexuality) would triumph in the courts over homosexuals demanding their “rights” based on “sexual orientation non-discrimination.” “Gays win, Christians lose,” she said at one public policy discussion. (Feldblum also runs a website devoted to overturning the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and the ban on homosexuals in the military.)

Does a recording or transcript exist from this HGLC event? Does Kagan subscribe to Feldblum’s view that homosexuality-based “rights” take precedence over the liberty of people of faith to act on their belief that homosexual practice is wrong?

Re-shaping the Law School curriculum
In her role as Dean, Kagan oversaw the HLS curriculum and new faculty appointments. Thus, she must have endorsed the following HLS offerings as legitimate subjects and viewpoints (i.e., “gay rights” and “transgender rights” are true civil rights; any disagreement or disapproval is therefore illegal discrimination). One of her major efforts as Dean was modernizing the curriculum (including eliminating a required Constitution course, and instead requiring international law courses; “As Harvard Law Dean…,” CNS News, May 28, 2010). She was clearly paying close attention to the curriculum.

"Queer theory" legal scholar William Rubenstein
Kagan brought a pioneering GLBT legal advocate and "scholar", William B. Rubenstein, to HLS from UCLA, first as a Visiting Professor, then as a tenured professor. (Both were HLS Class of 1986.)

In a memoir – also the keynote speech he delivered at the September 2003 HLS GLBT reunion (with Kagan perhaps in the audience?), Rubenstein waxed poetical about his sexual experiences, desires, and scholarship. He describes his involvement with ACT-UP in the 1980s (and later gave a lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School in conjunction with a celebratory Harvard Museum exhibit on ACT-UP in 2009). He explained how he had to alter his planned GLBT law course at HLS (Spring 2004) after the Lawrence v. Texas and Massachusetts “gay marriage” rulings:

In my new guise, I was hired on May 19, 2003 by the Harvard Law School as a visiting professor to teach a January 2004 course on sexual orientation law. … it was with mixed feelings that I reorganized my Hardwick-centric course away from its gay focus. Labeling the new product Law & Sexuality, I took up newer identities (bisexuality, trans, genderfuck), as well as the gauntlet thrown down by Justice Scalia, dissenting in Lawrence (polygamy, S&M, the sexuality of minors). … And yet Harvard Law School itself has not retained many of its alienating features of old. My own classmate Elena Kagan is now Dean; another classmate, Carol Steiker, who had written her journal Note arguing for heightened scrutiny of classifications based on sexual orientation, now a professor; and one of my own students from a 1995 Yale course on Queer Theory, Ryan Goodman, now a member of the Harvard faculty. Fifty-four Harvard Law professors signed an amicus brief challenging the Solomon Amendment, Congress’s insistence that the military be permitted to recruit at the law school, recruit, that is, in direct violation of the law school’s, the university’s, the city’s, and the state’s anti-discrimination policies. No longer do gay law books represent the occasional oasis in the Saharan library. (pp. 330-1, emphasis added.)

More important, in his 2003 reunion speech, Rubenstein challenged the Harvard Law School to work harder to queer its curriculum and culture:

And so my message, to collect the lessons: our [gay] children, figuratively speaking, come to Harvard seeking a home; they bring with them a wondrous spirit that renews the life of the community regularly; but what they “go into” here at Harvard is not what it is at other institutions around the country. Whose law school is it? Why not ours?

Imagine the possibilities: student scholarships; fellowships for graduates to work on queer issues or to assist them in becoming legal scholars; funds to expand Harvard’s collection of gay materials; funds to support scholars to come to Harvard to teach and write; research and travel money to facilitate the efforts of Professor Halley and other Harvard faculty working on these issues; an endowed speaker series providing a forum for the exchange of ideas among scholars, lawyers, judges, and law students; a chair. Such programs would both make Harvard a more welcoming place and help Harvard contribute more to intellectual discourse on gay issues. Harvard should aspire to lead, and we alums should aspire to make sure that happens. After all: Aren’t we enlarged by the scale of what we’re able todesire? Still time. Still time to change…. (pp. 333, emphasis added.)

Did Elena Kagan hear and accept his challenge?

Here's the description of Rubenstein's course " Sexual Orientation and the Law."

Janet Halley and transgender law
Professor Janet Halley (an "out" lesbian who self-identifies as a “gay man”) was elevated to a named chair professorship by Dean Kagan. (See the video of Kagan’s announcement on the Senate website: September 17, 2007.) Halley may have provided the inspiration to Kagan to go after the military recruiters in her 1999 book on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”: Don’t: A Reader’s Guide to the Military’s Anti-Gay Policy. She teaches family law, discrimination, and legal theory; she recently taught a course entitled “The Poetics of Sexual Injury.”

As Professor Rubenstein described Halley in his keynote speech cited above:

Most importantly, Harvard’s faculty now includes the country’s single most interesting and provocative queer law scholar, Janet Halley, hired away from Stanford.

Professor Halley identifies herself as a member of the LGBT community in the law professors’ directory—the first full member of the Harvard faculty to do so. Professor Halley’s work, however, challenges the identity-based nature of social movements, investigating whether identity is not, ultimately, as imprisoning as it is liberating. In a unique demonstration that the personal is political, Professor Halley refers to herself as a “gay man.” (pp. 331, emphasis added.)

HLS offered a Transgender Law course (in 2007) taught by Halley and Dean Spade, a transsexual activist attorney from the national Lambda Law organization:

“As evidence of the increasing visibility of transgender people, Harvard Law School is offering a seminar on transgender law next spring taught by [out lesbian] Professor Janet Halley and [transsexual] Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which is dedicated to serving the needs of low-income people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming.” (“Lambda lawyer discusses challenges facing transgendered,” Harvard Law Record, April 25, 2008; emphasis added.)

LGBT Law Clinic and "Career Guide"
The LGBT Law Clinic of HLS was apparently established during Kagan’s tenure as Dean. Kagan was pushing students to engage in “public interest law” and “clinical” experience." This clinic was one recommended choice. Its director, Robert Greenwald, also taught courses at HLS including “Family, Domestic Violence and LGBT Law” (in 2009).

HLS issued its “LGBT Rights Law: A Career Guide” in 2007. It lists recommended courses to take for a career in LGBT law.

Catherine MacKinnon - rape, lesbianism, prostitution, etc.
Kagan brought radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon to Harvard as Visiting Professor in 2007-8 for an “inquiry into the relationship between sex inequality in society and sex equality under law... Concrete issues--employment discrimination, family, rape, sexual harassment, lesbian and gay rights, abortion, prostitution, pornography--focus discussion through cases. Racism, class, and transsexuality are considered throughout.”

Forum on hate crimes and transgender issues for Gov. candidates
Also at HLS while Kagan was Dean: In September 2006, a forum with the Massachusetts Democrat Governor candidates was cosponsored by HLS Lambda, InNews Weekly (a defunct radical GLBT Boston newspaper), and the Boston Pride Committee, and covered by the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Journalists. It focused on “hate crimes” and transgender issues – once again demonstrating the extremism of HLS Lambda. (MassResistance blog, September 14, 2006.)

Mass. Governor Candidates Chris Gabrieli (L) and Deval Patrick (R) at GLBT Forum, Harvard Law School, Sept. 12, 2006 (Bay Windows photo)



II. Kagan took part in functions and forums of radical GLBT groups at Harvard University – and apparently followed their lead on issues from banning military recruiters on campus, to increasing GLBT “visibility” in the HLS curriculum.

Kagan attended the first HLS GLBT Alumni reunion in 2003.
Kagan attended the first reunion of HLS GLBT alumni in September 2003. (Note the inclusion of “T” for “transgender” alumni.) Reportedly, it was the first event of its kind in the nation. Kagan graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986. Did she attend as a GLBT alumna, or in her role as Dean? She was, at least, at the reunion’s concluding dinner, according to the Harvard Crimson. The Crimson described the event:

Celebratory at times, solemn at others, alumni and current students marked the anniversary Saturday with anecdotes about the personal challenges they faced, the battle they continue to fight to keep military recruiters off campus and the need for classroom instruction in legal issues pertaining to homosexuality.

During the second discussion, titled "Lambda Today: Current Issues and Challenges Facing GLBT Students at HLS," a student panel expressed their dissatisfaction with the efforts that the faculty and administration are making to address issues facing GLBT students. They highlighted the University’s decision to continue to allow military recruiters on campus, even though their presence violates Harvard’s non-discrimination policy...

At the reunion’s final event, a dinner held at the Hyatt Regency hotel, HLS Dean Elena Kagan renewed her commitment to improving student life for all students on campus ... (“HLS Holds Nation’s First Ever GLBT Reunion,” Harvard Crimson, 9-22-03; emphasis added.)

What role did Kagan play at this event? Is there a recording or transcript of any formal comments she may have made?

Within a month, Kagan was agreeing with the demand made by the GLBT radical students at that reunion: banning military recruiters on campus.

Notably, the keynote speaker for that HLS GLBT reunion was radical queer legal scholar and Kagan’s Class of 1986 classmate, Professor William Rubenstein (then at UCLA, but about to teach a course at HLS on sexual orientation and the law as Visiting Professor). In his speech noted above, “My Harvard Law School ” (available on the Harvard website), he challenged the school to “queer” its curriculum and culture.