You go, Prof. Carpenter!

I'm gonna wade into the political maelstrom for a bit. The recent nomination of John Roberts for the SCOTUS has brought a lot of muck to the surface, including those fetus-hating miscreants of NARAL (recently rechristened the feel-good pseudo-patriotic "NARAL Pro-Choice America") with their downright libelous ad against the nominee. Even though the only evidence of the nominee's stance on gay rights is something rather positive, the gay-rights spokesbots and membership organizations have fallen in lock-step opposing him, because of his supposed stance on Roe v. Wade and by extension, privacy rights. I've about given up on hoping those organizations can manage to more than feign impartiality on anything like this where abortion "rights" are even tangentially concerned, I suspect not out of reasoned conviction but for fear of alienating their supposed "allies" on the left (such as NOW, the ACLU, and the all-holy Democratic Party, all of whom would sell gay men & women out in a minute if it meant choosing between us and their unholy grail of abortion).

But last week i was astonished -- astonished! -- to come upon an actual well-reasoned, informed, legal opinion from the gay middle (still awaiting such from the gay left) that debunks the apologia for the gay left's allegiance to the abortion lobby in the name of privacy rights. From law professor (and gay man) Dale Carpenter:

While gay-rights groups have not yet announced their opposition to the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, that declaration is only a formality. They will politely wait until the Senate has conducted hearings and then come out swinging against him. Whether or not they are right to oppose him, one basis for their likely opposition should be dispelled. Abortion rights are not gay rights. And when it comes to constitutional law, Lawrence is not Roe.

Typical of gay activists’ reaction to the Roberts nomination was that of Joe Solmonese, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign. Writing for the online edition of the Advocate, Solmonese warned that Roberts “has an extremely disturbing record in opposition to Roe v. Wade,” the historic 1973 Supreme Court decision announcing a constitutional right to abortion. Indeed, abortion has become the litmus test for gay groups in deciding whether to oppose him.

Yet abortion is not a gay issue in practice or in principle. In practice, gay couples are the least likely in the land to produce unwanted pregnancies. Procreation for gay couples typically involves months of planning and thousands of dollars in investment, requiring the use of sophisticated reproductive technology or the cooperation of a surrogate parent. “Oops babies” are simply not a phenomenon common to gay life. Gays thus have less practical need for the option of abortion than do heterosexuals.

Yes, a gay woman could become pregnant through rape or consensual heterosexual sex. She might then want an abortion. But this no more makes abortion a “gay” issue than the fact that gay people die in plane crashes makes aviation-safety regulation a gay issue. Not everything that could conceivably happen to a gay person is thereby a gay issue.

Why then do gay groups make abortion a test of a politician’s or a judicial nominee’s commitment to gay rights? One answer to this question is that there’s a demonstrated correlation in polling between opposition to abortion and opposition to gay equality. When a person is silent on gay issues, the next best indicator of his likely views is his stand on abortion. There are people who oppose abortion and support gay rights, of course, but these are the exceptions.

But gay-rights groups go further than this, insisting that there’s a connection in principle between abortion rights and gay rights. That supposed principle is the right to privacy. “The privacy rights decided in Roe were at the core of the landmark Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case,” Solmonese argues, referring to the 2003 decision in which the Supreme Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional.

This is wrong. True, the constitutional right to privacy underlies both Roe and Lawrence. But the mere fact that both opinions spring from the same root does not mean the loss of one will erode the other.

For starters, it’s remarkable how little the decision in Lawrence relies on Roe. The Lawrence opinion called on a phalanx of earlier privacy precedents and other authorities but mentioned Roe only sparingly, and never for a crucial point. The reason is obvious. Even for many liberal scholars, the reasoning of Roe is an embarrassment.

Want to read more, or do you already want to revoke my gay card? Whichever, I'm sure that by now HRC (now headed by former chief of the pro-abortion Democratic PAC "Emily's List") and NGLTF have elevated Prof. Carpenter to public enemy #1. I, on the other hand, nominate him for independent gay thinker of the year!