Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Don’t Use Quotation Marks

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To put it another way, the same liberals who object that the military includes too many lower-class kids won’t let military recruiters near the schools that contain students who will soon join the upper-class elite. It’s almost enough to make us contemplate restoring the draft, starting with law school students. Besides the pesky little fact that I’m not a liberal, what kind of pathetic straw-man argument is this? We need to discriminate against gays in order to help the poor (in fact, to help poorlaw students)? And since when does
one see such sophomoric sarcasm, especially about something as important as the draft, on the editorial pages of the Journal? Worst of all:
In any event, there should be no legal question about Congress’s right to put conditions on grants of federal funds to universities. It does this all the time — including requirements that colleges adhere to certain civil rights and gender standards. With a few exceptions, universities have no trouble going along and courts have no problem letting them. So the First Amendment, the basis for the challenge to Solomon, is now even less than a “legal question”? Universities and law schools should have no right whatsoever to raise First Amendment arguments in setting their own policies and challenging laws with which they disagree? To invoke the First Amendment in the name of academic freedom, intellectual integrity and equality of opportunity now constitutes — Journal’sterm — a “disgrace”?!? I’m not saying that Solomon or DADT are in fact unconstitutional under current jurisprudence. I’m not saying the Circuit Court decision striking down Solomon was correctly decided or that the Supreme Court will not overturn the lower court and reinstate Solomon. I am saying that the current litigation is not frivolous, it is about discrimination-without-quotation-marks, and it is most definitely not a “disgrace.” How dare the Journal belittle the question of equal treatment for gays, in any context. Disagree with us, fine — but don’t make light of the issue itself. How dare they lampoon the issue by the gratuitous use of quotation marks. How dare they call a perfectly reasonable First Amendment challenge — whether it survives or not — a “disgrace.” I expect better from the Wall Street Journal. Much better. What a…well, what a “disgrace.”