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Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall had his feelings hurt.
Students and administrators at the University of Kansas questioned whether the campus Federalist Society should have invited an anti-LGBTQ speaker. Despite protests, the talk from Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defending Freedom went forward as planned. Stegall outlined the situation and his claims in a six-page letter, packed with the kind of petty grievances one might expect to read in the diary of a middle schooler, and resigned his adjunct faculty position.
Bless his heart.
“KU Law is not serving its students well — nor is it preparing them to take their place as lawyers in the great conversation (or Kansas courtrooms) — when it engages in bullying and censoring tactics, fosters a spirit of fear, drives dissent into a guerrilla posture, and gives institutional backing and support to overwrought grievances which can and do cripple a persons’ ability to critically engage with ideas or people with whom they disagree,” he wrote.
Stegall appears to be throwing a very public tantrum for hard-right GOP legislators in Topeka, hoping to gin up some outrage next session. KU has seldom been especially popular at the Statehouse, and perhaps the conservative justice imagines Chancellor Doug Girod being dragged in for a public grilling.
Allow me to make two points, which are really all this man and his manufactured controversy deserve.
First, the situation as described by the Kansas City Star’s Jonathan Shorman and Katie Bernard appears to have worked out ideally. A controversial speaker received an invitation to appear. Everyone had their say. Even administrators who supposedly asked students to disinvite Lorence admitted that they had a right to invite him. Protesters gathered to make their views heard. The speech went off without apparent hitches.
Even Stegall’s response to the entire matter was duly covered, not only by the Star but by Brad Cooper’s Sunflower State Journal, John Hanna of the Associated Press and Andrew Bahl of the Topeka Capital-Journal. The Sentinel, a right-wing propaganda outlet, published not only an article but also included a PDF of Stegall’s letter.
No one can claim that the justice didn’t have his say in a remarkably public way.
So what’s there to be upset about?
I’m a free speech absolutist myself. I believe the government has no business in regulating what people express, and that we usually benefit from a an exchange of views and perspectives. In that way, I agree with Stegall’s sentiments about the importance of persuading others to your view. We should all feel free to express ourselves in the public square.
However, and this is my second point, this expression too often comes at the expense of LGBTQ people.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has described the Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group. While that designation could be argued, the center also describes what the alliance has worked toward in recent years. Their list:
• Supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad.
• Defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad.
• Contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia.
• Claimed that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.
If someone want to make those arguments in public, they should be able to do so. I’m sure that alliance speakers can persuasively tell audiences why my husband and I shouldn’t be married and in fact imprisoned for being intimate. (Some recent commenters on my Twitter account have attempted to do so as well, in more vulgar terms.)
No law school or associated organization would invite a speaker calling for the return of Jim Crow laws. No one would invite a speaker who supported wartime internment camps for other races. No one would invite a speaker to explain why women shouldn’t serve as lawyers.
Anyone who believes such nonsense should be able to say it. But law schools wouldn’t invite them.
And state supreme court justices wouldn’t write letters defending them.
To put a finer point on it: Would Sam Brownback appointee Caleb Stegall resign his KU post if it involved defending a segregationist? Or does he simply see LGBTQ people as less than? Does he see their concerns and lives as worth less than those of straight people?
In a week when the U.S. Senate resoundingly approved a bill protecting marriage rights for same-sex couples, anyone with clear eyes and an open heart can understand how far our country has come. I wouldn’t dream of silencing anyone who disagrees. I wouldn’t dream of making common cause with them, either.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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