Skip to main contentDear Gordon:
Your true colors are showing again.
By supporting U.S. Attorney Michael Mosman for a federal judgeship, you are turning your tasseled loafers on the queer vote you so openly court.
And that makes homos like me mad as hell.
Thanks to Basic Rights Oregon, we now know that in 1986 Mosman urged U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to uphold Georgia's homophobic anti-sodomy laws. In a draft opinion the then-law clerk penned for Powell, Mosman actually had the nerve to write, "The state is not attempting to criminalize the status of being a homosexual, it is criminalizing sexual conduct."
In an effort to woo the queer vote (to earn your "moderate" merit badge) you've said that as a Mormon you know what it's like to face discrimination. So would you back a federal judge candidate who had once argued that it was OK for you and Mosman (a fellow Mormon) to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as long as you didn't wear your funny underpants?
And how about your dear "friend" Judy Shepard, who in your campaign commercials said her son, slain college student Matthew Shepard, "would have really liked" you. Wasn't Matthew tied to a fence post because he didn't know his place? Because he dared attempt to engage in the kind of "sexual conduct" that your pick for the bench said should be considered illegal?
I mean, it's OK to be gay, as long as you aren't (wink, wink) "being gay," right? Who are you kidding, Sen. Smith? Did you really think that one of the most reviled landmark rulings against gays and lesbians would go by completely unnoticed?
I guess you did, or why else would you support this guy? Maybe you thought queers were spending too much time watching Are You Hot? to weed through the past of this legal beagle, but it didn't stop BRO Executive Director Roey Thorpe from putting the brakes on Mosman's appointment. In a March 5 letter copied to Elizabeth Birch, your ally at the national lobbying group Human Rights Campaign, Thorpe told you about her concerns regarding Mosman's interpretation of the law and how his views might affect his legal decisions if he were appointed to a federal judgeship.
I know that, sadly, your man will likely get his job, but at what cost? The fact is that by dredging up one the most damaging decisions against gays and lesbians ever, Basic Rights now holds Mr. Mosman's nuts in their hands. And, in essence, yours, too.
Kind of queer, isn't it?
Find out more about Basic Rights Oregon at www.basicrights.org .
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