For those who weren’t there, Paul Mirengoff has posted a few words summarizing my Dean Dan Polsby’s talk Friday on the Solomon Amendment case. Paul adds his own predictions about the outcome of the case and its likely aftermath:
One of the many great points Dean Polsby made about the Solomon Amendment yesterday was that the law schools challenging the Amendment seem motivated more by anti-military sentiment than by sympathy for gay rights (the suit assumes the legality of the underlying “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy). Polsby, a professor for decades, notes that the liberal professoriate was defending its sensibilities against the military at a time when gay rights were a non-issue.
If, as I expect, the Supreme Court upholds the Solomon Amendment, both sets of lofty motives (anti-military animus and pro-gay rights sentiment) will likely be insufficient to induce liberal law schools to stand on principle and turn down federal money.
A quick explanatory note–The issue of equal rights is a non-issue here because the lawsuit does not challenge the constitutionality of the underlying “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, just the equal-access recruiting rules for the military. Apparently Paul is skeptical of the academy’s courage to stand up for principle and reject the government’s bigotry-tainted lucre in the event of an adverse ruling in the case. Dean Polsby simply observed that an adverse ruling would truly offer the academy an opportunity for heroism of the bravest sort, by standing firm on principle, even at great cost.
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