Justice Carol Corrigan

Carol Corrigan is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. She is 61 year old, considered a moderate Republican, Catholic, never married and, I am told, lives with another woman. I saw her excoriate the attorney of a physician who had refused to perform an insemination on a plaintiff because the plaintiff was a lesbian. Justice Corrigan said that it was completely OK for a physician to decide not to perform a particular procedure. However, once a physician offers a procedure to clients in general, it was wrong to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The doctor's "religious conscious" argument held no weight with Justice Corrigan. She was angry! The CA Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the doctor.

Justice Corrigan was one of the justices in the minority who voted against same-sex marriage in May of 2008. For that she has been chided for being a "bad lesbian" in the LGBT press. However, her dissenting opinion, which few have bothered to read, is far from homophobic! The following excerpt sounds like it could have been written by a justice who was also a member of the Radical Faeries:

“While their unions (comprehensive domestic partnerships) are of equal legal dignity, they are different because they join with partners of the same gender. Plaintiffs (those seeking same-sex marriage) are in the process of founding a new tradition, unfettered by the boundaries of the old one.”

"......founding a new tradition, unfettered by the boundaries of the old one."

That sounds good to me!!

She also wrote that, although she would vote in favor of same-sex marriage in an election, a court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage would provoke a reaction which would, ultimately, slow down the process of expanding marital rights. I guess the fact that same-sex marriage had never won an election (29 losses at that point, now 33) gave her a hint of things to come.

But to the average LGBT person in San Francisco or L.A., she is an enemy of our community.

This is an example of our marriage-only campaign for same-sex marital rights is distorting our perspective on who our friends are and who our enemies are.