Lesbian Rumors are the White House's Kryptonite

Damn, President Barack Obama is on a roll. Health care reform? No problem. The first nuclear weapons treaty in decades? You betcha. A sweeping presidential memo that demands hospitals stop discriminating against same-sex partners when it comes to visitation rights? Absolutely.

But you want to know how to rain on this White House parade? Just spread a rumor that one of Obama's potential picks for the U.S. Supreme Court might be (gasp!) gay.

Last week, Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he'd be retiring from the court, after a healthy 35 years on the bench. Numerous candidates are being bandied about. There's retired Georgia Judge Leah Ward Sears. Chicago Judge Diane Wood. Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren.

And Solicitor General Elena Kagan. And if you listen to CBS blog posts by right-wing writers who've been accused of plagiarism, you might come to think that Elena Kagan is a lesbian.

Ah, rumors. As Hollywood screen legend Errol Flynn once said, "It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper." And when it comes to gossip about her perceived sexuality, Kagan is no stranger to whispers. See here. Or here. Or here. And even here, where Kagan is not only rumored to be gay, but dangerous to America.

Apparently you just can't be a 49-year-old working woman who has never married without creating the whiff that you might be a lesbian (or, apparently, dangerous to America).

Should unfounded rumors be condemned when they're trying to "out" somebody? Sure, you bet.

But should they be condemned in the way the White House flipped its lid over this CBS blog post? Not exactly.

The controversy surrounds a post written by Ben Domenech, a conservative blogger (once removed from the Washington Post after charges of stealing other people's work), where he said that Kagan was openly gay and would make history as the first openly gay Justice. He then went on to cite a rumor that Kagan had a female partner, and that everyone at Harvard Law School (where Kagan was previously Dean) knew about it.

CBS published it. And then the White House freaked, blasting CBS for publishing a post from an alleged plagiarist.

"The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010," said White House Communications guru Anita Dunn, adding that CBS was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers."

Talk about a conundrum. It's perfectly fine to be upset at CBS for its lack of good judgment in letting a piece fly based solely on unsubstantiated innuendo. Domenech defended his piece, saying that "I erroneously believed that Ms. Kagan was openly gay not because of ... a ‘whisper campaign’ on the part of conservatives, but because it had been mentioned casually on multiple occasions by friends and colleagues." Of course, Domenech doesn't name any of these 'friends' or colleagues.'

But did the White House cross the line, making it seem like being gay would be an icky thing? That's the issue, and it has a number of folks torn, including Equalrep.com's Paul Sousa, who writes that diversity characteristics, like sexual orientation, should be something that are welcomed on the Supreme Court, and the White House shouldn't have used such harsh rhetoric in condemning CBS. Sousa has called for an apology from Anita Dunn, as well as White House staffers Ben Labolt and Brian Bond. You can join his call for an apology here.

Here's where I'll cross the personal line from blogger to someone who has met Elena Kagan numerous times, as my old job was as a communications professional at Harvard Law School. If anyone tells you that they can speak on behalf of Kagan's sexual orientation (and there are some bloggers who think they can attest to it), don't believe them. After four years of working at Harvard Law School, I met no one who could speak to Kagan's sexual orientation with any more authority than trying to guess tomorrow's winning lottery numbers.

But here's what I do know: Kagan was pretty much beloved by students and staff alike for playing nice with all sides. She seemed very good at fundraising, she instituted a policy that gave students and staff free coffee every morning until 11:00am, she was a good sport when it came to partaking in the annual law school parody, and she once told me that my graphic design was very good. And she was damn smart.

Is she gay, straight, bisexual? Who the hell knows. Would she make a good justice regardless?

I think she would. Now I just wish the White House felt the same way, too, and wouldn't have to resort to full-throttled "She's not gay!" defenses.

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