“the product of habitual ways of thinking about strangers;” and, he concluded: “If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.” The other dissenters rightly observed: “Whether the group [whose policy is challenged] appears to be in the vanguard or rearguard of social thinking is irrelevant to the group’s rights.” Correct as that proposition undoubtedly is, it is difficult to reconcile with the Court’s general practice where “vanguard” – New Class – social thinking is involved. It is tempting to think that the Court majority believed that opening the Boy Scouts to an adult homosexual activist would frame a general rule courting seduction and pederasty in other cases, a possibility the public would not accept.
Some state courts besides New Jersey’s are ahead of federal courts in enacting the program of the intelligentsia under state constitutions. The high courts of Hawaii and Vermont, for example, have held same-sex marriages or the equivalent to be a right guaranteed by their state constitutions. The Vermont Constitution was adopted in 1793, and it is impossible to imagine that its ratifiers intended to invalidate any law that recognized marriage as a contract between a man and a woman only. The Hawaiian public responded with an amendment to their constitution overturning the decision; Vermont’s constitution is quite difficult to amend and the legislature capitulated and enacted something called a “civil union,” which carries the same benefits as marriage. Sooner orlater the U.S. Supreme Court will be presented with the issue, and the outcome is far from clear.
Radical Feminism
Radical feminism, an increasingly powerful force across the full range of American institutions, overrode the Constitution in
United States v
.
Virginia
(1996). The Court held, seven votes to one, that the Equal Protection Clause required the Virginia Military Institute to admit women. VMI had been an all-male military college for over 150 years and had coexisted peaceably with the Equal Protection Clause for 128 of those years. VMI provided “adversative methods” of training, a program that was extremely rigorous mentally, physically, and emotionally. The admission of women is changing the nature of the institution. Minor changes in atmosphere are due to such things as the need for separate bathrooms, curtains on barrack windows, and the relaxation of discipline (so that young men who need rigorous discipline can no longer receive it at VMI). More serious is the new applicability of Title IX, the federal law dealing with sex discrimination. Sexual harassment, whether real or marginal, is now a major issue, as it is at almost all coeducational schools. Surveillance has been increased, though perhaps not sufficiently: VMI is experiencing the novelty of a pregnant cadet and is now under fire for proposing to dismiss both the woman and the man who caused the pregnancy. Not surprisingly, cadets no longer interact as before. Camaraderie has declined as young men, fearful of harassmentcharges, often avoid speaking to women. Women who can do six pullups are accepted as equals by male cadets, but the large majority of women who cannot are rebuffed. Whether one views these changes as wholesome or otherwise, it is clear that the VMI decision substantially changed the nature of the institution. After the service academies at West Point and Annapolis admitted women, they too had to relax their training standards to accommodate the mixed student body.
In his dissent in
United States
v.
Virginia
, Justice Scalia destroyed the majority’s argument:
Much of the Court’s opinion is devoted to deprecating the close-mindedness of our forbears with regard to women’s education, and even with regard to the treatment of women in areas that have nothing to do with education. … The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what
Some state courts besides New Jersey’s are ahead of federal courts in enacting the program of the intelligentsia under state constitutions. The high courts of Hawaii and Vermont, for example, have held same-sex marriages or the equivalent to be a right guaranteed by their state constitutions. The Vermont Constitution was adopted in 1793, and it is impossible to imagine that its ratifiers intended to invalidate any law that recognized marriage as a contract between a man and a woman only. The Hawaiian public responded with an amendment to their constitution overturning the decision; Vermont’s constitution is quite difficult to amend and the legislature capitulated and enacted something called a “civil union,” which carries the same benefits as marriage. Sooner orlater the U.S. Supreme Court will be presented with the issue, and the outcome is far from clear.
Radical Feminism
Radical feminism, an increasingly powerful force across the full range of American institutions, overrode the Constitution in
United States v
.
Virginia
(1996). The Court held, seven votes to one, that the Equal Protection Clause required the Virginia Military Institute to admit women. VMI had been an all-male military college for over 150 years and had coexisted peaceably with the Equal Protection Clause for 128 of those years. VMI provided “adversative methods” of training, a program that was extremely rigorous mentally, physically, and emotionally. The admission of women is changing the nature of the institution. Minor changes in atmosphere are due to such things as the need for separate bathrooms, curtains on barrack windows, and the relaxation of discipline (so that young men who need rigorous discipline can no longer receive it at VMI). More serious is the new applicability of Title IX, the federal law dealing with sex discrimination. Sexual harassment, whether real or marginal, is now a major issue, as it is at almost all coeducational schools. Surveillance has been increased, though perhaps not sufficiently: VMI is experiencing the novelty of a pregnant cadet and is now under fire for proposing to dismiss both the woman and the man who caused the pregnancy. Not surprisingly, cadets no longer interact as before. Camaraderie has declined as young men, fearful of harassmentcharges, often avoid speaking to women. Women who can do six pullups are accepted as equals by male cadets, but the large majority of women who cannot are rebuffed. Whether one views these changes as wholesome or otherwise, it is clear that the VMI decision substantially changed the nature of the institution. After the service academies at West Point and Annapolis admitted women, they too had to relax their training standards to accommodate the mixed student body.
In his dissent in
United States
v.
Virginia
, Justice Scalia destroyed the majority’s argument:
Much of the Court’s opinion is devoted to deprecating the close-mindedness of our forbears with regard to women’s education, and even with regard to the treatment of women in areas that have nothing to do with education. … The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what
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