Are Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley’s comments about gays and people with AIDS relevant? Yes.
There should be a statute of limitations on things people did when they were in college that involved behavior such as, say, getting in a fight in a bar. It’s more troubling, however, when the scandal involves what appears to be closely held ideology, even if the comments are a few decades old and were written by a person just a couple years out of high school (although that context should also be considered).
I am not casting a vote in the Supreme Court race. I will have to write someone in. I voted for Joe Donald for state Supreme Court. I saw Donald as a middle-ground, less-ideological choice. He was a bridge choice, appointed by Tommy Thompson but supported by various Democrats. But he lost, and we’re now left with Bradley and JoAnne Kloppenburg. I see Kloppenburg as a stalking horse for the partisan left. I want someone more independent.
However, even before Bradley’s college-age newspaper rantings made big news (dug up by a liberal org and fed to the media – interesting how often that happens), I was concerned about her candidacy. I will explain why in a minute.
I do think her college-age comments should be considered in context. This is not to excuse them. She wrote them 24 years ago when she was a college student, and she’d obviously been deeply affected because a hemophiliac she knew had died from AIDS after a blood transfusion. She is now 44 years old.
I’d guess that most of us did things when we were in college that showed less maturity, wisdom and intellectual nuance than we have now. When you’re younger, opinions can come across more as an emotional rant, sometimes, than thoughtful nuance (it’s even worse in an Internet age, I’d guess). People should always remember the third prong of Aristotle’s Rhetoric – show ethos, including goodwill to opponents. Name-calling and demonizing other human beings rarely persuades, and it’s just wrong.
Now, let me be clear: I do think her comments are relevant because of the vitriol and hate in them. For starters, she called human beings with AIDS “degenerates” who were basically committing suicide. I condemn the comments. They are different than opposition to gay marriage, which many liberal politicians – including Barack Obama – once espoused.
The recent negative stories against Bradley are not all created equal, but this was a fair story. The story about Bradley leaving oral arguments 15 minutes early to give a speech to a business group that has spent heavily on the conservative side was fair game, too. The story about Bradley appearing in hunting garb, however, was silly and not newsworthy.
Conservatives are also upset by what they see as a double-standard regarding the media digging into conservatives’ youthful lives more than liberals’ and the lack of outrage when they do (case in point: Bernie Sanders writing an essay in 1972 that talked about women fantasizing about rape). I think they have a point on the double standard, but at some point, you also have to address what Bradley wrote and deal with the issue at hand. It’s not either/or.
The college columns story begs the question of whether such hardened beliefs really can change. I am not sure. I do think they can be tempered, and I know many people whose political ideologies have changed since college. College students are young, and young people are often still evolving in beliefs and life experiences, and life experiences can change beliefs.
Is it possible for someone to evolve in their opinions that much? Probably. Maybe. Or not. As noted, society also has changed. People have learned a lot about AIDS. However, lots of us were in college back then, and we didn’t write screeds such as this. At least she’s now repudiated them in a Facebook statement and apology, and after listening to Bradley on the radio Tuesday, I thought she did seem empathetic and truly contrite. Although the columns are relevant, I don’t think they’re disqualifying to the point of resignation.
But here’s the problem: Bradley really has no judicial record for us to judge. In the case of conservatives’ Bernie counterpoint, Sanders has decades of works in politics and policy since that essay to see that his beliefs have evolved and matured over time. As for Bradley? Less so.
Gov. Walker appointed her three times in three years: as a Milwaukee County Court judge and then to the appeals and supreme courts. He had many distinguished conservative jurists he could have chosen from, people with long records. Such a judicial record, if Bradley had it, would be important in light of the current controversy because it would give us a sense of her now.
“I care about what she thinks now,” read a column headline in the Journal Sentinel by Christian Schneider after the controversy. But what does she think now? Who knows?
Judges shouldn’t give their personal views about issues that might come before the court, of course (even though people are trashing her for not doing so now), but the problem is that there is just no judicial record to consider – not of any length anyway.
Instead, we have to basically take her word for it. The only reason to vote for her is a wink and a nod toward her ideology, even though she’s said she would not be an activist judge. This is incongruent.
The Bradley appointment was one a strong governor would make, not one a governor polling under 40 percent should make. The election is very close. Pick someone with an unassailable record. And vet them.
