A nationwide event to urge Senators to
rejected the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court cites her
objection to the law banning gay troops from serving in the military.
Organizers of Tuesday's Keep Out Kagan
Day steer clear from calling Kagan pro-gay or a radical
nominee as social conservatives have alleged but insist she's bad
for the bench because she doesn't support “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.”
In a promotional piece for the event,
the Young
America's Foundation lists its objections to Kagan, half of which
refer to her position on DADT.
The group claims Kagan enacted an
“Apartheid system” which prevented students from meeting with
military recruiters at Harvard Law School while serving as the
school's dean. Also listed is Kagan's amicus brief to the Supreme
Court against the Solomon Amendment, legislation crafted by Congress
that punishes colleges and universities that attempt to limit access
of military recruiters on campuses.
“During her time at Harvard Law
School she took away students' rights. Taking all these into account
it's safe to say she's wrong on students' rights, government
censorship and the military's right to recruit on college campuses,”
Evan Gassman, spokesman for Young America's Foundation, said.
Kagan called DADT “a profound wrong –
a moral injustice of the first order,” in an email to faculty and
students. She joined other law schools in their objection to the
Solomon Amendment, which threatens to deny federal grants to
institutions of higher learning if they refuse military recruiters on
campus.
But thousands of documents, including
emails, from the two years Kagan served as an adviser to former
President Bill Clinton reveal few opinions from Kagan on “Don't
Ask,” the New York Times reported Friday.
Opponents of gay marriage have also
attacked the nominee. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM)
has alleged that as solicitor general Kagan purposefully filed a weak
legal defense to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law
that defines marriage as a heterosexual union for federal agencies.
“The brief that Elena Kagan filed as
solicitor general on DOMA explicitly and gratuitously rejected the
key legal defense for marriage as the union of husband and wife –
that such unions uniquely protect children by encouraging responsible
procreation,” Brain Brown, president of NOM, said in a statement.
“Kagan's brief was designed to, and
in fact will, undermine the legal defense of marriage currently
before the federal courts,” he added, referring
to three legal challenges currently wending their way through the
federal court system.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is
scheduled to start confirmation hearings on June 28.