October 8, 2019

Read the Opening Remarks in the Supreme Court LGBTQ Case That Left the Justices Speechless

Oral arguments took place Tuesday morning.

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in three cases that involve LGBTQ people who were allegedly fired for their gender identity or sexual orientation. Pamela Karlan, the co-director for Stanford University’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and the counsel representing two gay men, left the court speechless with her opening argument.

“The attempt to carve out discrimination against men for being gay from Title VII cannot be administered with either consistency or integrity,” Karlan said. “In the words of the en banc Second Circuit, it forces judges to…resort to lexical bean counting where they count up the frequency of epithets, such as “fag,” “gay,” “queer,” “real man,” and “fem,” to determine whether or not discrimination is based on sex or sexual orientation.”

You can read the entire thing here: 

 



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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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