Leslie Southwick and the Republican Paradox

^{See also: History of the Civil Rights Backlash, Lesbian and Gay Adoption Rights}

You may remember the story I told in my piece on Don Imus and free speech from a few months back:

"I got fired from the new job today," a twentysomething man said over a cup of coffee. "But I deserved it. I did something incredibly stupid."

I prodded for more information, even though I wasn't really sure I wanted it. He sheepishly told me the story of how he had gotten into an argument with a customer, then went to the back and started talking to a coworker about the incident. In the course of the conversation with his coworker, he used a racial epithet to describe the customer--a word that I had never heard him use. The regional manager overheard, and that was that.

After he was fired, nobody talked about whether or not his free speech rights had been violated. He had made a racist remark while at work, in a context that would have created or contributed to a hostile work environment for other employees. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and he deserved to get fired for it.

Well, Bush 5th Circuit nominee Leslie Southwick would have reinstated him--with backpay, and with no penalties of any kind. In Richmond v. Mississippi Department of Human Services (1998), Southwick--then a judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals--supported the reinstatement, with backpay, of a white employee fired for using the standard-issue Mississippi racial epithet to describe a black coworker. The N-word, the comfortably white Southwick explained, is only "somewhat derogatory." Administrators had "overreacted" in firing the white employee, who in Southwick's eyes should have remained employed given that the slur was "not motivated out of racial hatred or animosity directed towards her co-worker or toward blacks in general." Judge Southwick did not explain how he came to know what the ex-employee's private motivations were, or why they were in any way relevant to the case.

To give you an idea of just how extreme Judge Southwick's ruling was, even by the standards of my home state, let me explain something about Mississippi's court system. Down here, we have an elected state Supreme Court. Of the nine justices, only one is African-American. The Mississippi Supreme Court is extremely socially conservative; all of the candidates campaign on their opposition to abortion, their support for "family values," and their church attendance. And they overturned Judge Southwick's ruling unanimously.

President Bush has an excellent record on race relations, by Republican standards. He has nominated not only the first non-white secretary of state, but also the second, as well as the first non-white attorney general. People who knew him in Texas claim that he had an excellent relationship with local Latino communities. He has spoken at NAACP events. He has taken a moderate tack on immigration reform, and subtly removed anti-affirmative action rhetoric from his entire platform.

So what's the deal? Would President Bush tolerate the use of racial slurs in his own administration? I'd like to think he wouldn't.

Then there's the whole matter of Judge Southwick's unconventional approach to what constitutes a family. Picture this scenario: A man impregnates a woman with whom he is not married. After they split up, she settles down with a partner of the same sex and they start raising the kid. The man--who, again, has never even been married to the child's mother--sues for custody. And Judge Southwick was all too happy to award it, stating that Mississippi had "spoken on its position regarding rights of homosexuals in domestic situations" through an unrelated policy prohibiting joint adoption by same-sex couples. If President Bush is looking for strict constructionist judges, one would think he'd avoid candidates who use adoption regulations to revoke a birth mother's custody--but I've long since stopped pretending to believe that the phrase "strict constructionist" still means anything.

Judge Southwick had a serious problem with what he termed the mother's "homosexual lifestyle." It was unacceptable, according to Judge Southwick, for "the child to be reared in a lesbian home." You know, a lesbian home. Sort of like the home that Vice President Dick Cheney's grandson is growing up in.

Presumably President Bush and others in his administration would not want young Mr. Cheney to be taken away from his parents and placed in the arms of the sperm donor, so it seems reasonable to wonder why President Bush is comfortable inflicting that fate on the rest of the country.

Judge Southwick has refused to apologize for any of his past rulings, stating that he doesn't believe in "[changing] a horse in mid stream." If he somehow squeaks past the Senate consent process, those who vote for him will not be able to claim ignorance should he continue past behavior. He has already made it clear that this is his specific intent.

As a lifelong Mississippian, I'm hearing a lot of mumbling about Judge Southwick. He's a good man, people of diverse political backgrounds tell me, and doesn't deserve the scrutiny he's currently facing. Maybe President Bush is a good man, too. It doesn't really matter. Good men who harm our culture with bizarre, outdated rulings that promote racism and homophobia have no business on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Democratic Senate must do its job and block his nomination.

See also:

• An Unacceptable Nominee (New York Times)