Strange bedfellows can make strong allies...could Olson really be an LGBT civil rights champion?

I was reading this article in the NY Times last week about former Solicitor General and attorney Theodore Olson’s prominent role in the latest chapter of California’s Proposition 8 saga.      

To most of the people who knew or knew of Olson and his career, it would have seemed unbelievable to think that a man who served Ronald Reagan and George Bush; who argued successfully on the Republican (and winning) side of perhaps the most important Supreme Court case in our generation’s history, placing George W. Bush firmly in the White House; a leader of the conservative Federalist Society, and a man who displays in his office a medal honoring his legal defense of Bush’s post 9-11 counterterrorism policies – that this man would call his representation of lesbian and gay couples in the fight to legalize same sex marriage perhaps “the most important case of his career” - but this is exactly what he has done.   

Though suspicion initially ran rampant on both sides of the political aisle about Olsen’s motives, it seems clear that a legal and political icon who has won 44 of 55 cases before the Supreme Court wouldn’t take a case of this magnitude in order to throw it. 

And it is heartening that Mr. Olson’s past appears to reveal an individual who has expressed support for equal rights since his youth and seems to genuinely believe that California’s ban on same sex marriage is “utterly without justification” and stigmatizes gay men and lesbians as “second-class and unworthy.”

Olson’s position on same-sex marriage reveals the reality that even outwardly political beings are complex - holding personal values and convictions that may appear incongruent to others.  Olson’s commitment to securing “the rights and happiness and equal treatment of millions of people” who never counted on him to champion their rights underscores the importance of not making assumptions about who are our allies in the fight to uphold civil rights and civil liberties.*

While some seem confused by our frequent partnering with individuals and organizations seen by others as “strange bedfellows”, the ACLU of MAINE’s underlying commitment to individuality, non-discrimination and free speech practically demands dismissal of stereotypes and openness to fluidity of opinion.  In addition to synching with core ACLU values and proving fruitful in many of our legislative initiatives, it encourages those with whom we seek to work to hear us with as open a mind as we hear them.   

*Check out these blogs discussing whether Olson moved too quickly in bringing same-sex marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This debate clearly echoes that which swirled around GLAD’s 2001 filing of Goodridge et al. v. Dept. Public Health in the Massachusetts’ courts.  While discussion of Goodridge comes with the benefit of hindsight, at the time it was filed, many in the LGBT advocacy committee voiced similar anger and concern about the timing – believing it premature and with potential to do great damage the long range fight.  But as lead attorney Mary Bonauto and her client, Hillary Goodridge were aware, there is never a “good” time to bring forward controversial civil rights issues.