'Cuz You Know How Those Queers Are

This is extraordinarily outrageous, even for the intolerant, hatemongering ignoramuses known as the GOP (emphasis mine):

Gay-rights groups have voiced hope that Obama will select the first openly gay Supreme Court nominee, and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund has offered two suggestions: Kathleen Sullivan, a former Stanford Law School dean, and Pam Karlan, another Stanford professor.

But conservative leaders have warned the nomination of a gay or lesbian justice could complicate Obama's effort to confirm a replacement for Souter, and another Republican senator on Wednesday warned a gay nominee would be too polarizing.

"I know the administration is being pushed, but I think it would be a bridge too far right now," said GOP Chief Deputy Whip John Thune. "It seems to me this first pick is going to be a kind of important one, and my hope is that he'll play it a little more down the middle. A lot of people would react very negatively."

Only in the fucked-up, privilege-soaked, fauxtopian fantasy world of the Republicans, with their bullshit rhetoric about tradition and morality masking an antique ideology that has no place in a multicultural society, could the mere fact of being gay be regarded as "polarizing," as "a bridge too far."

Steve rightly notes that Thune is "as a practical matter, is establishing a litmus test—qualifications and merit are important, but homosexuality, regardless of any other factor, is more important," and posits that Thune is doing so because he "assume[s] that a gay nominee is necessarily someone on the ideological fringe." The reality is that any person who Exists While Gay is axiomatically part of the ideological fringe to people like Thune. They spend their whole lives relegating people to the margins, and they can't even conceive of a marginalized person who might not be a wild-eyed lunatic, given that they go apoplectic at the mere thought of conceding an ounce of their privilege.

Hence, we have the GOP Chief Deputy Whip and a seasoned Senator indicating in a positively shameless manner that marginalized people should not be allowed a potential judicial ally. Thune's rank bigotry couldn't be more evident: Oh noes! A gay person on the Supreme Court might mean that the LGBTQI community has an ally when they sue for the equal rights we've been denying them for more than two hundred years!

Hey, GOP: That's why you're losing, right there. Because your elected members are fucking assholes.