For the first time in history there are three sitting female justices on the Supreme Court. The appointment of Elena Kagan makes her the fourth ever female justice. There was a barrage of criticism questioning her sexual orientation and the impact that would have on her objectivity. Two thoughts on this:

1. Kagan has never said that she is anything but heterosexual, but the short hair and air of confidence seems to confuse her critics. Their thinking is because she is not married at her age she must be lesbian. So much for not making assumptions..I don’t recall people accusing Justice David Souter of being gay even though he has been a lifelong bachelor.

2. So what if she is lesbian. The thinking is if she is lesbian then she could not be objective in her decisions. This is very scary to the conservative right now that Prop. 8 in California has been overturned regarding same sex marriage. It looks as though that case might be heading to the Supreme Court at some point. The real question that should be asked is regarding the sexual orientation of the remaining eight justices. As heterosexuals how can they be objective? How about their religious convictions, how could they be objective?

There is no thing as objectivity no matter what anyone says. Our experiences shape our lives and our values and the best we can hope for is that we are able to see things through others people’s eyes in order to make as fair decisions as possible.