<DIV> Christian Gregory <christian11@mindspring.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> >Here's a test-- name any significant social advance that started with the >Supreme Court rather than in an elected body. There are almost none. Who said anything about "starting" in the courts? Gay rights movements--and movements for sexual and gender equality in general--began in the streets and popular culture. * ** Actually a pretty good case could be made that it was Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that was the trigger for the development of the civil rights movement, as the culmination of a decades-long legal battle waged by the NAACP LDF.  Although I'm a judicial conservative -- that means not that I support right wing lawmaking by judges, but rarther that I support judicial restraint -- and I agree that we need to make changes in the streets and the legislatures, I think Nathan goes way overboard with with his idea that the couirts are simple tools of reaction, empty of promise as political tools for progressive change. We all have to recognize that the days of the Warren and even the Burger Courts are way over, of course, but I am not sure who the target of Nathan's attack is who is not aware of this. Maybe some right wingers who think the courts are loaded with librull activists. No one on the left that I know. Meanwhile we can do ijmportant things in the courts, The CCR and the ACLU just puta  big dent in the Patriot Act, for example -- by a  lawsuit. It would be good if we vould get the sucker legislatively repealed, but mewnhwile we shoulda lso atack it in the courts. Nathan, to whom I owe an apology for an intemperate outburst, is a bit of an all-or-nothing thinker. The courts are utterly useless, stay out of them. The economiy is the only important issue, forget sexuality (for one). Seems to me that we need more nuance and sensitivity to context. jks</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/security/*http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail/static/protection.html">Yahoo! Mail</a> - You care about security. So do we.