Why?
I don't mind telling you some "personal" stuff.
I'm gay.
In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that laws banning "sodomy were constitutionally permissible. For about the next three years I was on the gay community's bandwagon about wanting that decision - Bowers v. Hardwick - overturned. So I voted for Dukakis for only one reason - to make the Supreme Court a little bit more liberal. It was a mistake. I regretted it the next year and I've continued regretting it - my motive for the Dukakis vote, not the consequence - ever since.
In 1989, I realized my overall philosophy was more right-of-center than to the left, and it made more sense for me to be a Republican. In 1990 I began intensely studying constitutional law. Robert Bork's "The Tempting of America" was a very important early influence. Voting Republican for the next three elections was my way of trying to put more Borks on the Supreme Court. By that I mean "originalists" ... people dedicated to giving all clauses in the Constitution the meanings they were intended to have.
Then what happened in Dec. 2000? Bush v. Gore. That proved to me that the Republicans did not appoint better Supreme Court Justices than the Democrats.
And in 2003, Lawrence v. Texas overturned Bowers. I hate the Lawrence decision, and the Court's opinion, passionately. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote both Bush and Lawrence. I loathe him so much I can't even begin to describe, ..... it's like flames on the side of my face, .....
There was just no point in voting any more. If the Supreme Court can hand down a secision that could prevent my vote from being counted, why bother? If the Supreme Court defines "liberty" whatever way they feel like, they could strike down laws I voted for (and which I am 100% positive are not truly unconstitutional), why bother to vote?
I voted for McMullin because he was the only one who said the right thing appoint what kind of people should be appointed to the Court.
Cool--- Thanks MarkD!
I remember well the Bowers-Hardwick ruling, although I was only 12 at the time listened to NPR throughout the day and watched the MacNeil-Lehrer Report M-F on PBS, as part of my homeschooling (Non-Evangelical) educational experience.
It was absolutely absurd even then for me, that State Governments should be allowed to dictate sexual behavior among consenting adults within a private sphere, regardless of sexual orientation.
Your voting history and based upon your perspective on constitutional law, from an historic Supreme Court decision in '86 that supported the state of Georgia,
which was deliberately designed to target Gay Men, makes absolute sense . I confess that like many others, I get slightly lost with the most of jurisprudence, legal philosophies/theories and legal decisions at the Supreme Court level, aside from the "top line" decisions.
The odd thing about many of these types of threads is that
it is rare to actually have individuals that talk about their own voting history, and the motivations behind their decisions.Generally, it is more like "in theory this a XYZ voter living in a certain state/region from a certain socio-economic category and then maybe because they are part of a cultural minority (Religious/Sexual Preference, environmentalist....) that for whatever reason this explains the voting patterns.
We do have individuals, including myself, that will occasionally pull up close friends, family members, coworkers, etc that are essentially secondary sources.
This Forum is heavily dominated by a relatively younger set, so obviously this increases these types of responses to these types of threads....
Those of us 40+ years are heavily underrepresented on the Forum... since as kids born in the early 1970s, that came of voting age in the late '80s/ early '90s
"We lived it man"
