Wisconsin conservatives have a doozy of a candidate for state Supreme Court, and like so many on the Right these days, state appeals court Judge Brian Hagedorn has left a long paper trail of bigotry and hate. Hagedorn called Planned Parenthood “a wicked organization more committed to killing babies than to helping women,” wrote that “a candidate’s position on abortion is my litmus test,” and called the NAACP a “disgrace to America,” but perhaps most shocking is his repeated use of bestiality to attack LGBT rights.
In an October 2005 comment on his own blog, Hagedorn wrote that “The idea that homosexual behavior is different than bestiality as a constitutional matter is unjustifiable.” He wasn’t even attacking marriage equality there—he was attacking the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down anti-sodomy laws. Hagedorn specifically insisted that comparing people’s rights to consensual sex with bestiality is “not a slippery slope argument.”
In December of the same year, Hagedorn returned to the topic, pointing to a story about “a man who was arrested for sexually assaulting a dog.” "What if the dog liked it and frequently initiated it?” Hagedorn wrote. “Shouldn't the ACLU come to the rescue of the man for having sex in the privacy of his own home (or here, his own doghouse)? Doesn't the idiotic attempt at reasoning, or more properly, the sweeping, grandiose, unsupported generalizations about 'liberty' that was Lawrence v. Texas cover precisely this sort of thing?"
Fortunately, progressives have a strong candidate in state appeals court Judge Lisa Neubauer, who stands opposed to the kind of hatred spewed by Hagedorn. The election to replace a retiring progressive justice is in April, and if progressives hold the seat, it opens the possibility of taking a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year.