What timing!
So this last Friday I went to the BALiF dinner at the Marriott here in SF. In case you didn't know, BALiF stands for Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, and since that tells you nothing about the group, I'm telling you now that it's the gay attorney organization here in the Bay Area. Accordingly, I'm legally required to tell you that the dinner was fabulous.
Actually, it was fabulous. My former dean, Kathleen Sullivan, was the keynote speaker, and while normally being the keynote speaker for such an event doesn't automatically make you gay, in this case I was hoping that she'd use the opportunity to come out of the closet. Sullivan is one of the leading constitutional scholars in the country, who (I think) started out as Lawrence Tribe's TA before joining the faculty of Harvard Law School, a law school of some repute over yonder, back east. She was lured to Stanford not long before I started, no doubt enticed by our gentle winters and the promise of excellent burritos. (I had one of those so-called burritos from back east and I took one bite and exclaimed, cert denied, motherfucker! This reminds me of that joke about how students on the law review have sex: Infra! Supra! Infra! Supra! Seriously, this stuff killed the 2L's.)
I never had her for Con Law - I had the late John Hart Ely, who was no slouch himself. A member of the Warren Commission, he had to have yearly talks for the students who would bug him incessantly with questions about the Kennedy assassination. He'd always deny there was a second shooter in Dallas, and just having him there talk about the experience of serving on the Commission is one of those historical moments you're supposed to treasure until you're dead, but for me I will always remember the day when he and the then-dean, Paul Brest, were struggling to tap a keg in the law school plaza.
As for Prof Sullivan, I had her for Con Law 2, which is mostly First Amendment stuff. She is perhaps the smartest person I've ever been in the same room with, and I've been in some pretty big rooms, lemme tell ya. Basically, at some point or another during class she'd be talking about something and then look up at you and say, "This actually dovetails nicely into that point you were making last week," and you'd do that law school/deer-in-the-headlights thing which you had perfected in Property (the only class taught in the Socratic method), and she'd say, "Yes, remember when you were talking about Hossenpfeffer v. Ethel Merman" (at least that's what it sounded like she said), and you'd think "Who the fuck is Hossenpfeffer?" and then you'd feel something pricking up the hairs on the back of your neck, which felt roughly like any hopes of a clerkship being doomed until you realized that you would HATE to be a clerk, and as you were enjoying this minor bit of relief, she would pull a Cyrano to your Christian and practically put words in your mouth until a miracle occurred - and you'd sound, for just a moment, like a genius.
In the same way that Charlie McCarthy had a lovely speaking voice.
Aside from the fact that she filed amicus briefs on the side of the angels in every case affecting gay rights - Bowers v Hardwick, Lawrence v Texas, etc. - and that she'd never been associated with a man, she'd never come out publicly. It was the worst kept secret at Stanford Law School, and still she never came out as a lesbian. I figured that she never would for fear that it might jeopardize her shot at getting appointed to the bench. So who knows - maybe it was W's second term and the diminishing hope of an appointment, or simply the fact she'd spent so much time waiting already - but finally, she's out.
Keynote speeches at these types of things tend to be soporific affairs, and a great time to leave early (last year the Lexington was full of more pantsuits than One Day at a Time marathon). Instead, people stayed for one of the best speeches ever. Sullivan basically traced the state of her relationship and where she was, with the then-state of gay rights, all the way up through Lawrence.
As great as it was, I wish Judge Kramer's decision holding California's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional had come out a few days earlier. I would have loved to have heard her take.
Why the Hell Am I Watching This?
Speaking of lesbos, I am compelled to write about the L Word, Showtime's lesbian soap opera. Whereas my lesbian life is filled with dread at the absolute certainty that anyone I ever date will hereafter be two or fewer degrees of separation away from every other lesbian I know, the lesbian life on this show seems to revolve around how to maintain the narrative arc despite having these bizarre interstitial dream sequences starring Mia Kirschner and her character's Incredibly Bad Writing. It's like we're cruising along in a nice cheesy soap opera and suddenly David Lynch comes along and we're subjected to two minutes of Mia at a carnival getting shot at by creepy twin girls and you just feel cheated when the wounds aren't fatal. Annoying. Especially annoying because Lisa Cholodenko directed this ep and she's usually pretty good - she directed Laurel Canyon and High Art, the latter being something that came very close to putting a stake in the image of Ally Sheedy as forever being the weird chick in the school library making snow out of her own dandruff. All the Short Circuits in the world couldn't do that, you know.
As much as I bitch though, I'm still going to watch, mostly because it's the only thing we've got. Honestly, I wish there were some lesbian comedy, but for some reason, lesbians are funny or OH MY GOD THEY ARE THE MOST HUMORLESS PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Come on! A nice half-hour comedy with a jazzy title like, "Hey, That's MY Golf Cart!" or "The Outfielders" and we got ourselves a show!
If only.
On one hand, you got your Ellen DeGeneres. On the other, half the lesbians at Mecca on a Thursday night. You got your Lily Tomlin, your Paula Poundstone, your Lea Delaria (who I personally can't stand), and then you have the best lesbian joke ever told:
Knock knock!
Who's there?That'snotfunny.
