Gay friendly? “In college, Samuel Alito led a student conference that urged legalization of sodomy and curbs on domestic intelligence, a sweeping defense of privacy rights he said were under threat by the government and the dawning computer age,” reports the Associated Press.
President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, in a report written years before ubiquitous personal computers made electronic privacy the everyday concern it is now, warned of the potential for abuses by officials and companies collecting data on individuals.
Three decades before the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex, Alito declared on behalf of his group of fellow Princeton students that “no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden.” Alito also called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring.
As a federal appellate judge, Alito has built a scant record on gay-rights issues and a mixed one, at best, on privacy matters generally, in the view of civil liberties advocates who are still examining his opinions.
But they saw in the 1971 report a prescient thinker taking on issues ahead of their time, including the need for computer encryption, stronger oversight of domestic intelligence and curbs on the surveillance powers of states.
David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, said, “If these are his views today – and there is no indication they are not – it’s a hopeful sign that may provide some insight into his philosophy. This isn’t pop-the-champagne-cork time. His views need to be explored… [but] very few people were standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago.”
There’s a big difference between decriminalizing sex acts and prohibiting outright hiring discrimination, and supporting gay marriage and gay adoption. In fact, rather than being more liberal than most college students in 1971, as these quotes suggest, I would say those were pretty safe, mainstream views on campuses.