Judge Southwick should not be appointed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

Today is the vote in the Senate for Judge Leslie Southwick appointment to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. I just found out about this just now, I wish I knew earlier and I would have urged you to contact your senator about this. But now we just have to sit with our fingered crossed and hope for the best.

In 2001 in the S.B. v. L.W. case, Judge Southwick joined a majority opinion which upheld a chancellor’s decision taking an 8-year-old child away from her bisexual mother and awarded custody of the child to the father (who had never married the mother), in large part because the mother was living with another woman in a “lesbian home.” The language in the majority opinion repeatedly used terms like “homosexual lifestyle” and “lesbian lifestyle.” The dissenting opinion, by contrast, stated that sexual orientation has no bearing on child custody decisions.

Judge Southwick went beyond even the majority opinion and was the only judge to join an additional concurring opinion by Judge Payne. Judge Payne’s concurrence appears to have been written for the sole purpose of underscoring and defending Mississippi’s hostility toward gays and lesbians. The concurrence also suggests that sexual orientation is a choice and explicitly states that while “any adult may choose any activity in which to engage, that person is not thereby relieved of the consequences of his or her choice.” Thus, according to the reasoning adopted by Judge Southwick, one consequence of being gay or lesbian is possibly losing custody of one’s own child.

Judge Southwick was repeatedly asked about these opinions and he refused to disavow himself from the highly offensive language and reasoning in these opinions to which he put his name.

Senate Floor Statement of Senator Cardin
ON THE NOMINATION OF JUDGE LESLIE SOUTHWICK
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

Can you even imagining such a ruling? This is something that is out of the fifties and not from 2001