Blackstone Fellows and the Alliance Defense Fund: Can Girls Rule?

Marriage litigation over the legality of California’s public referendum supporting marriage has been abandoned by the State of California to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an international network of Christian attorneys who defend life, liberty and family. It seems pretty apparent from a recent San Francisco Chronicle report that California’s elected officials deem ADF a more appropriate advocate for their constituents than themselves.

SF Chronicle (AP) : “The judge said Tuesday he wants detailed information about what effects Proposition 8 has on the couples suing as well as ‘opposite-sex couples and others not in same-sex relationships in California’ . . . The governor and attorney general, who are supposed to defend state laws, submitted separate but similar filings Friday saying they would leave it to the conservative legal group the Alliance Defense Fund to take the lead in defending California’s gay marriage ban.” (from California Judge orders new filings in marriage litigation, published Wednesday, August 12, 2009 3:50 PM at www.telladf.org )

Wow. Well, I can tell you why ADF is more competent in this representation than most attorneys – because of the excellent litigation training provided to attorneys around the globe in ADF’s National Litigation Academies (NLA) and their annual Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. And a large number of those ADF attorneys today are Regent Law graduates.

In early August I had the privilege of addressing the more than 100 Blackstone interns from top law schools all around the world, including Regent Law. By chance I found myself as the only woman in a faculty panel presentation with other law faculty from top U.S. law schools, and I felt compelled to speak to the future of men and women in our culture.

Women who are sold out for Christ are being called by God to the law in greater numbers than ever before, and it is clear to me that this is happening for two very important cultural and legal reasons: marriage and abortion. The feminist concept of essentialism demands that only women can authentically understand the experiences of women – a notion which plays directly into why God is calling Christian women to be lawyers.

For the past four decades women have been assaulted by abortion and challenged by marriage in the demise of marital protections. Now the world is facing the feminization of reproduction (UK researchers have recently found how to procreate via cloning without needing men), and the feminization of marriage (it is commonly known that homosexual women rush to same sex unions in vastly greater numbers than do homosexual men). At a time when the American Bar Association (ABA) is trying to foster a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)[ ABA Journal : “The ABA policy-making House of Delegates passed by an overwhelming voice vote a resolution calling on Congress to repeal a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal marital benefits and protections to lawfully married same-sex couples.”] and abortion on demand is the centerpiece of presidential health care reforms and Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) legislation, who better to speak on these key cultural/legal issues than women lawyers empowered by God?

And the best news is that many of them are right here at Regent Law now and at Blackstone this summer. You go, girls.

(click photo to view larger image)

Professor Kohm mentors through discipleship women Regent Law students while they work toward their Juris Doctor. You can read some of her scholarship on women, marriage and abortion at these publications:

What’s the Harm to Women and Children? A Prospective Analysis, in WHAT’S THE HARM: DOES LEGALIZING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE REALLY HARM INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES OR SOCIETY? 79 (Lynn D. Wardle, ed. 2008).

Does Marriage Make Good Business? Examining the Notion of Employer Endorsement of Marriage, 25 WHITTIER L. REV. 563 (2004); cited in 6 U. PA. J. LAB. & EMP. LAW 865 (Spring 2004); Selected Current Bibliography on Labor & Employment Law, 98 NW. U. L. REV. 579 (2004); Daniel W. Olivas, Tennessee Considers Adopting the Louisiana Covenant Marriage Act: A Law Waiting to be Ignored, 71 TENN. L. REV. 769 (2004); Karen Turnage Boyd, The Tale of Two Systems: How Integrated Divorce Laws Can Remedy the Unintended Effects of Pure No-Fault Divorce, 12 CARDOZA J. L. & GENDER 609 (2006).

From Eisenstadt to Plan B, 33 WM. MITCHELL L. REV. 787 (2007)(cited in Jennifer E. Spreng, Pharmacists and the "Duty" To Dispense Emergency Contraceptives, 23 Issues L. & Med. 215 (2008); James T. O’Reilly, Losing Deference in the FDA’s Second Century: Judicial Review, Politics, and a Diminished Legacy, 93 CORNELL L. REV. 939 (2008); 23 ISSUES L. & MED. 301 (2008); 83 N. DAK. L. REV. 1365 (2008); 9 U. PA. J. LAB. & EMP. L. 235 (2007); Bibliography, 14 CARDOZO J. L. & GENDER 819 (2008)).

The Rise and Fall of Women’s Rights: Have Sexuality and Reproductive Freedom Forfeited Victory? 6 WILLIAM & MARY JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND LAW 381, (Winter 2000)(co-authored with Colleen Holmes)(cited in The Truth About Women’s Rights, Janet Benshoof, 6 WILLIAM & MARY JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND LAW 423 (Winter 2000); Dana Neacsu, Tempest in a Teacup or the Mystique of Sexual Legal Discourse, 38 GONZ. L. REV. 601 (2002-03); RECENT CASE: Constitutional Law - Substantive Due Process - Eleventh Circuit Upholds Florida Statute Barring Gays from Adopting. -- Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of Children & Family Services, 538 F.3d 804 (11th Cir. 2004), 117 HARV. L. REV. 2791 (June 2004); Cheryl B. Preston, Women in Traditional Religions: Refusing to Let Patriarchy (or Feminism) Separate us from the Source of Our Liberation, 22 MISS. C. L. REV. 185 (2003); Michael Scaperlanda, Rehabilitating the “Mystery Passage”: An Examination of the Supreme Court’s Anthropology Using the Personalistic Norm Explicit in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla, 45 J. CATH. LEG. STUD. 631 (2006)).

Sex Selection Abortion and the Boomerang Effect of a Woman’s Right to Choose: A Paradox of the Skeptics, 4 WM & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 91 (Winter 1997); cited in Vineet Chander, “It’s (Still) a Boy…”: Making the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act as an Effective Weapon in India’s Struggle to Stamp Out Female Feticide, 36 GEO. WASH. INT'L L. REV. 453 (2004); James DiFonzo, Customized Marriage, 75 IND. L. J. 875 (2000); Naryung Kim, Breaking Free from Patriarchy: A Comparative Study of Sex Selection Abortions in Korea and the United States,17 UCLA PAC. BASIN L. J. 301 (1999); Kindra L. Gromelski, You Made Your Bed… Now You are Going to Pay for it: An Analysis of the Effects Virginia’s Mandatory Paternal Identification in AFDC Cases will have on the Rights of Unwed Fathers, 5 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 383 (1999); Paul M. Kurtz, 1999 Annual Survey of Periodical Literature, 32 FAM. L. Q. 875 (1999); Alisonn Wood Manhoff, Banned and Enforced: The Immediate Answer to a Problem without an Immediate solution – how India can prevent another generation of ‘missing girls,” 38 VAN. J. TRANSNAT’L. L. 889 (May 1, 2005); Maneesha Deckha, (Not) Reproducing the Cultural, Racial and Embodied Other: A Feminist Response to Canada’s Partial Ban on Sex Selection, 16 UCLA WOMEN’S L. J. 1 (2007).