To Gays: Don't Mourn, Organize!

A powerful association of 36 law schools and their faculties—representing many of the accredited such schools in the country—thought it had an eminently just and winning case in opposing a congressional mandate that any university barring military recruiters from its campus would lose hundreds of millions in federal funds.

The law schools in this case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, have, since 1991, required that all potential employers coming to campus sign a pledge to not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

These law schools, however, rightfully regard the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy—rejecting openly gay recruits— as blatantly, invidiously unfair discrimination. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. And I see nothing in the Constitution that permits such repugnant exclusion from employment because of sexual preference.

But Congress, in the Solomon Amendment, had decreed that law schools must offer military recruiters the same access to their students as they do to nonmilitary recruiters— or else the entire universities, not just their law schools, would lose all federal funds.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0612,hentoff,72577,6.html