Covering_ The Hidden Assault on American Civil Rights - Kenji Yoshino [42]
Listening to Shahar, I reflect I would never have answered the question as she did. I would have experienced a simple “no” as both honest and politic. Indeed, I have a twinge of exasperation at Shahar for her high-mindedness. It is a dirty secret among lawyers that plaintiffs are often troublemakers—pious and unbending Cordelias. But then I reflect that Paul would have analyzed and answered the question as Shahar did. Like Shahar, he would have reasoned from his own visceral principles of equality. I realize through Paul that Shahar is acting on my behalf, moving gay rights forward for the rest of us who duck our heads when confronted with our second-class citizenship.
In May 1991, Shahar graduated from Emory Law School. Ranked near the top of her class, she had earned a distinguished scholarship and a position on the law review. That month, Shahar discussed her upcoming employment with Deputy Attorney General Robert Coleman. Shahar requested a late starting date because of her marriage, without specifying it would be to a woman. Coleman congratulated her.
Coleman began to tell coworkers Shahar was getting married. In Shahar’s view, Coleman was obsessed with the news because he thought it meant Shahar had converted to being straight. If Coleman was rejoicing over a prodigal daughter returning to the heterosexual fold, he was soon disappointed. He learned through a colleague Shahar was marrying a woman.
This news caused a maelstrom. The five senior aides held several meetings, and confirmed through Shahar’s personnel file that she considered Greenfield her “future spouse.” After they briefed Bowers, the attorney general decided to withdraw Shahar’s job offer. Bowers delegated the termination of Shahar to a subordinate, who read a script in the presence of a witness. The deputy told Shahar that Bowers had canceled the employment agreement, and told Shahar to direct any comments to Bowers in writing. Reading from the script, the deputy concluded, “Thanks again for coming in, and have a nice day.”
Shahar sat through this performance in disbelief. “It put me in a state of shock. I thought if I could just sit down and explain to Bowers what this was about, he would understand.” She was told Bowers would not meet with her. She tried to absorb her jobless state: “It was unbelievable. It was a couple weeks before the ceremony. I had graduated law school, I had a job that I was looking forward to, I had a commitment ceremony that was a weekend long to the woman I had been with for five years. This was like a grenade being thrown in it.”
The wedding took place on a campground in South Carolina, where one hundred people gathered for what Shahar describes as “a weekend out of time.” The rabbi made only a passing reference to the Bowers incident: “There are people who would like us not to do this. But we have created what we wanted to create.” For Shahar, that statement captured the ceremony: “We had a vision of what we wanted to create and we succeeded. Not just that we were in a Jewish setting, but that we had gotten our families of origin to where they were supportive. This was not in isolation, this was being surrounded by our community.”
Before the couple left for their honeymoon in Greece, they met with an attorney from the ACLU. This was Bill Rubenstein, in the days before he became an academic. While he agreed to take the case, Shahar remained uncertain about filing suit. As a lawyer, she knew being a plaintiff in a major civil rights suit was a Herculean undertaking. The couple decided to think it over on their trip. When they returned, both their mothers were waiting at the airport imploring them not to file. But the couple had decided to do so.
When terminated, Shahar was told to direct comments to Bowers in writing. In October 1991, she did so in the form of a lawsuit claiming he had violated her right to exercise her religion, her right to intimate and expressive association, her right to equal protection on the basis of sexual