Steven Menashi, a Special Assistant to Donald Trump and Associate Counsel to the President who was appointed last week for a lifetime seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, attacked the Human Rights Campaign and universities’ attitudes toward gay students, denounced feminists, and diversity efforts in editorials in the 1990s and 2000s.
CNN’s Kfile reports: “Steven Menashi, a Stanford-trained lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, wrote dozens of editorials and blog posts in the late 1990s and early 2000s for a number of college and professional publications decrying “leftist multiculturalism” and “PC orthodoxy.” He complained about “gynocentrists,” wrote that the Human Rights Campaign “incessantly exploited the slaying of Matthew Shepard for both financial and political benefit” and argued that a Dartmouth fraternity that held a “ghetto party” wasn’t being racist. He attacked academic multiculturalism as “thoroughly bankrupt” and, in 2002, defended then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi amid a worldwide controversy over comments asserting the superiority of Western civilization over Islamic culture — for which Berlusconi himself ultimately apologized.”
Menashi accused the Human Rights Campaign of hypocrisy “for not speaking out on crimes committed by gay men, only crimes committed against them.”
At the time, “the trial was ongoing for the 1999 rape and murder of a 13-year-old boy named Jesse Dirkhising by two gay men,” CNN reports:
Menashi insisted that he wasn’t suggesting a correlation between homosexuality and homicide — something he wrote that only “militant” anti-gay people would do — but rather arguing that “HRC only bolsters the unreasonable claims” by not responding to questions about the murder.
“By refusing to denounce the crime, and to sympathize with the Dirkhising family—or to acknowledge Jesse Dirkhising in any way—HRC only bolsters the unreasonable claims,” he wrote. “In their unwillingness even to discuss the case, HRC implies that the killing says something about American gays. Something bad.”
Menashi also attacked U.S. universities that criticized the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but segregated gay students in separate dorms.
Wrote Menashi: “The military says its ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy promotes the unit cohesion needed in combat by reducing sexual tension and respecting personal privacy. The colleges say these claims only mask irrational prejudice. University administrators insist troops in mortal combat should be able to handle the tension of living in mixed quarters. But it turns out that college kids living in dorms and frat houses, threatened by such dangers as beer kegs and basketball games, are quite a different matter. … In fact, the situation is so dire that colleges nationwide are establishing separate barracks for gays, not only as a haven from homophobic sophomores, but also to guard against emotional troubles gay students face in mixed living quarters.”
Much more on Menashi’s other writings at CNN Kfile.
