What a baby!

I hate to admit it but I’m related to this ( Stephen Dunne )con-artist/thief. He failed the Pa. Bar exam 4 times and got into serious legal trouble in the Philly area and thought it was time to leave town, back to Boston where he went to school. As a close relative of this scumbag/politician type/ lawyer want to be, I would never ever do any business with this guy because he’d rob you blind and your mother too!!

Your musings about comparative resources are also quite off-base. What makes you think that the State Bar has any incentive at all to roll over for every aggrieved moron who thinks filing a lawsuit will overcome having failed the bar? Or, for that matter, for aggrieved non-morons who have a legitimate grievance? Money’s not really an issue, musings about this guy’s personal finances aside. They’re a government entity, not a profit-making one. Their entire reason for existence is to be a rigid gatekeeper of who gets to practice law.

Oh, and if you really think that it’s that easy to win the Lotto by running to the courthouse, why don’t you give it a try? Are you that hesitant to set yourself up for a cushy retirement?

IOW, these are all issues that arise in a het marriage, too, and follow well-established rules. This guy just got so hung up on the lesbian thing that he refused to answer.

More likely he just got hung up on that ‘family law thing’ and didn’t know the material at all. Someone who puts a $10 million dollar value on his failing the bar exam is probably not planning on getting into the family law business line. There is not enough money.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that if the examples had been different most people who are currently saying they don’t matter would perhaps change their minds.

Interesting question. But are there any other issues hot enough right now to generate the same kind of third party heat.

not to swallow the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s propaganda quite so readily.

Now how did the Chamber get into this? That pipe was a nice comeback to the ‘Mary and Jane’ comment.

. . . and whether or not he passes the bar his second or third time around, he’ll have a nice job offer waiting from some fundamentalist organization, or perhaps with the Attorney General’s office. And probably a speaking tour too . . .

Oh no. That would not be enough income potential for somebody like this. Your being blinded by this snake trying using your particular hot issue for advantage.

I’d put him down for the PITLA industry. If he does ever pass the bar, either by this outside gambit or by taking and passing the exam the next time, he will be the type to sue hospitals or large companies for exorbitant sums of money. You know the type.

I wonder how in the world he came up with the $10 million dollar request?

… try imagining how often disgruntled bar-failers sue over imagined errors on the Bar Exam. Consider the legal resources available to a pro se bar applicant vs. those available to the State Bar (which is made up of, like, lawyers). Rack your brain for the last time you heard of anybody suing the Bar over a failed exam and getting anything that might conceivably massaged into the category of ‘win’.

Hmmm, comparative resources?

The resources available to the bar would be for the most part be limited to providing and grading the test. As a government organization the money is constrained to pre-planned expenditures. They would have a deep pocket of attorneys to tap, but mainly of the law abiding type.

As for him, hmmm. That is a good question. It does take money to play in the lawsuit game. He may be a trust fund baby. In that case, this suit lets him play and gain some notoriety til he can retake the test or coerce them into letting him pass.

Or perhaps he is the scion of a family of PITLA attorneys. He may have the resources of an entire major law firm behind him. The corrupt Mass officials may have a sticky political situation to deal with. He is not a Kennedy is he? or a second generation leach, perhaps from the firms that sued the tobacco industry?

james, your counter examples are not logically similar to the question on the MA Bar exam.

The question posed in the exam was not one of either interpretation or ethics. Law exam fact patterns and the questions posed are set up for the tester to do three things: (1) issue spot, (2) define and apply the relevant law, and (3) draw a legal conclusion. The exam questions must be answered in a dry, formulistic way: “The first issue is whether . . . . The rule for X is . . . . Here, when Mary did Y, her behavior did / did not meet element (a) of the rule because blah, blah, blah . . . . Therefore, Mary can / cannot do whatever.” Deviate from the format, don’t get points.

Neither your sweatshop nor your employee pay example is a fact pattern that lends itself to the Bar exam format. The point is to apply existing law to the fact pattern, not to have some sort of random etherial ethical conversation.

Virtually everyone who has been through law school understands this, and also understands that their own personal political or moral views matter not. That the jackass who is suing did not is irrelevant.

For example, one might highly disapprove, say, prostitution or intravenous drug use, but if the exam poses a fact pattern in which there is a 4th Amendment search and seizure issue when a prostitute or a drug user has been wrongfully detained or searched, guess what?

The test takers who, on moral grounds, disapprove both must still spot the issues, state the rules, apply the rules to the facts, and then draw a legal conclusion. If these so-called moralists don’t answer the question, they get zero points. It’s that simple.

I hope I’ve cleared up that little mystery for you.

Oh, and by the way, Bar exam test takers have tried every trick in the book to challenge. To my knowledge, none has succeeded. The rule is take the test as written. The subject matter is immaterial. End of discussion.

That is a breathtakingly ignorant point.

It certainly was.

Ron, I’m genuinely appalled at the blithe insensitivity and lack of compassion your argument demonstrated. There is no significant real-world difference between “they discriminate against queers” and “they discriminate against non-family members, and it just so happens that queers aren’t allowed to become the legal family of their romantic partners.”

After you put down the crack pipe…

Mythago, I completely agree with you on all the merits. But please try to scale down your tone a couple of notches, if possible. Thanks.

There’s not a line “here” at all. Dunne was asked a question about Massachusetts law. Because he flunked the bar exam, he’s throwing a little legal tantrum to try and get in anyway.

Imagine that Dunne had been asked a family-law question about the division of assets after divorce, and sued because his religion holds divorce is a sin. Do you think there would be “a line here somewhere”?

My cynical anticipated outcome

After you put down the crack pipe, try imagining how often disgruntled bar-failers sue over imagined errors on the Bar Exam. Consider the legal resources available to a pro se bar applicant vs. those available to the State Bar (which is made up of, like, lawyers). Rack your brain for the last time you heard of anybody suing the Bar over a failed exam and getting anything that might conceivably massaged into the category of ‘win’.

Being at the side of the love of their life in the emergency room, because they’re Christian?

No one is banned from being at the side of anyone because they’re homosexual, either. Now, if someone who is related to someone in the emergency room decides that you shouldn’t be at that person’s side, FOR ANY REASON, then they can do so, but that’s up to the family member, not the state. What you’re asking for here is a special right to be conferred to a homosexual relationship that has not heretofore existed.

[bold emphasis mine]

That is a breathtakingly ignorant point.

Homosexuals ARE and HAVE BEEN banned from being at the sides of their partners during medical emergencies when the partners cannot speak for themselves because by virtue of being in a homosexual relationship WE ARE NOT AND CANNOT BE LEGALLY FAMILY.

You must not be aware of what happened to Charlene Strong when her partner Kate Fleming drowned in their basement in a flash flood. Charlene was banned from Kate’s hospital room - until a “family member” intervened. The women had been a couple for about 10 years. I would posit they were just as much a family as any married hetero couple.

What we LGBTQ couples are asking for demanding is to be considered FAMILY in the eyes of the law so that WE can be by our partner’s side in the event of a medical emergency, so that WE can legally make the decisions on behalf of our partners in their hour of need, so that NO ONE aside from our partners can keep us away from our partners, so that we by right are of course the partner’s next of kin just as are heterosexual spouses.

Because under the law we are not legally our partner’s next of kin, we are by definition LEGAL STRANGERS.

How the fuck being spouses in the eyes of the law impinges on the rights of anyone else is seriously beyond me.

It isn’t just that though, is it? There’s the factual knowledge and then there’s the example in which it is embedded. People can object to the context of the example, without wanting to be exempted from knowing the facts. The obvious example are maths questions couched in the language of sports, feminists have sued over this and examining boards didn’t get off the hook by arguing that just because girls don’t like sports doesn’t exempt them from knowing how to add up.

The problem with the sports questions is that they require you to know something about the sport itself that’s not spelled out in the question. Like how many members on a particular type of team, or how long play goes on for, or what a particular term refers to, or what have you. If you don’t have the background to know what that refers to, you waste valuable time trying to figure that out just so you can solve the problem, putting you at a disadvantage.

There’s nothing in the question at issue here that does that. The relevant facts are all there, you just need to apply the law.

The bit about one spouse being pregnant at the time of the marriage has to do with presumed parentage. A child born during a marriage is presumed to be the product of that marriage and therefore the husband is presumed to be the father for legal purposes, no matter the actual parentage. I would assume that it works the same way for ssm, so that the non-pregnant spouse is deemed to have a legal parental relationship for purposes of custody and guardianship and inheritance later. It’s really meant to protect the child.

IOW, these are all issues that arise in a het marriage, too, and follow well-established rules. This guy just got so hung up on the lesbian thing that he refused to answer.

The lunacy of Dunne’s position is obvious; because a lawyer disagrees with the law doesn’t exempt her from knowing the law.

It isn’t just that though, is it? There’s the factual knowledge and then there’s the example in which it is embedded. People can object to the context of the example, without wanting to be exempted from knowing the facts. The obvious example are maths questions couched in the language of sports, feminists have sued over this and examining boards didn’t get off the hook by arguing that just because girls don’t like sports doesn’t exempt them from knowing how to add up.

Dunne’s position is a stretch. But I think there is a line here somewhere. Most people wouldn’t object to the girls/sports/maths example being legitimate. I’d feel a bit icky if I was doing accounting exams and they phrased optimisation questions in terms of the number of hours a sweatshop owner should make his orphans work, or whether the risks of getting taken to court are or aren’t great enough to mean you should give your female employees equal pay.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that if the examples had been different most people who are currently saying they don’t matter would perhaps change their minds.

Of course I’m against the police roaming the streets without uniforms, but minor concessions to personal religious identity are just that . . . minor. Wearing a crucifix doesn’t stop anyone from arresting crooks. Wearing a headscarf doesn’t stop anyone from arresting crooks. I believe in the maximum religious freedom possible, as long as it doesn’t impact the job itself.

I also believe in allowing everyone a large amount of elbow room to express their individualities . . . however, I disagree with uniformed government employees wearing symbols which say “I’m a member of a particular club, and I need everyone to know it.” I wear a government uniform as a part of my job, and I see the purpose of the uniform as letting everyone know that I’m there to help them and keep everything safe. If I wear a cross, a scarf, a star of david, etc. it separates me from all the people who are not members of that club. Should I be allowed to wear a rainbow flag pin on my lapel? And, being queer, I don’t feel like I can completely trust someone who goes out of their way to tell me that they’re a christian by wearing a cross. It’s not that I think that all cross-wearers are out to get me, it’s just that I’m more uncomfortable with cross-wearers (based on my own prejudices), and my wariness makes it harder for the government employees to do their jobs well and keep everyone safe.

I don’t know about the scarf/turban/beard issue though. It seems like rules against those restrict entire classes of people from certain kinds of government employment . . . after all christianity and judism don’t require its adherants to wear charm necklaces . . . and it seems lik e law enforcement is an area precisely where we want to employ a good representation of all kinds of people. Hmm, and what about someone with a cross tatooed on his/her arm? would that be a disqualifier? These are slippery-slope questions, I think.

Actually, it is rather a breathtakingly brilliant gambit. Ignore the position he took, he probably doesn’t believe in it. He is just ‘practicing his profession’.

. . . and whether or not he passes the bar his second or third time around, he’ll have a nice job offer waiting from some fundamentalist organization, or perhaps with the Attorney General’s office. And probably a speaking tour too . . .

Both Mary and Jane are attorney’s, so what is with the bit about ‘Mary trusted Jane so she didn’t hire her own attorney’. She should certainly be educated enough on her profession to not need one.

That’s probably the Board’s way of illustrating the adage that the person who represents him/herself has a fool for a client. You may or may not agree, but that’s the official line. As for being educated enough in her profession not to need one, we don’t know what kind of law she practices. Unless it’s family law, she may not be particularly qualified to analyse a pre-marital agreement, even for herself.

Mary was three months pregnant at the time of the marriage’. Well Jane is obviously not the bio father. I wonder how come they didn’t put any facts into the case as to how Mary got preggers.

They probably didn’t include it because it wasn’t important. Perhaps she became pregnant through AI. Maybe the biodad is dead. In any case, he’s not in the picture, and for the purpose of the question, it’s probably safe to assume that he’s not going to come into the picture later on. There are already plenty of issues to address with Jane’s and Mary’s respective rights without going down some rabbit trails chasing down the missing dad.

‘Mary was three months pregnant at the time of the marriage’. Well Jane is obviously not the bio father. I wonder how come they didn’t put any facts into the case as to how Mary got preggers.

‘Jane got drunk and hit Mary with a baseball bat, breaking Mary’s leg when she learned that Mary was having an affair with Lisa’. So what is the punishment these days in Mass. for assault and battery? Looks like 2.5 years or a fine of $1,000.

If he’s lucky, they may offer a settlement along the lines of “drop the case now, and we won’t ask the court for sanctions.”