Unprincipled positions?

Or, the problem with worrying only about ends and not the means.

The Solomon choice: By standing up for the right to oppose the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, some fear law schools could undermine two landmark civil rights laws.
BOSTON GLOBE by Kristin Eliasberg, November 27

EXCERPT: IF THE FEDERAL government contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to colleges or universities, should it be allowed to dictate what goes on at those institutions? The answer, according to two of the most important and successful civil rights laws in US history, has long been a resounding ''yes," when it comes to race and gender discrimination.
***
But next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that some fear could threaten the reach of these historic civil rights laws. The case, Rumsfeld v. FAIR, doesn't concern race or gender. In an ironic twist, it centers instead on a piece of legislation called the Solomon Amendment, passed in 1994, which says that the government can withhold funding from universities whose law schools refuse to allow military recruiting on their campuses because they consider the armed forces' ''don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and lesbians to be discriminatory.
***
NYU's [Burt] Neuborne recalls warning about the possibility of something like the Solomon Amendment back in the early 1980s, at a time when civil rights advocates were pushing the Supreme Court to use the threat of wholesale funding cuts as a tool to enforce Title 9. ''We developed a position that said if any piece of the university takes federal money, the entire university is covered by the antidiscrimination norm," says Neuborne. ''I warned we wouldn't be happy with this test because it will mean the government gets to control whole universities."

In yet another irony, a similar concern was raised by Chief Justice John Roberts when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. In 1982, Roberts wrote a memo supporting the position that in Title 9 gender-discrimination cases, discrimination in one part of the university should only trigger Title 9 penalties in that program, not in the entire institution. ''Under Title IX," Roberts wrote, ''federal investigators cannot rummage wily-nily [sic] through institutions, but can only go as far as the federal funds go."
***
Kathleen Sullivan, a law professor at Stanford and former dean of its law school, claims that Solomon fails this requirement on a couple of levels. For one thing, the military's insistence on equal access-and the ensuing ''political theater" in the form of campus protests and picket lines-actually works against the goal of successful recruitment, discouraging law students from interviewing with the military at all. ''The military was just at Stanford," she said recently, ''and no one showed up to interview because of the protests."

Read the whole thing and examine the contortions required to carve out a new rule. There are some decent arguments to be made but I think they involve winning the argument that 'dont ask, dont tell' is wrong.

They certainly don't involve the kind of cynical (and foolish) 'arguments' marshalled by Kathleen Sullivan. Would Sullivan accept her argument about counterproductive troublemakers in another context, say, abortion or civil rights? I think not.

What do you think would happen if the federal government began interpreting civil rights in a more race neutral fashion and denied funding to colleges with affirmative action programs? What would proponents of affirmative action policies argue then? I am not advocating this since I support some race-based decision making in instances like affirmative action programs. I'm only pointing out the pickle these folks got themselves into when they vociferously argued for this federal power, confident the power would always be used the way they liked.

h/t Jolt Linked at the Jam