A conservative appeals court judge running for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court spent his time in law school blogging about how a landmark gay rights ruling in Texas would lead to bestiality and Planned Parenthood being “wicked,” according to a Thursday report published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In discussing SCOTUS striking down an anti-sodomy law in Texas, Judge Brian Hagedorn wrote in a 2005 post reviewed by the paper that the Constitution needed to distinguish between “homosexual behavior” and bestiality.
“The idea that homosexual behavior is different than bestiality as a constitutional matter is unjustifiable,” he wrote.
In another post, Hagedorn ripped into Planned Parenthood, which he called a “wicked organization” that is devoted “to killing babies.” Hagedorn also called Roe v. Wade “the worst and most unjustifiable decision in history,” waxing on about the 45,000,000 “human beings” lost in the decades following the Supreme Court’s decision.
In another, he wrote that two of his three “fundamental passions” amid the “culture wars” included protecting the “sanctity of human life” and defending the “institution of marriage.” In a 2008 letter to the editor also reviewed by the paper, Hagedorn wrote that President Barack Obama’s election was a “great leap forward” for the country, but that he had worked to elect Arizona Sen. John McCain. His blog also conveyed a distaste for the NAACP, which he called a “partisan hack” organization and a “disgrace to America.”
The blogs were published between 2005 and 2006, when Hagedorn was a 27-year-old Northwestern University law student and father of two children.
When confronted with Hagedorn’s history of terrible posts, his political adviser Stephan Thompson issued a long statement to the Journal Sentinel insisting the judge’s personal views wouldn’t affect his decisions on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.
“When he put on the robe, Judge Hagedorn took an oath to be impartial and apply the law on every case, and he will always be faithful to that oath and to the people he serves,” Thompson told the paper.
Hagedorn’s opponent in the April 2 election is appeals court Judge Lisa Neubauer, who was appointed by former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle in 2007. Her camp seized on the reporting, criticizing Hagedorn’s “personal, extreme and radical agenda” seen through his old blog posts.
The posts cast significant doubt on the judge’s ability to be impartial on the bench, particularly if he’s voted onto Wisconsin’s top court in an important race for the state. Hagedorn and Neubauer are running to replace retiring liberal Justice Shirley Abrahamson. As it stands, conservatives have a narrow 4-3 majority on the court after liberal judge Rebecca Dallet was elected last April.