Bar-exam flunker sues: Wannabe rejects gay-wed question<\/span><\/span>
<\/a>By Donna Goodison
Friday, July 6, 2007 – Updated: 08:15 AM EST<\/p>\nA Boston man who failed the Massachusetts bar exam has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his refusal to answer a test question – related to gay marriage – caused him to flunk the test.<\/p>\n
Stephen Dunne, 30, is suing the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, claiming the \u201cinappropriate\u201d test question violated his religious convictions and his First Amendment rights. Answering the question, Dunne claims, would imply he endorsed gay marriage and parenting.<\/p>\n
The suit also challenges the constitutionality of the 2003 SJC ruling that made Massachusetts the nation\u2019s first state to legalize same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n
Dunne, who describes himself as a Christian and a Democrat, is seeking $9.75 million in damages and wants a jury to prohibit the Board of Bar Examiners from considering the question in his passage of the exam and to order it removed from all future exams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a different forum for that contemporary issue to be discussed, and it\u2019s inappropriate to be on a professional licensing examination,\u201d Dunne told the Herald. \u201cYou don\u2019t see questions about partial-birth abortion or abortion on there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunne scored a 268.866 on the bar exam, just missing a passing grade of 270. The exam question at issue concerns two married lesbian attorneys and their rights regarding a house and two children when one decides to end the marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, Jane got drunk and hit (her spouse) Mary with a baseball bat, breaking Mary\u2019s leg, when she learned that Mary was having an affair with Lisa,\u201d the bar exam question stated. \u201cAs a result, Mary decided to end her marriage with Jane in order to live in her house with Philip, Charles and Lisa. What are the rights of Mary and Jane?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunne claims the question was used as a \u201cscreening device\u201d to identify and penalize him for \u201crefusing to subscribe to a liberal ideology based on \u2018secular humanism,\u2019 \u201daccording to his lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHomosexual conduct is inconsistent with (Dunne\u2019s) Christian practices, beliefs and values, which are protected by the First Amendment,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
\u201cI respect people with alternative lifestyles, and we must do that in a civil society,\u201d Dunne said. \u201cI just have a different opinion that millions of people share with me, and I believe that my opinion should be respected just as much as (pro-gay) opinions. I have no intent in spreading hatred or discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his court documents, Dunne described homosexuality as a \u201cvoluntary human behavior that is changeable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSocietal recognition and perpetuation of rampant homosexuality is neither prudent nor wise,\u201d his lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
…. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen Dunne. That’s tough dude, I guess you have to keep living in your parent’s basement, surfing the net for gay pr0n. Bar-exam flunker sues: Wannabe rejects gay-wed questionBy Donna GoodisonFriday, July 6, 2007 – Updated: 08:15 AM EST A Boston man who failed the Massachusetts bar exam has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[972,1030,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","category-lgbtq","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}