Is Harriet Miers a lesbian? While that question is unlikely to be posed publicly, you can be sure it’s a question sweeping conservative groups. President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court will, like every Supreme Court nominee, receive close scrutiny.

And the closest scrutiny comes from conservative groups who abhor the notion that a non-exclusive heterosexual could get on the Court. Not that there’s evidence that he’s gay, but they compare Harriet Miers to Justice David Souter, who, like Miers, has never married and has no children. Conservatives say they worry that Miers could be another Souter. This is code for “she could be a lesbian.”

Tony Perkins, executive director of the Family Research Council, doesn’t just want to know whether Miers would overturn Roe; he really wants assurance as to whether Harriet is a lesbian.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Perkins has expressed outrage about Miers. He doesn’t say publicly that it’s because she’s never been married. She has no kids. Instead of marrying and raising a family, she’s a “career woman.” The term “career woman” has often been a euphemism for “lesbian.”

In fact, the only proof that she could be heterosexual is that she has a “long-time” companion, who is a staunch conservative member of the Texas Supreme Court. But is he a beard? The truth is some of the staunchest conservatives have been gay or lesbian – J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, for example, perhaps the two most talked about conservatives.

And we all know why we call the Republican Party the party of Lincoln. It’s fairly obvious that Lincoln didn’t share a bed for years with Josiah Speed simply because “beds were in short supply in those days.”

So Perkins has some reason to worry.

Perkins couches his true concern in attacking Miers. When she ran for City Council in Dallas (1992), she said she opposed abortion and did not support the repeal of Texas’ consensual sodomy statute, but did support civil rights for gays, and she appointed an openly gay attorney to a public board. That bothers Perkins.

Now, it’s true Perkins should have good reason to question Miers’ sexual orientation. There are lots of Republicans who are gay men and lesbians; some are out, like Rep. Jim Kolbe, Bonnie Dumanis and Mary Cheney, while others are in the closet or won’t comment on the subject, like the current head of the Republican Party.

And Perkins knows full well that being gay or lesbian is not a factor President Bush or Dick Cheney care about. When Cheney’s then-assistant secretary of defense, Pete Williams, was outed by The Advocate in 1991, Cheney said, “so what?”

At the Republican Convention in 2000, who can forget how conservatives bowed their heads and prayed while Republican Congressmember Jim Kolbe gave a speech on trade?

Perkins’ fascination with gays and lesbians has, of course, led to such stellar reports that “SpongeBob SquarePants is gay.” He’s a sponge! I’m actually shocked that Perkins hasn’t discovered that the entire Supreme Court is gay and lesbian.

I’m waiting for him to out conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of allowing state colleges to take the monies of Christian students and pay for Pride events on campus. Scalia is gay. He’s married; 20 kids. But Scalia is not just an opera aficionado; he could make Frasier Crane look like a charlatan.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. He’s gay. Don’t let the wife and kids fool you. He’s an expert on Shakespeare. And we all know about Shakespeare… having men play roles as women.

Justice O’Connor? She was a cowgirl. She makes Barbara Stanwyck look dainty.

Justice Clarence Thomas? Oh, please, talk about kinky.

Apparently, the litmus test for Perkins and others is marriage and children. They’ve questioned the sexuality of Condi Rice, Liddy Dole (even though she’s married to Bob Dole) and former Senator Nancy Kassebaum. And recently, before Margaret Spellings became education secretary, they questioned her sexuality because, even though she was divorced with kids, she had suggested that school curriculum include mention of “non-traditional” families.

There’s nothing I’ve found to suggest that Harriet Miers is a lesbian. But I hope the insinuation that she is gives her a special feel for what life is like for gays and lesbians, and the constant assault we endure from the extreme right wing.