Over at Slate, David Cohen and Leonore Carpenter, jump up and down with glee at the notion that elite law firms “won’t touch” the defense of traditional marriage. According to the New York Times, of the dozens of briefs filed at the Supreme Court against the notion that the Constitution creates a right to same-sex marriage, not one will be drafted by a major law firm. According to Cohen and Carpenter, “Putting the firm’s name on a brief arguing for a denial of their own [LGBT] employees’ basic human dignity isn’t just wrong, it is also counter to the aim of creating a workplace that will attract and keep the best employees.”

Fascinating. So after hearing for years — as big firm lawyers defended al Qaeda in Gitmo — that we can’t judge lawyers by their clients, suddenly it’s “wrong” for a big firm to take the wrong case.

Or not. Cohen and Carpenter are thinking three steps ahead. It turns out that it’s still okay for $1,000/hour lawyers to lend their considerable talents to jihadist mass murderers:

The current state of advocacy on this issue should not raise concerns about the loss of great lawyers taking on unpopular causes. Normally, when we lawyers talk about the nobility of defending an unpopular cause, we’re referring to a situation in which a single person, often a criminal defendant, stands alone against the full power of the state. Think To Kill a Mockingbird. Think Guantanamo detainees. We dare not lose sight of the vast chasm of difference between defending human beings oppressed by the state and defending the state itself when it wishes to continue to oppress human beings.

Yes, according to Cohen and Carpenter, the plight of al-Qaeda (provided, at government expense, with outstanding JAG defense lawyers) is comparable to the plight of a poor black man, wrongly accused of rape in the Jim Crow South.

Just so we’re clear, the gay-stoning, child-killing, woman-oppressing, genocidal foot soldiers of a lawless jihadist army are not “human beings oppressed by the state.” The Gitmo detainees did not stand ”alone” against the “full power” of the American government. Instead — violating every principle of the law of armed conflict — they engaged in combat operations as part of jihadist army, not just against American forces but also against innocent civilians. They are not the “oppressed.” They are the oppressors. And of all the good causes a talented lawyer can donate his or time and talent to support, multiple law firms and multiple “elite” lawyers have proudly chosen these jihadists.

This double standard is nothing new, and since I can’t improve on Andy McCarthy, writing on this same issue in 2011, I won’t. Here’s Andy:

The high dudgeon about lawyers heroically taking on unpopular causes is malarkey. DOMA is unpopular only on the left — but that is enough to ensure that the lawyer Left won’t touch it. But terrorists, murderers, illegal aliens, animal-rights activists, and global-warming alarmists? Count them in.
Social justice is not about ensuring a fair process. It’s about achieving outcomes of which the Left approves, by any means necessary. You can tell what they’re for by what they volunteer to do and what they’re against by what they won’t go near.

Yes, and since social justice now requires a constitutional right to gay marriage, even al-Qaeda gets a moral rehabilitation to advance the cause.