HMM: Law Profs Threaten Boycott of AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego Due to Hotel Owner’s Views on Same-Sex Marriage. Of course, this will mostly hurt the AALS, which will likely pay big penalties to the hotel if it doesn’t make its room-night target for the meeting, and which will certainly find it at least somewhat harder to negotiate hotel deals in the future.

UPDATE: Or is it a “girlcott?”

Meanwhile, it seems likely that the AALS is being used for another cause: “Apparently, a local labor union is co-organizing the boycott. While the union’s leader claims that the union is very concerned about the gay marriage issue, I suspect that the fact that the hotel is not ‘organized,’ has more to do with the union’s interest.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Smith:

There is also the question of where this should end. Should professors such as I even be permitted to attend the AALS meeting? Granted, I rarely go, but if it were in San Diego I might. As I said, I am currently against gay marriage outside of Oregon, and am if not a devout Catholic, at least one who strives to be annoying. Why not just bar such as myself from the AALS entirely? That would certainly make a statement about gay marriage, and would actually be within the jurisdiction, so to speak, of the AALS, which is all about law professors, not hoteliers. Maybe Catholic law schools should not be permitted to be members of the AALS at all. And don’t forget BYU and the Mormons. They think lots of bad thoughts too.

Just don’t try to boycott any progressive speakers in similar fashion. That would be McCarthyism.