Did Anita Hill’s Testimony Sensitize Clarence Thomas to Sex Discrimination Issues?

We will soon revisit the awkward— and for many working women, painful— testimony of Anita Hill in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Hill was a staff attorney who worked under Thomas’s direction when he headed the EEOC—the nation’s agency to enforce sex discrimination laws.

She testified: “He spoke about ... such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes," adding that on several occasions Thomas graphically described “his own sexual prowess” and the details of his anatomy. Hill also recounted an instance in which Thomas examined a can of Coke on his desk and asked, “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?”

Hill was attacked by Sen. Orin Hatch who said, “Hill was working in tandem with 'slick lawyers' and interest groups bent on destroying Thomas’ chances to join the court.”

Was that a teachable moment for Justice Thomas?

In 1992, Colorado enacted an amendment by a 52%-48% vote. The new law forbade any Colorado court, legislature, or local government from enacting a law or otherwise creating legal protection for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

In Romer v. Evans (1996), the Supreme Court struck down the Colorado law as a violation of equal protection. 

Justice Kennedy wrote for the 7-2 majority, stating that the law “seems inexplicable by anything but animus (hatred) toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.”

Justice Thomas joined Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion. Their opinion said that “homosexuals” cannot “obtain preferential treatment under the laws” because the U.S. Constitution said nothing about homosexual rights. Colorado, therefore, had constitutional authority to enact this law.

Thomas and Scalia based their reasoning, in part, on Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme Court case. There, police observed two men through a window in their apartment having sex. This violated Georgia’s sodomy laws. The men received $25 fines. The Supreme Court upheld the law, even though the men argued that Georgia does not prohibit heterosexual couples from having oral and anal sex.

The Supreme Court revisited that precedent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). On a similar fact pattern with a similar state law that was founded on Biblical injunctions against same-sex relations, the Court struck down this law (and others like it) as a violation of equal protection.

Again, Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court: “the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual." 
He added: “The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.”

Justice Thomas joined Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion. 

Scalia said: “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.... [T]he Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.”

If confirmed, will Brett Kavanaugh respect these precedents? 
What is his view of the state’s power to regulate sexual identity and consensual relations? 
These questions are worth exploring as his faces his accuser.