Another Bush Surprise. To the astonishment of many, including the die-hard Bush-haters of the gay left, the president this week signed into law the Mychal Judge Act, which allows federal death benefits to be paid to the same-sex partners of firefighters and police officers who die in the line of duty. The law is named after the heroic, gay New York City Fire Department chaplain killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
This is another small but significant step forward in terms of the mainstream GOP moving away from the religious right, which, as the New York Times reported, was furious that Bush put his signature on the bill. "I"m very saddened that he signed it, because of the precedent that it sets," lamented Paul Weyrich, rightwing activist and long-time opponent of gay inclusion. Weyrich whined, "Conservatives are becoming somewhat troubled by some of the things that the administration is doing, and if you have just a percentage or two who stay at home, it"ll mean the difference between control or not in the 2002 elections."
That's the anti-gay right's ongoing threat. But there's a contravening factor, as noted in the same article by Charles Cook of the well-regarded Cook Political Report. He observed, "There's a healthy percentage of gay people who if the Republican Party stopped poking them in the eye, some of them would vote Republican." The big-tent faction of the GOP knows this, too, and increasingly they are calling the shots.
The Pledge Flap. What can one say about the ultra-liberal federal appeals court sitting in San Francisco, which on Wednesday found that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and banned its recitation in public schools under its jurisdiction (an order suspended pending appeal)? On the one hand, it will increase public disdain over what's seen as loony political extremism emanating from the city by the bay. But since San Francisco also is noted for its pro-gay politics, that's not a good thing. If the left is going to go off the deep end, it becomes all the more important to establish that gay equality is not simply a cause of the left, no matter how much this infuriates both the gay left and the religious right.
Beyond Left and Right, Continued. And speaking
of transcending left/right politics, syndicated columnist
Jim Pinkerton this week quoted IGF contributor (and my partner)
David Boaz on the prospects for a libertarian-minded coalition.
Writes Pinkerton:
"both major parties hold some libertarian cards, and yet neither party is willing to play a consistent hand. David Boaz"sees a developing "combination of Social Security choice, school choice, social tolerance at home"" in which all those who don't wish to be trod upon find common cause in a newfound alliance of taxpayers, alternate lifestylers and other liberty-lovers."
That suggests one way to plant the struggle for gay equality in the soil of individual rights and liberty, rather than in the muck of identity politics and group-based entitlements.
The P.C. Swamps and What They Breed. Conservative columnist Suzanne Fields writes in her June 27 column, "No Common Sense and No Love of Country," on a poll of college students conducted by the highly respected pollster Frank Luntz. The survey found only 3 percent of students in the fervid fields of academia "strongly agree" that Western culture is superior to the culture of the Arab world. Fully 43 percent "strongly disagree."
Writes Fields,
"They weren't asked to consider specifically why a culture that systematically represses women, executes homosexuals, restricts the press, abrogates freedom of speech and religion and persecutes Christians and Jews is thought to be just as good as a culture that empowers women, works to eliminate prejudice against homosexuals, and guarantees freedom of the press, of speech and of religion."
Did I mention that Fields is a conservative? Here's yet more evidence that the p.c., multiculti, America-bashing left has lost its bearings, and that the pro-liberty right (as opposed to the religious right) seems increasingly to be the real ally of gay inclusion.