IGF CultureWatch

While tens of thousands of people were marching in DC for gay equality, a few of us were in Los Angeles piecing together the events on this coast that made all this possible.

The occasion was the book release party for Tom Coleman's memoirs, The Domino Effect. Tom is one of the key figures in gay history who fought tirelessly in L.A., first to eliminate our state sodomy law, then to chip away at the other vague laws which the police used to harass us, and most significantly to find a way for the culture and the law to include same-sex couples within the definition of family. That effort put California in the nation's forefront in having our elected leaders reshape the law before the courts needed to. If you want to know how important California is in gay rights, ask yourself why the State of New York, which has had an organized gay community for about as long as California, continues -- to this day -- not to have even so much as domestic partnership for the state's same-sex couples. My answer: They lacked a Tom Coleman.

As Tom was briefly recounting his career, I could not help but notice how many of the key figures in the room he was thanking were heterosexuals whose role in our movement is both essential and unrecognized: State Senator David Roberti; Attorney General John Van de Kamp; L.A. City Attorney Burt Pines (absent due to a hospitalization, but definitely in everyone's mind); L.A. City Councilman Mike Woo; Wallace Albertson; Dr. Nora Baladerian; Judge Arthur Gilbert. Whether you know their names and contributions or not, these are what fierce advocates of gay equality look like.

But they had to be coaxed into action by gay advocates with farsightedness, political wisdom and sheer common sense: Jay Kohorn and Chris McCauley, and, of course, Tom, were at the head of that list. This small band of people came together and used the freedom and tools our political system offers to turn a world that had no place at all for same-sex couples into one where our chief complaint is that the compromise they devised and then implemented -- domestic partnership -- is viewed by some people as good enough, at least for us. It was a fine compromise for the world that existed in the 1980s and 90s; but it is a step toward equality that arose from political necessity; it is not equality itself.

If what you know about the history of gay rights in California is Harry Hay and Del Martin and Harvey Milk, there are entire chapters left to understand. Tom's book will not be the last word on these people's place in our history. But it is a good start.

This debate on CNN shows how the HRC event provides cover for the President's silence about Maine and Washington. Hilary Rosen -- who I tend to agree with, mostly -- is exclusively focused on one thing: the federal government. The President cannot do anything because it takes a long time to get a bill through Congress. We have to give him time because Congress is slow.

No one with any sense could disagree with that, but its blinkered focus is dangerous. There are two critical state elections about our relationships, and the President's ambivalence about our relationships will be a factor in both of them. He doesn't need to ask Congress to do a thing. His very clear remarks last night reinforced the fact that he supports qualifed equality for our relationships (Washington) but not marriage (Maine). Like his statements as a candidate, this reaffirmation of his position (which the event attendees cheered) can and will be used against us, either explicitly in Maine, or implicitly in Washington, where his failure to say anything against repealing their domestic partnership law will not go unnoticed.

We are right on the verge of winning the support, not only of courts and legislatures, but of voters directly. The President is the leader who could tip the balance. Last night he stepped away from the field. And we let him.

There is no shortage of excellent commentary on President Obama's speech to HRC. Andrew Sullivan, Jim Burroway and Jeremy Hooper are all great. I only have a few thoughts to add.

(1) For those who want action from Obama, it's good to remember a speech by the President of the United States is action. We talk a lot about "war," but that is just a metaphor for what we are doing: changing a cultural prejudice that has existed for centuries. Signing bills is only one kind of action in that kind of struggle, and that's an end, not a means. Finding heterosexual leaders to join us has been the hardest part of our effort. This was a speech inconceivable from any prior President. It will be helpful in moving toward equality, and may stand as a landmark.

(2) This speech incorporated exactly the incoherence we are fighting in the culture. Obama did promise to sign bills that would punish anti-gay prejudice -- hate crimes and employment discrimination. But whatever political value those laws will have is undermined -- powerfully -- by the federal government's own explicit discrimination against gays in DOMA and DADT. Until those laws are changed, the government Obama presides over remains the country's dominant source of anti-gay discrimination. Those who oppose us will certainly have those two pillars of discrimination to support their own feelings about our inferiority.

(3) The President's failure to mention either Maine or Washington is unforgivable, and Obama has compromised, if not forfeited, any claim to be a fierce advocate of our equality in leaving them out. His ambiguous language about equality for our relationships will be used in Maine, as it was in California, to reinforce his opposition to same-sex marriage -- which is a fact. That fact will be used against us, and Obama is the only person that can prevent that, if he chooses. But the election in Washington state is one where even his lack of conviction about our equality would have been no bar to supporting us. The Washington referendum is not about marriage, it is only about domestic partnership rights. That is exactly the qualified equality he said he supports for us. There was not a person in that room last night who did not know about these two elections, and their cheers for the President's waffling on this central issue were inexplicable. Washington's legislature finally moved same-sex couples in that state to the nominal equality the President believes we are entitled to, and some in that state want to take it away, leaving same-sex couples in Washington with scraps (though not "nothing" as I incorrectly asserted in an earlier post). How could the President possibly be silent about that and be celebrated?

I couldn't agree more with Evan Wolfson's advice to Barack Obama about what he needs to say at his speech to the Human Rights Campaign this weekend.

Well, maybe a little. Evan thinks that Obama needs to make the moral case against exclusion of gay couples from the law. He follows David Mixner's lead, saying that Obama needs to explicitly oppose Maine's attempt to override the legislature's decision to support same-sex marriage.

Amen to that.

But he also follows the mainstream media's obsessive focus only on the east coast of this country, and completely leaves out what's happening in Washington.

In fact, opposition to Washington's Referendum 71 fits more comfortably into Obama's current position on gay equality. R-71 grants same-sex couples only domestic partnership benefits, not marriage - which is exactly what Obama is already on the record supporting. Given that, his silence on Washington's election is already inexplicable, and should be remedied. After all, if R-71 passes, gay couples in Washington will have no legal recognition of their relationships - no rights - at all. That makes Washington a good starting point for Obama's remarks.

But I agree with Evan that Obama needs to go beyond that bare support for qualified equality, and support the real thing. That is what is at stake in Maine. Washington's Equality Lite is a political compromise that is better than no equality at all. But in Maine, they have true equality on the ballot. Mixner is exactly right that Obama's hedged rhetoric was used against us -- against Obama -- in California, and will be used the same way in Maine. Only he can prevent that from happening.

It's not like there's a shortage of gay-related things to write about this week, but I don't think nearly enough people know about Brendon Ayanbadejo and Scott Fujita.

No, they are not the new It Gay Couple. Far from it. They are linebackers. In the NFL. Ayanbadejo plays for the Baltimore Ravens (he's on injured reserve right now) and Fujita is with the New Orleans Saints, both teams at the top of their divisions.

And both of them have gone public supporting gay equality; Ayanbadejo explicitly in favor of same-sex marriage and Fujita throwing his support behind the National Equality March this weekend.

Fujita became active after last year's proposal in Arkansas to ban gay adoption. As an adopted child, himself, Fujita felt he could not remain silent. When complimented for his courage, he said:

I don't think it's that courageous. I think I have an opinion, that I wish was shared by everybody, but I honestly believe that it's shared by more [football players] than we know because a lot of people just won't speak out about it. I'm hoping that what [Baltimore Ravens linebacker] Brendon [Ayanbadejo] did, and things like what I'm doing, speaking out a little bit, hopefully more people will step up and acknowledge the fact that hey, its ok to talk about this. Just because I'm in favor of gay rights doesn't mean that I'm gay or doesn't mean I'm some kind of "sissy" or something. That's the language that you hear in locker rooms. I know these guys well. I know for the most part, guys are a lot more tolerant than they get credit for but they're not comfortable yet speaking out about it. It's going to come in time. By in large, it's an opinion that's shared by more people than are realized. I just wish it was shared by everybody.

This is a theme I'm seeing a lot more lately: closeted support for gay equality from people who are afraid to say publicly what they believe privately. That is the closet Fujita and Ayanbadejo came out of, and they're not alone. It is extremely problematic for many straight men to even talk about gay equality, for the reasons Fujita states. But then, it was hard for us to talk about it for many centuries, as well. It's easy for us to assume that pro locker rooms are hotbeds of homophobia, and it's good for us to hear that maybe sometimes we should be more generous in our assumptions, and encourage more public support like this. We need it. And I deeply appreciate it.

It's hard to know what to say about James Bowman's essay defending the ban on gays in the military. Andrew Sullivan and Isaac Chotiner take the first shots; I'm still speechless.

Here is the heart of Bowman's argument:

Yet if reason were to be readmitted to the debate, we might find something in the history of military honor to justify the principle now enshrined in the law decreeing that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service." We know that soldiering--I mean not training or support or peacekeeping or any of the myriad other things soldiers do, but facing enemy bullets--is inextricably bound up with ideas of masculinity.

Unpacking the centuries of stereotypes, affronts, provocation and plain old cheap shots jammed into these 70 words will take a week or so at least (and there are plenty more insults where these came from), but here's one that should be at the head of the pack, that I hope will be expanded on by the man who first made it, 18 years ago: Kenneth L. Karst.

In his prescient 1991 law review article, "The Pursuit of Manhood and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces" (38 UCLA L.Rev. 499, Feb. 1991), Professor Karst showed how attempts to keep African-Americans out of the military were of a piece with exclusion of both women and gays from the military. Here is his thesis:

Masculinity is traditionally defined around the idea of power; the armed forces are the nation's preeminent symbol of power . . . The symbolism is not a side effect; it is the main point. From the colonial era to the middle of this century, our armed forces have alternately excluded and segregated blacks in the pursuit of manhood, and today's forms of exclusion and segregation are similarly grounded in the symbolism of masculine power.

In a little over 80 pages, Karst demolished the narrow self-interest of those like Bowman who - whether intentionally or not - try to use the military as a means of affirming their own masculinity at the expense of others. The icing on the cake, of course, is that they then can use the lack of such "masculinity" against those they exclude.

It took generations for African-Americans to fully work their way into America's image of power and authority. Women are still trying. Lesbians and gay men have long been there, but only by agreeing to the extortion of lying - implicitly accepting that gay people should not participate in the very thing they are participating in.

I'd like to see Bowman respond to Karst, if he can. But frankly, I don't know if he's man enough.

I just want to add a quick note on Stephen Miller's post. His proposed Liberty Agenda would not only be a proper focus for the Democrats, it would be the more seemly -- and natural -- course for Republicans.

There' s not much that needs saying about The High Price of Being a Gay Couple. It is a flawless diagnosis of a longstanding problem glaringly obvious to anyone who is subject to its unfairness, or is willing to think about it for a minute and a half. Anyone who professes to care about protecting taxpayers - particularly against Democratic excesses - should be able to look at that article and know exactly what needs to be done.

Anyone who was not blinded by hypocrisy.

California's Dan Lungren, for example. He has boldly chosen, not only to support this higher tax burden for homosexuals, but to enshrine it in the U.S. Constitution.

As decent Republicans like David Frum, Steve Schmidt, and even (slowly) John McCain try to figure out a strategy to rescue their party from its absolutists, Lungren is merrily leading the fringe headlong into the 19th Century.

That almost perfect inconsistency between sane fiscal policy and Neanderthal homophobia has now become the hallmark of the Republican party. No wonder the number of people who are willing to take pride in being Republican shrinks by the day.

In his initial look at the numbers for Maine's Question 1, Nate Silver raises a fascinating issue. The People's Veto will be ". . . a standalone initiative in an off-year election in which voters will have few other things to consider. What sort of electorate will turn out?"

What a test case for the paradox of the minority in a democracy. The issue of same-sex marriage means a lot to those of us who are homosexual - to some of us, it means the world - but what does it mean to the majority of heterosexuals? What reason, if any, will they have to vote in this election?

Frank Schubert, the go-to guy to run anti-gay marriage campaigns, has pointed out that he faces a challenge from the fact that most heterosexuals haven't had much opportunity to think about same-sex marriage very much. . . and when they do, they don't see much to worry about. That's why Schubert needs to (in his words) "develop" things for heterosexuals to worry about - what he calls "impacts." Or, in the words of his partner, Jeff Flint, their job is to create a doubt and "project the doubt forward" into an imagined -- and very scary -- future.

Schubert and Flint came up with some very effective zombie tales in California and startled enough people to pass Prop. 8. But that was in an election where same-sex marriage was hardly the main subject in most voters' minds. In contrast, Maine's election will focus voters on that one issue.

What, for heterosexuals who support us, will match the passion to vote that we have, with our minuscule numbers? This election, more than any I can think of, will test the potency of sheer justice as a motivator for voters. Our supporters really have nothing else at stake except the naked idea of fairness. They neither win nor lose anything else with their vote. But fairness is a notion that does not even register in the minds of our opponents, aroused into hallucinations of religious persecution and childhood indoctrination. That will be Schubert's get-out-the-vote strategy.

Who will vote in Maine, and why? That will give us an x-ray of American democracy circa 2009.

Hospital visitation rights for same-sex partners seems an absurdly low bar when it comes to our equality - the very least we could possibly ask -- and it's hard to imagine such small comfort being denied any more.

Which is one reason the court decision in Janice Langbehn's case is so startling. She and her partner, Lisa Pond, took their three children to Miami for a family cruise in February 2007. Pond suffered an aneurism, and was hospitalized in Miami. The hospital did everything it could to prevent Langbehn from having any contact with Pond, and succeeded in keeping them apart until Pond died. Langbehn and Pond had done everything a couple unable to get lawfully married could do to prepare for such an event, including health care proxies. But in a state like Florida where anti-gay prejudice continues to prevail, all the legal preparations in the world don't mean a thing.

According to a press release, the court ruled that "the hospital has neither an obligation to allow their patients' visitors nor any obligation whatsoever to provide their patients' families, healthcare surrogates, or visitors with access to patients in their trauma unit."

As a strictly legal matter, that may be true (the decision can still be appealed). But as a moral matter, it is appalling. Hospitals came into being because of human compassion for illness and suffering. Whatever their legal obligations, preventing a woman from seeing her dying partner until the priest arrives to deliver Last Rites is a level of cruelty that should go down in the annals of depravity. For the record, the hospital is Jackson Memorial ("One of America's finest medical facilities"), a name that should also be recorded for posterity.

Their depravity, though, is reserved only for those of us who are homosexual. That may provide comfort to a subset of heterosexuals. But for the rest of us, this story is beyond horror only because it is true.

There was an elephant missing from the room during the congressional hearing on ENDA - the opposition.

I don't mean witnesses testifying against the bill; Craig Parshall of the National Religious Broadcasters Association was quite clearly in opposition. Camille Olson, while not so clearly opposed to the bill, made some cogent points about how current language might be too broad.

The absence was most obvious among legislators who oppose ENDA. Of the 19 GOP members on the committee, only three I could count -- John Kline, the ranking member, Todd Russell Platts, and Judy Biggert -- spoke, or even showed up, and the last two are cosponsors of the bill. Kline's opposition was vague and he never said it would be a bad thing to prohibit discrimination against lesbians and gay men; rather, he was concerned about "philosophical and logistical" considerations. Religious groups are now clearly exempted from the bill, and Kline was worried only about "how that exemption will be applied." He never even tried to make a respectable libertarian argument against the bill.

There's no doubt that the GOP will vote en masse against ENDA, so why weren't they at the hearing to articulate their case, or challenge the pro-ENDA witnesses? This is becoming characteristic of the anti-gay movement. They're no less opposed to gay equality in employment, housing, marriage and the military, but they've stopped trying to make arguments publicly.

That's a fairly recent development. Maggie Gallagher, for example, used to be a leading voice willing to debate the anti gay marriage case, but nowadays, it's rare to see her outside of Fox-friendly forums and religious or NOM-sponsored gatherings (these categories may have little distinction).

And it's not just that the right is not talking to the public - they now actively want to keep anyone else from hearing what they say to one another. In early September, Stand For Marriage Maine had a "pro-marriage" rally, and Jeremy at GoodAsYou asked for tickets. SFMM is the group that got Question 1 on the ballot, and you'd think their events would and should be public. But when Bob Emrich discovered Jeremy might not be sufficiently supportive of Emrich's cause, he said no, but offered to send Jeremy a DVD of the proceedings. Needless to say, that promise is still unfulfilled.

In place of arguments and persuasion, the right now hides behind commercials that deploy either fear or deception. To be fair, this tactic can certainly be effective, as we Californians can attest. But when a movement gives up on persuasion and relies only on surrogate strategems like this, perhaps it's safe to assume even they see they're coming to the end of the line. At the very least, it's hard to believe they have any confidence in their own logic.

UPDATE: The original post misidentified one of the Republican members at the hearing.