IGF CultureWatch

Today NPR had an interesting, and ominous, story on how antidiscrimination law is (so far) trumping religious objections to gay marriage. For instance, when a Methodist organization in New Jersey refused to let its property be used for a lesbian wedding, a civil-rights commission revoked a tax break for the site. Next stop: state court.

I hope the Methodists win, though better still if this complaint had never been brought. Gay-rights advocates will be badly burned politically-and the Madisonian in me thinks we'll deserve to be burned-if we use antidiscrimination law as a bulldozer against attempts by religious people to disassociate themselves from same-sex marriage. "It's the law, get used to it" is an unwise and insensitive approach. We can do 95% of what we want to do while letting religious people maintain conscientious-objector status. The other 5% percent is not worth the contention and fury it will cause.

As for using the law to force Christian photographers to shoot gay weddings (also covered in the NPR piece)-James Madison must be spinning in his grave. Freedom of religious conscience is the founding American freedom. For Pete's sake, live and let live.

I'd like to add to what Jonathan has written below, on allowing religious people "conscientious-objector status" when it comes to requiring actions that affirm the equality of same-sex unions.

Almost all gay people, I'd say, want to be treated equally by the government, with the same rights and responsibilities as all citizens. That includes the right to marry (even if they choose not to marrry) and, for most, the right to serve in the military (even if they would choose not to do so).

Some gay people, however, don't merely want equal treatment by the state. They want to use the state against those who, based on deeply felt religious belief, do not want to offer their services to same-sex marriage or civil union ceremonies, as Jonathan describes below.

That's called progressivism, but others would say it's engaging in a legal vendetta against those who hold religious convictions that run counter to the principles of gay equality.

Another example that has garnered much publicity is from Canada, where an anti-gay pastor is appealing his conviction for writing a letter to a local paper that was found to defame gay people (who were compared to pedophiles and drug dealers), and thus to have contributed to a climate that fosters anti-gay violence.

The U.S. religious right is having a field day with this action in Alberta, charging that it's a reason to oppose measures such as the proposed federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act. And that, in turn, has led some supporters of gay nondiscrimination to defend the Alberta ruling, holding that speech that incites ill will should be banned.

But that is indeed a slippery slope, and one that runs counter to the right to express unpopular, and indeed ugly, opinions - a principle once defended by liberals.

More. Dale Carpenter, writing over at The Volokh Conspiracy, shares his thoughts on religious liberty and same-sex marriage. Excerpt:

Religious freedom is a first and founding principle of this country. I think religious accommodation to private persons and organizations should be generously provided, even where not required by the Constitution. At the very least, accommodation should be made where it can be offered without harming the protected class. For that reason, I think an exemption should have been offered in several of the cases cited in the NPR report....

While I'd be generous about accommodating the religious objections of private persons, I am very wary of introducing a system of exemption for public officers serving the public with taxpayers' money.

At 1:28 in this video clip of Hillary Clinton's concession speech today, check out the ecstatic reaction of the young people in the crowd behind her when she hits "gay and straight" in her litany of supporters.

We're not baggage any more. A rising generation of voters identifies with us...and will shun politicians who shun us.

Glad I lived to see it.

I wish I could be as overjoyed by the California Supreme Court's ruling for same-sex marriage as the rest of the gay world is. Politically, the ruling merely tees up an initiative battle, to be decided by simple majority vote. Backlash against the Court may make that battle harder to win. Affirmation of the Court's decision by plebescite would be tremendous, but it's too early to celebrate.

As for the ruling itself, my reading of it leads to a reaction I wish I didn't have: the majority opinion here is an example of judicial overreach.

Caveat: That's a flash reaction subject to change as I learn more. But, as I understand the opinion, here's what the court did.

In Massachusetts, the state Supreme Court had a stark choice before it: SSM, or throw gays out the window (TGOW). TGOW was a clear denial of equal protection, not remotely justified by the state's arguments, so the court went with SSM.

California offers a very different situation. Gay couples already have available all the substantive state rights of marriage, under the state's domestic-partner program. The state Supreme Court was merely deciding whether the legislature could withhold the word "marriage" in deference to tradition and public preference.

No, said the court. Gays are a "suspect class" and no differentiation of any kind is tolerable. The Court acknowledges that in California "marriage" has always, until now, meant opposite-sex marriage. Nonetheless, it holds that marriage definitionally includes same-sex couples.

Wait a minute. If the state constitution never even contemplated SSM before, why does it mandate SSM now? Because, says the Court, social mores and state policies (including the state's domestic-partner law) have, in the past 30 years, recognized the fundamental importance of equal rights for gays. The state has implicitly repudiated its tradition of discriminating against gays, and marriage law must reflect this change.

What the Court seems to be saying, then, is that California can have SSM. And California can have TGOW, provided throwing gays out the window reflects a broad consensus against gay equality. The one thing California cannot have is compromise en route to gay equality. Once the state has decided to treat gay people equally, it must go all the way. No half-measures, or even 90-percent measures. No experiments, transitions, interim steps, or concessions to politics. All or nothing, now!

This kind of legal totalism, it seems to me, is tailor-made to rule out any kind of accommodation, even if that accommodation gives gay couples most of what we need with the promise of more to come (soon). As one of the dissents points out (PDF), it also may make legislators reluctant to even start down the road toward civil rights.

I think SSM is a better policy than civil unions (at least one of the dissenters agrees). And I think denial of marriage to gay couples is discriminatory. But to make even a well-intentioned compromise ILLEGAL strikes me as a step too far, and a good example of how culture wars escalate.

Replying to CultureWatch's criticism of the Victory Fund's decision not to endorse an openly gay Democratic Senate candidate, the Fund's Denis Dison writes:

The Victory Fund's endorsement decisions have absolutely nothing to do with the desires of any political party. We endorse against party picks all the time...

Our endorsement decisions are necessarily private because it is not fair to applicants to publicly air our evaluations of their campaigns, particularly when we decide not to endorse. The decision not to endorse any particular candidate is the result of the same application and evaluation process every candidate goes through, and our endorsement criteria are public.

Read the full text here.

-- by Jonathan Rauch

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More. Reader "avee" comments:

although it didn't come into play in this primary race between two Democratic liberals, the Victory Fund has a firm litmus-test policy of only endorsing candidates who strongly favor abortion rights. That's an easy way to rule out many gay Republican moderates who show less than all-out enthusiasm for abortion on demand without parental consent (and preferably at taxpayer expense).

Maybe they should call themselves the Gay & Lesbian Abortion Rights Victory Fund.

-- by Stephen H. Miller

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Reminder: comments that consists of personal insults will be deleted.

Last week Michigan's state supreme court, upholding lower-court rulings, held that a 2004 constitutional ban on gay marriage means that state employers can't offer health insurance and other partner benefits to gay employees.

You may recall that conservatives insisted that their broadly written amendment was aimed only at same-sex marriage, not at taking away employment benefits. And that, as soon as the amendment passed, they set about taking away employment benefits. "A classic bait and switch."

But to what end? Turns out that Michigan's public universities preemptively circumvented the ruling not by shutting down partner benefits but by extending them even more broadly, to spouses and "other qualified adults"-i.e., financially interdependent cohabitants.

It's one more example of a fact that same-sex marriage opponents will not address, or even acknowledge: The real-world alternative to recognizing gay unions isn't recognizing nothing, it's recognizing everything.

Reader Casey P. points us to this touching account of young straight evangelicals who took part in the G/L "Day of Siilence," to the gratitude and understandable surprise of their gay peers. Another straw in the wind of changing evangelical attitudes.

Columnist, philosopher, and IGF contributor John Corvino's lecture defending the morality of homosexuality was cancelled by Aquinas College, a Catholic school in Michigan. Seeking to justifying their decision, college administrators badmouthed Corvino to boot.

But students, who have an inconvenient tendency to think for themselves, hosted him anyway, moving the lecture off campus. And gave him a standing ovation. (News video here.) Kudos to Aquinas's students for delivering an object lesson to their elders.

Headline, front page, Washington Post: "Military Waivers for Ex-Convicts Increase." Story sez:

the Army accepted more than double the number of applicants with convictions for felony crimes such as burglary, grand larceny and aggravated assault, rising from 249 to 511, while the corresponding number for the Marines increased by two-thirds, from 208 to 350.

At least our country can be grateful the Pentagon isn't desperate enough to consider ending the ban on service by open (i.e., truthful) homosexuals. Whether or not ex-felons can protect Iraqis from insurgents, they'll do their part by protecting the showers from sissies. Whew.

American Public Media's "Speaking of Faith" has a must-listen panel discussion between evangelicals of three generations (Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, Shane Claiborne). Go to minute 36:45, where homosexuality comes up, and stay tuned for a striking contrast between Colson and the younger men.

Colson answers a question about homosexuality with a doctrinaire natural-law exegisis of Paul. The younger men warn against Colson's hard-edged judgmentalism. Boyd agrees that homosexuality is wrong but can't understand why evangelicals pick on this one moral failing as a "deal breaker" while downplaying so many sins of their own (divorce, e.g.). He argues that evangelicals' reputation for "homophobia" (his word) is well earned and that Jesus ministered to prostitutes, rather than trying to pass laws against them. (Subtext here: the tension between the churches of Paul and Jesus.) Claiborne asks what sort of place the Church has become if it can't minister lovingly to a young gay man who feels like he is one of "God's mistakes" and wants to kill himself. "If that 'mistake' can't find a home in the church, who have we become?" He goes on to condemn the "meanness" of evangelical political style and speaks intriguingly of "post-Religious Right America."

More evidence here that homosexuality has become a major point of generational cleavage among evangelicals. Call me Pollyanna, but I think there's a new awakening of conscience happening among evangelicals and that homosexuality is at the heart of it.

More: Gay evangelical commenter Casey offers more evidence that change is afoot.

I agree with other commenters that the teachings, not just the tone, ultimately need to change. But I think the tone will tend to lead the teachings. And, as Greg Boyd implies in the panel discussion, no theological change is required for evangelicals to stop blowing homosexuality out of all proportion to its very minor role in the Bible. Proportionality alone would be major progress.