Author Archives: Jonathan Rauch

Romney’s Double-Standard, Redoubled.

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In a Feb. 10 interview with National Journal, former Massachusetts governor and current Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney comes out against a constitutional amendment banning abortion. So his double-standard on same-sex marriage and abortion is clearer than ever. Here's the whole exchange (not available online to non-subscribers):

Q: You would favor a constitutional amendment banning abortion with exceptions for the life of the mother, rape and incest. Is that correct?

Romney: What I've indicated is that I am pro-life, and that my hope is that the Supreme Court will give to the states over time or give to the states soon or give to the states their own ability to make their own decisions with regard to their own abortion law.

Q: If a state wanted unlimited abortion?

Romney: The state would fall into restrictions that had been imposed at the federal level, so they couldn't be more expansive in abortion than currently exists under the law, but they could become more restrictive in abortion provisions. So states like Massachusetts could stay like they are if they so desire, and states that have a different view could take that course. And it would be up to the citizens of the individual states. My view is not to impose a single federal rule on the entire nation -- a one-size-fits-all approach -- but instead allow states to make their own decisions in this regard.

So it's official: Romney favors a constitutional amendment to prevent gay couples from marrying, but not to prevent what most pro-lifers regard as infanticide. Not even Marx (Groucho) could find a consistent principle here, unless political expediency counts.

More: Romney on gay rights and discrimination...

Q: In 1994, during the Kennedy debate, you presented yourself as an advocate for gay rights. Would you say that you are advocate for gay rights now?

Romney: I am an advocate for treating all people with respect and dignity, and for the absence of discrimination.

Q: What does that mean, specifically?

Romney: What that means is, in my administration, I didn't discriminate against someone on the basis of their being homosexual. And I think that it is appropriate for private citizens and government entities to take their personal care to ensure that we do not discriminate in housing or in employment against people who are gay.

Q: So, employers should not be allowed to fire someone...

Romney: Wait, wait. You have to go back and listen to what I just said, and not say something I didn't say. I didn't say there should be a law... I said that employers should take care... this is not a law. I'm not proposing a law. I am not proposing a federal mandate, or I'm not proposing that there is an act of Congress of this nature. I'm saying that as a society, I think it is appropriate for us to avoid discrimination and denial of equality to people who make different choices and decisions including gay people. I do not support creating a special law or a special status. I've learned through my experience over the last decade that when you single out a particular population group for special status, it opens the door to a whole series of lawsuits, many of them frivolous and very burdensome to our employment community, and so I do not favor a specific law of that nature. What I do favor is people doing what I did, or what I tried to do, and not discriminate against people who are gay.

...and on his record:

Q: You remember, though, in 1994, you said you'd be better for gay rights than Ted Kennedy?

Romney: And then I explained why. And that was that Ted Kennedy was a Democrat and a liberal and that I was a Republican, and therefore that I would be able to be a voice for equal treatment and non-discrimination. Let me make it very clear: I am not a person who is anti-gay or anti-equal rights. I favor the treatment of all our citizens with respect and dignity. I do not favor creating a new legal special class for gay people. And I do not favor same-sex marriage, but as I've demonstrated through my own record, I have endeavored not to discriminate in hiring... one, in my administration, and second, in my appointment of judges.

I've appointed approximately 60 judges, one or two of whom... one of whom I'm quite confident is gay, the other may be gay as well. I think he probably is, and there may be more for all I know. But I've never asked a judicial candidate, "are you gay?" and discriminated against them on that basis. Nor, if I look in their resume and there's an indication of their being gay, I don't then delve into it and say, "Gee, are you gay yourself, or are you in support of gay issues?" I believe that in America, we should not discriminate against people on the basis of our differences. But that doesn't mean that you create a law for every difference that exists between people. It opens the door to lawsuits.

Q: In a Romney administration, Romney as president in the White House, there would be no discrimination against gay people? You'd hire people who happen to be gay?

Romney: That's been my record as governor. I would not discriminate against people on the basis of their physical and personal decisions or differences.

...and on homosexuality:

Q: You say "decisions" -- does that mean you believe homosexuality is a choice?

Romney: I'm not a psychologist. I don't try and delve into the roots of differences between people.

Unlike President Bush, Romney doesn't seem to choke on the words "gay" and "homosexual." And this time, at least, he didn't use the loaded term "unjust discrimination."

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Pro-Family or Just Anti-Gay in Va.?

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Heads up: the Family Foundation of Virginia, a big proponent of last year's successful anti-gay-marriage constitutional referendum, has decided to tackle divorce. According to the Washington Post, the foundation

said it will lobby the General Assembly this year to amend the state's long-standing no-fault divorce law, which essentially allows a husband or wife to terminate a marriage without cause. The foundation is advocating "mutual consent divorce" for couples with children, which would require a husband and wife to agree to divorce before a marriage can be legally terminated, except in certain instances, such as abuse or cruelty. The proposed legislation would not affect childless couples.

Now that's refreshing, because it's so out of character for so-called "pro-family" groups. As IGF contributor David Boaz pointed out in a seminal New York Times article back in 1994, "pro-family groups" dwell obsessively on homosexuality but have barely lifted a finger against divorce, which breaks up families by the millions.

My guess is that the divorce-tightening idea won't even get to first base in the Virginia legislature--arguably the most vindictively anti-gay political body in the country. My guess is that the authors of the notorious "Marriage Affirmation Act" are more interested in picking on a weak and unpopular minority than in inconveniencing the majority. But let's see. Thanks to the Family Foundation for a nice little test case.

And did I mention that Virginia's divorce rate (4%) is almost twice that of Massachusetts (2.2%), where gay marriage is legal?

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Ford’s Gay-Friendliness.

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Did any president, ex- or sitting, show more friendliness and warmth of spirit to gay folks than President Ford did in this 2003 letter to Charles Francis, the head of the then-promising Republican Unity Coalition? Ford says:

I fully concur...on "gay equality before the law." I sincerely hope that you prevail in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.

The coalition sought to make sexual orientation "a non-issue in the Republican Party." President Bush and the Federal Marriage Amendment/Marriage Prevention Amendment shot it out of the sky. Bush, of course, refused even to say the word "gay" for most of his presidency. Contrasting that with Ford's tone says volumes about the Republicans' wrong turn. With luck, it also hints at a different future.

President Ford was as decent and humble a man as ever worked in American politics. My own favorite Ford story, told by his former press secretary, Ron Nessen: When the president's dog, Liberty, pooped on the White House carpet, Ford blocked the Navy stewards who rushed to clean it up, insisting on doing the dirty work himself. Ford said, "No one should have to clean up after another man's dog."

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A Pariah’s Triumph—and America’s

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The memo is dated June 28, 1962. Reading it, one can scarcely believe that it was written as recently as 44 years ago.

From: Director of Personnel, Library of Congress.
To: Nevin R. Feather, a library employee.
Subject: "Interrogatory."

The library, it begins, "has received a report concerning you." It "has been reported" that "you had permitted a man to perform a homosexual act (fellatio) on you. Also, that you related that you find members of the male sex attractive; that you have been in bed with men; and that you have enjoyed embracing them." Enjoyed embracing! "Is this report true?"

At the bottom of the page, appended as a hurried note, is a plea for help. "I must admit I am quite shook-up over this matter," Nevin Feather wrote to Franklin Kameny. "Please advise me."

The disposition of Nevin Feather's case is lost to history, but the memo is not. In one of those cosmic japes that make fools of us all, the Library of Congress's sinister interrogation of its gay employee now reposes as a historical document in, yes, the Library of Congress. There it joins company with the diaries of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, the papers of Thurgood Marshall and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and 16,000 other document collections spanning 60 million pages.

Accompanying Feather's interrogatory are about 70,000 other of Kameny's papers, which were formally donated to the library in October. "His papers document the evolution of the gay-rights movement from its marginal beginning to broader acceptance in the political and social arena," says John Haynes, a historian with the library's manuscript division. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History acquired the picket signs carried in the nation's first gay civil-rights demonstration, which Kameny organized and led in 1965.

The bestower of these documents and mementos is alive and well at 81 and, naturally, pleasantly surprised. "We would never have imagined," he said in a recent interview. "If anyone had told us, when we were scrambling around on our hands and knees on somebody's living room floor with poster board making signs, that those very signs would end up in the Smithsonian with Thomas Jefferson's desk and Abraham Lincoln's inkwell, we would have thought they were nuts."

I am no impartial observer. In fact, I donated some money to help finance the gift of Kameny's papers. Still, I believe my judgment is reliable when I say that once in a blue moon a reporter meets a man who changes the world by sheer force of will, character, and vision, and that Frank Kameny qualifies. Consider the record.

In 1957, the U.S. Army Mapping Service fired Kameny over allegations of homosexual activity. That he held a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy and was a front-line combat veteran of World War II mattered not at all. As the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission would later put it in correspondence to him, "If an individual... were to publicly proclaim that he engages in homosexual conduct, that he prefers such relationships, that he is not sick or emotionally disturbed, and that he simply has different sexual preferences... the commission would be required to find such an individual unsuitable for federal employment."

Disgraced, Kameny was unable to find another job in his field. For a time, he found himself living on 20 cents of food a day. Instead of slinking away, however, he appealed his firing up through the executive branch and then to the congressional Civil Service committees. Failing, he sued the government. He lost. And then? Here is what he did.

¶ In 1961, he organized the Mattachine Society of Washington, a pioneering gay-rights group. Under its auspices, he bombarded the government with letters, receiving replies like "Please do not contaminate my mail with such filthy trash" (from a member of Congress), and "Your letter of August 28 has been received, and in reply may I state unequivocally that in all my six years of service in the United States Congress I have not received such a revolting communication."

¶ Beginning in the early 1960s, he represented dozens of civil servants attempting to save their jobs or to obtain security clearances. Partly as a result, in 1975 the civil service lifted its ban on employing homosexuals. Bans on security clearances lasted longer but also fell.

¶ In 1971, he ran for the District of Columbia's newly created delegate seat, becoming the first openly gay person to run for Congress (and possibly the second to run for any public office). Announcing his candidacy, he said, "This is OUR country, OUR society, and OUR government - for homosexuals quite as much as for heterosexuals. We are homosexual American citizens." He promised, "You will be hearing much from us in the next 30 days, and long thereafter." Today there are more than 350 openly gay elected officials in America. One of them, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is about to become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

¶ In 1965, Kameny's Washington Mattachine Society issued a path-breaking public declaration that "homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or other pathology in any sense." In 1973, after years of protest and persuasion by Kameny and others, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, perhaps the largest mass cure ever effected.

¶ Beginning in 1963, Kameny campaigned tirelessly for the revocation of D.C.'s sodomy law. The repeal was signed in 1993. It took, he says, "30 years, one month, four days, and 11 hours."

A delectable, if backhanded, tribute to Kameny's accomplishments comes from Peter LaBarbera, an anti-gay activist. Protesting the Library of Congress's acquisition of Kameny's papers, LaBarbera wrote of Kameny, "He is brilliant but wasted his considerable intellect and talents on homosexual activism, which is a shame." Well, yes. Kameny might have had a brilliant scientific career - if the government hadn't fired him for being homosexual. That was a shame.

Kameny, never a tall man, has shrunk 4 or 5 inches over the years. He used to revel in his vigorous stride but now walks, he says, "with little-old-man steps. I hate myself for it." The gay-rights agenda is dominated by marriage, the one major campaign that passed him by. Unchanged, however, is his voice, which has been compared, unfairly, to a foghorn (unfairly, that is, for the foghorn).

Also unchanged is his moral certitude, which is hard to compare to anything, and which almost transcends courage. "Courage," remarks Barney Frank, who has known Kameny for 26 years, "sometimes comes very close to a complete indifference to the opinions of those whom you hold in contempt. In Frank's case, that's a lot of people." It never seemed to have occurred to Kameny not to do what he did. "I was faced with a major issue," he says. "Something needed to be done, and it wasn't being done adequately."

In person, Kameny's tone remains today as stentorian, and sometimes strident, as in 1971, when he told the American Psychiatric Association's annual convention that psychiatry "has waged a relentless war of extermination against us." The voice in his voluminous correspondence strikes many of the same uncompromising notes. For example, in a 1968 letter he tells the House Un-American Activities Committee, "It is about time that our government called off its war upon us."

More striking in his correspondence, however, is an almost magisterial serenity. He exhibits an unshakable and unmistakably American confidence that all the great and mighty, no matter their number or power, must bow to one weak man who has the Founders' promise on his side. "We are honorable people who deal with others honorably and in good faith," he insisted to the Un-American Activities Committee. "We expect to be dealt with in the same fashion - especially by our governmental officials." There you hear the pipsqueak, indomitable voice of equality.

For Kameny's papers to join Thurgood Marshall's and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's, and for his signs to join Jefferson's writing desk and Lincoln's inkwell, seems fitting. All of those men understood that the words of 1776 set in motion a moral engine unlike any the world had ever seen; and all understood that the logic of equality could be delayed but not denied. Kameny, like them, believed that the Declaration of Independence means exactly what it says, and like them he made its promise his purpose.

My partner, Michael, and I are among the millions who owe some large measure of our happiness to Kameny's pursuits. This Thanksgiving found me grateful that one pariah fought back, never imagining he could fail; even more grateful to live in a country with a conscience; most grateful of all to know that there are generations of Franklin Kamenys yet to be born.

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Romney Is ‘Having It Both Ways.’

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Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney charges it's "disingenuous" of Sen. John McCain to think (1) gay marriage is a bad idea and (2) the issue should be left to the states (not a federal constitutional amendment). This, says Romney, is "having it both ways." Morality trumps federalism. I disagree, but it's a coherent position.

But wait. Mitt Romney opposes abortion. "I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother," he wrote in 2005. So does he call for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion? Umm...actually, abortion should be left to the states. From the same article:

The federal system left to us by the Constitution allows people of different states to make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus avoiding the bitter battles engendered by ''one size fits all" judicial pronouncements. A federalist approach would allow such disputes to be settled by the citizens and elected representatives of each state, and appropriately defer to democratic governance.

So there's room for moral variance on whether to slaughter unborn children, but not on whether to marry gay couples.

Romney isn't the only social conservative whose inconsistency on gay marriage and abortion is glaring, but he isn't just anyone. He's a leading contender for president and, apparently, the leading bidder for the "values vote."

So here's the question John McCain needs to put to Mitt Romney: "Mitt, if I'm wrong on gay marriage, how can you be right on abortion?" When Romney ducks, here's the follow-up: "Would you like to see the Constitution amended to ban abortion throughout the country, and will you fight for that if elected president? Yes or no." We're waiting, Governor.

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Frank Kameny Enters History.

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It's official. Frank Kameny has entered history--literally. Forty years ago, this civil-rights pioneer came to the aid of a frightened Library of Congress employee who was accused of "enjoying" the embrace of men. (I am not making that up.) On Oct. 6, that same Library of Congress accepted Kameny's papers and cemented his place in history's pages. Professional archivists will now painstakingly sort thousands of documents--the gift of Charles Francis's Kameny Project, which raised $75,000 to purchase and donate them--and will ensure their availability to generations of students of U.S. civil rights. There is no better record of the torment that homosexuals endured at the hands of their government in the 1950s and 1960s. And there could have been no finer tribute to Kameny than the ceremony at the Library. If there were any dry eyes in the house after Frank accepted the tributes and took his seat, mine weren't among them.

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Brangelina’s Marriage Boycott

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AP is reporting that Brad Pitt "says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. 'Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able,' the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19."

We IGF types have been warning social conservatives that excluding gay couples risks doing to marriage what excluding women did to the once-great men's clubs of mid-century-namely, condemning it to cultural obsolescence. If marriage is going to be defined as "that form of family which excludes homosexuals," more and more equality-minded heterosexuals are going to leave marriage behind. On several occasions when I've given talks at colleges, students have stood up and announced they won't marry until gays can.

Many conservatives seem to believe that by stopping same-sex marriage they can prevent marriage, and the culture, from changing. Brad Pitt says they're wrong. The social risks of gay marriage get debated incessantly; the risks of not having gay married, alas, get ignored.

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Polygamy ‘R’ Us? Gallagher vs. Link

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Over at Maggie Gallagher's MarriageDebate.com, an interesting exchange between Maggie and IGF's David Link. David argues that polygamy, in sharp contrast with same-sex marriage, breaks the modern marriage template. Maggie replies that "classical polygamy" is actually quite straightforward. Maybe, retorts David, but classical polygamy is not what we'll get in modern America. The same social changes that make SSM sensible in the U.S. today are the very same social changes that make classical polygamy archaic and group marriage incoherent.

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Parsing Polygamy

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At Volokh.com, IGF contributor and lawyer David Link explains why, in legal terms, the differences between same-sex marriage are vast. SSM fits neatly within the existing legal framework of marriage; polygamy would require rethinking marriage law from top to bottom. "If the husband died, would the wives continue to be married to each other? Why or why not?...And every question like these leads to others." Could a wife divorce one other spouse but stay married to the others? Again, why or why not? How many spouses could contest a divorce? What about child custody? Who would be responsible for child support? Who would be liable for debt? The problem isn't just that the answers are unclear; it's that no answer makes more sense than any other, because no answer fits within today's concept of marriage. In that sense, polygamy is literally incoherent. Link concludes:

Polygamy would require a genuine rethinking of marriage. And its multiplicity truly does have the capacity to undermine marriage: psychologically, culturally and legally. In fact, polygamy offers exactly the kind of concrete danger to marriage as we know it that same-sex marriage opponents have only been able to insinuate.

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