IGF CultureWatch

National Journal has a story (online for subscribers only) on legislation, now moving in Congress and supported by the Obama Administration, "that would give gay and lesbian federal employees the same benefits now offered to married heterosexual workers"-a bill which Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah opposes.

Why? Well, partly "because it excludes unmarried heterosexual couples.... Chaffetz said in an interview that if unmarried heterosexual couples were included in the legislation, 'I'd look at it very differently.' "

Right. If the bill included heterosexual couples, it would be using federal dollars and prestige to encourage straight couples to cohabit. Which apparently is better than encouraging gay couples to form stable and committed unions.

There is nothing pro-family about being anti-gay. Thanks, of a sort, to Rep. Chaffetz for helping prove the point.

The epoch of the cultural wedge issue is ending, says Democratic political analyst Ruy Teixeira, in his new report, "The Coming End of the Culture Wars" (PDF). And gay marriage will soon lose its political potency. It's baked in the demographic cake.

That's because of generational change, as culturally progressive Millennial voters surge into the electorate. It's also, more immediately, because of the decline in the number of white working-class voters. And the fastest growing religious group is not evangelicals but seculars, who tend to be very culturally progressive.

Of course, this does not mean that conflicts over gay marriage will die out overnight. There will continue to be attempts on the state level to keep gay marriage illegal through the initiative process. Such initiatives have met with considerable success, including the recent passage of Proposition 8 in the progressive state of California. Yet a simple regression model developed by Nate Silver suggests that such initiatives have been losing support at the rate of roughly 2 percentage points a year. This time trend, combined with a couple of other variables on state religiosity, indicates that California would fail to support such an initiative by next year and only a handful of Deep South states should be expected to support gay marriage bans by 2016.

Fights will continue on the gay marriage issue, but the outcome of these struggles is not really in doubt looking 10 years or so down the road. And neither is the decreasing usefulness of this issue to the conservative culture warriors.

Only 52 years late, the U.S. government has officially apologized to Dr. Frank Kameny, the gay-rights pioneer, for firing him from his federal job because he was gay. The Washington Blade has an account of what must have been a deeply touching ceremony. And Dale Carpenter has Frank's characteristically mischievous reaction:

I am looking forward to receipt of a check for 52 years of back pay, which I can well use.

But, more seriously, in a phrase that I've used in a related connection recently, all this is like a story-book ending where all issues are resolved. I'm usually not very emotional, but I haven't really come back down to ground yet in all of this.

This just a week after Frank received a tribute from President Obama himself. After signing an executive order granting some partner benefits to federal employees, the president handed the pen to Frank.

Now in his 80s, Frank is blessed to see the turn events have taken-a turn he has done so much to bring about. And we are blessed to be witnesses.

So I'm trying to figure this out. When courts impose gay marriage, conservatives tell us, that's undemocratic. These decisions should be left to the political branches, which are accountable to the people.

OK, I get that. But when two states' legislatures approve gay marriage of their own free will, with no court compulsion, and when the governors sign gay marriage into law, that's...undemocratic?

Right! Here it is, in an article by one Mark Hemingway at NationalReview.com. Apparently the goalposts have moved a bit: now only plebiscites are democratic:

"Of the recent states that have legalized same-sex marriage - Iowa, Maine, and New Hampshire - none has done so through democratic means, and the actions of the courts and legislatures run against public opinion."

One can only wonder: have these people any integrity at all?

At Volokh.com, constitutional law prof (and IGF contributor) Dale Carpenter's take on Obama's DOMA brief: Except for the odd flourish or two, it could have come straight from the mouth of the Bush Administration. Read it here...and weep.

Though anti-gay-marriage forces won on Prop 8 in California, their victory came at a steep price: the vote served as a wake-up call to millions of straights who are sympathetic to SSM but who, until then, had been content to sit on the sidelines. After Prop 8, straights took ownership of the SSM cause as never before. I think history will show this to have been an important change in the political dynamic, perhaps a landmark.

Now comes more evidence of a whole new level of straight engagement: the lead lawyers in the new federal SSM lawsuit are Ted Olson and David Boies, both straight, and both among the most eminent lawyers in the world.

Like a number of gay groups and fellow blogger David Link (below), I think this suit is likely to be counterproductive. (I'll withhold judgment on the legal merits until briefs are available.) I hope the federal courts will keep their distance and continue to let states go their separate ways.

Even so, the passion with which Olson and Boies make the case for marriage rights at their recent press conference is unmistakable and moving. And it is important in its own right: another sign that the cause of gay marriage has turned a corner among straight Americans.

Here's a good example of the sanctimonious extremism with which too many gay-rights advocates are shooting themselves in the foot.

In a recent blog post about Supreme Court mentionee Leah Ward Sears, I noted that she has recently joined the Institute for American Values, "which some have characterized as anti-gay, though it's not."

In reply, a commenter says that if you oppose gay marriage-as David Blankenhorn, IAV's president, does-you're anti-gay. In fact, you're just one step shy of "burning gays in the street".

So let's think about this. Blankenhorn favors federal civil unions if coupled with religious-liberty protections. He has repeatedly affirmed "the equal dignity of homosexual love," for instance here and here. He says IAV takes no institutional position on gay marriage.

As for same-sex parenting, his position is that all family structures are not alike and that it's best for children to be raised by their biological mother and father-but he also thinks same-sex adoptions should be allowed.

I recently did a radio talk show with a Family Research Council representative who not only denied the equal dignity of homosexual love but asserted that "homosexual relationships are on balance harmful to the people who engage in them and society as a whole." That's anti-gay. But Blankenhorn's positions, agree or disagree, are compassionate, reasonable, and shared by millions of reasonable people whose goodwill we need.

If we tell those reasonable people that they are the equivalent of gay-burners, or even of FRC, we not only flunk Basic Moral Distinctions 101, we effectively tell them they might as well sign up with the other side.

Some of them just might.

Andrew Sullivan, onetime Obama mega-fan, has credibility when he ticks off the reasons for disappointment with the President's apparent reluctance to move ahead, not just on some or most gay issues, but on every gay issue.

He might have added the Obama Administration's underwhelming support for AIDS programs, detailed here by Bob Roehr. Money quote:

President Barack Obama has proposed a trickle of new money for HIV in his fiscal year 2010 budget released May 7. That is far short of keeping pace with the growing demand for already inadequate services. ... The budget may have been the straw that broke the camel's back of the AIDS community's optimism about the new administration.

Unlike some, I've always seen Obama as a talented politician first and foremost, and so it's no surprise to see him behave politically. Two combat engagements and the most dangerous economic crisis since 1929 are not the time to put social issues on the front burner, and now he has that awkward business about torture to deal with. Even I, however, expected something, if only to show he's Mr. Change.

At least we can savor White House spokesman Robert Gibbs's effort to non-explain why Obama doesn't suspend the military's discharges of gay Arabic linguists.

Over at Cato, IGF contributor David Boaz notes that Sen. Jim DeMint, writing in the WSJ, makes a strong case for letting different states make different policy choices. "Centralized government infringes on individual liberty and...problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them." If "choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California," why, that's just fine.

Except when it's not. DeMint, of course, favors a national ban on same-sex marriage. No word from the Senator on how he squares the circle. We're waiting. This kind of blatant illogicality, in combination with a callous attitude toward the needs of gay individuals and couples, is part of what cratered Republicans' credibility.

More: Here's what else has Republicans looking toxic to young people and moderates: one of their leading national spokespeople, Joe the Plumber, calls gays "queer" and says he would not let them "anywhere near" his children. Lots of Republicans will be wincing privately at this almost refreshingly direct expression of bigotry, but let's see how many repudiate Joe Wurzelbacher publicly. Will the folks at the National Organization for Marriage, who are so quick to call gay-rights advocates out for incivility, defend Wurzelbacher as a victimized truth-teller?

He is for federalism, though. Maybe he'll come out against the Marriage Protection Amendment. Hold your breath.

Reading Dale Carpenter's roundup of recent same-sex marriage developments at Volokh.com, it's easy to see why some folks are talking about a tipping point. A cautionary note, though, about the much-discussed ABC-Washington Post poll showing, for the first time, more people supporting SSM than opposing it: The question doesn't allow for a third option, civil unions-which is a much better way to ask the question, since it distinguishes real SSM supporters (and opponents) from fence-sitters.

I haven't seen a three-way poll lately, but generally they're less volatile and show a sizable majority of the country to be sympathetic to same-sex unions but unsupportive of marriage. I'd wager the ABC-Post poll is an outlier. Public opinion on values issues just doesn't change that fast.

Here's something in the poll data which is revealing, if indirectly. Rising support for SSM is accompanied by increased support for legalizing illegal immigrants and decriminalizing marijuana-but also by a decline in support for gun control. A new poll from Pew confirms the turn against gun control, and adds that opposition to abortion is growing.

What does all of that have to do with gay marriage? Just this: It suggests that SSM is part of a libertarian shift in values-not a libertine shift or a flight from values altogether. The public increasingly rejects the claim that gay marriage harms a third party (as abortion does) or violates anyone's rights (as gun control arguably does).

No wonder the National Organization for Marriage and others have taken to claiming that gay marriage is a rights violation rather than a right. It's their last, best hope of persuading the public that gay marriage hurts someone. So far, the public isn't buying.