IGF CultureWatch

Let’s leave aside debate over the once and future shutdown, for which I hold both parties responsible (and award the mainstream media yet another badge of shame for its shamelessly partisan misreporting on fellow liberal elitists).

New Jersey will begin recognizing same-sex marriages on Oct. 21 pursuant to a superior court order; an appeal of that order is slated to be heard by the N.J. Supreme Court in January 2014. Also, the N.J. state legislature has until Jan. 14 to override Gov. Chris Christie’s 2012 veto of a same-sex marriage bill.

“The state’s statutory scheme effectively denies committed same-sex partners in New Jersey the ability to receive federal benefits not afforded to married partners,” said the state’s Supreme Court in denying Christie’s request to stay marriage equality until his appeal is heard.

Christie further showed himself unequipped for 21st century leadership by declaring he would tell a hypothetical gay child, “Dad believes marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Update 1: On Oct. 21, the Christie administration withdraw its appeal of the ruling requiring marriage equality and announced: “Although the Governor strongly disagrees with the Court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the Court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law. The Governor will do his constitutional duty and ensure his Administration enforces the law as dictated by the New Jersey Supreme Court.”

This is a nod to reality (he wasn’t going to win in the NJ Supreme Court come January), but also a political move that tries to play it both ways. That is, Christie isn’t standing in the courthouse door pledging marriage inequality forever, as Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli would likely do (see below).

Update 2: The National Organization for Marriage attacks and threatens “[Christie’s] surrender on marriage effectively surrenders any chance he might have had to secure the GOP nomination for president.” We’ll see.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate, anti-gay social conservative Ken Cuccinelli, is trailing Democratic crony capitalist hack Terry McAuliffe. Will Cucc’s loss be a lesson to the GOP? Don’t count on it. Anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher is already bloviating that Cuccinelli is losing because he’s not socially conservative enough.

Adding to the confusion in Virginia, where there is a fine Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate, Robert Sarvis, is the increasingly muddled reporting that describes Cucc as having “staked out strong libertarian positions.” As when he was supporting the state’s sodomy law? Of course, Cuccinelli is encouraging this laugh line by describing himself as “the most pro-liberty elected statewide official in my lifetime,” showing that this farce has become a travesty.

More. George Will in support of Robert Sarvis, Virginia’s Libertarian alternative. He quotes a Sarvis ad in which the candidate makes it clear:

“Like you, I can’t vote for Ken Cuccinelli’s narrow-minded social agenda. I want a Virginia that’s open-minded and welcoming to all. And like you, I don’t want Terry McAuliffe’s cronyism either, where government picks winners and losers. Join me, and together we can build a Virginia that’s open-minded and open for business.”

That would be nice.

Furthermore. This will be the meme: Tea Party Leader: Ultraconservative Ken Cuccinelli Is Not Conservative Enough. And to be fair, progressive activists have said the same thing (in reverse, that is) when they nominate leftwingers who go down to defeat.

Here’s another example of LGBT activists’ calcified partisanship and zombie “progressivism.” Via last week’s Washington Blade:

Two Democratic members of Congress—one gay and one bisexual—are incurring the wrath of LGBT activists for voting with House Republicans to delay certain portions of Obamacare in exchange for keeping the government in operation.

Reps. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) were among nine Democrats on Monday who voted for a Republican-led resolution that provided funds for the government for fiscal year 2014, but included a provision delaying the individual mandate and requiring members of Congress and their staffs to pay the full cost of insurance without the government subsidy. …

Both Maloney and Sinema also joined Republicans on Sunday to vote for repeal of the tax on medical devices as part of Obamacare. …

Michael Rogers, a D.C.-based LGBT rights advocate, said the vote means Sinema and Maloney are Democrats in name only. … Michaelangelo Signorile, a gay New York activist and radio host on SiriusXM, took to Twitter to express his indignation.

Oh, the horror. Not marching in iron-booted lockstep with the party of PROGRESS. Shamelessly violating the precepts of Democratric centralism. Shun them NOW.

More. The Blade subsequently reports this week that furloughed gay federal employees “all blamed Congress—and Tea Party Republicans in particular—for the partial government shutdown,” and that:

“Their style of government is not geared toward compromise,” [a furloughed employee] said, referring to [GOP] efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare that took effect on Tuesday. “They’re basically holding the federal workers and contractors hostage.”

Let’s think about this. The House Republicans for over a week have retrenched from their demand to defund Obamacare and instead staked their position on a one-year delay in the individual mandate, matching the delay granted businesses, and no special exemption (to allow employer-provided pretax subsidies for exchange-based plans) for congressmembers and staff. Also on the table is a bipartisan-supported end to the counter-productive tax on medical devices. In response, President Obama has said he will not negotiate until the Republicans pass his spending resolution with no changes (rendering “negotiation” rather beside the point). As Charles Krauthammer notes:

For all the hyped indignation over GOP “anarchism,” there has been remarkable media reticence about the president’s intransigence. He has refused to negotiate anything unless the Republicans fully fund the government and raise the debt ceiling—unconditionally.

Just who is refusing to compromise here? And when moderate Democrats want to pursue that compromise, they get attacked as DINOs by the same folks who claim the Republicans are the no-compromise party.

Do the progressives ever bother to think through their bald-faced contradictions?

Furthermore. Lots of gratuitous insults aimed at yours truly by loyal Democrats earning their Media Matters points, without tackling the actual arguments made above.

Still more. Via instapundit:

MoveOn.Org petition demands GOP arrests for ‘conspiracy against US.’

They are making plain how they think, and what they’d do if they had the power to do it. Take this seriously, because they do.

Via the Wall Street Journal, “Some Businesses Balk at Gay Weddings” (subscription may be required):

The issue gained attention in August, when the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that an Albuquerque photography business violated state antidiscrimination laws after its owners declined to snap photos of a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony.

Similar cases are pending in Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington, and some experts think the underlying legal question—whether free-speech and religious rights should allow exceptions to state antidiscrimination laws—could ultimately wind its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And then there’s this:

In Oregon, bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein learned in August that a state complaint had been filed against them because they had refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. A lawyer for the Kleins, who declined to comment, said the couple has done business with gay people for years, but didn’t want to be forced to participate in an event contrary to their Christian beliefs, especially given that same-sex marriage still isn’t legal in Oregon.

So, Oregon says gays can’t marry, but prosecutes those who balk at providing services for a same-sex nonlegal wedding. Both positions are profoundly anti-liberty.

Added: David Boaz comments on his Facebook page, more pithily than I, “The state of Oregon won’t issue a gay couple a marriage license, but it will prosecute you if you won’t bake ’em a cake.”

Related, via the Washiington Times, “Mormons try a more muted strategy against gay marriage second time around in Hawaii.” While the Mormon hierarchy still opposes same-sex marriage, instead of funding campaigns to defeat marriage equality they are attempting to secure a religious exemption for those whose beliefs prevent them from performing services for gay weddings.

We should accept that deal (“progressive” total statists, of course, won’t).

The arrogance and illegality reflected in IRS staffers giving the Human Rights Campaign the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage is pervasive in the Obama administration and its popular fronts, but covered only by the conservative press. It’s a black eye for the cause of gay legal equality, giving some very bigoted people and groups a legitimate platform to express outrage at an out-of-control and hyper-partisan Washington elite.

You know, progressives really aren’t above the law. Really, they aren’t. They just think they are.

The issue isn’t whether donor lists to advocacy groups should legally be made public (and I don’t believe they should). For staffers at the IRS to do so in order to expose donors to conservative groups is deeply corrupting, much like the denial of tax-exempt status and harassment audits unleashed against tea party organizations and limited-government advocates.

More. The argument has been made that I think religiously conservative small business owners are “above the law” because they are fighting against being forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings. The difference is that those business owners are facing litigation by the state; I argue these are bad laws (or badly interpreted laws) if they force people to engage in behavior that violates their religious beliefs, and that the laws should be changed.

In the case of the IRS selectively pursing conservative groups (or, in this case, illegally making their donor list public), the government is assuredly not bringing suit against the law violators, it’s protecting them. And the government is not arguing that the law is bad and should be changed, it’s just sanctioning corrupt partisan violations.

Furthermore. Only someone who gets “news” from MSNBC would fall for the manifestly false canard that liberal groups were equally targeted. Some facts:

Treasury IG: Liberal groups weren’t targeted by IRS like Tea Party

IRS scoreboard: 100 percent of “targeted” liberal groups were approved, conservatives languished

This is how change happens: “If most gays and lesbians in rural areas stay silent or bolt for the city, there’s no one and nothing to push back at ingrained prejudices.” In Pennsylvania, GOP state representative Mike Fleck is trying to change that.

And this is how change happens: “In this emotional video, David Stevens, a straight man, discusses what happened after he posted pictures of his gay brother’s wedding on Facebook.”

And this is also how changes happens, because there is a role for judicial action; it’s just far from the only thing that’s needed to achieve cultural change. In this case, the bipartisan legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies is seeking to have Virginia’s state constitutional amendment and related laws struck down as violating the fundamental right to marry and the equal protection of the laws.

Even if an eventual ruling doesn’t find that fundamental right, it would be great to see Justice Kennedy’s Romer decision extended to invalidate anti-gay-marriage amendments on the basis that they create an impermissible barrier to seeking remedies to discrimination through the legislative process. Many feel that this is what Justice Kennedy wanted to achieve in the Supreme Court’s Prop. 8 case, if he had been able to secure a majority.

Our Log Cabin friend David Lampo on why, in Virginia’s upcoming election, Republicans should say no to their party’s gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli and lieutenant governor nominee E.W. Jackson. Can’t argue with that. But David didn’t comment on what a corrupt crony capitalist and shameless hypocrite the Democratic nominee, Terry McAuliffe, is.

The Libertarian party doesn’t always offer an appealing alternative, but this year in Virginia we have excellent Libertarian candidate in Robert Sarvis, who will get my vote.

Via the Washington Post: “Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara served as an official witnesses Saturday at the Maine wedding of Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalsen, co-owners of a Kennebunk general store.”

At times, both LGBT progressive activists and religious conservative activists seem to uphold the above sentiment. It puts both groups of zealots at odds with the majority of Americans—including those of traditional faith and gay Americans, who would find better ways to accommodate with one another, if the activists would let them.

Consider the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act (MRFA), a House bill introduced last week by Republicans that, the conservative Washington Times reports, “seeks to protect the religious freedom of individuals, institutions and businesses that are increasingly being punished or harassed for their beliefs on marriage.” MRFA is intended to “prohibit discrimination through the federal tax code” against citizens and institutions who think marriage is the union of one man and one woman, said Rep. Raul R. Labrador, Idaho Republican.

The paper notes that the bill would not have affected, for example, recent state actions against the New Mexico photographer or the Oregon bakery that each refused to provide services for gay marriages, based on the small business providers’ religious faith.

However, the push for the bill nevertheless is clearly a response to such actions. What the bill would do is “ensure that individuals who want to donate to a church that holds to the traditional teaching on marriage would not see their donations challenged” by the IRS. Religious conservatives fear that such moves are being pondered against Catholic and other religiously affiliated schools that won’t hire openly gay or lesbian faculty, for instance (there is currently a push in California to revoke the Boy Scouts’ state tax-exempt status over the group’s refusal to hire openly gay scoutmasters).

MFRA also would shield companies and nonprofits from “adverse actions” by the federal government, such as denying federal grants, contacts, certifications and employment based on opposition to gay marriage.

MFRA is bad legislation, but another bad idea would be limiting the moderate religious exemption in the proposed Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which if passed would outlaw workplace discrimination against LGBT people. The Washington Blade reports that Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, which spearheads marriage equality campaigns, said he:

shares the “grave concerns” expressed by the American Civil Liberties Union over the religious exemption—which he said would “carve coverage by certain kinds of entities for LGBT people.”

Those “entities” being religiously affiliated institutions, including private schools. In their zeal to force faith-based organizations and small business owners who hold traditional religious beliefs about marriage to hire gay people or provide services (including those of an artistic nature) to lesbian or gay weddings, LGBT zealots are firing up a backlash that might come back to haunt all of us. Even worse, they are seeking to use the power of state coercion to force others to engage in actions that violate their religious beliefs, an ugly thread that runs throughout too much of human history.

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal favoring religious freedom recently noted that:

Some 97.6% of religious adherents in the U.S.—more than half the population—belong to religious bodies that affirm the traditional definition of marriage, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. For those Americans, tolerance isn’t turning out to be a two-way street.

The author, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, a “committed Lutheran” and contributor to Christianity Today, doesn’t aid her case when she goes beyond defending the rights of small business owners, arguing that government employees such as dissenting county clerks should be exempt from providing services to marrying gay couples. The state is different from civil society (or what’s left of it), something that progressive activists won’t acknowledge, either. In this misconceived view of state supremacy, religious conservatives and progressive activists are beholden to the same misconception.

More. Some activists have responded with, “well, that’s the law; they have to abide by the law.” What mendacity! As if these activists didn’t spend much of their time otherwise opposing bad laws. Moreover, the civil rights laws were enacted to remedy systemic employment discrimination against African-Americans, who often couldn’t find decent and equal employment anywhere (and often because of state “Jim Crow” laws). To apply the same government power to punish a tiny number of independent service providers with sincere religious objections to same-sex marriage is not only petty and cruel, but speaks to a lack of comprehension about the nature of religious conscience and why government should safeguard it, not coercively force individuals to violate their religious beliefs. But if you don’t take religious conviction seriously (hey, “it’s the law” and “they’re bigots; they should be forced to photograph the wedding; serves ’em right”), then you really are slouching toward totalitarianism.

Furthermore. Walter Olson replies to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway:

Many of the conscience cases she cites involving private businesses arose in jurisdictions that don’t recognize gay marriage, and most would reach the same legal result so long as local antidiscrimination laws remain in place, whether or not the law on marriage has changed. Libertarians have consistently worried about the tendency of anti-discrimination laws to erode individual rights of association. Modern progressives have consistently sought to dismiss or minimize such worries. Many conservatives from outside the libertarian tradition, such as Ms. Hemingway, do not seem to have given much attention to the issue until it gored their particular ox.

And from a posted comment at the Wall Street Journal site to Walter’s letter:

The florist in question did not “refuse to serve” gay clients. No one was turned away from her shop or denied service. Rather, she declined a solicitation to provide flowers to an event, namely a gay wedding… It’s the same thing as if a black florist sells flowers to KKK members who come into the shop, but refuses to supply flowers to a KKK function.

How many of the progressives who favor forcing small businessmen and women to bend knee to them would approve of forcing the black florist to decorate a Klan rally? [Added: Not so far-fetched, which is why a recent parody rings true.]

Finding “a new balance” between its obsession with gays and contraception and everything else would be better than not. But at some point (and it’s way, way past due), the Roman Church is going to have reform its dogma or risk increasing irrelevancy outside of the most hidebound jurisdictions. If the Latter-Day Saints can change course on formerly racist doctrine, then the Roman Church should be able to do so on its unchristian, non-Gospel-centered anti-gay doctrine, as it (mostly) has done on its past, 2,000 year history of virulent and bloody anti-Semitism. But will it?

More. A related controversy involving occasional IGF contributing author John Corvino: Catholic College Rescinds Invitation to Speaker Defending Same-Sex Marriage. John’s response is posted on his website, here.

Dale Carpenter blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy that federal recognition of same-sex marriages could put the kibosh on civil unions and domestic partnerships:

There is also, it should be noted, an effect for unmarried gay couples currently getting benefits from private employers who have recognized domestic partnerships…. Since federal benefits will now be available to same-sex spouses wherever they live, many companies across the country will likely end their domestic-partnership programs. Three decades of experimentation with alternative family statuses like civil unions and domestic partnerships is coming to an end.

That sounds reasonable, except that Wal-mart, the largest retail employer in the U.S., just announced it’s launching domestic partner benefits for employees and their (unmarried) same-sex and opposite-sex partners.

Given the decline in straight marriage, particularly among those with lower incomes, there may yet be a future for partner status, confirmed by employers if not by the state.