IGF CultureWatch

A new national survey by the Pew Research Center confirms, In Gay Marriage Debate, Both Supporters and Opponents See Legal Recognition as ‘Inevitable.’

Relatedly, Sean Trende of the conservative-leaning Real Clear Politics site, speaking on a panel at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute observed of the Pew findings:

The argument was no longer “let people do what they want.” It was “hate is not a family value.” The presentation of gays in media and entertainment no longer focused on sex… but on love. This also coincided with a reality for many middle Americans of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, cousins, friends and co-workers with “lifetime companions” who came to holidays, weddings, parties, and funerals. Gay rights was embedding itself with the bourgeoisie. …

The bottom line here is that public attitudes on marijuana and gay rights are shifting, not because the public is becoming more liberal or libertarian. Rather it is the proponents of the issues who are changing, framing those issues in what we might call a small “c” conservative light. And indeed, on issues where that transformation has not occurred [abortion, prostitution, etc.], public attitudes haven’t shifted much at all.

Much brouhaha over Michelle Obama being heckled by a lesbian activist urging her to press the president to fulfill his forgotten campaign promise to issue an executive order requiring federal government contractors to have nondiscrimination policies toward LGBT people. NPR reports that many in the African-American community are cheering Michelle for bluntly putting down the protestor:

News of the confrontation blazed through social media, especially among black posters. Jason Johnson, a professor of political science at Ohio’s Hiram College, says there’s a reason for that.

JASON JOHNSON: Well, there’s a belief and a very reasonable belief on the part of many supporters of Barack Obama, especially in the African-American community, that the president and Michelle have been subjected to an unprecedented level of rudeness and disrespect and incivility. …

[NPR’s KAREN GRIGSBY BATES]: Whatever it was, the prevailing response among black users of social media was mostly words like finally and yes, both followed by lots of exclamation points.

Lost in much of the non-lesbigay blogosphere is the fact that loud “in your face” protests were once a tactic by civil rights activists to push the government to end its anti-black discrimination.

More. Jared comments it’s not that the pro-Michelle reaction of many African-Americans was anti-gay per se, but rather that their rejection of “equivalency” between the black and gay fight for equal employment protection allowed them to cheer Michelle for putting the lesbian protestor/heckler in her place. It’s a subtle but revealing distinction.

Furthermore. Ellen Sturtz tells “Why I Confronted the First Lady“:

Some have said that the first lady wasn’t a proper target because she is not an elected official. However, time and again, the first lady has come to our community and asked us to “max out” on our contributions to the DNC. In fact, she had just made the same request of several hundred LGBT attendees, days after Senate Democrats had refused to include same-sex binational couples in their immigration reform bill. Despite the Democratic Party happily cashing LGBT checks, I have not seen the Obama administration “max out” on the myriad ways that the government could protect the LGBT community.

Indeed.

The movement for marriage equality is highlighting the underlying strengths and weaknesses in many national cultures.

James Kirchick discusses what's happening in France, where same-sex marriage was passed by the Socialist-led parliament but unleashed massive protests by Catholics and social reactionaries (evoking reminders of Vichy fascism).

Ned Simons looks at Britain, where the leadership of all three major parties (Conservatives, Liberal and Labour) support marriage for all, although a majority of Conservatives MPs and peers (in the House of Lords) remain opposed, as do the Catholic and Anglican churches, even though the Anglicans, who are the official state church in England, would be legally prohibited from conducting same-sex marriages (other religious groups would have the opportunity to opt-out). That's not enough for UK Muslims, who also want to be barred from same-sex marriages as well.

IGF contributing author Walter Olson and his husband, Steve Pippin, authored a piece on the Huffington Post, “Our American ‘Modern Family’ Is Now Old Hat.” They conclude:

In Europe, many countries were much faster than the United States to enact gay marriage into law. Yet those same countries have been much slower and more reluctant to ratify parenthood by gays, and adoption—over there often administered by monolithic state agencies—remains off limits even in the Denmarks and Norways. Part of the difference, I think, is that while getting to marriage requires a change in law—and we in America tend to take our time on that—founding a family is seen as something that every American has the right to go out and do. And so by the time our “family policy” experts noticed that gays were becoming parents on purpose, it had already become a substantial social phenomenon, hundreds of thousands of families strong.

It’s a contradiction, and yet it’s not: The United States is seen as distinctively “conservative” among the world’s great nations, yet it’s also the world’s arch-incubator of innovative social change. Don’t wait around for permission; it’s not as if anyone’s stopping you! If it’s worth doing, go for it, and let the law catch up in its own time. It works, again and again. And it’s so American.

The Illinois house tables marriage equality. We expect the GOP to cater to its anti-gay base. But we put up with a lot of extremely bad policy from the Democrats for the sake of their support on gay equality issues. However, let’s not forgot there is still a significant anti-gay faction in the Democratic party. They can delay the advancement of legal equality, but not block it:

Gay and lesbian couples who want to legally marry in Illinois will have to wait. It’s a delay that was met Friday with tears, anger and confusion. His voice breaking with emotion, state Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) tearfully said Friday that he would not call for a vote on his bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the closing hours of the spring legislative session.…

Stubborn resistance within the House Black Caucus, a 20-member bloc of African-American lawmakers who have faced a withering lobbying blitz against the plan from black ministers, has helped keep Harris’ legislation in check, with several House members still undecided.

There are a variety of opinions in the blogosphere about what went wrong. The most forgiving view is that African-American legislators just need more time to explain the issue to their constituents. Others contend not having a vote let these legislators off the hook (many members of the caucus were officially “undecided” but clearly party leaders knew they lacked enough votes in the overwhelmingly Democratic house).

Support for black civil rights by white lawmakers often took courage since it meant angering many of their constituents; we should expect the same from African-American legislators when it comes to support for gay legal equality.

Given the political divide, in many elections the choice is between a marriage-equality opponent or a regulation-and-tax hiker, both being bad options. So it’s not surprising that an annual ranking of state business climates shows liberal-governed states that recognize same-sex marriage tend to have worse economic outlooks. No state with marriage equality made the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ranking of the top 10 states with the best economic outlooks. And seven states that do recognize same-sex marriages are among the bottom 10 states with the worst economic outlooks: Maryland (35th), Maine (41st), Connecticut (43rd), Rhode Island (45th), Minnesota (46th), New York (49th) and Vermont (50th).

One example: Maryland has marriage equality while its neighbor, Virginia (5th in terms of economic outlook), has a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Last year, libertarian website Reason.com looked at how Maryland’s tax rates are driving jobs to Virginia.

Many moderate and center-right gay voters give their support to the party of big government because the party of lower taxes/higher growth doesn’t want our votes.

More. Facebook friend James Peron says: “I think I would say that they support the party of big government because the other party of big government doesn’t want our votes. The real difference is what they want big government ‘big’ over.”

Also, Rick Sincere (he’s on our blogroll) suggests that a better measure than ALEC’s rankings may be the Mercatus Center’s “Freedom in the 50 States,” which looks at both economic and personal liberty, including same-sex marriage and domestic partnership recognition (Virginia ranks 8th overall, Maryland 44th despite marriage equality as it’s bad on personal freedom in a number of other areas).

Furthermore, from the comments:

Houndentenor: “As I recall the economy grew quite nicely during Clinton’s presidency.”

Jared: ” Yes, having a Democratic president and a GOP-controlled Congress has often proved the sweet spot in limiting government over-reach. Not so good for advancing gay equality, but often has led to much more sensible economic policy.”

From The Atlantic, an interesting take on what gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony:

But what if the critics are correct, just not in the way they suppose? What if same-sex marriage does change marriage, but primarily for the better? For one thing, there is reason to think that, rather than making marriage more fragile, the boom of publicity around same-sex weddings could awaken among heterosexuals a new interest in the institution, at least for a time. But the larger change might be this: by providing a new model of how two people can live together equitably, same-sex marriage could help haul matrimony more fully into the 21st century.

I like the fact that this is not a knee-jerk anti-gender but women are better piece. Writer Liza Mundy takes note that “gay marriage can function as a controlled experiment, helping us see which aspects of marital difficulty are truly rooted in gender and which are not.” And among her rules for a happy marriage, “When it comes to parenting, a 50-50 split isn’t necessarily best.” As Mundy writes:

As Martha Ertman, a University of Maryland law professor, put it to me, many families just function better when the same person is consistently “in charge of making vaccinations happen, making sure the model of the World War II monument gets done, getting the Christmas tree home or the challah bought by 6 o’clock on Friday.”

In the end, “Rather than setting an example that fathers don’t matter, gay men are setting an example that fathers do matter, and that marriage matters, too.”

Of course, first the struggle to be able to marry must be won. The Washington Post looks at recent, dramatic victories, but also the long road ahead. Under the best of scenarios (assuming, as most do, that the Supreme Court will repeal the most onerous aspects of the Defense of Marriage Act but not impose marriage equality throughout the nation), 40 percent of Americans could live in states that allow gays to marry by the end of 2016. But after that, the road ahead will require overturning anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments in conservative states.

While advocates for gay equality feel, with justification, that the Boy Scouts of America’s vote to end the ban on gay scouts up to age 18 while maintaining its prohibition on gay scoutmasters is an unacceptable halfway step, the socially conservative Washington Times reports that accepting openly gay scouts at all is a major defeat for Christian Right evangelicals:

Signs of waning evangelical power in the nation’s culture wars and in Republican policy—and some unexpected challenges for GOP candidates—loom as the 103-year-old Boy Scouts of America gears up for a definitive vote this week on whether to welcome openly gay youths into the organization’s ranks.

If the BSA delegates gathering just outside Dallas vote to admit gays, it will reinforce the growing notion that evangelical Protestants and their conservative Catholic allies no longer can muster their troops as they once did, in such battles as state referendums over same-sex marriage and the 1996 enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Interestingly, the article also points out that the Mormon church, which sponsors more than a third of all scout troops in America, “has moved on to other battles in the cultural wars rather than take on the gay-rights activists.” This is similar to what we previously noted about the Mormons’ absence of late from the religious right’s political fight against marriage equality. It’s a good sign, as neutrality in practice is far better for us than engaged opposition, and if it lasts it will leave the evangelicals and the Catholic church down a major ally.

David Boaz takes note of:

Interesting evidence of movement among Republicans [on gay marriage]. A strong majority of voters in Virginia, a state that passed a gay marriage ban in 2006, and 40 percent of Republicans now say “it should be legal for gay couples to get married.” …

How has public opinion in Virginia changed since the 2006 amendment vote? Support for gay marriage (or opposition to a ban) has risen by 13 points. Independents are up only 3 points. Democrats are up by 7 points, perhaps because of the endorsement of President Obama. And Republican support is up 25 points.

And yet the party’s most likely future standard-bearers aren’t budging, perhaps because they are beholden to a dysfunctional primary and (especially) caucus system that gives disproportional voice and presidential-nominee veto power to an increasingly smaller and shiller faction of religious theocrats, those contemporary pharisees who thoroughly pervert the gospel message. It’s particularly disappointing to see Sen. Rand Paul moving to woo the them, as the Washington Post reports:

Earlier this spring, Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, invited a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network into their Kentucky home for what turned into two full days of reality TV. In a half-hour special, “At Home With Rand Paul,” the couple are seen bird-watching in the woods, going to McDonald’s and, especially, talking about religion—their belief in traditional marriage and the senator’s call for a “spiritual cleansing” in America. …

He said he’s not ready to “give up on” the traditional family unit. But he added that it is a mistake for conservatives to support a federal ban on same-sex marriage, saying, “We’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now.”

“If we’re to say each state can decide, I think a good 25 or 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people,” he said.

Paul has called on the GOP to “embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere,” which seems inconsistent with his message to the Christian right, and counter-productive given where the electorate is going. As Nick Gillespie points out:

If Paul continues to send significantly different messages to different audiences, he will end up alienating all his possible supporters. … If he’s serious about scraping the moss off the Republican Party, he needs to boldly defend his most contrarian, libertarian positions rather than temper his comments based on his speaking venue.”

Practically speaking, N.J. Gov. Chris Christie would be the most (and maybe, really, the only) electable Republican in 2016, and he’d probably be more electable if he came out in favor of marriage equality for gay couples. But he’d have to survive the evangelical-dominated Iowa caucuses.

[Since comments on the Washington Post website (not here) regarding the Rand Paul article have veered into attacks on religion, I should note that I use “evangelical” above in the Christian-right political sense of advocating the use of the state to enforce an agenda of animus; not in the gospel sense of spreading the good news of God’s unbounded and transformative love.]

More. From David Boaz: Virginia Republican Candidates Not Joining 21st Century: “[T]here’s a reason that a report by the Republican National Committee found that voters see the GOP as “scary,” “narrow minded,” and “out of touch” — and the Virginia Republican ticket is part of that reason.”

More on Paul. Campaigning, er, “speaking” in New Hampshire, Sen. Paul has not made noticeable mention of gay marriage or related issues. He’s hitting hard on the more libertarian-conservative issues, as in his remarks via C-SPAN at a recent New Hampshire Liberty Dinner were he castigated the enormity of misdirected government spending at a time when Obama is crying poverty over his still bloated budget (millions were just spent making the embassy in Vienna, Austria, a “green” showcase while Obama blames Republicans for not giving him enough money to provide security for the consulate in Benghazie).

If you take another look at Paul’s remarks to evangelical leaders, while he told them much of what they wanted to hear (he personally opposes same-sex marriage; his reported “spiritual cleansing” remark), when it comes to politics he didn’t put much on the table (he opposes the anti-gay federal marriage amendment, for instance.) But whether he can mitigate evangelical opposition with rhetoric while not alienating independents and social libertarians remains an open question.

Via Mother Jones: “It’s remarkable what has happened in the marriage fight since the Mormons decided to abandon it.” Moreover:

The pullback of the LDS church may also have the unexpected effect of allowing more Republican elected officials to back marriage equality without fear of suffering at the polls. (Mormons are among the country’s most reliable Republican voters.) Republicans in Rhode Island and Delaware were a key factor in marriage advocates’ success, says HRC’s Nix.

Another sign of the times.