IGF CultureWatch

I’ve been reading a recently published book looking at opposition to same-sex marriage from “queer” political activists and academics, The Marrying Kind? Debating Same-Sex Marriage within the Lesbian and Gay Movement. The book is a collection of analytical pieces that let LGBT and “queer” opponents of “heteronormality” speak for themselves, which exposes the weakness inherent in much of their worldview.

It’s not that all of the criticism of marriage voiced here lacks merit; it’s just that the typical solution — more leftism; subsuming the LGBT/queer movements within what’s seen as a more important push for broader “social justice” and leftwing social transformation, is so utterly predicable. Dig through the buzzwords and what you end up with is an agenda for bigger government to direct economic redistribution to those deemed more deserving (or more politically useful).

But primarily the focus here is on “Queer scholars and activists [who] have leveled harsh critiques against the movement’s supposed tendency toward assimilationist goals and strategies, with the goal of legal same-sex marriage often singled out as a prime example of the broader tendency.”

Along those lines, I was happy to see IGF mentioned, if only within quotes from a critical academic. In the introduction, editors Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor write that

One of the most vocal queer opponents of same-sex marriage, who represents what we term the “homonormative critique,” is Lisa Duggan. … [In an essay from 2002] Duggan argues that for LGBT organizations like IGF, “Marriage is a strategy for privatizing gay politics and culture for the new neoliberal world order.”

Forgotten these day, or simply denied, is how IGF and others often mislabeled “gay conservatives” were making the case for marriage equality over a decade ago, before the mainstream LGBT progressives came onboard. So it’s good to have “queer” radicals reminding us of that.

Another chapter contains interview excerpts representing various ethnic and class perspectives, in which “a thirty-one-year old Asian-American middle-class lesbian” is quoted saying:

They’re just, like, highly normative kinds of things that they want to do. … I understand that some lesbians want to go to some country club to play with their kids or have their membership, I don’t, it’s like they don’t get, they are not really interested in changing, in social change. I think they are really interested in kind of like, making us more like kind of heterosexual middle-class people, also white.”

You get the drift.

This book provides more evidence of the reality of LGBT academia that Bruce Bawer exposes in articles and in his most recent book, The Victims Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, also highly recommended.

In fact, The Victims Revolution and The Marrying Kind? complement each other quite nicely.

San Diego’s Democratic mayor Bob Filner has apologized for his behavior and said he needs help, amid allegations that he sexually harassed women.

You might recall that last year LGBT activists fell over themselves to support Filner against an openly gay Republican, city councilman Carl DeMaio, in a race with no incumbent.

However, given the political culture these days, I don’t think harassment charges are likely to hurt Filner much.

More. Third accuser goes public against San Diego Mayor… But at least he’s still not a gay Republican, because that would be really, really bad.

The 68-year-old proprietress of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, is the target of a lawsuit by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson because she refused to provide wedding flowers for a customer who was marrying his partner. Washington state legalized same-sex marriage in December.

According to CNN’s Belief Blog, Barronelle Stutzman, an evangelical, “said she agonized over the decision but couldn’t support a wedding that her faith forbids. ‘I was not discriminating at all,’ she said. ‘I never told him he couldn’t get married. I gave him recommendations for other flower shops.’”

Not surprisingly, “Among conservative Christians, Stutzman has become a byword—part cautionary tale and part cause celebre.”

Must progressivism decree that the power of the state be so absolute that there be no exemption from its dictate for religious conviction, not to speak of individual liberty? Apparently so, given Obamacare’s model of requiring private business owners to pay for their employees contraception, including abortifacient drugs, despite their religious convictions. In both cases, the state is not stopping one party from harming another; its forcing what it sees as positive behavior upon those who have a different view.

The pagans persecuted the Christians, and then the Christians came to power and persecuted the pagans. Similarly, there’s more here of animus against those who deviate from the one-true correct political line than anything else. It’s not only mean and vulgar, it’s politically counterproductive. But I’m sure using the power of the state to crush those who don’t toe the line makes those who can now persecute feel smugly empowered.

N.J. Gov. Chris Christie has proved a big disappointment. Having vetoed a marriage equality bill passed by the legislature, he’s now campaigning for reelection on his continuing opposition, although letting gay people marry has wide and growing support in his state (a Quinnipiac poll found 64% of New Jersey voters supporting gay marriage and only 30% opposed). But even worse, Christie went livid over the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling, putting him to the social right of Sen. Rand Paul, who seemed to welcome the decision as turning the matter over to the states—despite his own stated belief that marriage should be reserved for a man and woman (which he plays up when courting evangelicals). Paul is a principled limited-government conservative unlike Christie, who seems to have no discernible political principles.

More. Christie may indeed by trying to outmaneuver Paul among socially conservative primary voters. That’s a good reason for gay Republicans and our friends to think about supporting Paul.

Furthermore. Christie lashes out at libertarians.

Happy July 4th! In honor of the day, enjoy the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., singing the national anthem across from the Supreme Court after last week’s marriage decision was handed down.

Columnist Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post:

If you want to know why social conservatives have effectively lost the battle over same-sex marriage with the American people, you need look no further than former senator and now Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint.

She’s right that Heritage, while always wrong about gay rights, once could mount intelligent arguments; under Jim DeMint’s leadership, no more.

You see it’s easy: If you’re a progressive left-liberal Democrat, you can have all the nasty homophobic outbursts you want and Hillary Rosen, GLAAD and the rest of the party fronts will give you a free pass.

I don’t often agree with Andrew Sullivan these days, but this time he’s absolutely right.

More. James Kirchick weighs in:

If a white woman’s [Paula Deen] muttering the N-word in the hot aftermath of an encounter with a robber is a “revelation of actual attitudes,” how could a straight man calling a gay man a “toxic little queen” in the safety of an online social network not amount to the same sort of “revelation”?

Never mind that she stumped for Barack Obama in 2008; ridiculing Deen — this plumpy, white, Southern purveyor of comfort food — makes white liberals feel good about themselves. The same schadenfreude doesn’t apply to Baldwin, star blogger at the Hollywood insane asylum that is The Huffington Post, perpetually rumored New York City mayoral candidate and vocal advocate of all things right and liberal. For Queen Alec, the rules just don’t apply.

Furthermore. GLAAD’s last major bout of publicity was its condemnation of Fox News hosts for attending and supporting its annual Media Awards gala, following the Democrat’s Media Matters playbook. Now GLAAD defends a liberal’s anti-gay tirades. GLAAD is giving new meaning to “partisan hacks.”

A victory, fortunately, as expected. I was surprised/disappointed to see Kennedy alone joining with the liberal bloc. Roberts, Alito, Thomas and, volcanically, Scalia, all in dissent. They seem to think federalism, a conservative principle, is situationally based on which side of the political spectrum an issue falls. Of course, liberals also shift around on federalism, and many have made the non-federalist argument that constitutional liberty should trump state law; but that’s not what the conservative federalists believe, when it suits their purposes.

What federal rights, benefits and protections couples residing in states that do not recognize their marriages will have remains to be worked out, and it will be messy.

More. From our comments:

Scalia rages about overturning ‘democratically legislated laws’ and yet he just overturned the Voting Rights Act yesterday.

And:

Last night I watched MSNBC. It was nothing but outrage that the Supreme Court overturned a “democratically legislated law,” renewed just in 2006. Do you think they will be as much outraged today, after another “democratically legislated law” and the voice of the citizens of California expressed directly through a referendum just in 2008 were overturned by the Supreme Court?

As with federalism, on the primacy of majoritarianism over constitutional principles there is hypocrisy all round.

Furthermore. As the author of the majority decisions in Romer, Lawrence and now Windsor, Reagan-appointee Anthony Kennedy earns a key spot in American and gay history.

And worth noting:

For nationwide same-sex marriage, the road to victory runs through the GOP

Rand Paul: On Gay Marriage GOP Needs to ‘Agree to Disagree’

The Happy Stories Begin

This analysis in the New York Times looks at the red-hot social issues to be decided this week by the Supreme Court: marriage equality for gays, race-based preferential treatment in college admissions and the Voting Rights Act. Writes Adam Liptak:

The extraordinary run of blockbuster rulings due in the space of a single week will also reshape the meaning of legal equality and help define for decades to come one of the Constitution’s grandest commands: “the equal protection of the laws.”

If those words require only equal treatment from the government, the rulings are likely to be a mixed bag that will delight and disappoint liberals and conservatives in equal measure. Under that approach, same-sex couples who want to marry would be better off at the end of the term, while blacks and Hispanics could find it harder to get into college and to vote.

That’s because:

Formal equality would require that gay couples be treated just like straight couples when it comes to marriage, white students just like black students when it comes to admissions decisions and Southern states just like Northern ones when it comes to federal oversight of voting. The effect would be to help gay couples, and hurt blacks and Latinos.

In a roundabout way, the analysis comes down to an argument that constitutional equality under the 14th Amendment doesn’t mean “formal” equality. Because of past historical discrimination, blacks (in particular) must receive preferential treatment in college admissions, for example, in order to be treated equally. As Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, put it, one view of equal protection “is skeptical of government classifications based on race and similar characteristics,” while the other “tries to make sure that historically disfavored groups are not subordinated.”

The problem is once you move beyond “equal means equal” regarding how the government treats you, other unintended distortions then occur (the oft referenced but still relevant cases of children of well-off African-American professionals vs. lower-income white kids with higher SAT scores). In employment affirmative action pertaining to race and gender (which are not before the court this term), the need to avoid “disparate impact” in hiring and promotion have led to de facto discrimination against better qualified pale males.

At some point, government preferences for some become unfair discrimination against others, often in service to political motives, when “formal equality” is legally interpreted as not being equal.

As Chief Justice Roberts said in 2007, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

More. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that, in admissions, public colleges and universities could use race as a criteria if narrowly tailored to ensure diversity in the student body, remanding the case back to a lower court to apply a “strict scrutiny” standard in judging whether the university’s use of race met this criteria. Allowing even a narrow use of race-based preferences won’t please those students with better earned qualifications who aren’t admitted so as to foster racial diversity, but it does continue to get away from the idea that rewards and punishments should be meted out to this generation to make amends for sins committed by past generations.

Exodus International, the religious ministry that promoted “conversion therapy” to help gay people become straight, has closed up shop and apologized “for the pain and hurt” it caused. It’s yet another sign of the changing times, but don’t expect the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, and other anti-gay religious right groups to follow suit anytime soon. The purveyors of ignorance for political gain will always be with us, but eventually they will be marginalized.

More. James Kirchick explains why we should all be thankful about Exodus’s end.