IGF CultureWatch

The rightwing blogosphere has discovered sex columnist/anti-bullying activist Dan Savage’s rant again the Bible while addressing an audience of high school journalists. And they’re making hay with it:

In the video, Savage is clearly heard saying, “We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people — the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstration about virginity about masturbation…We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.” …

[An offended Christian student] said the speech was laced with vulgarities and “sexual innuendo not appropriate for this age group.” At one point, he said Savage told the teenagers about how good his partner looked in a speedo. … As the [offended] teenagers were walking out, [the student] said that Savage heckled them and called them pansy-assed.

Savage’s substance, about the misuses of Biblical literalism, may be sound. But his hurling of obscenities, particularly given the audience, is the kind of stupid, counter-productive action that elicits cheers from the secular leftwing faithful and appalls those on the other side who we ought to be striving to win over by understanding their worldview and speaking in language that is persuasive to them. Savage, however, certainly is not unique in falling into the trap of insular, echo-chamber activism, alas.

More. Comments reader “jpr”:

Christian abolitionists motivated by their faith were a driving forcing in abolishing slavery in the U.S./U.K., despite some biblical passages condoning slavery. If back then, secular anti-slavery activists had told them the Bible was bs, how would that have helped? [We should] speak to these people in a way that respects their faith and respects the Bible, and make the argument that the spirit of the Bible — and many passages, particularly in the New Testament, condemning bigotry and judgmentalism — can continue to bring more people of faith onboard.

Either we keep speaking to ourselves, or we reach out to people of faith, Republicans, and others that are not now with us. Too many LGBT activists just don’t get this — or don’t care.

Furthermore. Savage issues an apology for his poor choice of words. That’s good, but like Hillary Rosen, would it have dawned on him that his comments were offensive and inappropriate (not to mention counter-productive) if not confronted by an uproar from outside the insular world of the left-liberal echo chamber?

More still. Now he’s standing by his “bs” charge.

From The American Conservative: Why the Right Can’t Win the Gay Marriage Fight, by Daniel McCarthy. He isn’t happy about it, but his essay pretty much conveys a recognition that the traditionalist right has lost the game.

McCarthy is wrong about many things. In particular, he thinks freewheeling promiscuity is the norm among gay male couples because only women can rein men in. He writes, “In practical terms, so far as checking promiscuity is concerned, marriage is superfluous for lesbians and not very effective for homosexual men. To the extent that marriage serves as a brake on promiscuity at all, this is owing to the sex differences of the spouses.” Which is a common trope on the right with a small measure of truth (men are more driven toward promiscuity than women) but doesn’t grasp that the dynamics of a stable male relationship require, in most cases, the acceptance of an ideal of fidelity if the relationship is going to last.

McCarthy does have an interesting observation:

But in the latter half of the 20th century two things steadily eroded the cultural and legal taboos against homosexuality. The first was that it had come to be seen as an innate desire about which individuals have little choice. The second was that as these strange new beings emerged from their hiding places they didn’t look so frightening—indeed, they looked a lot like everybody else. The great public-relations victory won by the gay-rights movement that hastened the advent of gay marriage was the shift in the 1990s away from a radical, anti-bourgeois image toward one more in keeping with societal norms, from the militancy of ACT-UP to the banality of “Will and Grace.”

The gay-marriage effort has been a cause as well as an effect in this change: while same-sex marriage is disturbing to many Americans, it is reassuring to others, suggesting as it does loyalty to a middle-class ideal. Those homosexuals who remember more radical days are often dismissive of bourgeois aspirations of the younger set. …

Religious right literalists can’t see what gay radicals do: that gay marriage really is a conservative idea.

More. Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper writes in a New York Times op-ed:

In an ironic twist, gay and lesbian Americans are among the strongest promoters of conservative family values today. … The legislative reforms sought by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are not intended to secure special rights or tear down social institutions. We seek only the ability to build lives together for richer or poorer (without unjust taxation tilting the scale toward poverty), to care for our loved ones in sickness and in health (through equal access to health care and without suffering from a “domestic partner penalty”), and to be by our partner’s side until death (without the fear that the absence of a marriage license would add complications and heartache).

updated April 25, 2012

Mitt Romney’s campaign said last week that Richard Grenell, the former Bush administration spokesman at the United Nations, was joining his team as a spokesman on foreign policy issues. Although the Washington Post story doesn’t mention it, the Advocate and others have previously reported that Grenell is openly gay and, according to reports, lives in California with his long-time partner, Matthew Lashey, a media and entertainment company executive. The Advocate also noted that Grenell fought, unsuccessfully, to have his partner listed alongside the spouses of other U.N. diplomats.

Romney has distanced himself from his one-time strong support for gay legal equality and reiterated his opposition to gay marriage, the banning of which he would add to the U.S. Constitution. But Romeny has said he hasn’t, and won’t, discriminate in
hiring. Whether Grenell’s appointment, given his advocacy, becomes an issue will be interesting to watch.

More. I assumed Grenell’s appointment would be attacked by the social right (and it was), but it’s the left-liberal blogosphere (for instance here, and here) and [added: some] LGBT “progressives” who have declared war on Grenell. Whether this is character assassination for insufficient political correctness (tweets mocking Hillary! And Newt’s wives!) or not, carried out by the audience that delights in Bill Maher’s rabid attacks on GOP women, it’s further evidence that the one thing the left and Democratic Party loyalists hate most are gay Republicans, even those with a history of fighting for gay equality within the GOP.

Furthermore. Via the Washington Post: The campaign and Grenell are dealing with a backlash from left and right. You’d expect it from the right, but the behavior of “progressives” in trying to block the appointment of an openly gay, pro-gay-equality voice reveals the shamelessness of the partisan left. I’ve said it before but it remains sadly true: their worst nightmare is that the GOP should become less anti-gay and challenge the one true party for gay dollars and votes.

Why this matters: The Washington Post also reports: “Two weeks from now, North Carolina will hold a public referendum on what could become one of the toughest anti-gay measures in the country.… But President Obama did not touch the subject when he appeared in Chapel Hill on Tuesday—even though it is roiling the electorate there.” Why should he, as long as the GOP remains anti-gay, no need to spend political capital on a slavishly loyal LGBT bloc.

Long-time religious right activist Ralph Reed, who used to represent Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and now heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is urging Mitt Romney to adopt Rick Santorum’s scathing brand of social conservatism in order to win the White House. It’s not enough, apparently, that Romney is pro-life and supports the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Writes Reed in a Washington Post op-ed titled “To Beat Obama, Mitt Romney Must Channel Rick Santorum“:

[Romney’s] immediate task is to consolidate conservative support and unify the party. The best way to do that is to appropriate the best parts of Santorum’s message. Santorum follows the trailblazing evangelical candidates Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee, who personified the rise and the maturation of social conservatives as a critical component of the Republican coalition. …

It’s a strategy that could only be cheered in the fever swamps of the religious right and among the Democratic left, who understand what a godsend it would be for Obama.

I’m reminded of Santorum’s remarks on losing a Midwestern primary to Romney that he (Santorum) still felt he was victorious because he had won the most conservative districts—as if failing to carry anything but the most conservative districts boded well as a strategy for winning a general election. But like the socialist left, the social conservative right lives in a fantasyland where the most ideologically pure are certain to be rewarded for their lack of messy ambiguity.

More. Romney’s promise to “champion a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman” doesn’t sit well with some of his largest donors.

The New York Times Magazine looks at the political prospects of the four Republican New York State senators who voted for marriage equality and provided the necessary margin for it to pass. “The four Republican apostates now had targets on their backs,” the Times reports. However:

…if you parse public opinion, you find the acceptance of gay marriage is not just growing; it is accelerating. This is driven, of course, by the overwhelming support of young voters, but also by white Catholics, who have grown more open-minded on gay rightss. …

Opponents of gay marriage used to hold their opinion more passionately than supporters. But as more Americans have openly gay children, siblings, friends and neighbors, the supporters feel just as strongly.

On the other hand:

African-American support for gay marriage has remained stubborn, hovering around 30 percent for years, for reasons of class and education and because of the centrality of church in their lives. According to internal memos of the National Organization for Marriage, the anti-gay-marriage lobby sees an opportunity to play on the fact that some blacks resent hearing gay marriage likened to their own civil rights struggle.

Interestingly, the article notes that the four senators:

are upstate guys, from struggling former mill towns and diminished Rust Belt cities. So while the senators’ political calculus differs from district to district, their experiences give us a glimpse into how this issue is likely to play out in “real America,” as conservatives are fond of calling it, and not just in the coastal metropolises. Which is why the fates of these four are being watched intently by national lobbies and wavering politicians across the country.

Their re-election would be a welcome sign of progress.

So reports the New York Times News Service. Yes, I know, it’s pressure from the anti-gay social conservatives that dominate the GOP that keeps Obama from banning anti-gay discrimination or supporting marriage equality—and it’s the reason why the Democrats failed to move forward with the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which never left committee when they controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of Obama’s presidency, and why the Democratic leadership dragged its feet on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” until the Log Cabin Republicans’ lawsuit (and an uproar from LGBT bloggers) forced a last-minute move.

But if that is the case, then really, wouldn’t it make sense to shift the focus to supporting, and electing, pro-gay Republicans, whereas the national strategy of making the major LGBT lobbies into fundraising arms of the Democratic Party is likely to produce just more of the same?

More. From the Washington Blade: “U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed little interest Wednesday in advancing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the wake of an announcement from the White House last week that the Obama administration won’t take action against LGBT workplace discrimination at this time.” And why would he?

“Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires,” a series of psychology studies at the University of Rochester demonstrates. You’ll never get the homophobes to admit it, but as anti-gay paranoia wanes throughout culture and society, we should see a decrease in this kind of reaction formation.

James Kirchick takes note that the Seattle LGBT Commission had planned to meet with a group of Israeli students touring the U.S. under the auspices of the Alliance of Israeli LGBT Educational Organizations. “It would be hard for anyone, outside the confines of the gay-hating religious right, to find anything pernicious about such an endeavor,” Kirchick writes. Yet the Seattle commission canceled the meeting after a protest by an anti-Israeli “progressive” academic at Seattle University. “We weren’t prepared to handle the Palestinian question,” said the commission’s co-chair.

Kirchick points out “the not-insignificant point that Israeli society doesn’t sanction the torture and murder of homosexuals, whereas Palestinian society—like the vast majority of Arab and Muslim societies—does.”

President Barack Obama has now shared with us his view of the Supreme Court’s role, which is to uphold laws that are passed democratically by Congress, and that for the court to overturn such a law would be “unprecedented” and “judicial activism.”

As the Washington Post reports:

President Obama challenged the Supreme Court on Monday to uphold his administration’s sweeping health-care reform legislation, arguing that overturning the law would amount to an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” of judicial activism. …

Obama questioned the authority of the nine-member panel of unelected justices to reverse legislation that was approved by a majority vote in Congress. … “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint—that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said during a Rose Garden news conference. “Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Obama added:

“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

In reality, the bill was pushed through the House by Democratic leaders on a narrow vote of 219-212, not winning any Republican support. Even if it were relevant, “strong majority” is not only a lie, it’s a stupid lie.

Of course, he’s being mendacious and hypocritical (evidently, our great Constitutional scholar-in-chief has never heard of Marbury v. Madison, or so you might think). But even so, putting forth this argument will come back to bite “progressives” — such as when the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage, which actually was passed by Congress with big (and bipartisan) majorities and signed into law by President Clinton, comes before the High Court.

More. David Boaz blogs at Politico:

It’s striking to me how the liberals and Democrats on this panel are bending over backward to defend the president’s strikingly inaccurate statement. … Everyone who observes the Supreme Court – every constitutional law professor, every reader of newspapers – knows that it’s just nonsense to say that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” to “overturn a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

More. Conor Friedersdorf writes at The Atlantic:

President Obama’s recent remarks notwithstanding, it isn’t as if the left wants a Supreme Court that consistently respects legislative majorities. The iconic decisions of the Warren Court, Roe vs. Wade, and efforts to extend marriage rights to gays are all premised on the notion that striking down popular laws is sometimes a worthy enterprise. Nor is the left going to champion fidelity to the text of the Constitution as it was understood at the time of the country’s Founding. And as Lawrence v. Texas shows, liberals are comfortable celebrating when longstanding precedents are overturned ….

Except when they’re not.

And from conservative columnist Byron York:

A decision on DOMA, which has not yet arrived at the Supreme Court, lies in the future. But if those arguments come when Barack Obama is president, perhaps DOMA’s defenders will remind the administration of the president’s respect for duly constituted and passed laws.

Furthermore. In the comments, “another steve” responds to criticism of this post from our loyal left-liberal readers:

It’s just nonsense to say the president’s remarks were taken “out of context.” They weren’t very long, you can read them in all the major papers. And many liberals immediately defended them, until the party’s talking points changed.

Finally, from the Washington Post fact checker: “It’s clear that Obama’s ‘unprecedented’ comment was dead wrong, because the Supreme Court’s very purpose is to review laws that are passed by the nation’s democratically elected Congress — regardless of how popular or well-intentioned those laws may be…. “

Via Real Clear Politics.

I think if President Obama came out as gay, he wouldn’t lose the black vote,” a cheerful Van Jones told MSNBC this afternoon. “President Obama is not going to lose the black vote no matter what he does,” he added.

Jones seems to recognize that homophobia is a factor in the black community, but goes on to dismiss its impact (and then, to be fair, he defends marriage equality, which few Republicans would do). Still, the linkage of “coming out as gay” and “no matter what he does,” with all that chortling between Jones and the MSNBC gang, is more than a little unsettling.