IGF CultureWatch

David Boaz blogs “Conservatives Shift on Gay Marriage.” Well, OK, it’s mainly about Britain’s Conservative Party, which is leading the charge for same-sex marriage in the U.K. But Boaz notes that, here in the U.S., “Republicans too know that ‘young urbanites’ are overwhelmingly supportive of marriage equality, and they don’t want to lose a whole generation.”

But when (or whether) the GOP can move forward by doing both what’s right (the principle of equal freedom under the law) and politically pragmatic (appealing to the center) in the face of intransigent opposition by the Santorum social right, whose activists still dominate GOP presidential caucuses, remains to be seen.

More. From Politico, Republicans Retreat on Gay Marriage:

Just a few years ago, House Republicans were trying to etch their opposition of gay marriage into the Constitution. Now? They’re almost silent. …

It’s not like the GOP has become a bastion of progressiveness on gay rights, but there has been an evolution in the political approach — and an acknowledgment of a cultural shift in the country.

And the article notes this:

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released earlier this month showed a 9 percent increase in support for gay marriage among Republicans to 31 percent. Support among 18-to-34-year-olds was nearly 70 percent, according to a 2011 Washington Post/ABC News poll.

And so the wind blows.

Jonathan Rauch explains why Rick Santorum’s beliefs on privacy are deeply troubling, to say the least. He writes:

Defending sodomy laws, Santorum didn’t make the usual half-hearted point that the laws were rarely enforced. He came out swinging. Homosexuality is among behaviors that are “outside of traditional heterosexual relationships” and therefore “undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family.” People have no right to engage in such behaviors, even in their own homes.

Rauch then asks,

If the state can’t be trusted to regulate our markets, can it really be trusted to regulate our morals? By way of an answer, return, for a minute, to Houston in 1998. According to “Flagrant Conduct,” a fascinating and important new book by University of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter, what really happened in Lawrence’s apartment that night, though shocking, won’t surprise many gay Americans. Lawrence and Garner were not having sex when the cops arrived. …

Two officers freely admitted to Carpenter that their disgust at homosexuality was a factor in the arrest. Nothing new there. Sodomy laws in practice had nothing to do with the enforcement of virtue, and everything to do with the arbitrary use of state power against gays. Before Lawrence, many police departments treated baiting and entrapping homosexuals as a kind of sport.

Back to Santorum, Rauch observes:

He can’t revoke privacy, which the country prizes, and he probably can’t be president. But his ascendance could—and, by rights, should — break the already strained alliance of libertarians and social conservatives on which the post-Reagan conservative movement is built.

For more about Carpenter’s book on Lawrence v. Texas, here’s a link to the San Francisco Chronicle’s review.

Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn discusses “The Gay Alternative to Obamacare,” by which he means GOProud’s critique of the Democrats’ signature power grab. McGurn writes:

Gay Americans understandably chafe at the way the tax code discriminates against them with regard to health insurance. If you are heterosexual, the insurance provided your spouse by your company is treated as a benefit—which means it is untaxed. If, by contrast, you are gay, the insurance provided your spouse or partner by your company can be treated as income—which means taxed.

And then he observes:

Yet with one notable exception, most gay organizations nevertheless continue to argue for solutions that expand the federal government’s role in health care and leave the employer privilege intact. The exception is GOProud, a pro-free market, pro-individual liberty, pro-limited government coalition of gay conservatives and their allies. This group argues that the problem with our tax code isn’t just that it discriminates against gays. It’s that it discriminates against every American who doesn’t have his or her health insurance through an employer.

The folks at GOProud aren’t asking for special treatment. To the contrary, they want a system in which all health-care consumers are treated equally. They argue that this requires a thriving national marketplace for individual insurance…

The point being:

“When the left does identity politics, they simply craft special policies that benefit particular groups,” says [GOProud’s Executive Director Jimmy] LaSalvia. “We’re about explaining how limited government and policies that treat everyone equally might benefit some people in unique ways. As conservatives, we need to do a better job of letting particular groups know how they would benefit from this approach.”

The statist left, including LGBT “progressives,” sees big government control as a way to eventually ensure equality, as long as progressives are calling the shots (and when they’re not and the mega-state falls into the hands of social conservatives, well, too bad). The libertarian view is that it’s better to reduce the role of government and allow free people to make their own decisions via voluntary contractual relationships within a free market system.

As the New York Times reports:

An attempt to repeal New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage law failed on Wednesday in the House of Representatives, with members of the Republican-dominated chamber voting 211-116 to kill the bill. …

With Republicans outnumbering Democrats by three to one in the House, which has approved a number of socially conservative bills this session, proponents of same-sex marriage feared early on that there was little chance of preserving the law.

“Every step forward is a sign of momentum,” said Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, a group that lobbies for same-sex marriage nationwide. “The fact that we got two-thirds of the vote, in one of the most heavily Republican legislatures in the country, will make a serious impact.”

The leftwing flagship Daily Kos ran a story headlined, “New Hampshire’s tea party-run legislature … upholds gay marriage.” It concluded, rightly, “In other words, progress.”

David Boaz writes at the Huffington Post about Cal Thomas’s Confusion About Freedom. I especially liked the blurb David posted on his Facebook page:

“Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas LOVES freedom. Just read his column today. Except the freedom to smoke pot, read pornography, love the person you love, marry the person you love, etc.”

Another promising new organizational leader is the Gill Action Fund’s Kirk Fordham. As the Washington Blade reports:

Growing up in a Christian and Republican family, Fordham said he also has experience with parents who initially were unhappy about his sexual orientation, but later came to terms with it, and he knows what it takes to change the hearts and minds of people like them. …

A lifelong Republican, Fordham currently serves as CEO of Everglades Foundation, but has had experience working for several GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, even some with anti-gay records. …

Fordham said he “absolutely” plans on reaching out to Republican lawmakers to influence them on LGBT issues and he knows “how to speak their language.”

Along with the impressive R. Clark Cooper at Log Cabin, the team at GOProud, and perhaps Chad Griffin, newly named head of the Human Rights Campaign (a liberal Democratic activist who has reached out to and worked with Republicans), the broader LGBT movement may yet realize that focusing on electing and lobbying Republicans who are socially libertarian (and preferably fiscally conservative) is the best way to make the Democrats less complacent toward us.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute remarks to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin:

Every time Republicans have a big win — 1980, 1994, 2010 — it’s because Democrats have overreached on their big-government agenda and Republicans campaign on lower taxes and limited government. Every Republican strategist knows that smaller government is the unifying theme for Republicans and independents in this election. I think even Santorum knows it. I think he doesn’t really mean to get distracted into talking about homosexuality, contraception, and the outrage of separation of church and state. He just can’t help it.

In 2010, the nascent Tea Party movement, focused on fighting back against Obama’s trillions of dollars of debt expansion thrown willy-nilly at politically favored boondoggles, led to the GOP takeover of the House and strong gains in the Senate. But the empire strikes back, and social conservatives supporting Rick Santorum, the anti-libertarian, (and this) are showing they’re still potent.

This occurs just as the Koch brothers are attempting to take over the libertarian Cato Institute (a think tank that has played an important role in advancing gay legal equality, such as through its Supreme Court brief in Lawrence v. Texas that was cited approvingly in his decision by Justice Kennedy, and in supporting marriage equality) and turn Cato into another arm of their Republican election machine by placing Koch employees, Republican campaign operatives and social conservatives on its board. More on the libertarian-conservative divide from Outside the Beltway.

David Boaz writes of the societal progression toward gay legal equality:

Even as the Republican candidates fight to see who can get furthest to the right, acceptance of gay people and gay marriage in the United States is moving briskly along. … Republicans haven’t given up their opposition, but their resolve is weakening. A few GOP legislators helped put [marriage equality] over the top in New York, Washington, and Maryland. Former Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman and a group of libertarian-leaning GOP donors played a key role in [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo’s efforts in New York.

The formerly vocal opposition to gay marriage has quieted. Congressional Republicans haven’t revived the Federal Marriage Amendment. Conservative media stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh and Bill Buckley’s National Review have barely mentioned the issue. (When you search for gay marriage at National Review Online, you get lots of ads for things like “Gay Destination Weddings.”) The ambitious [N.J. Gov. Chris] Christie vetoed his state’s bill while also calling for a referendum on gay marriage rather than flatly rejecting the idea. He also has nominated an openly gay judge to the state Supreme Court.

As Boaz sums it up, “That sound you don’t hear is social change happening.”

Chad Griffin, newly named head of the Human Rights Campaign is, like his predecessor Joe Solmonese, a Democratic partisan with close ties to the Obama administration. But perhaps unlike Solmonese, who departs to join the Obama reelection effort, he seems more willing to work with Republicans (something you sensed Solmonese felt was anathema) and to be critical of the administration (again, something that seemed anathema for Solmonese). From The Advocate:

Griffin, 38, is a fervent supporter of President Obama with personal ties to White House officials, but … Griffin has been openly critical of the president’s evolving position on marriage equality, calling Obama’s indicated support for states’ rights on deciding who can marry “a step backwards.”

NARAL and Planned Parenthood pressed Obama to force Catholic-affiliated institutions to buy abortion-inducing drugs for employees. The environmental lobby got Obama to block a jobs- and energy-gushing pipeline and to lavish federal funding on corrupt “green” boondoogles. Meanwhile, HRC took a back seat to the Log Cabin Republicans on pushing for “don’t ask” repeal and sits back while Obama “evolves” ever so slowly on marriage equality. Will any of this change? We’ll see.

More. The Washington Blade concurs:

“The incoming HRC president also comes into the role as many critics contend HRC has been too cozy with the Obama administration and too afraid to criticize Democratic lawmakers.”

You think? Recall that Democrats were in charge of the House, Senate (with a supermajority) and presidency, and ENDA never moved out of committee. Why spend political capital when the nation’s largest LGBT lobby views its mission as promoting the party.

Sadly, Andrew Breitbart, a tireless pundit and blogger for small government/fiscal conservatism who delighted in exposing leftwing hypocrisies, has passed away. Breitbart was an advisor to GOProud, the conservative gay group, and rallied to its support after GOProud was excluded from participating in the national Conservative Political Action Conference.

What’s striking about the comments following the report in the Wall Street Journal is just how hateful are the remarks by some self-professed liberals (they have now been deleted, I see; I think they should have stayed up). As one commenter responded, “I’ve never seen so much rejoicing at a journalist’s death.”

Somewhat related, here’s an interesting piece from the American Spectator on how Santorum and his followers are trying to drive libertarians (or really, all who might be fiscally conservative but socially moderate) out of the conservative movement. Well, they’d be ideologically “purer” if they succeeded, I suppose, but they won’t win elections. Which is why Michael Moore has been encouraging Democrats to vote for Santorum (as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com website reported).

More. The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher retweets some of the posthumous hate and praise.

More. James Kirchick writes The Audacity of Breitbart:

In 2010, Breitbart joined the board of GOProud, a conservative gay organization. The following year, when the Conservative Political Action Conference announced that it would ban GOProud from its conference in deference to complaints from social conservative groups like the Family Research Council, Breitbart pulled out of the conference and declared that he would host a party for the “homocons” instead. His attitude on gays, like on most things, was shaped by the socially liberal milieux in which he was formed: southern California and New Orleans, where he attended Tulane University.

And more here, from Gay Patriot, Breitbart welcomed gays into conservative coalition.