IGF CultureWatch

I must respectfully disagree with David, below. In my view of things, using the blunt power of the state to force Catholic universities and hospitals to buy and provide their employees with free contraceptives, including morning-after abortion-inducing drugs, makes a mockery of religious liberty. And that’s regardless of the fact that most Catholics use and approval of birth control (many of whom may find contraceptives acceptable but don’t extend that view to the morning-after pill).

These institutions are Catholic, not secular, by their charters and in their running. And the church, rightly or wrongly, considers contraception and abortion to be sins. If the state can forced religious institutions to violate the tenets of their faith, then what can’t it do?

The road to the total state may be pleasing to those of the leftist persuasion (at least as long as they’re in charge), but it’s the antithesis of what America should stand for. A religious exemption is not too much to expect of a government that respects religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

A Washington Examiner column notes the following tidbit about one of Mitt Romeny’s biggest donors:

Hedge fund millionaire Paul Singer also gave Romney’s super-PAC $1 million in November. . . . But Singer’s biggest cause in 2011 was not partisan — he spent $1 million lobbying to legalize gay marriage in New York state. That puts Singer not only far to the left of the GOP base and Romney, but also to the left of President Obama, who publicly opposes gay marriage. Singer’s son married a man in Massachusetts. . . .Singer’s million-dollar check doesn’t suggest Mitt is pro-gay-marriage. . . . But it’s revealing that these are Romney’s biggest donors. At the very least, it highlights the difference between the GOP’s electoral base and its money base.

I guess it does.

Also worth noting briefly, this interesting profile in the Washington Blade of formerly closeted former GOP congressman Bob Bauman, whose view today is conservative-libertarian and a pox on both parties.

From an annual study of how incoming college freshman view things:

Even though the percentage of incoming freshmen who identify as conservative has stayed relatively stable, those students and the rest of their peers are shifting away from hard-line conservative stances on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, marijuana legalization and affirmative action. … The rise in the number of students who support same-sex marriage is the biggest shift in this year’s survey. At 71.3 percent, the percentage of incoming freshmen who agree either “somewhat” or “strongly” that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status is up “a remarkable” 6.4 percentage points from two years ago, the report says. While support is more common among women (77.3 percent), it’s increasing faster among men (64.1 percent).

They are the future.

(Hat tip: Walter Olson)

Christie nominates two for state Supreme Court, including gay African-American mayor:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced he is nominating Bruce Harris and Phil Kwon to the state Supreme Court. If confirmed, Harris would be the third African-American justice and first openly gay justice and Kwon would be the first immigrant and first Asian-American justice. . . . Steve Goldstein, the chief executive of Garden State Equality, a gay rights organization, said he was stunned when Christie called to tell him about the imminent nomination of Harris, 60, a graduate of Yale Law School. “As I told the governor right then and there, you could have picked me up off the floor,” Goldstein said.

The GOP will either follow Christie’s direction (and eventually embrace marriage equality, which Christie opposes), or it will continue getting beaten by Democrats who appear tolerant and liberal as they suffocate economic growth.

One takeaway from the GOP South Carolina Primary, won handily by Newt Gingrich: the religious right’s support for distant-third runner-up Rick Santorum proved not to amount to much, despite a high number of evangelicals in the state. Iowa increasingly appears to be an outlier.

As John Avlon writes at the Daily Beast, “If evangelical leaders can’t get their chosen candidate a victory here, where can they do it? … the idea of a mass-mobilizeable, single-issue voter is increasingly a myth perpetuated by special-interest activist groups who are literally invested in the idea.”

Still, Avlon notes, social conservatives

“have certainly been successful in getting Republican candidates to conform to their policy positions. Despite the fact that 70 percent of Republican primary voters say that fiscal issues are the basis for deciding their vote—just over 20 percent say social issues are the defining issue in 2012—this GOP field is as far to the right on social issues as any in the party’s history.”

Gingrich may hold the same anti-gay positions as Santorum, but as of now there’s no love lost between the serial philanderer and the religious right. The same is true of Romney, who still is viewed with suspicion by evangelical leaders.

We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out in terms of the religious right maintaining its dominant position within the party.

Ex-wife says Gingrich wanted ‘open marriage,’ was the campaign story of the day. The GOP presidential candidate’s second ex-wife said he asked for an “open marriage” in which he could have both a wife and a mistress. Gingrich denies the specifics, but the adulterous mistress is now the third Mrs. G.

Added. One man, one wife, one mistress (at a time); otherwise, it’s a slippery slope to who knows what!

Also surfacing: reports that Rick Santorum’s wife, when in her 20s, had an affair of many years with an abortion doctor/father of six (who delivered her as baby!). Candidate Santorum dismisses the charges without quite denying them.

It’s all just further moral hypocrisy by those who belittle committed same-sex relationships as unworthy of recognition and equal treatment under the law.

More. Santorum attacks Romney’s judicial appointments in Massachusetts for being too pro-gay:  An excerpt:

Two of Mr. Romney’s nominations for judgeships in Massachusetts, Stephen S. Abany and Marianne C. Hinkle, were well-known as advocates for special protections for homosexuals. What about the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion? What assurances did the governor receive that these nominees would “only follow the law”?

Kind of makes Romney seem not so bad (relatively speaking).

From the Wall Street Journal, Hope Dims for an Evangelical Pick. Good. The odds are about even that the Republican nominee will be able to unseat Obama. Romney is flawed, but if we’re rolling the dice, better that Romney should land in the Oval Office than an anti-gay equality, anti-personal liberty (anti-free-trade, anti-right to work) zealot like Santorum, or an anti-gay equality, anti-free market, deranged egomaniac like Gingrich.

Political analysts also indicate that the odds of the GOP taking control of the Senate are high as well. So, given that there is at least a strong possibility that the Republicans will control the presidency, House and Senate next year, I wonder if our leading gay lobbies are engaging in contingency planning the way that successful business do, mapping out strategies for various likely (or at least possible) developments over the near term.

The largest and richest LGBT national lobby, the Human Rights Campaign, is in the midst of selecting a new executive director to replace the departing Joe Solmonese. It would be nice to think that, maybe this time, they won’t reflexively go with another leftwing Democratic operative who is uninterested in reaching out to libertarian Republicans (and couldn’t speak their language of personal liberty if he was), and who showed himself to be unwilling to pressure Democrats to spend political capital on our behalf even when they controlled both houses with a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. And that goes as well for the future HRC leader’s willingness to hire lobbyists who aren’t died in the wool Democratic partisans.

If HRC sticks to its old game plan and the Republicans take congress and the White House, that won’t necessarily be bad for HRC (think of the fearsome fundraising pitches they’ll send out); it will, however, prove terrible for those interested in advancing gay liberty and legal equality, or playing defense against rollbacks where equality has hitherto advanced.

More. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer writes:

after a quarter-century in the wilderness, [Ron Paul is] within reach of putting his cherished cause on the map. Libertarianism will have gone from the fringes — those hopeless, pathetic third-party runs — to a position of prominence in a major party. … Paul is nurturing his movement toward visibility and legitimacy.

The movement for gay equality should be able to make common cause with the movement for greater individual liberty. If it can’t because fealty to big-government leftism is seen as a higher goal, that would be an immense lost opportunity.

More (added Tue. night). Whatever you might think of Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, they’re not the blathering anti-gay bigots that Santorum is, and almost as bad, Gingrich and Perry. So the fact that Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry brought up the rear in New Hampshire is welcome news.

And I’d be very happy if the prime challenger to Romney turned out to be a libertarian-minded opponent of the anti-gay federal marriage amendment who refused to sign Maggie Gallagher’s odious anti-gay marriage pledge, and who defends letting openly gay servicemembers serve their country (yes, Ron Paul). He also understands, unlike Gingrich et al, that businesses in a competitive economy must sometimes be restructured (and yes, downsized) to remain profitable and avoid bankruptcy.

Regardless of Paul’s particular strengths and flaws, the best thing that could happen to the GOP (and the nation) would be the emergence of a strong and permanent libertarian wing to counter the pernicioius dominance of intrusive-government social conservatives.

(Original post)

The view from the Log Cabin Republicans:

“Final pre-primary polls out of New Hampshire show strong support for Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. It is not a coincidence that these are also the candidates who demonstrated respect as elected officials for LGBT Americans and focused on economic rather than social issues,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director. “Governor Romney, despite his opposition to marriage, continues to stand by his support for nondiscrimination and said in Sunday’s debate that he would stand for ‘increasing gay rights.’ Congressman Paul has a long libertarian record that includes voting for the end of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and consistently opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment. Governor Jon Huntsman is rising quickly in the polls as voters respond to his pragmatic, commonsense conservative message, including his unapologetic support of civil unions.

Even candidates like Senator Rick Santorum are learning that his past antigay language is not going to keep him in the top-tier, while Gingrich and Perry, who have doubled-down on divisive rhetoric, are floundering. In the state which proudly proclaims, ‘live free or die,’ the path to victory is support for freedom for all.”

During Sunday’s debate in New Hampshire, Romney, who opposes marriage equality, tried to soften his image a bit (as Amanda Terkel relates at the Huffington Post), saying: “I oppose same-sex marriage and that has been my view,” but adding, “If people are looking for someone who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people — that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me.”

He’s both for and against discriminating against gays.

Santorum, who uses much strongly language in opposing marriage equality (he says the “country will fall” as a result of same-sex marriage and that gays adopting children with cause societal “dysfunction”) nevertheless said, “I would be a voice in speaking out for making sure that every person in America, gay or straight, is treated with respect and dignity and has the equality of opportunity.”

Glad he cleared that up.

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Former senator Rick Santorum, reportedly surging in Iowa polls, is not only a virulent homophobe, he also is, according to the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, a long-time opponent of limited government and, in his own dismissive words, “this whole idea of personal autonomy, . . . this idea that people should be left alone.”

More. Romney’s move to the right on social issues, designed to attracted Midwestern and Southern evangelicals, bombed big time in Iowa. Religious conservatives, who dominate the Iowa GOP, went overwhelmingly for Santorum. But if Romney is the eventual Republican nominee, his anti-gay rights and anti-immigrant positions won’t play well with independents. When will they ever learn?

Furthermore. Santorum’s fixation on gay marriage as intolerable perversity gets booed by (some) New Hampshire college Republicans and would be a likely negative among the general electorate.

On the other hand, some are arguing that Santorum would be more likely than Romney, or Obama, to appeal to the white working class. Kimberley Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal: “He’s the frugal guy, the man of faith, the person who understands the financial worries of average Americans. He’s directly contrasting his own blue-collar bona fides with those of the more privileged Mr. Romney. Identity politics is often a winner, and Mr. Santorum does it well.”

Let’s hope the popular response to Obama’s disastrous leftwing “leadership” to nowhere doesn’t turn out to be American fascism.

And finally… Viva Paul for his bare-knuckled attack exposing Santorum’s hypocrisy.

The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage is running an attack ad against Ron Paul, accusing him of supporting same-sex marriage. And they’ve created an entire Wrong on Marriage website to attack him.

Actually, while Paul opposes the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, he supports the Defense of Marriage Act. Somewhat muddying his support for the act (which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages), he also says the issue should be left to the states to decide.

But in the GOP field, Paul is viewed as a pro-gay marriage candidate—earning him the ire of the religious right.

Also of interest, Slate’s David Weigel looks at Ron Paul newsletters from 20 years ago that had some disparaging comments about gays. Gay sex columnist and activist Dan Savage tells Weigel, astutely:

“Ron is older than my father, far less toxic than Santorum, and, as he isn’t beloved of religious conservatives, he isn’t out there stoking the hatreds of our social and political enemies … 1990 was 21 years ago—an eternity in the evolution of attitudes toward gays and lesbians. What has he said about us lately?”

More. From Why Ron Paul Matters, a Wall Street Journal op-ed from the Cato Institute:

Support for dynamic market capitalism (as opposed to crony capitalism), social tolerance, and a healthy skepticism of foreign military adventurism is a combination of views held by a plurality of Americans. It is why the 21st century is likely to be a libertarian century.

Wouldn’t that be nice.