IGF CultureWatch

From the right-wing Washington Times: After demise of ‘don’t ask,’ activists call for end to military ban on transgenders:

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which pushed to end the military’s gay ban, is urging President Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity.” . . .

A White House spokesman declined to provide Mr. Obama’s position on transgenders in the military, referring a reporter to the Pentagon. “Transgender and transsexual individuals are not permitted to join the military services,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

Leaving aside the fairness or unfairness of the military policy, there’s little doubt, politically, that if certain leading LGBT lobbies had insisted that the “LGBT community” oppose repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” until transgendered people were also included, then repeal would have failed to get out of committee, blocked by Democrats and Republicans, just as was the case with the gender-identity-inclusive Employee Non-Discrimination Act. We can be thankful, in this instance, for the arbitrariness of political correctness. (And, I suspect, that L&G servicemembers weren’t going to let the “all at once or nothing at all” crowd call the shots on this one, although SLDN seems now to have found a new mission.)

From the Washington Post, an overview of marriage equality and the courts:

The DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] case is part of the legal wrangling that has slowed what once looked like a relatively timely showdown in the Supreme Court over same-sex marriage.

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the group that has spearheaded legal challenges to DOMA, does not foresee any decision by the justices until 2013.

And the celebrated effort to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage — led by the political odd couple of Democratic stalwart David Boies and former George W. Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson — is caught in a tangle of judicial procedures.

Via Towelroad: HRC’s Joe Solmonese Submits Question to GOP Debate.

More. Will the future of the GOP be more akin to Santorum, or Brown?

I didn’t catch the debate and don’t have much to add to the general response to Santorum’s ugly, and misleading, characterization of gay servicemembers. The format of these debates certianly isn’t helpful—why not ask all the candidates the same questions? Ron Paul and Gary Johnson are against “don’t ask,” and it would be interesting to have seen Jon Huntsman reply.

Effecting change in the GOP will take more than denouncements from left-leaning activists who’d cut off their hand before voting for a Republican under any circumstances. The Wall Street Journal reports on an interesting coalition regarding immigration:

[Free-market] Conservative, tea-party and libertarian groups have joined liberals in fighting a signature Republican bill in Congress that would crack down on illegal-immigrant workers. The legislation, they argue, would hurt businesses and employees while expanding government regulation.

Many LGBT activists have been peddling the line that small-government, low-tax tea party groups are racists, homophobic social reactionaries. That’s not only wrong, it’s counterproductive for long-term coalition building (but not so counterproductive if your goal is purely partisan).

A Hollywood story of how much the world as changed, for the better, in the last few decades.

Cynthia Yockey writes in The Advocate:

LGBTs on the left have only about a year to learn the language of conservatism and persuade the conservative movement that we have an unalienable right to equality. That’s because conservatives now control a majority of state legislatures and probably will also control the White House and Congress come 2013.

Hmmm. Sounds like Cynthia has been reading this blog’s discussion of political language.

Meanwhile, GOP House Speaker Boehner’s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act won’t help. But his case seems so weak on the merits I anticipate a positive outcome, eventually, in the courts. Maybe in 2013.

Oregon’s Republican Party announced that it will strip antigay language from its 2012 platform, the Oregonian reports. Party spokesman Greg Leo said the change part of an effort to streamline the state GOP platform so it’s more attractive to a broader range of voters.

Oregon isn’t Texas, but eventually even the national GOP must realize that its anti-gay positions won’t win the support of future generations (but alas, not in this election cycle). The change will only happen when, as in Oregon, an effort is made to push the party in the direction it needs to go, for all our sakes.

More. The Cheneys Make Case for Marriage Equality. Yes, the man that so many on the left love to hate. And no, I’m not absolving W for backing the federal marriage amendment—a position that Cheney stated he disagreed with. Could he and should he have done more to buck his party on gay equality? Yes. But this still matters.

Joe Solmonese will step down as president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest and wealthiest LGBT political lobby, when his contract expires next March.

My criticisms of HRC have dwelt on its becoming too much of a strategic arm of the Democratic party. I’ll just note that it would be nice if the HRC board would consider the possibility that come January 2013, the U.S. might have a Republican president and a Republican Senate and House. It would be useful to have an HRC head who had some ability to understand and make the conservative-libertarian argument for gay equality, rather than a hard core progressive Democratic partisan. But the chances of that happening are meager.

It could be a very long time before the Democrats again have the presidency and both houses of congress—the situation during the first two years of the Obama administration (with a Senate super-majority for the first year and and half). That more advantage of this wasn’t taken by HRC is a bit of a scandal. No congressional movement on repealing the Defense of Marriage Act or even the liberal priority (at least during the Bush years) of pushing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. And I believe there would have been no administration/congressional movement to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if the liberal blogosphere and several progressive activists hadn’t bucked the “be nice to Democrats” line and demanded that action be taken before the Republicans took the reins of the House in January (plus, significantly, the October 2010 advancement of the Log Cabin Republicans’ lawsuit). HRC’s tune, instead, has been to play nice with the party that they so closely identify with.

Now I realize the GOP harbors fierce opponents of gay rights. Some of my critics seem convinced that this fact means that the LGBT movement should be in the business of advancing the party of the left. I think that’s the wrong take-away. We won’t have gay equality in the U.S. until both parties are on board. Writing off the GOP instead of lobbying it—and doing so by speaking its language of individual liberty (protection from government), not the left’s language of group rights (bestowed by government)—is not going to help get us there from here.

More. Being able to “speak the language” is important. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, overturning state sodomy laws, was written by Justice Kennedy, a Reagan-appointee. He repeatedly cited an amicus brief filed by the libertarian Cato Institute, primarily making a constitution-based individual liberty case, and ignored the brief co-filed by HRC (which focused on “victimhood” issues such as asserting that sodomy laws provoked violence against gays as a group).

But in politics just speaking the language isn’t enough. The ability to mobilize support is what earns the attention of politicians. That requires money and ground operations, and a willingness sometimes to cross party lines (as the National Rifle Association did by endorsing the re-election of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid).

Furthermore. David Boaz of the Cato Institute hails, in his blog post How Judges Protect Liberty:

four federal judges who had courageously and correctly struck down state and federal laws:
• Judge Martin L. C. Feldman, who blocked President Obama’s moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico;
• Judge Susan Bolton, who blocked Arizona’s restrictive immigration law;
• Judge Henry Hudson, who refused to dismiss Virginia’s challenge to the health care mandate; and
• Judge Vaughn Walker, who struck down California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.

That’s a political perspectives that’s neither beholden to left nor right.