IGF CultureWatch

Last week, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law SB 48, which requires that social science instruction in California schools include the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons to the history of the state and nation. The bill had been strongly opposed by California’s Catholic bishops and the religious right. But that doesn’t automatically mean its passage was wise or that it was the right battle to pick at this time.

Immediately after the bill was signed (it’s set to take effect in the 2013-14 school year), opponents launched an effort to collect signatures for a ballot referendum to overturn it. That means another protracted and expensive battle that could very well, at the polls, result in a setback for gay rights advocates. A big reason why is that a lot of parents are likely to see the new mandate as a politically correct effort by Sacramento to placate activists representing a favored Democratic constituency, at a time when the state’s schools are having difficulty teaching the basics of reading, writing, math and history. That’s a persuasive argument to have to defend against.

The 2011 Education Week/Pew Center on the States’ Report Card on School Performance gives California schools a grade of “D-” for K-12 achievement, ranking the state 46 out of 51 states plus D.C. (The state’s overall grade, taking into account factors such as school financing and teacher credentials, is a “C,” for a somewhat better but still mediocre rank of 30.) Given this record, it’s likely the Golden State’s public schools will be as unsuccessful teaching gay history as they have been at teaching everything else, so the upside is rather minimal. The downside is to give the gay struggle for legal equality another distracting and unnecessary sideshow.

Here’s an interesting article from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which holds that “There’s no need to sacrifice free speech for a campus to be accepting of LGBT students.” Prohibiting speech deemed to be “unwelcoming” of LGBT students really isn’t a good idea.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal writes of the bluster against marriage equality in New York by the anti-gay National Coalition for Marriage (NOM) that:

the language [on a NOM-affiliated website] implies that the Legislature acted illegitimately when it “imposed same-sex marriage on New York with no vote of the people.” Such a vote is not part of the ordinary procedure for enacting legislation in New York, and it is misleading to pretend otherwise.

Taranto also describes a NOM demonstration he observed in New York:

Most interesting, it was a very diverse crowd–we’d say a quarter to a third black, with lots of Hispanics. That’s not really surprising. Notwithstanding their tendency to vote for Democrats, blacks and Hispanics tend to hold conservative views on so-called social issues. As we noted in November 2008, exit polls showed that black Californians backed Proposition 8 by 70% to 30%. . . .

It may turn out that yesterday’s diverse crowd represented the religious right of the future. If so, it will be interesting to see how the left tries to counter it. Maybe Thomas Frank can publish a book called “What’s the Matter with Harlem?” or Barack Obama can deliver a disquisition on African-American bitter clingers. We suspect minorities would find such condescension as off-putting as whites do.

No doubt they would.

More. NOM blogs in response to Taranto that “There will be an election in 2012, in which we will find out if Republican elites are right they can pass a gay marriage bill in NY without consequences.”

To which Taranto replies:

Imposing “consequences” on “Republican elites” is a perfectly legitimate goal. But to the extent that that is the objective of the “Let the People Vote” effort, it reinforces our view that the effort is deceptive.

The number of gay people who can legally wed in the U.S. today (albeit without federal recognition) has effectively doubled, given that New York’s population is roughly the same as the combination of the five other states (and DC) where same-sex marriage was already legal.

This political column in the Washington Blade caught my eye. It’s an endorsement of Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley’s run for the U.S. Senate, noting that Berkley is a strong advocate of gay rights. Also in her favor, according to columnist Peter Rosenstein, “Shelley Berkley understands how bad the Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) budget is for her constituents and seniors everywhere.”

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t disagree more. The waste, abuse, fraud and over-utilization in government-run Medicare is unsustainable, and Ryan’s plan is an important and courageous step to bring this overspending under control. While the columnist suggests that Berkley has other ideas on fixing Medicare, as with her fellow Democrats she has failed to spell them out while Demonizing GOP cost-controlling efforts. Berkley’s track history, in fact, casts doubt on whether she would favor any approach other than upping taxes, as a comment on the Blade piece (not from me) points out:

Berkley has a 100 percent pro-gay record. Great! Meanwhile, according to National Taxpayers Union, last year she voted 96 percent in favor of big spending. We have a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $14 trillion national debt because of people like her. So if I’m gay AND a taxpayer AND concerned about the looming debt disaster, should I support people who are spending us into bankruptcy?

So there you have it: good on gays, terrible on the #1 issue confronting the nation: the future of American economic solvency through reducing the exponential growth of government spending. But this is the choice gay voters typically face since gay equality was subsumed under the grand coalition of the left.

More. This Washington Post national debt chart says it all.

Democratic political operatives overwhelmingly say the time has come for gay marriage, while a majority of Republican operatives now believe they should just avoid this issue, according to a National Journal Political Insiders Poll. “Both positions represent significant gains for gay marriage compared to two years ago,” according to the analysis.

Thus does progress get made, but it’s never simply linear. It’s extremely likely, for instance, that the 2012 GOP presidential nominee will favor a constitutional amendment against gay marriage (unlike McCain, who opposed the amendment, which Bush had championed). That anti-gay position will thrill the base in Iowa and the South, but cost the party support among independents and young voters. Maybe in 2016 the party will redo the calculus and a more enlightened conservative will take the day.

More. Texas Gov. Rick Perry—far less odious than Mitt Romney on gay marriage

“Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me,” he said to applause from several hundred GOP donors in Aspen, Colo. “That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business.”

Furthermore. According to the Washington Blade, “a Perry spokesperson said the governor supports a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.” Which, if still true, would make his position just as odious as Romney’s.

Still more. On reflection, I concur with commenter “Another Steve,” who said: “Perry’s recent statement about New York marriage showed a shift, and one that might be capitalized on and used to move him (and the GOP) further. ” That’s right, too.

The Department of Justice filed a motion in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the Log Cabin Republicans v. United States case, asking the court for “emergency” reconsideration of its July 6 decision to lift the stay of the worldwide injunction of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, reports Metro Weekly.

Administrative separation board hearings proceeding and discharges are continuing under DADT, and since the passage of the repeal act the Air Force has confirmed three discharges and one resignation related to 10 U.S.C. 654 in 2011, according to the publication, which notes:

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Servicemembers United executive director Alex Nicholson, said in a statement provided to Metro Weekly, “The Administration’s response to this latest development in the Log Cabin Republicans lawsuit is unfathomable and confusing. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ should be completely dead by now.”

Yes, it should. I wonder if the Obama administration would be fighting this suit if it had been brought by LGBT Democrats rather than Republicans.

More. From the San Francisco Chronicle, “Obama’s Lawyers Seek to Re-Impose ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’

Furthermore. R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, on why the Log Cabin suit has mattered.

Roll Call reports that openly gay Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) is gearing up to run for an open seat in the Senate:

Groups including the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign have supported Baldwin’s political career for almost 20 years, and they intend to tap into their vast supporter lists to fully back a Senate bid by the seven-term Congresswoman, whose voting record has consistently been among the most liberal in the House. …

The Human Rights Campaign has more than a million members and supporters nationwide, and it already has a fundraising portal for Baldwin set up on its website. “If Tammy decides to run for the Senate, we will step up our efforts to get the word out about her record,” HRC spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz said.

Would that be her record for gay rights, or her record as one of the most left-liberal members of the House? And does HRC know that there is a difference?

More. An interesting if rather hard-core libertarian item from the Friends of Liberty Newsletter:

D.C.’s gay pride festival in June was a case study in how the Left operates. What struck me as I walked around the festival was how a young person would see all the Left-leaning institutions of the gay community and conclude, a) that’s normal, and b) there is no alternative way to think about being gay. Only the almost-invisible gay Republican and libertarian booths offered any kind of diversity of thought. A number of organizations with booths at the festival had “equality” in their name . … The real deal is never articulated – ‘Support us and we’ll give you equality but, oh by the way, what we’re not telling you is that you’re signing up to live in a socialist country.’

Furthermore. Baldwin joins with the hard left to vote against the deficit ceiling agreement, finding even a modest amount of decrease in the growth of spending too much of an affront to her spendthrift sensibilities. She’s one of our elected representatives who is most responsible for this.

Former 2-term New Mexico governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson says that the Christian right’s anti-gay “family leader pledge,” which other GOP White House contenders are jumping to sign, “gives Republicans a bad name.” Too bad the media refuses to take Johnson’s presidential bid seriously (unlike, say, Herman Cain, with no government experience), but he doesn’t fit into their political narrative.

More. Johnson’s latest on YouTube, Tolerance is American.

Furthermore. Filed under “There he goes again”…. Ex-Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, gay-rights opponent and GOP presidential contender, gets mired in whether being gay is “a choice” (which he seems to reduce to the dispute over a specific gay gene), when in truth this should be irrelevant to whether gay people deserve equality under the law. (For what it’s worth, the answer, given what we generally mean by “choice,” is almost always no, but maybe for some bisexuals in the middle of Kinsey’s scale, and more often for females than males, sometimes kinda sorta, as if it matters.)

The Pentagon has ordered a halt to all separations of gay troops under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and will begin accepting applications from prospective recruits who identify themselves as gay, reports Army Times, following a ruling by a panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Log Cabin Republicans v. United States.

It’s true that in a few weeks/months the administration would have formally ended DADT (60 days after the defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify that it will not adversely impact military readiness), after Congress voted to repeal the anti-gay-service law last December. But Log Cabin’s suit and the Ninth Circuit’s ruling are still good things. The court’s finding that the statute is unconstitutional because it treats gay Americans differently under the law is an excellent precedent to take into battle against the Defense of Marriage Act and other anti-gay government edicts.