IGF CultureWatch

Conservative (and not very gay friendly) columnist Thomas Sowell nevertheless scores some sharp observations about the current campaign against school bullying. While not mentioning gay youth (prime victims of harassment, intimidation and violence), he is otherwise correct in noting:

The courts have created a legal climate where any swift and decisive action against bullies can lead to lawsuits. The net results are indecision, half-hearted gestures and pious public pronouncements by school officials, none of which is going to stop bullies.

When judges create new “rights” for bullies out of thin air, just as they do for criminals, and prescribe “due process” for school discipline, just as if schools were little courtrooms, then nothing is likely to happen promptly or decisively.

If there is anything worse than doing nothing, it is doing nothing spiced with empty rhetoric about what behavior is “unacceptable”—while in fact accepting it.

If public schools aren’t allowed to enforce discipline and to actually punish bullies, then much of the anti-bullying rhetoric is just hypocritical posturing. And legislative mandates that schools “teach tolerance,” when they can’t teach kids to read and write, don’t inspire confidence. (School choice and private school vouchers, providing an actual incentive for public schools to get their act together as they compete for students, just might. At least victims, like Kurt on “Glee,” could flee their tormentors.)

The Human Rights Campaign’s castigating the House leadership for spending $500,000 (and probably much more) to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court cases where its constitutionality is being challenged strikes me as proper. But the group’s criticism of the law firm of King & Spalding for taking the House’s case to defend the constitutionality of DOMA is somewhat grayer. While I don’t know that I would want to hire the firm that’s fighting against my rights, all sides deserve an advocate and I don’t fear a strongly argued case that makes clear what the constitutional issues are.

Update: King & Spalding feels the pressure and withdraws. Firm Partner Paul Clement, a former Solicitor General, resigned in order to continue the defense of DOMA he agreed to undertake. LGBT activists cheered; others warned of a New McCarthyism.

I wish the House wasn’t pandering to social conservatives in holding hearings on the legality of President Obama’s decision not to have the Justice Department support DOMA in court. But I question how constructive HRC’s attack on the hearings (“fixated on beating up on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans”) will be. Democrats are able to call witnesses, too, if they so choose, I believe, so wouldn’t it be more productive to show up and make the best possible case?

More. In an earlier post I praised the administration’s decision to belatedly, after two years, stop defending DOMA in court. As I asked then:

Will the LGBT Obama partisans…who for the past two years have assured us that Obama had no choice but to defend DOMA against legal challenges, that he was legally obligated to order his Justice Department to do so, and who maintained that position by dismissing those of us who pointed to contrary precedents, now admit they were wrong?

Needless to say, the view that many of Obama’s supporters took then sounds eerily similar to the position that the House GOP is now taking—and that the pro-Obama folks are excoriating.

The anti-gay religious right claimed “religious discrimination” when Wal-Mart fired an employee who verbally harassed a lesbian co-worker, screaming at her that she was “going to hell.”
The Seventh Circuit has now upheld the firing.

Wal-Mart, by the way, also should be free to fire a gay or lesbian employee who yells at a conservative Christian co-worker and calls her a “bigot” for attending a socially conservative church. But if and when such a case arises, would anyone be surprised if the gay employee were to claim “anti-gay discrimination”?

A report in Newsweek shines a light on “a part of life in the armed forces that hardly anyone talks about: male-on-male sexual assault.” Jesse Ellison writes:

While many might assume the perpetrators of such assaults are closeted gay soldiers, military experts and outside researchers say assailants usually are heterosexual. Like in prisons and other predominantly male environments, male-on-male assault in the military, experts say, is motivated not by homosexuality, but power, intimidation, and domination. Assault victims, both male and female, are typically young and low-ranking; they are targeted for their vulnerability.

A key argument by those opposed to letting open gays serve in the military was that it would lead to sexualized barracks (often with the none too subtle invoking of gays as sexual predators). In all likelihood, having open gays around will decrease the incidents of male-on-male sexual assault. Reporting and follow-up measures being put in place measures to protect straights from gays will have the effect of protecting both gays and vulnerable straights from the assaults of twisted, hetero bastards.

Related: The GOP’s House hearings this week on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”—a sop to the anti-gay right—failed to produce the bang the bigots were looking for.

“The whole thrust of the training is you’re supposed to go on treating everybody like you’re supposed to be treating everybody now—with dignity, respect and discipline,” [Secretary of Defense] Gates said.

Well, treating everyone with dignity, respect and discipline certainly would be a step forward!

University of Missouri law professor Thom Lambert takes aim at the claim by University of Pennsylvania law professor Tobias Wolff (writing at the Huffington Post) that gays should support labor union stances (or, as Wolff puts it, “Pushing back against the current assault on American workers should be one of the highest priorities of the LGBT community today—fully on a par with the effort to secure employment discrimination protections or relationship rights”).

Prof. Lambert responds:

If an expression of support for gay rights and the provision of benefits to gays were enough to create a “reciprocal obligation” to provide support, gay people would have to spend all their time pushing causes!

Which might be fine with Prof. Wolff, as long as they were progressive causes (Lambert notes that Wolfe is not demanding that gays endorse a BP plan to limit liability for oil spills, although BP is on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of “top businesses that support equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees”).

Concludes Lambert:

So, if you’re a gay person and you think collective bargaining by public sector unions is bankrupting state and local governments while fattening the civil service class, go gripe about it to your Republican neighbor over a beer. In doing so, you’ll be promoting the sort of social change that will ensure real equality for gay people in the future.

More. Dale Carpenter blogs:

Wolff’s argument comes from a long political tradition, going back at least to the 1950s, which maintains that gay rights are inextricably tied to a host of causes supported by self-styled progressives—everything from abortion rights to various left-wing revolutionary movements. Lambert is part of an emerging group of dissenters from the dominant progressive tradition in gay politics. It includes people who support gay rights but also support the rights of the unborn, oppose gun-control legislation, want taxes kept low, think social welfare programs are wasteful and counter-productive, doubt the value of national healthcare programs, and so on. They may be wrong about any or all of these things, but it is hardly obvious that sexual orientation—either as a matter of principle or as a matter of political strategy—should dictate the stands they take.

The Republican Party as a whole is not supportive of gay equality. You might think that would lead LGBT political groups to try to increase the number of pro-gay (and openly gay) Republican office holders, who once elected would be in a position to change the party. Alas, that’s not the case.

Take the Victory Fund. Its stated mission is “To change the face and voice of America’s politics and achieve equality for LGBT Americans by increasing the number of openly LGBT officials at all levels of government.” But the group has long had a virtual litmus test against pro-life gay candidates, which (with rare exception) has excluded endorsements for gay Republicans. Robert Turner, president of the D.C. chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, argues “being pro-life is not bad for the gay cause” and is urging the Victory Fund to “Get rid of the pro-abortion plank in your vetting process and move on.”

Another case in point; Just this week Equality California (EQCA) endorsed Democrat Debra Bowen for Congress. She’s a pro-gay liberal, but also running for the seat is popular Republican Redondo Beach mayor Mike Gin, who is openly gay and married (yes, to a man).

You’d think sending him to Congress would convey a powerful message to the GOP and be a significant step toward changing the party’s anti-gay stance. But fealty to the Democratic Party remains the top priority of a great many LGBT activists, whose worst fundraising nightmare is a GOP that isn’t adamantly anti-gay.

More. Log Cabin Republicans are “Proud to Support One of Our Own, Mike Gin, For Congress.”

A sign of what’s wrong with today’s LGBT activism. Jeff Epperly explains how the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is attempting to silence non-PC openly gay writers.

The Washington Blade reports:

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) maintained this week that pro-LGBT legislation could see progress in the Democratic-controlled Senate during the 112th Congress as prospects of movement are unlikely in the Republican-controlled House.

Well, yes. So, why weren’t these measures brought forward during the 111th Congress, when Democrats enjoyed large majorities in the House and Senate (with a filibuster-proof party majority in the latter for a year and a half, lost only with the election of moderate Republican Scott Brown)? It’s only now, when these bills are certain to die in the GOP House that the Democrats are making them an issue with an eye on rousing LGBT donors and support for 2012.

It’s the same old, same old. As I’ve previously argued, even repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) was shoved off to the last possible moment last year, and then initially brought to the floor by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid in a way that ensured maximum GOP opposition (i.e., with no debate allowed on amendments to the military appropriations bill). It was only when left-wing bloggers and activists began to turn on the Democrats over these shenanigans that a clean DADT repeal bill was brought to the floor and then passed with the support of six GOP Senators (including Scott Brown).

Anyone remember Bill Clinton’s first two years, with majorities in both Houses?

Gay voters are like Charlie Brown and congressional Democrats are Lucy, jerking the football away so that Charlie Brown trips and falls as he runs up and is just about to kick it. Again, and again, and again.

I certainly don’t think libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) should be exempt from criticism, but the reporting shouldn’t be as misleading as in the Advocate story, Ron Paul Supports DOMA.

There is much confusion both by politicians and throughout the media over the fact that the Defense of Marriage Act that Bill Clinton signed into law has two aspects: Section Two holds that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages that are authorized by other states. Section Three holds that the federal government may not recognize any state-sanctioned same-sex marriage for purposes of federal law, which includes matters such as joint income tax filing, spousal immigration, Social Security inheritance, etc.

An argument can be made that Section Two upholds federalism and, even if disagreeable, allows for a slow but steady progression of state-recognition for same-sex marriage without forcing Utah and Alabama to recognize marriages performed in Vermont and Massachusetts. That could have the positive benefit of taking some of the heat off of a push by social conservatives for a federal constitutional amendment that would bar all states from recognizing same-sex marriage.

But there is no justifiable federal argument on behalf of Section Three. It’s anti-federalist, imposing one doctrine (non-recognition) on all states. It’s also ahistorical, in that the federal government has always allowed states to define their own marriage laws and to then recognize those unions.

So what’s wrong with the Advocate piece? Here’s an excerpt:

Speaking to the group Family Leader in Pella, Paul said of DOMA, “I see that as an act that was prohibiting the move to nationalize [same-sex marriage] and force Iowa to accept the rules of Massachusetts or whatever,” The Des Moines Register reports. DOMA, which President Obama and the Justice Department said they will no longer defend in court, allows states to deny recognition to same-sex marriages performed in other states, and also prevents federal recognition of such unions.

Rep. Paul states his support for Section Two of DOMA. He doesn’t mention Section Three. But the Advocate then defines DOMA via non-federal recognition.

Maybe Rep. Paul is bad on that, too. But it’s not what he is quoted as saying and doesn’t jive with his opposition to a federal anti-gay marriage amendment. The magazine says, with some justification, that Paul “seemed unclear” and showed “confusion” about DOMA, which is true to the extent he didn’t mention the anti-federalist Section Three in making his federalist argument. But the Advocate itself further muddies the water by confusing support for Section Two with Section Three; they are different, and reporting should clarify, not confuse, that point.

It’s very possible that when DOMA reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, Section Two will be upheld but Section Three ruled unconstitutional. Our efforts should be concentrated on getting rid of Section Three, even if it means living with (or even embracing) Section Two. That will require a bit more sophistication than the Advocate and other media seem willing to muster.

In addition to the studies showing growing support for marriage equality that Jonathan Rauch notes below, according to the latest polling by the highly regarded and nonpartisan Pew Research Center, about as many adults now favor (45%) as oppose (46%) allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. Last year opponents outnumbered supporters 48% to 42%. Opposition to same-sex marriage has declined by 19 percentage points since 1996, when 65% opposed gay marriage and only 27% were in favor.

But GOP leaders, with the marked exception of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, continue to place their bets on wooing the anti-gay right. As for Daniels, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll “appears to vindicate his repeated insistence that the country needs a ‘truce’ on fights over social issues while it grapples with its mounting economic challenges.” The Journal adds:

Nearly two thirds of Republican primary voters said they would be “more likely” to vote for a GOP primary candidate who says the party should focus more on the economy and the deficit and less on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Only 8% said they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate. The rest said they were unsure.

Yet this week House Speaker John Boehner announced he will be spearheading a congressional effort to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. Once again, the GOP ensures it doesn’t miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.