IGF CultureWatch

Updated 11/7/10

Blogs B. Daniel Blatt at GayPatriot, it’s high time for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest and best funded LGBT lobby, to review its strategy and leadership:

if [HRC] is serious about advocating for gay and lesbian Americans in our nation’s capital, it needs new leadership. Its leaders just don’t get the issues which helped elect Republicans across the country. It is time for Joe Solmonese to step down and to be replaced by someone who knows how to “talk Republican”, given that Republicans will soon control one house of Congress.

Solmonese’s background is in left-wing partisan (Democratic) advocacy. Before coming to HRC, he worked for EMILY’s List, an outfit which defines itself as “a community of progressive Americans dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women“. . . .

People want government to leave us alone so we can solve our problems on our own. And that’s a message which should be welcome to gay and lesbian individuals and should certainly not be anathema to the gay community. . . . Just as government shouldn’t interfere in the marketplace, so it shouldn’t meddle in our homes. If it wants to have any influence in the 112th Congress, HRC’s leadership needs to tap into the freedom rhetoric that so resonated with the American people in yesterday’s balloting and lobby Congress not to enact laws which limit our liberty.

And to do that, they don’t necessarily need a Republican leader or one from the Tea Party movement, but one familiar with and respectful of the ideas which undergird it. Joe Solmonese is not such a man.

Too often, Solmonese has seemed more interested in defending the Obama administration to HRC’s gay donors rather than in playing hardball. As for lines of communication with the GOP, they appear to be nil. Even leaving aside the group’s failed one-party strategy, the people running HRC, as Blatt notes, don’t speak the language of “liberty” (from an intrusive government); their template for politics is one of “rights” (granted by a progressive government). They live in a different world from the party that now controls the House.

[Added: The arguments for marriage equality and open military service could be framed through either lens. But liberty talk just doesn’t come naturally to left-leaning progressives.]

[Added: Considering Joe Solmonese’s $300,000+ salary, he isn’t exactly being paid for performance.]

More. From the comments: “Don” observes, perceptively:

The point is not that LCR and GOProud don’t have their own jobs to do. The point is that HRC, as an organization that relies primarily on lobbying to advance gay rights, should act like a smart, professional lobbying team.

Every industry of importance uses lobbyists and every industry makes regular adjustments to its lobbying team in reaction to the political climate and which party is in control on the Hill. In 1992, Dem lobbyists were fully employed and GOP lobbyists were looking for work. In 1994, that situation flipped. In 2006, it flipped again and it will yet again in reaction to this week’s results.

Only at the HRC does nothing change. It is the same ineffectual in-house team year after year after year, regardless of who is in control. And to make matters worse, none of HRC’s people are former senior staffers or are otherwise personally connected to anyone of importance on the Hill. The result: this group takes in nearly $40 million per year (as opposed to about 600K for LCR) and even with Democratic super-majorities, is unable to achieve legislative goals that have been pending for more than 3 decades.

[Added: I’m told that it’s not that HRC won’t hire Republican lobbyists, it’s more that they would be expected to sign on to the organization’s broad progressive agenda—abortion rights, race-based affirmative action, etc. You’d have to be pretty RINO (Republican in name only) to make it through HRC’s screening.]

Furthermore. From GOProud: “According to CNN, 31% of self-identified gay voters supported Republican candidates for the U.S. House. This number is a dramatic increase from the 19% GOP House candidates won among gay voters in 2008.”

Is HRC listening?

From the Washington Post last month: “The most common responses were concerns about spending and limiting the size of government, but together those were named by less than half the groups. Social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights, did not register as concerns.”

Is the GOP listening?

America remains a center-right nation. In 2008, many voted for Obama because they believed he’d be a smart, post-partisan leader, and instead got a smooth-talking mega-spender who only grows jobs in the government sector. Yes, there are certainly hard-core left-liberal and hard-core right-conservative states and districts, but the margin that makes for a national majority is not on the extremes.

In several states/districts, Democrats who rubber-stamped the Obama/Pelosi/Reid big liberal agenda lost. But in several states/districts, Republicans who were viewed as flakey Tea Party extremists also lost. In many cases, Republican primary voters sabotaged their own party’s chances. In Delaware, in particular, where GOP Rep. Mike Castle would have easily won the Senate race if he hadn’t lost the primary to Christine O’Donnell. Also in Nevada, where Harry Reid, despite his low approval ratings, beat out Sharon Angle, who was viewed as a wingnut. It looks like in Alaska, Palin-backed Joe Miller will lose to the GOP incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, running as a write-in candidate.

And then there’s California, where Carly Fiorini, an opponent of gay marriage, lost to the very left-liberal Barbara Boxer. In the GOP primary, Fiorini beat former GOP Congressman Tom Campbell, a deficit hawk who supported marriage equality. At the time, polls showed Campbell would beat Boxer and Fiorini would lose to her (as I discussed here). GOP primary votes went with Fiorini and paid the price.

More. Had Harry Reid lost, New York’s Chuck Schumer would probably have become Senate Majority Leader. Although Schumer can be insufferable, he would have been better for advancing gay equality. It’s becoming clearer that Reid all but sabotaged the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal vote. By not allowing any GOP amendments to be brought up, and not trying to strike any deals with GOP moderates (especially Maine’s Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, who had been supporters of repeal), he all but ensured a united GOP would filibuster. His continued tenure doesn’t bode well for us.

Furthermore. David Boaz offers advice to the winners, writing in Politico, GOP won on economy, so focus on it:

Avoid social issues. When the Bush Republicans spent too much time on issues like the gay marriage ban and the Terri Schiavo intervention, they alienated suburban and professional women, college graduates, young people, libertarians and independents — overlapping groups, of course. And they lost two elections. After 2008, they seem to have learned their lesson. Even in the face of several states instituting marriage equality, Republicans kept their focus squarely on overspending, health care and big-government overreach — issues that united opponents of the Obama agenda.

They shouldn’t blow it now. They should stick to the economic issues that won them this election and avoid the divisive social issues that cost them 2006 and 2008.

Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff, a liberal, editorializes The Democrats Earned Their Drubbing:

Given the history of midterm elections being hostile to the party in power, we knew Obama and the Democrats had just two years to deliver on some key LGBT initiatives, most notably repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t’ Tell” and passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. But hopes were far higher than just those two issues. In September 2009, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced the Respect for Marriage Act, which would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. . . . Obama campaigned on supporting a full repeal of DOMA, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. One year later, the bill is nowhere and repealing DOMA has vanished from the radar. . . .

In typically sloppy Democratic fashion, the party has managed to alienate its most ardent supporters — gays — by half-stepping on repeal and appealing a federal judge’s ruling that the military’s gay ban is unconstitutional. Leave it to the Democrats to piss off a constituency that has nowhere else to go.. . . After next week, LGBT rights advocates return to playing defense on the Hill after failing to capitalize on the incredible and short-lived opportunities of 2009 and 2010.

For all the legitimate complaints about the Democrats’ out-of-control spending and fetish for rule by regulatory bureaucracy, one would hope that the near-trillion-dollar stimulus-to-nowhere and the trillion-dollar healthcare mashup would at least be offset by advances in gay legal equality. But gay voters gave millions and worked endlessly for this president and his party, and all we got was a lousy hate crimes bill (and please, the GOP didn’t have a Senate filibuster until mid-2010, so don’t try that lame party defense).

I have no illusions about the GOP Congress, although I hope some sanity can be restored to the federal budget. The judicial branch may well be where gay liberty is advanced. Too bad Obama is appealing the pro-gay rulings on “don’t ask” and DOMA. The price of making the once-independent gay movement into a fundraising lapdog of the Democratic party (which takes us for granted as a captive constituency easily bought off with cheap rhetoric) will be long and painful.

More. Here’s how Democrats respond to favored constituencies—when they feel they need to. In January 2009, the Democratic congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a top priority for NOW and other women’s groups, over strong GOP opposition. The Democrats felt they had to make good on this campaign promise and do so fast. They don’t fear that gay voters/contributors/PACs aren’t going to support them, no matter how little they do on our behalf. This is what comes when groups such as the Human Rights Campaign see themselves as part of the Democratic party machine, rather than fighting on behalf of an independent constituency.

In the closing weeks of the mid-term campaign, President Obama—having lost the support of everyone else—has been strenuously campaigning to bring out the Democratic Party base, especially young liberals, black, Hispanic, and now gay voters. In the closing days of the campaign, he teased that he might consider revisiting at some point his opposition to marriage equality, maybe. After the election. Because, as he told liberal bloggers, “Attitudes evolve, including mine.”

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is busy appealing court decisions that found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

More. Actually, Obama previously said he supported gay marriage when he first ran for Illinois state senate in 1996, but then discovered it was an affront to his deep religious faith in 2004 when, during his U.S. Senate run, he stated: “I’m a Christian…. I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.” He reiterated that position during his presidential run.

So, perhaps it might be more accurate to say his attitude could re-evolve (or just revolve).

In a number of tight Senate and House races, time and again it seems that GOP candidates who veer away from focusing on fiscal restraint and limited government, and instead jump on the culture war bandwagon (gay issues, in particular) are doing themselves no good. In fact, many swing district/state GOP candidates have hurt themselves by vocalizing their opposition to gay legal equality.

We need not point again to New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. Instead, consider Colorado GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck. According to Denver’s Fox affiliate:

Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck’s comments about homosexuality continue to draw strong reactions just two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. Buck, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, said he believes people are gay by choice.

“You can choose who your partner is,” Buck said. “You don’t think it’s something that’s determined at birth?” host David Gregory asked. “I think that birth has an influence on it like alcoholism and some other things but I think that basically you have a choice,” Buck replied.

Reports the conservative Washington Times:

Democrats, in an effort to woo suburban female voters, have ramped up attacks on Mr. Buck’s anti-abortion stance, a rape case he declined to prosecute as Weld County District Attorney, and his remarks that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. . . .

The Democratic strategy has shifted the focus of the campaign away from economic issues, where Mr. Buck and Republicans have enjoyed success in hammering the Democrats on the stimulus bills, health care reform and the trilions of dollars being added to the national debt.

The race is now a dead heat.

More. Just as New York’s Paladino found himself stunned by the response to a little gay-bashing and tried to backtrack (Daily News: “Carl Paladino pleads for ‘forgiveness’ after anti-gay remarks set off campaign firestorm”), so too is Buck trying to stem the damage (Colordado Independent: “Buck campaign to gay teen’s mom: ‘Ken may have misspoke.’”) That, in itself, is a sign of how the world has changed.

As the Washington Blade reports, in Florida, GOP Attorney General Bill McCollum announced Friday that he won’t appeal a court ruling last month overturning Florida’s law banning gay people from adopting children, putting a “final end” to the 33-year old state prohibition.

Meanwhile, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on openly gay servicemembers is back in effect, after an appellate court granted the Obama Administration’s request for an injunction to a district court ruling that had, for several weeks, put an end to government-ordered discrimination against gay citizens. With a Republican House on the horizon and the U.S. Supreme Court’s tradition of military deference, there is a real risk that the reinstated gay ban could be with us for a long time.

Interestingly, the Blade story reports that this need not have been the case:

legal experts, including constitutional specialists with the American Civil Liberties Union and the LGBT litigation group Lambda Legal, agree that presidents generally should defend federal laws. But they say the obligation to defend a law should not apply to cases where strong evidence exists that the law is unconstitutional and a court issues a ruling overturning the law on constitutional grounds. . . .
“The question is no longer whether the Executive will defend an Act of Congress, but whether the Executive will appeal from a well-reasoned, obviously correct federal court ruling based on findings of fact that are exceedingly unlikely to be reversed,” [ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero] said in his letter. “Given these findings and the proper legal standard of review to be applied, there is no reasonable argument for the constitutionality of the policy, and no reason for the government to appeal,” he said.

Generally, I believe that legislatively overturning anti-gay laws is preferable. But if that is not going to happen (because for the year and a half the Democrats had a filibuster-proof senate majority, they dithered), then the courts must be used to secure equality under the law. But when it comes to military discrimination, or the Defense of Marriage Act’s banning the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that states have sanctioned, that’s not the view of this administration.

Rick Sincere blogs that, speaking at the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum claimed that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan “are certainly two of the shoulders that we stand upon as the Republican Party.” Sincere quotes the Cato Institute’s David Boaz commenting on Santorum’s remarks:

“Santorum in Richmond speaks of freedom, individual rights, and the dignity of the human person. But he has demonstrated in the past that he doesn’t really mean the freedom to live your own life as you choose. He has denounced ‘this whole idea of personal autonomy … this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do.’ That’s the American idea of freedom, but it’s not Rick Santorum’s idea.”

Comments Sincere:

Given that Santorum has declared his interest in pursuing a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, he needs to take some time to reconcile his contradictory views and ask himself, are Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan’s shoulders those of giants upon which Republicans stand, or are their old-fashion views about individual autonomy, personal responsibility, and human freedom at odds with the 21st century’s Republican Party?

That’s the question facing the GOP, and it involves whether Tea Party libertarianism will withstand attempts by GOP social conservatives to co-opt the movement.

More. Then again, some see the
winds of change altering the GOP itself.

Furthermore. From The Daily Caller, Sexual orientation makes surprise appearance as campaign issue.

If nothing else, Log Cabin’s lawsuit to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell,” leading to a district court’s ruling barring enforcement of the policy, puts the White House on the spot. If the Obama Justice Department appeals, as it has just appealed a set of recent rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act, it won’t help shore up the Democrats’ liberal base. But it’s expected that lower court rulings invalidating laws passed by Congress should be appealed (although, apparently, there are exceptions). Obama has 60 days to decide. I expect he may wait until after the election and then appeal, although it would be uncharacteristically gutsy to announce the policy is now dead.

More. Obama Administration Requests Stay of Injunction Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Ruling. That didn’t take long. Our “fierce advocate” strikes again.

Furthermore. At least for now, Log Cabin Republicans Prevails Over President Obama. It’s a suit that the Human Rights Campaign and other Democratic party water-carriers would never have brought.

Still more. Obama’s Justice Dept. halts military equality, again.

Sometimes the political system just doesn’t work and there are no good choices, although there may be a lesser evil—sometimes a Democrat and sometimes a Republican.

Tea Party organizers and activists have shown a laser-like focus on reining in fiscal profligacy and eschewing social issues, but that’s not true for a few of the candidates they’ve supported through GOP primary victories. In the race for New York governor, Tea Party backed Carl Paladino has disgraced himself with his ignorant homophobia, some of which he now seems to be trying to distance himself from, given the uproar that, as if in a time warp, he failed to anticipate. If nothing else, his comments that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is acceptable”—coming in the wake of horrors such as the Bronx gay-bashing/torture story and a rash of gay teen suicides—show the political tone deafness of a candidate who fathered a daughter out of wedlock and sent racy (and some say racist) emails.

His opponent, Andrew Cuomo, is a career Democrat who, as Clinton’s head of HUD, is one of the godfathers of the housing bubble (e.g., through his promotion of the Community Reinvestment Act that strong-armed banks into making home loans to those without collateral). Expect more wasteful, unaffordable and counterproductive government interventions from his administration, which will bow to the public sector unions. But he’s clearly the better choice, alas.

Similarly, what more can you say about Christine O’Donnell in Maryland, with her history of wacky social conservatism? But her opponent is a serial tax hiker supporting establishment liberal policies that have choked off growth and innovation. I throw up my hands. Likewise, Nevada, with Sharron Angle vs. Harry Reid (although here, the chance to replace the unctuous Reid as the Senate’s Democratic leader would be worth the price of Sen. Angle).

Not all Tea Party backed candidates are this pathetic—Joe Miller in Alaska, Marco Rubio in Florida, Dino Rossi in Washington state, and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin seem solid, among others. I like Rand Paul in Kentucky as well, despite some political missteps. But clearly, for fiscally conservative social libertarians, sometimes there are no good options.

More. Back to Paladino, it’s hard to know what he actually thinks or believes, but it’s good to see him realize he crossed a line. I hope others on the right take note.

To clarify, it’s not that I don’t think gay pride parades should ever be criticized—in New York and San Francisco, The Onion may have hit the target—but the whole tenor of Paladino’s speech to the rabbis needlessly injected the divisive culture war into a race that should have maintained its focus on economic issues that unite all conservatives as well as many independents and libertarians. It was stupid politics, and coming on the heals of the gay-bashing torture and gay teen suicide stories, just wrong.

Furthermore. William Saletan at Slate writes that Carl Paladino is right about gay pride parades and wrong about gay marriage.

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal has a fine Weekend Interview profile of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook, noting “Mr. Thiel has dabbled in activism to the minor extent of co-hosting in Manhattan last month a fund raiser for gay Republicans” (actually, it was GOProud).

Interestingly, Thiel reflects about Obama, “I’m not sure I’d describe him as a socialist. I might even say he has a naïve and touching faith in capitalism. He believes you can impose all sorts of burdens on the system and it will still work.” Unfortunately, he adds, government has become too big and too inefficient to work, “throwing good money after bad,” and has put up too many regulatory barriers to innovation and growth. He notes, for example, how Sarbanes-Oxley resulted in a dearth of initial public offerings—new public companies based on innovative ideas that are the foundation for robust economic growth—which is part of the reason why “we’re stuck in a period of long-term stagnation.”

The great exception, Thiel says, has been information technology: “So far computers and the Internet have been the one sector immune from excessive regulation,” he observes. Yes, so far.

For me, the profile highlights how openly gay conservatives and LGBT progressives view the problems facing us, as Americans, in starkly different terms. Peter Thiel is the anti-Barney Frank.

More. Barney Frank spins about his responsiblity for the mortgage crisis.