IGF CultureWatch

A coalition of religious conservative groups blocked the city of El Paso, Texas, from extending benefits to city employees’ same-sex partners through a successful ballot measure. The aim of the initiative: to promote “traditional family values” by limiting benefits to “city employees and their legal spouse and dependent children.” But as the Wall Street Journal reports, after being approved by 55% of the voters, it became clear that the measure also eliminated retiree health benefits for former city workers (and even for elected officials, who aren’t technically city employees).

“We don’t want to get into a holy war with the church,” said Ron Martin, president of the local police union. “I just wish they would have left us alone.” Just one of the unintended consequences of discrimination by ballot box.

Tis the season, courtesy of Fox’s “Glee“:

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal remains on life support. True, John McCain’s transformation into Jesse Helms is one of the more disheartening developments (McCain/Palin would have been a train wreck, not that Obama/Biden isn’t). On the plus side, the announcement by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) that he will support repeal, as will Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), most likely with fellow GOP senators Olympia Snowe (Maine), Richard Lugar (Mo.), and perhaps John Ensign (Nev.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and maybe a few others, shows that there is part of the Grand Old Party that can be worked with, if there is a will to do so.

What remains startling about the 111 Congress is that, aside from the so-far fumbled DADT repeal effort and passage of a lame hate-crimes bill, nothing in terms of gay legal equality has passed. Nancy Pelosi’s leftwing House didn’t even move the Employee Non-Discrimination Act out of committee (and despite the debatable merits of the bill, a majority of Americans say they favor barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation). Repeal or modification of the Defense of Marriage Act was never even seriously raised.

Analysis of why two years of a huge Democratic majority in the House, with a (for a year and a half) filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority, yielded so little should be the focus of much soul-searching within the LGBT movement. That it won’t speaks volumes about the big Washington LGBT activists’ partisanship-first misdirection (yes, I mean you Human Rights Campaign).

More. Jon Stewart feels the need to mock Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for their testimony in support of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

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The Advocate excerpts remarks supporting repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

In the responses to the Adovcate piece, a commenter proclaims that Republicans oppose repeal because they intend to “say no on everything that Obama tries to pass, tries to do to get the country going in the right direction.” But that’s exactly the kind of progressive response that’s so entirely counterproductive. Instead of engaging Republicans and making pro-liberty arguments, too many Democrats go out of their way to present DADT repeal as part of Obama’s progressive, big government, intrusive state agenda. Gee, that will get small government GOP moderates onboard.

More. On another culture war front, leftists at The Nation attack libertarians for criticizing TSA scan and grope policies. When the state is run by “progressives” led by a dear leader, no government violation of human dignity may be opposed. From David Boaz: “it’s striking to see how many conservatives think the TSA has gone too far, and how dismissive—even contemptuous—liberals are of rising concerns about liberty and privacy.” From Glenn Greenwald: “The most odious premise in [The Nation] piece: anyone who doesn’t quietly, meekly and immediately submit to Government orders and invasions—or anyone who stands up to government power and challenges it—is inherently suspect.”

From Cory Doctorow: “I remember when being anti-authoritarian, pro-dignity and pro-freedom were values of the progressive left.”

As I’ve previouisly blogged, Harry Reid set up the “don’t ask, don’t tell” pre-election vote to fail. By refusing to allow a full debate, he ensure united GOP opposition, even though GOP senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Richard Lugar (Ind.) have indicated they would otherwise have voted for repeal, thus denying the GOP its filibuster. GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), John Ensign (Nev.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), among others, are also mentioned as obtainable votes against filibuster and for repeal.

As Kimberly A Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal (full column only available to wsj subscribers):

If Democrats leave town with few or no final victories to tout—if they fail even to protect Americans from tax hikes—they can thank their Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. It was Mr. Reid’s flawed pre-election strategy that landed his party with this undercooked fowl, and his post-election floundering has even his own members worried.

You wouldn’t know this from listening to Mr. Reid, who has laid out a lame-duck agenda that bears no connection to time, reality or election results. According to the Nevadan, Senate Democrats are going to confirm judges, rewrite immigration law, extend unemployment insurance, fix the issue of gays in the military, reorganize the FDA, forestall tax hikes, re-fund the government, and ratify a nuclear arms treaty—all in two, maybe three, weeks. This is the same institution that needs a month to rename a post office.

This legislative pileup is what happens when a majority leader chooses to hijack the Senate—to use it not on behalf of the country, but on behalf of a midterm campaign. The first part of Mr. Reid’s strategy was to introduce legislation specifically designed to rev up a liberal base for the midterm vote. To pep up gay rights activists, the majority leader promised legislation to change the military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. To inspire Latino midterm voters, he also embraced the Dream Act, which would offer a path to citizenship for some immigrants.

Part two of Mr. Reid’s strategy: Make sure nothing, including these highlighted bills, then passed. Much of today’s unfinished business is legislation that could have earned GOP support. But the majority leader deliberately included poison pills that would cause Republicans to balk. The entire goal was to tag Republicans with obstructionism, turning off average voters and further inspiring the base.

The strategy didn’t work, and by putting politics above all else, we’re likely to pay the price for a long time indeed.

Thor Halvorssen blogs on last week’s vote in the UN to remove gay people from a resolution calling on countries to condemn “extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions” based on discriminatory grounds. As Halvorseen explains:

The resolution highlights particular groups historically subject to executions including street children, human rights defenders, members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority communities, and, for the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation as a basis on which some individuals are targeted for death.

The tiny West African nation of Benin (on behalf of the UN’s African Group) proposed an amendment to strike sexual minorities from the resolution. The amendment was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

In other words, the resolution ensures that the U.N. no longer condemns extra-judicial killings of gay men and women The countries voting for and against the resolution reads like a list of the civilized vs. the uncivilized world (sorry, no moral relativism here).

As Halvorssen notes:

Those against the amendment include every European nation present, all Scandinavian countries, India, Korea, most of Latin America, all of North America, and only one Middle Eastern nation: Israel. In most countries in the Middle East, it is a crime to be gay—in some, like Saudi Arabia, it is punishable by beheading and in others, like Iran, by hanging.

Be thankful if you don’t live in one of the countries voting in favor of the resolution. And if you’re an American, be especially thankful for these freedoms.

From the Washington Blade: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal ‘barely hanging on’:

One Senate Democratic aide, who spoke to the Washington Blade on condition of anonymity, said repeal — currently pending before the U.S. Senate as part of the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill — is “barely hanging on with life support.”

“The only way to resuscitate this effort and get a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ vote is for President Obama and [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates to start pushing directly, something we on the Hill had expected the president and Gates to do long ago,” the aide said.

Frustration over the lack of movement on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” prompted activists affiliated with GetEQUAL to take action on Monday and chain themselves to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience.

Elsewhere in the Blade:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Thursday expressed confidence about having the necessary 60 votes to move forward with legislation containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal — provided certain conditions are met with the amendment process on the Senate floor. . . .

Lieberman said he’s received assurances from GOP senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) as well as “others privately” that they would be open to moving forward with defense legislation containing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal provided there’s an “open amendment process” in bringing the bill to the floor.

And from the Washington Times, on the pre-midterm election “don’t ask” Senate vote debacle:

Many Republicans wanted to debate amendments on how the nation would handle trials for suspected terrorists, and also wanted a chance to try to strike language that would allow military hospitals to provide abortions to women willing to pay for them.

Asked whether Ms. Collins, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, would support a repeal effort, her spokesman, Kevin Kelley, said “she wanted to vote for the defense authorization bill and supports the repeal.”

“Her issue at the time was that Majority Leader Reid had said he would not allow any Republican amendments to the bill at the time. She was opposed to that process, which shut Republicans out of the debate,” he said.

So Harry Reid and the liberal Democrats didn’t want to let the GOP vote on banning abortions in VA hospitals, and were willing to let “dont’ ask” repeal go down because of it. Thanks, Harry. Let’s see if you make amends (by allowing a fair amendment process, and thus bringing in GOP votes from Collins and Lugar) as the clock ticks away.

More. tick, tock, tick, tock.

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that four out of 10 Americans believed marriage is becoming obsolete. In 1978, just 28 percent felt that way.

Although the push by gay people for marriage equality goes against this trend, expect social conservatives to blame us for the decline in marriage.

The real reason marriage is on the ropes: about 29 percent of children under 18 currently live with a parent or parents who are unwed or no longer married, that’s five times more than the number from 1960.

Then there’s the class angle. In 1960, people with a college degree were only 4 percentage points more likely to be married than people with just a high school education or less. By 2008, that gap widened to 16 percentage points.

The rise of the welfare state has much to do with the decline of marriage and coherent families as support systems. On this as on other matters, limited-government conservatives and libertarians are correct, and social conservatives who scapegoat committed gay couples are wrong.

More. Maybe this will help bring marriage back into vogue.

GOPround, a gay conservative group, and representatives of leading Tea Party organizations have sent a letter to House and Senate Republican leaders urging them to keep social issues off the Republican agenda, reports Politico. The letter states:

“On behalf of limited government conservatives everywhere we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement. . . . This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check. . . .

We urge you to stay focused on the issues that got you and your colleagues elected and to resist the urge to run down any social issue rabbit holes in order to appease the special interests. The Tea Party movement is not going away and we intend to continue to hold Washington accountable.

“When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren’t arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion,” said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member.

More. EDGEBoston, a gay paper, provides some background and analysis, concluding:

Some social conservatives. . . have decried the shift in focus from social hot button issues. . . . With American society becoming more accepting of GLBT citizens, however, the nation’s politics seem bound to change as well. For the moment, it appears as though gays wishing for less government intrusion into their lives may have made common cause with other stripes of conservatism.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Modern Family,” a sitcom that includes a gay couple with an adopted child, is the third most popular show among self-identified Republicans but doesn’t break into the top 15 among Democrats. Surprised?

“Desperate Housewives,” a comedy about families and friends with gay characters, ranks tenth among Republicans and doesn’t crack the Democrats’ top 15 (the show, by the way, is created, written and produced by Marc Cherry, described on his Facebook page as a “somewhat conservative, gay Republican” and winner of Log Cabin Republicans’ American Visibility Award.) However, “Brothers & Sisters,” a large family drama with a gay couple (and a more didactic liberal line) ranks sixth among Democrats but doesn’t break the GOP’s top 15.

And then there’s this to ponder:

“Mad Men”… scores through the roof with Democrats (does anyone in Santa Monica or on Manhattan’s Upper West Side not watch it?), but it has one of the weakest scores among Republicans. The same is true for FX’s “Damages,” Showtime’s “Dexter,” HBO’s “Entourage” and AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” . . .

“The big shows with mass appeal tend to have above-average scores from Democrats and Republicans but with higher concentrations of Republicans,” says John Fetto, senior marketing manager at Experian Simmons. “Looking at the Democrats side, I don’t mean to make light of it, but they seem to like shows about damaged people. Those are the kind of shows Republicans just stay away from.”