IGF CultureWatch

David Brock, the head of the left-progressive and George Soros funded Media Matters group, which basically attacks Fox News 24/7—often disingenuously (e.g., for reporting that there actually are two sides to the global warming debate)—has announced the formation of a tangent effort called Equality Matters. The new group will be led by Richard Socarides, who served as Bill Clinton’s special assistant on gay issues. From Brock’s announcement:

Despite huge progress in gay rights in recent years, exemplified by the historic vote this weekend finally striking down the ban on gay men and women from serving in the military, we are now living through a period of ferocious fundamentalism in the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Traditional conservatives and the Tea Party movement are united only in their contempt for equal rights for all Americans and a desire to return America to a 19th century idyll. Equality Matters will not allow these latter-day ‘clerics’ to gain serious recognition by the media nor influence the policies that affect the lives of every American. . . .

The purpose here is to demonize fiscally conservative Tea Party supporters as the equivalent of the Klan. The aim is to keep gay votes firmly tied to the party of gargantuan government spending and politically controlled redistribution (the Soros/Media Matters agenda). The result will be to dissuade limited government conservatives and Republicans who are rightly revulsed by Brock from positively viewing the fight for gay equality.

It’s a shame that someone as intelligent albeit partisan as Richard Socarides will be leading such a counter-productive effort.

More. “Another Steve” responds to comments defending Brock with the following:

the Tea Party agenda is to reduce government spending and support limited government. No Tea Party groups are promoting social issues–it’s not what they are about. Yes, individual Tea Party people might be socially conservative (not all; there are many, many liberterians, like me, who attend Tea Party events), but it is not what the movement is about.

So if you attack “the Tea Party movement,” as Brock does, you are attacking limited goverment conservatives, like me. You are saying that I am a bigot and racist because I oppose what’s happened to the size and cost of government. It’s the worst sort of smear.

Yes, it is. And it’s by an organization that purports to fight misinformation and stereotypes.

From the Washington Post: “A Senate vote Saturday cleared the way for final passage of a bill to end the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy…. Fifty-seven members of the Senate Democratic caucus and six Republicans—Sens. Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio) —voted yes” on the procedural vote (that is, the vote to have a vote).

In the final 65-to-31 vote taken Saturday afternoon, two additional GOP senators supported repeal: Richard Burr (N.C.) and John Ensign (Nev.).

If the military report had been requested earlier and finished before the final month of the 111th Congress, and if the Democratic leadership had made it a priority, the repeal could have happened sooner. GOP senators Collins, Snowe and Brown, in particular, didn’t just become socially moderate.

But with the incoming GOP-controlled House, the path is blocked in terms of further legislative advances. It will be up to the courts to modify the Defense of Marriage Act’s ban on federal recognition of state-authorized same-sex unions. And the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which during the two years of a Democrat-controlled Congress never made it out of committee, is dead. (In 2007, during the 110th Congress, the House had passed a version of ENDA covering sexual orientation but not gender identity.)

More. The change won’t take effect right away. After being signed into law, the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won’t hurt troops’ fighting ability. After that occurs, there’s a 60-day waiting period.

Furthermore. It’s worth noting that the Dream Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for children brought into this country at a young age by their parents, was set up to fail, just as “don’t ask” repeal was set up to fail until this week. The Senate Democratic leadership allowed no committee hearings on the controversial measure, and then in the final weeks of the congress brought it to the floor with truncated debate and no process for voting on amendments. It failed to achieve cloture, letting Democrats continue to paint the GOP as the “enemies” of Hispanics.

So, after two years of inaction and shenanigans over “don’t ask” repeal, tying it to a complicated Defense Authorization measure and allowing no debate or amendments, why did Harry Reid at long last move forward a separate measure that, surprise, garnered eight Republican votes? I think many (not all) activists and many (not all) left-progressive bloggers finally demanded an end to the gaming and threatened to blame Democrats as well as Republicans for failure (see, for example, Richard Grenell at the Huffington Post, as previously referenced). The threat to withhold dollars and support pushed the Democrats to give in and allow “don’t ask” repeal to be legitimately presented and passed. Unfortunately, Hispanic activists let the party have its way in order to keep the Hispanic vote tied to the Democratic party through 2012.

Still more. From Slate:

While undoubtedly a step forward, repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” doesn’t suddenly establish a legal principle that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and also doesn’t allow transgendered individuals to serve in the military. [emphasis in original]

In retrospect, it’s surprising that LGBT activists didn’t sabotage DADT repeal by demanding transgender inclusion.

With a vote now schedule for Saturday, and GOP Senators Brown, Collins, Snowe and Murkowski on board, I’m betting this will, finally, happen. But this is troubling, from The Politico:

Publicly, President Barack Obama has reaffirmed his support for repealing the policy this year. But the White House is quietly pushing far more aggressively for the new START treaty, signaling it may be open to punting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal until after the new year if it can get enough GOP votes on the treaty for ratification, according to several senators and Democratic aides.

And this:

Whether the Democrats’ approach will work is an open question. While gay rights groups do blame the GOP, which has promised to block all legislation until the government is funded and Bush-era tax cuts are extended, they have been urging Senate Democratic leadership to make the measure a higher priority and not wait until the end-of-the-session logjam to move it forward.

“We’re running out of time to get a lot of things done around here,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a proponent of the repeal. “I hope we can get a lot of things done, including that one.”

And this:

“I have a lot of people in Nebraska who are supportive of repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ but they don’t hold against you what you can’t do,” said Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat up for reelection in 2012.

And this:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, contends the GOP just wants an opportunity to debate and offer amendments to important bills like the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the DREAM Act and the repeal bill. . . .

“They may be just trying to show their base that, yeah, they really tried hard,” he added, “and the mean ol’ Republicans stopped them from getting it done.”

(Reminder: we welcome comments from all perspectives, but those with personal insults or obscenities will be deleted. That’s the policy.)

From Richard Grenell at the Huffington Post, “Gay Leaders Need a Tea Party Style Shakeup—111th Congress a Total Failure“:

The entrenched gay leaders in Washington, DC, have spent the last two years blaming Republicans for the fact that they themselves have struck out on Capitol Hill and will end the 111th Congress with nothing to show for their multimillion-dollar fundraising efforts. If this were a public company, the Board or the shareholders would have run these leaders out of town a long time ago.

Despite campaigning for decades to put Democrats in control of all of Washington, their dream ticket of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama failed to deliver what the gay leaders themselves promised the movement. . . . [Gay leaders in Washington] have turned their comfortable and high-paying perches into a safe haven free from the consequences of job performance evaluations.

Read the whole thing.

More. Democratic party control of the White House and both chambers of Congress (with substantial majorities) was a once-in-a-generation occurrence. We will not see it again for a long, long time. But a permanent campaign to restore it will keep HRC’s fundraising coffers full for the next decade.

Just to follow up on David Link’s excellent comments: barring last-ditch efforts by Sen. Joe Lieberman and a few others to secure a separate repeal vote, the question will be whether President Obama will appeal a future Ninth Circuit ruling that very well could uphold the district court’s decision that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unconstitutional. The administration, of course, appealed the district court ruling in favor of the Log Cabin Republicans well-argued suit. Stay tuned.

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.”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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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.