IGF CultureWatch

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.

This is good news: the Obama Administration drops its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. How this plays out in the court cases, however, remains to be seen, but at long last our “fierce advocate” isn’t actually opposing judicial efforts to secure federal recognition of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages.

Added. Will the LGBT Obama partisans (including several commenters to this blog) 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? Nay.

On another topic in the news, I’m reposting this update to a prior post, with a nod to what’s going on in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana:

Here vs. There. It’s worth noting that, unlike the British Conservative party, the U.S. Republicans are under the sway of a powerful and well-organized religious right contending for influence with a more libertarian, small-government “leave us alone” faction. That’s a challenge on the right that will have to be confronted for many years to come before we see a Republican president call for “equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality” [as Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron recently did].

Moreover, Britain’s Conservatives are in a governing alliance with the Liberals against the leftwing, union-dominated Labour party. But in the U.S., our traditionally liberal party, the Democrats, are now controlled to a large extent by public-sector unions. So we no longer have a pro-market liberal party. That leaves us with a rightwing party dominated by social conservatives and a leftwing party driven by redistributionist unions. Hence, our sad political predicament.

Indeed.

More. David Boaz on Madison, Wisconsin: The Athens of the West.

The Advocate publishes (online) a dissenting commentary:

Over the last months, conservatives have complained to The Advocate about its inaccurate and glowing coverage of Obama administration official Susan Rice, its lack of coverage of John Bolton’s support for “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal and gay marriage, and its whitewashing of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s failed two years of dominance. . . . It’s time The Advocate stops painting Democrats with a perfect brush and starts highlighting the efforts of gay conservatives working to limit government’s involvement in LGBT people’s lives.

The odds that Rep. Ron Paul will ever be president are very slim. But it’s still nice to see him best Mitt (amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage) Romney and win the presidential straw poll at CPAC—the Conservative Action Political Conference—thanks largely to his energized young supporters.

For those who don’t know, Paul was one of just five GOP members of Congress who voted to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And during his 2008 presidential run, when John Stossel (then of ABC’s 20/20) asked if gay people should be allowed to marry, Paul, an opponent of the anti-gay federal marriage amendment, replied “Sure…I’d like to see all governments out of the marriage function. I don’t think it’s a state function; I think it’s a religious function.”

As the Economist reports, Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a resounding endorsement to what were once termed liberal values and against the sort of state multiculturalism that defends the separatism of immigrant communities, including radical Islamism, and opposes their cultural integration into Western society.

Cameron declared that the state needs actively to promote values of “freedom of speech and worship, democracy, rule of law and equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.”

Added the Conservative PM:

Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.…

We need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.

His remarks, not surprisingly, were dismissed by progressives.

Relatedly, columnist Abigail R. Esman describes how the liberal media’s refusal to investigate and report on the wave of honor killings of young women by their families in Islamic immigrant communities led her to reassess her progressive politics.

More—Here vs. There. It’s worth noting that, unlike the British Conservative party, the U.S. Republicans are under the sway of a powerful and well-organized religious right contending for influence with a more libertarian, small-government “leave us alone” faction. That’s a challenge on the right that will have to be confronted for many years to come before we see a Republican president call for “equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.”

Moreover, Britain’s Conservatives are in a governing alliance with the Liberals against the leftwing, union-dominated Labour party. In the U.S., our traditionally liberal party, the Democrats, are now controlled to a large extent by public-sector unions. So we no longer have a pro-market liberal party. That leaves us with a rightwing party dominated by social conservatives and a leftwing party driven by redistributionist unions. Hence, our sad political predicament.

The brouhaha over GOProud’s participation in the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington, is getting bigger.

Those boycotting the event over the participation of openly gay conservatives are using the Orwellian name “Conservatives for Unity” to declare that gay conservatives are anathema and must be expulsed from the movement. They held forth that “it is necessary for each group within any coherent movement not to stand in diametrical opposition to one or more of its core principles. It is our conviction that the institution of marriage and the family qualify as such principles.”

But what does it say that Larry L. Eastland, a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a board member of the American Conservative Union, the group that organizes CPAC, responded in a letter to fellow board members that they should “not be guilty of ‘casting the first stone,’ and added, “Let us not lose sight of our goals by closing the door on individuals who will stand with us on public issues on which we agree, and keep to themselves their differences on issues where it could give ‘aid and comfort’ to our opponents.”

I guess it says that the boycotters are so crazy that they make the Mormons look like liberals.

More. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who sits on the board of the American Conservative Union and is on the advisory board of GOProud, dismissed the boycotters, saying:

Loser people and loser organizations that haven’t done any work all year try to get headlines so they can whine about CPAC. They can get a little press. That happens all the time.

Zack Rosen demonstrates the contortions that gay white men who aspire to be part of the LBGT progressive world have to undergo. He writes “In Defense of the Gay White Male,” but his defense is extremely tepid and his column is more about recognizing his privileged condition as a non-transgendered non-person of color while asserting, mildly, that he really doesn’t quite understand why he should be apologizing for this. Give it up, Zack, cause you’re never going to escape the oppressive white male accusation with that crowd.

In the San Diego Gay & Lesbian News, a progressive outfit called Courage Campaign states:

This weekend in Rancho Mirage, Calif., the Koch brothers—key funders of California’s anti-environment Prop 23 as well as the Tea Party, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and countless other right-wing organizations—will meet behind closed doors with other conservative power brokers. There, these billionaires and their elected officials will strategize on how to impose their right-wing agenda on the rest of us.

Would that “right wing agenda” of the Cato Institute include its amicus brief in Lawrence that Justice Kennedy cited in his opinion overturning state sodomy laws (note: he didn’t cite the briefs from NGLTF or HRC), or the Cato Institute’s efforts backing the suit to overturn California’s anti-gay marriage Prop. 8?

Ah, well here’s some good news to be filed under Things Change: Gay Marine’s husband surprised at respect shown by Naval Academy.

The new iman of the so-called Ground Zero mosque and Islamic cultural center, Abdallah Adhami, advocates retribution for those who leave the faith, reports the New York Post. He advised that those who preach about apostasy should at least be jailed, as “Many [Islamic] jurists have said they have to be killed.”

That led Jordan Sekulow, a lawyer at the Pat Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice, to question why the mosque project would choose a leader who advocates retribution for those who leave the faith. He remarked, “To be in the United States of America and to tell former Muslims to ‘keep your mouth shut’ is against the Constitution.” The Robertson-affiliated center is suing to stop the Islamic center and mosque from being built.

The iman also addressed the issue of homosexuality, holding forth that “An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life.”

That led Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, to respond that “When a religious leader of his standing opens up his mouth and spews this kind of ignorance and hateful statements, it does put his greater judgment into question.”

I believe that those who have legally secured ownership to property should be able to build a religious center, no matter how intolerant they are—whether Iman Abdallah Adhami or Pat Robertson. But that is different from celebrating such a center (when it is of the Islamic variety, of course) as a tribute to “diversity” and the multiculturalism of the Big Apple, as some have done.

The Washington Post reports on still small but none the less important gay inroads within the conservative world, while the New York Times looks at the CPAC flap.

Wishful thinking or green shoots?