IGF CultureWatch

I’m not a big “L” Libertarian Party guy, but I think LP Chairman Mark Hinkle put it very well in his outreach message to disenchanted gay voters:

“Exit polls indicate that Democrats get over 70% of LGBT votes in federal elections. Those voters must really love the Democrats’ rhetoric, because they certainly aren’t seeing any action.

“President Obama and the Democrats had almost a year of complete control of the federal government: the Presidency, the House, and a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. They could have repealed ‘don’t ask don’t tell.’ They could have gotten rid of the Defense of Marriage Act. But they didn’t do either of those things.”

Would a Republican-controlled Congress have “done any of those things”? Not on your life. But what if the Democratic leadership had been willing to negotiate support for any of these initiatives with GOP moderates in exchange for things they would want (tort reform, for instance). But there was no will to go there.

From AP: “‘The whole thing is a political train wreck,’ said Richard Socarides, a White House adviser on gay rights during the Clinton administration.” Hard to disagree. At one time, the bill to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell” had several Republican sponsors. But when push came to shove, we didn’t even keep the two Maine moderates, Collins and Snowe (here’s the cloture vote). Talk about pulling a defeat out of the jaws of victory.

McCain disgraced himself. But Socarides is right to fault the Democrats’ strategy. And whose bright idea was it to highlight Lady Gaga at a pro-repeal rally the day before the vote? It’s the kind of “let’s just speak to each other and our allies on the left” foolishness that shows a disdain for even bothering to try to reach out to the opposition.

In retrospect, waiting for the military report, due by the end of the year, would have taken away a crutch some socially moderate Republicans used to vote down repeal. Holding a lame-duck vote after the election might also have been a better way to go. But what’s done is done, and the struggle will have to carry on in the next Congress, with a much larger number of Republicans onboard (with some chance of another vote this year, after the military report is released). Either way, the Democrats-only strategy will be an even bigger failure if that’s all we’ve got.

More. Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin says Harry Reid set up the vote to fail. He blogs:

The sixty votes needed to break the filibuster had already been lined up, but that was before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to limit debates and votes on amendments. That led to a collapse in support in ending the filibuster. Servicemembers United, which has been campaigning for DADT’s repeal, saw through Reid’s political posturing.

There are going to be a lot of political postmortems on this one.

Furthermore. Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the libertarian Reason Foundation, blogs ObamaCare’s First Major Casualties: Gays and Aliens.

This is very telling: The Washington Blade’s top story this week is about the DC mayoral Democratic primary, which incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty lost to City Council Chair Vincent Gray. The story is headlined: “Activists hail Gray’s stunning win over Fenty.” The subhead (at least in the print version): “But mayor carries precincts with high concentrations of LGBT voters.”

That is, gay voters went one way, while the city’s “progressive” LGBT activists went the other.

In a nutshell, Fenty and Gray are both liberal African-American Democrats, but Fenty challenged the entrenched unions by supporting modest school reforms, which included firing teachers who failed to meet basic performance standards. That infuriated the teachers’ union, which strongly backed Gray, as did the rest of the public sector employee unions. Sadly, despite improved student test scores (and lower crime) under Fenty, Gray won the day.

LGBT “progressive” activists are joined at the hip with public sector unions and other elements of the “progressive” statist, entrenched big government coalition. Gay voters, however, cast their votes overwhelmingly for Fenty. This is a local story, but this November, and in November 2012, American voters will, I believe, rise up against not just ineffective big government, but the entrenched power of public sector unions, whose members’ salaries and benefits (that is, for federal and state and local workers), paid by taxpayers, are now far in excess of what taxpayers themselves earn for the same jobs in the private sector, not to mention the near-impossibility of firing public sector workers despite their lack of performance.

LGBT activists are showing that they will be on the wrong side, fighting tooth and nail to defend the privileges of their Service Employee International Union allies, and that’s not going to be good for gay people.

More. From Michael Barone, Public Unions vs. Gentry Liberals:

“Gentry liberals and public employee unions were allies in the Obama campaign in 2008. But now they’re in a civil war in city and state politics. This raises the question of whether the Democratic Party favors public employee unions that want more money and less accountability, or gentry liberals and others who care about the quality of public services. Right now the unions are winning.”

That would seem to mirror the split between gay voters and LGBT progressive activists over public union power.

Furthermore. From Reuters: “Now that most European countries are burdened with high deficits and debt mountains due to the financial crisis, the ‘big government’ left is not seen as offering a credible answer to the question of where and how to shrink the state. In many countries, public employees are the biggest bloc of socialist party members and constitute a brake on reform.”

There, as here.

The Cato Institute’s David Boaz expects tea-party congressional freshmen to push for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, not an amendment to ban gay marriage. “I don’t think there’s likely to be a lot of social activism coming out of them,” he tells the Wall Street Journal.

More thoughts from Boaz on the tea partiers, here.

There’s no question that the tea party patriots have focused like a laser on Washington’s fiscally unsustainable course. Could that change? The Journal notes, “82% of tea-party supporters interviewed said they oppose gay marriage, compared with 74% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats, according to a Zogby International poll.” On the other hand:

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in June found that just 2% of those identified as tea partiers put social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage at the top of their priority lists for federal action. By contrast, 29% chose job creation and economic growth at the top, and 25% picked the deficit and government spending.

Engagement and dialogue with the tea party movement, rather than rank attacks from the LGBT left is the better way to help ensure that they don’t shift gears and make common cause with the cultural warriors.

More. Just received a fundraising letter from the Human Rights Campaign that attacks the Tea Party movement, without citing any evidence of the Tea Partiers’ anti-gay activism. For HRC, it’s all about supporting the Democratic Party.

Florida Gov. Crist shifts support on gay rights issues. I sometimes wonder if any politician believes in anything other than their own will to power, and organizing effective electoral coalitions to that end.

More. Republican John Dennis isn’t going to beat Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, but his ad is fun.

To David Link’s eloquent plea to the U.S. Senate, below, I’ll add these thoughts. Regarding the district court ruling that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unconstitutional, I agree that if barring openly gay people from serving in the military (that is, requiring that they lie and hide, subject to discharge if the truth about their orientation should be learned) is based on societal hostility and the presumed (or even real) prejudice of heterosexual troops, then the policy is in violation of constitutional protections ensuring due process, free speech, and (more generally) equality under the law.

But that’s a different question from whether it would be a better political course to reverse “don’t ask, don’t tell” via congressional action rather than by court ruling. A legislative death to the policy would be less likely to provoke a backlash by those claiming judicial overreach. (Of course, if the judiciary did not, in fact, so often overreach to advance a political agenda not grounded in ensuring constitutional protections for all, then such claims would be less effective, but that’s another story).

So here’s hoping that Log Cabin’s to-date successful lawsuit may light a fire under a recalcitrant Senate.

According to a report posted by Jon Ward at The Daily Caller:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour issued a subtle rebuke Wednesday to conservative and Republican leaders who have focused on religious and social values issues this year, saying they were taking the GOP off message in an election year when voters care overwhelmingly about economic issues. . . . When asked about comments by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, that said the GOP should call a “truce on the so-called social issues” to focus on fiscal matters, Barbour said he supported the sentiment.

Elsewhere at the Caller, Alex Knepper posts that Montana’s Big Sky Tea Party gave the boot to one of its leaders over anti-gay statements. Writes Knepper:

The Tea Party has shown itself, time and time again, to be a force against those who would seek to focus on abortion and homosexuality. In fact, it has been an unmitigated blessing for those who were exhausted with the religious right’s veto stamp over Republican Party behavior. It has truly brought the party back to basic, bread-and-butter issues: size-of-government issues are unquestionably its key concern.

But read here about how “With the smug incomprehension in which it takes so much pride (can’t understand – won’t understand!), the BBC sets about the American Tea Party Movement as if it were a cross between the Klu Klux Klan and the German neo-fascist brigade.” The same could be said for MSNBC, or course.

From the Washington Post: Same-sex marriage gains GOP support.
Some of this is wishful thinking. Yet there is undeniably a shift occurring on the right as more limited-government (or at least anti-gargantuan government) conservatives come out and make the big-tent case that social issues are divisive. If they (we) become dominant, it will be the worst of all nightmares for the power-seekers of the command-economy redistributionist left.

The more we can change the perspective that gay equality is part and parcel of the broader and increasingly unpopular “progressive” agenda, the better placed we’ll be to wage the fight for legal equality after the Tea Party empowered GOP regains one or both houses of Congress this November, and then the presidency in 2012.

More. Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff takes aim at the LGBT anti-corporate activists who have targeted Target Corp. stores. He writes:

Locally, you’d be hard-pressed to find a prominent Maryland or Virginia Democrat who supports marriage equality. But that doesn’t stop our lobbyists from working hard to elect them. And re-elect them.

Why are we so quick to jump on a corporate boycott —even one targeting a high-profile gay-friendly business—yet when it comes to politicians, our advocates are just as quick to turn the other cheek?

Could it be that for many activists, it’s the progressive agenda (and its party) first?

Furthermore. From the New York Times:

[Paul] Singer a self-described Barry Goldwater conservative…has become one of the biggest bankrollers of Republican causes…. He is not new to fund-raising–he raised money for George W. Bush, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and, surprisingly, gay rights initiatives. …
Singer plans to hold a fund-raiser next month at his Manhattan apartment in support of the California lawsuit opposing Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. Ken Mehlman, a former top Republican official who said this week that he was gay, will be one of the co-hosts.

Which is why things like Mehlman coming out are important; it’s part of the trend of more conservative money and support for gay legal equality. But instead of celebrating, LGBT progressives are fuming.

Still more. How big is the GOP tent? An online debate over at the New York Times.

The Atlantic has a big story on former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman coming out and saying he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage. The Log Cabin Republicans issued this statement. But not everyone is so welcoming. Says blogger (and outer) Mike Rogers, “Ken Mehlman is horridly homophobic and no matter how orchestrated his coming out is, our community should hold him accountable for his past.”

Bush’s support during the Mehlman years for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage everywhere  in the U.S. was unconscionable, and I suspect Mehlman went along with Karl Rove, rather than being the instigator. Hold him accountable if you like. Other issues Mehlman is being targeted with helping to oppose include a federal hate crimes statute that includes gays and transgenders (now passed and signed by Obama) and the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which remains blocked in the Democrat-controlled Congress (despite enough GOP support to preclude a filibuster). There are plenty of principled gay libertarians who are against both these initiatives and they are not “anti-gay.”

If someone opposes legal equality, that is an issue. Failing to embrace the use of state power to supposedly make life better for gays is a debatable matter on which reasonable gay people can and will disagree. So on those initiatives, I’d cut Mehlman some slack.

If he now uses his influence to help change the GOP’s opposition to gay marriage, it would go a long way toward making amends.

More. John Aravosis blogs:

I hope someone at the DNC is starting to sweat. We now have the former head of the Republican party who is to the left of Barack Obama on gay marriage. There’s a virtual groundswell of senior Republicans coming out for marriage equality. It can’t be going unnoticed in the gay community. And while it doesn’t mean 70% of the gay vote will now go Republican instead of Democrat, it does mean that growing numbers of gays and lesbians will starting thinking of the GOP as a legitimate alternative to the Democratic party.

That’s a mite optimistic, but if the trend continues…. And it will be the only way to stop the Democrats from viewing gay voters as nothing more than a spigot for campaign dollars and volunteer labor.