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.
Do you think opponents of gay marriage are reaching a bit to make their points? Check out this commentary Why Young Black Men Don’t Graduate in the Washington Times. It’s by Janice Shaw Crouse, executive director of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute. She writes:
A new report from the Schott Foundation reveals that just 47 percent of black male students earn a high school diploma on time. Ironically, this report came out shortly after Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled on Proposition 8 and homosexual marriage in California. If the statements on which Judge Walker based his ruling are “facts,” how do we explain what is happening educationally to boys in the black community, where a large majority are growing up without fathers?
Of course, Judge Walker might well agree that having two parents is better than one for raising children. But the points he made (and which Crouse quotes) were different ones, that “The gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment” and that “Having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.”
Crouse twists and spins to make the same old argument that allowing gay people to marry is an assault on the heterosexual family unit, and that the absence of fathers in black homes leads to underachievement by young black men. So, ipso facto, Judge Walker’s ruling that gay people have a constitutional right to marry is so bad it’s keeping young black men from graduating!
The liberal New Republic provides a timeline showing Obama’s support for gay marriage back in 1996 when running for Illinois state senate (his statement at the time: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages”) and then his subsequent move up the political career ladder and away from marriage equality, instead favoring civil unions for gays and holding that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals. Said presidential candidate Obama:
What I believe is that if we have strong civil unions out there that provide legal rights to same-sex couples that they can visit each other in the hospital if they get sick, that they can transfer property to each other. If they’ve got benefits, they can make sure those benefits apply to their partners. I think that is the direction we need to go.
As if hospital visitation and easier property transfer is what marriage is essentially about! Elsewhere in the New Republic, the magazine’s executive editor Richard Just calls Obama out on this non-profile in courage. Some of the NR’s commenters defend the president, saying marriage is a state, not federal, issue (sounding like Republicans!), and ignoring that it’s a federal law (the Defense of Marriage Act) that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even after states have extended legal equality to gay people.
Yep, Republicans are worse. But all politicians elevate the will to power over principle, and treat the stances they take as a means to an end (their own advancement). The liberal ones are just fancier in their footwork. The lesson is to push back and make it cost them not to deliver—and that means playing hardball.
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A substantial fraction of people feel carnal affinity exclusively or primarily with individuals of the same sex. Insofar as their sexuality is to be channeled it cannot be toward the goal of procreation. If society has a general interest in the constraint of the sexual instinct, then it has an interest in encouraging long-term monogamous relations regardless of whether one ostensible purpose is to bear offspring. ... The claim that we defend marriage by disallowing it to homosexuals is a non sequitur. Could it not equally be argued that we reaffirm the importance of marriage by making it available even to couples who have not traditionally had this opportunity?And a libertarian argument (no talk here of "constraint of the sexual instinct") from Sheldon Richman:
Marriage has never been exclusively about procreation. If that were so, couples that were infertile, elderly, and uninterested in having children wouldn't have been allowed to get married. Many other values have been at the core of marriage: economic security, love and emotional fulfillment, and more.Richman also takes on the objection that courts shouldn't overrule public referendums or legislatures, explaining:
It seem clear that if government exists, then there is nothing wrong with courts thwarting the public or the legislature when either oversteps the limits we hope are set for government and violates liberty.Neo-cons and libertarians don't agree on much, so it's interesting to see these two finding their own way to argue in favor of same-sex marriage. In other words, marriage equality-it's not just for progressives.
I can understand why Target Corp. would want to donate to politicians who support a pro-growth agenda and oppose the sort of job killing regulations, confiscatory taxation and anti-growth spending that aims to grow unionized government at the expense of the private sector. Unfortunately, many fiscal conservatives are also social conservatives and oppose legal equality for gay people.
That may describe Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, a Republican who, as a legislator, supported amending the state consitutution to ban same-sex marriage. When Target donated to an independent political fund supporting Emmer (Best Buy did so as well), activists groups went into protest mode, including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Moveon.org. According to one gay media report:
Activists angry at Target for supporting an anti-gay marriage gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota are pressing on with their protests after the company apologized.
The Minnesota-based retail giant apologized last week for contributing $150,000 to MN Forward, an independent political fund supporting anti-gay Republican Tom Emmer. Emmer clinched the GOP nomination for Minnesota governor Tuesday.
In a memo to employees, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wrote that he continues to believe that a "business climate conducive to growth is critical to our future," but added he had not anticipated how the donation would affect its employees. "And for that I am genuinely sorry," Steinhafel wrote.
Of course, if Emmer were a Democrat who opposed gay marriage it's doubtful that HRC would be targeting Target, given that HRC has itself supported the campaigns of candidates such as Virginia's Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat who favors keeping "don't ask, don't tell," as well as a great many Democrats who oppose gay marriage to varying degrees. Maybe HRC should target itself?
That being said, it's probably good to send a message that businesses that donate to candidates opposing legal equality for gay people are going to be held to account. Whether the protests should continue after the donors subsequently apologize, in an effort to get them to cough up more funds for LGBT groups and their favored causes and/or to keep activists in the news and gin up their fundraising operations, is debatable.
On that matter, consider that the gay conservatives at GOProud are out and proud about violating the boycott by LGBT activists and unions of the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. Doug Manchester, the owner of the hotel, was a financial supporter of California's anti-gay-marriage Prop. 8. Manchester subsequently issued a statement saying "I am sorry for the pain and conflict I have caused and would like to take this time to apologize, clarify my views on the matter and share some background on Hyatt's long-standing and commendable support of the GLBT community" (it's quoted in the link above).
Again, I think there is value in protesting businesses that support opponents of gay equality. But at this point, GOProud believes the ongoing boycott has all to do with unions opposing the fact that Manchester's hotel remains non-union, and I suspect the group is right.