IGF CultureWatch

As the Obama machine gins up its political blood libel accusing the anti-tax, pro-limited government Tea Party movement of being racist-despite lack of evidence-the Washington Post, to its credit, takes note of "the strong libertarian strains within the tea party movement," as evidenced by its refusal to join social conservatives in condemning same-sex marriage. In fact, the paper reports that following the Massachusetts' district court ruling finding sections of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional:

The large tea party-affiliated organizations, including FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Nation, declined to comment on [district court judge Joseph] Tauro's ruling because of their groups' fiscal focus. "That's just not something that's on our radar," said Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation. He acknowledged, however, that some in his group-though not a majority-are opposed to the Defense of Marriage Act.

The situation is perhaps different in South Florida, where [Everett Wilkinson, state director for the Florida Tea Party Patriots] said "several hundred" of the group's supporters are gay. "Our stance might be different than someone who's in Oklahoma," he said.

More. If you're a Facebook person, this Gay Tea Partiers Facebook page has 124 members to date. (Update: now 132 members, and counting.)

Furthermore. Some of the comments have already turned to discussing the Obama Justice Department's refusal to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation (against those they call "crackers") in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, as Deroy Murdoch writes about here.

James Kirchick takes note in the Wall Street Journal that:

Earlier this month Madrid celebrated its annual gay pride festival, reputed to be the largest in Europe. It featured the usual mixture of calls for tolerance, righteous political speechifying, and raucous display of sexuality. But the Spanish capital also earned a dubious distinction this year not for anything it included, but for what it excluded: Israel.

The municipality of Tel Aviv had originally planned to sponsor a float in the Madrid parade. But Spain's Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders and Bisexuals revoked the invitation following Israel's raid on the Gaza flotilla that ended with nine dead pro-Hamas activists.

Israel is the only Mideast country that respects the rights of gay people. As Kirchick observes: "Saudi Arabia beheads gays. Syria arrests them in sting operations. Iran hangs them from cranes in public squares.... As for Gaza, one of Hamas's leaders has referred to gays as 'a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick.'"

There's an old saying that bosses pay employees just enough so they don't quit. The same is true about politics, in that parties give their coalition blocs just enough to keep them onboard. If you don't play hardball, you don't get much.

San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter relates that:

Congresswoman Jackie Speier put a damper on hopes for swift House passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [stating] she doesn't see the LGBT workplace protections becoming law anytime soon. Addressing the crowd of gay and straight political and community leaders at Sunday's Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club Pride breakfast, Speier said, "Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi is doing all she can to ensure a majority for next year so we can pass ENDA."

Get that? Despite the big Democratic majorities in Congress that are certain to shrink after November, give us your votes and money and maybe next time round. Got to love the moxie, right?

Leaving aside the debate between gay progressives and libertarians/conservatives over whether ENDA is actually a good idea, the political reality is that its supporters can't sue through the courts to achieve protected-class status in the workplace. It's legislation or nothing. The same isn't true of overturning "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act, however. Which is why the White House and congressional Democrats can't simply announce that action will be delayed until after gays pony up their votes and dollars for the next election cycle. And the next. Or can they?

The L.A. Times reports:

Gay veterans organizations say the questionnaire sent to 400,000 military personnel will produce skewed results on the potential effect of repealing the ban on openly gay service members.

Most of the criticism focused on a handful of questions in the lengthy survey related to whether unit readiness would suffer and the extent of concerns among service members about sharing housing, bath facilities and attending social functions with gay and lesbian personnel.

Critics of the survey note it doesn't ask about the effect on unit morale or readiness due to the current policy of discharging troops found to be gay. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which provides legal help to those discharged under the current law, recommends that troops not participate in the questionnaire.

Meanwhile, Politico reports:

Next week, a lawsuit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans is going to trial in California-and Obama's Justice Department is in the uncomfortable position of trying to prevent the "don't ask, don't tell" policy from being overturned as discharged veterans testify about its dramatic impact on their careers.

Some gay rights activists who were cheered by Obama's decision in May now say they're frustrated by what feels like a two steps forward, one step back approach to the issue-especially in light of Obama's delay in seeking to repeal of the policy in the first place.

Gay legal advocates "note that from time to time, [the Justice Dept.] has refused to stand behind laws under challenge as unconstitutional," but instead will fight in court to defend don't ask, don't tell. I'd add, just as they'll fight in court to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the Massachusetts' case, discussed below.

More. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com says that a key portion of the Department of Defense's troops survey "is fairly useless" in that it "measures the relationship between gossip and unit morale [more] than anything having to do with homosexuality per se" and "goes out of its way to avoid asking the troops about something which is arguably more relevant and which is certainly more measurable: their opinions about DADT."

The national Log Cabin Republicans, encourage servicemembers to complete the survey, arguing "Not doing the survey abdicates terrain to those who want to keep DADT in place."

Winston Churchill famously said in November 1942, when for the first time Nazi forces were pushed back in North Africa, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

The ruling by a federal district court in Boston finding unconstitutional the worst aspect of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)-the section prohibiting the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that are recognized by the states in which the couples reside-also signals an "end of the beginning."

As 365gay.com reports, "Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that Congress violated the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when it passed DOMA and took from the states decisions concerning which couples can be considered married." In a related case, "he ruled that DOMA violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

The rulings do not force every state to validate same sex marriages, nor even for states to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. They do require that the federal government recognize marriages where they are recognized by the states in question. That's a common sense approach that allows cultural and political evolution to move forward through the states without triggering a political backlash that could result a draconian federal amendment voiding all same-sex marriages.

The district court's ruling will be appealed by the Obama administration to an appellate court, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. It will take years. But the signs point to an eventual end of federal discrimination against same-sex couples.

More. The New York Times looks for tea-party types who talk about states' rights but don't like Judge Tauro's use of the Tenth Amendment-and can't find them. They find even tea partiers who oppose gay marriage saying "The Constitution does not allow federal regulation of gay marriage just as it doesn't allow for federal regulation of health care."

Here's a link to Jonathan Rauch's New York Times op-ed, "A 'Kagan Doctrine' on Gay Marriage." If he's right, Justice Kagan's rulings may not be what LGBT activists expect.

Somewhat related. Columnist Steve Chapman at Reason.com looks at conservative angst over Supreme Court judicial activism and finds something surprising, in "How Republicans Made Their Peace with Sodomy":

When conservatives talk about judicial activism, they have in mind a variety of Supreme Court decisions-legalizing abortion, hindering the death penalty, allowing flag-burning, and preventing officially sponsored prayer in public schools. All these, they believe, ignored the plain words or the original meaning of the text.

But there is another decision that fits any definition of a liberal, activist approach. It came in a 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas, involving two men who were prosecuted after being caught by police having sex in a private bedroom. ...

But after the initial denunciations, something odd happened: The decision vanished from public debate.

Roe v. Wade led to endless battles over abortion laws. The school prayer decisions have been defied in many districts. But once the sodomy laws were gone, they were forgotten. No one mourned them, and no one tried to bring them back.

Or virtually no one, as Chapman clarifies. His overall take: "maybe it's because they realize that laws trampling liberties most people take for granted can't be squared with the spirit of freedom and equality that defines the Constitution-even if the letter of the Constitution has nothing obvious to say on the particular matter at hand."

"Campaign Spot" blogger Jim Geraghty writes in "For Better or Worse, the NRA Grades Candidates on Only One Issue" that some conservatives are miffed that the National Rifle Association looks likely to endorse the re-election of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the senate majority leader and co-instigator of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid mega-government agenda.

As commenters to IGF has pointed out, the NRA is a nonpartisan organization focused on one issue-second amendment rights-and it supports conservatives or liberals who concur with it, which is one reason it's been so successful.

There really is no gay rights group that's comparable. The big Washington LGBT lobbies-even the ones whose bylaws claim that they're nonpartisan (and who once-upon-a-time truly were)-now overwhelmingly define themselves as part of the "progressive" coalition. These groups haven't been shy about treating non-gay issues as part of formal or informal litmus tests for candidate approval (this has been true not just of the Human Rights Campaign but even groups such as the Victory Fund, which maintains a pro-abortion requirement that trips up openly gay, pro-life Republicans who might have benefited from its support).

The clearly partisan gay groups (Stonewall Democrats, Log Cabin Republicans, GOProud) have their own role, which is different. But it would be constructive to have even one major LGBT group that would endorse and fund liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, based just on whether they supported legal equality for gay people. You might even begin to see more conservative Republicans break away from their party's anti-gay party line, just as Harry Reid and several liberal Democrats have broken from their party's anti-gun rights stance.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Read the Declaration and celebrate liberty!

The Drudge Report headline was "Google to Pay Gay Employees More than Straight Ones?," while Fox News online called its story "Google Raises Eyebrows With New Gay-Only Employee Benefit." In the Fox account, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family complains, "How is offering more money to only one group to offset a perceived inequity not a form of discrimination against those groups not fortunate enough to receive such bonuses?"

In fact, Google is paying to cover the income taxes the government requires on health coverage provided to employees' same-sex spouses/partners. The federal government requires no such taxes to be paid on the value of health coverage provided to opposite-sex spouses (thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, the IRS can't recognize same-sex spouses). In other words. Google is ensuring that the take-home pay for employees with covered same-sex spouses is the same as that provided to employees with covered opposite-sex spouses.

Until the government recognizes same-sex spouses, private industry will continue to turn to this type of work-around in order to treat gay employees fairly, and to attract the talent needed to compete in the marketplace.

But if you want to talk about "unfairness," the people with a real gripe may be single employees, since (opposite-sex) married employees and employees with children have often been "paid more" than single and childless employees, in that U.S. employers traditionally subsidize the "family plan" health coverage employees purchase for their spouses and kids. But you won't see complaints from Focus on the Family, or headlines on the Drudge Report and Fox News, about that.

Equal time: The Democrats who control Congress rejected an amendment to their trillion-dollar health care "reform" that would have made the tax treatment of employer-provided health coverage for same-sex spouses/partners equal to that of opposite-sex spouses. But they did manage to placate the unions by passing special breaks for union-negotiated health coverage. Who's got the power? Not the LGBT lobby that provides its support unconditionally to the business-bashing party, that's for sure.

A split Supreme Court ruled in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez that the University of California's Hastings College of the Law can legally deny recognition and funding to a Christian student group that will not let gays join [clarification: would not let non-celibate gays be voting members or voted into leadership positions]. Neal McCluskey writes on the Cato Institute blog, in his post Having Public Colleges Means Limiting Freedom, that "Quite simply, when public universities decide which groups do or do not get taxpayer funds, and which professors are or are not hired, government is deciding those things, and that is ultimately incompatible with both free inquiry and, more importantly, a free society." Kind of like the endless pro-big government "progressive" narrative on government-funded PBS.

If Hastings were a private college, there would (ideally) be no issue with its deciding which groups to fund or not fund. A conservative religious school would chose to fund the conservative Christian group, and a liberal college wouldn't. With public institutions, or private institutions receiving government funding, the state gets to decide. Sometimes you and/or I will agree with those decisions, and sometimes we won't. But that's politics (i.e., who has got the power of the state behind them, at this time).

More. Justice Samuel Alito's dissent cites an amicus curiae brief filed in opposition to Hastings College of Law by Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL). The dissent can be read here. GLIL is mentioned on page 29:

...the Court argues that the accept-all-comers policy, by bringing together students with diverse views, encourages tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the development of conflict-resolution skills. ... These are obviously commendable goals, but they are not undermined by permitting a religious group to restrict membership to persons who share the group's faith. Many religious groups impose such restrictions. ... Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights. Brief for Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty as Amicus Curiae 35.

Furthermore. Cathy Young writes in "A Dangerous Precedent" at Reason.com: "How would people feel if, at a public university that happened to be dominated by religious conservatives, a gay-rights group was denied recognition because it refused membership to people who openly espouse anti-gay views?"

IGF contributing writer Dale Carpenter blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy site that a Minnnesota district judge denied a temporary restraining order sought by Twin Cities Pride (TCP) to prevent an anti-gay preacher from distributing literature and displaying signs inside the park where TCP has a permit for the annual gay pride festival.

A park is usually a public place, but apparently TCP is paying for the right to use the park to hold its festival. As one commenter over at Volokh asks, "If the Pride event must permit this anti-gay preacher access to their event, what stops hundreds of others from joining him and converting the Pride event into an anti-gay event?"

I think the U.S. Supreme Court got this one right when in 1995 (and in opposition to LGBT activists) it decided that the organizers of Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade (and, by extension, organizers of other parades) had a right to exclude a gay Irish group from their event. I disagree with the Paddy's Day parade organizers, but I think it was their right. Just as it is TCP's right to exclude from their event the anti-gay preacher.

More. Okay, a park is not a parade. To the extent that that pride event's area was not closed off, I'm willing to backtrack on this one.