IGF CultureWatch

James Kirchick writes in The Advocate:

It's not just gays on the right who should want to find a comfortable space in the conservative movement-gay liberals had better hope there's room for gays there too. That's because we continue to live in a center-right country, and with a Republican takeover of Congress in November becoming more likely with each passing day, the importance of achieving bipartisan support for gay rights legislation becomes all the more clear.

Meanwhile, the past year and a half of legislative stalling-all while the Democrats had the White House and supermajorities in Congress-ought to put a dent in the claim that gays have no choice but to invest all of their political energies in the Democratic Party. If liberal gays truly value legal equality over political partisanship, they will wish groups like the Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud tactical success in changing the GOP from within.

But how would that advance the careers of LGBT activists in the Democratic party?

In California's GOP primary for the U.S. Senate, former congressman Tom Campbell, a supporter of gay marriage, is under attack, and his previous front-runner staus reduced to a statistical tie with gay-marriage opponent and failed CEO Carly Fiorina, reports the DC Examiner.

The demented National Organization for Marriage is spending $300,000 on television ads that falsely liken Campbell to ultra liberal tax-and-spender Barbara Boxer, best known for castigating a military officer who dared show her the respect of calling her "ma'am."

According to the Examiner, Campbell's "opposition to Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that enshrined a ban on gay marriage in the California Constitution, has made him a target of the social conservatives who dominate the ranks reform the GOP."

If the LGBT political movement was at all savvy, its leaders would recognize that supporting a major, viable candidate like Tom Campbell is the only way to reform the GOP, and that eventually having two parties in support of gay legal equality is better than having one (which, by dint of being the only player with gay support, can easily take the money and run - and do little to nothing else).

But the LGBT movement is run by Democratic operatives who, IMHO, prefer having an anti-gay GOP - it gives them a big, easy, fundraiser target. And so we cling to the one party strategy.

More. No surprise; the Human Rights Campaign is going to go all out to support Boxer over a Republican who favors marriage equality and could begin to shift the national direction of the GOP.

The original House-passed health care bill contained a provision extending to domestic partners the same tax exclusion on the value of employer-provided health benefits that spouses of employees receive. That was a major step forward-the taxes paid by domestic partners but not spouses for "family coverage" are huge.

The Senate dropped the tax-equalizing provision entirely in its version of the health care bill, although at the same time it loosened the language restricting government funding of abortion. Score: One for the pro-choice/abortion lobby, zero for gays.

The new reconciliation bill negotiated by Obama with House and Senate Democratic leaders (intended to be passed after the House's passage of the Senate bill) keeps the Senate's less-restrictive abortion-funding language but doesn't put back in the House's provision equalizing the tax treatment of health benefits for domestic partners. Score: Two for the pro-choice/abortion lobby, zero for gays.

The choice/abortion lobby knows how to play hardball. The LGBT Democratic party fundraisers know how to applaud and swoon.

More. The health care bill says that employers must allow adult children of workers to stay on their parent's plan up to age 26. The reconciliation measure clarifies that this is on a tax-free basis, so employer's don't have to input the value of the benefit as income to be taxed- as they will still have to do for domestic partners. So the Democrats expanded the universe of untaxed benefits for some family members and left us out, again.

If the Human Rights Campaign's claim that it pushed for untaxed DP benefits is true, I can only say that doing so while cheering the president and providing unconditional support to the party is a deeply flawed strategy.

Furthermore. I'm reminded that it's not just same-sex domestic partners that remain excluded; it's same-sex spouses as well! LCR has more, here.

General Petraeus' statement this week on DADT:

"I believe the time has come to consider a change to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I think it should be done in a thoughtful and deliberative manner that should include the conduct of the review that Secretary Gates has directed that would consider the views in the force on the change of policy. It would include an assessment of the likely effects on recruiting, retention, moral and cohesion and would include an identification of what policies might be needed in the event of a change and recommend those polices as well."

Anti-gay social conservatives will be contacting Moveon.org to see if it has any of those General Betray Us posters left over.

Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson observes:

Just 20 years ago, opposition to abortion and opposition to homosexual rights seemed to overlap entirely. They appeared to be expressions of the same traditionalist moral framework, destined to succeed or fail together as twin pillars of the culture war.

But in the years since, the fortunes of these two social stands have dramatically diverged. A May 2009 Gallup poll found that more Americans, for the first time, describe themselves as "pro-life" than "pro-choice." A February CNN-Time poll found that half of Americans, for the first time, believe that homosexuality is "not a moral issue." This divergence says something about successful social movements in America.

He goes on to note that:

...a generation of thoughtful gay rights advocates, exemplified by Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal, has made the argument for joining traditional institutions instead of smashing them. More radical activists have criticized this approach as assimilationist and bourgeois. But only bourgeois arguments triumph in America. And many have found this more conservative argument for gay rights-encouraging homosexual commitment through traditional institutions-less threatening than moral anarchism.

That speaks to the advancement of gay marriage and other "assimilationist" goals once virulently denounced by "progressive" gays as "rightwing." But going back to Gerson's initial point about abortion, many leading gay political groups still maintain a pro-abortion-on-demand litmus test for candidates they'll endorse, including the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. This effectively eliminates many Republican gays-and gay-supportive but pro-life Republicans (and a few Democrats)-from ever being backed by these officially nonpartisan LGBT groups.

More. Another sign of the times. Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican and long-time social conservative, unexpectedly issued a directive barring discrimination against gay state workers. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

By making that move, the governor "is now projecting the image of reasonableness and inclusiveness," says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "This is not going over with the hardcore right-wing elements in the party, but it is a necessity for governing and it tells you where our society has gone. McDonnell has recognized a reality."

Small steps forward are still steps forward, and we'll only fully gain equality under the law when anti-gay stances are anathema among both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

California Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) leader Ryan Sorba was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) when he said CPAC shouldn't have allowed the gay group GOProud [a coalition of gay Republicans] to be there. Here's the YouTube:

Alexander McCobin of Students for Liberty provoked Sorba's comments by saying in his own short speech:

"In the name of freedom, I would like to thank the American Conservative Union for welcoming GOProud as a co-sponsor of this event, not for any political reason but for the message it sends….Students today recognize that freedom does not come in pieces. Freedom is a single thing that applies to the social as well as the economic realms and should be defended at all times."

McCobin also drew some boos, but they were drowned out by applause. CPAC is the largest annual gathering of the hard-right wing of the Republican party. This represents progress.

After the GOP makes expected big congressional gains this coming November, lobbying within the libertarian wing of the Republican party will be vitally important. But don't count on the big-name "progressive" LGBT groups to bother with anything remotely like constructive engagement.

The libertarian Cato Institute today hosted a forum on the topic "Is There a Place for Gay People in Conservatism and Conservative Politics?," featuring Nick Herbert, MP, the British Conservative Party's openly gay Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. Responses to Herbert's remarks (an affirmative reply to the above question) were provided by Andrew Sullivan, a supporter of President Obama who detests the Republican party, and anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher, who opposes any conservatism that might grant gay people the freedom to legally marry and thus equal liberty under the law.

Rick Sincere has blogged a richly detailed account, which I highly recommend. It's well worth reading.

More. I see that over at Positive Liberty, Jason Kuznicki also has blogged his views of the event (as a libertarian, he's skeptical of the proposition). While Dan Blatt at the proudly conservative and pro-Republican Gay Patriot site takes umbrage at the absence of an actual gay American conservative on the panel.

When I saw this headline in the DC Agenda (successor newspaper to the Washington Blade), Filibuster threat makes ENDA unlikely in 2010, I wondered if it could possibly be saying that LGBT activists couldn't find a single Republican to support the measure. But no, it means that even assuming a few mostly northeastern GOP senators were on board, enough Democrats would vote no to defeat the non-discrimination act. In other words, even if the Democrats had kept their Senate supermajority, it wouldn't have been enough.

"The Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and National Center for Transgender Equality - three leading groups working on ENDA - say they are confident the House of Representatives will pass ENDA in the summer or early fall. ... But in the Senate, LGBT civil rights lobbyists have been reluctant to reveal the findings of their highly confidential head counts, including leanings of the 17 Senate Democrats that have not signed on as co-sponsors. Among them are Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner, both of Virginia."

A gay non-discrimination act was first introduced in 1974 when Bella Abzug and Ed Koch were in Congress, and it still can't pass when Democrats have overwhelming majorities in both Houses? Majorities that are certain to shrink come November. I'd say yet again it's past time to revisit the pledges of free gay votes (and dollars) to Democrats just because they're Democrats (both Webb and Warner received support from local and national LGBT lobbies - the HRC web site still brags how it "mobilized its members to vote for U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb"). But my beating that drum wouldn't do much good, would it.

Then again, without the vague "gender identity" add-on that could require employers to add unisex bathrooms, the odds for passage would be much greater. That's another self-inflected political wound that activists are intent on gouging deeper and deeper.

More on Jim Webb. MetroWeekly reports, "Webb...had in the past been an opponent of equal treatment for women in the military. When asked about the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy in an interview during his 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Webb said, 'That's a policy that's working,' and left it at that."

So why the campaign support from the Human Rights Campaign? As long as you've got that "D" after your name, it's "don't ask, don't tell" about gay equality over at the Democratic Party's favorite free-money machine.

As I predicted, Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) is the one gay issue that has a chance of moving forward - Obama's State of the Union made no mention of pushing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or repealing/modifying the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). What if he had moved on legal equality last year when he and his party were riding high, instead of squandering his political capital on a massive expansion of government? Spilt milk.

On DADT, conservative pundit Jim Geraghty blogs:

I'm a bit of a squish on this issue. If you told me the guy who was the best pilot and who had the best shot of putting a J-DAM bomb on the Iranian nuclear program's main facility was Harvey Fierstein, I'd say get that goatee airborne over Persian skies pronto.

But the politics of this issue are pretty clear, and so after pledging to repeal DADT and pledging and promising and promising, Obama's big step on this issue for the gay community is to say, "Now is precisely the moment for all of you red state and red district Democrats to vote to end 'don't ask, don't tell,' nine months before an election that's already looking miserable for our side." Somehow, I suspect they'll be less than fully enthusiastic.

Geraghty links to the LGBT left site AMERICAblog, which posts:

The President needs to do more than call for gays to serve openly. He needs to announce he will insert repeal language in the defense authorization bill he will submit to Congress in the next few months. Then, he needs to actually go out and round up the votes like he's doing on health care.... You will tell how serious the President is about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell not by a bland, fleeting mention, but by what he does to go out and get it done...

On Scott Brown's historic senate victory in Massachusetts, IGF contributing author David Boaz writes on the Cato Institute blog that given:

"the growing recognition that libertarians are a major part of the decentralized 'Tea Party' movement, and rising poll support for 'smaller government,' the Brown victory is a flashing red light with a siren warning Democrats not to proceed with a health care bill that voters don't like and a big-government agenda that Americans weren't voting for in 2008."

And at NPR.org Boaz notes:

"By pressing such a big-government program, Obama has energized a small-government element in the electorate that had been demoralized and pushed aside by a big-government Republican president. Right now, that movement looks likely to turn a lot of Democrats out of office this fall."

But party-line Democrats don't want to hear that message, and LGBT Democratic activists especially aren't listening. This morning I received a fundraising email from EQCA (Equality California) Executive Director Geoff Kors that read:

"Yesterday, in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts voters elected a right-wing, anti-equality candidate to the U.S. Senate seat held by Edward Kennedy since 1962. And the group behind Prop. 8, the National Organization for Marriage, played a major role. The volatile electorate, coupled with fierce opposition determined to deny us equality, makes 2010 a critical year" [to work to elect Democrats].

Scott Brown is a moderate Bay State Republican who opposes marriage equality but thinks the issue should be left to the states (he's against a federal amendment to bar same-sex marriage and says he accepts gay marriage in Massachustts as a settled fact). The idea that the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, which endorsed Brown, played a significant role in his victory is delusional.

Yet again, LGBTers are determined to be on the wrong side of history, and to miss opportunities to forge any links with libertarian-minded, small-government conservatives.

More. Brown also, infamously, is our first centerfold senator.

Furthermore. Politico reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is attacking Republican Richard Hanna, running for Congress in upstate New York, over his ties to the Cato Institute, which the DCCC labels "a right-wing extremist group." According to Politico:

An incredulous Cato spokeswoman, Khristine Brookes, e-mails, "Are they serious? Are we a right-wing extremist group because of our arguments in favor of gay marriage or for our criticism of the Bush war in Iraq?" The "extremist" in question in the release, she notes, is a pro-immigration, pro-trade economist...