IGF CultureWatch

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sent Congress a letter stating that that ending the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy before the military conducts a thorough review (translation: not this year) "would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter." After all, those serving in the military expect to make political policy and dislike taking orders, right?

A release from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network states:

Gay rights advocates are furious after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking for the Administration in a letter to the Hill, effectively killed the chances of a vote on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before the Midterms. And if the Democrats lose the House, repeal-a firm Obama campaign promise-may be deferred indefinitely.

Uh, oh, guess who's been thrown under the bus.

Not surprisingly, the Obama fundraisers at the Human Rights Campaign are spinning the Gates letter as if the Defense Secretary had operated independently, like some sort of loose cannon (reminds me of how in Russia during the '30s Gulag prisoners used to lament, "if only Stalin knew!"). States an HRC release:

Today's letter from Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton flies in the face of the President's commitment in the State of the Union address to work with Congress to repeal the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law this year.... It is inconceivable that the Secretary of Defense would so blatantly undermine the Commander-in-Chief's policy commitment.

But as scholars at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out in a release titled Experts: Obama Administration Defers "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Repeal Two Years:

Christopher Neff, Deputy Executive Director of the Palm Center, believes that Secretary Gates' letter is a signal from the White House, not just the Pentagon. "Today's letter represents a public effort by the Obama Administration to put a stop to Congressional repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' in 2010. Clearly, the Department of Defense is not its own branch of government. The Secretary of Defense serves the President."

Somebody tell the Human Rights Campaign.

A diatribe at The Clyde Fitch Report blogsite tears into Kelsey Grammer, formerly of "Frasier" fame and currently co-starring in a Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles. Grammer, a Republican who supported Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008, is promoting the soon-to-be-launched RightNetwork with a video riffing on big government, more taxes, and trillion dollar deficits. For this, the Fitch Report howls that Grammer is "a radical right-winger...putting his reactionary maw behind the RightNetwork, a new multiplatform venture that presumably aims to hurl the LGBT community all the back to the closet, stripped of whatever rights they may have won, and, for all we know, marked with ass tattoos just the way that William F. Buckley, Jr., wanted."

Nothing on the site, or in Grammer's video, warrants that assessment or suggests that the new "network" will be anti-gay. But like those who make up racist slurs to attack everyone who joins Tea Party protests against gargantuan government, truth has very little to do with it.

Everything we know about Grammer suggests he's gay-supportive (this Wall Street Journal profile calls him an "outspoken Republican" and "a supporter of same-sex marriage"). But I suspect the left's biggest fear is a limited government movement that is not socially reactionary.

Yet if only the intolerant get involved in the GOP, the Tea Parties, and conservative politics in general, it's clear that the right will stay predominantly intolerant forever, giving many on the left what they seem to want-a boogeyman party to fundraise against. That may be in their partisan interest, but it's not a strategy that bodes well for the expansion of our rights, especially given likely Republican gains in Congress come November.

Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn pens a column (for WSJ subscribers only) on the Supreme Court case involving whether a conservative Christian student group at Hastings College can be treated equally with other student groups regarding university recognition and funding, when the university itself receives taxpayer funding, and still exclude non-believers and gays from its membership and leadership.

McGurn notes that with bigger and bigger government spreading taxpayers' money more widely in all directions, it becomes harder for any institution to not receive public funding. That leads to contortions such as this:

The dean is Leo Martinez of the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Here he is defending the school policy at issue, which requires the Christian Legal Society (CLS) to admit non-Christians and gays if it wants to be an official student group:

Question: "Would a student chapter of, say, B'nai B'rith, a Jewish Anti-Defamation League, have to admit Muslims?"
Mr. Martinez: "The short answer is 'yes.'"
Question: "A black group would have to admit white supremacists?"
Mr. Martinez: "It would."
Question: "Even if it means a black student organization is going to have to admit members of the Ku Klux Klan?"
Mr. Martinez: "Yes."
Question: "You can see where that might cause some consternation?"

LGBT activists and much of the gay community are opposing the Christian Legal Society, but as McGurn further writes:

That's a much more serious proposition than a simple disagreement with some private organization. That public/private distinction helps explain why CLS has also found allies in the libertarian Cato Institute and Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty. In their own brief, this latter group stresses that it was the ability of gay Americans to form gay associations-whose membership rules they defined for themselves-that gave them a collective voice in the face of an often hostile majority.

Presumably Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty do not share the CLS view of human sexuality. But they understand exactly where Dean Martinez's logic is taking us.

Update. And expect to see more of this:

"Three bisexual men are suing a national gay-athletic organization, saying they were discriminated against during the Gay Softball World Series held in the Seattle area two years ago. The three Bay Area men say the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance in essence deemed them not gay enough to participate in the series.

An alliance attorney says the group is a private organization and, as such, can determine its membership based on its goals. Good luck with that!

Update. The San Diego Gay & Lesbian News reports:

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) last week filed suit against NAGAAA for enforcing its policy of no more than two heterosexual players for each team competing in the GSWS against three players who now purport to be bisexual. Melanie Rowen, the NCLR attorney representing the plaintiffs, told SDGLN the orientation of five players from the San Francisco-based team "D2" was protested by an opposing team at the GSWS in Seattle two years ago. The protesting team claimed D2 had perhaps as many as five straight players. NAGAAA's tournament rules allow for no more than two per team.

According to Rowen, after being asked what their sexual preferences were, one said he was gay, two refused to answer and two more said they enjoyed both men and women and one of those was married to a woman.

Apparently, the National Center for Lesbian Rights has nothing better to do than sue gay organizations for trying to maintain a gay identity. Of course, when it comes to defending the rights of women to mantaining "safe" and "affirming" women-only spaces, that's apparenlty an entirely different matter.

Columnist and IGF contributing author Jennifer Vanasco recently wrote in the Seattle Gay News a piece titled "A Lesbian on the Supreme Court?," stating:

Suddenly, it seems possible that the next Supreme Court pick might be a lesbian.... Solicitor General Elena Kagan is not openly gay at the moment-which, of course, may mean she's not gay at all. But persistent rumors, an absence of denial, and some assurances from people I trust make me think that, yeah, she probably is. And she's right now on the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on his retirement this summer.

Fair enough. So why have the Obama administration and it's lefty-liberal blogger-henchmen, not to mention its Human Rights Campaign fundraising lapdog, gone ballistic over speculation about Kagan's personal life and relationships? Here's Sam Stein blogging at the Huffington Post:

Leading gay rights group are accusing Republicans of trying to rile up their conservative base by launching a whisper campaign against potential Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan-suggesting the current Solicitor General is a closeted lesbian even though she's not. In its first entree into the upcoming Supreme Court nomination process, the group Human Rights Campaign blasted the increasingly public discussion of Kagan's sexuality, calling it a play "straight out the right-wing playbook....

The comments come a day after CBS published a blog by Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, in which he asserted that choosing Kagan would help Obama "please" much of his base, because she would be the "first openly gay justice."

Here's Domenech in his own words. Doesn't seem too different from what Vanasco wrote, but it got Domenech labeled "a lying scumbag" by blogger "digby." Domenech later explained that he wrongly assumed Kagan was out of the closet, triggering further lefty attacks against him.

And it's not just crazy leftwing bloggers. As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported:

CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: "The fact that they've chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010." She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger "with a history of plagiarism" who was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers." The network deleted the posting....

As William A Jacobson blogs at Legal Insurrection

"it is curious that those objecting to the Kagan rumor seem to treat an accusation of being gay as a slur.... I don't know if I would support Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. I'll wait to learn more about her. If she's gay, so be it, but I will not treat that fact or rumor as a slur. And I'll hold her to the same level of disclosure of personal relationships that we would expect of any other nominee."

Finally, IGF contributing author David Boaz blogs at the Politico:

a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said he complained to CBS because the column "made false charges." I would have hoped that in 2010, in a liberal White House, the statement that someone is gay would not be considered a "charge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines "charge" as "a claim of wrongdoing; an accusation." For many decades it was indeed a "charge," and a career-ending one, to be identified as gay. I would hope that's no longer true, and I'm disappointed in the White House's language.

Let's just add it to the list of our disappointments.

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.