IGF CultureWatch

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...

Newsweek has a nice cover story, The Conscience of a Conservative, about Ted Olson, labeled "the unlikeliest champion of gay marriage." That's because "he is one of the more prominent Republicans in Washington, and among the most formidable conservative lawyers in the country." He was, in fact, head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Ronald Reagan, and Solicitor General under George W. Bush. That overview is followed by Olson's essay, The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage, on "Why Same-Sex Marriage is an American value."

Yes, I anticipate the barrage of comments about why we should only support Democrats because Democrats are better. But what's interesting about Olson and his legal efforts on behalf of marriage equality is that it's happening despite the fact that the LGBT political establishment is pretty much run by Democrats as a fundraising operation for their party. Imagine what the political scene might look like with a little bit of outreach across the aisle.

More. Conservative commentator and Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover, on Why I'm Joining the Fight for Marriage Equality.

Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Tim Kincaid has an interesting post ("A call for a nuanced view of religious leaders") about Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston's huge Lakewood Church, who gave an opening prayer at the inauguration of Annise Parker, the newly elected lesbian mayor of Houston. Osteen, a best-selling author whose uplifting Sunday service is broadcast nationwide, says he welcomes gays to his church but believes scripture elevates heterosexual marriage as best.

He's wrong, we may strongly believe, but Osteen, unlike Rick Warren, has never endorsed an anti-gay marriage initiative or signed an anti-gay declaration. So why was he lumped in with the worst of the religious right haters and condemned as an "anti-gay ridiculous person" and a "smiling bigot" recently by the popular leftist gay website Queerty?

As Kincaid writes of Osteen, "We can be, at times, too quick to denounce and drive away some who could in the future - or currently on some issues - be incredibly valuable allies if we only would let them." But it's so much more fun to shout "bigot bigot go away," isn't it. And, by the way, what exactly is the difference between Osteen's remarks and those of Barack Obama, who similarly cites scripture as the basis of his belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and gets standing ovations at HRC dinners?

I'll jump in with a few new year's legislative-front predictions for 2010, which I suspect won't be well received by those who view the world through the lens of LGBT political lobbies and media. In short, don't expect much from Washington in the year ahead.

Having given us a "hate crimes" bill, Democrats feel that, for the most part, they've taken care of things. With elections approaching in November and the number of expected lost seats for Democrats mounting, purple state/district Democrats-already severely burned by succumbing to "Chicago-style" pressure to vote for an increasingly unpopular (and, in fact, truly dreadful) "health care reform" bill-have used up just about all their wiggle room among centrist and center-right voters.

Those who think that they will cast their lots for an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that includes (as LGBT activists insist it MUST) job protections for transgendered workers (ill-defined, despite the bill's verbosity on the matter, and still subject to scary charges about men in dresses exercising free-choice regarding restrooms) are delusional. It won't happen.

As for reforming or repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, sorry, that's a no-go, too. And for the same reasons-Democrats have pushed those beyond their left-liberal base as far as they dare with health care and mega-government-expanding "stimulus," and they must at least appear to be moving back toward the center. Moreover, when it comes to equality for same-sex spouses, the Obama administration has not exactly shown courage, or willingness to spend political capital (indeed, quite the opposite). Which shouldn't surprise anyone who was paying attention during the campaign.

The one possibility for progress is that repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" might be pushed through as part of a defense spending bill later this year. Given that a majority of Americans now seem to favor this, and it might be done relatively quietly, it's within the realm of possibility. That would certainly be welcome, but even John McCain was suggesting he'd consider repeal. Given what the "LGBT community" spent in terms of labor and dollars on behalf of electing this administration and Congress, and the promises we were made, it's slim pickings-if it happens at all.

As for the November elections, pollsters expect significant losses in the House (20 to 40 Democratic seats are widely mentioned) and the shift of several Democratic Senate seats to the GOP, restoring its filibuster. That's going to make the one-party strategy, which was always a terrible "all eggs in one basket" bet, even worse-for us, at least, if not for the Democratic operatives running the Democratic fundraising fronts know as LGBT rights organizations.

Let's get this straight, errr correct. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, a libertarian-leaning Reagan-appointee, orders health benefits for a lesbian spouse of a federal employee, and the Obama White House, through its highest ranking openly gay appointee (John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management), attempts to thwart the judge's order? Get ready for calls to protest. Oh, sorry, make that write more checks to Democrats.

More. The Obama Administration is opposing DOMA as "unfair" but defending it (separate and unequal treatment of gays) as "constitutional" at the same time. It appears that gay legal equality may be the sole area of U.S. law where Eric Holder's Justice Department is not leaning over backwards to take the liberal-left judicial line.

Requiring Catholic social service programs to extend benefits to same-sex spouses has become the key rallying point against a same-sex marriage bill being debated by the Washington, D.C., city council. Some jurisdictions that have passed marriage-equality legislation, such as the state of New Hampshire, broadly exempt programs affiliated with religious organizations from recognizing same-sex spouses; the D.C. proposal would not.

The council also rejected an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

Much discussion takes the form of denouncing the Neanderthal right for its hidebound bigotry standing in the way of true progress and all things good. That may or may not be accurate, but it's certainly not good politics. Forcing religious affiliates to violate their dogmatic principles gives social conservatives a huge rallying cry, and to many independent non-bigots it appears to be using the state to force behavior that violates personal conscience, and a step too far.

A broad religious exemption might be an affront to "equality" (and there are counter-arguments of a libertarian nature that could be made here), but at the very least it would allow us to advance without courting such intense reaction. Take note that New Hampshire, with its broad religious exemption, is one of the very few jurisdictions in which marriage equality looks like it may have some staying power.

More. The efforts of gay marriage supporters in D.C. are directed at having the council pass the measure and then fighting attempts by opponents to hold a referendum. Right now, should marriage equality come before the voters, it would be expected to lose, as it has lost in every jurisdiction where voters have had their say. Time to re-evaluate the strategy, one might think.

Note: Due to a server issue over Thanksgiving weekend, some posted comments were inadvertently lost. Sorry about that.

Yet another fawning Washington Post puff piece on an Obama staffer looks at White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, who was formerly chief of staff to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).The post relates this bit of history. In Baucus's 2002 senate race:

Messina masterminded a bruising attack ad against Republican state Sen. Mike Taylor, a former hairdresser. The ad featured video footage of Taylor, then decades younger and bearded, setting the hair and massaging the temples of a mustachioed man in a beauty salon chair-with a funky bomp-chic-a-bomp-bomp '70s beat in the background. The spot ends with a frozen frame of Taylor reaching down and out of sight toward the other man's lap. Disapprovingly, a voice-over declares, "Mike Taylor: Not the way we do business here in Montana." ...

Stephanie Schriock [Montana's junior senator Jon Tester's chief of staff] cited the ad as one example of how Baucus has long appreciated and been served by Messina's killer instinct. "Jim was willing to make the hard call to put an ad out there," she said.

Nowhere does reporter Jason Horowitz question the use of overt homophobic stereotypes (regardless of the fact that Taylor wasn't, in fact, gay) to aid the Democrat's cause. But then, neither the politically supplicant media nor LGBT Democratic activists seem to mind pandering and promoting the denigration of gay people when it serves the interests of their party. (Which is to say, if it were a Republican administration, the appointment of a White House deputy chief of staff with this history would have triggered loud protests; under Obama, it's just an amusing anecdote.)

The House-passed health care bill included one decent provision that would have extended the payroll tax exclusion on employer-provided health benefits that spouses receive to domestic partners. The New York Times described it here. But despite the Senate bill running to an amazing 2,074 pages in which all sorts of social engineering are hidden, with a less-strict abortion-funding ban than in the House bill, there is apparently no provision for remedying the tax inequality faced by gay spouses and partners.

So despite raising taxpayer costs by at least $1 trillion and imposing costs on businesses and individuals of another $1.5 trillion, in its 400,000 words Harry Reid couldn't find a sentence or two for equality under the law.