IGF CultureWatch

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.

While it's hard not to be heart-broken over Maine voters rolling back marriage equality in one state where it was legislatively (not judicially) created, there are some key lessons that might be learned. Or not, more likely.

On marriage, the "M" word remains our biggest hurdle, no thanks to a "progressive" president who still reiterates his belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman, which anti-equality activists certainly make use of, and an LGBT movement that responds with "Thank you, sir, may I have another."

While all-but-marriage partnerships may just survive in Washington State, advocates face the hard truth that U.S. voters remain unwilling to grant us marriage equality in the vast majority of states.

Great Britain doesn't use the "M" word for all but marriage-they use "civil partnerships"-and many European nations that now have marriage equality first went through a period of all but marriage. We may have to as well (with the stipulation that the federal Defense of Marriage Act be amended to give equal rights to all but marriage partnerships recognized by the states-and even that remains a huge political hurdle, despite Democratic congressional majorities, which are sure to shrink in two years time-tick, tock, tick, tock).

Skipping "all but marriage" and demanding the "M" word may make for rousing protests, but at some point you have to admit that, when voters have the final say, it's a failed strategy, barring a sea change in popular opinion.

In the political contests, it's not all gloom. Bob McDonnell, the new GOP governor of Virginia, may be a Christian conservative, but he barely mentioned social issues in his campaign (while his Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds, lambasted McDonnell for being against women's equality in a 20-year old master's thesis, which was also anti-gay, but that point was not used by Deeds.) Both Deeds and McDonnell had voted in the Virginia legislature for a successful state amendment banning same-sex marriage, although Deeds receive all the organizational LGBT endorsements. But McDonnell, while avoiding social issues (other than declaring his present support for women in the workplace) ran a low tax, contained-government campaign. And that's why he won, with some Republican and libertarian gay support.

I haven't followed the New Jersey race in which Republican moderate Chris Christie ousted Demcrat John Corzine, a close Obama ally, but it doesn't seem like gay issues were much discussed there, either.

In New York's 23rd congressional district, liberal, pro-gay-marriage Republican Dede Scozzafava was challenged on the right by Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman. She withdrew and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens after tanking in pre-election polls. Owens, a gay-marriage opponent like the president he supports, won. If Scozzafava hadn't been so far to the left on economic issues (her support for bigger government spending and union "card check" fueled her rightwing opposition), it would have been a clearer test of the GOP's willingness to support gay-marriage advocates in its big tent. But we'll have to wait to see those contests.

More on Marriage. Columnist Steve Chapman seems of a similar mind when he writes, in Gay Marriage Lost, But It's Not Losing:

it's not the idea of treating gay couples equally that bothers most Americans. It's the name of the legal arrangement. Call same-sex marriage by another term...and they're fine with it....

...you don't get across a broad river in a single leap. You get there by building a bridge that allows you to travel across one step at a time. As a destination, civil unions leave a lot to be desired. But as an avenue, they're hard to beat.

As President Obama signs the new federal hate crimes statute-the only major piece of LGBT-related legislation that's likely to pass, in my view-Camille Paglia bucks the LGBT lockstep mindset, again (you have to scroll down through the jump in her latest omnibus Salon posting):

Hate crimes legislation, in my view, simply cushions people in their own subgroups and gives them a damaging sense of false entitlement. . . .

I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.

Rick Sincere, another independent voice, offers his own critique. As does Rob Power at Outright Libertarians.

Maybe Maine or Washington State will break the trend and affirm by popular vote the legal equality of same-sex marriages. Maybe. We'll know in a week. But if I can jump the gun, a victory in both states looks dubious.

Not unrelatedly: A new Gallup poll should be a wake-up call to the LGBT mainstream activist groups. Should, but likely won't. The key finding:

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009 ... Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group....

Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008.

Last November, Obama's victory and the Democrats' sweeping gains in Congress seemed to assure the leading LGBT groups (nationally, as well as their state counterparts) that they were on the politically correct track by linking LGBT rights at the hip with a broader leftwing "progressive" big government, pro-union, Democratic Party agenda (let's leave aside, as they did, last November's simultaneous voter rollback of marriage equality in California, Arizona and Florida - their focus was on bringing out the vote for Obama, which they did, even if that meant increasing the numbers of anti-gay minority voters. But those are lessons that everyone has chosen to ignore, so let's go on).

At a time when the need to forge dialogue and, eventually perhaps, alliances with libertarian conservatives who make up a sizeable part of the "tea party" resistance has never been greater, the LGBT movement groups are still devoting themselves to being loyal foot soldiers (and fundraisers) of the left, placing all their bets on the benevolence of the president they worked so tirelessly to elect and his Democratic majorities in Congress. In one year's time, those majorities are going to be a lot smaller. The clock is ticking.

More from Gallup:

The propensity to want the government to "promote traditional values" - as opposed to "not favor any particular set of values" - rose from 48% in 2008 to 53% in 2009. Current support for promoting traditional values is the highest seen in five years.

The fact that LGBT political groups abandoned lobbying for gay equality regardless of other issues and turned themselves into adjacents of the Democratic Party plays a big role, I'd argue, in why there are virtually no politicians willing to embrace a limited government, pro-growth agenda that includes ending federal government discrimination against gays in marriage and the military. [Added: A rare exception is former two-term New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, now preparing a long-shot 2012 Republican presidential run.]

The original Human Rights Campaign was willing to work with and occasionally endorse Republicans; today's HRC is nothing but a Democratic Party fundraising front (yes, I've said it before, but non-leftist gay people keep giving them money as if they were a gay rights organization, so I'm going to keep saying it).

The recent Equality March in Washington featured speakers from the leftwing Service Employees International Union. I'm just surprised ACORN wasn't invited to speak.

More. How partisan has HRC become? In the special congressional election in New York's 23rd district, a pro-gay marriage liberal Republican who supports most of HRC's "progressive" agenda is up against a liberal, pro-Obama Democrat who opposes gay marriage, and a limited government but anti-gay-equality conservative. HRC's position: no endorsement (in fact, no mention of the race on their website).

There's a big (or maybe not so much) National Equality March on Washington coming up on Oct. 10-11, organized by "grassroots" left-liberal and pro-union LGBT activists. But its main characteristic might be the lack of a clear, focused and achievable demand - I'd nominate pressing the Democratic Congress and president to repeal the provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that prohibit the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that are legal and valid under state laws. Along those lines, two stories this week caught my eye.

The New York Times looks at The High Price of Being a Gay Couple:

In our worst case, the couple's lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.

From another angle, CNNMoney.com looked at health care costs and included a profile of a gay man married to his partner:

"I've started my own business, so for the time being, we've added me to my spouse's insurance plan.... The good news is that he's got an excellent benefits package, so that doesn't cost us anything extra out-of-pocket.... The bad news is that the Federal government doesn't acknowledge our relationship, so the employer contribution is reported as taxable income....

"I don't believe in socialized health care. I am a very big believer in the free market. I want universal health care through the private sector, through the free market."

Spot on. Marriage equality and the free market - a liberty agenda for real change we could believe in!

A Human Rights Campaign (HRC) nightmare: As the Washington Blade reports, in an upstate New York congressional district a pro-gay-marriage Republican is running against an anti-gay-marriage Democrat. My prediction: no endorsement from the nation's largest LGBT rights group.

Of course, Democrats may say (should a gay-supportive Republican tip the partisan balance) that a GOP-led House wouldn't take up issues such as reforming the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)...oh...never mind.

OK, there is some truth to that. But you simply can not get to gay legal equality with just one party, while half the nation supports a party that remains opposed, because it receives no gay support, because it remains opposed (play loop endlessly). Gay inroads must be made in the GOP, and races such as this one are important.

Two things struck me about last Saturday's huge "tea party" March on Washington: the way the media dismissed the event's importance and focused on the kooks (exactly as they used to do with gay protests), and the lack of an anti-gay message from among the marchers (a very good development).

As to the first point, Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, observed in the New York Post, "How do you marginalize a significant protest against a politician or policy you support? Lowball the numbers, then dismiss participants as deranged and possibly dangerous kooks. In the case of Saturday's massive 9/12 protest in Washington, done and done." Just as was done with gays. The major media is rarely objective, it's just that its biases change.

Similarly, the Cato Institute's Gene Healy's recounted:

Judging by the massive crowd on Saturday that descended on Washington for the 9/12 March, you'd have to be deaf not to recognize that small-government conservatism remains a vital part of the national conversation.

If you've been fed a steady media diet of MSNBC over the last few months, though, you could be excused for fearing a Pennsylvania Avenue takeover by a rabble of pitchfork-wielding cranks and extras from "Deliverance." But the crowd - "in excess of 75,000 people," according to a D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman - was made up of orderly, pleasant, middle-class Americans from all across the country.

In my two hours at the protest, I didn't see a single "Birther" sign, and spied only one racially insensitive caricature. "Many of the signs," the liberal Center for American Progress alleges on its blog, "attacked President Obama using explicit racial and ethnic smears" - a claim that's simply false. . . . The gallery of "racist, radical portrayals" they posted after spending hours looking at tens of thousands of signs contains few that fit the bill.

And, somewhat surprisingly, there seems to be no evidence of anti-gay contingents at the protest, either. Even Andrew Sullivan, who posted every crazy or embarrassing sign that anyone saw at the March (how dare they criticize the Chosen One!), couldn't find any that were anti-gay. So I think we can assume there weren't any.

This was, in fact, a different group of right-wingers, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday:

"The demonstrators, who plan to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, are drawing their passion not from Bush-era fights over terrorism or gay marriage, but rather from Reagan-era debates over big government programs."

This could be partly because Obama has steered clear of social issues, such as marriage equality, and has instead worked hard to advance bigger-government programs, so that's where the country's focus is. But it's also true that the established groups that played some role in Saturday's march - National Taxpayers Union, Freedomworks, Americans for Prosperity - tend to be led by libertarians with no interest in the anti-gay agenda.

It's clear that the Bush-Obama bailouts and the larger Obama program have galvanized libertarian-leaning, anti-tax, anti-deficit, small-government people, and those are the issues being talked about this summer. And if the beltway LGBT movement wasn't run by Democratic party operatives, they might see that making common cause with pro-liberty groups on the right as well as with the pro-gay big-government left could create a movement that might have a fighting chance of achieving legal equality for gay people, rather than just delivering gay votes, and dollars, to Democrats.