IGF CultureWatch

The Obama administration and Congress may be working overtime to put the government on tax-and-deficit-fueled steroids, to extend their regulatory tentacles and grow the power of the state over us all. But outside the beltway, as IGF contributing author David Boaz writes on the Cato Institute's blog, genuine citizen activism is having an effect on state legislatures that's led to an inspiring culture shift toward liberty on two fronts: the legal use of marijuana and marriage equality. On the latter, Boaz reflects that:

[One of] the striking things about the rapid succession of [pro-marriage-equality state legislative] votes is the lack of public opposition. Conservatives have been remarkably silent, perhaps because some of them genuinely do feel less outrage about legislative action than about "judicial tyranny," and perhaps because opposition to gay marriage is getting to be embarrassing among educated people.

Concludes Boaz:

The "shift to the left" that we seem to observe on economic policy is depressing to libertarians. But that's mostly crisis-driven. When the results of more spending, more taxes, more regulation, and more money creation begin to be visible, we may see the kind of reaction that led to Proposition 13 and the election of Ronald Reagan at the end of the 1970s. Meanwhile, this cultural "shift to the left" is far more encouraging.

In addition to Jennifer Vanasco's column posted at left, "Obama's No Show," it's beginning to dawn on some activists (not those at the Democratic Party auxiliary known as the Human Rights Campaign, but to some others) that their president is a bit of a let down when it comes to being the promised "fierce advocate" for gay rights (excepting for the small matter of the right to marriage, which he upfront opposes as un-Christian).

Reports the New York Times, "President Obama was noticeably silent last month when the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage." And while the president has urged Congress to pass a dubious bill federalizing hate crimes against selected victims, he's delayed action on one of his key campaign promises that, like marriage, involves fundamental equality under the law: repealing the military's "don't ask, don;t tell" gay ban.

Last weekend, Richard Socarides, who advised President Bill Clinton on gay issues, published an opinion piece in the Washington Post headlined, "Where's our fierce advocate?"

It's about eggs and baskets, and what happens when you put all in one (HRC to Obama last year: here's our unconditional support plus our dollars and volunteer hours, given at the expense of fighting anti-gay state initiatives; we trust you'll be kind to us and invite us to your victory parties).

More. From Steve Clemons of the liberal New America Foundation, "Obama Needs to End Silence on Biggest Civil Rights Move of Our Time".

Furthermore. See Ross Douthat's New York Times op-ed column, "Faking Left." He writes:

the Obama administration does seem to have a plausible strategy for turning the "social issues" to liberalism's advantage. The outline is simple: Engage on abortion, and punt on gay rights.

The punting has been obvious. On the campaign trail, Obama promised to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy He still intends to - but not yet, not yet. He said he supported federal recognition for civil unions. His administration has ignored the issue. He backed repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. Don't expect that to come up for a vote any time soon.

With every passing day, it becomes clearer to those with eyes that so many professional LGBT leaders were and are merely Democratic party operatives, first and foremost.

Still more. From Andrew Sullivan, with whom I rarely agree, but perhaps he's beginning to see the light:

Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all).

And what is Obama doing about any of these things? What is he even intending at some point to do about these things? So far as I can read the administration, the answer is: nada. We're firing Arab linguists? So sorry. We won't recognize in any way a tiny minority of legally married couples in several states because they're, ugh, gay? We had no idea. There's a ban on HIV-positive tourists and immigrants? Really? Thanks for letting us know. Would you like to join Joe Solmonese and John Berry for cocktails? The inside of the White House is fabulous these days.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bawer reflects that in Europe, "instead of encouraging Muslim immigrants to integrate and become part of their new societies, Western Europe's governments have allowed them to form self-segregating parallel societies run more or less according to Shariah." One result:

Ubiquitous youth gangs, contemptuous of infidels, have made European cities increasingly dangerous for non-Muslims-especially women, Jews and gays. ...

One measure of the dimensions of this shift: Owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays-who 10 years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc-now support conservative parties by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

If our anti-gay religious right were predominantly Muslim and violent instead of Christian and merely reactionary, would the U.S. left be throwing gays under the bus?

Some LBGT activists will no doubt be upset that California's courts have allowed a small, private Lutheran High School to expel two 16-year-old girls for having a "bond of intimacy" that was "characteristic of a lesbian relationship," as reported by the Los Angeles Times. The girls sued; they lost.

Here's a suggestion. Maybe the girls should not go to a school that's founded on religious beliefs that view homosexuality as immoral, rather then trying to use the coercive power of the state to force the Lutherans to modify their dogma-based practice-at a private Lutheran institution-and thereby play into every fear being promoted by the religious right.

A libertarian friend suggests that perhaps we should tell the right that if they agree to marriage equality, we'll drop anti-discrimination laws-and then we could claim the mantle of freedom and diversity. LGBT activists would never go for that one, but advocating that private, religious organizations be treated as serfs of the state really isn't a good idea.

More. Our liberal readers are agast. Typical responses: "Change schools? How insensitive can you get?" and "If it gets one dime for transportation, books, physical ed, health ed, etc., the school can not say it is private."

But reader "Walker" responds to the point:

Religious schools generally don't get government money. But most institutions in a society with a government as big as ours do get some kind of financial "support" from government. Do you really want to bring the entire society under the control of government? Does that sound like a good plan for freedom and diversity? Or for a small minority that depends on tolerance? If you say you can attach all-enveloping strings to ANY government money, then you'd better be confident that your allies will always be in charge of that all-powerful government.

As to the question "Do you really want to bring the entire society under the control of government?," I bet their answer would be, "Yes!"

All opposition to the LGBT-inclusive federal hate crimes bill just passed by the House (Senate action is to come) isn't from right-wing crazies, although reading the LGBT media and blogs you might think so. At the libertarian-minded Reason magazine, Jacob Sullum argues:

Aside from the usual problems with hate crime laws, which punish people for their ideas by making sentences more severe when the offender harbors politically disfavored antipathies, this bill federalizes another huge swath of crimes that ought to be handled under state law, creating myriad opportunities for double jeopardy by another name. The changes would make it much easier for federal prosecutors who are displeased by an acquittal in state court to try, try again, as they did in the Rodney King and Crown Heights riot cases. They simply have to argue that the crime was committed "because of" the victim's membership in one of the listed groups…

Wendy Kaminer also made a sound civil libertarian case against such measures last year in "The Return of the Thought Police." I'm with the libertarians in opposing measures that either federalize or increase criminal penalties for acts committed with anti-gay animus; punish the crime and the degree of planning that went into it, not accompanying thoughts.

But many progressives are cheering this new expansion of federal prosecutorial power - in many cases the same voices who demonized Bush for widening federal prosecutions of alleged terror suspects. They're also lambasting critics of the bill as "bearing false witness" for suggesting that the measure will lead to the silencing of anti-gay sermonizing. I wonder if they said the same thing in Canada and Sweden. And yes, these prosecutions ultimately failed, but that doesn't mean putting pastors on trial and forcing them to defend their sermons isn't chilling.

Frank Rich had some interesting thoughts (yes, I actually said that) in his Sunday New York Times column. He remarks on the scant reaction on the right to the Iowa and Vermont marriage victories, aside from the silly anti-gay YouTube missive from Maggie Gallagher's "National Organization for Marriage." Writes columnist Rich:

Even the anti-Obama "tea parties" flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. ...[M]ost straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didn't even make the evening news.

Let's leave aside Rich's partisan belittling of Fox News - the tea parties are a genuine and important demonstration of opposition by a large number of Americans, including yours truly, to Obama's trillions of spending for government expansion. (Read Steve Chapman at reason.com: "The scale of the federal response to the crises has come as a frightening surprise to many Americans, who suspect the cure will be worse, and less transitory, than the disease." And I suspect they're right.)

If we were not so intent on adopting an air of cultural superiority toward them, we might see that libertarian conservatives who distrust intrusive government and want it out of our wallets and our lives are exactly those with whom we should be engaging in dialogue.

Still, Rich is right that Americans seem to have turned a corner on the gay marriage issue. Alas, too late for California, thanks to our own activists' organizational surrender on state anti-gay initiatives in November 2008, in order to better support Obama and the Democratic Party (and not offend Obama's anti-gay minority constituency). But still a good harbinger for the future.

Rich is also right that the GOP still has a long way to go, with those he labels as the party's chief contenders in 2012, Romney, Palin and Gingrich, "now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren." That's why I believe it's all the more important to be supportive of efforts by Log Cabin and the new GOProud to work toward change from within the Republican flanks. The pro-marriage equality speech at Log Cabin's convention last week by Steve Schmidt, the Republican political consultant who managed John McCain's campaign, was a good sign (see Jon Rauch's item, below).

But much more needs to be done. And liberal Democrats belittling these efforts isn't helpful.

Don't know if a new group called GOProud, subject of a nice Wall Street Journal "Mainstreet" column by William McGurn, will have staying power. But any additional effort to challenge the Democratic Party's string-pulling of LGBT political activism (which resulted last year in funneling gay dollars, staff resources and volunteer legwork to the Obama campaign, rather than to defeating the four successful anti-gay state initiatives) is certainly A-OK in my book.

More. You can learn more about GOProud at their website, where their mission is described as to "promote the power of individuals, limit government's reach, enable economic growth through free market principles, and strengthen America's position in the world."

It would be great to see them organize visible gay contingents at future "tea party" protests and otherwise build alliances with the libertarian right.

More on tea parties. Steve Chapman writes at reason.com:

The scale of the federal response to the crises has come as a frightening surprise to many Americans, who suspect the cure will be worse, and less transitory, than the disease.

And I suspect they're right.

Of course, the concerns of their liberal critics can't be ignored; after all, it is true that to the extent that there are leaders of these protests, many of them don't even have Ivy League degrees (if you can imagine). And worse, I've heard that among the protesters are many (and I'm not making this up), dangerous VETERANS!

New York Post columnist Kyle Smith writes:

News stories about the Vermont decision implicitly recognize that this one really counts, by emphasizing the fact that this is the first state to approve gay marriage through a legislature rather than impose it from the bench.... Vermont has made the change the proper way, and it ought to be congratulated.

Those who chafe at the decision - and the passage of Prop. 8 in California, which Obama carried by 24 points, suggests that the opposition is hardly limited to Republicans - should reexamine their arguments.

Smith goes on to note that opponents of letting gays wed like to claim that same-sex marriage violates their religious freedom, which apparently is premised on living in a society where government consigns gay people to second-class status. (This video from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is devoted to this point.) But as Smith remarks:

Christians are surrendering nothing. They remain free to disapprove of homosexuality.... They also remain free to move to a country that enforces religious views....

Conservatives who are in favor of more children being born into and raised by two-parent families, social mechanisms to limit promiscuity, decentralized political decision-making and the supremacy of lawmakers rather than judges in non-Constitutional matters have much to cheer in Vermont. Gay-marriage opponents should ask themselves whether their reasoning is something else in disguise.

Making a conservative, pro-family argument isn't going to sway all social conservatives, but it will eventually convince many who are not bigots, and who don't wish to see themselves as such.

And there's another lesson: domestic partnerships and/or civil unions can be stepping stones to full marriage equality, allowing states to grow comfortable with the notion. Those who argue that it must be full marriage equality now or nothing - no compromise! - have been proven wrong.

But that's not to say full equality doesn't remain the goal, and we should keep our eyes on the prize. With four states won (Iowa and Vermont joining Massachusetts and Connecticut) it's right to press congressional Democrats and the Obama administration to modify the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act to allow federal recognition of same-sex marriages in states where they exists - and to do so before the GOP retakes seats in the House and the Senate in 2010.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force bestowed a Leadership Award to San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom on April 6, calling him "a galvanizing force for marriage equality."

Meanwhile, the creator of a highly effective anti-gay marriage ad on behalf of California's Prop. 8, using a news clip featuring Gavin Newsom, won a very different award, from the American Association of Political Consultants. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

[Frank Schubert] was happy to give the political pros from across the country a 45-minute seminar on his victorious campaign, where he was asked: "How did you come from 14 points behind in the polls and win?"

Well, Schubert explained, they were very disciplined, they had tremendous support from the faith community and they had "a gift from God: Gavin Newsom."

Whereupon Schubert showed the same-sex-marrying San Francisco mayor delivering his infamous "it's gonna happen, whether you like it or not" line that became the anchor for Schubert's TV campaign.

The place exploded in laughter.

Like many on the left, Newsom gets credit for standing up for marriage equality, but he did so in a way that spoke to the gay community and our supporters, while letting opponents of same-sex marriage know just what he thought of them. That didn't work out so well in the end, did it. But it's the mindset of today's progressive activism, which directs its energy inward on group affirmation rather than outward on constructive engagement with those who see the world through a very different lens.

The Washington Blade's annual look at compensation paid to, as they term it, "leaders of the LGBT rights movement," is always an interesting read. But the real issue isn't just the level of pay; I agree that, in general, CEOs of nonprofits should earn what the competitive market deems is fair. The broader, and far more important question, is the same one that's being asked of private-sector CEOs these days - does the level of their individual performance this past year still entitle them to receive what would otherwise by deemed fair compensation for their positions? Or should there by some "clawback" (i.e., recouping promised compensation in light of poor performance) for these executives as well?

Given the devastatingly bad leadership shown on the part of some, particularly as regards the debacle of California's Proposition 8, a campaign mismanaged to an extraordinary degree, should Lorri Jean of the LA Center still be getting $327,000? (The Advocate, in its "Anatomy of a Failed Campaign," called her one of "the small clique of California LGBT leaders" who were in charge of directing, or misdirecting, opposition to the initative.) Should Joe Solmonese, under whose management the bulk of HRC's efforts went to getting out the vote for Obama instead of fighting the three statewide anti-gay marriage initiatives that were passed, be receiving $338,400? Or would it be more just to direct their way some of the same outrage over the bonuses being paid to executives who ran their companies into the ground?