IGF CultureWatch

The Washington Post's "On Faith" forum looks at anti- and pro-gay rights boycotts. Note that the initial post claims a McDonald's caved-in to the religious right, but that a commenter who called the McCorp HQ got a very different response.

I think it all goes to show that, these days, boycotts are basically a fund-raising tactic by both sides, directed more at their members/donors than anyone else. They almost never (or, make that just "never") have any real economic impact. Sometimes a corporation will initially get scared and announce a retreat, only to then receive a barrage of complaints and boycott threats from the other side. By now, U.S. businesses have basically figured this out.

But the whole game does give the boycotters (on both sides) the emotional satisfaction of believing that they are following in the footsteps of Gandhi and King.

West Palm Beach Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney's predecessor, GOP Rep. Mark Foley, resigned after (with assistance from the leftwing gay blogosphere), it came to light that he'd been sending sexually suggestive emails to teenage former House pages (over 16, the age of consent in D.C.). Now, Mahoney has agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to ABC News.

Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, his staffers said.

The affair between Mahoney and Allen began, according to the current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising "a world that is safer, more moral." At the time, ABC reports, Mahoney's campaign ads featured a picture of him with his wife, Terry, with the line, "Restoring America's Values Begins at Home."

The staffers say Mahoney first met Allen at a campaign stop and later arranged for her to work as a volunteer on the campaign. Allen also appeared in a Mahoney campaign television commercial, criticizing his opponent.

The Foley scandal led to some of the most egregious outpouring of homophobia by Democrats in recent memory. You may recall, for instance, that there were campaign ads claiming GOP leaders allowed Foley to "molest boys," while some LGBT Democratic activists, it was reported, sent social conservatives copies of "The List" of gay staffers working for Republicans on the Hill, in an effort to get them fired as "pedophile protectors."

Thank goodness we had the Democratic Party to stand up for us…oh, never mind.

More. While ABC broke the story, most major media decides that a big, juicy sex scandal involving a congressman with a "D" after his name is not worth reporting.

Connecticut becomes the third state to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples. That's good, except we've learned that court mandated marriage equality can have stinging political repercussions. I hope that's not the case again, and it may be that Connecticut itself avoids a voter backlash and constitutional amendment. But with three statewide anti-gay marriage initiatives coming up, and Californians being bombarded by an anti-gay marriage ad featuring San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declaring same-sex marriage is here to stay "whether you like it or not," the timing of the court decision is not good.

Connecticut had already advanced to civil unions via an act of the elected legislature; achieving marriage equality through the legislative process would have been better.

More. Dan Blatt over at Gay Patriot blogs that Prop 8 opponents need a better narrative than "don't believe their lies."

Bad news: Support for California's anti-gay marriage Prop 8 is picking up steam:

Likely California voters overall now favor passage of Proposition 8 by a five-point margin, 47 percent to 42 percent. Ironically, a CBS 5 poll eleven days prior found a five-point margin in favor of the measure's opponents.

One reason is the success of this anti-gay marriage ad showing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom proclaiming same-sex marriage is here to stay "whether you like it or not."

It's not lost yet, but this is bad news, especially since the parallel Obama surge isn't counteracting Prop 8's growing support. It's quite possible Obama will be the next president, but that all three anti-gay marriage state initiatives (California, Florida and Arizona) will pass. Given that most of the national LGBT activist groups have made the election of Obama their number 1 priority, with the lion's share of their efforts aimed at getting out the vote, for Obama, and raising money, for Obama, a loss in California (especially, since it will roll back marriage equality) will be telling.

But then again, the beltway LGBTers chose to focus their efforts on electing Kerry/Edwards four years ago (even though Kerry/Edwards supported state amendments to ban gay marriage), and they seem to have learned nothing. Okay, that's probably unfair. Since their goal is maximizing their own power and influence in a hoped-for Democratic administration, from their viewpoint their priorities make perfect sense, for them.

More. Reader Casey submitted this telling comment:

"[A]s somebody who has been working against Prop. 8 since months before the ruling went down, raising money, recruiting volunteers, educating voters and praying desperate prayers, I don't want to hear [another commenter's] nonsense about "we only have two viable choices." I've spent years listening to gays talk about how gay issues are the most important thing to vote on, that my status as a Republican is an abomination because the Democrats are so much better on gay issues... and yet, here we are, in the fight of our political lives to defend our right to marry in the largest state of the nation-the ULTIMATE gay issue-and those same gays are MIA, too busy giving their time, energy and money to Obama to do what needs to be done in CA.

"Being behind in the polls wasn't inevitable-we were ahead for a long time-but now the fact that their side has out fund-raised us by $10 million, the fact that they can call on thousands of committed people to go door to door when we can barely get bodies to our phone banks, and yes, the fact that they just want it more than we do is proving out, and now they're ahead, with another ad coming down the pipe that's going to hit us in the throat. Yeah, I said it-they want it more-and if that doesn't change, tangibly, now, we're going to lose this thing.

"Gays have a third choice in 2008; say to hell with the presidential election-Obama is no savior for the gays, and McCain no threat-and get 100% behind the No on 8 campaign. But no-our national organizations had to pretend the presidential election mattered for us this year, and for that, we might just all pay dearly, for a long time to come."

Furthermore. Reader Jake responds to those who charge that criticizing the decision to focus national LGBT resources and labor on electing Obama reflects a pre-emptive blaming of President Obama for Prop 8's passage:

I'm thinking that there will be far more anti-gay blacks and Hispanics coming to the polls this year to advance the "change we've been waiting for" because of the get out the vote efforts of Obama/Biden and the California, Arizona and Florida's Democratic party. I'm kind of surprised that you don't think that's possible.

The Gay Patriot blog poses an interesting question-whether the media's failure to consider Rep. Barney's Frank conflict of interest (his then partner, when Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee and defending Fannie Mae from calls for more regulation, was a Fannie Mae exec) shows that the media don't consider gay relationships subject to the same scrutiny (and thus the same respect) and heterosexual relationships.

An exception: Fox News, which reported: "Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank's efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank's partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency's push to relax lending restrictions."

Many liberals, I'm sure, will find the Fox News account "homophobic," but isn't not reporting on Frank's conflict of interest a sign that gay relationships aren't seen as "real"?

More. Another factor: the media's lock-step narrative blaming the crisis on Republican deregulation and Wall Street greed, right out of the Obama playbook, while giving a pass to Democratic malfeasance (e.g., Frank and friends' success at protecting the big-government fiefdoms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Republican efforts to rein them in, while threatening lenders that failed to extend increasing amounts of credit to low-income families).

The SNL skit that NBC pulled from its own site (while it lasts).

Still more. And now Frank is playing the race card. Lovely.

Jonathan Rowe over at Positive Liberty has an interesting post on social conservatives who would rather scapegoat gay people than deal with the far greater impact of heterosexual misbehavior, which leads to real social ills including young unwed mothers unable to emotionally and financially care for their children (who, in turn, grow up with the dysfunctions of being abandoned by their fathers). Case in point: William F. Buckley's disinheriting his illegitimate grandson by declaring in his will, "I intentionally make no provision herein for said Jonathan, who for all purposes...shall be deemed to have predeceased me." Ouch.

In comparison, the Palins look like models of tolerance.

Conservative Christian activists are using a week in which U.S. librarians highlight the danger of banned books to protest the refusal of high school libraries to accept donations of books such as "The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting," or books presenting homosexuality as a reversible condition. It's a clever protest, organized by the group Focus on the Family.

The problem is that public school librarians are government employees, and so the role of the state in sanctioning one set of ideas over another comes into play. In the end, librarians who are hired by the representatives of taxpayers should have the right to make these calls, and they are deciding not to include books they consider hurtful and misleading. And religious conservatives certainly have a right to protest.

It's a valid question as to whether there is value in providing access to the anti-gay point of view on the shelf next to books supportive of gay equality. How can anyone learn to respond to arguments they have never really read or heard? Yet children are certainly prone to hurtful and hateful behavior, and public schools are not exactly adept at teaching dispassionate approaches to hot button issues.

The issue, of course, is made increasingly irrelevant by the internet, where content (so far) is not regulated by the state, and which allows children and adults to see all sides of social arguments, even (and too often) at the extremes.

Updated Oct. 3, scroll down

I hope this isn't just an act of political desperation, but John McCain has become the first GOP presidential nominee to participate in an interview (albeit through written answers) with a gay publication. He promises to "give full consideration" to the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and to review don't ask, don't tell (but to defer to military commanders on changing the law, a position similar to Obama's).

More. LGBT activists are jumping all over Sarah Palin for her comments to Katie Couric referencing a gay friend and saying she doesn't judge those who make different choices. No, being gay is not a choice (although, in some sense, acting on one's orientation may be). But when it comes to discussing being gay, activists go ballistic if you're in any sense "pro-choice."

Yet Palin, despite her evangelical background, is clearly pointing to a way to be evangelical and be part of a larger community that includes gay people that's very different from the condemnation we usually hear from the religious right. But instead of encouraging her (and through her, religious conservatives), she gets blasted.

Furthermore: THE GREAT DEBATE

From Thursday's veep debate:

Ifill: Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?
Biden: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted-same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair. ...

Ifill: Governor, would you support expanding that [granting same-sex benefits to couples] beyond Alaska to the rest of the nation?
Palin: Well, not if it goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman. And unfortunately that's sometimes where those steps lead.
But I also want to clarify, if there's any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue.... But I'm being as straight up with Americans as I can in my nonsupport for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.

Ifill: Let's try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?
Biden: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.
---

McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden both oppose same-sex marriage. Biden feels the constitution mandates giving gay couples the same benefits as marriage (but not giving them marriage). Palin felt that Alaska's constitution bound her to veto a bill that would have barred benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees.

Obama/Biden have the edge in the commitment to equality, but honestly, not by much. And certainly not to any degree that might conceivable justify the viciously mean-spirited and often hysterical demonizing of McCain and (especially) Palin by LGBT Democratic activists.

I've blogged about Jay Bakker before, but his story is inspiring so here's another link.

And here's more Good News about younger evangelicals, from the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll:

"Young evangelical Christians display generational differences on some key social issues. A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples. Older evangelicals remain strongly opposed. At the same time, young evangelicals are as solidly pro-life on abortion as older evangelicals."

The "religious right" is changing, and as I've argued regarding conservatives in general, inroads can be made if there's an effort to do so, rather than knee-jerk, secular-liberal and frequently contemptuous dismissal of the Palin people.

Another observation: it's past time to stop insisting that gay legal equality be tied at the hip to support for abortion on demand (are you listening HRC and Victory Fund, both of which have a "pro-choice" litmus test for candidates they support-even if those candidates are openly gay Republicans).

More. This is religious cultism we could do without.

Roger L. Simon adds, "And they complain about the religious right -- can you imagine the reaction to a similar group of kids singing about McCain under the tutelage of an evangelical minister?"

Blogs the Volokh Conspiracy's Jim Lindgren, "as creepy and inappropriate as this singing is - it's not as bad as what Obama is actually proposing: forcing all children, starting at the age of 11, to give 50 hours a year of child labor working in their communities at the direction of the federal government."

Reason.tv now has this parody.

This being a blog titled "Culture Watch," although focused on socio-political developments affecting the status and legal rights of gay people, I must recognize the coming out of popular American Idol runner-up/teen fave Clay Aiken and former Disney child star/aspiring actress Lindsay Lohan. Churlishly, my initial response (particularly as regards party girl Lohan) is, must they? But out gay celebs do represent some kind of progress, especially for the younger set.

Rick Sincere blogs, "The shock and surprise with which this news is being met is ... [ellipses in original, denoting silence] well, isn't it."?

Yes, it is.

More. In the entertainment world, "Republican is the new 'gay.'"