IGF CultureWatch

The Advocate recently published a provocative column titled Mixed Messages, on the murder of cross-dressing 15-year-old Lawrence King by a homophobic classmate, Brandon McInerney, at Oxnard, Calif.'s E.O. Green Junior High. Wrote Neal Broverman:

...each LGBT child at Casa Pacifica [a group home for abused, neglected, and emotionally troubled children where King lived] is given a "Know Your Rights Guide" provided by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a legal advocacy group. "Queer and Trans Youth in California Foster Care Have Rights!" declares the pamphlet's cover. Inside is a description of the state's Foster Care Nondiscrimination Act, along with a list of entitlements for queer children like safe bathrooms and dating. Included on the list-below an illustration of a teenager in overalls and high heels-is the right for kids to wear clothes and hairstyles that fit their gender identity. King clearly took that freedom to heart in the last weeks of his life.

As wonderful as this encouragement sounds, did it put Larry in harm's way by sending him out in a world not ready for him? It may be beyond the capacity of kids to reconcile a tolerant atmosphere like Casa Pacifica with the xenophobic, conformist nature of school. Children like Brandon McInerney are products of their society, one that simply does not know what to do with a boy in heels.

Broverman raised serious issues that are certainly worth discussing. But his piece provoked strong criticism from certain activist quarters, as in this Open Letter to The Advocate from "lawyers, advocates, and child welfare professionals" who declare "hiding fuels hatred" and that "We cannot keep children safe by hiding them. Succumbing to fear creates an environment in which hatred thrives. Invisibility is just another, more insidious, killer."

That sounds a awful lot like the kind of sloganeering that is meant to stifle open discussion rather than foster it. Gay adults know that, if they choose, they can walk hand in hand down a street of a non-gay neighborhood-and they know that in a great many neighborhoods they will risk getting beaten (or worse) for it. That's a choice adults can make.

I think Broverman was altogether correct in pointing out that 15-year-old King, as a transgendered minor, might have been better served by adults who imparted the message that the world can be a dangerous place and unless one is able, willing and prepared to defend oneself (or makes an informed decision to accept the risks or even to court martyrdom) it may be prudent to place discretion over self-expressiveness-at least until one is able to escape entrapment in the public school system.

Pictures of Thomas Beatie, the married and pregnant Oregon man, this week moved from The Advocate (and, in sensationalized versions, the tabloids) to the mainstream media as Beatie appeared on Oprah. Not so surprisingly, as the original first-person Advocate piece made perfectly clear, Beatie is a transgendered man who was born a female named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to a woman. He decided to carry a baby for his wife, Nancy, who has had a hysterectomy.

The only thing "shocking" about this story is the widespread revelation that in the United States a woman can only marry another woman, and a man can only marry another man, if they are first "surgically adjusted." That's fine for those who are, in fact, transgendered, but doesn't help those of us who are gay and lesbian with no desire to go under the knife in order to gain the right to wed (or to marry and become parents through adoption or surrogacy.)

A churlish thought: If gay people are expected to delay anti-discrimination protections until the transgendered are also covered, shouldn't the transgendered forgo the right to wed?

Too Transgressive? Commenter "Another Steve" writes:

Sorry, but this is a shocking and disturbing development.... We're told that transgendered people identify completely with the opposite gender of their birth and so need sexual reassignment surgery. But if this transgendered "man" decides to become pregnant -- the most womanly thing imaginable -- then what's going on here beyond transgression for its own sake?

We'll, live and let live, but the pictures are a bit unsettling.

More. David Letterman has some fun (view here). Activists complain, "David Letterman Mocks Trans Man."

James Kirchick, writing in The Advocate, puts forth the best gay case for McCain.

The upshot: McCain is not a homophobe and at a gut level he's repelled by the intolerance of the religious right. But he's no supporter of gay legal equality, either. While the situation for gay Americans would continue to improve under a President McCain, progress would not be driven from the White House.

If you have reason to believe that a President Obama would allow Iraq to become an Al-Qaeda base, strangle free trade, hike taxes up the gazoo for anyone earning over $31,850 (that's just by letting the Bush tax cuts expire) while allowing a Democratic Congress to spend us into stagflation (ok, Bush has pretty much allowed that already, but it could get even worse, really), then it's not self-loathing for gays to support McCain.

On the other hand, if you think rhetorical expressions of support for gays override all other issues facing the nation, then clearly McCain is never going to please.

More. The value of experience.

Furthermore. Somewhat relatedly (gays and GOP), a Log Cabin board member argues that support for Washington State's expanded partnership rights bill fits in with the GOP's "history and tradition of promoting individual liberty and a belief in empowering states and local communities." Well, that's part of the GOP's history, but the good part that it's altogether correct to call the party home to.

(Policy reminder: comments with personal insults or obscene invective will be deleted; repeat offenders will be banned)

As it's Easter, let's turn to a more upbeat story regarding gays and religion. The Jewish newspaper The Forward reports that traditionally gay synagogues are now so well accepted that they are grappling with the high percentages of heteros and their families who want to join. (hat tip: Rick Sincere). Excerpt:

That difficulty has become particularly acute at Bet Haverim, where more than half the 300 members are straight. After some confusion with Atlanta's gay newspaper, Bet Haverim's rabbi, Joshua Lesser, asked that Bet Haverim be described as a "gay-founded" synagogue....

"I think that was a profound transformational moment where most of us realized: 'Oh, this is the value of opening up our synagogue. We have created a community of allies,'" Lesser said.

I also hear that something similar has happened in larger MCC churches as well. And even the gay-focused gun-defending (and training) enthusiasts, the Pink Pistols, recount that straights who are uncomfortable with NRA-type groups are joining.

Other minorities have long confronted issues of assimilation vs. independent institutions, and the need to strike a balance that preserves what's best in minority culture while helping to enrich (and being enriched by) the larger community to which we all belong.

Updated March 25

The Washington Blade headline (top of page 1) proclaims Obama pastor backs gay rights. Oh, so that makes the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a good guy as far as we (that is, the "LGBT community") are concerned? Wright's gay defenders represent the sort of inbred myopia that distresses many of us who have moved away from the LGBT left-liberal party line. Rev. Wright may call on the Lord by saying "God damn America," he may blame 9/11 on the "chickens are coming home to roost" for U.S. support of "state terrorism against the Palestinians." He may declare that the U.S. government invented and spread HIV/AIDS "as a means of genocide against people of color." But hey, he upholds the progressive line on gay rights, sort of. Let's rally to his support, and that of his most-famed mentee. (Yes, Obama has stated he disagrees with some cranky statements uttered by his most revered spiritual adviser for the past 20 years. Sorry, my bad.)

More. From the funny pages.

Furthermore: Why the speech was a brilliant fraud. Writes Charles Krauthammer:

Why didn't he leave-why doesn't he leave even today-a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction….

Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

And yet Andrew Sullivan, Chris Crain, and other gay pundits still find themselves in full swoon. And they argue that Wright's support for gay rights balances his instances of hatefulness (Sullivan, here, and Crain, here). Just what, one wonders, would be needed to shake their entrancement?

More still. Bruce Bawer writes:

I was no fan of the late Bill Buckley, but a piece by him in the current Commentary has proven surprisingly timely. In it he describes how he and others, back in the 1960s, dealt with the huge and unwelcome influence in conservative circles of the John Birch Society, whose nutbag leader Robert Welch believed Eisenhower was a Communist agent. What did Buckley do? Give a speech in which he refused to disown Welch, explaining that Welch was a part of the big, complex picture of American conservatism and that he couldn't disown him any more than he could disown his grandmother? No, Buckley sought, through the power of the pen, to weaken the Birch Society's influence and separate Welch from the bulk of his followers. Others, too, took part in this effort. And, over time, it worked. It's called behaving responsibly. It's called leadership

And Gregory Rodriguez writes in the LA Times on what he terms Obama's brilliant bad speech:

Just maybe more progress will be made if average, fair-minded, decent people simply chose not to associate with-and lend their credibility to-haters, extremists or sowers of racial discord. Obama could have taken that simple path any time over the last 20 years. He chose not to. Now it's too late.

Yet still more. Christopher Hitchens' take:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily.... To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith.

The conservative but not homophobic FrontPageMagazine.com (I've written for them, as have other IGF authors) has an article titled Complicity in Iran's Anti-Gay Jihad. It details how Britain's Labour government has finally reversed course, in the face of public protests, and will (for now) allow Mehdi Kazemi, a 19-year-old Iranian student, to remain in Britian. Kazemi's lover was executed in Iran for sodomy, reportedly after naming Kazemi as his sexual partner. Kazemi would surely be executed had Britain succeeded in deporting him.

Writes Robert Spencer:

Yet despite all this, the Left in America, for all its vaunted concern for gay rights, remains largely silent about Iran. Has The Nation, or Katha Pollitt, rushed to Kazemi's aid? No - not a word about Kazemi has appeared in The Nation. And The Nation is not alone. Although Columbia students did react derisively to Ahmadinejad's denial that there were homosexuals in Iran, the violent persecution of gays in Iran was well-known in the West long before the President of Iran's visit there - and yet he was still welcomed enthusiastically by students who would have lustily reviled Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham, neither of whom has ever called for anything remotely close to the execution of gays, had either of them dared to set foot on campus. And a delegation of Columbia professors, according to Tehran's Mehr News Agency, even planned a trip to Iran in order to present an official apology to Ahmadinejad for the way he was treated by Columbia President Lee Bollinger when he visited the university.

There seems to have been a great silence, as well, from the leading U.S. LGBT groups. Perhaps they think that a friendly dialogue with Ahmadinejad by the next administration will take care of all.

There's more background on this outrageous affair in the Times of London. That Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary in Gordon Brown's govenrment, had to be shamed by activist Peter Tatchell (whose group OutRage! has taken heat from the British left for standing up to Islamofascist homophobia) and by a gay member of the House of Lords before she halted her efforts to send Kazemi to his death is utterly despicable.

IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter, the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, lets us know that video of presentations from the recent symposium Is Gay Marriage Conservative? can now be viewed online.

The symposium was held February 15 at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. The event aimed "to foster civil debate among conservatives and within conservative thought about gay marriage" and focused on "the underlying policy question of whether gay marriage is a good idea from a conservative perspective." As I previously wrote, it's the kind of open exchange of ideas between independent gay intellectuals and prominent conservatives that IGF loves to see, and that the "progressive" LGBT echo chamber organizations have long shunned.

Presenters included Dale, Jonathan Rauch, David Frum and Charles Murray, among others. Check them out!

And while you're in a video watching mode, be sure to spend some time with another IGF contributing author, Wayne State University philosophy professor John Corvino. John fequently debates representatives of the religious right before student audiences. Here, he presents a free 8-minute excerpt from his renowned lecture on the morality of same-sex love.

What's to say about Eliot Spitzer? If (a) he weren't married, and (b) he hadn't made an issue of cracking down on prostitution services, then I'd say it's nobody's business. But given his mendacity and hypocrisy, that's not the case.

The Washington Examiner does a nice job of comparing Spitzer's imbroglio with other politics and prostitution scandals, which highlights the extent to which prostitution stings have become a favored device in the politics of personal destruction toolkit.

That's another reason why (and again, leaving aside Spitzer's mendacity and hypocrisy), making the purchasing of sexual pleasure illegal opens the door to selective prosecutions and other bad things. Regulate it as might be necessary for health and safety, zone it away from the kiddies, and tax it like other businesses, says I.

The arrangements for the rendezvous at a Washington hotel were caught on a federal wiretap recording last month and laid out in legal papers that reveal the intricacies involved in hiring a $1,200-an-hour call girl and sending her to D.C. from New York.

How nice that the FBI has nothing better to do than elaborate surveillance operations aimed at prosecuting consensual, commercial relations involving adults. What's terrorism, after all, compared to illicit nookie?

You know, if you're a porn director starring in your own films, you can pay a professional to have sex with you and as long as you film it for commercial sale it's all (still, thankfully) legal, despite the efforts of the Meese Commission. How inane does that make our prostitution laws look?

More. Andrew Sullivan picks up on the same theme.

More still.

Client #9, also known as Eliot Spitzer, enthusiastically enlisted in a crusade for tougher anti-prostitution laws and specifically for steps to raise the penalties for "johns" who patronized the women involved. The campaign bore fruit, and in his first months as Governor signed into law what advocates call "the toughest and most comprehensive anti-sex-trade law in the nation". Among other provisions, the law "lays the groundwork for a more aggressive crackdown on demand, by increasing the penalty for patronizing a prostitute, a misdemeanor, to up to a year in jail, from a maximum of three months." (Nina Bernstein, "Foes of Sex Trade Are Stung by the Fall of an Ally", New York Times, Mar. 12). (via Overlawyered.com)

And reader "Avee" comments:

Yes, the FBI may have initially been following a suspicious money transfer in Spitzer's private accounts. But once it became clear this wasn't about corruption or terrorism, but purchasing commercial sex, they continued with the wiretaps and surveillance. So Steve still has a point about the FBI misdirecting its resources at prostitution.

Furthermore. Alan Dershowitz agrees it was entrapment:

Once federal authorities concluded that the "suspicious financial transactions" attributed to Mr. Spitzer did not fit into any of the paradigms for which the statutes were enacted, they should have closed the investigation. It's simply none of the federal government's business that a man may have been moving his own money around in order to keep his wife in the dark about his private sexual peccadilloes.

As [the Wall Street Journal] has reported: "It isn't clear why the FBI sought the wiretap warrant. Federal prostitution probes are exceedingly rare, lawyers say, except in cases involving organized-crime leaders or child abuse. Federal wiretaps are seldom used to make these cases . . ."

And Nora Ephron observes:

This is the problem these guys get into: they're so morally rigid and puritanical in real life (and on some level, so responsible for this priggish world we now live in) that when they get caught committing victimless crimes, everyone thinks they should be punished for sheer hypocrisy.

But they shouldn't really. It's one of the things you have to admire about Senator Larry Craig: he's still there.

Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (based in New Orleans) became the first and only jurisdiction in the country to recognize an individual's right to bear both arms (in a 2001 case) and to purchase adult toys "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." The latter case involved a Texas statute that criminalized the promotion and sale of sex toys. As the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro explained:

"The Fifth Circuit's analysis correctly rests on the Supreme Court's 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, which found that Texas's anti-homosexual sodomy statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment right to engage in private intimate conduct. Put simply, there is no state interest compelling enough to overcome the individual right to freedom in the bedroom.

Because the 11th Circuit last year upheld a similar Alabama "obscene device" statute, Shapiro says that "the Fifth Circuit's decision now squarely opens up a 'circuit split,' which means the issue is ripe for the Court to take up next term." Here's hoping the highest court in the land follows the Fifth Circuit and decides that adults are entitled to possess both handguns in the home (in a case now before the Supreme Court) and sex toys.

And here's another look at how liberty and sexuality stand together. Jamie Kirchick writes in the New Republic of how gay porn actor and director Michael Lucas, who is a Jewish Russian immigrant, has run afoul of the politically correct academic crowd because of his unbridled condemnation of homophobia and anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. This particularly brouhaha erupted after Stanford University's student government asked Lucas to host a lecture on sexual health, which caused other students to protests against the invite. Responded Lucas, "It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims."

Kirchick admits that Lucas is often over the top (forgive me), but I like this quote from the story:

"He's from the East Coast," says Mark Kernes, a senior editor at Adult Video News. "Us people on the West Coast are more laid back."

More on gun rights. The Pink Pistols' brief is the lead for the Washington Post story on amicus briefs in the Second Amendment case now before the Court. (IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter helped write the brief.)

More on Jew-bashing + gay-bashing. The most recent in an ongoing series of attacks in France.

Europe capitulates, again. A gay Iranian teenager faces deportation from Britain and execution in his home country after a Dutch court refused to hear his asylum claim.

Commenting on this week's oral arguments in the marriage case before the California Supreme Court, Dale Carpenter writes:

if gay-marriage litigants do lose the case, the loss may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the gay-marriage movement as a whole. On the one hand, a pro-SSM ruling from the California high court would lead to a state-wide voter initiative to amend the state constitution to ban not only gay marriage but legislatively created civil unions as well. Nobody knows how that vote would turn out, but I would not be confident of a victory for gay marriage. That has always been a serious risk of this California litigation.

On the other hand, a ruling that leaves the issue to the state legislature (which has twice voted to recognize gay marriage) and the governor (who has twice vetoed gay-marriage legislation, deferring the issue to this litigation) will mean that this issue will be resolved democratically.

We've been through this before: either you believe that gay marriage is a new civil right that should be enforced by the courts, or you believe that (with the sole exception of uber-liberal Massachusetts) it's counter-productive to achieve a court victory that creates a voter backlash, enshrining a ban on legal recognition of gay unions into state constitutions. It then follows that giving the electorate a few years to get comfortable with civil unions is the best path to securing eventual marriage equality.

Quite unrelatedly, the Washington Post looks at Hillary's gay supporters in Texas, some of whom find Obama's lack of actual experience troubling.

On the other hand:

[Clinton supporter] Gribben, 64, gives a short history lesson and names all of Clinton's contributions to the gay community. She was the first first lady to march in a gay pride parade. She's fought for more HIV funds. She wants to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," though it was her husband who signed the controversial military policy toward gays. She's for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and supports civil unions.

To which could also be added, "although her husband signed the Defense of Marriage Act (and bragged about it in his re-election ads on radio in the South)."