IGF CultureWatch

An email discussion list I'm on alerted me to this posting from Anthony Bradley's Christian-themed (but not religious right) blog. Are things really this bad for heterosexual men? Bradley paints a depressing picture. Here's an excerpt:

Families like the Keatons and the Cosbys (like the Cleavers and Nelsons of a previous generation) were presented as the pinnacle and fullest expression of life on earth. This is what you want fellas, a beautiful wife, a few kids, a nice house, a good job...then comes retirement, grandchildren and you die a fulfilled man. Ahh, what a life!

Guess what? Lots of guys are finding out the hard way that in the real world having the perfect "American family" image is the rare exception.

Here's the truth: lots of guys I know are in completely miserable marriages, many (I mean MANY) wives have committed adultery, kids have chronic illnesses, guys hate their jobs are stuck because of debt, divorced (even though they swore they were not going to do what their parents did by splitting up), many wives want to leave their husbands because they don't make enough money, lots of "great guys" never marry, many can't get over addictions because after praying for 12-15 years they've discovered that it "doesn't work," depression, dealing with their own sexual abuse at a late age, mulling over a very long list of regrets, wanting to pack it all up and go "into the wild," your daughter has a reputation for being a "slut," your son's already a pot head, etc.

And for guys that I talk to who aren't Christians or part of any religious tradition some of the issues are worse than these.

I know, this is not a cheery Yule Time/New Year's message. But it did strike me that gay people, as do other minorities, sometimes focus a bit too exclusively on our own travails and challenges (as if, say, straight people are the "haves" and we are the "have nots"). There's some truth to this perception, especially in terms of government discrimination and legal inequality. But we should always remember that what unites gay and straight men (as men), and gay and straight women, and all of us together, is the shared challenges of the human predicament.

Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister with close ties to anti-gay religious conservative activists, has surged into a virtual tie with front-runner Rudy Giuliani in the Republican presidential race, just two weeks before the first contest, according to a new Reuters/Zogby poll.

Last month, conservative columnist Johah Goldberg wrote in the Los Angeles Times that:

A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee is a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do "good works" extends to using government-and your tax dollars-to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

As others have already said, the rise of a socially intolerant, big-spending "populist" was always the fear that hovered over small-government, low-tax economic libertarians regarding the Republican party's strategy of aligning religious conservatives with free marketers. The hope was one day to see a socially tolerant (and gay inclusive) economic conservative (someone not too far from Giuliani, perhaps) emerge as the standard-bearer. The nightmare was/is Rev. Mike, the amiable enemy of liberty.

More. Be afraid: Huckabee and the Christian Reconstructionists.

And worse. He raised a son who is a dog torturer. But hey, he's got that old time religion, so let's make him president, say the Republicans of Iowa.

According to a new report by CBS's 60 Minutes, the military's enforcement of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (or, as I prefer, "Lie and Hide") has plummeted:

Discharges of gay soldiers have dropped dramatically since the Afghan and Iraq wars began, from 1,200 a year in 2001 to barely 600 now. With the military struggling to recruit and retain soldiers, gay soldiers claim that commanders are reluctant to discharge critical personnel in the middle of a war.

So much for the argument that gays must be drummed out to preserve the "unit cohesion" of our combat forces.

Addendum. Commenter John S. shares:

"Don't ask, don't tell" equals "Lie and Hide"... I like it. It is very obviously true, and the more airtime this particular turn of phrase receives, the more it will chip away at the "Don't ask, don't tell" mentality. Can I have your permission to use "Lie and Hide" with everybody I know?

But of course, and thanks.

Not that I think he's going to be president, but Ron Paul is attracting the support of a cadre of some pretty charged-up Republicans who may have an impact on their party's future.

Paul's position on same-sex marriage is muddy, perhaps intentionally. But when, in an interview, ABC's John Stossel asked Paul "Should gays be allowed to marry?" his (initial) answer was "Sure." That later gets qualified, but in and of itself it sets him apart not just from the fundies but also from mainstream Republicans-and Democrats-running for the highest office.

When pushed, alas, Paul says that government shouldn't be in the marriage licensing business, but it's not like hetero couples are going to give up all the government-provided rights and benefits they receive by getting hitched.

Paul also reveals a deeper antipathy when he says of gay couples, "just so they don't expect to impose their relationship on somebody else." That sounds more like the Texas congressman who, while opposing a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, did vote for the Defense of Marriage Act which, in part, bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages (even when recognized under state law) for purposes such as filing joint federal taxes, Social Security inheritance and spousal immigration. And Paul voted in 1999 to bar the District of Columbia from [using federal funds for adoptions by unmarried parnters]. ( Some key Paul positions are summarized here.)

Even so, that initial "Sure" was nice to see.

Update. Paul's gay supporters say the 1999 amendment he voted for, regarding adoptions in the District of Columbia, involved federal funding for adoptions by unmarried couples, and it was the federal funding that Paul opposed. However, it appears that the amendment did not seek to limit the total amount of federal funds to D.C., but to prohibit the use of federal funds by the D.C. government for any operations that would facilitate adoption by unmarried partners. (H.R. 2587; H.AMDT. 356: An amendment to prohibit any funding for the joint adoption of a child between individuals who are not related by blood or marriage.)

More. Back in 1998, our own contributing author David Boaz advocated Privatize Marriage: A simple solution to the gay-marriage debate. But I have to agree with our frequent commenter Avee, who shares:

I, too, would prefer government to stop licensing marriage. But it's not politically likely that, anytime soon, Washington is going to revoke all the hundreds of special rights that government grants to married couples, in the tax code and otherwise. That being said, does Paul support stopping the government from discriminating against same-sex couples by giving them all the rights it gives to opposite-sex couples whose marriages it recognizes (for as long as it continues to recognize opposite-sex marriages)? It would appear Paul does NOT support this.

It seems that politicians who are the most anti-gay (e.g., Huckabee calls homosexuality "sinful") are often also the most anti-immigrant (e.g., Huckabee wants to seal border.)

Could be that people who don't like people who are different, don't like people who are different?

More. Reason mag's Hit & Run blog on Republicans "chasing a rabbit down a hole" for dubious short-term gains and likely long-term disaster.

Still more. David Lampo, a spokesman for Log Cabin Republicans of Viriginia, writes in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

What are the lessons the Republicans should learn from the 2007 elections? Certainly not the one that the Family Foundation is pushing in its e-mail blasts to its supporters that claim the losses were attributable to candidates who were not socially conservative enough…

For Republicans to succeed, we must get back to focusing on real Republican ideals and values-such as limited government, individual responsibility, and fiscal discipline-and move away from campaigns that do nothing more than attack gays and immigrants…

…if the Republican Party wishes to reverse its recent electoral misfortune, it will need to adopt a message and run campaigns that invite people into the party rather than exclude them from it.

I'm not a supporter of hate crimes bills, as previously noted (for example, here and here). But if I were, I wouldn't be a happy camper about this latest legislative fiasco.

Yet another uninformed hit piece against gays who dare to deviate from the party line is making the rounds, this time via Public Eye, a quarterly put out by Political Research Associates, a nonprofit supported by progressive and liberal activists and foundations.

In Gay Conservatives: Unwanted Allies on the Right, Pam Chamberlain sneers that:

Embarrassed by a gay community that embraces the diversity of drag queens, transgender youth, and adherents of exotic sexual practices, these (mostly male) assimilationists express their sense of entitlement through outrage at being discriminated against for being gay....

It is in the blogosphere, however, where political writers like Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and the Independent Gay Forum, an online collection of gay conservative writers, have found their home....

I love the fact that to prove her case, Chamberlain copiously quotes...other progressives who accuse those they label as "gay conservatives" of sexism, racism, etc. etc.

Actually, IGF's writers include several Democrats and many small "l" libertarians. But while Chamberlain notes that "gay conservatives" embrace a variety of issues including "limited government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, a strong defense, and free markets," she repeatedly returns to the trope that because the religious right is anti-gay and holds sway over the Republican party, "gay conservatives" don't make any sense (aside from being motivated by shame and selfishness).

It's clear that Chamberlain simply doesn't give any credence to the ideas of "limited government" and personal responsibility, so she dismisses them as a veneer. It's not possible that gay non-leftists might genuinely believe that individual liberty trumps group entitlement. Or that faith in government regulation to engineer social outcomes is often counter-productive. Or that economic redistribution doesn't lead to "social justice" but to economic stagnancy. Or that those who champion less government and greater individual liberty might be battling the grip that social conservatives have on the GOP.

These ideas may, of course, be debatable, but it's a sign of the left's slovenliness to not even engage in that debate and instead to dismiss gays who rejected leftwing boilerplate politics as craven, racist, misogynist self-loathers.

On a happier note, here's an op-ed in which one (straight) conservative explains why he supports gay marriage. It's the kind of argument that gay libertarians and conservatives can help foster on the political right, the value of which you might expect gays on the left to recognize.

IGF gets a mention from the religious right media concerning efforts to use the government against the gay-families-inclusive children's book King & King, including those who want to ban it from public and school libraries (the book is about a prince who, instead of marrying a princess, decides to marry her brother).

According to a report by the Cybercast News Service (CNS), part of the social conservative Media Research Center, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality predictably proclaimed that King & King is being used to propagandize young children: "The homosexual movement is moving to push the behavior on young children, with the idea being that they can get to them before the natural moral opposition to homosexuality is even formed," LaBerbera said.

When CNS asked presidential candidates "Should teachers read the book to second graders as part of the school curriculum? Would you read it-or have read it-to your own children?":

"The answer is no," [Fred] Thompson's chief campaign spokesman told Cybercast News Service. "He's very clear. There is no wishy-washiness."

Romney is also opposed. "This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers," the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement. "We need to strengthen our families by passing a federal marriage amendment and also insisting on marriage before having children."

But IGF contributing author David Boaz offered a different take:

"Should the federal government require this book? I would say no. Should the federal government ban this book, no it shouldn't," Boaz told Cybercast News Service.

"But if the question is, should this book be in local libraries or in school districts, then I would say sure, why not? There are some gay families, so what's wrong with letting kids find out in a calm, non-hysterical way that there are different kinds of families in the world?"

Of course, both the left and the right often want to promote their own world views through government schools and libraries, which is why (as long as there are government schools and libraries) letting local school boards and library districts make book selection decisions, without state and federal interference, seems like the safest course.

Not surprisingly, the GOP contenders in Wednesday's debate, when called on to answer the "Don't As, Don't Tell" question posed by Retired Brig. General Keith H. Kerr, gave exceedingly lame, party line ("unit cohesion must be perserved") responses. Too bad that under CNN's format only Hunter (there's some candidate named Hunter-who knew?), Huckabee, Romney and McCain were asked to answer. I don't honestly know if Rudy would have been shamed into deviating a bit from the party lockstep. But at least it was fun to watch Romney, now a DADT champion, refuse to address his 1994 declaration that he looked forward to the day when gays and lesbians could serve "openly and honestly in our nation's military."

Regrettably, CNN couldn't find a high-ranking, openly gay GOP veteran to ask the question, and instead (they claim inadvertently) went with Gen. Kerr (who was quickly identified as a steering committee member of "LGBT Americans for Hillary")- which allows Republicans to further sidestep the issue.

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Tom Brokaw's book Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the Sixties and Today de-gays the decade that saw pioneering activists such as Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings and others spearhead the modern gay rights movement.

In an interview with media critic Howard Kurtz, Brokaw puts up a defense:

KURTZ: I have heard some criticism of the book saying that you deal with civil rights, you deal with women's liberation, as it was called then, but you don't devote any time or space to the burgeoning gay rights movement....

BROKAW: I don't, because the gay rights movement came slightly later. It lifted off during that time and I had to make some choices about what I was going to concentrate on. The big issues were the anti-war movement, the counterculture.

But Kameny, in a letter to Brokaw, points out a few facts such as:

• Starting in 1961, a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service gay ban.
  
  
• About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill got underway.
  
  
• In 1965, Kameny and a few other brave souls began picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites.
  
  
• And, of course, June of '69 brought the Stonewall riots, three nights of police confrontation in New York's Greenwich Village following a raid on a gay bar.

I doubt Brokaw is personally homophobic, but his is a generation that, for the most part, still can't seem to take the struggle for gay equality seriously. Unquestionably that's true among social and religious conservatives, but it also keeps rearing up among secular and straight liberal stalwarts as well, and to a large extent informs the Democratic Party's tepid support for real gay equality (as exemplified in the previous post).