IGF CultureWatch

The Employee Non-Discrimination Act passes the House, and that's historic. I contend that the bill is mostly symbolic (with or without transgender inclusion), as I explained here, and respect gay libertarians who opposed all measures that further empower government to limit the hiring decisions of employers, even bigots (Dan Blatt makes that case over at Gay Patriot). Still, symbolism can be important in changing attitudes and helping to otherwise ensure equality under the law, and a good deal of inequality in the legal treatment of gay people in America is, unfortunately (and wrongly) justified on the basis that we are not covered by federal anti-discrimination law.

And so I take heart that 35 Republicans voted for the bill, including two of the lead co-sponsors, Chris Shays (R-CT) and Deborah Pryce (R-OH). And that four Republicans voted for it in committee, providing the margin for passage when four liberal Democrats voted "no" over the trans issue. So much for those who endless repeat the mantra that we need solely to ensure that all gay support goes to the Democratic Party.

Still, I have a hard time believing that Bush will not veto the bill should it pass the Senate, meaning all Repbulicans will look like bigots, and the entire game gets replayed again in two years.

In other news, Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani, which seems unlikely to convince many religious rightists to support the thrice-married former NYC mayor. Robertson is now something of a joke even among evangelicals, who are far more likely to look to James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) for their political guidance. And it will certainly hurt Rudy among tolerant-minded independents.

On a more positive note, the Advocate actually has a not-terrible piece on Giuliani and the Republican field, correctly noting that even with some backsliding Giuliani remains the most gay friendly candidate ever to be within reach of the GOP nomination. And that's not a bad thing.

A new Gallup survey shows that countries with the highest Well-Being Index scores are also some of the countries with the highest acceptance of gays and lesbians, led by New Zealand.

Conversely, several of those countries with the lowest Well-Being Index scores are also some of the countries with lowest acceptance for gays and lesbians (bottom feeders: Zimbabwe, Haiti, Ethiopia and post-Soviet Georgia).

Another interesting poll analysis: The Cato Institute's David Boaz parses the data from a recent Washington Post/ABC News survey that asked Americans about their support for smaller (or larger) government and if they favor (or oppose) civil unions for same-sex couples. He found that:

• Small "l" libertarians who support smaller government and civil unions: 26%.
• Conservatives who support smaller government and oppose civil unions: 23%.
• Liberals who support larger government and civil unions: 26% percent.
• Statists/anti-libertarians who support larger government and oppose civil unions: 17%.

So libertarian-minded Americans (although they might not label themselves as such) who support smaller government and civil unions outnumber conservatives who support smaller government and oppose civil union. Could be that's why Giuliani is seen as a viable candidate for the GOP nomination as more Republicans begin to come round, and still more might be expected to if they perceive that independents or fiscally conservative/socially tolerant Democrats could be up for grabs.

Ah, the enlightening groves of academe. Attend UCLA and you can learn about " The Queer and Trans Politics of Prison Abolition," which is all about

on-the-ground work to...build resistance to the prison industrial complex in queer and trans communities as well as scholar-activists working to build analysis of the gendered and raced nature of imprisonment, the history of prison reform and prison abolition movements, and marginalization of prisoners in "gay rights" struggles.

Panelists will address questions such as: How do we build strategies for resisting imprisonment that centralize the leadership of currently and formerly imprisoned people? What does a queer and trans politics of imprisonment look like? What relationship does the current "gay rights" movement have to policing and imprisonment? What concrete strategies are working in the quest for prison abolition?

There are without doubt serious issues regarding gay prisoners, the foremost being prison rape (not mentioned in the description). But the notion that the "queer and trans communities" that exists only in the fervid imagination of academic activists should act as the vanguard for "prison abolition"-as if without prisons we'd all live in harmony-may just be the epitome of moronic leftism.

Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez follows up on last week's New York Times' piece about the decline of gay urban enclaves. Citing research by UCLA demographer Gary Gates, Rodriguez observes:

Gates' research on U.S. Census data drives home a point that the gay vanguard has been wrestling with for a while: The hedonistic, transgressive, radical ethos (and stereotype) that once characterized gay culture doesn't represent reality anymore. The decline of urban coastal gay communities, the increase in the gay population in the interior U.S. and the overall diversification of the gay population are facts. What's more, Gates argues, these trends are a function of the growing acceptance of homosexuality among the American public. . . .

Gates doesn't believe that these trends spell an end of gay "associational" life. The process he's describing is not unlike the one experienced by so many immigrant or minority groups in America that fought against discrimination, moved beyond their enclaves and then felt a little sad that they lost the embracing sense of uniqueness and community that they once enjoyed.

Another week, another Republican sex scandal, this time involving Richard Curtis, a Washington state legislator who made the mistake of going to the police when he was blackmailed by a hustler. The police report revealed the married lawmaker liked to wear women's undergarments and such.

Chris Crain draws attention to the response by many activist stalwarts for lgbT rights in reference to said cross-dressing. Some examples:

Wayne Besen, who endorsed the "trans or bust" ENDA strategy and yet labels Curtis' sexual fetish as "f*cked up" and "perverted" ... Same for Pam Spaulding, who said about the blackmail victim, who she calls Richard 'Kink' Curtis: "Is there any end to the depravity of the hypocrites in the moralist GOP?" Dan Savage even throws in evidence mentioned in the police report that has no bearing on the case: "Lingerie, condoms, rope, stethoscopes-Rep. Curtis is a very kinky girl!"

So, who's the bigger hypocrite, a cross-dresser who opposes same-sex marriage or activists who celebrate gender transgression, except when they don't?

Vile people, whether Nazis, communists, or homophobes who pervert the Christian faith, make use of the First Amendment, but the First Amendment is more important than their vileness. This remains true, despite (or even because) if these people ever obtained political power they would surely deny anyone else the right to use the First Amendment again.

The Anti-Defamation League is celebrating the nearly $11 million verdict against the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church as "'a repudiation of its hateful ideology." Using the state's power to adjudicate and enforce punishment against those who express a "hateful ideology" ought to raise red flags among those who believe in free speech, no matter how vile.

More. In the comments, "Another Steve" writes (persuasively, I think):

"Verdicts based on the emotional distress caused by hate speech are, indeed, a very slippery slope-even when it's a civil suit. Many comments were posted on the earlier hate crimes item insisting that hate speech would never be targeted. Somehow, I'm much less certain about that today, reading many of the same people cheer this verdict."

Brian Miller of Outright Libertarians also hits the nail on the head when he comments:

"If Phelps was trespassing on private property and refused to leave, you may prosecute him for that.

"If Phelps assaulted someone during his demonstration, you may prosecute him for that.

"If Phelps damaged someone's car as part of his demonstration, you may prosecute him for that.

"Phelps protested on public property expressing an unpopular message. You may not prosecute him for that. Attempts to "limit" his freedom of public expression due to the unpopularity of his ideas aren't just unconstitutional, but unAmerican. They go against the very ideals of the Republic from its founding."

But it's quite astounding how far the liberal-left has moved toward support for limiting basic rights such as speech and protest (but only against those with "hateful" ideas, of course).

Another point: Every time the Phelps clan/cult protests in public with their horrific "God Hates Fags" signs, it exposes the dark underpinnings of homophobia and causes folks to question what really lurks behind the anti-gay mindset. In short, it does far more to discredit, rather than promote, anti-gay animus. This is bad? We couldn't pay for this kind of beneficial political street theater!

More. To be fair, lesbian progressive Pam Spaulding gets it:

I have doubts that this will hold up; the question is whether picketing outside a funeral is free speech, and I can't see how it isn't-the hatemongers have a right to picket if they are in a public space.

Back to our comments, where "walker" puts it all together:

I'm appalled at all the commenters who think the First Amendment doesn't protect speech they hate. That's the whole point of the First Amendment-nobody needs a First Amendment for popular speech, we need it for unpopular and offensive speech.

Some people say, Well, there's a time and a place for free speech-they can protest on their own property-or as long as they can't be heard inside the church. Would you really say that to gay protesters outside a Catholic church? Or to antiwar protesters outside a Republican meeting? Did liberals tell civil rights marchers-whose message was offensive to many white Southerners-that they should protest only on their own property?

The New York Times looks at the decline of gay neighborhoods such as San Francisco's Castro, where the annual Halloween parade was canceled this year. Also, there's a sidebar with blogosphere responses. National trends, according to the report, show "same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban." An upside:

At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations.... "Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York," [UCLA demographer Gary Gates] said. "Now you can just go to Kansas City."

An increase in social acceptance of gay people is a large reason for the decline of traditional gay ghettos (the Times says "enclaves"), including uber-enclaves such as the Castro, NYC's West Village, and West Hollywood.

But the Times' story leads with a revealing description of what's become of the Halloween festivities in San Francisco, where "the once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders.... Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration."

Sounds like a good place to get away from, no?

Sen. Barack Obama, the Washington Blade reports, angered some gay supporters when his presidential campaign refused to drop an anti-gay minister and gospel singer, Donnie McClurkin, from a black-gospel themed "Embrace the Change" concert tour intended to energize the support of African-American churchgoers.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, McClurkin has accused gay Americans of "trying to kill our children" and called homosexuality a "curse." Obama's campaign responded to the protests by inviting Rev. Andy Sidden, a white South Carolina pastor who is openly gay, to the tour, to deliver a message of tolerance to the African-American faithful-a move greeted with hoots by Pam Spaulding at Salon.com. Spaulding, who is black, writes:

I'm convinced that Sidden will share a message that is sensitive and entirely appropriate, but given this situation, it's mind-boggling that the campaign would select a white pastor to address homophobia in the religious black community. We're talking Politics 101.

Chris Crain argues that HRC is playing politics on behalf of Hillary, its favored candidate. That's probably true, but can anyone even imagine a gay campaign making use of a speaker who believed, say, that blacks have an innate tendency toward criminality, and then claiming it was taking a positive step by creating a big tent in which both anti-black bigots and gays could work together? Of course not.

Alone, this brouhahah might not amount to much. But it's not an isolated incident. Earlier this year, for example, actor Isaiah Washington received the prestigious NAACP Image Award despite his recurrent use of the slur "faggot," which got him bounced from "Grey's Anatomy." So while lgbT groups bend over backwards to condemn any real or imagined manifestation of racial insensitivity within "the community," we're too often expected by our fair-weather allies to tolerate anti-gay bigotry for the sake of all- important "coalition-building."

More. A first-hand report from a gay vigil held outside one of the concerts:

A black woman who stood in line for the concert marched over to us and declared:"God made man for woman and woman for man." She said a couple of other things of a Biblical nature (how homosexuality is ugly in God's sight, blah blah blah), but I tuned her out. I have learned that little trick over the years.

The ironic thing is that if this vigil was held in the 1950s, the subject would be about segregation and her role would be played by a white person claiming that the "separation of the races" was Biblically mandated.

More still. Rev. Sidden, the gay white pastor, gave an opening prayer, but McClurkin actually MC'd the concert-and used the opportunity to describe how he was "delivered from homosexuality." David Ehrenstein has more, concluding that Obama's "continued relevance to gay and lesbian African Americans is over."

More again. Chris Crain on Hillary courting support from anti-gay black ministers far worse than McClurkin, and the silence from her gay backers.

Liberal New York Times pundit Frank Rich is risking the wrath of the Kos crowd by opining, "No matter how you slice it, the Giuliani positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control remain indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's."

Rich makes the case that Giuliani's status as the GOP front-runner reveals the religious right's "values czars' demise as a political force" and that:

"white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals.... Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues."

That evangelical activists are still trying to push the gay hot button shows their disconnect with the people on whose behalf they claim to speak, says Rich. Let's hope so.

Two Rudys? There's a very different view of Rudy by liberal academic/historian David Greenburg, who writes with disdain in the Washington Post that Giuliani is no social issues liberal at all:

What's left of the case for Rudy's liberalism relies on three prongs: guns, gay rights and abortion. But even those positions, seen in context, don't render Giuliani a liberal or a moderate so much as an occasional and tepid dissenter from the GOP line...

Hmm. Maybe the Giuliani camp can disseminate the Rich column calling him socially liberal like Hillary among moderate independents, and the Greenburg op-ed labeling him "a confirmed right-winger" among the GOP's activist base-and hope they don't get the two mixed up!

Civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer warns of The Return of the Thought Police, regarding the proposed federal hate crimes law, in the Wall Street Journal (now online for non-Journal subscribers). She takes on the typical "pro" arguments made by big-government progressives on behalf of such legislaton:

[D]istinguishing hateful bias crimes from other hateful acts of violence punishes ideas and expression, no matter how scrupulously the legislation is crafted. When someone convicted of assaulting one woman is subject to an enhanced prison sentence or a more vigorous prosecution because his assault was motivated by a hateful belief in the inherent inferiority of all women, then he is being punished for his thoughts as well as his conduct.

While motive or state of mind are routinely considered in criminal cases (as mitigating or aggravating factors,) ideology is not routinely invoked in determining the seriousness of an alleged crime. Hate crime legislation, however, is expressly designed to punish particular thoughts or ideas.

Its advocates argue that hate crimes demand differential treatment because they are crimes against communities, not just individuals.... Civil libertarians, however, ought to be more sensitive to the creation of thought crimes-even when "bad" thoughts are only punished in the course of punishing bad acts. Free-speech advocates who believe that misogynist pornography should be legal, for example, should question whether evidence of a defendant's porn collection should be introduced at a sexual-assault trial in order to convict him of a hate crime. It's sophistry to suggest that in such a case the defendant would suffer punishment only for his conduct, and not his beliefs.

She concludes:

Matthew Shepard's killers were convicted of homicide and kidnapping by the state of Wyoming and are serving consecutive life sentences. His torture and murder remain awful to contemplate, but civil libertarians ought not be squeamish about questioning the consequences of the law that would bear his name.