IGF CultureWatch

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.

So now it seems that gay men are discriminated against more at work than gay women. Not that I want to play the victimization game, but it is interesting that for years some lesbian-feminist activists have claimed "double discrimination" as women and as gay (which is why, in LGBT, true progressives insist that the "L" must be first, even though survey data repeatedly shows about twice as many gay men as lesbians).

That it appears that it's gay men who face more salary-level discrimination than lesbians goes against the accepted narrative.

Giuliani entered the fabled lion's den in a major address to an audience of Christian conservative activists, declaring (the New York Times reports), in pointed contrast to ex-social liberal Mitt Romney, "Isn't it better that I tell you what I really believe, instead of pretending to change all of my positions to fit the prevailing winds?" Moreover:

"Christians and Christianity is all about inclusiveness," he said. "It's built around the most profound act of love in human history, isn't it?"

Yes, it is-or should be. And it's good to see a GOP politician take that message to the religious right.

Fox News adds: "Giuliani did not mention the subject of gay marriage in his remarks. Gary Bauer, a Christian activist and former presidential candidate, said Giuliani should have addressed the issue." The fact that he didn't (even though, like Hillary and Obama, he opposes marriage equality and might have scored some points by stressing that) is telling.

Dubmledore comes out, or is it more appropriate so say that Rowling outed him? The Potter series deals movingly with the age-old saga of the force of light and love that values each human life vs. the powers of darkness and inhumanity, including those who would degrade someone for being different. No matter, expect Christian conservatives, not at all happy with Potter-mania to begin with, to go a bit bonkers:

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Burn the witch!

More. It's not only the rightwing that's reacting with snarky homophobia. Check out the festival of stereotypes Rowling's announcement has unleashed over at gossip site Radar and at left-friendly Salon .

On Tuesday, NBC's Matt Lauer, interviewing Sen. Larry Craig, said (as I took it down): "the report says that you followed a well known pattern of behavior by members of the gay community seeking sex in restrooms." Hmmm, I thought GLAAD had educated these guys?

When NBC showed an old news clip from the first Clinton presidency, with Sen. Craig ragging that Bill "is a naughty, nasty, bad boy," it did sound like something out of a bad pedophile novel.

Beware of the unintended consequences of anti-discrimination mandates. That's what some folks are discovering in Santa Fe, where the residents of the RainbowVision development, created to provide a secure and affirming environment for gay seniors, fear it could soon be overrun by heterosexuals. New Mexico law bars housing discrimination based on sexual orientation, and so the home owners association can't maintain a balance toward gay people (and it seems that the management company is just as happy to rent to whomever).

RainbowVision includes a mixture of condos and rental units plus an assisted-living facility. Interestingly enough, the New York Times recently reported on discrimination against gay seniors in typical assisted living facilities, including one in Santa Fe, finding that gay seniors:

have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide. Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated.

So it would seem that the right to create gay-focused retirement institutions might be worth preserving.

And its not just gay seniors who fall victim to "fair housing" over-reach. Activist in the past succeeded in forbidding those seeking home or apartment roommates from indicating a religious or age preference in their classified ads, and the same issue has popped up with gay people seeking gay roommates.

To which some housing commissar wannabes simply shrug and say why not force an 80-year-old Catholic grandma to rent her spare room to a 20-something wiccan? It'll be good for the old gal, and it's not like there's any need to respect archaic concepts like property rights or freedom of association or any other impediments on the road to the progressive total state, is there?