IGF CultureWatch

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.

Editor's reminder: Impassioned debate is welcome, but gratuitous insults will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.

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).

Is it a smart strategy to maximize the party's political hold on Congress, or an unwarranted snub that showcases the divide between rhetoric and reality, as Democratic senatorial campaign honchos decide a gay candidate in North Carolina is not worthy of support?

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Former Wall Street investor Jim Neal of Chapel Hill announced he was running for the U.S. Senate. [North Carolina State] Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro declared a week later that she was not running for the U.S. Senate. Both are Democrats. Guess which one received a phone call from U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who heads the Democratic Party's efforts to recruit Senate candidates? ...

Neal...falls into a coveted category of candidates: self-funder, someone who will sink a chunk of his own wealth into the race. Such candidates typically get at least a courtesy meeting from their party's national political committees, particularly in the state where former U.S. Sen. John Edwards showed that an unknown with a lot of money can succeed.

Neal, 50, and others suggest that the fact that he is gay drove the actions of the Democratic Senate committee and other leaders of a party that criticizes Republicans for their anti-gay rights platform. … "There are a lot of people within the Democratic Party establishment who are uncomfortable with my candidacy," Neal said last week. ...

A former staffer at the national Democratic Senate committee said he was surprised Schumer didn't at least meet with Neal. The gay community has reliably contributed to Democrats, said the former staffer, who asked not to be identified....

Yes, yes, the GOP is, for the most part, worse. But they don't receive the lion's share of gay political dollars, do they.

Last year, Wal-Mart came under attack from the religious right over its "pro-gay agenda"-specifically, its support for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (the retail giant donated $25,000 to the gay business group and agreed to sponsor two of its conferences).

Wal-mart also has an anti-discrimination policy banning discrimination against its LGBT employees, and supports a network for its gay (and lesbian, and bisexual, and transgender) workers.

So why has the Human Rights Campaign, the Washington-based LGBT political lobby, given Wal-Mart a "do not buy" rating in its new consumer guide, at the start of the vital holiday shopping season?

HRC says its because Wal-Mart doesn't provide domestic partner benefits. But given the chain's other gay-inclusive actions, and the attacks it has endured from the anti-gay right for doing so, doesn't HRC's rebuke come off as a wee bit excessive? This seems no way to treat our mostly (if not yet quite 100%) friends.

The explanation, I'd suggest, has all to do with the Democratic Party's strategy of making non-union Wal-Mart a political whipping boy, and HRC's now predominant role as water-carrier for the Democratic Party.

Republican-leaning but frequently libertarian-minded law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) on Guns and Gay Sex (click on "Download the document from Social Science Research Network"):

"[R]easonable regulation" often can be used to cover the true intentions of regulators who actually intend to extinguish or seriously undermine the right at issue. Courts are rightly suspicious of such possibilities in the context of other rights, such as free speech, abortion, sodomy, birth control, or the dormant commerce clause....

We should expect courts to treat the regulation of gun ownership with the same skepticism previously applied to the regulation of gay sex....

More. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide if the city of Washington DC can ban virtually all private (nonstate) possession of guns.

As The Guardian (UK) reports (but I couldn't find in this week's US coverage), one of the plaintiffs is openly gay:

Tom Palmer, one of six plaintiffs named in the original lawsuit challenging the Washington, DC ban, considers the case a matter of life and death. An openly gay scholar in international relations at the rightwing [sic] Cato Institute, he thinks that a handgun saved him years ago in San Jose, California, when a gang threatened him.

"A group of young men started yelling at us, 'faggot', 'homo', 'queer', 'we're going to kill you' and 'they'll never find your bodies'," Mr Palmer said in a March 2003 declaration.

"Fortunately, I was able to pull my handgun out of my backpack, and our assailants backed off."

Here's another take on why 2nd Amendment rights matter to gays.

[This aside, originally intended as a short follow-up to an earlier piece on Iran and gays, was tacked on to the post about gays and guns but generated all of the comments. So I've reposted the guns piece at the top. ]

Okay now, how many comments until our Kos-minded visitors reminded us, for the umpteenth time, that Bush equals Hitler? (it's a continuing refrain in the comments to last week's post taking issue with academics protesting criticism of Iran's executions of gay citizens).

Speaking of some of our frequent commenters, this may explain it.

Liberal Montgomery County, Maryland, has passed a measure to ban discrimination against transgender people in housing, employment and "taxi service." But a provision to require business establishments to allow individuals with gender identity conflicts to use either male or female restrooms, "regardless of whether the individual has provided documentation of their gender identity" (i.e., even if there are physically of the opposite sex from that for which the restroom is designated) was removed following vigorous protests, when it became clear that the measure would otherwise fail to pass.

Another state, another restroom controversy. A human rights complaint was filed against a Scottsdale, Arizona bar after a pre-operative (biologically male) but female attired trans woman was ejected for using the women's restroom (it's now been settled). The bar owner claimed that female patrons using the restroom were "freaking out." But facing action by the state's attorney general's office, he agreed to turn one of the bar's restrooms into a unisex facility.

The plight of transgenders and restrooms is real, especially those who are biologically of one sex but otherwise self-identify with the opposite. Turning to the state in liberal jurisdictions may provide some "wins" by forcing business owners to create unisex, presumably single-user facilities, but I doubt it's going to help generate public support for transgender acceptance.

No surprise, an Iranian official confirms gay executions are routine in the Islamic Republic. Islamofascists (and "fascists" is the appropriate term) make American religious rightists look like pussycats.

Strangely, while the regime is punishing homosexuality with death, it's publicly funding gender reassignment surgery for transsexuals. As if thousands of gay executions weren't enough, it compounds the tragedy that is Iran to contemplate how many gays have undergone the knife in an effort to save their lives.

More. At Columbia University, the liberal professorteriat is still up in arms over university president Lee Bollinger's critical remarks when introducing Mahmoud ("no homosexuals in Iran") Ahmadinejad:

"I think for most people the Ahmadinejad incident was an occasion that brought out a lot of discomfort," said Wayne Proudfoot, a religion professor. "It seemed clear to me that the language he used in introducing Ahmadinejad was intended to, and had the effect of, placating, appeasing and being a message to conservative critics."

Bollinger had said, in part:

"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. And so I ask you, why have women, members of the Ba'hai faith, homosexuals and so many of our colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?"

There was a time when speaking up for those oppressed by petty and cruel dictators was of concern to liberal academe, but today anti-Americanism trumps all on the "progressive" (sic) left. And so if Ahmadinejad hates Bush, he must be a good guy, right?

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.