IGF CultureWatch

Just to be clear... By pushing ENDA toward an inevitable Bush veto, the Democratic leadership anticipates not only galvanizing the LGB (if not T) bloc behind Hillary, but also putting GOP front-runner Giuliani on the spot-if he stays true to his principles and urges Bush not to veto, he hurts himself with the GOP base (and because Bush will veto anyway, it hangs over him during the general election, should he be the nominee). If Giuliani equivocates, he hurts himself with his more socially liberal supporters. It's a win-win for Democrats, which is why Pelosi and the leadership are pushing so hard for a T-less (and thus passable) bill.

Update. But wait, now it seems like Pelosi is saying that the bill will only move with Ts included-which means that in all likelihood it won't be going anywhere soon. They're in, they're out...they're in (for now). Update to the Update: Ok, maybe they're still out, with Pelosi saying she's fully committed to moving an inclusive ENDA forward once the votes are there (don't hold your breath), but then adding that the bill minus Ts is going forward in any event. If so, then we're back to the situation described below...

(Original post) They're out; they're in; they're out... Looks like Rep. Barney Frank wants to push through committee a version of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act that does not include transgenders, yelping activists be damned. The two key points in the New York Times report, Liberal Base Proves Trying to Democrats (and I paraphrase below):

(1) There is almost no chance that President Bush would ever sign the bill.

(2) Some Republicans in the House wish the bill had included language on transpeople because it would have made it easier for them to vote against it (and demagogue it-think of employers being forced to hire bearded men wearing dresses).

The Times reports that gay rights groups are "angry and bewildered, especially because the compromise involves a bill unlikely to be signed by Mr. Bush." But Barney Frank and party leaders want to pass ENDA knowing Bush will veto it, because they believe it will energize gay and gay-friendly voters in the 2008 election. The great "T" debate complicates that, but they still seem committed to this strategy.

In the real world, however, ENDA (with or without Ts) seems increasingly less relevant. As a story on 365gay.com, The Gay Glass Ceiling, notes:

When it comes to the workplace, gay and lesbian activists have focused mainly on ending overt and obvious harassment and discriminatory hiring, firing, and promotion practices.... [But] formal policies are less of a predictor of gay and lesbian happiness at work than are informal measures, such as whether someone feels comfortable bringing a partner to a company event.

It's the corporate culture that counts most, regardless of official nondiscrimination policies (mandated or not). At best, passing nondiscrimination laws may indicate that a shift in attitudes has occurred. In other words, by the time you can garner enough support to pass an ENDA, it's not really needed.

An endorsement of marriage equality by "Dear Abby" columnist Jeanne Phillips is a harbinger that the nation is, slowly, beginning to come around. That's why educating Americans by working through the state legislative process is, I believe, far more likely to lead to same-sex marriage than relying on liberal judges to force the issue (typically provoking a backlash that results in state constitutional amendments banning recognition of all gay partnerships).

Dale Carpenter, a law professor and IGF contributing author, has posted on the Volokh Conspiracy a detailed response to the expressed concerns of some gay groups, including Lambda Legal, that a gay-only ENDA might not adequately protect gays: He writes:

we now have decades of experience with state laws that protect gay people from discrimination based on sexual orientation but not gender identity. If the inadequacy of sexual-orientation protections were a real problem-as opposed to a hypothetical or theoretical one-we should expect to see many such cases. But neither Lambda nor any other organization has yet produced a single instance in which an employer successfully argued around a gay-only employment protection law by claiming that it really fired the person for gender non-conformity.

The ENDA "T" or not-to-"T" debate, and the wider assertion about the existence of a progressive "LGBT community," is mostly about gay cultural politics and whether the activist/academic-inspired focus on gender-identity will prevail over the "assimilationist" goals that are of actual concern to most gay people.

Log Cabin has a nifty TV ad reminding primary voters that Mitt Romney, a social-issues liberal when running for office in Massachusetts, has turned on a dime as he panders to the GOP's socially conservative base. I think this is appropriate, since Romney is now the most vocally anti-gay GOP candidate in the race, relentlessly beating the anti-gay marriage, traditional "family values" drum.

And by the way, this ad is very different from the leftwing YouTube attack on Rudy Giuliani, which used anti-gay stereotypes to gin up opposition to Giuliani's pro-gay record. The key distinction: Giuliani is the GOP candidate who is pushing the envelope, relatively speaking, toward gay inclusion within his party. The gay lefty YouTube activists want the GOP to nominate the most homophobic candidate; Log Cabin is hoping the party will nominate the least.

John Aravosis, no conservative he, takes on what he terms the transgender fiasco:

Anyone who says that transgendered people have always been accepted as part of the gay community is simply wrong.... I think that the transgender community was added to ENDA the same way the T got added on to the LGB. By force, and attrition, rather than by popular demand....[W]hen I speak to friends and colleagues privately, senior members of the gay political/journalistic establishment, and just plain old gay friends around the country (and our own readers), the message I hear is far different from what I'm hearing from the groups. I'm clearly hearing three things. Well, four: 1. I feel empathy for transgendered people, and support their struggle for civil rights. 2. I want ENDA to pass this year even if we can't include transgendered people. 3. I don't understand when transgendered people became part of the gay community? And then there's always #4: Please don't tell anyone I told you this.....

What I'm hearing is a message far different from what you hear from NGLTF and some of the louder activist claiming to speak for the enlightened masses. I think that a lot of gay people never truly accepted the transgender revolution that was thrust upon them. They simply sat back and shut up about their questions and concerns and doubts out of a sense of shame that it was somehow impolite to even question what was happening, and fear that if they did ask questions they'd be marked as bigots. And now, that paper-thin transgender revolution is coming home to roost.

He warns, ominously:

There is a climate of fear and confusion and doubt about the transgender issue in the gay community. And no one wants to talk about it. And when you don't talk about your small concerns, when you're afraid to talk about them, when it's not considered PC for you to talk about them, one day those small concerns turn into big problems and the revolution comes tumbling down.

From experience, I know that many leftwing "progressive" LGBT activists (and their allied academic-indoctrinators) live in a world where status among their peers is predicated on being ever-more ideologically pure and cutting-edge. And they don't care what the unenlightened gay masses think; they're confident that since they're the only game in town, the money spigot is going to stay on. I hope they're wrong.

Libertarian columnist Steve Chapman explains why he's against hate crimes bills. It's an argument I tried to make, but stumbled over, in the previous post. Chapman writes on "the defining defect of hate crimes bills: It is intended to provide extra penalties for criminals who think incorrect thoughts."

I'm also reminded that a few years back activists supported a hate crimes bill that would have required a step-up in punishment. Matthew Shepard's killers were given life in prison, and so the step-up would, presumably, have been death. But these activists, including the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, were against the death penalty, too, so it wasn't clear exactly what they wanted to inflict on those who murdered Shepard. It's reminiscent of today, with the Human Rights Campaign wanting the feds to ensure more robust prosecutions of hate crimes, but also demanding to "Free the Jena 6" despite these thugs' vicious, unprovoked, racially motivated attack on a white teenager. It's a red flag of how "hate crimes" prosecutions rapidly become politicized, one way or the other.

Changing gears, the Wall Street Journal has an excellent op-ed, "The Queerest Denial," on the Iranian government's murderous homophobia-and the American left that figures any regime that really, truly hates us (that is, the U.S.) can't be bad.

More on hate crimes laws and why they're such a bad idea, from IGF's archives, here.

[Update: As of 10/1 there are apparently reliable reports that Pelosi and Frank have reversed course and agreed to delay the "mark up" of ENDA until later this month in response to activists' demands, and presumably to mark up a bill with transgender inclusion. It's also likely that, good vote counters that they are, they expect that a T-inclusive ENDA will likely fail, in which case it will be up to the activists to decide whether to try again with a T-less variation (and I'm guessing the activists are so wedded to T-inclusion that the answer will be no). I'd also bet that the overwhelming majority of lesbigays would be fine with a T-less ENDA, but it's not like anyone cares.]

Original post: Looks like congressional Democrats, following the lead of openly gay Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, are moving forward with two versions of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA): One for LGBs (lesbians, gays and bisexuals ) and one for Ts (transgenders). The Democratic leadership, however, is "marking up" the LGB version and pushing it forward, leaving the T bill in legislative limbo.

I'm ENDA neutral. Gay libertarians are firmly against it, opposing all laws telling employers who they can or can't hire, fire or promote. I see ENDA as less intrusive than other anti-discrimination measures-i.e., no assumed "disproportionate impact" requirement that hiring reflect regional racial/ethnic breakdowns (leading to race-based preferences), or that drug addicts be kept on the payroll because they have a disability. ENDA would probably criminalize any official statements that gays won't be hired (with perhaps an exemption for religious groups), but it's rather easy just to not state why someone is or isn't offered a job or promotion. ENDA advocates wildly overstate what it will accomplish.

Planet Out reports that:

Leaders of 12 LGBT rights groups issued a statement Thursday opposing any effort to remove transgender protections from the latest iteration of the 33-year drive to add gay men and lesbians to federal anti-discrimination law....

Signatories included leaders of PFLAG, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Stonewall Democrats, Lambda Legal, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and the AFL-CIO's Pride at Work, among other groups...

The likelihood that activists such as the NGLTF and maybe even the HRC (see below) might oppose a "non-inclusive" ENDA would certainly be a political spectacle (read: meltdown). Already, Pride at Work announced it will picket when Pelosi speaks at the HRC's upcoming National Dinner. But since it's likely that Bush would veto ENDA anyway (with Ts in or out), it may all be sound and fury-and fundraising-anyway.

The HRC is asking for feedback on what it should do about ENDA, but there's no doubt that it's committed all-out to passing the federal hate crimes bill (the group, you see, is against hate crimes except if committed by black thugs against a straight white teenager, and then it favors letting the bashers go free).

On hate crimes laws, I'm with the libertarians in opposing measures that criminalize intent [added: animus is a better word here; punish the crime and the degree of planning that went into it, not accompanying "thought crimes"] and so don't favor the bill that congressional Democrats have attached to an Iraqi funding act (which Bush, who is against bringing the federal government further into local hate crimes prosecutions, may or may not sign). But the religious right's scare-mongering over this bill is also way overblown-I don't expect anti-gay sermons to be criminalized anytime soon, at least I hope not, for the sake of all our freedoms.

Relatedly, some gay activists are targeting one of the good-guy Republicans, New Hampshire 's Sen. John Sununu, a libertarian-leaning small-government conservative who stood up to his party and opposed the federal marriage amendment. That's a sorry development.

Because Sununu opposes ENDA and the hate crimes bill, he's been labeled "anti-gay." But his opposition to these measures (a view shared with gay libertarians) derives from his belief that there are constitutional limits on the role of the federal government, not from anti-gay animus. And despite what liberal (albeit supposedly nonpartisan) activists may think, having at least some GOP senators who vote no on anti-gay marriage amendments is a positive thing.

Larry Craig Watch. Via Opus.

Jamie Kirchick does a masterful job exposing the Human Rights Campaign's inane support for the Jena 6 thugs, "a group of black teenagers who beat and stomped a 17-year-old white boy [Justin Barker] into unconsciousness last December," and who have now become a cause celebre among the pc chic crowd-including our biggest, and always trendy, LGBT lobby. We can now add "Free the Jena 6!" to "George Bush, You're Fired!" among the highlights of HRC sloganeering.

A key observation:

Last week HRC president Joe Solmonese traveled all the way to Jena, La., along with thousands of other supporters and declared that "this injustice cannot stand." By "injustice," he was presumably referring to the prosecution and sentencing of the young men responsible for the beating...

Defenders of the Jena 6 have little to say about the group's mauling of Barker, which no one denies happened, even though the assault could be considered a hate crime and is reminiscent of a gay bashing....

How does HRC square its backing for hate-crimes legislation with its support of the Jena 6, who are themselves guilty of a racially motivated attack?

Of course, they don't even see a need to try.

More. Chris Crain, himself the victim of a violent gay bashing, has pictures of swollen-faced Justin Barker and blogs: "Shame on you, Joe Solmonese. Whatever moral authority you had to lead a gay rights group, much less the movement, you squandered today....Shame, shame, shame."

Ah, but Chris, Solmonese and his ilk have no shame; after all, he's a leftist, and so who are we to question his obvious moral superiority?

There are always those who misguidedly believe that "unity" trumps all else, including justice. Sadly, that is the view now taken by the U.S. Episcopal Church, which has bowed down to Canterbury's demand, on behalf of African Christofascists (who campaign in their home countries to make gays socializing together a crime) that it stop blessing same-sex unions and ordaining gay bishops.

Why the U.S. Church didn't break with Britain in 1776, I don't know. But unless the Episcopalians belatedly declare their independence, it makes no sense for gays to stay with them. This church worships the false idol of "unity" above all. It has chosen the dark side.

More. Have I over-reacted to what is, in effect, a "cooling off period"? Maybe, but it seems to me that gay Episcopalians have shown enormous loyalty to their church through the years. I don't see that being responded to in kind. Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria is an evil man who corrupts the essential gospel message, and instead of going the distance to placate/appease him, he should be called out for the promoter of hate that he is.

Larry Craig watch. On a much lighter note, catch this video.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country." So declared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as he in effect proclaimed the Islamofascist tyranny over which he presides (and in which known homosexuals are arrested and executed) to be gay-free. Chillingly, Ahmadinejad went on to defend the use of capital punishment against anti-social elements, saying:

Can a physician allow microbes, symbolically speaking, to spread across a nation? We have laws. People who violate the public rights of the people by using guns, killing people, creating insecurity, sell drugs, distribute drugs at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran, and some of these punishments-very few are carried in the public eye, before the public eye. It's a law based on democratic principles. You use injections and microbes to kill these people, and they are executed or they're hung, but the end result is killing.

Some conservative sites have made much of Iran's murderous state-sponsored homophobia, as for example, on the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

His regime funnels sophisticated munitions to Shiite militias in Iraq, who use them to kill American soldiers. Oh, and by the way, his regime also executes homosexuals for the crime of being themselves. Maybe if Columbia University President Lee Bollinger were aware of the latter fact he would reconsider his invitation to the Iranian president to speak on his campus today.

A cynic might say that this is a tactic to divide the left (where some still feel if you hate George Bush with enough vehemence, it excuses all else). But it's still good to see the right take on gay bashing-even if it's in Iran.

Update. Iran's state news agency has censored all references to gays from the official Farsi-language transcripts of Ahmadinejad's remarks.

More. Right Side of the Rainbow is rightly appalled at left-wing students, "some of whom are surely gay themselves," who cheered and applauded the butcher, and who say they'd rather have him as president than Bush. Blogger Paul provides a video of an Iranian execution of gay teenagers, but don't expect anything to get through to some of these Ivy League idiots.