IGF CultureWatch

This, from a gushing puff piece in The Advocate:

The man who took on Bush and 9/11 has set his sights on another tragedy-the American health care system. In his latest documentary, Sicko, Michael Moore reveals the dark side of health care in a capitalist system. But the question remains: will he ever make a movie about us?

Yes, if only instead of rancid capitalism with its evil pharma and health care firms, motivated by sordid profits to develop life-saving miracle drugs, we had a system like Cuba's! Of course, all HIV-positives have to live in state sanatoriums unless and until they can convince authorities otherwise. But mentioning that wouldn't make for effective propaganda, would it.

For another more critical take on Sicko, see here.

IGF contributing author James Kirchick writes at the New Republic Online about Jerusalem's gay pride parade:

it is not just the ultra-Orthodox community that has opposed gay pride events in Jerusalem. Even liberal stalwart (and newly-elected President) Shimon Peres proved feckless... Ha'aretz reported that Peres promised to oppose the parade in exchange for the votes of Knesset members belonging to religious parties. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has an openly gay daughter, also expressed opposition to holding a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, because of the city's "special sensitivity." Such a stance-having no problem with a gay pride march in principle but disapproving of it in Jerusalem-assumes that there is something morally wrong with homosexuality, and that such an event would tarnish the holiness of the ancient city.

And yet:

Hagai El-Ad (the founder of Magi, an acronym for "Israeli Gay Party," which he hopes will one day be represented in the Knesset) told me that the parade's "existence is a victory for freedom. Its existence proves that Israel is a democracy." In a region of the world where homosexuality can be met with state-sanctioned death, Jerusalem's sixth annual gay pride event is yet another testament to the freedom, openness, and diversity of the Jewish State.

More evidence, via the Wash Post, that civil unions (or even state-recognized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts) are running into roadblocks. Specifically, courtesy of federal law overriding the states, employers do not need to extend health and other benefits to the partners/spouses of same-sex employees, and many are not doing so.

But the article also notes that public shaming can be an effective means of bringing opprobrium to those who treat gays as second-class employees-and by doing so, help shift the culture overall in a positive direction.

The Philadephia Inquirer's Faye Flam looks at new research on the psychological underpinnings of homophobia. She writes that "University of Pennsylvania psychologist and disgust expert Paul Rozin says it's particularly a guy thing-most heterosexual men are disgusted by the thought of touching other men."

Also at work: "The moral compass of the religious right factors in that additional dimension of sanctity/purity, which is driven by disgust as well as religious teachings."

But she also quotes University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan:

"People used to think it was revolting when two people of different races got married," Caplan says. Letting your sense of disgust guide your views on gay marriage, he adds, "is just bigotry and bias dressed up with the clothes of wisdom."

Or, as Flam nicely puts it: "Isn't it kind of babyish to declare gays immoral because you think their sex lives are icky?"

New York's affluent gays and lesbians stayed away from Sunday's Gay Pride Parade "in droves, taking with them the money that has kept a 37-year-old tradition alive," reports the New York Observer in "Goodbye, Mr. Chaps."

"Queer" journalist Richard Goldstein opines:

"White people say they experience the parade as being tired and corny.... They'll say it's unattractive to them. The reason it's unattractive to them is because there are all these faces of people of color from all over the world."

Yes, I'm sure that's it, since all successful gay white people simply must be racists. But it also just might be that the parade has to a large extent, and for a long time, become too much of a mix of knee-jerk leftism and arrested-development sexual exhibitionism.

That's the dominant image, unfortunately overwhelming the contingents of civic, religious and professional groups who do participate. And you can't blame the media for focusing on the most outrageous elements while demanding "full and inclusive representations" of the LGBT community. That's why I'd submit that a growing number of gays (who are, as Paul Varnell points out, increasingly bourgeois) simply find pride parades at best useful as part of a coming out rite of passage, at worst an embarrassment, and in any event not representative of our lives.

Increasingly, many of the states that have banned gay marriage are beginning to revoke the domestic partner benefits of public employees. One result: local governments are extending benefits more widely, to anyone that an employee might designate.

Elsewhere, convoluted work-arounds are being tried, such as at Michigan State University, which, in order to ensure that no same-sex spouse-like relationship is even hinted at, is extending benefits to those it labels as "other eligible individuals," defined this way:

a person must have lived with a non-unionized Michigan State employee for at least 18 months without being either a tenant or a legal dependent. They also can't be automatically eligible to inherit the employee's assets under Michigan law, which means no children, parents, grandparents or other close relations.

And no spouses, since they are covered under the traditional benefits package. Needless to say, the recordkeeping and administrative burden on employers is greatly increased. And just how privileging nonspousal relationships above committed same-sex coupledom is meant to "strengthen marriage" is anyone's guess.

In a related development, in Virginia, a state which probably leads the nation in the number of times it has banned gay marriage, a small victory was gained when the University of Virginia was permitted to extend gym benefits to same-sex couples. Thus are the steps by which, in some places, progress is measured.

In "A Conservative's Answer to Wikipedia," Los Angeles Times staff writer Stephanie Simon looks at a religiously rightwing web encyclopedia, Conservapedia.com, created by Andy Schafly (one of Phyllis's three sons, and not the gay one).

Type in "gay" and the search is redirected to "homosexuality," with all the homophobic pseudoscience you'd expect.

But there was something even more disturbing in Simon's article. She reports that:

In recent months, Conservapedia's articles have been hit frequently by interlopers from RationalWiki and elsewhere. The vandals have inserted errors, pornographic photos and satire... The vandalism aims "to cause people to say, 'That Conservapedia is just wacko,'" said Brian Macdonald, 45, a Navy veteran in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who puts in several hours a day on the site fending off malicious editing.

Such aggression has reinforced the view among some Conservapedia writers that left-wingers are out to suppress their free speech.

What the left doesn't get: The cost of living in a free society is to suffer being offended-without trying to silence those you find offensive (another example: campus "progressives" who steal conservative student newspapers from their distribution sites and destroy them). Conservatives have a right to their media; and the answer to arguments we find appalling is to criticize them. After all, it's not as if gay-supportive information isn't also easily available online.

Another recent Stephanie Simon piece, " New Ground in Debate on 'Curing' Gays," examines how some who are involved in "ex-gay" ministries are beginning to admit that being gay is not a "lifestyle choice." Slowly, the truth usually gains momentum and displaces falsehood. But dialog and debate are much more likely to advance that process than are censorship and sabotage.

Mildred Loving issued a powerful statement on the 40th anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia. Excerpt:

not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others.

The Bay Area Reporter has more, and links to the YouTube video of the press conference where Loving's statement was released.

Reuters on "The growing confidence of polygamists and their willingness to go public...." Fundamentalist Mormon multi-wifers are, in fact, using our rhetoric, as they understand it: "As consenting adults, which is the key, we ought to have that choice to live that lifestyle."

Yeah, but don't hold you breath waiting for LGBT+P.

A cautionary tale on American liberalism run amuck-the death of Antioch College. Writes former public radio correspondent Michael Goldfarb:

Antioch College became a rump where the most illiberal trends in education became entrenched. Since it is always easier to impose a conformist ethos on a small group than a large one, as the student body dwindled, free expression and freedom of thought were crushed under the weight of ultraliberal orthodoxy. By the 1990s the breadth of challenging ideas a student might encounter at Antioch had narrowed, and the college became a place not for education, but for indoctrination.

It's a telling account of what passes today for "progressive liberalism."