IGF CultureWatch

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), that is. He voted anti-gay by supporting the Clintons' Defense of Marriage Act and such, so there is rejoicing among the GOP-haters aplenty. But leaving aside the ongoing and endless debate over outing, it's interesting that no one, not even on the gay left, is even questioning why the state has a right to set up surveillance/sting operations in public men's rooms with the aim of prosecuting gay guys, closeted or otherwise, caught cruising.

More. A news blitz. The Task Force weighs in and does mention that police stings are a dreadful business.

Still more. Dale Carpenter asks:

Given the long history of police fabrication of evidence and entrapment of gay men in these sting operations, there should be no presumption that the officer's version of events is correct. But assuming for the sake of argument that Craig did everything the officer alleged, how was it the basis for a criminal charge that could get him a $1,000 fine and/or ten days in jail?

But get a load of some of our commenters defending police entrapment!

Yet more still. I'm away for an extended Labor Day weekend so haven't added much. Assuredly, Craig is no poster boy but a sad story of the closet (the near total lack of any sympathy for him, from left or right, is another story). Even so, here's a thought:

• A president is caught having sex with an intern in the Oval Office and lies to cover it up; he finishes his term (and may yet return as president-consort).
• A congressman sends salacious e-mails to former pages now of legal age; he resigns in disgrace.
• A senator engages in the illegal activity of hiring prostitutes; he's finishing his term and no one is suggesting prosecution.
• A senator taps his toes in a men's room in a subtle signal only a fellow seeker would recognize and respond to; he's entrapped, charged with a crime and forced to resign in disgrace.

All together, guess which orientation is cut no slack?

A Washington Blade headline: Church rejects couple's bid for ceremony at facility. Subhead: Lesbians file lawsuit in dispute over civil union by the ocean.

According to the Blade report, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights has threatened to prosecute the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of the United Methodist Church for refusing to allow the lesbian couple's civil union ceremony in their seaside pavilion.

"Religious groups have the right to make their own decisions without government interference," said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization defending the Camp Meeting Association, in a prepared statement on the suit. "The government can't force a private Christian organization to use its property in a way that would violate its own religious beliefs. This action by the State of New Jersey is a gross violation of the First Amendment."

So why is this lesbian couple suing, and the state intervening, to force a religious group to allow its property to be used in a way that violates its religious beliefs?

Conservative (that is, anti-gay) religious groups often charge that the ultimate aim of the gay movement is to force them to alter their religious beliefs and, in particular, perform gay marriages. Gay activists routinely call that nonsense. This case doesn't quite go so far as to insist that the Methodist group perform the ceremony, but it comes pretty close. It's the collectivist, "use the state to force our way" grain of truth that energizes conservative claims. And it's entirely gratuitous and unnecessary.

Freedom of choice for gays cannot be premised on denying others, particularly religious groups, freedom of conscience (not to mention respect for their property rights!).

Just another glimpse, via Reason magazine's spotlight on Iranian state television, of the depth of Islamofascism's hatred of both Jews and gays.

I'd add that the ongoing failure of U.S. "progressives" to recognize and respond to such evil (witness the silence of international LGBT groups to far worse anti-gay deprecations in the Islamic world ) has all to do with two decades of multiculturalist indoctrination propagandizing how all cultures are equally deserving of respect except for Western culture, which is the source of all the world's ills.

More. Some commenters note that principled activists such as Peter Tatchell have protested Islamic homophobia. Fair point. But as reader Avee advises, it's worth re-reading one of Rick Rosendall's columns from last year, "No Excuses for Iran."

On July 7, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) announced that it would join the July 19 worldwide action with a vigil against the death penalty [aginst gays in Iran] outside the Iranian mission to the United Nations. On July 13, however, IGLHRC pulled out of the protest and announced it was moving its July 19 event and changing its focus to one of introspection for Westerners....

Joining IGLHRC at New York's LGBT Community Center were Human Rights Watch (HRW), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and others. IGLHRC said that the worldwide call for protests raised questions like "How do we avoid reinforcing stereotypes and playing into hostilities prompted by our own government?"

And then there's this jolly view, as related in a review of a new work by Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics at Columbia University, who argues that promotion of gay rights in the Middle East is a conspiracy that "produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist." It's certainly a rather paranoid perspective in light of the relative inattention that Western gay rights groups have given to the Middle East.

Are civil unions a 600-year-old tradition? A new study (again) makes the case:

Opponents of gay marriage in the United States today have tended to assume that nuclear families have always been the standard household form. However, as [historian Allan A. Tulchin] writes, "Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures."

For example, in late medieval France, the term affrèrement-roughly translated as brotherment-was used to refer to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe. These documents provided the foundation for non-nuclear households of many types and shared many characteristics with marriage contracts, as legal writers at the time were well aware, according to Tulchin.

The new "brothers" pledged to live together sharing 'un pain, un vin, et une bourse'-one bread, one wine, and one purse.

When the late John Boswell made similar arguments over a decade ago, issues with his scholarship undermined his work. It may be interesting to see if Tulchin has greater success.

When it comes to the laws against prostitution, anti-sex moralism, enforced arbitrarily and often vindictively and corruptly by the state, is the order of the day. But in a free society why shouldn't adults be able to enter into these transactions? How many more lives and careers must be ruined until Americans (probably on a state by state level) at long last decriminalize consenting sexual relations between adults that involve an exchange of filthy lucre (as opposed to perfectly legal exchanges of expensive gifts and such)?

Karl Rove, Bush's key political adviser, is resigning. Good. As the Washington Blade reports:

Rove is widely seen as having masterminded the 2004 campaign against gay marriage. That effort, which resulted in gay unions being banned in 11 states, was designed to drive conservative voters to the polls and increase Bush's popular vote tally....

Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, said such campaign strategies were proven ineffective two years later, when vehemently anti-gay voices, such as Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, were defeated. He said a majority of Americans now support certain gay rights and protections, and the 2004 campaign might mark the final time any "anti-gay strategy" is used on the national stage.

"It's disappointing and unfortunate that Karl Rove pursued the strategy he did in 2004," Sammon said. "He went down that course and divided the country and it was a mistake, and I think history will judge him harshly because of it."

To gay "progressives" who place fealty to the Democratic Party above all, the GOP is basically unredeemable (and the more homophobic all the better for keeping gay voters on the correct political reservation). But, in fact, there can be no widespread victory for gay equality without moving the GOP to accommodate statewide moves toward same-sex unions/marriage and turn against enshrining discrimination at the federal level.

Early in his administration, it seemed that Bush was willing to be more open on gay issues, but when the going got tough he opted to listen to Rove and pursue an appeal to prejudice (much as Nixon had done a generation earlier with his "Southern strategy").

But Log Cabin's Sammon is essentially right; as gay openness increases and we and our families are seen as part of the "normal" fabric of society, ginning up bigotry for political gain becomes less effective. Which is why this is no time to embrace the "one party" strategy. Not only will that never ensure gay rights ("Hey Democrats, free votes from gays; nothing required") but it's an affront to the 25 percent of gays who routinely tell exit polls they vote for Republicans, and who aren't going to abandon their beliefs that confiscatory tax rates, government-controlled healthcare and anti-trade protectionism are disasters that must be averted-and that gays deserve full equality from their government.

If you actually believe it's pro-gay to use anti-gay stereotypes to gin up opposition to pro-gay Republicans among anti-gay conservatives, then you need a brain transplant. And why am I not surprised that the Advocate is having orgasms over this self-styled YouTube auteur/provocateur?

More. From the Washington Post, about the despicable anti-Giuliani/anti-gay "Gays for Giuliani" video created by a liberal gay New York artiste:

Davis is thinking about starting a political action committee to raise money to buy a television spot in South Carolina, a key primary state where some bloggers have complained that he is "gay-baiting" and "using Republicans' fear of gays to undermine Giuliani's candidacy."

You think?

In Chicago, a national assembly of Evangelical Lutherans urged its bishops to refrain from defrocking gay and lesbian ministers who violate a celibacy rule, but it rejected measures that would have permitted the ordination of gays churchwide.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's standards require ministers to "abstain from homosexual sexual relationships." But in the resolution, the assembly also "urges and encourages" bishops to refrain from or "demonstrate restraint in disciplining" ministers who are in a "mutual, chaste and faithful committed same-gender relationship."

So why not just accept, or even bless, such "faithful committed" relationsips? Because, as with the Democratic candidates who endorse civil unions but oppose same-sex marriage, it's a step that's still seen as too far to go.

At least the Evangelical Lutherans get credit for not being this hidebound!

I was underwhelmed and agree with many insta-analysts that the questioning by rock singer (she called herself a "rock star") Melisa Etheridge was at best vapid (hey, Ellen or Rosie at least would have had talkshow interviewing experience). Making Etheridge a panelist for what was billed as an historic, first-ever, nationally televised (via cable station Logo) LGBT presidential candidates forum was an embarrassment-especially when she all but endorsed Dennis Kucinich!

Much babble about the LGBT community, which helped the candidates to avoid saying "gay" (although, eventually, they do). An inconvenient truth: there is no "LGBT community," but that's another posting.

Some have noted that the big three (Obama, Clinton and Edwards), who favor civil unions and are against the Federal Marriage Amendment, but oppose "gay marriage," actually have the same or even a weaker position than Dick Cheney (but are better than Bush, who supports the FMA).

I don't have much to add to the live blogging comments by Ryan Sager, here, or Dan Blatt, here. If you missed it, they convey the feel of the nonevent.

John McWhorter, an African-American policy analyst who, among other positions, supports school choice (and thus gets damned in some quarters as a race-betraying conservative) has a column in the New York Sun about Mitt Romney, Mormons and gays. Deeply moving, whether you agree with his conclusion or not.

Meanwhile, Newsday looks at Rudy Giuliani's support for gay rights. Expect gay "progressives" to send this to GOP conservatives (see our earlier posting), perhaps adding a video of a lisping gay stereotype to introduce it, in their efforts to keep anti-gay Republicans in control of the GOP (it's the kind of logic that only a morally superior "progressive" could appreciate, I suppose).