IGF CultureWatch

A 2004 court ruling led Massachusetts to become the first state to recognize legal marriage for same-sex couples. In many other states, less sweeping court rulings (requiring spousal rights through civil unions, but not marriage) provoked backlashes leading to passage of anti-gay marriage amendments to state constitutions. But the Massachusetts state legislature has now voted down an attempt to place an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative before the voters in November.

On Reason magazine's Hit & Run blog, David Weigel shares former Massachusetts Gov. (and current GOP presidential candidate) Mitt Romney's response:

Today's vote by the State Legislature is a regrettable setback in our efforts to defend traditional marriage. Unfortunately, our elected representatives decided that the voice of the people did not need to be heard in this debate. It is now even more important that we pass a Constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage. Marriage is an institution that goes to the heart of our society, and our leaders can no longer abdicate their responsibility.

Does Romney actually think it's the legislature's duty to allow any proposed referendum to go on the ballot? As Weigel writes, "Seven months ago Massachusetts voters had the chance to elect a legislature and governor who would have opposed gay marriage or supported a vote on the ban. They chose to elect a bunch of pro-gay marriage Democrats."

In any event, the legislature's action should weaken arguments that same-sex marriage is just a plot between gays and overreaching judges. It also shows that once people have time to adjust to the idea of same-sex marriage and even live with it for awhile (or with civil unions, as an introductory step), popular opposition evaporates.

In this video clip, Johann Hari, a columnist for Britain's The Independent, talks with gay and human rights activist Peter Tatchell. Hari discusses why multiculturalism is divisive, patronizing, oppressive and often leads to a shameful betrayal of women's and gay rights.

David Boaz notes that Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of "Loving vs. Virginia," the U.S. Supreme Court decion ending state bans on interracial marriage. He writes on the Cato@Liberty blog:

in our own times, Virginia has been repeatedly banning same-sex marriage, not worrying excessively about how much collateral damage it does to wills, custody agreements, medical powers of attorney, or joint bank accounts.

Boaz references "the state's tradition of interfering with private choices," which "flowed from an arrogant desire by the state to control private relationships."

More. Virginia's Supreme Court has just affirmed 18 as the age of consent for "sodomy," whereas 15 is the age of consent for vaginal intercourse. As New York Law School Prof. Arthur S. Leonard writes, the result is "making oral or anal sex illegal for gay teenagers while vaginal intercourse is legal for teenagers of the same age, a patent inequality." The more things change...

An excellent column by Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle takes aim at the lesbian lawsuit against eHarmony.com. Writes Saunders:

[Walter Olson, editor of overlawyered.com] noted that [Linda] Carlson has "a much better chance with existing dating services." But she is suing, Olson noted, because diversity and tolerance have come to mean, "It's not just that you get the choices you want, but also choices you don't approve of have to be taken away."

And: "Diversity in theory is the enemy of diversity in practice."

The very term harmony evokes the sound of differing chords coexisting and making interesting music. As for Carlson's lawsuit, it could result in a world where all dating services must serve the same people. It's one note.

More at overlawyered.com and from Rick Sincere, who writes:

If [Carlson] prevails in her suit-and, given that she filed the suit within the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals geographic reach, she may well do so-then gay-oriented dating and matchmaking services (like gay.com or myPartnerPerfect.com) will have to accept straight clients on an equal basis with gay clients. That will dilute their purpose and make them less safe and inviting for the very people they are intended to serve.

Pioneer gay activist Frank Kameny says in this week's Washington Blade that DC's "Capital Pride" event should be called "Gay Pride." How proud can you be if you can't say what it is you're taking pride in?

See how closely you have to read this Washington Post story to realize the weekend has to do with gay people. This is, to a large extent, fallout from the activists' insistence that "gay" excludes and so either the cumbersome and confusing LGBT must be deployed, or no signifier used at all.

I don't always agree with Andrew Sullivan, but he's absolutely right to pick up on the way that liberal Democratic pols and pundits still think it's the 1990s when it comes to "don't ask, don't tell," the ending of which they support in principle at some future date when it seems safe and appropriate.

And yes, the GOPers are much worse (expectedly so, since the big gay national lobbies have become fundraising arms of the Democratic party), while a few principled libertarian-conservatives like George Will get it.

More. Former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), no friend of gay legal equality (he was a prime sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act), comes out against DADT.

The Freedom to Marry Coalition makes good use of the 40th anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia.

Meanwhile, Kalamazoo, Mich., has withdrawn health benefits from its employees' same-sex domestic partners as a result of the Michigan anti-marriage amendment passed in 2004. The state Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of a state Court of Appeals decision blocking same-sex benefits, but it also let the earlier decision take immediate effect. Expect more of this around the country.

And here's why this matters.

Another Washington Post column looks back at the U.S. Supreme Court's 1967 Loving vs. Virginia ruling, striking down state bans on interracial marriage. Law prof. Kermit Roosevelt, noting that the equal protection clause was ratified in 1868, asks why voiding these laws took so long:

Interracial marriage bans now seem obviously invidious. But go back far enough and the consensus flips. At one point, most everyone thought such bans were legitimate. The same is true of segregated schooling and discrimination against women. It is true of just about everything the Supreme Court has held that the equal protection clause prohibits.

At one point, all of these practices were seen as legitimate reflections of the world, not as invidious attempts to impose inequality. When the court held these practices unconstitutional, it was neither enforcing a rule that had existed since 1868 nor creating a new rule. It was recognizing that social attitudes had shifted, and with them the understanding about what is reasonable and what is invidious.

He adds:

This point connects Loving to current social struggles, most notably the debate over same-sex marriage. Opponents decry the "activist judges" in Massachusetts who struck down that state's same-sex marriage ban and warn that the Supreme Court will someday follow. So it may-but, if it does, responsibility will not lie primarily with judges.

In other words, when the battle has been won in the court of public opinion (and most state legislatures), the Supreme Court may be free to sweep away the last remaining areas of intransigence. But pursuing marriage equality through a judicial strategy while a majority in most states are strongly opposed is a recipe for reaction, including state (or a federal) constitutional amendments blocking same-sex marriage for yet another generation.

Washington Post columnist Tom Shales takes a look at cable station TCM's "Screened Out: Gay Images in Film," a Gay Pride Month series featuring major or minor gay characters that starts Monday night. There's more on the TCM website.

More. Much discussion on TCM of Hollywood's reliance on stereotypes of "nervous nellies" and other sissified representations. Actually, it doesn't seem like so much has changed in that regard in Hollywoodland, except that the excessively flamboyant "funny gays" are now counterbalanced somewhat by average gay Joes (the "Will & Grace" stratagem).

A California woman is suing the online dating service eHarmony, alleging it discriminates against gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The company claims its research was developed to match opposite-sex couples and that matching same-sex couples is "not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted."

Reason magazine's "Hit & Run" blog points out that this explanation may be dubious, since it has been widely reported that eHarmony's founder is an evangelical Christian who once had close ties to James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Still, blogger Katherine Mangu-Ward takes note of:

a rival site launched Friday catering exclusively to gay men. (It's called myPartnerPerfect.com, and offers its males-only service for just $37.95 a month, or $204 for a year).

Is eHarmony's exclusion of same-sex couples discriminatory, and if so isn't myParnterPerfect.com also guilty? Or do anti-discrimination cases of this sort go far astray from challenging egregious exclusion and end up engaging in tort for tort sake (a view expressed over at overlawyered.com) and serve mostly as a means to take umbrage over an evangelical-tinged group that doesn't want to invite us to their party?