IGF CultureWatch

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, makes the thinking behind the military's "don't ask, don't tell" gay ban perfectly clear:

"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies that it's OK to be immoral in any way."

Oh, and then there's that "unit cohesion" thing, too.

But gays are much more an open part of our world then when "don't ask" was put in place by President Clinton, at the instigation not just of congressional Republicans but of Democratic bigwigs like senators Sam Nunn and Robert Byrd. This time, GOP Sen. John Warner, one of Congress' most respected authorities on military matters and a former Navy secretary, shot pack at Gen. Pace: "I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral."

In other words, the threshold of anti-gay bigotry is much lower these days, even among Republicans (see Coulter, Ann, response to), suggesting that the gay ban is unlikely to survive the post-Bush presidency, whichever party takes the White House.

How Clintonesque.

"I have heard from many of my friends in the gay community that my response yesterday to a question about homosexuality being immoral sounded evasive. My intention was to focus the conversation on the failed don't ask, don't tell policy. I should have echoed my colleague Senator John Warner's statement forcefully stating that homosexuality is not immoral because that is what I believe."-Hillary Clinton in a March 15 statement

Her initial political inclination was to try to stay to the right of Virginia's GOP senior senator, and to thereby earn her expected Human Rights Campaign endorsement without actually having to affirm the dignity of gay people.

Our friend and fellow blogger Tom G. Palmer has helped score a legal victory in defense of constitutional freedoms, specifically the right to own a gun for self-protection. The case concerns our nation's capital, where adult citizens are barred from legally owning or possessing firearms. No licensing, no background checks, a total ban. Reports the Washington Post:

Palmer, 50, said that his gun rescued him 25 years ago when he was approached by a group of men in San Jose. Palmer, who is gay, said he believed the men were targeting him because of his sexual orientation. He said he and a friend started to run away, but then he took action.

"I turned around and showed them the business side of my gun and told them if they took another step, I'd shoot," he said, adding that that ended the confrontation.

Palmer moved to [Washington, D.C.] in 1975 and lives in the U Street NW corridor, where police have struggled lately to curb assaults and other crimes.

Many believe the state alone should have a monopoly on all protective weaponry. Apart from denying free individuals the right to defend life and property (including equalizing the terms with gay bashers when the cops don't happen to be around!), legal gun ownership serves as the founders intended, as a barrier to the government ever veering too close to tyranny (one of the first laws Hitler passed was to bar German Jews from owning guns). It's a right worth fighting for.

More. Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, law prof. Eugene Volokh takes on the meaning of "militia" as used in the Second Amendment, noting that the Supreme Court has ruled:

"The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense."

Yet much of the liberal media pretend as if the founders, anachronistically, were pre-visioning something akin to the contemporary National Guard. But why rely on facts when confusion serves the political purpose so much better?

Lefty bloggers outed a campus ex-Marine conservative, Matt Sanchez, by publicizing that he had appeared in a gay porn film years earlier, and Sanchez responds.

Given the left's constant talk about equality, discrimination, minority rights and systemic oppression, I thought the fact that I was a Hispanic, a Marine, a nontraditional, 36-year-old Ivy League student and a 100 percent flag-waving red-blooded Reagan Republican would make my point of view interesting, but so be it. Everything is political now, and even the double standards have talking points....

Those on the left who now attack me would be defending me if I had espoused liberal causes and spoken out against the Iraq war before I was outed as a pseudo celebrity. They'd be talking about publishing my memoir and putting me on a diversity ticket with Barack Obama. Instead, those who complain about wire-tapping reserve the right to pry into my private life and my past for political brownie points....

I am embarrassed to admit that was I worried that my fellow conservatives would distance themselves from me when the news about my film career broke. The opposite has happened. I've been asked to give my point of view, invited to speak at various functions, and invited back on television. My peers on the right have gone out of their way to give me a vote of confidence and avoid a rush to judgment. I appreciate the support. I am also not really that troubled by the abuse I've taken from the other side.

And there's an interesting take over at Protein Wisdom on the left's hatred of gays who won't toe the party line:

In Matt Sanchez, we have a conservative who, from the perspective of his earlier libertine attitudes toward sex and sexual orientation, wandered off the "progressive" plantation, and so, to people like [leftwing blogger Tom Bacchus], must be exposed, mocked, and MADE TO PAY for his ideological transgressions, the undisguised subtext being that the political positions of gay men must necessarily be tied to that of the collective, which not only presumes to speak for them, but which, it is clear, is willing to police its ranks by engaging, in the most vicious ways, in behaviors it claims ostensibly to find anathema-namely, reducing a person to his sexual orientation (the game of "outing") in order to undermine his positions (which has the net effect of arguing that your only value as a homosexual is tied inexorably to what you are willing to do for the orthodoxy's conception of "the cause"; your individualism, that is, is ironically only granted you should you willingly surrender it to the Greater Good).

I do think there's an important distinction between closeted homosexuals who work against gay equality, and gays who are libertarian/conservative and trying to work toward greater freedom from within that camp. But to a great many on the self-righteous, smug, and (yes) hate-driven left, any gay non-"progressive" is an open target that must be silenced or destroyed.

I don't know enough about Sanchez (who reportedly does not identify as gay) to peg him, but I do know that I'm appalled by the tactics of those who would bring him down.

More. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force weighs in with a defense of Sanchez-and porn. But the response, probably written shortly after the brouhaha began, assumes that Sanchez's fellow conservatives would break with him (they haven't, just as they didn't abandon openly gay conservative Jeff Gannon when bloggers publicized his past work as an escort/hustler). NGLTF also doesn't take into account that Sanchez is himself now a critic of the porn industry (which may, in fact, be what does make him acceptable to his fellow conservatives).

Isaiah Washington wins an NAACP Image Award! Washington, of "Grey's Anatomy" infamy, originally called co-star T.R. Knight a "little faggot," and then at the Golden Globes denied doing so while managing again to deploy the "F" word.

No sign of protest from HRC and friends about their liberal allies, though TMZ.com suggests that perhaps now Michael Richards should receive a GLAAD Award, and Queer Sighted isn't very happy, either.

But then I guess GLAAD has just been too busy condemning gay drag queens for their supposed racial insensitivity!

Ann Coulter was her usual despicable self when she called John Edwards a "faggot," and HRC takes the opportunity to express its outrage at Republicans. But Gay Patriot shows that a good many conservative and/or Republican bloggers are also unhappy with La Coulter's antics. And we can now even add some on the Christian right.

If HRC hadn't transformed itself into a Democratic Party fundraising arm, then its reacton to something like Coulter's imbecility might not seem like such a knee-jerk, rouse the base, operation. But then, fostering meaningful dialog with those on the right is the last thing on HRC's to-do list, and so it has no credibility when it issues a response to incidents such as this.

Speaking of HRC, if you think I've been hard on their ultra partisanship of late, just read Chris Crain.

More. Andrew Sullivan blogs:

"HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton], the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign.... What matters is what's in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats."

Still more. One of Coulter's themes during her CPAC address was her dislike for Rudy (she said she's likely to support Romney). Meanwhile, Rudy surges among Republicans, not all of whom are intolerant bigots, it seems. And Rudy shares is vision of the GOP as the party of freedom.

Worth noting. In her March 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed (WSJ subscribers, only), the very politically astute Peggy Noonan writes that:

In 2000 [McCain] felt he could take on Christian conservative leaders in the South. Bad timing. In 2000 they were at the peak of their 20 years of power. Now their followers are tired and questioning after a generation of political activism. And many leaders seem compromised-dinged after all that time in the air. Mr. McCain could rebuke them now and thrive. Instead he decided to attempt to embrace them.

McCain is re-fighting the last political war. I don't think Rudy is going to make that mistake.

Update. The GOP big three sharply denounce Coulter's remark.

The very first soldier wounded in the Iraq war-a marine who lost his leg- comes out. Retired Sgt. Eric Alva also wears a wedding ring to signify his relationship with his partner, Darrell.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is considering hiring at the State Dept. at least some of the Arabic-speaking gay linguists discharged from the military under "don't ask, don't tell" (also known as "lie and hide").

How much longer can this increasingly antiquated and just plain wrong policy last? I dunno, although renewed efforts for repeal are underway in Congress. But the arguments against it that will be most effective will draw on examples such as Sgt. Alva, and not the kinds of anti-military protests now popular at our elite liberal universities, which seek to hamper armed services enlistment and oppose the war while incidentally citing the gay-exclusion policy.

"Stop the War!," "End Campus Recruitment!" and "Let LGBTs Serve!" is not a winning message.

A snapshot from the Culture War: Anti-gay Mormon parents sue the Santa Rosa City (Calif.) School District for giving their daughter a written reprimand for using the put-down "That's so gay." The parents, long-time opponents of the school's diversity program, consider the reprimand part of a homosexual agenda.

To be fair, the article suggests the daughter was teased about being a Mormon and that similar reprimands did not follow. That's a problem with diversity initiatives. They can't and shouldn't be neutral (no equal time for the Klan), but letting bureaucrats decide what's acceptable can mean only politically incorrect teasing gets the stick, leaving everyone to compete over who has been more "victimized."

Shall I go out on a limb? I'll take exception with my IGF colleague Dale Carpenter, who suggests that the GOP's social conservative base will sink the Giuliani campaign. Based on factors including the early California primary, I predict in 2008 it will be Hillary vs. Rudy, and that Democrats will do all they can to publicize Rudy's support for gay rights-including veering on outright homophobia-in an attempt to keep social conservatives at home on election day. (And if I'm wrong, I'll delete this post and deny I every said any such thing).

More. Walker comments:

It's not "Rudy in drag" they'll use. They'll say in the debates "those of us who have gay friends-and I know Mayor Giuliani lived with a gay couple for some time after his second divorce" ... Just like the repeated Mary Cheney gambit.

Some are asking why the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is targeting gay (and white) comedian/drag performer Charles Knipp, who performs as a black woman on welfare, with too many kids, named Shirley Q. Liquor. Here's Shirley's take on Kwaanza, and here's her skewed commentary on "homosexicals."

Knipp also portrays other large female characters with irreverence, including North Dakota Marge and Betty Butterfield.

The Washington Blade reports that GLAAD's critics, including some still upset over the organization's silence during last year's congressional page scandal (when those making partisan hay over GOP Rep. Mark Foley's interest in former teenage congressional pages freely invoked stereotypes that confused homosexuality and pedophilia), have called into question GLAAD's targeting of Knipp. However:

"We very clearly recognized," [GLAAD head Neil Giuliano] said, "that what we were doing in that case was standing with those organizations and individuals in the African-American community that asked us to take a stand against that racism."...

Giuliano said GLAAD took action this month against the Shirley Q. Liquor routine-an act that's been running for years-partly because he and other gay leaders recently attended a seminar on racism. "The outcome of which made me much more sensitive to when there is an opportunity to stand up against racism, it's important to do so," he said, "even when it may not be the core scope of your work day in and day out."

One can certainly argue whether Knipp's routine is "racist" or whether certain underclass cultural dysfunctions are a fair target for comedy. One might also raise the issue of whether when black comedians Tyler Perry or the often homophobic Eddie Murphy dress up as large black women this, too, is "defamatory." But the larger issue is that GLAAD seems to think that it needs to score points with fellow progressives by using its limited time and resources to attack gays for being "racist," rather than, oh, say, maybe for instance, taking on homophobia in the African-American community (which would, no doubt, run the risk of those progressives labeling GLAAD as "racist").

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) usually defends conservative students against the PC left. The group's website notes:

At many of our nation's colleges and universities...students are expected to share a single viewpoint on controversial matters like the meaning of diversity, the particulars of racism, and the impermissibility of "hate speech." Mandatory "diversity training," in which students are instructed in an officially-approved ideology, is commonplace.

Now, FIRE is showing its evenhandedness by taking on Virginia's Hampton University, which for the second time in two years has denied recognition to students trying to start a gay and lesbian student group on campus. Good for FIRE!

Shifting gears somewhat, this Washington Post report looks at how the Democratic Party's leftwing "net-roots" are going after even moderate liberals who are pro-choice on abortion and support gay rights if they also happen to favor legislation to scale back the estate tax, tighten bankruptcy rules and promote free-trade agreements. It's very possible that the GOP will move toward the center as 2008 approaches, while the Democrats veer sharply into leftwing loonyland.