IGF CultureWatch

Former Enron exec Michael Kopper was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to return $8 million to the government. But his domestic partner, William Dodson, has been allowed to keep $9 million in funds that Kopper helped him obtain through Enron-related scams.

According to the Washington Blade:

the fact that U.S. and Texas laws do not recognize same-sex relationships most likely prompted authorities against going after Dodson's financial gains in the Enron affair, financial observers have said. Federal prosecutors forced the married spouses of several Enron figures to forfeit money they obtained in schemes operated jointly with Enron executives.

In other words, if Kopper and Dodson were married, the Enron funds that now belong to Dodson would be considered jointly owned by the two men under the marriage laws of most states. As Alphonso David, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, puts it:

"It's ironic that some of the same people who are opposed to legal recognition of marriage between same-sex couples are upset that this couple gets to keep about $9 million in stolen funds.... This highlights the point that people don't always think about the obligations as well as the rights that go with marriage."

Israeli citizens can now enter into same-sex marriages in foreign jurisdictions that allow them (such as Canada, Massachusetts and some European countries) and have them recognized by the Israeli state. As Andrew Sullivan points out: "The contrast with the murderous homophobia in the Arab-Muslim Middle East could not be starker."

But don't tell that to San Francisco-based QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terror).

And so it begins, with Romney charging that McCain is being "disingenuous" by claiming to oppose gay marriage. Meanwhile, McCain may be trying to put some distance between himself and Rudy.

More Politics. As alerted to in the comments: Nancy Pelosi has announced that the Democrats intend to keep Don't Ask, Don't Tell around for the foreseeable future. Via the Boston Globe:

Pelosi has also tempered hopes of reversing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the service of gays and lesbians in the military... Though Pelosi believes homosexuals should be able to openly serve, she has made clear that she believes Democrats have more urgent national-security priorities - including changing course in Iraq and investigating war-related contracting.

Memo to gay activists: If you're waiting for the new Congress to pass an ENDA (Employee Non-Discrimination Act) that includes, at your insistence, the transgendered, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that might interest you.

Still more bashing of America's largest non-government employer this month, from the anti-gay religious right (here, too) and the anti-business Democratic left (here, too).

It's demagoguery (and hypocrisy) all round, as the rightists don't like businesses that treat gays as valued customers, and the lefties just don't like business.

More on Edwards the hypocrite, from Radley Balko:

Edwards' contempt for Wal-Mart has nothing to do with real concern for the poor (it's more a mix of anti-corporatism and good old fashioned snobbery). If that were the case, he'd at least acknowledge that Wal-Mart has done more for the working poor in America than any government safety net program could ever hope to.

Many with a libertarian bent will never forgive John McCain for his speech-muzzling "McCain-Feingold" law that served mainly to divert campaign financing dollars to even less visible pathways. Granted. But it's hard to argue with his recent call for the wayward GOP to return to limited government principles:

We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office....

Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us.

Such sentiments are particularly pertinent this week, as we mourn the loss of Milton Friedman, who shed light into the muck of left-liberal economic stagflation and showed how trusting people to make their own choices, rather than empowering government bureaucrats (and smug Ivy League elitists) to choose for them, leads to growth, prosperity and dynamism. Of course, many of us would also stress that freedom to choose for oneself extends beyond the marketplace and boardroom, and that limited government doesn't mean wielding state power to impose a moral regimen on the populace - lessons that social conservatives failed to grasp. (Friedman, himself, opposed the "war on drugs" and favored decriminalizing prostitution.)

Still, as congressional Democrats salivate at the thought of imposing their beloved price controls, wage schemes and trade barriers, Friedman's loss is most acutely felt.

GOP rightwingers hate Bush's nominee for Republican National Committee Chair, Mel Martinez, but so do (and understandably so) LGBT Democratic activists.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's (NGLTF) post-election press release is How Will the Election Affect Sexual and Reproductive Rights?

The release is about a joint audioconference with feminist/reproductive rights groups, but it does beg the question: Do these feminist/reproductive rights groups give gay rights equal footing with their own core agenda? Answer: Are you insane?

Along with NGLTF, self-styled 'progressive' LGBT groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and even the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, use an abortion-on-demand litmus test for the candidates they endorse/fund- which allows them to eliminate gay-tolerant conservatives who are even mildly pro-life. When such candidates know they will be adamantly opposed by the leading national gay groups, what incentive do they have to moderate their views on gay issues?

Memo to LGBT progressives: not all gays are of like mind on abortion.

From analysis in the Milwaukee Sun Sentinel, on the Wisconsin vote (for Democratic candidates and the anti-gay-marriage initiative):

By putting the same-sex marriage and death penalty measures on the same ballot....Republican leaders in the Legislature ended up drawing the wrong type of voter to the polls-Democrats, especially conservative ones. Those people voted for the ballot proposals but against Republican candidates....

"It was a lose-lose situation," [U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican] said. "You had Reagan Democrats and socially conservative union members who wanted to vote yes and yes (on the referendums) and then voted for [Democratic Gov. Jim] Doyle."

But I kinda wish LGBT Democratic activists, who spend so much energy denouncing gay Republicans, would devote just a bit of their efforts at anti-gay Democrats (since, after all, it's their party that our national LGBT organizations work so tirelessly to fund).

According to CNN's exit polling, 24% of self-identified gays cast their votes for Republicans on Tuesday. In 2004, 23% of the gay vote went for Bush. Log Cabin stands alone in trying to leverage the power of this vote with a religious-right dominated GOP. But to groups like the Human Rights Campaign, which now sees its mission as electing liberal Democrats, these voters don't even exist.

From a Log Cabin post-election release:

GOP leaders lost sight of what brought our Party to power in 1994. Limited government, lower spending, high ethical standards and accountability, and other unifying GOP principles attracted a broad coalition of support including fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, mainstream Republicans, libertarians, and independents. Now we've lost the U.S. House because Party leaders turned their backs on the GOP's core principles and catered only to social conservatives.

Hard to argue with that.

Sadly if predictably, seven of the eight ballot referendums amending state constitutions to bar same-sex marriage (and, in some cases, civil unions and spousal-like agreements) easily passed, included in heavily Democratic-voting states. Anti-gay amendments sailed to victory in Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, Tennessee, South Carolina, South Dakota, and liberal-leaning Wisconsin (where voters overwhelmingly re-elected a Democratic senator). Only Arizona (where voters re-elected a Republican senator) looks poised to be a bright spot. It's a sign of the still-potent backlash against judicially mandated same-sex marriage and civil unions, with much braying by GOP social reactionaries and mostly silence from the leaders of the self-styled party of inclusion. Too bad.

Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum is gone gone gone from the Senate, which is good. His House counterpart, Colo. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, managed to hang on and spew forth for another two years. That's bad.

I doubt that new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi [and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] will try to put through the full agenda their left-liberal supporters expect-everything from barring funds for the war in Iraq to transgender anti-discrimination legislation. But pro-growth tax cuts will expire as new fees are levied, the minimum wage will be dramatically hiked (hope you're not a small business owner!), trade barriers set up and counter-productive redistributionist schemes championed. Pro-market initiatives for entitlement reform are now off the table, and routine matters will henceforth get bundled up with regulatory expansion (and more power to the apparatchiks) to get passed. Too bad.

But the worst of the anti-gay stuff will also be tabled. That's good.