IGF CultureWatch

In Massachusetts, the Boston Globe newspaper has told its gay and lesbian employees that:

An employee who currently covers a same-sex domestic partner as a dependent will have to marry his or her partner by Jan. 1 for the employee benefits coverage to continue at the employee rates to get married or lose their domestic partner benefits.

That's the right thing to do. As the rival Boston Herald reports, "Now that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, companies that offer benefits to gay employees' partners risk hearing cries of discrimination from unmarried straight couples."

Corporate domestic-partner benefits are a stop-gap to provide a bit of fairness to employees in same-sex relationships until gays can get married. There is no reason to preserve them as a distinct benefit category after marriage (and, arguably, state-recognized civil unions) become available.

Domestic-partner benefits will continue for Globe employees who live in states where gay marriage is not recognized.

I support school choice rather than pouring yet more taxpayer money down the endless rat-hole of union-dominated and bureaucratically mismanaged public (i.e., government) schools. But for the foreseeable future it's in exactly such miserable institutions where the vast majority of American youth will be forced to try to glean whatever education they might be fortunate enough to extract. Given this sorry circumstance, I think public schools should at least have the ability to insist on basic decorum and civility among their captive students.

Yet, in 1969, a liberal dominated Supreme Court, in Tinker v. Des Moines, ruled that free speech rights extended to students and so public schools could not restrict political speech, including arm bands worn in protest of the Vietnam War, unless such symbolic speech caused undue disruptions to school activities. Tinker has been tinkered with around the edges, but basically stands.

This bit of history is relevant because the Ninth Circuit now must decide whether a California sophomore named Tyler Chase Harper was unfairly sent home from his high school for wearing a t-shirt saying "Homosexuality is shameful." The overt sloganeering is certain uncivil, but is it also political speech protected by liberal jurisprudence? If so, then opponents of the t-shirt must prove it is a form of harassment that keeps gay students from learning in order to have it banned.

It would be much easier if schools were still able to simply insist on civil behavior and dress codes that excluded culture-war sloganeering.

Meanwhile, here's another public school culture-war skirmish. At Howell High School in Michigan, when the Diversity Club hung a rainbow flag in a hallway, it was allowed to remain despite a petition by Christian conservatives. That prompted these students to create a Traditional Values Club and produce their own flag. Now, faculty members have voted that both flags should be displayed only in classrooms during club meetings.

That sounds sensible, but let's see if one side or the other sues claiming their right to political speech was unduly infringed.

More. TCS Daily wonders if the 9th Circuit is creating preferential speech rights.

On Thursday, New York's highest court ruled that the state constitution does not require same-sex marriage, while the Georgia Supreme Court upheld that state's constitutional ban on gay marriage and any state recognition of same-sex relationships.

These are defeats, but I hope they serve to wake up judicial strategy advocates that turning to the courts to mandate gay marriage is both bad politics (provoking voter backlash when courts rule our way against overwhelming majority opinion) and not a sure bet.

In New York, advocates asked for a finding of a right to marriage and nothing less, hoping for a Massachusetts-style judicial victory. But Massachusetts is not proving to be a model for anywhere but Massachusetts. If they had asked for a ruling instructing the legislature to grant the statewide benefits of marriage to gays in a fashion to be devised by the legislature (such as through Vermont-style civil unions, now provided in several states), it might have been a happier day.

More. Gay Patriot West observes:

Had New York's Court of Appeals ruled in favor of gay marriage, the decision would have rallied gay marriage opponents and strengthened the case for a federal constitutional amendment. Now that argument is considerably weakened. And the option still remains for advocates of gay marriage to make their case before the legislature-and the people to whom the elected legislators are responsible.

And he's right.

Ryan Sager concurs:

Supporters of gay marriage won a resounding victory yesterday-even if they don't know it yet.

Still more. According to a Human Rights Campaign statement:

The court's archaic reasoning is rooted in ignorance and completely contradicted by the facts of today. ... The court threw the expert advice of child welfare professionals and years of scientific evidence out the window with its ruling against fairness.

But the court's role is to interpret the state constitution, not to create new law by decree because liberals want it and believe it would be "fairer" and more resonable, but lack the support of the electorate or the legislature.

Meanwhile, as Instapundit notes, Howard the Hypocrite Dean called the reasoning of the New York Court "bigoted and outdated," but just a few months ago, when sucking up to Pat Robertson, he himself trumpeted his party's support for marriage only between a man and a woman. Better watch it, Howard, or you could give shameless pandering a bad name.

Yet still more. A backlash even in Massachusetts?

Voters in the Old Dominion, which already has a sweeping law against recognizing same-sex marriages or anything remotely similar, will vote in November on a constitutional amendment that would not only ban civil unions (again, already illegal in Virginia), but decree that the state will "not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals."

That language is so broad it's anybody's guess what it might apply to (private contracts to share property?). That means if it passes, the courts will have to interpret it. But wait, social conservatives say we need an amendment because activist courts are inserting themselves into the marriage debate!

Virginia Gov. Tom Kaine, a Democrat, opposes the amendment, saying it could affect contracts between unwed heterosexual couples and "disenfranchises…unmarried people, both same-sex or heterosexual couples." While he opposes same-sex marriage, he says, "We're equal citizens in the state; we ought to be treated equally." But then why does he opposes letting gay couples marry?

Nevertheless, it's interesting that Kaine, the governor of a conservative state, has a view that is at least as gay friendly as John Kerry's, and Kerry was perhaps the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. That may show progress.

But as the Washington Post reports, anti-gay marriage amendments "have passed in each of the 20 states where they have been on the ballot, often by more than 3 to 1." Sadly, it would take a huge breakthrough, or a lot of scarred cohabiting heteros, to reverse that trend.

While at first this blow-up among the parents of first graders just looks silly, it shows how ugly of things can (and, in many cases, will) get.

Maryland's conservative GOP Gov. Robert Ehrlich backs a state amendment barring same-sex marriage. That's insupportable. But it's interesting to note that, in the run-up to the Nov. election, Ehrlich has fired an official for being anti-gay and appointed an out gay judge. These are being viewed (maybe cynically) as attempts to appeal to moderates. In any event, I think it shows how far we've progressed in general, even though marriage equality remains a formidable struggle.

Meanwhile, in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger (who vetoed a legislatively passed gay marriage bill) declared that:

A person should only be limited by his dreams and not by his background, and not by his heritage and not by his sexual orientation. . . .We are united in the values of love, tolerance, and understanding…working together we can create a better future for California where everybody matters and every family counts.

Once the general public moves just a bit more toward marriage acceptance, basically tolerant politicians such as Schwarzennegger and McCain (and perhaps even more conservative ones such as Ehrlich, and maybe even liberal Democrats like Kerry and Edwards) should follow along.

Even in the Czech Republic, gay couples who legalize their relationships under a new registered partnership law that's several steps short of full marriage equality nevertheless refer to their unions as "weddings."

This encapsulates my problem with the argument that we must settle for nothing less than full marriage equality now, court mandated as necessary. Once the hetero majority gets used to civil unions or domestic partnerships that are increasingly seen as marriages, society will more readily accept the step-up to full legal matrimony, without the reactionary backlash that could lead to passage of a federal (and certainly numerous state) constitutional amendments, stopping progress for at least several decades.

More. Washington Blade editor Chris Crain editorializes that conservatives ought to support marriage equality for gays rather than "marriage lite," because the latter is inevitably also made available to heterosexual couples as a weaker alternative to marriage, and thus does serve to weaken the institution.

It's a good point, and I've made it myself before, including here and here. Alas, opponents of marriage equality can't get past their anti-gay animus in order to see that marriage for all should be the conservative stance. That leaves us with civil unions and DPs as less than perfect stepping stones, achievable goals that often have majority support and pave the way for future advances.

As Slate's "Explainer" Daniel Engber notes:

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will have to undergo league-mandated "sensitivity training," after calling a Chicago Sun-Times columnist a "fag" last week. Guillen told a reporter on Friday that he wasn't sure if he'd make it to the session, while legendary baseball loudmouth John Rocker described his own sensitivity training as a "farce."

Yes, sounds like it's gonna make the guy real sensitive about gays. But this kind of mandatory session is really about placating those offended (and I count myself among them).

Businesses have a right to force this kind of training on their employees, and doing so allows them to claim they're making good faith efforts to eliminate discrimination should they find themselves being sued. But requiring offenders to endure a bit of multi-culti psychoblather isn't likely to get at the root of anyone's prejudice (though it may provide them with an incentive to keep their bigotries out of public view).

I hadn't heard about the brouhaha that followed when the heavily Mormon town of Kanab, Utah, resolved to promote the "natural family" unit, defined as man and woman, duly married "as ordained of God," with hearts "open to a full quiver of children." The Los Angeles Times has the story.

From Mormons to Muslims, the Washington Post takes a look at how social pressure is pushing some Islamic gays to seek lesbian wives. At least in this case it's not the state doing the pressing, yet.

Fox anchorwoman Julie Banderas stands up to anti-gay crusader-loon Shirley Phelps-Roper in a fiery interview. You can go to YouTube and watch the fireworks for yourself.