IGF CultureWatch

Syndicated, openly gay columnist Deb Price predicts that the "millennial generation" (Americans born between 1985 and 2004) will usher in legal approval of same-sex marriage:

Even two years ago, 15-to-25-year-olds favored gay marriage by 56 percent to 39 percent, according to a national survey by the University of Maryland's youth think tank, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE at civicyouth.org).

"Each generation has come of age being considerably more tolerant and become even more so," says CIRCLE Director Peter Levine, who tracked attitudes of generational groups over time.

"This youngest generation is very tolerant, a very large group, and they have turned around the voting decline in the first election in which they could vote. If you put all that together, it spells a huge change in gay rights-and one not very far off," he adds.

Will this generational change of attitude last? Some studies suggest people tend to become more conservative as they age. But from what I've read, this often means that many on the left in their teen and young adult years come to realize, through experience, that the solutions promised by big-government social programs not only don't materialize, but that social engineering has counter-productive results-providing long-term betterment only to those politicos who appropriate tax dollars to expand their power bases.

That young, gay-friendly Americans will become gay-intolerant in large numbers as they grow older seems less likely, although if some activists continue to cement the (mis)perception that gay legal equality is part and parcel of left-liberalism's big-government, redistributionist social agenda, it could happen.

[Faithful readers, we apologize for the intermittent server outages. We're working on it.]

Gay Democratic partisan Wayne Besen writes, "I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with Alan Keyes when he said Mary Cheney is a 'selfish hedonist,' " Besen, some may remember, is a former Human Rights Campaign spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, instead of defending the rights of gays to marry, tells Pat Robertson's 700 Club he agrees (and so does the Democratic Party) that "marriage is between a man and a woman." To its credit, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force couldn't stomach this. We'll see if it provokes any ire over at HRC, which is happy to endorse Democrats who oppose gay marriage-as long as they're pro-choice on abortion.

This Wall Street Journal column looks at the death and life of Newark, N.J. Under the former, now-thankfully ended regime of Mayor Sharpe James, the city pursued a failed strategy of promoting big public projects and drowning would-be private start-ups in red tape. Add to that mix a hefty does of anti-white race-baiting and you've got a mixture for urban stagnation and decline.

The column quotes Prof. Richard Florida, who makes the case for reviving cities by attracting the "creative class" of energetic people and unleashing their entrepreneurial energies:

"There were lots of mayors like James who said, 'I'd rather keep my power base than build my city,'" says Mr. Florida. "Jane Jacobs told me the problem is that these cities are run by squelchers." By that she meant politicos who try to stamp out anything they can't control. They love big public projects, but private enterprise makes them nervous. Meanwhile the professional planners on public payrolls are squelchers of a different sort. They keep trying to remake cities in their past image.

"They're not going to bring back suburban, middle-class families to Newark," Mr. Florida says. "What you can bring in is young singles, the gay community and empty-nesters who are looking to be closer to an urban center."

It's another indication of how the interests of gays should align not with stultifying, backward-looking big-government liberalism but with the spirit of market-based initiative and dynamism. If only we hard a political party that was pro-market and pro-gay.

Harper's magazine has outraged fellow liberals by publishing an article claiming that testing AIDS drugs in Africa is evil because drug companies are evil and, in fact, invented the false idea of AIDS so they could poison people and get rich.

As this critique in the Columbia Journalism Review's online daily suggests, it's the paranoid anti-capitalist/anti-global-economy thesis of Hollywood's "The Constant Gardener" meets AIDS denialism. What's scary is that if it weren't gay lives that could be imperiled by this nonsense, how many more anti-corporate "progressives" (gay or otherwise) would find such scape-goating conspiracy theories right up their alley?

I wasn't able to attend the recent Log Cabin Convention in Washington, D.C. But from what I've heard and read, it seems many of the right notes were struck.

LCR President Patrick Guerriero stated:

On the days that I have disagreements with people like Jerry Falwell, I'm reminded that I disagree more with [House] Democratic leader] Nancy Pelosi on a hundred different issues.

Now, if the GOP were monolithically under the religious right's thumb (which some Democrats want to believe, but isn't true), I might take issue with Guerriero. But the job ahead is to build on party principles that support individual autonomy and thus restore the GOP to its roots as the party of liberty, born as the Democrats mobilized to defend the expansion of slavery and, later, Jim Crow segregation.

At the LCR confab, particularly inspiring were remarks by Britain's Alan Duncan, an openly gay Conservative member of parliament, who declared:

It's the duty of the state to intervene when two people hate each other, not when they love each other.

The British Conservatives (with some exceptions) have been far more willing than their U.S. counterparts to reach an accommodation with the fact that gay people exist. It shows that opposition to the concept of ever-bigger, more-intrusive government as the solution to all ills, and support for the legal equality of gay people, are not inherently exclusive. In fact, in a better world, Dick Cheney's stated belief that "freedom means freedom for everybody" (which daughter Mary Cheney again referenced during her chat with Diane Sawyer) would truly once again be the party's guiding principle.

Here's what happens to gays who think the Democratic Party should do more for them than just take our money.

And no, I'm not saying the party we don't fund (i.e., the GOP) is better. Just that we expect more from the party we are guilted, incessantly, into opening our wallets for.

As for the GOP, Mary Cheney's story, as told to ABC's Diane Sawyer on Thursday primetime, shows that while incremental progress has been made, there's still a long, hard road ahead. Giving all of our money and labor to ungrateful Democrats won't help us get there.

Update: Well, I thought Mary Cheney did just fine with Diane on Thursday night, explaining her strong disagreement with the national GOP on gay marriage but also making clear why she would remain a Republican even if her father wasn't veep.

It was also interesting that she referred to herself as "gay" several times, while her gay-male critics called her a "lesbian." It reminded me of Ellen's famous "Yep, I'm Gay" Time magazine cover story. Yet this site has taken some heat for being the Independent Gay Forum and not the Independent LBGT&etc Forum.

I feel strongly that "gay," while far from perfect, is an inclusive term and that if lesbian feminists want to self-segregate (and often work for women's and lesbian issues in organizations dedicated to that purpose), so be it. But it doesn't turn "gay" into a male-only category. Mary Cheney, Ellen DeGeneres, and many other gay women would seem to agree.

Still more. I found Elizabeth Birch and Hilary Rosen's Washington Post op-ed a bit smug and condescending. They write:

This week we've debated each other over the wrongs we feel her family and their allies have perpetrated on the gay and lesbian community and what the impact of her current activities will be.

I'm not quite sure what wrongs the Cheney clan per se have done (the veep has distanced himself from the Federal Marriage Amendment).

Also, following on my point in the update above, Birch and Rosen insist on calling Mary Cheney a lesbian when she herself uses the term gay. Apparently, the demand to respect the nomenclature that an individual favors only works in one direction.

A case in suburban Washington, D.C., shows how over-reaching "anti-bias" laws can achieve illiberal results by overriding the exercise of free conscience. As Walter Olson writes at overlaywered.com:

Bono Film and Video has an announced policy of refusing to duplicate material that owner Tim Bono regards as contrary to his Christian values. Now the Arlington County (Va.) Human Rights Commission has held a public hearing and investigated Bono on charges that he discriminated against Lilli Vincenz by refusing to duplicate her Gay Pride videos.... Various social-conservative pressure groups have taken up Bono's cause, and this would appear to be one of those instances where they have a point.

Note that this is not a matter of job discrimination. And it is not a case of discriminating against a customer based on her group identity. It's the owner of one little film shop in Arlington declining to produce materials that violate his values, while others want to force him to do so-and if he refuses, to fine or even jail him.

Lillian Hellman once famously refused to "cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion," but that is exactly what liberal authoritarians want to require of Tim Bono. One wonders, are only liberals allowed to have consciences? If Tim Bono were refusing to duplicate White Power tapes, would they then defend him? Is it a matter solely of who can use the state to force ideological fealty to their ideas?

As gay people, we often protest against what some see as manifestations of creeping,Taliban-like theocracy from the right. But in the case of Tim Bono, just who is insisting on imposing their values on everyone?

In short, it is not in our own long-term interests, which are grounded in liberty and respect for individual autonomy, to use the state to force others to reproduce content of which they disapprove.

More than 80 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 now ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And some 249 of the Fortune 500 offer health and other benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees. That's up from just 28 a decade ago, writes Fortune magazine columnist Marc Gunther. He also notes the efforts of the Human Rights Campaign to rate companies on their gay-friendly and gay-equitable policies. HRC head Joe Solmonese even seems to get it right (not left) this time, when he states that "Corporate America is ahead of government in providing equal treatment for GLBT people because it knows that fairness is good for business."

Last year, Wal-Mart, America's biggest employer and a frequent punching bag for anti-free-market activists, agreed to support a network for its gay (and lesbian, and bisexual, and transgender) workers, joining such firms as Citigroup, DuPont, and IBM. "All these trends are moving in one direction-towards more rights for gay and lesbian people," writes Gunther, adding, "This is remarkable, given the setbacks that gay rights have taken in the political arena, especially around the issue of gay marriage."

Gee, maybe the market really does know more than ego-inflated politicians.

The column also notes that the religious rightists are attempting to instigate a backlash, via shareholder resolutions seeking to reverse corporate domestic partner benefit policies that, as they so charminly put it, "pay people who engage in homosexual sex acts." Do these people ever think about anything other than what gay folks do in bed?
--Stephen H. Miller

I've been on the road, so blogging has been light and will remain so through the start of next week. But the ballot situation in Colorado is worth taking note of. Signatures are being collected for an array of pro- and anti-gay ballot initiatives. So, instead of just opposing (1) an anti-gay-marriage, man-woman-only state amendment and (2) a related initiative that rules out any legal status "similar to marriage" for same-sex partners, activists, backed by the Gill Foundation, have gone proactive. They're supporting (3) their own ballot initiative that says domestic partnerships are "not similar to marriage." That's important, because while a majority of voters have consistently opposed same-sex marriage, increasing numbers (and in many locales, majorities) do not oppose domestic partnerships. Plus, (4) another gay-supported ballot measure would legalize domestic partnerships.

Any combo of these could get on the ballot and pass, but even if anti-gay (1) and pro-gay (3) were to win, for instance, the situation would still be noticeably better than a simple victory for the marriage-banners.

More. Let's recall that in Nov. 2004, 11 states passed ballot initiatives banning gay marriage. That year, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbigay lobby, gave only token support to opposing these referendums, and instead put its big dollars behind the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Kerry/Edwards, of course, gave their backing to passing these anti-gay amendments. We forget this bit of shameful history at our peril.
-- Stephen H. Miller

"Bigotry is bad for business," said Alan Hawse, vice president of information technology company Cypress Semiconductor, in remarks directed at anti-gay Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky. But I've long felt that many (most) politicos in both parties aren't primarily concerned with the general well being. Their energy is focused on themselves and the maximization of their own position and power, and so appeals to bigotry, however hurtful of economic growth, prosperity and dynamism, thus serve their primary interest.

This is evident on the left, too, with anti-globalization and pro-protectionism. Simply terrible policies, economically speaking, that nevertheless appeal to the fears and prejudices of the uninformed.

And as for some religious "leaders" organizing in favor of constitutionally banning same-sex marriage, I can only quote the Bible: "Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites that ye be."

And let's not forgot our very own gay "leaders." In the Times story linked above, catch the quote from HRC's clueless Joe Solmonese, who intones that the amendment is an unwanted distraction when (among other things) "we have an economy barely hanging on." Apparently, he agrees with John Kerry that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, but most Americans see low unemployment, moderate if slowly rising interest rates, low inflation (excepting gas), very solid economic growth and an up stock market as, well, not "barely hanging on."

More. Some commenters defend the Kerry/Solmonese/Democratic "talking points" line on the economy, but even the New York Times business section can't abide it. An April 28 report was headlined "U.S. Economic Growth Continues Its Rapid Pace; Consumers Are Upbeat," while a companion story reported that "With unemployment in March at 4.7 percent, the nation is still adding about 200,000 jobs a month-a fairly robust pace."
-- Stephen H. Miller