IGF CultureWatch

The New Yorker's Brokeback Bush and Cheney cover, that is.

I'm headed out of town to attend to family matters, so you won't have Steve to kick around (for a few days).

USA Today looks at the growing efforts to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children, which it labels "a second front in the culture wars" over same-sex marriage. Steps to pass laws or secure November ballot initiatives are underway in at least 16 states.

It could be that before too long, gays-especially couples-who are able to do so, really will have to relocate themselves to those states that don't trample them underfoot.

Reason Online responds, primarily by referencing Julian Sanchez's Reason magazine article on the growing fight. Sanchez suggests that opponents of gay adoption:

...visit Florida and ask a child in foster care which makes him feel more threatened: the thought of being raised by homosexuals, or the prospect of an indefinite number of years spent passing through an indefinite number of homes.

One of the Reason blog's readers disputes that the kids would choose the gay parents (I guess some probably wouldn't, depending on whether they're old enough to have imbibed schoolyard homophobia). Another reader paraphrases libertarian humorist P.J. O'Rourke along the lines of:

I am such an extreme Republican that I support gay marriage and adoption. If gay people get married and raise kids, pretty soon they'll be living in suburbs, driving SUV's and voting Republican.

Well, in another universe where Republicans where true to their own best values, maybe.

I'm glad former congressman Kweisi Mfume, one of the leading Democratic candidates for Maryland's U.S. Senate seat, has endorsed marriage rights for gay couples. However, his endorsement would be more likely to sway the uncommitted if his own record on marriage had been more, let's say, supportive (i.e., Mfume has fathered five children out of wedlock with four different women). His more recent behavior has also been less than exemplary on the marriage front.

True, Mfume is certainly less of a hypocrite than gay marriage opponents such as Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman who pushed the Defense of Marriage Act prohibiting federal recognition of gay unions, which led many to wonder which of his three marriages (via two divorces) he was defending. Still, supporters like Mfume aren't very likely to advance the cause.

More Recent Postings
02/12/06 - 02/18/06

The "Ask Amy" advice column receives a query from a Colorado woman who had a gay couple move in next door, and who was so shocked by witnessing a goodbye kiss one morning that (on the advice of her pastor) she circulated a petition urging that they refrain from such displays of affection. The woman can't understand why her gay neighbors took it personally.

This dovetails with the point Paul Varnell makes in his recent column, "The War on Gay Visibility."

As Variety reports, gay Indian Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma is directing a documentary called "In the Name of Allah" about gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims across the Muslim and Western worlds. He's working with Sandi Dubowski, whose documentary "Trembling Before G-d" movingly looked at gay orthodox Jews as they told their stories.

Good luck to Sharma and Dubowski. But as the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto warns:

One wonders how this will go over in the Muslim world, which has not of late gained a reputation for tolerance. And if Muslims react to "In the Name of Allah" with half the fury they've directed at those Danish cartoons, which side will our Western multiculturalists come down on?

I guess we'll see.

Given Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's brutal murder by an Islamic militant upset over Van Gogh's making a movie about the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies, Sharma and Dubowski are brave men.

I liked this column in The Advocate by gay outdoorsman David Stalling, who-referencing the elk hunt in "Brokeback Mountain"-posted a query at a website for bow hunters. He writes:

For fun, on the Big Game Forum, I posted a new thread: "Brokeback Mountain: Best Elk-Hunting Movie?" Since folks on this site often and justly complain of poor Hollywood depictions of hunting, I mentioned that here was a good positive portrayal. The response didn't surprise me. People with screen names like Terminator, Sewer Rat, Bearman, and ElkSlayer wrote things like "No queers could really hunt elk"; "Elk are too majestic an animal to be killed by faggots"; "Imagine a gay elk camp: guys would worry that camouflage makes them look fat."

A lot of anti-gay swill? Sure. But considering that the media images of gays (excepting Brokeback) run the gamut from "Queer Eye" to "Will & Grace"-and these are the representations upon which GLAAD, HRC and The Advocate bestow their effusive praise-is it really any wonder that rural America sees gays the way it does?

Maybe Willie Nelson's new gay cowboy song will help. Or maybe not.

More. I guess not. Willie means well, but the song (penned by Ned Sublette in 1981) promotes the same old stereotypes that conflate sexual orientation and gender identity:

"What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?...Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out."

Alas, still more confusion about sexual orientation and gender identity isn't what gay people need.

Say Anything blog's posting has a link to an audio excerpt.

Some very thoughtful comments (ok, obviously not the first one). Check 'em out.

In Ohio, the Republican House Speaker Jon Husted is opposing a bill to ban gay couples from adopting or providing foster care, and Husted's chief of staff called the measure "divisive legislation," saying that Husted wants to see the House focus on other issues. The Buckeye State's Democratic party chairman told the media that Democrats will likewise work to ensure that the bill never comes to a vote. That's the sort of bipartisanship I like, fair-minded voices in both parties speaking out against the wingnuts, who are usually but not always (see Byrd, Robert) Republicans.

More Recent Postings
02/05/06 - 02/11/06

A reader who e-mailed me this USA Today story, on cities in red states vying for gay tourist dollars, suggested calling it "Just shuddup and give us your money." I'd be more charitable. Most of these cities-Atlanta, Ft. Lauderdale, Phoenix, maybe even Dallas-are to varying degrees far more gay-friendly than their states' typical smallvilles and rural areas. It's a positive sign that these cities are marketing to gays, and not so surprising that the religious conservatives are not making a fuss about it.

Actually, I wish they would-if social conservatives demanded that states start forfeiting income in order to placate their prejudices, local business interests would turn against them. And that would be a good thing. So maybe we need to "heighten the contradictions" (in Marxist parlance) and provoke a self-defeating rightwing backlash?

Mickey Kaus of Slate's Kausfiles argues that advocates of gay marriage are mistaken if they think that Brokeback Mountain's playing well in blue enclaves within red states heralds some sort of cultural shift, as some claim. It's a long piece with a fair measure of Kaus's queasiness toward gays but a caution worth considering, when Kaus warns:

If you think the visceral straight male reaction against male homosexual sex has effectively disappeared-look at Plano, etc. -you won't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the possible deep-seated, even innate, sources of resistance to liberalization, and you'll tend to be surprised and baffled by their persistence. At worst, you'll pass them off as sheer redneck bigotry-a proven way to lose the red states for good.

Andrew Sullivan responds that:

[A]ssuming a huge, overnight shift in sentiment toward gay men is foolhardy. At the same time, the pace of change these past couple of decades is astonishing. And can I really be blamed for being heartened by the way in which so many people, including many straight men, now seem able to deal with the idea of gay love?

Sullivan also scores a well-placed point about "putting love at the core of gay identity, rather than merely sex (while not being anti-sex at the same time)." I'd argue that while social conservatives may be focused on gay sex, gay activists have misstepped by single-mindedly focusing on "rights talk," either in the sense of access to government benefits or as an abstract call for "equality" (as Dale Carpenter explains so well here).

Love, however, is something much more comprehensible to those not typically predisposed to the liberal line. And that's my thought for this Valentine's Day.

I don't usually agree with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when it issues yet another of its international resolutions (previous decrees condemned matters ranging from the Iraq war to overseas low-wage factories). But since I agree that freedom of religious expression is paramount, I can't fault the board for calling to end persecution of the Chinese sect Falun Gong.

For those who don't know, Falun Gong actually believes that gay people are an abomination. Its founder has called gays "demonic" and has said that "the priority of the gods will be to eliminate homosexual people." But they shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs. And since S.F. has a huge Chinese-American (and Chinese immigrant) population, it makes sense for the board to express itself.

Now, back to business as usual for the supes, who are presently debating the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.