IGF CultureWatch

Most high school seniors support further restrictions on abortion, but are twice as likely as adults to support legal recognition of gay marriages. Those findings come from a highly regarded national poll by researchers at Hamilton College and Zogby International. It's further evidence that (1) we'll win the gay marriage fight in time, and (2) abortion and gay legal equality are not linked concepts except in the minds of certain activists.

The anti-gay right's latest bit of dangerous nonsense gets dissected by Jon Rowe over at Positive Liberty. At issue: a new book by David Kupelian titled The Marketing of Evil. In the section on gay rights, Kupelian suggests that the gay movement is following a "master plan" that was spelled out in a book by gay PR strategists back in 1990. That long-since out of print work is After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.

The funny thing is, while After the Ball was a smart book about using the mainstream media to counter negative stereotypes and promote honest representations of gay lives, it was dismissed by many self-styled progressive gay activists at the time as a "sell out" that advocated "assimilation" and substituted a "marketing strategy" for radical, grass-roots coalition building on the left. That right-wing conspiracy buffs think it was some sort of master plan would actually be funny if it weren't so hateful.

More Recent Postings
01/1/06 - 01/7/06

I'm not going to keep posting what are likely to be gazillions of interesting pieces on the film, but here are two before I sign off.

Gene Shalit's pan calls the film "wildly overpraised" and labels Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a "sexual predator." What's the Today show got against this movie, anyway? Actually, Shalit has written supportively about his gay son, but clearly he still has issues with what gay men do under the covers. (Here's a link to view his review.)

On a more positive note, New York Daily News columnist Jack Mathews writes:

Like "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Larry David, who voiced his tongue-in-cheek objections to "Brokeback" in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, I felt that "cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat" to make me watch a pair of range riders steam up a pup tent.

But I've now seen the movie three times (twice with my wife, if you have to know) and it is one of the most devastating Hollywood love stories of all time.

No word on whether Larry David was ever lassoed into the theater, though.
-- Stephen Miller

I don't get this protest. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation of Los Angeles is decrying this Viagra ad. "What are you doing on New Year's Eve?" a smiling gray-haired man asks in a full-pager that ran in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 29. The text reads: "Fact: Viagra can help guys with all degrees of erectile dysfunction-from mild to severe."

"Not only does sending this reckless message contribute to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, but it is also part of a pattern of irresponsible direct-to-consumer advertising by the drug industry," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS group.

Either they're anti-sex on New Year's Eve, or just reflexively anti the drug industry (or the Wall Street Journal, or capitalism, or fun, or...). I'm sure Viagra is misused, by gays and others, as a party drug. But it has also enabled up to millions of older men to enjoy sexual relations again. The AIDS activists merely seem churlish.

A report on how same-sex marriage would be economically advantageous to New Hampshire, by the Institute for Gay & Lesbian Strategic Studies, finds that "savings from means-tested public benefit programs" would come to $400,000 annually. The report doesn't go into details, but it seems the explanation is that with marriage (as opposed to shacking up), household incomes are viewed by the state as combined, making it more difficult to qualify for public assistance benefits.

Part of the value of marriage is that it legalizes a relationship of mutual support, so those who might individually fall on hard times have a partner they can lean on. And that's a good thing. As long as couples actually do get married, which requires a hefty dose of internalized social expectation in addition to legal equality.

More: Readers provide context regarding the New Hampshire marriage fight, in our posted comments.

Yet another religious conservative exposed. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! Yes, Pastor Latham is a sad hypocrite (or at least a lost soul mired in fear and self-loathing ). But why should anyone be subjected to a night in jail (prior to release on bail) and face up to a year in prison just for asking another male to join him in his hotel room for sex?

I guess trying to engage a prostitute is the alleged "crime," but I don't think it's routine for males soliciting sex from females (even if they turn out to be plainclothed cops) to face such draconian treatment. Welcome to supposedly post-sodomy law America!

And yes, I realize that Pastor Latham no doubt supported anti-prostitution and anti-sodomy laws, too.

More: The arrest occurred outside a gay resort, as noted in more detail in the posted comments.

Update and clarification: From the AP account, it seems the matter isn't about allegedly soliciting a male prostitute, just soliciting oral sex to occur in a hotel room. Welcome to Oklahoma, where apparently the Supreme Court's Lawrence ruling (voiding sodomy laws) doesn't hold.

Pastor Latham, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee, claims the police are lying about the sex request. If that defense doesn't seem plausible, will his lawyers rely on Lawrence? Stay tuned.

Dale Carpenter's newly posted critique of Brokeback Mountain has provoked spirited debate in gay papers where it's been publshed. My own supportive views toward the film have already been stated, but here are some other interesting takes.

Guest blogger Ross Douthat of the Atlantic, on Andrew Sullivan's site, has positive things to say but also argues that:

The straight men are all either strutting oafs, bitter bigots like Jack Twist's father, or "nice-guy" weaklings like Alma's second husband, whose well-meaning effeminacy contrasts sharply with Ennis's rugged manliness. Jack and Ennis are the only "real men" in the story, and their love is associated with the high country and the vision of paradise it offers-a world of natural beauty and perfect freedom, of wrestling matches and campfires and naked plunges into crystal rivers-and a world with no girls allowed. Civilization is women and babies and debts and fathers-in-law and bosses; freedom is the natural world, and the erotic company of men. It's an old idea of the pre-Christian world come round again-not that gay men are real men too; but that real men are gay.

Blogger Tim Hulsey is critical of some of the critics, observing that:

David Letterman in particular has conducted a one-man crusade against the "gay cowboy movie," and Nathan Lane famously performed a minstrel-show Broadway parody of Brokeback on the Today show.

That the openly gay Lane would attack the film is less surprising than it would seem: I suspect that gay men who have adopted an ironic "camp" sensibility as a personal defense mechanism will prove especially resistant to the film. When I saw Brokeback in D.C.'s Dupont Circle, one young gay man heckled the screen, Rocky Horror style. He sounded like the sort of fellow who was beaten throughout high school, and who learned that a withering wit can be the best defense of the powerless. In a strange way, he seemed to belong on the screen with Jack and Ennis.

And finally, this piece by a gay escort is surprisingly sad, as he predicts a rise in his clientele:

Students graduate, soldiers return to citizenry, and so the one-shot lovers must say goodbye. And like Jack and Ennis, many of my clients went on to pass year after wistful year in a life nature never truly intended. Until something happened. ...

Ostensible business trips to the coast will be scheduled, where men like me lie in wait. After the second or third time a man trucks back home to International Falls from the multiplex, and then maybe the gay bar, in Duluth, the family computer's potential to track down his bible camp paramour may prove too tempting. Men will take risks after seeing this film.

Which may, I suppose, lead back to Carpenter's concerns about hurt wives and abandoned kids (or alternatively, liberated souls now free to love). But whatever your response, a film that provokes reactions this strong is a force to be reckoned with, I reckon.

TV's Larry David won't be seeing Brokeback Mountain. He says, in fact,

cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears.

But rest assured, some of his best friends are gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Meanwhile, in Britain's The Guardian, John Patterson remarks that the American western "has always throbbed with latent homoeroticism." And that Brokeback

wouldn't be in the least controversial...were America not unimaginably neurotic and puritanical about sex, straight or gay, in the first place.

He could call Larry David as his first witness.

More: Stephen Hunter, the Washington Post's movie critic, presents a similar examination in a piece titled Out in the West: Reexamining A Genre Saddled With Subtext."

More Recent Postings
12/25/05 - 12/31/05

From the Ithaca Journal, here is an excellent op-ed on how we might benefit from overcoming our political insularity. Janis Kelly writes that:

All around me in Ithaca I see fairly bright people talking and listening only to each other, confident of the superiority of their own ideas, openly contemptuous of those who might not agree.... This provincial, almost tribal, insularity deprives us of a certain social richness, as well as of opportunities to hone our political thinking....

Most of America is more sophisticated about political integration. There is a tradition of political generosity, of not shunning or demonizing your neighbors who hold different political views. And most people have lots of neighbors who hold different views. That basic decency has broken down in Washington and in segregationist enclaves like Ithaca.

To say the least!

For those who donated during our end-of-year drive (hint: there's still time), many, many thanks. Onward to 2006!

More: North Dallas Thirty (whose website is always worth a visit) takes on some of this site's antagonists whose consistently uncivil behavior even in response to an item about promoting political civility is distressing if unsurprising. NDT writes:

This whole article is about broadening one's experiences in the hopes of finding common understanding, because that is the basis of civility and good behavior. It is hard to hate someone with whom you share something in common.

This is why gay leftists, which seem to be the bulk of the commentors on this board, work so hard to demonize people and shunt people away from such experiences. For even daring to say one thing positive about [black conservative] LaShawn Barber, [a commenter] has been getting pounded and getting called every name in the book. Stephen is getting beaten up for even daring to link to [this article].

Both the knee-jerk gay left and the anti-gay right are victims of a rigid ideology, and both become visibly upset whenever their ideas are challanged. But the persistent comments attacking this site-by some who post repeatedly during each and every day-is the perfect testimony of why it is so important that we exist.

Dr. Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist who gained notoriety for his claimed ability to "cure" homosexuals of their "disorder," has passed into the great beyond. The New York Times obit mentions he was married four times. Since Socarides was often cited by anti-gay "defense of marriage" types, one can only ponder which of his four marriages was being defended.

The most interesting thing about him, however, was that his openly gay son was Bill Clinton's liaison to the lesbian and gay community. Can you say "dysfunctional family"?

Over at Positive Liberty, Jon Rowe takes Socarides death as an opportunity to share some thoughts on the misuse of the mental health profession to enforce social norms.