IGF CultureWatch

Dale Carpenter takes a look at attempts to defeat the anti-gay marriage amendment in Texas, and finds that activists are making the same strategic mistakes that lead to amendment victories in 13 states last year (including 11 ballot initiatives on Nov. 2). For instance:

In a conservative Republican state, here's the coalition [activists] have put together to defeat the amendment: Among the eight "featured sponsors" of the anti-amendment campaign are three partisan Democratic groups, two leftist groups that promote "social justice," one statewide gay group that barely pretends to work with Republicans, and another that was founded by the daughter of former Democratic governor Ann Richards. This is, to be sure, a "coalition." It is a coalition of losers.

Critics will demand to know who else you could get to join forces in the anti-amendment effort. I dunno. But my gut tells me that allying with liberal to left-wing activists in a conservative state does more harm than good. By far.

By the way, there's a huge difference between "justice" (government acts to ensure equal treatment before the law) and "social justice" (government acts to redistribute resources to those it feels are more deserving-and more likely to vote for said government). Conservatives view the latter as distorting market incentives that drive growth and prosperity, and fostering dependency that produces social dysfunction. Maybe they'd vote to ban gay marriage anyway, but joining equal treatment for gays to such a wider agenda isn't smart politics.

Furter: Dale debates an amendment supporter, as recounted by the Houston Chronicle. His comments, I'm sure, were more persuasive than those of Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, also quoted in the article, who labels the amendment "a proposition of hate." We may think it is, among some supporters, but that rhetoric is not going to win over moderates who might be leaning in favor of the amendment out of fear that gay marriage will radically fray the social fabric. They know that hate isn't their motivation, and when we lob the "H" word instead of addressing their concerns, we guarantee we'll lose.

Still More: In California, the group spearheading that state's anti-amendment fight, Equality California, has posted on its website a big "Payback for Arnold" banner. I guess they think they only need votes from liberal Democrats. Bye-bye moderate Republicans and independents; hello, defeat.

In a major article for the New Republic, Andrew Sullivan writes:

It is beginning to dawn on many that the very concept of gay culture may one day disappear altogether. By that, I do not mean that homosexual men and lesbians will not exist-or that they won't create a community of sorts and a culture that sets them in some ways apart. I mean simply that what encompasses gay culture itself will expand into such a diverse set of subcultures that "gayness" alone will cease to tell you very much about any individual. The distinction between gay and straight culture will become so blurred, so fractured, and so intermingled that it may become more helpful not to examine them separately at all.

Gay marriage will be a main driver of this, and Sullivan comments that while watching a gay couple get married on the beach,

The heterosexuals in the crowd knew exactly what to do. They waved and cheered and smiled. Then, suddenly, as if learning the habits of a new era, gay bystanders joined in. In an instant, the difference between gay and straight receded again a little.

I don't want to oversimplify; Sullivan sees gay culture as undergoing "integration," not "assimilation," with a multiplicity of roles and identities now availalbe.

But it's clear that this radical but evolutionary reconfiguring toward the mainstream of American life won't please those whose brand of radicalism is based on perpetuating marginalization, or who would strap all gays into their "queer" identity straitjacket.

A Lambda Legal attorney is suing two fundamentalist doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate lesbian Guadalupe Benitez. The doctors said to have done so would have violated their religious beliefs, and that they also would have refused to inseminate an unmarried heterosexual women.

So, Ms. Benitez couldn't go to another doctor? The idea, it seems, is now prevalent in the gay legal world that no matter of personal conscience or religious conviction should permit a private business or practitioner to discriminate against a gay client.

I believe discriminating against gays is morally wrong. I also believe that there are limits in the ability of the state to force people to go against their personal convictions, especially in matters of abortion or procreation. There are other doctors in Southern California.

The matter has parallels with attempts to force all pharmacists to dispense birth control.

By the way, I also oppose attempts by religious conservatives to pass laws that forbid gays or unmarried heteros from procreating through artificial insemination, and which sought to criminalize doctors' participation in assisted reproduction in those cases. The state should not be involved in either forcing or forbidding doctors from making such personal decisions.

If Hamas were to win control of the Palestinian Authority in coming elections, expect to see homophobic and misogynistic laws as part of its "liberation." The London Times reports that Mahmoud Zahar, the faction's leader in Gaza who is now extremely popular among Palestinians, said there would be no rights given to "homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick." Israel, by the way, protects gays from discrimination and provides certain spousal rights to same-sex couples, which is why gay Palestinians try to flee there.

In The New Republic, Rob Anderson takes gay groups to task in How America's Gay Rights Establishment Is Failing Gay Iranians (free registration required), noting that in the view of some leading gay activists:

The moral argument is that Americans are in no position to criticize Iranians on human rights-that it would be wrong to campaign too loudly against Iranian abuses when the United States has so many problems of its own. ...

Activists are more than willing to condemn the homophobic leaders of the Christian right for campaigning against gay marriage; but they are wary of condemning Islamist regimes that execute citizens for being gay. Something has gone terribly awry.

By way of example, he quotes Matt Foreman of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, who described Iran's executions of gays as the moral equivalent of George Bush's America, saying:

If we think that psychological torture and physical torture and rape and inhumane conditions are not part of our own criminal justice system, than people don't have a clue about the reality of our nation, let alone the conditions of Guantanamo, let alone the sanctions to keep prisoners in Afghanistan.

Compare this, Anderson notes, with anti-apartheid activism of the 1970s and '80s (no one said we shouldn't organize international condemnation against South Africa because America was just as racist!), and you can see how great this failure is.

Anderson also writes that Paula Ettelbrick, head of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC ), "wasn't willing to discuss what progress the organization has made [on Iran]; so it is hard to know whether whatever the IGLHRC is doing is effective or not." Well, in the wake of the article's appearance, Ettelbrick has responded with a column in the Washington Blade on standing up for Iranian gays. That's something, at least.

Update: Gay Patriot writes: "The problem for the American gay community is that our 'establishment' no longer recognizes right from wrong. Only Red from Blue." That about sums it up.

Further: A commenter notes that in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban, the traditional if covert acceptance of same-sex relations has returned, as reported here.

More Recent Postings
10/2/05 - 10/8/05

Last night I caught on cable TV's Bravo a special called "Great Things About Being Queer." I'd describe it as an hour-long spectacle of parade exhibitionism, sophomoric camp attitudes, silly drag queens, and, well, you get the picture. If I were a gay teen and this was how the gay adult world was presented, I wouldn't want any part of it, either!

So, who is responsible for promoting this view of gay life and giving it such high media visibility? It's not the 25% of gays who vote Republican! Rather, it's the same fashionably leftish urban gay elite that dominates our "community" institutions. Thanks, guys.

The Oct. 3 Time magazine cover story, The Battle Over Gay Teens (sorry, must be a Time subscriber to read it all) has some interesting observations. Among them:

[Ritch Savin-Williams, who chairs Cornell's human-development department] recalls counseling a kid who, after the third session, referred to his "partner." "And I said, 'Oh, you're gay.' And he said, 'No. I only fall in love with guys, but I'm not "gay." It doesn't have anything to do with me.' He saw being gay as leftist, radical. ...

The political part is what worries [Michael Glatze, editor of YGA Magazine]. "I don't think the gay movement understands the extent to which the next generation just wants to be normal kids. The people who are getting that are the Christian right," he says. Indeed, several of those I met at the Exodus event had come not because they thought it would make them straight or even because they are particularly fervent Christians. Instead, they were there because they find something empty about gay culture-a feeling that Exodus exploits with frequent declamations about gays' supposed promiscuity and intemperance. ...

On the first day of the Point Foundation's [scholarships for gay youth] retreat...the 38 students who made the trip were given gift bags that contained, among other items: ...a DVD of the 2001 film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, in which a teenage boy is masturbated by an adult. ... The Aug. 16 issue of the gay magazine the Advocate, whose cover featured a shirtless man and blared, summer sex issue. ...

Point executive director Vance Lancaster says the film, a cult musical about the relationship between a drag queen and a young singer, was already a favorite for many scholars. He also says it "reflects reality". ...

Point scholar and Emory College junior Bryan Olsen, who turned 21 in August and has been out since he was 15, told me during the retreat, "It probably sounds anti-gay, but I think there are very few age-appropriate gay activities for a 14-, 15-year-old. There's no roller skating, bowling or any of that kind of thing. It's Internet, gay porn, gay chats."

Food for thought.

Update: My current take-if she's against excessive business regulation (and she appears to be) and has no anti-gay record (despite her sodomy law stance, she wasn't anti-gay on the Dallas council), then she may be the best we're likely to get. Sure, I'd prefer a libertarian like Judge Janice Rogers Brown, but she'd never get through the senate - social conservatives would be lukewarm, and the left would demonize her like nothing you've ever seen. So we have Miers. And the fact that the anti-gay social conservative pundits like Bill Kristol are up in arms doesn't exactly bother me. Another positive: James Dobson is pulling back on his initial support.
--Stephen H. Miller

-----
An AP account takes a thorough look at the available evidence regarding Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' views on gays, including her support (in 1989, while running for the Dallas city council) for maintaining the Texas sodomy law. It also recounts the view of a Dallas gay activist who says that when Miers served on the council, "She wasn't what we call a right-wing nut. My impression was that she was not one to be rabid against us."

Time.com has a pdf of the questionnaire she filled out for the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas, a group she agreed to meet with while making clear she wasn't seeking their endorsement.

The Blade has more:

In Miers' meeting with members of the gay group...she opposed abortion, a response that prompted the group to eliminate her from contention for obtaining the group's endorsement.

Note: it was not her support for the sodomy law!

Blogger Tom Scharbach gives his take.

It will be interesting to hear her testimony at the confirmation hearings.

Further: For what it's worth, from D Magazine (Dallas)'s FrontBurner blog, elucidating on Miers' one-word response ("No") when asked if she supported sodomy law repeal.
--Stephen H. Miller

My only reaction to the Harriet Miers nomination is to be underwhelmed but not to see any obvious red flags. But I was amused by the Exodus Ministries flap. When President Bush mentioned the voluntary organizations that Miers is affiliated with, one was Exodus Ministries, which caused some blogosphere commotion until it was clarified that Exodus Ministries is a Christian outreach program that helps prisoners get their lives together, and has no relationship with Exodus International, the so-called "ex-gay" group. The other interesting factoid is that because she is middle-aged and unmarried, she is already, without any evidence, being labeled a closet case by some "liberals."

Update: Andrewsullivan.com passes along a tidbit from the online New Republic that Meirs apparently submitted a report to the American Bar Association's House of Delegates that including this recommendation:

Supports the enactment of laws and public policy which provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child....

But no matter; she will refuse to promise to support Roe v. Wade, and so gay activists will oppose her.

More Recent Postings
9/25/05 - 10/1/05

Opines social conservative pundit Rod Dreher: "We are losing the gay marriage fight, and, in fact, have lost it already, though not all of us know it yet. When the acceptance of civil-unions protections for gay couples is the conservative position, then we have been defeated." (Hat Tip: RichTafel.com)

Further: As the Washington Post reports, the advent of civil union ceremonies in Connecticut, granting all the state (but not federal) benefits/responsibilities of matrimony, "seemed too low-key to be a milestone in a cultural fight that has divided the nation." That's in marked contrast to the protests that ensued when Vermont instituted civil unions and Massachusetts provided for same-sex marriage.

Unlike domestic partnerships elsewhere, civil unions are more akin to marriage in that the state issues licenses, and the unions are solemnized by a justice of the peace who pronounces the couple "partners in life."

Arnold says:

I am returning Assembly Bill 849 without my signature because I do not believe the Legislature can reverse an initiative approved by the people of California.

I am proud California is a leader in recognizing and respecting domestic partnerships and the equal rights of domestic partners. I believe that lesbian and gay couples are entitled to full protection under the law and should not be discriminated against based upon their relationships. I support current domestic partnership rights and will continue to vigorously defend and enforce these rights and as such will not support any rollback.

California Family Code Section 308.5 was enacted by an initiative statute passed by the voters as Proposition 22 in 2000. Article II, section 10 of the California Constitution prohibits the Legislature from amending this initiative statute without a vote of the people. This bill does not provide for such a vote.

The ultimate issue regarding the constitutionality of section 308.5 and its prohibition against same-sex marriage is currently before the Court of Appeal in San Francisco and will likely be decided by the Supreme Court.

This bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue. If the ban of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, this bill is not necessary. If the ban is constitutional, this bill is ineffective.

That certainly won't please critics, and shouldn't (Log Cabin issued a statement expressing its "deep disappointment"). But it's not the traditional Republican gay-baiting, either, and will help take the wind out of the sails of the proposed anti-gay marriage/anti-partnership constitutional amendment(s) when it/they come up for a vote.