IGF CultureWatch

From what I can glean, Bush Supreme Court pick John Roberts doesn't have much of a record on gay issues. Sure, I wish Bush had gone with someone showing a more libertarian-conservative bent. But I see no glaring red flags, either, at this point anyway. Roberts appears to be a pro-business conservative who is not coming out of the extreme or religious right. In short, unlike, say, former ACLU head attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he isn't a movement activist.

Nevertheless, the heavily partisan liberal-left gay media and activist groups immediately condemned the nomination. The Advocate, drawing on the Human Rights Campaign, castigates Roberts over abortion, prayer at graduation ceremonies, and the Endangered Species Act. No, I'm not making this up. [Note: Original Advocate story is now gone, replaced by a more balanced report sans Endangered Species Act. Aside from HRC, looks like gay media/activists realized they can't paint Roberts as a fire-breather, as much as they initially wanted to.]

Update: More from HRC on the "grave danger" posed by Roberts, who would tip the court to the "far right." Hint: it's all about abortion.

There's a moving story in the New York Times about "an unlikely alliance between Joe Tom Easley, a lawyer and well-known gay activist, and Robert Reilly, a Defense Department adviser reviled in gay circles for an article he once wrote calling homosexuality 'morally disordered,'" who cooperated to bring a disfigured and half-blinded Iraqi boy to the U.S. for cosmetic and eye surgery.

When people can connect on a human level beyond political polarization, small miracles can happen.

The Washington Post reports that recently in Middlebrook, Virginia:

someone broke into St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ. The perpetrator smashed a window of the fellowship room, then crawled in and set fire to a pew and the choir platform where the organist plays. The only clue to motive was anti-gay graffiti spray-painted on the red brick wall in the rear.

The arsonist's message - and ire - broke through a hodgepodge of poor spelling and abbreviations: "Gays lover," "Lesb hell," "UCC siners" and "Sinner."

Just five days before the attack, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ announced its endorsement of same-sex marriage, though its decision is not binding on individual churches.

In all likelihood, the church wsa attacked by gay-haters who took literally the rantings of the religious right. But certain other quarters are just as intolerant. The Post also reports that a prominent Washington, D.C., African-American pastor and civil rights activist, Willie F. Wilson, in a July 3 sermon:

warned that lesbianism is about "to take over our community" and asserted that one reason women become lesbians is because a "lot of the sisters [are] making more money than brothers." He went on to describe a gay sexual encounter in explicit and derogatory terms.

Wilson is the national executive director of the Millions More Movement, which is organizing a march on Washington in October to mark the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. The Post states that "several leaders in the gay community said Wilson's remarks might set back efforts to make the new march inclusive." Well, I guess so. But "other march organizers appeared at the church to offer Wilson strong support."

In other words when push comes to shove, guess whose rights are dispensable.

More Recent Postings
7/10/05 - 7/16/05

I received the item below from a reader who doesn't want credit, so here it is as a guest commentary:

Does anyone still watch Showtime's Queer as Folk? Well, my partner and I do. One of the themes this (final) season is a statewide proposition that the friends are fighting. I guess it's to deny marriage rights, though they usually describe it as "it will take away all our rights."

I expect that kind of sloppiness, and the references to Nazis and "it's like Germany in the 1930s" are par for the course. But I was struck by the lawyer, Melanie, going door to door who said, "If we lose our rights, what's next? Old people will lose their Social Security?" A tenuous connection, I thought. And then it's been repeated two or three times that "some of the largest corporations are pouring millions into this." Melanie even emphasizes, "Not just rich conservatives, but corporations!"

That's the part that really gets my goat. Of course it's completely untrue (that is, it doesn't happen in real life). And I assume it just represents ignorance and kneejerk leftism on the part of the writers.

Actually, QAF (honored with a GLAAD media award for outstanding drama series) is so ludicrous on so many fronts that one becomes numb, but I sympathize with the reader. As I've noted previously, corporations have been at the forefront of advancing gay equality. According to an HRC report, 82% of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and 43% offer domestic partner health benefits - numbers that go up every year.

Moreover, Microsoft's recent flip-flop and re-flip-flop on supporting the Washington state anti-discrimination bill (they were for it, then neutral when pressed by the religious right, then re-endorsed it when pressed by gays) shows the risks corporate America faces from even appearing not to take a stand, rather than being an active antagonist to gay equality.

Similarly, the one corporation that most invokes gay ire is Texas-based ExxonMobile, because it's the one big oil company that does not specify a gay nondiscrimination policy and doesn't offer partner benefits, and the old Mobile did before the merger (Exxon never did). ExxonMobile claims its general policies cover all kinds of discrimination, and that's debatable. But they're hardly funding anti-gay initiatives!

This anti-gay site lists companies that support and oppose the "homosexual agenda." The most "anti-gay" are guilty of not offering diversity training, or rescinding partner benefits. Those are the worst.

In our mailbag, a reader asks our opinion on a recent message from the Human Rights Campaign stating that, regarding the open position on the Supreme Court:

if the nominee doesn't even have an explicitly anti-GLBT record, his or her record on other issues, like choice, will be important. Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas are legally intertwined so an end to Roe could very well mean an end to Lawrence and the promise that it holds for GLBT rights.

It's no surprise that long-time abortion activist Joe Solmonese, now HRC's top dog, would stress this linkage. (While head of the Emily's List PAC, Solmonese channeled funds to a senate candidate who supported amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage but was "pro-choice.") And the claim regarding Roe and Lawrence is not baseless. As noted in previous items, Justice Kennedy's majority decision struck down state sodomy laws on "privacy" grounds similar to Roe.

But as I've also said, sexual privacy isn't likely to be the lead argument in future cases fighting the Defense of Marriage Act, or Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Those cases will be based on whether equal protection under the law is extended to gay people, as it should be, and as Justice O'Connor argued when she supported overturning the Texas sodomy law on equal protection, not privacy, grounds.

So it may very well be that the Lawrence sodomy ruling is the only one that will trace its pedigree to Roe.

As there are certainly gay people who do not favor unrestricted taxpayer-funded partial-birth abortion on demand for minors without parental notification, and possibly even people of good will who don't favor abortion as birth control but hold no animus against gays and gay legal equality, HRC's tying abortion and gay rights tightly together seems to put the interest of the liberal-left Democratic coalition above that of gay people (who, to be frank, are the least likely cohort to need unrestrained abortion access for themselves).

A New York Times story published July 5, "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited," refers to a forthcoming study on bisexuality in males conducted by Toronto and Chicago psychologists, who measured how men who described themselves as gay, bisexual, or heterosexual responded to erotic movies. Three-quarters of the bisexuals were aroused in the same pattern as the gay men. The article concludes that the study "casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men."

Note: The research was on sexual arousal, not behavior. No one disputes that many men who are aroused primarily by men can still manage to marry and father children. It just suggests that their primary sexual orientation is still homo. And, in fact, researchers have long recognized that female sexuality is far more fluid with regard to sexual orientation and bisexuality, while men tend overwhelming to be one way or the other (again, in terms of what they think about when they masturbate, to put it bluntly).

But all this flies in the face of the "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender" mantra proclaimed by leading gay activists. The "LGBT" fixation came out of academic "queer" activism in the 80s, and woe be upon anyone today who challenges it. So, even though there is no organized male bisexual activist movement, our LGBT (or, chauvinistically, GLBT) activists are up in arms over the Times story. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force issued a statement declaring:

We remain stunned that the New York Times Science section would carry such a shoddy, sensationalistic and downright insulting story. It - and the profoundly flawed 'study' it purports to cover - are laced with biased premises, misstatements and inaccuracies. It equates sexual orientation with sexual arousal, as supposedly measured by a crude device. . . It defames the truth in the lives and loves of millions of bisexual men. The Times should be ashamed.

The NGLTF also notes that it is working with "bisexual leaders and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to consider a coordinated response to the Times article." But interestingly, its "media contacts from the bi community" lists three women - and no "bisexual" men.

Update: Openly gay science writer Chandler Burr states in a letter to the Times:

Some gay and bisexual advocates are condemning "Straight, Gay or Lying?" regarding a study suggesting that bisexuality may not exist among human males - something those of us familiar with the scientific literature have known since, basically, forever.

Compare this hysterical - and anti-science - reaction to the conservative Christians' anti-science reaction to studies showing that homosexuality is an inborn orientation like left-handedness. They're identical.

The right hates science because the data contradict (in the case of homosexuality) Leviticus; the left because the data contradict the liberal lie that we're environment-created, not hard-wired in any way.

These particular scientific facts are making these advocates scream like members of the extreme right, though it's they who always tells the right to let go of concepts that are contradicted by science.

Dogma to the left, dogma to the right, and the facts be damned.

More Recent Postings
7/3/05 - 7/9/05

Here's an interesting story out of Virginia, where independent gubernatorial candidate Russ Potts supports changing state law to let gays adopt, while both the Republican and Democratic candidates want to keep the adoption ban in place.

Potts is actually a Republican state senator (and chairman of the state senate's education and health committee) who, the AP reports, "is disenchanted with what he sees as his party's turn toward right-wing extremism on social issues." Moreover, "Potts said he saw no reason law-abiding gay couples who can provide good homes for children without parents should be barred from doing so."

The Republican nominee, Jerry Kilgore, flatly opposes adoptions by gays, but so does Democrat Tim Kaine, who says only married couples should be allowed to adopt (but, of course, he strongly opposes letting gays marry).

Many charge that anti-gay Republicans "force" Democrats in GOP-majority states to take anti-gay positions. While I don't think that excuses the Democrats' "see, we're bigots, too" stance, it does point out that the real battle for gay legal equality rests within the Republican party. Democrats won't be moved to embrace gay equality until it's "safe" for them to do so (i.e., it won't require them to spend too much political capital).

But until the time when pro-gay Republicans can wrest control of their party away from the religious right, I'm happy to see some break ranks and, like Potts, make independent runs for office.

Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate's Democratic leader, has suggested that four of his Republican colleagues be considered by President Bush as potential Supreme Court justices. Among Reid's recommendations: Florida Sen. Mel Martinez. "There are people who serve in the Senate now who are Republicans who I think would be outstanding Supreme Court members," Reid said.

Martinez is best remembered by gay voters for his rabidly homophobic slanders, which were the cornerstone of his election bid. He accused his opponent, conservative former GOP Congressman Bill McCollum, of being "the new darling of the homosexual extremists" and "anti-family," and of trying to appease "the radical homosexual lobby" because he supported a bipartisan federal hate-crimes bill that included sexual orientation.

Walter Olson notes that all four of Reid's recommendations are reliable allies of the trial lawyers' lobby, a key Democratic Party funding bloc. Olson writes, "while none of Sen. Reid's four faves are identified with the GOP's socially liberal Chafee-Snowe wing, all four. . .have repeatedly broken partisan ranks to side with the Democrats and the organized bar against liability reforms. "

Apparently, Reid is ok with a virulent homophobe (and maybe even a Roe v. Wade skeptic) as long as he'd be likely to keep the lawyers happy.

Sure looks like someone's taking HRC and its gay dollars for Democrats for granted.

This story on legal battles against the military's don't ask, don't tell policy suggests how important the next Supreme Court justice will be for hot-button gay issues. The Pentagon wants the challenges dismissed, saying that the Supreme Court's Lawrence ruling nullifying sodomy laws has no bearing on the case because the dismissed service members "could have abstain from sexual activity and not reveal their sexuality." The plaintiffs maintain that the current policy denied them the right of privacy, equal protection of the law and freedom of speech.

In Lawrence, the majority ruled that sodomy laws were an unconstitutional violation of privacy for gays and straights alike, while Justice O'Connor's concurring decision ruled against same-sex sodomy statutes as a violation of equal protection under the law for gays. As I've said before and others have reiterated in their comments on my earlier post about O'Connor, her take (though not embraced by the majority) remains by far the more valuable in fighting legal double-standards on marriage, the military, and other areas of state-sponsored discrimination.

Whether her replacement is a fair-minded, small government conservative like O'Connor, or a flaming bigot like Scalia, will make a huge difference in our lives for many years to come. Bush's assertion that abortion and gay marriage won't be "litmus test" issues offers at least some room for hope.

Ashraf Choudhary, a prominent Muslim lawmaker who serves in New Zealand's Labour government, has condoned the stoning executions of homosexuals and adulterers as prescribed by strict Islamic law. Laughably, New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark responded:

Clearly Ashraf is a devout Muslim and he will have his own views. But for the record let me spell out the Labour Party does not support capital punishment. It does not support flogging. It does not support stoning. We have very strong views about that.

How very reassuring.

Local media in New Zealand reports that Choudhary's views are considered mainstream among New Zealand's growing Muslim population and that "Labour's Muslim MP is representing the majority of the Muslim community."

This situation, of socialists downplaying Islamic-fundamentalist hate, isn't unique to New Zealand. Recently London's leftwing mayor, "Red Ken" Livingstone, embraced radical Islamists as part of his coalition, as bemoaned by one appalled gay Muslim, here.

Meanwhile, Sir Elton John laudably called on his government "to ensure that ending violations of gay people's fundamental human rights around the world becomes an explicit issue in its diplomatic relations with other countries." He added, in reference to London's gay pride celebration:

There are many parts of the world where such a celebration could not take place, because basic human rights are not respected and people face threats, attacks, prosecution and even possible execution just because of their sexuality.

And there are clearly many who are willing to bring that very culture to the West if they think it may serve their own political purposes.