IGF CultureWatch

Happy July 4th! We've got three new articles posted, by IGF contributing authors Paul Varnell, Jon Rauch and Dale Carpenter.

Also, Andrew Sullivan has a fine essay on the meaning of American liberty, which you can read or listen to here.

More Recent Postings
6/26/05 - 7/2/05

In 1986 Sandra Day O'Connor, then still a relatively new Supreme Court Justice, voted with the majority in Bowers v. Hardwick to uphold the constitutionality of a Georgia "sodomy" law that criminalized non-missionary position sex in private between consenting adults. Some 17 years later, a far more experience Justice O'Connor voted with the majority to overrule Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas.

Unlike the Georgia law, the Texas statute applied only to same-sex sex, allowing Justice O'Connor to find it unconstitutional on equal protection grounds (and to maintain the fig leaf that she wasn't directly contradicting her earlier ruling). But for all intents and purposes, she sent to history's dustbin a scurrilous anti-gay legal precedent she had originally helped put in place. Those 17 years had allowed Justice O'Connor, and much of the country, to develop a far deeper understanding of gay people as citizens entitled to equal treatment under the law.

Let's hope other conservative jurists eventually will follow in her footsteps.

Update: A critical view and my response, in our mailbag.

Following protests from the "muzzle 'em all, muzzle 'em now" crowd at GLAAD and its anti-free speech allies, ABC has canceled the broadcast of its new reality show "Welcome to the Neighborhood."

From the ads I had seen and ABC's description, the show explored the prejudices among Middle American Red Staters and how they are eventually (more or less) overcome. The premise: a diverse group of families, including a gay couple, competed to win a 3,300-square-foot, four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath house on a cul-de-sac near Austin by convincing the neighbors to welcome them. I had been looking foreard to watching it.

However: "These residents are making their judgments because of race, national origin and religion," Shanna Smith, National Fair Housing Alliance president and CEO, complained. She also hinted that the show violated the federal fair housing laws, which could subject ABC to prosecution, since the neighbors air their concerns about the "suitability" of some of their potential neighbors, and we're all suppose to pretend that such considerations never, ever happen in real life.

The Post also reports that "the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation also had cautioned ABC after seeing the first two episodes." Specifically:

GLAAD entertainment media director Damon Romine, who has seen the entire series, said that although it's clear "the producers intended to send a powerful message about the value of diversity and embracing the differences of others," the episodic format "created serious issues in terms of depicting the neighbors' journey from intolerance to acceptance."

Got that? GLAAD admits that showing people confronting their prejudices might be worthwhile, but the show could initially confuse the masses into incorrect thinking, and thus must not be permitted to air.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if, heaven forbid, these would-be cultural commissars ever had the political power, they'd be burning books and videotapes in the streets.

GLAAD's mission ought to be to respoind with intelligence and conviction to the anti-gay polemics of the religious right -- not stiffling debate, and not telling us all what we can and can't read or watch. But that's just not as much fun, I guess.

First Canada, now Spain.

Don't expect the U.S. to be swayed to follow their examples anytime soon. But it definitely is a changing, and changed, (Western) world.

Update: Some bizarre assertions about the beneficence of European socialism, effectively refuted, in the comments zone.

Columnist and IGF contributing author Deroy Murdock provides this take on gays in the Islamic world. Pray for them.

The American Political Science Association issued this release on critical views toward gay marriage - from feminists and lesbigaytransqueeractivists who'd like to do without marriage altogether.

The author of the study, Jyl Josephson, director of women's studies at Rutgers University, writes:

For some queer critics of the same-sex marriage quest, the current heterocentric vision of marriage inappropriately associates the public granting of a privacy privilege with adult citizenship for those professing lifelong, monogamous sexual relationships. Their objection is not so much to the fact that same-sex couples wish to have such relationships recognized, but rather to privileging this form of sexual relationship above all others.

If married couples-opposite or same-sex-are provided greater social, economic, and political privileges than nonmarried individuals, the result will be secondary exclusions and reinforcement of an undesirable link between a particular form of intimate association and adult citizenship.

Surprise, the libertarian in me doesn't think this is totally off the walls. Government should recognize and enforce private contracts between individuals, but perhaps we should leave it to the voluntary institutions of civil society to support and encourage those types of relationships that their adherents feel ought to be supported and encouraged.

I happen to favor marriage as a stabilizing institution; but I don't think it's right for everyone. And I have qualms about government using its awesome power to "promote" it with a broad range of incentives.

Still, it will be a long trek to the time when state and federal governments don't see themselves as mandated to use the laws and tax code to favor matrimony over other relationships - and certainly, in the view of some (not all) IGF authors, that's well and good for society as a whole. And as long as government is both recognizing and "privileging" heterosexual marriage, surely it's unacceptable not to do the same for same-sex marriage, too.

Despite boycott threats from anti-gay groups and the perception of a gay marriage backlash from the American public, corporate sponsorship of gay pride festivities held around the country remained strong this year.

As I wrote some time back in my article Corporate Liberation, "the religious right isn't the only group attacking business support for gay events. The gay left is simply beside itself," labeling the acceptance of corporate money as "a surrender to 'commodity fetishism.'" (Rick Rosendall provides more examples of anti-corporate animus, in the comments zone.)

But whereas some on the gay left like to complain about being targeted as a highly desirable market demographic (to paraphrase, "give us your money, capitalist pigs"), it's actually something to celebrate - and take pride in.

Blogger Jonathan Rowe looks at the case of a man fired by Allstate for posting an anti-gay-rights missive (that quoted the discredited statistics of Paul Cameron) on a socially conservative website. The fired guy is now claiming religious discrimination.

I think that, in general, companies shouldn't fire employees for away-from-work activities that don't break any laws unless the activity is truly egregious. Like being a Ku Klux Klan "Grand Kleagle," as was Robert Byrd, the still-intensely homophobic West Virginia senator. And while I'd argue private employers should have the legal right to fire employees if they feel they're just not working out, as a general principle discriminating on the basis of off-site political activities sets a bad precedent.

Liberals like to raise the "scandal" of the Hollywood blacklist, when in fact most (some argue all) of those blacklisted were active members of the Communist Party defending Stalin's party line - speaking of which, Cathy Young has a nice review, here, of the new book "Red Star Over Hollywood." I'd agree that blacklisting communists, dupes that they were (and many still are), only serves to make totalitarians appear as martyrs. Let's not do the same for homophobes.

Rowe, by the way, goes on to look at the larger issue of conservatives who claim that being gay should not be a protected class under anti-discrimination law but that religion should be, when in fact sexual orientation is far less of a "choice" than religious affiliation. He quotes an article of mine, which quotes, in turn, IGF contributing author David Boaz, on that matter.

More Recent Postings
6/19/05 - 6/25/05

The liberal bloc on the Supreme Court (joined, regrettably, by swing vote Kennedy), ruled the government is entitled to seize and bulldoze your home or business without your consent, in exchange for whatever it feels is a reasonable price, if well-connected private interests who covet your property can convince the government to issue the order (can you say "ka-ching").

Commented dissenter Sandra Day O'Connor: "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner."

There are plenty of nightmare cases of homes and businesses being seized for ill-thought out corporate-welfare boondoggles. But as in the recent medical marijuana case, the liberal justices (joined then by big-government conservatives) would rather see consequences they disapprove of than risk suggesting that government power is subject to limits (because, hey, eventually they'll be back in power and calling the shots).

For some time now, Justice O'Connor (who was right on limiting the government's overreach and violation of personal rights when it came to prohibiting sodomy, overriding state medical use of marijuana laws, and now on property seizures) is the only High Court member who consistently recognizes that the constitution puts limits on how far government can go.

As Americans, we should be concerned about protecting all of our rights, in addition to "gay rights."

Update: As columnist George Will notes:

Liberalism triumphed yesterday. Government became radically unlimited in seizing the very kinds of private property that should guarantee individuals a sphere of autonomy against government.... Those on the receiving end of the life-shattering power that the court has validated will almost always be individuals of modest means. So this liberal decision...favors muscular economic battalions at the expense of society's little platoons, such as homeowners and the neighborhoods they comprise.

And in the comments zone, IGF contributing author Rick Rosendall reminds us that in Washington, D.C., this very type of government seizure is being used to wipe out the one area zoned for gay adult-entertainment clubs, which will now be bulldozed for a new taxpayer-subsidized stadium.

Islamic militants ("Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes") show up at NYC-area gay pride parades where they call for the castration of gay men, reports the New York Observer. Comments lesbian conservative Kristine Withers, "To me, it's synonymous with the Nazis recruiting on 42nd Street during World War II."

The paper quotes IGF contributing author Bruce Bawer, who comments on the European scene, "For liberals, the violent anti-gay hostility of their fundamentalist Muslim allies may be the first thing that really makes them realize they're not on the same page."

But if standing by gays means abandoning their blame the West, blame America, and blame the U.S. military mentality, I think you'll hear European lefties and American left-liberals saying, "Gays who...?"