IGF CultureWatch

The Supreme Courts ruled 6-3 today that the federal government has the power to prosecute the use of marijuana for medical purposes even in states that have enacted laws permitting medical marijuana use, in a decision by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. Joining the liberal anti-federalists was the most anti-gay member of the court, Antonin Scalia. Only three members of the court defended the principle of federalism: Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.

Justice O'Connor said in her dissent that the majority ruling was effectively "extinguishing" experiments with medical marijuana laws. "This case exemplifies the role of states as laboratories," she wrote.

Many state medical marijuana laws were passed directly by voters through ballot initiatives, so it's not a happy day for democracy, or for patients with cancer and AIDS. And it doesn't help the cause of backing states as "laboratories" in other areas, such as same-sex marriage, when the federal authorities decide to quash such experiments in democracy.

Update: Instapundit, as usual, provides links to some of the best blogosphere analysis of the decision and its ramifications.

More Recent Postings
5/29/05 - 6/04/05

A nonconservative, nonlibertarian blogger, Joe Perez, explains why he appreciates the articles we post on this forum despite his political difference of opinion:

If they were followed uncritically, many of the proposals voiced in the IndeGayForum would be likely to take the gay movement in a harmful, self-destructive direction that I could not support. Fortunately, there is little chance of that happening any time soon. As a matter of fact, gay conservatives and libertarians are a distinct minority in the gay movement and do not define "the gay agenda." Their critical perspective, as the "minority government in power" gives the gay movement a precious gift: intellectual gridlock. They're our check and balance.

The gay movement very much need thinkers like those featured in IndeGayForum to challenge the sloppy logic and dangerous excesses in the movement's mainstream. Even if some of these challenges are way off base.

He may hope we'll see the light, and I'll wish the same of him (for instance, liberals truly aren't "making health care more affordable" - far from it, Joe, by increasingly turning health care over to government and away from market forces, they've driven medical costs through the roof).

My third attempt to get a letter published in the Washington Blade countering their oft-repeated misrepresentation of a ruling by California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown has succeeded, after I directly asked editor Chris Crain to allow it to run. Chris, apparently, is more willing than his letters editor to allow different points of view to be expressed, for which I am appreciative. Still, the preponderance of gay media will continue to robotically repeat the Democrats' talking points against Brown, no matter how distorted their charges are.

Speaking of Blade editor Crain, he has a nice editorial in this week's issue on the Democrats acquiescence to the appellate nomination of a true anti-gay bigot, William Pryor, and the lackluster response from Washington's leading gay political lobbies. Crain writes:

It is not the job of a civil rights movement to offer political cover at crunch time. Conservative groups understand this and never scream more loudly than at their own allies when they waiver.

But as I've often said, too many of our activists are Democratic Party loyalists first and foremost, and the rest of us let them get away with it.

Discrimination by a government that's supposed to ensure all are treated equally is the worst kind of betrayal, and should be the main target of our rights struggle - whether it be for the right to serve in the military, for marriage equality (even if approached incrementally through partnerships and civil unions), or for the right to nondiscrimination in federal and state employment.

While sporadic discrimination may exist in the private sector, the much-maligned profit motive is a powerful incentive for private employers to seek the best talent they can find, regardless of anyone's personal prejudices. That's one reason why, in Virginia, a business coalition successfully lobbied the extremely right-wing, anti-gay state legislature to overturn a law forbidding employers from offering partnership benefits, arguing that the measure prevented them from recruiting top employees.

Today, more than 83% of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and more than 40% provide domestic partner health benefits, and those percentages keep increasing every year, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.

In contrast, this week the Washington Post reported that David Schroer, an extraordinarily well-qualified ex-army ranger, received an offer to be a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress - only to have the offer withdrawn when he revealed he would begin work as Diane Schroer after undergoing a long-planned gender change.

If the Library of Congress were a profit-making enterprise, the loss of such a candidate would equal a loss of profit-potential for the owners or stockholders. Not so in government, which is why rules with teeth forbidding discrimination are necessary (as is privatizing as many government services as is practical and letting market incentives drive progress forward).

Unfortunately, discrimination in federal hiring seems to be heading in the opposite direction, thanks to Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch, even though the administration itself seems to be embarrassed by the situation (yet unwilling to risk the wrath of the religious right by actually removing Bloch).
--Stephen H. Miller

Paul Varnell casts a critical eye on all the pride talk, and asks if there isn't a better way to promote our goals.

The gay media, following the lead of Democratic activists, keeps repeating the canard about Califronia Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown supposedly "anti-gay" adoption ruling. So I hereby repeat my defense.

In Sharon S. v. Superior Court, a convoluted case in which the biological mother and her partner had broken up and now opposed each other in court, Brown wrote that second-parent adoptions ought to require "a legal relationship between the birth and second parent," or else it would "trivialize family bonds." And, in fact, California's 2001 law affords registered domestic partners the same streamlined adoption process as stepparents. What Brown was saying is that the state need not create another right to adopt for two individuals with no such legal bond, and that legislators recognized this when they allowed registered domestic partners to adopt.

As reported by the American Bar Association Journal (Aug. 8, 2003), one of the lawyers in this case, Charles A. Bird, argued that same-sex couples "who for whatever reason don't want to register as domestic partners" should be allowed to enter into second-parent adoptions. That is the position Brown was rejecting, which is not the impression given by the gay media attacks, which follow the talking points of liberal activists who oppose her nomination to the federal bench.

More Recent Postings
5/22/05 - 5/28/05

Max Boot, a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the conservative Weekly Standard, changes his position on gays in the military. He writes:

In 1993-94, when the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy was promulgated, I was persuaded by the warnings of Colin Powell and other generals that opening the door to gays and lesbians would hurt morale and cohesion. But in the intervening decade, society has become more accepting of homosexuality. . . . Sooner or later, the U.S. military will follow the example of Australia, Britain and Israel and lift its ban on openly gay service members. In the struggle against Islamic fanatics, we can't afford to turn volunteers away.

Liberals may prefer the more "multilateral" Powell over Don Rumsfeld, but Powell was the one who screwed us during the Clinton years.

It could be we've just seen the first head-to-head battle of the 2008 GOP primary, and John McCain has bested Bill Frist. An analysis by the AP:

A bipartisan deal could undercut Frist's political standing and his remaining months as Senate leader.... Among the Republicans seeking a compromise on the judicial nominees is a potential 2008 rival to Frist - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Last week, it was McCain who appealed to his Republican colleagues at a closed-door meeting to compromise with the Democrats, a notion Frist rejected.

I know, the conventional wisdom is that McCain is seen as too moderate to get the GOP nod (though he'd easily win the general election if he did). But the CW has often been surprisingly, stunningly wrong.

By the way, did you notice that the judicial compromise left the Democrats with the right to squelch two of Bush's judicial nominees, and who got squelched? It was not the most anti-gay of the group, William H. Pryor Jr., nominated for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who now is on his way to confirmation. Says planetout.com:

As Alabama attorney general in 2003, Pryor urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the rights of states to outlaw consensual gay sex, comparing laws against gay sex to laws against pedophilia and bestiality in a friend-of-the-court brief.

Instead, the two deemed beyond the pale are, first, former Interior Department solicitor William Myers, nominated for the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, who, Newsday reports, is vigorously opposed by environmentalists for what they say was an anti-environment agenda at Interior and as a private lawyer and lobbyist for cattle and mining interests. And second, Henry Saad, nominated for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who has invoked the ire of Senate minority leader Harry Reid for reasons not all that clear, other than Reid's insinuations about "a problem" he said is in the nominee's "confidential report from the FBI" (it may be that Reid's pseudo-McCarthyite tactics against Saad boxed him into a corner he couldn't get out of).

I guess when it comes to beltway clout, the Sierra Club beats out the Human Rights Campaign. Maybe HRC should demand a refund from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee!

Update: The Christian Science Monitor analyzes what the filibuster deal means for the 2008 presidential race:

Among those who appear to be actively considering a run, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona emerges a winner, analysts say.... The agreement on judges "certainly burnished his credentials as an independent thinker and someone who's a problem-solver," says John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.

McCain's biggest drawback is that his shoot-from-the-hip style makes him unpopular with religious conservatives. But he opposes abortion, and could become palatable to that GOP bloc if he appeared the strongest Republican to face the Democratic nominee, analysts say.

More Recent Postings
5/15/05 - 5/21/05

As the Washington Post headline puts it: Business Groups Tire of GOP Focus On Social Issues:

From Wall Street to Main Street, the small-government, pro-business mainstay of the Republican Party appears to be growing disaffected with a party it sees as focused on social issues at its expense.... Mark A. Bloomfield, whose business-backed American Council for Capital Formation pushes for lower taxes on savings, investment and inheritances, said the business community is no longer the GOP's base.

And neo-libertarian John Henke says that the administration's catering to the religious right while ignoring the "libertarian center" could cost it dearly, if true small-government conservatives decide sit out the next election. He writes:

maybe this'd be a good time for Republicans to notice that their constituency consists of more than evangelicals. They might even consider trying to actually appeal to that "libertarian center." Otherwise, '06 looks like it might be ugly for the GOP. (Hat tip: instapundit)

All of which might leave the middle up for grabs - if the Democrats weren't blindly swerving to the left.

More Recent Postings
5/22/05 - 5/28/05

This week, a "moderate" Republican governor with national aspirations, Maryland's Robert Ehrlich, vetoed a modest domestic partnership bill and mouthed drivel about protecting the "sanctity of marriage," in an attempt to curry favor with religious conservatives. Meanwhile, the supposed "moderate" bloc of congressional "New Democrats" pledged to oppose a modest free trade expansion with Central America, in deference to big-labor contributors who think the U.S. government can freeze the present manufacturing sector in place by forfeiting the prosperity and growth that freer trade invariable brings.

One party thinks its purpose is to stifle personal liberty and the familial relationships two life partners can enter into, and the other thinks its purpose is to stifle economic liberty and the business relationships that trading partners can enter into. That's politics, I guess.

P.S. I'll be away for a few days. Catch you later. (Also, new letters in the mailbag)