Author Archives: Stephen H. Miller

The Progressive Death of Religious Liberty

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When basic constitutional rights conflict, as they often do, it’s vital to work out common-sense accomodations. Historically, civil rights laws have allowed for these, based on evidence of deeply held moral or religious beliefs. Using the power of the state to force a devout women to violate her beliefs by engaging in expressive activity to support same-sex marriage, and, in fact, advocating the repeal of religious and conscious protections, is the extremist position that progressive LGBTQ+ activists have embraced. Rights for we, but not for thee, is their position.

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Act Up and How We View Our History

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Specter writes that:

Instead of a colossus run largely by a small cohort of white men, [Schulman] argues, it was more of a loose confederation of affinity groups. … When we think of ACT UP, Schulman wants us to think of the fight for universal health care, racial justice, and radical democracy—and to recognize that “a few committed activists, when focused on being effective, can accomplish a lot.” …

She assails David France, whom she accuses of using her research to “nefarious ends” in his powerful documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” It won mainstream approval, she thinks, precisely because it promotes a “heroic white male individual model” of activism, in contrast with the “diverse grassroots movements” revealed in the less celebrated documentary “United in Anger,” which she produced with its director, Jim Hubbard.

He notes, however:

Yet there were reasons for ACT UP’s prevailing image. A 1989 survey of the New York chapter showed that more than three-quarters of participants were younger than thirty-five and that eighty per cent were white gay men. Many were well educated, even well-off. …

“ACT UP was predominantly white and male,” she acknowledges. “But its history has been whitened in ways that obstruct the complexity.” [Larry] Kramer, she thinks, “never really understood the wide range of people who were in ACT UP, where we were coming from, and what we were doing.” …

He further observes:

ACT UP certainly contained affinity groups, including the Majority Action Committee, for people of color, and the Women’s Caucus. But did members who were white and male have an advantage in swaying a bureaucracy that was also overwhelmingly white and male? That’s what Kramer implied, and, though Schulman doesn’t dispute the point, she thinks that the group’s true power lay in a concerted display of strength through diversity. …

[Schulman’s] insistence on ACT UP’s diversity is important and correct. Still, the group’s most famous image—the inverted pink triangle of the “Silence = Death” logo—didn’t just link AIDS and the Holocaust; it was also an assertion of a gay identity, as not incidental but integral.

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World of Sports

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A Victory for True Liberalism (Not Leftist Progressivism)

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Progressives are (mostly) hesitant to denounce a 9-0 decision in favor of a Catholic social service agency’s right to not include same-sex couples when placing foster care children, pointing out that the decision was made on narrow grounds while at the same time calling for passage of the Equality Act to ensure that religious exceptions are prohibited under federal law.

Some of the more perceptive commentaries follow below.


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The Non-Gay Movement

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Bruce also writes that during the height of the gay rights struggle when “far-Left gay activists — most of whom preferred ‘queer’ to ‘gay’ — who didn’t want a place at the table but, as one of them told me on the ‘Charlie Rose Show,’ wanted ‘to turn the table over.’ Meaning what? Meaning that they weren’t in it for reform but for revolution.”

And now, “Add it all up and it’s hard not to see it as the beginning of a sweeping set of revolutionary, society-wide changes of precisely the kind that the queer Left wanted to achieve with the gay-rights movement, but never did.”

Fighting back:

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Pride

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Brad gets it right, again.

Case in point:

James Kirchick observes:

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