IGF CultureWatch

Intrepid blogger North Dallas Thirty looks at the response to the Kansas disaster by NGLTF and HRC, which, he notes, unconditionally endorsed a presidential candidate last year who backed passing state amendments banning gay marriage - or have we pointed that out before? The factual errors in the NGLTF release (they call Topeka the state's largest city when it's clearly not) cause him to ponder just how much research into this red state they actually felt they needed to bother with.

From time to time, some of us catch flak for criticizing gay "progressive" groups, as if a failure to stand mute and write checks veers on the treasonous. I'll again state that what we don't need is yet another "echo chamber" blankly applauding inept ideologies and on-autopilot strategies.

Log Cabin decided not to endorse President Bush over his support for a federal amendment against gay marriage. But there was virtually no public criticism from within the "community" when HRC gave Kerry/Edwards a free pass to support (and grant legitimacy to) anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments - which, as it turns out, have become a much greater threat to gay liberty than the stalled federal amendment which Bush has all but backed away from.

The citizens of Kansas just voted by a wide margin (70 to 30 percent) to approve a state constitutional gay marriage ban, making Kansas the 17th state to pass such a prohibition. The amendment declares that only traditional unions are entitled to the "rights and incidents" of marriage, prohibiting the state from authorizing civil unions as well.

Worse, opposition to same-sex marriages has been increasing. When asked whether they thought same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, 68 percent of the respondents surveyed last month in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they should not, and 28 percent said same-sex marriages should be valid. A similar poll by Gallup last year found that 55 percent thought same-sex marriages should not be valid, while 42 percent said they should be recognized.

Over the past few months, judges in Manhattan and San Francisco have ruled that New York State and California must recognize same-sex marriages despite majority opposition by the citizens of those states (both decisions are on hold while being appealed).

As IGF contributing author Brian Holmes notes in his recent column Courting Public Opinion:

When "judicial activism" takes root in the big coastal cities, state legislators in heartland capitals like Topeka and Indianapolis follow suit with state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.... [S]olid and lasting equality will come when revisions to the law are backed by the will of the people. When new laws are imposed from on high, there is no guarantee that the mass of citizens will follow suit.

Clearly.

My IGF colleague Dale Carpenter offers his take on the Terri Schiavo tragedy. While I respectfully disagree with Dale about the appropriateness of (and motivations behind) the congressional action, I think Dale is correct in highlighting the growing importance of the "culture of life" concept among social conservatives.

Dale writes:

One could conceive a "culture of life" that affirmed the equality of gays. Such a culture might even show a special concern for the dignity and equality of gays, as it would for any marginal persons, like the disabled or the dying. But that is not the culture favored by religious conservatives.

It is true that "culture of life" can become something of a grab bag that's invoked with animus by the religious right to, among other things, oppose gay equality. But we should also appreciate the widespread emotional appeal of affirming those aspects of our culture that embrace and enhance life, as opposed to those aspects that disregard, degrade or destroy life and which could rightly be seen as part of a "culture of death" - including, for instance, partial-birth abortion on demand and promiscuous, unprotected, drugged-out sex.

As with the similar "family values" debate, the key here (as I think Dale suggests) is to fight for the inclusion within what's recognized as the "culture of life" of gay families and responsible gay sexuality while effectively making the case against homophobia and legal inequality. But we should be wary of dismissing the "culture of life" concept outright as an inherently evil ploy without redeeming value.
--Stephen H. Miller

Among the leading contenders:

Francis Arinze: "In a commencement address this year at Georgetown University, Arinze drew protests by saying the institution of marriage is 'mocked by homosexuality.'"

Joseph Ratzinger: "He once called homosexuality a tendency toward 'intrinsic moral evil.'"

Diogini Tettamanzi: "He has taken a tough line against what he terms 'homosexual culture.' In one article, he wrote that the church was called 'together with every person of good will, to denounce the very grave personal and social risks connected with accepting such a culture.'"

Almost all the contenders seem to have made ignorant and dehumanizing statements about homosexuality (as reader Alan commented on the item below regarding the late pope, "I don't know that he could even envision 'gay people' as anything other than individuals who perversely engage in homosexual acts").

Also like the late pope, a common thread is demonizing free markets and global trade (i.e., "globalization") as a form of imperialism that keeps the poor impoverished, when in fact it is the key to helping underdeveloped nations rise out of poverty.

Tettamanzi, the Washington Post tells us, described as "positive" the anti-globalization rioters at the Seattle World Trade Organization conference in 1999 who prevented a new trade accord, while another contender, Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, told his fellow Latin Americans that "Neoliberal capitalism carries injustices and inequality in its genetic code," while condemning the U.S. for promoting free-market economic policies and "exporting" liberal views on matters such as contraception.

Some reactionaries are just wrong all round, but it's no surprise that those who oppose personal freedom would also be against free markets.

More Recent Postings
3/27/05 - 4/02/05

Chuck Muth has a nice posting making fun of California religious-right zealot James Hartline, who is in a tizzy because the chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party spoke to a Log Cabin chapter. When Chuck, a genuine small government, libertarian-minded Republican, contacted Hartline to defend the San Diego party chairman, Hartline replied: "I will be supplying your email to my 2,400 Christians readers in San Diego."

Who does this guy think he is, Mike Rogers?

On the plus side, he was a major force in standing up against - and helping to bring peaceably to an end - totalitarian Communism in Europe. History will credit him for that.

Then there are the negatives. He brought to a screeching halt all liberalizing trends in the Church (and that's "liberalizing" in the old-fashion sense of extending liberty, not in the American sense of favoring bureaucratic governance). He stood four-square against women priests and birth control (including condoms that might have saved countless AIDS-ruined lives), and for mandatory clerical celibacy and stonewalling in the face of his Church's manifold pedophilia scandals.

And then there was his virulently reactionary view of gay people, exemplified most recently by his denouncing gay marriage as part of an "ideology of evil." A steady stream of proclamations issued by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Pope John Paul II sought to deny gay people our full humanity. Gay adoption was labeled "gravely immoral" and a form of "doing violence" to children (and this, as the Church tolerated and covered up countless child rapes by its "celibate" priests). Gay sexuality itself was dismissed, repeatedly, as "intrinsically disordered."

A willful, persistent insistence on denigrating gay people, our relationships and our sexuality served to irreparably darken John Paul II's legacy, fostering ignorance and inequality, and scarring the lives of many worldwide who looked to the Pope for spiritual guidance. That this should be the legacy of a religious leader whose mission was to bring a greater awareness of God's embracing light and love is, to put it bluntly, sinful.

Islamic, Jewish and Christian religious leaders unite to condemn a planned gay festival and parade in Jerusalem. And American fundamentalists are egging them on. This could get very ugly, I fear.

Some people just won't learn: unprotected, promiscuous anal sex is not a healthy way of life. Case in point: Reuters reports that Rare Gay Male Sex Disease Enters Britain.

Does "society" bear some role for not heretofore recognizing/celebrating same-sex relationships in a way that would promote their stablilty? Yes. Does that absolve a large segment of gay men in the developed world from not getting their act together? No, it doesn't. This is a point Gabriel Rotello made a few years ago in his "controversial" book Sexual Ecology, which looked at the behaviors that made AIDS an epidemic waiting to happen among gay men - and offered thoughts on making gay culture "sustainable" instead of self-destructive.

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal featured a page 1 story on deaf children and cochlear implants (online only for WSJ subscribers). These devices, which are placed in the bone behind the ear to help profoundly deaf children perceive sound, are being opposed by deaf activists:

Some steeped in deaf culture don't see themselves as handicapped and view implants as an attempt to "fix" something that isn't broken. They especially oppose hearing parents deciding to get implants for their deaf children, believing kids should make the decision themselves when they get older.

It's easy to dismiss the deaf activists, but what if the story were about gay children and parents who, for the sake of argument, at some point could give their kids a treatment to ensure that they would instead be heterosexual?

Being gay, of course, is not a physical impairment, but the deaf activists also think their status is just a different way of being, and that they are part of a deaf culture and a deaf community. And as surely as hearing parents are opting for cochlear implants, so too would most heterosexual parents opt to make their gay kids straight if they could. But such a situation would surely cause a loss to the richness of the human tapestry, so it's a good thing that being gay isn't as simple as being deaf.

Update: Columnist Cathy Young sends a comment noting her take a few years ago in Reason magazine on what she calls "the (incredibly offensive) gay/deaf analogy." That article can be read here (give it a minute to load).

If you haven't read Paul Varnell's newly posted review of the book Queer Wars by Stanford "queer theorist" Paul Robinson, take a look. I love that Robinson attacks columnist Michelangelo Signorile for being a "gay conservative" when Signorile writes one of the most scathingly leftwing columns around (for instance, see his recent effort, "Log Cabin's Drug Money: Shilling for Big Pharma on social security privatization"). But I guess the game for those on both the hard left and on the hard right is that you can never, ever be extreme enough that somebody won't try to make their reputation by calling you a sellout.