IGF CultureWatch

And speaking of "puritans" new and old, the death of feminist anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin is a reminder of the period when Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon and Gloria Steinem sought to pass ordinances banning pornography (until the Supreme Court struck these down), and placed themselves on the same side as Phyllis Schlafly in supporting the censorious efforts by then-Attorney General Ed Meese's Commission on Pornography.

That unholy alliance showed the truth in the old cliche that the far right and far left do, in fact, mirror each another.

Note: For those who were wondering, I am not the Stephen Miller who writes for the New York Sun (and penned this Dworkin obit), though we are both cursed with an extremely common name.
-- Stephen H. Miller

Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by dismissing concerns about media vulgarity, charges Dan Gerstein in Why the Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars, from Monday's Wall Street Journal (alas, apparently only available to WSJ Online subscribers).

Gerstein, former communications director for Joe Lieberman, takes aim at New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently railed against "New Puritans" who want to "stamp out" all that is "joyously vulgar" in American culture."

Counters Gerstein, "vulgarity, joyous or otherwise, is hardly in retreat." Moreover:

[T]he implications of this mindset and the battle lines it establishes are clear.... [I]f you're not exactly enamored of watching titillating stunts and ads at the Super Bowl with your six--year-old, you're part of the TV Taliban.

But:

Not all parents who are concerned about the avalanche of crud crushing their children every day are obsessed with SpongeBob's sexual orientation. Nor are they seeking to shred the First Amendment.

And he points to what he calls "the nub of the values problem for Democrats today":

We don't hesitate to judge people's beliefs, but we blanch at judging their behavior. That leaves us silent on big moral issues at a time of great moral uncertainty, and leaves the impression that we are the party of "anything goes." Even worse, it creates a "values vacuum" that gets filled by the SpongeBob gaybashers of the world.

The result, says Gerstein, is that "heartland residents are tuning out our party." I think that's on target. Too often gays, "progressives," and (especially) progressive gays dismiss all concerns about morality and values as motivated by intolerance. That merely results in ceding the values mantle to those who really are motivated by anti-gay animus.
--Stephen H. Miller

It's very touchy-feely to support bringing the world's religions together as urged by the late Roman Catholic pontiff, but we should be wary of the dangers of accommodating faith traditions that sanction bigotry under the guise of religiosity. For instance, Washington Post columnist Colbert King notes that Anglican bishop Nzerebende Tembo in Uganda:

suspended all activities between his diocese and the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, including his request for $352,941 to support an HIV-AIDS program, financial assistance for orphans' education and a visit by a U.S. medical team. Tembo based his decision on news that the Central Pennsylvania diocese had supported election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.... [T]he Pennsylvania group had collected more than $350,000 to send to Uganda.

[Tempo claims no money had been pledged but] acknowledged withdrawing his request and said he also asked that the U.S. medical team not visit Uganda.... The money sought from the Central Pennsylvania Diocese, Tembo observed, "is not the only money in the world."

Comments King: "Thus ecumenism on the Anglican front."
--Stephen H. Miller

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.