IGF CultureWatch

Conversations secretly taped in 2000 with then presidential candidate George W. Bush, by a former aide now hawking his book, clarify Bush's perspective on gays and gay rights - not as rejecting as the fundamentalists wanted, and not as bad as gay rights activists claimed.

As reported by the New York Times, the tapes were made by Doug Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister and a Bush campaign liaison to evangelical Christians. The Times notes:

A White House adviser to the first President Bush, Mr. Wead said...in 1990 that Andrew H. Card Jr., then deputy chief of staff, told him to leave the administration "sooner rather than later" after he sent conservatives a letter faulting the White House for inviting gay activists to an event.

Which perhaps should have alerted "W." that the guy wasn't to be trusted (at any rate, this betrayal might open Bush's eyes a bit).

According to the Times, "Many of the taped comments foreshadow aspects of his presidency, including his opposition to both anti-gay language and recognizing same-sex marriage." Also, Bush "repeatedly worried that prominent evangelical Christians would not like his refusal 'to kick gays.' -- Specifically:

Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Many activists will again go ballistic (expect denunciations of Bush calling gays "sinners") and ignore that fact that Bush (a) said he was in the same boat and (b) was rebuking the fundamentalists using a language they shared.

Here is another relevant excerpt:

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."

Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."

Again, not the "bigot" and "hater" of activist propaganda.

On the other hand, Bush is never going to be a ally for marriage equality. Again, the Time reports:

As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention.

All in all, unless we understand the mainstream GOP view that Bush reflects, rather than making it seem worse than it is, we won't be able to enter into any kind of meaningful dialogue with the party in power.

More Recent Postings
2/13/05 - 2/19/05

You may want to catch Sunday night's "gay marriage" episode of "The Simpsons." As ABC News Online reports:

While some Christian conservatives are upset, there's less criticism this time. In part that's because "The Simpsons" - unlike "SpongeBob Squarepants" and "Postcards from Buster" - is not aimed directly at children. In part, it's because many evangelicals have long embraced "The Simpsons" for its high religious content.

There are too many intelligent, discerning Christians and evangelicals who have adopted the show, who like the show," says [religion writer Mark] Pinsky. "I think it would be too dangerous, frankly, too marginalizing, for other leaders of the Christian Right to attack it."

Well, it hasn't stopped Robert Knight of Concerned Women of America, as the article also points out.

Update: And be sure to check out the official "Springfield Is For Gay Lovers of Marriage" site.

Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, who played a key role in fighting the legalization of gay marriage a year ago, now says he favors same-sex marriage and will oppose any efforts to ban it, the AP reports. Seems Reilly, a Democrat, has decided to run for governor and "is seeking to meet with gay and lesbian leaders as he prepares his campaign for next year's governor's race."

Politicians don't support gay marriage because they've become enlightened; they support gay marriage when they calculate it has become in their political interest to do so.

Anti-gay-marriage polemicist Maggie Gallagher is called on the carpet for also being anti-male, by a feminist who isn't. (Hat tip: Beth Elliott)

IGF contributing author David Link has a guest column in Bay Windows discussing a recent episode of ABC's reality show "Wife Swap," in which a lesbian partner and a Christian fundamentalist wife changed places for a week, each caring for the other's family. I also caught this episode and David hits the nail on the head regarding the shameless homophobia on display. For more, check out this interview in The Advocate.

There's a just-launched website, JonathanRauch.com, you'll want to check out. Jon is IGF's co-managing editor and vice president, and in his spare time he's a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as writer in residence at the Brookings Institution.

Jon is also the author of the recent Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, and the earlier books Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought and Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working. He writes of his new site:

No popups. No javascripts. No sponsors. No blog. Yet. And I'll be damned if I know what a trackback is. But here is a selection of my journalism, handily compiled, gradually accumulating, and free of charge.

Take a look!

Want an example of how gay media distorts everything through the ideological lens of gay-left activists? Here's an excerpt from the popular gay news site 365gay.com:

Another Bush [federal appeals court] nominee, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, also holds a radical record of anti-gay judicial activism. In 2003, Brown was the only justice on the California Supreme Court to rule against recognizing the right of gay Californians to legally adopt their children. Brown argued that allowing a gay parent to legally adopt the biological child of their partner "trivializes family bonds."

Now here are some facts. In Sharon S. v. Superior Court, a convoluted case in which the biological mother and her partner broke up during the adoption proceedings and opposed each other in court, what Brown actually argued is 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.

Just to make the point, here's what California's Contra Costa Times reported:

Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote in her partial dissent that second-parent adoptions are not a "universal option" and legislators recognized this when they allowed registered domestic partners to have the same adoption rights as stepparents.

And here's what the lawyers on the other side were arguing, as reported by the American Bar Association Journal: "There's a demand for second-parent adoption," says Charles A. Bird, a San Diego lawyer who represents Annette F. "Some of that demand is for same-sex couples who for whatever reason don't want to register as domestic partners, some of it is for heterosexual couples who don't want to marry and some of the demand is for families where adoptions are done across generational lines." (emphasis added)

The 365gay.com site is not alone in mischaracterizing Justice Brown as a "radical" anti-gay extremist; a quick Google search showed the same spin throughout the activist community and its lapdog media.

Update: Reader Dan77 writes in the comments area:

"either gays want marriage (or as a fallback civil unions) because we want the rights and responsibilities of legal recognition, or we don't. How in blazes can activists say gay couples should be able to co-adopt even if they don't want to accept the spousal obligations of a domestic partnership?

Once again, it's rights without responsibilities, the child's cry of "I want my cake and to eat it too!"

Update II: The influential Washington Blade continues the distortion of Brown's dissent, comparing her with nominee William Pryor and reporting that both

have taken positions in opposition to gay civil rights, prompting gay rights attorneys to question their ability to rule fairly in future cases. ... Brown issued a minority opinion in 2003 saying a gay person should not be allowed to adopt the biological child of his or her partner, saying providing such an adoption right "trivializes family bonds."

It would have been nice if someone had actually read her opinion.

It's no big surprise that since the terror attacks of 9/11 and the war in Iraq fewer gays have been discharged from the military, reports the Washington Post. Charles Moskos, an architect of the "don't ask, don't tell" concept, says that given the current stress on military services, individuals who say they are gay may not be immediately granted an honorable discharge.

But "what has traditionally happened is that there is a decline during a war and then a spike in discharges right after," said Sharon Alexander, a lawyer for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "We noticed that during the Persian Gulf, the number of discharges was practically nonexistent and then it shot way up."

Some number of these discharges may be self-initiated. But even so, the partial suspension of the policy (recall that gay military translators were still booted out) is hypocritical. The DADT edifice either persecutes gay personnel who have bravely served their country, or provides a too-easy escape clause for heterosexuals who don't want to fulfill the commitment they've made. In either case, it's time for the "gay ban" to go.

"If social conservatives really wanted to protect marriage, the Marriage Protection Amendment would prohibit divorce," says Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dimitri Vassilaros in "Divorced from Reality." Vassilaros asks if:

U.S. senators such as Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum and other so-called marriage defenders have the intestinal fortitude and the political backbone to truly protect marriage by spelling out a ban to its only threat, D-I-V-O-R-C-E (as Tammy Wynette would have called it).

And he notes:

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. The FRC claims it "champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society." It looked like the ideal organization to support a divorce prohibition so marriage finally can be protected properly. Looks are deceiving.

"Most conservatives do not see divorce under the purview of the federal government," Perkins said. Marriage is, but divorce isn't.

According to Vassilaros, "Only John Kerry could appreciate the subtlety of that nuance."
(hat tip: Rick Sincere)

Utah saw its first openly gay state senator sworn in (Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake). McCoy, who spoke from the front of the chambers, said "The fact that I am gay is certainly one of the characteristics with which I have been endowed by my Creator, and it is an important part of who I am as a human being," adding that it is not the only characteristic that defines him. He concluded by thanking his parents and his partner, Mark Barr, for their love and support. Thus is progress made, even in the reddest of states.

...and the Lack Thereof.
Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher takes note of the moving story of Maya Keyes, the now-out lesbian daughter of archly homophobic commentator and recent senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Maya was recently evicted from her parents' home and told she'd receive no money to attend Brown University, where she was accepted. Just the latest high-profile example of how anti-gay prejudice destroys families.