IGF CultureWatch

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)

A German zoo's attempts to straighten out their gay penguins have ended in failure. The zoo keepers say the penguins need to procreate for the good of the race, er, species, while gay groups protested their outrage over the effort to break up happy gay (penguin) couples so as to enforce heterosexual norms among captive critters. Well, I always thought Tennessee Tuxedo was a little 'light in the loafers,' if you know what I mean.

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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.

At the libertarian-minded ReasonOnline site, John Coleman reminds us in My Privatized Valentine that:

St. Valentine, a Roman cleric, was imprisoned for his opposition to Emperor Claudius' decree that young men (his potential crop of soldiers) could no longer marry. Valentine performed their ceremonies anyway and was thrown in jail for his obstinacy. His belief was that marriage is too sacred a rite to relegate to the incompetence of state bureaucracy. And, on February 14, he was executed for that belief.

Drawing a lessons for our times, Coleman argues that the state should only certify the legality of civil unions, leaving the sanctioning of ceremonial "marriage" to the private sphere of religious institutions:

It is time to privatize marriage. If the institution is really so sacred, it should lie beyond the withering hands of politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. There should be no federal or state license that grants validity to love. There should be no state-run office that peers into our bedrooms and honeymoon suites. If the church thinks divorce and homosexuality are problematic, it should initiate the real dialogue to address these problems in-house rather than relying on state-sponsored coercion to affirm doctrinal beliefs. And if tax-codes and guardianships need some classification for couples, let's revise civil union standards to reflect those needs.

Well, that's certainly one up on those who believe we must settled for nothing less than full state-recognized marriage! (hat tip: instapundit)

If your interested in this argument, IGF contributing author Steve Swain argues here that what the state does for birth and death it should also do for marriage: merely certify status, and leave the tasks of celebrating and solemnizing to communities and religions.

And over on my right, we now have a diversity of opinion on the marriage question, most recently from John Corvino, Dale Carpenter, and Paul Varnell.

This week the Democrats elected Howard Dean as their new party chair. Yeeeehaaaaa.

There are those who say it's only a matter of time before the Democrats slide into total irrelevancy, at which point the GOP will split into a libertarian and a social conservative party. But an alternative future is proposed in this op-ed from Washington's newest paper, the Examiner.

Former Democratic National Committee press secretary Terry Michael argues that the Democrats can succeed if they return to their "Jeffersonian liberalism" roots. He writes:

But in a post-industrial, information economy, the little guys, who Democrats have always claimed to represent, are again more self-sufficient, empowered to make - tailor-make, in fact - choices for themselves.... The "Central Authority Solutions" story offered by Democrats, from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, lost luster. That's especially true with regard to economic issues. On the other hand, when it comes to lifestyle and personal choices - the social-cultural issue frame - the party still has some juice left from that original Jeffersonian story, which made individual liberty central to party ID....

The new desktop-empowered generation, turned on by Republican economic choice, but turned off by the social-cultural intolerance of the GOP Taliban wing, could embrace Democrats if we return to our founder's philosophy - a back-to-the-future Jeffersonian liberalism. Jefferson, who said the government that governs least governs best, knew the era of big government was over before Bill Clinton proclaimed it.

It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
--Stephen H. Miller

Look for a split decision on same-sex marriage from New York's highest court. In fact, the New York Post reports, it's likely to come down to one man - moderate conservative Judge Albert Rosenblatt, appointed by moderate conservative Gov. George Pataki. The Post reports:

Pataki's other three appointees are not likely to be swayed by the argument that the ban on gay marriage violates New York's constitution, said [legal scholars]. Those likely opponents are Judges Susan Phillips Read, Victoria Graffeo and Robert Smith.

On the other hand, Chief Judge Judith Kaye and Judges George Bundy Smith and Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick - all named by former Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo - have traditionally been "very sensitive" to civil-rights issues and would likely favor legalizing same-sex marriages. That would make Rosenblatt the deciding vote.

A 4-3 decision upholding gay marriage in New York State would likely add to the polarization over the role of "unelected" judges in "redefining" marriage - just what the proponents of a federal "marriage protection" amendment dream of. Yet the strategy of marriage-by-lawsuit rolls on.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate Republican, announced that while he supports the right of gay couples to marry, the city will appeal last week's ruling by a state judge giving the Big Apple 30 days to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Despite his support for gay marriage, Bloomberg said the state court's ruling was not the way to achieve that goal. As reported in the New York Sun (the place to go for honest analysis):

The judge's decision caught Mr. Bloomberg and his aides off-guard and put him in a position of having to choose between courting the city's liberal majority and fending off challengers from his right in a campaign year....

Mr. Bloomberg told two hostile crowds - the Human Rights Campaign and the Lesbian & Gay Pride Foundation - that he was appealing the decision because the ruling "was incorrect" and "the current state Constitution does not permit same-sex marriages." He was heckled and booed by the two audiences, and his critics wasted no time in criticizing his attempt to have it both ways.

Yet, interestingly:

Gay activists in the city said privately they sympathized with the mayor. While they want support for gay marriages, there is a widespread belief in the community that the dust-up caused by the San Francisco marriages didn't help their cause, it hurt. Having New York rush to allow marriages that might only be rolled back later doesn't make much sense, they said.

And that's a response that does make sense. This matter is going to go to the state's highest court one way or another, given the upstate marriage suits that Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is fighting. If the court upholds gay marriage, couples in NYC can then get married. If it goes the other way, what would be gained by allowing mass weddings of dubious legality on the City Hall steps, repeating the images that came out of San Francisco last year that gays cheered but many others viewed as an anarchistic assault on marriage, thus fueling the national backlash. And to what end, since California's high court than nullified those weddings?

A word of warning from libertarian-leaning Republican Chuck Muth, a political consultant and head of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government public policy organization, on what might happen if the U.S. Supreme Court throws out the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Muth writes:

In any event, the New York decision based upon the Loving decision [in which the Supreme Court voided laws against interracial marriage] could well be the basis of a case which ultimately ends up before the Supremes over the constitutionality of DOMA. And when it does, my money is on the Court striking down DOMA based on the Loving precedent and the 14th Amendment.

Which brings us to the Federal Marriage Amendment (or whatever focus-grouped name they're now calling it).

If DOMA does get struck down, that will further inflame a large and vocal segment of the public and fuel congressional efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. Unlike today, such an amendment, post-DOMA, could well garner the 2/3 vote needed in both houses of Congress to send the ban to the states. And just by looking at the number of states which passed gay marriage bans last November, there's a good shot that such an amendment could get the [3/4ths] ratification needed to approve it.

Would this happen? I don't know, but given current political realities, it certainly could happen. Should marraige activists challenging DOMA at least give serious attention to this scenario? Absolutely! Are they? Don't bet the ranch.

(hat tip: Rick Sincere

Update: Loyal CultureWatch reader "Pillar" comments:

In the corporate world, scenario planning (also called "war gaming") is vital before any major strategic undertaking -exploring all the possible consequences of an initial action, whether positive or negative to your goals, and then developing possible counter-responses within each scenario, and on and on.

This type of complex strategic planning helps many companies avoid going off the cliff by attempting the wrong takeover or brand launch.

As for gay activist organizations, I think their strategy sessions basically have consisted of jumping up and down and yelling, "George W. Bush, You're Fired!"

Remember the "Saturday Night Live" skit where John Kerry defended his position on the Iraq war as being "perfectly consistent" - he was always for the war when addressing conservatives and always against it when speaking to liberals.

Well, New York's Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street and would-be next governor, has taken an oddly Kerryesque stance on the gay marriage lawsuits being argued in his state. According to a report by law professor/marriage advocate Arthur Leonard in Gay City News, in the suit Lambda Legal brought in Manhattan, Spitzer:

was invited to intervene in the case to defend the marriage statute, he declined to do so, leaving the defense of the case to the City Law Department....

On the other hand, Spitzer's office is defending the marriage law in other lawsuits pending outside the city, in which his office has taken the position that the marriage law is constitutional.

While upstate voters might not take to the idea of gay marriage, liberal Manhattan is a different story. Thus is all explained.
--Stephen H. Miller

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