IGF CultureWatch

A New York State judge in Manhattan ruled that denying gay couples the right to marry violates the state constitution. The matter will now go to New York's highest court, but it raises the possibility New York City (the only place where the ruling applies) could be ordered to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning next month. (Here's the New York Times story.)

The case was brought by Lambda Legal on behalf of five New York City gay couples.

While I celebrated the Massachusetts ruling ordering that state to recognize gay marriages, I've since changed my view and now believe a more effective and practical strategy is to go to bat for civil unions with all the state rights spouses have, as in Vermont. Polls show far wider support for civil unions than for marriage, and many conservatives now view it as the "compromise" position -- despite the hard right's opposition.

Once the electorate is comfortable with the level of recognition granted under civil unions, it would be far easier to advance to full marriage equality. But this view is certainly not shared by all of our IGF contributing authors, to be sure.

In any event, the activists have staked out a strategy of using the nation's most liberal courts to order full marriage recognition now, the electorate be damned. While I'd like to believe they'll succeed in securing marriage rights for gay Americans, I think it's a high-risk, all-or-nothing proposition. (See my Jan. 29 posting about activists in Connecticut scuttling a civil unions bill that was about to pass.)

And if the backlash against judicially decreed gay marriage leads to passage of the proposed federal "marriage protection" amendment - or even just more state amendments in addition to the 13 passed last year - history will record this approach as well-intentioned but strategically calamitous.

But maybe I'm wrong; the next few years will let us know.

Update: Gay Patriot predicts a New York statewide voter referendum in 2005 that will defeat gay marriage (in the comments area, that legal possibility is disputed). I'd say it's more likely the state's highest court will put the kabosh on the lower court ruling - and if it instead decreed the rights of marriage through civil unions, I wouldn't be displeased.

Some of the comments to the previous item show an almost pathological hatred of the current administration, claiming, for instance, "What Bush is doing to gays is unacceptable for any decent human being. He is destroying every single part of our lives." This is what many on the gay left (and some libertarians) believe.

For those who don't read the comments (which, alas, mix thoughtful responses with the venting of antagonists raging at a site they're compelled to visit and attack daily), I answered a suggestion I was "blaming the victims" as follows:

One of my purposes on this blog is to hold gay activists accountable for strategies and actions I see as counter-productive - or at least counter-productive in advancing gay equality; they may in fact fulfill the objective of producing successful fundraising letters.

Am I always right? No. Do I think it's useful to challenge the activists in this way - yes, if for no other reason than most gay media is nothing but an echo chamber - running press releases as if they were analysis.

If you think Bush is the devil, then you're not going to agree with me on this. If you think Bush and all other politicians respond to political interest groups on the basis of whether it serves their interests to do so, then my point - gay Republicans need to be Republicans, and thus build leverage in the party; supposedly nonpartisan groups need to be effectively nonpartisan, and thus able to lobby both sides - might be seen as having some merit.

If I can be indulged another link to Rich Tafel, I see he is of similar mind when he writes:

During my time running a gay rights group I noticed a disturbing trend. When I was in conflict with Republicans I was lauded by the gay press and fundraising shot up. When I worked in cooperation with Republicans to accomplish things I was called a shill and fundraising was more difficult.

So here's the paradox for gay organizations. Though cooperation should be the goal, their funding depends on attacking Republicans. The gay political groups will not make progress nor seek opportunities for finding common ground, and they will be wealthier for it.

Meanwhile, there are reports that openly gay U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz) is being considered by the Bush administration for the important post of U.S. Trade Representative. (Hat Tip: Gay Patriot). If he should be appointed, expect many of the main gay activists groupings to respond on a par with the hostility minority activists have shown to the appointments of Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez.

A few weeks ago President Bush said that "nothing will happen" on the proposed federal amendment to ban gay marriage because too many senators did not see the need for it, signaling that pushing the amendment would be a low priority. Then hell broke loose on the right, as social conservatives demanded that the president change his tune or they'd turn on him in the social security reform debate. Dutifully, tonight Bush included the amendment in his state of the union address (though again stating his case in terms of reining in "activist judges").

Sadly, gays have no leverage with the party in power. Gays overwhelming vote and fund the Democratic party, and the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay organization, choose inaugural week to attack Bush - right after he made his statement backing off of the amendment, just as activists were either critical or silent when, before the election, Bush made conciliatory remarks about civil unions.

The GOP will continue to kow-tow to social conservatives as long as the gay line is "one party only," as recently reiterated by Matt Foreman of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force when he said, "It's not relevant what the Republicans in the Senate do."

Gays won't support a party that doesn't support gay equality; that party won't support gay equality until gay support increases gay leverage. That's the way things now stand.

Update: Rich Tafel writes:

When the President said a few weeks ago that he wouldn't push this issue, gay groups attacked him for being two faced and social conservatives responded with a letter to Karl Rove demanding a response. I'm hopeful that by mentioning it he's given the social conservative wing of the party a bone, but with pressure against him from the gay left and religious right that will be tough.

A funny "Brady's Corner" cartoon in the Washington Blade shows a quavering SpongeBob Squarepants confessing: "First they came for Bert and Ernie, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muppet. Then they came for Tinky Winky, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Teletubby. Then they came for me..."

Yes, to our eyes, James Dobson, head of the religious right's Focus on the Family, looks ridiculous when he claims that SpongeBob's participation in an educational video remix of "We Are Family," being distributed to elementary schools to promote diversity and tolerance, is part of a cryptic "pro-homosexual" agenda. But an op-ed by Ruth Marcus, a member of the Washington Post's editorial page staff, titled "Ready to Throw in the Sponge?" raises some provocative issues that supporters of gay equality would be foolish to dismiss out of hand.

She writes, "who could resist the temptation to make fun of the alarm-sounders? Not I, certainly - how else to respond to people who work themselves into a lather over an animated talking sponge? Yet, in an odd way, I also find myself understanding some of what's bothering them."

She notes, further, that:

...if you peel away his repulsive prejudice against gays and his overheated paranoia, Dobson's stated problems with the video echo the worries of many ordinary parents, even liberal ones, that they are the losers in the culture wars and that they have been supplanted in their role by outside forces.

This phenomenon was brought home to me recently when my elementary school-age children's private school put up a photography exhibit on families with gay members.... What discomfited some of us - many of us, in fact - was the explicitness of the accompanying text describing families with bisexual and transgender parents and families with a history of incest.

This was a PC bridge too far. One day that week, I was driving the kids home and asked the innocuous question of what they had done in school. "We went up to see the exhibit and learned about transgender families," my 9-year-old answered brightly. "Will was a little confused about how the woman had the baby if she is a man." I held my breath, waiting for the 7-year-old to follow up.

...is it really necessary, absent such a predicate, to go through all this in elementary school? And whether my reaction is right or wrong, shouldn't this be a decision for me and my husband to make - not something sprung on us by our school? This is the way in which I find myself unexpectedly, and somewhat unsettlingly, aligned with the Focusers on the Family.

I'm not embracing Marcus's view of things, but I think it's important for those who work for gay equality to understand these fears instead of just dismissing them as "bigotry" and "hate." It might also help to recognize that some (not all) of what progressive activists want to preach to school kids, where they're able to do so, can be over the line.

More Recent Postings
1/23/05 - 1/29/05

Iran clerics have no problem with men undergoing sex change operations, reports the Los Angeles Times:

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, gay male sex still carries the death penalty and lesbians are lashed, but hundreds of people are having their gender changed legally, bolstered by the blessings of members of the ruling Shiite clergy.

"Approval of gender changes doesn't mean approval of homosexuality. We're against homosexuality," says Mohammed Mahdi Kariminia, a cleric in the holy city of Qom and one of Iran's foremost proponents of using hormones and surgery to change sex. "But we have said that if homosexuals want to change their gender, this way is open to them."

Sadly, gay men are no doubt facing intense pressure to undergo sex change/castrations. But one can see how, from the fundamentalists' perspective, this actually affirms the stark duality of gender that they need to uphold.

In Connecticut, the Hartford Courant reports in "Tactic May Stall Bid For Civil Unions" that:

Connecticut appeared poised this year to become the first state to approve civil unions for same-sex couples without the threat of court intervention. But now the chances of passage have greatly dimmed as the result of a controversial decision by an influential gay rights group. Love Makes a Family began telling legislative allies Wednesday it is launching an all-or-nothing campaign for a same-sex marriage law.

It is a decision that puts the group at odds with legislative supporters, some of whom see Connecticut on the threshold of extending an important civil right.

Are gay-marriage activists right to oppose civil unions, even if they confer all the state benefits of marriage? How about statewide domestic partnership bills, as in California, that might offer many but not all spousal rights?

The Courant story also reports:

Rep. Cameron Staples, D-New Haven, said civil unions have picked up significant bipartisan support in the last two years, including an unexpected endorsement from one of the legislature's leading conservatives, House Minority Leader Robert Ward, R-North Branford. "We have a real opportunity to pass a civil union bill this year with all the rights of marriage. The position taken by Love Makes a Family puts that at risk," Staples said. "I was disappointed."

Love Makes a Family, a coalition of groups backing equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, always set marriage as its goal. What's new, legislators said, is the all-or-nothing strategy....

In a sense, this debate could be looked at as Vermont vs. Massachusetts. In the former, a comprehensive civil unions law was passed following a court order that gays be given equivalent rights; in the latter, the state's highest court ordered that gays be granted full marriage equality. The Massachusetts' ruling, however, unleashed a backlash that led many states to pass constitutional amendments barring both same-sex marriage and (in many instances) civil unions, and gave momentum to a federal constitutional amendment that would do the same.

In neither Vermont nor Massachusetts, let's note, do same-sex couples receive federal recognition or spousal rights. However, in an interesting development, this week Wal-Mart (one of the nation's largest employers) expanded its definition of "immediate family" to include an employee's same-sex partner in states that recognize either domestic partnerships and civil unions. Once again, private employers go where government fears to tread.

Given how deeply conservative and fearful the nation is on the issue of marriage - even Kerry-voting Oregon voted overwhelmingly to ban gay marriage - supporting civil unions as an initial step doesn't seem imprudent (how's that for a definitive position!). As noted before, the Netherlands and Belgium both began with civil-union-like partnerships; after people became comfortable with them, it was easier to then grant gays full marriage access.

(Newly posted on this site, John Corvino further makes a case for civil unions.)

Canada, of course, looks like it may skip the civil unions phase and go straight (so to speak) to same-sex marriage. But the U.S. is most certainly not Canada, and one reason Canada may grant marriage rights is to further poke its nose at the U.S.

In Connecticut, if it turns out that the civil unions bill on the verge of passing is pulled for lack of gay activists' support, and if no marriage bill is subsequently passed (and I believe it very unlikely one would be), it will stand as a lesson for others facing the same choice elsewhere.

"A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage," reports the New York Times.

The letter, dated Jan. 18 and addressed to the administration's lead political strategist, Karl Rove, was sent by a coalition known as the Arlington Group. Last November, MSNBC reported that the Arlington Group "unites the heads of almost every major political advocacy organization on the Christian right, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values, Bill Bennett of Empower America, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America and Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation."

The Arlington Group expressed disappointment with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage. Referencing President Bush's recent statement that "nothing will happen" on the marriage amendment for now because many senators did not see the need for it, the group's letter threatens:

When the administration adopts a defeatist attitude on an issue that is at the top of our agenda [banning same-sex marriage], it becomes impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings.

The letter also whined that in an interview before the election President Bush "appeared to endorse civil unions" for same-sex couples, something the left-gays at the Human Rights Campaign have still not acknowledged.

In response to the letter, the Log Cabin Republicans issued a statement saying:

The Arlington Group should stop using political blackmail to push a divisive Constitutional amendment that failed by wide margins last year in both houses of Congress. Instead they should join with other conservative and Republican groups in supporting the GOP's reform agenda.

The statement also quoted LCR President Patrick Guerriero saying:

The creation of personal savings accounts is a tremendous opportunity for the Republican Party to build an ownership society. I hope the Arlington Group joins Log Cabin and dozens of other grassroots conservative organizations in fully supporting Republican efforts to save Social Security.

I'm glad that, at least this time, it's Log Cabin that's standing by the administration and building bridges while the one-issue focused social conservatives are refusing to play if they don't get their way.

A follow-up on responses from left and right to the controversial "gay Lincoln" theory. Columnist Doug Ireland, gay and of the left, writes that a grotesque Lincoln cartoon in The Nation, the leading leftwing political magazine, "showing Lincoln's head on a woman's body with an ample, protruding bosom and dressed scantily in 19th century women's lingerie," is much worse than even the rightwing Weekly Standard's gay-stereotype Lincoln cover. And it is. Scroll down Ireland's blog and take a look.

More Recent Postings
1/16/05 - 1/22/05

No, not polygamy. But a bill granting some marriage-like rights passed Utah's state senate, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. The bill, for example, would

...allow two adults - be it a same-sex couple or a grandmother and granddaughter - to register with the state Health Department and check which benefits they want, including hospital visitation privileges and inheritance....

In addition to granting hospital-visitation rights and inheritance benefits to those who register for reciprocal rights, the bill would allow them to make organ-donation decisions, make funeral arrangements and also make emergency medical choices for the other person.

The bill comes less than three months after voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and restrict benefits in any "domestic union" outside marriage.

Now, one could argue that allowing a man to "reciprocal partner" with his grandmother is far more likely to weaken traditional marriage than letting two unrelated gay adults wed. But being optimistic, maybe if people get used to same-sex couples "reciprocal partnering," it would make them less fearful of same-sex marriage (or at least civil unons!) - even in Utah.

Update: Well, so much for that, as Utah lawmakers kill partners bill.

An e-mailed press release from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force hypes "Why Welfare Reform Is a Queer Issue," a panel and "speak out" to be held at NYC's LGBT Community Center on Jan. 26. On the agenda, NGLTF's Jason Cianciotto will explain the "overt homophobia in welfare - abstinence promotion, marriage promotion, fatherhood initiatives." Also according to the press release:

Policy experts will address the harmful impact of the 1996 welfare reform laws on the LGBT community and what's in store for the LGBT community with reauthorization.... Discussion will include how new welfare proposals increase funding for homophobic policies like marriage promotion and fatherhood initiatives.

I remember how when Clinton signed the GOP welfare reform bill requiring able-bodied, long-term welfare recipients to take available jobs, left-liberals predicted our nation would again be filled with Hoovervilles (i.e., homeless tent cities). Instead, a record number of long-term welfare recipients actually (gasp) took jobs.

As for welfare reform being anti-LGBT because it promotes marriage and fatherhood, one could certainly argue that not allowing gays to marry increases the liklihood that poor gays would need welfare, since studies show married couples are better able to lift themselves out of poverty. But I suspect we're actually seeing a hint of what the activists at NGLTF actually feel - marriage itself is an oppressive institution, so encouraging folks to marry (and, especially, encouraging single mothers to marry one of their children's fathers) simply reinforces the evils of patriarchy.

Update: If you haven't done so, click below and read the comments posted on this item. We don't always get intelligent debate; this time we did.