IGF CultureWatch

I've been out of town with limited computer access these past few days, which explains the lack of postings. I hope to get caught up next week. But I did want to check in and note a few passing thoughts.

On Bush's inaugural theme of freedom and liberty: It's easy to point out the obvious - he wants to deny gay couples the freedom to marry. True enough, but endorsing individual freedom as the foundation for social advancement is still worth celebrating, and Bush's rhetoric can be used to hold the GOP accountable when it attempts to use the power of the state to elevate the prejudices of the majority over the rights of all to equal treatment under the law (including the right to equal participation in the institutions created or regulated by the state). Remember, Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder but his proclamation that "all men are created equal" nevertheless provided the inspiration to abolish slavery.

But by the same token, freedom also means free individuals may choose with whom they wish to affiliate and associate in the private sphere, and the state should not intervene even if private country clubs choose to discriminate against gays and not recognize gay families. That is simply one of the tradeoffs of freedom.

On Martin Luther King Day, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" focused on Nate Berkus, a regular guest who talks about interior design, and who just survived the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. Sadly, his partner, photographer Fernando Bengoechea, was lost in the waves. Berkus told a very moving story of fighting to stay together and cling to one another as they were both swept into the ocean, and then being pulled apart by the water's force. Many in the audience wept. It was Oprah's highest rated show of the season, and another example of how Americans from all walks are getting to know gay people and our lives.

Update: Writing in Salon, Jennifer Buckendorff's "The Oprah Way" explains why "to change people's minds on issues like gay marriage, liberals [I'd say supporters of gay equality] need to learn to tug at their heartstrings."

Rich Tafel's blog reports on a local GOP event where Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie was asked, by Republican Unity Coalition founder Charles Francis, about the place of gays in an inclusive GOP. Rich writes:

Gillespie went on to explain that the GOP needed to reach out to all groups if the party is to become a majority party....My impression is that the Republican leaders are looking for opportunities to mend fences with gays in the party....For gays to move forward they'll need to educate those who don't understand us in the same way the Gillespie's father educated him about the immigration issue. It looks like there are opportunities now to build bridges between gay Republicans and the GOP.

That's a hopeful message for inauguration week, but time will tell whether the GOP's leadership is intent on becoming a big tent, or just blowing smoke.

While watching Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" Tuesday night I was surprised to see an ad from the Human Rights Campaign attacking George Bush. Was this a mistake, left over from the campaign? No, it appears that HRC is proudly blasting Bush during his inaugural week.

But just what is the purpose of buying time on Fox TV, Republican central, to let die-hard conservatives know just how much gays hate President Bush? And this, within a week of Bush's statement that his administration wouldn't be pushing the Federal Marriage Amendment (thus igniting an uproar among social conservatives)?

But HRC would rather attack Bush than in any way, shape or form try to work with the administration in power for the next four years. What a sorry state of affairs.

By the way, I was watching Bill O'Reilly because his guest was Philip Nobile discussing the "gay Lincoln" theory put forth in the new book by the late C.A. Tripp, with whom Nobile worked before a falling out. O'Reilly clearly thought Nobile would blast the theory but instead, while criticizing Tripp's work, Nobile argued that "there's more evidence for the gay-Lincoln than for the completely-straight-Lincoln theory." This did not please O'Reilly, who was clearly miffed.

At one point when Nobile pointed to accounts that Lincoln, on several occasions, had surreptitiously invited Captain David Derickson to share his bed in the White House when Mrs. Lincoln was away, O'Reilly countered that perhaps they were simply having "a pajama party."

I've ragged on the national leadership of the Log Cabin Republicans quite a bit lately. That's because LCR's mission is so critical. We need to be a presence in both major parties, so when LCR last year looked like it was starting to morph into HRC - evidenced, for instance, by the group's silence when Bush made accepting comments about civil unions - then it seemed as if no one was trying to get a seat at the GOP table.

But it may be that LCR is catching on. Last week they noted (if not quite praised) President Bush's statement suggesting that the Federal Marriage Amendment wouldn't be pushed by the administration. LCR has also proclaimed support for GOP Social Security and tax reform initiatives, something that until now has been less than prominent on the group's website.

There are those who say we shouldn't work with the GOP till they come round on our issues. But unless gay conservatives work with the GOP on issues of mutual interest (such as Social Security and tax reform), those bridges will never be built.

Libertarian-minded columnist Steve Chapman looks at the Florida adoption gay ban and rolls his eyes, noting that "The original impulse, it turns out, was not to protect children but to penalize gays." And it still is.

The so-called "unity statement" that the Log Cabin Republicans signed with the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign and 18 other national gay groups is a mixed bag. The statement endorses the basic agenda of most gay activists, including support for hate crime laws (which add penalties on the basis of anti-gay motivation), and federal and state laws to outlaw job-related anti-gay discrimination.

But while most gays may support these goals, many libertarian and conservative-minded gays don't, believing that equal treatment is all gays should demand from the state; that violent acts, not violent thoughts, should be criminalized; and that private employers have a right to hire and fire whomever they please. But gay libertarians and conservatives are outside the framework of this unity.

The statement also follows the litany of proclaiming we're all part of a "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community," leading to a call, for instance, to end "the military's discriminatory anti-LGBT ban," meaning that cross-dressers, too, be allowed to enlist. But demanding a transgender-inclusive military (no discharge for Corporal Klinger) will set back efforts to let gays serve openly and honorably.

Also problematic, the statement declares, "We must continue to expose the radical right's efforts to advance a culture of prejudice and intolerance, and we must fight their attempts to enshrine anti-gay bigotry in our state and federal laws and constitutions." The problem here? While many anti-gay activists are bigots, not all are. Many misguidedly fear that same-sex matrimony will destabilize, rather than strengthen, marriage. They're wrong, but labeling them "bigots" who are part of the "radical right," when they are neither, does nothing to bring them around.

There are, however, some pluses. I was glad to see a positive remark from President Bush is used to help advance the cause, rather than eliciting knee-jerk condemnation. From the unity statement:

In December, People magazine asked President and Mrs. Bush about civil unions. "Is a couple joined by that kind of legal arrangement as much of a family as, say, you two are a family?" "Of course," President Bush replied.

Bush's acknowledgement (despite his support for an anti-gay constitutional amendment) has set an important new minimum standard for future dialog surrounding same-sex couples and families..."

That's progress, since during the campaign when Bush criticized his own party's platform for opposing state-recognized civil unions, the Log Cabiners were silent and NGLTF and HRC actually condemned Bush's remarks. So the unity statement shows some headway here.

A final point: Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said the statement's was intended "to send a message...that we share a common vision." But while LCR is clearly intent on finding unity with liberal gays, it appears less concerned about finding unity with Republicans, or even gays who might support equal treatment but not hate crimes, job laws and the rest of the agenda. That's LCR's prerogative, of course, but it's worth noting that it does leave a block of gays outside the bounds of "unity."

More Recent Postings
1/09/05 - 1/15/05

Writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal (online for WSJ subscribers only), cultural critic Bret Stephens links together both the legacy of crypto-lesbian Susan Sontag and C.A. Tripp's outing of Lincoln. Well, someone had to do it, right?

Referencing Sontag's (in)famous "Notes on Camp," Stephens calls it:

...basically a manifesto, masquerading as an analysis, of one type of homosexual sensibility. Camp, she wrote, was disengaged, apolitical, ironic, lighthearted, extravagant, a "solvent of morality," the antithesis of tragedy. "The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious," wrote Ms. Sontag. "One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious." In other words, gay.

Then, turning to Tripp, Stephens writes:

Mr. Tripp's book treads a well-worn path of various social and political movements in America that have claimed Lincoln as one of their own: Christian evangelicals, temperance societies, progressives, socialists. The historical claims made on Lincoln were almost always false, but the spirit animating them was usually decent. By contrast, the worst political movements in America have been the ones that rejected Lincoln's legacy, such as Southern segregationists and the Black Power movement, and the trends that ignored his legacy altogether - like Camp.

Which brings me back to Ms. Sontag. Though she presented herself as the consummate voice of intellectual seriousness, she was, in fact, a popularizer of her generation's worst ideas, a champion of all its wrong impulses. And these ideas and impulses were ones that, sadly, characterized much of the gay movement for almost 40 years. Mr. Tripp is wrong to insist that Lincoln was gay. But gays are right to insist that Lincoln belongs to them as much as to anyone else.

Now some may find Stephens' critique of camp a slap against gays, but I've come round to a similar view of this particular aspect of gay culture. For what set me off most recently, see below.

Will & Graceless.

The apotheosis of mass media campiness has got to be NBC's "Will & Grace." Take last Thursday's episode, in which Will's police officer boyfriend recounts how he got fired. The "hilarious" setup: a Saks clerk was shot during a robbery because the cop/boyfriend, sent to disarm the thief, on entering the store spots a pair of fancy gloves and just has to stop and try them on (we never learn if the clerk survived or not, the matter of his life or death being wholly irrelevant). Camp as the "solvent of morality," indeed!

[corrected 1/13]
Rick Sincere's blog draws attention to a new group in the old dominion called the Virginia Family Values PAC. But hold on, it's actually a group that's fighting against elected officials who support anti-gay legislation, among other things. But this PAC is using the language of small-government conservatism to do so. As Rick puts it:

Dated January 9, the group's initial press release uses buzzwords that are sure to catch the attention of Goldwater Republicans like myself:

Virginians from across the commonwealth today announced the formation of a non-partisan political action committee to strengthen family values and families' political influence in Richmond and in the November elections....

Virginia Family Values has named four of the candidates that they'll be targeting for removal from office for their anti-family votes ... All four candidates have consistently voted against family and parental rights, and have introduced bills that would increase the size of government while decreasing family freedoms and privacy.

"The family is the foundation of our society," explained PAC founder Waldo Jaquith. "Every time that these legislators have been given the choice between family values and bigger government, they've chosen wrong. They're way out of touch with Virginia values, and we intend to show them the door."

Rick comments further:

It's rare to see a group made up of Democratic and liberal activists ... using terms like "RINO" to describe Republicans...for whom "RINO" is more accurate than they would be willing to admit. What a pleasure it would be if more Democrats wanted to rid our legislatures of RINOs and replace them with authentic, small-government, Goldwater conservatives.

Jon Henke, who describes himself as a "neo-libertarian," picked up on this too, noting that "some groups are taking what seems to me to be very effective grassroots action.... They've co-opted the language of the religious right and turned it on them. That's pretty clever."

This is an interesting strategy, and although the Virginia Family Values PAC is not a gay group (I originally misreported that, as Rick informs me), I hope local gay groups will be inspired to likewise think outside the liberal-left box. But don't expect the large inside-the-beltway crowd to follow along, given the Human Rights Campaign's smackdown for even considering support for personally owned Social Security accounts that gay partners could bequeath to one another.

The long-awaited publication of the final work by the late psychologist/Kinsey associate C.A. Tripp, claiming that Abe Lincoln was gay (based on an analysis of circumstantial evidence), has, expectedly, drawn some critical reaction. Richard Brookhiser, an historian and senior editor at the conservative National Review, but writing in the New York Times, offers one of the more balanced perspectives, finding:

Tripp can lay out a case, but his discussion of its implications is so erratic that the reader is often left on his own. One wonders: What does it mean to be homosexual?" ...

Tripp argues that a cultural innocence - the word "homosexual" had not yet been coined - allowed acts of physical closeness between men that had no deeper meaning, as well as acts that did but could escape scrutiny. We know more than our ancestors, and our reward is that, in some ways, we may do less. In any case, on the evidence before us, Lincoln loved men, at least some of whom loved him back. Their words tell us more than their sleeping arrangements.

On the other hand, disgruntled former Tripp associate Philip Nobile, writing in the conservative Weekly Standard, labels the work "a hoax and a fraud: a historical hoax, because the inaccurate parts are all shaded toward a predetermined conclusion, and a literary fraud, because significant portions of the accurate parts are plagiarized..." (from Nobile's own work, that is). And he adds a tale of this encounter with gay firebrand Larry Kramer:

"If you don't stop making a stink about Tripp's book, I'm going to expose you as an enormous homophobe," Larry Kramer telephoned me to say last October. "For the sake of humanity, please, gays need a role model." I replied that the book was so bad, it would backfire on the homosexual movement when reviewers and readers caught on to the fabrications, contradictions, and general nuttiness of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

Still, even Nobile admits:

The Gay Lincoln Theory, for all its jagged edges, may be a more satisfying explanation for the president's weird inner life than the Utterly Straight Lincoln Theory. "I have heard [Lincoln] say over and over again about sexual contact: 'It is a harp of a thousand strings,' Henry Whitney told William Herndon in 1865. Leaving aside Tripp's bad faith, it is not utterly beyond imagining that Lincoln may have played a few extra strings on that harp.

Yet perhaps more telling about the conservative response is the Weekly Standard's cover, featuring a limp-wristed, erring-wearing Lincoln and the text "The First Log Cabin Republican?" That mocking response captures how most social conservatives are going to react to the "gay Lincoln" claims.

Updates: Andrew Sullivan argues it's Nobile who is guilty of fraud, not Tripp. And Tim Hulsey compares the Weekly Standard's Lincoln cover with another offensive Lincoln representation, this time over at liberal Salon.com. Writes Tim, "Judging from these two publications, it's disturbingly easy for heterosexual Americans - regardless of ideology - to make light of silly fairies, especially if we dare to claim Honest Abe as one of our own."

Rich Tafel explains why he's not offended by the Weekly Standard cover.