IGF CultureWatch

The House of Representatives on Thursday solidly defeated the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment (now, apparently, titled the Marriage Protection Amendment). The final tally came in 63 votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary to alter the Constitution.
As for party discipline, 27 Republicans joined the opposition to the amendment, while 36 Democrats voted in favor of the marriage ban.

Scheduling the vote on the eve of the first presidential debate seems to ensure that it receives limited media coverage. But that doesn't matter: this circus has fulfilled its mission -- shoring up Bush's support from social conservatives. The federal measure is now deader than a dodo. But the manifold state constitutional amendments are alive and kicking. That's where the real damage will be done.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, penned an op-ed that dominated Tuesday's Wall Street Journal editorial page. And guess what, it was titled "The Marriage Amendment Is a Terrible Idea."

Cox is no supporter of same-sex marriage, mind you, and he blasts as "judicial arrogance" the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling earlier this year ordering the state to recognize gay marriages, but he then calls the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) an assault on the tradition of federalism:

The Supreme Court has frequently opined that the regulation of domestic relations "has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the states." That would change. Not only same-sex marriage and family law in general, but other areas could move into the federal judicial sphere.... Restraint in the allocation of governmental authority to the national government from the states is fundamental to our Constitution.... [W]hen it is not warranted, neither should we succumb to the temptation to federalize what the states have handled will for centuries.

Cox also notes that, "Like the Balanced Budget Amendment..., the FMA is more symbol than substance, given the near impossibility of a two-thirds vote. But unlike a requirement to balance the budget, the FMA would do more harm than good were it to be enshrined in our charter." Clearly.

I didn't catch last Sunday's "60 Minutes" interview with Fox News' superstar Bill O'Reilly, but I'm informed that O'Reilly told Mike Wallace he was in favor of civil unions for gays (albeit such unions would be open to "all" who wanted them) and favored gay couples adopting as a "last resort," to keep kids out of the system of orphanages and foster care.

Along with Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly is an icon of populist conservatism. That he breaks with conservative orthodoxy at all on civil unions and adoption is a sign of progress. If it weren't for the hot-button issue of gay marriage and the intense backlash it has engendered (increasingly our "bridge too far," for now), the scope of gay advancement would be much more apparent.

Evidence of this can be found in last Sunday's Washington Post, which began a series of articles on "Young and Gay in Real America." The first installment, which dominated the front page and continued on two full pages inside, told the story of an openly gay teenager named Michael Shackelford who lives in a small town in Oklahoma and longs for marriage with the right man and a white picket fence. Despite the hardships (being taunted and ostracized, and his more activist friend had his car keyed), Michael's life is vastly better than it would have been just a decade ago. He's out -- not entirely voluntarily. He's dated a number of guys -- in a small Oklahoma town! He hasn't joined the Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school, but it attracts about a dozen gay members. He goes to a gay youth group and a gay dance in Tulsa. He sends a note to a classmate (who, alas, turns out not to be gay). He has no qualms asking an Abercrombie clerk if he's gay. He goes to Barnes & Noble to buy a book on how to be gay.

What this shows is how much progress there has been in a generation. Rather astounding, and mostly beneath the radar.

Just when you think the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) couldn't veer farther off course, they do. The featured speaker at the upcoming 8th annual HRC National Dinner in Washington, D.C., is none other than the Rev. Al Sharpton, perpetrator of the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax/slander and organizer of demonstrations in 2000 against Freddy's Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned Harlem store that Sharpton denounced as a "white interloper," after which the store was set on fire by an arsonist, killing seven people.

Here's an online account of Sharpton's sick, sad history. Way to reach out to the mainstream, HRC!

Writing in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, William Saletan, chief political correspondent for Slate, looks at new books on same-sex marriage by gay activist and organizer Evan Wolfson and gay historian George Chauncey. Says Saletan, too often advocates of marriage equality fail to address the fear that drives opposition to gay marriage. As he puts it:

Every movement that seeks to change society faces two great tasks. The first is to discredit the old order. The second is to offer a new one. Without the assurance of a new order, the debate becomes a choice between order and chaos, and order wins. ...

This larger menace -- the abolition of moral discrimination -- is what frightens reasonable people into joining the antigay resistance. They worry that marriage is losing its meaning and being supplanted by less stable relationships. Wolfson and Chauncey vindicate their fears. Chauncey welcomes the spread of domestic partnership benefits.... Wolfson praises California for extending "family protections" to unmarried heterosexuals. ... Neither author asks why couples who can marry but choose not to do so deserve such protections.

In contrast, Saletan notes that gay marriage advocates such as Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan understand "marriage as a way to mainstream gay culture," not just a series of government benefits that ought to be available to anyone who shacks up. Concludes Saletan:

We can absorb gay marriage into our society not because it's gay but because it's marriage. It's compatible with the moral distinctions we already understand and treasure. We don't have to honor every lifestyle we tolerate or treat cohabitation like marriage. It's the enemies of gay marriage who want to make this debate an all-or-nothing, order-or-chaos proposition. Let's not help them.

My two cents: Time and again, gay activists dismiss anyone opposed to the profound socio-cultural changes the movement for gay legal equality represents as a "bigot" or "hater." Well, some may be, but most are work-a-day folks who fear the breakdown of the norms they believe knit society together. Addressing their fears and not stoking them (as some "queer liberationists" delight in doing) is a vital step too often ignored.

The Washington Blade's Chris Crain says about John Kerry's pronouncements on gay marriage:

Kerry opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment backed by President Bush...but he backs those in Massachusetts and elsewhere who are amending their state constitutions to accomplish the same end.... Kerry's public support arguably gave political cover to enough swing votes to affect the exceedingly narrow vote by the Massachusetts Legislature in favor of the constitutional ban.

After Missouri voters passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage this summer, Kerry told reporters he would have voted with the majority. Later, when he was under the impression that the Missouri measure banned civil unions as well, he switched positions and said he would have opposed it. Still later, when his campaign learned that the Missouri amendment actually took no position at all on civil unions, Kerry demurred entirely....

As with his shifting stances on Iraq and other issues, Crain writes, Kerry's "congenital inability to state a clear, principled view and then stick to it is costing him dearly and may decide the election."

More Recent Postings
9/19/04 - 9/25/04

The House of Representatives is set to vote this week on the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), a political ploy by right-wing Republicans to bash gay-supportive Democrats, since the Senate's anti-amendment vote (with Kerry and Edwards absent) dooms the measure for this session. Our own Dale Carpenter has written an excellent paper for the Cato Institute explaining why this debate should remain in the state legislatures and the federal government has no business regulating family life. It's an argument aimed at small government, pro-federalism conservatives who should oppose the FMA.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Jacques, head of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), during a conference last week with journalists quoted in the Washington Blade, lobbied against the FMA by saying:

"This is nothing but a political effort to draw attention away from Congress' failure to do something about the economy, the hemorrhaging of jobs, rising health care costs and national security."

Let's reflect on this tactic. HRC ought to be doing whatever it can to move moderate and libertarian-minded Republicans to oppose the FMA, arguing against constitutionalizing the marriage ban in a way that might sway them. Instead, she uses language that mirrors Kerry's critique of Bush's domestic agenda and calls for more expansive government. This tactic can only have one outcome: to antagonize those very Republicans whose votes she should be soliciting!

Jacques is a partisan drone who hasn't made a right call since taking the helm at HRC earlier this year. It's time for her to go.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) sent out an e-mail earlier this week that read as follows:

The year is 2010. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been guaranteed the rights granted every American by the Constitution of the United States. And, as predicted, the homosexuals have taken over. Old Glory's gone pink. Hedonism reigns. And ass-less chaps are standard office attire. Welcome to the United States of Gaymerica.

Click to enter:

http://ga4.org/ct/BdzNfRd1NQlI/gaymerica

The clink is to a webpage that continues the theme. Bizarre, to say the least, but it turns out this is a weird NGLTF call to vote on Nov. 2 styled as a parody of anti-gay propaganda. Unfortunately, NGLTF seems unaware of how easily its satire could be used by anti-gay wingers in real anti-gay fundraising letters proclaiming, "See, this is what gays really want."

In fact, the rightwing is still circulating a 1987 Gay Community News manifesto that declared "We shall sodomize your sons" and "Tremble, hetero swine," also said to have been meant as darkly humorous but which subsequently found its way into the Congressional Record as evidence of the "gay agenda."

Elsewhere, NGLTF is worried that, according to its press release, "Bisexuals Overlooked in the Debate on Equal Marriage Rights." It states:

when the Washington Post wrote about the first same-sex couple to marry in Massachusetts...the headline was wrong. One of the two, Robyn Ochs...emphasized her orientation as a bisexual in speaking with the reporter, [but] this was never mentioned....

As if focusing on bisexuality would help make the case for marriage equality clearer!

On Saturday, Louisiana voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions, one of 12 such measures on ballots around the country this year. Poll watchers say it's likely anti-gay-marriage advocates will win all 12, and win most of these easily, although the proposed ban in Oregon has a shot at losing (and maybe in Michigan, too).

The Massachusetts Supreme Court's Goodridge ruling, declaring that the Bay State must recognize full same-sex marriage -- rather than civil unions with the rights associated with marriage, as in Vermont -- will be viewed as a move that went too far, too fast, and triggered a wave of state actions that actually set back the cause of marriage equality for decades (it was George Bernard Shaw, I think, who said the road to hell is paved with good intentions).

Or maybe the success of these anti-gay ballot initiatives will show that states are quite capable of stopping same-sex marriage if they want to, derailing the pressure for a federal Constitutional amendment.

In any event, the battle for marriage equality is going to be long and hard, with many setbacks but also a few victories (Massachusetts voters may allow their same-sex marriages to stand; other states will add or beef up their domestic partnership laws; the next generation is going to be far more comfortable with gay equality than today's average voter.) Better strategies, pursued along less partisan lines and attempting to appeal to voters not already on the liberal left, could be put into play. In time, federalism allows what works to spread and exposes what's hidebound. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually.

More Recent Postings
9/12/04 - 9/18/04

In an interview published in the Dallas Voice, a gay paper, John Kerry says he was wrong to endorse a Missouri state constitutional amendment, recently passed by voters, that will ban same-sex marriage and civil unions in that state. Apparently, he was misinformed about the matter and only supports amending state constitutions to ban gay marriage, while civil unions are ok. Of course, this is very close to what Bush recently said, so I guess Kerry is courageously making sure he doesn't get to Bush's right on this matter -- not that gay Democratic activists would complain or anything.

Being uncharitable, one could say that Kerry has once again done a political recalculation and flip-flopped -- though this time in our favor. Can he tell religious conservatives he supported the Missouri amendment before he opposed it?

And yes, I realize Bush, unlike Kerry, supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban same-sex marriage and civil unions (though Bush, disingenuously, disputes it would nix the latter).

Also of note, Kerry's daughter, Vanessa, has told AIDS advocates her dad would double spending in that area. But it's odd that during a week in which Kerry the candidate spoke extensively about his health care agenda he didn't feel compelled to go on record with this promise himself. Maybe he's made so many promises to double spending in so many areas -- while balancing the budget, of course -- that he decided this was best delivered at a distance and below the media spotlight.

--Stephen H. Miller