IGF CultureWatch

For those not yet entirely sick of the Reagan and gays debate, the Advocate online features Larry Kramer's screed from the print
issue, comparing Reagan to Hitler, and Andrew Sullivan's online-only response.
--Stephen H. Miller

One of our community's old nemeses, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, has become a for-now ally.

Some years back, Barr authored the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton. DOMA holds that no state can be forced to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state, and then goes on to forbid the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions (e.g., no joint tax filings, no social security inheritance, no green card for non-U.S. same-sex spouses). While the first half of DOMA basically restates what many constitutional scholars believe is already a state's prerogative to set and interpret marriage law, the federal prohibition is truly noxious and unforgivable.

But Barr gets some positive karmic points for his testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Unlike his fellow Republicans such as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who disgraced himself by calling for a federal constitutional amendment that would prohibit his state from ever approving gay marriage, Barr blasted the proposed FMA, saying:

Part of federalism means that states have the right to make bad decisions - even on the issue of who can get married in the state. Resisting the temptation to use the federal government to meddle in state matters is the test of this conservative principle. Indeed, it is the test separating conservative federalists from hard-line social conservatives, willing to sacrifice the Constitution in their understandable anxiety over the sorry state of modern morality....

[T]he amendment supported by Governor Romney...takes a moral decision out of the states, where it is most likely to be made with the optimal benefit to everyone, and hands it to a couple of lone elected officials. To be frank, I do not appreciate their presumption to dictate morals to my fellow Georgians through misuse of the federal Constitution....

[T]he Governor is pleading for this Congress and the federal government to protect him against the Massachusetts state constitution, the Massachusetts legislature, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and most ironically, the people of Massachusetts.

So, for today, two cheers for Bob Barr!

Fair-minded conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke, writing in The Atlantic:

I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.

Actually, that pretty well sums up how to make a conservative case for gay equality, with an emphasis on promoting social stability and not simply advancing rights (or, as the right would have it, "special rights").

I wish the big-money gay lobby groups would learn how to "speak conservative," rather than hurling the language of liberalism and wondering why their arguments are so readily dismissed. It's not that those arguments are wrong (e.g., we have a right to be who we are and to live as we want, and the government should not deny us our fair share of recognition/legal equality/social benefits). But for conservatives who are concerned/fixated on maintaining social cohesion in the face of imminent anarchy, they might as well be speaking Greek. And of course, the hard gay left delights in preaching that their lgbtqxyz movement is, in fact, aimed at obliterating bourgeois normality, capitalism, etc. (thanks guys).

The Sunday Washington Post ran a big story, "Foes Confounded by Limited Outcry Against Gay Marriage," saying the marriage issue isn't catching on for the right:

Evangelical leaders had predicted that a chorus of righteous anger would rise up out of churches from coast to coast and overwhelm Congress with letters, e-mails and phone calls in support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. But that has not happened.

Then, Monday's Wall Street Journal had a big story (only online for subscribers) titled: "Christian Coalition Working for a Revival: Gay-Marriage Issue Seen as a Lightning Rod for Fresh Energy, New Conservative Troops." But the Journal story is more about hard-core activists being up in arms and organizing themselves ("Some 30 new diretors have been appointed to coalition chapters") than about the grassroots troops marching in the streets or phoning/writing Congress.

While abortion -- seen as saving the innocent unborn from slaughter -- galvanized the conservative church-going, work-a-day types to protest, same-sex marriage hasn't, and I think will not. The activist leadership of the religious right still doesn't get this, since their homophobic fanaticism is such a big part of their psychological makeup. But it's not translating to the masses who may personally oppose gay marriage but don't see any need to pass a constitutional amendment telling the liberals over in Massachusetts what their state can or can't do.

Here's a surprise from a Father's Day interview with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) in the New York Times Magazine. (You may recall that the former Senate majority leader once famously compared homosexuality with alcoholism and kleptomania.). Here's the excerpt:

[final question]

Q: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children?

Lott: It's so important that children have parents or family that love them. There are a lot of adopted children who have loving parents, and it comes in different ways with different people in different states.

Don't know if there was any more context to this statement than the Times is providing. But from Lott, it's a startling sentiment.

More Recent Postings

6/13/04 - 6/19/04

Looks like anti-gay Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is angling for a July vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would bar any state from recognizing same-sex marriages. The amendment has little chance of garnering the 60 votes needed to keep it alive, but that's not the point: Santorum and the GOP's anti-gay crusaders want to use the vote to bludgeon gay-supportive Democrats in November.

But the anti-gay right isn't even united on the amendment. As this story from the conservative CNSNews.com reports:

Some conservative groups reject the Federal Marriage Amendment as currently written. Concerned Women for America says it's important to do more than preserve marriage "in name only." The group says same-sex partnerships should not be afforded the same benefits as married couples are.

"CWA opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment because it would not prevent state legislatures from recognizing and benefiting civil unions and other such relationships, which would result in legalized counterfeit marriage," the group's website says.

The politics of this thing get loopier every day.

I don't know how much stock I'd put in this NY Post gossip item claiming that former Sen. Sam Nunn, (D-Ga.), a fervent supporter of the military gay ban, is a strong contender for Kerry's vice presidential spot. I assume the Kerry campaign is putting out many false signs of interest to placate a range of ideological and regional constituencies. However if such a thing were to come to pass, you can bet liberal gay groups would contort themselves in defense of the ticket.

It's good to see that some on the gay left actually do stick to their principles. The Chicago Anti-Bashing Network (CABN) plans to picket a John Kerry fundraiser, citing the gamesmanship through which both Kerry and Illinois Democratic senate candidate Barack Obama try to have it both ways -- opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment but also opposing marriage equality for gays. This is from the CABN website:

John Kerry...says that while he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment, he also OPPOSES gay marriage and says he SUPPORTS a proposed anti-gay amendment to the Massachusetts State Constitution. In other words, he calls for destroying equal marriage rights in the one state where they have been secured!! Democratic office holders in Massachusetts are in the forefront of a move which could once again ban gay marriage there as early as 2006. ...

On Saturday night Obama and John Dean, a stand-in for Kerry, will be the honored guests at the annual Human Rights Campaign fundraiser. We call on all true supporters of full equal rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people to please join us for a picket of Obama and Dean.

HRC, of course, would support Attila the Hun if he were the Democratic presidential nominee.

I guess I wasn't really aware of this until I read it in the June 22 (Pride) issue of The Advocate. Writes author and Air America (that's lefty radio) host Laura Flanders:

At every level the [Democratic] party needs a push: of the 14 legislative bodies in seven states that have passed anti-gay marriage amendments (which are subject to voter approval), six were Democrat-dominated; two state legislatures had both houses controlled by Democrats.

Yes, on gay matters, the GOP is worse. But the Democrats will do as little as they feel they can get away with, and those who urge gay voters to withdraw from the GOP are ensuring that the Democrats will become even more lethargic.

I've said this before, but I like it, so I'm saying it again: If a town has just two supermarkets, it doesn't do much good to proclaim you'll never, ever use supermarket A (and anybody who does should be cursed) and then complain about the lousy service you're receiving at supermarket B.

Our own Jonathan Rauch, a Virginia resident, takes aim at Virginia's law set take effect July 1 that will nullify all "contracts or arrangements" between two members of the same sex that seek to bestow marriage-like rights. In his Sunday op-ed in the Washington Post, he also reminds us that Virginia is the only state to forbid private companies, unless self-insured, from extending health insurance coverage to employees' domestic partners.

Writes Rauch of the new statute:

When Rhea County, Tenn., tried to ban gays from living there, it became a national laughingstock and hastily backed down. Obstructing gay couples' private contracts is no less vindictive and abusive, and it deserves the same nationwide opprobrium...

If Virginia's attack on basic legal equality does not offend and embarrass conservatives, what anti-gay measure possibly could? And if this law is not snuffed out, what might be next?

Two good questions.