IGF CultureWatch

And what of the Democrats? Here's an excerpt from Bob Roehr's report in the Windy City Times:

Gays and lesbians who stayed tuned for the Democratic response hoping for a defense on these issues were sadly disappointed, even though it was delivered by Senate leader Tom Daschle and one of the most pro-gay members of Congress, House leader Nancy Pelosi.

There was not one word on HIV or on any gay issue even though press accounts in the days leading up to the speak noted a slight increase in domestic AIDS funding in the President's proposed budget and his intent to defend traditional marriage.

Senator John Kerry, the upset winner in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa the previous day, defended his 1996 vote against DOMA in an interview on ABC News. He called his vote a denouncement of the "gay bashing" that took place during the Senate debate on that legislation. He was one of only 14 Senators vote against the bill. However, Kerry said that when it comes to gay marriage, "I have the same position as the President."

Last week, Judge Charles W. Pickering of Mississippi accepted President Bush's offer of a recess appointment to a long-vacant Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals slot -- an end-run that bypassed Senate Democrats who had filibustered Pickering's confirmation. Much consternation was expressed by the left.

But despite his opponents' charges of "racial insensitivity," Pickering has a long and distinguished civil rights record that includes bravely testifying for the prosecution in a criminal hate-murder case against the Ku Klux Klan. Also not widely reported were his rulings regarding gays and lesbians. In 1991, Pickering sharply rebuked an attorney who tried to use a plaintiff's homosexuality in a fraud trial, saying "Homosexuals are as much entitled to be protected from fraud as any other human beings." And in 1994 he stopped an anti-gay citizens group in the town of Ovett, Mississippi, from using the courts to harass Camp Sister Spirit, a lesbian community. "The judge who threw out the anti-Camp Sister Spirit case and rebuked homophobia from the bench in the Deep South over ten years ago deserves a promotion," according to a statement last year from the Log Cabin Republicans.

The Human Rights Campaign, which was part of the Democratic coalition that opposed Pickering, condemned his appointment, making much of remarks by Pickering 20 years ago before a Baptist group in which he briefly mentioned divorce and homosexuality as social ills. Not exactly fire and brimstone, and it's the worst that liberal gays could find.

Once again, the broad--based liberal-left agenda of the gay "mainstream" takes precedence over support for fair-minded conservatives.

The Right and the Left, Again.

Sunday's New York Times reported that:

[Sandy] Rios of Concerned Women for America said Mr. Bush had implicitly endorsed gay unions. "It is the same as saying the federal government doesn't want to weigh in on slavery, but if the states want to call it chattel that is O.K," Ms. Rios said.

By the way, right-winger Rios was condemning the same Bush statements that the left-wing National Gay & Lesbian Task Force called "a declaration of war on gay America."

More Recent Postings

1/11/03 - 1/17/04

"Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage," reports the New York Times. The program includes "training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.' -- Aside from the fact that the this reeks of the sort of nanny state-social worker meddling that Democrats usually specialize in, there's no basis in the U.S. Constitution for making taxpayer-funded marriage counseling a responsibility of the federal government.

But politically speaking, it's clear Bush is hoping to placate the GOP's religious right base with a $1.5 billion "pro marriage" payoff, and perhaps avoid being pressed into endorsing the far more controversial anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment championed by social conservatives. As the Times noted:

[Administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that gay couples had a right to marry under the state's Constitution.

The religious right is clearly hoping the marriage initiative will be just an appetizer to the anti-gay amendment main course, but Bush, I think, is hoping it will be enough to satiate the social right's rank and file voters, if not its virulently homophobic leaders.

My IGF co-editor, Jonathan Rauch, makes a powerful case for ending the ban on immigrnants with HIV. The piece is titled "Bad Blood."
[Hyperlink is now fixed]

Here's a nice column from USA Today in which a gay couple from Washington state discuss their decision to legally wed in Canada [note, when originally posted I mistakenly described the couple as Canadian]. It's called "Marriage Strengthens Bond of Same-Sex Couples, Too."

More Recent Postings

1/11/03 - 1/17/04

There's a fair amount of misleading reporting around Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comments on a proposed anti-gay marriage amendment. Cheney said in an interview that "the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes." Cheney declined to say whether he has discussed the issue of same-sex marriage with the president, the Denver Post reports, or shared his perspective as the parent of a gay daughter.
"I don't talk about the advice I give the president," Cheney said. "That is why he listens."

Some media are reporting that "Cheney says he will support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage," choosing to ignore the conditional tone of his statement, just as the New York Times misreported the story when Bush said he'd support such an amendment "if necessary" (and instead reported it as "Bush will").

It should come as no surprise that Cheney promises to support any decision the president might eventually make. That's his job. But it's not the same as saying that he personally favors such a ban. And it certainly doesn't tell us what Cheney is advising the president to do.

You don't have to be Bush backer to believe that getting the facts right is important when it comes to trying to prevent Bush/Cheney from making an actual endorsement of the amendment. They have not done so, though they may be floating trial balloons, or trying to placate the religious right without taking any action. As I've said before, declaring that they have endorsed the amendment is not only bad reporting, it's surrendering well before the battle's over.

"Group opposed to gay marriage assailed for hiding poll results," reads the Boston Herald headline. Seems that the Massachusetts Family Institute / Coalition for Marriage released only those portions of a new Zogby poll that supported their position - and hid the fact that a narrow majority in the Bay State oppose their drive to ban gay marriage by amending the state constitution.

The Boston Globe followed up, quoting a coalition spokesman who says he merely "misspoke" on the poll findings. By the way, they also have a bridge in Brooklyn they're looking to sell.

Adventures in Hetero-Marriage Land.

Libertarian-minded columnist and IGF contributing author Deroy Murdock takes a look at the Britney Speakrs/Jason Allen Alexander quickie nuptials and quicker annulment. He writes (on the conservative National Review Online site):

Whatever objections they otherwise may generate, gay couples who desire marriage at least hope to stay hitched. Britney's latest misadventure, in contrast, reduced marriage from something sacred to just another Vegas activity, like watching the Bellagio Hotel's fountains between trips to the blackjack tables. "

"social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

And liberal columnist Ellen Goodman had this to say:

Britney and Jason were granted an annulment in 55 hours on the grounds that they lacked "understanding of each other's actions in entering upon this marriage." Compare them to gay couples who "understand" each other and commitment but are kept legally single. "

And the idea that same-sex marriage somehow disparages heterosexual marriage? We can put that to rest. Who needs gay couples when you have Britney and Jason?

Gays a Threat to Marriage?

According to a new survey, typical urban-dwellers now spend much of their adult lives unmarried - either dating or single (or, in the case of gay couples, unable to wed). According to the Washington Post:

"What's going on now is making the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s pale in comparison," says Eli Coleman, director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota. He called [the new survey from the University of Chicago] the most comprehensive since that of acclaimed researcher Alfred Kinsey, who surveyed people about sex in the 1940s

However,

"social services, the church and law enforcement have been slow to address this latest sexual revolution. -- "It's not approved. It's not talked about," [project leader Edward] Laumann says. "Or they just look the other way."

Or they pretend that gay marriage would somehow be the real threat to the culture of marriage!

IGF's Paul Varnell has more to say on the hypocrisy of gay marriage opponents in his new posting, "Anti-Love Isn't Pro Marriage."
- Stephen H. Miller

More Recent Postings

1/4/04 - 1/11/04

A suburban San Jose school district agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by six gay students who said they were subjected to beatings, death threats and other harassment. The Morgan Hill district, which did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, also agreed to hold training sessions for students and teachers to discourage anti-gay harassment.

Although I'm against the epidemic of frivolous lawsuits that's overtaken the country, if what these students charge was done to them is true, then the school district deserves to be held accountable. While I'd prefer real school choice so that children can escape the clutches of uncaring educrats who can't or won't ensure their safety, as long as government schools use our tax dollars we should demand that gay kids not be treated as expendable.

The Right to Fire

Hewlett-Packard did not violate the rights of a devout Christian employee when it fired him for posting Biblical scriptures on his cubicle that were critical of homosexuality, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled.

Those who believe that private (or shareholder-owned) companies should have the right to hire or fire at will should see nothing wrong with HP giving the sack to a homophobe. But those who believe companies should not be able to fire (or not hire) on the basis of an employee or applicant's personal beliefs may have to contort themselves to explain why some expressions of religious conviction are more equal than others.

The experience of teen girls who have same-sex relationships is markedly different from that of gay males, recounts the Washington Post in "Partway Gay?":

Outside of conservative religious circles, the common understanding for years has been that homosexuality is largely genetic, based on physical attraction, and unchanging. Though an easy model to understand, if not accept, it has a major flaw: It is derived almost exclusively from male subjects.

Recent studies of relationships among women suggest that female homosexuality may be grounded more in social interaction, may present itself as an emotional attraction in addition to or in place of a physical one, and may change over time.

The greater fluidity of sexual orientation among many (not all) women as compared with men can't be dismissed, though it makes for a more complicated picture of gay life in the 21st century.

GOP leaders have been abandoning their party's commitment to federalism in favor of further centralizing Washington's authority over the states. "States' rights," of course, has a dubious legacy and liberals love to associate the idea with discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the South. But the concept that the states are better suited than Washington to understand and respond to local needs has always been fundamental to our democratic republic.

The newest wrinkle is that even Republicans who champion local autonomy are abandoning the idea in order to support a constitutional amendment to prohibit states from recognizing gay marriage. The AP quotes IGF contributing author David Boaz on the Republicans' waning enthusiasm for allowing states to act as laboratories of democracy:

Traditionally the champions of small government and states' rights, President Bush and his allies in Congress have aggressively pursued policies that expand the powers of Washington in the schoolroom, the courthouse, the home and the doctor's office. "

David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, which advocates limited government and individual liberties, said there are inevitable tensions when conservatives try to use federal power to override the actions of more liberal state governments. "

Cato's Boaz said the next big fight will be over GOP attempts to stop state moves to sanction gay marriages. "Some conservatives are saying we need one national policy, but that would be an unprecedented federal intrusion into marriage law that has always been controlled by the states,'' he said.

Of course, the Democrats support granting more power to Washington over virtually all policy matters, and thus are ill equipped to argue the federalism case when it comes to gay marriage.

More Recent Postings

12/28/03 - 1/3/04