IGF CultureWatch

A few days ago I noted that Ohio's legislature had passed, and its governor will soon sign, legislation to forbid gay marriage and to prohibit domestic partnership benefits for state employees. But this week, the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, launched its own domestic partner registry -- the first in the nation created by voters. "The registry, which passed with 55% of the vote in November in this community of 50,000, was the first such measure adopted by way of the ballot," reports the AP.

Even in Ohio, the forces of reaction can't stop the movement toward greater liberty and legal equality from advancing.

Here's an editorial from the Washington Blade and its sister publications endorsing Wesley Clark. What's interesting is the clear-headed look at the other Democratic contenders on gay issues. As Bush moves closer his party's religious right base (a big mistake, but one the administration increasingly appears committed to), it's worth noting that Democratic candidates past and present have not been held to a very high standard by their gay supporters. A few quotes from the editorial:

John Edwards" has failed to embrace civil unions for same-sex couples. -- When Dean said he intended to push the debate in the South beyond "guns, God and gays," Edwards faulted the New Englander for ducking a "values" debate important to his region. "

Among gay audiences, [John] Kerry points out that he was the only senator up for reelection in 1996 to vote against the politically popular Defense of Marriage Act. But his GOP opponent that year was Gov. Bill Weld, whose record on gay issues was far more supportive than Kerry's. Asked this week to defend his DOMA vote after President Bush vowed support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, Kerry told ABC News, "I have the same position as the president," even though Kerry has said he is actually opposed to such an amendment.

Earlier this year, Kerry cited procreation as the primary reason marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, even though his own marriage to heiress Teresa Heinz is childless.

During his tenure in the Senate, Kerry has also cast some questionable, and downright insulting votes, including a prohibition on immigration for people who are HIV-positive, a federal crime (with jail time) for HIV-positive healthcare providers who fail to disclose their status, and -- most upsetting -- a "no promo homo" measure that barred the use of federal funds in schools to "promote homosexuality. ""

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam vet, says he supports a full repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," but as recently as the 2000 Democratic primary he took Gore and Bradley to task publicly for the same position. At the time, Kerry said rather bizarrely that allowing gays to serve openly was "a bad idea" because commanders needed the discretion to remove gays from particular units if they endangered unit cohesion. ...

[After] Vermont's highest court had ordered the governor and legislature to adopt full marriage or its equivalent, [Howard Dean rejected] gay activists who argued (then and now) that anything other than marriage is inherently unequal. In Massachusetts today, where that same debate is repeating itself, activists are labeling the Dean position, now favored by the Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, as anti-gay.

The Blade also has a separate article looking at Dean's mixed messages.

The point is certainly not that Bush is better than the Democratic contenders on gay matters; obviously, he's not. If you're a single-issue voter, you're going to vote for the Democrat, whoever he is. But I react strongly to much of the pious nonsense that some Democratic activists are serving up about their candidates. Last time, they gave a free pass to Bill Clinton -- the first U.S. president to sign anti-gay legislation into federal law with both "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act (and who then trumpeted his support for DOMA with radio ads in the South during his reelection campaign).

So please, spare me the "Democrats Good, Republicans Bad" e-mails and at least contemplate that both parties have their own unappealing shadow sides to be weighed in the balance.

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The New York Times takes note of the president's deliberately ambiguous language:

" President Bush never used the words "gay," "homosexual," "same-sex" or "amendment." Instead of an amendment, he referred only to a "constitutional process." And, as he has in the past, he qualified the present need for such a process. "

Some conservatives found fault with his reluctance. "He made the case for the necessity of an amendment, and I am puzzled as to why he did not, having diagnosed the problem, prescribe the only remedy, a federal marriage amendment," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention....

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said Mr. Bush's failure to ask Congress to get to work on an amendment negated his other initiatives.

However:

Some gay Republicans said the president had gone too far.
"We will not stand with anyone who is willing to write discrimination into the Constitution," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans.

But Charles Francis, chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition and a family friend of President Bush, said he was not yet ready to break ranks. He emphasized that the president had not mentioned an amendment and that his comments about the "constitutional process" remained conditional, although he acknowledged, "He has come about as close as he can get."

Will the religious right be placated by rhetoric minus an actual endorsement of and lobbying for the amendment? Or will Bush be pushed into giving anti-gay activists what they want, and thereby alienate the moderates and independents who don't cotton to legislative gay-bashing? Stay tuned.

A new ABCNEWS/Washington Post survey has some good news: only 38% of Americans favor amending the U.S. Constitution to make it illegal for same-sex couples to marry, while 58% say, instead, that each state should make its own laws on gay marriage. If history is any guide, a proposed constitutional amendment that can't even get a majority of popular support is doomed.

But States Go Crazy.

On the other hand, some states seem to be reacting to the prospects of gay marriage in Massachusetts with total dementia. Ohio's legislature has just passed a bill that would not only prohibit same-sex marriage, but also forbid the state from granting domestic partner benefits to its employees. Gov. Bob Taft said he will sign it, pending legal review.

In Virginia, a House panel unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday urging Congress to propose a constitutional amendment against gay marriages. But a bill to impeach Virginia judges if they were to rule in favor of same-sex marriage was defeated. How charitable.

From the president's State of the Union address:

A strong America must also value the institution of marriage. I believe we should respect individuals as we take a principled stand for one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization. Congress has already taken a stand on this issue by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, signed in 1996 by President Clinton. That statute protects marriage under Federal law as the union of a man and a woman, and declares that one state may not redefine marriage for other states.

Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

The outcome of this debate is important -- and so is the way we conduct it. The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight.

Bush does not endorse a specific constitutional amendment, but "if judges" mandate same-sex marriage, he would favor supporting traditional marriage through the "constitutional process." Still, that won't be enough to stop criticism from the right. Already, a press release has been issued from the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, who declares:

Sixty-four days ago the Massachusetts State Supreme Court tossed a cultural time bomb into the public square when they mandated the Legislature to create homosexual marriages. Disappointingly, this evening in his State of the Union address, President Bush promised to help the families of America -- after the bomb goes off and the damage is done. Now is the time, before the Court of Massachusetts imposes same sex marriage on America, to protect the sacred and irreplaceable institution of marriage.

The President should immediately call upon Congress to pass an amendment this year to the Constitution codifying into law what history and nature has taught us -- marriage is between a man and a woman.

The families of America have consistently supported the President on both his foreign and domestic policies. They have stood with him in his efforts of homeland security and now they want the President to focus on the security of the American home by protecting the institution of marriage.

But Bush has not done so, at least not to the extent the religious right's leaders are demanding. Of course, he's now opened the way to discussing the "constitutional process," which could jeopardize our rights to equality under the law. He should be called to account for that, although I wish there'd be some acknowledgement by gay leaders that his position is far more ambiguous than the religious right expected from their man.

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."

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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."

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1/11/03 - 1/17/04