IGF CultureWatch

Could there be a better example of the tightrope the Bush administration is walking in the culture wars than the president's letter congratulating the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church on its 35th anniversary -- the same week that he placated the religious right with his support for their "Marriage Protection Week" (while, in another demonstration of political maneuvering, remaining silent on the right's anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment -- the ostensible point of Marriage Protection Week)?

The Right to Dissent.

Andrew Sullivan spells out why the politically correct thought police are bad for gays.

Bad Publicity.

The Harvey Milk High students crime spree story got lots of media attention in NYC last week, and rightwing groups are already making use of it. This New York Post editorial calls for eliminating the school altogether, claiming that it fosters gay/straight segregation. Unanswered is whether these students were just a few bad apples, or whether lax administrators have let things get totally out of hand.

The following quip has popped up all over the Internet, with various attributions, and has also been published in several newspapers as a letter to the editor:

"The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage."

Quip Debate:A newly posted letter to the editor from Jeff McQuary takes exception. He writes, in part, "Henry is not the spiritual founder of Anglicanism. He was merely the political accident that made the (inevitable) spread of the Protestant Reformation to England happen at the particular moment it did."

A New Generation of Voices.

Eric Eagan, a young gay writer, explains his yearning for kids and normalcy in this Yale Daily News column. In the same paper, Jessamyn Blau explains why, in her view, being gay should not be equated with specific political views. Good to see that some Ivy Leaguers can think for themselves rather than just mouthing those same, old, tired PC platitudes!

Civil Rights, or Civil Liberties?

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has hired Massachusetts Democratic State Senator Cheryl Jacques as its new executive director. It would be good if she considers the advice provided by Andrew Rapp, the editor-in-chief of Boston's Bay Windows gay newspaper, last July 7 in an editorial headlined "How Now HRC" (no longer available online). Rapp wrote that the group has ineffectively pursued a traditional "civil rights" strategy focused primarily on passing a federal nondiscrimination-in-the-workplace law. But:

The recent victories of our movement illustrate that a more fruitful approach is one that emphasizes civil liberties. In the Lawrence decision, we won a meaningful "equal protection" argument that recognizes gay people as a class, but the much more sweeping win was the finding that all people are entitled to the liberty to have consensual sex in the privacy of their home. The Canadian courts"found that we are entitled to the liberty to choose our partners, regardless of sex.

We are best described as a group of people with a particular stake in expanding civil liberties, rather than a class of people seeking protections under the law. Now we are seeing that civil liberties approach is also more fruitful.

But can an organization as beset with inertia as HRC recognize its failures and retool its strategies?

"The Reagans" and

More Recent Postings

10/26/03 - 11/01/03

CBS's decision to exile its controversial miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan to cable's "Showtime" has liberals crying "censorship." Of course, that charge more appropriately describes actions by government, not decisions by a private company responding, in its own best interests, to fears of bad publicity or boycott threats against its advertisers.

Liberal gay activists should know this, since they've use these tactics to perfection themselves. My message to liberals: live by the sword, die by the sword. I remember back in 1992 (I think) participating in a protest by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation against the movie "Basic Instinct," which hadn't yet been released and which none of us had seen -- but we were told it was full of hateful depictions of "killer lesbians" (a bit of an exaggeration, as it turned out). More recently, activists targeted "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger's syndicated TV talk show before its launch (see stopdrlaura.com) and Michael Savage's CNBC talk show, alleging that both of these "talents" had prior histories of anti-gay comments in other media. Following low ratings and advertiser flight, both TV programs were soon canceled.

The gay angle. Concerning the CBS miniseries, topic "g" played a big role: Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, executive producers of "The Reagans," are (according the Washington Post):

"well known in TV circles for their gay advocacy TV projects and remakes of old Broadway musicals. Those advocacy projects include the NBC film "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story," which is based on the true story of an Army officer's legal challenge to her involuntary discharge after revealing she was gay, and the Lifetime movie "What Makes a Family," about a lesbian's fight to retain custody of the baby her late partner bore.

Zadan and Meron worked on those projects with Hollywood heavyweight Barbra Streisand, whose husband, James Brolin, was cast to play the president in "The Reagans." Streisand, an outspoken liberal, was not involved in the CBS miniseries but weighed in yesterday with a lengthy statement on her Web site titled "A Sad Day for Artistic Freedom."

One of the more controversial scenes was one in which the president was shown saying to his wife, "They that live in sin shall die in sin" when addressing the AIDS crisis. The quote, the filmmakers conceded, was fictitious, according the New York Times.

The strangest gay angle. A story at newsmax.com is headlined "CBS Nixed 'Reagans' Following Letter From Rock Hudson's Ex-Lover." Yes, it claims that "CBS's decision to pull the plug on its miniseries "The Reagans" came on the heels of a letter to the network from Rock Hudson's ex-lover [Marc Christian], who complained that the film's portrayal of the 40th president as a virulent homophobe was false." The letter was made public by Christian's friend, conservative and openly lesbian commentator Tammy Bruce.

Now back to the 'censorship' issue. The fights taking place on college campuses over speach codes and the like have some bearing here. A USA Today story, "On campus: Free speech for you but not for me?" reports that:

On campuses large and small, public and private, students describe a culture in which freshmen are encouraged, if not required, to attend diversity programs that portray white males as oppressors. It's a culture in which students can be punished if their choice of words offends a classmate, and campus groups must promise they won't discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation -- even if theirs is a Christian club that doesn't condone homosexuality.

The Seattle Times reports, for example, how a peaceful protest against racial preferences was shut down. Other, similar accounts of hostility toward free speech -- from both the left and the right -- abound in the new book "You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscirmination Laws" by David Bernstein. The book deals briefly with how attempts by gay activists to suppress the speech of their opponents can subsequently be used by anti-gay activists to suppress what they find to be offensive gay materials.

What's it all mean? Liberals and conservatives, gays and anti-gays, should be fully free to criticize each other's views, books, movies and miniseries. That's democracy. But if either side is going to turn to advertiser boycotts, or try to preemptively block the publication or viewing of materials they find either "hateful" or "offensive," they should be aware that such tactics are only legitimized to be used against them in the next battle. That's not censorship, but it's how the culture wargames are now being played.

Update: GLAAD, having perfected the advertiser-boycott-threat strategy against ideologically suspect programming, now joins the liberal chorus denouncing CBS's decision to pull "The Reagans." Couldn't you guess?

The Next Generation.

A new Gallup poll of 18- to 29-year-olds has some good news:

Young Americans are substantially more likely than older Americans to support marriages between homosexual couples -- 53% vs. 32%, respectively. This greater acceptance of gay and lesbian rights among young Americans has been a consistent finding in Gallup Polls for a number of years.

But this generation is not more "liberal," politically speaking. Nearly half (45%) say they are politically independent, with the remainder more likely to identify themselves as Republicans (30%) than as Democrats (24%). Also, "By a margin of 82% to 58%, young Americans are much more inclined than older Americans to support a proposal that would allow people to put a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would be invested in private stocks and bonds." Yes, the future may well be ours! (thanks to andrewsullivan.com for the original link)

Sunday's consecration of openly gay Episcopalian Bishop V. Gene Robinson, despite the vehement opposition of "traditionalists," is a milestone, and cheers to Bishop Robinson for refusing pleas that he step aside for the sake of "unity" (i.e., so that supporters of anti-gay discrimination in both the U.S. church and the worldwide Anglican Communion shouldn't be so upset). Placating proponents of prejudice is the last thing any religious denomination ought to do, and shame on those who think "unity" is more important than righteousness. Would they have urged northern-state Baptists in the 1860s to accept slavery least the southern-state Baptists take offense and schism (which, of course, they did)?

The anti-gay American Anglican Council, a network of churches and church officials moving to break with the denomination over Bishop Robinson's consecration, issued a statement saying "heresy has been held up as holy" and that "blasphemy has been redefined as blessing." They added, "The arrogance of the leaders of the Diocese of New Hampshire and the Episcopal Church is nothing less than stunning."

No, it's the arrogance of this anti-gay council that is stunning, and their belief that blind obedience to tradition should take precedence over the expanding revelation of human dignity.

One of the AP stories noted,

"Though there have been gay bishops in the past, all were closeted when they were elevated to their posts. Robinson has been open about his 14-year relationship with his partner throughout the process in which he won election to the new post."

And this is precisely what has so upset the "traditionalists" -- that gay people should no longer be shamed and shunned and forced to lie and hide. What a dark and evil faith these folks adhere to. And how, well, unchristian.

More Recent Postings

10/26/03 - 11/01/03

According to reports about a new study, mixed-race students are more likely to feel depressed, have trouble sleeping, skip school, smoke, and drink alcohol. Not all that long ago, mainstream (not extremist) social conservatives would have demagogued such findings to denounce mixed-race families. But no self-respecting conservative would question "race mixing" these days. That's progress. And after the gay equality struggle is as complete as the civil rights revolution, they'll somehow forget they ever complained about gays, too.

UnCivil Marriage

The discountblogger explains how "social conservatives have blurred the line between civil and religious marriage -- but only when it concerns gays and lesbians." For instance:

Civil marriage...is not rooted in religious belief -- or, at least, it's not supposed to be. After all, a man and a woman who reject all forms of religious belief can still be married in this country. All they need to do is sign a piece of paper. Similarly, a Jew and a Christian -- even though they have fundamentally different religious beliefs -- can marry. And even then, with the blessings of the Right. Yet, two gay men, two completely religious gay men, both of whom have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, cannot.

The proposed Federal Marriage Amendment is not about protecting religion, he writes. It's about keeping gays out.

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Ronald Reagan was painfully slow to respond to the AIDS crisis, yet close friends swear the man was never homophobic. Still, a new CBS miniseries on the former president, by openly gay executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, is stirring up controversy. As gay.com reports:

In one scene, Ronald and Nancy are having breakfast when the subject of AIDS comes up. Reagan, in the script, says "They that live in sin shall die in sin" and refuses to discuss the issue further. Elizabeth Egloff, a playwright who wrote the final version of the script, acknowledged there was no evidence such a conversation took place.

The Reagan record is open to criticism, but using slander to bolster one's case smacks of cheap leftwing propaganda. And the fact that defenders of the series cite Edmund Morris's biography "Dutch" without noting that this book was roundly castigated for mixing fact with totally fictitious dialog and characters (and phony footnotes) certainly doesn't inspire trust is what the series presents as "truth."

They're Going to Sue Science?

The socially conservative CNSNews.com reports:

A coalition representing former homosexuals is
developing a legal strategy to litigate on behalf of people who
challenge the proposition that individuals are "born gay."

Next up, perhaps, will be a suit against the claim that the earth isn't the center of the universe.

Bush Expands Marriage . . . in Iraq.

One upside of deposing Saddam, the Washington Post reports, is that "Freed of an onerous Baath Party bureaucracy that sought to regulate even the most fundamental aspects of Iraqi life -- such as who married whom -- Iraqis lately are tying the knot in numbers not seen in recent memory." Now, if we could only get rid of some of our own "onerous" government regulation that tries to limit who can marry whom right here in the U.S.! After all, it would be nice to be at least as progressive as Taiwan on this matter.

More Recent Postings

10/19/03 - 10/25/03

Some GOP strategists are urging the party to take up the religious right's banner and make opposition to gay marriage -- and support for a constitutional amendment banning government recognition of gay relationships -- into a major campaign issue, the Washington Post reports. I think the article overstates the likelihood of this, as Bush is well aware that the social right's "culture war" help undo his father's re-election. But if "activating the base" comes to be seen as crucial, it could happen. As they say, those who do not learn from history...

Social Security Reform: Good for Gays.

The Cato Institute's Social Security Project website explains how incorporating personal retirement accounts into Social Security would "create clear property rights for individuals in which they can bequeath contributions to their family members, regardless of state or federal legality of their union." Currently, only legal spouses can inherit your accumulated benefits, regardless of any civil union or domestic partnership relationship. Kudos to Cato for recognizing how reforming the system, which is fiercely opposed by most Democrats and liberal-left activists, would be a boon for gays.

Openly gay Detroit News columnist Deb Price explains why Schwarzenegger is good for Republicans, and good for gays. She writes:

The numbers are indeed telling. With little known about his views except that he is a fiscal conservative who supports abortion and gay rights, Schwarzenegger captured 50 percent of the votes of self-identified moderates, compared with 31 percent for Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. "

A ballot box smash hit in California, Schwarzenegger is now a leading actor on the national political stage. If he follows his best instincts, he'll force both parties to rewrite their scripts.

Price, whose column is also syndicated, often hews close to the typical liberal-left gay advocate's worldview. But occasionally, as in this piece, she shows some welcome independence of mind.

For more views on the impact of the California election, take a look at our newly posted columns by Dale Carpenter and Paul Varnell!

If You Build It (High Ratings), They (Advertisers) Will Come.

Corporate America is now clamoring to secure product placements and endorsement deals with the producers of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the NY Daily News reports. NBC and its Bravo cable network are now considering spinoffs as well. Quite a change from just a few years back when gay content routinely caused advertiser flight. But ratings speak louder than the religious right's ubiquitous, but toothless, product boycott threats. Yes, capitalist consumerism really is our ally!

A few weeks ago, IGF contributing author Andrew Sullivan wrote this piece
for the Wall Street Journal, taking conservatives to task for opposing gay participation in our society's "integrating" institutions, such as marriage, the military, etc. Among other questions, he asked:

On what grounds do conservatives believe that discouraging responsibility is a good thing for one group in society? What other legal minority do they or would they treat this way?

Last week, conservative David Frum responded, also in the Wall Street Journal.
You can read Frum's arguments for yourself but basically, as Sullivan and others have accurately noted, it is a nonresponse - conservatives of Frum's sort are fundamentally opposed not just to gay marriage, but to any form of domestic partnership recognition. They have nothing positive to say about integrating gay people more fully into society, because they would rather keep us permanently beyond the pale.

But you can't whistle down the wind, and the more the social right digs in its heels against changes that expand individual liberty (rather than focusing constructively on the many left-wing nostrums that expand intrusive government and constrict individual liberty), the more marginalized the social right will become.

Sullivan, by the way, also has an excellent op-ed in Sunday's New York Times about the Catholic Church's ongoing attacks against gay Catholics.

More Recent Postings

10/12/03 - 10/18/03

With much hoopla, Elizabeth Birch's 9-year tenure as head of the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest - and wealthiest - lesbigay lobby, is coming to an end. But all the accolades leave me uneasy. True, under Birch HRC grew substantially. But too many of the group's efforts seem to have been on behalf of itself: growing HRC's staff, improving HRC's employee benefits, and - most impressively - buying and renovating a big (and expensive) HRC headquarters building in D.C.

Despite all the cash raked in through swanky fund-raising dinners, what of the group's actual accomplishments? Their beloved Bill Clinton signed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, believing (correctly) that his gay supporters would swallow it without a murmur, and also signed legislation making "don't ask, don't tell" the military's policy, after raising too early - and then quickly dropping - support for ending the gay ban.

OK, there were symbolic gestures, such as Clinton's recognizing gay pride month and making a number of lower-level gay federal appointees as payback for gay support. But what of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), HRC's long-ballyhooed big goal? Even with a Democratic House and Senate during his first two years, Clinton and House-leader Dick Gephardt didn't move on it.

Before Birch, HRC had only made endorsements in congressional races. Under Birch, presidential politics became key, not only providing big support for Clinton, but endorsing Al Gore early in the primary season, well before the GOP had even settled on a candidate (which explains Al and Tipper's appearance at Birch's big farewell dinner). These moves made HRC seem more partisan, an adjunct of the Democratic National Committee, as it were. Moreover, in some years during Birch's tenure HRC's well-publicized candidates' "scorecards" took into account votes in favor of the federal government's racial-preference mandates and unrestricted government funding for abortions, among other not-so-gay issues.

Still, compared to the radical poseurs at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, HRC was a model of moderation - not wacky leftists, just partisan Democrats with an extremely flimsy "nonpartisan" veneer.

Discrimination Against the Unwed.

This week's cover story in Business Week looks at "Unmarried America" and how the new demographics of the non-traditional family ("singletons" living alone, unmarried straight co-habitators, single parents, and gay couples) are changing America. The news peg:

The U.S. Census Bureau's newest numbers show that married-couple households -- the dominant cohort since the country's founding -- have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today. -- Also fueling the demographic change: More people are coming out of the closet and setting up same-sex households.

The unmarried, however, often find themselves getting the short end of the stick. They:

are often subjected to discrimination in housing and credit applications. They pay more for auto and homeowners' insurance" In the workplace, unmarried people wind up making an average 25% less than married colleagues for the same work because of the marriage-centric structure of health care, retirement, and other benefits".

As the reality of unmarried America sinks in, CEOs, politicians, and judges will be challenged to design benefits, structure taxes, and develop retirement models that more fairly match the changing population.

These include corporate domestic-partner benefits, which, however, are fully taxed under federal and state law (unlike spousal benefits). Business Week concludes: "No matter how the politics play out, the demographic convulsion is certain to cause a collective reexamination of what it means to be full-fledged members of society."