IGF CultureWatch

Arnold Schwarzenegger's capture of California's governorship creates the possibility that the GOP in the nation's most populous state could finally be wrestled free of the religious right's stranglehold. After all, social conservatives such as the Traditional Values Coalition spent big bucks trying to defeat Arnold (one TVC press release was titled "Schwarzenegger Candidacy Would 'Terminate'' Moral Leadership in California"). And Schwarzennegger was endorsed by the California Log Cabin Republicans, who noted the Terminator is on record supporting domestic partnerships and gay adoptions.

Incumbent Democrat Gray Davis came to be viewed as a politician who put liberal special interests groups -- government employee unions, the trial lawyers lobby, eco-extremists, minorities who want the rules everyone else follows bent in their favor (as in drivers licenses for illegal aliens) -- above the common good. As California spent itself into near bankruptcy on megagovernment, Davis kept signing into law burdensome new mandates and regulations on businesses, stalling economic growth and new job creation as the rest of the nation began to recover from the post-bubble recession.

Yet gay liberals gave their enthusiastic support to Davis, who signed pro-gay legislation -- including an expansion of domestic partners rights (probably more encompassing than a bill Schwarzenegger might have backed). Yet in the end, does it benefit gays to be seen as just one more group of special interest pleaders in the liberal-left's coalition? Could it be that a fiscally responsible centrist who is 80 percent behind our issues is ultimately better than an out-of-the-mainstream liberal who supports 95 percent of our agenda? These are long-term strategic questions that ought to be considered.

Here's the breakdown of the gay vote in California, via the Fox News exit poll. When asked, "Are you gay, lesbian, or bisexual?," 4% answered yes. Of these, 52% voted for Bustamante, 32% for Schwarzenegger, and 4% for McClintock.

Also of interest, the Fox News exit poll asked: "How do you feel about California's new law extending domestic partner rights for gays and lesbians?" Of all voters, 21% were enthusiastic; 32% were supportive but not enthusiastic; 29% were opposed but not angry; and 13% were angry (5% didn't answer). Even of those who voted for Schwarzenegger, 34% were either supportive or enthusiastic. These numbers certainly dent the social conservatives' rhetoric about same-sex spousal rights being forced on an unwilling populace!

Andrew Sullivan has penned an excellent column, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, taking American conservatives to task for their un-conservative opposition to gay participation in "integrating social institutions." Sullivan asks:

If two lesbian women want to share financial responsibility for each other for life, why is it a conservative notion to prevent this? If two men who have lived together for decades want the ability to protect their joint possessions in case one of them dies, why is it a conservative notion that such property be denied the spouse in favor of others? ...

In all these cases, you have legal citizens trying to take responsibility for one another. By doing so, by setting up relationships that do the "husbanding" work of family, such couples relieve the state of the job of caring for single people without family support. Such couplings help bring emotional calm to the people involved; they educate people into the mundane tasks of social responsibility and mutual caring. When did it become a socially conservative idea that these constructive, humane instincts remain a threat to society as a whole?

We know that the theocratic "wingnuts" will never be convinced, but mainstream conservatives are going to have to grapple with these issues sooner or later.

Marriage Wars.

Yes, it's disappointing that the Bush administration issued an official declaration proclaiming October 12-18 as "Marriage Protection Week." Right-wing religious groups that oppose gay marriage -- and support the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Act (FMA) -- cooked up the idea for Marriage Protection Week in order to mobilize their minions to lobby Congress in support of the FMA. But the text of the White House proclamation never mentions the FMA. It's intent is to once more placate the religious right on the cheap, without doing anything concrete that could seem too intolerant (read "anti-gay"). So while the proclamation declares that

"Marriage Protection Week provides an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages in America"

and Bush calls on all Americans to "join me in expressing support for the institution of marriage," it also states that

"we must continue our work to create a compassionate, welcoming society, where all people are treated with dignity and respect."

No doubt, the proclamation adds legitimacy to those groups fighting against gay marriage, but it also must be disappointing to them that it fails to directly mention, much less endorse the FMA, and even repeats language Bush has used previously to separate himself from the virulent anti-gay rhetoric of the religious right -- which clearly doesn't "welcome" gay people into society, or believe we should be treated with "dignity and respect."

But, of course, Bush can't have it both ways. And his call to welcome all (read "gays") into society while denying us the right to society's bedrock institution -- marriage -- is an internal contradiction too vast to smooth over.

Nevertheless, the rhetorical response to the proclamation by activist groups such as the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force is way over the top. NGLTF terms Bush's proclamation "shocking and appalling" and Marriage Protection Week a "weapon of mass discrimination and fear-mongering" that aims to "demonize and defame gay people and our families." The President is "catering to wealthy and politically power organizations intent on permanently relating a minority to second class citizenship." NGLTF's statement ends with a call to "stand beside gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender America in this terrible and frightening time."

One thing is clear: both sides in the marriage wars are eagerly engaged in "fear-mongering" aimed at keeping their donors blood pressure up -- and their wallets open.

Split Decision.

American public opinion is now split nearly evenly on gay marriages, according to
a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. It found that 48% say "allowing two people of the same sex to legally marry will change our society for the worse," while 50% say it would either have no effect or be an improvement. These stats aren't encouraging to those who'd like to amend the Constitution to ban gays from marrying or otherwise receiving the legal benefits of marriage.

More Recent Postings

09/28/03 - 10/04/03

Bravo to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for petitioning the military's highest court to strike down a law from the Uniform Code of Military Justice that makes private, consensual sodomy a crime -- and one subject to stricter penalties than many violent assaults.

Congress could, of course, revise the military sodomy prohibition, known as Article 125, but has refused to do so. According to Lambda Legal's website:

In 2001, a blue ribbon panel chaired by Judge Walter T. Cox III was tasked to review the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) on its fiftieth anniversary. Calling military sodomy prosecutions "arbitrary, even vindictive," the Cox Commission recommended that Congress repeal Article 125 and replace it with a statute governing sexual abuse similar to laws adopted by many states and in Title 18 of the United States Code. Congress has not acted on the Commission's recommendations and the law remains in effect.

Overturning Article 125 won't end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (or "lie and hide") policy and the risk of discharge if the military learns you're gay. But it would lessen the real danger of prosecution that closeted gays in the military still face while serving their country.

Dualing Marriage Weeks Planned.

The anti-gay Family Research Council and its cohorts (the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America, etc.) are planning to make opposition to gay marriage "the issue of 2004," according to the FRC's website.
The groups have declared October 12-18 to be "Marriage Protection Week," dedicated to mobilizing their grassroots to lobby Congress.

In response, the Metropolitan Community Church is trying to organize a "Marriage Equality Week" campaign during the same week. But in terms of coordination and mobilization, the anti-gays seem to be way ahead of the game.

It's now crystal clear that opposition to gay marriage will be the animating issues for the religious right during the decade ahead, replacing even opposition to abortion.

The Locker Room Closet.

If you haven't read Boston Hearld sports writer Ed Gray's coming out column, you should. The locker rooms of professional sports will likely be one of the last bastions of homophobia to fall.

The Sept. 25 Harvard Crimson reports that the university's very inclusive Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) is being challenged by an upstart Queer Resistance Front, which criticizes the BGLTSA not for being a ridiculously unpronounceable collection of mostly consonants, but for selling out to the mainstream. According to the Crimson's story, the QRF "plans to protest events promoting conservative anti-queer politics, as well as BGLTSA events promoting what QRF organizers describe as mainstream gay politics." The group's organizers desire "not to be included within social categories, but rather to work to disrupt those categories through which social power operates." Ah, America's privileged youth at play.

Whose Loyalty Is Worth Rewarding?

Log Cabin California has endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, which is appropriate, since the Terminator is not only supportive on gay issues but also the only GOP candidate with any chance of winning. Meanwhile, the anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition has gone all out with a million dollar ad campaign attacking Schwarzennegger, preferring once again to lose the election to the Democrats rather than see a centrist Republican win. Maybe its time that the national GOP rethink its view that religious rightists are a constituency they need to placate at all costs.

More Recent Postings

09/21/03 - 09/27/03

Here's a lesson from the Netherlands about incrementalism. Frida Ghitis writes in the Chicago Tribune that the Dutch first established registered same-sex partnerships as a separate institution conferring some spousal rights. Then, after folks became comfortable with the concept, they took the logical step and integrated gays into mainstream marriage. She writes:

Arriving at gay marriage required a long and arduous 16-year trek through the jungles of public opinion, parliamentary politics, the Dutch courts and, surprisingly, a reluctant gay community. "

[Activists] gradually persuaded municipalities to allow registries of committed gay couples, and enlisted the agreement of corporations, such as the Dutch airline KLM, to recognize the registries for the purpose of employee benefits. After 1998, gay couples were allowed to make their relationships official through a national system of registered partnerships that assigned rights and responsibilities almost identical to those of marriage. At last, in 2001, the law was changed so gays had identical marriage rights as straight couples.

Specifically, on April 1, 2001, Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen performed

the first fully government-sanctioned same-sex marriages in the world. They were not registered partnerships, civil unions or any other political concoction cooked up to resemble a normal marriage. These marriages were 100 percent identical to the ones joining married heterosexual couples in the Netherlands.

Could it be that rather than a "separate but unequal" copout, civil unions are a smart, pragmatic step that brings us closer to where we want to be, without fostering a hugely reactionary backlash?

Biting the Hand that Feeds Them.

A group of law schools, professors and students is suing the Department of Defense over the government's requirement that law schools receiving federal funding allow military recruiters on campus, the Washington Times reports. At issue is not only opposition to the military's ban on openly gay men and women in the armed services, but, I believe, a more general left-liberal hostility toward the armed forces. I'm 100% against the gay ban, which stupidly destroys what would otherwise be many fine military careers. But trying to stop military recruitment while we're fighting a war on terror is even stupider, as is the belief that institutions are somehow entitled to federal funding and, at the same time, to discriminate against the federal government.

NGLFT-gate.

The Washington Blade reports on NGLTF leader Matt Foreman's silence regarding gay marriage during his speech at the 40th anniversary civil rights rally in Washington -- and quotes IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter and, briefly, me.

More Recent Postings

09/07/03 - 09/13/03

Popular lesbian cartoonist Alison "Dykes To Watch Out For" Bechdel shares this bit of reflection in the Sept. issue of Lesbian News:

"Our unelected president is campaigning for Arnold Schwarzenegger and driving the whole planet over a cliff with his insane, extremist policies. That's what motivates me to write the strip now. In fact, if I didn't have this outlet, I would probably implode from horror and disbelief."

What's so depressing about this hyperbole is that her view is shared by so many on the lesbigay left (and the left in general). The need to demonize their opponents -- as if W. were Hitler -- rather than, say, debating the merits of intervening to overthrow foreign mass murderers, is nothing less than shocking. But if you believe that your side is the repository of all that is "progressive," then the fact that America elected a president who doesn't back your politics -- and whose election is an affront to your self-identity as the ordained vanguard -- leads to this sort of lunacy. And yes, we elect our president via the Electoral College to protect the principle of federalism, and not by a simple plurality. And the Supreme Court gets to decide procedures when a race is truly too close to call.

But why let the Constitution stand in the way of the one right, true, and progressive agenda? After all, the purity of sheer political loathing trumps any need for reason, doesn't it? Once again, the gay left mirrors its counterparts on the religious right (one can imagine them debating why "my hatred is morally superior to your hatred!").

Freedom Is Better.

Reuters reports on Palestinian Gay Runaways fleeing to Israel. It's something you'd think would give pause to the anti-America/anti-Israel "queer" activist crowd (yes, Western Civ. actually is better for gay people).

California: Betwixt Left and Right.

It's good that California's liberal legislature passed a bill, which embattled governor Gray Davis has now signed, giving gay and lesbian couples who register as domestic partners many of the rights and responsibilities of married heterosexuals. According to the AP:

It gives same-sex couples control over their community property and funeral arrangements, and requires them to pay child support if the partnership is dissolved. Some Republicans in the state legislature say the measure undermines marriage and is another example of Davis's pandering to liberal Democrats.

It's not marriage; it's not even "civil unions." But it's still a move toward equal treatment under the law. Unfortunatley, the same liberal legislators have bankrupted California with their special interest spending bills, passed onerous over-regulation on just about everything, and kow-towed to the government unions and trial lawyers to such an extent that business is, quite understandably, fleeing the state for greener pastures.

Thus the dilemma facing gay moderates when confronted with a GOP dominated by social conservatives and a Democratic party controlled by proponents of megagovernment, when there's no socially libertarian, fiscally prudent alternative (although, arguably, California now may, thanks to Arnold, have a centrist option).

But choosing between the two parties in these circumstances is not easy, and well-intentioned people will come to different conclusions about how to vote. Life truly isn't all black or white, despite the dogmatic certainty of those on both the left and the right of the spectrum.
--Stephen H. Miller

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who blogs "The Volokh Conspiracy," along with several other pro-federalist law scholars submitted this letter to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, in opposition to the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Among the excellent points the scholars raised:

there is no need to federalize the definition of marriage. If Oregonians, for instance, choose to define marriage more broadly than citizens of other states do, there's no reason for the federal government to step in. (Nor is such a sweeping amendment necessary to satisfy the narrow goal of letting each state choose whether to recognize out-of-state homosexual marriages. There's no need to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on the whole nation, either by banning all homosexual marriages, or requiring them to be recognized throughout the country.)

Moreover, if marriage is federalized, this will set a precedent for additional federal intrusions into state power.

Honest conservatives should take this federalist argument seriously. Of course, many on the liberal-left side of the spectrum like to impose their own "one size fits all" solutions on the country, and have often done so, making it difficult for them to now stand against the Federal Marriage Amendment on federalist grounds. That's why getting authentic conservatives to publicly argue the federalist case is so important.

More Recent Postings

09/07/03 - 09/13/03

As previously noted, the head of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force chose to remain silent about gay marriage when he spoke at the 40th anniversary civil rights rally in Washington. NGLTF was apparently not bothered that the event's official platform, representing the views of leading civil rights organizations, failed to support same-sex marriage -- or even to oppose the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment.

So, just what is NGLTF busy lobbying for these days? Why, support for every element of the civil rights establishment's agenda, no matter how controversial -- including race-based preferences as government policy.

This week, NGLTF announced it was stepping up its efforts to defeat a California ballot initiative that would prevent the state from classifying any person by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin (with certain exemptions). Specifically, NGLTF is

"intensifying its field efforts in California to assist in the defeat of Proposition 54. The Task Force has identified Ward Connerley's Proposition 54 as dangerous and racist..."

Ward Connerley, by the way, is an African-American business leader who is opposed to preferential treatment based on race (which, in NGLTF's view, makes him a "racist").

Proposition 54 may or may not be good policy, but is it something NGLTF should take a stand on, right after the group refused to confront the civil rights establishment over its lack of support for gay marriage?

A Washington Post story on the beginning of classes at New York's Harvey Milk High School demonstrates why the first public school for gay youth is needed -- despite the criticism that it's a "segregated" approach to protecting gay kids (as voiced in some articles posted on this site). As David Mensah, head of an advocacy group for gay youth, tells the Post: "There could and must be more efforts to ensure the safety and security of all children within the community, but while we are working on that, there have to be solutions for those kids who are being victimized today." The enrolled students represent a tiny fraction of gay students in the New York public school system -- but these are the "nonconforming kids" who are particularly at risk.

The Post also quotes Dino Portalatin, a student who rarely went to classes at his old school, feeling he'd be "better off dead than having to deal with the constant harassment and fights." After transferring to the Harvey Milk program that was a precursor to the new school, he not only graduated on time but was class valedictorian. "If not for Harvey Milk I'm sure I'd either be dead or working some burger-flipping job," he said.

While I prefer privatization and choice in education to government approaches, sometimes we have to deal with the solutions that are presently available. Of course, creating a safe environment for all gay kids trapped in government schools should be the goal. But in the meantime the answer isn't to adhere slavishly to the "separate but equal is not equal" line and thus keep the most at-risk kids stuck in public high-school hell until some massive sensitivity training can be administered by education bureaucrats and the unionized, can't-ever-fire-'em teachers' corps. That, frankly, is pie-in-the-sky idealism. So I'm for a real-politik, modestly government-funded approach that can be put into place here and now for those most in need.