IGF CultureWatch

A lesbian couple charges that O'Hara Catholic School in Eugene, Oregon, refused to admit their 4-year-old daughter because of their sexual orientation. According to the AP, the couple has complained to the Eugene Human Rights Commission and the Oregon Child Care Division. One of the women, Lee Inkmann, said O'Hara Principal Dianne Bert told her in mid-August that having a family with two mothers at the school would confuse other children and that gay unions are in conflict with Vatican teachings.

This story is disturbing, but not for the obvious reasons. As much as we may disagree with the Vatican's anti-gay stance, the Church has a right to determine its own policies and to have those views reflected in the private schools it runs. If we want to demand that the wall separating church and state be respected so as to prevent religious doctrine from becoming government policy, then we must recognize that religious institutions also have a right to assert their own teachings free from government interference. Aside from the public (government) school system, there must be many private schools that would have been happy to accept this child. So why not go to the local Montessori school, for instance, rather than turning to the government to force the Church to accept a child from a home that obviously doesn't adhere to Church beliefs?

This is the kind of overreach that fuels the fires of the religious right, where the case is already heating up websites.

More Recent Postings

08/31/03 - 09/6/03

A hearing was held Thursday before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. The topic: "What is Needed to Defend the Bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act of 1996?" (click to see the testimony transcripts). IGF contributing author and Univ. of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter explained why amending the Constitution to forbid states from granting legal recognition to same-sex relationships is not such a good idea. He testified:

The solemn task of amending the nation's fundamental law should be reserved for actual problems.

Never before in the history of the country have we amended the Constitution in response to a threatened (or actual) state court decision. Never before have we adopted a constitutional amendment to limit the states' ability to control their own family law. Never before have we dictated to states what their own state laws and state constitution mean. Never before have we amended the Constitution to restrict the ability of the democratic process to expand individual rights. This is no time to start"

Also testifying against the proposed amendment was Keith Bradkowski, whose partner of 11 years was a flight attendant on the first plane to be crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. His moving testimony put a human face on the issues.

Reports are that the hearing was surprisingly even-handed and not the homophobic circus many had feared. Quite possibly, it was held to placate the anti-gay right rather than to give the amendment a real push. The subcommittee's chairman, Sen. John Cormyn, is a Bush loyalist. Had he not called the hearing, it's very likely someone else, with more demagogic intentions, would have claimed jurisdiction and done so.

But gays on the left can't see the balancing act that the administration is engaged in, and simplistically tell their followers that Bush and the entire GOP are pushing a hardcore anti-gay agenda.

A related item: In this op-ed from Friday's Washington Post, former GOP Senator Alan Simpson takes aim at conservatives who support the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. He writes:

That people of goodwill would disagree was something our Founders fully understood when they created our federal system. They saw that contentious social issues would best be handled in the legislatures of the states, where debates could be held closest to home. That's why we should let the states decide how best to define and recognize any legally sanctioned unions -- marriage or otherwise.

As someone who is basically a conservative, I see not an argument about banning marriage or "defending" families but rather a power grab. Conservatives argue vehemently about federal usurpation of other issues best left to the states, such as abortion or gun control. Why would they elevate this one to the federal level?

A good question, indeed!

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution is scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday, September 4. The topic: whether the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, is sufficient to block gay marriages, or whether amending the Constitution is necessary.

Given the hysteria on the right over this issue, it's nice to see a few more conservatives coming out against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. For example, writing in the Washington Times, Bruce Fein argues:

Conservatives should squelch a rash constitutional amendment...to prohibit states from recognizing homosexual marriages and thus place the issue off-limits for popular democratic discourse. The amendment would enervate self-government, confound the cultural sacralization of traditional marriage and child-rearing, and clutter the Constitution with a nonessential.

Readers of this blog will know that many "queer" lefties also lack enthusiasm for marriage equality, while their straight coalition allies have been largely silent. Richard Goldstein, who is certainly no friend of IGF, takes issue with his side's reluctance in a Village Voice piece titled "The Radical Case for Gay Marriage." He observes:

There's been no crush of Hollywood celebs at fundraisers for this cause. The radical cadres that march against globalization and war haven't agitated for marriage rights. "There is virtually no opposition from progressive groups," says Evan Wolfson of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry. "The problem is a failure to speak out and get involved." From a movement noted for its passion about social justice, this lack of ardor demands to be addressed.

But, of course, Goldstein is hoping gay marriage will radicalize the institution and pave the wave for legal recognition for all manner of unions -- which is what the rightwingers fear most. Once again, the gay left mirrors the religious right.

This New York Times article by Clifford Krauss on the ambivalence of some Canadian gays toward their recently achieved ability to wed has been generating comment. Krauss reports:

In Canada, conservative commentators worry aloud that gay marriage will undermine society, but many gays express the fear that it will undermine their notions of who they are. They say they want to maintain the unique aspects of their culture and their place at the edge of social change.

It is a debate that pits those who celebrate a separate and flamboyant way of life as part of a counterculture against those who long for acceptance into the mainstream. So heated is the conversation that some gay Canadians said in interviews that they would not bring up the topic at dinner parties.

You know what, nobody is going to force anyone to get hitched. It's a matter of the legal option to wed, for those who wish to do so. Why is that so threatening to the "anti-assimilationists" of the left and the social conservatives of the right?

The Times article also presents this tempered critque of gays against gay marriage:

"It's the vestiges of a culture of victimization, of a culture that's tied to being in a ghetto," said Enrique Lopez, 38, an investment banker who has been in a steady relationship for two years but says he is not ready to marry. "The vast majority want to live innocuous, boring lives, and the option of marriage is part of that dream."

I'll give the last word to marriage activist Evan Wolfson, who wrote recently in the NY Daily News:

Threat to marriage? How does a loving couple taking on a commitment suddenly become a threat because the couple is gay?

Which is a viewpoint both the religious right and gay left might well ponder.

Reading his op-ed published in the Philadelphia Gay News and elsewhere, you'd think that National Gay & Lesbian Task Force head Matt Foreman was serious when he says:

First and foremost, everyone in the community, no matter where he or she is on marriage -- for, against, don't know or don't care -- must unite to fight the backlash. If we do not, we will lose. Period.

Second, because we cannot win this by ourselves, each of us must speak openly and directly to our families, friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Which raises, again, Foreman's decision to remain utterly silent on the marriage question last month when he took the podium at the 40th anniversary civil rights rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, presumably out of deference to anti-gay black church leaders whose support he covets for NGLTF's broader left-liberal, big-government, income-redistributing agenda. (For more, see Rick Rosendall's column, "A March in the Wrong Direction," on this site.)

Throwing Stones at Arnold.

The San Francisco Chronicle's
story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's 25-year old interview with the long-defunct "Oui" magazine shows gay activists of the left once again joined at the hip with their opposites in the religious right, who are also making hay over the interview. The Chronicle buries Schwarzenegger's full comments, which included a strong statement against stereotyping gays, while repeating the business over his long-ago sexcapades.

The paper quotes the big guy and provides responses as follows:

he referred to gay people as "fags," saying, "I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business; though it may bother some bodybuilders, it doesn't affect me at all." "

"I think he's got a problem, bordering on a fixation" about gays, said Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

Michael Andraychak, president of Los Angeles' Stonewall Democratic Club, which opposes the recall, called on the actor to apologize, saying gays react to "fag" much as African Americans react to "the n-- word." "

Toni Broaddus, program director for Equality California, the statewide gay-rights group, said she was troubled by Schwarzenegger's description of group sex in the gym. "

Who knew that "queer" would become politically acceptable (at least among "progressives") but that "fags" would remain verboten? Or that gym sex would become a target of the lesbigay left?

What the young Schwarzenegger actually said, speaking in a language not his own, was this:

Asked whether he was "freaked out" by being in such close contact with guys at the gym, Schwarzenegger said, "Men shouldn't feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies...Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us. Well, I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business..."

We report, you decide.

More Recent Postings

08/24/03 - 08/30/03

An openly gay bishop is "The Last Straw," causing true believers to leave the liberal, secularized Episcopal church in disgust, declares Rev. Peter Mullen, the Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, writing in the Aug. 26th Wall Street Journal (online to WSJ subscribers only). He sermonizes:

Homosexual bishops? How long before we see pedophile bishops, necrophile Deans of Cathedrals and cannibalistic Archdeacons?

Nice, huh. The sooner these bigots splinter off, the better.

Not the Marrying Kind.

Gay historian James T. Sears has a column in the Washington Blade asking why gays would want to get married. His viewpoint is sexual liberationist, which is somewhat different from the feminist, anti-patriarchy/anti-marriage camp (and a bit more fun to read). He writes:

In our post-Stonewall struggle, we (particularly many gay leaders) have entered a Faustian bargain trading equal rights with heterosexuals in lieu of sexual liberation for all".[D]id those of us in the Stonewall generation riot to appear in the New York Times "Weddings/Celebrations"?

And he approvingly quotes from an early gay activist:

Harold Call, a prominent leader in the Mattachine Society, observed near the end of his life, "We are still operating under the anti-sexual taboo," he said. "The Puritan idea is Thou Shalt Not Feel Good. Unless you are miserable, overworked and under-f***ed you"re not really a productive member of the society."

But the vision of the endless orgasm will forever remain elusive (cf. Dr. Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents"). Overwhelming, gays and lesbians want the right to marry and lead bourgeois lives, even if they don't choose to exercise that right -- at least while they're young and randy. And society benefits from the stability that spousal relationships tend to provide (which is the seed of truth that gives force to the pro-family camp's otherwise noxious propaganda about sexual anarchy). Sorry, but it's time to grow up, Peter Pan.

I'm not criticizing those who reject coupling up for themselves; it's certainly not best for everyone. But I'm critical of those who think it's not best for anyone.

IGF contributing author Richard J. Rosendall watched last weekend's rally at the Lincoln Memorial marking the 40th anniversary Dr. King's 1963 March on Washington for civil rights. He reports that neither of the gay activists who spoke -- Matt Foreman of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and Mandy Carter of Southerners on New Ground -- mentioned the fight to gain equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, or efforts to build a coalition to oppose the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Their silence was presumably in deference to the rally organizers, who also chose to say nothing on the marriage rights question so as not to give offense to anti-gay black religious leaders.

Says Rick:

"Our relationships" was the closest Foreman came to mentioning marriage. It would have been comical if he had been explicit about how those awful Republicans are attacking gay marriage rights, as he stood a few feet from Walter Fauntroy, the favorite front man for the anti-gay Alliance for Marriage. How convenient for Foreman that it's all a simple partisan matter, and how pathetic that this would be seen by anyone as a serious voice of gay activism.

We'll be posting Rick's upcoming column on the rally shortly.

More Recent Postings

08/17/03 - 08/23/03

Monday morning NPR reported (in roughly these words): "After the Lawrence decision, gay marriage has become a hot issue. Jerry Falwell has started a website to gather 1 million signatures against gay marriage. His site is www.onemanonewoman.org."

What's the point of making taxpayers pay for a left-wing radio network if it's going to shill for Jerry Falwell? Maybe it's budget time on Capitol Hill, and they have to show some balance.

Winning the Culture Wars.

From theagitator.com:

More Evidence that Conservatives have Well and Truly Lost the Culture War.

So I was channel-surfing last night and ran across the TBS Superstation Family Movie Night.

The movie? Victor/Victoria. I rest my case.

In response to this, someone else commented that they had recently seen the gay-themed movie "The Object of My Affection" run on another "family" channel. That, as they say, is progress.

Jesus Would Weep.

Sometimes it's revealing to see just how extreme anti-gay bigots in respectable places can be. A case in point is a sermon by the Rev. Steven R. Randall at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Catonsville, MD. As reprinted in the conservative Washington Times, the good reverend compares his fellow Episcopalians who support gay inclusion with the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and took thousands of lives. From the pulpit, he intoned:

Like many of you, I feel like our church has been hijacked by misguided and in some cases evil terrorists. And like those planes of [September 11], our church is being used to destroy not only those inside in the name of some false god, but to destroy the lives of others, outside the church"

We've all seen the headlines of papers everywhere stating that the Episcopal Church voted to ordain an openly homosexual man... After that, the Episcopal Church actively supports the blessings of same-sex "marriages" as if they were holy and good and something from God. "

The current Episcopal Church will carry more people to hell than it will save. Our church is like a flying coffin.

Clearly, there is a Church of Love and a Church of Hate. It's pretty clear which church anti-gay Episcopalians like this jackbooted cleric belong to.

Recent Postings

08/10/03 - 08/16/03

There's an important op-ed in Thursday's Washington Post by former Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia -- the author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It's titled Leave Marriage To the States. In the battle against efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny same-sex couples any and all the civil benefits of marriage, Bob Barr has turned out to be an unexpected ally.

Barr, in fact, was something of a conservative libertarian suspicious of federal overreaching. He writes in his op-ed:

Make no mistake, I do not support same-sex marriages. But I also am a firm believer that the Constitution is no place for forcing social policies on states, especially in this case, where states must have the latitude to do as their citizens see fit.

However Barr's Defense of Marriage Act -- barring (as it were) the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages even if legally valid at the state level (as none were, or are, to date) -- was rightly seen among gays as an unfair denial of federal benefits such as a deceased spouse's Social Security, or tax-free inheritance of a spouse's estate. The overall effect was to treat our relationships as permanently "second class."

But the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) is far worse, wiping out even state-level civil benefits for gay couples. You take your allies where you find them, and Barr's public opposition to the FMA should be welcomed and used.

Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King notes that some of the African Anglicans so vehemently opposed to blessing committed gay couples and ordaining openly gay bishops (and with whom anti-gay Episcopalians are now aligned) have defended polygamy in their own neck of the woods, arguing the need to show respect for African culture. Moreover, the Church of England mother church has an heir apparent to the pivotal role of "Defender of the Faith" who is an avowed adulterer (Prince Charles, of course). But gay couples and gay bishops are somehow beyond the pale.

The Empire Strikes Back.

Yes, the religious right is making its top priority passage of an anti-gay constitutional amendment to ban not only same-sex marriage but also same-sex civil unions, the Washington Post reports.The effort is led by "Christian family groups" such as James Dobson's Focus on the Family, which has more than 1,300 employees -- including 150 people who answer more than 15,000 calls and letters daily.

Coalition Politics (1).

New York Democratic State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx has filed a lawsuit to block funding for New York City's Harvey Milk High School for gay (lesbian, bisexual, transgender ") students, reports the New York Times. Diaz claims the school discriminates against heterosexuals and takes money away from black and Hispanic students at other public schools.

Coalition Politics (2).

The big Aug. 23 rally at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 1963 civil rights march on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has adopted a platform that endorses the federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and a federal hate crimes law, but is silent on supporting same-sex marriage rights or opposing the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. "This is a coalition march for jobs, peace and freedom," Atlanta gay activist Lynn Cothren told the Washington Blade. "This is not a gay march, although we've had involvement at every level."

But considering that past gay marches on Washington have devoted seemingly unlimited space to endorsing all aspects of the civil rights "social justice" agenda, including such un-gay related issues as support for race-based preferential treatment and opposition to welfare reform, might our national gay lobbies have expected just a wee bit more from the civil rights establishment in return?

Recent Postings

08/10/03 - 08/16/03

Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King notes that some of the African Anglicans so vehemently opposed to blessing committed gay couples and ordaining openly gay bishops (and with whom anti-gay Episcopalians are now aligned) have defended polygamy in their own neck of the woods, arguing the need to show respect for African culture. Moreover, the Church of England mother church has an heir apparent to the pivotal role of "Defender of the Faith" who is an avowed adulterer (Prince Charles, of course). But gay couples and gay bishops are somehow beyond the pale.

The Empire Strikes Back.

Yes, the religious right is making its top priority passage of an anti-gay constitutional amendment to ban not only same-sex marriage but also same-sex civil unions, the Washington Post reports.The effort is led by "Christian family groups" such as James Dobson's Focus on the Family, which has more than 1,300 employees -- including 150 people who answer more than 15,000 calls and letters daily.

Coalition Politics (1).

New York Democratic State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx has filed a lawsuit to block funding for New York City's Harvey Milk High School for gay (lesbian, bisexual, transgender ") students, reports the New York Times. Diaz claims the school discriminates against heterosexuals and takes money away from black and Hispanic students at other public schools.

Coalition Politics (2).

The big Aug. 23 rally at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 1963 civil rights march on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has adopted a platform that endorses the federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and a federal hate crimes law, but is silent on supporting same-sex marriage rights or opposing the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. "This is a coalition march for jobs, peace and freedom," Atlanta gay activist Lynn Cothren told the Washington Blade. "This is not a gay march, although we've had involvement at every level."

But considering that past gay marches on Washington have devoted seemingly unlimited space to endorsing all aspects of the civil rights "social justice" agenda, including such un-gay related issues as support for race-based preferential treatment and opposition to welfare reform, might our national gay lobbies have expected just a wee bit more from the civil rights establishment in return?

August 14, 2003

The Marriage Backlash

Why we must tread carefully at this historic juncture. According to a new Washington Post poll:

public acceptance of same-sex civil unions is falling. Fewer than 4 in 10 -- 37% -- of all Americans say they would support a law allowing gay men and lesbians to form civil unions that would provide some of the rights and legal protections of marriage.

That is a precipitous, 12-point drop in support found in a Gallup Organization survey that posed the question in identical terms in May, before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against sodomy and Justice Antonin Scalia argued in his dissent that the court was on a slippery slope toward legalizing gay marriage.

The number opposing religious ceremonies blessing same-sex couples is even greater, with three out of four against us. How strongly held is that sentiment: "Among Americans who attend church at least a few times a year, 47% said they would attend services elsewhere if their church blessed same-sex unions," according to the Post poll. There is nothing to calls this but what it is -- a reactionary but widespread backlash. And we'll have to work hard to try to prevent it ending up with passage of an anti-gay constitutional amendment barring any legal recognition of gay couples.

The new (yes, NEW!) articles posted at right are worthy additions to this dialogue.

Forget backlash: We're just another American family, convincingly argues columnist Craig Wilson in USA Today. But is straight America listening?