IGF CultureWatch

Deroy Murdock, a libertarian-minded syndicated columnist, takes a look at the arguments used to defend sodomy laws in Freedom and Sex. This is one of the few critiques of the conservative "slippery slope" theory that goes out on a limb and describes the libertarian viewpoint:

Should laws against adult homosexuality, adultery and incest potentially place taxpaying Americans over 18 behind bars for such behavior? Priests, ministers, rabbis and other moral leaders may decry these activities. But no matter how much people may frown upon these sexual appetites, consenting American adults should not face incarceration for yielding to such temptations.

Well, that's one way to respond to conservatives who believe if you get rid of sodomy laws you won't have a legal principle left to outlaw incest between consenting adults. But of course, the conservatives have always obscured the fact that abuse of minor children, whether theoretically "consensual" or not, could and would remain illegal despite any Supreme Court ruling regarding the privacy rights of adults exercising free choice in their own bedrooms.

More Balancing by Bushies.

The New York Times reports that White House aides conferred with 200 gay Republicans in D.C. for the annual Log Cabin Republican convention and associated lobbying push:

Among the White House officials briefing the Log Cabin Republicans today was Dr. Joe O'Neill, the administration's AIDS czar, who is openly gay. Bobby Bottoms, a Log Cabin Republican from San Diego, said he was struck by photographs in Dr. O'Neill's office, taken during the White House Christmas party, of Dr. O'Neill and his partner with the president and Laura Bush.

Mr. Bottoms said Dr. O'Neill told the group that the White House was "the most wonderful working environment that he had ever worked in."

"He spoke from the heart and you could tell in his tone, and in his words," Mr. Bottoms said, "he was very passionate that there was absolutely no issue with him and his sexuality."

(I'll refrain from any pun about "Mr. Bottoms," who has probably heard them all.)

Even if overstated by GOP loyalists, this is a BIG change from earlier Republican administrations, and a far cry from what liberals predicted. But of course meeting with gays is just one half of the balancing act. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, former Montana Governor Mark Racicot, recently met with a group of anti-gay conservatives who are enraged over an earlier Racicot get-together with the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the big Washington-based gay rights lobby.

An account of Racicot's one-hour meeting with the anti-gay activists by one of the attendees, arch-conservative Paul M. Weyrich, is posted on the Free Congress Foundation's Web site under the title A Fatal Flirtation: The GOP and the Homosexual Movement). Writes Weyrich:

In many different ways the [conservative activists] group stressed that if the Republican Party drifts toward the homosexual agenda, it will alienate the millions in the religious right while gaining very few from the homosexual community. "

Chairman Racicot defended his meeting with the Human Rights Campaign by saying "I meet with anyone and everyone." Gary Bauer said that certainly was not true because surely he would not meet with the Ku Klux Klan. Rev. Wildmon asked if he would meet with NAMBLA (The North American Man Boy Love Association). The chairman was not familiar with this group, which advocates sex between men and young boys. The chairman said he would not meet with such an "aberrant" group. He was also asked about GLSEN, the group that is pushing pro-homosexual and pro-transgender education programs in the schools, including elementary schools. Again, the chairman professed ignorance.

This couldn't have been a fun meeting for Racicot, who has good relations with the Log Cabiners. And it remains to be seen if the White House can continue to reach out to gays, however tepidly, without making the religious right even nuttier.

Recent Postings

05/04/03 - 05/10/03

An interesting article by sociologist Alan Wolfe concludes that the American public is growing increasingly gay tolerant, as shown by majority opposition to sodomy laws and other positive indicators of growing support for gay acceptance. Wolfe observes in Are Republicans Making a Mistake Supporting Santorum? that:

by backing Santorum, President Bush and most other Republicans have apparently concluded that, as conservative activist Gary Bauer put it, Santorum's views reflected the American mainstream.

But I don't think that's quite right. The administration most likely was blindsided by Santorum's outburst, and when confronted with it tried to find a middle ground that wouldn't seem too intolerant but wouldn't alienate the religious conservatives, either. I read an online discussion arguing that when Bush supported Santorum as "an inclusive man" he intentionally was defending the principle of inclusion as a good thing for Republicans to uphold, while deliberately ignoring the substance of Santorum's remarks about homosexuality.

Whether that's too generous toward Bush or not, it's clear that social conservatives are still fuming over the lack of administration support for the anti-gay views Santorum expressed -- a fact that both the mainstream and the gay media have ignored.

By the way, a new poll shows 7 in 10 adult Americans support the U.S. Supreme Court overturning same-sex sodomy laws. In just a few weeks, we'll have a decision which, if positive, could provide a major boost toward equal treatment for gays under the law and get us well past the debate over whether gays should be legally persecuted. At least the Santorums of the world wouldn't be able to keep claiming they're only expressing agreement with nation's highest court (in its notorious Bowers ruling upholding, though unlike Santorum not advocating, state sodomy statutes).

Sorry, but I've been busy and haven't had a chance to weigh in on the Bill Bennett brouhaha. But here are two pieces worth checking out. Michael Kinsley's Washington Post op-ed, Bad Bet By Bill Bennett, makes a strong case that, yes, the conservative virtue maven and compulsive gambler is guilty of hypocrisy. Of Bennett's defense that his gambling never hurt anyone else, Kinsley writes:

Bennett can't plead liberty now, because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about. He wants to put marijuana smokers in jail. He wants to make it harder to get divorced. He wants more "moral criticism of homosexuality" and "declining to accept that what they do is right."

And IGF's Walter Olson wrote a column for Slate a few years back, William Bennett, Gays, and the Truth, that took Bennett to task over his promotion of a claim that "homosexuality takes 30 years off your life." How many years is it for playing of the slots?

Let me say that I think we do need to promote "virtue" and values, especially among the young. But we've let the social conservatives mix civics with their own brand of prejudice for far too long - which has only served to give self-discipline a bad rap.
-Stephen H.Miller

Could biotechnology allow two gay men to make a baby? That question was explored recently, and not by the National Enquirer. No, it was a legit story in the Washington Post, which reports:

If the science holds true in humans as in mice -- and several scientists said they suspect it will -- then a gay male couple might, before long, be able to produce children through sexual reproduction, with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes.

That scenario raises difficult questions, including whether the second man would be recognized as the child's biological mother.

Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this. But it does point out that the near future could be a very different world than the one we now inhabit. If gay couples can produce their own biological offspring together, would that hasten the full acceptance of gays into the fabric of society, or provoke a backlash over tampering with the heretofore immutable laws of nature? And if genetic engineering advances still further, will "designer babies" that are engineered to be an improvement on the traditional model be welcome or rejected as dangerous mutants (shades of X-Men!). There are no answers, but sometimes it's worth stepping back from the squabbles of today and thinking about the questions that are waiting for us tomorrow.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

05/04/03 - 05/10/03

Much of the media rehashing of the Rick Santorum controversy hasn't added much that's new. But Hendrik Hertzberg's piece in The New Yorker, Man Bites Dog, is very fine indeed. One astute observation among many:

Santorum believes that while individuals have no "right to consensual sex within the home" the state does have "rights to limit individuals' wants and passions," which is to say their feelings. --

It's probably unfair to parse Santorum's pronouncements as if they were products of ratiocination. No wonder, though, that liberal Democrats, moderate Republicans, and other non-hard-right types are increasingly nostalgic for the likes of Ronald Reagan (who delivered a forceful but unfortunately not fatal blow to Republican homophobia when he opposed a referendum that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in California's public schools) and Barry Goldwater (whose suspicion of Big Government did not include an opt-out provision for bedrooms).

Ultimately, Santorum will be seen as a throwback to authoritarian and statist conservatism, and the truly progressive, liberty-advancing strain of the movement will win out. The reason: at their best, traditional democratic liberalism (as opposed to welfare-state liberalism), small-government conservatism, and libertarianism inspire with the poetry of greater personal freedom coupled with respect for the rights of others. Santorum and his friends' appeal is premised on little more than fear. They're dinosaurs, and I suspect that even they know it.
--Stephen H. Miller

Think the Santorum flap revealed fault lines in America's culture wars? Wait till Massachusetts' highest court rules on gay marriage later this year, or so warns James Taranto's Best of the Web column on the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" site, which references and, in part, takes issue with Stanley Kurtz's latest anti-gay-marriage blowup over at the National Review.

On a happier note, read Tuesday's editorial re: Santorum in the Washington Post.
Stephen H. Miller

President Bush has nominated Claude A. Allen, a black conservative, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Allen served as press secretary to then-Sen. Jesse Helms during his 1984 North Carolina senate race against then-Gov. James Hunt. The Washington Post reports:

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said Democrats are scrutinizing Allen's statements about abortion and gays. During the 1984 campaign, Allen was criticized for his response to Hunt's description of Helms's backers as right-wingers. Allen said Hunt had links "with the queers." Nevertheless, a Senate Democratic aide said indications are that Allen would be confirmed. "He's an African American on a court that needs one," the aide said.

Guess it"ll be another victory for diversity.

I'd never say that the outrage isn't understandable over Sen. Rick Santorum's comments supporting sodomy laws, especially his assertion that if gay sex isn't kept as a criminal offense in Texas and elsewhere, than there's no stopping incest, bestiality, adultery, and polygamy! But I do think it's worthwhile, amidst the outrage, to rationally look at the shifts in the political culture being revealed. And the news, clearly, isn't all bad.

For starters, a few years back when then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott compared gays with alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, it hardly registered as a story outside the gay press. The Santorum blow-up, on the other hand, has received major national coverage, both print and broadcast. That's progress.

Another plus is the President's better-than-might-have-been-expected response. Again, I'm not praising Bush, but if we're going to be honest, it's worthwhile to look at what he said, and didn't say, about this affair. Here's White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, providing the "official" response:

"The president has confidence in Senator Santorum, both as a senator and as a member of the Senate leadership."

Asked about the president's views on homosexuality, Fleischer said a person's sexuality is "not a matter that the president concerns himself with" and that he judges people on how they act as a whole.

What's missing is any hint of support for Santorum's views on sodomy laws, or for the belief that consulting adults are not entitled to sexual privacy in their bedrooms. No wonder some religious conservatives are upset about this "timid" defense. In the words of the Family Research Council:

"Beyond a few tepid statements of personal support for Sen. Santorum, no prominent national GOP leader seems willing or able to mount a spirited, principled defense of marriage and family."

And to the religious right, that's come as a shock. The FRC added, by the way,

"The question naturally arises: Have Republican leaders been so intimidated by the smear tactics of the homosexual lobby and its Democratic attack dogs that they are cowering in silence?"

Well, not quite "cowering," but while Bush won't do or say anything that's seen as too supportive of gays, he won't do or say anything that looks like he endorsing intolerance, either. So Bush praises Santorum as "an inclusive man" (ha!), and says he's interested in how the Supreme Court will rule, shortly, on the constitutionality of sodomy statutes. Right now, all signs point to a ruling that, at the very least, voids same-sex-only sodomy laws, and Bush won't have a problem with that, either.

Thus the balancing act goes on, to the chagrin of both gay activists and their opposites in the religious right -- both sides convinced the President has sold his soul to the other.

SARS Envy?

"Some [activists] question why HIV didn't get the attention SARS does," says a headline in the April 25 issue of the Washington Blade (this story isn't online). Talk about comparative victimization contests! The main governmental responses to SARS have been contact tracing and quarantine. Just imagine if that had been the response to AIDS! Obviously, since HIV is NOT spread casually through the air, quarantine would be inappropriate. A case might be made for contract tracing to alert those infected with HIV early on, a standard public health response to a deadly communicable disease, but AIDS activists put up a fight, fearing - with some justification - that quarantine could follow. Even today, the same issue of the Blade has a piece about activists criticizing a CDC proposal for routine HIV screening by doctors!
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

04/20/03 - 04/26/03

A fun column on Santorum by Jim Pinkerton nevertheless raises important issues regarding fractures within the GOP over you know what.

On Another Topic...

Syndicated columnist Rex Wockner looks at the ever-expanding LGBTQITS acronym and asks why enough is never enough.

Andrew Sullivan offers a Santorum-fest. Well worth reading. And there's this editorial from the Washington Post, a Richard Cohen column, and Howard Kurtz's media wrapup.

Also, USA Today provides a nice overview of the GOP's gay problem.

As expected, the "wingnuts" of the religious right are stepping up to embrace Santorum. But conservative Stanley Kurtz, who says he opposes sodomy laws but doesn't support using courts to overturn them, writes what is at least an interesting defense of the Pennsylvania senator's comments. (Sullivan, however, has little difficulty taking it apart.)

Then there are the Utah polygamists upset over Santorum's linking of polygamy with homosexuality!

By the way, a colleague notes that the Human Rights Campaign, the big gay liberal lobby, joined with civil rights groups in demanding that Sen. Trent Lott resign his senate leadership spot over expressions of nostalgia for segregation, but that the civil rights establishment has been noticeably silent on Santorum's defense of arresting gays in their bedrooms.