IGF CultureWatch

Invitation Rescinded. A follow-up to the item below on Bill Simon's mismanaged attempt to placate religious conservatives. The AP also reports that Simon was axed from a list of planned speakers at a gay GOP fund-raiser scheduled for later this week. The Republican Unity Coalition event starring Mary Cheney -- the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney -- is expected to raise $1 million for "Big Tent" Republican candidates for the House and Senate who are viewed as supportive of gay inclusion. Said an RUC statement:

It is hugely disappointing to us to see Bill Simon bow under the pressure of a small fringe group who evidently yanked his chain hard the first time he reached out to us and to all voters in the middle, where elections are won.

I don't know the details, or if Simon signaled an unwillingness to personally attend. If the RUC folks gave him the boot (as the press accounts seem to suggest), they may have felt that a strong response, with some political pain, is the only way to ensure that conservative candidates don't think the religious right is the only constituency they need be concerned about. But in general, making Simon stand up and defend his positions in front of a gay-friendly audience, if he were willing to do so, would otherwise seem like a good thing.
--Stephen H. Miller

Non-Spousal Rights (or, Brotherly Love). The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, in responding to a Log Cabin Republican questionnaire, Bill Simon, the GOP's candidate for California governor, came out in favor of domestic partnerships, gay adoption, and the executive order protecting state employees. He's against gay marriage. And even on partnerships, he"d prefer that they not be defined specifically to recognize same-sex relationships. Here's how he put it:

"Let's not premise this thing on having the government go in your bedroom," Simon told a caller on the Ronn Owens KGO radio show. "What happens if my brother and I . . . why couldn't we be domestic partners, if we both lost our wives?" Asked by Ownes if he was proposing such laws for incestuous relationships, Simon said definitively he was not -- but for "any people who want to have a special relationship and set it forth in a contract, I'd look at that."

That's weak, or course. At best, domestic partnerships should be a stop gap that provides an avenue for same-sex couples to obtain something approaching spousal rights, while denied full equality to enter into marriages. As IGF contributor Jonathan Rauch and others have noted, opening up DPs to relationships that don't aspire to be spousal is to weaken the concept that spouses deserve special recognition and reinforcement. "Roommate rights," or recognizing a son and his widowed mother, or two siblings, as somehow "spousal," is nothing less than a frontal assault on the idea of spousal uniqueness -- all in order NOT to recognize gay partners as deserving the dignity of spouses.

Having said this, however, I"d argue it is still progress that Simon, as a candidate of the GOP rightwing, has come as far as he has. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan supporting gay adoptions, or any kind of partnership rights?

Better Off Dead? Harvard Law School, threatened with losing the millions of dollars in government funding that Harvard University as a whole receives, has agreed to finally allow the U.S. military to recruit on its campus. Originally banned in the Vietnam era, the military was kept away more recently to show the law school's opposition to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. True, "lie and hide" is unjustified and odious, but at a time when we are fighting against a worldwide terrorist network that wants to murder as many of us as it can, is it too much to expect the eggheads get their priorities, well, straight? Yes, keep up the lobbying against "don't ask." But keeping the military from recruiting the best and the brightest (that is, working to weaken the military) was politically perverse. That Harvard had to be financially blackmailed into letting the military recruit says volumes about the myopia of the liberal-left elite.

Community, Heal Thyself. There's a scathing attack on gay life, not from the religious right, but from a gay talk-show host and writer named Charles Karel Bouley II, in The Advocate:

It's 2002 and gay men are still drugging themselves silly, having unsafe sex, and turning themselves into living Billy dolls. If the religious right has a preconceived notion of who and what gay people are, maybe it's because we have fed it to them.

I can't say I agree with all of his rant. If the gay left revels in its antipathy to middle-class normality, Bouley goes to the other extreme and apparently sees no shadow whatsoever in suburban conformism. But he does score some points, especially about drug use and unsafe sex 20 years(!) into the age of AIDS. In any event, it's refreshing to see someone insist that we take responsibility for how we're perceived, rather than simply blaming the "bigots" for every negative image of gay folks that still lingers in the heartland.

Right-wing Wrath. You know you"re winning the culture wars when the anti-gay right starts criticizing Bill O"Reilly, conservative host of Fox TV's high-rated "O"Reilly Factor," for being too accommodating to gays. Here's a rant titled Even Bill O'Reilly Is Part of the Media's "Gay Spin Zone", from the right-wing Culture and Family Institute. Writes the CFI's Stephen Bennett:

O"Reilly has even said that he's "on the side of the angels" in opposing bans on homosexual adoption. (This was in regard to the state law in Florida that lesbian comedian Rosie O"Donnell and her friends in the liberal media have targeted for elimination.) Sad to say, one by one, even conservative stalwarts in the media are caving in to the homosexuals" grand, sinister plan.

Don't tell the gay left, though. They think things are only getting worse!

Another Sign of Progress. A serious contender for the Los Angeles Police Department's top job, David Kalish, is gay, and that's no big deal, reports the San Francisco Chronicle story. According to the report, Kalish, now a deputy chief,

seems to be one of the few among the dozens of candidates for the $240,000-a-year job who appears to be not only well-liked both inside and outside the department, but to have made no major enemies along the way. "He's commanded thousands and thousands of officers, and he's always been successful," says [L.A. City Council member Jack] Weiss, a staunch supporter. "Kalish is known for having a strong relationship with everybody. His orientation just is not an issue."

I don't know if Kalish will be named chief, and given the competition he probably won"t. But being seriously considered is a far cry from what a gay candidate could have expected just a few short years ago. (And it's a happier case of our new inclusion than, say, Michael Kopper being accepted by the top execs of Enron as part of their inner cabal.)

--Stephen H. Miller

Let the Light Shine Forth. Last Sunday's Washington Post, in Church's Growing Flock Changes Heart of Texas, gave an inspiring look at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, described as "the largest predominantly gay church in the United States, and possibly the world," with more than 3,500 members, "about half of whom attend services on a typical Sunday morning." In what may be the ultimate story of gay and lesbian assimilation,

It's a scene straight from Middle America: There is laughter all around and hugs and kisses, too, and after the offertory and communion and much greeting and good cheer, the faithful file happily out of church -- men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women.

But there's always shadow in the presence of light, and so, wouldn't you just know it,

The Christian right and anti-gay groups have trained their ire on the church, picketing outside and occasionally infiltrating the sanctuary to shout slogans. "I'd call it a synagogue of Satan," said John Reyes, head of the Dallas office of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America. "It's a monstrosity."

Nevertheless,

as the church has tripled and quadrupled in size, the critics have been able to muster only a dozen or 20 protesters sporadically. The Cathedral of Hope, its services protected by a pair of uniformed police and a sprinkling of officers in plain clothes, has shrugged and moved on.

Funny that when gay activists disrupt the church services of denominations viewed as homophobic, conservative pundits are quick to condemn (and usually rightfully so, although some acts of "bearing witness" by gays who are actual members of these churches may be a different matter). But when religious right activists, enraged by hate and zeal, disrupt gay church services, where's the conservatives" outrage?
--Stephen H. Miller

Arafat's "Queer" Brigade. The Forward newspaper presents an even-handed account of opposing views in the gay community on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Gays Are Divided on Mideast Strife.The paper reports:

Emmaia Gelman, a member of Queers for Palestine, a New York-based activist group that she said has some 20 to 30 members, said gays and lesbians are disproportionately represented in leadership roles in pro-Palestinian activist groups.

"Queer activism has traditionally fought to recognize the parallels between all kinds of oppression that are based on identity and on the wish of a government or society to repress a certain kind of people, or to erase people from the public dialogue or public space whose existence is inconvenient," Gelman said. "And so in that way there are enormous parallels between the queer liberation struggle and Palestinian struggle for human rights."

Well, that's one point of view. Fortunately, reporter Daniel Treiman also interviewed IGF contributor and LA Times columnist Norah Vincent, who

said her support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians "has nothing really to do with being gay, it has to do with notions of freedom and democracy." She did say, however, that the relatively advanced status of women and gays in Israel is indicative of why Israel is worthy of support.

Finally, the story quotes the Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, who pens attacks on gays who are out of lockstep with the left. Goldstein called Vincent's characterization of the gay left's attitudes toward Israel "an outrageous libel" and claimed he has never heard of Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) or Queers for Palestine. Does that mean he doesn't read this site?

Palestinian "Liberation": Redux The New Republic's mortifying account of the arrest and torture of gay Palestinians by Arafat's forces (summarized in my Aug. 13 posting) is now online at the magazine's website. Read it for yourself. But don't expect Arafat's "useful idiots" on the gay left to see the light. They're the ideological descendants of the same ilk that celebrated Mao, Fidel, and Uncle Ho (and before that, Uncle Joe).

Was Pim Fortuyn Right? The gay Dutch politician, assassinated while making a credible run to become that nation's prime minister, warned that unchecked immigration posed a real threat to women's rights and gay equality. For this, he was condemned as "intolerant" and called a "racist." But read Mark Steyn's commentary in Canada's National Post about the blinkers worn by multiculturalism's proponents. He notes that "even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes -- women's rights, gay rights -- the political class turns squeamishly away." Moreover he dares to assert, "I believe Western culture -- rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. -- is preferable to Arab culture." I support immigration, but with assimilation. Without it, like a Hindu widow, we're slowly climbing on the funeral pyre of our lost empires." It's a controversial piece, to be sure, but one whose arguments cannot simply be dismissed.
--Stephen H. Miller

Super Tuesday. As you probably know by now, in Tuesday's Georgia primaries both the anti-gay right and the loony left took hits, which is a victory for sanity in the political sphere. First, Rep. Bob Barr, the thrice-married defender of family values and the lead force behind passage of the dreadful Defense of Marriage Act (which forbids federal government recognition of gay unions, among other nice things), lost to Rep. John Linder, also a conservative Republican, but one who doesn't specialize in gay-bashing (redistricting had pitted the two incumbents against each other). On the eve of the race, Barr accused Linder of "supporting the gay agenda," which was nonsense, but shows that Barr was continuing his malignant ways up till the end.

Also on Tuesday, Rep. Cynthia McKinney was soundly defeated by challenger Denise Majette. McKinney notoriously charged that the Bush administration knew of impending terrorist attacks before September 11 but did nothing to stop them, presumably because, as she added, "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war." On Monday, according to Atlanta media, McKinney's father and patron, state Rep. Billy McKinney, dismissed Majette's candidacy and spelled out the reason for his daughter's tough fight: "J-E-W-S," he said on television. And on it goes. Oh, she was a supporter of gay rights, too. Big deal. Good Riddance.

We"re Everywhere! Much of the print and broadcast coverage on the guilty plea by former Enron executive Michael Kopper noted that he and his domestic partner profited from some rather shady dealings. For instance, Reuters reports that "In the "Chewco" deal that ultimately led Enron to restate its earnings to the tune of $591 million in November, Kopper and his domestic partner William Dodson earned $7 million from Enron for a $125,000 investment." The fact that Kopper is gay has been treated in a simple, straight-forward manner, as far as I can tell. But perhaps it will give the gay left another reason to condemn our "assimilation" into the mainstream!

They Just Won't "QUIT." More anti-Israeli lunacy from the gay left this week. According to an account on the sf.indymedia.org website:

"About 25 queer settlers descended on a downtown Berkeley Starbucks on Saturday, August 17, claiming Berkeley as "a city without people for people without a city." The group, organized by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), posted a banner proclaiming the reclaimed caf" "Queerkeley -- A Prophecy Fulfilled." They also erected" signs reading, "It Works In Palestine, Why Not Here?" and "It's Ours Because We Say So." They erected plastic palm trees to "make the concrete bloom," and gave patrons a tract explaining their religious claim to the land as follows: "Land of fruits and nuts "" "

The report continues:

"The group selected Starbucks for the location of their first settlement in Berkeley because Starbucks founder and CEO, Howard Shultz, is a major supporter of the Israeli state and the corporation has become the prime target of an international boycott of corporations with ties to Israel."

Wow, an anti-Israel and anit-corporation demo all in one!

The "queer" left's demonizing of Israel and romanticizing of the Palestinian "liberation movement" is even more repellant given recent revelations of the arrest and brutal torture of gays by the Palestinian Authority (see the Aug. 13 posting, below).
--Stephen H. Miller

Fit to Print. The New York Times has finally decided to run gay union announcements in what will now be known as its "Weddings/Celebrations" section. Just why it took the flagship of American liberalism so long to do so is an interesting question. As a story in the Boston Globe points out, in the New England region alone the count of daily and weekly papers that publish same-sex union announcements includes the Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, New Hampshire's Foster's Sunday Citizen, the Somerville Journal, and the Melrose Free Press. But the Boston Globe itself, which is owned by the New York Times Company, has yet to join their ranks. Looks like small town editors may know something about community that the liberal elites are just realizing.

Biting the Hand that Feeds "Em. AIDS service/advocacy organizations that receive federal funding are bristling at a Department of Health and Human Services investigation into whether these groups used government money to finance the shout-down of HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson at the international AIDS conference in Barcelona last month. According to the Washington Post:

"Thompson was heckled on the third day of the weeklong conference when he delivered a speech on the U.S. government's overseas AIDS activities. Protesters blew whistles, chanted 'Shame, Shame,' rhythmically jabbed their fingers and eventually surrounded Thompson on the stage. He read his address to the end but his remarks were entirely inaudible. Handouts in both English and Spanish criticized the government for not spending enough on care and treatment of people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in poor countries. At the bottom of the flier was a list of 12 organizations."

True, the investigation was triggered by complaints from a group of conservative members of Congress who are not exactly gay friendly. Still, if you"re accepting government funds, do you really want to put on protests that such as this:

"The heckling of Thompson was especially dramatic because it occurred in a movie-theater-sized space and went on for half an hour. (The Spanish health minister was heckled into inaudibility at the conference's opening ceremony, but that protest took place in a cavernous sports arena and lasted only 10 minutes.)"

This is all too typical of the contemporary left's mode of "discourse" -- throw a tantrum and refuse to let your opponents speak at a public conference, even if they"ve helped pay for your air fare, and then become indignant at the thought that your use of the taxpayers' funds is being looked into. I guess this is what the left means by "entitlement."

Beyond the Troglodytes. I wouldn't bother alerting you to yet another analysis of gay "progressive" Richard Goldstein's attacks on gay nonlefties if I didn't think it made some interesting, and fresh, points. Here's Julian Sanchez's review of Goldstein's screed, posted on the website of Laissez Faire Books, which is itself a libertarian resource well worth becoming familiar with. In particular, Sanchez notes:

"The vagaries of America's winner-take-all first-past-the-post electoral system, and the two-party hegemony it has entrenched, have forced a distasteful coalition. Adherents of a philosophy of limited government, open markets, and equality under law were shoehorned into "the right," where they formed an uneasy realpolitik alliance with (among others) loathesome, hate-filled little troglodytes who prattle about a "gay agenda" and live in terror of the day when America recognizes that 'equal protection of the laws' is utterly inconsistent with state bans on 'sodomy' and a 'straights-only' marriage policy."

However, as things have (thankfully) begun to change, the gay left is utterly unable to adapt:

"The Republican Party has frequently been hostile to gay rights. Therefore, when a Republican candidate emerges who might begin to reverse that trend, the correct response [by the left] is not to support him, proving that Republicans have much to gain politically from sloughing off the bigots and reaching out to the gay community, but instead to rebuff him."

Moreover:

"As we've seen with attacks on black conservatives, dissenting views must be explained away as signs of inauthentic identity, even as affronts to the relevant identity. For Goldstein, politics and sexual identity have so blurred together that this comes very easily. If being a progressive is just one necessary aspect of that identity, after all, then an attack on progressivism is an attack on the identity."

Turns out, in fearing change, Goldstein's really the one who's the "conservative."
--Stephen H. Miller

Liberate Palestine?A harrowing article appears in the Aug 19-26 issue of The New Republic on the persecution of gays in the territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority. "Refugee Status" by Yossi Klein Halevi (unfortunately, not posted online at the magazine's website) discusses the arrest and torture of suspected gays. Several stories are recounted, including that of a 21-year-old Gazan whom the author calls Tayseer (a pseudonym):

[A] young man he didn't know invited Tayseer into an orange grove. The next day he received a police summons. At the station Tayseer was told that his sex partner was in fact a police agent whose job is to ferret out homosexuals. If Tayseer wanted to avoid prison, he too would have to become an undercover sex agent, luring gays into orchards and turning them over to the police. Tayseer refused to implicate others. He was arrested and hung by his arms from the ceiling"

Months of horrifying torture followed. After his release, Tayseer crossed into Israel, where he now lives illegally. His dream is to move to Tel Aviv. According to Halevi, in the last few years hundreds of gay Palestinians have fled to Israel. Think about this if you should happen across a pro-Palestinian Authority demonstration, especially one in which gay left groups such as QUIT ("Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism") are taking part.

Capitalism Liberates! Some 92% of major U.S. companies now have nondiscrimination policies that included sexual orientation, and more than two-thirds also offered domestic partnership benefits for the partners of their gay or lesbian employees, according to a new survey by the Human Rights Campaign. Think about that the next time yet another GLBT "progressive" labels corporations, free markets, and trade as the enemies of "social justice."

Addendum: Unlikely Heroes? Here's the AP story on the new survey of gay-friendly corporations. Notice how corporate America is easily outpacing both state and federal governments, which overwhelming do not protect gays from workplace discrimination, or extend partner benefits to gay government workers.

Notice, too, Human Rights Campaign leader Elizabeth Birch's comment, "The truth is it's corporate America that has been the unlikely hero in the movement for equality for gay and lesbian Americans"" Why unlikely? Typically, shareholder-owned companies are driven to both attract the best personnel they can, and to market their products to as wide a customer base as they can appeal to. It's government that is more likely to cut deals among narrow interests in order to rough out an electoral plurality. As HRC's Kim Mills says at the end of the AP story, "Most successful companies know discrimination is bad for business."

For politicos, pitting group against group is an electoral strategy.

2-4-6-8, We Will Not Assimilate! Many gay left activists are adamant in their rejection of "assimilation" into mainstream society, seeing it as a threat to "progressive" identity politics, and even to their "queer" identities. Consider the following attack on gay assimilation in Richard Goldstein's notorious Fight the Gay Right essay in the June 14 issue of The Nation:

"It's a painful, warping performance"And for the large contingent of gay people who were middle class before they were queer, acceptance even on these stilted terms is a seductive offer. The gay right is a broker of this deal. It provides a training manual in assimilation". Homocons abet this recruitment drive by urging gay people to qualify for membership in an assimilated elite, and that means leaving the tribe behind. By pitting personal ambition against communal values, they hope to wean gay people from the institution that has played a major part in their rise. The queer community still ties its members to the left, which is why it has been targeted by homocons."

Ironically, a similar anti-assimilation view is held by anti-gay Muslim fundamentalists. For example, here's how Sheikh Abu Hamza, the Egyptian imam of London's Finsbury Park Mosque and head of the Ansar Al-Shari'ah organization, views cultural assimilation (from an interview with the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, posted by the Middle East Media Research Center):

Q: "Do you consider yourself British?"

Abu Hamza: "I consider myself British to the extent that I use my British documents to move around.... I live here and I hold a passport. It is a superficial identity; real identity is in the heart and in the mind, and this is the [identity] that drives a man. This [identity] is Islam..."

But while gay leftists reject assimilation as a threat to the gay "tribe" and its "communal values," Islamists reject the mainstream in part because of its very acceptance of gay folks and others:

Q: "But in Britain you are respected as a person."

Abu Hamza: "And who said that we do not respect a person?! But must we respect a person even when he wants to be an animal?!...There is a difference between a man of intelligence and a man who is crazy or a pervert; [there is a difference between] a natural man and a criminal man... Must we respect someone who boasts of his bestiality? This is inconceivable. This is incompatible with Islamic religious law, or with reason.... Every man... [can choose] whether to be a human being or an ape. For example, if a man wears clothes, he is respected; but if he takes them off, he should not be respected. An adulterer should not be respected. Anyone who attacks little children should not be respected. Anyone who tries to turn himself into a half-man, half-woman should not be respected..."

If the mainstream is a bulwark against the enemies of gay equality (or, let's face it, of the "right" of gay people to even exist), then that seems all the more reason to embrace and defend it, while still working to expand the arena of personal liberty.

Left, Right, and (Mostly) In-Between. Last Sunday's Washington Post presented an intriguing look at the governor's race in Minnesota. As a microcosm for national political trends, this race shows voters rejecting both the Democratic and Republican parties as captives of special interests, a point which the traditional parties simply won't grasp -- thus creating a real opening for the independent candidate, Tim Penny. Write reporters David Von Drehle and Dan Balz:

As elsewhere, the deciding votes belong to cultural moderates. -- The [Democratic-Farm-Labor] nominee for governor, meanwhile, gives scarcely a nod to the idea of reaching out beyond his base. Instead, Roger Moe -- majority leader of the state Senate for an incredible 22 years -- describes a by-the-book campaign strategy based on accumulating slivers of the population. In a three-way race"Moe says, "it's going to take 34 or 35 points to win. It won't take 40 points. So you get ducks where the ducks are." Finding enough ducks will be a matter of "narrowcasting rather than broadcasting," targeting the "distinct, small groups" that Moe says constitute the base of the DFL.

But such "narrowcasting," whether practiced by Democrats reaching out to minorities and gays, or Republicans targeting religious conservatives, won't heal the rifts in the social fabric or nourish a sustainable and growing political foundation. Politicians who don't see the need for attracting broad-based majorities by growing their base, rather than relying on narrow pluralities, are dooming their parties to eventual extinction. Republicans and Democrats should both pay attention.

Not a "Commie." A nice piece by David Harsanyi is now posted at FrontPageMagazine.com, responding to gay "progressive" (and attacker of gay moderates) Richard Goldstein's rebuke to all who would call him a communist. I particularly like Haranyi's remark:

"Classifying himself a "liberationist" who fought "bitter battle with Marxists who regarded sexism and homophobia as a distraction from the class struggle," Goldstein seems to have less of a problem with Marxism's all-encompassing tyrannical dehumanization than he does with totalitarian views on sexual persuasion. Communism's 100-million plus victims are not as damaging a crime to him as a fellow traveler's lukewarm support for the local same-sex prom."

Which brings to mind Urvashi Vaid, the former long-time head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who took umbrage at being called a Marxist, noting, instead, that she was an "anarcho-syndicalist." Oh.