IGF CultureWatch

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.

Republicans, Nazis, Whatever. In Orange County, Florida, where openly gay Republican Patrick Howell is running for the state legislature, the leader of the county's Democratic Party asserted that a gay person voting for Howell would be like "a Jew voting for Hitler." Responds the leader of the Orange County Republican Party, writing in the Orlando Sentinel:

"Comparing any candidate to Hitler is so extreme, so vulgar and so desperate that it begs for a reaction of indignant outrage"[H]ow can a party chairman regard any voting block as exclusively Republican or Democrat? Voters do not belong to me or to my party, like distinct herds of cattle. How terribly presumptuous, not to mention condescending"to Democratic voters, gay and otherwise."

How indeed, except that this mentality is par for the course, and expressed in somewhat less vulgar terms by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, among others. Consider Frank's remark, "I guess if you're gay but you're also rich, and you like to pollute, and you don't like black people, then you vote Republican."

The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which has endorsed Howell, chimed in with a condemnation of the Hitler comparison, although one that doesn't go much further than belaboring the obvious. "There is no comparison between a man who's participating in the democratic process and a totalitarian responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent people, including Jews and gay," says the Victory Fund statement.

Well, duh. Memo to the Victory Fund: It's not like the Democrats in Orange County just got slightly confused about the difference between Nazis and openly gay Republicans, you know. The Democratic party is dependent on its core constituencies -- blacks and Hispanics, trial lawyers, unionized government workers, and gays and lesbians. The trial lawyers and government workers aren't going anywhere as long as the Democrats continue to oppose tort reform and support bigger government. But the Democrats will fight tooth and nail to maintain their high percentage of minority and gay votes. That's why GOP efforts to reach out to Hispanics, blacks, and gays and lesbians are viewed as such a threat. And, in fact, the Orange County Democratic leader aimed his remark at a black gay Democrat who was helping Howell circulate petitions. Gays and blacks voting Republican -- no wonder the Democratic leader went apoplectic.

Still More on Goldstein. If you"ve been following my earlier postings on gay "progressive" Richard Goldstein's attacks on gay moderates in The Nation and elsewhere over the past few months, you might want to take a look at the letters published in the current issue of The Nation. In addition to the response from IGF contributor Andrew Sullivan (one of Goldstein's prime targets), what's surprising is how many ordinary readers of this left-of-liberal mag wrote to take umbrage at Goldstein. For some of them, perhaps cocooned on the left since they came out, Goldstein's screed may have at least enlightened them to the existence of gays who are challenging left-wing orthodoxy. As the communists like to say, "To be attacked by your enemy is a good thing." Well, sometimes.

Hypocrisy and Hysteria Alert. Big Brothers-Big Sisters of America Inc. (BBBSA) finds itself at the center of a storm over its new rule requiring all 500 U.S. affiliates to allow gays and lesbians to serve as mentors to children. Funny how all the right-wing groups that argued that the Boys Scouts of America, as a private organization, had a right to order its local chapters to exclude gay men from serving as volunteers, suddenly feel justified in condemning the gay-inclusive decision of a different child-mentoring organization.

According to the Culture and Family Institute:

Children who are involved in BBBSA programs are primarily from single-parent homes. Many of these kids are emotionally fragile and desperate for attention and affirmation from an adult of their own gender. "While gay activists insist that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children, the evidence indicates that a substantial number of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.

The alert from the American Family Association is, if you can believe it, even worse, leading off with a purported threat by gay activists to "sodomize your sons."

Increasingly, this level of discourse can only appeal to the true hard-core fanatics. So, in a sense, it's a sign that these anti-gay groups have given up trying to move broad public opinion and instead are focusing exclusively on feeding red meat to, and soliciting funds from, their base. But it's still ugly to behold.

Censorship or Civility? The AP reports in a July 30 story that a recent graduate of an Ann Arbor high school is claiming "censorship" because she wasn't allowed to oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians during her speech for the school's "Diversity Week" program. And a conservative legal foundation is bringing a federal lawsuit on her behalf. The school, for its part, says it merely asked the girl to reconsider the critical paragraph of her remarks.

The problem with events such as "Diversity Week" is that if you"re a religious conservative and you believe homosexuality is a sin, you don't want the school telling your kid otherwise. On the other hand, public schools don't let kids from racist or anti-Semitic homes express their opinions. The difference, alas, is that opposition to homosexuality still carries religious weight, whereas racism and anti-Semitic views are nearly universally condemned in today's America.

The AP story doesn't make clear what the diversity folks were saying about gay people. Possibly it was just a bland exhortation against prejudice and discrimination. Maybe something more, and maybe something less. The school says during an "open mike" students were free to express any opinion. And some student organizers of the event said the "views of people who oppose homosexuality are often heard, and therefore they sought panelists who supported homosexuality," the AP reports.

A public school is an institution you are forced to attend (unless your parents can afford the price of a private alternative). School officials can search you locker, test your urine (under certain circumstances), and make you get naked and shower publicly. Which is to say, public schools are not a great respecter of personal rights. While the purpose of education should be to work through competing ideas, all schools have certain values that they impart as part of the educational package. Which is why the "gay" issue (and, for that matter, the "God" issue) provokes such heat.

Let's hope that in this little microcosm of the culture wars the legal brouhaha will at least prove educational, as the parties try to adjudicate where, as far as public schools are concerned, civility ends and censorship begins.

More Gay Political Rashomon. Here's another example of how different sides have very different views of the same gay political development. Last week, the Bush administration announced that Scott Evertz, the openly gay director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (i.e., the "AIDS Czar"), was moving to the Department of Heath & Human Services, where he will coordinate the government's global AIDS program. The new domestic "AIDS Czar" is Dr. Joseph O"Neill, an openly gay physician who treated AIDS patients before entering public service. He is currently chief of the AIDS policy office at HHS.

According to a statement from Rich Tafel, leader of the Log Cabin Republicans (the gay GOPers), this is a welcome expansion of the AIDS policy team, with the addition of another high-level openly gay appointee. "With Scott Evertz and Joe O'Neill, we have two of the best qualified people in the nation on the President's team fighting the AIDS epidemic both at home and abroad," writes Tafel.

On the other hand, the liberal/progressive Human Rights Campaign views the action with some suspicion, as they do with all administration moves. Says HRC Political Director Winnie Stachelberg:

"While this shake-up has caused much speculation and uncertainty, we are cautiously hoping that these moves will reinvigorate the Bush administration's efforts".This is an opportunity for the administration to reverse course, take this life-and-death issue off the backburner and reassert American leadership. We hope they are up to the daunting task at hand."

The HRC release goes on to say that "There has been speculation that Evertz may have been forced out of his position by conservatives upset with Evertz's close association with gay groups and his support of condom usage as an effective means to stop transmission of HIV."

Meanwhile, the anti-gay Family Research Counsel weighs in with a statement of concern:

"FRC opposed the appointment of Scott Evertz last year because he had no public health qualifications and as a gay political activist had espoused policies at odds with the president's position, such as needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.... It remains to be seen whether the new appointee will pursue policies more closely aligned with the President."

Finally, the Juy 24 issue of LCR's e-newsletter, "Inclusion Wins" (not yet online), took aim at both the HRC and FRC responses, saying:

"This past week the gay left and the far right once again joined forces in spinning a story -- and both sides got it wrong. -- Leaders of the Family Research Council"claimed that [Scott Evertz] was pushed out of his position because he was too liberal, "too gay." -- Within a few hours, HRC put out their press release giving the far right exactly what they needed. HRC and FRC put out identical stories that Scott was "shoved" and it was a victory for the anti-gay right. Both organizations -- FRC and HRC -- have been looking for every chance to attack the Bush administration and make the same case to each of their donor bases -- the far right has influence in the White House. HRC wants to scare people into giving. FRC wants to appear powerful. They were a perfect match.

The LCR newsletter continues:

"The AIDS establishment has been schizophrenic.... They've attacked the Bush Administration for not doing enough on global AIDS, attacking [HHS Secretary Tommy] Thompson and hounding him off the stage at the recent Barcelona AIDS conference. But then Secretary Thompson stated he was working to address these concerns, and the same AIDS activists criticized him for not doing enough at home and focusing too much on the global problem."

Looks like you just can't win with some people, I guess.

Whatever the truth may be, the fact is that the administration has now appointed openly gay men to oversee both its domestic and global AIDS policy. That's the real story here -- and one that both the gay left AND the anti-gay right thought could never, and would never, happen.

Joined for Life? Here's a good example of the trouble with civil unions as "marriage lite." According to this AP report, Gary Roengarten and Peter Downes entered into a civil union in Vermont, but their relationship has since soured. Now, they find that they can't legally dissolve their union via a court in Connecticut, where they reside, because that state (like the other 49 outside of Vermont) doesn't recognize civil unions in the first place. A Vermont court could dissolve their legal union (the equivalent of granting a divorce), but only if one of the men were a Vermont resident.

Rosengarten's attorney said his client wants a formal dissolution to protect the inheritance of his three adult children. "These are two very private people who want to have this resolved with dignity and discretion," he explained.

Opinion Journal, on the Wall Street Journal website, has some fun with this (scroll all the way down to the item titled Marriage Plus), opining:

"Unlike today's marriages, a civil union is really for life."Though anyone can get a civil union license in Vermont, state law requires at least one party be a legal resident before the family courts will rule on a dissolution. Oh well, maybe this will provide Rosengarten and Downes with the impetus to patch things up."

But it's no joke to those who discover themselves legally bound together with no way out. Consigned to the realm of halfway measures and semi-equality, same-sex couples may find this sort of legal limbo becoming more familiar. Sooner or later, the other 49 and their courts, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, will have to come to terms with what has happened in Vermont. Or, much better still, realize that barring gay and lesbian couples from marrying in the standard manner is not a tenable situation.

A Blog to Check Out. IGF fellow traveler Tom Brennan has started his own daily blog. Here's a link to his postings from last Friday, with a scathingly on-target critique of Richard Goldstein (who thinks all gays must march in leftwing lockstep), followed by a priceless self-description of lesbigay radicals on parade:

Large banners proclaimed, "Defend Civil Rights at Home, No 'Collateral Damage' Abroad, Stop This War!" and "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered People & Allies In SOLIDARITY with Arabs, Muslims, South Asians Against Racial Profiling." Three other banners carried by allied activists defended Mumia abu-Jamal, slammed patriarchy and war. Chants rang out: "Stop the Hate, Stop the Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here," and "Arabs and Muslims Under Attack, What Do We Do? Act Up, Fight Back," were among them.

Comments Brennan, "I'm looking forward to reports of the "No Racist War" and "Solidarity with the Muslim World" dummies taking their message to the gay pride parades in Mecca, Tehran, Cairo, Baghdad etc etc etc etc." Me too.

Praise Where It's Due. Howard Dean, Vermont's governor and a Democratic presidential hopeful, was questioned by NBC's Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. To his credit, Dean gave an unflinching defense of his support for civil unions, and said signing the bill was one of the most important events of his political life. Moreover, he said that he, like many other straight Americans, had spent a lifetime listening to misinformation about homosexuality, and that every state needs to go through the kind of discussion that Vermont went through in order for that misinformation to be shown up for what it is. Russert asked him rhetorically how many of the others running for president would have signed the civil unions bill, which pretty much makes the point.

While Dean should be commended for his support for civil unions and gay equality, at no small political cost, he took other stands that were less praiseworthy. He denounced tax cuts as "voodoo economics," saying "Supply-side economics doesn't work, and what's happening on Wall Street day is a perfect example of that." (Actually, without the tax cuts and the consumer spending they"ve fueled, economic growth would likely be negative and the stock crash much, much worse.) Dean also defended his support for the pork-barrel spending of the recent farm subsidies giveaway-to-agribusiness bill (sadly passed with support from both Democrats and Republicans).

So see, I"m willing to praise liberals when they are in their civil libertarian mode, but remain staunchly critical of their ever-bigger government, tax-and-spend mania. Support for our equality must expand beyond the most liberal wing of the liberal party if we are to achieve success outside of the country's "progressive" bastions.

More on What Ails the Catholic Church. A very fine piece in Sunday's Washington Post looks at Roman Catholic seminaries in the U.S. Not unexpectedly, a large number of those studying to be priests are gay and they tend to socialize together, which sometimes leads to sexual tensions that are readily apparent. But the topic is not allowed to be openly discussed. The result is a "weird" atmosphere that is driving both straight and gay seminarians to abandon their dreams of becoming priests. Says one straight former priest-to-be about "the atmosphere of suffocating sexual repression" at his seminary:

"You need to create a space where people can be who they are. Being gay is not the problem, but when it's all underground it's no good."

Indeed, clearly it's not.

On German "Marriage". Readers have written to chide me for the recent item in which I wrote, "Meanwhile, Germany (of all places) joins France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden in granting same-sex couples the benefits of matrimony." Wrote one reader:

"Despite the impression you might get from watching the History Channel, the second world war ended a long time ago and fortunately LOTS of things have changed since then. Modern Germany is far from being a perfect place, but general attitudes towards homosexuality in Germany are far ahead of the U.S. and have been for a long time."

Another reader pointed out that Germany's law does not grant the full rights of marriage:

"The German Eingetragene Partnerschaft (registered partnership)--the so-called 'Homo-Ehe' (gay marriage)--in fact does not grant same-sex couples all of the benefits that verheiratete (married) opposite sex couples get. Most notably, they do not get the same benefits as regards taxation--income and inheritance"."

The reason, I"m informed, is that portions of the partnership bill equalizing taxation were rejected by the Bundesrat (the upper house), which is controlled by the CDU/CSU (Christian Democrat Union/Christian Social Union). Moreover, the partnerships, unlike marriage, are not recognized outside of Germany. Hope that helps clarify matters.

Pandering to the Right. Here's another sign of how backward we remain on the subject of legal marriage for gays and lesbians. Just as Canada embarks on a path that's expected to lead to legal same-sex matrimony, Congress members who represent the GOP's anti-gay wing, led this time by Louisiana's David Vitter, are again trying to block funding for Washington, D.C.'s domestic partners law (Congress has the final say so over the district's appropriations). This attempt to mobilize the religious right before November's elections isn't expected to prevail, and openly gay Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz), who previously succeeded in getting the appropriations committee to remove language against the D.C. partners law, is again working to ensure that this latest bit of anti-gay pandering comes to naught.

The sooner this mischief bites the dust, the better for the GOP all round. For what does it profit a party to appeal to the religious right and lose the moderate suburbanites who would like to vote Republican, but fear joining a party that
countenances bigotry?

Paglia Takes Aim. Author Camille Paglia is a free-thinking socially libertarian lesbian and longtime critic of the lesbigay left's rigid orthodoxy (which she terms "gay Stalinism"). In a new FrontPage Magazine piece titled The Gay Inquisition, she responds to attacks against her and other non-leftists by the Village Voice's Richard Goldstein.

Paglia, who sometimes falls into the same kind of overly personalized sneering that her leftwing nemeses specialize in, nevertheless hits the nail on the head when she writes:

"There have been seismic shifts in feminism and gay politics over the past decade. My wing of pro-sex feminism has triumphed, and gay life in general has become more integrated with mainstream America. The fire has gone out of activism, since we are in a period of negotiation rather than confrontationalism in social-policy issues. Communication lines between gay and straight have opened dramatically, except in the most retrograde patches of religious fundamentalism. Hence the small cells still stoking their fury in feminism and gay activism are mostly fanatics--those who are still nursing childhood wounds and who cling to "the movement" as a consoling foster family. They are harmless, except when impressionable young people fall under their spell: their parochial jargon and unresolved resentments stunt the mind."

If only we could put all the leftwing "queer theorists" and all the rightwing family values moralists in a room together and let them luxuriate in their mutual fanaticism while the rest of us get on with our lives.