Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

No One Is on the Moral High Ground Here

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The outing of the son of Mississippi’s GOP governor, after he signed a religious liberty bill, raises the usual issues. If the son of Gov. Phil Bryant wanted to make his sexual orientation public, he would have done so. His outing (assuming he is gay) is an attempt to embarrass the governor.

It’s at best a ham-fisted attempt to “educate” the benighted masses that gays are in all families. To the extent anyone pays attention, it will further polarize, with defenders of the Mississippi law seeing it as an exceedingly ugly tactic by opponents and thus feeling reinforced in their beliefs.

Personally, I believe it’s wrong for small business owners with religious convictions against same-sex marriage to be forced to provide expressive services to same-sex weddings (as they are in states and localities with LGBT anti-discrimination measures that apply to “public accommodations”). But the Mississippi law is in many respects “problematic” (as progressives like to label things they want to suppress) and quite probably unconstitutional. That’s because, among other reasons, it’s a mishmash of agenda items, including an unenforceable declaration that “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman [and that] sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The “religious liberty” battle now roiling through the states could have been avoided with a bit of common sense, such as an acceptance of religious exemptions in LGBT anti-discrimination matters. But progressive activists have made it clear they will tolerate no dissent on this.

I wish that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993 with support from many Democrats who would now be required to strenuously oppose it, applied to states and localities. The law holds that legislation burdening the exercise of religion on behalf of a compelling government interest must be the least restrictive way in which to further the government interest. But in 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court held that RFRA could only be applied to federal legislation.

If that were not the case, it would have been interesting to see how RFRA might have played out in religious liberty disputes based on state and local anti-discrimination laws. (Subsequently, attempts to pass statewide RFRAs based on the federal model have been treated by opponents as the second coming of Jim Crow.)

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More Evidence: All About the “T”

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The news media is all over that Bruce Springsteen cancels North Carolina concert over ‘bathroom law’ (via CNN.com):

Springsteen and his E Street Band were slated to perform at the Greensboro Coliseum this Sunday. The roughly 15,000 ticketholders will all be eligible for a refund. The newly enacted law requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, and has drawn fierce criticism for excluding legal protections from gay and transgender people.

The North Carolina law, as the article notes in a secondary fashion, invalidates a comprehensive LGBT anti-discrimination measures passed in Charlotte and prohibits any future local measures in the state. But the reporting and commentary is fixated on the bathroom issue.

Part of this is because transgender bathroom and locker room use has—along with forcing small businesses with religious objections to provide expressive services to same-sex marriages—become the dominant LGBT issue of the day. Employment discrimination, what’s that?

Along those lines, the Washington Post recently informed us that queasiness over using restrooms with the opposite sex is simply a matter of socialization and enculturation:

A bathroom bill wouldn’t be raised in some parts of Europe where restrooms are unisex. But the public bathroom here has regularly been a location of consternation for the puritanical, puri-panic-al United States: an American conundrum resulting from American sensibilities and American history.

Which is why so many suspect that gender-neutral bathrooms is the actual aim of progressive activists, and are responding with such vehemence.

Is this rightwing manipulation? Sure. But leftwing overreach has opened the door that reactionary politicians are now walking through.

P.S., I’ve traveled throughout Europe and don’t recall shared “unisex” (the author means mixed sex) restrooms, even in Scandinavia. But hey, if it serves the narrative.

More. Gay Washington Post columnist recounts:

I was having dinner with some LGBT colleagues when I excused myself and headed to the facilities — one labeled for men, the other for women, facing each other across a small hallway. Between them stood an employee, who looked me up and down and opened the men’s room door for me.

How polite? Hardly. Instead of thanking him, I explained how presumptuous he had been in deciding my bathroom preference for me. I tried in vain to explain how “gender identity” (the way individuals perceive themselves) is different from “biological sex” (generally indicated by a person’s genitalia, or sex assigned at birth).

Yes, for many progressives the aim is gender-neutral restrooms.

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Culture Wars Redux

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Via the Washington Times:

Mississippi bakers, florists and photographers who want to avoid serving gay weddings for religious reasons can breathe easy — at least for now.

Calls for a boycott and repeal campaign followed after Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed a religious-freedom bill Tuesday that protects small-business owners from facing penalties for declining to participate in same-sex ceremonies.

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay advocacy group, called the bill “horrific” and lambasted Mr. Bryant while vowing that “his state will suffer.”

Since Mississippi has no LGBT anti-discrimination law, the religious liberty law was unnecessary; no one is forcing small businesses with religious objections to provide services to same-sex weddings.

But in a saner, less mendacious world, tolerance for religious conservatives — particularly as regards expressive services for same-sex weddings — wouldn’t be viewed as “horrific.”

The irony is that where religious liberty is a legitimate issue — in states and localities where LGBT anti-discrimination laws are used to punish and destroy small businesses that offend progressive sensibilities — religious freedom protections won’t be passed.

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Restoring Campus Sanity

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Via Reason.com: Judge Sides with Gay Brandeis Student Guilty of ‘Serious Sexual Transgression’ for Kissing Sleeping Boyfriend:

The accused, “John Doe,” [had been found responsible by a Brandeis University investigation that denied him due process] for stolen kisses, suggestive touches, and a wandering eye—all within the context of an established sexual relationship. His former partner and accuser, J.C., did not file a complaint with the university until well after the incidents took place. In fact, J.C.’s participation in Brandeis’ “sexual assault training” program caused him to re-evaluate the relationship.

The two began dating in the fall of 2011. They broke up in the summer of 2013.

Comments Robby Soave: “In a world where affirmative consent is a prerequisite for each and every conceivable sexual act, people who awaken their partners by kissing them are committing assault.”

As I wrote about this case back in August 2014, On Campus, Absence of Due Process Extended to Gays, “Maybe these incidents should be left to the judicial system when there is evidence of an actual crime.”

More. From the Washington Examiner:

From the very beginning, the deck was stacked against Doe, as his accuser — a former boyfriend with whom he had a 21-month committed relationship prior to the accusation — submitted two sentences as to the accusation and was not required to provide a full account of the alleged sexual assault. As [Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, a George W. Bush appointee] wrote in his decision, even if the accuser had provided such a statement, the accused was not entitled to see it.

“Indeed, the accused was required to provide his or her own detailed response without an opportunity to see or know the details of the accusation,” Saylor wrote. “There was likewise no requirement that copies of any ‘substantiating materials’ submitted by the accuser, or the names of any witnesses, be provided to the accused at any time.”

Saylor noted that school disciplinary hearings like the one Doe faced are not criminal proceedings, yet administrators essentially conducted the hearing like a criminal trial.

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All They Can See is the “T”

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Fortune notes that businesses responded with far more vigor to, and threatened boycotts over, Georgia’s narrowly scoped religious liberty bill than to North Carolina’s sweeping invalidation of current and future LGBT anti-discrimination provisions.

The reason: fear of being seen as supporting men in women’s bathrooms. The campaign against transgender rights is so effective it’s cutting gay rights off at the knees.

As I wrote in February, “It’s also likely that drawing a line in the sand around locker room use in public (including schools) and private facilities is going to sink future LGBT anti-discrimination efforts, which used to be focused on employment.”

More. But wait, we were assured this would never happen….College Decides To Make ALL Bathrooms Gender-Neutral:

Instead of being classified as “men’s,” “women’s,” or single-occupancy restrooms, all facilities at the Cooper Union will carry descriptive signs describing exactly what lies within. Former men’s rooms, for instance, are now described as “urinals and stalls,” while former women’s rooms now carry the label “stalls only.” Regardless of their type, all bathrooms will be open to whomever wants to use them.

We were told bathrooms going gender-neutral was just rightwing scare-mongering aimed at the rubes.

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Reaction: Lessons from North Carolina and Georgia

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North Carolina’s legislature voted, with GOP unanimity, to void all local LGBT anti-discrimination measures within the state. As NPR.org reports:

One word dominated the debate over the bill and the Charlotte ordinance before it: “bathroom.” Charlotte already protected residents from discrimination based on race, age, religion and gender. On Feb. 22, the city council voted to expand those protections to apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, too.

The most controversial element of Charlotte’s expanded ordinance was the fact that it would allow trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

One-party state supporters will point to this, and a less onerous religious-liberty exemption bill for faith-based groups in Georgia, as indicating why LGBT voters and their allies should only support Republicans. I disagree, as noted in my last post. If there had been at least one, or preferably a few, LGBT-supportive Republicans in the GOP caucus, the outcome might have been different. At least the Republicans couldn’t have so easily painted the issue as a purely partisan one.

The GOP is going to have power—nationally, statewide and locally—from time to time, so the view that it should simply be opposed and not reformed doesn’t move me. And reform means supporting those Republicans who are with us.

One the broader issue, again we see the effective use of fear over transgender people and bathrooms. The left has never understood why the apparent threat to unisex bathrooms, locker rooms and showers has such power, and that’s why we keep losing. The battles for lesbian and gay rights took a few decades of education and engagement; this has not happened around transgender issues, and I include in this failure the farce of sensationalism around Caitlan Jenner. And so transgender rights become the battering ram to obliterate gay rights.

Finally, I think the North Carolina and Georgia bills are radically different. I support faith-based exemptions for religious groups (I’d even go further and support a right of religious dissent for private businesses that don’t want to provide expressive services for same-sex weddings). If LGBT activists weren’t going to the mat to oppose religious exemptions, such a compromise might be able to deter a nuclear option such as the one unleashed in North Carolina.

More. Gov. Nathan Deal vetos the Georgia law, which focused exclusively on religious freedom and was very different from what North Carolina passed, but was treated by the liberal media and LGBT activists as if it were the exact same thing.

I have no issues with the Georgia law per se, although the governor was also correct in noting that the bill’s supporters failed to provide examples in Georgia of the kind of discrimination against faith-based organizations and “certain providers of services” that the bill seeks to protect against (which, unstated, is due to the fact that Georgia lacks an LGBT anti-discrimination law).

Furthermore. As the Washington Post reports, it’s big business lobbying against religious conservatives on these measures. Progressives typically condemn business lobbying as the root of all evil but welcome it in this particular case.

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One-Party State Supporters

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Some on the LGBT progressive left are condemning the Human Rights Campaign for endorsing incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). Kirk is one of an admittedly too-small number of GOP congressmembers working to make their party more LGBT supportive.

HRC’s policy is to endorse incumbents who are mostly if not 100% onboard with its scorecard priorities—even if an opponent dots more “i’s” and crosses more “t’s.” Otherwise, elected officials would have less reason to be responsive when lobbied—and in the Democratic party, there’s often a primary challenger claiming to be even more progressive across the spectrum than a sitting congressmember.

But as I never tire of pointing out (as it makes progressives stomp their feet so), the worst nightmare of the LGBT left is a Republican party that ceases to be predominantly anti-gay, pulling gay voters away from the party. So when HRC occasionally does the right thing and endorses a pro-gay-equality Republican incumbent, it’s seen as a betrayal. Left foot first; always, left foot first.

I don’t think these progressives actually believe the GOP can be permanently prevented from keeping or taking legislative power so why bother working to reform them. It’s more like if the GOP is allowed to have power in Washington, then worse is better as regards mobilizing LGBT votes and dollars to put the one-true-party back in office.

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Illiberal Progressives Empower the Right

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This weekend, “anti-Donald Trump protesters blocked an Arizona highway and created a traffic nightmare in a bid to keep the GOP frontrunner and his supporters from attending a Saturday rally,” reported the New York Daily News. The incident follows the successful effort by protesters to force the cancellation of a Trump rally in Chicago, after which the candidate handily won the Illinois GOP primary.

You don’t have to look warmly on Donald Trump (I certainly don’t) to see that preventing him from speaking is all wrong, totally counterproductive, and completely in keeping with the contemporary worldview of progressive activists. Instead of countering Trump’s speech with their own message, they want to prevent him from speaking, and then celebrate their victory while Trump claims—as hard as it is to believe—the moral high ground.

In January, LGBT progressive activists created a disruption that succeeded in forcing the cancellation of a reception with an Israeli gay rights group at the LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change conference in Chicago. One can think Trump wrong on just about everything, and the Israeli gay rights speakers as courageous and virtuous, and still condemn progressive activists in both situations for their tactics of “de-platforming” (that is, forcibly silencing) those with views they disagree with. As I wrote at the time:

On college campuses progressivism now means shutting down or otherwise eliminating the expression of viewpoints that are not deemed sufficiently and correctly progressive. It’s a new streak of authoritarianism that reflects back to the pro-Soviet leftism of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Freedom of speech isn’t the only constitutional right progressives believe we would be better without (ok, they support freedom of speech they agree with; it’s just “hate speech” that shouldn’t be protected). You can’t pick up an LGBT paper or visit an LGBT website and not see articles and editorials informing you that religious liberty is nothing but code for the right to engage in anti-gay discrimination. Just like the right to freedom of speech is just code to engage in hate promotion. And then progressives wonder why, in rejecting their brand of authoritarianism of the left, a growing number seem inclined to embrace its opposite, authoritarianism of the right.

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Red State, Blue State

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“Despite skewing Democrat, LGBT people are flocking to red states,” reports the Daily Beast. The piece cites marriage equality nationwide and more accepting attitudes as a factor, but notes that this is reflective of wider national migratory patterns:

Specifically, it lines up with people—especially young people—choosing less to live in huge, expensive cities, which were traditionally friendlier toward LGBTQ individuals, and choosing instead to make lives for themselves in small and mid-tier cities in the middle and southern states. …

Smaller cities have shorter commutes, cheaper rent, and less competition for good-paying jobs. And a lot of smaller cities are investing in the kind of infrastructure (public transportation and amenities, walkability and density near city centers) that young people value.

Other reports on the migration pattern are more explicit in citing the economic vitality of Red states as compared to those long-governed by Democratic majorities. Stephen Moore writes at the Daily Signal:

They are leaving states with high minimum wages, pro-union work rules, high taxes on the rich, generous welfare benefits, expansive regulations to “help” workers, green energy policies, etc.

Similarly, blogger James Joyner notes in a Christian Science Monitor column:

Red states offer lower housing costs, lower taxes, and less regulation than blue states. That’s why so many blue-state voters are moving to the West or South. In the short term, the red states gain power. in the longer term, they change. … While the near-term political effect of this has been to increase the power of red states, the longer term impact has been to turn them into purple and even blue states

The concern is that the new migrants, attracted to superior economic conditions, bring along their left-liberal economic ideas and will proceed to vote for big-government Democrats in their new havens—after which they’ll wonder at the mystery of why the economies in those states will have begun to falter, too.

On a more optimistic note, many LGBT people may have felt it necessary to live in liberal states and cities but now have the freedom not to do so. A rising number of fiscally conservative gay voters would be a good thing.

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