Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

What Success Looks Like

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Via the Washington Post, 2016 could be a very difficult year for LGBT activists:

Less than eight months after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, LGBT advocates are on the defensive, playing whack-a-mole with a massive number of bills in state legislatures they say are meant to peel back LGBT rights…. Religious exemption and bathroom bills are leading many of those legislatures’ agendas….

Among the litany of horrors listed in this article, which draws on the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign as its primary source: state-level proposed legislation allowing clergyman not to perform same-sex weddings (a right they already have), allowing religious exemptions for small businesses that don’t want to provide services to same-sex weddings, and allowing schools and businesses to maintain shared same-sex restrooms (often with private facilities for those who identify as, but have not transitioned to, the opposite sex).

If these efforts are the nightmare scenario being used by the Human Rights Campaign to drum up support and fundraising, then things look pretty good for LGBT people.

Now, it’s not that some of these proposals aren’t offensive political posturing (while others, I’d argue, simply reaffirm constitutional liberties). But the one area that could truly be rights-denying would be state attempts to allow government officials to refuse to provide marriage licences to same-sex couples. However, that’s not being seriously considered; what we see instead are a few state proposals to allow individual officials to excuse themselves from issuing licences as long as the office itself makes licences available to all couples.

As I’ve noted before, government officials are responsible for following the law of the land, even when doing so is at odds with their own religious beliefs. They are public servants, not private, self-employed service providers. So codifying these opt-outs can be constitutionally dubious, although one might think informal arrangements or reassignments within county and state offices handling these issues might suffice.

More. Not mentioned in the article, which appeared prior to Justice Scalia’s passing, are some GOP presidential contenders (most emphatically Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) pledges to appoint justices who would roll back the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in favor of marriage equality nationally. In that event, each state would be able to approve or deny the rights of same-sex couples to wed. Legal experts and Court-watchers think overturning Obergefell is highly unlikely—opponents of unrestricted legal abortion nationally have been trying to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades. But it shouldn’t be dismissed as impossible and is a legitimate reason for those supporting equality under the law to oppose such candidates.

Yet even here, “let the states decide” is a noticeable advancement over advocating to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage across the nation.

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Toxic Politics About to Get Uglier

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The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a jovial homophobe, will make an already toxic electoral season worse. From all indications, there will be no move by the Senate to confirm Obama’s forthcoming nominee, making the Court a central issue in both the primaries and the November election.

Already, the GOP presidential contenders who’ve specialized in pandering to the worst instincts of their party’s social conservative base (primarily though not exclusively Cruz and Rubio, among those left standing) are pledging to put forward, if elected, a nominee who will roll back Obergefell, the ground-breaking decision in favor of marriage equality. But that’s a zero-sum change, since Scalia was the most adamant voice attacking the idea that same-sex couples’ relationships could be worthy of recognition, as he did earlier when he bitterly condenmed overturning the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, Court-watchers are also looking to future replacements, including octogenarian liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among others.

(Chief plaintiff Jim Obergefell takes the high road, tweeting “Thank you for your service to our country, Justice Scalia. Condolences to your family and friends.”)

Obama will likely nominate someone who is unacceptably liberal to the GOP senate but not obviously extreme (“Political calculation also militates in favor of nominating someone whose leftism isn’t obvious,” the Powelineblog predicts). But recognizing the likelihood that the next president is going to make this call, Hillary and Bernie will duke it out over who will push for a hard-core progressive.

Regardless, Obama’s nominee (or Hillary’s, or Bernie’s) will be good on LGBT legal equality while in favor of running roughshod over other liberty rights (second amendment, commercial political speech, freedom from state coercion, religious dissent….).

Meanwhile, many expect the fight will bring a halt to any bipartisan cooperation that Congress might have been able to achieve this year.

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The Dichotomy

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Milo Yiannopoulos, a young gay conservative Brit and anti-political-correctness provocateur, and the student protesters at Rutgers. NJ.com reports:

“In my view, anybody who asks for a trigger warning or a safe space, should be immediately expelled” [Yiannopoulos said].

The audience loudly applauded his statement.

He said such reactivity merely demonstrates that those students “are incapable of exposing themselves to new ideas.”

“They are demonstrating that they are incapable of engaging in a humble pursuit of knowledge,” he said.

At which point, a woman yells from off camera, “This man represents hatred!” They also started chanting “Black lives matter.”

The video then pans to one side of the auditorium where two students appear to smear fake blood on their faces.

The evocative display was met with loud applause.

Members of the audience in support of Yiannopoulos booed and started chanting, “Trump, Trump, Trump!”

The protesters also splattered their fake blood, Breitbart reports:

the progressives stormed out of the auditorium, leaving a trail of red paint for the janitors to clean up.

Walls, seats, and doors were also vandalised by the protesters. Peaceful attendees who had come to hear a speech instead found themselves splashed with the fake blood. At least one attendee was allegedly assaulted by a protester, who covered him in red paint.

The rise of authoritarian-progressive political correctness, which seeks to stop the expression of ideas its adherents dislike, is met with support for Donald Trump. It’s action/reaction, and represents the sad state of left-dominated academia. It does not bode well for the country.

More. And in Britain, Peter Tatchell: snubbed by students for free speech stance:

The emails from the officer of the National Union of Students were unequivocal. Fran Cowling, the union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and “transphobic”.

That the man in question is Peter Tatchell – one of the country’s best-known gay rights campaigners, who next year celebrates his 50th year as an activist – is perhaps a mark of how fractured the debate on free speech and sexual politics has become.

In the emails, sent to the organisers of a talk at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday on the topic of “re-radicalising queers”, Cowling refuses an invitation to speak unless Tatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend. In the emails she cites Tatchell’s signing of an open letter in the Observer last year in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to “no-platform” people, such as Germaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.

Cowling claims the letter supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. She also made an allegation against him of racism or of using racist language. Tatchell told the Observer that the incident was yet another example of “a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere” symptomatic of a decline in “open debate on some university campuses”.

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Let Freedom Bloom

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Via Ilya Shapiro at the libertarian Cato Institute, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom:

While Cato believes that same-sex couples ought to be able to get marriage licenses (if the state is involved in marriage in the first place), a commitment to equality under the law can’t justify the restriction of private parties’ constitutionally protected rights like freedom of speech or association.

Arlene’s Flowers, a flower shop in Richland, Washington, declined to provide the floral arrangements for the same-sex wedding of Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed. Mr. Ingersoll was a long-time customer of Arlene’s Flowers and the shop’s owner Barronelle Stutzman considered him a friend. But when he asked her to use her artistic abilities to beautify his ceremony, Mrs. Stutzman felt that her Christian convictions compelled her to decline. She gently explained why she could not do what he asked, and Mr. Ingersoll seemed to understand.

Later, however, he and his now-husband, and ultimately the state of Washington, sued Mrs. Stutzman for violating the state’s laws prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. The trial court ruled against Arlene’s Flowers and the case is now on appeal.

Cato has filed an amicus brief supporting Arlene’s Flowers and Mrs. Stutzman, urging Washington’s highest court to reverse the trial court’s decision. Although floristry may not initially appear to be speech to some, it’s a form of artistic expression that’s constitutionally protected. ….

[Supreme Court] justices have said repeatedly that what the First Amendment protects is a “freedom of the individual mind,” which the government violates whenever it tells a person what she must or must not say. Forcing a florist to create a unique piece of art violates that freedom of mind. Moreover, unlike true cases of public accommodation, there are abundant opportunities to choose other florists in the same area.

It remains stunning that progressive LGBT activists have decided using the power of the state to force religiously conservative small business owners to provide expressive services to same-sex weddings is where the front line of the LGBT movement should be. They’re mean-spirited, intolerant and smug authoritarians, and proud to be so.

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Iowa Crazy

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One of the absurdities of U.S. presidential elections is that untypical Iowa has such an outsized impact on creating early and vital candidate momentum as the first delegate-selecting state, for which we can blame Jimmy Carter. Iowa caucus-going Democrats skew left, and caucus-attending Republicans are dominated by deeply socially conservative evangelicals. That’s why the Iowa GOP gave it’s blessing to caucus winners Rick Santorum last time (edging out Mitt Romney), and before that to Mike Huckabee. Neither went on to win the nomination, of course.

At a final Iowa rally for Ted Cruz, Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” spoke vehemently against same sex marriage and said, “Let’s rid the earth of these people.” Cruz himself called forth “Father God please….Awaken the Body of Christ that we may pull back from the abyss,” which was either scary crazy fundamentalist pandering or worse, or a biblical reference misunderstood by the secular elite (or, as conservative pundit Rod Dreher tweeted, “He’d bite a hobbit’s finger off to win.”). Further on that point, columnist Kathleen Parker said, “I think that the middle of the road people, moderates, more liberal Republicans would find that kind of a little much, and I know that — I don’t see independents falling in line behind Ted Cruz.”

Some reasonable people are glad Cruz made Donald Trump look like a loser, undercutting his veneer of invincibility. But we’ll see how this plays out.

And then there was this apparently absurdist claim about Marco Rubio being secretly gay, which seems like just another last-minute dirty campaign trick, but is amusing.

Onward to New Hampshire.

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Freedom Defended

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Via Towelroad:

Leading UK gay activist Peter Tatchell has come out in support of a Belfast baker who was found guilty of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage”.

Spot on. A commitment to liberty means liberty for all, no matter how furious it makes progressive authoritarians.

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Young Authoritarians on the March

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Well, one more post on the Creating Change travesty, because I think it encapsulates a seminal development on the left—including among younger LBTQ progressives—that older left-liberals haven’t wanted to face. It’s the fact that 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.

This is an ideology grounded in anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism, so it should really be no surprise to scratch the surface and find just underneath our old acquaintance, anti-Semitism, dolled up superficially as anti-Zionism.

The leaders of the National LGBTQ Task Force say they want all progressives to be able to come to their conferences as their true selves, but what happens when their true self is an authoritarian anti-Semite? At some point, “no enemies on the left” is just not viable, unless you’re willing to surrender to and henceforth take orders from the mob, as leftwing university administrators now appear willing to do.

Some are trying to defend the Task Force by claiming that the Israeli speakers at the Jerusalem Open House reception were the ones who decided to end the event because they didn’t want to deal with condemnation by the protesters. But that’s entirely disingenuous, as made clear by Washington Blade editor Keven Naff in his commentary Creating Shame: Anti-Israel protest misguided, offensive. He notes:

The organizers of Creating Change had to know something like this was brewing. Yet they had no control over the protest, which easily could have devolved into a dangerous situation. “The Task Force did very little to ensure that the program …could go on as planned, safely and without disruption,” [American University Law professor Tony] Varona reported. “Instead, the protestors were allowed to bully the speakers off the stage, and then to bully and harass the attendees out of the room.” When your invited speakers are forced to flee out a back door, you have failed in your responsibility to ensure the safety of attendees. Task Force staff must do a better job of providing security and of maintaining control over their own events. Ceding the stage to protesters sets an irresponsible precedent.

Naff concludes:

It’s refreshing to meet with younger LGBT advocates and Creating Change provides a safe space for them to share ideas and tactics. But “safe spaces” should refer to protecting the physical safety of attendees. They should not be shielded from opinions and ideas they find offensive. … Censoring speech and shouting down those we disagree with should not be on our agenda. Creating Change organizers must behave like the parent in the room and establish some basic rules of engagement and enforce them. And there’s clearly much work to be done in educating younger advocates on the history of Israel, the Holocaust and the plight of LGBT people in the Middle East.

Those who define themselves as on the left must either stand up to the new authoritarians or eventually surrender to them.

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The “Pinkwashing” Lie

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Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate that The LGBTQ Left Has an Anti-Semitism Problem:

The concept of pinkwashing is extraordinarily insulting. It presumes that the Israeli government has no interest in promoting LGBTQ rights except to help mask its oppression of other groups. This presumption is totally unique to Israel. Nobody thought that France was attempting to distract from its terrible mistreatment of Roma immigrants when it legalized same-sex marriage. Nobody thought that South Africa was diverting attention from the painful, enduring remnants of apartheid when it gained marriage equality. Yet many LGBTQ activists freely impute to Israel a malign motive in expanding rights to sexual minorities.

More. This story has legs, and is leading to some interesting self-analysis by the LGBTQ left.

This includes a heartfelt letter to Task Force executive director Rea Carey that was co-signed by numerous (albeit overwhelmingly Jewish) LGBT activists and thought leaders, stating in part:

We also believe that the Task Force as well as all other LGBTQ organizations need to consider and adopt some form of an “active pluralism” policy with respect to these issues. Such a policy, while respecting the free speech rights of individuals and groups, would not allow protesters to effectively censor the speech of other groups, much less threaten the physical well-being and safety of those with whom they do not agree, including Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ groups. Given the concentrated and organized hostility that is so often displayed against Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ groups, and the stark rise in global anti-Semitism, it is even more important that we as a community promote civil and respectful debate.

A nice piece in the Washington Post by liberal Jonathan Capehart comments on video of the anti-Israeli protestors chanting,“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Writes Capehart, “Those words are alarming because Palestine can’t get ‘from the river to the sea’ without wiping the Jewish state off the map.” Well, that’s the idea.

At the Huffington Post, Dana Beyer, executive director of Gender Rights Maryland, blogs that:

The Creating Change conference is, like it or not, a business. Their customer base is now college students subsidized by their LGBTQ centers who are immersed in intersectionality, microaggressions and trigger warnings, and other forms of queer theory chic. One friend described it as students suffering from micro-aggressions getting macro-angry.

Beyer also quotes a letter to Carey from Tony Varona, a law professor at American University and former legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, in which he observes:

I’ve also found that the messages from the plenaries and sessions so far have been much more akin to the amorphous, sometimes incoherent “radical chic” anarchy-light demands of the Occupy movement than the much more substantive, productive, tangible resource-building messages of past Creating Changes, and as you might know, I’ve been to a bunch of Creating Changes since I was on staff at HRC (between ’97 and ’02).

I’ve heard much more about the abolition of prisons, police, borders and the state itself — really, the abolition of authority of any kind — at this Creating Change, than I have about grassroots lobbying and GOTV [get out the vote] work. In fact I’ve heard nothing of the latter. I’ve heard much more about who does not belong at Creating Change, who should be silenced, and who should be excluded from or pushed out of the tent, than I’ve heard about the importance of diversity and inclusion. Yet isn’t diversity, unity, inclusion, and conversation what Creating Change has long been about?

Many of the responses point to the problem of political intolerance (yes, “political correctness”) that’s come to dominate life on U.S. campuses of late. Students are indoctrinated into an ideology that justifies mob tactics to silence the expression of views deemed insufficiently progressive (and anyone else’s views are in constant danger of being declared by the mob to be insufficiently progressive).

Here’s hoping this self-examination on the left will lead to positive change.

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Pre-Op Trans Olympians, What Could Go Wrong?

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The International Olympic Committee has received new recommendations for guidelines it’s expected to adopt, opening the door for more trans athletes to compete internationally, reports outsports.com. The recommendations address allowing competition by transgender athletes who have had gender reassignment surgery, as well as those who have not yet had surgery, or have chosen not to do so although their gender identity is at odds with their genitalia.

This may not pose much of an issue for competitions in which transmen compete against cisgender men, but it is likely to raise issues for transwomen whose bodies have been developmentally male. Nevertheless, the recommendations state:

To require surgical anatomical changes as a pre-condition to participation is not necessary to preserve fair competition and may be inconsistent with developing legislation and notions of human rights. …

Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:

• The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.

• The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).

• The athlete’s total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.

Regardless of testosterone levels, the first time a pre-op transwoman takes a medal competing against cisgender women—think about a younger Caitlyn Jenner in a women’s track and field event—it’s going to get ugly.

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