Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

Freedom Ascendant, and Under Siege

by on

No doubt 2014 is the year the tide was turned on marriage equality and there is no going back (take a look at Freedom to Marry’s map of the states at year-end). Up next is 2015, when the assumption is the Supreme Court will rule in favor of a nationwide constitutional right for gay people to marry.

As the Washington Blade reported this week in noting that the Supreme Court declined a request by Florida’s attorney general to stay marriage equality there, after a district court ruled in favor of it:

The refusal from the Supreme Court to stay same-sex marriages in Florida is noteworthy because although justices have denied similar requests to halt same-sex marriages in Alaska, Idaho, South Carolina and Kansas, they’ve never done so before in a state where a federal appeals court has yet to rule on the issue. The decision with regard to Florida could be a sign the Supreme Court is ready to rule in favor of nationwide marriage equality no matter what the federal appeals courts decide in the interim.

Expectations can be disappointed and hopes delayed, or dashed, but the signs look good.

This being IGF Culturewatch, let us again note that there is an authoritarian shadow that’s attached itself to the fight for the freedom to marry, and that is the desire by some to force conservative Christians to provide services to same-sex weddings, which they feel is a violation of their freedom not to be forced by the state to engage in activity that violates their religious beliefs. This is part of a wider, uglier spirit of the age, described in Politico by Flemming Rose:

…the grievance lobby has succeeded in shifting the fulcrum of the human rights debate from freedom of speech to the necessity of countering hate speech; from the individual pursuing individual liberties to the individual being aggrieved by the liberties taken by others. That shift becomes counterintuitive, the logic increasingly absurd. Those aggrieved by free speech are defended, while others whose speech is perceived as offensive to such a degree that they are exposed to death threats, physical assault, and sometimes even murder are deemed to have been asking for it: “What did they expect offending people like that?”

Freedom to marry is a culture-shifting advance forward, but it is not the only freedom that matters. For a sense of this, here’s a look by the Mercatus Center at California that’s not quite up-to-date but you get the gist (the status of freedom in the other states can also be viewed).

Here’s to a new year that will advance liberty for all.

20 Comments

The Victory Fund’s Spurious ‘Bipartisanship’

by on

Chuck Wolfe, outgoing president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, in an interview with Metro Weekkly, has some decent things to say about the need to support LGBT candidates in both parties, such as “if I have an opportunity to put an openly gay person or an out lesbian in the Republican caucus who can speak up inside that caucus meeting I’m going to do it.” But then he reaffirms the Victory Fund’s litmus test to only endorse candidates who are thoroughly pro-choice on abortion, which has eliminated a good many gay Republicans from receiving Victory Fund support.

And, of course, the Victory Fund bent knee to LGBT left and union activists by refusing to support San Diego’s Carl DeMaio this year in his race for Congress, which he narrowly lost after LGBT Democrats unleashed a slew of last-minute dirty tricks.

No surprise there, since former George W. Bush press secretary Dana Perino revealed that in DeMaio’s 2008 race for San Diego mayor, “The Victory Fund not only declined to endorse DeMaio, it’s common knowledge in San Diego that it then gave his confidential campaign information to the Democrats and bragged about it.”

Sorry, Chuck, but bipartisanship doesn’t mean soliciting money from gay Republicans as well as Democrats. Either you’re bipartisan in offering support to qualified candidates who can win, or you’re not, and Victory Fund isn’t.

15 Comments

No, This Issue Is Not Going Away

by on

The New York Times takes a look at the simmering issue of local authorities forcing small business owners to sell their services on behalf of gay weddings, or else. And the hurt feelings of high-minded LGBT customers who can’t abide allowing service providers not to be forced to bend knee to them. As David Boaz tweeted:

The conservative Christian site Shoebat.com, in turn,

decided to call some 13 prominent pro-gay bakers in a row. Each one denied us the right to have “Gay Marriage Is Wrong” on a cake and even used deviant insults and obscenities against us. One baker even said all sorts of profanities against Christians…

The libertarians at Reason.com put this in perspective:

Shoebat is kind of his own worst enemy in trying to perform this experiment. … But while it would have been better for a more articulate person to have performed this experiment, it’s instructive nevertheless. If bakers are a “public accommodation” as is argued, there’s no reason for them to refuse to make these cakes or cookies or what have you. The bakeries would not be saying “Gay marriage is wrong.” They’re just selling a cake to somebody who believes that. Just as making a gay wedding cake is not an endorsement of gay marriage. It’s just fulfilling a customer’s orders.

To which I’ll add, progressive authoritarians who think this issue is settled, and that those who are appalled by what’s happening should just let it go, because when progressives are giving the orders people should do as they are told, will see that this is very far from over. Worse, that it will continue to besmirch the right, proper and still ongoing effort to secure the freedom to marry.

11 Comments

Marriage: A 2016 Non-Issue?

by on

Don’t look for culture war arguments in Campaign 2016, says Michael Barone:

I don’t think you’ll hear much about it in the 2016 campaign. The reason is that opinion on it cuts across party lines. More than any other issue I can remember, it splits Americans along lines of age. Elderly voters tend to oppose it, though by significantly smaller margins than in the past. Young voters tend to favor it by increasingly large majorities.

Most Democratic politicians favor same-sex marriage. But they don’t want to risk losing the support of elderly and many churchgoing black voters who oppose it but would otherwise support them. Most Republican politicians oppose it. But they want the votes of many Millennial generation voters who consider it a no-brainer. These splits affect primary as well as general election electorates.

So both parties are in the position of the legendary old-time politician who said, “Some of my friends are for the bill and some of my friend are against the bill, and I’m always with my friends.”

While obviously liberal Democrats have been readier to support marriage equality than conservative Republicans, few would have predicted the general silence from the mainstream GOP on this issue as of late.

20 Comments

Payback Time, Again

by on

Equality Virginia, the commonwealth state’s marriage equality lobby, can claim a role in bringing the freedom to marry to all Virginians. Kudos all round. But now, what will they do? I know! Force bakers and photographers to accept gigs that they would rather turn down. That’ll show ‘em.

This week, the group sent out a fundraising letter stating:

While we celebrate marriage, opponents of equality are doubling down on intolerance—doing their best to push Virginia backward, and trying to…use the upcoming General Assembly session to ensure that “the rights and freedoms of those who disagree with the redefinition of marriage are treated equally and not discriminated against in their religious practice, education, business, or employments.”

“The situation is urgent,” the letter declares.

Along the same lines, the Washington Post “Civilities” advice column recently ran a letter about New York state innkeepers who were fined $13,000 by the state:

I am writing about the New York state couple who refused to allow a lesbian couple to use their farm for their wedding. As a gay man who recently married, I’m troubled by this situation because I find that too many gay people who say they are being discriminated against are not willing to see that others have different beliefs and values, especially when it comes to marriage rights. In planning my own wedding, I had only one bad experience when a vendor said it would not cater to my husband and me; I took my business elsewhere. As bad as this sounds, I believe that business owners should have the freedom to choose whom they serve…

Post columnist Steven Petrow responded, indignantly: “Of course, it’s a shame that not everyone in your shoes gets to celebrate with their second-choice of vendors.” He continued:

Frankly, I wasn’t surprised to see some columnists’ blowback against the lesbian couple or New York’s $13,000 penalty against the innkeepers…. I was surprised, though, by the large number of my LGBT Facebook followers who seemed to share that view. One gay man posted: “Why ruin someone else’s livelihood, when you still found another venue, still got married, and are still just as happy?” And this from a lesbian reader: “Let us not start becoming bullies after everything we fought for….

Clearly my sympathies lie with the McCarthys [the lesbian couple], not the farm owners. I can only imagine the hurt and humiliation the couple felt when they were turned away, and I applaud them for not taking the insult quietly.

To which the Cato Institute’s David Boaz tweeted, “Let’s go around fining everyone $13,000 to show the need for tolerance.”

As I’ve said before, whether you think government should force small businesspeople to provide services for religious ceremonies they feel violate their religious beliefs has all to do with your concept of individual liberties, and whether these are fundamental rights of individuals or are gifts for the state to bestow as progressive elites decide is fit, and holding that the right not to act is no right at all. For those in the latter camp, there is just no convincing them that this is all so very wrong.

More. Making A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage. It isn’t helped when the secondary message is that we have no tolerance for religious dissension.

Furthermore. Welcome, Huffington Post readers and viewers from other links. Also check out our most recent postings.

67 Comments

Spot On

by on

Just because it’s fun, and true, here’s a link to our friend James Kirchick’s latest take-down of the rich, powerful and corrupt: The Rise and Fall of Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge, America’s Worst Gay Couple.

Just one of the article’s pertinent observations:

One suspects that had this couple been heterosexual and conservative, the initial media attention would not have been quite so toadying. We would have no doubt been treated to endless stories about how a “rapacious” “right-wing” millionaire, who had done nothing to earn his fortune, set out to destroy one of liberalism’s great institutions all the while enabling his power-mad spouse to “buy” a seat in congress. But everything about the Hughes-Eldridge pairing militated against such a portrayal. The prospect of a fresh-faced, conventionally liberal, gay couple hit every media sweet spot.

More. The Washington Blade takes on Hughes. The story is really one about factions of the left duking it out, the parvenue progressives vs. the Old Guard.

7 Comments

The Last Holdouts

by on

Just a few scant years ago, who would have thought that marriage equality could be coming even to Mississippi? Not that the fight there is over. As The Clarion Ledger reports:

Same-sex marriages won’t be allowed in Mississippi while the state defends its gay-marriage ban, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves on Nov. 25 overturned Mississippi’s definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman, but he put his own decision on hold for two weeks to give the state time to appeal his ruling.

On Thursday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Mississippi cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples during the appeals process. But the New Orleans-based court agreed to a quick process for considering the dispute over Mississippi’s definition of who can marry.

The paper also reports that:

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said he voted for Mississippi’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and he “absolutely” still supports it.

“This is a constitutional issue with me,” Bryant told reporters Tuesday in Jackson. “You know, the people of the state of Mississippi vote to change a law, and then one federal judge can say, ‘Well, I’m going to overrule that.’ Then what good is the rule of law? What would be next? What if a judge said, ‘We think you ought to legalize marijuana.’ Then does that mean the laws of the state don’t exist anymore?

“So, this is a constitutional battle that I think you’re seeing waged all across the United States, is whether or not the people of a particular state, or the lawmakers that represent it, have the right to make certain laws,” Bryant said.

Recent months have seen a surprising number of conservative GOP governors and other officials acquiesce to the inevitable and accept, if not support, rulings favoring the freedom to marry (including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, among others). But the hard core of the social conservative base, exemplified in Congress by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and by governors such as Bryant and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, will man the guns of the last redoubt.

It matters not the Gov. Bryant’s argument is, well, specious, given that a key role of the judiciary is to overturn “democratically” passed laws that violate the fundamental protections of the federal Constitution. Ours is a republic of separate and distinct branches, some with the power to overrule others, and not a majoritarian dictatorship or mobocracy. Conservatives used to understand and defend that point, to the chagrin of progressives.

That the left often supports government overreach of dubious legality, and that these expansions of federal executive power do not involve the protection of fundamental liberties but far more often violate individual rights, confuses things. Fair enough, a pox on both partisan houses, as both left and right, conservatives and progressives, Democrats and Republicans are too often power-grubbing hypocrites, if not downright cesspools of corruption.

Nevertheless, recognition of the right to marry is coming, even in Mississippi, if not with a 5th Circuit ruling, then when the Supreme Court inevitably weighs in. And this expansion of liberty, despite the opposition of local majorities, is fundamentally and constitutionally sound.

13 Comments

The Catholic Church’s Ongoing Marriage Muddle

by on

Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, appointed by Pope Francis, has a softer tone in his opposition to gay marriage, but he lacked a convincing argument this week on CBS’s “Face the Nation” (view clip here, after ad) as he tried to explain the Roman church’s opposition to gay marriage because it’s necessary “to protect mothers and fathers who come together to continue the human race.”

When asked by interviewer Norah O’Donnell about gay parents, he returned to the need for “legislation that supports, protects and upholds those who take the risk to bring children into the world”, but not for gay couples who are raising children, because they are “not bringing children into the world to preserve the human race,” or at least are not bringing children into the world “through their own love,” which is what deserves the state’s protection.

Church representatives had an easier time when they could just declare homosexual relations a sin and be done with it. Instead, the kind of convoluted argument Archbishop Cupich puts forward is going to be increasingly unconvincing as more gay couples become parents, even assuming that one were to accept the view that childbearing is the only legitimate rationale for state-recognized marriage.

38 Comments

Australia and Finland Move Forward

by on

On the international scene, there’s good news from down under: ruling Liberal party leaders will shortly decide whether to allow their members a conscience vote on a recently introduced marriage equality bill. As Reason reports:

“Want to hear a senator introduce legislation legalizing government recognition of same-sex marriage in a speech that also invokes the names of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwing von Mises? You’ll have to go to Australia for that, mate.”

Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abott remains opposed to allowing gay people the freedom to marry (but will likely acquiesce to allowing a parliamentary vote). Also opposed to marriage equality was former Labour PM Julia Gillard, although she now says that gay marriage seems inevitable.

And more good international news. Finland is set to become “the last Scandinavian country in which gays and lesbians can legally tie the knot if the measure receives final approval,” the Washington Blade reports. And right on Putin’s doorstep, that’s sure to unleash fresh rage from Russia’s gay-hating despot, whose tyranny has driven many Russian gays to seek asylum in the U.S.

More. Putin surrounded by deviant nations! Poland gets its first openly gay mayor in elections with record number of LGBT candidates.

5 Comments