IGF CultureWatch

Wall Street Journal political columnist Gerald Seib takes note of the growing ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans, citing a WSJ/NBC News poll conducted Dec. 6-9. Tellingly, among the findings:

• Asked if they were a supporter of the traditional definition of marriage as being between one man and one women, 69% of Republicans said yes versus 25% of Democrats.
• Asked if they were a supporter of the gay-rights movement, 63% of Democrats said yes versus 14% of Republicans.

One conclusion might be that gay people and their friends should only support Democrats, a view held by many leading national and regional LGBT advocacy groups. A more strategic take-away would be that winning over Republicans should be the key aim of those self-same groups.

In post-marriage-equality America, it seemed at first as if culture war divisions might give way to a new consensus, with conservatives seeing married gay people as a positive—akin to what’s happened in the U.K., where Prime Minister David Cameron has said, “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us. Society is stronger when we make vows to each other and we support each other. I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a conservative.”

But in the U.S., polarization on gay issues is hardly abating, as the WSJ poll shows. And here, a major factor, I believe, has been the well-publicized efforts by LGBT social justice warriors to prosecute small business owners with conservative religious beliefs (including wedding planners, photographers, florists and bakers/caterers) under anti-discrimination laws, using the power of the state to put them out of business if they refuse to provide their services to same-sex marriages.

Conservatives place a high value on religious liberty, which today’s secular progressives frequently dismiss as if it were of no consequence. So a cynic might suggest that perpetuating polarization through such prosecutions—instead of tolerating a minor amount of religious dissent—while not in the best interest of ensuring wider acceptance of LGBT equality, could be in the best interest of professional advocates whose continued existence and full coffers are predicated on keeping the culture wars burning.

Social conservative politicos and activists are fanning the flames, but it’s intolerant progressives who keep striking the match.

Via the conservative-leaning PJ Media news site:

Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin gave Kim Davis and all the other county clerks in the state a “wonderful Christmas gift” by protecting their religious rights and freedom.

Bevin issued an executive order two weeks after taking office that removes the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses issued in Kentucky. Staver said that will enable Davis and all other county clerks to do their jobs — issue marriage licenses to everyone, including same-sex couples — without compromising their religious principles.

Over at Instapundit (also part of PJ Media), the comments ranged from:

“Do we have a secular or sectarian society. While I respect Ms. Davis beliefs, rewriting law just for her was not the right [thing] to do.”

To:

“It wasn’t just for her, it was for everyone like her, and a very reasonable way to accommodate the rights of all parties.”

Another commenter said, “Removing the clerk’s name from the license is a very hollow victory,” and I tend to agree with the observation, although the commenter may have been lamenting that marriage licenses are being issued to same-sex couples at all.

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.

But it’s for the good if a small, symbolic action can defuse a contentious “culture war” face off and serve civility without diminishing individual rights, and I tend to see that happening here.

More. Scott Shackford, at reason.com’s Hit & Run blog, notes there have been other recent compromises:

The conflict with Davis was the most visible representation of resistance, but it’s not the only one. … In North Carolina, lawmakers passed legislation allowing county employees to opt out of duties performing marriages or issuing licenses if they have religious objections. But the county is also obligated to make sure magistrates or clerks are available to pick up the slack and that the county keeps regular hours.

In Alabama, state law gives county probate judges complete discretion as to whether to issue [any] marriage licenses at all. In response to the Obergefell decision, some judges have opted out entirely.

These responses, too, seem like reasonable ways to move beyond culture war confrontations without denying gay couples the right to wed.

I watched some of the live stream from Unfinished Business: The Atlantic LGBT Summit held in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 11. A friend commented, “the identity politics—trans, bi, LGBT youth of color, why isn’t disability being discussed?—was too much for me.”

For me, as well.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s reporting at reason.com strikes the right notes about what she terms “an event filled with both thought-provoking speakers and brain-numbing PC platitudes.” For instance, on the panel discussion on legal barriers to transgender equality, she sums up:

Welcome to the minefield that is discussing LGBTIQ* issues circa 2015. By the time panelists had sorted out who was micro- or macro-agressing against whom, there was little time left for the planned topic of the panel, trans civil rights. (Unless the right to be on an Atlantic panel is at the forefront of the trans agenda.)

* Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning

On the issue of whether the LGBT movement should allow tolerance for religious dissent, Brown writes:

Those who stuck out most during the day’s sessions were figures like David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, and writer and pundit Andrew Sullivan. Boaz and Sullivan are both gay and have long histories of gay-rights activism. But their belief in religious freedom set them apart from most of the crowd and speakers gathered yesterday. One of the biggest cheers of the day, in fact, came after an audience member accused Boaz of being “on the wrong side of history.”

As I’ve said and others have noted, progressive activists believe that nondiscrimination supersedes all other constitutional liberties (here’s an example in a different context, regarding Title IX and freedom of speech). The summit showed the strident opposition to the suggestion that there is a liberty right not to be forced to provide services to same-sex weddings when doing so violates religious belief, or even a positive value is showing tolerance for religious dissent by a small number of service providers.

Brown notes that “the historic alliance between libertarians and the LGBT community when it comes to political activism” is pretty much over, as “the area of common ground seems to be shrinking.” Hard to argue with that.

More. A positive development on the LGBT front! As the New York Times reports:

In a surprise announcement, the Empire State Pride Agenda, a leading state group that advocates gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues in New York, will disband next year, citing the fulfillment of a 25-year campaign for equality.

Having secured marriage equality in New York before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, and with broad nondiscrimination measures in place that include transgender men and women, it was mission accomplished. But, as the Times also notes:

State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, seemed shocked by the news. “There’s a lot more work to be done on L.G.B.T. rights in New York, so declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ seems premature,” he said, noting that his legislative chamber had not passed a “single piece of L.G.B.T. legislation” since 2011. “I hope a new political group picks up the mantle,” he added.

The gay equality agenda may be met, but hey, there’s lots of progressive policies to coral LGBT support behind, not to mention embedding LGBT lobbies into the identity politics spoils system!

Houston Mayor Annise Parker commented recently on the defeat of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance. As reported by the Washington Blade:

After the defeat of the ordinance, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin told the Blade LGBT advocates should call on TV stations not to run anti-trans ads like the kind seen in Houston, an idea Parker said she endorses. “I think there should be a certain level of social responsibility because while they were horrific ads, they were clearly fear-mongering and deliberate lies,” Parker said.

Anyone is free to organize protests and otherwise make their views known to the media. The problem is that almost all political ads are seen as “unfair”—by the other side. And often, that’s exactly what they are—remember those Democratic ads showing Republicans rolling grandma in her wheelchair over the cliff by supporting Medicare reform.

The Houston ads against the ordinance, raising the spectre of threatening “men” (instead of transgender women) using women’s restrooms, are only more so.

But if the best response advocates of anti-discrimination measures can propose is to pressure TV stations not to run opposition ads, that’s a rather stark admission that they can’t mount an effective counter-argument and organize effectively to get their message out. And that raises comparisons to the recent wave of campus protests that seek to forbid speech that progressives view as advocating incorrect views. It’s all of a piece of the new illiberal intolerance.

More. Mark Lee writes in the Washington Blade:

That whooshing sound you may have heard when reading Washington Blade reporter Chris Johnson’s interview last month with Chad Griffin was likely the air being sucked out of the room due to gasps by First Amendment adherents. The Human Rights Campaign president offered a shockingly stark strategy for avoiding future ballot defeats on nondiscrimination measures such as the recent loss in Houston.

“In politics, there’s often two sides to a debate,” Griffin acknowledged, before dissecting the degree of debate he would tolerate. “There’s also right and wrong, and there’s lies, and there’s defamation of an entire population of people. And that’s what happened in Houston. And so, I am hopeful that in the go-forward we as a community, as an organization, local campaigns can be more aggressive with station managers, quite frankly.” Griffin’s “solution” to losing seems to be roughing-up news stations running opposition ads or reporting on opponent positions, rather than winning hearts and minds. Sort of similar to something Donald Trump might say.

We are collectively losing sight of the fact that the defense of liberty and free speech only matters when protecting the right to expression of unpopular opinion.

Remember when LGBT activists said they only wanted equality, not special treatment. They don’t, either.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker issued an executive order to add LGBT-owned businesses to a diversity program under which a percentage of state contracts is set aside for minority-owned businesses. That is, of course, a way of ensuring preferential treatment in government contracting for businesses not owned (officially) by straight white men.

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, blogs:

I wonder: How will anyone know whether a business owner is bisexual? Do you have to say that you’ve had sex with members of the same sex? What if you just say that you’re attracted to members of the same sex? Or is the state relying on the assumption that non-bisexuals would be reluctant to label themselves bisexual, even when that helps them get valuable contracts, for fear that the label will come out to their friends (or to other prospective business partners who discriminate against bisexuals rather than in favor of them)?

And one of his blog commenters asked,”Is there evidence that well-qualified LGBT-owned businesses have been historically disadvantaged in MA government contracting?”

It’s all politics and pandering, of course, and who has got the power now, baby.

Voters in Houston soundly defeated the proposed Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which would have broadly expanded LGBT (and other) anti-discrimination protections, with 39 percent voting “yes” and 61 percent saying “no.”

The measure would have prohibited bias in housing, employment, city contracting and business services for 15 protected classes, including race, age, sexual orientation and gender identity. But, as the Texas Tribune reports, opponents successfully framed the measure as a “bathroom ordinance,” since it presumably would have allowed transgender individuals who have not undergone gender reassignment surgery to use the public restrooms that they felt were appropriate to their gender identity, which transgender people often point to as a challenge. That opened the door for this:

Outside of polling places, signs read “NO Men in Women’s Bathrooms.” And television ads bankrolled by opponents depicted a young girl being followed into a bathroom stall by a mysterious older man.

The challenges faced by transgender people are great, and restroom accommodation is among them. Since people don’t typically walk around public restrooms naked (and they do have stalls, after all), the opposition seems on the hysterical side, but it was obviously effective.

On the other hand, there are cases involving locker rooms where people do get naked, which raise more difficult issues. This week, for instance, the U.S. Department of Education found that a Chicago suburban high school district discriminated against a transgender student who has not undergone gender reassignment surgery, and gave the school a month to provide her with full access to girls’ locker rooms or lose federal funding.

The school district had “provided the student with a separate changing facility outside the locker room and installed privacy curtains on stalls in one locker room out of the three that she uses for physical education, swimming and athletics programs, according to the federal government’s findings.” No matter; the ACLU and transgender activists considered that accommodation separate and unequal (because the race analogy applies to everything) and sued.

This is not an isolated case; other transgender suits have involved swimming pool locker rooms and saunas. But the focus here on mixed-anatomy nudity among public school minors seems particularly incendiary.

When gender identity and physical anatomy conflict, pushing the fight to nudity in locker rooms—including in high schools—is the kind of tactic that provokes a broader backlash under which reasonable demands get lumped and fought.

Might it be, in fact, a reasonable compromise for those who are transgender but have not made a full transition to use gender-neutral single facilities for changing and showering?

More. The Washington Post on Why Houston’s gay rights ordinance failed:

But as much as HERO’s proponents decried the vote, the proposition was rejected by a decisive majority of the citizens of the nation’s fourth-largest city. Turnout was strong among white conservatives and African Americans — demographics likely to oppose the measure….

Many in the protected classes under the ordinance, including race and age, are already covered by federal anti-discrimination laws. LGB&Ts are not.

This helped opponents characterize the bill as if it were just about transgender bathroom use. And that, I believe, was itself an encapsulation of pent-up reaction to a range of LGBT advances, from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the perceived persecution of conservative Christian small business owners who don’t want to provide services to same-sex weddings.

Furethermore. I usually agree with columnist Steve Chapman, but he comes down on the other side of the locker room controversy, writing:

What does that leave? Either treating Student A as a girl for all purposes, as the government insists, or for all purposes but one, as the school district has chosen….

If the district is serious about privacy, it can offer more spaces that cater to the needs of modesty. It might also post signs stating a locker room rule that most kids already know: Keep your eyes to yourself.

Maybe that works in some places (Chapman cites, approvingly, a local newspaper’s survey of students at two suburban Chicago high schools), but there are times when penises in the girls’ locker room (or womens’ locker rooms, regarding public pools and saunas) is going to be a legitimate issue, and not just among “bigots.”

And certainly a political issue. Via the conservative Weekly Standard:

There is a lesson in this, especially for Republicans. The left is in the process of overreaching on an issue that the average voter cares about, deeply. People might be able to rationalize supporting same-sex marriage by telling themselves that, even if it’s not their thing, it makes no difference to them what gay couples do. But if you’re a woman using the locker room at the gym, it might matter quite a lot if a man who says he’s a woman on the inside is using the shower next to you. …

We have reached a bizarre moment in our politics, where the “progressive” left resists having conservative speakers on a college campus because they make students feel “unsafe,” but insists that boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with girls in the public schools, and misgivings must be educated away, or litigated into submission.

And from The Federalist:

When liberal Houston — a city with a three-term lesbian mayor — overwhelming rejected an anti-discrimination ordinance for the transgendered (among others), a hysterical New York Times editorial accused voters of being transphobic hate mongers with blood on their hands.

Boycott Houston!

If, as LGBT activists believe, bakers and caterers (and photographers and wedding planners) must take all assignments, even those they find morally disagreeable, is the same true of printers?

As the Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro writes on the Cato at Liberty blog:

Hands On Originals, a t-shirt printing company in Kentucky, refused to print t-shirts promoting a gay-pride event, the Lexington Pride Festival. Its owners weren’t objecting to any customers’ sexual orientation; instead, they objected only to the ideological message conveyed by the shirts.

The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization nevertheless filed a complaint with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission under an antidiscrimination ordinance that bans public accommodations from discriminating against individuals based on sexual orientation.

While the Commission ruled against the printers, the state district court reversed on free speech and free exercise grounds. The case is now before the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where Cato filed an amicus brief.

The case raises a number of interesting parallels: should a gay printer be forced to print anti-gay Christian Reconstructionist literature? Should a Jewish printer be forced to publish anti-Semitic tracts?

While some LGBT advocates of the “they will now do our bidding” school would probably argue No (see, completely different, no comparison whatsoever), others who are more honest might say Yes, since business providers have no right to accept or reject any job they are offered. As Cato’s Walter Olson noted, “Many advocates of the anti-discrimination principle appear to believe that it trumps virtually any other liberty or value.”

More. The Washington Examiner reports this week, citing research by the Barna Group:

…the percentage of all millennials who are “very concerned” about additional restrictions on religious freedoms in the next five years has increased 10 percentage points since 2012, to 25 percent.

In August, the Examiner cited research by Caddell Associates, which found that:

Americans reacting to the Supreme Court’s approval of same sex marriage desire a truce between religious freedom and gay rights, but if pushed, overwhelmingly side with protecting the liberty of their faith by a margin of 4 to 1, according to a new national survey.

The degree of their fierce support for religious freedom and liberty jumps when given this choice: “Suppose a Christian wedding photographer has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same sex marriage. If a same sex couple wanted to hire the photographer for their wedding, should the photographer have the right to say no?”

A huge 82 percent said yes.

Given the backlash against high-handed political correctness that’s gaining steam, these findings should be a warning to the “they will now do our bidding” school of activism.

The Washington Post‘s Civilities columnist Steven Petrow looks at the case of a gay male couple that was asked to leave Louie’s Sports Bar & Tiki Bar in Fayetteville, N.C., by the bar’s female owner. The incident: Around 11 p.m. on a late summer night, Andrew Deras put his arm around his boyfriend Dustin Baker and gave him what he later described as a “very minor” kiss.

Noting a few similar incidents, “Could the kiss be the next big milestone in LGBT rights?,” Petrow asks.

In the comments below the article on the Post‘s website, one commenter said:

Of course this has to be litigated. The Equal Protection clause of the Constitution means that gays can do the same things as straights in public.

Others pointed to the need for new, rigorous anti-discrimination legislation, to which another commenter responded:

As a gay Libertarian, I have regularly parted ways with the activist-type gays who always want a new law… and when they get that new law, they want another new law, and another and another and another…..You don’t like that bar that threw out the gay couple for kissing? Then boycott the bar and shine the light of bad publicity upon them.

Other commenters quickly chimed in that such a viewpoint was no different than sanctioning Jim Crow segregation against African Americans.

Not long ago, I referenced a fine analysis by John Corvino on the differences between anti-gay discrimination by a smattering of private small businesses in 2015 and systemic, frequently state-imposed racial discrimination in the pre-civil-rights South. And it’s no surprise that I’d rather see civil action against establishments that discriminate over unequal public displays of affection than lawsuits and state-administered punishments.

Along those lines, Scott Shackford has an updated version of his Is this where gays and libertarians part ways? piece is in the November issue of Reason, now online. An excerpt:

[W]e have little reason to believe that most people want to discriminate against gay, lesbian, or transgender customers. The burden created by those who do is remarkably small and can be remedied without government intervention. …

Libertarians care more about restraining government authority over the individual than allegiance to anybody’s “side.” Support for the rights of religious conservatives to discriminate should not be taken as endorsement or encouragement for their goals or moral framework.

As a gay libertarian, I support the right of a baker to decline to produce a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, but don’t expect me to buy so much as a cookie at their shop. And now that government-enforced oppression and discrimination is ending, I’d much rather see my peers embrace a world where we are all equally free to decide the terms by which we deal with each other, not one where we seize the same government powers that were once used to abuse us and use them to pummel our ideological opponents.