IGF CultureWatch

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.

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.

The Human Rights Campaign’s endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president was no surprise, given the close ties between the lobby’s leaders and the Clintons. But coming before the first primaries, it was sure to tick off the Sandernistas, and indeed they felt the Bern.

“It’s understandable and consistent with the establishment organizations voting for the establishment candidate, but it’s an endorsement that cannot possibly be based on the facts and the record,” Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs told the Washington Blade.

I preferred it when HRC just endorsed congressional candidates, prior to the group first presidential endorsement, that being Bill Clinton in 1992. Before then, the group could lay a claim to actual bipartisanship, supporting a fair number of socially inclusive Republicans. But once HRC tied itself so closely to Democratic presidential nominees, it was seen as the party’s outreach arm to lesbian and gay (and later, LGBT) voters. One reason the National Stonewall Democrats closed up shop is that its efforts were seen as redundant with HRC’s.

On a practical level, the early endorsement is viewed by many as bad tactics. Other lobbies on the left and the right make Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, respectively, compete fiercely for their support; HRC pretty much gives it away on the first date.

As Scott Shackford writes at reason.com:

[Many] perceive the HRC leadership as aspiring political operatives securing their own futures rather than actual LGBT activists and compromising so as not to harm their relationship with the Democratic Party elites.

The timing of the endorsement is itself evidence for the argument. … A look at poll averages right now showing Clinton vs. various Republican candidates and Sanders vs. various Republican candidates suggests it’s all extremely up in the air. Sanders does come out on top in some match-ups.

Shackford concludes:

For not a small number of people in the LGBT left, Sanders’ criticism of HRC will not hurt him at all and might actually help him get some primary votes, particularly among older, disaffected gay voters who remember both Clinton’s and the HRC’s histories.

As this blog has pointed out before, not rocking the Democratic Party establishment is HRC’s specialty. During the initial two years of the Obama administration when Democrats enjoyed filibuster-proof majorities in Congress, HRC failed to aggressively push, much less demand, that Democrats move forward with what was then its top agenda item, passage of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. The bill was never moved out of committee, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (among others) didn’t want to spend the political capital.

The one big achievement of the session, repeal of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy, lay dormant until just weeks before Congress was set to recess with a GOP majority slated to take over the House, when the grass-roots erupted and pushed congressional allies in both parties to force an end run around an again hesitant Reid, while HRC sat on the sidelines.

I fervently hope Donald Trump isn’t the GOP nominee, but it says a great deal about the state of the union that he so far seems unstoppable. Given the Democratic alternative, it’s a depressing campaign season indeed.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Aaron Zitner and Dante Chinni, in Donald Trump Forges New Blue-Collar Coalition Among Republicans (subscriber firewalled), shed some light on the predicament:

Mr. Trump’s appeal is a form of secular populism rarely seen in Republican primary races, and one he is pressing in part with appearances in working-class communities in Iowa that include independent voters and even Democrats who may be lured into the caucuses. …

Past nominating contests have often boiled down to two-person races in which an establishment-backed front-runner beats a socially conservative candidate who appeals to working-class voters—a role Rick Santorum filled in 2012, as did Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Pat Buchanan in 1996. Now, Mr. Trump appears to be opening a new, third lane in the GOP, drawing on a large share of voters who don’t have a college degree and don’t identify strongly with the party’s touchstone social issues, such as opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage.

That raises the prospect that the 2016 contest could narrow to a three-person race featuring the leading choice of social conservatives, the top pick of the party’s establishment wing of centrists and business-friendly Republicans—and Mr. Trump.

Gay-baiting isn’t among Trump’s fascistic tendencies. He is not a social conservative. He’s not much of an economic conservative, either. He favors the crony capitalism that made him rich. He is, instead, a populist demagogue.

What Trump will mean to the future configuration of the GOP is yet to be determined.

More. Via LCR:

Log Cabin Republicans remains committed to the eradication of radical Islamic extremism and believes it poses an existential threat to our culture and members of the LGBT community in particular, but inciting the politics of fear will not achieve those ends.

Plus this observation:

Considering Mr. Trump’s insistence that pursuit of a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality is futile as it would never be realized, we hope he likewise comprehends that his position advocating a carte-blanche ban on Muslim immigrants is equally fanciful.

As others have pointed out, on LGBT equality issues, Cruz and Rubio (among the main contenders) are far worse.

Meanwhile, how Hillary Clinton is bringing the nation together, as usual. Like Obama, her ire is most provoked by the one true enemy, Republicans.

OK, there is some justification if she were addressing Cruz, Carson and Huckabee, but no, not Bush, Kasich, Paul, Christie or (on Muslims) Rubio. Her partisan hyperbole is red meat for the base, and not what the country needs.

Via NBC-San Diego, DeMaio Accuser Sentenced for Obstructing Justice:

A former aide to Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio was sentenced to five years of probation Monday for using a phony email account to make it appear DeMaio or one of his associates threatened him.

The presiding judge said the slanders “definitely played a role” in DeMaio’s defeat.

LGBT progressives championed the (false) accusations that sunk Carl’s congressional campaign (he had been leading in the polls beforehand). I, however, was skeptical. As you may note, commenters on that thread were not.

Glenn Reynolds at instapundit: “I’m cynical enough to think that if he’d done this to a Democrat, he would have been punished more severely.”

Via BuzzFeed: There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law.

Yes, Republicans were/are worse—sometimes much, much worse—on marriage equality. That doesn’t mean we should excuse every attempt by the Clintons, Obama and others to make themselves look much more nobler than they were. Truth should mean something other than spin.

Scott Shackford has more. Hillary Clinton’s Bizarre Gay Marriage Revisionism Doesn’t Fool Those Who Remember. And he tweets: “There are now gay people semi-defending DOMA in order to protect Hillary and I honestly don’t know what to say.”