Politics & Public Opinion

Contretemps on the Left

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I almost feel sorry for the Human Rights Campaign. I think they long-ago sacrificed their integrity by becoming an outreach arm of the Democratic party. But the LGBT left is incensed that HRC is not working explicitly for the progressive statist/absolutist agenda. Some days you just can’t win.

More. The protesters are charging, for instance, that HRC fails to include “economic justice” concerns in its Corporate Equality Index, thus “pinkwashing” the grievances they have against corporate America.

Furthermore. LGBTQ Task Force leader Rea Carey said, in her annual State of the Movement speech, that LGBT activism has a “moral obligation” to expand its efforts on behalf of the “greater good,” and “to use our progress and any relative privilege we might have to…do our part for a changed and just society.” By which she means bigger, more coercive and confiscatory government. And no exemptions for religious organizations from the dictates of the state. No thanks, Rea.

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Potemkin VIle

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What are politicians who oppose marriage equality defending any more?

We know what they say they have in mind: the mechanical litany of protecting the right of children to have two biologically related parents; some version of Christian values; the independence of the people’s will against unelected judges; and the right of a state to define family relations. Each of those has some appeal, and some merit.

But Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard revealed a gap in the politics that should ease those who are jittery about the coming Supreme Court case. After a federal court last week struck down Alabama’s prohibition on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, Hubbard said, “It is outrageous when a single unelected and unaccountable federal judge can overturn the will of millions of Alabamians who stand in firm support of the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment.”

Chris Geidner helpfully pointed out that, far from multiple millions, less than 700,000 Alabamians voted for the amendment. And that’s out of a population of 4.8 million.

This does not mean marriage equality is popular in Alabama. But you can’t deny that 4.1 million Alabamians did not weigh in on the sanctity of marriage. A lot of them weren’t registered to vote, a lot probably had other things to do on voting day, and you have to assume that a lot of them just didn’t really give much of a damn about this particular issue.

It’s not unlikely that, if this decision is upheld, either on appeal or as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling next June, there will be a certain amount of discontent in Alabama, possibly more than there has been in the 36 other states whose marriage equality bans have been overturned.

But think about the magnitude of the yawn that has greeted those other decisions.

So far, the Supreme Court has only overturned one state ban on same-sex marriage, California’s. Seven million Californians passed that ban (against 6.4 million who opposed it), and the court overturned it two years ago in Hollingsworth v. Perry.

While California is a pretty blue state, it is extraordinarily hard to find any of those seven million voters who, after the court’s decision, took to the streets, stormed the courthouse doors, or even wrote letters to the editor. The decision was met by the ban’s many supporters with a shrug. All of the fear and anxiety and emotional manipulation from one of California’s ugliest initiative campaigns had been utterly forgotten. No hard feelings, who’s providing snacks for the kids’ soccer game Saturday?

And that seems to be what’s happening in the other states where bans have been falling on a weekly basis. Most people are just relieved to be getting done with this.

That might be because equality advocates have had it right from the start: this really doesn’t affect most people’s lives negatively, and the ones whose lives it does affect are positively joyous. The bans were a deeply cynical and politically timed moment in American history designed to exploit the last dying gasps of an ages-old prejudice. That spasm forced the constitutional issue, and it turns out the cynics were right in their own way. That particular form of bigotry was dying, and they timed the bans well.

This last generation of politicians still has some long-tail prejudice to cater to. But I’m feeling confident they’re going to find this snake oil doesn’t dazzle the masses the way it used to.

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Liberals vs. Progressives?

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Allum Bokhari, a British political consultant and Liberal Democrat, has penned an interesting column in which he finds a growing gulf between the views of moderate liberals and radical progressives on a number of key social issues. He writes:

The coalition of moderate liberals, skeptical intellectuals, and radical progressives that once stood together against the conservative “moral majority” is beginning to fracture. … [A] number of serious divisions have emerged on the cultural left. And they are becoming increasingly bitter. …

On Islamism:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a female genital mutilation survivor…was disinvited from a planned speaking engagement at Brandeis University for her criticism of Islam, and was stripped of her honorary degree. Salon.com immediately applauded the decision. … Students at UC Berkeley attempted to do the same to Bill Maher over his alleged islamophobia. … One of their [progressives] core beliefs is that you do not “punch down”—that is, attack vulnerable or marginalized communities. Islam, despite being the dominant religion of dozens of nation-states, is said by progressives to fall into this category. …

On due process:

These days…defenders of due process are more likely to be at loggerheads with radical progressives than Bush-era neocons. Nowadays, it is progressives, not conservatives, who championed the use of campus tribunals to deal with sexual assault on US campuses. These tribunals, conducted by untrained faculty members, with no requirement for defendants to have access to legal representation, have attracted a growing tide of criticism. …

On censorship:

Today…it is progressives who are not just standing up for the right of private censorship, but also actively demand it. It is progressives, not Christian conservatives, who now lead campaigns against sex and violence in the media. And it was progressive students, not middle-aged moral crusaders, who banned a pop song on over 20 university campuses. …

Bokhari concludes:

It increasingly appears that cultural politics, once the great strength of the left-wing movement, is rapidly turning into its Achilles heel. Once a source of unity, it has turned into perhaps the primary source of division. With moderate liberals and radical progressives sharpening their weapons on a number of fronts, a battle for the soul of the left is about to begin.

I fear that’s way too optimistic an outloook, at least when applied to the U.S. From what I can see, there aren’t many “moderate liberals” in this country who are willing to speak out against “radical progressives,” especially regarding due process protections and freedom of expression, although libertarians certainly are doing so.

More. For those who are interested, more from Allum Bokhari, via Britain’s Liberal Democratic Voice website.

Furthermore. Along somewhat similar lines, Jonathan Chait on How the language police are perverting liberalism:

But political correctness is not a rigorous commitment to social equality so much as a system of left-wing ideological repression. Not only is it not a form of liberalism; it is antithetical to liberalism. Indeed, its most frequent victims turn out to be liberals themselves. …

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.

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Obama: Good for Gays, Not So Good for America

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According to Mark Joseph Stein and J. Bryan Lowder, writing at Slate (LGBT Comes to the SOTU), Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address was historic in that it contained three references to gay rights and “marks the first time a president has used the words transgender and bisexual in a State of the Union address (in addition to the explicit use of the term lesbian rather than the generic gay).”

For many on the left, it seems, keeping count of nomenclature is exceedingly important. But I’ll grant you that inclusive rhetoric can matter. More importantly, however, let’s weigh the administration’s record.

The Employee Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), then backed by many LGBT Democrats, never made it out of committee during the first two years of the Obama presidency when his party enjoyed large majorities in both houses of Congress—a sign of lack of administration interest in pushing it. But last year, the president belatedly fulfilled his 2008 campaign promise to issue an executive order barring government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

His administration sat back and would have allowed Harry Reid to scuttle a Senate vote to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” at the end of 2010, as I’ve written about before (Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman saved the day). Subsequently, however, the Defense Department moved to successfully implement the new policy of letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.

Obama initially ran for president opposing gay marriage, alluding to marriage’s “religious connotation” and holding that “marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.” But in office his position evolved to support for marriage equality. And while the truly historic advances for the freedom to marry were driven by lawsuits and the courts, the administration did weigh in against the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. After the majority ruling penned by Justice Kennedy (a Reagan appointee) finding DOMA unconstitutional, federal agencies have moved to ensure equal treatment of same-sex spouses in the areas that they regulate.

As David Boaz sums up on The National Interest website about the speech and, more broadly, Obama’s legacy:

[W]e got a sweeping vision of a federal government that takes care of us from childhood to retirement, a verbal counterpart to the Obama campaign’s internet ad about “Julia,” the cartoon character who has no family, friends, church or community and depends on government help throughout her life. … The spirit of American independence, of free people pursuing their dreams in a free economy, was entirely absent. … The president wants more and better jobs. And yet he wants to raise taxes on the savings and investment that produce economic growth and better jobs. … President Obama’s tax-spend-and-regulate policies have given us the slowest recovery since World War II. You want to help the middle class? Lift those burdens.

But also:

I appreciate the president’s inclusiveness in his rhetoric and his policies. In 2013, he paid tribute to “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.” This year he cited gay marriage as “a story of freedom”—indeed, his only mention of freedom—and he touched on the deepest roots of our liberty and our civilization in this passage: “we are a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen: man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino and Asian, immigrant and Native American, gay and straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability.”

All in all, the Obama administration’s record on gay rights may be its only lasting positive legacy.

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Finding a ‘Moderate’ Gay Marriage Position as Goalposts Shift

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Jeb Bush, the new GOP presidential front-runner (but at this early stage, don’t bet the ranch), weighed in on gay marriage. What he said marks a welcome shift toward moderation in line with statements by other GOP governors of late (including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, among others), and is in marked contrast to earlier Bush statements (actually, in contrast to his statements of just a few days earlier).

Republicans who are not creatures of the religious right like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that a moderate position on gay marriage for most Americans today (as opposed to four or eight years ago) is the freedom to marry.

As reported by the paper of record:

As gay couples began to wed in Florida after a court ruling, Jeb Bush, the state’s former governor and long an opponent of same-sex marriages, struck a conciliatory note on Monday, telling The New York Times that “regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law.” …

Mr. Bush’s comments suggested a tepid acceptance of the new legal status, or at least an acknowledgment that there is little he can do to block it.

“We live in a democracy, and regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “I hope that we can show respect for the good people on all sides of the gay and lesbian marriage issue—including couples making lifetime commitments to each other who are seeking greater legal protections and those of us who believe marriage is a sacrament and want to safeguard religious liberty.”

The Times further noted:

His remarks were markedly more sympathetic to same-sex marriage than comments he made to The Miami Herald on Sunday as he left a golf course. “It ought be a local decision—I mean, a state decision,” Mr. Bush told The Herald. “The state decided. The people of the state decided. But it’s been overturned by the courts, I guess.”

Gay rights leaders said they found Mr. Bush’s statement on Monday encouraging. Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a group that has pushed for same-sex marriage, said that “most Republican politicians have been adamant in their opposition and provide no room for evolution.” Mr. Bush “at least is expressing his respect for those who support marriage equality,” Mr. Sainz said. “That’s a big change for Republicans.”

And on this point, I must agree with HRC.

According to a look at Bush’s statement and the responses to it by Business Insider, “Jeb Bush Changes His Tune On Gay Marriage“:

Bush was clearly attempting to strike a moderate tone with his statement. The Miami Herald’s Mark Caputo, one of the foremost experts on Sunshine State politics, described it as having a “neither too-hot-nor-cold Goldilocks quality.” However, it was still a marked shift from his past comments on gay marriage.

LGBT Democrats will complain that tepid acceptance is no longer acceptable. Indeed, according to Business Insider:

“Jeb Bush remains as out of touch as ever with Floridians and voters nationwide on the civil rights issue of our time,” the [Florida Democratic Party’s] chair, Allison Tant, said in a statement. “Bush championed these discriminatory policies as governor, and it’s a shame that he remains determined to stand for the forces of bigotry.”

This, of course, ignores that just a few years ago their beloved Clintons were also opposed to same-sex marriage, as for that matter was Barack Obama, but let’s not get sidetracked into the swamp of LGBT Democratic hypocrisy.

We conclude that accepting the inevitable is indeed a sign of progress for the leading presidential contenders from the nation’s conservative party.

More. Chain reaction: Marco Rubio now says about gay marriage: Courts are weighing in and “whatever the law is, we’re going to abide by it and respect it.” He doesn’t want to be out-Bushed!

I should add that I find it increasingly difficult to take N.J. Gov. Chris Christie seriously, but let’s note that his tone about gay marriage is more antagonistic that the latest statements from Bush and even Rubio. Christie is willing to accept the inevitable in New Jersey but calls on the GOP to continue fighting against the freedom to marry nationally. That attempt to court social conservatives who aren’t going to support him anyway shows, again, how out of touch he is.

Furthermore. Mitt Romney, who apparently still supports a federal constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage nationally, looks likely to challenge Bush for the center right space. So it will be interesting to see how that plays out. The divergence is being noted. The Independent reports:

This week [Bush] also set himself apart from many conservatives (and Mr Romney) on gay marriage. While not fully endorsing same-sex marriage, he said in a statement that rulings by court judges allowing it, as has just happened in Florida, should be respected by everyone. “We live in a democracy,” he said, “and regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law.”

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Freedom Ascendant, and Under Siege

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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.

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The Victory Fund’s Spurious ‘Bipartisanship’

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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.

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No, This Issue Is Not Going Away

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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.

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Marriage: A 2016 Non-Issue?

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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.

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Payback Time, Again

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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.

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