Politics & Public Opinion

Are NPR and Maggie Gallagher Missing the Boat?

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Andrew Sullivan is excerpting a fascinating debate he titles, “Embracing the Bias,” about the dilemma NPR faces over its surprising to no one tilt toward the left.  One of the key bones of contention is whether NPR should just say outright, yes, we are sort of leftish, but unlike Fox News, we’ll own up to our bias and honestly try to be fair rather than just asserting it.

As much as I’d like to endorse that kind of full disclosure, it presupposes, as the lawyers say, a fact not in evidence.  Lesbians and gay men should be more attuned than most to the fact that in a whole lot of cases, people don’t recognize their own bias.  On the contrary, they can understand what others view as bias as some sort of natural order.

When Maggie Gallagher takes umbrage at being called a bigot or worse, she is sincerely expressing her view that the world she grew up in and understands is entirely neutral and correct.  Her incredulity comes from the notion that such a uniform history of acknowledging heterosexual marriage holds no bias against homosexual couples.

And, speaking historically, she is not wrong. I don’t think the long, confounding and ongoing development of marriage came out of a bias against same-sex couples, it just came out of an ignorance of their existence.  It took all of that history, culminating late in the 20th Century, for lesbians and gay men to fully assert their public presence, much less their need for the same legal recognition of their relationships that heterosexuals take for granted.

But just because there was no intent to discriminate against same-sex couples in, say, the 16th Century doesn’t mean that the effect of that unawareness isn’t discriminatory today.  Gallagher has set herself up as the ambassador of that obliviousness.  If history isn’t biased, how could she and her followers be?  What is wrong with people?

What Gallagher can’t see (or won’t acknowledge) is what a gathering majority can no longer blind itself to.  Lesbians and gay men do exist, do fall in love, do form relationships, do raise children.  The law’s neglect of them is now clear to anyone who wants to see it.

But those who keep their blinkers on do, in fact, begin to look biased, look like they really don’t want to see something that is right in front of their eyes.  Perhaps that isn’t really bigotry or hate, but it looks so willful, so harsh, so mean.

Maybe it is always hard for us to recognize our own biases, too easy to mistake them for justice when, in fact, their injustice is only still coming into view.  It would be so nice if Gallagher and NPR and everyone could stand back from their deeply held beliefs and examine them fully.  But history proves that’s hard.

On a lot of subjects, now, we don’t know what bias is.  How can we expect people to admit something we don’t have agreement on the boundaries of?  If NPR doesn’t see their bias as bias, they can do no more about it than Gallagher can, and will be missing many of the same cultural shifts that are happening right under their nose.

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Real Political Action at CPAC

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‘We’re not trying to … sneak the left’s agenda into the conservative movement.”

Those are the words of GOProud’s Christopher Barron in explaining why the very, very conservative Andrew Breitbart, as well as Grover Norquist, Ann Coulter and others have given genuine support to a group of openly gay Republicans.  Chris Geidner’s first rate and exquisitely fair reporting for Metro Weekly gives both the left and the right — and the really far right — room to make their points.  GOProud obviously isn’t everyone’s cup of Darjeeling, but they are not the enemy of the gay movement.  The only ones who need to worry about them are those Republicans who want to purge the party of any open homosexuals.

The heart of GOProud’s position is this:

“The problem is that the gay left has decided what qualifies as pro-gay and what qualifies as anti-gay, and a whole bunch of the stuff that they think qualifies as pro-gay, I don’t think has anything to do with being pro-gay,” says Barron. ”And, a whole bunch of stuff that they think is anti-gay, I don’t think is anti-gay at all.”

This is clearly anathema to the gay left, which has too frequently tarred anyone who questions any proposal they put forth as acting in bad faith.  But it also teases out the problem Log Cabin has had among Republicans.  In order to get along with the leadership of the gay left — which is pretty much the leadership of the gay rights movement thus far — LCR has supported laws that purport to help lesbians and gay men, from ENDA to hate crimes laws to anti-bullying bills.  These proposals run counter to the genuinely conservative impulses of a strong (and I think the best) conservative philosophy espoused by Republicans.  Government power necessarily relies on politics, and in a culture war, those politics can get corrosive when they’re not outright dangerous.  In a vibrant democracy political power is dynamic; as its contours shift, the changes can intensify cultural divisions rather than resolving them.

Democrats tend to believe government has an extraordinary ability to solve, or at least ease, problems, and we Dems can minimize the consequences those power shifts cause, usually by pretending they will not occur.  LCR was no liberal bastion, but they developed decent working relationships with the Democratic problem solvers.

That coalition had some success in enacting hate crimes laws, AIDS programs and other accomplishments.  DADT would not have been repealed without LCR’s help, particularly in the form of their lawsuit against the federal government.  But DADT, like DOMA, is different in kind from ENDA and its legislative brethren.  ENDA asks the government to help ease discrimination; DADT and DOMA are, themselves, discrimination by the government that purports to be neutral with respect to all citizens.

GOProud can be disingenuous, and that’s clear when it comes to marriage.  Barron says his group opposes DOMA, but on grounds of federalism, not equality.  The implication is that the constitution’s guarantee of equality does not apply to homosexuality. That’s something I certainly don’t agree with, but it would be a good question to put to GOProud.

In any event, the tawdry accusations that GOProud is anti-gay or even self-hating are hard to make stick to Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, his partner in crime.  No one can accuse them of being closeted or lacking in political interest.  They have a vision of what is and is not a proper role for government that is respectable and (at least what we’ve been able to see of it) fairly consistent.   It is not the Democrats’ vision of government, but why should it be?  Their opposition to hate crimes laws and ENDA and other social tinkering by the federal government is not an attempt to disguise some other political motives, nor are they giving cover to people whose revulsion derives from a fundamental opposition to homosexuals.

GOProud proves that there is no necessary connection between conservatism and homophobia, an assumption that has been the foundation of the religious right’s incursion into the Republican party.  GOProud is short-circuiting it, and the sparks are flying.

How could that not be a good thing?

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Brothers and Sisters

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Alabama and Florida have new Governors who are actively catering to the Christians in their states.  Alabama’s Robert Bentley explicitly appealed to his fellow “brothers and sisters” in Christ, unaware that this could be taken badly by anyone who is not in the family.  He was subsequently informed that Alabama does, in fact, have a smattering of non Southern Baptists, and did his best to apologize for any hurt feelings.

Governor Rick Scott in Florida is using his government position to further Christianity in the more traditional way – behind the scenes.  His new Secretary of the Department of Children and Families is David Wilkins, who also serves as Finance Chairman for Florida Baptist Children’s Homes, which describes itself as an “organization dedicated to providing Christ-centered services to children and families. . .” That’s hardly surprising for a Baptist organization.  Wilkins test will come when he has to deal with citizens who are not seeking Christ-centered services.

This certainly doesn’t bode well for same-sex couples in Florida.  Gov. Scott has said that adoption should be limited to married couples, using the traditional formulation to exclude homosexuals without saying so.  This goes against a state appellate court ruling, which overturned Florida’s unique-in-the-nation rule prohibiting adoption (but not foster parenting) by anyone who is homosexual, and against simple arithmetic, with the number of children needing adoption, on one side of the equation, and the number of married couples willing to adopt, on the other.

These new governors will be pushing the limits of the distinction between Christians and “Christianists,” the term Andrew Sullivan coined to describe Christians who go beyond believing in and acting on their faith, and attempt to impose it on believers and nonbelievers alike through civil law.

They may want to exercise some caution.  The First Amendment to the Constitution protects religion from state coercion, but it does something else as well: it protects religions from one another.  That’s not necessarily a constitutional matter, but it’s at least as important.  You don’t have to search very hard to come up with examples of religions that hold government power in various nations and leverage their power to disadvantage people of other religions.

But that’s nothing compared to the leverage religious believers have over different sects of their own religion.  Just because Shiites and Sunnis are both Islamic doesn’t mean they have the same view of religion, or of the state.  In fact, divisions within religions may be more intractable and emotionally held than broader religious differences.  Henry VIII didn’t fight Rome in order to start a Jewish sect; he felt he was every bit as much a Christian as the corrupt boys on the continent, possibly more so.

Religion can be a special case of epistemic closure.  Belief is so personal and interior that it’s easy to lose perspective, or fail to appreciate that others believe very, very different things at their very core, not only about obvious politicized issues, but about God’s grace, itself, and God’s own identity.

And that’s not just true across religions, but within individual sects.  Governor Bentley’s Southern Baptist brothers and sisters belong to one of many dozens of Baptist denominations that aren’t always in complete harmony. There are enough Presbyterian denominations that Wikipedia has to alphabetize them.

And individual believers are even more varied.  It’s easy to forget that Al Sharpton is a Baptist minister, and that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty are all Baptists as well. Catholics are fairly unique in having a single, institutional voice to guide them – one which is widely ignored by actual, practicing Catholics in so many particulars, high among them gay marriage.

The First Amendment is a reminder that a government which can not command religious belief has to be cautious of religious reasoning, itself, which inevitably leads to so many different, but firmly held conclusions.  Gov. Bentley’s religious belief is clearly not something he holds lightly, but even in Alabama, it shouldn’t be surprising that in the civil arena, its assertion by the state’s leading political figure is viewed in political terms.  Gov. Scott can certainly rely on a large cohort of religious believers who oppose any legal recognition of same-sex couples, but he is not the Minister of Florida, he is its governor.

And homosexual citizens are among his constituents.  Religions have the power to deny membership to anyone they wish, but states are different.  Christianist governors (and other powerful religious politicians) can’t ignore or exclude lesbians and gay men from the society; they can only use power to rig their rights.  And as the non-religious reasons for doing so collapse under ordinary scrutiny, the religious motivations are exposed not only to secular review, but examination by other competing religions and religious thinkers as well.

Those religious debates have both enlightened and inflamed centuries of human progress.  But they have not combined well with secular government.  The First Amendment has stood as an excellent guardrail between our nation and a noxious religious nihilism.  Its wisdom is still evident.

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The Dancing of Politics

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Steve Miller’s post on DADT makes some great points, including what appears to be the lack of action by President Obama as our advocate, fierce or otherwise.  I don’t discount the possibility that he might be doing his work behind the scenes and out of public view.  Sometimes, discretion is the better part of victory.  Not everything a President does has to be in the public eye.  But given the media’s just-shy-of prurient interest in this issue, it’s easy enough to imagine that the administration really is just watching the Senate agonize, and maybe crossing its fingers for us.

But I want to focus a bit on the politics that go unnoticed by most people.  The promise that Joe Lieberman got from Susan Collins and Richard Lugar is not what I would call a solid one.  What, exactly, or even approximately, is “an open amendment process?”  This is just the sort of subjective “agreement” politicians announce all the time to make it appear they have done something they have not.

I have no reason to believe Collins and Lugar (and others) don’t intend to vote for repeal.  But as we learned in the earlier chapters of this debate, their party’s leaders continue to have some sway over the strays.

The real test here, is once again of Harry Reid’s political skills.  The “open amendment process” is not an argument, it is an excuse that the GOP can use any time they find it necessary or helpful or just convenient.  Reid and the President can prevail (and I still assume the President does want to achieve repeal) only if they create the political climate where the GOP loses  more from continuing DADT than they do.  It’s a game of political chicken.  If the GOP thinks DADT’s continuance is better for them, they can claim any amendment process Harry Reid comes up with isn’t open enough.

And by “losing” I obviously mean political loss.  As is so often the case in Washington, not a single senator has a direct interest in this.  It’s easy for them to treat our equality as an abstract principle because for them that’s what it is.

That’s why Joe Lieberman stands out.  He has shown the kind of true and principled, actual leadership on this issue that only the best politicians even aspire to.  So, too, Patrick Murphy in the House.  In fact, Murphy had more to lose by standing up for us, and in fact lost in the midterms.  Obama’s commitment as our fierce advocate can and should be measured against the open advocacy of these two men.

But neither Lieberman nor Murphy has the clout of the President and of Reid.  This is now all about leadership.  But it will also be the acid test for the Republicans in the Senate.  How dedicated, really, are they to John McCain’s addled homophobia?  Is his really the face of the 21st Century GOP?

In fact, for the Republicans, repeal will give them all a chance to re-decide McCain’s most fateful judgment.  He could have chosen Joe Lieberman as his vice-president, but found Sarah Palin a better fit for his party.  He rejected moderation and bet the farm on empty partisanship.  In 2010, support of DADT is as empty as partisanship gets.  It has nothing in its corner except ignorance and fear — ignorance and fear that it seems even most members of the military have abandoned.

That is the political calculation that the Republicans will have to make for themselves.  For the Democrats, the calculation has to do with the risks of leadership.  They saw what happened to Patrick Murphy.  Do they have the courage to make this happen, and maybe suffer the anger of some voters, or will they take the easier course (for them) of leaving us with at least four more years of Bill Clinton’s compromised legacy?

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What Do Social Conservatives Want?

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Over at Cato, David Boaz considers the recent “Values Voter Summit” and blogs:

Social conservatives talk about real problems but offer irrelevant solutions. They act like the man who searched for his keys under the streetlight because the light was better there….

Why all the focus on issues that would do nothing to solve the problems of “breakdown of the basic family structure” and “the high cost of a dysfunctional society”? Well, solving the problems of divorce and unwed motherhood is hard. And lots of Republican and conservative voters have been divorced. A constitutional amendment to ban divorce wouldn’t go over very well with even the social-conservative constituency. Far better to pick on a small group, a group not perceived to be part of the Republican constituency, and blame them for social breakdown and its associated costs.

But you won’t find your keys on Main Street if you dropped them on Green Street, and you won’t reduce the costs of social breakdown by keeping gays unmarried and not letting them adopt orphans.

Read the whole post. Plus Jonathan Rauch’s thoughts, below.

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The New Roe v. Wade?

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In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Berkeley law professor John Yoo takes issue with Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Yoo says that he favors gay marriage as a matter of policy, but that:

Federalism will produce the political durability that supporters of gay marriage want. If states steadily approve, a political consensus will form that will be difficult to undo.

Consider, by contrast, abortion. Roe v. Wade (1973) only intensified political conflict at a time when the nation was already moving in a pro-choice direction. That decision...poisoned our politics, introduced rounds of legislative defiance and judicial intervention, and undermined the neutral principles of constitutional law.

I don't disagree that relying on courts, rather than the political process, to advance our rights carries the risk of a backlash, and certainly Jon Rauch strikes a similar note in his recent column on the California ruling.

But I suspect abortion and marriage equality really don't resonate on the same level among most conservatives, apart for the hard-core religious right. Consider Glenn Beck's interview with Bill O'Reilly (discussed in my last post), in which Beck refused to label gay marriage as a threat and quoted Thomas Jefferson that "if it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me." But when O'Reilly asked him about abortion, Beck responded, "Abortion is killing, you're killing."

For most people who oppose marriage equality, their unease over giving a stamp of approval to gay relationships (and by that they mean gay sex) just isn't in the same league with stopping the abortion mills that result in the murder of unborn babies, sometimes just before birth and at taxpayer expense.

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