IGF CultureWatch

Like Stephen, I found the lack of reaction to the CDC report on the number of self-reported homosexual Americans pretty interesting. For those of us old enough to remember being gay in the 70s (that’s the 1970s, for younger readers), it’s hard to imagine that these low numbers, well below the Kinsey-ish estimates of 10%, did not cause much of a stir.

But, indirectly, IGF occassional contributor John Corvino, helped me think about why this is important. His new article at Commonweal, “Thinking Straight,”  isn’t about the numbers game; it’s a great analysis of an essay by Michael Hannon called “Against Homosexuality,” which tries to turn Queer Theory against the notion of gay rights. John does a fine job of explaining how wrong Hannon is, but John’s main point is that while categories for sexual orientation do have their problems, they serve a very practical and important purpose. Absent a fairly clear understanding that there are other people who are attracted to members of their own sex, and that homosexual people have an ordered place in society, it’s very hard for young lesbians and gay boys to find a healthy place in their developing psyches for their sexual feelings.

The closet distorted the more ordinary process heterosexual kids go through, from awkward embarrassment to adult relationships. For generations, homosexual kids went from awkward embarrassment to public silence, possibly awkward heterosexual marriage, or at best awkward adult companionship.

In that context, those fighting for gay equality in the 60s and 70s had to establish something new in public discourse: the fact that there were people who deserved the rights we were claiming. Back then, it was hard to get people willing to testify at public hearings. Remember, those were the days when it was still a crime in most states to even be homosexual. We had heterosexual allies, but those of us who wanted to change the laws had the burden of demonstrating that, despite public appearances, there really was a homosexual population that was affected.

The 10% figure served as the proxy for all those closeted people. It wasn’t accurate, but it had some science behind it. And it provided a little comfort to help bring a few more people into the public eye as open homosexuals.

Now that the closet is eroding (it’s not gone by any means — look how hard it was for Ian Thorpe to come out), we seem to have reached critical mass in the number of people who are comfortable being open about being gay. Today, it’s hard for either the general public or, most importantly, young homosexuals, to avoid knowing something about the fact that homosexual people have a place in society, with or without a spouse.

And it turns out that it doesn’t make a difference how many of those people there are. Whether it’s 10% or 2% or 1.6%, the actual number is not what’s at issue. The equal protection clause doesn’t have a numerical threshold. If the law, itself, is being used by a majority (however large) to unfairly discriminate against a minority (however small), the constitution requires the courts to assure that there is a good reason (sometimes a very good reason) for the differential treatment.

So, for myself, I am going to be spending my time in other pursuits as people continue to exert time and resources trying to figure out how many lesbians and gay men there are. Now that we’re on the path to full equal protection of the law, everything else is just demographics.

Occasional IGF Culture Watch contributor Dale Carpenter shared the thought that “This will be the formulation that will finally allow religious traditionalists to publicly support same-sex marriage,” referring to how Republican Rep. David Jolly (Fla.) announced his support marriage equality:

“As a matter of my Christian faith, I believe in traditional marriage. But as a matter of Constitutional principle I believe in a form of limited government that protects personal liberty. To me, that means that the sanctity of one’s marriage should be defined by their faith and by their church, not by their state. Accordingly, I believe it is fully appropriate for a state to recognize both traditional marriage as well as same-sex marriage.”

Jolly becomes the eighth current Republican member of Congress to come out in support of gay marriage, joining Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), and Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.).

Said Rep. Dent in announcing his support, “As a Republican, I value equality, personal freedom and a more limited role for government in our lives. I believe this philosophy should apply to the issue of marriage as well.”

The Human Rights Campaign’s blogging on President Obama’s long-awaited executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees focuses more on celebrating Obama than on heralding a step forward by LGBT Americans. The posting, With Executive Order, Obama Takes His Place in History, tells us:

“The order, profoundly consequential in its own right, dramatically underscores President Obama’s own LGBT legacy of achievement, unmatched in history … Viewed in full, President Obama’s legacy of achievement is unmatched in history…including the largest conferral of rights in history to LGBT people via the implementation of the Windsor decision….”

There’s also a link “for more information on President Obama’s six-year record of accomplishment.”

Here’s how I would have put it: “Finally, after 5-plus years of ignoring pleas from a voting bloc that has disproportionately supplied funds, labor and votes to his party, President Obama ordered that contractors working for the federal government his administration oversees can’t discriminate against LGBT workers. If organizations claiming to be leading the fight for LGBT equality had exerted more pressure instead of acting as supplicant lapdogs, it would have happened much sooner….”

A look at shifts occurring within the religious right, via National Journal. The gist: the religious right is experiencing “a generational shift from offense to defense,” from using government power to impose “family values” to seeking to carve out a sphere of “religious liberty” for religious dissenters:

The Hobby Lobby case is in many ways a model for the new strategy being pursued by the Religious Right. It represents a way to engage in politics that is less aggressive than the tactics of the previous generation of believers. Back then, the key phrase was “family values”; now, it is “religious liberty.” You see it everywhere—from contraception court cases to legislation to think-tank conferences.

This shift in rhetoric has moved the Religious Right from offense to defense in the culture wars, as Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins put it last year. The main aim, it seems, is not to oppose contraception or gay marriage but to be left alone: to extract a promise that religious conservatives will not have to photograph a gay wedding or pay for someone else’s birth control. It is a version of the Religious Right that even the libertarian wing of the Republican Party—a historical rival for influence within the GOP—can get behind.

While some of us believe religious conservatives do, in fact, have a right to the exercise of their religion without undo state interference, others believe that allowing any such deviation is anathema.

More. Via Reason: “Libertarians are the ones who tend to both support same-sex marriage and people’s right not to be compelled to work in service of one; to want to get both our bosses and the government out of birth control decisions; and to take free speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and personal autonomy very seriously.”

Conservatives and progressives…not so much.

Furthermore. Michelangelo Signorile’s “ENDA Nightmare“—ENDA passes the House attached to another year-end bill with GOP support and becomes law. Yesterday’s must-pass legislation becomes today’s “dangerous religious exemption” because it doesn’t allow the state to regulate hiring decisions at religious organizations.

Worth repeating. Seriously? Model trains?

Political predictions rarely hit the nail on the head. But journalists love to make them, and we keep reading them. Here’s one take on a possible scenario for the 2016 presidential election, with Republicans driving themselves to defeat by clinging bitterly to their opposition to gay marriage (along, presumable, with their guns and religion), via the Washington Post. I don’t think it will happen this way, but you never know.

More. A positive note—the Texas GOP’s looney gay-bashing helped lose Dallas the 2016 Republican Convention.

Furthermore. Another countertrend: working to bring the GOP around. As National Journal reports:

Similarly, rather than talking about gay marriage, strategists are guiding Republicans to talk about the freedom to marry, and they cast the question in familiar conservative terms about the government’s role in people’s private lives.

“Use freedom language, why it’s important for families, why it’s inappropriate for the government to treat people differently and treating gay people as taxpayers,” said one GOP gay-rights lobbyist.

And beyond changes to the rhetorical approach, the LGBT-rights community is bringing cash to the effort.

These efforts won’t change things tomorrow, but could do so down the road. As Darwin advised the animals, evolve or die.

Plus, National Journal on the importance of Carl DeMaio’s run.

The new Pew Research Center report on political polarization has some interesting findings. Among them:

Young Outsiders lean Republican but do not have a strong allegiance to the Republican Party; in fact they tend to dislike both political parties. On many issues, from their support for environmental regulation to their liberal views on social issues, they diverge from traditional GOP orthodoxy. Yet in their support for limited government, Young Outsiders are firmly in the Republicans’ camp.

Also:

The Next Generation Left are young, relatively affluent and very liberal on social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. But they have reservations about the cost of social programs. And while most of the Next Generation Left support affirmative action, they decisively reject the idea that racial discrimination is the main reason why many blacks are unable to get ahead.

These are groups not firmly in either the liberal/left or conservative/right camps, but likely to support equal government treated of LGBT people—if they’re not told doing so requires them to sign up for the full progressive government-expansion agenda and the identity politics of perpetual victimization. And let’s hope they don’t stumble across the gay press.

More. Pew charts partisan shifts over the past decade.

There’s a cultural divide, apparently, about whether sitcom representations of gay men tend to be offensive, campy stereotypes, and it’s gained notice by the New York Times.

As for me, the portrayal of Cam on “Modern Family,” played by straight actor Eric Stonestreet, has never rung true, whereas Kurt on “Glee,” played by openly gay Chris Colfer, has always been convincingly authentic.

The Supreme Court strikes a few blows for liberty, although LGBT progressives won’t see it that way.

In the long-awaited Hobby Lobby ruling, the court found closely held for-profit companies are not required to pay for employees’ contraceptives (specifically abortifacients) if their owners have religious objections:

In a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito the court held that as applied to closely held corporations the Health and Human Services regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. … Justice Anthony Kennedy filed a concurring opinion.

The decision is a victory for the Green family that owns the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and the Hahns who own Conestoga, a cabinet making company, who had challenged the so called contraceptive mandate saying it forced them to either violate their faith or pay ruinous fines. The government defended the provision as an essential part of health care coverage for women.

The ruling bodes well for the eventual likelihood that the rights of nonpublic employers (that is, private, closely held firms and small proprietors) not to be compelled by the state to provide artistic or creative services that celebrate same-sex marriages.

Also worth noting: the court’s ruling that government-employee unions can’t make nonmembers pay fees.

It’s a bad day for progressives who believe all rights come from the state, and only that which the state specifically allows should be permissible.

More. Get Equal issues a predictable response. And the Human Rights Campaign helpfully informs us that “countless lesbian and bisexual women as well as some transgender men rely on contraception.”

Returning to the world of reason, some insights from Ilya Shapiro, blogging from the libertarian Cato Institute. And an observation from Cato’s Walter Olson.

And Cato’s Julian Sanchez weighs in:

The outrage does make sense, of course, if what one fundamentally cares about—or at least, additionally cares about—is the symbolic speech act embedded in the compulsion itself. In other words, if the purpose of the mandate is not merely to achieve a certain practical result, but to declare the qualms of believers with religious objections so utterly underserving of respect that they may be forced to act against their convictions regardless of whether this makes any real difference to the outcome. And something like that does indeed seem to be lurking just beneath—if not at—the surface of many reactions. The ruling seems to provoke anger, not because it will result in women having to pay more for birth control (as it won’t), but at least in part because it fails to send the appropriate cultural signal. Or, at any rate, because it allows religious employers to continue sending the wrong cultural signal….

And that, too, is what the demand by progressive activists for conservative Christian bakers and photographers to labor in celebration of same-sex weddings is all about.

Furthermore Additional comments from Ilya Shapiro, via The Federalist website:

The essence of freedom is that government can’t willy-nilly force people to do things that violate their consciences. Americans understand this point intuitively. Some may argue that there’s a conflict here between religious freedom and women’s rights, but that’s a “false choice” (as the president likes to say). Without the HHS rule, women are still free to obtain contraceptives, abortions, and whatever else isn’t illegal. They just can’t force their employer to pay for them.

Still more. Here’s Steve Chapman’s perspective:

The conservative alarms about the alleged threats to religious freedom are way overblown. But there is something to be said for government policies that let people of strongly held opposing views go their separate ways.

On the other hand, this take, via the Washington Blade‘s political cartoonist, is just bonkers, pandering to the low-information, hyper-partisan reader—and the accompanying op-ed isn’t much better.

Here’s a graphic retort.

Even more. Megan McArdle: Who’s The Real Hobby Lobby Bully?:

Cards on the table: I think that institutions Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor are obviously correct—they are being forced by the government to buy something that they don’t want to buy. We can argue about whether this is a good or a bad idea, but the fact that it is coercive seems indisputable.

…the secular left views [religion] as something more like a hobby, so for them it’s as if a major administrative rule was struck down because it unduly burdened model-train enthusiasts. That emotional disconnect makes it hard for the two sides to even debate; the emotional tenor quickly spirals into hysteria as one side says “Sacred!” and the other side says, essentially, “Seriously? Model trains?” That shows in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, where it seems to me that she takes a very narrow view of what role religious groups play in the lives of believers and society as a whole.

I think that’s right.

On the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, let’s revisit this essay David Boaz penned a few years back placing Stonewall in context as resistance against oppression by the state.

HBO’s documentary on the legal fight to overturn California’s Proposition 8, “The Case Against 8,” is undeniably a moving piece of TV. It will surely, among those who see it, reinforce their commitment to marriage equality.

But when you step back, it suffers from the same faults as journalist Jo Becker’s book on the case, Forcing the Spring—it’s as if the fight for gay marriage has no previous history, and the momentous fight in the case against Prop. 8, Hollingsworth v. Perry, was a world-changing victory won through the heroic efforts of three men, LGBT activist leader Chad Griffin (now president of the Human Rights Campaign) and superstar lawyers Republican Ted Olson and Democrat David Boies.

What’s most egregious, however, is that short shrift is given to the case that actually is leading to national marriage equality, United States vs. Windsor, decided by the Supreme Court on the same day. In only the briefest of mentions in the HBO documentary do we hear about this case, and its plaintiff Edith Windsor and her lawyer, Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, go unheralded.

Hollingsworth may have sought to establish a nationwide right to same-sex marriage, but had the far more limited outcome of restoring marriage equality in California, and it did so on the exceedingly narrow grounds that the opponents to the lower court ruling against Prop. 8 lacked standing to bring the appeal (since the current governor, Jerry Brown, declined to do so). As Hank Stuever writes in his Washington Post review, the HBO documentary is “fascinating for all the wrong reasons.”

James Kirchick suggests in his Wall Street Journal review of Becker’s book (and a similarly themed book by Olson and Boies), Hollingsworth will be just a footnote in the history of marriage equality; Windsor is the decision that’s changing everything. Writes Kirchick:

Not only did the victory [in Windsor] grant federal recognition to every gay marriage registered in a state that recognizes such unions, but the decision has since been cited by multiple state courts in striking same-sex marriage bans from the books. Hollingsworth reversed Proposition 8—no small feat considering that California is the country’s most populous state but hardly the sort of victory that merits the mantle of “revolution”…

A similar point is also driven home by Alyssa Rosenberg in her Washington Post commentary.

Clearly, it’s Windsor that courts across the country are relying on as they grant gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry, including the 10th Circuit’s historic ruling. Thank you, Edie Windsor and Robbie Kaplan. Too bad you lack the PR machinery of Griffin, Olson and Boies.

More. The Cato Institute’s David Boaz reminded us back in 2010, when district court judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop. 8 (the ruling eventually allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court), that when Walker was nominated by Ronald Reagan to the federal bench:

…such groups as the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force worked to block the nomination.

In other words, this “liberal San Francisco judge” was recommended by Ed Meese, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and opposed by Alan Cranston, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the leading gay activist groups. It’s a good thing for advocates of marriage equality that those forces were only able to block Walker twice.

In the HBO documentary, Griffin jokes that if the chairman of the Cato Institute supports marriage equality, maybe he should rethink his position, demonstrating a lack of awareness about libertarians versus conservatives. (Cato’s chairman Robert A. Levy discusses Griffin’s remarks here.)

Furthermore. More on libertarians and gay marriage from Cato’s David Boaz, via (and with commentary from) Richard J. Rosendall, president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA) of D.C.

And Dale Carpenter adds: “Rarely have so few overlooked so many to claim so much based on so little.“