IGF CultureWatch

Committed gay partners, including those legally married in U.S. states that recognize their unions or in foreign countries that do, are tragically denied permanent residency in the U.S., causing the couple to relocate outside the country or resulting in painful separations. The primary culprit is the Defense of Marriage Act, whose constitutionality is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. DOMA forbids the federal government from recognizing gay legal unions.

Congress is now formulating an immigration reform bill, and LGBT political groups are making a concerted effort to include within it the Uniting American Families Act, which would let permanent partners of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents obtain permanent resident status. President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have announced their support for including the measure in the broader bill. Republicans pushing for immigration reform, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have said that gay inclusion would be a deal killer.

Responded Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin, quoted in the Washington Blade, “The LGBT community will not stand for Congress placing the blame of their own dysfunction on our shoulders.”

IGF’s own Jonathan Rauch penned an impassioned commentary at the liberal Daily Beast saying “Really? Republicans will deep-six the entire effort and demolish themselves with Latino voters, business interests, and young people to prevent gay people from having someone to take care of them?” Jonathan rightly explains that

From a conservative point of view—indeed, from a social conservative point of view—keeping same-sex life partners out of the country makes even less sense substantively than it does politically. It betrays rather than upholds conservative values.

I agree with that point (though I’m not sure the Daily Beast site is the place to reach conservatives with conservative arguments). And yet…something isn’t quite right here. If the Supreme Court strikes down the DOMA section that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, then gay couples married in states or countries that recognized their unions would presumably have their relationships recognized by the federal government and its immigration enforcement authorities on a par with heterosexual marriages.

The Supreme Court’s decision will be handed down next month. So, why go to the mat demanding inclusion of “permanent partner” residency, which includes those couples not married in states that recognize same-sex marriages or in foreign nations that do— a more liberal and problematic standard than spousal residency?

There is a view among conservatives that Obama and the Democrats wouldn’t mind seeing the immigration bill “deep-sixed” because they see its passage or not as a win-win: If it becomes law, they’ll take credit; if it fails, they’ll blame Republicans and use the issue to galvanize Latino and other pro-reform voters in the party’s campaign to re-take the House in 2014.

I support legal equality for gay spouses in immigration and other areas. But I also expect the federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriages will fall, and I know that getting any immigration bill through the GOP House is going to be problematic at best.

And, in the end, I don’t trust the Democratic coalition that’s insisting on a provision in the immigration bill that Republicans are just not going to accept, because I believe the party’s strategists would be just fine with a failed outcome.

More. For what it’s worth, the Washington Post editorializes:

With anti-reform forces preparing their assault, it’s critical that the pro-reform camp doesn’t provide them with ammunition. … Civil rights groups, in particular, will insist on amending the bill to provide visas for the foreign same-sex spouses of American citizens. … [Americans] overwhelmingly favor legalization and a path to citizenship. That, and Republican alarm at losing the Latino vote, have generated fresh momentum to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. Those who favor a fix should be wary of asking too much and, in the process, sapping that momentum.

Furthermore. The Washington Times reports:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced amendments Tuesday to grant gay couples the same immigration rights as other married couples, setting up a key hurdle for the immigration bill. …

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the committee chairman, introduced two different versions: One would apply to “permanent partners,” which critics said could invite widespread fraud. The other would only apply to same-sex couples who are legally married, which given the laws in various states would dramatically limit who could qualify.

Actually, if the Supreme Court does the right thing, I think it would be wrong to assume that federal rights such as spousal residency would disappear if a legally married same-sex couple moves to a state that doesn’t recognizes same-sex marriage.

Former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, an openly gay and “new generation” Republican, is a potential congressional candidate. As Roll Call reports:

National Republicans view DeMaio, who has yet to announce his candidacy, as a top potential recruit to take on [Rep. Scott Peters]. The freshman Democrat ousted GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray in November in one of the closest and most expensive races in the country. . . .

In a matchup with Peters, DeMaio led 49 percent to 39 percent. The poll was taken April 22-24 and had a 4.9-point margin of error.

DeMaio has solid favorable ratings. In the poll of likely voters in the district, 51 percent said they had a favorable impression of him while just 28 percent viewed him unfavorable.

Not surprisingly, as the New York Times reported last year about the mayoral race that Demaio would narrowly lose:

A victory for Carl DeMaio…would make San Diego the second-largest city in the country to elect an openly gay mayor, and by far the largest to elect a gay Republican. Yet, perhaps no group has opposed Mr. DeMaio as loudly as this city’s sizable gay and lesbian population. …

[P]arts of the crowd booed Mr. DeMaio at a mayoral debate at the gay and lesbian community center here. He was booed again as he walked hand in hand with his partner in this year’s gay pride parade. . . .

Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican who became the second openly gay Republican in the House when he came out in 1996, said he faced opposition similar to what Mr. DeMaio has encountered from gay voters.

Successful gay Republicans who could move the GOP forward on gay issues are LGBT Democratic activists’ worst nightmare. All the more reason why it would be grand to have an openly gay Republican congressman again. Here’s hoping.

Via Buzzfeed (and yes, I’m a bit late posting this):

GOProud, the bombastic group for gay conservatives and their allies, is going to be going through some major changes in the coming months, as the two co-founders, executive director Jimmy LaSalvia and senior strategist Chris Barron, plan to step back from their day-to-day roles with the group as a new executive director is selected. …

“As Chris says always, there was this little patch of ground that nobody else wanted — and that’s where GOProud is,” LaSalvia said. “We built a foundation on that patch of ground, and I’m really kind of excited to see where it goes from here.”

They’ve done so with support from a number of straight conservatives, including board chair Lisa De Pasquale; Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist; former CPAC organizer David Keene; Republican strategist Liz Mair; and, early on, the late Andrew Breitbart, who hosted a party on GOProud’s behalf at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in 2011. …

We’ve always wanted GOProud to be not just gay conservatives; we wanted it to be people who were conservative and supported gay people,” [LaSalvia] said. “That’s been the real flexing of the muscle. Tony Perkins could care less about just gay conservatives. It’s very easy to marginalize us. It’s a lot harder — when it’s all of these grassroots and grasstop straight conservatives … That’s a different fight.”

Reaching out to and organizing gay-supportive conservatives is transformative work, often greeted with disdain from LGBT progressives.

More. Paul Ryan responds to the shifting political winds. He and the rest of the new generation of GOP leadership aren’t there yet, but they’re heading in the right direction. The Log Cabin Republicans’ new ad campaign spells out why.

Writing at the American Conservative, Rod Dreher posits that public acceptance of gay marriage represents not just a social revolution but “a cosmological one,” meaning, as he sees it, “the gay-rights cause has succeeded precisely because the Christian cosmology has dissipated in the mind of the West.” He intones:

Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love. …

Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions. …

Gay marriage signifies the final triumph of the Sexual Revolution and the dethroning of Christianity because it denies the core concept of Christian anthropology. …

Still, if the faith does not recover, the historical autopsy will conclude that gay marriage was not a cause but a symptom, the sign that revealed the patient’s terminal condition.

It’s sad that Dreher doesn’t seem to know any of the hundreds of thousands of deeply believing Christians (or, for that matter, Jews or those of other faiths) who are gay and favor the right to wed not because they seek unrestrained sexual excess (that would be the queer radicals who reject marriage), but precisely because their spiritual belief leads them to favor marital sexuality infused with love.

Among the strongest communities of faith I’ve experienced have been gay religious congregations, and some of the weakest, most hypocritical and shallow expressions of spiritual understanding have been among those safely conventional religious followers who mistake the status quo for God’s eternal plan.

More. It’s good to see at least some Mormons discussing gay marriage, and some defending the idea that promoting marital fidelity among gay people is a far better idea that trying to force gay celibacy.

The Washington Post‘s Fred Hiatt writes that the gulf between blue America and red America has been deepening since Obama became president, and neither side is shamed by its hypocrisy. For instance:

One result is that purported adherence to states’ rights has become more situational than ever. Red-staters want to ignore Roe v. Wade while insisting that the most permissive state’s concealed-carry law be accepted across the country. Advocates of gay marriage find themselves simultaneously against the federal Defense of Marriage Act because it doesn’t recognize Massachusetts’s primacy in allowing same-sex marriage and against California’s ban on same-sex marriage because it violates the U.S. Constitution. …

Unfortunately, across a range of issues state diversity won’t work very well. A ban on assault weapons in Maryland is of limited use if you can buy a gun in Virginia. A married gay couple with children could risk custody if they move from Massachusetts to Mississippi. But with Americans living in two separate worlds, that may be the reality we face for some time to come.

Mix and match: At its best, federalism allows us to see what works (less onerous business regulation, less confiscatory taxation, school choice, public employee benefits on par with private-sector workers, marriage equality) and what doesn’t. But overcoming the backward-focused paradigm of a left/right divide that separates social and economic freedom into opposing camps remains the ongoing challenge of our time.

More. An optimistic note on gays and guns, from Instapundit Glenn Reynolds.

David Boaz blogs at Cato@Liberty:

Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific [gun control] measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the Second Amendment. NPR and other media have lately noted a growing libertarian trend in American politics. That’s not just about taxes, Obamacare, marijuana, and marriage equality. It also involves gun rights. …

If political scientists Herbert McClosky and John Zaller are right that “[t]he principle here is that every person is free to act as he pleases, so long as his exercise of freedom does not violate the equal rights of others,” then we can expect Americans to cling to their gun rights for a long time.

And then there’s this from the liberal New Republic:

Congressional consideration was also delayed by gun control proponents’ insistence on a ban on assault weapons. … Even if the law could be passed, it wouldn’t have made any dent in gun violence statistics because these guns are rarely used in crime. Focusing on assault weapons played right into the hands of the NRA, which has for years been saying that Obama wanted to ban guns. Gun control advocates ridiculed that idea—then proposed to ban the most popular rifle in America.”

Next up, attempts to ban pressure cookers.

Bruce Bawer’s latest look at the warped world of LGBT academia, in this case CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS). Read it and weep for what kids in college are being taught.

Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff finds more signs of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s decent into rank Democratic partisanship. He writes:

This misguided strategy of turning LGBT rights into a partisan issue and the LGBT movement into a wing of the Democratic Party is as much a mistake today as it was 20 years ago.

That’s what I’ve been saying.

James Kirchick has more to say about GLAAD’s decline into irrelevance.

Shifting gears a bit, today Britain is saying farewell to Margaret Thatcher, and here’s an interesting look at how the former prime minister—no friend of gay rights—expanded economic freedom and by doing so created the underpinning for increased social freedom. As well as a view of Thatcher as “gay icon.”

The left is again disgracing itself by celebrating her demise.

Via Salon, Paul Ryan to GOP: Don’t abandon abortion fight:

The two issues have long been linked, but it seems likely the two will cleave apart from each other in coming months as mainline Republicans moderate themselves on marriage but remain committed to the fight against abortion. That was the general consensus among activists we spoke to at CPAC, the annual gathering of conservatives in March, where many seemed ready to embrace marriage equality, but thought abortion was still a critical issue for the GOP. Even many pro-gay conservative activists, like GOProud founder Jimmy LaSalvia, are pro-life.

Progressives and party operatives will hoot, as usual, but there are a great many of us who fervently support marriage equality and are not pro-choice on abortion, or are at least equivocal (e.g., first-trimester vs. late-term, especially partial-birth murder of the kind defended by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius). The hegemonic liberal media has long failed to report abortion horrors such as this, to its continuing and utter shame. More here.

At the Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens offers A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage (behind the subscription firewall, alas, as it should be widely read). Stephens writes:

As conservatives debate the subject of gay marriage, maybe they should pause to consider their view about the other kind of gay marriage. You know the one: He works mind-boggling hours and only comes home once his wife is sure to be asleep. He beams at the sight of an old college buddy. Two years into the marriage, she starts murmuring to her closest friend that he just isn’t very interested in her, that way. Five years later he starts acting out in odd ways when he drinks. And he drinks a lot. …

I have a crazy theory; see if you agree. It’s that gay people generally want to lead lives of conventional respectability. So much so, in fact, that many are prepared to suppress their sexual nature to lead such lives. The desire for respectability is commendable; the deception it involves is not. To avoid deception, you can try to change the person’s nature. Good luck with that. Or you can modify a social institution so that gay people can have what the rest of us take for granted: The chance to find love and respectability in the same person. …

[A photo of a gay couple at their wedding shows] a picture of happiness, respectability and pride. Does that look like the end of Western Civilization? Or does it look like the fulfillment of America’s basic promise, the pursuit of happiness, honest, unembarrassed, at nobody else’s expense? Don’t you prefer it to a picture of the other kind of gay marriage—you know, the one of the groom with the faraway gaze, the bride with that look of anxious foreboding?

More. Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics to Richard Rodger’s music, “We’re Gonna Be All Right.” Near the end, the battling pair shift from reflecting about themselves to remarking on troubled couples they know: “Sometimes she drinks in bed. Sometimes he’s homosexual. But why be vicious? They keep it out of sight. Good show, they’re gonna be all right.” Or not.

Furthermore. Similarly, from the Washington Post, My father’s gay marriage:

Gays have always been able to marry. But I fail to see how society is strengthened when they are forced by convention to marry someone whose body is unattractive to them, whose voice isn’t what they want to hear in the morning or whose touch may be as grating as sand in the bed.

But because there are many truths, there’s this rejoinder as well.

OK, still more. I didn’t really intend to “invisibilize” bisexuals and I do believe, to a large extent, in the Kinsey scale. So yes, bisexual men are going to be able to have marriages with women that can’t be characterized as “quiet desperation” even if they sometimes seek sexual relationships with other men. But for gay men (Kinsey 5+) married to women, it’s a different story.