IGF CultureWatch

Two headlines: Same-Sex Military Couples to Receive New Benefits, Pentagon Says and Hagel confirmation votes to be held this week.

In the words of outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Penetta: “It is a matter of fundamental equality that we provide similar benefits to all those men and women in uniform who serve their country.”

It’s good that gay couples are receiving more benefits despite the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. But it also seems clear that this is being pushed through just before the Hagel confirmation. Could be that words of support for equality would sound false coming from Hagel, if he could even bring himself to voice them. Otherwise, why not wait a week or two and let Hagel make the announcement, which would have sent a strong message that the drive toward equal treatment for gay service members would continue under the Pentagon’s new leadership, despite Hagel’s anti-gay history.

In the face of the religious right’s uproar over the move by the Boy Scouts of America to allow local troops to decide whether or not to continue barring gay boys/adult volunteers, the group has now delayed any move until later this year. But as Lillian Cunningham writes in the Washington Post‘s On Leadership column:

If the BSA wishes to hold onto its core mission, which is precisely to instill common values, then it needs to decide on those values at a national level. Right now, what it is actually debating is whether to abdicate that responsibility. …

The BSA has focused too much on its followers of the moment, not its followers of the future. This holds whether you believe they should keep or lift the ban on gays. Do you want followers who are anti-gay? Then keep the national ban, and be willing to give up money from companies that don’t share your view. But do you want followers who are inclusive? Then you need to have a national policy of tolerance and be brave enough to let those people and organizations walk away who don’t want the future you want.

In the short term, the BSA may have found a way to duck out of a complicated situation, but at what cost? This lack of leadership, whether by delaying the decision or pushing the decision down the organization, says the BSA is willing to cut out its own heart.

I see her point, but I’m willing to accept something less than perfect (the BSA adopting a national policy of nondiscrimination) in favor of what may actually be obtainable (letting troops decide for themselves). Smaller steps often pave the way to more comprehensive change, even if those steps smack of compromise and moral equivocation.

Domestic partnerships set the stage for marriage equality; if we demanded full marriage rights from the start, the nation (and even liberal blue states) wouldn’t have had a chance to overcome fears about legal recognition of our relationships. Now, the point has been passed where we need to continue settling for less the legal equality on the marriage front.

Compare this with progressives’ refusal to allow the federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to go forward without covering transgendered people, although there were votes to pass the bill with an end to sexual orientation discrimination. (ENDA’s value is debatable, but it has been a key goal of LGBT activists). Refusing to limit ENDA to what was obtainable, however, left it dead in the water, even when the Democrats had large majorities in both houses. Sometimes standing on principle just leaves you standing still.

More signs that the GOP is confronting the repercussions of intolerance. Via a National Review Online interview with Jim Gilmore, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and former Virginia governor:

“I don’t think the party dies immediately,” Gilmore says. “It’s not going to just disappear like the Whigs did, since there is so much law that supports the two-party system. But Republicans will be locked into a permanent minority at the national level unless we seriously rethink our approach.” …

“Young people today have a more tolerant, hands-off perspective,” he says. “Their libertarian philosophy, for example, has to be taken into consideration. Yet we keep projecting anger at the gay community and the Hispanic community, even though they’re open to many of our ideas.”

Many Republican stalwarts understand that continuing to take marching orders from authoritarian social conservatives will court self-destruction.

More light. I hadn’t been aware of these developments regarding Chick-fil-A. It’s an inspiring account.

Still more light. Via the New York Times:

Kevin L. James, a conservative talk show host running for mayor of Los Angeles, was sitting in his campaign office recently pondering which was his bigger obstacle to victory: being openly Republican, or being openly gay. “Depending on what room you’re in here, sometimes it’s easier coming out gay to Republicans than it is coming out Republican to gays,” he said. …

John Weaver, a Republican political consultant… has increasingly warned that Republicans are marginalizing themselves by moving to the right on issues like abortion, gay rights and immigration. “He is from central casting about what a future Republican candidate can look like in an urban or blue state and win,” Mr. Weaver said.

Look for the LGBT political establishment to unite in opposition to James.

The New York Times looks at new efforts to promote marriage that include traditional opponents of same-sex marriage who have had a change of heart, spearheaded by David Blankenhorn’s retooled Institute for American Values, and gay marriage advocates including IGF-affiliated Jonathan Rauch, John Corvino and Dale Carpenter. According to the report:

The “new conversation” may discomfit many conservatives by including gay men and lesbians. And this conversation may not suit many liberals who are wary of stigmatizing unwed parents or treating marriage as some sort of desirable norm.

Here’s the group’s mission statement. It says, in part:

We propose a new conversation that brings together gays and lesbians who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. The new conversation does not presuppose or require agreement on gay marriage, but it does ask a new question. The current question is, Should gays marry? The new question is, Who among us, gay or straight, wants to strengthen marriage?

We’ll see if there is momentum to move beyond social conservatism’s intransigence on the right, and if so whether gay and liberal groups are willing to engage in this conversation with those who are not part of the coalition of the left.

More. Columnist Kathleen Parker weighs in:

Blankenhorn’s personal transformation has resulted in a welcome shift in the public debate. How clever of him to recognize that his allies in strengthening marriage are the very people who for so long have been excluded.

Some 20 years ago, I was a spokesman for the then newly formed Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). There are still a few news articles archived online that quote me from those days, such as here, here and here.

In the years since, GLAAD has had an array of executive leaders, and too often has seemed most interested in raising money by partying with Hollywood friends. While the religious right and social conservatives have been used endlessly in fundraising appeals, they were rarely, if ever, publicly engaged and debated (IGF-affiliated John Corvino and Jonathan Rauch have done far more in this regard, with little or no budget). Instead, trendy political correctness and ideologically lock-step “diversity,” along with echo-chamber “coalition building” with those on the political left, have been the order of the day.

So I was pleased to read in the Washington Post that GLAAD is taking on NatGeo over the cable channel’s promotional programming with the anti-gay Boy Scouts of America. The BSA is far past the point where it should enjoy free media rides (which it wouldn’t, of course, if it excluded boys and scout masters who were African-American or Jewish), but NatGeo seems clueless about its latest programming being in any way controversial. It’s not a matter that government should weigh into, but it is an issue that should be confronted within the bounds of civil society. So, good for GLAAD.

More. Suddenly, it looks like the BSA’s gay ban could fall, at least as national policy. The Washinfgton Post reports:

Southern Baptist leaders…were furious about the possible change and said its approval might encourage Southern Baptist churches to support other boys’ organizations instead of the BSA.

Well, that’s their right. And they could always revive the Hitler Youth.

Obama’s gay inclusiveness during his inaugural address advances our cause. I have never said the Democrats aren’t far better on gay issues (who would argue they weren’t?). What I have contended is that, in many cases, they are not as good as LGBT Democrats claim and, in particular, that Harry Reid, with the administration’s tacit support, was working to bury “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal efforts the same way the administration backtracked on immigration reform when it held congressional majorities, in order to have a campaign issue, but that the LGBT blogosphere and, especially, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), refused to let that happen.

Let’s also be clear; those of us who believe that Obama’s economic and regulatory policies are beyond misguided and, in fact, are dangerously destructive, are compelled to point out that a party that combines support for gay legal equality with backward leftism on economics, with trillion dollar deficits and metastasizing public-sector growth, aimed at increasing dependency on government (and the party of government), will risk, in the end, discrediting the parts of its policy that are right. So I’m happy that LGBT Democrats have something profound to celebrate, but in no sense does this mean that gay critics of Obama and his party should back off for the sake of LGBT solidarity.

More. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute on the importance of “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” and what these milestones should mean to libertarians.

The National Stonewall Democrats has ceased operations, at least for now, citing funding issues. More to the point, the organization really has had no reason to be, since the Human Rights Campaign competes far more successfully on the same turf—organizing LGBT support for Democratic candidates and working to defeat Republicans, including openly gay Republicans (such as Richard Tisei), and socially moderate, gay supportive Republicans (such as Scott Brown). In fact, the preponderance of the LGBT movement is a thinly veiled party fundraising operation run by LGBT Democrats, making the need for an explicit “Stonewall Democrats” on the national level redundant from the get go.

Relatedly, Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff opines on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, despite his recently renounced anti-gay record going back decades. HRC had scored Hagel a “0” during his time in the Senate from 2001-2006 (not a single pro-gay vote), but “immediately accepted the tepid apology” Hagel issued just before Obama announced his nomination. Moreover:

Did HRC extract any promises from the White House or Hagel himself before so quickly forgiving and forgetting his rather serious sins? Hagel voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004, putting him in the company of the most rabidly anti-gay members of Congress. In 1999, he said he opposed repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” …
It’s all politics as usual — Log Cabin opposes Hagel merely because Obama wants him. And HRC supports Hagel because it must now support everything Obama does. What’s lost here is accountability.

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Much is being made of the sperm donor to a lesbian couple who is now being sued by the state of Kansas for child support, after the lesbians broke up and the birth mother applied to the state for financial help (after which, at the request of the state welfare agency, she provided the name and contact info for the sperm donor). The donor had no relationship to the child or the mother; he had originally responded to a Craigslist ad seeking a donor, and had signed a contract with the lesbian couple absolving him of all parental rights and responsibilities including financial support.

As Hot Air correctly points out, if Kansas recognized same-sex marriage and the lesbian couple had been wed, then the state would have properly pursued the now-ex, who by right of marriage would have been a second legal parent, for financial support. But without marriage, the ex is a legal stranger in this case. So now, it’s a mess—an embarrassment to the state, possibly ruinous for the innocent sperm donor, and (despite this case’s particulars) a threat to the system of sperm donorship due to all the fearsome publicity.

Writing in the New York Daily News, Akhil Reed Amar, who teaches constitutional law at Yale, argues that “gun lovers should invoke a landmark gay-rights case where the court’s liberals won out,” namely Lawrence vs. Texas. Writing at the Reason magazine blog, Damon W. Root comments on Amar’s column and points to the relevance of a Cato Institute amicus brief filed in Lawrence that states: “America’s founding generation established our government to protect rather than invade fundamental liberties, including personal security, the sanctity of the home, and interpersonal relations.”

Root adds that Lawrence and the Supreme Court’s ruling supporting gun ownership in District of Columbia v. Heller “each represent a major victory for the libertarian approach, with individual liberty triumphing over intrusive government in both cases.”

More. “Instapundit” Glenn Reynolds blogs: “Over the years I’ve often said that in my ideal world, happily married gay couples would have closets full of assault weapons.” The first part hasn’t gone over so well with social conservatives.

The Washington Post reports that:

an Annapolis company whose old-fashioned trolleys are iconic in the city’s wedding scene has abandoned the nuptial industry rather than serve same-sex couples. The owner of Discover Annapolis Tours said he decided to walk away from $50,000 in annual revenue instead of compromising his Christian convictions when same-sex marriages become legal in Maryland in less than a week. And he has urged prospective clients to lobby state lawmakers for a religious exemption for wedding vendors.

“As long as he doesn’t discriminate against other people, he’s free to do whatever he wants to do, including withdrawing his business from the industry,” said Equality Maryland executive director Carrie Evans, oblivious to the Orwellian overtones of her statement.

The situation is similar to that of a religiously conservative photographer who refused a request to photograph a lesbian wedding; her case is now before the New Mexico Supreme Court.

In each of these cases, the vendor is not refusing to serve gay people who come into their shops, for instance; they’re refusing to provide their services for same-sex weddings, which they feel violate their religious beliefs. There is a difference here that is not minimal.

LGBT progressive activists don’t have a problem with forcing wedding vendors whose religious convictions oppose same-sex marriage to either violate their personal beliefs or go out of business. But it smacks of progressive authoritarianism. We want the right to marry; forcing private businesses to serve us is another matter entirely, and another agenda. It erodes liberty in favor of state coercion for progressive ends.

Along similar lines, progressives cheer that private businesses will now be forced by the state to provide their employees with free “morning after” abortofacient drugs, despite their owners’ religious objections.

Eventually, it might dawn on these champions of governmental coercion that granting the state power to force private business owners to violate deeply held beliefs may come back and bite them when a different regime, with a different ideology, is in power.

Let’s be clear; the government should treat all citizens as equal under the law, and government marriage clerks that refuse to perform same-sex weddings shouldn’t hold their jobs. But private businesses are not agencies of the state, not quite yet, though increasingly that, too, seems part of the progressive playbook.

More. From a letter published in the Washington Post:

Why in the world would two people who are about to celebrate their marriage—surely one of the more joyful events of their lives—want to use a vendor who is unhappy about providing a service that they are paying for?

Why, indeed. Until you grasp that it’s all about force, coercion, and the use of state power to bring all who might dissent from the progressive worldview to heel.