IGF CultureWatch

Whose rights, exactly, is the Catholic Church asserting in challenging the Obama administration on contraception?  It certainly isn’t the rights of Catholic women, and it’s hard to see who else’s rights the bishops are invoking — except their own.

The church is up in arms that the administration is requiring insurance plans to include contraception coverage.  The rule has a conscience clause that protects the free exercise of religious organizations, but the church complains there isn’t a similar exemption for organizations associated with religions whose employees do not need to be religious adherents.  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is apoplectic, threatening to use every means at its disposal to stop what they argue is a trashing of their beliefs.

The Catholic Church has long been at odds with its own members on same-sex marriage, where one poll showed 71% of Catholics believe civil same-sex marriage should be allowed.  But that is nothing compared to the complete divide between church hierarchy and its members when it comes to contraception.  Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women defy the church’s ban on “artificial” contraception, which is within the margin of error of complete disobedience.

And that’s not Catholics who just hold a belief, as they do with same-sex marriage.  That is Catholics who actually use birth control.

So the bishops, who do not need contraception, are demanding a rule for their non-religious employees that even their religious employees don’t seem to particularly want.

I believe in the importance of conscience clauses, as does Jon Rauch.  I even think there is some value in using them to appease unreasonable fanatics if it will achieve some significant political goal.

Here, there is nothing at stake but the power of the bishops to demand in the civil world a rule they cannot enforce in their own domain.

A Washington Examiner column notes the following tidbit about one of Mitt Romeny’s biggest donors:

Hedge fund millionaire Paul Singer also gave Romney’s super-PAC $1 million in November. . . . But Singer’s biggest cause in 2011 was not partisan — he spent $1 million lobbying to legalize gay marriage in New York state. That puts Singer not only far to the left of the GOP base and Romney, but also to the left of President Obama, who publicly opposes gay marriage. Singer’s son married a man in Massachusetts. . . .Singer’s million-dollar check doesn’t suggest Mitt is pro-gay-marriage. . . . But it’s revealing that these are Romney’s biggest donors. At the very least, it highlights the difference between the GOP’s electoral base and its money base.

I guess it does.

Also worth noting briefly, this interesting profile in the Washington Blade of formerly closeted former GOP congressman Bob Bauman, whose view today is conservative-libertarian and a pox on both parties.

After more than fifty years of the formal struggle for equality, we are at a stage where we can exercise some of the privileges of success.  One of those is a more open discussion about homosexuality as a choice.

Cynthia Nixon, who had a 15-year relationship with a man, is now engaged to a woman.  She rejects being categorized as bisexual.  Frank Bruni takes advantage of that to explore some of the biological terra incognita of sexual orientation.

This has long been a touchy subject because homosexual activity has historically been viewed as illness, sin and crime.  The first is objectionable (at best) because it deprives us entirely of the ability to be perceived as healthy human beings.  The last two are both reasonably described as voluntary (unless you’re on the very far left, which few around this site are), but amount to the “choice” of activities that are inherently wrong.   Those of us who are homosexual don’t view love, affection, or even consensual sex as wrong, so this view of choice is unacceptable, and at the very heart of the argument we have been making to be treated equally under the law.

Bruni argues that sexual orientation can be viewed as another sort of choice, the constitutionally protected ones of religion and gun ownership.  Neither possesses any biological prerequisite; they are both freely chosen and fully recognized parts of American citizenship.

Bruni uses a well crafted phrase to capture the decision point more appropriately: “the right to love whom you’re moved to love.”

This is something heterosexuals have always understood for themselves.  Long before the sexual revolution in the 1960s, young people rebelled against parental choices and even preferences about their marriage partners.  Not all of those children were able to act on their choices, but they certainly had them.  They needed no help, and were subject to no steering in recognizing whom they were moved to love.

Some of us know for a fact that that private, purely internal movement is only toward members of our own sex.  That is as resistant to change as was Romeo’s love for his Juliet.  Heterosexual adults, too, like Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, know about the imperatives of the heart.

It is true that those four heterosexuals had a choice about whether to act on their love.  Romeo was quite the dog in Verona; Juliet knew the parentally sanctioned Paris was ready to go; Mrs. Simpson had already made a marriage choice (two, actually); and no one can plausibly claim that the King of England would have lacked other options.

But the conversation changes and narrows dramatically when it turns to homosexuality.  People mean something very different and much smaller when they talk about whether homosexuality is a choice.  They’re not talking about whom, in particular, we are moved to love; they are talking only about the gender of people we are moved to love.

That is the discussion we have had for a couple of generations now.  Bruni helps move the debate forward, and that is worth taking advantage of.  We are not likely ever to understand the origins of something as complicated, — as human — as the impulse toward love.  It’s time lesbians and gay men (and bisexuals, too) stopped being required to answer that unanswerable question in order to obtain equality.

From an annual study of how incoming college freshman view things:

Even though the percentage of incoming freshmen who identify as conservative has stayed relatively stable, those students and the rest of their peers are shifting away from hard-line conservative stances on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, marijuana legalization and affirmative action. … The rise in the number of students who support same-sex marriage is the biggest shift in this year’s survey. At 71.3 percent, the percentage of incoming freshmen who agree either “somewhat” or “strongly” that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status is up “a remarkable” 6.4 percentage points from two years ago, the report says. While support is more common among women (77.3 percent), it’s increasing faster among men (64.1 percent).

They are the future.

(Hat tip: Walter Olson)

The National Organization for Marriage is complaining that lesbians and gay men in Maine have qualified an initiative to make same-sex marriage legal there.  Their concern is that we, ourselves, say civil rights shouldn’t be voted on.  What hypocrites we are!

But Maine’s legislature passed a same-sex marriage bill in 2009, and NOM and its allies pushed for an ultimately successful referendum to have the law annulled.  If they’re willing to go to the people to deny us our rights, why wouldn’t we carry the fight to the same battle ground?

So yes, civil rights shouldn’t be put to a vote, but if that’s the only option we have, then that’s the one we’ll exercise.  Voters are allowed to change their minds, and it sounds like Maine’s voters are doing just that.  NOM may want us to ignore that, but we’re not going away.

For years gay-marriage opponents have said that the same principles that lead to SSM (free love, etc) lead straight to polygamy. For years I’ve pointed out (for example, here) that the core principle of SSM, namely that everyone should have the opportunity to marry and that society is better off when this is the case, leads straight away from polygamy. From a social policy point of view, SSM and polygamy are opposites, not equivalents.

Here’s some new evidence. “Monogamy reduces major social problems of polygamist cultures,” finds a new study. “In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage.”

Why? Monogamy helps ensure there are enough spouses to go around. “By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, institutionalized monogamy increases long-term planning, economic productivity, savings and child investment.”

The case for SSM arises from exactly the same insight. It extends the opportunity to marry to people who lack it and is thus socially stabilizing; polygamy withdraws that opportunity from people who have it and is thus socially destabilizing.

Note to lawyers: this study should be cited in at least one amicus brief in every gay-marriage case in the country.

Something new and interesting in Utah…a bipartisan bill outlawing workplace discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, but with a twist. Salt Lake City outlawed employment discrimination against gays a couple of years ago, with LDS church support, and other Utah cities have followed. But a statewide bill failed last session.

This one is different because (1) it has a Republican co-sponsor and (2) it also outlaws workplace discrimination on grounds of political speech or activity outside the workplace (and unrelated to the job). The idea is that you don’t get fired for being gay, and you don’t get fired for supporting (or opposing) Prop 8.

The bill has support from business (the Chamber of Commerce, no less), and Equality Utah, the main gay group. The LDS church may not actively support it but will almost certainly not oppose it. An interesting question: what will conservatives do? So far, one state conservative group, something called the Sutherland Institute, which looks like a state version of the Family Research Council, has come out against. Other conservative groups/leaders have not yet been heard from, even though the bill would actually do something about complaints that gay-marriage opponents and other advocates of religious-inspired causes are scared for their jobs  because they gave $100 for Prop 8 or whatever.

I’m not naive enough to expect that anti-discrimination coverage for gays will get broad Republican support in Utah, with or without protections for anti-gay activism, religious liberty, or motherhood and apple pie. But this bill might win enough Republican support to pass. Derek Brown, the Republican co-sponsor, is a bright, attractive young guy who looks to me like the future of the party, if the party has the sense to grasp it. Hope springs eternal.

Christie nominates two for state Supreme Court, including gay African-American mayor:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced he is nominating Bruce Harris and Phil Kwon to the state Supreme Court. If confirmed, Harris would be the third African-American justice and first openly gay justice and Kwon would be the first immigrant and first Asian-American justice. . . . Steve Goldstein, the chief executive of Garden State Equality, a gay rights organization, said he was stunned when Christie called to tell him about the imminent nomination of Harris, 60, a graduate of Yale Law School. “As I told the governor right then and there, you could have picked me up off the floor,” Goldstein said.

The GOP will either follow Christie’s direction (and eventually embrace marriage equality, which Christie opposes), or it will continue getting beaten by Democrats who appear tolerant and liberal as they suffocate economic growth.

One takeaway from the GOP South Carolina Primary, won handily by Newt Gingrich: the religious right’s support for distant-third runner-up Rick Santorum proved not to amount to much, despite a high number of evangelicals in the state. Iowa increasingly appears to be an outlier.

As John Avlon writes at the Daily Beast, “If evangelical leaders can’t get their chosen candidate a victory here, where can they do it? … the idea of a mass-mobilizeable, single-issue voter is increasingly a myth perpetuated by special-interest activist groups who are literally invested in the idea.”

Still, Avlon notes, social conservatives

“have certainly been successful in getting Republican candidates to conform to their policy positions. Despite the fact that 70 percent of Republican primary voters say that fiscal issues are the basis for deciding their vote—just over 20 percent say social issues are the defining issue in 2012—this GOP field is as far to the right on social issues as any in the party’s history.”

Gingrich may hold the same anti-gay positions as Santorum, but as of now there’s no love lost between the serial philanderer and the religious right. The same is true of Romney, who still is viewed with suspicion by evangelical leaders.

We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out in terms of the religious right maintaining its dominant position within the party.

Ex-wife says Gingrich wanted ‘open marriage,’ was the campaign story of the day. The GOP presidential candidate’s second ex-wife said he asked for an “open marriage” in which he could have both a wife and a mistress. Gingrich denies the specifics, but the adulterous mistress is now the third Mrs. G.

Added. One man, one wife, one mistress (at a time); otherwise, it’s a slippery slope to who knows what!

Also surfacing: reports that Rick Santorum’s wife, when in her 20s, had an affair of many years with an abortion doctor/father of six (who delivered her as baby!). Candidate Santorum dismisses the charges without quite denying them.

It’s all just further moral hypocrisy by those who belittle committed same-sex relationships as unworthy of recognition and equal treatment under the law.

More. Santorum attacks Romney’s judicial appointments in Massachusetts for being too pro-gay:  An excerpt:

Two of Mr. Romney’s nominations for judgeships in Massachusetts, Stephen S. Abany and Marianne C. Hinkle, were well-known as advocates for special protections for homosexuals. What about the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion? What assurances did the governor receive that these nominees would “only follow the law”?

Kind of makes Romney seem not so bad (relatively speaking).