IGF CultureWatch

In response to a gay Iowan. If only Obama’s administration wasn’t a rolling disaster I would.

But I’m hoping Ron Paul knocks Gingrich for a loop in the state—and it could happen. Not that Paul would ever get his party’s nomination, but to see an opponent of the anti-gay federal marriage amendment (he called it “a very bad idea”) and a supporter of gays serving in the military win the GOP caucuses in heavily evangelical Iowa would be a good sign.

Added. The Washington Blade reminds us that:

[Paul] voted on two separate occasions in 2004 and 2006 against a Federal Marriage Amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage throughout the country. Paul was among the five Republicans who voted for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal on the House floor in May even before the Pentagon released its report in November 2010.

Paul certainly takes positions I don’t agree with; my point is that his record on gay issues is (by GOP standards) well above average, and it would be good, in that regard, if he bested Gingrich and the rest who would pervert government to deny us equality under the law.

More. Some Republican blogs and GOProud (and even Log Cabin) are defending Gingrich and noting that he was responding specifically about gay marriage (and why supporters of gay marriage should or shouldn’t vote for him), and that he was not telling gays in general to vote for Obama. There is some truth that this is a somewhat different context, but his defenders are themselves wide of the mark as well.

It’s a bit as if during the 1964 presidential campaign Gingrich had told a black civil rights advocate that if ending segregation and Jim Crow laws were the advocate’s predominant issue, then he should vote for Lyndon Johnson, and the media reported “Gingrich tells blacks to vote for Johnson.” The headline would overreach a bit, but the sentiment that if you think receiving equal treatment under the law is important, don’t vote for me, remains accurate.

At this stage, gay Rebublicans and independents should be supporting GOP candidates who most support our legal equality. Leavings aside (with the rest of the media) former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, of the major candidates Jon Huntsman is the best—a strong fiscal conservative with solid foreign policy experience who supports recognition of civil unions and, if he does better than predicted in New Hampshire, still might emerge as a contender. As noted above, Ron Paul also opposes the federal marriage amendment, unlike Gingrich and Romney.

On “don’t ask,” Gingrich has gone further than Romney (who opposed repeal of “don’t ask” during a war but indicated he’d leave repeal in place), whereas Gingrich said he would reinstate the ban.

So why the support for Newt, who would enshrine second-class status toward gays in the Constitution and federal policy?

Gay men who live in states where same-sex marriage is legal are healthier, have less stress, make fewer doctor visits and have lower healthcare costs, reports USA Today, citing a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, for which the abstract is available online here.

This sort of data is going to be increasingly available and will help show that denying marriage equality has seriously negative repercussions not just for gay people, but in terms of broader social costs as well.

This clip from the last Iowa debate is a good landmark to locate where gay rights are today and where the GOP is in that cell of the country’s public policy matrix.

Mitt Romney is struggling to be a moderate in his party that finds moderation abhorrent. Rick Santorum is proud of his immoderation in general, and his intemperance on gay marriage in particular. He finds Romney squishy, and Chris Wallace uses his privilege as debate questioner to make Romney squirm on Santorum’s behalf.

Squirm he does. Romney says he is “firmly in support of people not being discriminated against based upon their sexual orientation.” But without pause or turn signal, he continues: “At the same time, I oppose same-sex marriage. That has been my position from the beginning.”

Romney’s dilemma is that he really has supported gay equality, and may still. He invokes a member of his Massachusetts administration’s cabinet who was gay, to buttress his fair mindedness. But he distinguishes gay equality from same-sex marriage. That’s not a matter of equality, it’s . . . well, something else.

Santorum doesn’t have that nuance to worry about. While he, too claims not to discriminate based on sexual orientation, he isn’t weighed down in the debates by a need to appeal to voters who worry much about the gays.

Clearly, there was a time – and to many Americans we’re still in it – when to say you were both for gay equality and against same-sex marriage were consistent, or at least could coexist without much cognitive dissonance. Lesbians and gay men deserve to be treated the same as everyone else, they just can’t get married to one another. However, they can marry someone who’s of the opposite sex.

The inherent contradiction in those thoughts is now apparent to a large and growing number of Americans. How on earth is it equal that homosexuals should have all the rights of heterosexuals except the one that goes to the core of actually being homosexual – the right to marry someone you love who, because you are homosexual, will be the same sex as you?

Romney is caught in that contradiction, and that is his tragedy this year. Equality under the law is not divisible in this way, and the dwindling number of people who insist on the rhetoric of equality without the substance look more and more preposterous with each passing year.  As a party, the Democrats have finally accepted this cultural change, and few of their candidates will be dogged by it.

Santorum’s tragedy is longer-term and more lasting. He has thrown himself in with the crowd that doesn’t mind contradicting itself openly and proudly – so much so that they have worked hard and frozen into place, in state constitutions, second-class status for same-sex couples, a status they refuse to view as unequal. They got in right under the wire on that, but no one can freeze politics in place. The GOP will continue to have Santorums, but it shouldn’t be surprising, by the time 2016 rolls around, to see them doing the squirming over what it means to have equal rights.

With the Labor Prime Minister staunchly opposing marriage equality, it’s a bit topsy-turvey down under. James Peron writes at the Huffington Post:

Recently, Australia’s ruling Labor Party has been fighting off an attempt to legalize same-sex marriage. The problem was that rank-and-file members, and most voters, support marriage equality, while left-wing Prime Minister Julia Gillard does not. She is quite adamant in her opposition. …

While the opposition coalition in parliament—an alliance of the Liberal Party and the National Party—is supposed to vote against the measure, there is hope. Canadian Melody Ayres-Griffiths, who married her Australian wife in Canada but now lives in Australia, has written that opposition Liberal MPs may still come to the rescue.

She observes that many of the people within the opposition coalition are fiscally conservative, socially liberal libertarians. “These libertarians — some of whom are very powerful inside the Liberal party — may force Tony Abbott [Leader of the Opposition] to allow his MPs to hold a conscience vote of their own,” she writes. This would mean that opposition MPs could support marriage equality, making up for lost votes from Labor’s conscience vote — a repeat of what happened in New York.

New York’s gay marriage legislation faced some staunch Democratic opponents who are fundamentalist Christians. However, some wealthy Republicans, who were more libertarian than conservative, came to the rescue and ponied up big bucks to push for equality.

The lesson is that relying solely on the party of the left, there and here, is not a particularly good strategy.

On the heels of Frank Kameny’s passing, another gay pioneer is gone. Paul Varnell was a columnist, thinker, and founder of the Independent Gay Forum.

I never met Paul, but we spoke pretty often back when he was editing the IGF website. I always found him exceptionally thoughtful and decent. It seemed as if there was nothing that didn’t interest him, nothing he didn’t know something about. And his columns (most of which first ran in the Chicago Free Press) were an IGF anchor. Here’s one example, one of many, of how his gentle, firm voice could summon moral reflection more effectively than outrage could have done.

Paul never got national attention, and probably wouldn’t have wanted it (in fact, probably would have despised it), but in his quiet way he was a pioneer and leader among those who made the world safe to be non-leftist and gay…partly through the power of his logic, partly through the gentleness of his touch.

Goodbye, Paul. You were a good man and you made a difference.

On the passing of our friend and former IGF editor and contributing author Paul Varnell, here’s one of his colulmns many recall fondly: A Valentine’s Story.

More. An example of how Paul will be missed. When Sarah Schulman wrote recently in the New York Times (“Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’”) to condemn gays who support Israel, which she characterized as “the tendency among some white gay people to privilege their racial and religious identity,” it would be good to have heard Paul’s voice, as in this 2002 column “Israel, Palestine, and Gays.”

Furthermore. A tribute by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, which includes this quote from Paul:

“This suggests,” Varnell continued, “that what would work best for us is an approach that emphasizes sharing our common humanity rather than attacking the mainstream and portraying ourselves as an aggrieved, victimized and petulant minority. It is, after all, the homophobes who are the sad, isolated, troubled little clot of obscurantists.”

More still. Remembrances by journalist Rex Wockner.

And here is the Chicago Tribune’s obit.

Longtime IGF contributor Paul Varnell has died.

Paul was an early mentor for me, and I’ve missed his contributions in the years he has been ill. He will be missed.

 

I’ve mostly refrained from commenting on the presidential race because it’s all too depressing, reflecting the political pathologies of our time. And neither party seems able to offer a way forward.

I won’t be voting for Obama, and I doubt I will vote for the GOP candidate. First, the Democrats. They’ve hitched themselves to a narcissistic, messianic leftwing community organizer/academic lawyer with no experience or knowledge of how the private sector generates wealth for society as a whole, and who rigidly adheres to the political ideology that raising taxes on “the rich” (including many small business owners) and expanding the bureaucratic regulatory state by leaps and bounds will lead to economic growth, or if not exactly growth, at least “fairness,” which is more important anyway.

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An animated Yule-time look at the Obama presidency thus far that’s not even parody—it’s all too true.
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The likely Republican choice is coming down to Romney or Gingrich, one bland and one grandiose, pandering to the social conservatives in their base by pledging to deny us basic equality under the law.

The Democrats are stuck with Obama but the GOP has the opportunity to pick a socially moderate fiscal conservative with a proven record in prudent governance and foreign policy. That would be Jon Huntsman, who sits with 1% in the polls among Republicans. Not going to happen.

The other major GOP contender who at least opposes the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment (and who voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”), Ron Paul, garners around 8 percent but likely would be less electable in the general election than Huntsman because his libertarian views on government—and especially foreign policy—seem out of the mainstream.

So there you have it. The next four years will likely see further polarization, without the bipartisan consensus necessary to trim the entitlement programs that are sinking us in astronomical debt, and will do so if not reformed regardless of any tax increases on “the rich.” The GOP isn’t likely to summon the will to make these cuts on its own, and the Democrats would rather demagogue (“Mediscare”) their way back to congressional power.

Politics is inherently corrupting since it is predicated on power and compulsion. That’s why limited government was so dear to the founders. We’ve lost our way, and may wander in the darkness for a long time to come.

More. In the comments, reader Tom Scharbach is more optimistic, noting: “Stephen, you can take some comfort in the fact that the presidential candidates most closely allied with the far-right religious conservatives (Bachmann, Perry, Santorum) — the true believers — aren’t doing all that well in the contest. …” He also writes:

It is going to take a while for the Republican Party to break loose of the death-grip of religious conservatives. The death-grip was thirty years in the making, and it will take time to undo it. But it will happen, eventually, because the county is changing rapidly. It won’t be too many years before opposition to “equal means equal” becomes a political liability, and that will break the death-grip.

There’s some interesting back and forth at not gay friendly National Review Online on why young conservatives seem much more proud to be pro-life than to be anti same-sex marriage. Here’s the third or so take: Re: Life vs. Marriage.

A statistical study (yes, someone did the research) says that same-sex marriages are way overrepresented on the New York Times “Weddings” page. Well, not as overrepresented as marriages among Ivy League grads and elite lawyers! Of course, it will still take a few years to make up for the total exclusion during the entire 20th century.