IGF CultureWatch

I didn’t feel compelled to watch the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics, and I find that I’ve avoided the competitions as well. I know that Putin’s Russia, while oppressive, corrupt and authoritarian, isn’t the only, or worst, anti-gay regime. Our ally India gives Russia a run for the money, at least on paper if not in practice, in terms of outlawing homosexuality. Gay people face a death sentence in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world. In Nigeria, Uganda and other benighted places, things are little if any better.

Still, Russia rankles. Maybe it’s that Putin so obviously sees the games as a propaganda coup, as Hitler did the ’36 Olympics in Berlin. And while I didn’t support a boycott of Sochi, my gut tells me that these games are morally tainted. To cheer and applaud along with a beaming Putin turns my stomach.

Already, we’ve seen in connection with these games the arrest of Russian gay rights advocates and the stifling of anti-Putin protests (an everyday occurrence), with the IOC’s acquiescence, while Russian authorities allow a pro-Putin, anti-gay demonstration. In a more petty vein, there’s the Russians’ denial of access to at least one pro-gay Olympian’s website, reminding us of how “gay propaganda” is strictly forbidden.

I don’t condemn anyone who feels the fraternal spirit of the games themselves supersedes the sins of the host. But for myself, I can’t get over it.

More. Olympics delivering for Putin.

Much of the basis for arguing against allowing small business owners a ‘right of conscience’ religious exemption from providing services to same-sex weddings is an assumed equivalence between sexual orientation and race.

Given the long legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, federally enforced nondiscrimination laws were necessary to allow African Americans access to commercial services available to whites, not to mention voting rights, employment, public accommodations, etc. Advocates of forcing religiously conservative bakers to produce congratulatory wedding cakes with two grooms or two brides atop suggest that the same thing is true of gay people. It isn’t.

Most bakers, florists, etc. would provide these services; allowing a small number to opt out based on religious conscience shows respect for individual liberty that in the long run will serve gay people much better than using the law to force expressive behavior that celebrates same-sex weddings.

Some defending such a draconian application of anti-discrimination law put forth a Manichaean view of good progressives vs. evil traditionalists. That self-congratulatory perspective is blind to the shadow side of leftism/progressivism and its tendency toward collectivist authoritarianism when given a free rein. There’s a striking similarity between leftwing and rightwing inquisitors and heresy hunters.

As Matt Barnum writes at The Purple Elephant blog:

I think we should be uncomfortable making a direct comparison between discrimination against gays and discrimination against blacks. Both have been awful, but only one involved slavery, only one involved de facto and de jure segregation. …

The root of this awful argument [against religious exemptions for service providers who oppose gay marriage] is the notion that race and sexuality are exactly the same—have the same moral status, the same cultural history, and warrant the same legal response. There are certainly overlaps, and gays have certainly been treated very poorly historically. But sexuality is not race, and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

Peggy Noonan discusses the totalism beneath the progressive mindset. She’s talking about Obamacare’s contraception-abortifacient mandate on employers, but she could as well be addressing the demand by certain gay activists for no religious exception that would allow small service providers not to accept assignments that require them to provide expressive services for same-sex weddings.

Writes Noonan:

Meanwhile, back in America, the Little Sisters of the Poor were preparing their legal briefs. The Roman Catholic order of nuns first came to America in 1868 and were welcomed in every city they entered. They now run about 30 homes for the needy across the country. They have, quite cruelly, been told they must comply with the ObamaCare mandate that all insurance coverage include contraceptives, sterilization procedures, morning-after pills. If they don’t—and of course they can’t, being Catholic, and nuns—they will face ruinous fines. The Supreme Court kindly granted them a temporary stay, but their case soon goes to court. … And so they fight, in a suit along with almost 500 Catholic nonprofit groups.

Everyone who says that would never have happened in the past is correct. It never, ever would have under normal American political leadership, Republican or Democratic. No one would’ve defied religious liberty like this. The president has taken to saying he isn’t ideological but this mandate—his mandate—is purely ideological.

It also is a violation of traditional civic courtesy, sympathy and spaciousness. The state doesn’t tell serious religious groups to do it their way or they’ll be ruined. You don’t make the Little Sisters bow down to you. This is the great political failure of progressivism: They always go too far. They always try to rub your face in it.

More. Now available in paperback is a new, expanded edition of Jonathan Rauch’s classic Kindly Inquisitors. From the blurb:

the answer to bias and prejudice, Rauch argues, is pluralism—not purism. Rather than attempting to legislate bias and prejudice out of existence or to drive them underground, we must pit them against one another to foster a more vigorous and fruitful discussion. It is this process that has been responsible for the growing acceptance of the moral acceptability of homosexuality over the last twenty years.

A follow-up by Rauch also addresses progressive speech codes (but by extension, I’d argue, the progressive mindset that would force a florist to decorate gay weddings, and a baker to design congratulatory cakes with two grooms or two brides atop). Writes Rauch:

Something else I often find called on to emphasize to young people, at a time when college speech codes are usually justified as protecting minority rights, is that turnabout is not fair play. The problem is not that the bad guys were in charge of the speech rules in 1954, whereas the good guys are in charge now. The problem is that majorities, politicians and bureaucrats are very unreliable judges of minorities’ interests.

The mass marriage ceremony at the Grammys was both kind of inspiring and, sorry, kind of creepy, in that mass weddings kind of way, despite/because of the role of high priestesses Madonna and Queen Latifah as officiants. But it does reinforce the astounding change in public acceptance of marriage equality. Yes, socially conservative evangelicals are not the Grammy audience, but young people give the event huge ratings. And they are the future.

Alas, many Republicans will keep losing until they get that trying to keep marriage restricted to heterosexuals is driving away more voters than the diehard religious right bloc they fantasize will put them over the top. The latest evidence: GOP operative Ed Gillespie’s run for the Virginia Senate seat held by moderate Democrat Mark Warner. Gillespie told the Washington Times:

My faith also teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman. In fact in the Catholic church it’s not just a teaching, it’s a holy sacrament just like communion. I believe that as well. I believe marriage is between one man and one woman and I believe that people who don’t share that view or share my faith, that that doesn’t make them anti-Catholic or religious bigots. And I think people who do share my view, that doesn’t make us anti-gay either.

Republicans can’t get away with this kind of “I’m not a bigot but marriage is a sacrament” malarkey anymore. Your sacrament isn’t enshrined in the Constitution, an ever-growing number of Americans recognize, while equality for all under the law is. The popular Warner needn’t feel threatened.

Robert Turner, executive director of the D.C. Republican Party and former president of the D.C. chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, has it right about prominent LGBT organizations in his Washington Blade op-ed:

When you listen to some national gay organizations, they speak of the evils of Republicans. They often imply ALL Republicans. Either they are not mindful that we have a growing number of Republican allies in the House and Senate and around the country who support us on many of our core issues, or they are simply party hacks. It’s OK to be a party hack. I am. Just don’t masquerade as a non-partisan national LGBT organization if that’s what you really are — an operative of the Democratic Party.

It might be better if the Human Rights Campaign identified itself for what it’s become, a fundraising arm of the Democratic Party, rather than pretending to speak for all gay people when it lobbies for gay rights and supports progressive causes.

To make a point, Alan Sears, head of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is leading the legal battle on behalf of photographers, florists, cake decorators and others sued for refusing to create products for same-sex weddings, found a Southern California photographer who refused to take a Christmas card photo of his family after he identified his affiliation. The photographer explained in an email, “I oppose the goals and objectives of your organization and have no interest in working on its behalf.”

And that was the point Sears wanted to make, as the Washington Times reports:

“We’re talking about human dignity. It violates someone’s dignity to require them to create images that violate their core beliefs,” Mr. Sears said. “I think I’m a pretty nice guy, and my family are kind folks, but to require this woman to portray me in a loving, family-centered way that is contrary to her views and her conscience, I think it would be an act of violence against her dignity.”

The article also notes:

Those filing friend-of-the-court briefs in favor of the ADF’s position include some high-profile supporters of gay marriage, including Ilya Shapiro, Cato Institute legal counsel; Eugene Volokh, University of California at Los Angeles School of Law professor; and Dale Carpenter, professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. …

“The vast majority of same-sex couples do not want the service providers who disagree with participating at their celebrations, but there is a small number of highly political activists who will do so to make a point,” said Mr. Carpenter. “And they will create conflicts that do not need to exist.”

For those who might not know, both Dale and the Cato Institute have a substantial history fighting for gay legal equality, particularly in overturning sodomy laws (Cato’s brief was cited by Justice Kennedy) and marriage equality.

George Will’s recent column defending judicial activism on behalf of individual liberty doesn’t address gay legal equality, but the points he makes are relevant to the issue nevertheless. For instance, Will notes that “America’s defining value is not majority rule but individual liberty. Many judges, however, in practicing what conservatives have unwisely celebrated as ‘judicial restraint,’ have subordinated liberty to majority rule.”

Will is correct in also observing that “Conservatives clamoring for judicial restraint, meaning deference to legislatures, are waving a banner unfurled a century ago by progressives eager to emancipate government, freeing it to pursue whatever collective endeavors it fancies, sacrificing individual rights to a spurious majoritarian ethic.” Of course, the “judicial restraint” conservatives clamor for is intended to leave in place measures legislatively passed (or instituted via popular referenda) that dictate discrimination, often against gay people.

But judicial restraint is a two-edge sword, and a diminished judiciary also allows liberals to leave unimpaired the worst outrages of the regulatory state. Both left and right, it seems, would sacrifice individual liberty for unrestrained government that serves their particular ideological agenda.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s comments about “extreme conservatives” have provoked an intense response from conservatives who don’t view themselves as extreme. First, here’s what the governor said during an interview with public radio (as reported by the Daily News:

“Who are they?” Cuomo said about the Republicans. “Are they these extreme conservative, right to life, pro assault weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are, and if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York. Because that’s not who New Yorkers are. If they are moderate Republicans, like in the Senate right now, who control the Senate—moderate Republicans have a place in this state.

These comments have been attacked by those who are pro-life, anti-gun control and anti-gay-marriage, although the intensity of the criticism has been from pro-life and pro-gun-rights groups.

The problem I have is that there are many who are gay (and gay supportive) who happen not to support (at the very least) late-term abortion on demand at taxpayer expense, believe in the right to keep and bear arms and support marriage equality. By tying the three issues into one bundle, Cuomo and Democratic Party activists advance their coalition progressivism but makes it harder to reach out to conservatives who might be open to libertarian arguments on marriage.

Their concern, of course, isn’t with advancing support for marriage equality among conservatives, but it should be ours.

Via Deadline Hollywood:

Did the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson take a toll on the show’s appeal? A&E’s flagship reality series clocked 8.5 million viewers Wednesday night [down from the show’s Season 4 debut, which drew nearly 12 million viewers], snapping a streak of ratings records and posting its first season-to-season drop. Among adults 18-49, the premiere averaged 4.2 million viewers, down 33%.

That’s a bucket of cold water thrown in the Robertson family’s faces.

The show can no longer be seen as an innocent guilty pleasure, as a number of TV columnists seem to have noted, including here: “[W]here watching Duck Dynasty was once a form of escapism, now it can’t help feeling like taking sides.”

That, to a large extent, explains the drop off.

More. Variety reports, “‘Duck Dynasty’ Falls to Lowest Ratings Since 2012.”

Changing times. Utah is now evenly split on marriage equality in a poll taken following a district court decision overturning Utah’s anti-gay-marriage amendment. That ruling was later stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court pending the state’s appeal.

Seeing 1,300 same-sex couples apply for marriage licenses likely gave momentum to shifting attitudes.