IGF CultureWatch

Given the political divide, in many elections the choice is between a marriage-equality opponent or a regulation-and-tax hiker, both being bad options. So it’s not surprising that an annual ranking of state business climates shows liberal-governed states that recognize same-sex marriage tend to have worse economic outlooks. No state with marriage equality made the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ranking of the top 10 states with the best economic outlooks. And seven states that do recognize same-sex marriages are among the bottom 10 states with the worst economic outlooks: Maryland (35th), Maine (41st), Connecticut (43rd), Rhode Island (45th), Minnesota (46th), New York (49th) and Vermont (50th).

One example: Maryland has marriage equality while its neighbor, Virginia (5th in terms of economic outlook), has a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Last year, libertarian website Reason.com looked at how Maryland’s tax rates are driving jobs to Virginia.

Many moderate and center-right gay voters give their support to the party of big government because the party of lower taxes/higher growth doesn’t want our votes.

More. Facebook friend James Peron says: “I think I would say that they support the party of big government because the other party of big government doesn’t want our votes. The real difference is what they want big government ‘big’ over.”

Also, Rick Sincere (he’s on our blogroll) suggests that a better measure than ALEC’s rankings may be the Mercatus Center’s “Freedom in the 50 States,” which looks at both economic and personal liberty, including same-sex marriage and domestic partnership recognition (Virginia ranks 8th overall, Maryland 44th despite marriage equality as it’s bad on personal freedom in a number of other areas).

Furthermore, from the comments:

Houndentenor: “As I recall the economy grew quite nicely during Clinton’s presidency.”

Jared: ” Yes, having a Democratic president and a GOP-controlled Congress has often proved the sweet spot in limiting government over-reach. Not so good for advancing gay equality, but often has led to much more sensible economic policy.”

From The Atlantic, an interesting take on what gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony:

But what if the critics are correct, just not in the way they suppose? What if same-sex marriage does change marriage, but primarily for the better? For one thing, there is reason to think that, rather than making marriage more fragile, the boom of publicity around same-sex weddings could awaken among heterosexuals a new interest in the institution, at least for a time. But the larger change might be this: by providing a new model of how two people can live together equitably, same-sex marriage could help haul matrimony more fully into the 21st century.

I like the fact that this is not a knee-jerk anti-gender but women are better piece. Writer Liza Mundy takes note that “gay marriage can function as a controlled experiment, helping us see which aspects of marital difficulty are truly rooted in gender and which are not.” And among her rules for a happy marriage, “When it comes to parenting, a 50-50 split isn’t necessarily best.” As Mundy writes:

As Martha Ertman, a University of Maryland law professor, put it to me, many families just function better when the same person is consistently “in charge of making vaccinations happen, making sure the model of the World War II monument gets done, getting the Christmas tree home or the challah bought by 6 o’clock on Friday.”

In the end, “Rather than setting an example that fathers don’t matter, gay men are setting an example that fathers do matter, and that marriage matters, too.”

Of course, first the struggle to be able to marry must be won. The Washington Post looks at recent, dramatic victories, but also the long road ahead. Under the best of scenarios (assuming, as most do, that the Supreme Court will repeal the most onerous aspects of the Defense of Marriage Act but not impose marriage equality throughout the nation), 40 percent of Americans could live in states that allow gays to marry by the end of 2016. But after that, the road ahead will require overturning anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments in conservative states.

While advocates for gay equality feel, with justification, that the Boy Scouts of America’s vote to end the ban on gay scouts up to age 18 while maintaining its prohibition on gay scoutmasters is an unacceptable halfway step, the socially conservative Washington Times reports that accepting openly gay scouts at all is a major defeat for Christian Right evangelicals:

Signs of waning evangelical power in the nation’s culture wars and in Republican policy—and some unexpected challenges for GOP candidates—loom as the 103-year-old Boy Scouts of America gears up for a definitive vote this week on whether to welcome openly gay youths into the organization’s ranks.

If the BSA delegates gathering just outside Dallas vote to admit gays, it will reinforce the growing notion that evangelical Protestants and their conservative Catholic allies no longer can muster their troops as they once did, in such battles as state referendums over same-sex marriage and the 1996 enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Interestingly, the article also points out that the Mormon church, which sponsors more than a third of all scout troops in America, “has moved on to other battles in the cultural wars rather than take on the gay-rights activists.” This is similar to what we previously noted about the Mormons’ absence of late from the religious right’s political fight against marriage equality. It’s a good sign, as neutrality in practice is far better for us than engaged opposition, and if it lasts it will leave the evangelicals and the Catholic church down a major ally.

David Boaz takes note of:

Interesting evidence of movement among Republicans [on gay marriage]. A strong majority of voters in Virginia, a state that passed a gay marriage ban in 2006, and 40 percent of Republicans now say “it should be legal for gay couples to get married.” …

How has public opinion in Virginia changed since the 2006 amendment vote? Support for gay marriage (or opposition to a ban) has risen by 13 points. Independents are up only 3 points. Democrats are up by 7 points, perhaps because of the endorsement of President Obama. And Republican support is up 25 points.

And yet the party’s most likely future standard-bearers aren’t budging, perhaps because they are beholden to a dysfunctional primary and (especially) caucus system that gives disproportional voice and presidential-nominee veto power to an increasingly smaller and shiller faction of religious theocrats, those contemporary pharisees who thoroughly pervert the gospel message. It’s particularly disappointing to see Sen. Rand Paul moving to woo the them, as the Washington Post reports:

Earlier this spring, Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, invited a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network into their Kentucky home for what turned into two full days of reality TV. In a half-hour special, “At Home With Rand Paul,” the couple are seen bird-watching in the woods, going to McDonald’s and, especially, talking about religion—their belief in traditional marriage and the senator’s call for a “spiritual cleansing” in America. …

He said he’s not ready to “give up on” the traditional family unit. But he added that it is a mistake for conservatives to support a federal ban on same-sex marriage, saying, “We’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now.”

“If we’re to say each state can decide, I think a good 25 or 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people,” he said.

Paul has called on the GOP to “embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere,” which seems inconsistent with his message to the Christian right, and counter-productive given where the electorate is going. As Nick Gillespie points out:

If Paul continues to send significantly different messages to different audiences, he will end up alienating all his possible supporters. … If he’s serious about scraping the moss off the Republican Party, he needs to boldly defend his most contrarian, libertarian positions rather than temper his comments based on his speaking venue.”

Practically speaking, N.J. Gov. Chris Christie would be the most (and maybe, really, the only) electable Republican in 2016, and he’d probably be more electable if he came out in favor of marriage equality for gay couples. But he’d have to survive the evangelical-dominated Iowa caucuses.

[Since comments on the Washington Post website (not here) regarding the Rand Paul article have veered into attacks on religion, I should note that I use “evangelical” above in the Christian-right political sense of advocating the use of the state to enforce an agenda of animus; not in the gospel sense of spreading the good news of God’s unbounded and transformative love.]

More. From David Boaz: Virginia Republican Candidates Not Joining 21st Century: “[T]here’s a reason that a report by the Republican National Committee found that voters see the GOP as “scary,” “narrow minded,” and “out of touch” — and the Virginia Republican ticket is part of that reason.”

More on Paul. Campaigning, er, “speaking” in New Hampshire, Sen. Paul has not made noticeable mention of gay marriage or related issues. He’s hitting hard on the more libertarian-conservative issues, as in his remarks via C-SPAN at a recent New Hampshire Liberty Dinner were he castigated the enormity of misdirected government spending at a time when Obama is crying poverty over his still bloated budget (millions were just spent making the embassy in Vienna, Austria, a “green” showcase while Obama blames Republicans for not giving him enough money to provide security for the consulate in Benghazie).

If you take another look at Paul’s remarks to evangelical leaders, while he told them much of what they wanted to hear (he personally opposes same-sex marriage; his reported “spiritual cleansing” remark), when it comes to politics he didn’t put much on the table (he opposes the anti-gay federal marriage amendment, for instance.) But whether he can mitigate evangelical opposition with rhetoric while not alienating independents and social libertarians remains an open question.

Via Mother Jones: “It’s remarkable what has happened in the marriage fight since the Mormons decided to abandon it.” Moreover:

The pullback of the LDS church may also have the unexpected effect of allowing more Republican elected officials to back marriage equality without fear of suffering at the polls. (Mormons are among the country’s most reliable Republican voters.) Republicans in Rhode Island and Delaware were a key factor in marriage advocates’ success, says HRC’s Nix.

Another sign of the times.

This first-person column from Minnesota makes as good a case as any about the profound change in attitude toward gay people by a majority of heterosexuals over the past two decades.

With Rhode Island, Delaware, and very soon Minnesota joining the states that recognize gay marriage— all since the Supreme Court heard arguments to scrap enshrined federal discrimination under the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act—what’s amazing is how little controversy is being generated. And yet the GOP remains supplicant to an ever-smaller and increasingly disdained minority of bigots. That can’t last, and it won’t.

Until even just a few years ago, you could say these people were just ignorant, or were understandably cautious about major societal change. But that argument no longer holds water (sorry, Mona Charen). Gay marriage provides legal equality and promotes stability and mutual care, as gay families take their place in society. Nowhere does it have the fearsome repercussions that conservatives feared. Instead, it has undercut the radical sexual liberationists who did want the gay movement to be a front in the struggle against bourgeois normality.

That gay people for the most part remain, politically, chained at the hip to the left-liberal party of bigger government and regulatory strangulation is to a great extent the result of the conservative party’s intransigence. But just as few expected the Soviet Union to come tumbling down so quickly, I think the GOP could soon undergo a sea change that isn’t apparent right now but might be just around an historic corner.

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.