IGF CultureWatch

No political movement can put a hold on its most extreme members, a truth that Christians right now are having to face.  Pastor Charles Worley and his followers in the Providence Road Baptist Church are trying so hard to save lesbians and gay men from hell that they want to put them in pens and execute them; destroy the gays to save the gays.

And boxer/politician Manny Pacquaio got caught in the weeds when he told a reporter that the Law of God instructs him to oppose same-sex marriage.  The reporter included the quote from the Bible most famously associated with opposition to homosexual activity, the one from Leviticus, and Pacquaio backed off a bit, retreating to more favorable Bible verses, and hiding what for all the world looks like homophobia behind the usual religious-tinged vagaries.

The reporter certainly went further than Pacquaio had, but if that verse from the Bible is a surprise to Pacquiao, or anyone, that would be news.  As the King James Version translates,”If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”  That is the Word of God in a pretty authoritative text.  Is Pacquaio saying he both agrees with and disagrees with the Word of God?

That is the question Christians like Pacquiao ought to be asked squarely.  If the second part of the verse is incorrect (“shall surely be put to death”), isn’t it possible that the first part might be susceptible to rethinking as well?

Rev. Worley is comfortable with his dogmatism.  Both parts of the verse are inerrant, and damn the consequences in the modern world for those who stand up.  Same thing for shellfish, I imagine.

So whether the reporter made a journalistic error or not, he got to a true question that professing Christians today need to confront: Who Would Jesus Execute?

I’m not a theologian or any sort of religious scholar.  All I know is the Bible I actually read (OK, parts of the Bible).  I remember Jesus saying in Matthew 5 that there are some parts of the Old Testament that could use remaining, like taking an eye for an eye.  My reasons for believing in a Christianity that accepts lesbians and gay men is based on that sort of thing, and the sermons in the churches (mostly Episcopalian after the Catholics made it clear they had no room for me and my sort) I have gone to as an adult.  I know there are plenty of Christians who find the death penalty for anyone, much less lesbians and gay men, not very Jesus-like, and I assume they have the theological chops to defend that position.

But most Christians aren’t theologians.  Pacquaio is among them, it seems.  Perhaps he should attend Pastor Worley’s church, and see what the consequences of believing the literal Word of God, as it actually appears in the Bible, look like.  Does he think Jesus wants gay people killed?  If not, which parts of the Bible does he think it’s fair to minimize or absolve?

Richard Grennell’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, Marriage, Gay Republicans and the Election, is behind a subscriber firewall. But it’s worth noting a few of his points:

Anti-gay extremists not only dismiss a plethora of serious issues confronting America and the world, but they fail to recognize the consistency of living by the conservative ideal of limiting government involvement in our lives.

The claim that gays should be barred from conservative activism is not only bigoted but is a bipartisan view. The intolerant assault comes from the far right, who object to Republicans who are gay, and the far left, who object to gays being Republicans. When the extremists on both sides are the only ones speaking up, the majority suffers. …

Thousands of Republicans privately voiced support for my appointment and were disappointed by the events that led to my resignation earlier this month. Some did so while admitting they disagreed with my support for gay marriage. But they too are passionate about a strong America, personal responsibility and independent religious institutions—issues that should be at the forefront of this year’s presidential election. …

While there are many reasons not to vote to re-elect President Obama, gay marriage is not one of those issues. …

The point is not to convince gay Democrats to vote for Romney—that’s not going to happen, obviously. Left-liberals won’t buy the argument that it’s a bad thing that “Mr. Obama … has demonstrated a willingness to abandon the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great while embracing a new era of government-centered decisions,” and they may even applaud Obama for doing so.

Rather, the point is to reach out to conservative Republicans with the message that being gay, and supporting full legal equality for gay people, isn’t inconsistent with conservative principles. That’s a fight that is vital to make, and gay Democrats shouldn’t put party first by sniping at gay Republicans for making it.

Although you might not know it from within the left-liberal echo chamber, a major fissure is becoming evident in the GOP. It’s between those who see the future and how younger voters, even those who identify as Republican, support the legal equality of gay people, and the old guard social reactionaries of the religious right. Over time, it’s safe to bet on the young and those who see which way the wind is blowing, but it could, as I’ve said, be another decade, and the struggle will intensify before it’s resolved.

To demonstrate, two stories. From the McClatchy newspaper syndicate’s Washington bureau, “Quietly, the Republican Party Is Embracing Gays“:

A quiet transformation is taking place in the Republican Party, which has begun to embrace openly gay candidates … While differences still exist, the party is on the cusp of a generational shift in which the longtime foes of gay rights are replaced by younger party leaders who are more accepting.

“It’s an exponential change from a few years ago,” said former Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe. “It’s happening, and it’s going to continue to happen.”

But then there’s this, via the New York Times, “Gay Prosecutor Is Denied Virginia Judgeship Despite Bipartisan Support:

Virginia’s Republican-controlled House rejected the judicial nomination of a gay Richmond prosecutor early Tuesday morning, plunging the critical swing state into the middle of the national debate about the civil rights of gay Americans.

The prosecutor, Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former fighter pilot and Navy officer, failed to garner the majority of the 100-member House of Delegates that was required to secure the judgeship…. Thorne-Begland’s candidacy had broad bipartisan support from the Courts of Justice Committee, which is charged with vetting judicial appointments, and many lawmakers assumed his appointment would be approved.

That’s bad, and the instigator was a rabidly anti-gay Virginia legislator, Bob Marshall, who is running for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination (the primary is later this year). Still, a positive sign is that Virginia’s GOP governor, Bob McDonnell, who hasn’t exactly been supportive of gay rights, felt it necessary to distance himself from the actions of Virginia’s House. According to the same story, he issued:

…a statement that implicitly condemned the vote, saying judicial candidates “must be considered based solely on their merit, record, aptitude and skill.” The statement also said Mr. McDonnell had “long made clear that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not acceptable in state government.”

Some would dispute that, but it shows the governor, who would like to be Romney’s veep, feels he has to distance himself from the worst elements of his own party.

More. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni makes a similar point:

Within [the GOP’s] uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.

It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.

Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald seem to be having a lover’s spat over the President’s vocal but personal support of marriage equality.  Andrew gushed, and Glenn cringed at the gushing.  On its own, this isn’t much, but it is based on a fundamental difference between gays on the left and the rest of us.

Glenn claims his objection isn’t to Andrew’s emotionalism, but I don’t think that holds water.  Anyone who thinks Andrew Sullivan is someone who would or could twist his deeply held views to “glorify whatever the leader does at any given moment” is not paying enough attention to Andrew.  In fact, it’s that “any given moment” that undermines Greenwald’s premise.  This was one specific moment, one particular issue, and is hardly typical of Andrew’s thinking, writing or person.  Lacking the proper leadership deference over time and across issues and leaders, all that is left of Greenwald’s criticism is Andrew’s emotional style at the President’s statement.

Andrew wasn’t alone in going over the top.  Jon Rauch is equally effusive about this given moment, and I’m with both of them.

Greenwald is hardly an opponent of marriage equality.  I think the exhilaration is less extreme on the left because of the different way they view government and sexual orientation.

Andrew, Jon and the members of IGF tend to have a narrow view of government’s role.  Specifically with respect to sexual orientation, the government should not have laws on the books that actively, positively discriminate based on sexual orientation.  Sodomy laws were the sine qua non of that kind of legal rule, placing us literally outside the law, making us criminals.  Dale Carpenter’s excellent book, Flagrant Conduct, describes the fall of those laws in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas.  Sodomy laws (and the related array of sexual misconduct laws) discriminated against us as individuals, and specifically discouraged and in many cases punished even the simple act of claiming a gay identity in public.  Military discrimination used those laws as the premise for active, legal discrimination against lesbians and gay men, and those laws, too, are now history.

That leaves marriage as the only place in the law where lesbians and gay men are explicitly excluded.  Now that the law cannot make us criminals, the job is to unwind the tangle that prohibits our relationships from being fully and equally recognized.

Those who have spent a lifetime trying to end that last vestige of positive legal discrimination cannot be faulted for losing it when a President of the United States, for the first time, tells the nation that he agrees with their argument.  No law has been changed yet, and as we just saw in North Carolina, the work is still substantial.  But as a national matter, today we can envision as a reality the last days of government discrimination.

The left expects more of government.  In addition to not discriminating itself, the left believes government should also act to prohibit others from discriminating, and should do a lot more as well.  Marriage equality is not an end in itself, it is one more piece of the larger puzzle.  That can be seen pretty plainly in the manifesto, Beyond Same-Sex Marriage.

In that sort of context, full marriage equality isn’t going to solve very much, since there will still be poor and elderly and sick people, and there will still be individual discrimination against lesbians and gay men in particular that should be stamped out with governmental imprimatur and enforcement.

I’m dubious about government’s competence to do that; that is why I’m not of the left.  But that’s also why I’m overjoyed right now.  For the first time in my life, the President has said publicly that he supports marriage equality, understands why we want and need it, and is willing to defend his (and our) position. I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually live to see that, and in my opinion, that is the beginning of the end of our struggle.  And it’s icing on the cake that Mitt Romney is sweating bullets, and wants to keep himself as far from having to defend his sort-of position in public as his handlers can manage.

However we get to marriage equality, I’m going to view that as the end of the line.  I don’t want the government discriminating against me, and once it doesn’t, my activist days will be over.  Andrew and Jon and Greenwald can speak for themselves, of course, but right now I’m going to go have a good cry.

African-American church leaders, the foundation of the black civil rights movement, have been overwhelmingly and stridently opposed to equality for gay people, which has contributed mightily to black opposition to same-sex marriage. The Washington Post reported that in North Carolina last week, many black precincts voted 2-1 for the ballot measure to ban gay marriage and domestic partnerships. Moreover, the paper reports that:

African-Americans have historically been more hostile to gays and lesbians than other racial and ethnic groups. Only 39 percent of African-Americans favor gay marriage, compared with 47 percent of white Americans, according to a Pew poll conducted this April.

So it’s a good thing that Obama’s personal endorsement of marriage equality at least has them discussing the issue as a point to debate, as reports USA Today. Still, it may be a long time until the views of most black pastors evolve.

More. From John McWhorter, “President Obama’s New Role in the Fight Against Black Homophobia.”

The magnitude of the challenge Mitt Romney faces on marriage can be seen, not in the looniest of gay marriage opponents, or the most depraved, (though as I argued, he is now stuck with these folks).  No, the hard part will be dealing with the Maggie Gallaghers.

Gallagher has become a master of disguising her disapproval of homosexuality in general — so good she even seems to have convinced herself she’s fair minded.

But look at her defense of marriage, either in its condensed version, or for the brave hearts, its fuller explanation in an argument with John Corvino.  Her bottom line is that marriage is a key “governing idea” that cannot be changed without inevitable erosion of its core.  That core idea, again and again and again, is the importance of a mother and a father to children.  That’s a limited idea, and a pretty uninformed view of government, law and society, but it’s one Gallagher is committed to and not afraid to man the battlements on.

Romney, however, kicked the props out from under her yesterday when he said that same-sex couples have a “right” (his exact word) to adopt children, as they did in Massachusetts under his governorship.  It wasn’t long before he had to shake the Etch-a-Sketch and try to argue that he doesn’t believe gay adoption is actually a right; he was just acknowledging the reality in 49 states.

But if 49 states (Florida is the exception) allow same-sex couples (some of them legally married) to adopt children, then what governing idea is Gallagher talking about preserving?

That is the hole in the heart of Gallagher’s argument and it is the flaw that is eroding the anti-equality side every day.  Nobody has to deny the importance of marriage for children to also accept that children need and must have some kind of responsible parenting, whether it is the ideal or something less.  No one has ever argued that if children can’t have ideal parents, they shouldn’t have any.  That’s such a ridiculous notion that even Gallagher won’t take it up.  But if we believe (and our laws support) children having less than ideal parents, than isn’t that our “governing idea?”

People who believe in absolutist arguments (we can’t ever change the governing idea of marriage as between a man and a woman) run the risk of focusing so firmly on the heavens that they trip on the sidewalk.  What’s happening today isn’t that people are rejecting the importance of marriage for children, they are just accepting that many good things are not perfect things.

More than that, they are understanding that homosexuals are not made of stone.  Whether they have children or not, same-sex couples see childless heterosexual couples, including those who have raised children that no longer live with them, and make the perfectly reasonable claim that the relationship of marriage extends beyond a contract to have and raise children.

As heterosexuals stop to think about that, they see and even feel its fundamental truth.  They are not rejecting their own ideas about marriage, they are simply embracing homosexuals into the real world they know, as imperfect equals.  They see that Gallagher’s governing idea has never been a mandate for them, and if the law accepts their departures from the archetype, why shouldn’t it make room for homosexuals as well?

That is the bottom line that this GOP memo reminds the party of.

Gallagher can’t let go of her dogmas and verities, but she’s not running for public office; she has the luxury to be as philosophical as she likes.  In contrast, Romney is running for President, not Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  As a whole, Americans are realists, and while there will always be some room for moral authoritarians, that’s not a style that has served American leaders well.

Obama hip-checked Romney into the absolutists, and as the adoption episode shows, Romney is going to have a hell of a time getting back on his feet.   Whatever political instincts he has toward fairness cannot survive the melodramatic abstractions of the religious fervor he has to manage among his base.

An important perspective on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” by a former aide to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Writes Matthew Gagnon:

I saw up close the White House and its Democratic allies actively trying to stop, for political purposes, the very legislation they are now taking undue credit for. Instead, a lone Republican senator from Maine was the one actually taking a phenomenal personal and political risk and ultimately proved to be the real engine behind the repeal.

It’s a reminder of the importance of achieving at least some GOP support for gay equality.

More. Via Politico, The pro-gay marriage Bush alumni: “…for an administration with a reputation for social conservatism, it’s worth looking at the number of alumni who come out in favor of same-sex marriage — and urged the rest of their party to follow suit.”

There is a very real possiblity that within the decade the GOP could be turned around, if there is a will to make the effort. But too many Democrats are just fine with an anti-gay GOP (as demonstrated by their attacks on Ric Grenell and other gay Republicans working for change within the party), as it serves their partisan interests. And too many LGBT activists have fallen into that trap.

Without doubt, the Washington Post‘s report of the young Mitt Romney as a prep school bully and gay-basher is harrowing:

Romeny … spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

A few days later [found] Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. … “It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

The incident reportedly haunted Lauber, who died of liver cancer several years ago. It troubled the other perpetrators as well, the Post reports, but Romney—the instigator and scissor-wielder—claims no memory of the attack, which begs credulity, although he apologized for unspecified “pranks” that went too far. Romney also claimed that homosexuality “wasn’t something we all discussed or considered. So that’s simply just not accurate.” Which also rings false.

The account is reverberating around the Huffington Post and the left-liberal blogosphere, got picked up by a few other news outlets but hasn’t broken out more widely. It comes on the heels Romney’s failure to stand by his openly gay foreign policy spokesman, Ric Grenell, who resigned under attack by the religious right (not helped by parallel attacks on Grenell by the “progressive” left, let me add), and Romney’s reiterating his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in every state. Whether this has any traction beyond those already in the Democrats’ camp will be telling.

More. The truth, the truth, what is the truth? Breitbart has a round up of conservative blogosphere responses charging media distortion and double standards. The latter I believe.

Still more. Obama mocked and shoved a plump girl as his friends yelled taunts. [Added] But at least Obama remembers, and tells it, himself. And a big difference, as our commenters note, is that he regrets it.

Further thoughts. My guess is that the reports of this incident won’t change anyone’s mind. Those opposed to Romney will have fresh reason to reject him; those in his camp will dimiss the story as overblown and distorted. But I’m fairly certain that Romney will receive a far smaller portion of the gay vote that did John McCain (who strongly opposed the federal marriage amendemnt and, at that time, said he was open to ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’). Not that I think Romney’s campaign cares very much about getting the 27% of the self-identified gay vote that McCain garnered according to CNN (the total self-identified gay vote was just 4 percent of all votes cast).