Bigger Government: Always Good for Gays?

by on

From my viewpoint, Obamacare’s requirements that employers with 50 or more workers must provide high-level health benefits (which many employers can’t afford) or pay a penalty/tax of $2,000 or more per worker (which many employers can’t afford) will drive many relatively small or marginally profitable business out of business, or to reduce their hiring. Others may disagree. But according to the Washington Blade‘s coverage, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force believes Obamacare, and in particular its Medicaid expansion, “is particularly important for LGBT people because they disproportionately live below the poverty level.” Moreover, according to a Task Force spokesperson:

“The Medicaid expansions are going to end up being hugely important for LGBT people because it expands coverage to low-income people, and LGBT people are disproportionately low-income … We know this because of rampant employment discrimination and housing discrimination.”

I suppose there is some poll that the Task Force could cite to support this (the article refers to the group’s own report, for what that’s worth), but much independent research indicates that gay people are not suffering from severe economic disadvantages, and advocates have been hard press to provide real evidence of “rampant employment discrimination and housing discrimination.” Isolated incidents, yes. More than that, no. (As the article goes on to note, the economic status of transgendered people is more likely to be marginal.)

And even if this all were true, further burdening the Medicaid system that’s already overextended and heading toward bankruptcy with a requirement to cover those who earn 133% above the federal poverty level, to be funded by still-more federal and state deficit spending (and, in part, with higher taxes on “the wealthy,” which also depresses economic growth and investment), isn’t likely to improve things in the long run—quite the opposite. But if you’re an LGBT progressive activist organization, you’re going to back big government spending solutions on the grounds that they’re good for gays (er, LGBTs), I suppose.

2 Comments

Privacy, Silence, Neutrality and Anderson Cooper

by on

I am as glad – and grateful – as anyone for Anderson Cooper’s non-coming-out coming out.  There are some lessons in this story worth talking about.

People who know Cooper seem to agree with him that he was not really in the closet except with respect to the general public.  That is a telling fact.  As the walls of the closet have come down on the private side of people’s lives, there is still that remaining door that can be opened or closed to the public.  The people we know on our side of the door – the private side – are far more likely today to know we are homosexual than they ever have been.  Cooper enjoyed that private side of the closet with his family and friends.

But Cooper is not like the rest of us (and not just in what he does for a black t-shirt).  For those of us without a public face, the need to come out or not to others – to decide whether to open that door — is a recurring issue; we are always meeting new people, and regularly face the problem of how much to reveal to whom, and in what circumstances.

People like Cooper who have a large public reputation have to deal with this a little differently.  Word spreads about the famous, particularly about something as personal and controversial (or at least pretty interesting) as homosexuality.  News of my homosexuality never hit Twitter; it never really achieved a threshold of being news.  For Cooper, opening that door once to a world that knows him as a personality pretty much brings him out in toto.  There will still be pockets of cluelessness, but for the most part, this is a one-time deal for someone of Cooper’s stature.

The Entertainment Weekly story that got this story moving makes the point that it’s possible for even celebrities today to come out without its being a big deal, and Cooper’s example contradicts that (in the short term, since it was kind of newsish) but reaffirms the larger point, having such a short shelf-life.  Writing this post all of two days after Andrew Sullivan broke the story already feels like I’m stretching it out.

But that’s where the political aspect of sexual orientation comes in.  For me, when it comes to sexual orientation and politics, I was born this way.  It has taken me a long time to accept that some people – a lot of people – are not born political, or at least don’t take to politics naturally.  I see a need for lesbians and gay men to take political action, but as people who are more activist than me can tell you, it’s always been an uphill battle.

Cooper reports on political stories, but as a journalist he should not be an activist.  As a gay man, that puts him in a difficult spot.

A lot of politically active lesbians and gay men resent celebrities who are privately lesbian or gay, but have not opened the public door.  We have an enormous public relations job to do, and need all the help we can get.  That is one of the things that animated the movement to out politicians and celebrities – the idea that they had an obligation to use their public face to help us all gain equality.  The worst of the worst were the ones who worked against legal equality, but the desire for even neutral or supportive public figures to come out – or be dragged out – came from the mathematical problem of being a minority in the first place.  We start out with numbers that are staggeringly against us in a democracy, and then have the additional problem of members of our group who won’t even admit they belong.

Cooper seems to have struggled with that.  He mentions “the unintended outcomes” of maintaining his privacy, and says he may have given the impression that he is trying to hide something that makes him uncomfortable, ashamed or afraid.  His coming out was intended to – and does — clarify any misimpressions.

But those misimpressions are, and always have been, a perfectly natural consequence of silence.  If about 95% of the population is heterosexual, and someone doesn’t positively identify as homosexual, is it unreasonable for people to assume that individual is straight?  The open discussion of homosexuality over the last quarter century or so changes the bet somewhat, since silence now looks more telling, when it isn’t downright implausible.  Yet many people still cling to the fig leaf of privacy as if it were without consequence.

In this impressive compilation of Cooper in the field, one quote stood out: “Journalists don’t like to become part of the story, but unfortunately they have been made part of the story. . . . “  That, I am afraid, is true of sexual orientation as well.  Our inequality is embedded in the status quo that recognizes only heterosexual relationships, and if we say or do nothing, we are part of a story that tolerates and accepts our second-class status.  We cannot get out of that story, or create a more appropriate status quo unless we act, unless we speak, unless we stand up as lesbians and gay men.

The false neutrality of silence is clear in this story about Jitters and Bliss Coffee.  The company claims to be neutral when it comes to marriage.  They say they don’t have a public position on the matter, and “respect the views of all their customers.”  To demonstrate that neutrality, they joined up with the National Organization for Marriage to offer NOM members a non-Starbuck’s coffee option, since Starbuck’s has taken a position supporting marriage equality.

That is the neutrality of the status quo, being nakedly manipulated to preserve itself.  Our silence, their silence, anyone’s silence is a vote for NOM, is a vote for the bias and prejudice that are woven into the fabric of current law.

In this politicized environment, privacy equals silence, and silence equals — well, not death anymore, but certainly some spiritual damage.  That was the unholy balance that Cooper upset.  Neutrality is a primary virtue of the journalistic profession, but when “neutrality” means “the status quo,” and if the status quo is, itself, biased, then neutrality is not neutral.  Anderson Cooper’s coming out helps expose that truth.

18 Comments

Forward with the Liberty Revolution

by on

Happy Independence Day, a time to celebrate liberty and freedom (from government injustice and tyranny).

Next year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear and rule on one aspect of the odious, anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act—the provision that forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and legal partnerships that are valid under state law. I’m hopeful this will topple, with libertarian-leaning Justice Kennedy joining the court’s liberals. I’m less convinced that Chief Justice Roberts will do the right thing, despite (or maybe because of) his support for government overreach in casting the deciding vote to uphold the Democrats’ liberty curtailing (and small business strangling, jobs crushing) health care “reform.”

Over at the Huffington Post, James Peron takes issue with Brendan O’Neill, former editor of Living Marxism, who argues that gay marriage is “a tool of the elite” used to disparage the working classes, to whom we should all look for correct political guidance. O’Neill writes:

gay marriage has become so central to modern political debate in America and Britain, despite there being almost no societal drive or urge behind it—because it lends itself brilliantly to expressions of a very elitist sensibility.

Counters Peron, “In the years that I’ve followed assaults on LGBT people, the attackers were almost universally from the class Marxists told me were my allies. Sorry, but I’m not going to get gay bashed for anyone’s revolution.” (Hat tip: Rick Sincere)

Finally, Deroy Murdock forwarded a link to his defense of Ronald Reagan, a fighter against totalitarian tyranny who has been a favorite target of the gay left’s wrath.

9 Comments

LGBTTIQQ?

by on

There may actually be a valid point in trans activist Ashley Love’s Washington Blade commentary, that point being “The medical condition transsexualism is neither equivalent nor subservient to gay, lesbian or bisexual sexual orientations….” But it’s pretty much lost in all the politically correct leftwing blather about:

This complicated matter of conflation, colonization and censorship of transsexual issues … In theory, the coalition known as LGBTTIQQ is different communities aligning themselves to accomplish a common goal. But what happens when that coalition’s top priority ranks the needs of a particular, more privileged group over the more discriminated against groups? An uprising is what happens. The “Transsexual Spring,” the widespread and growing resistance against misrepresentation, calls for major reform in education concerning our birth challenge.

Which all end ups calling for a boycott of GLAAD for insufficient deference to transsexual sensitivities.

Interestingly, as another commentary in the same Blade issue, by Dana Beyer, points out, two months ago a landmark EEOC decision expanded the definition of “sex discrimination” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to include transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. As a result, the proposed Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), Beyer argues:

“is essential for the gender-conforming gay community, who are not yet protected under Title VII. But while it may be a political necessity, it is not a legal necessity to protect transgender Americans, who are covered as described above.”

But how would that fit into the narrative of gays colonizing and censoring transsexuals?

More. From the comments, “Andy” writes: “Funny how the trans activists who demand there by no ENDA without trans inclusion did NOT insist there be no EEOC ruling expanding Title VII to include transgendered people without also including gays and lesbians. Looks like solidarity is a one-way street…”

12 Comments

Super Chief

by on

Ari Ezra Waldman has an informative analysis of the Supreme Court’s health care decision at Towleroad, with his thoughts about how it might throw some light on what the court would – or should – do if it accepts one of the several pending gay marriage cases, including a challenge to DOMA that is now at the head of the list.

But by framing his comments in the addicting polarity of the political left and right, I think he misses the more important constitutional thinking that animates the health care case, and particularly the role of Chief Justice John Roberts.

From the political perspective, the bottom line of the case is that the left won the policy while the right won the law.  Democrats get the health care reforms they fought very hard for, but as Waldman notes, the most conservative Republicans got limits on two of Congress’s most expansive powers – powers that have had few limits up until this decision: the authority to pass laws under the Commerce Clause, and a limit on how far the Spending Power goes before it coerces individual states.  Neither is much of a constraint, given existing Supreme Court rulings, but the opinion does draw lines that many people thought might be nonexistent.

But Chief Justice Roberts confounded the politics.  This most political of all cases is not fitting into the proper political boxes.  And in his introduction to the opinion, Roberts does his best, not only with rhetoric, but with his bottom line, to steer the court through the political shoals:

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

Our deference in matters of policy cannot, however, become abdication in matters of law. “The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.” [citation] Our respect for Congress’s policy judgments thus can never extend so far as to disavow restraints on federal power that the constitution carefully constructed. “The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.”

The difference between policy and constitutional law are famously hard to define, and frequently get lost entirely in political discussions.  The Chief Justice wants his court to keep a close focus on the apolitical constitution, and particularly the limits it places on legislative authority.  Congress violated two very important limits in this case, and the court called them on their transgressions.

But the court must be as respectful of the constitution’s structural framework as possible, and that means upholding another branch’s decisions if there is any constitutional authority to do so.  While there were political problems for Congress if they said the penalty for failure to buy health insurance is a tax, that is an entirely fair characterization of what they did, and they do have the power to levy taxes. Just because Congress didn’t rely on that clear power – for obvious political reasons – doesn’t mean that, absent any other constitutional authority, the court cannot uphold their action based on this obvious but politically risky power.  As the Chief implied, it’s not the court’s job to protect people from their politicians, or politicians from the people.

While that might seem to be a problem for the DOMA cases, I think it works the other way.  Waldman focuses on conventional equal protection analysis, which holds that while the court defers to Congress on economic legislation, it should not do so when politically unpopular groups are disadvantaged by legislation.  That is a fair argument that dates back to 1938, and the most famous footnote in judicial history.

But the DOMA cases are the flip side of the health care case.  The health care decision is based on the powers Congress has been granted, but DOMA is about the limits the constitution places on what can be passed, even with constitutional authority.

The Equal Protection Clause is one of the “restraints on federal power that the constitution carefully constructed,” which Roberts and the court are bound to respect.  Lesbians and gay men have slowly been convincing the country, and the courts, that there are political reasons for elected officials to violate it and disadvantage them under the law.

It is easy enough for the court to hold elected officials responsible to the voters when they try to avoid facing up to a political reality like raising taxes.  But it will obviously be harder for the court to put itself in the public’s crosshairs.  But when it comes to the Bill of Rights, that is where the constitution places the court, for good or ill.  Sometimes the constitution puts the elected branches on the political hotseat, and sometimes it puts the court there.

That is why it is fair to hold the Chief Justice to the apt quotation from his great predecessor, Chief Justice John Marshall.  “The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.”  When a same-sex marriage case does make it to the highest court, Roberts’ hardest decision will be whether he believes the court that bears his name is stable enough to apply the same apolitical view of constitutional interpretation to itself that he has applied to Congress.

The health care opinion is a remarkably stabilizing decision.  The Chief Justice managed both the politics and the law well.  I think it is a hopeful sign.

 

10 Comments

Best and Worst

by on

Mary Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has married her longtime partner, Heather Poe. Fox News reported that:

In a statement, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, said the couple got married in Washington on Friday. The Cheneys said the two had been in a committed relationship for many years and they were delighted that they could take advantage of the “opportunity to have the relationship recognized.”

A good news story that also helps extend support for marriage equality outside the left-liberal “progressive” echo chamber. Alas, that echo chamber’s denizens seem intent on alienating any potential avenue of support that isn’t part of the left-progressive scene. Example: The big gay news ricocheting around conservative media and blogs isn’t the Cheney marriage, but of gay rights activists, guests of President Obama, making obscene gestures at the portrait of President Reagan during a gay pride reception at the White House. Juvenile in the extreme. As Gay Patriot’s B. Daniel Blatt remarks, “What would the media reaction be if social conservatives had photographed themselves flipping off pictures of Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter while visiting the White House?”

More. Along somewhat similar lines, at Powerlineblog.com.

21 Comments

A Conservative Argument

by on

There’s an important essay defending gay marriage in, of all places, The American Conservative. And its placement there, making the conservative case in conservative terms, is significant.

Noah Millman critiques in “Gay Marriage and the Limits of Consequentialism” the “consequentialist” case against marriage equality, “a case which says, basically, that since you don’t know what the outcome will be you should move very slowly and incrementally in implementing any change.”

He concludes:

The case for gay marriage–the Burkean case, you might say–is simply that what amount to common-law gay marriages already exist. Numerous gay couples settle down for long-term, even life-long relationships of mutual support. They jointly own property. They bear, adopt, and rear children. These are already existing realities, not hypotheticals. They are not the product of state diktats; they are the product of organic cultural change which, in turn, has shaped changes in the law.

And that:

The question before the people is whether to recognize these realities, and, if so, as what. “As marriage” is one answer–the answer favored by those who want to secure those already-existing arrangements, for families already in them and for future generations who might want to form similar arrangements. And it’s the answer that seems to be getting intuitively more persuasive to more and more people as they look at these couples and at straight marriages and don’t see any fundamental differences that the law should be cognizant of.

It won’t sway the religious right. Still, there are a lot of conservatives who are not religious fundamentalists but who look at the unintended consequences of well-meant liberal social initiatives, including the role of economic redistribution in promoting government dependency and family breakdown, and say “Enough!” Those are the conservatives who can be, and must be, reached, using arguments and language that resonates with their deeply held convictions.

31 Comments

Doing It

by on

Mark Regnerus gets props for being candid about his new study on parenting, but doesn’t seem to understand what he’s actually being candid about.

The study is another attempt to compare the effects on children of same-sex parents and opposite-sex parents — well, kind of.  Regnerus just asked adults if, as children, either of their parents had ever had a same-sex relationship, and if so, whether they’d lived with that parent during that period.  That approach obviously has some real problems, as John Corvino so aptly argues at TNR.

In describing the methodology of his research, Regnerus says, “I realize that one same-sex relationship does not a lesbian make, necessarily. But our research team was less concerned with the complicated politics of sexual identity than with same-sex behavior.”

I can’t think of a statement that more clearly reveals the chasm between the way the extreme right views sexual orientation and the way most everyone else does today.  Not knowing much about Regnerus, I have no idea what his political proclivities might be; all I can say is that his statement incorporates a view of homosexuality that is widely accepted only among the political and religious right today.

No one would argue that heterosexuality is synonymous with sexual behavior — or at least no one would who expected to be taken seriously.  Sexual orientation — gay or straight — involves sexual behavior, but also an enormous spectrum of other factors, psychological, emotional, relational and both public and private.  I doubt many heterosexual couples would stand for having their sexual behavior isolated and then used as the measure against their parenting skills.

But Regnerus is happy to do that for homosexuals.  He thinks it will actually be helpful to society to compare people who have engaged in homosexual behavior and had some experience parenting (for as little as four months), with heterosexual parents who have married and devoted a lifetime to raising children.

That is a comparison that is simply untenable.  When many of the children he surveyed were growing up, of course, homosexuality was more widely stigmatized as sexual behavior — or, more accurately, sexual misbehavior, since it could also be criminalized.  That view of homosexuality as conduct rather than as something more integrated into a human character is something most of the culture has moved on from.  But the right continues its obsessive focus on sex, to the exclusion of anything else.  And Regnerus places that view of homosexuality at the very heart of his study.

In addition, Regnerus makes the same mistake that Dr. Robert Spitzer made in his early study of homosexuality, and has both regretted and apologized for: taking the word of people about their experiences, without any further delving.

It would be good to hear Regnerus respond to both of these criticisms.  I don’t think either one has a responsible answer.  Whatever his study shows, it does not answer the question that the right poses: whether there is any scientific proof that the children of stable homosexual couples do any better or worse than the children of stable heterosexual couples.

0 Comments