IGF CultureWatch

Via Real Clear Politics.

I think if President Obama came out as gay, he wouldn’t lose the black vote,” a cheerful Van Jones told MSNBC this afternoon. “President Obama is not going to lose the black vote no matter what he does,” he added.

Jones seems to recognize that homophobia is a factor in the black community, but goes on to dismiss its impact (and then, to be fair, he defends marriage equality, which few Republicans would do). Still, the linkage of “coming out as gay” and “no matter what he does,” with all that chortling between Jones and the MSNBC gang, is more than a little unsettling.

In the 1980s, Larry Kramer was the best Cassandra a movement – and a nation – could have asked for.  Caustic, relentless and loud, Kramer gave us all a kick in the butt and ACT UP, both badly needed, and both successful beyond anyone’s imagining.

More than a quarter century later, he’s finding it hard to accept victory.  His sour screed at the Huffington Post is unnecessary, overheated and wrong.  In typical Kramer fashion, he overargues his case, but what once was passion now just comes across as melodrama:

During World War II, when Jews were being gassed to death by the trainload, the great Jewish scholar of political theory Hannah Arendt told her people they should form an army to fight back, and that they only had themselves to blame if they didn’t. We had that army for a while. It was called ACT UP. What happened to it?

Well, two things.  First, after its victory, it moved on.  Yes, there still is HIV, and yes, far too many people suffer and die as a result.  But today that is more a function of poverty, ignorance and other social conditions than of homophobia and the pathological need to make gay people invisible.  While one part of the ACT UP forces became more radical, the rest saw they really had made a difference, and tried to actually enjoy the fruits of their labor. The AIDS fight did more than just save the lives of millions, and bring a generation out of the closet, it was the earthquake that uprooted in heterosexuals the refusal to acknowledge gay people even existed.

And because of that, a second thing happened to the army: It enlisted an uncountable number of heterosexuals.  Kramer may have difficulty accepting that fact, since he seems to have blinded himself to the idea that heterosexuals can be not only our allies but also our champions.  But that is the most profound change that has happened since the 1980s.

The problem of a minority in a democracy is that it cannot, by definition, succeed on its own.  It must have allies, either in the political realm or at the very least, in the courts.  And today, we have no shortage of such allies: Ted Olson and David Boies; Meghan and Cindy McCain; Andrew Cuomo and Christine Gregoire; George Clooney and Brad Pitt;  Isaiah Thomas, Antonio Cromartie and Scott Fujita; Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt. . . . It is utterly impossible to draft a complete list of heterosexuals who not only support us, but have taken public roles in fostering our equality.

But don’t tell that to Kramer:

To those still alive, just know that there’s no one out there fighting for you now. [snip] Why can’t we, once and for all, bond together to fight for our mutual needs? Where are the leaders who can lead us on this journey to our equality?

Kramer’s pessimism seems to come from his view that only gay people should or can fight for their rights:

What does that say about how much the gay population wants to fight for these rights that I speak of? I think we help to kill each other by not fighting together to get these rights, by fighting each other instead, and not fighting against all the hate that’s always out there coming non-stop from our enemies.

Yes, we still have enemies who fire non-stop hate in our direction.  Bully (you might say) for them.  But it’s hard work these days being that grim a pessimist.  With the important exception of schoolchildren, the vast majority of us can ignore the haters (or even love them, depending on your philosophy), and keep convincing the far larger group of waverers.  And in a beautiful exponential progression, each person who changes in our favor changes others.  That progression does not work in the opposite direction.

If I were in a position to give any advice to Kramer, it would be to open his gaze a little, and include heterosexual supporters in his worldview.  The glass isn’t half empty, it’s three-quarters full.

David Boaz blogs “Conservatives Shift on Gay Marriage.” Well, OK, it’s mainly about Britain’s Conservative Party, which is leading the charge for same-sex marriage in the U.K. But Boaz notes that, here in the U.S., “Republicans too know that ‘young urbanites’ are overwhelmingly supportive of marriage equality, and they don’t want to lose a whole generation.”

But when (or whether) the GOP can move forward by doing both what’s right (the principle of equal freedom under the law) and politically pragmatic (appealing to the center) in the face of intransigent opposition by the Santorum social right, whose activists still dominate GOP presidential caucuses, remains to be seen.

More. From Politico, Republicans Retreat on Gay Marriage:

Just a few years ago, House Republicans were trying to etch their opposition of gay marriage into the Constitution. Now? They’re almost silent. …

It’s not like the GOP has become a bastion of progressiveness on gay rights, but there has been an evolution in the political approach — and an acknowledgment of a cultural shift in the country.

And the article notes this:

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released earlier this month showed a 9 percent increase in support for gay marriage among Republicans to 31 percent. Support among 18-to-34-year-olds was nearly 70 percent, according to a 2011 Washington Post/ABC News poll.

And so the wind blows.

As a result of litigation the National Organization for Marriage was compelled to release some of its internal documents, which have now been published at HRC, BuzzFeed and elsewhere. One widely criticized board document proposes “fanning the hostility” between blacks and gays; that has drawn rebuke from almost every quarter, including Barry Deutsch of FamilyScholars.org. And Rob Tisinai of Box Turtle Bulletin wonders whether when NOM laid plans to fan hostility in this way, it stopped to think what the effect might be on black gay teens.

I contributed a comment at National Review Online about another of the revelations in the documents, which involves the sowing of discord and enmity at the most intimate level imaginable:

To me the most striking detail was that NOM had budgeted $120,000 for a project to locate children of gay households willing to denounce their parents on camera.

Whenever I hear NOM described as “pro-family” from now on, I will think of that fact.

I wonder whether some of these revelations might bring about a “one night he heard screams” moment for some who have backed NOM in the past.

Jonathan Rauch explains why Rick Santorum’s beliefs on privacy are deeply troubling, to say the least. He writes:

Defending sodomy laws, Santorum didn’t make the usual half-hearted point that the laws were rarely enforced. He came out swinging. Homosexuality is among behaviors that are “outside of traditional heterosexual relationships” and therefore “undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family.” People have no right to engage in such behaviors, even in their own homes.

Rauch then asks,

If the state can’t be trusted to regulate our markets, can it really be trusted to regulate our morals? By way of an answer, return, for a minute, to Houston in 1998. According to “Flagrant Conduct,” a fascinating and important new book by University of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter, what really happened in Lawrence’s apartment that night, though shocking, won’t surprise many gay Americans. Lawrence and Garner were not having sex when the cops arrived. …

Two officers freely admitted to Carpenter that their disgust at homosexuality was a factor in the arrest. Nothing new there. Sodomy laws in practice had nothing to do with the enforcement of virtue, and everything to do with the arbitrary use of state power against gays. Before Lawrence, many police departments treated baiting and entrapping homosexuals as a kind of sport.

Back to Santorum, Rauch observes:

He can’t revoke privacy, which the country prizes, and he probably can’t be president. But his ascendance could—and, by rights, should — break the already strained alliance of libertarians and social conservatives on which the post-Reagan conservative movement is built.

For more about Carpenter’s book on Lawrence v. Texas, here’s a link to the San Francisco Chronicle’s review.

Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn discusses “The Gay Alternative to Obamacare,” by which he means GOProud’s critique of the Democrats’ signature power grab. McGurn writes:

Gay Americans understandably chafe at the way the tax code discriminates against them with regard to health insurance. If you are heterosexual, the insurance provided your spouse by your company is treated as a benefit—which means it is untaxed. If, by contrast, you are gay, the insurance provided your spouse or partner by your company can be treated as income—which means taxed.

And then he observes:

Yet with one notable exception, most gay organizations nevertheless continue to argue for solutions that expand the federal government’s role in health care and leave the employer privilege intact. The exception is GOProud, a pro-free market, pro-individual liberty, pro-limited government coalition of gay conservatives and their allies. This group argues that the problem with our tax code isn’t just that it discriminates against gays. It’s that it discriminates against every American who doesn’t have his or her health insurance through an employer.

The folks at GOProud aren’t asking for special treatment. To the contrary, they want a system in which all health-care consumers are treated equally. They argue that this requires a thriving national marketplace for individual insurance…

The point being:

“When the left does identity politics, they simply craft special policies that benefit particular groups,” says [GOProud’s Executive Director Jimmy] LaSalvia. “We’re about explaining how limited government and policies that treat everyone equally might benefit some people in unique ways. As conservatives, we need to do a better job of letting particular groups know how they would benefit from this approach.”

The statist left, including LGBT “progressives,” sees big government control as a way to eventually ensure equality, as long as progressives are calling the shots (and when they’re not and the mega-state falls into the hands of social conservatives, well, too bad). The libertarian view is that it’s better to reduce the role of government and allow free people to make their own decisions via voluntary contractual relationships within a free market system.

As the New York Times reports:

An attempt to repeal New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage law failed on Wednesday in the House of Representatives, with members of the Republican-dominated chamber voting 211-116 to kill the bill. …

With Republicans outnumbering Democrats by three to one in the House, which has approved a number of socially conservative bills this session, proponents of same-sex marriage feared early on that there was little chance of preserving the law.

“Every step forward is a sign of momentum,” said Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, a group that lobbies for same-sex marriage nationwide. “The fact that we got two-thirds of the vote, in one of the most heavily Republican legislatures in the country, will make a serious impact.”

The leftwing flagship Daily Kos ran a story headlined, “New Hampshire’s tea party-run legislature … upholds gay marriage.” It concluded, rightly, “In other words, progress.”

David Boaz writes at the Huffington Post about Cal Thomas’s Confusion About Freedom. I especially liked the blurb David posted on his Facebook page:

“Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas LOVES freedom. Just read his column today. Except the freedom to smoke pot, read pornography, love the person you love, marry the person you love, etc.”

Another promising new organizational leader is the Gill Action Fund’s Kirk Fordham. As the Washington Blade reports:

Growing up in a Christian and Republican family, Fordham said he also has experience with parents who initially were unhappy about his sexual orientation, but later came to terms with it, and he knows what it takes to change the hearts and minds of people like them. …

A lifelong Republican, Fordham currently serves as CEO of Everglades Foundation, but has had experience working for several GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, even some with anti-gay records. …

Fordham said he “absolutely” plans on reaching out to Republican lawmakers to influence them on LGBT issues and he knows “how to speak their language.”

Along with the impressive R. Clark Cooper at Log Cabin, the team at GOProud, and perhaps Chad Griffin, newly named head of the Human Rights Campaign (a liberal Democratic activist who has reached out to and worked with Republicans), the broader LGBT movement may yet realize that focusing on electing and lobbying Republicans who are socially libertarian (and preferably fiscally conservative) is the best way to make the Democrats less complacent toward us.