IGF CultureWatch

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.

Everyone will read a different moral lesson into the conviction of Dharun Ravi for invading the privacy of Tyler Clementi and intimidating him because Clementi was gay.  Some see the verdicts as the reason we shouldn’t have hate crimes laws, and others view this case as the vindication of those laws.

I have always been divided.  No hate crime can occur unless there is an underlying offense, and those offenses – whether murder, assault or anything else – are already crimes irrespective of who the victim is.  Penalty enhancements because of a motive beyond that to commit the crime itself do raise troubling questions about government intrusion into thoughts, and there are few areas where the government’s machinery is more destructive and menacing than in criminal prosecutions.

On the other hand, the kinds of cases we associate with hate crimes – lynchings and dragging, the grisly and horrifying death of Matthew Shepard – are especially repulsive because they are more than just the crime itself.  They are genuinely hateful.

And that is the problem for me.  Dharun Ravi’s case is void of anything like that.  It trivializes any meaningful notion of “hate.”

Ian Parker’s excellent article lays out the story in the New Yorker, and if it is unrecognizable as the story told by the daily press and television news, that is the point.  It’s been a long time since the mainstream media got the adrenaline rush of a real hate crime against a homosexual like they had with Matthew Shepard.  Clementi’s suicide seemed to have all the right elements, but Parker astutely sticks to the actual facts, rather than just the ones that support the desired spin.

Ravi certainly seems to have been a privileged, arrogant and heedless young man, and there’s little doubt he possessed just enough high school-level ambiguity about gay boys to be pretty uncomfortable when he learned his new college roommate was gay.  His initial reaction on finding out, texted to a friend, was “FUCK MY LIFE; he’s gay.”

Ravi didn’t have the makings of a Meghan McCain style gay rights supporter, but neither does he seem to have what it takes to be a homophobe.  When another friend fretted about how awkward it would be if Clementi made a sexual overture, Ravi replied, “He probs would. Why would it be awk. He’d want me I wouldn’t want him.”  If homophobia has any touchstone at all, it is an exaggerated overreaction to gay sex in general, and any thought of a homosexual advance in particular.  On that score, Ravi is wanting.

Like many boys his age, Ravi seemed more concerned about Clementi’s possible effeminacy than about homosexuality in general, and agreed with a friend who drew the distinction between the apparently feminine, weak and geeky Clementi and a less flamboyant homosexual they had met during orientation.  When Ravi finally actually heard directly from Clementi for the first time, he reported to a friend that Clementi was “gay, but regular gay.”  Not a ringing endorsement of equality, but not exactly the Red Flag of Homophobia.

Ravi’s use of words like “fag” and “fruity” are hardly hallmarks of tolerance, but they fall into a broader context, as does his silly reference to January being a “gay month,” and ultimately his appallingly dumb decision to turn his computer camera on Clementi.  How much of that decision was based on Clementi being gay, and how much on other things about Ravi’s new roommate which were at least as exotic to him?  It seems the only time Ravi actually used the word “hate” about Clementi was in reference to what he thought was Clementi’s poverty.  The privileged Ravi was pretty clear: “Dude, I hate poor people.”  Ravi knew how to use the word “hate,” but even here, there’s more rhetoric than emotion.

The jury did not have to be convinced Ravi hated gays, which is one more reason this case is such a poor exemplar of a hate crime.  It is enough under New Jersey law that the invasion of Clementi’s privacy was intended to intimidate the victim based on sexual orientation.  Ravi was straddling the line between intimidation and embarrassment, neither pleasant for the victim, but with consequences for the perpetrator that make all the difference under the criminal law.

The jury found that Ravi was intimidating Clementi because Clementi was gay, and that finding makes this a case of public interest rather than just another stupid college prank.

But it is being understood as a case about hate, and that is a shame.  If there is any hatred here, it is an anemic and indefinite kind of hate that comes from the decadent and feeble politics of victimization.  And that has left us with two victims, rather than none.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute remarks to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin:

Every time Republicans have a big win — 1980, 1994, 2010 — it’s because Democrats have overreached on their big-government agenda and Republicans campaign on lower taxes and limited government. Every Republican strategist knows that smaller government is the unifying theme for Republicans and independents in this election. I think even Santorum knows it. I think he doesn’t really mean to get distracted into talking about homosexuality, contraception, and the outrage of separation of church and state. He just can’t help it.

In 2010, the nascent Tea Party movement, focused on fighting back against Obama’s trillions of dollars of debt expansion thrown willy-nilly at politically favored boondoggles, led to the GOP takeover of the House and strong gains in the Senate. But the empire strikes back, and social conservatives supporting Rick Santorum, the anti-libertarian, (and this) are showing they’re still potent.

This occurs just as the Koch brothers are attempting to take over the libertarian Cato Institute (a think tank that has played an important role in advancing gay legal equality, such as through its Supreme Court brief in Lawrence v. Texas that was cited approvingly in his decision by Justice Kennedy, and in supporting marriage equality) and turn Cato into another arm of their Republican election machine by placing Koch employees, Republican campaign operatives and social conservatives on its board. More on the libertarian-conservative divide from Outside the Beltway.

Why is the debate over contraception coverage a women’s issue?  I know a lot of heterosexual men, and my understanding is that they have as much of an interest in controlling whether and when to have children as women do.

Contrary to what you might think, the vast majority of heterosexual American men do not view sex the way Catholic bishops are required to.  So shouldn’t someone be asking men, too, how they feel about whether insurance coverage for contraception is important as a public policy issue?

David Boaz writes of the societal progression toward gay legal equality:

Even as the Republican candidates fight to see who can get furthest to the right, acceptance of gay people and gay marriage in the United States is moving briskly along. … Republicans haven’t given up their opposition, but their resolve is weakening. A few GOP legislators helped put [marriage equality] over the top in New York, Washington, and Maryland. Former Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman and a group of libertarian-leaning GOP donors played a key role in [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo’s efforts in New York.

The formerly vocal opposition to gay marriage has quieted. Congressional Republicans haven’t revived the Federal Marriage Amendment. Conservative media stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh and Bill Buckley’s National Review have barely mentioned the issue. (When you search for gay marriage at National Review Online, you get lots of ads for things like “Gay Destination Weddings.”) The ambitious [N.J. Gov. Chris] Christie vetoed his state’s bill while also calling for a referendum on gay marriage rather than flatly rejecting the idea. He also has nominated an openly gay judge to the state Supreme Court.

As Boaz sums it up, “That sound you don’t hear is social change happening.”

Chad Griffin, newly named head of the Human Rights Campaign is, like his predecessor Joe Solmonese, a Democratic partisan with close ties to the Obama administration. But perhaps unlike Solmonese, who departs to join the Obama reelection effort, he seems more willing to work with Republicans (something you sensed Solmonese felt was anathema) and to be critical of the administration (again, something that seemed anathema for Solmonese). From The Advocate:

Griffin, 38, is a fervent supporter of President Obama with personal ties to White House officials, but … Griffin has been openly critical of the president’s evolving position on marriage equality, calling Obama’s indicated support for states’ rights on deciding who can marry “a step backwards.”

NARAL and Planned Parenthood pressed Obama to force Catholic-affiliated institutions to buy abortion-inducing drugs for employees. The environmental lobby got Obama to block a jobs- and energy-gushing pipeline and to lavish federal funding on corrupt “green” boondoogles. Meanwhile, HRC took a back seat to the Log Cabin Republicans on pushing for “don’t ask” repeal and sits back while Obama “evolves” ever so slowly on marriage equality. Will any of this change? We’ll see.

More. The Washington Blade concurs:

“The incoming HRC president also comes into the role as many critics contend HRC has been too cozy with the Obama administration and too afraid to criticize Democratic lawmakers.”

You think? Recall that Democrats were in charge of the House, Senate (with a supermajority) and presidency, and ENDA never moved out of committee. Why spend political capital when the nation’s largest LGBT lobby views its mission as promoting the party.

Sadly, Andrew Breitbart, a tireless pundit and blogger for small government/fiscal conservatism who delighted in exposing leftwing hypocrisies, has passed away. Breitbart was an advisor to GOProud, the conservative gay group, and rallied to its support after GOProud was excluded from participating in the national Conservative Political Action Conference.

What’s striking about the comments following the report in the Wall Street Journal is just how hateful are the remarks by some self-professed liberals (they have now been deleted, I see; I think they should have stayed up). As one commenter responded, “I’ve never seen so much rejoicing at a journalist’s death.”

Somewhat related, here’s an interesting piece from the American Spectator on how Santorum and his followers are trying to drive libertarians (or really, all who might be fiscally conservative but socially moderate) out of the conservative movement. Well, they’d be ideologically “purer” if they succeeded, I suppose, but they won’t win elections. Which is why Michael Moore has been encouraging Democrats to vote for Santorum (as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com website reported).

More. The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher retweets some of the posthumous hate and praise.

More. James Kirchick writes The Audacity of Breitbart:

In 2010, Breitbart joined the board of GOProud, a conservative gay organization. The following year, when the Conservative Political Action Conference announced that it would ban GOProud from its conference in deference to complaints from social conservative groups like the Family Research Council, Breitbart pulled out of the conference and declared that he would host a party for the “homocons” instead. His attitude on gays, like on most things, was shaped by the socially liberal milieux in which he was formed: southern California and New Orleans, where he attended Tulane University.

And more here, from Gay Patriot, Breitbart welcomed gays into conservative coalition.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani says the GOP’s stance on gay marriage makes it look like it “doesn’t understand the modern world,” in an interview with CNN. You think?

Social Issues and the Santorum Surge, in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, presents James Taranto’s interview with conservative politico Jeffrey Bell. An excerpt:

Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues…has a winning track record for the GOP. … The populist nature of social conservatism perplexes liberals, who think less-affluent Americans ought to side with the party of statist economics. … Yet Mr. Bell notes that social conservatism is largely a working-class phenomenon: “Middle America does have more children than elite America, and they vote socially conservative, even though they might not necessarily be behaving that way in their personal life. They may be overwhelmed by the sexual revolution and its cultural impacts.”

Santorum is “the most consistent and unapologetic social conservative in the race,” Bell notes.

I imagine Obama would beat Santorum in a matchup (at least that’s the conventional wisdom held by the elite, for now), but Santorum’s surge points out the extent to which we’ve failed to convince working-class America that gay equality is a positive development. Instead, gay rights has been perceptually lumped with both the over-expansion of state intrusiveness and the “sexual revolution”—phenomenon of the left that are viewed (and with some justification) as having destabilized traditional social bedrocks like marriage and community.

There’s a price to be paid by making gay rights part of the agenda of the left, and the Santorum surge may be part of that price.

More. Along the same lines, social conservative columnist Star Parker hails Santorum’s rise, linking it to “three recent left-wing victories”—the appellate ruling that California’s anti-gay-marriage Prop. 8 is unconstitutional; the orchestrated attacks on the Susan G. Komen foundation that led to the reversal of its decision to withdraw funding for Planned Parenthood over the latter’s abortion services; and the administration’s refusing to grant religiously affiliated organizations an exemption from Obamacare’s employer mandate requiring provision of free contraception, abortifacient drugs and sterilization.

The liberal-left supports all three actions; the social right opposes all three. Some of us hear the Sesame Street ditty, “which one of these things is not like the other.”