IGF CultureWatch

Revised November 29, 2011

Sorry, but I’m not about to join the chorus singing the praises for Mass. Rep. Barney Frank on his announced retirement from the House. Yes, he was one of the earliest openly gay members of Congress (Rep. Gerry Studds actually was the first, and Frank’s coming out was tainted by scandal over his boyfriend working as a prostitute from their apartment).

On the plus side, Frank championed gay rights legislation that never passed, such as the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, and opposed, unsuccessfully, the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, both signed into law by President Bill Clinton, whom he avidly supported.

But gay rights don’t exist in a vacuum, as our friends on the left tirelessly remind us. And Frank, in my view, has been one of the all time worst legislators in U.S. history. During the housing bubble that eventually brought us to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Frank tireless opposed efforts to require more sensible capital reserve requirements for federally created Democratic housing fiefdoms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Opposing stronger regulation of these government sponsored enterprises (while trying to ramp up the red tape on private financial firms), he famously intoned in 2003, “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

When they blew up due to lack of sufficient capital (couldn’t see that coming?), Frank blamed the political opposition. He also championed legislation forcing banks to make subprime housing loans to those whose lack of income and assets should have disqualified them (the Community Reinvestment Act), and who later would be among those with homes they couldn’t afford and mortgages they couldn’t pay (who could have guessed?). Frank said critics of the bill and its effects were motivated by racism.

The result was the bank bailouts that taxpayers funded. And if that wasn’t enough damage, Frank capped his career with the Dodd-Frank regulatory behemoth that is helping to strangle business investment.

Barney, good riddance. Don’t let the congressional door slam you on the way out.

More. An argument has been made that if Clinton had not signed the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress would have sent to the states (which would have ratified) the much worse Federal Marriage Amendment. Maybe. But I think history shows that trying to appease an enemy by surrendering some rights and liberties only makes the enemy, having tasted victory, hungry for more. If instead of boasting about signing DOMA Clinton had used some political capital to make the case for letting states decide the issue, an argument with some conservative resonance, things might have turned out very differently.

The Washington Post looks at the status of gay federal employees, noting that because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) their partners are prohibited from receiving spousal health benefits that are increasingly common in the private sector.

One day DOMA will go the way of all pernicious things, but this is one more example of how government trails the private sector in all manner of innovations. In this case, it’s because of anti-gay Republicans who pushed for DOMA and complicit Democrats, such as Bill Clinton, who signed it and then bragged about having done so in his southern campaign ads. In other instances, innovation in the government sector is stymied by fealty to public sector unions and their hidebound rules. And innovation throughout the economy is curtailed by the government’s arcane legislation and voluminous regulation, and by the crony capitalism fueled by K Street lobbyists that misdirects capital for political payback.

Altogether, it’s why bigger government isn’t the answer to what ails America.

The Washington Blade’s Kevin Naff reflects on the Penn State/Jery Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal and how some anti-gay groups are trotting out their gay = pedophile propaganda. But what’s striking is the absence of a homophobic backlash, which we would certainly have seen in years past.

More. The social conservatives give it the old try.

If the Democrat-controlled Senate follows the lead of its Judiciary Committee with a party line vote to repeal the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), then the GOP-controlled House will certainly not do likewise. Quite the opposite. Too bad Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t work to move DOMA repeal out of committee when the Democrats controlled both chambers, including the Senate with a filibuster-proof supermajority.

Yes, there’s politics afoot. DOMA repeal has no chance, but a Senate vote would galvanize gay voters—and precisely because it has no chance of being enacted, it won’t unleash a broad reaction against the Democrats in socially conservative swing states, the fear of which kept Reid from moving on DOMA repeal when it actually might have made its way to Obama’s desk. Pretty neat, eh.

The wild card is a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which might at least repeal the DOMA clause prohibiting the federal government from recognizing state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. Such a move would infuriate social conservatives, but it also wouldn’t please a lot of Democratic strategists hoping the issue stays below the radar of swing state voters.

More. Yes, I realize the GOP now could and probably will filibuster repeal in the Senate, but the point still holds. The Democrats only bring it up when it has no chance of actually passing.

From National Journal, Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Looking for Conservative Support:

The Respect for Marriage Act, the bill that would repeal 1996’s DOMA, has little if any chance of passing this Congress, but advocates are hoping to form a wave of support that will eventually lead to the end of DOMA and return the decision on marriage to states. …
The salons are also meant to show conservatives that support gay marriage they are not alone. Getting them to support the issue publicly, though, is another story. “Reaching out to the right, it’s a different animal,” said Nicole Neily, the executive director of the fiscally conservative Independent Women’s Forum and one of the leaders of the third-party salon.

This will be a protracted cultural and political struggle, but it’s good to see that efforts are being made by supporters of marriage equality within the conservative movement. As I’ve often stated, the argument to the right has to be made in the language of the right (individual liberty vs. over-reaching government), and it’s a language that the big-government left just doesn’t speak.

More. Agreeing to talk: A look at an ongoing dialogue between gay marriage advocate Jonathan Rauch and opponent David Blakenhorn.

In a fallen world, even the best ideas are susceptible to corruption. One example is how the “It Gets Better” campaign has degenerated into political posturing. As Sean Cutter writes in the Washington Blade, the series of YouTube videos originally conveyed stories of inspiration to bullied gay kids. But like most everything else, it has become politicized and now we have a endless stream of politicians who know nothing about the experience of distraught gay youth trotted out to score political points. As Cutter writes:

Congressman Jim Moran’s video is uncomfortable to watch because, having no experience to relate to troubled gay teens with, he resorts to talking about how he was a “shy kid” growing up. He looks like he doesn’t know what else to say, and how could he? He never grew up with the broad, institutional persecution that LGBT youth face. But with so many other politicians making similar videos, his office must have felt that it needed to make its own.

Even worse,

Rep. Leonard Lance, who appears in the video, voted against repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Rep. Frank LoBiondo, who says in the video, “There are actions we can take to make things better now,” voted against repeal of DADT and for the Marriage Protection Act, which would prohibit federal courts from hearing cases that involve challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act.

Which may put into perspective the decision by Sen. Scott Brown (who voted for “Don’t Ask” repeal) to forgo making a video despite howls of protest from certain partisan corners.

Kudos to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which is working on behalf of a gay GOP candidate. In Virginia, gay Republican Patrick Forrest, an attorney and former senior official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is running for state senate (with Victory Fund and Log Cabin support) against a Democratic opponent whose campaign engaged in homophobic tactics. Of course, that hasn’t stopped LGBT Democratic partisans from protesting the Victory Funds’ apostasy against partisan purity.

Update. Alas, Forrest did not prevail against the incumbent.

Columnist George Will scores some points in his column “Conformity for diversity’s sake,” but his argument gets marred by conservative tics such as conflating sexual orientation with “sexual practices,” as when he writes:

Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its “long-standing nondiscrimination policy.” That policy, says a university official, does not allow the Christian Legal Society “to preclude someone from a leadership position based on religious belief.” So an organization formed to express religious beliefs, including the belief that homosexual activity is biblically forbidden, is itself effectively forbidden.

Still, liberals (in the classical sense, at least) should be wary of efforts to limit freedom of association, as Will points out when he quotes former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, “the court’s leading liberal of the last half-century,” who said:

“There can be no clearer example of an intrusion into the internal structure or affairs of an association than a regulation that forces the group to accept members it does not desire. Such a regulation may impair the ability of the original members to express only those views that brought them together. Freedom of association therefore plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.”

Put another way, if gay groups, say, on university campuses, don’t want to have to allow religious conservatives to attend their meetings and selectively quote Scripture at them, they shouldn’t insist that religious conservatives be forced to allow openly gay students to join their clubs. Of course, on today’s campuses, the former would never be tolerated, but demanding the latter reveals the ideological conformism that, as Will points out, underlies much of “diversity” orthodoxy.

Here’s an interesting look at Race, Religion and Same-Sex Marriage, via the New York Times. Writes openly gay columnist Frank Bruni, “the quest to legalize same-sex marriage — now permitted in six states and Washington, D.C. — has met particular resistance from African-Americans.” He notes that black oppositon played a major role in passing the anti-gay-marriage Prop. 8 in California and defeating an attempt to pass marriage equality legislatively in Maryland.

Bruni points out that the Human Rights Campaign has launched a media campaign using video testimonials by black celebrities and civil rights leaders to speak up for marriage equality. That’s certainly fine. Since HRC can’t/won’t work to make inroads among non-Democrats, at least focusing on winning over a large but recalcitrant part of the Democratic coalition makes sense.

Gay troops and veterans are challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in a federal lawsuit. The federal law prohibits the U.S. government from providing numerous benefits to the spouses of gay troops, including health insurance coverage, surviving spouse benefits and the financial stipend for off-base housing. Pentagon policy also prevents gay couples from being allowed to live in on-base military family housing, which gay couples can do in Great Britain and Australia.

This seems like a savvy suit that hits the right cultural buttons, so I hope it goes somewhere.

Marriage equity, of course, remains a political fault line in America, with religious conservatives placing a stranglehold on GOP candidates who know (or should know) that support for a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage throughout the U.S. hurts them with independents and socially moderate Republicans. But for the religious right, it’s a litmus test.

Witness the ordeal of Herman Cain. Last week the Washington Blade reported that Cain remarked on “Meet the Press” that “I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same sex marriage, but I am pro-traditional marriage,” and that “Pressed by host David Gregory on whether states should decide the issue for themselves, Cain replied, ‘They would make up their own minds, yes.’”

The Blade also noted that “Earlier this month, Cain told the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein he has no problems with openly gay people serving in the military and wouldn’t seek to reinstate ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ if elected president.”

But just one week after the Blade ran that story, it reported that, after sharp criticism from the right, Cain indicated to the conservative Christian Broadcasting Network that he’d support the amendment because of efforts to undo the Defense of Marriage Act. “I think marriage should be protected at the federal level also,” Cain now said. “I used to believe that it could be just handled by the states…”—apparently just a week earlier.