IGF CultureWatch

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, R. Albert Mohler Jr., writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. …
…we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. …
There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world around us that is being tested, so much as the believing church. We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach.

There you have the crux of the Christian right’s position, stated without rancor. It may do no good to argue, as many do, that Jesus never mentioned or condemned homosexuality but went out of his way to break bread with social outcasts and to charge those who would condemn a prostitute to cast the first stone if they were, themselves, without sin (as no one is). The apostle Paul, who never met Jesus in the flesh, did condemn a man who lies with a man as with a woman, but as with many Biblical prohibitions that statement is open to contextual interpretation (i.e., a condemnation of pagan practices). However, to the fundamentalist, whether on the Christian right or the politically correct left, the world is always black and white.

What particularly struck me about Mohler’s argument, however, is the underlying claim that we are in the midst of a moral revolution that is anti-gospel and therefore must be opposed. His is the same church, mind you, that about 150 years ago proclaimed that chattel slavery was Biblically sanctioned and worth fighting to maintain (although it would seem that anyone who reads the gospels without blinders could easily see how antithetical to the message of Jesus such as view was). Ending slavery, too, was a “moral revolution” that his church could not, and would not, accept.

It’s particularly sad when those who choose to dwell in darkness proclaim that their effort to keep human souls in bondage, then as now, is somehow God’s will. Here’s another Biblical verse: “Jesus wept.”

More. Bruce Bawer shares his thoughts on Mohler’s op-ed.

In the Wall Street Journal, it’s dueling op-eds by my friend Walter Olson (“An Amen for Albany“) vs. Maggie Gallagher (“New York’s GOP Let Down the Base“).

The struggle is not just between the left and the right. There’s a fight within the right as well. And since those who lean to the right of the political spectrum consistently represent more than half of the nation, it’s a fight that must be made and won.

I was as surprised as anyone by David Frum’s declaration that the facts no longer support the claim that gay marriage will damage straight families. David and I have been friends since college, but our friendship was strained when he asserted in the 1990s that sodomy laws—i.e., menacing people like me with arrest and imprisonment—would be a good way to discourage judges from imposing SSM. When he and his wife offered last year to host a reception in honor of my marriage to Michael, I was deeply touched, but I understood his gesture as one of friendship, not as a recantation.

And, in fact, I think David’s statement on gay marriage is not a change of principle. Just the opposite. It represents  fidelity to a principle—a conservative principle—and therein lies its importance.

David, in the past, has expressed philosophical objections to SSM, having to do with marriage’s being founded on distinctive gender roles and so on. You’ll note that in his article he doesn’t embrace SSM. What he does say is that his consequentialist objections—objections based on real-world consequences—have been disproved.

None of that nuance will matter in conservative-land. Right-wingers will cite this as yet another example of his apostasy. But here’s the irony. They are not the real conservatives. He is.

Specifically, he’s a Burkean conservative, one who begins from a presumption that social change is disruptive, but who is also open to real-world evidence that sometimes change is necessary or beneficial. Burke, remember, supported the American revolution as protective of basic rights, even as he bitterly opposed the French one.

There is nothing conservative about never changing your mind, regardless of the facts. Nor is there much that is truly conservative about the strange coalition of anti-government radicals and social reactionaries that dominates the American right. Nor will that coalition do itself any political favors by excommunicating Burke and his pragmatic descendents. A better approach would be to understand why David Frum, far from betraying conservatism’s greatest tradition, exemplifies it.

New York’s Republican-controlled state Senate voted 32-29 late Friday night to bring gay marriage to New York.

As I blogged a few days ago, “What’s going on in the New York marriage struggle shows why winning over Republicans (even just a few!) matters greatly.”

Only a handful of GOP state senators voted for the bill, but the GOP majority leader allowed the vote to come to the floor. We’re still a ways away from the day when national congressional GOP leaders would allow something like DOMA repeal to receive an up or down vote in the GOP controlled House, but New York shows that with some effort, enough Republicans can be moved to advance gay equality in a real and substantive way.

More. The role played by rich Republicans, to the dismay of some. And no immediate response from the GOP presidential contenders, perhaps because of the complete absence of a “judicial tyranny” argument for conservatives. Now we can ask supposedly Tenth Amendment-style Republicans, “Do you think the federal government should overrule the governor and legislature of New York?”

Furthermore. Michele Bachmann speaks, and she’s gotten it exactly wrong. She supports Tenth amendment state rights to set the laws they want to set, and she supports using Congress to override state decisions that she doesn’t agree with. From Fox News:

the Minnesota congresswoman said it’s also up to the states to decide whether they permit same-sex marriage. … She added that it’s not a contradiction to pursue a federal constitutional amendment that would trump state law…

And 2+2=5.

More still. Maureen Dowd writes critically of the president:

Obama’s reluctance to come out for gay marriage seems hugely and willfully inconsistent with what we know about his progressive worldview. And it is odd that the first black president is letting Andrew Cuomo, who pushed through a gay-marriage bill in Albany on Friday night, go down in history as the leader on the front lines of the civil rights issue of our time.

But for the president, “the fierce urgency of now” applies only to getting checks from the gay community, not getting up to speed with all the Americans who think it’s time for gay marriage.

Yet more still Conservative columnist James Taranto writes in the Wall Street Journal:

the overwrought expressions of anger and despair from people who style themselves champions of traditional marriage have the feel of scapegoating. It isn’t the fault of gays that marriage is in dire straits.

And David Boaz calls Republicans to account on federalism and states rights.

Mark Steyn on free speech:

Mark Steyn on Free Speech.

At 6:20, he describes investigations by Scotland Yard against a Muslim cleric for homophobia after the cleric denounced homosexuality, and a simultaneous investigation by Scotland Yard against a gay group for Islamaphobia after it accused Islam of being homophobic.

More about Steyn’s remarks here.

While his most egregious examples are from Britain, Canada and Australia, they serve as a cautionary tale. Despite the First Amendment, there are many ideologues on both the left and the right would like to stifle speech they view as “hurtful” or “offensive” here in the U.S.—which is why vigilant support for free speech remains so important.

In this video, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell gives a long ode to the value of Ron Paul as the most important voice for marriage equality because he speaks to Republicans and conservatives (he chooses to take a positive view of Paul’s somewhat confusing language).

Also, from Politico: Newly declared GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s fundraising is targeting gay Republicans, based on his support for civil unions.

Yes, it’s still likely the GOP ticket will be Romney/Bachmann in 2012, but those who say there is no hope for changing the GOP are defeatists helping to perpetuate the status quo.

What’s going on in the New York marriage struggle shows why winning over Republicans (even just a few!) matters greatly. But those who run our leading LGBT political lobbies still seems to be firmly committed to a one-party strategy. Their identity politics is all bound up in being Democrats.

More. Lady Gaga isn’t helping.

George Will swoons over Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz, a strong supporter of the Tenth Amendment (i.e., powers not granted to the federal government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution are reserved, respectively, to the states or the people). Except, Will neglects to mention, when it comes to state marriage laws, where Cruz loses his federalist principles and (at the very least) vigorously supports the Defense of Marriage Act, barring federal recognition of state-sanctioned marriages.

Last night’s Republican debate had a long exchange on same-sex marriage and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military. The short of it: only Rep. Ron Paul and businessman Herman Cain said that they do not support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in all states, and that they would not reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Conservative Rep. Michelle Backmann seemed at first to say states should handle marriage issues but then backtracked and voiced support for the amendment – joining Romney, Pawlenty Gingrich and the others in violating the federalist, limited government principles they claim to uphold.

Let’s note that CNN didn’t invite former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson to the debate, and that likely candidate Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and former U.S. ambassador to China, has not yet declared and so was absent. Both oppose the constitutional amendment and wouldn’t reinstate DADT.

The GOP candidates last night made a number of strong points on the catastrophic deficit growth led by President Obama and congressional Democrats, and the perils of the Democrats’ blocking efforts at (and demagogic scare-mongering over) entitlement reform. But, with the exceptions noted, their fealty to using the government to enforce anti-gay discrimination makes them unacceptable. Here’s hoping Huntsman declares soon.

More. From Politico: Huntsman’s fundraising is targeting gay Republicans, based on his support for civil unions.