IGF CultureWatch

Yesterday’s defeat of a vote on the Defense Authorization bill – which included repeal of DADT among hundreds of thousands of other items – is instructive to those who criticize lesbians and gay men for going to the courts to overturn laws passed in the normal democratic process.

DADT, in its molasses-like demise, is subject to anything but a normal democratic process.  To be fair, the entire lame duck session resembles ordinary democracy only in the sense that it is conducted by people who have been duly elected.  But any semblance of process, due or otherwise, is lacking.  Where else but in the United States Senate would the entire country take it for granted that a 57-40 vote in a 100-member body would be a defeat?

But the central point is more particular than mere complaints about the vagaries of Senate procedure.  As Robert Caro discussed in comprehensive historical detail in Master of the Senate, the filibuster and cloture rules have been around to be abused since the very early days of the Senate, and some leaders, like Lyndon Johnson, were able to keep the bills running on time.  Just because the rules are more abused now than at any time in history doesn’t make them any more unfair to anyone, including lesbians and gay men.

No, the singular problem for DADT, as for any law that alienates a specific minority, is how the accumulation of bad feelings about the minority garble and twist the discussion.  Just this week, yet another respectable poll of the American people showed a solid 2/3 who not only support repeal of DADT, but would, themselves, vote for it if asked.  Since 2005, the percentage of support has been at 60% or more.

But when Senator Harry Reid called for the premature, losing vote yesterday, his frustration was palpable.  A senior Senate aide described the problem.  While Reid and Senator Susan Collins had finally agreed to four days of debate, and an amendment process satisfactory to Collins, she was not the only relevant senator:

“It would have been much more than four days,” the aide says. “Her suggestions were flat out unworkable given how the Senate really operates. You can talk about four days until the cows come home. That has very little meaning for Coburn and DeMint and others who have become very skilled at grinding this place to a halt.”

The minority Republicans in the Senate were and are so obsessed with the problem of open homosexuals in the military, that they are not only willing to block a vote on funding for the nation’s entire military, they have done their part to hold it up until this late date even though the prejudice they believe they are protecting is on life support, not only among the voters, but even in the military, itself.

But Republicans are only part of the larger problem.  I cannot speak to Reid’s actual concern about how the Senate’s proceedings would be gummed up, but it’s not really Harry Reid’s rights that are at stake here.  The inconveniences of a leader and his institution are problems of an entirely different species from the problems faced by a woman who is afraid to tell her friends in the military who they should contact if she is killed in fighting.

Would it really have been so bad for the Senate to call the GOP’s bluff on this?  The prospect of Senate Republicans pontificating on gays in the military for four days or more is a soul-chilling prospect, but maybe that’s what the nation needs.  They have no new substantive arguments to make — they never really had any to begin with.  Their rearguard action on this lost cause might just need its Waterloo, to  finish it off once and for all.

Neither Reid nor Obama nor Collins nor anyone else in the Senate has any personal stake in this fight.  Their speeches are speeches, not the real life conflicts that lesbians and gay men have to confront every hour and every day.  It is the heterosexual Senate’s luxury to be able to put off equality until a more convenient time.

We suffer that luxury.  But it is not our only choice.  The courts exist in general, and the equal protection clause exists in particular, precisely because majorities don’t have a personal interest in a minority’s disabilities under the law.  Some members of the majority may have the principles of a Joe Lieberman or a Patrick Murphy, but they can also cater to the distortions of prejudice, even when that status quo is dying.  Majorities can even sometimes sacrifice their own interests (such as a defense authorization bill) because of their perverted views.

Perhaps Reid knows what he is doing.  I still think this can get done.  But yesterday’s political convolutions are a compelling argument for courts to have the final say on some issues.

A coalition of religious conservative groups blocked the city of El Paso, Texas, from extending benefits to city employees’ same-sex partners through a successful ballot measure. The aim of the initiative: to promote “traditional family values” by limiting benefits to “city employees and their legal spouse and dependent children.” But as the Wall Street Journal reports, after being approved by 55% of the voters, it became clear that the measure also eliminated retiree health benefits for former city workers (and even for elected officials, who aren’t technically city employees).

“We don’t want to get into a holy war with the church,” said Ron Martin, president of the local police union. “I just wish they would have left us alone.” Just one of the unintended consequences of discrimination by ballot box.

Tis the season, courtesy of Fox’s “Glee“:

I have a new article in The Advocate making an argument that a lot of gay folks will disagree with. The “nut graf”:

We—gay Americans and our straight allies—have won the central argument for gay rights. As a result, we must change. Much of what the gay rights movement has taken for granted until now, and much that has worked for us in the past, is now wrong and will hurt us. The turn we now need to execute will be the hardest maneuver the movement has ever had to make, because it will require us to deliberately leave room for homophobia in American society. We need to allow some discrimination and relinquish the “zero tolerance” mind-set.

Check it out. And some of the comments frame the debate very nicely. Here’s Rob:

Does ANYBODY think for ONE SECOND that blacks, or jews, or women would shy away from standing up to people who only partially saw them as equal?! Hell no. They all have zero tolerance and relentlessly stamp out even the smallest ember of hate or bigotry.

Replies Bill:

I’m certainly all for getting equal rights as quickly as possible, but I don’t see the advantage in frightening those who tentatively support us into some sort of backlash. … Nobody likes to be threatened or bullied, and straight people are no exception. If we’re really beyond the tipping point, let’s not make the mistake of alienating those who support us with unwarranted hostility.

IMHO, this is the most important debate the gay-rights movement needs to have. What do you think?

Last Thursday, John McCain said repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is “obviously a transcendently important issue.” (The quote is at the 47 minute mark.)

What if it isn’t?

I don’t mean to say that equality isn’t important – even transcendently important.  I obviously think it is.

But what if the goal of repeal, and maybe even the goal of equal rights in general, is to reduce the amount of time, effort and resources so many people believe we have to spend discriminating?  What if our whole movement is ultimately about reassessing whether it’s not just fairer, but easier all around if Americans could view homosexuality as not such a big deal?

There is more than a little evidence in the Pentagon survey to suggest that we have hit and passed just that tipping point.  The enormous percentages of troops who have actually served with someone they believe to be homosexual and don’t see what all the fuss is about attest to a truism that is nearly a cliché in movies: The ragtag bunch of misfits who bring their peeves and prejudices to their unit find that the only way to survive this man’s army is by working together.  Unit cohesion isn’t a prerequisite to cooperation, it’s a result of it.

McCain and others seem irritated that only 28% of troops responded to the survey.  They argue that 72% of troops believed the fix was in, and couldn’t bring themselves to provide their own answers.

That’s a bit of a stretch.  Do they really believe there is so much cynicism among the young troops?  Could it be that some of our elder statesmen are attributing their own world-weariness to a different generation?  Given the potency of anti-gay sentiment among those who still harbor it, it seems unlikely that troops who had the opportunity to be counted on the earth-shattering question of vile tolerance would stand down.

As the report’s authors testified, a 28% response rate is more than statistically sound, fully consistent with prior military surveys, and is light years beyond the infinitesimal samples who are polled by very smart professionals in the political world on every subject under the sun, with degrees of accuracy that sometimes approach mysticism.

McCain cannot seem to accept that the world might have changed around him, and that the transcendent importance he attributes to sexual orientation isn’t so widely shared any more.  And the context of the hearings couldn’t better illustrate the disproportion of the obsession with homosexuality.  However important – or not – DADT is, is funding the nation’s entire military really the secondary consideration?  Yes, attaching repeal to the funding bill was a political move — big surprise.  But it’s political mostly in the sense that it illuminates the self-indulgence of politicians who are hellbent on catering to a dying prejudice.

To McCain, it is the status quo – the institutionalization of prejudice – that is transcendently important.  He is defending DADT as if it were a principle, rather than a political compromise that no one liked in the first place, but everyone could agree on in order to extricate Bill Clinton from his failed political promise to gays.  That promise proved to be premature for our politics, and the military has had to live with DADT’s bizarre strictures ever since as penance for Clinton’s sins.

The politics of 1993 have dissipated, and that’s helped a new generation see the eccentricities and outlandishness of this policy, whose sole premise is the virtue of lying.  There is an enormous chasm between the people who can shake their heads at that absurd notion and the ones who embrace it, and feel pressed to defend it to the death.

There is good reason to believe the troops are ready to move past the Byzantine machinery of this particular prejudice, which their elders wasted so much time on.   Even McCain has no substantive arguments left, and has to resort to creaky process complaints: We need more studies, we have to have be able to propose amendments, Harry Reid is so darn mean to us!

McCain may still be able to prevail on this unheroic course.  Delay is the last refuge of a political scoundrel, and Washington is full of political scoundrels of both parties.  But if McCain is able to eke out some sort of success on his self-imposed mission, it will not be a victory for anyone, himself included.  The change he fears has already happened, and all that’s left is to remove a dead body from the statutes.  It’s mostly gone from the troops, and from the culture.  All that’s left is the complaints of the losers.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal remains on life support. True, John McCain’s transformation into Jesse Helms is one of the more disheartening developments (McCain/Palin would have been a train wreck, not that Obama/Biden isn’t). On the plus side, the announcement by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) that he will support repeal, as will Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), most likely with fellow GOP senators Olympia Snowe (Maine), Richard Lugar (Mo.), and perhaps John Ensign (Nev.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and maybe a few others, shows that there is part of the Grand Old Party that can be worked with, if there is a will to do so.

What remains startling about the 111 Congress is that, aside from the so-far fumbled DADT repeal effort and passage of a lame hate-crimes bill, nothing in terms of gay legal equality has passed. Nancy Pelosi’s leftwing House didn’t even move the Employee Non-Discrimination Act out of committee (and despite the debatable merits of the bill, a majority of Americans say they favor barring workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation). Repeal or modification of the Defense of Marriage Act was never even seriously raised.

Analysis of why two years of a huge Democratic majority in the House, with a (for a year and a half) filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority, yielded so little should be the focus of much soul-searching within the LGBT movement. That it won’t speaks volumes about the big Washington LGBT activists’ partisanship-first misdirection (yes, I mean you Human Rights Campaign).

More. Jon Stewart feels the need to mock Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for their testimony in support of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Gaypocalypse Now
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

Back in 2006, when John McCain was still John McCain, he said that the time to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be when military leaders called for repeal. Then, when military leaders called for repeal, he demanded a full study of the consequences.

Now the study is done and the military leadership still wants repeal, and McCain has moved the goalposts. They need to think the matter over another year. Then we can talk.

PolitiFact.com excavates the record and rates McCain’s position a “full flip-flop.” What a shabby sunset to a great career. And what a sad comparison to the man whose Senate seat McCain occupies, a fellow named Barry Goldwater.

The Advocate excerpts remarks supporting repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

In the responses to the Adovcate piece, a commenter proclaims that Republicans oppose repeal because they intend to “say no on everything that Obama tries to pass, tries to do to get the country going in the right direction.” But that’s exactly the kind of progressive response that’s so entirely counterproductive. Instead of engaging Republicans and making pro-liberty arguments, too many Democrats go out of their way to present DADT repeal as part of Obama’s progressive, big government, intrusive state agenda. Gee, that will get small government GOP moderates onboard.

More. On another culture war front, leftists at The Nation attack libertarians for criticizing TSA scan and grope policies. When the state is run by “progressives” led by a dear leader, no government violation of human dignity may be opposed. From David Boaz: “it’s striking to see how many conservatives think the TSA has gone too far, and how dismissive—even contemptuous—liberals are of rising concerns about liberty and privacy.” From Glenn Greenwald: “The most odious premise in [The Nation] piece: anyone who doesn’t quietly, meekly and immediately submit to Government orders and invasions—or anyone who stands up to government power and challenges it—is inherently suspect.”

From Cory Doctorow: “I remember when being anti-authoritarian, pro-dignity and pro-freedom were values of the progressive left.”

As I’ve previouisly blogged, Harry Reid set up the “don’t ask, don’t tell” pre-election vote to fail. By refusing to allow a full debate, he ensure united GOP opposition, even though GOP senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Richard Lugar (Ind.) have indicated they would otherwise have voted for repeal, thus denying the GOP its filibuster. GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), John Ensign (Nev.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), among others, are also mentioned as obtainable votes against filibuster and for repeal.

As Kimberly A Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal (full column only available to wsj subscribers):

If Democrats leave town with few or no final victories to tout—if they fail even to protect Americans from tax hikes—they can thank their Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. It was Mr. Reid’s flawed pre-election strategy that landed his party with this undercooked fowl, and his post-election floundering has even his own members worried.

You wouldn’t know this from listening to Mr. Reid, who has laid out a lame-duck agenda that bears no connection to time, reality or election results. According to the Nevadan, Senate Democrats are going to confirm judges, rewrite immigration law, extend unemployment insurance, fix the issue of gays in the military, reorganize the FDA, forestall tax hikes, re-fund the government, and ratify a nuclear arms treaty—all in two, maybe three, weeks. This is the same institution that needs a month to rename a post office.

This legislative pileup is what happens when a majority leader chooses to hijack the Senate—to use it not on behalf of the country, but on behalf of a midterm campaign. The first part of Mr. Reid’s strategy was to introduce legislation specifically designed to rev up a liberal base for the midterm vote. To pep up gay rights activists, the majority leader promised legislation to change the military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. To inspire Latino midterm voters, he also embraced the Dream Act, which would offer a path to citizenship for some immigrants.

Part two of Mr. Reid’s strategy: Make sure nothing, including these highlighted bills, then passed. Much of today’s unfinished business is legislation that could have earned GOP support. But the majority leader deliberately included poison pills that would cause Republicans to balk. The entire goal was to tag Republicans with obstructionism, turning off average voters and further inspiring the base.

The strategy didn’t work, and by putting politics above all else, we’re likely to pay the price for a long time indeed.

Thor Halvorssen blogs on last week’s vote in the UN to remove gay people from a resolution calling on countries to condemn “extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions” based on discriminatory grounds. As Halvorseen explains:

The resolution highlights particular groups historically subject to executions including street children, human rights defenders, members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority communities, and, for the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation as a basis on which some individuals are targeted for death.

The tiny West African nation of Benin (on behalf of the UN’s African Group) proposed an amendment to strike sexual minorities from the resolution. The amendment was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

In other words, the resolution ensures that the U.N. no longer condemns extra-judicial killings of gay men and women The countries voting for and against the resolution reads like a list of the civilized vs. the uncivilized world (sorry, no moral relativism here).

As Halvorssen notes:

Those against the amendment include every European nation present, all Scandinavian countries, India, Korea, most of Latin America, all of North America, and only one Middle Eastern nation: Israel. In most countries in the Middle East, it is a crime to be gay—in some, like Saudi Arabia, it is punishable by beheading and in others, like Iran, by hanging.

Be thankful if you don’t live in one of the countries voting in favor of the resolution. And if you’re an American, be especially thankful for these freedoms.