IGF CultureWatch

Maybe the anti-gay right’s plan to boycott the Conservative Political Action Conference is an isolated squabble. No big deal, says Dave Weigel. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’ll agree with Jennifer Rubin: this is a fairly big deal, a sign of what life will be like for the right now that homosexuality is a wedge issue among Republicans.

In October of 2009, a group of social conservatives issued something they called the Manhattan Declaration: a not-very-veiled threat to split the conservative movement if it tried to soft-pedal abortion and gay marriage. Just weeks later, a gay Republican group called GOProud showed up at CPAC, causing a rupture between libertarians and social conservatives. Meanwhile, the Tea Party movement was entering conservative politics as a major disruptive force on the libertarian side. Though socially conservative in their views, Tea Partiers want to put economic issues first and see social issues as divisive distractions.

So now GOProud is back for Round Two, and a cluster of social-cons, including the Family Research Council and the National Organization for [read: Against Gay] Marriage, have drawn what they call a “line in the sand” against participating in CPAC if GOProud is there, which it will be.

Weigel and others are right to say that these tiffs are not uncommon on the right (or, for that matter, on the left). But it’s not the particular tiff that’s important here. Here’s the problem: conservatives’ hostility to homosexuality isolates them politically from the rest of the public, and the anti-gay consensus is fracturing even on the right (44 percent of Republicans say homosexuality should be accepted by society).

Translation: an issue which once divided and dispirited the Democratic coalition while uniting and energizing conservatives now cuts the other way. It’s a wedge issue against the right. Not just temporarily, either.

That’s why, despite my prediction (never have I been happier to be wrong!), Republicans couldn’t hold ranks last month over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s why the House GOP will make its stand in 2011 not on social issues but on spending cuts, which may not enjoy broad public support but which do, at least, unite rather than divide conservatives.

And it’s why the latest GOProud/CPAC tiff is not just a bad moment in a happy marriage. The anti-gay right is losing its grip, but it won’t surrender without a fight, and the fight it promised in the Manhattan Declaration is under way.

B. Daniel Blatt of Gay Patriot has an op-ed on AOLNews.com looking at the path ahead for implementing “don’t ask” repeal and other gay equality measures. He writes about the military:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that implementation would proceed in stages, “sequenced in order to protect small unit cohesion” . . . It remains to be seen how exactly the military will determine that “specific methodology. . . .The Palm Center’s Aaron Belkin, however, believes repeal “really isn’t rocket science” given that “the troops already know how to interact with gays because they do so every day.” . . .The Palm Center holds that it can be done in “a matter of weeks,” while the defense secretary thinks a year may be needed to educate troops, with the specific methodology yet to be determined.

We’ll see how drawn out the battle over implementation becomes.

Has anyone got a more blinkered view of gays in the entertainment industry than Ramin Setoodeh?  Last year, for reasons that escape me, he decided that Sean Hayes shouldn’t be playing the lead in Broadway’s Promises, Promises because Hayes is gay.  Worse, Setoodeh thought it was a good idea to share that insight with the whole world.

You’d think that experience would have taught him a lesson, but he’s now back claiming that not only do audiences not “see” gay actors in straight roles, but that Hollywood won’t even let gay actors play gay roles.

Given the economy in California, it’s possible (I suppose) that TV doesn’t count as “Hollywood” anymore, but anyone who saw the Emmy awards last year might have noticed that one category alone — Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series — had nominations for gay actors playing straight, gay actors playing gay and a straight actor playing gay.  Yes, the straight actor won, but does anyone at all think this Hollywood has any problem with any qualified actor playing gay roles?

Whatever it is Setoodeh is qualified to write about, gays in the entertainment industry seems not to be it.

Stephen Miller joins what is turning out to be a much larger, and enormously welcome conversation over gay rights that has been too long in making it to the public stage.  He says the Christianist rebellion against the conservative CPAC is a “Welcome Winnowing” of the right from the conservative movement.  Karen Ocamb asks the obvious related question from the left:  “Will LGBT progressives be able to work with Log Cabin Republicans in 2011?”  And Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times is dumbfounded to learn there are non-leftist homosexuals.

But it’s best to let the Christianists speak for themselves, and I think Joseph Farah of World Net Daily sums it up quite clearly:

Purge is not a bad word. It simply means, according to the dictionary definition, “to rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; cleanse; purify.

As I was listening to Handel’s glorious “Messiah” over Christmas, the phrase, “And we shall purify. . .” struck me, for the first time, as terrifying.  Something that is a necessary task in chemistry and the hard sciences is transformed, in human desire and behavior, into horror-ridden moral crusades.  Whether someone wants to purify a group of humans for religious reasons, racial ones or political ones — or any combination of those — there are no means to that end that are not gross, shocking, sometimes obscene, and at their worst, naked terrorism.

The Republican Party has given aid and comfort to people who want to cleanse the world of homosexuality.  All of their studiously loving words cannot hide that simple wish.  The GOP has been able to finesse this decay for long enough, and now faces an internal conflict that not even Ronald Reagan could manage.

The Purists are awake and active.  And I can’t see a Republican leader on the horizon who can even begin to handle them.

From the socially conservative World Net Daily:

Two of the nation’s premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited. . . .

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud. . . .

The American Conservative Union, longtime organizers of CPAC, disclosed just before Christmas that GOProud would be considered a “participating organization,” the second highest level of participation. As a “participating organization,” GOProud has a voice in planning the conference.

This is a great sign that the gay haters (who hate to be identified as haters) are splitting off, just as during the late 50s/early 60s the avowed racists and anti-Semites left or were driven from what was becoming the new mainstream (Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley) conservative movement.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

More. Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg opines: “I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too. . . . And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos—the homosexual bourgeoisie—strikes me as good news.”

Not quite a Christmas miracle, put this is a possible herald of change.

Televangelist Pat Robertson has been no friend of liberty, as witnessed by his long history of anti-gay and otherwise defamatory and discrimination-defending remarks. But as the Washington Post reported, he appears on the right side of one hot-button issue: pot criminalization. “We’re locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing you know they’ve got 10 years,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club.” “I’m not exactly for the use of drugs—don’t get me wrong—but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, I mean, it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people.”

Vice President Joe Biden was quick to disagree, responding “I think it would be a mistake to legalize.” Hey, if Robertson is for decriminalizing pot, then liberals must be in favor of it, right? As the Daily Caller comments:

The more glaring concern for Biden and Obama is that come 2012, there could be several Republicans running for president who are more progressive on pot. Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson have all expressed support for drastically reforming marijuana laws. (Johnson and Paul are in favor of legalization, Palin said she supports a person’s right to use it in their home.) You also have establishment Republicans and Tea Party groups citing the 10th Amendment argument for repealing health care—the same argument most libertarians cite when calling for the repeal of the Controlled Substances Act and allowing states to legislate their own drug laws.

The Democrats were once the party of slavery; then they became the party of civil rights. The Republicans were once the party of abolition and civil rights, then they became, well, you know. So, what if spurred on by the libertarian-receptive Tea Party movement the GOP would change again, while the Democrats remain committed to ever-more intrusive and expanding state power and government control. I’m not predicting, but rigidly thinking that the parties are frozen and unyielding is not a constructive approach to creating change.

More. Then again, Biden said this about gay marriage, which no leading GOP figure (to date) would. The difference might be that decriminalizing pot has a certain redneck appeal and they’re seen as part of the GOP base, whereas gay marriage is still viewed as lefty and urban (and hence hopelessly Democratic).

Also, at what point will Obama and Biden stop struggling over and “evolving” on gay marriage and openly support marriage equality?

The National Organization for Marriage has every right to get itself into a tizzy over the juvenile and vulgar ad from a group calling itself FCKH8.  But I’ll tell NOM the same thing I’ll tell FCKH8:  You’re not ever going to stop people from using vile and offensive language — at least not in a country with a first amendment.  So stop it.

It is no pleasant thing for me to have to endure NOM’s relentless obliviousness, just as I’m sure it’s tough for them to have to suffer being called haters by enthusiastic twentysomethings, and now, even some of their kids.  But that’s part of living in a country that established from the start the invaluable notion that the individual freedom to speak one’s mind is one of the most important fundamentals of a society where the government derives from the consent of the governed.  People are a varied and messy lot, and while we can be managed a bit, we can’t be controlled.  There will always be people of strong feeling who feel no obligation to manners and social restraint.

Dealing with other people’s bad habits is one of the things that demonstrates true civility.  And while ceaseless complaining isn’t exactly uncivil, it’s certainly unseemly.  That’s what this whole skirmish boils down to, unseemly whining by NOM and FCKH8.  Once you get past the hyperobvious fund-raising potential for both groups in complaining about the other’s rhetoric, you really aren’t left with very much of substance.  FCKH8 undermines a sound theme of tolerance with its brash and rude intolerance.  NOM, I’m afraid to say, has lost any claim to respectability, but it’s probably best to leave them alone in their ever-shrinking world.

We’re near Christmas, and I’d much rather focus on real things and honorable emotions.  To all men and women of good will, have a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

Conservative “don’t ask” supporter Bill Kristol writing in the Weekly Standard:

President Obama said last week, speaking “to all Americans”: “Your country needs you, your country wants you, and we will be honored to welcome you into the ranks of the finest military the world has ever known.” Our fine servicemen and women won’t quit, they won’t whine, they won’t fret, and they won’t cause a scene. Conservatives owe it to them to conduct ourselves with the same composure and dignity.

Conservative “don’t ask” opponent Max Boot writing in Commentary:

Perhaps the most lasting impact of this policy change will be the return of ROTC to Ivy League campuses. Already Harvard and Yale are talking about reinstating their ROTC programs. This, too, will not make much of a change in either the Ivy League or the military, but it is a small, welcome step toward bridging the chasm that separates the armed forces from society’s elites.

Next up: the same lack of leadership on gay marriage? At least until the formidable team of Sen. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Collins (R-Maine) indicate to the Democratic leadership that it’s ok to support us.

David Brock, the head of the left-progressive and George Soros funded Media Matters group, which basically attacks Fox News 24/7—often disingenuously (e.g., for reporting that there actually are two sides to the global warming debate)—has announced the formation of a tangent effort called Equality Matters. The new group will be led by Richard Socarides, who served as Bill Clinton’s special assistant on gay issues. From Brock’s announcement:

Despite huge progress in gay rights in recent years, exemplified by the historic vote this weekend finally striking down the ban on gay men and women from serving in the military, we are now living through a period of ferocious fundamentalism in the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Traditional conservatives and the Tea Party movement are united only in their contempt for equal rights for all Americans and a desire to return America to a 19th century idyll. Equality Matters will not allow these latter-day ‘clerics’ to gain serious recognition by the media nor influence the policies that affect the lives of every American. . . .

The purpose here is to demonize fiscally conservative Tea Party supporters as the equivalent of the Klan. The aim is to keep gay votes firmly tied to the party of gargantuan government spending and politically controlled redistribution (the Soros/Media Matters agenda). The result will be to dissuade limited government conservatives and Republicans who are rightly revulsed by Brock from positively viewing the fight for gay equality.

It’s a shame that someone as intelligent albeit partisan as Richard Socarides will be leading such a counter-productive effort.

More. “Another Steve” responds to comments defending Brock with the following:

the Tea Party agenda is to reduce government spending and support limited government. No Tea Party groups are promoting social issues–it’s not what they are about. Yes, individual Tea Party people might be socially conservative (not all; there are many, many liberterians, like me, who attend Tea Party events), but it is not what the movement is about.

So if you attack “the Tea Party movement,” as Brock does, you are attacking limited goverment conservatives, like me. You are saying that I am a bigot and racist because I oppose what’s happened to the size and cost of government. It’s the worst sort of smear.

Yes, it is. And it’s by an organization that purports to fight misinformation and stereotypes.

There’s no shortage of commentary and analysis about the repeal of DADT, so I’ll just add a brief thought.

A number of people showed amazing, active leadership to get this done.  Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Patrick Murphy in the House, Dan Choi and all the folks at Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen; even Lady Gaga deserves a tip of the hat.

But I want to say a word for a different kind of leadership, the kind that takes place out of the limelight.  Barack Obama, in particular, gave us several measured and tailored statements of support, none of them exhibiting the kind of inspiring rhetoric that will live on in the history of political oratory.  He has taken no end of criticism for failing to live up to his self-description as our “fierce advocate.”

But as the Rolling Stones observed, you may not always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.  What we should have learned from Bill Clinton’s spectacular failure on this issue is that a large component of vitriolic unfairness is built into it, and can and will be exploited easily enough.  When Clinton promised he would resolve the problem of gays in the military with the stroke of a pen, he gave Sam Nunn an engraved invitation to visit those infamous submarine bunks, and paved the way for Republicans to invoke the most fearsome set of showers since World War II.

This is the kind of political problem that can best be solved more indirectly.   There was no doubt about the public support for repeal, and while there was concern about how the troops would view it, that turned out to be based on the same wishful thinking by the right as everything else in the area of gay equality.  But even in the face of genuine popular support, the equally genuine, gut-level ugliness of the minority also has to be negotiated.

That is Obama’s real triumph, and he proved to be quite right about how you approach the problem.  Rather than offer up the moral leadership of the presidency as a target, and risk yet another failure, he allowed the focus of the animosity to diffuse, letting the political poison seep out in less toxic doses.

That’s not the kind of celebrity leadership that makes a president a short-term hero to a constituency group, and leaves nothing but moral victories in its wake – if a president is lucky enough to get even one of those.  It’s a brand of political leadership that is antithetical to our desire for immediate gratification, but is better for our long-term health.  Andrew Sullivan has called this Obama’s Long Game, and that gets it exactly right.

Harry Reid was complicit in this strategy to get us what we needed, not merely what we wanted.  Reid doesn’t have the oratorical gifts Obama has, but he doesn’t need them.  There are times when I wish Reid could give a speech with the conviction that Newt Gingrich had.  But Reid’s low blood-pressure style is what allows him to get the results that Gingrich could only promise in his failed House leadership.

There are a lot of different styles of politics, and despite what the media and the spokespeople would like us to believe, there is an enormous amount of politics that takes place quietly, thoughtfully and without fanfare, until the fanfare is actually warranted.  That is how the embarrassment of DADT was ultimately removed from the law.

May its slander rest in peace.