IGF CultureWatch

I've been writing about the changing political climate on the right as efforts to roll back the fiscal insanity take precedence over social issues and crowd out the religious right-driven by average people coming together to protest and work for change, often in opposition to the party hack machine. That's an extremely positive development. The libertarian Cato Institute's David Boaz shares that assessment in this blog post, but adds the qualifier that "out in the real world, where real Republicans live, the picture isn't as promising."

A case in point: the disappointing result from last Tuesday's GOP congressional primary in the DC suburbs of northern Virginia (Arlington/Alexandria), where Matthew Berry, a libertarian-leaning fiscal conservative who is openly gay, narrowly lost to Patrick Murray, backed by the local GOP machine. Boaz writes:

Republican activist Rick Sincere tells me that "in the last few days before the election, I received numerous emails from the Murray campaign that included subtle reminders that Matthew is gay and supports an end to DADT. [Murray] also, in a Monday email, took a quotation from Matthew out of context to make it look like he supports a federally enforced repeal of Virginia's anti-marriage law. In other words, Murray played the anti-gay card."

Still, there's reason for optimism about the future:

Blogger RedNoVa made similar observations, adding, "If you were at the Matthew Berry party last night, you would notice that the average age in the room was about 30. Young people were everywhere. The future of our party was there. Murray's campaign crowd was older, and full of party purists."

Boaz also notes chillingly anti-gay rhetoric in a western Tennessee GOP congressional primary, and sums up, "With Republicans like that, it's no wonder that many moderates, centrists, and libertarians still aren't sure they want to vote Republican, even with Democrats running up the deficit and extending federal control over health care, education, automobile companies, newspapers, and more."

Added: From the Log Cabin of Northern Virginia newsletter:

Matthew Berry, the first openly gay man and member of Log Cabin to run for the Republican nomination for the 8th Congressional District, was defeated in the primary on June 8 by Patrick Murray after Murray repeatedly raised the issue of Matthew's sexual orientation and his positions on specific gay issues in emails to supporters just prior to the election.

In the final days of the campaign, Murray attacked Berry for his support of marriage equality and repeal of DADT, which just recently passed Congress. He also falsely claimed that Berry had labeled himself a "liberal progressive" and then called him a RINO to boot, a charge that mystified Berry's many libertarian supporters as well as the many conservative activists and Virginia bloggers who endorsed Berry.

The 8th District is currently represented by Democrat Jim Moran, who has a long history of scandal and corruption during his years in public office. Given the politics and cultural makeup of the 8th District, however, few political observers believe Murray has any chance of unseating Cong. Moran. Many believe Berry's defeat in the primary will unfortunately kill any chance of extending the Republican Party's reach in the 8th District beyond its narrow conservative base.

More. From the Washington Times, Fiscal focus splits GOP factions on social issues. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a likely contender for the GOP presidential nod in 2012, says that given the dire economic situation being created by out-of-control deficit spending, the next president "would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. ... We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while." Sensible, of course, but enough to trigger the wrath of the Family Research Council (and, as commenter Carl points out, Mike Huckabee).

There is a battle going on for the soul of the GOP, and it matters greatly to gay people who wins.

Furthermore. I should note that while Gov. Daniels called for a true over "social issues," the Family Research Council and Huckabee responded with appeals to ramp up the fight over abortion. Even here, they're downplaying (for now, at least) gay issues, and that's significant, too.

According to this primary election analysis in the conservative Washington Times:

The bottom line on Tuesday's primaries: The Republican Party is facing a purge, and limited-government conservatives are in the ascendance.

After years of taking a back seat as neoconservatives-big-government interventionists-and religious conservatives conducted a tug of war for the GOP's heart, traditional conservatives and fiscally cautious "tea party" activists are shaking up the Republican establishment and also helping shape Democratic contests.

"A center-right coalition, which is not dominated by the religious right or neocons, seems to be emerging as a powerful force in American politics," Republican National Committee member Saul Anuzis of Michigan said. "It doesn't mean their issues aren't important, but they are not necessarily the driving issues as our economy, jobs and ever-growing debt and deficit scare taxpayers."

This gels with what Jonathan Rauch wrote on this blog a few days ago, in 'Tea' Is for Tolerance. But will the hyper-partisan LGBT movement, which often seems to favor all things dependent on bigger government and higher taxes (i.e., the "progressive" agenda) pay heed?

Worth noting: This Washington Post op-ed on marriage equality was penned jointly by Bob Levy, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute (which often aligns with conservatives to oppose expanded government and higher taxes), and John Podesta, president of the left-liberal Center for American Progress (which often aligns with progressives to support higher taxes and bigger government). Both men serve as co-chairs of the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is sponsoring the Olson-Boies case against California's Proposition 8, which overturned the legislatively passed extension of marriage to same-sex couples in the Golden State.

Ike Skelton, the Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has been no friend to the repeal of DADT. But sometimes people who disagree with us can make our arguments better than our strongest supporters do, and Skelton's comments to CBS News tellingly reveal the denial and futility at the heart of the DADT opposition.

As we argue about equality and patriotism and the harm a nation can do to itself by looking at this issue through the narrow slit of prejudice, Skelton sees the problem with DADT repeal more simplistically, and in a way few of our supporters would even have thought of: "What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?" he asked.

That's a surprisingly good question, when you think about it. Not a lot of 7-year olds will be weighing in on the merits of gay soldiers serving openly in Afghanistan, but that's not what Skelton's talking about. In fact, he's articulating the concern of the entire generation of people who grew up denying that lesbians and gay men existed - could exist - at all. They're older than 7, but when it comes to homosexuality, they have that same sort of idealized innocence. Skelton speaks for those who think that homosexuality, like cancer, should only be whispered about in public, to shelter tender minds from facing this dark truth too soon, the people who believe in their deepest hearts that homosexuality, if it must exist, is something to be ashamed of, suppressed, and kept hidden from the public (which is what those 7-year olds have been enlisted for) at all costs.

Skelton and his constituency are living in an increasingly shrinking closet. According to a new CBS poll, 77% of Americans know someone who is homosexual, compared to 42% who could say that in 1992. And while the remaining 22% today can say they don't know anyone who's lesbian or gay, they certainly can't say they haven't heard about people who are. The fact that the question is now regularly being asked in public interest polls presupposes the problem that irks Skelton and others: sexual orientation is a political subject that pretty much all Americans are asked about, talk about, and have opinions about. Directly to Skelton's point, there are not a lot of nooks and crannies left in the country where discussion of gay rights is not permitted, for adults or children. Conservative churches from one end of the nation to the other have made sure of that, as has the National Organization for Marriage and other anti-gay groups that run ads - on television and radio and in newspapers - opposing gay equality. Like discussion of DADT, those ads can and do lead kids to ask questions of their mommies and daddies.

In fact, the only place where discussion of gay rights is hindered at all is in the military. Heterosexual soldiers, of course, are free to weigh in to support or oppose (or be indifferent to) DADT - as long as it's eminently clear they are straight. Lesbian and gay soldiers, however, have to be ever cautious about what they say and how they say it, and certainly cannot articulate the fact that their opposition might arise from experience.

And that is the point. Not that we are protecting children, somehow, since they'll be exposed to the public debates over homosexuality in any number of contexts, DADT being only one. No, all DADT protects is its own premise: that homosexual soldiers should be silent about that fact, and leave the debate over their lives to the heterosexuals.

This has historically been a very successful strategy of disabling the very people who discrimination harms from explaining why, and arguing for its elimination from the law. But those days are gone. Even the new survey of military opinions on DADT will inquire into the opinions of the very people the policy harms. . . in fact, the only people the policy harms. They will still have to remain in the closet in order to be surveyed - something not even Kafka or Orwell could have imagined - but they will be asked; as bizarre a victory as I can envision.

And while all of that is going on, 7-year olds across the country will be watching TV and listening to the radio, and even talking to their friends at school. It's entirely possible they already know more about gay people than Ike Skelton does, and will likely be more comfortable viewing gay people as just people than Skelton wants them to be.

The new chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party has one word for social conservatives: goodbye. She is telling Bay Windows, a gay newspaper, that gay marriage and other social issues are going on the back burner, presumably because they're losers. MassResistance, a virulent anti-gay group, is appalled.

That was in April. Today, the New York Times reports that overturning same-sex marriage is getting no traction as a campaign issue in Iowa, where a state court ordered SSM a year ago.

And National Journal has a poll of Republican political consultants and insiders in which half say the party should "downplay" the issue of gays in the military. With 13 percent calling for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that leaves only 31 percent who want to take a stand against open gays in the military. "This is going to happen, and Republicans don't want to look intolerant going into fall elections," says one typical insider. Another: "This issue will not help drive voters to the polls."

And there's this perceptive comment: "The Democrats and independents fleeing Obama are social liberals shocked by the administration's war on business. We would do well not to remind them why they once rejected the GOP."

Back in November, a group of social conservatives, led by Robert George, issued something called the Manhattan Declaration-a veiled threat to split the Republican party if it did not continue to put abortion and SSM front and center. But what Grover Norquist has been saying appears to be true. The energy behind the Tea Party represents a shift away from Jerry Falwell as well as a backlash against Barack Obama.

It's a mistake for gays to assume that the Tea Party movement is our enemy. More likely, it will help pull the Republicans off our backs.

Addendum: Thanks to the reader who points out that the Mass. GOP chair's comment is from April 2009, not two months ago. I should have caught that.

Living in a solidly blue district, my household received a fundraising letter from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee urging us to donate money at www.dscc.org/SilenceGOPlies.

At the site it doesn't, or no longer, uses the ominous phrase "Silence GOP lies," and instead offers the somewhat less threatening "Stop GOP lies" - perhaps because a number of bloggers have called attention to the DSCC's call to "silence" the opposition. Reportedly, many of these fundraising letters also have included a "Silence GOP lies" button.

Think about that; it's not "respond to GOP lies" or "expose GOP lies." The fundraising message (at least in the letter) is "Silence GOP lies." That's a little scary, but quite tellingly captures what's so wrong with the "progressive" mindset today.

And what, exactly, are these "lies"? Some are strongly partisan criticisms of Obama, but others are policy views widely shared by much of the American public, such as the "lie" that "the badly needed stimulus bill" that cost nearly a trillion dollars (helping to create our debt tsunami) and which preserved mostly government jobs wasn't, er, "badly needed." Silence those lying liars before they lie again!

And isn't it the Democrats who like to claim that the GOP uses threatening words in its criticisms of Democrats? So, what exactly is "Silence GOP lies" supposed to convey?

The letter also attacks "Tea Party hysteria" in terms that are, well, hysterical (say, isn't the word "hysteria" supposed to be sexist and no longer permitted? Uh, oh, somebody at the DSCC is gonna be in trouble!).

More. No, my point is not just to engage in partisan sniping, but to critique it. And the "gay" angle is my consistent argument that the fight for our equality should not be tied to just one of the two governing parties (and the negative repercussions of having so much of the LGBT political movement controlled by Democratic party operatives, whose agenda often places their party's needs first.

Blogress Ann Althouse discusses implications of a McDonald's ad running in France (you can view it with captioned translation through the above link) that's caused expressions of consternation from Bill O'Reilly and other American conservatives. As Althouse summarizes,

"we see a young man and understand something about him - he's gay - and then we see his father doesn't really get that, but they love each other and spend time with each other...at McDonald's.

". . .When O'Reilly jokes about McDonald's doing an ad in this series showing a member of Al Qaeda, he's revealing that he thinks gay people are a group that most people view with justified hostility. McDonald's, operating in France, hasn't analyzed things that way. That's their judgment call, and I hope it's a good one."

Actually, I think O'Reilly and other miffed conservatives are showing how out of sync they are. With "Glee," one of the Fox network's biggest hits, including storylines about a gay high school student and his sympathetic but not-quite-comprehending father (shades of the French McDonald's ad), it's clear that the times have changed. I'd be very surprised if in the near future we don't see gay inclusive ads such as this one running here in the U.S., despite the wailings of certain members of the old guard.

More. I should add, it's also another sign of how capitalism drives equality, as discussed here, when not thwarted by social conservatives or anti-market progressives (as in this blast from the past).

Former Congressman Tom Campbell, the fiscally conservative, pro-gay marriage GOP candidate running in California's Senate primary, had been leading his opponents but now trails failed CEO and gay marriage opponent Carly Fiorina going into next Tuesday's vote, as social conservatives ramp up their attacks.

Campbell has the best poll numbers against current Democratic Sen. Barbara ("No Ma'am") Boxer, best know for her advocacy of out-of-control government spending and disdain for the U.S. military. But he may not get the chance to face her.

It would have been savvy for LGBT activists who actually want to see gay equality advance within the GOP, and hence the nation, to at least give Campell support in the primary, but aside from Log Cabin Republicans they didn't. Much better to keep the Republican party avowedly anti-gay in order to fundraise against the GOP demons.

The Republican and religious roots of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have never been in doubt. But is NOM becoming more frankly partisan and more narrowly religious? Consider three items:

***In California, NOM is running ads opposing Tom Campbell in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. The ad mentions marriage only after attacking him for supporting higher taxes. On its website and in emails, it is dubbing Campbell a RINO (Republican In Name Only), an epithet used in intra-party squabbles.

NOM is now against higher gasoline taxes as well as gay marriage. I'm waiting for the "Drill Here, Drill Now" ads.

***In Minnesota, NOM is running ads criticizing the state DFL (Democratic) party repeatedly by name for opposing a voter referendum on marriage. It also attacks Independent candidates.

The surprise is not that NOM would oppose pro-SSM candidates, but that it would do so in a way indistinguishable from a GOP ad.

***In a recent fundraising email, NOM Executive Director Brian Brown claims that same-sex marriage evinces a "profound untruth about the human person." The term "human person," a redundancy to the uninitiate, is most distinctive to Catholic theology and especially prominent in the writings of conservative Catholic natural-law theorists.

Opposite-sex marriage, Bown continues, is "written on the human heart." It's an elegant and evocative phrase. Google it and the first thing that pops up? An important and, especially for Catholics, influential address by Pope John Paul II entitled, "God's Law is Written on the Human Heart."

Brown concludes his email in language that combines the partisan and religious strands in NOM's DNA: "Here's NOM's promise: We transform your values into action, action into victory--victory for God's truth about marriage. What God has joined, no RINO Republican has any right to put asunder!"

It's perfectly legitimate for NOM to make itself a home for religious-conservative Republicans and a particular strand of natural-law Catholicism. This reflects the group's governing philosophy. Indeed, as compared to downplaying these facts for strategic reasons, it's refreshing to see NOM come out of its partisan and sectarian closet.

The imperative of America's press is not truth, it is conflict - or, more accurately, drama. Truth and facts are tools the press uses to enhance dramatic conflict, but it is the fight, not the resolution, that animates the press.

Gay equality provides a rich vein of material, and we are used to our opponents exploiting fears and anecdotes to support laws that put the government into the active position of discriminating, from Sam Nunn's infamous "field hearing" in 1993 where he led legislators into submarines to see how gay soldiers would be sleeping and showering this close to our heterosexual fighting men, to Martin Ssempa's ongoing campaign in Uganda to provoke citizens into a full understanding that homosexuality means eating one another's poo-poo.

But it's not just our opponents who want to work people up into a sweat. The New York Times does a fine job this morning of stirring the pot. According to their reporting, if DADT repeal passes (a prospect still months away in the Senate, apparently), there will be all kinds of "thorny issues" that will arise, from allowing same-sex couples to live in base housing together to hospital visitation.

But this being the New York Times, these concerns are coming from homosexual soldiers. See? You don't have to hate gays to exploit us; you just have to be deeply enough committed to conflict.

To be fair, the NY Times did get Elaine Donnelly to weigh in with a typically overwrought comment, in order to maintain its liberal cred. Donnelly, true to form, brought up the perils of living right next to the homosexual menace: "Same-sex couples in family housing will become a reason for families to decline re-enlistment or a change in station," she fretted. If you thought it was bad having to live next to black neighbors in the 60s, imagine what it would be like if the black neighbors were homosexual.

It is not until the 17th paragraph of the 25 paragraph story that the NY Times states the obvious, noncontroversial truth "that tens of thousands of gay people already serve in the military, many open to their closest peers, without problems."

It's possible to imagine, in some alternate universe, an accurate, truthful and informative report where that is the point. But who in our own galaxy wants to read about something "without problems"? No one - or, at least no one who isn't primarily interested in conflict and drama.

After a lifetime of loving the theater and literature, I have come to take pleasure in the non-dramatic. In our age, this is nearly a confession of error, or gross and alarming nonconformity. But sometimes I just want the facts without the adjectives and adverbs, the breathless reporters and all the agita.

Which brings me to Rush Limbaugh, and a savvy defense of him on gay rights. As Timothy Kincaid observes at Box Turtle Bulletin, while we're used to assuming Rush is a Neanderthal reactionary on gay rights, that may not be correct. Bellicosity is Limbaugh's style, and I wouldn't argue he's the calm, rational journalist of my dreams. But on gay rights, he's hardly been leading the charge to maintain inequality. He's got some rough comments about political excesses from our side, and lord knows I couldn't disagree with him on that. But when it comes to the actual policies of DADT and equal or equal-ish rights for same-sex couples, Rush isn't on the front lines.

Tim offers some evidence -- from the right -- that Rush may be squishy on civil unions, and maybe even on sexual orientation being a choice. Whatever is in Rush's head or heart, though, it's clear that the prospect of gay equality is something he hasn't exploited with the bombast at his disposal.

Which may mean he's actually a bit more responsible and conscientious than the writers and editors of today's story in the NY Times. Certainly the NY Times has taken a strong editorial stand in favor of equality. But when their news side feels comfortable and duty-bound to use us in order to make sure people have something to argue about, it's worth pointing out that it looks, for all the world, as if they're trying to out-Limbaugh Limbaugh.