IGF CultureWatch

I try to give myself some political and emotional distance from the arguments in the Prop. 8 trial (I'm not always successful) so I can better assess what the other side's best case could be, in order to figure out how to respond appropriately. Good lawyers have to know the strength of the other side's case, not to mention the weaknesses of their own.

But sometimes life gets the better of you. As I was posting about Dr. Tam's testimony, a not unrelated drama was playing out closer to home. One of my cousins told her father he could have only supervised visits with her very young children. He is gay, and she believes he might molest them.

Many years ago, my uncle married a woman, though it was reasonably clear to most of us (even back then) that he was gay. My grandmother knew, and she was born in 1907. We nevertheless supported the marriage, and the two great kids it produced, and when the inevitable happened and my uncle met a partner more suited to his natural homosexual orientation, everyone hunkered down for that transition, as solid families do. I can't pretend it was easy, particularly for the kids. That's why I am such a strong proponent of eliminating social and religious pressure on lesbians and gay men to deny their sexual orientation, which so often results in wrong marriages - the best evidence (for those who want to believe it) of heterosexuality. Kids should have two parents who have the same sexual orientation. If you honestly don't want homosexuals to marry each other, and want to avoid them marrying heterosexuals, come right out and say you'd just rather they be single.

My cousin eventually got married, and my uncle adores the grandchildren, whose photos he prominently featured on the Christmas card he sent out last year. But his daughter has been drifting deeper into an evangelical sect, and they have now helped her convince herself that there is too much of a risk her father will molest her children.

The most amazing thing is her belief that her father would accept her low opinion of him. She told him he is free to see his grandchildren, as long as the visits are supervised, and she was nonplussed to learn that he wasn't taking that well.

This is the divide we face. People like my cousin view the assumption that gay men will probably molest children as eminently reasonable, even uncontroversial. They expect us - everyone - to accept that fact. That is why they view themselves as compassionate when they fail to prohibit gay relatives (even fathers) from having any contact whatsoever with their children. Supervised visits seem like a reasonable compromise.

Similarly, Dr. Tam believes he is being more than fair in supporting the political compromise of domestic partnership. Of course homosexuals shouldn't have access to marriage - everyone believes that. They get their due (maybe even more than their due) under the law. Why are they complaining?

This is how our willingness to compromise is used against us. If my uncle were to accept the insulting offer his daughter has put on the table, she will be confirmed in her unreasonable beliefs about gay men. For my uncle's part, his self-respect is being pitted against his love of his grandchildren. His daughter can't imagine he would have self-respect.

This morning, the dilemma was resolved. My cousin, based on her religion-based-on-love has cut off all contact with her father. Once again, offhand comments in Leviticus, which are decidedly not about pedophilia, trump a specific demand in the Ten Commandments that says in no uncertain terms (and I believe I am quoting here) "Honor thy father and thy mother."

This pedophilic spin on homosexuality is our own contribution to the theology of sexual orientation. At the very least, it is highly arguable that Leviticus or Genesis, or even St. Paul, were primarily concerned about pedophilic homosexuals. It took a lot of time and effort to figure out how to turn the one into the other.

The last thing I'd have expected from the people defending Prop. 8 was for them to be post-gay; but they seem to have at least one attorney who's there.

On Friday, Howard Nielson cross examined Prof. Gregory Herek extensively about the scientific literature that shows "erotic plasticity" and the idea that "the very concept of sexual orientation may be misguided." To my mind, this was the most rigorous cross-examination the defense has offered, and the most intellectually honest.

There is scientific evidence, some of it offered by our own witnesses, showing that some people's sexual orientation is, indeed, fluid. It's not like this should come as any surprise, since the "B" in "LGBT" is now quite taken for granted.

But Nielson was going further with this. He was trying to blast open the entire notion that homosexuality even exists as a category. That, of course, is what the post-gays have argued -- that we should move past this insistence on categorizing ourselves based on sexual orientation. Some ex-gays, too, have found it more convenient to latch onto this term.

Nielson's insistent drumbeat of questions to Prof. Herek suggested very strongly that this will be offered, somehow, to support Prop. 8's rationality. My guess is that the argument would go something like this: The post-gays are right. It's a waste of our time to try and divide ourselves up based on a factor that (the literature shows) is so indeterminate. The marriage laws don't discriminate against homosexuals because even homosexuals can't figure out for certain who counts as one of them. How can you discriminate against a group you can't define?

Well, it's hard to define race, too, in a pluralistic society that doesn't mandate racial uniformity through marriage laws, but that doesn't mean there's no such thing as racism.

But even at its strongest, I'm not sure this argument takes Nielson where he wants to go. If homosexuality doesn't exist as a category, then neither does heterosexuality. As Prof. Herek repeatedly noted in his testimony, though, Nielson was focusing a bit obsessively on the margins. Most people do, in fact, know and identify themselves with one of the two primary sexual orientations.

And that's for a very good, and solidly practical reason. It's easy enough to decline to state a sexual orientation when you're single - though there's certainly no shortage of people willing to declare a major. But when it comes time to commit, and specifically to marry, you can only pick one of the two available options. That returns us back to the original question: should the government be steering people into one of those options and away from the other through the force of law? If so, why? It's not enough simply to say the government is not discriminating against a group of people because we don't know if some of those people really are "those people." The government is, in fact, discriminating against every individual who is willing to declare him or herself, not only a member of that group, but a publicly identifiable member. It's hard to be a closeted homosexual after you've obtained the marriage license with someone whose gender looks suspiciously like your own.

Just because the law isn't discriminating against every conceivable member of a group doesn't mean it isn't discriminating against the group, and (particularly when it comes to marriage) the individuals in the group. Marriage, unique among most civil rights issues, involves two people who must individually agree that this is the course for both of them. If the government chooses to recognize such relationships, can it prefer the relationships that heterosexuals wish to enter to the relationships homosexuals wish to enter?

Nielson's argument seems to be trying to recreate the closet in plain sight. As in days gone by, there are no gay people in it, and no straight people either - just people who get married to members of the opposite sex or don't get married at all. That's not a justification for the status quo, it's just a reiteration of it.

There are a couple of things right up front that should be said in favor of Hak-Shing William Tam. On Thursday, he testified under oath at the Prop. 8 trial that he does not think bestiality is related to homosexuality. He supports domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. He might even support gay adoption, though he hasn't yet made up his mind about that.

That's a lot for a man who believes homosexuals are twelve times more likely than heterosexuals to molest children, and that same-sex marriage will necessarily lead to - might even be intended to lead to -- the legalization of prostitution and sex with children.

Whatever the satisfactions of judging Dr. Tam, I think there's more value in a gimlet-eyed look directly into the contradictions and paradoxes of his testimony.

Start with that "twelve times more likely." It's absurd on its face, contradicted by both science and common sense. But that's not the half of it. It doesn't matter where it actually came from (Dr. Tam doesn't know, attributing its provenance vaguely to the internet), to know that it lumps into its prepackaged assumptions one of the most obvious and often ignored of all the misunderstandings about homosexuality.

It doesn't include lesbians.

Attributing the supposed predisposition toward sexual misconduct of gay men to lesbians is something of a blood sport among our opponents, and they seldom get called on it. The courtroom would have been an ideal opportunity to explore that, but you can't have everything.

David Boies obviously had bigger game to go after when questioning Tam (and came home with a bounty), but I'd love to have heard Tam's answer about whether he thinks lesbians are as voracious as he seems to assume gay men are in their appetite for molesting children. If not, can they get married?

It's possible, maybe even likely, that he does believe they are sexual predators, too. That is the nature of belief: it not only doesn't require facts to support it, it exists independent of, and sometimes contrary to facts. People often believe in God, not because their lives are so good, but because they are not. There are very few facts for the survivors in Haiti to look to that can give them comfort about the future, but faith can sustain them through the grim reality. It has sustained others.

Dr. Tam seems to have the same unshakable faith in his understanding of homosexuality as he does in his understanding of God. He would violate that faith if he questioned it. When he testified that he does not believe he is hostile to lesbians and gay men, there's no doubt he believes that. That's why he supports domestic partnership, protections against discrimination, and other gay-supportive laws.

But would he support laws protecting child molesters in any other context? If gay marriage will really lead to "falling into Satan's hands" as he dramatically wrote, why is domestic partnership okay? Groups in Hawaii don't see any difference at all, which is why they are demonstrating against the civil unions bill now in the Legislature there.

I doubt Tam can explain that difference. But as a voter and even as a political activist, he doesn't need to. Voters can vote for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all.
But the equal protection clause in the constitution is not just puffery. It doesn't have to mean a lot for it to mean something. Dr. Tam is not the only person who worked very hard to get Prop. 8 passed, and his testimony embodies the most common, irreconcilable discords about homosexuality. No matter what any individual voter believed, it is possible - and necessary under constitutional rules - to ask whether there are any consistent reasons, any rational ones, that would support a majority treating a minority differently, and less favorably, than itself.

Dr. Tam did not provide anything like that on Thursday. But Friday's cross-examination of Prof. Gregory Herek provided a glimmer of such an argument.

Two things at the Prop. 8 trial today surprised me.

I did not expect to be able to actually see deposition testimony by Prop. 8 witnesses who would not be testifying in court, but the Olson/Boies team has posted videos, and there is no doubt why the defense did not want these two witnesses on the stand.

It is not because Dr. Kathryn Young and Dr. Paul Nathanson seem shy or afraid of anything. Instead, they appear to be forthright, well-informed, and engaged in the questioning.
To be fair, these tapes include only those parts of their depositions where they do say positive things. But their honest and unambiguous statements are devastating to the parties that called them into this case. Yes, homosexuality is just a normal variant on human sexuality. Yes, reputable studies clearly conclude there is no reason to predict harm when children are raised by same-sex couples. Yes, homosexuals, like heterosexuals, want to marry for reasons of stability and commitment. Yes, single lesbians and gay men raise fine and healthy children, and marriage would reinforce that.

The biggest surprise to me is that David Boies does not have to bully or trick them into saying these things on the record. That speaks well of the witnesses, and their view of professional ethics - or at least honesty.

But that's why they had to be hidden from view. Even without seeing the rest of their testimony (which is presumably the reason they were called by the other side, not ours), there is no doubt that they would have helped our case, as much as, and maybe more than our own witnesses.

The other surprise was the Mormon documents. It will come as a shock to no one that the LDS church was the biggest supporter of Prop. 8. But this was news:

With respect to Prop. 8 campaign, key talking points will come from campaign, but cautious, strategic, not to take the lead so as to provide plausible deniability or respectable distance so as not to show that church is directly involved.

It's hard to tell from the transcript how exact this wording is, but phrases like "plausible deniability" and "respectable distance," are hard to mistranscribe.

There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with religious believers, their leaders, and even their church organizations taking a vocal and even prominent role in political campaigns; frankly, I couldn't imagine a way to prevent this if anyone seriously thought differently. The tax laws that purport to intrude here are as flatfooted as they are misguided.

But who expects church leaders to separate themselves from their moral authority like this? On what other issue would a church have such anxiety about the public knowing they are engaging in a battle against a specific theological evil? If gay marriage is bad - and that's clearly the position the LDS church took - why on earth would they need "respectable distance" from actions based on their own position? Are they hiring a hit man here?

Yet this is how the LDS, and even some Catholic authorities, approached Prop. 8. As with the deposed witnesses, it is their honest assessment of the situation that is the most damning.

And this is how, win or lose, we win. Every road leads back to the same truth: the imagined problem of homosexuality that survived through so many centuries is now seen by too many people as no problem at all. I can only imagine what a problem that is for the people who seem, for whatever reason, to need it be a problem.

On Scott Brown's historic senate victory in Massachusetts, IGF contributing author David Boaz writes on the Cato Institute blog that given:

"the growing recognition that libertarians are a major part of the decentralized 'Tea Party' movement, and rising poll support for 'smaller government,' the Brown victory is a flashing red light with a siren warning Democrats not to proceed with a health care bill that voters don't like and a big-government agenda that Americans weren't voting for in 2008."

And at NPR.org Boaz notes:

"By pressing such a big-government program, Obama has energized a small-government element in the electorate that had been demoralized and pushed aside by a big-government Republican president. Right now, that movement looks likely to turn a lot of Democrats out of office this fall."

But party-line Democrats don't want to hear that message, and LGBT Democratic activists especially aren't listening. This morning I received a fundraising email from EQCA (Equality California) Executive Director Geoff Kors that read:

"Yesterday, in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts voters elected a right-wing, anti-equality candidate to the U.S. Senate seat held by Edward Kennedy since 1962. And the group behind Prop. 8, the National Organization for Marriage, played a major role. The volatile electorate, coupled with fierce opposition determined to deny us equality, makes 2010 a critical year" [to work to elect Democrats].

Scott Brown is a moderate Bay State Republican who opposes marriage equality but thinks the issue should be left to the states (he's against a federal amendment to bar same-sex marriage and says he accepts gay marriage in Massachustts as a settled fact). The idea that the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, which endorsed Brown, played a significant role in his victory is delusional.

Yet again, LGBTers are determined to be on the wrong side of history, and to miss opportunities to forge any links with libertarian-minded, small-government conservatives.

More. Brown also, infamously, is our first centerfold senator.

Furthermore. Politico reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is attacking Republican Richard Hanna, running for Congress in upstate New York, over his ties to the Cato Institute, which the DCCC labels "a right-wing extremist group." According to Politico:

An incredulous Cato spokeswoman, Khristine Brookes, e-mails, "Are they serious? Are we a right-wing extremist group because of our arguments in favor of gay marriage or for our criticism of the Bush war in Iraq?" The "extremist" in question in the release, she notes, is a pro-immigration, pro-trade economist...

As usual, I'm paying more attention in the Prop. 8 trial right now to the cross-examination than to our case-in-chief, mostly because the decision will depend on whether the other side has reasons for discriminatory marriage laws; as a constitutional matter, at least, equality doesn't have to defend itself, inequality does.

Like so many other people, I am firmly in the camp of San Diego's Republican Mayor, Jerry Sanders. He is one of the few politicians in this country who has actually risked his own political future because he believes we are right about marriage. He did not just change his mind about whether domestic partnership was legally and socially inferior to marriage, he told the world about it -- very publicly -- when he was in the course of a hotly contested reelection campaign. What Democrats (let alone Republicans) have risked their careers in such a direct way? Compare Sanders' action to that of congressional democrats who fret about putting ENDA up for a vote - and ENDA is a whole lot less contentious than marriage. Sanders shows what leadership on a controversial issue really looks like. For the record, San Diego's voters reelected him.

Brian Raum for the Prop. 8 defenders tried to parry Sanders' unambiguous rejection of that last residue of prejudice. He wanted Sanders to say that his newly-enlightened view must mean that people who support only domestic partnership do so out of hatred - and that his adaptation meant he'd turned his back on his own previous bigotry.

Sanders didn't take the bait (and Raum offered him a lot of worms). Instead, he calmly distinguished between hatred and the antiquated mindset about homosexuality that we call, in shorthand, prejudice. This distinction is so important.

It shouldn't be a surprise that people who grew up in a time when homosexuals were commonly described as perverts, deviants and degenerates (when they were described at all which, outside of criminal cases and arrests, and the occasional joke about interior decorators or hairdressers, wasn't often) would find it hard to believe, today, that homosexuals are just ordinary fellow citizens. This is what obviously separates those who most reliably vote against us - seniors - from those who most reliably accept us. People in the 1950s and 60s (and even into the 1970s, as this tape of Richard Nixon illustrates hilariously and potently) took it for granted that homosexuals were not only not normal but not good. Those who grew up from the 1980s onward at least saw that framework for understanding homosexuals challenged, and sometimes fully rejected.

The older view, looked at from today's perspective, is certainly harsh, and can be viewed as hateful. But it can also be seen as something more benign and understandable. Of course homosexuals have to struggle against the misunderstanding, but it doesn't make those who haven't been able to change an attitude they view as so fundamental to morality (however wrongly understood) our enemy, only our opponents.

Sanders captured that when he distinguished prejudice from hatred, and this is a theme we should be relentless in articulating. It's easy to caricature those who are stuck in a time warp on homosexuality - as easy for us to do as it for them to caricature us. We shouldn't get ourselves caught in that trap.

That doesn't mean we should be blasé about the truly vile things some of Prop. 8's supporters have said about homosexuality, both on and off the record. Nor should we be casual in making the case for full equality. But we should recognize, in every possible way, that this is hard for a lot of reasonable people who do not harbor hatred for us, only false or misguided ideas.

It was hard for Jerry Sanders, too. But look what happened to him.

I'm on record supporting the televising of the Prop. 8 trial, so it's natural that I am siding with Dahlia Lithwick over Orin Kerr in their fascinating and articulate debate. (H/T Andrew)

It's not that I think Orin is wrong, but that he focuses too narrowly on how plaintiffs want high-profile trials to serve as public forums for their viewpoints. That is inarguable. But the other side in those trials isn't just an innocent bystander. In the hypothetical high-profile trial Orin offers, where a conservative group wants to publicize a case challenging a public university's affirmative action program, I am probably aligned with Orin. But even if I weren't and were representing the university, I can think of any number of very good ways to use that forum to make my own case, not just to the court, but to the public. I know there are affirmative action supporters who are smart and passionate about their position, and who, like the conservative plaintiffs in that hypothetical case, would relish the opportunity of engaging with a very interested public on an issue of importance.

This is public relations, not law, and it is a necessary, though not entirely salutary byproduct of court proceedings being public in cases with political ramifications.

I think Orin might be distracted in the Prop. 8 case because the people defending Prop. 8 seem to lack that fire in the belly -- at least now that the election is over. Four of their six witnesses this week now refuse to testify, claiming that they are afraid of the effect publicity might have on them, even though, as Lithwick notes, this is "not a case about outing gang members." Nor, as we now know, will their testimony be televised. It will be recorded, as I'm sure their lawyers advised them early on the law demands. Their deposition testimony was also transcribed, and their prior public statements urging voters to support Prop. 8, or more generally to oppose marriage equality are hardly news any more.

Given that, I'd have to agree with Theodore Boutros from the Olson/Boies team, who says that the witness's main fear is not about their already on-the-record positions and statements, but an entirely rational fear of being subject to cross-examination by David Boies. Of course, all of the plaintiffs' witnesses were subject to pretty intense and sometimes withering cross-examination by the Prop. 8 defenders - cross-examination, even very tough cross-examination is not unknown in courtrooms.

The sudden reticence of the Prop. 8 witnesses really does look embarrassing for their side, despite their efforts to blame it on out of control gay vigilantes. This is the first full federal trial of an initiative they won, for God's sake. What better forum could they have to make their case broadly than this courtroom right now? Where is the parade of star witnesses, the academics, and the ordinary people who found Prop. 8 so compelling that they actually voted to amend their constitution - not just a law, but the document setting out the very guiding principles of governance - so that, contrary to one of the most fundamental constitutional protections ever devised, it would protect the majority from a minority -- a minority that comprises between 2-5% of the electorate?

I, of course, see this as one more sign that there is no defensible legal case against gay equality, only a still potent political one which comes, not from any actual engagement with reason, but from impulse, inertia, a residue of historic antipathy and a misperception of homosexuality's very nature that has been cultivated for centuries, and is only now being seriously questioned not just by those of us who are gay, but by heterosexuals across this nation and the world. In contrast to those heterosexuals who are engaged in the discussion and really want to explore why it is they believe what they believe, the Prop. 8 defenders seem only to have a whole lot of people who want to be left alone.

At their best, courts provide a truth-seeking function that need only be tangential in political debate. Courts ask people to testify under oath, unlike the sound bites and half-truths that color electoral politics. And specifically with a subject as weighty as a constitutional amendment (despite California's trivilalizing of that document), a trial can test the legitimacy of each side's arguments, rather than their rhetoric. Now is the time for Prop. 8's supporters to make their case. I, for one, keep waiting.

This will not be helpful.

Actors reading the (hastily transcribed by amazing people who, for all their amazingness are not court reporters) reports of testimony of witnesses in the Prop. 8 case is Exhibit A in why trials that many members of the public will be interested in should be available directly.

The first problem is the one that court transcripts have always had, the enormous difference between the cold words that a witness has pronounced on the stand and how he or she has said them: intonation, body language, inflection, etc. Judges and jury members do not just hear the words witnesses utter, they watch the witnesses. Credibility is, in no insignificant part, found in the way words are said, or the manner of the witness. Those are things that no transcript can portray, which is something I have learned directly after many years of having done appeals based on only the record of the trial.

The second problem is that we don't, here, have even an assuredly accurate transcript of the words yet. Court reporters will provide those eventually, which will be astronishingly accurate, given the fact that reporters are needlessly, manually performing a function that a simple iPhone Voice Memo app could perform perfectly and with no human effort (or expense) whatsoever. Here, though, the incredible livebloggers at Firedoglake and the Courage Campaign (who you should give some money to, in my opinion, for stepping into the void that the Supreme Court has created), doing the best they can, are providing general descriptions of some very academic testimony, getting only as many of the actual words spoken by the witnesses as they humanly can. They are also, naturally, guided by their own feelings about which side should win, which colors what they choose to transcribe and how. So the actors will be reading, not the actual words spoken, but only some of them, as well as some other kinds of summary which may have been influenced by human emotion rather than neutral transcription.

Finally, and most significantly, the actors, not having had the benefit of seeing the witnesses, will inevitably be giving their own spins to the imperfect text they will have -- and we will have absolutely no way of knowing how close or far their impressions are from the real thing that happened in that courtroom. It's impossible to even begin imagining how much mischief, creative license, and/or sheer whimsy will be involved in that. And, lacking any actual video record available to the public, we won't have anything to compare to their performances.

I'm not sure what to call the product of this inadvertent collaboration among real witnesses, nonprofessional transcribers, enthusiastic actors and possibly even a director or two. But "reenactment" is only the most charitable name for it.