IGF CultureWatch

It looks like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is ready to declare outright war on whatever believers still inhabit the pews. Their pastoral letter on marriage will be debated formally next month, but a preview is available. I've long since left the Catholic church (I can only take so much), but even if I were a heterosexual whose interests the church purports to protect, I think this would be the final straw for me.

The church is nothing if not consistent on sex (bad in general, good if it's "ordered" toward procreation), but this time out the Bishops seem comfortable squarely placing heterosexual couples who use contraception in the same moral position as same-sex couples. In fact, this letter may be the first time I've heard church officials explicitly employ the same language about married couples using birth control as they use about homosexuality. The letter describes contraception as an "intrinsically evil action." That's very close to the language they use about homosexuality. In fact, I think we're only "intrinsically disordered," without the "evil." The National Catholic Reporter (which is independent of the church) cites surveys showing 96% of married American Catholics use birth control, which is "within a margin of error of complete unanimity."

Is the American church ready to show American heterosexuals the same level of condescension they have previously reserved for us? That's up to them, of course. And I could be wrong about this, since I'm no expert on Catholic theology.

The condescension and theological arrogance of writing -- and thinking -- like this may be the biggest problem the church faces. Pastoral letters and other pronouncements from the Vatican seem to make a conscious effort to come from a world that Catholic believers don't live in, or maybe even recognize. As the bishops pontificate (you should pardon the word) in plummy grandiloquence about "the language of the body" and the "unitive" nature of marriage, you can almost feel the defensiveness from this famously unmarried and theoretically celibate clergy. Be sure to check out the part of the letter where the bishops explain why the Bible's description of Eve as a "helpmate" to Adam not only doesn't mean she was intended to be his inferior, but take their paternalistic case of nerves one step further to argue that the Bible also uses the original word translated as "helpmate" ("ezer") to describe God, himself. You can almost hear them cheering on Catholic women with a hearty but very self-conscious, "You go, girl!"

While the bishops and the Vatican indulge themselves in their pomposity, American Catholics continue their lives in the reality-based world. In addition to those who use contraception (i.e. pretty much everyone), 45% of American Catholics support same-sex marriage - in fact, Catholics have the highest support of any denomination; a full 62% of them support civil unions.

Ironically, that's probably a tribute to the church, itself, which has a history of social involvement, justice and intellectual engagement. Those things have taken a backseat to foolish and pedantic imagined consistencies on sex these days, but perhaps believers are willing to forgive even this and hope that it, too, will pass.

The pastoral letter will probably not change any minds. But then, it's not really intended to. That, in fact, may be the biggest problem my former church faces.

I'd like to speak up in favor of the White House statement on the two anti-gay referenda. It is easy to be cynical about the statement, and there is certainly no shortage of evidence to support cynicism. But it will help.

Here is the statement:


"The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes 'strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.' Also at the dinner, he said he supports, 'ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.'"

Andrew may be right that the President is not putting his weight behind us in either Maine or Washington, but the politics of this issue is not so straightforward. This one's a bank shot.

Obama is not going to support gay marriage yet. End of sentence. There is no rational or moral reason for his position, and he knows enough not to even try to offer one. It's an assertion without a foundation, and one that more than half of all Americans continue to believe.

But we have two very close elections to worry about now. One is in Maine with California's Frank Schubert at the helm again trying to terrify voters about gay marriage. Schubert is as savvy and dangerous a political flack as exists, and he'll use anything to win - including Obama's on the record statement to Rick Warren expressing his personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Obama is not going to take back his statement to Warren. But when the White House says, in an official statement, that Obama believes "strongly" in stopping laws "designed to take rights away" (as Maine's referendum is), our side is no longer defenseless when and if Schubert tries to use the President's words against us.

It is not perfect, and it is not what we need most. But it is more than the nothing Obama gave us in California.

And it is a little more than that in Washington State. A contemporaneous statement of his support for our equal rights will go a long way to help us approve Referendum 71. While the opposition is doing everything it can to make that election, too, about same-sex marriage, it is not. Washington's legislature has been working incrementally to make domestic partnership there more equal to marriage, and passed a law that does exactly what the President said - and now says again - that he supports. Again, it is not perfect, and it is not what we need most. But it is not nothing, and our side will be able to use the President's words, dated this month.

I fully understand and share the frustration of people who want more from the President. The nation has changed since Bill Clinton was in the White House. But we can't forget the fundamental lesson from the 1990s: When it comes to gay rights, it's not the principle that is most potent, it's the backlash. Clinton did not want to sign either DADT or DOMA (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). In both of those cases, he was dealing with incendiary reactions to pro-gay statements. And both were compromises to proposals that would have been worse: a complete ban on gays in the military and a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage.

The nation has moved a lot on DADT and civil unions. But it hasn't moved enough yet on marriage, where 53% of Americans still haven't come around. They will. I, too, would like to see Obama lead the nation into its best instincts on this issue rather than follow its worst.

But if we can win in both Maine and Washington, I think we will have turned a corner. Obama's statement does help us some in both states, and we should use it for all it's worth.

With all due respect to Barney Frank, enough with the NRA comparisons.

In defending his dismissive remarks of the National Equality March, Frank has said we should follow the example of the most effective lobbying group in the country - the National Rifle Association - and do our lobbying work at the district level. The NRA doesn't hold marches, and, according to Frank, we shouldn't waste our time either.

Barney's wrong. First, this obscures the fact that lesbians and gay men are a very small minority. U.S. gun ownership runs between 21.6% and 50%. Every one of those people has a very direct interest in gun laws. You can't fairly compare their numbers to the 3-5% of gays and lesbians in the country. While we have an ever-increasing number of supporters who are willing to vote for our equality, their interest is indirect: justice and fairness for their friends and family, and maybe even in general. That is a tribute to them and to generations of lesbians and gay men who took the risks of coming out to try and persuade them.

What Frank assumes is that, like NRA members, our supporters would also have the single-minded dedication we do, in every congressional district in the nation, to put unified and unceasing pressure on members of congress.

There are places in the country where that might happen. But that's the second reason the NRA analogy is wrong. Those people overwhelmingly live in places were we already have the congressional support we need. It is exactly in the places where we need the help that we would have the fewest straight supporters to do what the NRA does.

That is the paradox of being, not just a minority, but an extremely small minority in a democratic nation. No one but us actually experiences the day-to-day effects of discrimination, and because we are all part of the larger public, it is hard to get our unique but intense problem onto the national agenda for a sustained period of time. A national march does that for a day or two, but already the media has moved on to - what are for them - more important issues to the public at large.

When our problems are national in scope (as they are with DADT and DOMA) we have to do things nationally to call attention to the problem. Barney Frank's prescription presupposes support in places where we need it the most and have the hardest time getting it.

It's enough to make reasonable non gun-owners mad enough to go out and join the NRA.

Despite good financial news from the Maine campaign for our equality, the storm clouds are gathering, in the form of "Fog."

This video from Focus on the Family (courtesy of GoodAsYou) lays out the red carpet for Maine ads using President Obama's personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman against us.

As I said earlier, if Obama wants to help us in this single state -- Maine -- he doesn't need to ask Congress for a thing; though permission from Rahm Emanuel is probably at least as hard to come by.

But it is not entirely a matter of Obama helping us. He is on the record in a way that can and will hurt us. If he says nothing about Maine, then his comments to Rick Warren can accurately and honestly be used, as they were in California, to help convince moderate voters to repeal equal marriage rights. This is not a national issue, and he is not the President of Maine. But his lack of clarification is his consent to the anti-equality campaign to use these existing remarks as is.

The President knows this. He is the only person who can do anything about it. His silence here would be his most eloquent refutation of his expressed good intentions. That is so clear, even Focus on the Family can see it.

While tens of thousands of people were marching in DC for gay equality, a few of us were in Los Angeles piecing together the events on this coast that made all this possible.

The occasion was the book release party for Tom Coleman's memoirs, The Domino Effect. Tom is one of the key figures in gay history who fought tirelessly in L.A., first to eliminate our state sodomy law, then to chip away at the other vague laws which the police used to harass us, and most significantly to find a way for the culture and the law to include same-sex couples within the definition of family. That effort put California in the nation's forefront in having our elected leaders reshape the law before the courts needed to. If you want to know how important California is in gay rights, ask yourself why the State of New York, which has had an organized gay community for about as long as California, continues -- to this day -- not to have even so much as domestic partnership for the state's same-sex couples. My answer: They lacked a Tom Coleman.

As Tom was briefly recounting his career, I could not help but notice how many of the key figures in the room he was thanking were heterosexuals whose role in our movement is both essential and unrecognized: State Senator David Roberti; Attorney General John Van de Kamp; L.A. City Attorney Burt Pines (absent due to a hospitalization, but definitely in everyone's mind); L.A. City Councilman Mike Woo; Wallace Albertson; Dr. Nora Baladerian; Judge Arthur Gilbert. Whether you know their names and contributions or not, these are what fierce advocates of gay equality look like.

But they had to be coaxed into action by gay advocates with farsightedness, political wisdom and sheer common sense: Jay Kohorn and Chris McCauley, and, of course, Tom, were at the head of that list. This small band of people came together and used the freedom and tools our political system offers to turn a world that had no place at all for same-sex couples into one where our chief complaint is that the compromise they devised and then implemented -- domestic partnership -- is viewed by some people as good enough, at least for us. It was a fine compromise for the world that existed in the 1980s and 90s; but it is a step toward equality that arose from political necessity; it is not equality itself.

If what you know about the history of gay rights in California is Harry Hay and Del Martin and Harvey Milk, there are entire chapters left to understand. Tom's book will not be the last word on these people's place in our history. But it is a good start.

This debate on CNN shows how the HRC event provides cover for the President's silence about Maine and Washington. Hilary Rosen -- who I tend to agree with, mostly -- is exclusively focused on one thing: the federal government. The President cannot do anything because it takes a long time to get a bill through Congress. We have to give him time because Congress is slow.

No one with any sense could disagree with that, but its blinkered focus is dangerous. There are two critical state elections about our relationships, and the President's ambivalence about our relationships will be a factor in both of them. He doesn't need to ask Congress to do a thing. His very clear remarks last night reinforced the fact that he supports qualifed equality for our relationships (Washington) but not marriage (Maine). Like his statements as a candidate, this reaffirmation of his position (which the event attendees cheered) can and will be used against us, either explicitly in Maine, or implicitly in Washington, where his failure to say anything against repealing their domestic partnership law will not go unnoticed.

We are right on the verge of winning the support, not only of courts and legislatures, but of voters directly. The President is the leader who could tip the balance. Last night he stepped away from the field. And we let him.

There is no shortage of excellent commentary on President Obama's speech to HRC. Andrew Sullivan, Jim Burroway and Jeremy Hooper are all great. I only have a few thoughts to add.

(1) For those who want action from Obama, it's good to remember a speech by the President of the United States is action. We talk a lot about "war," but that is just a metaphor for what we are doing: changing a cultural prejudice that has existed for centuries. Signing bills is only one kind of action in that kind of struggle, and that's an end, not a means. Finding heterosexual leaders to join us has been the hardest part of our effort. This was a speech inconceivable from any prior President. It will be helpful in moving toward equality, and may stand as a landmark.

(2) This speech incorporated exactly the incoherence we are fighting in the culture. Obama did promise to sign bills that would punish anti-gay prejudice -- hate crimes and employment discrimination. But whatever political value those laws will have is undermined -- powerfully -- by the federal government's own explicit discrimination against gays in DOMA and DADT. Until those laws are changed, the government Obama presides over remains the country's dominant source of anti-gay discrimination. Those who oppose us will certainly have those two pillars of discrimination to support their own feelings about our inferiority.

(3) The President's failure to mention either Maine or Washington is unforgivable, and Obama has compromised, if not forfeited, any claim to be a fierce advocate of our equality in leaving them out. His ambiguous language about equality for our relationships will be used in Maine, as it was in California, to reinforce his opposition to same-sex marriage -- which is a fact. That fact will be used against us, and Obama is the only person that can prevent that, if he chooses. But the election in Washington state is one where even his lack of conviction about our equality would have been no bar to supporting us. The Washington referendum is not about marriage, it is only about domestic partnership rights. That is exactly the qualified equality he said he supports for us. There was not a person in that room last night who did not know about these two elections, and their cheers for the President's waffling on this central issue were inexplicable. Washington's legislature finally moved same-sex couples in that state to the nominal equality the President believes we are entitled to, and some in that state want to take it away, leaving same-sex couples in Washington with scraps (though not "nothing" as I incorrectly asserted in an earlier post). How could the President possibly be silent about that and be celebrated?

I couldn't agree more with Evan Wolfson's advice to Barack Obama about what he needs to say at his speech to the Human Rights Campaign this weekend.

Well, maybe a little. Evan thinks that Obama needs to make the moral case against exclusion of gay couples from the law. He follows David Mixner's lead, saying that Obama needs to explicitly oppose Maine's attempt to override the legislature's decision to support same-sex marriage.

Amen to that.

But he also follows the mainstream media's obsessive focus only on the east coast of this country, and completely leaves out what's happening in Washington.

In fact, opposition to Washington's Referendum 71 fits more comfortably into Obama's current position on gay equality. R-71 grants same-sex couples only domestic partnership benefits, not marriage - which is exactly what Obama is already on the record supporting. Given that, his silence on Washington's election is already inexplicable, and should be remedied. After all, if R-71 passes, gay couples in Washington will have no legal recognition of their relationships - no rights - at all. That makes Washington a good starting point for Obama's remarks.

But I agree with Evan that Obama needs to go beyond that bare support for qualified equality, and support the real thing. That is what is at stake in Maine. Washington's Equality Lite is a political compromise that is better than no equality at all. But in Maine, they have true equality on the ballot. Mixner is exactly right that Obama's hedged rhetoric was used against us -- against Obama -- in California, and will be used the same way in Maine. Only he can prevent that from happening.