Brian Brown: The Gay Deceiver

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The Washington Post's Ombudsman tries to respond to Monica Hesse's treacly article on Brian Brown from the National Organization for Marriage -- and makes the same mistake Hesse did.

It's not that you always have to represent the "other side," as the paper's Style Editor sermonizes. The Ombudsman notes that Hesse, herself seems to be on the "other side," as a bisexual who claims a prior relationship with a woman.

The problem is that she is a writer who is unable to detect when she is being had. I don't know whether Brown is "pleasantly, ruthlessly sane," but he is certainly deceptive. As the article shows (unless Hesse was deceived about this, too), he knows better. He claims (as does Frank Schubert, the Karl Rove of the anti-marriage movement) to know homosexuals personally, though like Schubert's gay supporters, they are kept in some undisclosed location the public doesn't have access to. If you know someone who is gay and not completely self-hating, how can you ignore any real option for same-sex couples you think should not be permitted to marry one another?

That is exactly what is at issue in Washington state, where Referendum 71 does not give same-sex couples the right to marry, but only the right to have their relationships recognized as domestic partnerships. Will Brown and NOM be fighting that battle as well? Brown's only, insulting answer to same-sex couples is that they should be treated under law like good friends, or maiden aunts. The extent of the equality he would grant them is limited to being able to contract with one another (which he doesn't seem to acknowledge would be radical only if it were not already legal) and maybe have the state permit hospital visitation. NOM's stand on Referendum 71 is clearly the key to their good faith; support would show that they mean it when they say it is only marriage they are trying to protect. Not pressing Brown on that -- in fact, taking him at his word as being supportive of gay equality -- was Hesse's gravest sin.

And the paper's Ombudsman never even mentioned it.

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California Actin’

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For those who are interested in how gay rights moved from dreaming to action, another piece of California's history is now in print: Tom Coleman's memoirs, The Domino Effect. I'm obviously biased here, but my defense is this: New York had a very active gay community at the same time that California did, yet to this day New York state does not have either domestic partnership or marriage, and California has both. I think the key reason is that we had people like Tom (and others) who knew how to act on their dreams.

Tom's book is about what the world looked like when he got started, and how he worked to change it. New York has many elegant writers and historians, which is why we know so much more about New York's gay community and activists than California's. But unless you have an adequate supply of Tom Colemans, your laws remain static. Politics -- particularly the virulently ant-gay politics of the 1960s and 70s -- is very hard work, and all the visionaries in the world don't help if they don't understand how to make change happen in the scrum of government.

As a nation, we're now at the height of our political action. Tom's book is a good way to see how far we have come, and study what people had to do to make that happen.

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The Debate Over Heterosexual Grievance

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Some props to Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage for going on Michaelangelo Signorile's radio show to talk about marriage. Regrettably, Signorile wanted to talk about gay equality, and that's a language Brown doesn't speak. In fact, if Brown has mastered any skill to qualify him for his present position, it is turning the conversation away from homosexuals and focusing only on heterosexuals.

Brown was insistent that "We should all share the same basic rights," but every time Signorile tried to pin him down on what legal rights same-sex couples should have, Brown changed the subject. He would much rather talk about heterosexual grievance.

That is how the anti-marriage forces succeeded in California. They turned an election about gay inequality into a town hall exposing how lesbians and gay men mistreat religious believers and parents of schoolchildren. Brown learned the lesson well. To hear him tell it, we have utterly overpowered heterosexuals and are bullying them without mercy. If only we could have used our superpowers to change the law that discriminates against us. . . .

Brown clearly intends to follow that script in Maine and if he gets the opportunity, Washington. Once again, the right will try to erase us from the discussion, and focus only on themselves. Hopefully this time around we won't assist them in that strategy.

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Other People’s Judgments

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"You don't just want us to tolerate what you gay people do," my skeptical questioner announced, "you want us to think that it's RIGHT."

Whenever I hear this point-and it's pretty often-I always think to myself, "Duh." Of course I want that. Why would anyone think otherwise?

Actually, the latter question is not entirely rhetorical. Even my fellow gays ask me why we should care about other people's moral approval. Beyond the obvious pragmatic advantages-for example, more moral approval means more favorable voting attitudes, means more legal rights, means an easier life-why should we give a damn what other people think? And while we're on the subject, why should THEY care? Why are our lives any of their business?

There's a myth circulating among well-meaning people that "morality is a private matter," and that therefore "we shouldn't judge other people." This is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. It's about fairness and justice. It's about what we as a society are willing to tolerate, what we positively encourage, and what we absolutely forbid. It is the furthest thing from a private matter.

There's a (wholly fictional) story I tell in my introductory ethics classes about a freshman who wrote a paper defending moral relativism. His paper was laden with references to what's "true for you" versus what's "true for me," what's "right for you" versus what's "right for me" and so on. The professor gave the paper an F. Surprised and angry, the student went to the professor's office demanding a justification.

"Well," the professor carefully explained, "I graded your paper the way I grade all papers. I stood at the top of a staircase and threw a batch of papers down the stairs. Those that landed on the first few stairs got A's…then B's, C's and so on. You wrote a long, heavy paper. It went to the bottom of the stairs. It got an F."

"That's not right!" the student blurted out.

"You mean, that's not right…FOR YOU," the professor responded, grinning.

The moral of the story (aside from, tenured professors do the darnedest things) is this: despite all of our talk of "right for you," deep down we believe in public moral standards. We may disagree about what those are, and about what actions fall under their purview-but we still believe that right and wrong aren't entirely relative.

One might object that grading affects other, non-consenting people, whereas relationships affect only the people involved. There are two problems with this objection. The main one is that the latter point is just false. Unless one endorses a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" secrecy, relationships have a public presence and thus public consequences. Gays aren't waging the marriage battle just so we can all go back in the closet. Like most people, we want to stand up before family and friends, proclaim our love, have it celebrated for the beautiful thing that it is. (At least, that's what many of us want.) We want to send the message to young gays and lesbians that there's nothing wrong with them; that they, too, deserve to love and be loved, and that there's nothing sinful or wrong about that. We want to be treated equally in the eyes of the law. All of these aims affect other people in various ways.

Second, the objection invites the response, "Says who?" Who decides that only actions affecting other people are appropriate targets of moral scrutiny? Who determines that that's the right way to look at morality? And there's no way to answer such questions without engaging in a bit of moralizing. Value judgments are inescapable that way. Those who claim that they're not taking any moral stances about other people's lives are, by that very claim, taking a moral stance about other people's lives-a "tolerant' one, though not necessarily a very admirable one. Sometimes, other people's behavior is horrific, and we should say so.

"Saying so" is part of the confusion here. There's a difference between MAKING moral judgments and OFFERING them, not to mention a difference between offering them respectfully and wagging your finger in people's faces. The latter is not just self-righteous; it's generally counterproductive. I suspect when people say that "we shouldn't judge other people," it's really the latter, pompous kind of moralizing they're concerned to avoid. But we shouldn't confuse the rejection of bad moralizing with the rejection of moralizing altogether.

In short, we should care what other people think and do, because the moral fabric touches us all.

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Utah’s Good People

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Utah Governor Gary Herbert's statement yesterday about gay rights has a message bigger than I think he intended:

"We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't."

Herbert was talking about a state law that would prohibit discrimination against lesbians and gay men, and expresses an optimism about human nature that he'd probably be embarrassed about in any context except gay rights. His position looks to be that the law should not be used to punish people who do bad things because -- well, he doesn't get into that; we just should do good things. I think it's fair to assume he confines this theory to laws about homosexuality, since it's hard to imagine a public official who would support eliminating or ignoring all laws that punish people for doing things we agree are degraded or despicable. I also think it's fair to assume he wouldn't want to rely solely on human virtue even in the face of other forms of discrimination. Perhaps, though, he is not being inconsistent here, and has asked the Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Division to refrain from enforcing any existing anti-discrimination laws against African-Americans or others.

But his focus on laws that punish people only applies to one species of laws -- those that affirmatively state what should be prohibited. But look at Herbert's statement in the context of Utah's law that prohibits same-sex couples from the benefits of the state's marriage laws. This is not a law that (technically) punishes anyone, it is a law that encourages something we agree is good. But if, as Herbert seems to believe, it is the "right thing to do" not to discriminate against homosexuals, why does this law unambiguously demand the government engage in that discrimination?

Perhaps Utah doesn't need to pass a law prohibiting discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Perhaps people in Utah can be relied on to treat homosexuals fairly. But the state's existing marriage law certainly doesn't support the Governor's optimism. In fact, that law is pretty solid evidence proving him wrong.

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Gay Marriage, Straight Disaster?

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In a recent blog post, I took note of a column in which Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune writes that I, among other gay-marriage advocates, "forthrightly asserted that granting gays access to matrimony will have no discernible [social] impact." My quote:

"I wouldn't expect much effect on the social indicators that would be visible to the naked eye," said Jonathan Rauch.

In my book and elsewhere, of course, I've argued that same-sex marriage is more likely to strengthen the culture of marriage than weaken it, and that shutting out gays, far from being risk-free, would be likely to redefine marriage as a civil-rights violation.

In order not to appear any more inconsistent than I actually am, I want to put on record the whole paragraph that I sent to Chapman:

Hi Steve. SSM directly affects only a small number of couples, so direct effects on the non-gay population are likely to be small. Cultural effects-e.g., bolstering the norm of marriage vs. normalizing alternative family structures-are indirect and distinguishing signal from noise would be hard. So I wouldn't expect much effect on the social indicators that would be clearly visible to the naked eye.

I'm not sure why Steve edited out the word "clearly," which made the point a bit, um, clearer: direct, immediate impacts of allowing gay marriage will be small, because so few couples are directly involved. Indirect effects, ramifying through the culture in the form of, say, increased (or decreased) support for the norm of marriage, may be quite large over time. But it's hard to trace these indirect cultural influences with any specificity, or to know what would have happened under some alternative scenario. Identifying them will require some fairly sophisticated research (thus: "not clearly visible to the naked eye").

So, don't get me wrong: either allowing or banning gay marriage will probably have some effects on heterosexual behavior. But the obvious effects will be small, and the larger effects won't be obvious.

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‘Safe’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Shut Up’

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A friend writes, "I'm coordinating a safe-space training at [an urban public university]. One participant stated that she felt she was a strong ally, but her religious beliefs dictate that homosexuality is a sin. What should I do? Can I deny her a safe-space sticker, or ask her not to advise students on religious issues?"

This is a hard question.

It's hard partly because of its legal implications. Georgia Tech, another state school, recently lost a lawsuit because its safe-space program distributed literature uniformly criticizing traditional interpretations of the Bible. Not surprisingly, a federal judge ruled that this practice violated the First Amendment by favoring particular religious viewpoints. (Georgia Tech has kept its safe-space program but dropped the religious literature.)

Legal matters aside, the question raises difficult policy issues. What counts as "safe"?

Safe-space programs generally involve a school-sponsored diversity training focusing on LGBT issues. Upon completing it, participants receive a sticker to display on their office doors announcing their "ally" status.

Given how often religion is used as a weapon, I can understand why many LGBT students would not feel "safe" while being judged as sinners. We should never underestimate the potential damage done by telling youth, at a delicate stage in identity formation, that acting on their deep longings could lead to eternal separation from God.

In contemplating my friend's question, I mainly thought of those vulnerable students, and how best to protect them. I also thought of my friend John.

John is a faculty member at a small private liberal arts college. He is an evangelical Christian who believes that homosexual conduct conflicts with God's plan as revealed in the bible. And yet John defies easy stereotypes. He supports civil marriage equality, decries the various ways religion is used to harm LGBT people, and avoids "heteronormative language" (his words) in his classroom.

While he believes that homosexual conduct (not to mention plenty of heterosexual and non-sexual conduct) is sinful, he also believes that all humans-himself included-have an imperfect grasp of God's will, and that we should generally strive to respect other people's life choices and give them wide latitude in forging their own paths. John and his wife have welcomed me in their home, and during grace before the meal, his wife asked for God's blessing on me, my partner Mark, and our relationship. (For the record, I did not take the latter to imply approval for every aspect of our relationship.)

In light of all I know about John and his loving treatment of LGBT persons, I can think of few spaces "safer" than his office. Any program that would disqualify him draws the circle of "safe spaces" too narrowly.

Moreover, there are good strategic reasons for wanting to make the circle of self-proclaimed allies as inclusive as possible, consistent with the well-being of LGBT students. We need people like John to make their presence known.

Yet I am not suggesting that we draw the circle so broadly as to rob "safe space" of any real meaning. Any student in any campus office-stickered or not-should expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. Presumably, the safe-space sticker denotes venues that substantially exceed that bare minimum (as John's office would).

So how does one draw the circle broadly enough to include John and other conservative religious allies while excluding those who might rant about gays burning in hell?

As with any policy question involving human beings, there's no perfect formula here (just as there are no perfect people). To some extent, the desired group will be somewhat self-selecting. Those interested in condemning LGBT people to hell generally don't attend voluntary pro-gay diversity trainings.

Yet there are also steps one can take to tailor the circle. My recommendation would be to include, among various other elements of a pledge taken by safe-space training participants, something along the following lines:

"I understand that my own values and beliefs may differ from those of students who seek me out for a 'safe space,' and will refer students to appropriate resources given their particular values, beliefs, interests and desires."

The idea here is that students who wish to retreat to a "narrower" circle will be assisted in doing so. Note that religious people offer such assistance all the time. Think, for example, of the Christian who helpfully directs a student to the Buddhist Student Center, despite her personal conviction that eternal salvation is through Christ alone.

On this approach, students who want pro-gay religious literature can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. At the same time, those who want the advice of fellow conservative evangelicals, for example, or fellow Orthodox Jews, can receive it and evaluate it for themselves.

Admittedly, my recommendation would allow conservative religious students to request and receive-in a designated "safe space"-literature of a sort that's often deeply damaging to LGBT people. But the approach is preferable to the alternatives: a public university's (illegally) favoring particular religious viewpoints, on the one hand, or its becoming silent on religious issues-the Georgia Tech solution-on the other.

Universities are places for free exchange of ideas. As long as that's done in a compassionate manner that respects student autonomy, it should never be considered "unsafe."

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Fearless

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There's probably a reason anti-gay marriage advocates won't or can't answer Steve Chapman's simple challenge; it's because he called their bluff. Maggie Gallagher offers a weak tea response, which Conor Clarke has no trouble seeing right through.

As is so often true these days in political debate, subjective fears seem to be the path of least resistance, the lazy advocate's way of making a case. Maggie's not normally lazy, but her appeal to fear is not even credible by the low standards of anti-gay argument.

For example, I'm not sure which of Maggie's folks will be "afraid to speak up for their views" in a pro gay-marriage state. Will it be this pastor, who said:

The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals - sodomites, queers! That's what it was instituted for, okay? That's God, he hasn't changed. Oh, God doesn't feel that way in the New Testament … God never "felt" anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.

Or these guys with the Facebook gay-bashing page; or this pastor who, even today, is blaming gays for tornados? Even the much vilified federal courts sometimes rule that high school students can wear anti-gay t-shirts to school. Heck, those students even have a federal law to protect them. There is simply no shortage of anti-gay sentiment in the world, and I doubt we'll be running out any time soon.

But even if some of Maggie's supporters do experience this paralyzing fear -- against all of the evidence -- it's certainly not likely that Maggie herself will. So cheer up, Maggie!

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2012, Not 2010

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Equality California (EQCA) is not sitting back and waiting in the struggle to regain marriage equality in the Golden State. They are "ready and committed to fighting, persuading and working tirelessly - doing whatever it takes to win the right back as quickly as possible." The question for them, in a smart analysis and plan released last week, is when a return to the ballot will give the best chance for victory. Their conclusion: 2012, not 2010.

EQCA offers many reasons why a rematch in 2010 is problematic. Recent years have seen a stall in the movement by California voters toward marriage equality. Experienced political consultants strongly feel "that neither the data nor their intuition supports moving forward with an initiative to win marriage back in 2010." Among those who gave $50,000 or more for last year's fight, EQCA found that most top donors will sit out a 2010 campaign, or, if a measure reaches the ballot, "will participate at a much reduced level of funding."

The leading coalition partners in communities of color consider 15 months insufficient to build the cultural competency and trust required to change minds in those communities. LGBT family groups, noting the increased harassment faced by their school-age children in a heated campaign, argue that the costs of returning to the ballot would outweigh the benefits without a high confidence in victory.

$2 to 3 million would be needed just for a professional signature-gathering effort to gain ballot access. Experienced hands estimate that an affirmative campaign would cost between $30 million and $50 million - a tall order so soon after last year's loss - and the voter and funder fatigue from back-to-back losses would push the next try back at least four years. EQCA also points out the hardships being faced by social service organizations due to the economic downturn, and questions the ethics of spending tens of millions on a 2010 campaign that would be dicey at best.

EQCA has found that for most voters, marriage is more a cultural than a political issue, and changing minds is a lot easier outside the heat of a campaign. Pushing the deadline back to 2012 will give the best chance for California's 18,000 same-sex married couples to crystallize what is at stake, to connect with voters as only friends and family can, and to refute the wealth of misinformation.

The pro-equality numbers look 4 percent better in 2012 when you consider the higher turnout of young voters in a presidential election year, the young people who will join the voter rolls in the next 38 months, and the older people who will leave the voter rolls in the same period. That's without considering the effect of any efforts at persuasion.

EQCA lists many puzzle pieces that must be assembled for success: "field, messaging and media, coalition and leadership outreach, activating our base, work in people of color communities, activating the faith community, supporting the grassroots, campus organizing, voter registration and coordination across the state." Canvassers must be trained to listen as much as to convey the campaign message. EQCA is setting up a speaker's bureau and training speakers, and is working with other groups doing field work to coordinate scripts, voter targeting, and message testing. An innovative online campaign is needed for areas in the state without a field staff presence, since field offices are located where support for Prop 8 was strongest.

An additional 24 months will give equality advocates more time to plan, organize, fundraise, build the grassroots, integrate allied efforts, recruit new allies, and improve outreach to the people of color who comprise a majority of California's population.

Those who insist on returning to the ballot in 2010 should explain how EQCA's analysis is wrong, rather than merely serenade us with stirring rhetoric. Strategy is not a dirty word, and enthusiasm is not enough.

None of us with a stake in this fight wants to wait. Every day that I am separated from my own foreign partner is painful. Unfortunately, wanting is not having. There is a great deal of work remaining to overturn Prop. 8, not to mention the ballot fight looming this November in Maine, where our opponents hold a fundraising edge. Let us do the preparation needed to win a lasting victory in California, and not let our hearts rule our heads.

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2010 or 2012: A False Choice

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Most states have their own struggles for gay marriage, whether in the long term like Illinois or near term like Maine, where a referendum is coming up almost immediately. But it is California that seems to have seized an outsized portion of the attention.

For one thing, California is by far the largest state. For another both the legislature and the state Supreme Court have voted in favor of gay marriage. But last year voters rejected gay marriage by a vote of 52 to 48 percent.

Now the question roiling California activists is whether to return to the voters to try to have the ban reversed in 2010 or in 2012. Equality California, the group that managed the 2008 effort to preserve gay marriage argues for 2012. But an apparently large group of "grass-roots and net-roots" activists calling themselves the Courage Campaign are pushing for a revote right away-in 2010.

It is difficult to take Equality California very seriously these days. They ran an exclusionary, top-down campaign, hired high-paid consultants, made several strategic misjudgments, spent $40 million dollars-and lost. Not an impressive showing. So why should we believe them now?

On the other hand, what is the Courage Campaign offering? Enthusiasm, to be sure, and a good portion of righteous indignation. But not much else. Consider what they don't offer.

Money. Will the well-off donors who made large contributions to the 2008 struggle want to repeat the process just two years later? Are they not likely to be suffering from "donor fatigue"? Rick Jacobs, Courage Campaign founder, bragged to The New York Times that they had raised $75,000 in just one day.

Fine. Do that for 460 days and you have the amount of money that Equality California spent to lose. If donors can say to Equality California, "No more money for losers," they could say to the Courage Campaign, "No money for people with no track record at all."

A Strategic Plan. If the strategy of Equality California was flawed, where is an alternative strategy by the Courage Campaign? Where is their plan to persuade cultural conservatives, religious voters and ethnic minorities to support gay marriage, to clear up the (alleged) doubts and uncertainties many mddle-of-the-road voters felt about gay marriage, to somehow lure more pro-gay voters to the polls?

Polling Data. The advocates for a 2010 vote have no polling data to suggest that the outcome would be any different from 2008. They should want polling data showing substantial gains in public support for gay marriage among likely voters before they advocate another referendum. Given the tendency of some people to lie to pollsters and purport to have a more gay-supportive or laissez-faire attitude toward gay marriage than they actually do, advocates should want to see polling data showing at least 56 or 57 percent support.

The conclusion forces itself forward that neither 2010 nor 2012 is a really good bet. What California gay marriage advocates should give us is a number-a level of support for gay marriage that would let us know that a referendum finally has an excellent chance of passage. Up to now, support for gay marriage has been growing at a rate of roughly one-half to one percent a year.

In the meantime, to hasten that result, they could work in various ways on changing people's minds about gay marriage. But no one has shown us any plans to do that. Until either side offers that, it is hard to take them seriously.

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