IGF CultureWatch

Andrew Sullivan does a good job of showing how Robert George's WSJ piece about same-sex marriage seems to leave no reasonable option for lesbians and gay men in our society. But George illustrates something else that's at least as important: He wants us to view court decisions about same-sex marriage through the same lens as those regarding abortion. That's his preference, but it's not at all necessary.

It all started with Roe v. Wade, as you know, which was the "judicial usurpation of authority." If a future court were to rule in favor of same-sex marriage as a constitutional matter, George argues it would amount to judges trying to "peddle a strained and contentious reading of the Constitution-one whose dubiousness would undermine any ruling's legitimacy." Judges should not resolve morally charged policy issues "according to their personal lights."

Who couldn't agree with that? But does George's constitution really have nothing to say about all people being treated equally? It is true that Roe (and far more important, its predecessor, Griswold v. Connecticut) had to stretch to find constitutional penumbras and emanations. But no such ephemera are necessary to conclude that lesbians and gay men, too, are citizens, and that laws must apply equally to them. At the very least, whether and how equality might apply to marriage laws needs a radically different kind of constitutional analysis than Roe demanded.

This focus on Roe is magician's misdirection. Gay equality is certainly controversial enough, and it is true that court decisions about marriage equality reverberate through the culture. But that is not necessarily because the judges have exercised any usurpation of their authority, it is because the prejudice about homosexuality is still deeply rooted. Judges ruling in favor of gay equality are caricatured as acting on personal prejudices, but it may not be their prejudices that are at issue.

Amen to Dale's post. I'd add one additional point. The political class offers us these shiny political objects because our leadership (and, to be fair, many of us) give them the impression that they'll make us happy. A natural consequence of asking for things other than the hard ones: marriage and the military -- is that we allow politicians to work on the easy ones at the expense of what we really need.

California's legislature, like the President, is seeking to honor Harvey Milk, but they're doing it after having done their work on the hard issue of marriage (and getting preempted by the voters). I don't want to diminish the political importance of symbolic or accessory accomplishments, like hate crimes laws. These can and do pave the way in the political process for the momentous achievements that are needed. Presidential honors to openly gay and lesbian citizens do let the nation know that honor and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive, and show that the President was speaking honestly when he said his vision of America includes lesbians and gay men.

But this is not hard work. By definition, presidential honors go to people whose reputations are well-established. It is the rest of us -- the undistinguished ones who have to live under federal laws that mandate discrimination against us -- who aren't much helped by honors like these. Changes in the law are the only thing that will make a difference in our everyday lives, and for a minority that continues to be denied the dignity of the constitution's equal protection clause, that means we can only depend on political majorities. We have done a monumental job of getting this nation close to majority support -- and have gone above and beyond the call of 50% when it comes to the military -- but are at the point of either diminishing returns or sheer exhaustion right now. Either way, it is only those like the President who have it in their power and talent to make the closing case.

Honoring Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King is good for Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King, but those honors do not change a single word of a single discriminatory federal law. Anything less than that is costume jewelry.

Congratulations to Billie Jean King and to Harvey Milk (posthumously) for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I figure these medals, though deserved by the recipients, cost the gay-rights movement about $5 million each.

We were told in 2006 that we needed a Democratic Congress to pass gay-rights legislation. We got one and nothing much happened. Two years later, we were told we needed a filibuster-proof Senate majority. It was delivered, but nothing valuable is passing the Senate. We were told we needed a Democratic president. We elected one and nothing's moving. It wasn't enough. It will never be enough. The problem is not that the Democratic Party is useless, at least not completely. (And useless is still better than hostile.) The problem is not that the president has more important things to do, though he does.

The core of the problem is that every "gay rights" measure is still viewed by politicians, political pundits, and the most energized actvists on both sides, as liberal. That's true even where majorities tell pollsters they support the measure, as with passing ENDA and repealing DADT. Liberals are proud gay rights is their cause. Conservatives are delighted it's not. The association of gay rights and liberalism is easy and unquestioned across the political spectrum -- the last bastion of bipartisan consensus.

But as the healthcare debate is reminding us, this is not a left or even center-left country. We may have a Democratic majority in Congress, but we don't have a liberal majority. We haven't had one since 1965. If we didn't get one after the misrule of the past few years, we aren't going to get one. So electing more Democrats is not the answer, or at least not the whole of the answer. Building grand progressive coalitions is not the answer.

We must break the consensus about gay rights. We must challenge the assumption that gays are just the next group with a list of demands. The political culture must come to see military service by gays as patriotic and honorable, which it is, not as a civil right or as a social experiment, which it is not. It must see gay marriage as an embrace of responsibility and tradition, which it is, not as hedonism or as yet more sexual license, which it is not. It must see gay rights not as left, but as right.

The estimable Peter LaBarbera commented on my post about GLAAD. Some folks here replied with varying levels of snark and/or mockery. LaBarbera does tend to bring that out in people.

But I think his comment deserves a bit more, because I think his assumption helps clarify the distance between us. He says, "When will the entertainment industry catch up with reality and cast a sympathetic FORMER homosexual character who is content with his sexuality in a major film? The "gay-as-victim" shtick is getting so tiresome."

I couldn't agree more with his final sentence. That is one of the things that distinguishes IGF, I hope. But what about those former homosexuals who are content with their sexuality?

It's here that I think LaBarbera and his supporters are at odds with the vast majority of America. it's not that we don't think there are people who describe themselves as ex-gays, or even who have found someone of the opposite sex to marry and are content with, even proud of their lives.

But very few people think those folks are "former" homosexuals. Rather, I think most of us agree with Alan Chambers. Chambers, who is the president of Exodus Intenational, is candid that he continues to "struggle" with his homosexuality, but that his religion helps him to resist that temptation.

While most Americans understand sexual temptation, they don't "struggle" with their sexual orientation, and I doubt very many today imagine God demands that exertion of homosexuals any longer. If homosexuals want to make that deal with their God, they certainly can, but that God is looking increasingly unreasonable. Why should secular gays be in the same class as Catholic priests? Even American Catholics are evenly split on priestly celibacy, with 55% of all Americans saying that rule appears to have outlived any usefulness it might once have had.

I don't know what kind of God LaBarbera has in mind, but I think the deity he and Chambers worship is not the one the rest of us envision. If some TV producer wants to do a modern-day Thorn Birds, with a gay man in the role of the priest (maybe Richard Chamberlain is still available), he might give it a try. But I think that God might get a lot less sympathy than the one in the original could count on.

The Palm Center's just released report, A Self-Inflicted Wound: How and why gays gave the White House a free pass on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell', reveals how it's not just politicians who stand in the way of DADT repeal, but some of our own leaders. The Military Readiness Enhancement Act, or MREA, is ready to go, with 164 co-sponsors. Independently, the President really could do something unilaterally, but won't. And according to the report, he has been given cover by gay leaders.

Aaron Belkin's position will raise any number of hackles, and it should. Here's mine: Like most politically active minority groups, we don't actually elect any of our "leaders." They are generally self-selected, and over time, that process of self-selection can become incestuous. Small groups of like-minded individuals designate themselves, in various combinations, to represent the interest of the group, and exercise a pretty free ability to determine what they believe that interest is.

Belkin doesn't name any names, but the problems facing DADT repeal speak for themselves. Between 69-75% of Americans now support eliminating this blot on our national reputation, but the fear of a backlash like the one Bill Clinton suffered has the political classes paralyzed and positively verklempt. How much more public support is needed to give them comfort? Do we have to wait until support rises to 80%? 90%?

This is a funhouse mirror image of why minorities are given special consideration in the constitution. Not only are our politicians afraid of a majority's biases about a minority, they are now even afraid of a minority of the majority's biases about the minority.

Can't anyone in our leadership point that out?

I don't know if this phenomenon has a name (I'd suggest CEGSSS: Clinton-Era Gay Shell-Shock Syndrome), but if our leaders can't guide politicians through it, what good are they? I'm sure Rahm Emanuel is no easy project, but are the rest of us supposed to live through the aftereffects of his trauma forever?

I'm really wondering whether we need GLAAD anymore. They've just released their Network Responsibility Index for 2008-09 to "serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representations." ABC led the pack among networks; of its 1,146.5 total hours of primetime programming, 269.5 hours (24%) included LGBT impressions. The CW came in second with 138 LGBT-inclusive hours, or 20% of its primetime offerings. CBS gave us the back of their hand, devoting only 60 hours -- 5% of its schedule -- to us. For shame.

In 1985, when GLAAD was a startup, this kind of monitoring was not only valuable, but necessary. Back then, the New York Times had a specific editorial policy against use of the word "gay," to describe us. GLAAD is the reason that changed, and they can claim credit for much more. They've helped us change the world.

But now we are in the position where we can complain when one network only shows us five percent of the time -- a number pretty close to our actual percentage in the population. Anyone tuned only to ABC would have had to put up with 269.5 hours of us. How helpful is it, really, that we know, to the decimal point, total network hours, percentages (subdivided by race, as well; Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives lose serious GLAAD-cred on that point) and year-over-year differentials of GLAAD-approved achievement? Are we studying stuff now, not because we need to, but just because we can?

I don't know how much it cost to do all this monitoring, and slicing and dicing of the data, nor how much was spent to produce the 39-page, very glossy report. But in a world where we have some important and expensive political work to do in (for example) Maine, New York and possibly Washington (and let's not forget California), is this really the best use of $11 million? Do we really need GLAAD as an institution any more? More important, if we ever decided we didn't, would it be possible to get rid of them?

I was obviously -- and happily -- wrong in worrying about Charlotte. Despite some troubling rhetoric from religious leaders, the gay pride event there went off without a hitch. About 500 believers prayed peacefully, even mingled with the crowd of about 10,000. This shows how people of contrasting beliefs should be able to interact. The Christians, in their red shirts, believe God has "A Better Way" for us, and just like anyone else who is trying to sell us something, whether it's a car, a life insurance policy or a religious way of life, we should respond to their pitch with some measure of the politeness in which it is offered, and any credibility we think is warranted. If and when we give them a clear signal of No Sale, everyone should be able to continue on their way.

Which led me to thinking about a customer they were able to close the deal with: Alan Chambers. He's just published a book called Leaving Homosexuality, about his struggle with unwanted homosexual attraction. An interview with him at CitizenLink fascinated me because, even more pointedly than the protesters in Charlotte, he seems to be able to draw a line between his religious beliefs and the civil society. He seems quite candid in admitting he finds other men sexually appealing. But in his view, acting on that attraction is sinful:

The key thought here is the opposite of homosexuality isn't heterosexuality. It's holiness. There are people who are conflicted with their sexuality, involved with homosexuality, and there is a way out for those who want it. But it doesn't say that they're going into heterosexuality, because that's not the point. The point is that people can leave whatever it is that God calls less than His best and move into something that is His best, becoming more like He is.

That strikes me as getting it just about right. If you hold his religious belief (which interestingly implies that God is heterosexual, something I don't think I've heard before), then you should probably avoid that particular sin. Plenty of religions are questioning that premise right now, but not the one Chambers belongs to.

An awful lot of us, though, are accepting of our homosexual orientation. And Chambers acknowledges that his path is only "for those who want it." The rest of us live in the secular world, governed by secular laws and (in part) by our human desires and affections. Chambers and the Charlotte protesters can try to talk us out of those, but they can't force us to believe something we don't. That's something the First Amendment -- both in the religion clauses and in the free speech clause -- got exactly right. Neither religion nor government can demand belief. Yet that is the knot at the heart of the religious opposition to homosexuality. Because they cannot enforce belief, they are trying to use the law to corral acceptance, but acceptance is, itself, a belief -- and one that is growing.

As we learn every day from the rest of the world, living with people who hold contrasting or inconsistent beliefs is the only alternative to civil unrest and even violence. The Charlotte protest and the Chambers interview show a civility -- and a clear separation of religion from the law -- that I think is admirable. I thought someone should say that.

I'm on the record as being in favor of kisses, as well as kiss-ins. I'm Pro-Kiss.

So I was paying attention to the latest kiss-in in Southern California, outside the LDS temple in La Jolla. It was a small rally, but the quality of the kissing seemed above average, and the point was made: Kissing is really not that big a deal.

But this local news report had something in it I don't think I've ever seen before -- certainly not on local news. A shot of two women kissing pans to reveal a couple of kids playing, with the reporter saying "This, taking place in front of children roaming on church property." My reflexive cringe turned into amazement, though, when the report cuts to one of the kissers being interviewed: "What if those children grow up and they are gay? I don't want them to think it's a bad thing."

That is close to an encapsulation of the entire gay rights movement in two short sentences. The report was able to get past the immediate and natural fear people have for children in general, and offer an opportunity for the audience to think about the world as gay children might experience it. In other words, it actually imagined, for a moment, that all gay people really were, themselves, children at some point. Why should they grow up in a world of images where straight kissing is good but gay kissing is bad? What effect would that have on them?

That leap of imagination -- of empathy -- is the one more and more heterosexuals are able to make. I don't want to make too big a deal of out this one TV news report, but as much as some of the best kisses I've ever had, it took my breath away.