Disappearing Act

by on

There was an elephant missing from the room during the congressional hearing on ENDA - the opposition.

I don't mean witnesses testifying against the bill; Craig Parshall of the National Religious Broadcasters Association was quite clearly in opposition. Camille Olson, while not so clearly opposed to the bill, made some cogent points about how current language might be too broad.

The absence was most obvious among legislators who oppose ENDA. Of the 19 GOP members on the committee, only three I could count -- John Kline, the ranking member, Todd Russell Platts, and Judy Biggert -- spoke, or even showed up, and the last two are cosponsors of the bill. Kline's opposition was vague and he never said it would be a bad thing to prohibit discrimination against lesbians and gay men; rather, he was concerned about "philosophical and logistical" considerations. Religious groups are now clearly exempted from the bill, and Kline was worried only about "how that exemption will be applied." He never even tried to make a respectable libertarian argument against the bill.

There's no doubt that the GOP will vote en masse against ENDA, so why weren't they at the hearing to articulate their case, or challenge the pro-ENDA witnesses? This is becoming characteristic of the anti-gay movement. They're no less opposed to gay equality in employment, housing, marriage and the military, but they've stopped trying to make arguments publicly.

That's a fairly recent development. Maggie Gallagher, for example, used to be a leading voice willing to debate the anti gay marriage case, but nowadays, it's rare to see her outside of Fox-friendly forums and religious or NOM-sponsored gatherings (these categories may have little distinction).

And it's not just that the right is not talking to the public - they now actively want to keep anyone else from hearing what they say to one another. In early September, Stand For Marriage Maine had a "pro-marriage" rally, and Jeremy at GoodAsYou asked for tickets. SFMM is the group that got Question 1 on the ballot, and you'd think their events would and should be public. But when Bob Emrich discovered Jeremy might not be sufficiently supportive of Emrich's cause, he said no, but offered to send Jeremy a DVD of the proceedings. Needless to say, that promise is still unfulfilled.

In place of arguments and persuasion, the right now hides behind commercials that deploy either fear or deception. To be fair, this tactic can certainly be effective, as we Californians can attest. But when a movement gives up on persuasion and relies only on surrogate strategems like this, perhaps it's safe to assume even they see they're coming to the end of the line. At the very least, it's hard to believe they have any confidence in their own logic.

UPDATE: The original post misidentified one of the Republican members at the hearing.

3 Comments

Self-Help Helps Most

by on

Q. Should I go to this upcoming gay March on Washington?

A. It depends. It seems to me that if you think it will help the cause of gay marriage, or whatever else it is to be about, you might want to go. But if not, why bother. These gay marches on Washington have been steadily losing significance; the last one was a financial fiasco. If you know of any other way to promote marriage equality, it might be better to do that instead of taking the time and money to go to Washington. Of course, it is always fun to see many thousands of gays and lesbians gathered in one place. So if you lived in Baltimore or, say, Philadelphia, go ahead and go. But if you live in Chicago or St. Louis....

Q. Do you support this idea of a gay school being proposed in Chicago?

A. First of all, it isn't to be an all gay or even primarily gay school. Fewer than half of the students are projected to be gay. But the point is that it is an explicitly gay-friendly and supportive environment for gay students, many of whom have been harassed or bullied at their own local school. I cannot see any advantage in keeping them in those schools. Let them go to a place where they can do what students are supposed to do in school-learn. The argument that students should learn to cope with harassment and bullying is a nonstarter. Most of the "real world" of adults is not so hostile or threatening. And the argument that rejecting a gay school will somehow magically force schools to improve on their own is sheer fantasy. It will do nothing of the sort. The absence of a gay-supportive school has had no such effect up to now. What the gay-supportive school might do is be a role model for schools that want to do a little better. No gay school, no role models, no incentive to improve.

Q. You keep going on about how we should try to improve our community. OK, how?

A. Maybe I should do a whole column just on this. But here are a few ideas for a start. There are three aspects to this: self-improvement, public participation, and neighborhood/community improvement. In no particular order. Patronize a gay business. Thank them for being there. Remember the gay community center in your will. Plant flowers in your front yard or in a window box. If you are a male over 50, attend the Prime Timers' book discussion group.

Got the idea? Here's more. Join a sports team. Stop littering-and this includes cigarette butts. Attend the opening of an art show or a local theater performance. Limit the amount you drink at bars-no one likes a drunk-even at bars. Even if you are not religious, go to church. Churches are natural communities and a potential source of friends. Smile. Say "hello" or "morning" or even "How ya doin'" to your neighbors whether they respond or not. Get an HIV test. Floss. Prevent crimes: Stay alert when walking alone at night. Join a neighborhood group. No one is expected to do all of these, but everyone can do some of them.

Q. The recent death of "neo-conservative" Irving Kristol brings to mind the question of why so many conservatives and "neo-conservatives" are anti-gay. Got any thoughts?

A. As Samuel Johnson replied when a woman asked him why he incorrectly defined a word in his great "Dictionary," "Ignorance, Madame, sheer ignorance." I suspect that is the case here. Most conservatives, especially older ones, don't know many or any gay people, or don't know they are gay, and are wholly incurious about our lives and our struggles: They know nothing about us and want to know nothing. Perhaps they fear contamination. They may think it is an unaccountable choice, a fact they would unlearn if they asked just a few questions, of course. Some are following religious proscriptions of early biblical writers-who were just as ignorant about homosexuality as some are today. Yet others may see us as a threat to the family and society-as if more men would be gay if homosexuality wasn't suppressed. Maybe they think everyone is potentially homosexual! But mostly it is unreasoning, just an embedded cultural prejudice.

2 Comments

Rational Stasis

by on

Here are some things we've learned in the last week:

(1) If you are a faithful Mormon, but also gay, one day you can ". . . rise with normal attractions for the opposite sex."

(2) "[A]ll pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards."

It isn't hard to show how irrational these statements are: Of course it's normal for heterosexuals to have attractions to the opposite sex; it's a truism. But it's completely abnormal for someone who is homosexual to have such attractions; it's an absurdity. Pornography may, indeed, turn your sexual drive inwards, but even if you believe that, it's heterosexual pornography that turns heterosexuals' drive inwards, and it's homosxual pornography that does this for homosexuals -- and never the twain shall meet.

What is striking about these remarks from fairly respectable people in the modern world is how thoroughly irrational they are. And, of course, the fact they were delivered in all seriousness.

In the constitutional debate over whether laws prohibiting same-sex marriage have a rational basis, it is deeply held beliefs like these that are rolled into the motives of some people who support marriage bans. These are only the most recent eruptions of some fundamental misunderstandings about what, exactly, homosexuality is. Amid this muck, it is no small task for a court to discover any genuine reasoning. And it's proving hard even for same-sex marriage opponents to deliver any arguments that are much more coherent.

Yet in Iowa, where 92% of those surveyed said nothing much had changed in their state after same-sex marriage was made legal, 41% still said they would vote for a marriage ban. Why? If nothing much has changed since gay marriage became legal, and if states like Massachusetts can show an actual decrease in divorce rates after five years of same-sex marriage, what is it that is wrong with same-sex couples marrying one another?

Voters don't have to struggle with these questions if they don't want to. But courts have to, and have to explain their reasoning. That is one reason, on this issue in particular, that same-sex marriage opponents so love the ballot; voters never have to explain themselves.

2 Comments

It’s the Independents, Stupid

by on

Daily Kos posts poll numbers from Maine: If the vote to revoke gay marriage were held there today, we'd lose by two points, 46-48. Given that more people tend to vote against same-sex marriage than admit in polls they'll vote against it, the real gap is probably more like 5 or more percent.

No news in the finding that women and younger people are more supportive of same-sex marriage, but look at the partisan breakdowns. Our problem can be summarized in one word: Republicans. Democrats favor SSM by a two-to-one margin (60-30). Independents favor it by seven percentage points (52-45). But Republicans are overwhelmingly, crushingly opposed, 74-20-and their combination of solidarity and intensity swings the whole equation.

This intensity gap explains why, as two political scientists, Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips, found recently [PDF], policy tends to be more conservative on gay marriage than the voters prefer-not, as conservatives often insist, more liberal.

It also underscores the importance of targeting persuasion relentlessly to the political middle. Forget about preaching to the converted. Another five percentage points or so of independents changes the game. That's the challenge.

6 Comments

Bizarro Universe?

by on

A Human Rights Campaign (HRC) nightmare: As the Washington Blade reports, in an upstate New York congressional district a pro-gay-marriage Republican is running against an anti-gay-marriage Democrat. My prediction: no endorsement from the nation's largest LGBT rights group.

Of course, Democrats may say (should a gay-supportive Republican tip the partisan balance) that a GOP-led House wouldn't take up issues such as reforming the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)...oh...never mind.

OK, there is some truth to that. But you simply can not get to gay legal equality with just one party, while half the nation supports a party that remains opposed, because it receives no gay support, because it remains opposed (play loop endlessly). Gay inroads must be made in the GOP, and races such as this one are important.

9 Comments

‘Always and Everywhere’…Again

by on

Last week I wrote about marriage-equality opponents' "Always and Everywhere" argument-the claim that since marriage has "always" been heterosexual, we ought not to tinker with it now.

In response, a prominent same-sex marriage opponent e-mailed me to explain what was "logically and philosophically wrong" with my critique. In particular, she argued that my claim that "each new same-sex marriage is a living counterexample to it" fails, because it misunderstands the rationale behind "always and everywhere." According to this opponent, the "always and everywhere" argument is not intended as a straightforward descriptive claim-in which case, a single counterexample would indeed refute it-but rather as a tool to uncover the REASON why society after society constructs marriage heterosexually.

As she put it, "Why do they keep stumbling on this idea that it's important to unite male and female in public sexual unions that define the responsibilities of male and female parents to their biological children? Is that reason still valid today?"

Interesting. Is this the right way to understand the "always and everywhere" argument? And if so, does that affect my assessment? To these questions, my answers are "Maybe" and "Absolutely not."

It's probably misleading to talk about THE right way to understand the "always and everywhere" argument, unless one is considering a specific instance of it by a particular marriage-equality opponent. After all, the claim that marriage has been heterosexual "always and everywhere" has been used by different people at different times for different purposes.

But let's suppose one is using the claim to flush out why marriage has been the way it is-that is, 'typically heterosexual almost everywhere. Why, indeed, has marriage been this way?

One huge reason is the misunderstanding and oppression of gays throughout the ages, or what we might call "heteronormativity." It is therefore no surprise that as scientific and moral understanding of homosexuality evolves, so does acceptance of same-sex marriage.

What's more, it's not clear that the reasons for heterosexual marriage would be in any way invalidated by acknowledging reasons (perhaps similar, perhaps different) for homosexual marriage. This is not a zero-sum game.

But what if there's a reason for making marriage EXCLUSIVELY heterosexual-as most (but not all) societies do? According to marriage-equality opponents, there is such a reason. It is to bind parents, and especially fathers, to their biological children.

I have two responses. First, talking about THE reason for marriage is even more misleading than talking about THE purpose of the "always and everywhere" argument. While there may be an embedded practical logic in social institutions, the underlying justifications for them are nearly always complex. Marriage looks the way it does today because of a varied and often messy history.

Second, even granting that one important reason for marriage is binding parents (especially fathers) to their biological children, it is not clear why this reason requires marriage to be exclusively heterosexual. I've said it before and I'll say it again: same-sex marriage never takes children away from loving biological parents who want them.

And here's where same-sex families provide a living counterexample in the strongest sense. It's not just that they falsify the claim that marriage is always and everywhere heterosexual (by announcing, in effect, "Not anymore it isn't!"). It is that they falsify the patently absurd claim that binding parents to their biological children is the sole justification for marriage.

No one actually believes this claim, which is why it continues to amaze me that marriage-equality opponents suggest it with a straight face. Marriage surely binds children to parents, but it also binds spouses to each other-for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health and so on. Generally, that's good for the spouses and good for society-even where children are not present.

Alternatively, opponents will make the more limited claim that this particular purpose of marriage (binding parents to children) trumps the others. But again, even if that were true, it's not clear what follows. How would allowing gays to marry make straights any less bound to their biological children?

Imagine the thought process: "Yikes, Adam and Steve are getting married! Kids, I'm outta here."

In short, whether we take the simple reading of the "Always and Everywhere" argument ("Never before, therefore not now") or this supposedly new and improved one ("Almost never before; therefore, there must be some good reason for 'not now'), the anti-equality conclusion doesn't follow.

5 Comments

How A Wedding Band Affects Your Rating Band

by on

I've been reading Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus's Chairman's Mark, his outline for health care reform. To the already very long list of federal benefits and obligations heterosexual married couples are entitled to that same-sex couples are denied because of DOMA, you can soon add one more: how much you pay for health insurance.

Under the Chairman's plan, the rating bands (within which insurers can vary rates) will allow lower or higher rates according to family composition. While the Chairman's Mark includes no language, will anyone be surprised when the definition of "family" includes married spouses of only the opposite gender, and their children?

This is the way federal law constantly inflicts a thousand small (and some very large) cuts on same-sex couples every blessed day of our lives. DOMA is that federal law, and it is intolerable.

1 Comment

A Different ‘Right’?

by on

Two things struck me about last Saturday's huge "tea party" March on Washington: the way the media dismissed the event's importance and focused on the kooks (exactly as they used to do with gay protests), and the lack of an anti-gay message from among the marchers (a very good development).

As to the first point, Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, observed in the New York Post, "How do you marginalize a significant protest against a politician or policy you support? Lowball the numbers, then dismiss participants as deranged and possibly dangerous kooks. In the case of Saturday's massive 9/12 protest in Washington, done and done." Just as was done with gays. The major media is rarely objective, it's just that its biases change.

Similarly, the Cato Institute's Gene Healy's recounted:

Judging by the massive crowd on Saturday that descended on Washington for the 9/12 March, you'd have to be deaf not to recognize that small-government conservatism remains a vital part of the national conversation.

If you've been fed a steady media diet of MSNBC over the last few months, though, you could be excused for fearing a Pennsylvania Avenue takeover by a rabble of pitchfork-wielding cranks and extras from "Deliverance." But the crowd - "in excess of 75,000 people," according to a D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman - was made up of orderly, pleasant, middle-class Americans from all across the country.

In my two hours at the protest, I didn't see a single "Birther" sign, and spied only one racially insensitive caricature. "Many of the signs," the liberal Center for American Progress alleges on its blog, "attacked President Obama using explicit racial and ethnic smears" - a claim that's simply false. . . . The gallery of "racist, radical portrayals" they posted after spending hours looking at tens of thousands of signs contains few that fit the bill.

And, somewhat surprisingly, there seems to be no evidence of anti-gay contingents at the protest, either. Even Andrew Sullivan, who posted every crazy or embarrassing sign that anyone saw at the March (how dare they criticize the Chosen One!), couldn't find any that were anti-gay. So I think we can assume there weren't any.

This was, in fact, a different group of right-wingers, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday:

"The demonstrators, who plan to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, are drawing their passion not from Bush-era fights over terrorism or gay marriage, but rather from Reagan-era debates over big government programs."

This could be partly because Obama has steered clear of social issues, such as marriage equality, and has instead worked hard to advance bigger-government programs, so that's where the country's focus is. But it's also true that the established groups that played some role in Saturday's march - National Taxpayers Union, Freedomworks, Americans for Prosperity - tend to be led by libertarians with no interest in the anti-gay agenda.

It's clear that the Bush-Obama bailouts and the larger Obama program have galvanized libertarian-leaning, anti-tax, anti-deficit, small-government people, and those are the issues being talked about this summer. And if the beltway LGBT movement wasn't run by Democratic party operatives, they might see that making common cause with pro-liberty groups on the right as well as with the pro-gay big-government left could create a movement that might have a fighting chance of achieving legal equality for gay people, rather than just delivering gay votes, and dollars, to Democrats.

10 Comments

What’s Barney Frank Afraid Of?

by on

I'm a big fan of Chris Geidner at LawDork, but I have to disagree with him (a bit) about the DOMA repeal bill, and specifically about Barney Frank's unequivocal position that he won't sign on.

Chris agrees with Frank's strategic thinking, which is nearly always impeccable. The bill's "certainty provision" provides that any marital rights recognized by the federal government (social security survivor benefits, say) could not be denied by a state that doesn't, itself, recognize same-sex marriage. Frank argues this would be a political problem of enormous proportions, and again it's hard to disagree with him about that.

But neither Barney Frank nor Chris argue that this is a bad thing as a policy matter. In fact, unless I'm misreading this provision, I suspect both of them might think it's a good thing, and entirely consistent with the way the federal government interacts with state governments on a regular basis. States don't often get the right to deny people federally recognized rights.

But as a strategic matter, having the most powerful, openly gay member of Congress in either house refuse to co-sponsor a repeal of DOMA because it includes a provision that will be controversial, or because the bill, itself, would be controversial (which it will) sends an odd and disconcerting message - that we should only support bills that are sure to pass.

No bill about gay equality in Congress will be easy But where is the shame (for us) in having the right thing voted down? DOMA repeal, in particular, is going to be a big challenge. But that's not because it's the wrong thing to do, it's because there is still adequate anti-gay prejudice in the country to make doing the right thing troublesome for many members of Congress.

That shouldn't be the reason for Frank to avoid co-sponsoring the bill, though, it should be the reason for him to be front and center on it. DOMA repeal is a public fight we need to have, even if it means surviving a losing vote or two. If gay people won't stand up for our own equality in the face of opposition and possible failure, how can we expect heterosexuals to?

0 Comments

Horror Show!

by on

"At the end of the day, people vote on issues based on how they think it will impact them and their families. We spent a great deal of time trying to understand what impacts could we develop that would work. Communication has to be aimed at and appeal to those self interests of the electorate."

This is the challenge our opponents have. The quote is from the emerging guru of the right, Frank Schubert, whose Shubert/Flint Communications had the task of instilling fear about same-sex marriage into otherwise disinterested heterosexuals during the Prop. 8 battle. What he found was that gay marriage wasn't an issue most moderate voters cared much about. Schubert and his folks needed to "develop" those fears, so they could exploit them.

Karen Ocamb does a thorough job of examining exactly how much work this involved, and I'll leave you to be fascinated, appalled or sickened by the underlying videos (via Pam's House Blend). The only thing I can add is to emphasize this obvious truth. Most heterosexuals don't see a real threat from same-sex marriage because there isn't one. This is something we've known from the start, but we've been doubting ourselves. In the words of Schubert's partner in this crime, Jeff Flint, their trick is in "…raising a doubt and projecting a doubt forward - that you have to get people to believe may happen but it hasn't happened yet." Along with heterosexuals, they got us, too.

Schubert/Flint proved in California that they could raise those doubts among the undboutful, creating and inflating the fear they needed people to have. They are now unleashed in Maine, and will be spooking people throughout the Halloween season.

To the sturdy people of Maine, I can only say this: Your instincts are right. Same-sex marriage will not, and cannot affect yours. It will only add to the happiness in the world, not subtract from it. These ghouls haunting the countryside and the airwaves are being paid to scare you. Tell them to take their horror stories somewhere else.

4 Comments