IGF CultureWatch

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.

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.

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?

"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.

I don't know how many fans of Mad Men are out there, but last week's episode was terrific. It's called "The Arrangements," and while the focus is on Grandpa's decision to arrange for his passing (something not at all imminent, and which his daughter is not ready to deal with), the title's plural is intentional.

One of the main characters, Sal, is gay (no spoiler here), but has a socially-approved wife. Some would call this a marriage (including Sal and his wife, Kitty), but in the vernacular of sophisticates of the time, it is more clearly an "arrangement." Neither Sal nor Kitty can actually articulate what the problem is, but when you see her watching Sal perform a commercial the way he wants to film it -- and doing his impression of Ann-Margret in the opening of "Bye Bye Birdie" -- the look on her face is the answer to every anti same-sex marriage argument in the book. These are two people mutually deceiving one another about a very obvious fact that lies at the core of their relationship. Very slowly, what they're lying about is coming to the surface.

Do we really want our culture and our laws to go on encouraging this kind of farce? Leave aside for the moment its effect on homosexuals. Is this good for heterosexuals? Watch that scene, pay close attention to the look on Kitty's face, and then ask those who say current marriage laws treat gays equally to answer the questions she is struggling with.

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.

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.

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.