IGF CultureWatch

I've never shied from criticizing the gay left for preaching that "LGBT rights" are just one part of a broad "progressive" agenda leading to the golden age of redistributive socialism under the direction of a liberal elite that's better than the rest of us. And I stand by that, especially to the extent that the leading LGBT rights organizations are now little more than Democratic party fundraising fronts run by Democratic party operatives.

But I have to say, as of late, I'm more sympathetic to focusing on a broader agenda, but from the opposite direction. One reason my heart hasn't been in blogging here at IGF is that, as important as gay legal equality remains in the face of government-mandated discrimination (primarily marriage and the military), I'm totally bummed out by the greater issue of the harm to American long-term prosperity and individual liberty under the current administration in Washington, all to the sycophantic cheerleading of the big-government-loving propagandists who dominate the media.

As I doubt that there will be anything other than feigned moves toward repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act or Don't Ask, Don't Tell before the 2010 elections (at which point Republicans who've been opposed by the gay lobbies will, I believe, pick up several or more seats in both congressional chambers), all we're likely to reap from the chosen one is a yet bigger orgy of spending to grow government at the expense of the private sector, sowing the seeds of even more confiscatory taxation and/or hyperinflation, along with still more ill-conceived and anti-growth regulation (much of the worst justified by the hysteria of global warming alarmism, the left's religious apocalypticalism).

So my attention has not been on gay rights; it's not where the action is. And to that degree, as I said, I can sympathize with the left that's always been more interested in "larger issues" at hand.

Still, from time to time I'd like to draw attention to some truly independent thought on gay issues, such as Camille Paglia's recent explanation of why she's against hate crime/thought crime laws (it's here, but you have to scroll down to the last answer on the page). Excerpt:

"Government functionaries should not be ceded the dangerous authority to make decisions about motivation. ... The barbaric acts that led to the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998 deserved a very severe penalty, which has been applied."

As reader "avee" wrote in the comments, responding to some muddled assertions:

Motive is only important in terms of its relation to pre-meditation. If motive reveals a crime was pre-meditated, then it's a more serious crime.

Increasing the penalties for assault or murder because of the bias in a person's head is a very different matter. It is, in effect, punishing thought. You may like punishing those with thoughts you don't think they should have, but it's a very bad road to go down. Beware, social engineers, of the consequences of your actions.

More. Reader "Sol" comments, responding an assertion that it's all Bush's fault:

"The Bush deficit was bad; the Obama deficit is catastrophic. There really is no way to convey the unprecedented size of the projected federal debt, but this chart gives some indication. ... At some point we will either have to inflate our way out of this hole, or raise taxes in a drastic way. The result will be a low-growth, heavily government dependent economy for years to come."

Ah, but at least we'll have higher criminal penalities (or, probably in fact not) if the state can ferret out bias!

There is A Homosexual in America. And He's a problem:

Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity-but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him. A vast majority of people retain a deep loathing toward him, but there is a growing mixture of tolerance, empathy or apathy. Society is torn between condemnation and compassion, fear and curiosity, between attempts to turn the problem into a joke and the knowledge that it is anything but funny, between the deviate's plea to be treated just like everybody else and the knowledge that he simply is not like everybody else.

This is from Time magazine's issue of January 21, 1966. I can't even begin to unpack how far we have all come from these pre-Stonewall days, but Hendrik Hertzberg does a fine job in the New Yorker.

The only thing I'd add is to ask you to think about that bizarre third person singular. "The homosexual is unsure of his position in society. . . " "Society is torn between condemnation and deep loathing toward him. . . " This lumps us all into some undifferentiated whole, then puts us behind a grammatical wall from the author and the society he takes for granted.

And before you offer up a prayer of thanks that those days are gone, check out Matthew Rettenmund's analysis of Admiral Mullen's view of DADT at Towleroad. The Admiral says he wants to "give the president my best advice, should this law change, on the impact on our people and their families at these very challenging times."

Matthew hits him with a sound blow that knocks the Admiral right back to 1966:

Pitting LGBT soliders against "our people and their families" begs the question: What about our people and their families, Admiral?

That is exactly the right question, and the Admiral ought to answer it -- even if only for himself. Why doesn't he view us as part of "his" people and "their" families?

While we're waiting, check out the Time article -- if for no other reason than to find out that we seem to have lost the "cuff-linky" bars our ancestors used to enjoy.

A young gay man, fresh out of a Catholic law school, notices a generation gap at this year's Pride festivities in Minneapolis:

One observation I made was that the younger crowd (perhaps ages 18-30) were very tame this year. In past years, I feel like the younger crowd has donned the more traditional Pride garb of brightly colored short-shorts, flip-flops, and perhaps a pooka shell necklace. This year, I noticed the younger crowd was not nearly as sexually provocative in their dress. . . . Most of the younger crowd was dressed normally, dragging along their puppies and dogs.

The older crowd was drastically different. My friend and I were in the beer garden and she and I both commented on how so many "older" men were dressed provocatively and with the purpose of expressing sexuality . . . .

Assimilationist? That's one way to look at it. Performative rather than authentic? Perhaps, but radicalism in attire and manner is as much a performance as modesty can be. This writer sees better days ahead:

I think young gay men and women are beginning to see the possibilities for the general gay community and are starting to subdue and prepare themselves for leading a "normal" American life, something that a lot of gay men and women desperately need right now. I know I am and I am definitely looking to the future with high hopes.

Commentators on the post regarding the death of Seaman August Provost bring up what will probably be a red herring in the public debate: whether this was a hate crime. The death is being investigated as one, but I think this will distract from the real problem with DADT.

I am assuming that, in the military, there is a fairly high standard for what counts as harassment, since the daily environment must balance the need for brutal discipline against the necessity for young men and women to blow off a little steam. Facts may prove otherwise, but if reports are true that Provost told his family about being harassed, it was probably not just insults and nude pictures posted in his locker. We'll see.

Reporting that, or anything like it would subject Provost to being thrown out of the Navy for telling them he was gay -- unless he was willing to lie about that, which doesn't seem to be the case. And his harasser would obviously know that fact. In that sense, DADT is a bully's best friend.

The Navy doesn't have a report here -- it has a death. The first question on any investigator's list will be "Why?" Again, facts may show otherwise, but Provost's partner certainly seems convinced it was because Provost was gay. If reports are correct that he was both shot and burned, this would seem to be something more than just a minor incident gone bad.

For purposes of whether it was a hate crime, that motive is quite important. But even if there were no hate crime statute, this appears to be a murder. If it is because Provost was gay, it doesn't matter whether extra time is added to the punishment for that motivation. The problem is that DADT short-circuited any reasonable method for Provost to seek help from his superiors if he was concerned about a particular colleague's actions. DADT gives aid and comfort to those who want to intimidate homosexuals. That fact should not be lost in a search for the killer's motive.

I recently stumbled across an interesting essay discussing the connection between free markets and gay marriage, written in 2006 by the prominent legal theorist Ronald Dworkin in the New York Review of Books.

Dworkin argues that culture is shaped, among other things, both organically and by law. Organically, it is shaped "by the discrete decisions of individual people about what to produce and what to buy and at what price, about what to read and say, about what to wear, what music to listen to, and what god if any to pray to." But our culture "is also shaped by law, that is, by collective decisions taken by elected legislators about how we must all behave." Which of these processes - organic or legal - should predominate in the case of same-sex marriage?

What's most interesting about the essay is Dworkin's critique of conservatives who oppose state regulation of markets forbidding evolution in economic practices and arrangements but who invite state regulation of marriage forbidding evolution in familial practices and arrangements.

Socialist societies do give people in power the authority to shape the economic environment for everyone by stipulating prices and the allocation of resources and production. But we insist on a free market in goods and services: we insist, that is, that the economic culture be shaped by a composite of individual decisions reflecting individual values and wishes.

The socialism of a centrally controlled economy is an insult to liberty as well as to efficiency-a view most enthusiastically held by the conservatives who favor a religious model for non-economic culture. They do not realize that liberty is even more perilously at stake in the religious than the economic case. . . .

Everything I said about the cultural heritage and value of marriage is equally true of the general institution of religion: religion is an irreplaceable cultural resource in which billions of people find immense and incomparable value. Its meaning, like that of marriage, has evolved over a great many centuries. But its meaning, again like that of marriage, is subject to quite dramatic change through organic processes . . . . American religious conservatives, even those who regard themselves as evangelical, do not imagine that the cultural meaning of religion should be frozen by laws prohibiting people with new visions from access to the title, legal status, or tax and economic benefits of religious organization.

Within broad boundaries, conservatives believe, markets should be shaped by individual decisions. The presumption in markets should be against central regulation. A similar principle would apply to religious beliefs and practices - they should be allowed to develop organically.

Same-sex marriage is the product of an ongoing, organic process that reflects the values of millions of our fellow citizens living in actual families. The opposition to same-sex marriage, at least in so far as it is grounded in dogma, amounts to this: We know the truth, we have the power to write that truth into law, and we will use our power to stop any further development contradicting it. Applied to markets, conservatives would call it socialism.

You don't need to go much further than the death of Seaman August Provost to show how contemptible Don't Ask, Don't Tell is. He was not killed in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or off the coast of North Korea; he was killed in San Diego.

At Camp Pendelton.

And it is very likely he was killed because he was gay - a fact his non-military partner said was known among Provost's trusted friends at Pendelton.

Provost told family members he was being harassed, and their common-sense advice to him goes to the heart of DADT's incoherence: he should tell his supervisor.

Except, of course, that would be "telling."

DADT not only prevented the Navy from being able to investigate this harassment (though they can investigate it now that he's dead), it is exactly the kind of policy that sends a message to any potential harasser that our government views homosexuality as something wrong.

We can finesse this policy till the cows come home, and maybe mitigate a bit of the surface problems of DADT. But the deeper problem, the problem of what it says about homosexuals to heterosexuals in the military is the iniquitous heart of the policy, and that message will keep being sent as long as it exists.

Dale Carpenter's tart question about the President's options on DADT suggested to me that we may be invoking the wrong political analogy. While the discussion has tended to focus on whether we are or aren't similar to African-Americans in their struggle for equality, the more apt comparison might be whether we are to the Obama administration what the religious right was to George W. Bush.

For eight years, Bush got away with condescension and empty gestures: faith-based this and that, a limp, piety-draped announcement of the Federal Marriage Amendment, and all the cooing and coddling and coded insider messaging any insulated special interest could ask for. It's clear that his administration seldom viewed the right as a group needing anything more than stroking - and that's when they weren't expressing outright contempt for the religious leaders to one another. For their part, the religious zealots knew they had no reasonable political alternative, and hoped (and prayed) for the best. At least they were inside the White House.

I am hopeful the Obama administration doesn't view us, in private, with the derision and cynicism that was so characteristic of the Bush advisors. But we know Rahm Emanuel, in particular, is haunted by what he calls "the consequences of '94." I don't think it's unreasonable to believe he views lesbians and gay men as a kind of political irritation, an itch that must be scratched, as his Republican predecessors in the White House viewed the far right.

I'm not alone in that fear, as gay criticism of Monday night's cocktail party demonstrates. It was an event designed for our insiders, by insiders to cater to insiders. The President said many very good things, up to and including, "I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises that my administration keeps."

That expression of accountability is fine as far as it goes. But kept promises don't include cocktail parties or gestures. The administration certainly needs some time to address the overt discrimination against homosexuals that federal law demands to this very day. But it is up to us to determine how long the President (or Emanuel) can exploit our hopes and string us along.

To me, that means, not cuddling up to us in private, but using this President's phenomenal resources of good will and articulation to nudge the public discussion forward. And he can't do that by just talking to us.

It is that, above all, that makes him so radically different from Bush. His speech to us on Monday suggests that he understands our issues well enough to take on that task. Not today, and maybe not even this summer. But at some point he needs to say something publicly.

As a whole, Americans are past ready for repeal of DADT. If the problem is truly the military, then Obama needs to speak publicly to the military. If Stephen Colbert can rib the troops about DADT, I think they're probably willing to listen to their Commander-in-Chief.

And while the public is still not entirely ready for nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage, Obama cannot continue to allow federal law to recognize only the lowest common denominator of state discrimination against same-sex couples. DOMA is, and will continue to be, the wall that politics bangs its - and our - head against time after time until it is changed. He cannot assure success by addressing the American public. But he can continue to indulge prejudice by commiserating only with us.

Rahm Emanuel has reason to fear public reaction to gay equality. But that's because he lacks the rhetorical skills his boss possesses. He has to follow, and cater to public opinion because his strength is not in changing it.

The President, though, does have that talent - in abundance. He has addressed the Muslim world directly, and showed himself fearless during the campaign in defending himself against the most demeaning political charges, absurd claims that would have reduced a lesser candidate to fits of frustration.

It is that promise, explicitly, that I want him to keep for us: the promise of representing us to those portions of the public who still harbor fear and misunderstanding. He can't do that by holding cocktail parties for us, or weakly asking Congress to act. Congress is not famous for leading - that is the President's job. We will continue to do our part, but now we need his eloquence. The rest will follow.