IGF CultureWatch

It appears that some gay activists in California are starting to doubt the wisdom of pushing to repeal Prop 8 in 2010. One group outlines some considerations that make a lot of sense, including these:

Over $81 million was raised and spent by both sides in the Proposition 8 campaign, more than in any previous anti-gay ballot initiative. Many of the LGBT nonprofit organizations doing critical work for our communities have suffered layoffs and cutbacks in services. . . . Major donors, including foundations that provided funding for critical educational campaigns, have endured hits to their portfolios, and many are exercising caution. Any successful "vote-yes" campaign will require generous support from pro-LGBT institutional donors. These donors give based on evidence of likely success, which for 2010 is filled with grave doubts. It is unlikely that we will be able to raise the necessary funds to undertake an effective electoral campaign until after 2010. . . .

The demographics of opinion on marriage equality indicate that natural changes in the state electorate, with new and younger voters replacing older voters, contributes over time to increased support for marriage equality. In weighing the options of presenting a ballot measure on statewide ballots either next year, in 2010, or in a future year, the latter portends a much greater capacity by marriage equality supporters to leverage and benefit from the natural shift in voter opinion.

Some ACLU leaders, including Matt Coles, think even 2012 is too soon (and they may be right). Equality California, which indicated preliminary support for 2010 back in May, is now (re)considering the issue.

The reality of having to get our act together -- in raising money, strategizing, volunteering, campaigning, and winning -- for an election less than a year and a half away is starting to settle in. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

Plenty of people have weighed in on former President Bill Clinton's newfound support for same-sex marriage, but little can be added to Jamie Kirchick's piece in the Advocate, ripping Clinton a new one -- not that Clinton needs a new one.

In response to Clinton's stirring reply to the question of whether he personally believed in equal marriage rights for same-sex couples: ""Yeah. I personally support people doing what they want to do. I think it's wrong for someone to stop someone else from doing that," Jamie is in fine form:

What eloquence! What moral conviction! Remember that these stirring words come from a man who, prior to the emergence of Barack Obama, was widely considered to be the greatest political communicator alive.

What is it about our equality that reduces the likes of Clinton, and even Obama, to Bush-like grunts and circumlocutions? Even in retirement, is Clinton still so shell-shocked from the nation's last hurricane of homophobia? That was 15 years ago, which is about 45 in gay rights years. Does Obama really believe that any reaction today to his leadership on repeal of Clinton's signature achievements on gay equality, DADT and DOMA, would be worse than what he faced during the campaign over Rev. Jeremiah Wright, palling around with terrorists, or people clinging to guns and religion?

The rhetorical scraps we get from these mighty orators should be compared to the simple eloquence of Meghan McCain, who has no trouble saying, "No matter how politically charged the discussions about marriage equality may get, the question is really a simple one: Do the rights and privileges we offer citizens include everyone in our country, or only some of us?"

McCain isn't a politician, and can articulate her true feelings with more liberty than an elected official. But Rep. Patrick Murphy is sure in politics, and he, too, leaves both Clinton and Obama in the dust when it comes to us. Watch how easily and authoritatively he responds to the charge that open gays in the military would destroy unit cohesion by saying the very notion is an insult to him and to the military.

The lesson here was stated best by a president who didn't have to deal with gay equality. President Clinton, President Obama, when it comes to gay rights, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself.

The epoch of the cultural wedge issue is ending, says Democratic political analyst Ruy Teixeira, in his new report, "The Coming End of the Culture Wars" (PDF). And gay marriage will soon lose its political potency. It's baked in the demographic cake.

That's because of generational change, as culturally progressive Millennial voters surge into the electorate. It's also, more immediately, because of the decline in the number of white working-class voters. And the fastest growing religious group is not evangelicals but seculars, who tend to be very culturally progressive.

Of course, this does not mean that conflicts over gay marriage will die out overnight. There will continue to be attempts on the state level to keep gay marriage illegal through the initiative process. Such initiatives have met with considerable success, including the recent passage of Proposition 8 in the progressive state of California. Yet a simple regression model developed by Nate Silver suggests that such initiatives have been losing support at the rate of roughly 2 percentage points a year. This time trend, combined with a couple of other variables on state religiosity, indicates that California would fail to support such an initiative by next year and only a handful of Deep South states should be expected to support gay marriage bans by 2016.

Fights will continue on the gay marriage issue, but the outcome of these struggles is not really in doubt looking 10 years or so down the road. And neither is the decreasing usefulness of this issue to the conservative culture warriors.

I guess I am just a sex-negative prude, but I really do not think that soliciting more porn industry support for marriage equality efforts is a great idea. I guess it is nice that NickYoungXXX-dot-com supports the cause and all, but the Maggie Gallagher press release kind of writes itself. And I really don't think we are going to win over any moms in Sherman Oaks with a porn-funded campaign of artsy NO H8 photos.

This whole thing is kind of silly, but it does illustrate a real problem in California. It seems like just about everybody out here has his or her own "grass roots" organization dedicated to overturning Prop 8. There is a real incentive for those groups to do outrageous stuff, because the ones who do the most outrageous stuff will stand out in a crowded field. That means attention that should be focused on nice boring gay couples will be diverted to Mormon-bashing or porn-industry fundraising or Perez Hilton.

This seems to be the year of the Gay Kiss. Kiss-ins are taking place from Salt Lake City to El Paso to Paris (and not the one in Texas -- the one in France).

Talk about the personal being political. This is the most delightful possible response to the sourpusses who are trying -- today -- to deny us a peck on the cheek (the horror that set the LDS church's hair on fire) or a smooch to smooth out the spice from good Mexican food. The El Paso police were apparently ready to arrest people, and the Police Chief had to issue a public statement letting everyone in on the news that gay kissing isn't against any known law, even in Texas.

We may or may not have Katy Perry to thank for this, but I can't think of anything that more wonderfully illustrates how far we've come, and how far other people haven't since the 1950s.

Is the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation past its prime? GLAAD's reaction to the movie Bruno makes them sound like a bunch of crotchety old fussbudgets who could use a toke of medical marijuana.

Their press release on July 7 grudgingly noted the movie is "apparently intended to skewer" homophobia, but GLAAD couldn't get past the fact that gay teenagers are still "bullied, beat up and ridiculed." GLAAD's Rashad Robinson cranks that up to 11 in an op-ed for the LA Times. Straight people can laugh at the movie, then go back to their normal lives; but not gay people, who must suffer interminably:

It could come up in the form of jokes about gay parents at the office. Or gay teens taunted with the name "Bruno" in school hallways. Or in fanning the flames of anti-gay campaigns and laws, like California's Proposition 8, pushed by those who exploit discomfort, and the "ewwww" factor, for political ends. . . . For a major studio film with a massive cultural footprint to pile even more stereotypes and discomfort onto an already hostile climate -- despite what are inarguably the best of intentions -- doesn't make the work of changing and overcoming it any easier.

I think GLAAD turns Bruno on its head. They're confusing the way people might misperceive the movie with the message the movie is sending. Bruno wants to make fun of homophobic cluelessness, and GLAAD doesn't seem to want to let it. Unlike the sexless pansies in movies past, which GLAAD helped the general public contextualize, Bruno goes Full Dildo on the puritans.

Ironically, Bruno is the kind of movie GLAAD paved the way for - gleefully anti-homophobic. But now it's GLAAD who's become orthodox. If GLAAD doesn't get itself a sense of humor, they may wind up being the subject of Baron Cohen's next movie.

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.