Britain's Conservative Party reaches out to anti-gay Islamists by appointing the British Muslim's equivalent of Anita Bryant to his "shadow cabinet." Oh, and she also supports Hamas.
Now there's a conservative strategy for you-soft on Islamofascism, but awake to the threat posed by too much tolerance toward gays and Zionists. Is this the future of a Europe that seems increasingly in denial?
There have been several attempts to expand federal hate-crime statutes, both to incorporate sexual orientation as one of the specified classes in the law and to increase federal involvement in the investigation and prosecution of these types of crimes. Each time the proposed bill has failed to pass.
The latest iteration of this legislation is the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 3 and now under consideration by the Senate.
One might oppose this bill for the wrong reasons, motivated by an animus against gay and lesbian Americans that refuses to acknowledge them in the law.
One might also oppose this bill for the right reasons, supporting the dignity of gay individuals but objecting on constitutional, legal, and philosophical grounds.
Hate-crime laws at the federal level violate the constitutional division of government by federalizing crimes that should be handled by state authorities.
Legal scholar Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute told members of the House Judiciary Committee in April that the proposed law expands federal authority in an unconstitutional manner. He cited Chief Justice John Marshall, who observed that Congress had "no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States" and that it was "clear that Congress cannot punish felonies generally." Over time, however, Congress asserted that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution granted it the authority that Marshall said did not exist. Regarding this development, Lynch testified:
This Congress should not exacerbate the errors of past Congresses by federalizing more criminal offenses. The Commerce Clause is not a blank check for Congress to enact whatever legislation it deems to be 'good and proper for America.' The proposed hate-crimes bill is simply beyond the powers that are delegated to Congress."
From a legal standpoint, such a federal law would be redundant, at best.
One can understand if the call for hate-crime statutes comes from evidence of bad enforcement of the laws already on the books. We know that, in the past, police and prosecutors have been willing to look the other way when victims came from disfavored groups.
But as senior editor Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine pointed out in a recent column, "Unlike the situation in the Jim Crow South, there is no evidence that state and local officials are ignoring bias-motivated crimes."
Indeed, as Lynch testified, "all of the violent acts that would be prohibited under the proposed bill are already crimes under state law." Referring to the murders of James Byrd in Texas and Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, he added, "The individuals responsible for those murders were quickly apprehended and prosecuted by state and local authorities. Those incidents do not show the necessity for congressional action; to the contrary, they show that federal legislation is unnecessary."
Philosophically, passing this law would be wrong because hate-crime laws, however well-intentioned, are feel-good statutes whose primary result is punishing thought, violating our freedoms of speech and of conscience.
Wayne Dynes, editor of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, has noted that hate-crime laws, to be just, must be content-neutral. Yet in judging individual cases, he said, we would have to "get into the question of whether some hate" -- his example was that directed at an evil dictator -- "is 'justified' and some is not." He concluded that hate-crime prosecutions "will be used to sanction certain belief systems -- systems which the enforcer would like, in some Orwellian fashion, to make unthinkable. This is not a proper use of law."
Hateful thoughts may be repugnant to us, but they are not crimes in themselves. And crimes that follow hateful thoughts -- whether vandalism, assault, or murder -- are already punishable by existing statutes.
Passing this bill would also be wrong because it suggests that crimes against some people are worse than crimes against others. Hate-crime laws set up certain privileged categories of people, defined by the groups to which they belong, and offers them unequal protection under the law.
Beyond this philosophical objection, however, federal hate-crime laws -- those on the books now, those proposed -- are outside the scope of the authority granted Congress by the Constitution. New laws of this type should be rejected; older laws should be repealed.
This, from a gushing puff piece in The Advocate:
The man who took on Bush and 9/11 has set his sights on another tragedy-the American health care system. In his latest documentary, Sicko, Michael Moore reveals the dark side of health care in a capitalist system. But the question remains: will he ever make a movie about us?
Yes, if only instead of rancid capitalism with its evil pharma and health care firms, motivated by sordid profits to develop life-saving miracle drugs, we had a system like Cuba's! Of course, all HIV-positives have to live in state sanatoriums unless and until they can convince authorities otherwise. But mentioning that wouldn't make for effective propaganda, would it.
For another more critical take on Sicko, see here.
IGF contributing author James Kirchick writes at the New Republic Online about Jerusalem's gay pride parade:
it is not just the ultra-Orthodox community that has opposed gay pride events in Jerusalem. Even liberal stalwart (and newly-elected President) Shimon Peres proved feckless... Ha'aretz reported that Peres promised to oppose the parade in exchange for the votes of Knesset members belonging to religious parties. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has an openly gay daughter, also expressed opposition to holding a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, because of the city's "special sensitivity." Such a stance-having no problem with a gay pride march in principle but disapproving of it in Jerusalem-assumes that there is something morally wrong with homosexuality, and that such an event would tarnish the holiness of the ancient city.
And yet:
Hagai El-Ad (the founder of Magi, an acronym for "Israeli Gay Party," which he hopes will one day be represented in the Knesset) told me that the parade's "existence is a victory for freedom. Its existence proves that Israel is a democracy." In a region of the world where homosexuality can be met with state-sanctioned death, Jerusalem's sixth annual gay pride event is yet another testament to the freedom, openness, and diversity of the Jewish State.
More evidence, via the Wash Post, that civil unions (or even state-recognized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts) are running into roadblocks. Specifically, courtesy of federal law overriding the states, employers do not need to extend health and other benefits to the partners/spouses of same-sex employees, and many are not doing so.
But the article also notes that public shaming can be an effective means of bringing opprobrium to those who treat gays as second-class employees-and by doing so, help shift the culture overall in a positive direction.
Word of America's gay-straight cultural convergence-surely the major gay culture story of our time-reaches Britain's redoubtable Economist. The magazine got some interesting, and so far as I know hitherto unpublished, numbers from Williams Institute (UCLA) demographer Gary Gates (gotta love that smile):
...gay America is becoming more like Middle America. "Much of the stereotype around gays is a stereotype of urban white gay men," says Mr Gates. "The gay community is becoming less like that, and more like the population in general." Gay couples are still more likely than straight ones to live in cities, but the gap is smaller than popularly believed, and closing. In 1990, 92% of gay couples but only 77% of American households were in what the Census Bureau calls "urban clusters". By 2000, the gay figure had fallen to 84% while the proportion for households in general had risen to 80%, a striking convergence.
Notice how much things changed in only ten years. The age of homosexual exceptionalism is ending faster than would have seemed possible even a few years ago.
The Philadephia Inquirer's Faye Flam looks at new research on the psychological underpinnings of homophobia. She writes that "University of Pennsylvania psychologist and disgust expert Paul Rozin says it's particularly a guy thing-most heterosexual men are disgusted by the thought of touching other men."
Also at work: "The moral compass of the religious right factors in that additional dimension of sanctity/purity, which is driven by disgust as well as religious teachings."
But she also quotes University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan:
"People used to think it was revolting when two people of different races got married," Caplan says. Letting your sense of disgust guide your views on gay marriage, he adds, "is just bigotry and bias dressed up with the clothes of wisdom."
Or, as Flam nicely puts it: "Isn't it kind of babyish to declare gays immoral because you think their sex lives are icky?"
Allow, if you will, a few dissenting notes from gay orthodoxy. If a writer only wrote things you agreed with, what good is he? And why read him? Better just talk to yourself in the mirror. "Politically correct" originated as an orthodoxy-enforcing Communist Party term in the 1930s.
• Pride weekend and the Pride parade are becoming more like Mardi Gras every year-something we do mainly because a) it is traditional and b) it brings revenue into the city from suburban and regional visitors who buy food and alcohol, shop, maybe rent overnight accommodations, and spend money on other tourist things while here.
• It may be all very well to take government (taxpayers') money for various gay projects-after all everyone else does it too-but there is always the risk that to get the money one's agenda will be compromised or that people will shape their agenda to things the government (i.e., politicians) would approve-avoiding "sensitive" issues, for instance. "He who pays the piper calls the tune." And politicians always want a payback in the form of political support. It is better to rely on private funding from individuals, supportive corporations or sympathetic foundations less subject to majoritarian dictates.
• Gay leaders repeat endlessly that abortion is a gay issue, but it isn't. Personally, I support all forms of abortion: A fetus may be "human" but it is not a "person." Nevertheless, how abortion can be an issue for gays and lesbians whose sexual activity does not produce fetuses is never explained. Yes, some lesbians might want to get pregnant but then abort a badly deformed fetus. Fine. Get an abortion, but don't say doing it is a gay issue just because you are gay. Gay leaders say people have a right to control their own bodies. I agree. But do they mean it? Do they therefore also defend, as I do, the right to assisted suicide, S/M, drug use, ex-gay therapy, prostitution, promiscuity, etc.? And the central issue remains whether a fetus is just part of a woman's body or an autonomous person. That argument is seldom joined.
• The gay left seems terminally afflicted with "mission drift." As if there were not enough work to do to attain gay equality, they want to include other issues as part of our agenda such as environmentalism, global warming, free trade limitations, illegal immigration, government health care, support for unions, etc. To some gays, those issues are more important than gay freedom and equality. Well, fine, there are plenty of organizations working on those issues. Go join those. But don't try to claim that those are gay issues just because they might affect some gays. I may even be on the other side-and I'm gay too.
• GLBT (or more recently-ladies first) LGBT is a relatively young orthodoxy. It originates from a 1995 meeting of gay organization leaders in Washington who decided that we were no longer the gay/lesbian movement but the "gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender" movement. Well, I don't feel bound by what "gay leaders" try to dictate. It was amusing at the time to hear people initially spit out the whole litany (instead of just saying "gay") before the acronym was contrived. But these aren't all one movement and what we have in common is limited.
• I don't have much in common with a man who want to be a woman. Gays can support transsexuals in their political efforts and work together on areas of common concern (e.g., defamation by Prof. Michael Bailey), but by and large their issues are not my issues, nor are mine theirs. Awkwardly, they embody the very 19th century stereotype about gays we have been trying to overcome for 100 years--that gay men are women trapped in male bodies. Even less do I have anything in common with some transvestite heterosexual man who wants to wear a frilly frock around the house. Fine, do it with my blessing, but that doesn't make him part of the gay movement.
• And bisexuals? How many bisexual men are there in our movement? No doubt there are a few-there are always a few of everything. But as the prominent gay psychiatrist Richard Pillard said in a 2003 interview "I think female sexual orientation is more variable than is male. Men seem more often to be fixed from early adolescence, even from early childhood." Some women are no doubt technically "bisexual," but most admit, as one informed me, that "of course" she had a "preference." And years ago, when I wrote something skeptical about bisexuality, I got three indignant replies from "bisexual" women-all of whom admitted that they were in relationships with men.
Let the fur fly.
New York's affluent gays and lesbians stayed away from Sunday's Gay Pride Parade "in droves, taking with them the money that has kept a 37-year-old tradition alive," reports the New York Observer in "Goodbye, Mr. Chaps."
"Queer" journalist Richard Goldstein opines:
"White people say they experience the parade as being tired and corny.... They'll say it's unattractive to them. The reason it's unattractive to them is because there are all these faces of people of color from all over the world."
Yes, I'm sure that's it, since all successful gay white people simply must be racists. But it also just might be that the parade has to a large extent, and for a long time, become too much of a mix of knee-jerk leftism and arrested-development sexual exhibitionism.
That's the dominant image, unfortunately overwhelming the contingents of civic, religious and professional groups who do participate. And you can't blame the media for focusing on the most outrageous elements while demanding "full and inclusive representations" of the LGBT community. That's why I'd submit that a growing number of gays (who are, as Paul Varnell points out, increasingly bourgeois) simply find pride parades at best useful as part of a coming out rite of passage, at worst an embarrassment, and in any event not representative of our lives.
Increasingly, many of the states that have banned gay marriage are beginning to revoke the domestic partner benefits of public employees. One result: local governments are extending benefits more widely, to anyone that an employee might designate.
Elsewhere, convoluted work-arounds are being tried, such as at Michigan State University, which, in order to ensure that no same-sex spouse-like relationship is even hinted at, is extending benefits to those it labels as "other eligible individuals," defined this way:
a person must have lived with a non-unionized Michigan State employee for at least 18 months without being either a tenant or a legal dependent. They also can't be automatically eligible to inherit the employee's assets under Michigan law, which means no children, parents, grandparents or other close relations.
And no spouses, since they are covered under the traditional benefits package. Needless to say, the recordkeeping and administrative burden on employers is greatly increased. And just how privileging nonspousal relationships above committed same-sex coupledom is meant to "strengthen marriage" is anyone's guess.
In a related development, in Virginia, a state which probably leads the nation in the number of times it has banned gay marriage, a small victory was gained when the University of Virginia was permitted to extend gym benefits to same-sex couples. Thus are the steps by which, in some places, progress is measured.