De-Coulterizing Republicans

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Ann Coulter wasn't even brave enough to directly say it.

She didn't call presidential candidate John Edwards a faggot, not exactly.

At the end of the speech she was giving at the American Conservative Union Political Action Conference, she said, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."

She was probably pointing to actor Isaiah Washington, who referred to Grey's Anatomy co-star (and gay man) T.R. Knight as a faggot. But Washington, at least, apologized to the community and met with gay leaders. He checked into rehab because-well, because that's what stars seem to do when they commit big social gaffes.

Ann Coulter, though-Ann Coulter, when confronted, just continued making jokes. On her website, she says, "I'm so ashamed, I can't stop laughing."

Really, Ann Coulter? Really?

I mean, come on.

Sure, you're a right-wing pitbull who has made her name by attacking anything and everyone to the left of fascist. And yes, you once said Al Gore was a fag, though because you did it in an almost gentle half-insider kind of way, it came across as a fag hag's idea of a joke instead of a venomous attack like this one. And indeed, your crowd of young admirers cheered you on as you said it, laughing, as if they had never heard anything as funny as a serious candidate for president, a former United States Senator, being deeply insulted by a cheap throwaway line.

But-Ann Coulter. Really. Is this what you want the future of politics to look like? The future of democracy? The future of America? Do you really want serious debate about a very serious issue-the issue of who will be elected to lead our country-do you really want this debate to be hijacked by a round of playground bully-type name calling?

It seems to me, Ann Coulter, that someone with your brains and quick wit could certainly do better than saying, "Nyah, nyah, your guy's a faggot!" to a national audience.

But maybe Ann Coulter can't do better, not any more. Maybe she's bought her own hype. Maybe she thinks she is the woman she plays on TV. Maybe she thinks its enough, now, to be outrageous instead of outrageously smart, or outrageously pointed.

Ann Coulter, after all, is theater. She's not even a real person. She's like those World Wrestling Federation guys in tight shiny, skin-revealing outfits who pretend to be fierce and powerful but really have to plan out all their moves beforehand so they won't get hurt.

Maybe she felt that her influence is fading, that the Republican party is slowly but surely pulling away from the social conservatives who are weighing them down until they are almost drowned.

Her influence is fading. There is no question now. Her influence faded right before our eyes as, one by one, Republicans lined up to denounce her. The Republican presidential candidates denounced her. The Christian Defense Coalition denounced her. Even the Right half of the blogosphere, led by RedState, called for an old fashioned shunning, to let Ann Coulter know she was no longer one of their own.

In fact, the Red State recall of Ann Coulter has been amazing. They have made it clear that this sort of name-calling has no place in our national debate.

Good for them.

And good for us.

Because we gained something from Ann Coulter's gaffe. We saw Republicans and conservatives of all stripes come forward to say that calling someone a faggot is wrong. We saw them realize that in fact they can't say anything they want about marginalized people. That there is a line and they don't want to cross it. We witnessed our Red State brethren take a step back from the precipice of Coulter-Hannity-Limbaugh insanity, and instead say, "Wait a minute. This is not what we want. This is not who we are."

Welcome back to the table, Republicans.

Ann Coulter, you should listen to your party. You should apologize. Calling someone a faggot to get your audience to laugh doesn't just hurt gays and lesbians and their families, and doesn't just hurt John Edwards. It hurts Republicans. It hurts the political debate. It hurts Democracy. And it hurts America.

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Coulter’s Outburst, HRC’s Outrage, and Politics as Usual.

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Ann Coulter was her usual despicable self when she called John Edwards a "faggot," and HRC takes the opportunity to express its outrage at Republicans. But Gay Patriot shows that a good many conservative and/or Republican bloggers are also unhappy with La Coulter's antics. And we can now even add some on the Christian right.

If HRC hadn't transformed itself into a Democratic Party fundraising arm, then its reacton to something like Coulter's imbecility might not seem like such a knee-jerk, rouse the base, operation. But then, fostering meaningful dialog with those on the right is the last thing on HRC's to-do list, and so it has no credibility when it issues a response to incidents such as this.

Speaking of HRC, if you think I've been hard on their ultra partisanship of late, just read Chris Crain.

More. Andrew Sullivan blogs:

"HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton], the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign.... What matters is what's in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats."

Still more. One of Coulter's themes during her CPAC address was her dislike for Rudy (she said she's likely to support Romney). Meanwhile, Rudy surges among Republicans, not all of whom are intolerant bigots, it seems. And Rudy shares is vision of the GOP as the party of freedom.

Worth noting. In her March 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed (WSJ subscribers, only), the very politically astute Peggy Noonan writes that:

In 2000 [McCain] felt he could take on Christian conservative leaders in the South. Bad timing. In 2000 they were at the peak of their 20 years of power. Now their followers are tired and questioning after a generation of political activism. And many leaders seem compromised-dinged after all that time in the air. Mr. McCain could rebuke them now and thrive. Instead he decided to attempt to embrace them.

McCain is re-fighting the last political war. I don't think Rudy is going to make that mistake.

Update. The GOP big three sharply denounce Coulter's remark.

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So Lame.

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A snapshot from the Culture War: Anti-gay Mormon parents sue the Santa Rosa City (Calif.) School District for giving their daughter a written reprimand for using the put-down "That's so gay." The parents, long-time opponents of the school's diversity program, consider the reprimand part of a homosexual agenda.

To be fair, the article suggests the daughter was teased about being a Mormon and that similar reprimands did not follow. That's a problem with diversity initiatives. They can't and shouldn't be neutral (no equal time for the Klan), but letting bureaucrats decide what's acceptable can mean only politically incorrect teasing gets the stick, leaving everyone to compete over who has been more "victimized."

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Truth Comes Out.

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The very first soldier wounded in the Iraq war-a marine who lost his leg- comes out. Retired Sgt. Eric Alva also wears a wedding ring to signify his relationship with his partner, Darrell.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is considering hiring at the State Dept. at least some of the Arabic-speaking gay linguists discharged from the military under "don't ask, don't tell" (also known as "lie and hide").

How much longer can this increasingly antiquated and just plain wrong policy last? I dunno, although renewed efforts for repeal are underway in Congress. But the arguments against it that will be most effective will draw on examples such as Sgt. Alva, and not the kinds of anti-military protests now popular at our elite liberal universities, which seek to hamper armed services enlistment and oppose the war while incidentally citing the gay-exclusion policy.

"Stop the War!," "End Campus Recruitment!" and "Let LGBTs Serve!" is not a winning message.

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Fearless Prediction Time.

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Shall I go out on a limb? I'll take exception with my IGF colleague Dale Carpenter, who suggests that the GOP's social conservative base will sink the Giuliani campaign. Based on factors including the early California primary, I predict in 2008 it will be Hillary vs. Rudy, and that Democrats will do all they can to publicize Rudy's support for gay rights-including veering on outright homophobia-in an attempt to keep social conservatives at home on election day. (And if I'm wrong, I'll delete this post and deny I every said any such thing).

More. Walker comments:

It's not "Rudy in drag" they'll use. They'll say in the debates "those of us who have gay friends-and I know Mayor Giuliani lived with a gay couple for some time after his second divorce" ... Just like the repeated Mary Cheney gambit.

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GLAAD’s Very Racially Sensitive Mission Creep.

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Some are asking why the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is targeting gay (and white) comedian/drag performer Charles Knipp, who performs as a black woman on welfare, with too many kids, named Shirley Q. Liquor. Here's Shirley's take on Kwaanza, and here's her skewed commentary on "homosexicals."

Knipp also portrays other large female characters with irreverence, including North Dakota Marge and Betty Butterfield.

The Washington Blade reports that GLAAD's critics, including some still upset over the organization's silence during last year's congressional page scandal (when those making partisan hay over GOP Rep. Mark Foley's interest in former teenage congressional pages freely invoked stereotypes that confused homosexuality and pedophilia), have called into question GLAAD's targeting of Knipp. However:

"We very clearly recognized," [GLAAD head Neil Giuliano] said, "that what we were doing in that case was standing with those organizations and individuals in the African-American community that asked us to take a stand against that racism."...

Giuliano said GLAAD took action this month against the Shirley Q. Liquor routine-an act that's been running for years-partly because he and other gay leaders recently attended a seminar on racism. "The outcome of which made me much more sensitive to when there is an opportunity to stand up against racism, it's important to do so," he said, "even when it may not be the core scope of your work day in and day out."

One can certainly argue whether Knipp's routine is "racist" or whether certain underclass cultural dysfunctions are a fair target for comedy. One might also raise the issue of whether when black comedians Tyler Perry or the often homophobic Eddie Murphy dress up as large black women this, too, is "defamatory." But the larger issue is that GLAAD seems to think that it needs to score points with fellow progressives by using its limited time and resources to attack gays for being "racist," rather than, oh, say, maybe for instance, taking on homophobia in the African-American community (which would, no doubt, run the risk of those progressives labeling GLAAD as "racist").

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Allies and Antagonists.

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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) usually defends conservative students against the PC left. The group's website notes:

At many of our nation's colleges and universities...students are expected to share a single viewpoint on controversial matters like the meaning of diversity, the particulars of racism, and the impermissibility of "hate speech." Mandatory "diversity training," in which students are instructed in an officially-approved ideology, is commonplace.

Now, FIRE is showing its evenhandedness by taking on Virginia's Hampton University, which for the second time in two years has denied recognition to students trying to start a gay and lesbian student group on campus. Good for FIRE!

Shifting gears somewhat, this Washington Post report looks at how the Democratic Party's leftwing "net-roots" are going after even moderate liberals who are pro-choice on abortion and support gay rights if they also happen to favor legislation to scale back the estate tax, tighten bankruptcy rules and promote free-trade agreements. It's very possible that the GOP will move toward the center as 2008 approaches, while the Democrats veer sharply into leftwing loonyland.

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The Underground Issue

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Analyses of why the Republican party lost both houses of Congress in the 2006 election are still coming in and doubtless will continue for some time.

One of the most interesting is by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in a post-election "Addendum" to his book "Words that Work" (Hyperion, 2007). Luntz argues that Republicans failed to communicate any principles or vision, that they seemed "rudderless ... disjointed, out-of-touch, and adrift." He could have added arrogant and corrupt.

Luntz argues that Republicans were not only inept but sometimes simply wrong. He cites the bungled war in Iraq, intervention in the Terry Schiavo case, fumbled Hurricane Katrina relief, the porkitude of that Alaska "Bridge to Nowhere," and the poorly explained Prescription Drug Benefit.

He could have cited others: The Mark Foley affair, the Jack Abramoff scandal, the threat of warrantless wiretaps, the endless delays in approving Plan B birth control, and the obvious lie that "we" were making progress in Iraq even as military and civilian deaths climbed precipitously.

As more than one centrist or GOP-leaning voter told me, "I'm just so disgusted I'm voting straight Democrat." Not that the Democrats offered any alternatives. All they had to do was say, "We aren't them." In 1946 the Republicans won the first post-Roosevelt election with the slogan, "Had enough? Vote Republican." This time it was the Democrats' turn.

But where in all this were gay issues? Yes, seven out of eight states approved gay marriage bans but those seemed to have little impact on other races just as analyses of 2004 Ohio results suggested that the anti-gay amendment had no impact on Pres. Bush's narrow victory there. In fact, some have speculated an amendment in Virginia helped 2006 Democratic senate candidate James Webb by drawing Democratic black voters to the polls to vote for the gay marriage ban.

However that may be, I want to offer a thought about how gay issues may have played an unobtrusive, almost subterranean role in the election.

For one thing, introducing the amendment banning gay marriage a second time when it had previously failed reinforced the idea that the GOP was controlled by the religious right. Thus it could be viewed as part of a cluster of moralist, religion-based policies such as opposition to Plan B and sex education, bans on abortion, and the Terry Schiavo intrusion that made Americans uneasy.

Second, although most Americans oppose gay marriage, most Americans also oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to ban it. Thus the GOP's repeated efforts suggested a zeal for a federal government solution where none was wanted and supported the perception that the GOP was becoming the party of big and intrusive government--as witness the warrantless wiretaps, suggestions for national ID cards, intrusive airport searches, and ballooning federal deficits--very much the sorts of things Barry Goldwater warned about in 1964.

Although issues such as gay adoption rights, permanent partner immigration, hate crimes laws, or a federal non-discrimination law probably had little impact, the gay military ban probably did play--again--a subterranean role. Most Americans now favor the integration of gays into the military so the current ban even on skilled gay personnel such as Arab translators made clear that the GOP's homophobic policies were getting in the way of its other avowed goal--an effective military. It is not that Americans are zealous to have gays in the military but the ban added to the general sense that there was something wrong with the conduct of the war.

So it seems that gay issues seldom if ever determine who voters will vote for, but they can play a kind of unobtrusive role as part of a cluster of issues that can be related to overall perceptions about the role or efficiency of government, the presence of sectarian influence and questions of honesty, clarity and transparency.

If this is true, gays need to explain gay issues in terms not only of justice, fairness, and non-discrimination, but relate them to clusters of issues that can touch Americans' basic concerns about the proper limits on government, the dangers of overreach, opposition to scientific knowledge, governmental prejudice against citizens, mutually inconsistent policies, hypocrisy (corruption while moralistic) and cynicism (tolerating Foley's behavior while being publicly anti-gay).

This all requires a number of things: that gay organizations find ways to raise their voices a little more, that they find new clusters of issues to relate our concerns to, and that they manage to persuade our congressional and gubernatorial supporters to speak out more often and more clearly about our issues in the context of these clusters of ideas.

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Virginia Conservatives (Inadvertently) Support Something Good.

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Virginia looks like it may pass, with bipartisan support, a law giving hospital patients explicit authority to choose their visitors. It's a small step, but even anti-gay conservatives seem to be onboard since it's not being promoted as a gay rights bill. As the Washington Post reports, Virginia Assembly Delegate David Englin, a Democrat who sponsored the measure, emphasized that it carries a "broad purpose" that goes beyond gay rights. Still:

[Englin] said that granting protections to same-sex couples is, in his view, an added benefit. In fact, Englin said it was just such a scenario that inspired him to introduce the bill. Last year at a forum about the marriage amendment, Englin met Mike Rankin, a psychiatrist in Arlington County who was denied the right to visit his dying partner in a Seattle hospital because the man's ex-wife barred him from the facility.

"She had said a visit by me would be disruptive to his children and depressing to his children, so I was not allowed to visit," Rankin recalled. "All I knew was that I couldn't get in to see the man who had been the light of my life for six years."

A too-common scenario. Until we gain spousal recognition, these small steps can take us at least part of the way.

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Gospel of Hate.

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Archbishops of the Anglican Communion meeting in Tanzania sent a message of support to anti-gay members of the U.S. Episcopal Church, and also called on Anglicans to explore uniting with Catholics under the pope (who, as pictured in this Evening Standard account, looks amazing like the evil emporer from the Star Wars flicks). Specifically, American bishops are being asked to state that they will not consent to the election of gay or lesbian bishops and that they will not allow the creation and promulgation of rites for gay and lesbian couples (currently a local pastoral option).

Really, at this point, shouldn't U.S. Episcopalians just declare that the Anglicans, now fully under the sway of arch-reactionaries from the heart of darkness, can have the church of hate they so desire, and then go their own way?

More. Time magazine reports: "Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Anglicanism's first primate among equals and the man responsible for trying to hold the Communion together, made it clear in a press conference that he supported the communique." Also:

[Episcopalian Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori] appears to have been involved in putting together parts of this solution, which suggests that she is committed to making them work. If so, she will face stiff opposition from many U.S. Episcopalians, who would probably prefer second-class status-or no status at all-in the Communion, rather than retreating from a position on homosexuality that they feel more closely reflects the spirit of the Gospel than the exclusionary position of the majority of the primates.

Public school U.S. history lessons often confuse the difference between the Pilgrim separatists who sought to break with the corrupt Anglican church to better follow the gospel message, and authoritarian Puritans who sought to "purify" a centralized church in order to force their will on others. It's to the Pilgrims that today's Episcopalians should turn for inspiration.

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