Israeli citizens can now enter into same-sex marriages in foreign jurisdictions that allow them (such as Canada, Massachusetts and some European countries) and have them recognized by the Israeli state. As Andrew Sullivan points out: "The contrast with the murderous homophobia in the Arab-Muslim Middle East could not be starker."
But don't tell that to San Francisco-based QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terror).
And so it begins, with Romney charging that McCain is being "disingenuous" by claiming to oppose gay marriage. Meanwhile, McCain may be trying to put some distance between himself and Rudy.
More Politics. As alerted to in the comments: Nancy Pelosi has announced that the Democrats intend to keep Don't Ask, Don't Tell around for the foreseeable future. Via the Boston Globe:
Pelosi has also tempered hopes of reversing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the service of gays and lesbians in the military... Though Pelosi believes homosexuals should be able to openly serve, she has made clear that she believes Democrats have more urgent national-security priorities - including changing course in Iraq and investigating war-related contracting.
Memo to gay activists: If you're waiting for the new Congress to pass an ENDA (Employee Non-Discrimination Act) that includes, at your insistence, the transgendered, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that might interest you.
Still more bashing of America's largest non-government employer this month, from the anti-gay religious right (here, too) and the anti-business Democratic left (here, too).
It's demagoguery (and hypocrisy) all round, as the rightists don't like businesses that treat gays as valued customers, and the lefties just don't like business.
More on Edwards the hypocrite, from Radley Balko:
Edwards' contempt for Wal-Mart has nothing to do with real concern for the poor (it's more a mix of anti-corporatism and good old fashioned snobbery). If that were the case, he'd at least acknowledge that Wal-Mart has done more for the working poor in America than any government safety net program could ever hope to.
Many with a libertarian bent will never forgive John McCain for his speech-muzzling "McCain-Feingold" law that served mainly to divert campaign financing dollars to even less visible pathways. Granted. But it's hard to argue with his recent call for the wayward GOP to return to limited government principles:
We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office....
Americans had elected us to change government, and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us.
Such sentiments are particularly pertinent this week, as we mourn the loss of Milton Friedman, who shed light into the muck of left-liberal economic stagflation and showed how trusting people to make their own choices, rather than empowering government bureaucrats (and smug Ivy League elitists) to choose for them, leads to growth, prosperity and dynamism. Of course, many of us would also stress that freedom to choose for oneself extends beyond the marketplace and boardroom, and that limited government doesn't mean wielding state power to impose a moral regimen on the populace - lessons that social conservatives failed to grasp. (Friedman, himself, opposed the "war on drugs" and favored decriminalizing prostitution.)
Still, as congressional Democrats salivate at the thought of imposing their beloved price controls, wage schemes and trade barriers, Friedman's loss is most acutely felt.
A few weeks ago I was in Ripon, Wisconsin, for a same-sex marriage debate with Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family, when the Ted Haggard story broke. Haggard, then president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of the massive New Life Church in Colorado Springs, was being accused by former Denver prostitute Ted Jones of having regular drug-fueled gay trysts with Jones over a period of several years.
"So, do you think there's anything to this?" I asked Stanton, who told me that Haggard was not only his pastor but also a friend.
"No way," he replied. (At the time no tapes had yet been released, and Haggard was denying the story.) "It's just incongruous. John, it would be like finding out that you secretly have a wife and family in the suburbs. No."
(Betty, if you're reading this, be sure to get Timmy a haircut before his little-league game this weekend, and give Mary Jane a kiss from Daddy.)
Kidding aside, my reaction to the story's unfolding was marked more by sadness than schadenfreude. I could see the shock on my friend and opponent Glenn Stanton's face the next day, as further revelations made it increasingly clear that Haggard was pretty much guilty as charged. I was sad for Haggard, sad for his family, and sad for all the people he had mislead.
But he deserved his downfall, didn't he? Certainly. Here was a leader in a movement that actively fights gay rights. Haggard openly proclaimed that the Bible tells us everything we need to know about homosexuality -- namely, that it's just plain wrong. And as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, he helped to spread this view far and wide--apparently carrying on an affair with a male prostitute all the while.
So I wasn't surprised that many relished his fall from grace. A few days after returning from my trip I ran into a friend who, upon my mentioning Haggard's name, gleefully started dancing and singing "Another one bites the dust…" Schadenfreude--taking pleasure at the misfortune of others--is a natural human tendency, especially when those others are royal hypocrites. And it's not just schadenfreude, it's relief: one less person will be out there spreading lies about gays (though others will doubtless take his place).
Haggard is Exhibit N in a recent line of examples of the dangers of the closet. Some of them are Republicans, some Democrats; some are religious leaders, some not. While their stories differ in detail, they all highlight a major pitfall of trying to fight one's gayness, rather than embracing it openly.
I am of course not saying that when heterosexually married people act on homosexual desires, it automatically proves that they ought to have been doing so all along. Whether they ought to have been doing so depends, crucially, their own predominant sexual orientation, as well as on the moral status of homosexual conduct.
Nor am I saying, "If you don't let us be gay, then we will become lying, cheating, predatory assholes." I am saying that a world that doesn't provide healthy avenues for gay people to pursue intimacy should not be terribly surprised when some turn to unhealthy ones. Barney Frank put it well in a Newsweek interview regarding the Mark Foley scandal: "Being in the closet doesn't make you do dumb things, doesn't justify you doing dumb things, it just makes them likelier."
Of course, there are non-closeted people who (like Haggard and former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey) commit adultery or (like Foley) chase after sixteen-year-old employees. But it doesn't follow that the closet is not a contributing factor, any more than non-smokers with cancer disprove that smoking increases cancer risk. It's common sense, really: double lives are a recipe for danger. There are other recipes, to be sure, but this one's pretty reliable.
Partly this is because the closet demands, not just a lie, but an entire pattern of lies, which in turn make deception easier in other areas of life. Partly it's because this pattern is emotionally and spiritually draining. And partly it's because deception poisons relationships, cutting one off from the friends who could otherwise monitor one's behavior, offering support, guidance, and an occasional good smack upside the head when needed.
Haggard's much-needed smack did not come from his friends: it came from a public scandal. In response, he plans to begin a lengthy process of "spiritual restoration," which begins with owning up to one's sins. And that saddens me too--not because I'm against his (or anyone's) acknowledging fault, but because there's good reason to believe that Haggard and his advisers will miss the key ones. Homosexuality is not a sin. Making the world needlessly more difficult for gay and lesbian people surely is.
During 12 years of congresses disproportionately influenced by the GOP's religious right "core constituency" gays and lesbians became so used to tempering their political expectations that it is hard to know how to react to the sudden change in party control wrought by the Nov. 7 election.
Giddy excitement would be one possible reaction. Cautious optimism would probably be better. After all, gays won some and lost some. And George Bush is still president and can wield a veto pen.
Two results stand out: Gays and lesbians will no longer always need to play defense and an implicit rebuke to the religious right for overreaching.
The party switch places gay-friendly Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House and gay and gay friendly chairmen such as Barney Frank and Henry Waxman in charge of some congressional committees. And because gays are a constituency of the Democratic party, Congress is unlikely to approve any specifically anti-gay legislation.
Nor is a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage likely to get further than being introduced. It would be blocked at the committee level. In a related gain, the amendment's major fan Rick ("man on dog") Santorum went down to substantial defeat (Thank you, Pennsylvania voters), and although amendment co-sponsor Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave was reelected, she won only 46 percent of the vote, so she is likely to take a lower profile role.
Can we expect any positive actions from a Democratic congress? Among the possibilities that have been mentioned are overturning the military's ban on openly gay service members, inclusion of gays in a federal hate crimes law and passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Certainly public opinion supports all three.
The Hate Crimes law is perhaps the likeliest since it produces the least opposition. Both ENDA and repeal of DADT are possibilities, but are more likely to be vetoed. Something very limited for same-sex partners has also been mentioned, but seems unlikely.
To be sure, many of the new Democratic legislators are more socially conservative than the Democratic leadership--Rep. Rahm Emanuel recruited them specifically to counter the GOP's appeal on social issues.
But simply because they originally joined the Democratic rather than the Republican party, they may not be as hostile to equal treatment for gays as the Republicans were. Whatever they may believe about guns, abortion, or tariffs, they tend--if only "tend"--to think that discrimination is wrong--unlike most Republicans who approve of discrimination if it is called "values." Even if Bush vetoes such enactments, congressional passage itself is a powerful precedent to build on in the future.
We can even dare to hope for greater congressional insistence that federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Drug Enforcement Agency begin to tell the truth about marijuana, condoms, oral sex, abortion and a host of HIV issues. And that the National Institutes of Health might finally be adequately funded to research vaccines for syphilis and gonorrhea.
As to the religious right: With their remarkable capacity for self-pity and victim mongering when they do not get every jot and tittle they want, some religious right figures claimed to be devastated by the election. The New York Times quoted the head of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue describing it as "Bloody Tuesday" because South Dakota turned back a state law banning almost all abortions, California and Oregon rejected parental notification of a minor's abortion, and Missouri rejected a ban on stem-celll research.
Yet they managed to pass seven out of the eight state amendments barring same-sex marriage. Even though gays were heartened by Arizona's rejection of a gay marriage ban, a national first, they should be kicking themselves that they lost by 52 to 48 percent in South Dakota.
It may be that the October 25 New Jersey civil unions/marriage decision influenced the vote in some states. Heterosexuals who say they support civil unions or marriage in the abstract--even if they are telling the truth--seem to get skittish when confronted with the actual possibility. Is it an accident that of states with marriage bans on the ballot Arizona is the farthest away from New Jersey? Perhaps more important, Arizona retains a strong Goldwater/Kolbe libertarian tradition of live and let live.
It is hard to know how effective gay groups' anti-amendment efforts were in states such as Wisconsin, Colorado and Idaho. A friend reports that he walked into the Wisconsin group's Madison headquarters prepared to donate a few hundred dollars. Although people were standing around in the office, they all ignored him, so after a few minutes he walked out, keeping his money. When are gay advocacy groups going to stop depending on untrained volunteers and get serious about our lives?
GOP rightwingers hate Bush's nominee for Republican National Committee Chair, Mel Martinez, but so do (and understandably so) LGBT Democratic activists.
The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's (NGLTF) post-election press release is How Will the Election Affect Sexual and Reproductive Rights?
The release is about a joint audioconference with feminist/reproductive rights groups, but it does beg the question: Do these feminist/reproductive rights groups give gay rights equal footing with their own core agenda? Answer: Are you insane?
Along with NGLTF, self-styled 'progressive' LGBT groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and even the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, use an abortion-on-demand litmus test for the candidates they endorse/fund- which allows them to eliminate gay-tolerant conservatives who are even mildly pro-life. When such candidates know they will be adamantly opposed by the leading national gay groups, what incentive do they have to moderate their views on gay issues?
Memo to LGBT progressives: not all gays are of like mind on abortion.
From analysis in the Milwaukee Sun Sentinel, on the Wisconsin vote (for Democratic candidates and the anti-gay-marriage initiative):
By putting the same-sex marriage and death penalty measures on the same ballot....Republican leaders in the Legislature ended up drawing the wrong type of voter to the polls-Democrats, especially conservative ones. Those people voted for the ballot proposals but against Republican candidates....
"It was a lose-lose situation," [U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Menomonee Falls Republican] said. "You had Reagan Democrats and socially conservative union members who wanted to vote yes and yes (on the referendums) and then voted for [Democratic Gov. Jim] Doyle."
But I kinda wish LGBT Democratic activists, who spend so much energy denouncing gay Republicans, would devote just a bit of their efforts at anti-gay Democrats (since, after all, it's their party that our national LGBT organizations work so tirelessly to fund).
According to CNN's exit polling, 24% of self-identified gays cast their votes for Republicans on Tuesday. In 2004, 23% of the gay vote went for Bush. Log Cabin stands alone in trying to leverage the power of this vote with a religious-right dominated GOP. But to groups like the Human Rights Campaign, which now sees its mission as electing liberal Democrats, these voters don't even exist.
From a Log Cabin post-election release:
GOP leaders lost sight of what brought our Party to power in 1994. Limited government, lower spending, high ethical standards and accountability, and other unifying GOP principles attracted a broad coalition of support including fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, mainstream Republicans, libertarians, and independents. Now we've lost the U.S. House because Party leaders turned their backs on the GOP's core principles and catered only to social conservatives.
Hard to argue with that.