IGF CultureWatch

I missed this last week, but conservative U.S. News & World Report columnist John Leo ponders the meaning of gay conservatives (and IGF), following Andrew Sullivan's plug.
--Stephen H. Miller

In a Tue. Wall Street Journal op-ed (also available here), David Boaz writes of libertarians unrepresented by either politicians or media:

Gallup also found-this year as in others-that 20% are neither liberal nor conservative but libertarian, opposing the use of government either to "promote traditional values" or to "do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses."

[But] Democrats stand like a wall against tax cuts and Social Security privatization. Republicans want to ban abortion, gay marriage and "Happy Holidays." It's not just Congress-in Virginia's recent elections, all the Democrats were tax-hikers and all the Republicans were religious rightists. What's a libertarian to do?

He concludes:

According to [exit] polls, 17 million voted for John Kerry but did not think the government should do more to solve the country's problems. And 28 million Bush voters support either gay marriage or civil unions. That's 45 million who don't fit the polarized model. They seem to have broadly libertarian attitudes. In fact, it's no secret that libertarian voters make up a chunk of America. But you'd never know it from watching TV-or listening to our elected politicians.

The tragedy of our political system is that the two parties and their activists fundraising networks use the worst propagandistic means to keep their respective donor bases whipped into a crazy/angry frenzy. I'm reminded of the words of W.B. Yeats:

The centre cannot hold ...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

More. We've now posted Paul Varnell's "Neither Liberal nor Conservative," with further insights about polarization.--Stephen H. Miller

I can't say with certainty whether anti-gay Sen. Sam Brownback was in fact making an anti-gay crack when he said, in discussing gay marriage, "You look at the social impact of the countries that have engaged in homosexual marriage. You'll know 'em by their fruits," quoting (after a fashion) Matthew 7:16.

There's plenty to castigate Brownback for (Sweden doesn't even provide gays with full marriage equality) without going overboard over an ambiguous comment. But that's exactly the trap HRC fell into, with this heated response, saying Brownback's "derogatory use of 'fruits' sinks below decency." Of course, HRC is merely (as always) playing to its fundraising base, not trying to sway the wider public, and certainly not reaching out to conservative Christians who might be more familiar with biblical quotations as a part of political discourse-and thus just as likely to give Brownback a pass on the quote as gay activists were to insist it was an outright slur.

More: Would Howard Dean recognize the New Testament if it got up and introduced itself to him? Apparently not.

More Recent Postings
01/22/06 - 01/28/06

Dale Carpenter takes a look at what's really motivating some gay activists to oppose Alito (hint: it's not gay rights).

Joe Solmonese's Human Rights Campaign hits a new low by declaring:

A glance at his resume reads like an anti-gay textbook. From striking down a policy that protected gay students from harassment to his view that would threaten Congress' power to enact non-discrimination laws, he's the wrong choice for the court.

As I've noted before, even the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force supports the Alito free-speech ruling that HRC condemns as "anti-gay."
Moreover, Alito ruled to protect a gay student from harassment in another decision that didn't involve draconian restrictions on speech. And he said specifically during his testimony that Congress has the right to pass anti-discrimiation laws that protect gays.

Abortion-rights activist Solmonese should have stayed at Emily's List, where he happily endorsed supporters of the anti-gay federal Marriage Protection Amendment. Abortion over all!

As Carpenter writes, "The national gay groups...have pretty much taken themselves out of any serious debate about President Bush's judicial nominees."

Just for fun, the Oprah folks provide a chatty summation, with lots of photos, of Friday's visit with the Brokeback cast. This sort of publicity is priceless.

Britain is atwitter over the revelation that Mark Oaten, a leading Liberal Democratic member of Parliament, married with children, has been frequenting male hustlers. Oaten may be an adulterer, but he's not a hypocrite-apparently, he's about as close to a libertarian as you're likely to find in Britain. But like so many others, a la Brokeback, he thought he could live a lie and it eventually caught up with him.

Also from Britain, a look at why libertarians, or at least those who still believe in freedom of association, are sorely needed.

On a happier note, here's some news from the future.

P.S. Thanks, Andrew. Much appreciated.

NBC has canceled "The Book of Daniel," about a troubled Episcopalian priest and his family, but not because it had a gay character (one of Daniel's sons). Religious conservatives were successful in mau-mauing advertisers to flee because of far more controversial plot elements. Foremost among these: Daniel's conversations with Jesus, who gently encourages him to do the right thing ("now would be a good time to stop," he tells Daniel, who is addicted to prescription pills). This wasn't the judgmental storm trooper that fundamentalists like to envision. And so one of TV's rare attempts to deal with spirituality in everyday life, as lived by imperfect men and woman, bites the dust.

More: Some interesting comments, many arguing the show was poorly conceived and quite rightly pulled-and that social conservative activists had little to do with its demise.

More evidence that Brokeback is becoming a cultural touchstone. While answering questions at Kansas State University, President Bush had this exchange (from the White House transcript):

Q: You're a rancher. A lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on "Brokeback Mountain," if you've seen it yet? (Laughter.) You would love it. You should check it out.

THE PRESIDENT: I haven't seen it. I'll be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie. (Laughter.) I've heard about it. I hope you go -- you know -- (laughter) -- I hope you go back to the ranch and the farm is what I'm about to say. I haven't seen it. (Laughter and applause.)

While being ever-mindful of his conservative base, it sounds like Bush was still having some fun with the question. But to read the AP account picked up by 365.gay.com as well as most of the mainstream media, you'd think he went into shock.

More: Ok, the video coverage is a bit more revealing. But this is George W.-when answering questions on his own Social Security reform, he hems and haws and looks awkward. Sorry, but I'm not offended by his response here.

More Recent Postings
01/15/06 - 01/21/06

Columnist Norah Vincent, who has contributed some writings to IGF in the past, has a new book that got big play Friday night on 20/20 and a positive New York Times review. In Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again, Vincent (who is an out lesbian) spent several months transformed into "Ned," to discover what men are really like. She concludes men aren't so bad, but hurt from a lack of intimacy. From the Times review (by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp):

introducing herself to some guys in a bowling league, she's touched by the ritual howyadoin', man-to-man handshake, which, "from the outside . . . had always seemed overdone to me," but from the inside strikes her as remarkably warm and inclusive, worlds away from the "fake and cold" air kisses and limp handshakes exchanged by women.

...Norah-as-Ned commits to [the bowling league] for eight months, becoming the weak link on a four-man team of working-class white men.... The resultant chapter is as tender and unpatronizing a portrait of America's "white trash" underclass as I've ever read. "They took people at face value," writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right."

Neither dumb lugs nor proletarian saints, Ned's bowling buddies are wont to make homophobic cracks and pay an occasional visit to a strip club, but they surprise Vincent with their lack of rage and racism, their unflagging efforts to improve Ned's atrocious bowling technique and "the absolute reverence with which they spoke about their wives."

On 20/20, some of the bowlers indicated they had once or twice speculated about whether Ned was gay-though apparently that didn't result in any coldness or hostility that Vincent picked up on, despite any homophobic cracks.

By the way, reviewer Kemp's "white trash" characterization has already gotten heated blogosphere comment: Some feel it shows NYT/Vanity Fair insularity, others (including instapundit) think it was meant as a poke at that very elitism.

Another view: My partner was struck by how basically conservative Vincent's message was-the bowlers were genuinely nice, both to each other and to their wives; women have the power in heterosexual courting; men and women really are different. Vincent says "I found out identity is not something to tamper with"-living as a man eventually sent her into a hospital with depression, because she really is a woman and she had exhausted herself trying to seem like a man.

But over at salon, Andrew O'Hehir dismisses as "bizarre" Vincent's assertion that "male human beings and female human beings [are] as separate as sects"; in other words, that men and women are fundamentally different, in no small part because of the unique power of male sexual desire. Which to me seems a perfectly reasonable observation, and not at all "bizarre" outside the precincts of liberal feminist fantasia.