IGF CultureWatch

Al-Qaida has purportedly launched a news program via the Internet. According to the Washington Post account:

The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq. . . . A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.

Then came this weather report:

"The whole Muslim world was filled with joy" [after Katrina], the anchorman said. He went on to say that President Bush was "completely humiliated by his obvious incapacity to face the wrath of God, who battered New Orleans, city of homosexuals."

Pat Robertson, met Bin Laden.

I rather like Connecticut's suggested wording for the pronouncement of civil unions, which become legal in that state next weekend. At the end of ceremonies justices are advised to pronounce couples "partners in life" rather than "husband and wife."

To date, as the Washington Post story notes, Connecticut is the first state, without court pressure, to pass a civil union law conferring the same state (but not federal) rights as marriage. Vermont is the only other state that allows civil unions; Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriages.

Dale Carpenter's newly posted take on the governator's pending veto of California's marriage bill is here.

Blade newspapers editor Chris Crain penned this editorial defending ideological diversity - that is, inclusion of gay conservatives - in his papers. At issue: a flood of negative pushback from rather illiberal gay "liberals" after he ran viewpoint columns such as this.

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9/18/05 - 9/24/05

Jeff Cook, a gay small-government Republican, is challenging Rep. Sue Kelly, a GOP big spender, for New York's Hudson Valley congressional seat. Good for him! Kelly not only supported the pork-laded transportation boondoggle and favors expanding federal government funding for "the arts," but she also voted for the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Wrong on everything, she is (as Yoda might say).

"I have become really concerned in the last couple of years about the direction of some of the leaders in our party," Cook told The Hill. "If the Republican Party is unwilling . . . to stand up to the trappings and the temptations of big government, then who will? We've got to have a dividing line."

Cook opposes "larger and larger government" in both the fiscal and social realms:

he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment on the grounds that it's unconstitutional and contrary to his small-government philosophy.

Striking a careful ideological balance, Cook said families, not government, should make life's most important decisions - about schools, for instance- but offered an expansive view of "family" including adoption by gay couples.

Beating an incumbent is a tall order, but I'm glad to see someone advocating a consistent view of limited government and calling the GOP home to its roots (as the anti-slavery party, remember?).

More on Cook from Boi from Troi and Rick Sincere. And here's the campaign's website.

Further: A commenter notes this item on the race from the conservative RedState.org site

HRC, the large abortion-on-demand lobby that targets gay and lesbian donors, seems to imply in its lastest broadside vilifying John Roberts that only anti-Roberts votes are "principled" - suggesting that even stalwart left-liberals like Sen. Leahy, who reliably vote HRC's way on legislation, have taken an unprincipled stand by supporting Roberts - the anti-gay Chief Justice nominee who inconveniently has no anti-gay record and, annoyingly, did pro bono work on behalf of gay activists.

We've posted an interesting column from philosophy prof. John Corvino, In Defense of Pleasure, which asks, provocatively, what's so bad about feeling good? Nothing, says I, as long as you do no harm to others and take responsibility for your actions - and maintain the ability to self-discipline in the many areas where it's necessary to do so for your overall wellbeing. Alas, too many embark on the path of hedonism and spiral out of control, harming themselves quite seriously. So, can you abandon yourself to the fires of pleasure and not get burned?

This new article by Jonathan Rauch and Bill Meezan is one of the best yet on same-sex marriage and gay parenting. Among the research findings:

[T]here is no evidence that children of lesbian and gay parents are confused about their gender identity.

And:

[I]n general, children raised in same-sex environments show no differences in cognitive abilities, behavior, general emotional development, or such specific areas of emotional development as self-esteem, depression, or anxiety.

And finally, on the issue of being teased and ridiculed:

The evidence is mixed, however, on whether the children have heightened difficulty with peers, with more studies finding no particular problems.

The PDF version includes a textbox describing the new study of same-sex parenting by Patterson et al. - a true population-based sample that should (but probably won't) put to rest questions raised by anti-gay activists at the Family Research Council and elsewhere about the methodology of earlier research.

The British gay rights group Outrage! stands alone, it seems, in exposing the latest example of the murderous homophobia of Iran's Islamic regime, while the gay international rights groups that are dominated by left-wingers decline to criticize an anti-American ally. Hat tip: Gay Patriot.

Update: A new Amnesty International report reveals "alarming and widespread police mistreatment of gays" - in the USA.

Also, as one commenter notes, on the website of the reliably leftwing International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Iran's not exactly highlighted.
--Stephen H. Miller

Left-leaning columnist Keith Boykin has an even-handed look at gay betrayals from the left and the right. He writes:

Maybe it's time we stop supporting Democrats who take our money but won't take our positions. Maybe it's time we stop sucking up to powerful Republicans just because they have power. And if we're going to sleep with the enemy, we should at least get something positive out of the relationship.

Also, from an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:

Supporters of gay marriage need to build public acceptance community by community, state by state. That won't be accomplished by court edict. It may, however, be accomplished by dogged work in the legislatures, and Massachusetts may wind up leading by example.

And California, too, despite the veto.

Is it really "discrimination" to forbid a pre-operative transsexual from using the women's shower at a shelter for hurricane evacuees? Do the women-born-women who don't want to share the shower with a physical male have no rights? Judging from coverage like this, you'd suppose the answer is, no, they don't. If they're uncomfortable showering with a physical male (and too insensitive to see that their shower mate is psychologically a female), that's just too bad.

I'm not willfully insensitive to the struggles faced by the transgendered, but demands such as this are what make the public, not unreasonably, tune them out altogether.

Further: I agree, the arrest seems highly unwarranted. Government isn't known for its sensitive handling of these issues.

More Recent Postings
9/11/05 - 9/17/05