IGF CultureWatch

In our mailbag it's suggested that the religious right is beyond the pale of debate because "bigots [aren't] capable of dialogue." I respond that "to refuse to confront the ideas of your opponents is a great, big cop-out," and that "The religious right is not some splinter, Nazi sect; millions of hard-working, salt-of-the-Earth Americans find spiritual solace in its rituals and worldview. I don't believe we should simply give up on trying to reach them (the religious right's adherents, if not its leadership)."

Yes, we were down for nearly a full day, starting Thursday evening, after our server was attacked - again. Our team of wonderful unpaid volunteers took many, many hours away from their lives to get things up and running. We owe them a great, big THANKS.

We're hopeful things are now stabilized (if not, I guess you won't be reading this). For those who saw the message "Access Denied," it was nothing personal.

I'll be traveling for the next week out of country, but will try to post if the laptop can manage it. If not, see you next week!
--Stephen H. Miller

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has just selected a Republican to lead the organization, Neil G. Giuliano, the four-term mayor of Tempe, Ariz. I wish him luck; he'll need it. The organization has spent the last decade not constructively engaging the religious right (which merely served as "the enemy" in fundraising letters), and instead mainly cavorting with Hollywood celebs and issuing mindlessly politically correct denunciations (see below).

As an early GLAAD supporter, volunteer and board member of what was then GLAAD/New York, I wish Neil well. My suggestion: a thorough housecleaner, if the board allows it, of staffers who think GLAAD's mission is to advance the "progressive" agenda.

Update: In response to those who criticized me for criticizing GLAAD, in the comments zone reader "J.P." observes:

GLAAD was not formed as a Hollywood lobby; it was modeled on the Anti-Defamation League, and its mission was to counter far-right homophobia the way the ADL counters far-right anti-Semitism.

Over recent years, GLAAD went soft and found it easier to party with Hollywood liberals than to take on the religious right. Steve is absolutely correct in this, as anyone who remembers what GLAAD once was can attest.

The latest anti John Roberts missive from HRC, the abortion rights lobby that targets gay and lesbian donors, manages to sidestep abortion. This isn't so surprising, given that the Washington Post reports that, in the wake of the NARAL ad fiasco, the plan of Roberts' opponents "calls for emphasizing rights beyond abortion in an effort to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate."

HRC head Joe Solmonese dismisses Roberts aid to gay lawyers in the Romer case (although those same lawyers said Roberts help was conceptually very important). Instead, he focuses on decisions he believes indicate Roberts would not extend constitutional protections - such as his finding no constitutional violation in a teenager's arrest for eating french fries on the Washington subway (in violation of a local ordinance).

The arrest may well be seen as unreasonable, but not everything that's good or reasonable is premised on a constitutionally guaranteed right. And in the french fry case, as Eugene Volokh noted, Roberts was bound to follow a Supreme Court precedent - the Atwater v. Lago Vista decision, written by Justice David Souter, that ruled the disproportionality of arrest to offense was not unconstitutional (after a mother was taken into custody for violating the seatbelt law).

HRC's anti-Roberts release, by the way, was sent out the same day that the upper left page-one headline in the Washington Post was "Roberts Unlikely To Face Big Fight: Many Democrats See Battle as Futile." But HRC soldiers on, against a nominee whose history suggests an open-mindedness on gay matters that few expected.

Dale Carpenter makes a strong argument against the conventional wisdom that abortion rights underlie the struggle for gay legal equality. The issue couldn't be more timely, with some gay activists placing fealty to NARAL as a political litmus test superseding all others.

You don't need me to summarize, so just read it for yourselves.

Update: A nice link to us from Gay Patriot.

Remember last June when the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation joined with racial sensitivity groups and pressured ABC to cancel broadcast of its already-filmed reality show "Welcome to the Neighborhood"? (See A Victory for the Self-Appointed Thought Police.) The show explored changing attitudes among suburbanites as a diverse group of families, including a gay couple, competed to win a $400,000 house by overcoming their neighbors' prejudices. GLAAD declared that the episodic format "created serious issues in terms of depicting the neighbors' journey from intolerance to acceptance," and that viewers of the earliest episodes might be misled into thinking prejudice was acceptable.

Well, the Washington Blade has now reported that the gay couple, Steve and John Wright, who have an adopted son, won the house! Can you imagine a more convincing, uplifting, pro-gay message to have sent America? Good thing our media watchdogs kept that from happening, huh?

We've posted Paul Varnell's cogent case against the recent bisexuality study that garnered so much controversy. However, the flaws in the study don't, to me, justify the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force's overwrought and oh-so politically correct denunciation.

Update: Also now posted, Dale Carpenter's critique of the study's critics.

More Recent Postings
8/7/05 - 8/13/05

Last week, the Washington Blade reported that 16-year-old blogger Zach Stark, forced to attend an ex-gay camp/"treatment" facility by his parents, now criticized the worldwide response on his behalf by those with "one-sided (biased) agendas" and, using more ex-gay buzzwords, says that while homosexuality is still a "factor" for him but he won't let it "run my life." (See my original posting on Zach, here.)

We've published a letter in our mailbag which, assuming it's not someone's idea of a literary exercise, presents another very sad gay teen story.

Blogger Boi From Troy takes aim at CNN's double standard - last year refusing as "too controversial" a hard-hitting ad from the Log Cabin Republicans that linked images of Jerry Falwell, Rick Santorum and Rev. Fred Phelps, but now accepting a NARAL ad linking John Roberts to "violent fringe groups" that bomb abortion clinics.

According to the AP, "other abortion rights groups including the National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Majority all have announced their opposition to Roberts." They should have added the Human Rights Campaign, the abortion rights lobby that targets gay and lesbian donors.

Here's the New York Times' report; even the liberal Times can't defend the ad.

Meanwhile, social conservatives may be turning against Roberts for being pro-gay. And right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter has been leading the anti-Roberts charge.

Press release headline: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force study finds that Social Security privatization will disproportionately harm lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans . Yes, allowing gay people to bequeath their life-long retirement savings to a partner (or anyone else they choose) sure would be a bad thing, and allowing all people of modest means to access the wealth-generating power of the equity markets, if they so choose, is a sure threat to gay equality.

Oh, and the study also finds that "LGBT people of color, in particular, face an income disadvantage that leads to lower Social Security benefits." Well, yes, which is why capital accumulation via low-expense asset-class index funds would give them a fighting chance at a comfortable retirement.

Update: Reader "David" comments:

This is a dishonest study, done by leftists to advance the left's agenda rather than by actual gay activists with an interest in the actual lives of gay people.

Social Security choice is inherently pro-gay. If people put their retirement in private accounts, those accounts belong to them. They can leave their assets to their partner or to anyone else. If gays could get married, then this provision would not matter to us more than to anyone else - but we can't.

The study says: "If we earn less, we receive a lower Social Security payment in retirement." Well, duh. But that's a fact - or a complaint - about the current system. A large-accounts privatization plan would allow lower-income people to accumulate assets the way upper-middle-class people now do. If indeed gays are more likely to have lower incomes, then they would be disproportionately benefited by privatization.

I think the study notes, for instance, that money you leave to your partner is taxable, while assets left to your spouse are not. That's discrimination, and we should support ending it - but it's a comment on current law, not Social Security reform. In fact, we might even be able to quietly get a provision into the reform law that says that private Social Security benefits could be inherited tax-free. (And besides, left-liberals are always telling us that only the very rich pay the estate tax, so the taxability of retirement assets is hardly an issue for "low-income LGBTs.")

If you'd like to leave the money you've saved all your life to your partner - or to HRC - you should support Social Security choice.