Just an Observation.

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Columnist Larry Elder notes that, at a recent White House press conference, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller posed a question in which she called deputy defense secretary (and Bush's nominee for World Bank president) Paul Wolfowitz "a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history." With minimal research, Elder shows that this is, factually, far from the truth (the Iraq War has a much highly support level than many other U.S. incursions), thus revealing Bumiller's query as "another editorial masquerading as a question."

Might I add that if she had phrased her inquiry as biased in favor of the president rather than against, some of our liberal friends would now be cheerfully investigating her sex life for dirt.

More Recent Postings
3/20/05 - 3/27/05

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Making Libertarians Relevant.

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Writing at TechCentralStation, Pejman Yousefzadeh questions whether the existence of a separate Libertarian Party has diminished the influence libertarians might otherwise have on both Republicans and Democratic. He acknowledges that "when it comes to elections, the Libertarian Party is at best a marginal contender," but given how evenly divided the electorate is, a possible strategy might be:

to augment the influence of libertarians in public policy; invite Democrats and Republicans to bid for libertarian support with policy concessions to libertarians in exchange for libertarian votes. That way, libertarians could influence policy and serve as kingmakers for whichever party did the best job of attracting libertarian support on substantive policy issues.

It has long seemed to me that the religious right became a major player precisely bcause it didn't form its own party and run candidates sure to lose. Of course, the "kingmaker" strategy assumes there are enough libertarian-leaners to make a difference, but I suspect a lot of voters are "small 'l'" libertarians (or at least "neolibertarians") without labeling themselves - favoring government limited as much as is practically possible to its core mission of defending life, liberty and property (in Locke's phrase) and relying on freely made transactions within a dynamic civil society to provide the rest.

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Harkin: Congress Was Right.

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Okay, I looked around and there really isn't much gay news happening that's worth writing about- although I did find this Advocate story about a lesbian who fled the U.S. for Canada but is now returning (she'd "rather remain a disgruntled American queer. Free to be oppressed, free to be maligned, and free to be trampled upon, all in the name of political expediency," but is "ready to take up the mantle for positive change-not just for gays and lesbians but for all Americans") to be the perfect embodiment of the Advocate-gay worldview. It appears in the same online issue along with the expected knee-jerk vilification of Jeff Gannon.

So, I'll follow up again with Terri Schiavo, now being starved to death in Florida. Many of our commentors are enraged by my stance. Too bad. To paraphrase Lillian Hellman, I won't cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. And when there's doubt, I won't hesitate to err on the side of life. But like the abortion battle, nothing can convince those who disagree; it's a gut issue. And my gut tells me that Michael Schiavo should no more get away with murder than O.J. Simpson or Robert Blake or, oh, never mind.

I will say that to those of our readers on the left who are enraged that I could possibly support any position that Tom DeLay might support (no need to think, just conclude that whatever they favor must be opposed), I note that not all Democrats are with you, either. As this piece in Slate reports:

In the Senate, a key supporter of a federal remedy was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a progressive Democrat and longtime friend of labor and civil rights, including disability rights. Harkin told reporters, "There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disability, and many times there is no one to speak for them, and it is hard to determine what their wishes really are or were. So I think there ought to be a broader type of a proceeding that would apply to people in similar circumstances who are incapacitated."

I don't agree with Harkin on most issues, but I do think this makes the point that it's not only members of the great right-wing conspiracy who oppose starving Terri Schavio to death. Of course, some will still, I'm sure, conclude that both Harkin and I are tools of Tom DeLay!

Update: Chuck Muth writes, perceptively:

This intellectual and constitutional battle over the Schiavo matter is taking place almost exclusively among those on the right, with bona-fide card-carrying limited-government types finding themselves on opposite sides of the issue.

I'd agree with that. Some who oppose the congressional action paint it as a simple matter of federal encroachment on the states; it's not (simple, that is), if you believe the central responsiblity of government is, above all else, defending life and liberty.

Intemperate Update: On the death watch: Wouldn't it be more humane - and certainly more honest - to administer a lethal injection? But somehow starving her allows those responsible to obscure causality regarding their actions.

Is the Village Voice a Tom DeLay mouthpiece? Nat Hentoff has some eye-openers about Michael Schavio's behavior.

Final update: Cruel to the end, Michael Schiavo denies her parents' request to be with Terri as she died.
--Stephen H. Miller.

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‘Queer Wars’ Distorts History

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First published March 23, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.

Every few years someone on the far reaches of the political and cultural left peeks out at the country and is dismayed to discover that most gays and lesbians are "embracing the values and routines of the American mainstream" and failing to carry out the supposed transformative mandate of the original "gay liberation."

Never mind that the idea of openly gay and lesbian people leading contented, ordinary lives amid their neighbors and co-workers would seem pretty transformed to most of the early leaders of gay liberation who lived in more repressive times.

This scandalizes the radical critics who then write books trying to explain for others on the far left what went wrong and whom to blame. The latest entry is Stanford University Prof. Paul Robinson's brief Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics.

Robinson thinks "the emergence of gay conservatism as a political and intellectual force is arguably the most important new development in the gay world." Further, "the new conservatives have exercised an influence on the gay movement far in excess of the number of their actual converts." For Robinson this is something to be explained and, if possible, countered.

Queer Wars examines books by four writers Robinson alleges represent "the gay right" - blogger Andrew Sullivan, critic Bruce Bawer, broadcaster/columnist Michelangelo Signorile and former OutWeek publisher Gabriel Rotello - focusing on three issues and equating the failure to simultaneously embrace all three with "conservatism": the gay movement's supposed affiliation with the political left, the liberation of gender variance and liberated sexuality.

Then the book begins to fall apart.

Signorile and Rotello both turn out to be on the political left. Bawer, a New Deal Democrat when writing A Place at the Table, said virtually nothing about politics. Even Sullivan is described as a "classical liberal" à la John Stuart Mill - so not very conservative. For that matter, most gays you talk with are not on the far left but prefer fiscally prudent Democrats or socially liberal Republicans.

As for liberating gender variance, that seems to be a romantic fiction early gay leftists tried to sell. None of Robinson's writers endorse it, but then neither have most gay men, then or now. The gay clone style of the 1970s - and leather even more - was a clear rejection of the idea of gender deviance. Gay personal ads almost always insist on masculine partners. So if most gay men are "conservative" about gender, how are these writers discernibly different?

On the third issue of liberated sexuality, political leftists Signorile and Rotello turn out to be more conservative than the "conservative" Sullivan. For them, as for many other gays, the AIDS epidemic seems to have recommended a more cautious view. But likely even without AIDS, as gays and the gay movement matured, more gay men would have settled down anyway.

So Robinson offers supposed exemplars of "gay conservatism" who don't exemplify his definition, and supposedly defining issues that do not reliably differentiate "conservatives" from most gays. What Robinson really seems to object to are mainstream gay attitudes and writers who articulate those attitudes. But if Robinson thinks most gays are actually "conservative," then he must think anyone who is not a radical leftist is a conservative.

Just as Robinson's thesis falls apart, so does his mode of explication. He says he intends to "identify the tensions, even contradictions in their thinking." But contrary to Robinson, for instance, Sullivan's sexual liberalism hardly contradicts his mildly libertarian politics: they are parallel. Nor is it contradictory for Bawer to note that sexual orientation is all that gays have in common while opposing the idea that gay people are nothing but their sexuality.

Worse yet, while failing to find contradictions in his opponents, Robinson commits some whoppers of his own. First he says Sullivan and Bawer are less interested in enlightening right-wingers than in correcting leftists. Then he admits Bawer's book "is as much an attack on conservative homophobes as on gay radicals" and that Sullivan's book attempts to persuade conservatives to "amend their views of homosexuality."

Likewise, first he says Larry Kramer is an ancestor of the gay conservatives but later says he represents "the whole tradition of gay radicalism." First he says the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is "mainstream" but later admits it is part of "the institutional gay left." So was he not candid earlier?

Robinson clearly dislikes these writers. Writing a book about them was "a challenge to my tolerance." He finds some of their views "downright repugnant." He accuses them of being "grubby advocates for their own material interest." He asserts that they feel shame about homosexuality, feel "self-disgust and anxiety," are prudish, dislike sex or have low sex drives. And so forth.

The war over the word "queer" is over, Robinson says. "Queer" lost. So did the concept. All Robinson can do now is draw a mean-spirited caricature of the victors and make cheap personal attacks. Ultimately, this is a badly confused and dishonest polemic and no credit to the author - or the University of Chicago Press.

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Changing Places.

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House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, no friend of gay equality, was quoted in the Washington Times on congressional action to save Terri Schiavo from forced starvation at the hands of her husband:

"The sanctity of life overshadows the sanctity of marriage," Mr. DeLay said. He said that unless Mrs. Schiavo had previous written instructions, "I don't care what her husband said."

This led blogger Paul at "Right Side of the Rainbow," who opposes saving the life of Terri Schiavo, to write:

Is the manner in which [Delay] dismisses Mrs. Schiavo's husband distinguishable from the manner in which he would dismiss a gay man's partner? I doubt gay relationships have risen in Rep. DeLay's estimation; rather, the significance of heterosexual ones have fallen.

Blogger Paul comes out in favor of "the traditional right of spouses" and accuses the Republicans of attempting "to substitute their own judgment for that of Mrs. Schiavo's legal husband."

But as James Taranto writes in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

Supporters of Michael Schiavo's effort to end his wife's life have asked how conservatives, who claim to believe in the sanctity of marriage, can fail to respect his husbandly authority. The most obvious answer is that a man's authority as a husband does not supersede his wife's rights as a human being - a principle we never thought we'd see liberals question.

On one hand, you'd think there'd be pleasure in the fact that conservative Republicans are placing some value (i.e., saving a woman's life at the pleading request of her frantic parents) above "the sanctity of marriage," while gay activists - and even some gay Republicans - suddenly are in support of the full rights of traditional marriage and patriarchy, reducing a woman to the disposable property of her spouse.

Addendum - the anti-federalist contention. While in most respects I find arguments against increasing federal encroachment to be persuasive, sometimes rigid adherence to principle must give way to simple decency. And I remain unmoved by liberals who are eager to offer up Terri Schiavo as a human sacrifice in honor of their newly feigned fealty to state judicial autonomy.

More Recent Postings
3/20/05 - 3/26/05

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On Terri Schiavo.

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A letter in our mailbag supports Terri Schiavo's right to life. As widely reported, Terri has been in a vegetative state and kept alive by a feeding tube, now removed at her husband's insistence, backed by a court order. Terri's parents consider this murder by starvation, and Congress has stepped in.

Gay couples have often been in a situation where, after a terrible accident or illness leaves one partner incapacitated, the healthy partner and the victim's parents disagree about care. But this, it seems to me, is different - a husband wants to terminate the life of his spouse when there is no clear indication that this is what Terri Schiavo herself would have wanted. In such a situation, I'm not opposed to the state stepping in to protect the life of someone who can't speak for herself.

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Left vs. Right and No In-Between?

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IGF's Dale Carpenter points to a statement in the Washington Post by new Human Rights Campaign honcho Joe Solmonese, who opines:

"This struggle that we're in in this country right now is not just for GLBT Americans but for all progressives," [Solmonese] said. "All of us are redirecting our energy and adapting to a considerable shift in the political landscape, not just in the GLBT world."

I agree with Dale that this takes the lid off what Solmonese sees as his prime objective: to advance the liberal-left political agenda, of which "GLBT" issues are just one aspect.

The same Post story reported:

Just weeks ago, the NGLTF [National Gay & Lesbian Task Force], while stressing that it was not treading on the HRC's lobbying turf, announced that it was forming a committee to lobby Congress for GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) issues.

NGLTF, from its beginnings, has been politically even further to the left than HRC. So along with Solmonese's appointment, the Task Force's new Washington effort means that in the nation's capital the dominant gay strategy will be to hunker down with the Democrats' liberal wing rather than pursuing any kind of bipartisan effort.

As I wrote in response to a letter posted in our mailbag saying that gay groups should reflect most gay voters' left-leaning views:

It's fine to be insular within the liberal cocoon, just don't expect any pragmatic political victories. All 11 anti-gay state ballot initiatives passed on Nov. 2, while HRC focused on defeating George W. Bush in concert with its liberal allies rather than on addressing Americans' fears about gay marriage.

Former Log Cabin Republican head Rich Tafel on his blog offers this take:

[W]ith NGLTF on the scene HRC has to worry again about its left flank. That might explain why as a group the highly partisan HRC decided to move left, not to the middle, with its latest hire. It is all about fundraising and market share. It has nothing to do with the mission of the group, which was to make progress in the halls of Congress and the corridors of the White House for gay people. But as long as wealthy gay Democrats keep feeding this beast, we can expect more of the same.

So it's partisanship triumphant. And of course, that pretty much sums up American political culture at the moment. New York Times columnist David Brooks writes of "the ever-increasing polarization of the political class," and predicts:

At the same time, Americans will grow even more disenchanted with the political status quo. Not only will there be a general distaste for the hyperpartisan style, but people will also begin to see how partisan brawling threatens the nation's prosperity.... I wouldn't be surprised if some anti-politician emerged - of the Schwarzenegger or Perot varieties - to crash through the current alignments and bust heads.

One thing is for sure, a body politic with no center could be in for some wild swings. Be prepared.

More Recent Postings
3/13/05 - 3/19/05

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As Michigan Goes…

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Passing an amendment to Michigan's constitution that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman "also signals the end of health care and other benefits for the same-sex partners of public employees in the state, according to an opinion issued Wednesday by Attorney General Mike Cox," the Detroit Free Press reports. Polls prior to last November's election suggest that banning partner benefits for state employees wasn't what a majority in Michigan thought they were voting for, but that's what they got.

As reader "Guy" commented on my previous posting:

In Michigan and Ohio, polls also showed majority support for DPs [domestic partnerships] or CUs [civil unions] with majority opposition to marriage, but when marriage and CUs were put together in a ballot initiative, the whole thing won. That's the danger of opening the door.

I read on another site the question, why not just let Massachusetts sit for a couple years so the country can see it's no big deal? I don't have an answer, except that Lambda (which I in all other respects support) see this as a big fundraising/visibility issue. But is it good politics? Dubious.

Alas, the "class interests" of activists (as a lefty might put it) are not necessarily the same as the class interests of the rest of us.

Meanwhile, on the federal front, when asked at Wednesday's press conference about the California same-sex marriage decision and whether it would add fire to the proposed "marriage protection amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, President Bush said:

"the court rulings are verifying why I took the position I took, and that is I don't believe judges ought to be deciding this issue. I believe this is an issue of particular importance to the American people and should be decided by the people. And I think the best way to do so is through the constitutional process.... As a matter of fact, court rulings such as this strengthen my position.... People now understand why I laid out the position I did....

And no matter what your position is on the issue, this is an issue that should be decided by the people, not by judges.... This is a very important issue for the country and one that obviously needs to be conducted with a great deal of sensitivity and concern about other people's feelings.

In other words, "Yes."

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HRC Pours Another

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There's nothing wrong with Democrats heading gay-rights groups, even in this Republican age. But the Human Rights Campaign's new leader, Joe Solmonese, is the most partisan Democrat ever hired by a "nonpartisan" national gay political group. While he may surprise us, Solmonese starts with a huge deficit in credibility and influence in Washington, D.C. That's bad for the movement.

With the federal government now firmly in the grips of conservative Republicans, HRC continues to move left. Last year HRC made error after error in this vein: appointing as its executive director Cheryl Jacques, a Massachusetts Democratic legislator whose tenure lasted barely longer than the process to select her; endorsing John Kerry for president so early it lost any hope to influence his campaign; backing transgender inclusion in a federal employment law that would kill the bill; and endorsing a Democratic challenger over Arlen Specter, a senior gay-friendly Republican who's now chairman of the critically important Senate Judiciary Committee. And now Solmonese.

Not long ago HRC was managed competently and smartly, growing in size and power. In the early 1990s the organization was headed by Tim McFeeley, who built strong relationships with GOP members of Congress and hired the group's first Republican lobbyist. Under McFeeley, the group worked with Republicans to pass significant legislation like the Ryan White CARE Act, the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, and a law barring discrimination against HIV-positive people. In the late1990s and continuing through 2003, under the leadership of Elizabeth Birch, HRC could usually be counted on to represent the whole gay community, including Republicans and Independents. Its lobbying, its rhetoric, and its hiring of staff reflected a reality obvious to all but the most obtuse: that gay equality will never be secure if we work only with one party while ignoring or blindly opposing the one in power.

While most of its money and its endorsements understandably went to Democrats, HRC supported gay-friendly Republicans in hotly contested races even when liberal Democrats ran against them, as when the group endorsed Al D'Amato over Chuck Schumer for the U.S. Senate in 1996. The gay left squawked about that but HRC never wobbled. As the Specter race showed, it is inconceivable that HRC would take a similar stand today.

Prior to coming to HRC, Solmonese worked exclusively to elect Democratic candidates. According to Federal Election Commission records obtained by gay activist Michael Petrelis, Solmonese has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates but not one dime to any Republican, no matter how pro-gay.

Solmonese spent the last 12 years working for Emily's List, a fundraising group devoted solely to electing female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. So if you're a male Democrat who supports abortion rights, you get no money. If you're a female Republican who supports abortion rights, you get nothing. But if you're anti-gay and support abortion rights and you're a female Democrat, Emily's List loves you.

An example of the latter is the support given by Emily's List, under Solmonese's leadership, to Inez Tanenbaum, a pro-choice Democrat who ran for the U.S. Senate seat last year in South Carolina. It did not matter to Solmonese's group that Tanenbaum supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the very worst thing a candidate could do right now on the issue of gay equality.

Perhaps that's all in Solmonese's past, a necessary bow to the priorities of his old boss, and he will now adjust to the needs of his new employer. Fair enough, though this well-known track record won't help when he comes calling in Republican congressional offices.

There are more reasons to be concerned. Announcing his appointment, HRC's press release included the obligatory paean to bipartisanship. But this was overwhelmed by an emphasis on how "progressive" Solmonese is. (Progressive is now code language for that unspeakable thing, "liberal.") HRC informs us that he led "efforts to elect progressive candidates." He made Emily's List "the nation's foremost progressive electoral powerhouse." HRC quotes one supporter as praising him for a "tireless drive to create a more progressive America."

A Republican president just won another four-year term. The GOP has won seven out of the last ten presidential elections. Republicans have won majorities in the House of Representatives in six consecutive national elections. The Republican Senate majority grew in 2004 and is coming close to the super-majority needed to ram through anything it wants. The federal courts have become so conservative that liberal academics are starting to talk about the virtues of democracy. In this climate, it is not a political asset in Washington to be a foremost progressive.

That is, it's not a political asset if one wants to appeal to both parties. But that may not be what Solmonese, or HRC, want.

Here is Solmonese, quoted in the Washington Post, introducing himself to the world as a gay leader: "This struggle that we're in in this country right now is not just for GLBT Americans but for all progressives."

Mark that well. Solmonese wants to work for "all progressives." He sees himself leading the whole struggle of the proletariat. It's not just gay rights he wants, but a better world as defined by the left.

That's his right. But HRC once represented "all gays," some of whom are not progressives, and did so in a way that appealed to both parties, not just to the progressive one. With the appointment of Solmonese, it is much harder for HRC to present itself as nonpartisan; indeed, it now barely pretends to be.

The gay-rights movement needs effective political advocacy in Washington, so we must wish Solmonese and HRC the best. But we do so in the way one wishes the best to the unrepentant drunkard as he pours another.

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A California Clarification.

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No surprise here: In California, gay marriage opponents are pledging to launch a statewide ballot initiative to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Some fear that the language might extend so far as to undo the spousal rights granted under the state's sweeping domestic partner law, which was legislatively approved. Marriage opponents, of course, could overreach to their detriment; but if there's a genuine backlash against a judicial ruling that goes against the majority's expressed will on marriage, all bets are off.

Yesterday, I called amending the state constitution through referendum a burdensome process, but I stand corrected. Some states require a second vote along with legislative approval; not CA, where it just takes enough signatures to hold a single election to amend the constution.

Meanwhile, a positive sign. AP reports that while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't "believe in gay marriage" he would not favor amending the state constitution if the high court upholds the gay marriage decision. "I think that this will be now going eventually to the Supreme Court in California, and we will see what the decision is," he said in a televised interview. "And whatever that decision is, we will stay by that, because I believe in abiding by the law and sticking with the law." Which is a good deal better than the Kerry/Edwards position during last year's campaign.

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