IGF CultureWatch

Lynne Cheney has gone out on a limb by publicly stating that gay marriage should be left to the states -- thereby distancing herself from the Bush administration's call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage nationwide.

The Cheneys, of course, have an openly lesbian daughter in a long-term relationship. Four years ago, then-VP candidate Dick Cheney said that states should decide legal issues about personal relationships and that people should be free to enter relationships of their choosing. But under pressure, this year he's been loyally toeing the Bush line in favor of a constitutional ban.

On Sunday, when asked by CNN about her husband's stand on gay marriage in 2004, Lynne Cheney said:

I thought that the formulation he used in 2000 was very good. First of all, to be clear that people should be free to enter into their relationships that they choose. And, secondly, to recognize what's historically been the situation, that when it comes to conferring legal status on relationships, that is a matter left to the states.

The Senate is expected to vote on the marriage amendment this week. No matter how carefully she chose her words, Lynne Cheney's remarks are a rebuke to the President's anti-gay marriage crusade and may embolden some GOP moderates to break ranks and oppose the amendment. Her remarks also indicate there may still be some intelligent life left in the Republican Party when it comes to social issues.

More Recent Postings
7/04/04 - 7/10/04

As reported in the New York Times, in a recent e-mail religious right activist and GOP insider Paul Weyrich had this to say about the impact of the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment on his party:

As for the gay Republicans whose votes Mr. Bush might then lose, Mr. Weyrich wrote, "Good riddance."

Here's an excerpt from President Bush's Saturday radio address.

A great deal is at stake in this matter. For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that traditional marriage is critical to the well-being of families. ... And changing the definition of traditional marriage will undermine the family structure.

But note this observation from conservative pundit Robert Novak in his July 10 column in the New York Post:

Moderate GOP senators grumble that some longtime contributors are refusing their usual donation to the Republican presidential campaign. Their biggest grievance: Bush's endorsement of the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.

What once looked merely like a Bush/Rove ploy to rouse the conservative base now increasingly seems like an obsession, to be pursued all out despite certain failure in the Senate and the loss of moderate and independent votes and dollars.

In Wednesday's Washington Post, the group Campaign to Protect the Constitution ran a nearly full-page ad urging defeat of the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, signed by a number of presidential offspring: Ron Reagan; Jack, Chip, Jeff & Amy Carter; Lynda Johnson Robb & Luci Baines Johnson; and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (granddaughter of FDR and Eleanor). But where is Chelsea? Not among those willing to take a stand when it matters, apparently. Looks like it runs in the family.

Meanwhile, the anti-gay ex-gays at Exodus International are running a pro-amendment newspaper ad, which can be downloaded if you've a fast Internet connection -- and a strong stomach. It features a beaming mixed-gender couple, with the man proclaiming: "By finding my way out of a gay identity, I found the love of my life in the process. Gay marriage would only have blinded me to such an incredible joy." But catch his expression -- it's as downright eerie and 'unnatural' as any I've ever seen.

From the Blogsphere.

Tim Hulsey, a gay conservative whose blog is My Stupid Dog, responds convincingly to a charge that the gay male esthetic is inevitably linked to fascism (a smear that anti-gays like to hurl every once in a while).

And blogger KipEsquire (he signs it as one name), in an item titled Heather Needs Two Therapists, takes on anti-gay conservative Maggie Gallagher's latest hit piece, wherein she finds an adult child raised by gay parents who is very, very bitter (and, of course, extrapolates this ludicrously to all children raised by gay parents, as if there were never any unhappy, hetero raised offspring!).

Our Mailbag.

We've posted a new batch of letters, including a look at the folly of trying to reason with unreasonable conservatives, and a gay libertarian's take on Michael Moore. Check 'em out.

I don't like John Edwards, the Democrats' newly anointed VP nominee-to-be. Edwards is a shill for rapacious trial lawyers and an advocate of bigger government spending programs and more regulation by Washington bureaucracies, higher taxes on job and wealth producers and on stock market investments that grow the economy, and a vocal supporter of protectionist trade tariffs. So of course the GOP goes and immediately attacks Edwards for one thing I do approve of -- his support for legal equality (if short of actual marriage) for gays.

The Republican National Committee's website castigates Edward for opposing the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, and saying states should decide civil union status. But that's just for starters; the RNC then laces into Edwards for opposing sodomy laws!

According to the RNC site, "Edwards doesn't share the priorities of American families" because:

Edwards Believes In Right To Privacy When It Comes To State Sodomy Laws

EDWARDS: "I believe there is a fundamental right to privacy. I do not believe the government belongs in people's bedrooms. I think that applies to both gay and lesbian couples and heterosexual couples." (Sen. John Edwards, Remarks At Democrat Presidential Candidates Debate, Columbia, SC, 5/3/03)

Clearly, the RNC thinks this is damning, and it conveys that the Bush campaign does not believe in privacy among consenting adults within one's bedroom -- if there was any doubt about that.

Back home on Independence Day, and inching back into the swing of things.

Here's a legal riddle from the Washington Post: Does a man who marries a woman and then becomes a woman violate a ban on same-sex marriages? A Louisville marital dispute focuses on that teaser. But it also highlights the marriage ban's absurdity -- like disputes over how much "black blood" would run afoul of the miscegenation laws.

For the social right, the fight to bar same-sex marriage is their last chance to turn back the normalization of homosexuality. Not only are gays assimilated throughout the media (TV, movies, the Internet), but open gays and, increasingly, gay families are part and parcel of neighborhood America -- and not just in liberal New England or the Left Coast. Uncloseted gay life can be found from the deep South of Dixie to the rugged Western plains.

For the most part, America is adjusting as gays declare their independence from hiding and lying and foregoing family life. So it's fitting that Philadelphia, birthplace of the nation's independence, has launched an ad campaign to air nationwide on channels such as Bravo, MTV, and other cable networks, welcoming gay visitors to the city of Brotherly Love.

And that's why the social conservatives are pulling out all the stops in the marraige battle. Check out the fear-inducing "Could Your Kids Be Given to 'Gay' Parents?" posted at WorldNetDaily.com.

Look for fireworks the week of July 12, as the Senate begins debating the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. It won't be pretty.

More Recent Postings
6/20/04 - 6/26/04

Yours truly will be traveling and probably not able to blog much (and if the laptop wifi card keeps malfunctioning, not at all). I'll be back around July 4th. Hasta la vista, baby (see below).

Arnold Not Bothered by Gay Marriage.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says if gay couples want to get married, he has no problem with it, reports the Los Angeles Times (the story was also picked up by The Advocate).

Arnold's the future, full of sunny California optimism with a strong live-and-let-live streak. Supporters of the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment are the last gasp of America's puritanical sexual paranoia -- which is closely akin to the puritanical sexual paranoia of the Islamists we're fighting.

A study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concludes that same-sex marriage would be a windfall for the federal budget, reports the Gay Financial Network (and here's a direct link to the CBO study).

The CBO finds that letting same-sex couples marry would save the government a cool $1 billion per year by boosting income tax revenue and lowering spending on Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income.

But don't expect that argument to sway social conservatives. They see themselves engaged in a pitched moral battle and would spend the country into bankruptcy to prevent state recognition (and, as they see it, sanctification) of same-sex unions.

I won't be reading Bill Clinton's 957-page My Life, but Gay.com's Chris Bull reveals the part we'd want to know. He says Clinton "gives very little attention to gay politics," including his 1996 signing of the Defense of Marriage Act. But Clinton does reveal new details about the political machinations behind the failed effort to abolish the military's gay ban. Bull writes:

Clinton focuses on the incendiary pro-ban argument that Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., made in a closed-door meeting: "He believed homosexuality was a sin; said he would never let his grandson, whom he adored, join a military that admitted gays; and asserted that one reason the Roman Empire fell was the acceptance of pervasive homosexual conduct from Julius Caesar on down."

Yikes. Bull gets a reaction from openly gay one-time Clinton insider David Mixner. "The problem was that no one in the White House wanted to deal with the issue," Mixner tells Bull. "They just didn't have a stomach for a fight over a gay cause, and that left a vacuum for [anti-gay former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga)] and Byrd to fill. We never had a chance."

One of our community's old nemeses, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, has become a for-now ally.

Some years back, Barr authored the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton. DOMA holds that no state can be forced to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state, and then goes on to forbid the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions (e.g., no joint tax filings, no social security inheritance, no green card for non-U.S. same-sex spouses). While the first half of DOMA basically restates what many constitutional scholars believe is already a state's prerogative to set and interpret marriage law, the federal prohibition is truly noxious and unforgivable.

But Barr gets some positive karmic points for his testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Unlike his fellow Republicans such as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who disgraced himself by calling for a federal constitutional amendment that would prohibit his state from ever approving gay marriage, Barr blasted the proposed FMA, saying:

Part of federalism means that states have the right to make bad decisions - even on the issue of who can get married in the state. Resisting the temptation to use the federal government to meddle in state matters is the test of this conservative principle. Indeed, it is the test separating conservative federalists from hard-line social conservatives, willing to sacrifice the Constitution in their understandable anxiety over the sorry state of modern morality....

[T]he amendment supported by Governor Romney...takes a moral decision out of the states, where it is most likely to be made with the optimal benefit to everyone, and hands it to a couple of lone elected officials. To be frank, I do not appreciate their presumption to dictate morals to my fellow Georgians through misuse of the federal Constitution....

[T]he Governor is pleading for this Congress and the federal government to protect him against the Massachusetts state constitution, the Massachusetts legislature, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and most ironically, the people of Massachusetts.

So, for today, two cheers for Bob Barr!