IGF CultureWatch

The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, known more colloquially as "Virginia Tech," has unleashed a storm of controversy over recent actions by its governing board. As the Washington Post reported, Virginia Tech's board voted to (1) end race-based preferences (i.e., affirmative action) in admissions, hiring, and financial aid, (2) eliminate a policy of barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and (3) bar advocates of extreme political views (that is, who espoused breaking laws) from speaking on campus, in the wake of a controversial talk by a militant "Earth First" activist.

Not surprisingly, most liberal groups have condemned the board's actions -- although if a conservative speaker had triggered the ban on espousing extreme views, I somehow doubt these groups would have found that to be unwarranted.

Some of us, however, happen to oppose both discrimination based on sexual orientation and all discrimination based on race, including the "reverse" discrimination of race-based preferences. Thus, we break with both the pro-preference liberals and the anti-gay right in arguing, consistently, that individual merit or need, and not group membership, should be what matters.

As kind of an odd twist that shows how things aren't always so black and white, or straightforward, or (gee it's getting hard to find a nondiscriminatory metaphor), Virginia Tech's board, at the same time it eliminated its anti-discrimination policy for gays, announced the hiring of a lesbian professor, Dr. Shelli Fowler, to fill a one-year position at the university. This comes less than a year after the board declined to approve Dr. Fowler's contract for a permanent faculty position. The case is a bit convoluted, since Dr. Fowler's original job offer was tied to the hiring of her partner, Dr. Karen DePauw, as a graduate dean. This then triggered anonymous anti-gay e-mails to board members, leading to the revoking of Dr. Fowler's job offer -- whew.

Virginia's statewide gay lobby, Equality Virginia, put out a press release that praised the hiring of Dr. Fowler but criticized the ending of Virginia Tech's affirmative action program. At least as posted on the group's website as I write this, there is -- remarkably -- only criticism of Virginia Tech's ending of its affirmative action program, and no mention of its eliminating the anti-discrimation policy based on sexual orientation!

Savaged Again.

While a number of people have disagreed with my criticism of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's strenuously lobbying advertisers to keep off MSNBC's "Savage Nation" talk show, hosted by controversial conservative Michael Savage, I was glad (so to speak) to see that the Washington Blade's Chris Crain penned an editorial that also raised questions about GLAAD's action. He writes:

It's one thing to pressure a network to keep dangerous "expert" misinformation off the air, it's quite another to use "political correctness" to silence a loud-mouthed foe. -- The best response to simple-minded bigotry of the type spouted by the "idiot Savage" is more speech, not less.

Some, of course, contend that GLAAD is simply informing advertisers about Savage's past comments so that they can choose not to advertise. Grow up! The threat to label advertisers as "anti-gay," or even to organize "the GLBT community" to boycott their products, is behind the ad cancellations. If you want to defend intimidating advertisers, fine, but let's be honest about what's happening here.

Conservatives Coming to Terms.

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg writes in his syndicated column about his meeting with leaders of the Human Rights Campaign, the large Washington-based lesbigay lobby. Says Goldberg:

For many conservatives, there's a no-surrender attitude toward anything remotely gay. Some religious conservatives write off gays as abominations with the same gusto that some gays invoke bigotry. But even among more secular conservatives, the right has its own version of "don't ask, don't tell." Conservatives don't see and don't hear. "

[C]onservatives rightly criticize male promiscuity." But at the same time, we tell homosexuals that the only universal institution successful at civilizing men in this regard -- marriage -- is forever closed to them. Talk about a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario. This is why I favor some form of civil union for same-sex couples".

This, I"d argue, is an example of how -- slowly -- progress gets made through dialog with conservatives.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

03/09/03 - 03/15/03

IGF's own Jonathan Rauch is featured in yet another newspaper story from the heartland about the Pink Pistols, local gay gun groups that Jonathan has championed. This time up, it's a March 8 report in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which tells us:

"Despite the argument that gun ownership will deter gay bashing, some gay shooters said it can be hard to be out of the closet as a gun owner in a gay community where the most vocal voices tend to be liberal and ambivalence toward guns may be higher than in society as a whole. -- At a recent meeting of the group, other gay shooters agreed that guns can be the self-defense measure that dare not speak its name.

No surprise here, since no one ever said going against the grain was easy. Significantly, however, the story notes:

For the gun community, a nontraditional group like Pink Pistols can break down the stigma of firearm advocates as right-wing, angry, white males dressed in camouflage fatigues...

Translation: Gay support is a positive for gun-owners' image. Talk about coalitions!

Ad Attack.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is continuing its efforts to intimidate advertisers into dropping their spots on CNBC's new "Savage Nation" talkshow, hosted by bombastic radio personality Michael Savage, as recounted in this press statement. Meanwhile, writing in the New York Post, Adam Buckman comments:

Savage"didn't make any obscene gestures, jump up and down, foam at the mouth, or expel hot steam from his ears. I expected to see all of that and more, judging from the hysteria. "

I haven't caught it, but the show airs on Saturdays from 5-6pm. Catch it if you want to make up your own mind, while you can.

Holocaust Denial.

Believe it or not, anti-gay Republicans can sometimes be so ludicrous that they embarrass at least some of their fellow GOPers, as described in this look at Minnesota state Rep. Aaron Linder, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Linder triggered a storm of controversy when, among other things, he expressed the view that gays were not victims of the Nazis, and instead were themselves Nazis:

"I'm not convinced that they were persecuted," [Linder] said, suggesting that the main gay participants in the Holocaust were Nazi concentration camp guards. That contention, he added, is laid out in a book called "The Pink Swastika," which he hasn't read but is trying to lay his hands on.

Responded GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty, "I oppose any efforts to rewrite history to exclude homosexuals or any other minority group that suffered as victims of the Holocaust."
--Stephen H. Miller

A friendly IGF colleague e-mailed to say I"m wrong and GLAAD's right this time about Mike Savage (see my March 5 posting), and that after reading GLAAD's indictment he'd happily boycott anybody who advertised on the show, too.

I responded that even if you don't buy Savage's claim that he's not anti-gay but a libertarian on sexual matters and his assertion that GLAAD distorted his comments (despite how ugly the quotes appear to be), I'd still argue that what GLAAD's doing isn't right. If you consider Savage an outrageous homophobe, then argue against him, expose him, convince the public to turn away from him and bring his ratings down. But threatening his sponsors is a cheap shot, a tactic we all condemned when it was used by the religious right against gay-positive TV shows.

By the way, I failed to convince my colleague but another associate says she came across an ironic quote on a conservative website, about Martin Sheen complaining that anti-war actors are being "blacklisted" while there's a campaign on to get Savage off the air.

A Right to Censor?

Here's a scary take from New Zealand's Dominion Post on where clamping down on the expression of anti-gay views could take us. A parliamentary committee wants censorship laws changed so evangelical Christian videos critical of homosexuality can be banned. A New Zealand Court of Appeals decision had upheld the right the Christian group, Living Word, to distribute the American-made videos, citing the freedom of expression clause in New Zealand's Bill of Rights Act.

A Labour party committee chairwoman called the court's decision "unacceptable" because it had the effect of allowing "hate speech" to be expressed. But Stephen Franks, a spokesmen for the libertarian group Act NZ, labels the committee's report an attack on free speech. As the Dominion Post reported:

"A vibrant free society needs robust debate on every issue," Mr Franks said. "Censorship is justified when it is about putting age ratings on films or stopping child pornography but not when it tries to close down debate on issues that people feel strongly about."

The NZ government has no fixed opinion on the committee recommendation, said a spokesmen, who added (according to a paraphrase by the Dominion Post) that he was "conscious of the need to balance censorship with the right of free speech," as if they were both positive social values!

When you snuff out your opponent's rights, those same rights won't be there when you happen to need them.

Gays are Good for the Heartland.

As reported earlier this month in the Omaha World-Herald, James Clifton of the Gallup Corp. shared this advice on the use and misuse of polls:

"A good leader will change peoples' minds" and explain their reasons when they disagree with the public, he said, "but you can't do that when you don't know what people are thinking." He cited the state's 2000 ban on gay marriage as a way the state hurt its economic prospects and "made ourselves a joke."

"A leader's responsibility is to educate," said Clifton. "I don't believe that our leadership thought that (banning gay marriage) was a good idea." Large corporations consider issues of employee quality-of-life -- such as whether gay employees will feel comfortable -- when deciding where to expand their operations, he said.

As an aside, I don't agree with much that Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, stands for, but his willingness to vigorously defend same-sex civil unions is certainly praiseworthy. Getting at least some conservatives to join in supporting gay "family values" will have an even greater impact on the debate.

Proud To Be Contrary.

Florence King, a long-time columnist at Bill Buckley's conservative National Review, wrote in a piece for her hometown newspaper, the Fredericksburg (Virginia) Free Lance-Star, that "Being both a lesbian and a conservative is supposed to be impossible, but even my different drummer hears a different drummer." For example:

I can't, for the life of me, understand why gay people should want to marry and raise children unless, under their bravado, they are tractable conformists who have succumbed to conservatism's incessant mantra of "family values." -- The same-sex marriage and adoption movement is putting a strain on my lesbianism and providing me with a whole new set of cringes as I witness the ordinariness and grubbiness overtaking today's lesbians as they try to "mainstream" what used to be a good old-fashioned perversion.

It's interesting that King, who has a large conservative following, strikes a number of chords in this piece reminiscent of leftwing criticism of gay assimilation into the mainstream. I don't agree with the anti-assimilationists, but hey, I'd never try to stop them from expounding their views.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

02/04/03 - 02/05/03

02/23/03 - 03/01/03

02/16/03 - 02/22/03

Here's an update on the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation vs. Mike Savage contretemps. Savage, a bombastic and conservative San Francisco-based radio personality, is slated to have a talkshow slot on MSNBC, so GLAAD is targeting both the network and its sponsors (see my March 4 posting). In a Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz, GLAAD (with its ally, NOW) boasts of mobilizing more than 2,000 protest letters against a show that has yet to air, but which they know will contain views and ideas Americans ought not to hear. An enraged Savage labels this "Nazism" and "economic terrorism." Moreover, says the Post:

Savage says some of the inflammatory quotes trumpeted by his critics are "eight years old" or "out of context," and "some are said in jest, and they know it."

"It's actually a gay-friendly show," he says. "I'm quite libertarian when it comes to sexuality."

But if GLAAD and NOW have their way, we may never know.
--Stephen H. Miller

Here's a different take on the Sandy Koufax brouhaha (see my March 2 posting), from Bob Conrad of Chicago. His full letter is now in the IGF Mailbag, but he writes in part:

Perhaps because of your sensitivity to gay issues, I think you're really missing the main points of the New York Post/Sandy Koufax story. The blind item to which Koufax responded by leaving the Dodgers did not suggest that he was gay. It suggested that he was a gay coward, succumbing to political blackmail, agreeing to cooperate with a biographer lest she reveal a personal secret.

Sure, Koufax is known as a heterosexual, but he is better known as a man of heroic principle, historically able to stand up for his rights as a minority against even the strongest pressures of the times. The implication of cowardice is an insult, even where the insinuation of gayness is not. ".

By all accounts, he was prepared to [respond] with all the grace and dignity of a silent protest. He did not, like [Mets catcher Mike] Piazza, find it necessary to hold a press conference reconfirming his heterosexuality, thereby perpetuating the slur against homosexuals that such an action implies. --

I"d still argue that since the press did blow this story up, the lack of even a perfunctory "not that there's anything wrong with that" from Koufax indicates, as might be expected from a man of his generation, he was reacting to the accusation of being gay rather than merely to the insinuation that he was closeted and thus unprincipled.

By the way, if you're in New York or traveling there soon, I recommend the new play "Take My Out" by Richard Greenberg, which I enjoyed during its pre-Broadway run. It's about a major league star who comes out -- and the repercussions. It couldn't be more timely.

Court of Law, or People's Court?

I have also been asked how I can argue (as in my earlier posting, below) that anti-gay media personalities are best countered through public debate rather than advertising boycotts and other censorship-like tactics meant to cut off discussion, while, on the other hand, insisting that courts should grant gays the right to marry by judicial decree, as opposed to winning that right in the court of public opinion and through legislative action. Isn't that being inconsistent?

I'll respond by saying that while the role of courts should be limited in many regards, guaranteeing basic constitutional liberties to minorities is, in fact, one of their core roles. And the right to wed (now before a Massachusetts court), as well as the right to adopt (now before a Florida court), is premised on the guarantee of equal treatment under the law, without government discrimination. It's true that public opinion can't be ignored or else, as I've noted, we could face anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments that could set back the cause of equality for years. But I don't think our constitutional system was intended to allow the majority to withhold equal rights to a minority solely on the basis of popular prejudice. And if so, what was that fighting in the 1860s (and marching in the 1960s) all about?

The benefit of reading coverage of gay issues in the conservative press is that you actually get some insight into what anti-gay social conservatives think. For instance, in the Boston Herald's story about a lawsuit before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court seeking to allow same-sex marriage in that state, virtually all we're told about the opposing side is that:

opponents of same-sex unions contend marriage is by definition a union of a man and a woman. Various organizations have submitted 15 amicus briefs contending that down through the ages, the concept of marriage always has involved a woman and a man.

Compare that with the story in the Washington Times:

Their goal is to "get courts to destroy marriage as the union of male and female in one state," [Matt Daniels of the Alliance for Marriage] said. "Once they have that, they will launch an attack in the name of false constitutional arguments on the marriage laws in all 50 states and the federal DOMA" he said, referring to the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Should the suit prove successful, the anti-gay groups will undoubtedly propose amending the state constitution -- and intensify nationwide efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution -- to bar gay unions. That's bad, but progress is seldom made without generating a reactionary response, and reaction can only be exposed and vanquished through vigorous and open debate.

Will GLAAD Be Sad?

Speaking of which... I've long been critical of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation -- a group in which I was active some 10 years ago -- for putting too much emphasis on trying to silence their opponents rather than countering their arguments in public debate. This is a flaw that runs throughout the 'politically correct' left, and is at its ugliest when even moderate conservatives are blocked from speaking on college campuses or else drowned out by cliques of shouting students determined to silence any views with which they disagree.

GLAAD is somewhat more dignified -- the group threatens to boycott sponsors of talkshow hosts who GLAAD believes are demeaning gay people (or, in pc parlance, LGBT people). As reported in the NY Post, GLAAD has teamed with the National Organization for Women to keep MSNBC from airing a new TV talk show with radio personality Michael Savage. However:

Savage is angrily threatening to counterattack "with all the abilities I have," including filing lawsuits and, if necessary, mobilizing his army of listeners. "I'm not Dr. Laura and I'm not going to lift my skirts and run," Savage told The Post, referring to the tough radio shrink whose 2000 TV show was set upon by gay-rights groups that scared away advertisers and, arguably, forced a toned-down program that few watched, resulting in an early demise.

"If we let these bastards win, they will have elevated themselves to being a de facto national television censorship board," said Savage.

Yes, folks, this could shape up as one pug-ugly fight, especially if the GLAAD/NOW arsenal consists of nothing more than trying to mau mau the network and its sponsors. Frankly, I'd let Savage expose himsef, so to speak. Sunlight is often the best disinfectant.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

02/23/03 - 03/01/03

02/16/03 - 02/22/03

02/11/03 - 02/15/03

I haven't commented on Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax's tempest over a blind item in the New York Post hinting that someone very much like the former Dodgers great is gay. But I think Billy Bean, who came out several years back after retiring from professional baseball, pretty much gets it right, as quoted in the Washington Blade's story. Koufax's over-reaction -- threatening to cut all ties to the Dodgers since the team is owned by the same parent company as the Post -- demonstrates that Major League Baseball still has little tolerance when it comes to gay players. Said Bean of the twice-married Koufax:

If he had been able to portray tolerance, that would have made a huge difference. ... I wish [players about whom the media speculates] wouldn't feel such an emphatic need to deny those rumors so vehemently.

Adds Jim Buxinski of outsports.com:

What's so bad about having been alleged to be gay? ... One would hope that he'd be comfortable enough to laugh it off. "Me, gay? Yeah, right, just ask my ex-wives and current girlfriend."

Koufax exited baseball in 1966, so he's of a generation in which being called gay was considered an atrocious slur. Some would argue things haven't changed much in big-time competitive men's sports, but players who've grown up in a far more tolerant world are now coming into their own. Last May, when (yes, again) the NY Post speculated about Mets catcher Mike Piazza and he held a press conference to say, "I'm not gay, I'm heterosexual," his reaction, as compared with Koufax's, was far more subdued. Slowly, things do progress, and will continue to do so.

Related: The NY Daily News "confirms" Koufax is heterosexual. The San Francisco Chronicle urges the gay-obsessed NY Post to "come out."

For Shame.

Couldn't you guess. There are some gay anti-assimilationists who seem to lament that the era of gays as outcasts is over. According to the press release for a "Gay Shame" conference to be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor at the end of March:

The purpose of the conference is to inquire into various aspects of lesbian and gay male sexuality, history, and culture that "gay pride" has had the effect of suppressing. The conference intends to confront the shame that lesbians, gay men, and "queers" of all sorts still experience in society; to explore the transformative impulses that spring from such experiences of shame; and to ask what affirmative uses can be made of these residual experiences of shame now that not all gay people are condemned to live in shame.

The theme of the conference responds to recent celebrations of "Gay Shame" in cities across the US, Canada, and Europe, celebrations that often criticize contemporary gay politics and challenge current definitions and practices of "gay pride."

No, I'm not making this up.

Who's Your Momma?

The conservative Washington Times ran a article on the cancellation of liberal Phil Donahue's show on MSNBC, with this information:

Indeed, Mr. Donahue featured Rosie O'Donnell as his very last guest, dwelling upon her feelings as a "mother" and a pacifist.

No matter what you think of O'Donnell, she's not only an out lesbian but legally the mother of three children by adoption (her partner, Kelli Carpenter, also gave birth to a child who will bear O'Donnell's surname). The paper's use of what could be termed scare-quotes around "mother" is meant to disparage gay parents, but winds up insulting all adoptive mothers and fathers as well. I hope they protest.
--Stephen H. Miller

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, of instapundit.com fame, takes aim at sodomy laws and explains why the Supreme Court should strike them down in Lawrence v. Texas:

This isn't a question of "finding new rights," but of observing traditional limitations on what's a legitimate governmental concern.

He provides some fine links as well.
--Stephen H. Miller

IGF's own Walter Olson, one of our chief behind-the-scenes gurus, is the subject of this glowing profile in Wednesday's New York Sun, focusing on his day job as one of the nation's leaders in exposing how our legal system has gone law suit mad.

Taking on the trial lawyers and advocating tort reform is regarded as a conservative cause, so it's wonderful that this story prominently mentions Walter's work on behalf of IGF and his family life with partner and new son. Given the tendency of liberals to assume gays are automatically in their camp, and of conservatives to assume we're not, don't underestimate the importance of stories like this.
--Stephen H. Miller