IGF CultureWatch

After Lott? The San Francisco Chronicle's Marc Sandalow has a good piece on Sen. Trent Lott, addressing the homophobia of some GOP (and Democratic) social conservatives -- including a few in the running to take Lott's spot as Senate Majority Leader. He writes:

Open insults against African American are, in most quarters, seen as a political liability. Yet Don Nickles, R-Okla., one of the senators most likely to replace Lott as majority leader should he step down, didn't hide his contempt when he led the fight against the confirmation of gay San Francisco philanthropist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg.

"It's immoral behavior . . . and shouldn't be treated as acceptable behavior," Nickles said on national television. "One might have that lifestyle, but if one promotes it as acceptable behavior . . . then I don't think they should be representing our country."

Over in the House, Sandalow doesn't mention Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex), but he could have. In a July 18, 1993 story (not available online), the Washington Post reported DeLay's remarks to a convention of college Republicans:

"They are scared to death when we talk about values and morality and good, strong family values," said DeLay, a House minority deputy whip. He called homosexuality a "perversion" and said "it's pervasive to this administration."

"And I make the point that it's not just homosexuals in the military. They are putting homosexual activists in very key positions, very sensitive positions in this administration," DeLay said. --

DeLay further stirred the crowd of young conservatives by adding, "Just two weeks ago, the homosexual employees of the Department of Transportation had a party celebrating Gay Pride Week, paid for by the taxpayers."

On a happier note, Yahoo news has a story that Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn) may throw in his hat for Sen. Majority Leader. As IGF contributor Hastings Wyman reported, last year Sen. Frist attended a pro-gay Republican Unity Coalition function, at which he joked that "Trent Lott wouldn't be here." As one colleague remarked to me, "Maybe we'll get somebody civilized toward gays out of this dustup." Wouldn't that be a nice Christmas present!

Jail "em! FrontpageMagazine.com, the website run by the conservative activist and author David Horowitz, has a column urging the Supreme Court to uphold state sodomy laws. In "Sodomy, 'Privacy,' and Federalism," Henry Mark Holzer of Brooklyn Law School argues that sodomy laws are constitutional because the 'right to privacy' under Roe v. Wade doesn't exist. This is interesting, I think, because if repeal advocates try again to argue in front of the Court that sodomy laws are unconstitutional in light of Roe v. Wade, they are going to lose the Justices on the center-right who may not want to overturn Roe, but find its rationale deeply suspect. As I noted in a Dec. 13 posting, a constitutional argument that does not rely on the elusive "privacy right," but instead on constitutional equal protection/equal liberty gurantees, can be made -- as Roger Pilon of the libertarian Cato Institute urged in the Wall Street Journal. It's good advice, and one that liberal-left attorneys had best heed.

Also of interest on the FrontpageMagazine.com site are reader comments linked to the pro-sodomy-law column, which are far more openly homophobic than the column itself. Along with arguing that these laws are necessary because homosexuals can't keep their hands off little boys, one reader believes that sodomy laws protect women, because "As a woman you really don't know how to combat this problem. Marriage or a monogamous relationship does not protect her from a immoral husband or boyfriend, who thinks nothing of living a double life."

So without sodomy laws husbands will go out, have homosexual sex, and then infect their spouses with AIDS! Leaving aside the pathological homophobia expressed here, it's remarkable just how weak a drive heterosexuality is viewed as being if it can so easily be trumped by the allure of no-longer-illegal homosexual lovemaking!
--Stephen H. Miller

Gay Politics Through the Looking Glass. First off, let me say that there are some good libertarian arguments for why private-sector anti-discrimination laws aren't such a wonderful idea after all -- from infringing on the basic liberty of employers to hire and fire as they so choose (hey, it's their business), to creating a disincentive to hiring anyone in a protected category (for fear of frivolous, but expensive, litigation). I"m not sure I buy into the libertarian view, but it does suggest that countering discrimination by our government in the area of government employment (including military service) and government-granted benefits (including the ability to legally marry) should at least be a higher priority.

That being said, I think it's revealing what's just happened in New York State, where on Thursday the GOP-controlled state senate passed a statewide gay rights bill to protect gays and lesbians from private-sector discrimination. The bill had previously passed the Democratic-controlled assembly, and will now be signed by a GOP governor. But, as I previously noted, not everyone is happy; transgender advocates and their gay supporters called for the bill's defeat because of its focus on gay, but not transgender, protections.

The New York Times reports that a last-minute amendment to add protections for transgenders -- ranging from heterosexual cross-dressers to people undergoing sex-change procedures -- failed 19-41. Yet when the bill, minus the amendment, came to a vote, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a Rensselaer County Republican, voted for passage, as did 12 other Republican senators. "The time has come to move on in our lives put this behind us," Bruno said before the vote. "People can live their lives the way they see fit."

But, the Times continues:

opponents included both religious organizations and transgenders, who argued a nondiscrimination bill was also needed to protect them. "I think it would be an absolute and utter tragedy if this passes" without protecting transgender rights, said Charles King, co-president of Housing Works. New York City resident Melissa Sklarz accused Empire State Pride Agenda [the state's main gay rights lobby] of abandoning transgenders. "They have closed the door on us time and time again," she said.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda,

said he had doubts about its passage less than an hour before debate started. On Sunday, he counted only eight Republicans in support of it. He credited behind-the-scenes lobbying by [Gov. George] Pataki and Bruno with swaying enough Republicans to win passage of the measure.

So those on cultural left wanted to see the measure defeated rather than having to endure an incrementalist approach to their agenda, while Republican leaders twisted arms to ensure the bill's passage -- politics through the looking glass indeed!
--Stephen H. Miller

Conservative Double-Standard. The letters section of today's (Dec. 13) Wall Street Journal leads off with an excellent dispatch from the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon, headlined "The Complexities of 'Unfair Discrimination'" (alas, the WSJ in online only to subscribers). Pilon takes the Journal to task for its Dec. 3 editorial urging the Supreme Court to strike down state affirmative action statutes but not to find state sodomy laws unconstitutional. Writes Pilon:

Trouble is"the arguments that compel the court to strike state affirmative action programs apply equally to state sodomy laws. ... If affirmative action is unconstitutional because it unfairly discriminates, so too is the Texas [sodomy] statute".

Pilon then takes up the issue of sodomy laws in general, citing not the "privacy right" claimed by many sexual freedom advocates, but the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause:

which was meant to protect, among other things, the freedom and personal integrity of the individual." We have here, in short, nothing more complicated than "the right to be left alone," as Justice Brandeis famously put it. If the Constitution does not protect that, we have been sorely misled about its stature.

Take that, WSJ editorial writers!
--Stephen H. Miller

Why They Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer. For 30 years, gay advocates in New York State have tried to add "sexual orientation" to their state's human rights law in order to protect gays from discrimination in employment, housing and education. This year, they"re finally poised to succeed. GOP Governor George Pataki has not only promised to sign the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act passed by the Democratic-majority state assembly (the legislature's lower house), but he's pressed leaders of the GOP-controlled state senate to finally come onboard as well. The senate leaders agreed to bring up the measure next week and to support its passage without amendments, which will prevent anti-gay conservatives from planting "poison pills." So naturally, some gay "progressives" now feel compelled to turn against the measure they"ve championed -- and used as a fundraising and mobilization touchstone -- for the last three decades.

As Jonathan Capehart writes in the New York Daily News, openly gay state senator Tom Duane of Manhattan and his allies in the Democratic leadership are behind this effort. If memory serves, while a member of the New York city council Duane was part of an effort to block the city from buying public kiosk restrooms for its streets -- because the handicapped wouldn't be able to use them. No compromise for these folks; it's perfection of zilch. Of course, a more cynical view is that if they stop the gay-rights bill in favor of a transgender-inclusive replacement with minimal chance of passage, or if -- by opening it up for amendments -- they allow conservatives to scuttle it, the gay politicos can continue mobilizing their base by playing the victim card for another 30 years.

Sodomy Laws vs. Limited Government. Attorney and scholar Glenn Harlan Reynolds (of instapundit fame) has penned an excellent op-ed making a conservative argument for barring sodomy laws. He writes that the Framers of the Constitution "may not have been libertarians, exactly, but they certainly were not enthusiastic regarding untrammeled government power at either the state or federal level." Moreover, referencing the words of 19th-century Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, often cited by conservative jurist such as Robert Bork (no friend of gays, to be sure), Reynolds writes:

In other words, where laws infringe on important rights like property or "personal liberty," the very "nature of republican and free governments" may offer some restraint, even in the absence of specific constitutional language barring such laws. And this is not because of some fancy new right, but because of longstanding principles that the government should not regulate conduct that causes no harm to others.

These are the kinds of conservative-appealing arguments the sodomy-repeal attorneys will need to put forth if they want to win the votes of the non-liberal Justices on the Court. Let's hope they do.
--Stephen H. Miller

The Troglodyte. Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the once and soon-to-be-again Senate Majority Leader, is in hot water -- and deservedly so -- for failing to censor himself during a birthday bash for retiring centenarian Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.Carolina). Lott joked that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, when he ran on the break-away "Dixiecrat" segregationist ticket. Said Lott:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Those in attendance reportedly gasped.

The story has been widely reported, but most accounts failed to draw a connection with another significant Lott gaffe, back in 1998, when he compared gays with alcoholics and kleptomaniacs. Said Lott then, when asked his view about homosexuality:

"It is [a sin]....You should try to show them a way to deal with that problem, just like alcohol...or sex addiction...or kleptomaniacs."

Trent Lott is not a fire-breathing hater, nor is he an unreconstructed segregationist. Often it seems he doesn't even realize the implications of what he's saying. Nevertheless, unlike George Bush's amusingly twisted syntax, Lott's remarks convey a political worldview that is rather scary. So why is this man honored with the powerful position of Majority Leader? For fear of losing white GOP votes in the "solid South," I suspect. But the way forward is not tethered to the bigotries of the past, and if the GOP wants to be the majority party of the future it will have to come to terms with that fact.
--Stephen H. Miller

Speaking Their Language. The Orange County Register ran this editorial making a libertarian argument for why the Supreme Court should hold sodomy laws unconstitutional. The editorial reads in part:

So sodomy laws are objectionable in a free society. But are they forbidden by the U.S. Constitution? Roger Pilon, director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, thinks so.

The first clause he cites is the 9th Amendment, which says in its entirety: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." That was included in the Bill of Rights to remind us that just because the framers hadn't mentioned an individual right didn't mean people didn't have it. In that reminder can be found a right to privacy, to sexual freedom, or the more general right of a free citizen to be left alone by government if he or she is not harming another person.

Mr. Pilon also believes the 14th Amendment, which states in part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," forbids laws that intrude into private bedrooms. "That clause was meant to be the principal font of rights against the states, to protect the freedom and personal integrity of the individual," he told us. Justice Clarence Thomas has been especially interested in the "privileges or immunities" clause as a guarantee of individual liberty, and he could use it in this case to good effect.

Too often gay activists, who"ve come of age in the cocoon of liberal-left culture, don't understand that conservatives and libertarians not only don't view the world through the same lens as liberals do, but neither speak nor respond to the same rhetorical language as liberals. That may be one reason why when a sodomy-law case last came before the Supreme Court, 16 years ago, gay advocates failed to convince a conservative-leaning court that repeal wouldn't be just one more example of liberal judicial activism beyond the intent of the Constitution. Let's hope this go-round the pro-repeal lawyers will be able to argue the case in a way that can sway conservatives. It can be done, and Cato's Roger Pilon is perhaps showing the way.

A British Example. The British newspaper The Guardian reports that Tony Blair's Labour government will propose recognizing same-sex "civil partnerships" and granting these the same rights given to married couples (though civil partnerships would remain a separate category from "marriage"). Significantly, a leading Conservative Party figure says Conservatives will support the plan:

The shadow home secretary, Oliver Letwin, indicated that the Conservatives would support the measure when legislation was introduced. "Whilst we attach a huge importance to the institution of marriage we do recognise that gay couples suffer from some serious particular grievances," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "If what the government is coming forward with is indeed a set of practical steps to address a set of practical problems that affect people, then we will welcome them."

And in America we"re still debating whether homosexuality should remain a criminal act!

But What About the Transgendered? I do have one pet peeve about the reporting of the above story by The Guardian. It begins:

Gay men, lesbians and bisexual people are to be offered the same rights as married couples, a government minister indicated today".

But really, isn't including "bisexuals" a bit of a stretch? If they"re in an opposite-sex relationships, they already have the right to marry. If they"re in a committed same-sex partnership, then it's a gay relationship. Referencing bisexuals in this regard seems like politically correct sophistry.

The Race Card. IGF contributor Rick Rosendall authored a brave column (it ran in Boston's Bay Windows and elsewhere) on racial guilt-mongering in the corridors of the gay left. Writes Rick of a recent National Gay & Lesbian Task Force conclave, which included sessions for people of color only:

The preferred mode of communication at Creating Change resembles not conversation but emotional hostage taking. It is for the designated victims to harangue, and for the rest to pander. Each year the ritual starts all over again, as if for the first time.

NGLTF's Sue Hyde responded with a letter arguing that:

There are LGBT people of every color, ethnicity, class, age, race, condition of birth and gender who are joining together to make a stronger, more powerful and more fully representative movement for social justice, equality and freedom. Some of the work to build this movement will be accomplished when the voices of women, young people, people of color, old people, transgender people and intersex people can be heard more clearly, which logically requires that they be given the space, the time and respect to hear themselves first.

Listen, I don't doubt that the diversity-first crowd is sincere in its ideological beliefs and actually thinks all of this is somehow "progressive." But the ceaseless laundry-listing of victimized subsets leads not to a unity of the many (which requires a focus on commonality despite differences), but to seemingly endless balkanization and a competition to see who can exhibit the greatest wounds. This has never been healthy.
--Stephen H. Miller

In America? Columnist Steve Chapman has an excellent piece in the Chicago Tribune (free registration required) on the sodomy law case now before the Supreme Court. He writes:

One night four years ago, sheriff's officers -- entered the dwelling and barged into a bedroom. But all they found was a couple enjoying a pastime commonly enjoyed by couples in their bedrooms, and I don't mean organizing the closet. You might guess that at this point, the cops would have blushed, apologized and left as fast as their feet would carry them. Wrong. They arrested the couple under the Texas anti-sodomy statute. "

For [Tyron] Garner and [John] Lawrence, there was the indignity of being jailed, hauled into court and fined for consensual acts carried out in private. On top of that, their lawyers note, they are now disqualified or restricted "from practicing dozens of professions in Texas, from physician to athletic trainer to bus driver." If they move to some states, they'll have to register as sex offenders.

And there are those who claim these laws have no real impact on our lives.

Shareholders Rule. Lockheed Martin Corp. is one of the world's largest defense contractors with some 125,000 employees. That's why it's significant that the company has now changed its employment policy to include a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, and will also begin offering domestic partnership benefits sometime next year. According to the Rocky Mountain News, thanks goes to an ambitious group of college students who lobbied Lockheed's shareholders.

In another corporate development, the board of CBRL Group Inc., the parent company of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores restaurants, has voted to add sexual orientation to the company's non-discrimination policy. As reported on the Gay Financial Network site:

Cracker Barrel drew national attention in 1991 when it instituted a company policy that called for terminating employees "whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society." At least 11 workers were fired as a result.. -- [But this year] A shareholder proposal to add sexual orientation to the company's non-discrimination policy would have received a majority of the votes cast Nov. 26.

Remember whenever you hear corporations vilified as dark, nefarious powers unto themselves that not only do they need to please the consuming public in order succeed, but they are also owned and ultimately responsive to the will of their shareholders, who can organize, petition, and vote for policy changes. Talk about "economic democracy," we have a far higher degree than ever existed under state socialism!
--Stephen H. Miller

Defending the Indefensible. How many right-wingers are willing to argue that gay sex should be outlawed and sexually active gay people prosecuted and sent to prison? Probably not many, but count on a good number trying to support sodomy laws (now once again before the Supreme Court) as serving some useful function, such as "upholding morality," while not actually encouraging that they be effective enforced. Still others will hold that it's a matter best left to states legislators, as if there were simply no federal Constitution to provide equal legal protection to a subset of the citizenry disliked by local bigots.
Already, we"re seeing headlines such as "Governor defends ban of same-sex intercourse," wherein Texas Gov. Rick Perry said of his state's law to punish same-sex couples for having sex, "I think our law is appropriate that we have on the books." Then why not really enforce it, Governor?

Wrong About Everything. The New York Times has a story today about Justice Lewis Powell, who during his time on the Supreme Court managed to consistently oppose the fundamental principle of equality before the law and equal treatment for all by the state and its institutions (that's my take, not the opinion of the Times!). Of Powell, who died in 1998, his

embrace of racial diversity as a valid goal in [state] university admissions, expressed in a solitary opinion in the 1978 Bakke case to which no other justice subscribed, not only established a rationale for affirmative action but frames the current debate a generation later.

Powell was also the deciding vote in Bowers v. Hardwick, the sodomy law case. His fellow liberals expected a supporter of race-based preferences to side with them. But Powell, we're told by the Times, had

no personal experience with gay rights and found the issues raised by the case confusing and somewhat threatening. "I don't believe I've ever met a homosexual," he told one of his law clerks while the case was pending. "[T]he law clerk, who in fact was gay, told the justice, "Certainly you have, but you just don't know that they are." "

A book published last year on the history of the gay rights issue at the Supreme Court, "Courting Justice," by Joyce Murdoch and Deb Price, asserted that there have been at least 22 gay law clerks at the court, and that in each of six consecutive terms in the 1980's, one of Justice Powell's four law clerks was gay. "Doubts still gnaw at Powell's ex-clerks about whether they could or should have done more to educate him," the authors wrote.

And indeed they should have.

For what it's worth, Powell later indicated he had probably erred.

On rereading the case, "I thought the dissent had the better of the arguments," he told a reporter in 1990.

That and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee. Thus, the legacy of liberal Justice Lewis "through in the towel" Powell, supporter of university admissions by skin color, and of sodomy laws -- two issues once more before the High Court, which has a chance to set right what it previously did so wrong.
--Stephen H. Miller