IGF CultureWatch

On the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, let’s revisit this essay David Boaz penned a few years back placing Stonewall in context as resistance against oppression by the state.

(Update: If you read to the “final update” at the end, A&E announces Phil Robertson is back and filming will resume as normal. GLAAD’s strong-arming proved not just ineffective, but has made the LGBT community look authoritarian and censorious. Just as with GLAAD’s anti-Chick-Fil-A campaign. Please, let’s pull the plug on this organization!)

Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the redneck “Duck Dynasty” unleashed a torrent of benighted views about gay people in an interview with GQ, not on the family’s megahit A&E reality show.

In response, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued a statement with a thinly veiled call for sponsors to boycott the show. Said GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz: “Phil’s decision to push vile and extreme stereotypes is a stain on A&E and his sponsors who now need to reexamine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families.”

Aside from addressing Robertson as “Phil” (are they buddies?), Cruz’s suggestion that sponsors reexamine their ad buys isn’t likely to garner much traction. So why call for it, except as an auto-reflex meant to gin up donors? In particular, given that Robertson’s views were not expressed on the A&E show (but in a sophisticated men’s style magazine, where no doubt the editors expected they would be met with derision), the best response would have been to rationally counter his arguments publicly, rather than engage in an impotent attempt to drive his brood off the air.

Update 1: A&E has suspended Phil Robertson indefinitely from filming “Duck Dynasty.” [Added: But will air a “Duck Dynasty” marathon that prominently features him.] I maintain my position that debate is preferable to silencing the opposition.

Update 2: I’m not the only one who had this response. Brandon Ambrosino writes, “Why is our go-to political strategy for beating our opponents to silence them? Why do we dismiss, rather than engage them?”

Update 3: Sponsor responds, “It’s a free country and Phil has a right to his opinions.”

When your first impulse toward somebody who says something anti-gay is to try to get them fired, something is very wrong. And let’s not forgot the hypocrisy factor. Progressives never tire of telling us that those who cooperated with the Hollywood blacklist were terrible, horrible, unforgivable people for pressuring the movie studios to fire those well-meaning liberals in a hurry who joined the Communist party and supported Stalin.

Let me clarify for those who seem determined to willfully misconstrue, the issue is not whether A&E has a right to fire Robertson for not being the sort of person it wants to be associated with—of course it does. The issue is whether GLAAD’s immediate response should have been to try to pressure A&E, through its sponsors, to fire Robertson.

Not so very long ago, before the proverbial worm turned, religious conservatives would routinely target sponsors of TV shows with gay characters. This could be effective, leading to script changes that prevented open displays of affection between same-sex couples, for instance. Now, those campaigns have lost their teeth, as shown by the failed attempt to intimidate Penny’s after the retailer hired Ellen Degeneres as a TV pitchwoman. And now that the power has shifted, gay activists are deploying the same tactics against religious conservatives. You’d think that would make them at least queasy, but it doesn’t. Again and again, yesterday’s victim becomes tomorrow’s inquisitor.

Update 4: Cultural critic and open lesbian Camille Paglia weighs in:

“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades,” Paglia said. “This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by my own party.”

“I speak with authority here, because I was openly gay before the ‘Stonewall rebellion,’ when it cost you something to be so. And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech.”

And yes, Ted Cruz and other conservatives are making hay out of this. If you open the door for them (as was also done with the misguided Chick-fil-A fiasco), don’t be surprised if they walk in.

Update 5: Log Cabin Republicans suggest mediating this dispute with a “Moonshine Summit.” There was a time when those on the left also thought changing hearts and minds was important. Now it’s about power and punishment.

Update 6: A broad overview of the controversy from Da Tech Guy:

“Apparently A&E didn’t realize that the ‘Duck Dynasty’ customer base were not the same audience as Will & Grace. … Nor did the cultural elites figure out that the advertisers know who is actually buying their products.”

GLAAD will only succeed in getting “Duck Dynasty” merchandise off the shelves in liberal jurisdictions, while customers in areas GLAAD views as benighted are flocking to purchase said merchandise in a show of support for the Robertsons. But then, it’s always been about fundraising and appealing to the base.

Update 7. Via James Kirchick, writing in New York’s Daily News:

All of the comments in question were uttered in forums other than the TV show, rendering the accusation that A&E or its corporate sponsors somehow endorse Robertson’s views even more preposterous.

Nevertheless, the remarks set off an avalanche of righteous outrage from gay rights organizations. You’d think that with India rebanning sodomy, Uganda reinstituting lifetime prison sentences for gays and Vladimir Putin leading a crusade against homosexuality, that America’s relatively comfortable gay establishment would have bigger homophobic ducks to fry.

But in the minds of many of America’s leading gay activists, the barely literate comments of a Louisiana yokel rise to the level of national crisis.

Indeed!

Final update? A&E announces “Duck Dynasty” will resume filming in the new year—with Phil Robertson. GLAAD bet it all on having enough muscle to strong-arm A&E by threatening to pressure sponsors, and lost. What a foolish, impotent, and counter-productive effort. Shame on GLAAD and (let’s take a page from the GLAAD playbook), those who support it. Let’s boycott ’em.

Also worth noting:

Before joining GLAAD [Wilson] Cruz worked for The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. This same NGLTF honored Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela at the New York Public Library in May 2012 with a forum to spout her regime’s anti-American propaganda. Needless to add, Raul Castro’s daughter–an official of the only regime in the history of the Western hemisphere to herd gay men and boys at Soviet bayonet-point into forced labor camps and torture chambers–received a standing ovation at the event sponsored by this gay rights organization.

In brief, according to Wilson Cruz, Phil Robertson simply cannot be allowed to express his views (which happen to coincide with a majority of Americans’) in a free-market venue. This amounts to “pushing lies.” But Mariela Castro must be allowed to spew Stalinist propaganda at New York taxpayer’s expense. Apparently this amounts to spreading the enlightenment as reckoned by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Any questions why so many flyover Americans question the agenda of outfits like GLAAD and The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force?

As I shared from commenter Jared123 in my November 2013 post “GLAAD Needs a Mission Update“:

Groups like GLAAD attract LGBT progressives who want to work to advance a partisan left-liberal agenda. Unfortunately, when your message to conservatives isn’t “we think you should support civil equality and social inclusion of gay people,” but rather, “we think you’re wrong about everything and should become liberals,” you’re not going to accomplish much, although your fellow progressives will invite you to their parties and tell you that it’s wonderful you’re advancing the cause (of progressivism).

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Our friend Dale Carpenter along with several other libertarian-leaning, nonleftist law professors filed an exemplary brief arguing that DOMA is unconstitutional under federalism principles:

Our view is that Section 3 fails equal protection review for a reason quite distinct from the standard approaches relying on heightened-scrutiny analysis. Whatever else may be its constitutional defects, Section 3 is not a constitutional exercise of any enumerated federal power. It is also not a “necessary and proper” measure to carry into execution any of Congress’s enumerated powers. Instead, it is an unprecedented expansion of federal authority into a domain traditionally controlled by the states.

An array of briefs have now been filed from left-progressive to libertarian and center-right. That’s laudable. But let’s recall how the libertarian Cato Institute’s amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas was the one that Justice Kennedy cited in his opinion overturning state sodomy laws (note: he didn’t cite the briefs from NGLTF or HRC).

As in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy (and perhaps, now, even Alito and Roberts) aren’t going to be swayed by the bigger-government, Democratic party-aligned progressives. But it’s still good to have them onboard.

More. Here is analysis that includes a link to the Cato Institute’s brief in favor of marriage equality.

Furthermore. James Kirchick writes:

At the time of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, few would have predicted that a movement predicated upon sexual liberation would mature into one calling for the right to get married and serve openly in the armed forces.

Some liberal gay activists, suffering from a bout of historical amnesia, do not like what they see as an attempt by conservatives (gay and straight) to claim the cause of marriage equality as their own.

Still more. Not a constitutional argument, but a powerful video ad from Republicans United for Freedom.

Obama’s gay inclusiveness during his inaugural address advances our cause. I have never said the Democrats aren’t far better on gay issues (who would argue they weren’t?). What I have contended is that, in many cases, they are not as good as LGBT Democrats claim and, in particular, that Harry Reid, with the administration’s tacit support, was working to bury “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal efforts the same way the administration backtracked on immigration reform when it held congressional majorities, in order to have a campaign issue, but that the LGBT blogosphere and, especially, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), refused to let that happen.

Let’s also be clear; those of us who believe that Obama’s economic and regulatory policies are beyond misguided and, in fact, are dangerously destructive, are compelled to point out that a party that combines support for gay legal equality with backward leftism on economics, with trillion dollar deficits and metastasizing public-sector growth, aimed at increasing dependency on government (and the party of government), will risk, in the end, discrediting the parts of its policy that are right. So I’m happy that LGBT Democrats have something profound to celebrate, but in no sense does this mean that gay critics of Obama and his party should back off for the sake of LGBT solidarity.

More. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute on the importance of “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” and what these milestones should mean to libertarians.

The National Stonewall Democrats has ceased operations, at least for now, citing funding issues. More to the point, the organization really has had no reason to be, since the Human Rights Campaign competes far more successfully on the same turf—organizing LGBT support for Democratic candidates and working to defeat Republicans, including openly gay Republicans (such as Richard Tisei), and socially moderate, gay supportive Republicans (such as Scott Brown). In fact, the preponderance of the LGBT movement is a thinly veiled party fundraising operation run by LGBT Democrats, making the need for an explicit “Stonewall Democrats” on the national level redundant from the get go.

Relatedly, Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff opines on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, despite his recently renounced anti-gay record going back decades. HRC had scored Hagel a “0” during his time in the Senate from 2001-2006 (not a single pro-gay vote), but “immediately accepted the tepid apology” Hagel issued just before Obama announced his nomination. Moreover:

Did HRC extract any promises from the White House or Hagel himself before so quickly forgiving and forgetting his rather serious sins? Hagel voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004, putting him in the company of the most rabidly anti-gay members of Congress. In 1999, he said he opposed repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” …
It’s all politics as usual — Log Cabin opposes Hagel merely because Obama wants him. And HRC supports Hagel because it must now support everything Obama does. What’s lost here is accountability.

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I am as happy about New York’s marriage equality as anyone.  But as with so many other things, the headlines are disproportionate to New York’s actual contribution.  As with the Stonewall uprising, New York is more fortunate in having a large media megaphone than in having any national leadership role.  This is certainly not a bad thing, since attention to goings-on in New York helps to validate the work so many people across the country have been doing.  But New York is like Microsoft: It’s very good at taking (and being given) credit for the original ideas and labor of others.

And there is a very deep irony in this victory.  Governor Andrew Cuomo cannot receive enough credit for taking the lead in making this happen.  After years of feints and dodges by New York’s unfathomable legislature, Cuomo showed what political leadership looks like.

But in his statement after the vote, Cuomo said:

“This state, when it’s at its finest, is a beacon of social justice. . . .  [T]he legacy is that we are the progressive capital of this nation. . . . the other states look to New York for the progressive direction.”

But it is exactly because New York did not adopt key elements of the progressive era that this law cannot be challenged.  The referendum and initiative, in particular, were landmark progressive reforms, first adopted by Oregon voters in 1902 and then by California in 1911 at the urging of Governor Hiram Johnson.  The referendum allows people to vote directly to keep or abandon any legislation signed by the governor, and the initiative gives voters the power to pass laws directly.

The fact that New York has never adopted either of these iconic progressive reforms is what drives the National Organization for Marriage apoplectic.  Their window for appealing to the ebbing popular prejudice against lesbians and gay men is closing rapidly, and they still have a few states where they haven’t yet been able to leverage that to amend state constitutions and cement the status quo in place.

I can’t say I feel sorry for NOM.  But if I were Governor Cuomo, I’d be a little less cocky about how progressive my state is.

An important but unacknowledged figure in gay rights just passed from the scene.  In 1976, Adele Starr founded the LA chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.  Five years later, she became PFLAG’s first national president.  Karen Ocamb has a nice overview of Adele’s public life, summed up in this wonderful quote:  “We did it out of love and anger and a sense of injustice, and because we had to tell the world the truth about our children.”

Lesbians and gay men weren’t the only ones who needed to learn to come out of the closet; so did our parents and families, who were often even more embarrassed about homosexuality than we were.  But honesty and unconditional parental love were part of Adele’s nature, and she had an unparalleled ability to talk to other parents who felt their worlds had been turned upside-down.

It is ultimately arithmetic that secures her place in our history books.  We are not just a minority, we are an extremely small minority, no matter how you slice and dice the numbers.  It took us generations to begin to assert our own self-respect, but that is not nearly enough to change the history of misunderstanding that nearly all cultures have built up around homosexuality.  We also needed the support of our families and friends.

That was the bulk of the task we faced back in the post-Stonewall 70s, and Adele Starr stepped up to the plate, not only for her son, Phillip, but for all of us.  At LA’s gay rights parades of the time, PFLAG was always greeted with the biggest and most heartfelt cheers.  Their presence with us was simply joyous.  The gay rights history books will not be complete without a full accounting of PFLAG.

I know how inspiring Adele was to me in LA as we were working on the early ordinance on domestic partnership in the mid-80s, but I am sure there were people like here in cities across the nation.  Parents like her were as much the pioneers in their world as we were in ours, and maybe a little bit more so.  We had our own mountains of prejudice to fight against, but try to imagine what it must take for a parent to reject their own child.  That was what PFLAG was fighting.

Adele Starr isn’t with us any more, but her work isn’t anywhere near done.  There are still parents who find their own sons and daughters repugnant because of the child’s sexual orientation.  Adele and PFLAG showed by example that love can dominate that unnatural and destructive set of feelings.  We shouldn’t, for a second, forget how important that is to us.