IGF CultureWatch

A Hero? He CAN"T Be Gay!. An interesting series of posting on Mike Hardy's "Enemy of the Church?" blogsite. Hardy, a Dignity member who focuses on the intersection of gay + Catholic, includes several items over recent days about conservative Catholic attempts to deny that Father Mychal Judge, hero chaplain of the NYC Fire Department who died on 9/11, was actually gay.

As Hardy notes, a screed by Dennis Lynch on the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute website, states:

Victims of the September 11 hijackers were not just people. One victim of the September 11 terrorists was the truth about a Catholic priest. This is the story of how homosexual activists hijacked the truth about Father Mychal Judge. -- As is typical with activists, the truth about someone never stood in their way to advance their agenda. This was true with the homosexual activists who saw in Father Mike's heroic death a chance to attack the Roman Catholic Church. It didn't matter if what they said about Father Mike wasn't true. All that mattered was that a heroic, celibate, faithful Catholic priest could become a homosexual icon.

Never mind that, as Hardy's blog points out, Fr. Judge was active in Dignity (Dignity USA leaders Mary Louise Cervone and Marianne Duddy issued a press release on 9/14 lauding Fr. Judge as a "longtime member," the blogsite notes) or that the November 12 issue of New York Magazine quoted Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen as saying that he knew Father Judge was gay:

But [Fr. Judge] was out to Thomas Von Essen, the fire commissioner. "I had no problem with it," Von Essen says. "I actually knew about his homosexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firefighters to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was gay just had nothing to do with anything.

Now, it may be true that gay anti-Church activists led by Brendan Fay, who failed in their attempt to use the courts to force NYC's St. Patrick's Day Parade to accept a contingent from the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization (ILGO), have been claiming that Fr. Judge was some sort of a leader in the gay community, which, in fact, was not the case. Once again, the disingenuousness of some gay activists provides an opening for anti-gay activists.

The Great Debate. Last Thursday at The New School in New York City, author, pundit, and IGF contributor Andrew Sullivan debated the Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, a long-time Sullivan hater (see my June 19 posting), who argues that there's no place at the table for lesbigays who aren's part of his socialist vanguard. Lesbian author and IGF contributor Norah Vincent was also on hand, as was lesbian Marxist Carmen Vasquez. For some firsthand views of the event, visit the blogsites of Clay Waters and Sasha Castel (scroll down to the earliest posting under Friday, June 28). To read an account from Sullivan himself, see andrewsullivan.com (again, scroll down to Friday, June 28).

Sounds like the gay left was in typical form -- misquoting and misrepresenting their opponents rather than arguing the merits (such as they are) of their own case. My favorite: Castel's remark that:

I wanted to cheer when a self-identified "black lesbian conservative" asked [Goldstein] why she should be excluded from the movement simply for her politics, and he simply could not answer.

Or Waters' comment that:

Sullivan was misquoted by Goldstein in The Nation. ... Goldstein, who doesn't seem to take responsibility for anything he writes, admits "someone did take a statement by Sullivan out of context," but adds petulantly: "I had no way of knowing that the quote had been distorted, because Sullivan never issued a correction. He waited until the Nation piece to spring a trap. Readers of my critique will understand why. Cooking up a scandal is a very effective way to deflect attention from the substance of an argument".No wonder scandalizing has become a weapon of choice for the right. It's Sullivan's first line of defense against any adversary, and in that respect, he is a true conservative."

As Waters observes, Goldstein is saying that Sullivan is responsible for Goldstein's misquoting him (because Sullivan failed to adequately protest an earlier misquote by another Sullivan-hater, whom Golstein then quoted without verifying the (mis)quote from the primary source).

What can I possible add? It's the perfect summation of what the left is all about.

Another Bush Surprise. To the astonishment of many, including the die-hard Bush-haters of the gay left, the president this week signed into law the Mychal Judge Act, which allows federal death benefits to be paid to the same-sex partners of firefighters and police officers who die in the line of duty. The law is named after the heroic, gay New York City Fire Department chaplain killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

This is another small but significant step forward in terms of the mainstream GOP moving away from the religious right, which, as the New York Times reported, was furious that Bush put his signature on the bill. "I"m very saddened that he signed it, because of the precedent that it sets," lamented Paul Weyrich, rightwing activist and long-time opponent of gay inclusion. Weyrich whined, "Conservatives are becoming somewhat troubled by some of the things that the administration is doing, and if you have just a percentage or two who stay at home, it"ll mean the difference between control or not in the 2002 elections."

That's the anti-gay right's ongoing threat. But there's a contravening factor, as noted in the same article by Charles Cook of the well-regarded Cook Political Report. He observed, "There's a healthy percentage of gay people who if the Republican Party stopped poking them in the eye, some of them would vote Republican." The big-tent faction of the GOP knows this, too, and increasingly they are calling the shots.

The Pledge Flap. What can one say about the ultra-liberal federal appeals court sitting in San Francisco, which on Wednesday found that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and banned its recitation in public schools under its jurisdiction (an order suspended pending appeal)? On the one hand, it will increase public disdain over what's seen as loony political extremism emanating from the city by the bay. But since San Francisco also is noted for its pro-gay politics, that's not a good thing. If the left is going to go off the deep end, it becomes all the more important to establish that gay equality is not simply a cause of the left, no matter how much this infuriates both the gay left and the religious right.

Beyond Left and Right, Continued. And speaking of transcending left/right politics, syndicated columnist Jim Pinkerton this week quoted IGF contributor (and my partner) David Boaz on the prospects for a libertarian-minded coalition. Writes Pinkerton:

"both major parties hold some libertarian cards, and yet neither party is willing to play a consistent hand. David Boaz"sees a developing "combination of Social Security choice, school choice, social tolerance at home"" in which all those who don't wish to be trod upon find common cause in a newfound alliance of taxpayers, alternate lifestylers and other liberty-lovers."

That suggests one way to plant the struggle for gay equality in the soil of individual rights and liberty, rather than in the muck of identity politics and group-based entitlements.

The P.C. Swamps and What They Breed. Conservative columnist Suzanne Fields writes in her June 27 column, "No Common Sense and No Love of Country," on a poll of college students conducted by the highly respected pollster Frank Luntz. The survey found only 3 percent of students in the fervid fields of academia "strongly agree" that Western culture is superior to the culture of the Arab world. Fully 43 percent "strongly disagree."

Writes Fields,

"They weren't asked to consider specifically why a culture that systematically represses women, executes homosexuals, restricts the press, abrogates freedom of speech and religion and persecutes Christians and Jews is thought to be just as good as a culture that empowers women, works to eliminate prejudice against homosexuals, and guarantees freedom of the press, of speech and of religion."

Did I mention that Fields is a conservative? Here's yet more evidence that the p.c., multiculti, America-bashing left has lost its bearings, and that the pro-liberty right (as opposed to the religious right) seems increasingly to be the real ally of gay inclusion.

The Gay Left Exposes Itself. An article in Monday's LA Times, "Gay Pride Confronts an Identity Crisis," notes that "Longtime backers of [the] San Francisco event question the role of conservatives." Well, so much for the left's commitment to "diversity," as if we didn't know that their real aim has been to exclude anyone who doesn't toe their increasingly rigid party line. As reported by Scott Gold:

"a growing number of old-school, left-leaning gay activists are convinced that their movement is being sold to the highest corporate bidder, and that it has become so inclusive that it may rip its once-radical roots out."

I guess some types of inclusion are just TOO inclusive.

The report continues:

"As San Francisco prepares for the annual Gay Pride Parade and Celebration on Saturday and Sunday - an event that is expected to draw a million people to downtown - many liberal gay activists have begun belittling some of their fellow entrants: gay power company executives who rake consumers over the coals, gay landlords who evict hard-working tenants, gay cops who still harass cross-dressers."

And these folks claim to be opposed to stereotypes! Clearly, rather than a gay pride parade, the gay left would much rather be part of a "socialist pride" march, dedicated to nationalized industry, government-owned communal housing, and disbanding the police so everyone can be free to live in peaceful equality. The degree of infantilism here is truly sobering.

America's Future. On a happier, more hopeful note, check out this moving story about a Connecticut high school athlete's very public coming out to his peers, from the Waterbury Republican-American, via the site of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

A Question You Never Thought You"d Hear. "Is John Ashcroft becoming a liberal?" asked the Washington Post's "Political Notebook" column on June 21. The religious right, it seems, is furious at the attorney general for allowing his deputy, Larry Thompson, to address a gathering of gay Justice Department employees at an event sponsored by the group DOJ Pride. "After all the work we did to stand up to the liberal mudslinging during Ashcroft's confirmation fight, this is what we get?" asked Robert Knight of the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute. As I"ve said before, that's politics, baby. And it's becoming increasingly evident that the future belongs to "big tent" inclusiveness, and not to the exclusionary religious right.

So, just how loony can the anti-gay right get? A press release issued by the group Concerned Women for America (CWA) asks, "Why is Mr. Ashcroft, a committed Christian, using his official capacity to celebrate sin?" CWA's Sandy Rios fumes, "It won't matter if we dismantle terrorism if we implode from within. The presence of a top aide to the attorney general at an event celebrating "gay pride" is a clear endorsement of homosexuality."

This is about as over the top as anything I can recall -- they actually think speaking to a group of gay civil servants is as bad as terrorism!

In contrast, in the Post article the Log Cabin Republicans praised Ashcroft and Thompson for sending gay Justice Department employees the message that "the government is proud of their service" in the war on terrorism.

Remember all the predictions about the anti-gay crusade the Republicans would unleash if Bush won, and then if his attorney general pick was confirmed? As an e-mail I received commented, Ashcroft "catches flack from the right for sanctioning a Pride event, and meanwhile, no matter what he does, most of the gay groups demonize him." That about sums it up.

Patriotism Is Not a Gay Value? Now, for fairness, let's turn to that other contingent of deep thinkers, the gay left. Michael Bronski, in a piece for the Boston Phoenix titled "Rally 'round the fag: The sorry fate of queer politics since September 11" laments that a surge of patriotism was expressed during this year's gay pride celebrations. Writes Bronski:

"few could have predicted that the terrorist attacks' effects on the gay-and-lesbian-rights movement would be so, well, perverse". That was clear this month when Gay Pride celebrations across the country could have just as easily been called American Pride. Take Boston, historically a site of radical gay politics, where the theme of Pride this year was "Proud of Our Heroes." -- It is, indeed, a brave new world. And desperately patriotic flag-waving at Gay Pride events are -- telling us how far we still have to go."

Actually, it's telling us just how far the gay left has fallen into irrelevancy.

A Harbinger? When the Supreme Court voted last week 6-3 to bar executions of the mentally retarded, it reversed its own 1989 decision which found such executions constitutional. Justice Sandra Day O"Connor, who had written the 1989 decision, this time voted the other way, citing a change in national sentiment against executing murderers who are retarded. The Supreme Court is generally loath to directly reverse a prior decision, so the fact that they did so now bodes well for their willingness to reverse their 1986 decision upholding so-called sodomy laws, which still make same-sex partners criminals in many states. Clearly, national sentiment on this issue has also changed, and dramatically so, over the past decade. Let's hope the High Court revisits one of its worst decisions ever before another decade goes by.

The Left Strikes Back, in Typical Fashion. I"m all for full and rigorous debate among gays and lesbians from all points on the political spectrum, but the debate should be honest. Unfortunately, Village Voice columnist Richard Goldstein presents a vastly deranged portrait of those he terms "homocons," or gay conservatives, in his new book "The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right," and in a related article he penned for the current issue of The Nation, titled "Fighting the Gay Right." Goldstein feels a particular animus toward Andrew Sullivan, the highly successful gay pundit (and IGF contributor) who blogs away at andrewsullivan.com. But while a full airing of their differing opinions on the gay movement might have been interesting, Goldstein instead grossly distorts Sullivan's views in a way obvious to anyone who has actually read Sullivan's writings. Here's what I mean. Goldstein, in his Nation article, portrays Sullivan as some sort of anti-promiscuity crusader, stating:

"Marriage, Sullivan has written, is the only alternative to "a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation." "

But here's Sullivan's actual quote from his book "Love Undetectable," in which (as Sullivan points out in a response to Goldstein on his website), the context is the destructive effects of homophobia -- particularly in the guise of religion. Writes Sullivan:

"If you teach people that something as deep inside them as their very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets."

See what I mean -- Sullivan was clearly paraphrasing what homophobes say, and showing how such teachings have a harmful effect on gays. Goldstein's distortion makes it appear that the arguments Sullivan is explicitly criticizing are, in fact, Sullivan's views.

Here's another example. Goldstein writes (again, in his Nation article) of "homocons," saying that "they push a single, morally correct way to be gay," and adds, "The gay right is ready to lead a charge on behalf of what it calls "gender patriotism"."

In fact, the only actual use of this phrase is in a bit of drollery titled "Gender Patriots" by IGF's own Dale Carpenter, which is a sarcastic look at queer "gender rebels" who think gays must take up arms against gender differentiation. Carpenter writes:

"Poor souls, our rebels must try to enlist us in a war against gender that few of us believe in, and indeed, one in which most of us appear to be fierce partisans for the other side. It seems that someone, whether from the far right or the far left, is always trying to tell us how to live. But the gender rebels are entitled to their idiosyncratic strategy for achieving equality. I will leave them to the care of Karl Ulrichs, the "third sex" theory, the mythical urnings, and the other anti-gay stereotypes they hold so dear. We gender patriots have work to do."

Looking askew at militant gender rebels is hardly a call to enforce rigid gender roles. And, in fact, it is Goldstein and the gay left who more accurately could be charged with holding out only one correct way to be gay -- the left's way. They, in truth, are the real "attack queers."

Symbolic Affirmation: Big Deal. One of the bigger stories of Lesbian and Gay Pride Month has been the issuance, or non-issuance, of government proclamations marking June's pride celebrations as "official" (i.e., government recognized). This controversy plays out in localities, states, and at the federal level as officials who court the gay voting bloc sign Pride proclamations, while those who fear alienating social conservatives forgo the exercise. However, when proclamations are issued by cities and states -- or even when Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to formally recognize Pride Month -- the move gets barely any media play. The world at large just doesn't consider this a big deal. However, among lesbigay activists and organizers, it's a very big deal indeed, and much effort is directed into securing proclamations -- and denouncing those officials who choose not to make them.

Which brings us to President Bush, who again declined to issue an official Gay Pride Month proclamation. Said White House Spokeswoman Anne Womack, "The president believes every person should be treated with dignity and respect, but he does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation."

"Bush won't recognize Gay Pride month," declared a story on the planetout.com website:

"[Bush"s] refusal to issue a proclamation is a big deal to us," said Rob Sadler, a board member of Federal GLOBE, a group for GLBT federal employees. "Issuing a proclamation is totally a symbolic act, it doesn't give us any additional tangible rights, but it helps people who work for the federal government feel valued as an employee and it makes us feel like we're doing a good job," said Sadler.

See, I told you it was a "big deal." After all, how can you "feel valued" without an official government proclamation attesting to your inherent worth?

A different view, as you might expect, was voiced by the pro-Bush Log Cabin Republicans. LCR spokesman Kevin Ivers responded in the same article that:

the absence of the proclamation shouldn't be such a big deal. In fact, while the attorney general, John Ashcroft, is a well-known Republican conservative, his second in command, Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, will speak at the gay pride celebration on June 19 in the Justice Department's Great Hall. "This shows that the country is changing for the better," said Ivers." We shouldn't get so hypersensitive about symbolism. Symbolic acts are important, yes, but we have more important things to work on."

But for the activist-minded, symbolism -- and its alleged power -- IS what matters. That's why many activists will admit that even if hate crimes bills and anti-discrimination laws won't actually have much impact in terms of actual litigation, they are important because of the symbolism of "inclusion."

Bush's Balancing Act. Aside from the gay pride celebration at the Justice Department, the Washington Post reports that at the Commerce Department, management is allowing gay employees to proceed with events but has withheld official sponsorship. Official pride proclamations, however, have been issued by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (ok, he's a liberal, anti-profiling-at-airports Democrat) and by Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman. And the State Department co-sponsored with the group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (that's GLIFAA) a talk by Rep. Jim Kolbe, the openly gay Republican congressman from Arizona, on the global challenge of HIV and AIDS.

For symbolism counters, you"d think this was a fairly good haul. But the negative always trumps the positive, and a group of gay employees at the Commerce Department has now filed a complaint charging the agency with discrimination based on sexual orientation. According to another Washington Post story, "Part of the complaint"can be traced to a Commerce decision last year to end official sponsorship of gay pride activities," and the fact that this year the Patent and Trademark Office, a Commerce agency, pulled back its sponsorship of gay pride activities. "Gay pride events will go forward", the Post reports, "but will be sponsored by a gay employee group."

Well, I"m all for symbolic inclusion, but elevating the issuing of pride proclamations into a top movement goal strikes me as identity politics at its silliest. This is the deal: Politicians who are elected with a big gay bloc are more likely to issue proclamations. Bush's constituency, on the other hand, includes a much larger bloc of social conservatives. He"d like not to alienate them will symbolic kow-towing to gay activists, but he"d also like to court a larger share of GOP-leaning gay voters, too. So this administration, which has made several high-level openly gay appointments -- from the head of national AIDS policy to the ambassador to Romania -- is allowing more pride recognition events, with and without "official" sponsorship at the Cabinet level, than any previous GOP administration, but is withholding the big proclamation by the president himself.

Know what? If more gays vote for Bush in 2004, you can bet that he"ll go even further. That's politics, folks.