Search Results for Stonewall

More on Campus Anti-Speech Activism

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Since I raised the “Stonewall” movie fracas in the post below on transgender activism, I’m bumping up the following, which I had added to an earlier post on the progressive campus anti-speech movement.

Robby Soave writes at reason.com, citing Colorado College’s student newspaper, The Catalyst, that LGBT student activists at the college declared that the movie “Stonewall” was too offensive to be shown on campus by the college’s Film and Media Studies Department, which wanted to moderate a discussion about the controversy. Instead, the students demanded that the administration cancel the upcoming screening.

“I think Colorado College should cancel the screening because the safety and well-being of queer and trans students surpasses the importance of a critical discussion,” one student told The Catalyst. Said another: “If CC is really as dedicated to diversity and inclusion, they would never have agreed to screen a film that queer students have repeatedly stated is a threat to our identity and our safety. … It is fallacious to equate the rights of students to view a movie with the rights of students to exist free of violence.”

Soave comments regarding the students’ response to the film, directed by openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich, which positively depicts gay people fighting for equality in 1969:

That’s right: the film isn’t merely offensive to gay and trans students (despite having a truly gay-affirming message), it’s actively dangerous to their physical well-being…. This is a complaint emotionally-coddled students often make: that some kind of expression is so triggering that allowing it to proceed constitutes an act of violence. Such complaints are usually pure hyperbole, but hyperbole doesn’t even begin to cover the opinions of Colorado College’s precious snowflakes.

Also, here’s a link to James Kirchick’s piece on the Yale insanity:

If the administration is truly committed to equipping young people for the real world and not a chimerical fantasyland where they never have to hear something disagreeable, the best thing it could do, both for their sake and Yale’s sacred mission, is tell them to grow up.

And another fine piece by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, The New Intolerance of Student Activism:

They see anything short of a confession of wrongdoing as unacceptable. In their view, one respects students by validating their subjective feelings. Notice that the student position allows no room for civil disagreement. Given this set of assumptions, perhaps it is no surprise that the students behave like bullies even as they see themselves as victims.

From FrontPageMag.com:

Crybullies are everything they claim to abhor. They are narcissists who complain about selfishness. Completely incapable of human empathy, they whine that no one cares about their feelings. They are prone to cowardly acts of violence, but demand safe spaces. They are bullies who say they’re bullied.

The crybully embodies the left. He is an oppressed oppressor. An abusive victim. A self-righteous hypocrite. A loudmouth censor. A civil rights activist who wants to take everyone’s rights away.

Much of that description also fits the heroes of progressivism who use the power of the state to force small, religiously conservative business owners to provide services to same-sex weddings, and destroy their businesses if they refuse (and threaten them with financial ruin, and jail). It’s all of a piece.

More. The Vice President of the University of Missouri Student Association, via MSNBC: “I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment.”

Progressive students are flooding out of the closet—as the authoritarians we’ve always known them to be. Their older mentors should be as honest about their intentions.

Fortunately, some students get it. Via the Harvard Law Record: Fascism at Yale. Yes, let’s call the progressive students’ political beliefs by its right name.

Proving the point: Amherst Activists Demand Re-Education for Students Who Celebrated Free Speech. A coalition of campus progressive groups declared that a poster celebrating the First Amendment was “racially insensitive” and requires “extensive training for racial and cultural competency.”

The list of signatories at Amherst includes Purple Pride, Pride Alliance, Queer Resource Center, and TransActive. Because, you know, what has free speech ever done for gay people.

Finally, Walter Olson’s Campus expression roundup for the week, at Overlaywered.com.

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Debating the “T”

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The Federalist looks at the increasingly uncomfortable amalgamation of LGB and T, by way of an interview with a gay man who posted a change.org petition to “drop the T.” It won’t happen, of course, but the interview raises some interesting points. The petitioner (he asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the trans movement) notes, for instance:

To me, the LGB movement, with its celebration of all types of gay men and women, such as bears, leather daddies, drag queens, diesel dykes, lipstick lesbians, etc., has always been about expanding and re-defining concepts of gender; the trans movement, on the other hand, appears to be about re-asserting and codifying traditional concepts of gender.

The initial discussion is about the Stonewall narrative, and interviewer David Marcus asks:

I was at the Stonewall twenty-fifth anniversary march in 1994, and at that time we all thought we had a pretty good idea of what had happened at Stonewall. The Stonewall veterans— mostly gay, white men—were viewed as heroic. In the new version of events, the gay, white men at the riot are presented as weak followers, not primary actors. Why do you think so many established gay outlets have so easily accepted this narrative that echoes some of the worst stereotypes about gay men?

To which the petitioner replies:

I think there’s a general desire to find heroes in the past that aren’t the usual white guy, and I understand that completely, as a gay kid looking to find gay heroes in a heteronormative history myself. But you can’t alter history to make you feel better, and doing so by twisting a narrative so that heroic men become weak, dithering non-actors in an event is disrespectful to them and ultimately to yourself.

More. David Marcus has more to say at The Federalist website, Gay Versus Trans Bar Fight Breaks Out Over ‘Stonewall’:

Consider the accounts of the white, gay men interviewed for an AARP video celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall. They are quite clear about what led them to riot. It wasn’t the actions of the small number of transvestites that led them to fight back. It was the actions of the police, the frustration of being left behind in a nation that was slowly embracing civil rights. It was the moment when they refused to be cowed by a culture that condemned the very essence of who they were.

Let us be clear that those who accuse “Stonewall,” the movie, of whitewashing and cis-washing the events of that night are calling these men liars.

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The Progessive Campus Anti-Speech Movement

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There was a point, not so very long ago, when students and outside speakers advocating gay legal equality might not have been welcomed on campuses. That model of closed-mindedness isn’t something you might suppose those calling themselves “progressives” would aspire to emulate.

Later, when being gay was no longer anathema but support for same-sex marriage was a decidedly minority position (even on liberal campuses), discussions of marriage equality weren’t closed down. An open engage of conflicting ideas was viewed as central to a liberal education.

But today, progressives believe it is their responsibility to make sure no views outside their echo chamber, including conservative speakers and student op-eds, are permitted, lest they mislead those whose minds are not completely closed. Two cases in point, from Wesleyan University and at Williams College, expose the barely concealed authoritarianism that lurks behind much of progressive activism.

More. Feminist pioneer and committed leftist Germaine Greer is the wrong kind of feminist/leftist (not supportive of transgender rights). So:

While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous.

Brendan O’Neill responded:

The Cardiff censors say Greer’s ideas are ‘problematic’. That is what the PC say instead of ‘haram’.

Furthermore. The Williams student group that invited and then disinvited conservative author Suzanne Venker later reinvited her after being embarrassed over the fallout that followed their caving in to the student censors. At that point, Venker had apparently had enough and declined.

Late addition. Robby Soave writes at reason.com, citing Colorado College’s student newspaper, The Catalyst, that LGBT student activists at the college are demanding that the movie “Stonewall” is too offensive to be shown on campus by the college’s Film and Media Studies Department, which wanted to moderate a discussion about the controversy. Instead, they are demanding that the administration cancel the upcoming screening.

“I think Colorado College should cancel the screening because the safety and well-being of queer and trans students surpasses the importance of a critical discussion,” one student told The Catalyst. Said another: “If CC is really as dedicated to diversity and inclusion, they would never have agreed to screen a film that queer students have repeatedly stated is a threat to our identity and our safety. … It is fallacious to equate the rights of students to view a movie with the rights of students to exist free of violence.”

Soave comments regarding the students’ response to the film, directed by openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich, which positively depicts gay people fighting for equality in 1969:

That’s right: the film isn’t merely offensive to gay and trans students (despite having a truly gay-affirming message), it’s actively dangerous to their physical well-being…. This is a complaint emotionally-coddled students often make: that some kind of expression is so triggering that allowing it to proceed constitutes an act of violence. Such complaints are usually pure hyperbole, but hyperbole doesn’t even begin to cover the opinions of Colorado College’s precious snowflakes.

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Yes, the Bakers Again

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Because, despite the seeming absurdity of it, this is where LGBT progressives have decided the frontline of “the movement” should now be—eliminating the horrific scourge of religious conservatives who own small businesses and who would rather not participate in same-sex weddings.

This was one of the main drivers behind the shift by activists away from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) toward support for the Equality Act, which also covers “public accommodations” with no religious exemption for private business owners.

In a new blog post, John Corvinio, professor and chair of philosophy at Wayne State University, delves further the matter. He writes:

Do I believe that we should force people to make cakes they don’t want to make? It depends. I support anti-discrimination laws, which do indeed restrict the range of acceptable reasons for turning away customers from a place of business. On the other hand, I generally don’t believe in picking fights just to make a point.

If you live in an area with lots of gay-friendly options, and you deliberately seek a same-sex-wedding cake from bakers known to oppose same-sex marriage, then you are not much better than someone who deliberately seeks a Bible-shaped “God hates gays” cake from bakers known to be gay-friendly.

This is one area where the moral rules are at least as important as the legal ones, and the relevant moral rule is clear: Don’t be a jerk. None of the paths discussed [earlier in his post] will eliminate jerks, but they may provide options for those seeking to minimize conflict while upholding the values of liberty and equality.

(Added: To reiterate, this is about suing or otherwise seeking government action against independent business providers; other posts have discussed the very different situation of government officials refusing to treat all citizens equally under the law, which, ludicrously, is where religious-conservative activists have decided to make their stand.)

And speaking of deeply misguided activism, conservative media is having a field day with a rash of fake hate crimes concocted by LGBT students and others who you’d think might know better. What are they thinking, you have to wonder, beyond glorifying their own victimhood and advancing the progressive narrative.

More. Yes, physical abuse and lesser forms of bullying are unfortunately still with us. I never said all such instances were hoaxes. But the problem of politically (as in “correct”) motivated fabrications is real as well and—although ignored by LGBT and mainstream media—it’s doing damage to those who actually want to confront real instances of abusive behavior.

It’s not just on the LGBT front, of course, Faked instances of misogyny or, even worse, rape, have the horrific effect of undermining reports of actual abuse and rape. So the question of why these students (and others) are motivated to serve the cause by creating false narratives that they no doubt think are useful in mobilizing the masses must be addressed.

A large part of the explanation for this behavior is the need to perpetuate a sense of victimhood, which takes us right back to those activist-minded couples who feel justified in compelling small business providers to service their weddings. Don’t want to work on my marriage celebration—it’s like Selma and we’re marching with Dr. King…or standing up to the police at Stonewall.

You say you have religious objections to accepting this gig and want to recommend the florist, caterer, photographer down the block? You’re Bull Connor and we will destroy you and your business, using the power of the state to punish. And then we’ll tell each other how very special we are.

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Obama: Good for Gays, Not So Good for America

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According to Mark Joseph Stein and J. Bryan Lowder, writing at Slate (LGBT Comes to the SOTU), Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address was historic in that it contained three references to gay rights and “marks the first time a president has used the words transgender and bisexual in a State of the Union address (in addition to the explicit use of the term lesbian rather than the generic gay).”

For many on the left, it seems, keeping count of nomenclature is exceedingly important. But I’ll grant you that inclusive rhetoric can matter. More importantly, however, let’s weigh the administration’s record.

The Employee Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), then backed by many LGBT Democrats, never made it out of committee during the first two years of the Obama presidency when his party enjoyed large majorities in both houses of Congress—a sign of lack of administration interest in pushing it. But last year, the president belatedly fulfilled his 2008 campaign promise to issue an executive order barring government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

His administration sat back and would have allowed Harry Reid to scuttle a Senate vote to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” at the end of 2010, as I’ve written about before (Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman saved the day). Subsequently, however, the Defense Department moved to successfully implement the new policy of letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.

Obama initially ran for president opposing gay marriage, alluding to marriage’s “religious connotation” and holding that “marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.” But in office his position evolved to support for marriage equality. And while the truly historic advances for the freedom to marry were driven by lawsuits and the courts, the administration did weigh in against the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. After the majority ruling penned by Justice Kennedy (a Reagan appointee) finding DOMA unconstitutional, federal agencies have moved to ensure equal treatment of same-sex spouses in the areas that they regulate.

As David Boaz sums up on The National Interest website about the speech and, more broadly, Obama’s legacy:

[W]e got a sweeping vision of a federal government that takes care of us from childhood to retirement, a verbal counterpart to the Obama campaign’s internet ad about “Julia,” the cartoon character who has no family, friends, church or community and depends on government help throughout her life. … The spirit of American independence, of free people pursuing their dreams in a free economy, was entirely absent. … The president wants more and better jobs. And yet he wants to raise taxes on the savings and investment that produce economic growth and better jobs. … President Obama’s tax-spend-and-regulate policies have given us the slowest recovery since World War II. You want to help the middle class? Lift those burdens.

But also:

I appreciate the president’s inclusiveness in his rhetoric and his policies. In 2013, he paid tribute to “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.” This year he cited gay marriage as “a story of freedom”—indeed, his only mention of freedom—and he touched on the deepest roots of our liberty and our civilization in this passage: “we are a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen: man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino and Asian, immigrant and Native American, gay and straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability.”

All in all, the Obama administration’s record on gay rights may be its only lasting positive legacy.

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Another GLAAD Misfire

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(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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Making the Case

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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.

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Inauguration

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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.

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Pervasive Partisanship

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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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