IGF CultureWatch

In quite a contrast to the lone star state, the New York GOP has rebuffed a state senator who sees gay Republicans as disloyal. Queens senator Serphin R. Maltese tried to block the Log Cabin Republicans from obtaining greater power within the state party organization, reports the New York Times, but

The move against the gay Republicans was rebuffed by other party members, led by the state chairman, Stephen J. Minarik, and the Manhattan chairman, James Ortenzio, who both argued that the party should have a "big tent" image heading into 2006.

The GOP will have to confront the bigots at some point, and it's good to see some steps in this direction.

Whatever you think about McCain, if he runs it could galvanize the big tenters to try to take the party back from the grip of the evangelicals. But I just hope they don't turn wishy washy and "moderate" (i.e., liberal) on deregulation and limited government but instead offer a fiscally conservative, socially libertarian alternative that could draw support from both the left and the right.

More Recent Postings
6/06/05 - 6/12/05

Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggests that gay veterans unhappy with his proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment should move elsewhere, reports the Southern Voice.

The right-wing Texan had been asked what he would tell gay war veterans returning from Iraq. "I'm going to say Texas has made a decision on marriage and if there's a state with more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that's where they should live," Perry declared.

Not all Republicans believe their party should be an auxiliary of the religious right, but those who do clearly have decided that appealing to bigotry trumps the need to give the highest respect to soldiers who have risked their lives in the defense of liberty.

Update: A Washington Post editorial says Perry's remark dishonors Texas.

Under the principle of "eminent domain," local, state and federal governments can force property owners to sell their land if the government decides it's in the government's (er, the "peoples") interest that they do so. In Washington, D.C., an outlying area is home to a number of gay clubs that now stand in the way of a new stadium, and the city's liberal mayor and city council are forcing club owners to get out even if it means the loss of their livlihood.

These are successful businesses operating in the one area where the government's draconian zoning laws had, to date, tolerated their existence. But apparently if you're deemed "sleazy" by the state then you're not entitled to any respect for your property rights.

First they came for the strip clubs...

The Supreme Courts ruled 6-3 today that the federal government has the power to prosecute the use of marijuana for medical purposes even in states that have enacted laws permitting medical marijuana use, in a decision by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. Joining the liberal anti-federalists was the most anti-gay member of the court, Antonin Scalia. Only three members of the court defended the principle of federalism: Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.

Justice O'Connor said in her dissent that the majority ruling was effectively "extinguishing" experiments with medical marijuana laws. "This case exemplifies the role of states as laboratories," she wrote.

Many state medical marijuana laws were passed directly by voters through ballot initiatives, so it's not a happy day for democracy, or for patients with cancer and AIDS. And it doesn't help the cause of backing states as "laboratories" in other areas, such as same-sex marriage, when the federal authorities decide to quash such experiments in democracy.

Update: Instapundit, as usual, provides links to some of the best blogosphere analysis of the decision and its ramifications.

More Recent Postings
5/29/05 - 6/04/05

A nonconservative, nonlibertarian blogger, Joe Perez, explains why he appreciates the articles we post on this forum despite his political difference of opinion:

If they were followed uncritically, many of the proposals voiced in the IndeGayForum would be likely to take the gay movement in a harmful, self-destructive direction that I could not support. Fortunately, there is little chance of that happening any time soon. As a matter of fact, gay conservatives and libertarians are a distinct minority in the gay movement and do not define "the gay agenda." Their critical perspective, as the "minority government in power" gives the gay movement a precious gift: intellectual gridlock. They're our check and balance.

The gay movement very much need thinkers like those featured in IndeGayForum to challenge the sloppy logic and dangerous excesses in the movement's mainstream. Even if some of these challenges are way off base.

He may hope we'll see the light, and I'll wish the same of him (for instance, liberals truly aren't "making health care more affordable" - far from it, Joe, by increasingly turning health care over to government and away from market forces, they've driven medical costs through the roof).

My third attempt to get a letter published in the Washington Blade countering their oft-repeated misrepresentation of a ruling by California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown has succeeded, after I directly asked editor Chris Crain to allow it to run. Chris, apparently, is more willing than his letters editor to allow different points of view to be expressed, for which I am appreciative. Still, the preponderance of gay media will continue to robotically repeat the Democrats' talking points against Brown, no matter how distorted their charges are.

Speaking of Blade editor Crain, he has a nice editorial in this week's issue on the Democrats acquiescence to the appellate nomination of a true anti-gay bigot, William Pryor, and the lackluster response from Washington's leading gay political lobbies. Crain writes:

It is not the job of a civil rights movement to offer political cover at crunch time. Conservative groups understand this and never scream more loudly than at their own allies when they waiver.

But as I've often said, too many of our activists are Democratic Party loyalists first and foremost, and the rest of us let them get away with it.

Discrimination by a government that's supposed to ensure all are treated equally is the worst kind of betrayal, and should be the main target of our rights struggle - whether it be for the right to serve in the military, for marriage equality (even if approached incrementally through partnerships and civil unions), or for the right to nondiscrimination in federal and state employment.

While sporadic discrimination may exist in the private sector, the much-maligned profit motive is a powerful incentive for private employers to seek the best talent they can find, regardless of anyone's personal prejudices. That's one reason why, in Virginia, a business coalition successfully lobbied the extremely right-wing, anti-gay state legislature to overturn a law forbidding employers from offering partnership benefits, arguing that the measure prevented them from recruiting top employees.

Today, more than 83% of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and more than 40% provide domestic partner health benefits, and those percentages keep increasing every year, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.

In contrast, this week the Washington Post reported that David Schroer, an extraordinarily well-qualified ex-army ranger, received an offer to be a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress - only to have the offer withdrawn when he revealed he would begin work as Diane Schroer after undergoing a long-planned gender change.

If the Library of Congress were a profit-making enterprise, the loss of such a candidate would equal a loss of profit-potential for the owners or stockholders. Not so in government, which is why rules with teeth forbidding discrimination are necessary (as is privatizing as many government services as is practical and letting market incentives drive progress forward).

Unfortunately, discrimination in federal hiring seems to be heading in the opposite direction, thanks to Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch, even though the administration itself seems to be embarrassed by the situation (yet unwilling to risk the wrath of the religious right by actually removing Bloch).
--Stephen H. Miller

Paul Varnell casts a critical eye on all the pride talk, and asks if there isn't a better way to promote our goals.

The gay media, following the lead of Democratic activists, keeps repeating the canard about Califronia Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown supposedly "anti-gay" adoption ruling. So I hereby repeat my defense.

In Sharon S. v. Superior Court, a convoluted case in which the biological mother and her partner had broken up and now opposed each other in court, Brown wrote that second-parent adoptions ought to require "a legal relationship between the birth and second parent," or else it would "trivialize family bonds." And, in fact, California's 2001 law affords registered domestic partners the same streamlined adoption process as stepparents. What Brown was saying is that the state need not create another right to adopt for two individuals with no such legal bond, and that legislators recognized this when they allowed registered domestic partners to adopt.

As reported by the American Bar Association Journal (Aug. 8, 2003), one of the lawyers in this case, Charles A. Bird, argued that same-sex couples "who for whatever reason don't want to register as domestic partners" should be allowed to enter into second-parent adoptions. That is the position Brown was rejecting, which is not the impression given by the gay media attacks, which follow the talking points of liberal activists who oppose her nomination to the federal bench.

More Recent Postings
5/22/05 - 5/28/05

Max Boot, a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the conservative Weekly Standard, changes his position on gays in the military. He writes:

In 1993-94, when the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy was promulgated, I was persuaded by the warnings of Colin Powell and other generals that opening the door to gays and lesbians would hurt morale and cohesion. But in the intervening decade, society has become more accepting of homosexuality. . . . Sooner or later, the U.S. military will follow the example of Australia, Britain and Israel and lift its ban on openly gay service members. In the struggle against Islamic fanatics, we can't afford to turn volunteers away.

Liberals may prefer the more "multilateral" Powell over Don Rumsfeld, but Powell was the one who screwed us during the Clinton years.