IGF CultureWatch

In Oregon, Democrats and moderate Republicans are being encouraged to create civil-union legislation following Thursday's state Supreme Court decision rejecting gay marriage (and nullifying nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples last year in Multnomah County). Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown said the court's silence on the constitutionality of marriage benefits for gays, "leaves the door wide open" for a civil unions law, which is supported by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

In Connecticut, the state House approved a bill to provide same-sex couples with the same rights, benefits and obligations of married couples on Wednesday, but added an amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman (Connecticut has been one of only nine states that have not passed a Defense of Marriage Act limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples). Gov. M. Jodi Rell will likely sign the bill, although the Family Institute of Connecticut has declared that civil unions are same-sex marriage by another name.

Both these examples highlight continuing advances on the civil unions front via popularly elected state legislatures and governors, and continuing defeats when it comes to same-sex marriage - except in the nation's super-liberal districts. But when a few judges have ruled in favor of gay marriage, it's triggered renewed efforts to change state constitutions (and the U.S. Constitution) to prohibit this, and often sneaking in a constititional bar against civil unions as well.

If it hadn't been decided to make the perfect the enemy of the good, I believe we'd be seeing a civil unions groundswell, much to the chagrin of the religious right.

Update: In the comments area, Alan notes that even moderate, often Democratic-voting states such as Michigan and Ohio have passed amendments barring civil unions - a bad sign for those pushing the judicial strategy. He further observes:

As for comparing marriage suits with classic civil rights suits like Brown v Board of Ed, I think others have suggested that it's a matter of whether the country is near the "tipping point" on an issue, in which case judicial activism can supply a final thrust.

I'd submit that the country was ready to banish Jim Crow in the 1950s (even if the deep South wasn't), and thus Brown did not result in a federal constitutional amendment protecting segregation. But the country is nowhere near ready to embrace gay marriage, and so judicial activism may well result in a federal amendment (as it has already resulted in so many state amendments).

That's certainly the worst-case scenario, but we shouldn't dismiss the risk.

Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by dismissing concerns about media vulgarity, charges Dan Gerstein in Why the Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars, from Monday's Wall Street Journal (alas, apparently only available to WSJ Online subscribers).

Gerstein, former communications director for Joe Lieberman, takes aim at New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently railed against "New Puritans" who want to "stamp out" all that is "joyously vulgar" in American culture."

Counters Gerstein, "vulgarity, joyous or otherwise, is hardly in retreat." Moreover:

[T]he implications of this mindset and the battle lines it establishes are clear.... [I]f you're not exactly enamored of watching titillating stunts and ads at the Super Bowl with your six--year-old, you're part of the TV Taliban.

But:

Not all parents who are concerned about the avalanche of crud crushing their children every day are obsessed with SpongeBob's sexual orientation. Nor are they seeking to shred the First Amendment.

And he points to what he calls "the nub of the values problem for Democrats today":

We don't hesitate to judge people's beliefs, but we blanch at judging their behavior. That leaves us silent on big moral issues at a time of great moral uncertainty, and leaves the impression that we are the party of "anything goes." Even worse, it creates a "values vacuum" that gets filled by the SpongeBob gaybashers of the world.

The result, says Gerstein, is that "heartland residents are tuning out our party." I think that's on target. Too often gays, "progressives," and (especially) progressive gays dismiss all concerns about morality and values as motivated by intolerance. That merely results in ceding the values mantle to those who really are motivated by anti-gay animus.
--Stephen H. Miller

GOP consultant Arthur Finkelstein, who is openly gay and married his long-time partner in Massachusetts, was denounced as "sad" and "self-loathing" by Bill Clinton, whose remarks followed reports that Finkelstein is helping raise funds to unseat Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Finkelstein, who helped elect pro-gay Republicans like New York's Gov. George Pataki but has also sold his services to anti-gay Republicans, is not beyond reproach. But I think the Log Cabin crew score points regarding Clinton's own hypocrisy. As the New York Sun reports:

"What is sad here is that President Clinton, the same president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, implemented the military's discriminatory 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, and encouraged John Kerry to support anti-gay state constitutional amendments, thinks he has any credibility passing judgment on the like of Arthur Finkelstein or any other gay and lesbian American," a national spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, Christopher Barron, said.

The flip side of the Clinton mindset is that Democrats can get away with doing nothing (or worse) on gay issues, because gays who don't support them unequivocally are (in unison now, "self loathing").

Update: Brian Holmes of the Cornell Daily Sun adds his two cents on Clinton's "self-loathing" comment.

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Openly gay GOP Congressman Jim Kolbe is co-sponsoring a bill that would scrap the 12-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It's a long shot, of course, but glad to see an effort is being made.

And speaking of "puritans" new and old, the death of feminist anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin is a reminder of the period when Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon and Gloria Steinem sought to pass ordinances banning pornography (until the Supreme Court struck these down), and placed themselves on the same side as Phyllis Schlafly in supporting the censorious efforts by then-Attorney General Ed Meese's Commission on Pornography.

That unholy alliance showed the truth in the old cliche that the far right and far left do, in fact, mirror each another.

Note: For those who were wondering, I am not the Stephen Miller who writes for the New York Sun (and penned this Dworkin obit), though we are both cursed with an extremely common name.
-- Stephen H. Miller

It's very touchy-feely to support bringing the world's religions together as urged by the late Roman Catholic pontiff, but we should be wary of the dangers of accommodating faith traditions that sanction bigotry under the guise of religiosity. For instance, Washington Post columnist Colbert King notes that Anglican bishop Nzerebende Tembo in Uganda:

suspended all activities between his diocese and the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, including his request for $352,941 to support an HIV-AIDS program, financial assistance for orphans' education and a visit by a U.S. medical team. Tembo based his decision on news that the Central Pennsylvania diocese had supported election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.... [T]he Pennsylvania group had collected more than $350,000 to send to Uganda.

[Tempo claims no money had been pledged but] acknowledged withdrawing his request and said he also asked that the U.S. medical team not visit Uganda.... The money sought from the Central Pennsylvania Diocese, Tembo observed, "is not the only money in the world."

Comments King: "Thus ecumenism on the Anglican front."
--Stephen H. Miller

Intrepid blogger North Dallas Thirty looks at the response to the Kansas disaster by NGLTF and HRC, which, he notes, unconditionally endorsed a presidential candidate last year who backed passing state amendments banning gay marriage - or have we pointed that out before? The factual errors in the NGLTF release (they call Topeka the state's largest city when it's clearly not) cause him to ponder just how much research into this red state they actually felt they needed to bother with.

From time to time, some of us catch flak for criticizing gay "progressive" groups, as if a failure to stand mute and write checks veers on the treasonous. I'll again state that what we don't need is yet another "echo chamber" blankly applauding inept ideologies and on-autopilot strategies.

Log Cabin decided not to endorse President Bush over his support for a federal amendment against gay marriage. But there was virtually no public criticism from within the "community" when HRC gave Kerry/Edwards a free pass to support (and grant legitimacy to) anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments - which, as it turns out, have become a much greater threat to gay liberty than the stalled federal amendment which Bush has all but backed away from.

The citizens of Kansas just voted by a wide margin (70 to 30 percent) to approve a state constitutional gay marriage ban, making Kansas the 17th state to pass such a prohibition. The amendment declares that only traditional unions are entitled to the "rights and incidents" of marriage, prohibiting the state from authorizing civil unions as well.

Worse, opposition to same-sex marriages has been increasing. When asked whether they thought same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, 68 percent of the respondents surveyed last month in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they should not, and 28 percent said same-sex marriages should be valid. A similar poll by Gallup last year found that 55 percent thought same-sex marriages should not be valid, while 42 percent said they should be recognized.

Over the past few months, judges in Manhattan and San Francisco have ruled that New York State and California must recognize same-sex marriages despite majority opposition by the citizens of those states (both decisions are on hold while being appealed).

As IGF contributing author Brian Holmes notes in his recent column Courting Public Opinion:

When "judicial activism" takes root in the big coastal cities, state legislators in heartland capitals like Topeka and Indianapolis follow suit with state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.... [S]olid and lasting equality will come when revisions to the law are backed by the will of the people. When new laws are imposed from on high, there is no guarantee that the mass of citizens will follow suit.

Clearly.

My IGF colleague Dale Carpenter offers his take on the Terri Schiavo tragedy. While I respectfully disagree with Dale about the appropriateness of (and motivations behind) the congressional action, I think Dale is correct in highlighting the growing importance of the "culture of life" concept among social conservatives.

Dale writes:

One could conceive a "culture of life" that affirmed the equality of gays. Such a culture might even show a special concern for the dignity and equality of gays, as it would for any marginal persons, like the disabled or the dying. But that is not the culture favored by religious conservatives.

It is true that "culture of life" can become something of a grab bag that's invoked with animus by the religious right to, among other things, oppose gay equality. But we should also appreciate the widespread emotional appeal of affirming those aspects of our culture that embrace and enhance life, as opposed to those aspects that disregard, degrade or destroy life and which could rightly be seen as part of a "culture of death" - including, for instance, partial-birth abortion on demand and promiscuous, unprotected, drugged-out sex.

As with the similar "family values" debate, the key here (as I think Dale suggests) is to fight for the inclusion within what's recognized as the "culture of life" of gay families and responsible gay sexuality while effectively making the case against homophobia and legal inequality. But we should be wary of dismissing the "culture of life" concept outright as an inherently evil ploy without redeeming value.
--Stephen H. Miller

Among the leading contenders:

Francis Arinze: "In a commencement address this year at Georgetown University, Arinze drew protests by saying the institution of marriage is 'mocked by homosexuality.'"

Joseph Ratzinger: "He once called homosexuality a tendency toward 'intrinsic moral evil.'"

Diogini Tettamanzi: "He has taken a tough line against what he terms 'homosexual culture.' In one article, he wrote that the church was called 'together with every person of good will, to denounce the very grave personal and social risks connected with accepting such a culture.'"

Almost all the contenders seem to have made ignorant and dehumanizing statements about homosexuality (as reader Alan commented on the item below regarding the late pope, "I don't know that he could even envision 'gay people' as anything other than individuals who perversely engage in homosexual acts").

Also like the late pope, a common thread is demonizing free markets and global trade (i.e., "globalization") as a form of imperialism that keeps the poor impoverished, when in fact it is the key to helping underdeveloped nations rise out of poverty.

Tettamanzi, the Washington Post tells us, described as "positive" the anti-globalization rioters at the Seattle World Trade Organization conference in 1999 who prevented a new trade accord, while another contender, Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, told his fellow Latin Americans that "Neoliberal capitalism carries injustices and inequality in its genetic code," while condemning the U.S. for promoting free-market economic policies and "exporting" liberal views on matters such as contraception.

Some reactionaries are just wrong all round, but it's no surprise that those who oppose personal freedom would also be against free markets.

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