IGF CultureWatch

IGF contributing author David Link has a guest column in Bay Windows discussing a recent episode of ABC's reality show "Wife Swap," in which a lesbian partner and a Christian fundamentalist wife changed places for a week, each caring for the other's family. I also caught this episode and David hits the nail on the head regarding the shameless homophobia on display. For more, check out this interview in The Advocate.

There's a just-launched website, JonathanRauch.com, you'll want to check out. Jon is IGF's co-managing editor and vice president, and in his spare time he's a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as writer in residence at the Brookings Institution.

Jon is also the author of the recent Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, and the earlier books Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought and Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working. He writes of his new site:

No popups. No javascripts. No sponsors. No blog. Yet. And I'll be damned if I know what a trackback is. But here is a selection of my journalism, handily compiled, gradually accumulating, and free of charge.

Take a look!

Want an example of how gay media distorts everything through the ideological lens of gay-left activists? Here's an excerpt from the popular gay news site 365gay.com:

Another Bush [federal appeals court] nominee, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, also holds a radical record of anti-gay judicial activism. In 2003, Brown was the only justice on the California Supreme Court to rule against recognizing the right of gay Californians to legally adopt their children. Brown argued that allowing a gay parent to legally adopt the biological child of their partner "trivializes family bonds."

Now here are some facts. In Sharon S. v. Superior Court, a convoluted case in which the biological mother and her partner broke up during the adoption proceedings and opposed each other in court, what Brown actually argued is 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.

Just to make the point, here's what California's Contra Costa Times reported:

Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote in her partial dissent that second-parent adoptions are not a "universal option" and legislators recognized this when they allowed registered domestic partners to have the same adoption rights as stepparents.

And here's what the lawyers on the other side were arguing, as reported by the American Bar Association Journal: "There's a demand for second-parent adoption," says Charles A. Bird, a San Diego lawyer who represents Annette F. "Some of that demand is for same-sex couples who for whatever reason don't want to register as domestic partners, some of it is for heterosexual couples who don't want to marry and some of the demand is for families where adoptions are done across generational lines." (emphasis added)

The 365gay.com site is not alone in mischaracterizing Justice Brown as a "radical" anti-gay extremist; a quick Google search showed the same spin throughout the activist community and its lapdog media.

Update: Reader Dan77 writes in the comments area:

"either gays want marriage (or as a fallback civil unions) because we want the rights and responsibilities of legal recognition, or we don't. How in blazes can activists say gay couples should be able to co-adopt even if they don't want to accept the spousal obligations of a domestic partnership?

Once again, it's rights without responsibilities, the child's cry of "I want my cake and to eat it too!"

Update II: The influential Washington Blade continues the distortion of Brown's dissent, comparing her with nominee William Pryor and reporting that both

have taken positions in opposition to gay civil rights, prompting gay rights attorneys to question their ability to rule fairly in future cases. ... Brown issued a minority opinion in 2003 saying a gay person should not be allowed to adopt the biological child of his or her partner, saying providing such an adoption right "trivializes family bonds."

It would have been nice if someone had actually read her opinion.

It's no big surprise that since the terror attacks of 9/11 and the war in Iraq fewer gays have been discharged from the military, reports the Washington Post. Charles Moskos, an architect of the "don't ask, don't tell" concept, says that given the current stress on military services, individuals who say they are gay may not be immediately granted an honorable discharge.

But "what has traditionally happened is that there is a decline during a war and then a spike in discharges right after," said Sharon Alexander, a lawyer for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "We noticed that during the Persian Gulf, the number of discharges was practically nonexistent and then it shot way up."

Some number of these discharges may be self-initiated. But even so, the partial suspension of the policy (recall that gay military translators were still booted out) is hypocritical. The DADT edifice either persecutes gay personnel who have bravely served their country, or provides a too-easy escape clause for heterosexuals who don't want to fulfill the commitment they've made. In either case, it's time for the "gay ban" to go.

"If social conservatives really wanted to protect marriage, the Marriage Protection Amendment would prohibit divorce," says Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dimitri Vassilaros in "Divorced from Reality." Vassilaros asks if:

U.S. senators such as Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum and other so-called marriage defenders have the intestinal fortitude and the political backbone to truly protect marriage by spelling out a ban to its only threat, D-I-V-O-R-C-E (as Tammy Wynette would have called it).

And he notes:

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. The FRC claims it "champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society." It looked like the ideal organization to support a divorce prohibition so marriage finally can be protected properly. Looks are deceiving.

"Most conservatives do not see divorce under the purview of the federal government," Perkins said. Marriage is, but divorce isn't.

According to Vassilaros, "Only John Kerry could appreciate the subtlety of that nuance."
(hat tip: Rick Sincere)

At the libertarian-minded ReasonOnline site, John Coleman reminds us in My Privatized Valentine that:

St. Valentine, a Roman cleric, was imprisoned for his opposition to Emperor Claudius' decree that young men (his potential crop of soldiers) could no longer marry. Valentine performed their ceremonies anyway and was thrown in jail for his obstinacy. His belief was that marriage is too sacred a rite to relegate to the incompetence of state bureaucracy. And, on February 14, he was executed for that belief.

Drawing a lessons for our times, Coleman argues that the state should only certify the legality of civil unions, leaving the sanctioning of ceremonial "marriage" to the private sphere of religious institutions:

It is time to privatize marriage. If the institution is really so sacred, it should lie beyond the withering hands of politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. There should be no federal or state license that grants validity to love. There should be no state-run office that peers into our bedrooms and honeymoon suites. If the church thinks divorce and homosexuality are problematic, it should initiate the real dialogue to address these problems in-house rather than relying on state-sponsored coercion to affirm doctrinal beliefs. And if tax-codes and guardianships need some classification for couples, let's revise civil union standards to reflect those needs.

Well, that's certainly one up on those who believe we must settled for nothing less than full state-recognized marriage! (hat tip: instapundit)

If your interested in this argument, IGF contributing author Steve Swain argues here that what the state does for birth and death it should also do for marriage: merely certify status, and leave the tasks of celebrating and solemnizing to communities and religions.

And over on my right, we now have a diversity of opinion on the marriage question, most recently from John Corvino, Dale Carpenter, and Paul Varnell.

A German zoo's attempts to straighten out their gay penguins have ended in failure. The zoo keepers say the penguins need to procreate for the good of the race, er, species, while gay groups protested their outrage over the effort to break up happy gay (penguin) couples so as to enforce heterosexual norms among captive critters. Well, I always thought Tennessee Tuxedo was a little 'light in the loafers,' if you know what I mean.

More Recent Postings
2/06/05 - 2/12/05

Utah saw its first openly gay state senator sworn in (Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake). McCoy, who spoke from the front of the chambers, said "The fact that I am gay is certainly one of the characteristics with which I have been endowed by my Creator, and it is an important part of who I am as a human being," adding that it is not the only characteristic that defines him. He concluded by thanking his parents and his partner, Mark Barr, for their love and support. Thus is progress made, even in the reddest of states.

...and the Lack Thereof.
Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher takes note of the moving story of Maya Keyes, the now-out lesbian daughter of archly homophobic commentator and recent senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Maya was recently evicted from her parents' home and told she'd receive no money to attend Brown University, where she was accepted. Just the latest high-profile example of how anti-gay prejudice destroys families.

This week the Democrats elected Howard Dean as their new party chair. Yeeeehaaaaa.

There are those who say it's only a matter of time before the Democrats slide into total irrelevancy, at which point the GOP will split into a libertarian and a social conservative party. But an alternative future is proposed in this op-ed from Washington's newest paper, the Examiner.

Former Democratic National Committee press secretary Terry Michael argues that the Democrats can succeed if they return to their "Jeffersonian liberalism" roots. He writes:

But in a post-industrial, information economy, the little guys, who Democrats have always claimed to represent, are again more self-sufficient, empowered to make - tailor-make, in fact - choices for themselves.... The "Central Authority Solutions" story offered by Democrats, from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, lost luster. That's especially true with regard to economic issues. On the other hand, when it comes to lifestyle and personal choices - the social-cultural issue frame - the party still has some juice left from that original Jeffersonian story, which made individual liberty central to party ID....

The new desktop-empowered generation, turned on by Republican economic choice, but turned off by the social-cultural intolerance of the GOP Taliban wing, could embrace Democrats if we return to our founder's philosophy - a back-to-the-future Jeffersonian liberalism. Jefferson, who said the government that governs least governs best, knew the era of big government was over before Bill Clinton proclaimed it.

It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
--Stephen H. Miller

Look for a split decision on same-sex marriage from New York's highest court. In fact, the New York Post reports, it's likely to come down to one man - moderate conservative Judge Albert Rosenblatt, appointed by moderate conservative Gov. George Pataki. The Post reports:

Pataki's other three appointees are not likely to be swayed by the argument that the ban on gay marriage violates New York's constitution, said [legal scholars]. Those likely opponents are Judges Susan Phillips Read, Victoria Graffeo and Robert Smith.

On the other hand, Chief Judge Judith Kaye and Judges George Bundy Smith and Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick - all named by former Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo - have traditionally been "very sensitive" to civil-rights issues and would likely favor legalizing same-sex marriages. That would make Rosenblatt the deciding vote.

A 4-3 decision upholding gay marriage in New York State would likely add to the polarization over the role of "unelected" judges in "redefining" marriage - just what the proponents of a federal "marriage protection" amendment dream of. Yet the strategy of marriage-by-lawsuit rolls on.