IGF CultureWatch

A thoughtful column by Debra Saunders, posted at the conservative townhall.com site:

In 2000, I voted against Proposition 22 [an initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California] because I believe in the benefits of marriage, for gays and straights. But the reaction to this election chills me and makes me wonder if it makes more sense for advocates to push for civil-union legislation now, and marriage later, when the public is ready.

It doesn't help when advocates demonize those who hesitate to change laws that have existed for a long time and that shape American families. It doesn't help when they blame Bush voters for sentiments also shared by Kerry voters.

Indeed, it doesn't.

More Recent Postings
11/07/04 - 11/13/04

On his website, former Log Cabin Republican leader Rich Tafel, now president of RLT Strategies, urges the gay community to rethink old tactics. He writes (in an excerpt from an op-ed he penned last month):

How have gays come so far in the popular culture, yet lost ground politically? What strategy could we employ that could end this trend? ...

During the past decade our political strategy has been: "Elect more Democrats, defeat more Republicans." This strategy hasn't worked. The fundamental problem with it is that the same voters who embrace us in the pop culture have voted to increase Republican control of their Governorships, the House, the Senate and the White House.

Given this failed partisan strategy by gay lobbyists (and, though he doesn't say it explicitly, in light of Log Cabin's public criticism of Bush during the recent campaign), Tafel asks:

Who in the gay community will be at the table with the White House and Congress to insure gay and lesbian American's concerns are included? When social conservatives push to lift those protections in a second Bush Administration who will lobby the Administration on behalf of the gay and lesbian community?

And, even more fundamentally:

Our national [gay] organizations must change our political debate from good versus evil to terms of those we've educated and those we've failed to educate, which forces us to take responsibility for our own lack of progress. Instead of figuring out how to win over our opposition, we generally demonize them for being cold hearted, intolerant or stupid. We need to spend less time preaching to our choir of supporters and more time figuring out how to win over our opposition.

Tafel also writes, "I personally think gays should be pushing for civil unions, something that the President supports," rather than outright marriage.

Writing at Slate, Paul Freedman argues in The Gay Marriage Myth that terrorism, not "moral values" (and, in particular, not gay marriage) elected Bush:

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small.

BoifromTroy also picks this up and adds his two cents, suggesting that liberal Democrats are trying to blame gays for their loss rather than their selection of a lousy candidate (making gays, as he puts it, "the new Ralph Nader"), while conservative Republicans just want to blame gays.

There's some truth that the ambiguous "values" exit poll question is being spun mercilessly by both sides (hey, I would have said "moral values" were important, too!). But the fact that the Democrats are so quick to scapegoat us should be a warning sign to the "one party's all we need" partisans.

The much bigger issue is the triumph of the statewide gay-marriage-banning initiatives, which swept to victory even in liberal, Kerry-voting Oregon, and the widespread antipathy it reveals toward gay marriage �?? regardless of the issue's arguable role in Kerry's ("The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do") defeat.

More Recent Postings
11/07/04 - 11/13/04

A week after the election, the Log Cabin Republicans' Patrick Guerriero has issued a thoughtful assessment of mistakes made by gay activists and what must now be done. It's well worth reading. Here are some excerpts:

As we judge who our friends and opponents are in Congress we should think twice about labeling party-line procedural votes and refusal to sponsor our legislative priorities as anti-gay. We can and must speak out against anti-gay legislation, hate speech, and anti-gay votes. But we should attempt to do so without burning every bridge and without demonizing those who we need to educate and work with in the years ahead. When our most reliable friends are up for re-election, they deserve our community's full support even when they are Republicans.

That, of course, is a jibe at the Human Rights Campaign, which worked to defeat Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter despite his long record of supporting gay equality. The release continues:

And, President Bush has won a clear and decisive popular vote and electoral college victory. He is our nation's duly elected leader and we must find a way to work with him and his administration over the next four years.

That should be obvious, but it's not to partisan gay lobbyists and, until today, it wasn't clear Log Cabin realized it. And it would have been even better if LCR could have found some part of Bush's GOP agenda to praise (social security reform? health savings accounts? the war on terrorism? anything?).

We must accept that sometimes we cannot always do what feels good in the short term. Sometimes we have to do what is pragmatic and what will aid our battle over the long term.

Which is what maturity - a trait too often lacking among the activist vanguard - is all about.

More Recent Postings
11/07/04 - 11/13/04

Perhaps it was morally right to adopt a strategy of using state courts to gain full marriage equality, damn the consequences, but in retrospect there was little real debate within what's called the gay "community" about the risks of going for full marriage, rather than spousal rights through civil unions.

From the AP (via the Washington Blade):

German lawmakers expanded the rights of same-sex couples last week, allowing registered domestic partners to adopt each other's children and making rules on splitting up and alimony similar to those for heterosexual marriages.

That's the incremental approach that got the Netherlands and Belgium from civil unions/partnerships to full marriage -- but not in one, judicially degreed swoop. It's the path we were on in this country, state by state, until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's marriage ruling, followed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's high-media (but legally vacuous) gay marriage decree.

As good as those developments felt, they were seen as a radical slap in the face by the conservative U.S. electorate, which differs markedly from Canada, where judicially ordered same-sex marriage is not, apparently, provoking a comparable backlash. But in this country, the slew of state amendments banning gay marriage -- and in several cases, now even civil unions -- shows that we've reaped the whirlwind.

From liberal Tina Brown's Washington Post column:

On Wednesday morning, even the gay editors of liberal upscale magazines were prepared to tell you that if there's one person who should get a big bouquet from Karl Rove it's Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, aka Mrs. [columnist] Anthony Lewis, who forced her state to authorize gay marriage.

From a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Having ignored the 11 state gay marriage initiatives before Tuesday's election, our friends in the mainstream media now can't talk about anything else. They seem astonished that even voters in Oregon and Michigan, states that President Bush lost, supported traditional marriage by landslides.

Will we have a wide-open debate about strategy now? In the wake of last week's electoral losses, activists' are pledging a new round of lawsuits to overturn what the voters decreed. Will these suits focus on the civil unions bans while working to educate the country on marriage rights? I doubt it.

[Update: A reader responds, in our mailbag.]

More Recent Postings
10/31/04 - 11/6/04

Writing in the well-respected Washington Monthly, columnist Kevin Drum argues that in retrospect "the most important event of the campaign" was:

the Massachusett's Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage. The result was nearly a dozen initiatives across the country to ban gay marriage and a perfect wedge issue for Republicans.

Over at one of my favorite sites, Tech Central Station, Arnold Kling writes:

Although I take a liberal attitude toward gay marriage, I do believe that the Massachusetts Supreme Court need not have found a right to gay marriage in that state's Constitution. The Democratic Party reaped the whirlwind from that exercise in judicial activism.

And at The Agitator site, libertarian blogger Radley Balko concurs.

Gay activists who bellow that those who voted to ban gay marriage are all "bigots" and "haters" don't get it. Most of those voters are work-a-day folks who fear same-sex matrimony is an invitation to moral anarchy. We can say that's misguided, but it's just not the same thing as rank bigotry. And given the overall state of the culture, which is far ruder and cruder than ever, the fear that things are spinning out of control is not that hard to fathom.

What's needed is education over time, and probably the incremental steps of domestic partnerships and civil unions -- contrary to the Massachusetts court's radical judicial decree.

But gay activists still think filing lawsuits, regardless of popular opinion, is that path to victory. On the heels of the 11-state defeat, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force leader Matt Foreman issued a statement saying:

The results underscore why we have a Bill of Rights -- because it is always wrong to put basic rights up to a popular vote. ...In the end, we know the Bill of Rights will guarantee every American the freedom to marry. ...This is only one round and when the fight is over, complete equality for gay people will be the only side left standing.

The courts do have an important role in guaranteeing legal equality. But at the same time you can't just steamroll over popular opinion or (as I think Foreman does) dismiss it contemptuously and say only court rulings matter -- because in the end judges are either elected or appointed by those who are elected. And Big Daddy Government isn't going to do the job of reaching hearts and minds for us.

Gay Patriot West takes a look at just how wrong-headed HRC has been, with its focus on defeating Bush instead of fighting state referendums. And an excellent point relayed about their infantile "George Bush, You're Fired" sound trucks during last summer's GOP convention:

Who were they trying to influence? I mean, did HRC actually think GOP delegates who spent thousands of dollars to go the convention (not to mention all the political capital, such as years of activism for GOP causes, it takes to win election as a delegate) would read those signs and change their minds about a man whose nomination they came to celebrate?

[Update: As quoted in the Washington Blade, gay Republican activist Carl Schmid drives the point home:

"You can just fight, fight, fight and try to defeat these Republicans, but that hasn't been successful," Schmid said. "HRC spent millions to defeat Republicans and maybe they should spend some money on educating Republicans. The issue of gay marriage is not doing so well. I don't think 'George Bush: You're Fired' does a good job at educating America about gay marriage."]

Gay Patriot also ponders why Log Cabin can't bring itself (as of this late writing) to comment on Bush's victory. I'd add that LCR has a big problem right now. The nonendorsement (which I supported) and public criticism of Bush (which I think did veer close to endorsing Kerry) put them on the outs with the White House. For the life of me, I can't fathom why or how Chris Barron, who began 2003 supporting John Edwards for president, became political director and spokesperson -- the most highly visible position after executive director Patrick Guerriero. Did this not seem like it would be a problem?

And I'm disappointed that when Bush made his statement a few weeks ago that civil unions were ok by him and that the GOP platform committee was wrong to oppose them, there was no response whatsoever from LCR. Talk about missing an opportunity to re-open dialog! This really did make it seem that they were hoping and betting on a Kerry victory.

LCR is needed, but Guerriero and the board have made terrible mistakes. If they don't shape up, they'll remain totally marginalized. Championing core Republican policy initiatives would help them re-establish their now-in-doubt GOP credentials and not seem like Democrats in drag. Sulking with the gay left about Bush's victory (with over 1 million self-identified gay votes!) is simply churlish.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a moderate, gay-rights supporting Republican poised to take over chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation," reports the AP.

Specter helped kill President Reagan's nomination of arch-homophobe Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.

The Human Rights Campaign vigorously opposed Specter's re-election, despite his co-sponsorship of the HRC's Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and Hate Crimes Prevention Act, among other measures. If HRC had been successful and Specter had been defeated, the Judiciary Committee could have been headed by a right-wing social conservative such as Alabama's Sessions.

[Updte: A new letter in our mailbag takes me to task over Sen. Specter's liklihood to stand up to anti-gay judicial nominees.]

Four years of incumbency should have given a sitting president with a relatively robust economy a clear edge; instead, Iraq remained the dominant issue, trumping the economy and everything else - including gay issues. Americans are fiercely split over the war and its continuing casualties, though I believe history will judge Bush right on this, the big one.

Nevertheless, it's clear that his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment wasn't the winner Bush (and Karl Rove) expected it to be. The millions of "missing" evangelicals that Rove believed could be brought into the GOP fold never materialized. Instead, the FMA cost Bush the active support and votes of gay and gay-friendly moderates, libertarians and economic conservatives, as well as all those turned off by what seemed an extremist ploy. And significantly, the anti-gay perception helped drive away young voters, who turned out in higher numbers than ever and voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. The GOP now must decide whether, going forward, it will be the party of Arnold Schwarzeneggerr, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, or of Bill Frist and Rick Santorum.

[Update: OK, if you've read down this far you know Bush's victory was bigger than it first appeared on Tuesday evening, and that the passage of gay marriage bans in 11 states (by huge margins) showed the issue did play a significant role. That's why this was an initial reflection. Enough of the e-mails! ]

More Recent Postings
10/24/04 - 10/30/04

Bush has won. And more comfortably than it seemed last night. I'm not in mourning. Kerry would have offered little to gays other than symbolism that didn't require expending political capital - and some mid-level patronage appointments to the leading gay Democrats who helped mobilize votes on his behalf. Gay Democrats demanded nothing of Kerry for their support, and nothing is what they would have gotten. The man who declared, "The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position," would have proved, in this case at least, true to his word.

On the downside, anti-gay marriage bans (endorsed in principle by Kerry), bulldozed to victory in all 11 states that voted on them: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah. Amendments banning same-sex marriage were passed earlier this year in Louisiana and Missouri. They joined Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Nebraska, whose constitutions define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

There's just no way to put a spin on that. But it does mean we need to ask a bold question -- given the American electorate, was fighting for the "M" word too much, too fast, too soon? Great Britain just established same-sex "civil partnerships" apart from marriage. That's the path taken by many EU countries -- even some, such as the Netherlands, that later evolved their partnerships into full marriage.

Prior to last year's Massachusetts' court decision declaring that the state must provide equal marriage access for same-sex couples, I feared that such a ruling would result in a huge backlash. Then I got caught up in the euphoria. Now, I think it would have been far better if the court had followed Vermont and ordered the rights of marriage, but not necessarily full marriage, via civil unions.

This is a matter that is, of course, debatable both in terms of what's right and what's strategic, but it's a debate we need to have.