IGF CultureWatch

A Boston labor union representing some 6,000 members has amended its benefit plans to exclude gay married couples from receiving health and pension benefits, evoking fears that this could set a dangerous precedent for other unions and employers throughout Massachusetts, reports the Boston Globe. Trustees and administrators of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 issued a clarification of the phrase "dependent spouse" to mean "a person of the opposite sex." The move effectively denies gay married couples the same benefits other married couples receive under the union's pension plan, health plan, and deferred income benefits.

Says union administrator Russell F. Sheehan, "I'm sure we have plenty of gay members, and that's OK. They shouldn't have expected benefits if they knew their plan." The Globe story adds that "Sheehan brushed aside any suggestion that the step could be discriminatory and stressed that his union is free to extend benefits as it sees fit." No, not discriminatory at all. It's not like they're real married couples, is it?

The Washington Post, a bit late on the draw (as were gay organizations) on Sunday ran a strongly worded editorial against the recently enacted Virginia law banning not only recognition of gay marriages and civil unions, but any private contracts that seek to bestow marriage-like rights between same-sex couples. The full extent of this extremist lunacy is just now becoming evident to many. But how did this thing pass with no attention from either the media or activists? (As noted in an earlier posting, Virginia's main gay rights group was hesitant to push the state Democratic Party to oppose the measure, for reasons still largely unexplained.)

The silver lining, as the Post editorial notes: the law is so bad, it may eventually prove an embarrassment even to its backers in Richmond, capital of the Confederacy and still in rebellion against modernity.

In Massachusetts, anti-gay groups have asked a federal court to block the legalization of gay marriage next week, arguing that the state's highest court violated the U.S. Constitution with its landmark November ruling. The nonprofit Liberty Counsel (sort of an anti-Lambda Legal Defense) and its allies filed the case on behalf of Robert Largess of Boston, vice president of the Catholic Action League, who apparently believes that allowing same-sex couples to marry would be an impermissible violation of his civil rights. Go figure.

As quoted by the AP, legal expert Shari Levitan called the motion a "Hail Mary pass," saying, "I think the significance of this is not the case itself but that it highlights such strong emotions. People are willing to go to the mat with any argument to push their claim." We certainly do drive them up the walls, don't we.

Meanwhile, the AP also reports that the seaside gay mecca of Provincetown will issue out-of-state same-sex couples marriage licenses in defiance of Governor Mitt Romney's residency edict (based on a resurrected anti-miscegenation law), likely setting the stage for another round of gay marriage legal -- and political -- battles.

The Washington Blade has one of the better roundups on Iraqi prisoner abuse. A recent letter chides us for not doing more about the scandal, and I hope our IGF writers will give it the sort of thoughtful analysis this story calls for. In the meantime, I'll just say that the events at Abu Ghraib prison -- where Iraqi prisoners were photographed naked, forced to simulate gay sex, and otherwise humiliated and abused -- exposes many levels of sexual twistedness all round: The U.S. military, whose guards (and possibly prison administrators) consider gay sex the ultimate in humiliation/emasculation, and the Iraqi insurgents/terrorists, who consider gay sex the ultimate in humiliation/emasculation. As one prisoner who was stripped told the Associated Press (this from the Blade account), "They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel, and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."

At this point, we have pictures (and admissions by the U.S. military) of such things as prisoners being striped, posed as if having gay sex, forced to form a naked pyramid, being tied up and pulled on a leash, and being forced to crawl naked along the floor. This is abuse and mistreatment, to be sure, but is it "torture," as some in the media and the anti-war camp have labeled it (e.g., Seymour Hersh's "Torture at Abu Ghraib" in The New Yorker)?

Well, if some of the accusations, to date unsubstantiated, about actual sodomy/rape or even murder prove true, then yes, it's torture. But if it's being stripped and posed and forced to crawl, then I think the use of the word "torture" also signifies on the part of the media (and some war critics) the view that being forced to simulate gay sex is the very worst than can be done to a man -- apparently equivalent to the actual physical torture that Saddam inflicted year after blood-curdling year on innocent dissidents in the same prison. (Again, I say this about the events we have proof of -- not the as of now unproved allegations).

More Recent Postings

5/02/04 - 5/08/04

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) this week issued a statement criticizing Democrats for their lukewarm opposition to the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. That's good, but the NGLTF statement, titled "That's What Friends Are For - Where are Democrats on the Federal Marriage Amendment?," starts off in typical fashion with a laundry lists of complaints against the Bush administration that has nothing to do with gays. Instead, NGLTF's Matt Foreman writes:

"You've got to hand it to the Bush administration: they take care of their own. Wealthy folks have received tax breaks; Star Wars defense contractors are reaping billions; pollution controls on business are being eased; national forests have been opened to logging."

Thus having shown the GOP that there's no way short of hell freezing over that gays (on behalf of whom NGLTF claims to speak) would ever support their party, regardless of the Republicans' stance on gay rights, NGLTF then criticizes the Democrats for not scuttling the Federal Marriage Amendment despite overwhelming gay support for their party:

"[K]illing the amendment requires only 34 votes, and there are 48 Democrats, five of whom are retiring at the end of this year. In other words, every single Democratic Senator considered "at risk" this fall could be "let off the hook" on this vote, if necessary, and the amendment would still be defeated. ...

" I don't understand why our community should have to spend one more hour, one more dime, make one more phone call or write one more letter to make sure an anti-gay, anti-marriage constitutional amendment is dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate. ...

"We thought we could help head this off and give some cover to those now getting squishy on us by getting a few senators from safe (let me say SAFE) seats not up for election this year to say unambiguously that they would oppose any amendment seeking to restrict marriage rights. ... Turns out not even THEY would come through."

But here's a point worth noting: no Democrat reading the NGLTF statement, which equates gay interests with the whole left-wing political agenda, would ever fear that gays would abandon the party that stands against Bush's tax cuts, military spending, and attempts to loosen excessive business and environmental regulation, no matter what the Democrats do or don't do as regards the Federal Marriage Amendment. Thus does NGLTF undercut its own efforts.

[Addendum]: It occurs to me on re-reading this piece that NGLTF's statement is an excellent example of a near-total lack of understanding about market economics. Metaphorically, in a town with just two grocery stores, Foreman is telling the managers of the Red Supermarket that we will never shop with you (and cursed be anyone who does), while complaining to the managers of the Blue Supermarket that their customer service stinks.

Heritage Relents.

The Heritage Foundation has, apparently, removed Paul Cameron's pseudo-scientific studies from its research database (see Wednesday's item, "Shameful Heritage'). Andrew Sullivan and others had also called Heritage to task over its inclusion of Cameron's crank polemics as if they represented legitimate social science research on homosexuality. Sometimes, embarassment works.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that's more or less in the mainstream rather than on the far edges of the right, and which enjoys close ties to the Bush administration, has launched a research database for conservative policy wonks. Naturally, they devote an entire section to "homosexuality." And what passes for solid social science research at Heritage these days? How about at least two pieces by the king of social science falsification, Paul Cameron.

As you may recall, we have posted a few pieces revealing what a scurrilous creature Cameron is, including "Queer Science" by Mark E. Pietrzyk (originally published in the New Republic). Excerpt:

Cameron himself is also a demonizer of gays: several times he has proposed the tattooing and quarantining of AIDS patients and raised the possibility of exterminating male homosexuals. Most important, he is the architect of unreliable "surveys" that purport to show strains of violence and depravity in gay life.

And Walter Olson, writing on "Phony Statistics," notes:

Cameron resigned under fire from the American Psychological Association and was later formally terminated from membership following complaints about his research methods. He has had run-ins with other professional groups, including the Nebraska Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association.

So maybe Heritage isn't so mainstream after all.

Informed Chat.

Our own Jon Rauch had an online chat this week with readers of the Washington Post. An excerpt:

I favor going a state at a time with gay marriage. Let it start out where it has social support. Then it has the best shot at working. And as the rest of the country sees that the sky doesn't fall and in fact marriage is strengthened, GM will win not just legal but also social acceptance.

Which is like getting a bicycle instead of a unicycle.

Click here to read more.

Take a look at some of the family developments so far week (via links to 365gay.com):

• In Idaho, the state Supreme Court heard the case of a father who lost custody of his two children because he's gay, and who was then denied visitation rights with his kids as long as he lived with his same-sex partner.
• In Washington state, an appeals court ordered a new trial for a woman denied co-parental rights for the little girl she helped raise.
• In Kansas, legislators rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The state, however, already has a Defense of Marriage Act that limits marriage to a man and a woman.
• In Oklahoma, the governor signed legislation barring state recognition of adoptions by gay couples from out of state. Same-sex Oklahoma couples were already prevented from adopting. Apparently, this law could nullify parental rights and obligations if same-sex couples who jointly adopted a child move to the OK state, turning the child into an orphan.

All this while Massachusetts prepares, against its governor's will, to officially recognize same-sex marriages at the state level. It's quite a crazy quilt, but not too long ago some states allowed women's suffrage while others didn't. And, for that matter, slave and abolition states uncomfortably existed for nearly a century in the same federal union. Which is simply to say that justice is going to come at different times to different parts of the nation, mixed with hefty doses of imbecilic, family-nullifying reaction delivered by hypocritically "pro-family" demagogues. Get used to it.

"May 17 will change the world for lesbians and gays, for better, or for worse," reports the San Francisco Chronicle in this comprehensive wrap-up on Massachusetts, where the upcoming, first ever, state-sanctioned gay marriages in the United States will take place:

The Massachusetts marriages are clearly a turning point. Unlike San Francisco's February flurry of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, which are on hold until the courts resolve their legality, these will be fully legal and may be accepted in a handful of other states such as New York.

Further notes the Chron, however:

Gay activists said that while publicly they will attempt to play up the celebrations, they are also watching what one called an "intense backlash" not witnessed even when women sought the right to vote or African Americans pushed for the end of Jim Crow.

There's no attribution for who actually offered this position, but it's clearly wrong-headed. Neither women's suffrage nor civil rights were won without years of intense struggle against a brutally hostile populace that was eventually won over. Life's just not that easy.

I like, however, that the article reports that:

The state's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, promises to enforce a 1913 miscegenation statute that voids marriages conducted in Massachusetts for out-of-state same-sex couples if that marriage would not be accepted in their home state. Several county clerks have said they will refuse to enforce the 1913 law.

Could there be a better, or worse, metaphor for those opposed to same-sex marriage than trying to bring back to life a miscegenation statute? Apparently, the symbolism hasn't gotten through to them, alas.

There's an intriguing story in the Washington Blade this week focusing on Virginia, where the state's GOP-controlled legislature passed legislation that not only bans recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions, but also bans recognition of legal contracts between same-sex partners intended to confer marriage-like rights. Virginia's Democratic governor, Mark Warner, had sought to strip the contract-banning provisions from the anti-gay bill while supporting the civil union and marriage ban, but when the legislature added these back in he signed the bill into law anyway. Had he used his veto, chances are it would have been overridden, but he would at least have made a clear statement against bigotry and discrimination.

The Blade reports in "Lobbying Effort Faulted in Va. Fight" that Equality Virginia, the state's LGBT lobby, never asked Virginia's Democratic Party to help it work against this legislation:

"The thought of involving Virginia's Democratic Party, within walking distance from Equality Virginia, to lean on House and Senate Democrats, never occurred to [Equity Virginia's Dyana] Mason. 'I"ve contacted them in the past, but never followed up. We"ve always crossed in the night,' Mason said."

Given that Equality Virginia just about exclusively backs Democrats and enthusiastically worked for Gov. Warner's election, isn't some payback expected from the party machine? And no, I'm NOT excusing the Republican homophobes, the prime movers in this drama. But it's the Democrats that, overwhelmingly, get the gay vote and collect gay dollars. What's the point if that's just considered a freebie?

More Recent Postings

4/25/04 - 5/01/04

Opining in The New Republic, Jeffrey Rosen joins those same-sex marriage supporters who argue for legislative over judicial action: He writes:

The experience in Europe suggests that, when victories for gay equality come from legislatures rather than courts, they can eventually grow into something more: The legislature in the Netherlands initially recognized civil unions and, several years later, granted gays and lesbians the full benefits of marriage. Unless they are forced by courts to recognize gay marriage before the public is ready, state legislatures may move through the same progression, recognizing first civil unions and eventually gay marriage. For the moment, the best thing for judges to do is the thing they're most likely to do, which is very little.

As I said earlier, there's a valid point here, and in many jurisdictions we're too quick to seek judicial solutions rather than striving to win popular support. On the other hand, would African-Americans still be waiting for government-decreed segregation to end in the South if the courts hadn't interceded to ensure legal equality for a minority against majority animus? (Oops, just ticked off all those black, anti-gay "civil rights leaders" again.)