IGF CultureWatch

Spain will legalize same-sex marriages and grant equal rights to gay couples under incoming Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government, Reuters is reporting. The move is significant because Spain is one of Europe's most Catholic countries and the Vatican, as we all know, condemns same-sex unions with a vehemence.

Yes, the left does have its uses. But otherwise, I'm viscerally appalled and sickened by the new Spanish government. By shamefully declaring that his country would withdraw its coalition troops from Iraq in the wake of the terrorists pre-election attack in Madrid, Prime Minister-elect Zapatero sent a clear message of capitulation to the most fascistic enemies of freedom. He has greatly escalated the odds of more attacks, probably tied to swaying elections toward pro-withdrawal candidates, 'cause it worked so well in Spain. And he has heightened the resolve of the blood-thirsty murderers within Iraq. I won't even get into the harm that his anti-market, anti-trade policies will cause the global economy.

Time and again, the liberal-left parties that are horrific on economics and security are the ones most likely to support gay legal equality. And that is the challenge we face.

Fortunately, there are some exceptions -- in Great Britain, the leader of the Conservative Party, who once supported anti-gay legislation, has now endorsed Tony Blair's Civil Partnership act, which grants marriage-like rights to same-sex couples. In fact, the Tories recently held a "summit" to discuss reaching out to young gay voters.

But in America, those of us who support legal equality for all citizens, economic freedom, and the will to defend those freedoms, often have to make extremely difficult election choices -- as explored by the New York Times Magazine last week, when it reported that "The prospect of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is leading Log Cabin Republicans to question whether they can support George Bush in November."

Marriage Evolved, and Evolving.

Time and again, opponents of same-sex marriage claim that the institution's strength has been its immutability over millennial. But as two anthropologists write in the Washington Post, "The human record tells us otherwise." For instance:

the cult of romantic love in a companionate marriage is a recent innovation in the history of marriage. -- Marriage, in other words, is not only diverse across cultures but also dynamic and changing in America's own history".. This said, it is not the case that "anything goes." Every society favors forms of union that conform to its ethical standards and its needs.

And in America, our ethical standards, at their best, emphasize liberty and justice, not perpetuating discrimination for tradition's sake.

What happened to IGF this past week? The short version: we were hit with a "denial of service attack," a blizzard of unauthorized traffic that pushed us over our bandwidth limits and knocked us out. We're now back on a temporary server and hope to stay in business while we recover. Thanks for coming back to see us!

Special thanks are owed to Mike Airhart, Walter Olson, Jonathan Rauch, and others for their efforts and support.

--Stephen H. Miller and the IGF team

Peering into the Void.

IGF's co-managing editor Jonathan Rauch, author of the new book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, was interviewed earlier this week by radio host/Denver pastor Bob Enyart. As Jon puts it, "Ya gotta hear it to believe it."

If you can find humor in the vast mindlessness of the anti-gay religious right (Enyart, I'm told, is a Christian Reconstructionist) then enjoy this encounter at http://www.kgov.com/bel/2004/20040409-BEL072-24k.mp3 as "Bob Debates Homosexual Jon Rauch."

Another Example of 'Family Values'.

Anti-gay, anti-abortion leader Randall Terry of Operation Rescue writes in an op-ed that he has a gay son who, after spilling the beans to "Out" magazine, is no longer welcome in the Terry home. As Andrew Sullivan and others note, this is just one more example of how homophobia wrecks families. Growing up gay in the Terry household, it's no wonder the kid is "troubled."

More Recent Postings

4/04/04 - 4/10/04

Are President Bush and Karl Rove at risk of alienating many who would otherwise be in the forefront of the next generation of Republicans? Could be, judging from this column in the Yale Daily News by the head of that university's undergraduate Republicans. In "Gay Marriage Fits Republican Values," Al Jiwa writes:

I am firmly committed to the foreign policy of President Bush, believe strongly in the private sphere, and often prioritize the rights of states above federal jurisdiction. ...

The Republican Party stands for individual liberty and limited government; in calling for a constitutional amendment for the express reason of denying the validity of gay unions, we are contradicting these core principles, violating the dignity of our fellow citizens, and perpetuating lines of discrimination. ...

If marriage is a critical element of building a strong family unit (as many Republicans would contend), should we also not give every incentive possible to those who would make excellent parents? Instead, however, we discriminate against those who are more than capable of establishing long, stable relationships solely on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Yes, Yale is an elite liberal university and even its Republican activists could well be to the left of the party's core. Still, the GOP can't limit itself to the religious right and hard social conservatives if it hopes to remain the dominant party of the next generation.

Blogger Geitner Simmons has an interesting post about the ferocity with which some in Congress tried to expel gays from federal employment in the 1950s. Now that the Bush White House has reaffirmed a policy forbidding the firing of federal workers because of their sexual orientation -- after the administration's rightwing appointee to head the Office of Special Counsel tried to reverse course -- it's worth noting how far we've progressed, even with occasional flaps.

Simmons writes of how, under an executive order signed by Harry Truman in 1947, "the federal government could fire known or suspected subversives, habitual drunkards, homosexuals, and others susceptible to blackmail." Under pressure from Nebraska Sen. Kenneth Wherry, "a staunchly conservative Republican first elected in 1942," and like-minded allies, "an estimated seven to ten thousand real or suspected homosexuals -- Democrat and Republican -- lost their jobs during the 1950s."

The posting also cites the real-life Senate blackmail/suicide case on which novelist Allen Drury modeled the characters in his best-selling Advise and Consent.

Despite setbacks here and there, this is no longer the world in which we live, thankfully.
--Stephen H. Miller

The longish, wistful feature from the Washington Post, "Inventing a Marriage -- and a Divorce" looks at what lead one gay couple to join together in what they termed a "holy union" -- in 1976.

It was the spiritual, not the legal, side of marriage that was important to them, [Wayne] Schwandt recalled more than 25 years later. They wanted the blessing of the church and hardly thought about the state. "I was naive," Schwandt said. "I would not have understood what the 'legal protections of the law' would have meant.'"

Their union had no legal standing, but they hyphenated their names. "We were crazy," [James] Fortunato said. "It doesn't even fit on a credit card." He recalled trying to reason with irate Department of Motor Vehicles workers to change his name on his driver's license.

Sadly, like half of all marriages, their union didn't last the test of time, in part because it turned into a media circus. But one went on to a new, 20-year (and still counting) relationship that included a private exchange of rings at a church altar. Just a look at common lives being lived in uncommon times.

"The U.S. House of Representatives voted [last week] in favor of a bill supporting military recruitment on college campuses, prompting gay rights groups to vow to fight the bill when it moves to the Senate." That's the lead paragraph to this news story, and I can't think of a worse -- or better -- example of liberal activist myopia, and why such activists are held in disdain by so many Americans.

Yes, "don't ask, don't tell" is a terrible policy and we should lobby hard to revoke it, so that gays can serve openly in a military that holds all servicemembers to the same rules of on-duty decorum. But trying to stymie recruitment to the armed forces, while America is fighting a war on terrorism, makes me apoplectic. Do these activists really think a weaker military is the answer to discrimination? Sadly, the answer is probably yes.

And then there's the issue of recruitment bans on elite campuses themselves, which suggest that military service is best left to the less educated, non-latte drinking classes.

(IGF contributing author James Kirchick had more to say about campus recruitment bans in this column from the Yale Daily News.)

More Recent Postings

3/28/04 - 4/03/04

Perhaps fearing that its pandering to the religious conservatives' anti-gay agenda has gone too far (or been perceived as such), the White House declared this week that gay federal employees should not face workplace discrimination. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

"Long-standing federal policy prohibits discrimination against federal employees based on sexual orientation," said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "President Bush expects federal agencies to enforce this policy and to ensure that all federal employees are protected from unfair discrimination at work."

The surprise announcement came on the heels of mounting controversy over actions last month by a Bush appointee that appeared to reverse part of that policy. Social conservative Scott Bloch -- new head of the office charged with protecting federal workers from discrimination (!) -- in early February removed references to sexual orientation from his agency's website, complaint forms, brochures and training documents. Reports the Chronicle:

The Bloch controversy has threatened to undermine Bush's repeated efforts to emphasize his tolerance for gays and lesbians even as he backs a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It may also cement perceptions that the president is hostile to the gay community"

It's unclear, however, whether Bloch himself will now be pressured to reverse his "gay removal" policy, as the administration tries to find just the right balance between appearing too tolerant and too intolerant.

More on Massachusetts.

A correspondent writes:

In fairness to Kerry, the proposed MA "civil unions" are marriage in all but name. So, of course, the religious right is dead set against them and the constitutional amendment [in Massachusetts, which bans gay marriage but puts in place civil unions]. This issue boils down to how important you think a name is.

Ok, let me try this again. Kerry is better than Bush on gay issues, but not to the extent that justifies the free pass from gay supporters he's been getting. If Massachusetts had simply passed a Kerry-backed civil unions bill, that would be one thing. But once the state's Supreme Judicial Court put access to "real" marriage on the table, the bar for what's acceptable was permanently raised. Now, it would be a large step backwards to tie civil unions to a constitutional amendment that enshrines the concept that:

It being the public policy of this commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in the commonwealth.

In other words, they're saying that they'll never let us have full marriage equality -- not now, not down the road, no how.

This is more than just a matter of names, in my opinion, or even of whether civil unions might, under other circumstances, have been prudent as an intermediate step.

"For Some, a Sanitized Movement" in the Washington Post provides a voice for those gays who think marriage is a sell out:

The gay rights activists and theorists and feminists who critique the campaign from the left are the voices less often heard in the battle over gay marriage. -- [T]hey are mortified at the fate of a revolution pasteurized. They wonder what happened to championing sexual freedom and universal health care, and upending patriarchy?

Unfortunately, the article buys the false line that the gay movement began with leftists in the 1960s, after which time "conservatives" took advantage of the opening and moved in. Simply not so: Many very early gay activists were either political moderates favoring what's now termed "assimilation" or libertarians strongly opposed to socialism and statism. True, left-leaning radicals gained the spotlight in the '60s and '70s, but let's not entirely rewrite history!

While the Bush-backed Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution increasingly looks like it's going nowhere in Congress, the Kerry-backed Massachusetts state constitutional gay-marriage-ban amendment has now passed the Bay State's legislature. The amendment, of course, aims to quash gay marriage in the only state where it's on the verge of being recognized. Under state law, the amendment must again be approved by the next session of the legislature and then by the voters, at which time it may enjoy the support of President Kerry.

Here I bite my tongue to avoid making the obvious partisan comment and enduring the angry emails of gay Democrats, who are no doubt celebrating the great victory for civil unions in Massachusetts.

A move to add sexual orientation to the list of categories protected by the United Nations has been dropped in the midst of intense pressure from the Vatican and Muslim nations, reports GayWired.com. The motion was again shelved after it became clear the Vatican and Arab countries led by Egypt wouldn't let it pass. One openly gay member of the European Parliament, Britain's Michael Cashman, labeled the opposition as "The Unholy Axis" and added,

"Millions of people across the globe face imprisonment, torture, violence, and discrimination because of their sexual orientation. For the second year running the UN has failed to condemn this discrimination and the continuing abuses of human rights on the basis of a person's sexuality. Both the Vatican and the Conference of Islamic States should hang their heads in shame for having reduced their beliefs to the gutter of bigotry and discrimination."

The same alliance is attempting to revoke an executive order by Secretary General Kofi Annan that would provide the same-sex partners of UN workers with the benefits granted to married couples if their home countries approve.

One could be churlish and note that the bloody history of the Vatican and the Islamic states regarding the right to life and liberty for religious dissenters/minorities (not to mention gays and lesbians) is so dreadful that you have to wonder, gape jawed, at their sheer audacity to yet again promote an agenda of prejudice under the guise of religious orthodoxy.

More Recent Postings

3/28/04 - 4/03/04