IGF CultureWatch

Much of the media rehashing of the Rick Santorum controversy hasn't added much that's new. But Hendrik Hertzberg's piece in The New Yorker, Man Bites Dog, is very fine indeed. One astute observation among many:

Santorum believes that while individuals have no "right to consensual sex within the home" the state does have "rights to limit individuals' wants and passions," which is to say their feelings. --

It's probably unfair to parse Santorum's pronouncements as if they were products of ratiocination. No wonder, though, that liberal Democrats, moderate Republicans, and other non-hard-right types are increasingly nostalgic for the likes of Ronald Reagan (who delivered a forceful but unfortunately not fatal blow to Republican homophobia when he opposed a referendum that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in California's public schools) and Barry Goldwater (whose suspicion of Big Government did not include an opt-out provision for bedrooms).

Ultimately, Santorum will be seen as a throwback to authoritarian and statist conservatism, and the truly progressive, liberty-advancing strain of the movement will win out. The reason: at their best, traditional democratic liberalism (as opposed to welfare-state liberalism), small-government conservatism, and libertarianism inspire with the poetry of greater personal freedom coupled with respect for the rights of others. Santorum and his friends' appeal is premised on little more than fear. They're dinosaurs, and I suspect that even they know it.
--Stephen H. Miller

Think the Santorum flap revealed fault lines in America's culture wars? Wait till Massachusetts' highest court rules on gay marriage later this year, or so warns James Taranto's Best of the Web column on the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" site, which references and, in part, takes issue with Stanley Kurtz's latest anti-gay-marriage blowup over at the National Review.

On a happier note, read Tuesday's editorial re: Santorum in the Washington Post.
Stephen H. Miller

President Bush has nominated Claude A. Allen, a black conservative, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Allen served as press secretary to then-Sen. Jesse Helms during his 1984 North Carolina senate race against then-Gov. James Hunt. The Washington Post reports:

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said Democrats are scrutinizing Allen's statements about abortion and gays. During the 1984 campaign, Allen was criticized for his response to Hunt's description of Helms's backers as right-wingers. Allen said Hunt had links "with the queers." Nevertheless, a Senate Democratic aide said indications are that Allen would be confirmed. "He's an African American on a court that needs one," the aide said.

Guess it"ll be another victory for diversity.

I'd never say that the outrage isn't understandable over Sen. Rick Santorum's comments supporting sodomy laws, especially his assertion that if gay sex isn't kept as a criminal offense in Texas and elsewhere, than there's no stopping incest, bestiality, adultery, and polygamy! But I do think it's worthwhile, amidst the outrage, to rationally look at the shifts in the political culture being revealed. And the news, clearly, isn't all bad.

For starters, a few years back when then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott compared gays with alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, it hardly registered as a story outside the gay press. The Santorum blow-up, on the other hand, has received major national coverage, both print and broadcast. That's progress.

Another plus is the President's better-than-might-have-been-expected response. Again, I'm not praising Bush, but if we're going to be honest, it's worthwhile to look at what he said, and didn't say, about this affair. Here's White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, providing the "official" response:

"The president has confidence in Senator Santorum, both as a senator and as a member of the Senate leadership."

Asked about the president's views on homosexuality, Fleischer said a person's sexuality is "not a matter that the president concerns himself with" and that he judges people on how they act as a whole.

What's missing is any hint of support for Santorum's views on sodomy laws, or for the belief that consulting adults are not entitled to sexual privacy in their bedrooms. No wonder some religious conservatives are upset about this "timid" defense. In the words of the Family Research Council:

"Beyond a few tepid statements of personal support for Sen. Santorum, no prominent national GOP leader seems willing or able to mount a spirited, principled defense of marriage and family."

And to the religious right, that's come as a shock. The FRC added, by the way,

"The question naturally arises: Have Republican leaders been so intimidated by the smear tactics of the homosexual lobby and its Democratic attack dogs that they are cowering in silence?"

Well, not quite "cowering," but while Bush won't do or say anything that's seen as too supportive of gays, he won't do or say anything that looks like he endorsing intolerance, either. So Bush praises Santorum as "an inclusive man" (ha!), and says he's interested in how the Supreme Court will rule, shortly, on the constitutionality of sodomy statutes. Right now, all signs point to a ruling that, at the very least, voids same-sex-only sodomy laws, and Bush won't have a problem with that, either.

Thus the balancing act goes on, to the chagrin of both gay activists and their opposites in the religious right -- both sides convinced the President has sold his soul to the other.

SARS Envy?

"Some [activists] question why HIV didn't get the attention SARS does," says a headline in the April 25 issue of the Washington Blade (this story isn't online). Talk about comparative victimization contests! The main governmental responses to SARS have been contact tracing and quarantine. Just imagine if that had been the response to AIDS! Obviously, since HIV is NOT spread casually through the air, quarantine would be inappropriate. A case might be made for contract tracing to alert those infected with HIV early on, a standard public health response to a deadly communicable disease, but AIDS activists put up a fight, fearing - with some justification - that quarantine could follow. Even today, the same issue of the Blade has a piece about activists criticizing a CDC proposal for routine HIV screening by doctors!
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

04/20/03 - 04/26/03

A fun column on Santorum by Jim Pinkerton nevertheless raises important issues regarding fractures within the GOP over you know what.

On Another Topic...

Syndicated columnist Rex Wockner looks at the ever-expanding LGBTQITS acronym and asks why enough is never enough.

Andrew Sullivan offers a Santorum-fest. Well worth reading. And there's this editorial from the Washington Post, a Richard Cohen column, and Howard Kurtz's media wrapup.

Also, USA Today provides a nice overview of the GOP's gay problem.

As expected, the "wingnuts" of the religious right are stepping up to embrace Santorum. But conservative Stanley Kurtz, who says he opposes sodomy laws but doesn't support using courts to overturn them, writes what is at least an interesting defense of the Pennsylvania senator's comments. (Sullivan, however, has little difficulty taking it apart.)

Then there are the Utah polygamists upset over Santorum's linking of polygamy with homosexuality!

By the way, a colleague notes that the Human Rights Campaign, the big gay liberal lobby, joined with civil rights groups in demanding that Sen. Trent Lott resign his senate leadership spot over expressions of nostalgia for segregation, but that the civil rights establishment has been noticeably silent on Santorum's defense of arresting gays in their bedrooms.

A spokeswoman for Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) tells the media that the senator "has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals." So not only does he assure us that his political positions (such as supporting sodomy laws) have nothing to do with actual people, he uses totally PC language to boot. Call it a victory for all those who've devoted their time and energy to making sure everyone - bigots included - gets their "inclusive" nomenclature correct.

More Hysteria on the Right.

The religious conservatives at the Family Research Council are spending the week exposing the Bush administration's ties to the homosexual agenda. Today's online installment - "Homosexual Lobby: Follow the Money" (which, apparently, leads to the Republican National Committee). The far right's paranoia mirrors the far left's dementia.
--Stephen H. Miller

Pennsylvania's GOP Senator Rick Santorum said some really stupid and nasty things about gay people in an interview with the AP, voicing support for sodomy laws and comparing homosexuality with polygamy, adultery, and incest. In response, gay groups across the spectrum denounced Santorum's remarks. The Log Cabin Republicans issued a press release (not yet online) that read, in part:

"There is nothing conservative about allowing law enforcement officials to enter the home of any American and arrest them for simply being gay". Mainstream America is embracing tolerance and inclusion. I am appalled that a member of the United States Senate leadership would advocate dividing Americans with ugly hate filled rhetoric," said Log Cabin Republican executive director Patrick Guerriero.

The Human Rights Campaign, the large gay liberal lobby, is much better at posting their press releases online. Theirs read in part:

"Sen. Santorum's remarks are deeply hurtful and play on deep-seated fears that fly in the face of scientific evidence, common sense, and basic decency. Clearly, there is no compassion in his conservatism," said HRC Political Director Winnie Stachelberg. "Discriminatory remarks like this fuel prejudice that can lead to violence and other harms against the gay community."

Regarding the latter, I prefer avoiding the all-too-common activist response of denoucing language as "deeply hurtful," along with assertions that "hurtful" language will lead to violence - the underlying premise for speech codes. What Santorum said should be strongly criticized because he's a senator who wants to deny gay people our fundamental civil liberties, not because he hurt our feelings.

The Fight to Serve.

From a report by San Francisco's KGO-TV:

On the frontlines of the war with Iraq there is something new among the rank and file - gays and lesbians fighting alongside Americans. Thirteen of the U.S.'s partners in Operation Enduring Freedom allow homosexuals to serve in the military. Still, the U.S. has a policy that prohibits soldiers from being openly gay. But that's not keeping them from serving "

And this Washington Post editorial reminds us of just how counter-productive the gay ban continues to be, as in the surreal, ongoing purge from the military of gay Arabic-speaking linguists.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

04/13/03 - 04/19/03

"Queering the Schools" is the title of an article in the Spring 2003 issue of the Manhattan Institute's "City Journal," by Marjorie King. The Manhattan Institute is a conservative policy institute, but they're not rightwing nuts (they fed many reformist ideas to former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani), so it was dismaying to see an article with the tag line: "Gay activist groups, with teachers' union applause, are importing a disturbing agenda into the nation's public schools." The article has already drawn favorable comment from National Review online.

King blasts academic "queer theory" and Michael Warner, the Rutgers prof who says outrageous things about using "queer" sexuality to undermine the social order. But she then attacks high school gay-straight alliances as a plot to spread queer theory to susceptible teens. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network (GLSEN) is portrayed as part of this conspiracy, as King writes:

Every course in every public school should focus on LGBT issues, GLSEN believes. A workshop at GLSEN's annual conference in Chicago in 2000 complained that "most LGBT curricula are in English, history and health" and sought ways of introducing its agenda into math and science classes, as well. (As an example of how to queer geometry, GLSEN recommends using gay symbols such as the pink triangle to study shapes.)

For the record, I think groups like GLSEN do good and necessary work for the most part, and I strongly support gay-straight alliances that offer refuge to gay students while promoting gay inclusion. I also favor requiring public schools to take reasonable steps to fight gay-bashing, as an appellate court recently upheld.

But let's admit that well-intentioned efforts can, and sometimes do, cross the line into heavy handedness, telling students what to think and feel, not just how to behave civilly. Such tactics are a gift to anti-gay activists, who then brand all our efforts as part of an extremist scheme -- costing us credibility and making it harder to accomplish truly worthy goals, such as defending the rights of students to organize gay-straight alliances. Note: This does not mean that conservative attacks, such as the "City Journal" diatribe, aren't deplorable (author King, while focusing on activist excesses, shows she has no sense whatsoever how miserable life for a gay or lesbian high school student can be).
--Stephen H. Miller

The aptly named Stephen Funk is a gay Marine Corps reservist who, in consort with leftwing anti-war activists, held a press conference at the beginning of April to announce he was seeking conscientious objector status. Funk said he'd discovered "the military coerces people into killing" and "I believe that as a gay man"I have a great deal of experience with hatred and oppression."

Since being reported by the AP and other media, Funk's story has been used by some rightwing commentators to show that gays don't belong in the military. That logic, of course, is specious; one self-promoter -- who wanted military benefits as long as he wasn't required to keep his end of the contract and actually take up arms -- proves nothing about gay servicemembers in general. But it does show how activists on the left will use gays to advance their own political agenda, even when it undermines the ongoing fight for gay equality (such as the ability to serve one's country in the military, regardless of sexual orientation).

Reaching Out.

Speaking of the anti-gay right, several of the usual suspects are boiling mad that Marc Racicot, the chairman of Republican National Committee, addressed a meeting of the Human Rights Campaign, the Washington Post reports. Said Robert Knight of the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute:

"When you meet with a group that holds values that are antithetical to those of your base, you're sending the signal that your base is being taken for granted or is not respected -- that's what Mr. Racicot has done here. It would be like Al Gore meeting with the John Birch Society."

Well, they better get used to it - the GOP is in earnest about reaching out to ethnic minorities and gays, having realized (finally) that its base needs to expand if the party is to grow and thrive. In particular, Hispanics and (to a lesser extent) gays are seen as constituencies that could be attracted to the GOP's key themes of lower taxes and less regulation. Whether the anti-gay conservatives will stage an protracted fight over this remains to be seen.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Oliveri.

I like this local story from Hollywood, Florida about a city commissioner who failed to realize that gratuitous anti-gay remarks will now land you in hot water, politically speaking. Being forced to apologize by "outraged gay residents" -- and voters -- over his there-goes-the-neighborhood remarks linking gays and porn shops was proper comeuppance, and a sign of how those who fail to recognize the changed political landscape will find themselves blindsided.
--Stephen H. Miller

Recent Postings

04/06/03 - 04/12/03