IGF CultureWatch

I"m Back. A bit jet-lagged, but ready to pick up where we left off.

More on Montana. When last we blogged, the news of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus's slimy attack ad had just hit, and I wondered what the response might be. In fact, the Democratic-leaning Human Rights Campaign did come out with a critical statement saying, "HRC deplores any attempt to make a political issue of a candidate's real or perceived sexual orientation," and that "This type of ad has no place in politics, it is an affront to gay people and we hope we have seen the last of this campaign tactic." The HRC release, however, includes a lengthy excerpt from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee denying that the ad traded on anti-gay stereotypes. HRC does not comment on the DSCC statement. Are they trying to have their cake (denouncing a clearly homophobic tactic) and eat it, too (by avoiding giving too much offense to Democrats)?

Mickey Kaus of Slate's kausfiles had an item that includes a link to the ad. Comments Kaus, "It's a fabulous, highly-refined exercise in sleazy, leering innuendo, especially the final few nanoseconds in which Taylor's hand reaches down, down. ...." [toward his customer's crotch]

And finally, it was nice to see Marc Racicot, former governor of Montana and current head of the Republican National Committee, criticize the ad by telling the AP that "What is particularly insidious is that the Democratic Party has tried to present itself as a champion of fair and equal treatment of everyone, including those who are victims of judgment based on sexual orientation." Still, his comments come close to suggesting that labeling someone as gay is what's unacceptable, rather than the offensive stereotypes and, as Kaus says, leering innuendo.

More Political Slime. A Campaign Update from the Democratic National Committee's Office of GLBT Outreach that's making the e-mail rounds (but not posted online) focuses on the race between Oregon's GOP incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith and his opponent, Democrat Bill Bradbury. It's titled "Bradbury Calls on Gordon Smith to Explain Comment Comparing Homosexuality to Adultery and Implying that Gays and Lesbians Should be 'Saved"."

Gordon Smith, you might not realize, is a pro-gay moderate Republican who supports both the proposed federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the proposed federal hate crimes statute, two key items on the liberal gay movement's agenda. His transgression, apparently, was to appear before a group of religious conservatives and to try to mute their opposition to a hate crimes law that would increase penalties for attacks motivated by anti-gay bias. Smith reportedly told them, "If Christ can save a woman's life caught in the act of adultery -- without endorsing her lifestyle, but saving her life -- why can't we do that?"

Said Bradbury, "Smith's quote equating homosexuality with adultery undermines his claim that he supports the gay and lesbian community." Now think about this. Here is Gordon Smith trying to talk to religious conservatives in the language they understand, telling them that even if they don't accept homosexuality based on their religious literalism, they should still support -- or at least not mobilize to oppose -- efforts to curtail anti-gay violence (and, by the way, this is regardless of our own debate about whether a hate crimes bill actually will accomplish this). But oh, he used the word "lifestyle" and drew on a religious parallel. For shame! He's a HOMOPHOBE, so vote him out of office.

Time Off. I"ll be traveling for the next week and a half and won't be posting. But I"ll be back in touch after Oct. 20th.
--Stephen H. Miller

As I Depart. Let's see if all those liberal GLBT groups that were outraged by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's joking about lesbianism will take offense at a campaign ad by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus (Montana) that seems to have traded on anti-gay stereotypes. In castigating GOP candidate Mike Taylor, who ran a beauty school (and who says he's straight), the Baucus ad shows a videotape of Taylor from the 1980s in which he's wearing an open-front shirt and gold chains while massaging a man's face. Hmmm.

Bears in Toyland. Newsweek's website has a nice piece about Gay Day at Disneyland. Writes Ana Figueroa in A Gay Old Time:

I noticed that throngs of red-shirted men had gathered at the "Grizzly River Rapids" to brave the water ride together.... "Bill," a middle-aged man from the San Fernando Valley, was wringing out his socks after a soaking from the ride. His red shirt read, BEARS LA and had a picture of the Grizzly Mountain attraction on it. The Bears, he explained, are a "Gay Day subgroup." From what I could tell, they are also a rather hirsute subgroup. All the Bears on the ride seemed to have beards, and from what I picked up, a fixation not only with the Grizzly River Rapids but with the "Country Bear Jamboree" attraction at Disneyland.

After trying unsuccessfully to steer me away from the red shirts, my media guides exchanged heated words under their breath. No doubt each blamed the other for letting me stray off the pre-arranged press program. But they needn't have worried that I"d hear anti-Disney utterances. Throughout the park, groups of Gay Day attendees strolled around, enjoying themselves. Perhaps this wasn't the crowd Disney would have liked as a backdrop for its new attraction of rides for little kids. But, then again, there were numerous gay parents there with their children. I asked countless red-shirted patrons if they"ve been hassled by security, or made to feel in any way unwelcome. All replied in the negative.

Just another all-American outing -- and just as it should be.

Too Much of a Good Thing? A new Gallup poll reveals that Americans estimate approximately 20% of the general population is gay or lesbian. About a quarter of the public thinks that more than 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. Note: this is a survey of public perceptions only, not a count of gay people. Actual studies of the gay population often show from 3 to 5% are gay. Activists, twisting a figure from an old Kinsey study, like to claim we're 10%. But it's startling to think that so many Americans think that we are so many.

Comments Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in a press statement: "Clearly, the public realizes that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is sizable. Our hope is that this represents a better understanding of the complex nature of sexual orientation and a growing trend of respect and acceptance for our community and our lives." But I"m not so sure that the oversized guesstimate in this or another poll GLAAD references (but neither of which, contra GLAAD, asked about the transgendered) is necessarily a good thing. All it says, in and of itself, is that Americans think there are more of us -- which for some means, I"m sure, that we"re a larger threat.

Here's another interesting finding by Gallup:

While just slightly more than 50% of the public says that homosexual relations should be legal, well over eight out of ten say that homosexuals should have equal rights. These two questions may play to different norms that exist in contemporary America. The legal question may tap into a general sense of morality, and a reluctance of a more conservative segment of society to sanction what they consider to be deviant behavior. The question about equal opportunity, on the other hand, may invoke the public's attitudes about discrimination, fair play and equal treatment.

Read that again; just over 50% thinks we should be legal, or at least legally allowed to have sex (although I think it's possible some respondents were confused by the term "homosexual relations" and may have thought it referred to gay marriage).

Despite what any poll may mean by itself, if anything, gay people will keep on being who we are, and eventually the American public, however bad with numbers -- or with the concept of equality under the law for all -- will come around.
--Stephen H. Miller

Someone Else's War. During a rally on Monday organized by Harvard Law School's student-run gay rights group, faculty members urged the university to file suit against the U.S. government. Their aim is to keep the military's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) from recruiting on campus. While I share their disdain for "don't ask, don't tell," do these people really think this is the time to be publicly undermining recruitment efforts? And doing so in the name of gay rights, as the nation prepares for what may be a necessary war to secure our safety from a foreign tyrant armed with weapons of mass destruction, can only cast aspersions on our patriotism -- just the message we don't want to send the military as we lobby to undo the policy.

Said Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, one of O.J. Simpson's trial lawyers, "I don't see the downside of litigating"" They never do.
--Stephen H. Miller

The Other "Religious Right". As of 6 p.m. Monday, the popular gay news site planetout.com had not listed the stabbing on Sunday of openly gay Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe by a religiously motivated Muslim under either "Today's Headlines" or "Hot Stories". But planetout did have room to regurgitate the fact that GLBT groups are "outraged" at Florida Gov. Jeb Bush over his off the cuff remarks this weekend regarding two women charged with fraud in connection with a foster child's disappearance ("Bet you don't get that in Pensacola," Jeb kidded a group of upstate legislators about the women, one of whom reportedly told co-workers to "Tell my 'wife' I've been arrested.").

I suspect planetout.com will get around to the stabbing, as will the typically "outraged" GLBT groups themselves, perhaps by the time you read this. After all, unlike gay but conservative Dutch political leader Pim Fortuyn, whose assassination by a leftwing animal rights activist earlier this year triggered no outrage whatsoever from GLBT movement groups, Delanoe is a socialist. Still, the delay may be evidence of how touchy and "controversial" it still is for some gay folks to deal with the fact of the virulently homophobic Muslim religious right.

Advocate.com, I should note for the sake of fairness, does lead with Paris mayor stabbed in antigay attack, although unlike some wire accounts the fact that the assailant was motivated by his devout Muslim beliefs is relegated to the final graph. Would they have done the same if Delanoe had been attached by a Christian religious rightist? Dream on.
--Stephen H. Miller

Arguments can be made on either side about the likely war with Iraq. However, it's regretful that the leadership of the Metropolitan Community Churches - the world's largest gay and lesbian Christian body - have issued a statement about Iraq that suggests American aggression is the true villain. Titled A Call for Peaceful Resolution to Conflict with Iraq,
the statement begins:

Today America and Britain stand poised to go to war against the nation of Iraq and its people. Over the past 12 years international policies toward the Iraqi government have vacillated between support for Iraq in its quest to suppress opposition forces to vilification of the Iraqi nation as the personification of evil.

We call upon all people of faith and people of goodwill everywhere, especially our sisters and brothers in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities who know first hand what it means to be vilified, labeled and violently attacked, and who also know how difficult it is to survive under such circumstances, to join with the friends and members of Metropolitan Community Churches to oppose any further acts of aggression against Iraq.

Well, excuuuse me. But even if the MCC elders don't believe Saddam Hussein's regime of mass murder and his attempts to stockpile weapons of mass destruction represent a threat to the world, do they really think it's the Iraqi people our government is vilifying so that they can be "violently attacked" in "further acts of aggression against Iraq"? I have seen nothing that seeks to degrade the long-suffering people of Iraq; it is clearly the totalitarian regime headed by Saddam Hussein that is being presented - with a good deal of hard evidence - as an ongoing threat. The goal is regime change, which would liberate the people of Iraq.

The left likes to claim that this will be a racist war because the Iraqi army is non-white (if Arabs are non-white, are Jews?). While MCC doesn't use that phrase, it lurks behind the charge that the war will be an attack against the Iraqi people, with a strained equivalence made to gay-bashing in the U.S. Give me a break.

MCC tells us the war will not "promote the equitable distribution of resources" and instead will "divert international attention and resources from more critical issues including world poverty, a rapidly deteriorating ecological destruction, and oppression of too many of the world's peoples." This is stale leftist cant, implying that the war wouldn't make the Iraqi people freer (and allow them to participate in the world's market economy, making them richer), but instead would lead to more oppression and poverty. "We must stand together unequivocally for peace," state the MCC elders. But there are times when passivity in the face of evil is not a righteous act.
--Stephen H. Miller

Oct. 3, 2002

More than two weeks after the error was first called to their attention, the Human Rights Campaign has finally corrected its online press release denouncing the nomination of Michael McConnell to the U.S. Court of Appeals. As I noted in my Sept. 19 posting In His Own Words?, HRC put quotes marks around a paraphrase of McConnell's remarks by a conservative group, making it seem as if the words are a direct quote from McConnell. HRC was immediately notified about their error, but waited more than two weeks to post a revision. "Mistakes made in this press release were corrected," readers are now told, with no further elaboration.

In the meantime, reliable Bush-antagonist Michelangelo Signorile picked up the non-quote quote and used it to attack McConnell's nomination in his New York Press column. That's why misquotes are so dangerous; if not corrected quickly, they take on a life of their own. Now you can expect the false quote to be used again and again by gay rights advocates critical of McConnell.

My original posting was not an endorsement of McConnell (who has been endorsed, however, by the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay GOPers), but primarily a criticism of the misuse of quotes by HRC - which I view as a very serious matter, journalistically speaking. I was also critical of HRC's failure to note that McConnell had a few pro-gay notches (such as supporting the rights of students to form an official Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school in conservative Salt Lake City), and to note that while McConnell was part of the Boys Scout's legal defense, that many people also support the right of associations to control their own membership and leadership without necessarily being bigots or homophobes.

Nevertheless, this week the Independent Gay Forum received a rather impassioned letter from Wayne Besen, HRC's Deputy Director of Communications.

Besen writes that:

"Miller is correct to point out that in a recent press release the Human Rights Campaign directly attributed to U.S. Court of Appeals nominee Michael McConnell a statement paraphrasing one of his speeches. As the author of this press release I apologize for this mistake. However, I write to rebut Miller's characterization of McConnell's record and to re-affirm HRC's opposition to his nomination. We do not believe a mistake in punctuation resulted in any distortion of his record. Furthermore, we question the value of Miller's accusations attributing a sinister motive to HRC over an innocent typo."

In case there is any doubt, let me note that the quote marks above indicate that this is taken verbatim from Besen's letter; it is not a paraphrase by a person or group with its own agenda. To put words in someone's mouth they didn't utter, especially when the issue is as high-charged as whether a judicial nominee is anti-gay in his thoughts and emotions, as opposed to a believer in judicial restraint or even an advocate of some sort of equivalence for both religious conservatives and gays (however strained), is not simply "a typo" of no consequence. Quotation marks have a very specific and in some cases legal meaning, which everyone understands. To fail to correct this "typo" for several weeks, during a period when the media was initially focused on the nomination battle, is simply not acceptable.

Besen also writes:

"Miller should redirect his anger to criticizing those who truly threaten our liberty - the extreme right. Although fair criticism of GLBT groups is desirable and understandable, Miller's attacking GLBT groups for opposing a judicial nominee with a consistent anti-gay record is disgraceful and unconscionable."

Let me say this about that: Virtually all gay organization or news websites copiously cover the antics of the religious right; taking aim at the groupthink of the gay liberal-left is still fairly unique, and I make no apologies for marching out of lockstep. If Besen actually did welcome "fair criticism" he wouldn't be so furious that someone had actually dared to, well, criticize.

IGF has posted Besen's entire letter, so you can judge for yourself. Also, you should check out IGF contributor Dale Carpenter's latest Out Right column, defending McConnell. Dale, now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was a student of McConnell's and finds HRC's version of the man a gross distortion. Guess he can expect a little letter from HRC as well.

An Addendum. The McConnell nomination is also discussed by Hastings Wyman, who writes the syndicated Capital Letters column on politics and gays. Wyman writes: "On balance, given that one cannot expect Republican George W. Bush to nominate a lawyer with liberal credentials on social issues for a judgeship, McConnell probably isn't so bad." He also observes, "What is different about this nomination, however, is that even a Republican White House now understands that trying to win at least a modicum of gay support is an important part of the confirmation battle," and shows how this is, in itself, is a sign of progress.

Last week's issue of Time magazine had, buried in a long piece about American Taliban John Walker Lindh, a suggestion that "Taliban Johnny" had shared a gay relationship with a Pakistani businessman named Khazar Hayat. Here's how it was picked up and sensationalized by the New York Daily News in a piece titled: Bizman: Lindh was my gay lover:

John Walker Lindh's "dangerous journey" into Islamic militancy was cemented by a sexual relationship with a Pakistani businessman who guided the American Taliban turncoat toward schools that fueled his hatred for the United States, [Time] magazine reported yesterday. "It was the beginning of the dangerous journey, the first jaunt, the pleasure journey," Mufti Mohammad Iltimas Khan, a spiritual adviser, said of Lindh's encounter with the businessman.

Time's actual article, The Making of John Walker Lindh, had this to say:

Hayat met Lindh and took him on a tour of various madrasahs, searching for the perfect one from Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the northwest. The young American rejected them all and preferred remaining at Hayat's side. He helped Hayat at his store, a prosperous business dealing in powdered milk. Hayat, who has a wife and four children, says he had sex with Lindh. "He was liking me very much. All the time he wants to be with me," says Hayat, who has a good though not colloquial command of English. "I was loving him. Because love begets love, you know."

But something about this doesn't seem to gel, since earlier news reports had noted Lindh's rejection of his gay father as morally corrupt. Soon after, CNN weighed in with this take, in Pakistani man denies having sex with Taliban American:

Hayat, who said Walker Lindh stayed with him about a month, denied having sexual relations with the young American. "That's nonsense," he said. "We never had any such relationship." Lindh's lawyers deny that their client engaged in any homosexual relationships.

I don't know what the truth is, but it seems like Time's reliance on evidence such as Hyat's fractured English was probably suspect.

Interestingly, while Time was quick to publicize a gay allegation for Lindh, the New York Times treaded a bit too carefully when it came to discussing the homosexual orientation of a true hero. In a Sept. 20 piece titled Killed on 9/11, Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger Than Life,
Daniel J. Wakin writes this of Father Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department chaplain who perished shortly after administering last rites to a firefighter inside the burning World Trade Center:

Many Roman Catholics find in him a positive, indeed shining, example of a priest at a time when the priestly image is suffering from the sexual abuse scandal in the Church. Another group has publicly sung Father Judge's praises since his death: gay rights advocates. Some have spoken openly about what they say was his homosexual orientation, and the former New York City fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said that Father Judge had long ago come out to him. Still, the presence of the gay issue has caused some rancor among other friends, who resent what they say are attempts by the gay rights advocates to use Father Judge to further their agenda. [italics added]

And later:

Father Judge's name is also invoked by gay rights advocates, who maintain that the priest's sexuality was an important part of his make-up as a man and a priest.

Some of Father Judge's friends, however, are angry by what they see as opportunism by some gay rights advocates. These friends emphasize that any sexual orientation that he may have had is irrelevant. Some are hostile to the suggestion he was homosexual.

Actually, quite a number of Father Judge's gay friends have said that he was very much at ease with his homosexual orientation (though no one, as far as I know, has said he was sexually active). Moreover, Father Judge worked with the gay Catholic group Dignity, and marched in the alternative St. Patrick's Day Parade. However, at a time when some in the Vatican hierarchy are calling for purging homosexually oriented priests, the presence of the saintly but gay Father Judge is clearly causing some grief, and much denial. But unlike the shaky case for John Walker Lindh's bent, the evidence is straight-forward (so to speak) about Father Judge. Regardless, many will continue to have difficulty viewing sanctity and homosexuality as coexisting together.
--Stephen H. Miller

True Diversity. Check out veteran gay journalist Rex Wockner's current Wockner Wire opinion column at planetout.com. Rex takes aim at the idea that gays should be defined as creatures of the left merely because of our sexual orientation. He writes:

"The success of the gay movement has created the situation of bourgeois and ordinary and even conservative gays and lesbians becoming the majority of out, proud American homos.

"The screeching, dogmatic leftoids who long dominated American gay public discourse are not merely in retreat, they have become mostly irrelevant. Witness the obsolescence of the inflexibly leftist National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), once the dominant force in American gay activism. --

"I have spent 23 years poking around the gay universe, including the online gay universe for the past nine years, and I can say, without hesitation, that the vast majority of gays and lesbians these days have little in common with the dogma of NGLTF and movement wonks of that ilk. All the leftoid gays are still out there but, in the meantime, everybody else came out of the closet and completely buried them numbers-wise."

I couldn't agree more. As I once again witnessed this weekend the mobs of (mostly) student leftists staging their anti-capitalist, anti-American, window-smashing, police-taunting tantrum in our nation's capital, I was saddened to see, in at least one TV news report, a group brandishing a gay rainbow flag. How sad that these people think the (mostly) free economic system that made possible the social liberation of gay people is "the enemy."

Yet beyond the hot house of campus LGBT politics and its spawn -- the professional activists who dominate the "progressive" LGBT movement -- you"ll find the majority of gays and lesbians. And the future belongs to them.
--Stephen H. Miller

Biting the Hand that Could Save Them. A frightening piece on how the high-pressure anti-market demands of AIDS activists has contributed to a big falloff in the number of new AIDS drugs in development -- AIDS Activists Hinder Their Cause " can be read via a link to the international edition of the Jerusalem Post (and was brought to our attention by Andrewsullivan.com). The author, Roger Bate of the organization Africa Fighting Malaria, reports that:

There are between 5% and 30% fewer anti-AIDS drugs in development than there were a few years ago". Companies producing anti-AIDS drugs were developing fewer products than in the late 1990s. The reduction found was almost a third lower in 2001 than in 1998.

And one likely cause? According to Dr. Des Martin, president of the South African HIV Clinicians Society:

"Among several reasons, the threat of generic competition and attacks on multinational companies could be behind the recent decline in HIV anti-retroviral compounds," [Dr. Martin] says. The latter point is one that the pharma industry apparently does not want discussed widely.

However, admits one drug industry executive:

"we have lost the battle with the activists, and now the market is less profitable. The result is that we are spending less R&D time on anti-retrovirals. Why bother to innovate these products when any advance will not be profitable?"

Actions DO have consequences, and attacking the engines of innovation because they"re driven by (gasp) the profit-motive may have deadly consequences.
--Stephen H. Miller

Sept. 19, 2002

The Human Rights Campaign, the big Washington-based LGBT-rights lobby, has joined the fray with civil rights and feminist groups in opposing the nomination of Michael McConnell for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Log Cabin Republicans, meanwhile, have met with McConnell and endorsed his appointment.

Arguments can be made either way about McConnell. Many gay activists will not forgive that he was an integral part of the Boy Scouts" legal battle to exclude gay scoutmasters (a battle which the Supreme Court gave to the Scouts, ruling that a private association has a constitutional right to choose leaders who agree with the organization's goals).

What is not acceptable, however, is the distortion in HRC's anti-McConnell release, attributing words to McConnell that he never said. Here is an excerpt from HRC's press release:

McConnell's role in the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale lawsuit demonstrates hostility to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. -- The McConnell brief suggests that the Scouts' policy of excluding gay men is comparable to its exclusion of alcohol or substance abusers from leadership positions.

"But prevailing in their [the Boy Scouts] constitutional battle might prove to be a Pyrrhic victory," McConnell warned at a June 2, 2000, colloquium on evangelical civic engagement. "Unless the Boy Scouts can win public sympathy and not be seen as irrationally bigoted, they could become cultural pariahs and viewed in the same way as 'the Nazis in Skokie.'
"The Scouts would then face overwhelming pressure to change their policies regarding homosexuals," continued McConnell. "On the legal front, moreover, the Scouts' traditional ties with schools, national parks, and the military are in jeopardy. Scout supporters must go on the offensive, to highlight the intolerance of gay-rights activists." -- HRC website, all quote marks as in the HRC release

Pretty bad, right, except these words, despite HRC's quote marks, aren't exactly McConnell"s. They"re from a paraphrase of what McConnell said, in the newsletter of a conservative religious policy institute. Here's the relevant excerpt from the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Note the LACK of quotes in the original, which indicates a paraphrase:

But prevailing in their constitutional battle might prove to be a Pyrrhic victory, McConnell warned. Unless the Boy Scouts can win public sympathy and not be seen as irrationally bigoted, they could become cultural pariahs and viewed in the same way as "the Nazis in Skokie." The Scouts would then face overwhelming pressure to change their policies regarding homosexuals. On the legal front, moreover, the Scouts' traditional ties with schools, national parks, and the military are in jeopardy. Scout supporters must "go on the offensive," McConnell counseled, and highlight the intolerance of gay-rights activists. -- Ethics and Policy Center website

Is this a big deal? I think so. Attributing words directly to someone when they"re not really their words is pretty serious, especially when trying to decide if a viewpoint is based on a belief in governmental neutrality regarding moral issues, or rank bigotry. Maybe what McConnell actually said was just as bad, but I don't know (and, after reading HRC's attack, neither do you).

McConnell has opposed adding gays to legislation that protects racial and religious minorities from job discrimination, as HRC notes. But he did support a Salt Lake City ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination based on "lifestyle" and other non-job-related factors. He also defended a Gay Straight Alliance club in Salt Lake City when it was banned from a high school, arguing it had the same rights as other groups to meet on campus under the 1984 Equal Access Act. That's not to say that HRC, as a lobby that puts gay anti-discrimination statutes at the top of its agenda, shouldn't oppose him. But neither should they distort who he is, or what he actually has said.