IGF CultureWatch

Updated January 31, 2009

Peter Berkowitz writes in the Wall Street Journal, Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria Are Two Sides of the Same Coin:

It is not that our universities invest the fundamental principles of liberalism with religious meaning-after all the Declaration of Independence identifies a religious root of our freedom and equality. Rather, they infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.

Indeed.

Updated January 25, 2009

Apparently independent of me (and I of him), Christian blogger Mike Ruffin discusses the demonization vs. deification meme now dominant in U.S. politics - with some of Obama's supporters, such as Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson, celebrating that the word has been made flesh. (I see others are picking up on Myerson's creepy use of biblical allusion as well.)

Updated January 23, 2009

[by Stephen Miller] From Gay Patriot: "Obama worship is the flip side of Bush hatred." I'd add that the demonization (blaming for all ills) and deification (an awe-struck expectation of deliverence) toward opposed/favored political leaders has become the religion of the left. And of the two responses, deification of the person elected to be chief administrator of the executive branch is the more dangerous for the well being of any democratic republic.

Furthermore. As neatly summed up in the comic Prickly City.

--------------

Original post

[by Stephen Miller] Well, no mention of gay equality by "O" or his selected speakers, although the breakthrough that his administration represents for racial civil rights was a key theme. As one of our commenters likes to say to LGBT Obamists, "He's just not that into you," at least not once he's gotten your dollars and votes. What Obama is into is bringing Rev. Rick Warren's constituency of anti-gay, pro-social spending evangelicals into his takings coalition.

One of Obama's first acts will be to sign two so-called paycheck equity bills that make it easier to sue (or settle with) employers who don't pay women and racial minorities, on average, the same as they pay white men for the same positions (let's leave aside that if your male employees happen to be better performers, you're hamstrung if you think you can disproportionately reward them). These measures are being rushed through so Obama can sign them within days. But take note: no measures to advance gay equality, even just by ending government discrimination, are on his near-term legislative agenda.

Expect the promise to one day move on "don't ask, don't tell," the Defense of Marriage Act, and employment discrimination to resurface in Democratic fundraising efforts before the 2010 congressional elections, to shake down gay voters once again.

So enjoy your parties, gay Obama folks. It's just about all you're likely to receive for your contributed dollars and worn shoe leather.

Added. Ok, to be fair, Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction may have had us in mind: "O Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance. And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family."

Stirring words. But then, as noted in an earlier posting, Lowery was vocal in his criticism of Rick Warren, selected by Obama to deliver the Inaugural invocation.

Assessing the "W." years, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders highlights how "To trash Bush was to belong." (hat tip: susu). Suddenly, however, the party line of self-righteous contempt is out, and marching in pro-government lock-step is in. One sign: public school officials cracking down on "inappropriate comments" that show a lack of respect toward Obama. And will "Saturday Night Live," hate-central of the Bush years, ever move beyond gently chiding Obama for his overabundant goodness and innocence?

Plus, other signs of the need for an ongoing CultWatch.

Whereas DC was full of demonstrators during both of George W.'s inaugurations, just about the only folks giving any indication of protest this weekend are gays raising an outcry over Obama's honoring of anti-gay activist/preacher Rick Warren by selecting him to deliver the Inaugural invocation. Here's hoping that spirit of dissent continues.

Have We Gotten the Message Yet?

HBO, which exclusively televised the Lincoln Memorial pre-Inaugural concert, did not include out Bishop Gene Robinson's opening invocation. According to HBO, "the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the [untelevised] pre-show." (For it's part, team Obama, heralded for its near flawless event organizing skills, says it "regrets the error"). If a gay bishop prays in a forest of Obamists but nobody hears... (via Box Turtle Bulletin).

So much for in some small way counterbalancing the honor bestowed upon Warren.

Also, more on why Warren's selection to give the Inaugural invocation (which everyone will televise) was and remains morally wrong.

More. IGF contributing author David Boaz offers his Dissident Notes on the Obama Coronation.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, 87, a veteran of many civil rights battles, weighs in on same-sex marriage, civil unions, and Rick Warren. The Washington Post reports:

Lowery, who supports civil unions, has already spoken out about Obama's controversial selection of the Rev. Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, which has been protested by gay rights groups because of disparaging comments Warren has made about gays and his support of the California proposition to ban same-sex marriage.

"I understand the protesters and I disagree vehemently with some of the nasty things Brother Warren said about gay people. I support civil rights for all citizens. I don't think you can fragment civil rights," Lowery says. "I have also said to gay groups, 'If y'all can stop talking about marriage and start talking about civil unions it would change things.' The concept of marriage is so embedded in my soul as being between a man and a woman."

In Britain, where gays have "civil partnerships" with all the rights of marriage, the issue seems to be resolved as far as most are concerned. Singer Elton John has said that LGBT activists working for marriage rather than civil partnerships are making a critical mistake:

"If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership," John says. "The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. "You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Could it be that glomming on to the "separate but equal is not equal" meme was never going to be an effective strategy, especially when pursued through the courts rather than state legislatures?

More. George Will weighs in on the current super judicial strategy in California, and the possibility of a super backlash.

Furthermore. Was Chicago's Windy City Times sitting on its archival record of Obama's 1996 expression of "unequivocal support" for gay marriage, in response to the paper's questionnaire? If this had been allowed to come out during the campaign, Obama might have been seen as a Romneyesque flip-flopper, which may be why this record has only now been discovered.

Updated January 12

Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, pens an excellent analysis of how liberty recedes when government expands:

The current economic strategy is right out of [Ayn Rand's classic novel] "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. ...

With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

As severely misguided as the last months of Hank Paulson's (er, George Bush's) government have been, things are going to get worse under an incoming administration that promises the biggest expansion of government control over the economy since FDR's New Deal worsened and prolonged the Great Depression.

When the Journal recently revisited Isaiah Berlin's classic "Four Essays on Liberty," reviewer Daniel Johnson quoted an interview in which Barack Obama criticized the U.S. Constitution as "a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or state government must do on your behalf."

Comments Johnson:

If Mr. Obama were to read Berlin, he would learn why America's "charter of negative liberties" has preserved the freedom of individual citizens to pursue happiness in their own ways. On the other hand, what Berlin calls "the positive doctrine of liberation by reason," with its stated dictates, has proved to be incompatible with individual freedom.

Mainstream media is, with near uniformity, singing praises to the Democrats' proposed trillions of dollars of pork barrel "stimulus" spending to politically favored constituencies, and Obama's promise to create upwards of 600,000 new public sector jobs. But life under the new order will mean less freedom for us all, as redistribution and regulation under a exponentially expanding commissariat become the order of the day.

Rick Warren, Again

The plus side, we're told, is going to be an expansion of equality or gay people. That would be a great thing, but the evidence of that is scarce. Not to beat a dead horse, but as a signal of what's to come, smug evangelist superstar Rick Warren's choice by Obama to deliver his inauguration invocation is important, but not for the reasons some on this page think.

Warren, of course, famously compared same-sex marriage to bestiality, incest and pedophilia, and his public sermonizing on behalf of California's Proposition 8, which rolled back marriage equality, played an important role in its passage. He made a few vague statements in a subsequent interview that, while remaining adamantly against gay marriage, he supports "full equal rights for everybody in America," saying "I don't believe we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles so I fully support equal rights." He explained that this covers insurance or hospital visitation.

Some have wildly over-interpreted Warren's remarks as signaling that he is ok with domestic partnerships, but Warren has never said any such thing. (In fact, he later clarified to Beliefnet that "I now see you asked about civil UNIONS - and I responded by talking about civil RIGHTS. Sorry. They are two different issues. No American should ever be discriminated against because of their beliefs. Period. But a civil union is not a civil right.")

Yet Warren is being marketed as a new and improved sort of evangelical, far superior to anti-gay fuddy duddys like James Dobson, in no small part because Warren embraces the idea of a global warming apocalypse and favors a major expansion of the welfare state. That's bought him the support of liberal Democrats looking to expand Obama's redistributionist coalition to include left evangelicals. But in terms of the future of freedom and of individual liberty in this republic, it's more grim news of what we can expect in the years ahead.

More. Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast on Warren's duplicity regarding AIDS:

Team Obama likes to cite Warren's work on AIDS in Africa to combat criticism about the controversial pastor. But how does burning condoms in the name of Jesus save lives?

Separate but equal? Responding to the tsunami of criticism from his LGBT supporters (but probably not from me), Obama is letting openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson say a prayer at the Lincoln Memorial at one of his pre-Inaugural events. Don't know how much traction this lounge act will provide compared to Rick Warren's performance in the big room (that is, the Inaugural podium swearing in), but we'll see. As far as reaching out to the right in order to create dialogue, which some see as a justification for bestowing upon Warren the coveted invocation invite, it certainly would have been more effective - and more fun - to have both Warren and Robinson do the honors together.

Update. HBO, which exclusively televised the Lincoln Memorial pre-Inaugural concert, did not include Bishop Robinson's opening invocation. According to HBO, the decision was made by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Better late than never, a friend points out this "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," published in October by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, and fairly broadly criticized at the time.

It's long and hysterical-another sign of how beleaguered the hard-core Christian Right is feeling. Still more revealing, I count 18 paragraphs on homosexuality and gay marriage, versus four on abortion (aka, from a pro-life point of view, murder of babies). I found no instances of the word "divorce." "Adultery"? You gotta be kidding.

This is the kind of anti-gay obsessiveness and upside-down prioritizing that Rick Warren and others of his ilk and generation are moving away from. The more I think about Obama's choice of Warren to lead the inaugural prayer, the more I like it. Culturally, the moment is right to reach out to reachable evangelicals and marginalize the hysterics and obsessives who have all but monopolized their movement. The cultural left doesn't understand the difference between Warren and Dobson, but evangelicals sure will. And they'll know Obama and Warren are publicly declaring Dobsonism obsolete.

Adieu to 2008, a wretched year for gays. Voters banned same-sex marriage in Florida, Arizona and - most painfully - California, one of the few states where gays could legally wed. Arkansas banned adoptions by gay couples.

In every state where the populace has been able to vote on the issue of marriage equality, they've rejected it.

But fear not; our LGBT national political organizations weren't lazy. They put endless effort into raising funds and donating labor to get out the vote for Obama. That this meant an historically high turnout by minority voters who overwhelmingly voted to strip gay people of legal equality is no matter - we have the chosen one!!! Clap your hands and dance for joy!!!

And for our electoral defeat in California, blame the Mormons, a politically correct protest target. (And for gosh sake, never mention the pro Prop 8 robocall quoting Obama stating his faith-based opposition to letting gays marry.)

Only weeks away from the chosen one's inauguration, he's proved his mettle by putting repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" on indefinite hold and honoring an evangelical champion of rolling back of our right to equality. Not reason to celebrate, you claim? Party pooper!

As for 2009, we may see a (thankfully) toothless federal hate crimes bill, but the long awaited Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is sure to be impaled by activists' demands that it include cross dressing at work. Only in fantasyland are newly elected purple state Democrats in Congress going to go for that.

But hey, several LGBT Democratic activists have been or soon will be rewarded with mid-level administrative positions in one or another of Washington's rapidly expanding alphabet bureaucracies. Deliverance is nigh!

And a happy and joyous New Year to all!

Here's an interesting postmortem on the failed campaign to defeat California's Proposition 8, which rolled back marriage equality by placing a ban on same-sex marriage into the Golden State's constitution. What went wrong? A lot, apparently, including bland, focus-group-generated messaging.

Other insider critiques have noted a decentralized campaign structure that insisted on consensus among a group leadership, thus playing into the left's deference to anti-hierarchical organization but leaving no one with ultimate "buck stops here" responsibility - and an organization that was in no sense nimble, and unable to respond to rapidly changing developments on the ground.

More on what went wrong can be found here.

My mind boggled when a friend assured me the other day that Rick Warren is James Dobson with a friendlier face. HRC doesn't go quite that far, but it does say this: "Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian [sic...Dobson is a psychologist; should HRC know this?] James Dobson disagree on."

True, Warren is a transitional figure, hardly what gay people would call enlightened. But he is no Dobson or Wildmon or Robertson or Falwell. He has tried to move the evangelical movement away from politics. He thinks too little about homosexuality, instead of obsessing on it. By mostly ignoring homosexuality, he puts it in reasonable proportion to other (as he sees it) sins-and, with the religious right, mere proportionality is half the battle.

It's worth actually reading the BeliefNet interview which has become the locus classicus for those who call Warren a hater. He calls same-sex marriage a redefinition on the same order as adult-child marriage. Obtuse, to say the least. He also says, "Civil unions are not a civil right." Meaning, he explains, that the constitution doesn't mandate them.

But he also says he does not oppose California's domestic partner law (which is a civil union law, whatever the statutory name). And he says it's a "no brainer" that divorce is a bigger threat to family than gay marriage. And that the reason gay marriage gets so much more attention than divorce is because "we always love to talk about other [people's] sins more than ours."

Of course he is an evangelical preacher and he does think that homosexual relations are a sin which should not be dignified with public sanction. But he represents a major step forward over the generation before him (as the generation after him is better still). I hope that, beneath the denunciations, the folks on our side understand this.

Still more. Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens takes aim, suggesting that Jews also should be appalled by the selection, in Shame on You, Rick Warren.

Updates:

Sorry, Jon, but yes he is.

Time magazine spells out just how offensive Warren's comments were:

Warren told Beliefnet that he thinks allowing a gay couple to marry is similar to allowing "a brother and sister to be together and call that marriage." He then helpfully added that he's also "opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage." The reporter, who may have been a little surprised, asked, "Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?" "Oh, I do," Warren immediately answered. I wish the reporter had asked the next logical follow-up: If gays are like child-sex offenders, shouldn't we incarcerate them?

Writes Time's John Cloud:

Obama reminds me a little bit of Richard Russell Jr., the longtime Senator from Georgia who - as historian Robert Caro has noted - cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, tolerant politician even as he defended inequality and segregation for decades. ... Obama also said today that he is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays, which is - given his opposition to equal marriage rights - simply a lie. It recalls the time Russell said, "I'm as interested in the Negro people of my state as anyone in the Senate. I love them."

So why are so many thoughtful people so willing to give Obama a pass? And when is the veil going to fall from their eyes?

From libertarian-minded Reason magazine:

Oh LGBTers. Don't cry. I know President-elect Barack Obama's breaking your heart. It sucks, doesn't it, when you hitch your wagon to a political party, but the party is just not that into you? ... But you know who your real friends are, LGBTers. And we're going to help you get through this. Besides, who knows better than libertarians what it's like to be in a long-standing lopsided love affair with a mainstream political party?

And from columnist Richard Cohen:

Obama said, "we're not going to agree on every single issue." He went on to say, "We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans." Sounds nice.

But what we do not "hold in common" is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue - the rights of gays to be treated equally - as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that's nothing to celebrate.

---

Rick Warren is a new kind of evangelical leader - he supports bigger government with increased spending on social welfare programs. Of course, he also considers same-sex marriage an abomination, comparing the "redefiniton of a marrige" to let gays wed with legitimizing incest, child abuse and polygamy (here's a video of Warren urging support for California's Proposition 8).

That Obama selected him to deliver his inaugural innovation should be a warning of where the new administration might be heading - politically trying to bring evangelicals (especially younger evangelicals) into his expansive government, "share the wealth" fold. Is the new agenda fiscally profligate, redistributionist, and (moderately) socially conservative?

And are LGBT national "leaders," who turned their groups into fundraising funnels for the Democratic Party - and made getting out the vote for Obama their #1 priority (at the expense of fighting anti-gay state initiatives supported overwhelming by the huge minority turnout Obama triggered) - just beginning to sense this?

More. From Washington's The Politico:

Barack Obama's choice of a prominent evangelical minister to deliver the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November ...

[Warren] opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government's role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals' staunch support for economic conservatism. But it's his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday. ...

In selecting Warren, [Obama] is choosing to reach out to conservatives on a hot-button social issue, at the cost of antagonizing gay voters who overwhelmingly supported him.

And from MSNBC FirstRead:

As for the pure politics of this, when you look at the exit polls and see the large numbers of white evangelicals in swing states like North Carolina, Florida and Missouri, as well as emerging battlegrounds like Georgia and Texas, you'll understand what Obama's up to.

Last month, you may recall, the incoming administration signaled that it won't seek repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" gay ban until some unspecified time when "consensus" emerges among military leaders.

Gays planning to attend the Obama inauguration are advised to take public transportation. Just remember to sit in the back of the bus.

Everyone, and by that I mean every person in the United States if not the world, should read this seminal speech given by Frank Kameny in 1969. It surfaced recently among his papers in the Library of Congress and constitutes his statement on behalf of a gay man, Benning Wentworth, who was appealing the denial of a security clearance by the Defense Department.

We throw down the gauntlet, clearly, unequivocally and unambiguously. We state for the world, as we have stated for the public, we state for the record and, if the Department forces us to carry the case that far, we state for the courts that Mr. Wentworth, being a healthy, unmarried, homosexual male, 35 years old, has lived and does live a suitable homosexual life, in parallel with the suitable active heterosexual sexual life lived by 75 percent of our healthy, unmarried, heterosexual males holding security clearances; and he intends to continue to do so indefinitely into the future. And please underline starting with the word "and intends to do so into the future". Underline that, please, Mr. Stenographer.

To read this visionary speech and realize that not even 40 years have passed is to marvel at this country of ours. And at our good fortune in having Frank Kameny among us.

I'm told, by the way, that Benning Wentworth is still alive and well. Hats off to him, too. Imagine the courage it took for an open homosexual to stand up to the Defense Department in 1969.