IGF CultureWatch

A survey of self-identifying gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans conducted by Hunter College and funded by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) shows that respondents 18-25 years old said marriage and adoption rights were the top gay issues, while those 65 years and older said laws regarding hate crimes and workplace discrimination were most important. However, altogether only 59% know there's no federal law that bars workers from being fired based on their sexual orientation. If anti-gay discrimination in the workplace were as big an issue as some activists claim, one would think that figure would be much higher.

Generally, efforts toward ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and securing rights for transgender people scored the lowest in the poll. Which points to a rather large gap between the trans-inclusive agenda of many LGBT activists and the folks they claim to represent.

It now appears likely that the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which passed the House last fall without covering the transgendered, will not be brought up in the Senate this year. Many LGBT activists, such as the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, would rather have no law than a law that only protects gays and lesbians. Others, such as HRC, think the new Congress will be more likely to include transgender protections in the bill and that President Obama will be more likely to sign it. I personally doubt the former, and think the odds of a President Obama may currently be not much better than 50-50 given his increasingly obvious disingenuousness.

In other political news, the Washington Blade reports that HRC and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund are not supporting openly gay Democratic Senate candidate Jim Neal of North Carolina in his primary fight (one poll puts him even with the Democrat who has the backing of the national party). I understand that the party to which HRC and the Victory Fund have pledged fealty believes that a straight Democrat has a better chance of ousting incumbent GOP Sen. Liddy Dole. But if we are not for our own, who will be for us?

More. I never said that gay Republicans should support Neal. My point is that gay Democrats and supposedly nonpartisan LGBT political groups, especially those whose mission is to promote gay equality and/or to elect out-and-proud gay candidates (as is the Victory Fund's), are putting fealty to the Democratic party above all else (so what's new?). I liked Neal's response, "Maybe I'm not gay enough. I don't know."

As for ENDA, I recently explained my view here.

Update. Down to defeat, as reports EdgeBoston:

but some gay and lesbian leaders are questioning whether a losing candidate deserved more support from GLBT equality organizations.

Neither The Human Rights Campaign nor the Victory Fund supported the campaign of openly gay candidate Jim Neal, and the Democratic Party itself, far from supporting Neal, reportedly recruited winning candidate Kay Hagan, a NC state legislator, to run against him.

Gay voters are a cheap political date for the Democrats-a little sweet talk and nothin' else required.

Over at the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy website, IGF contributing author John Corvino is having an exchange with former gay activist David Benkof, who says he is practicing celibacy since embracing Orthodox Judaism. First, here's Benkof, who argues:

"We may think we've figured out why certain behaviors are moral or immoral, and even find some of G-d's moral calculus to be frankly troubling. But we are moral dwarves compared to the infinite wisdom and goodness of the creator of the universe."

And here's Corvino, who replies that:

Many people-with widely disparate views-have claimed to know God's mind, and they can't all be right. As humans, we are fallible. So this is not Corvino versus God; it's Corvino versus Benkof-each one trying to figure out what's right."

I'll add my two cents. Orthodox literalism is far from the only way to understand the Bible, a work that even on the surface is suffused with layers of allegorical richness. But going beyond biblical exegesis is the broader problem of how orthodoxy and fundamentalism confound scriptural authority with the totality of God's word.

I'm not the first to suggest that fundamentalism/literalism is a form of idolatry, worshiping scripture instead of the living spirit of the creator, whose revelation is alive and ongoing, as most certainly is our evolving ability to contemplate the fullness of his Logos.

I'll share that my favorite portions of the New Testament (the non-Paulist bits) are when Jesus calls out the crowd that castigates him for healing on the Sabbath (when the Bible demands you shall not work), saying "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Or when he dismisses the ritualistic dietary laws by saying, "It is not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean. It is what comes out of a man's mouth that makes him unclean." Or when he expresses shock that the masses actually think that the Biblical injunction of "an eye for an eye" should be (literally) followed.

Time and again, scriptural authority is cast as a means, not an end, and love trumps the law.

Reader Casey P. points us to this touching account of young straight evangelicals who took part in the G/L "Day of Siilence," to the gratitude and understandable surprise of their gay peers. Another straw in the wind of changing evangelical attitudes.

In the New York Times Magazine, a young gay man writes about young gay men being far more relationship-oriented these days:

But young gay men today are coming of age in a different time from the baby-boom generation of gays and lesbians who fashioned modern gay culture in this country - or even from me, a gay man in his early 30s. While being a gay teenager today can still be difficult and potentially dangerous (particularly for those who live in noncosmopolitan areas or are considered effeminate), gay teenagers are coming out earlier and are increasingly able to experience their gay adolescence. That, in turn, has made them more likely to feel normal. Many young gay men don't see themselves as all that different from their heterosexual peers, and many profess to want what they've long seen espoused by mainstream American culture: a long-term relationship and the chance to start a family.

The article comes complete with photographs that look like 1950s advertisements. Changing times, indeed!

Columnist, philosopher, and IGF contributor John Corvino's lecture defending the morality of homosexuality was cancelled by Aquinas College, a Catholic school in Michigan. Seeking to justifying their decision, college administrators badmouthed Corvino to boot.

But students, who have an inconvenient tendency to think for themselves, hosted him anyway, moving the lecture off campus. And gave him a standing ovation. (News video here.) Kudos to Aquinas's students for delivering an object lesson to their elders.

I don't mean to be flippant about the possibility of 14-year-old girls being forced into arranged marriages, but it increasingly seems that what's going on with the state seizure of all the children from a fundamentalist Mormon compound in Texas is producing scant evidence (to date) of actual abuse. Scott Henson, in the Dallas News, asks Where's the evidence of abuse?, while blogger Katie Granju queries where is the ACLU? (hat tip: instapundit). She writes:

I cannot express strongly enough how much I believe the state needs to take a strong, unequivocal stance in going after any of these individual adults in this group who have committed crimes against children in the name of religion. However, I am increasingly disturbed by the way the state of Texas is handling this matter. The wholesale rounding up and de facto incarceration of hundreds of women and children-none of whom have been individually accused of any crime-is very troublesome.

Also, David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy and Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute raise similar concerns about a disturbing overreaction by state authorities.

If the breakup of these families is based on the prejudice/contempt that both left-liberals and religious conservatives feel toward fundamentalist Mormons who practice polygamy, it raises issues of basic liberty in America that even those who oppose state-recognition of polygamy should take seriously.

More. Social conservative Rick Lowry may quote our own Jonathan Rauch, but his attempt to blame fundamentalist polygamy on "the liberal wave of nonjudgmentalism and of hostility to traditional marriage" is a stretch.

I did like the commenter to Lowry who suggests if polygamy is a risk factor for child abuse and so we take children away from polygamous homes, should we also not take children away if their single mom moves in with her boyfriend, as that's also known to greatly raise the risk of abuse?

GOP Congressman Cites Lawrence in Defending Polygamous Families . Said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), as quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune:

"I don't think it's the place of society to prosecute people who choose to cohabitate responsibly and are responsible for their children as opposed to men who are licentious or women who are licentious who are producing children that don't have place or context or male authority in their lives."

As Jonathan Rauch has pointed out, the criminalization and prosecution of polygamous behavior, as opposed to the state's refusal to license polygamous marriage, is unsustainable. It's important to make and sustain this distinction.

Furthermore. The AP reports: Sweep of polygamists' kids raises legal questions. Do tell.

Out Magazine published a hatchet job on gay Republicans ("Washington's Gay War") by Charles Kaiser, who interviews Barney Frank and other gay Democrats (on how awful gay Republicans are) without speaking with a single gay Republican.

As Rick Sincere blogs, Kaiser's number one example of gay Republicans is closet-case conservative Terry Dolan, who's been dead for nearly a quarter-century. Sincere also notes:

If, like Kaiser and others cited in his article, you are still mystified as to why there might be gay Republicans in Washington or any other part of the country, take a look at the principles of the Contract with America and other published Republican documents. Read Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative . Listen to Ronald Reagan's speech, "A Time for Choosing."

As John Corvino writes, religious right universities are fearful of allowing their students to hear thoughtful arguments for gay equality. But it is also true that the liberal left's academic hothouses have worked diligently to snuff out any hint of an encounter with ideological diversity. So perhaps it's of little wonder that LGBT "progressives" like Kaiser no longer know how to confront opposing ideas through argument that is both reasoned and passionate. Instead, mockery of non-liberals, aimed at fellow true believers in big government social engineering through an increasingly regulatory, redistributionist state, holds sway.

Headline, front page, Washington Post: "Military Waivers for Ex-Convicts Increase." Story sez:

the Army accepted more than double the number of applicants with convictions for felony crimes such as burglary, grand larceny and aggravated assault, rising from 249 to 511, while the corresponding number for the Marines increased by two-thirds, from 208 to 350.

At least our country can be grateful the Pentagon isn't desperate enough to consider ending the ban on service by open (i.e., truthful) homosexuals. Whether or not ex-felons can protect Iraqis from insurgents, they'll do their part by protecting the showers from sissies. Whew.

American Public Media's "Speaking of Faith" has a must-listen panel discussion between evangelicals of three generations (Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, Shane Claiborne). Go to minute 36:45, where homosexuality comes up, and stay tuned for a striking contrast between Colson and the younger men.

Colson answers a question about homosexuality with a doctrinaire natural-law exegisis of Paul. The younger men warn against Colson's hard-edged judgmentalism. Boyd agrees that homosexuality is wrong but can't understand why evangelicals pick on this one moral failing as a "deal breaker" while downplaying so many sins of their own (divorce, e.g.). He argues that evangelicals' reputation for "homophobia" (his word) is well earned and that Jesus ministered to prostitutes, rather than trying to pass laws against them. (Subtext here: the tension between the churches of Paul and Jesus.) Claiborne asks what sort of place the Church has become if it can't minister lovingly to a young gay man who feels like he is one of "God's mistakes" and wants to kill himself. "If that 'mistake' can't find a home in the church, who have we become?" He goes on to condemn the "meanness" of evangelical political style and speaks intriguingly of "post-Religious Right America."

More evidence here that homosexuality has become a major point of generational cleavage among evangelicals. Call me Pollyanna, but I think there's a new awakening of conscience happening among evangelicals and that homosexuality is at the heart of it.

More: Gay evangelical commenter Casey offers more evidence that change is afoot.

I agree with other commenters that the teachings, not just the tone, ultimately need to change. But I think the tone will tend to lead the teachings. And, as Greg Boyd implies in the panel discussion, no theological change is required for evangelicals to stop blowing homosexuality out of all proportion to its very minor role in the Bible. Proportionality alone would be major progress.

Updated April 22.

(I'm bumping this up because it deserves more attention.) Can you imagine the uproar from LGBT activists and the banner headlines in LGBT media if Republicans did this: Clinton and Obama Appear at Religious College that Categorizes Homosexuality with Stealing, Adultery & Sexual Abuse. This self-describe "Compassion Forum" was held at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Messiah is a Christian college that urges gay students to seek reparative therapy immediately. Neither candidate mentioned their support for gay nondiscrimination-except-as-regards-marriage.

Clinton and Obama's appearance at this venue was largely ignored by LGBT media and by LBGT activists, and this Friday's LGBT papers seem to have ignored it too. Yet John McCain's speech at Liberty University year's ago still is raised as a supposed indication that any gay person who supports him is a traitor to the cause.

Added: Here's a quote from Chris Crain that makes my point:

It's true that McCain doesn't pander to the right with rhetoric about "traditional family values," even last week when he was trying to win over conservatives as the presumptive GOP nominee. Many moderates and libertarians still love McCain for calling out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" back in 2000. But let's not forget how McCain sucked up to both of them in advance of this presidential run, even speaking at Falwell's Liberty University, which routinely expels gay students. (emphasis added)

The ramifications of the fact that so many LGBT activists and so much of LGBT media have been so thoroughly co-opted by a party that sees gay people as votes to collect and pockets to pick, giving back the absolute minimum in return, haunts our cause and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Semi-related, sort of. Are gay voters a cheap political date?

Furthermore. The latest anti-McCain attack ad?