IGF CultureWatch

I'm not a supporter of hate crimes bills, as previously noted (for example, here and here). But if I were, I wouldn't be a happy camper about this latest legislative fiasco.

Yet another uninformed hit piece against gays who dare to deviate from the party line is making the rounds, this time via Public Eye, a quarterly put out by Political Research Associates, a nonprofit supported by progressive and liberal activists and foundations.

In Gay Conservatives: Unwanted Allies on the Right, Pam Chamberlain sneers that:

Embarrassed by a gay community that embraces the diversity of drag queens, transgender youth, and adherents of exotic sexual practices, these (mostly male) assimilationists express their sense of entitlement through outrage at being discriminated against for being gay....

It is in the blogosphere, however, where political writers like Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and the Independent Gay Forum, an online collection of gay conservative writers, have found their home....

I love the fact that to prove her case, Chamberlain copiously quotes...other progressives who accuse those they label as "gay conservatives" of sexism, racism, etc. etc.

Actually, IGF's writers include several Democrats and many small "l" libertarians. But while Chamberlain notes that "gay conservatives" embrace a variety of issues including "limited government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, a strong defense, and free markets," she repeatedly returns to the trope that because the religious right is anti-gay and holds sway over the Republican party, "gay conservatives" don't make any sense (aside from being motivated by shame and selfishness).

It's clear that Chamberlain simply doesn't give any credence to the ideas of "limited government" and personal responsibility, so she dismisses them as a veneer. It's not possible that gay non-leftists might genuinely believe that individual liberty trumps group entitlement. Or that faith in government regulation to engineer social outcomes is often counter-productive. Or that economic redistribution doesn't lead to "social justice" but to economic stagnancy. Or that those who champion less government and greater individual liberty might be battling the grip that social conservatives have on the GOP.

These ideas may, of course, be debatable, but it's a sign of the left's slovenliness to not even engage in that debate and instead to dismiss gays who rejected leftwing boilerplate politics as craven, racist, misogynist self-loathers.

On a happier note, here's an op-ed in which one (straight) conservative explains why he supports gay marriage. It's the kind of argument that gay libertarians and conservatives can help foster on the political right, the value of which you might expect gays on the left to recognize.

IGF gets a mention from the religious right media concerning efforts to use the government against the gay-families-inclusive children's book King & King, including those who want to ban it from public and school libraries (the book is about a prince who, instead of marrying a princess, decides to marry her brother).

According to a report by the Cybercast News Service (CNS), part of the social conservative Media Research Center, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality predictably proclaimed that King & King is being used to propagandize young children: "The homosexual movement is moving to push the behavior on young children, with the idea being that they can get to them before the natural moral opposition to homosexuality is even formed," LaBerbera said.

When CNS asked presidential candidates "Should teachers read the book to second graders as part of the school curriculum? Would you read it-or have read it-to your own children?":

"The answer is no," [Fred] Thompson's chief campaign spokesman told Cybercast News Service. "He's very clear. There is no wishy-washiness."

Romney is also opposed. "This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers," the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement. "We need to strengthen our families by passing a federal marriage amendment and also insisting on marriage before having children."

But IGF contributing author David Boaz offered a different take:

"Should the federal government require this book? I would say no. Should the federal government ban this book, no it shouldn't," Boaz told Cybercast News Service.

"But if the question is, should this book be in local libraries or in school districts, then I would say sure, why not? There are some gay families, so what's wrong with letting kids find out in a calm, non-hysterical way that there are different kinds of families in the world?"

Of course, both the left and the right often want to promote their own world views through government schools and libraries, which is why (as long as there are government schools and libraries) letting local school boards and library districts make book selection decisions, without state and federal interference, seems like the safest course.

Not surprisingly, the GOP contenders in Wednesday's debate, when called on to answer the "Don't As, Don't Tell" question posed by Retired Brig. General Keith H. Kerr, gave exceedingly lame, party line ("unit cohesion must be perserved") responses. Too bad that under CNN's format only Hunter (there's some candidate named Hunter-who knew?), Huckabee, Romney and McCain were asked to answer. I don't honestly know if Rudy would have been shamed into deviating a bit from the party lockstep. But at least it was fun to watch Romney, now a DADT champion, refuse to address his 1994 declaration that he looked forward to the day when gays and lesbians could serve "openly and honestly in our nation's military."

Regrettably, CNN couldn't find a high-ranking, openly gay GOP veteran to ask the question, and instead (they claim inadvertently) went with Gen. Kerr (who was quickly identified as a steering committee member of "LGBT Americans for Hillary")- which allows Republicans to further sidestep the issue.

Editor's reminder: Impassioned debate is welcome, but gratuitous insults will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.

Tom Brokaw's book Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the Sixties and Today de-gays the decade that saw pioneering activists such as Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings and others spearhead the modern gay rights movement.

In an interview with media critic Howard Kurtz, Brokaw puts up a defense:

KURTZ: I have heard some criticism of the book saying that you deal with civil rights, you deal with women's liberation, as it was called then, but you don't devote any time or space to the burgeoning gay rights movement....

BROKAW: I don't, because the gay rights movement came slightly later. It lifted off during that time and I had to make some choices about what I was going to concentrate on. The big issues were the anti-war movement, the counterculture.

But Kameny, in a letter to Brokaw, points out a few facts such as:

• Starting in 1961, a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service gay ban.
  
  
• About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill got underway.
  
  
• In 1965, Kameny and a few other brave souls began picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites.
  
  
• And, of course, June of '69 brought the Stonewall riots, three nights of police confrontation in New York's Greenwich Village following a raid on a gay bar.

I doubt Brokaw is personally homophobic, but his is a generation that, for the most part, still can't seem to take the struggle for gay equality seriously. Unquestionably that's true among social and religious conservatives, but it also keeps rearing up among secular and straight liberal stalwarts as well, and to a large extent informs the Democratic Party's tepid support for real gay equality (as exemplified in the previous post).

Is it a smart strategy to maximize the party's political hold on Congress, or an unwarranted snub that showcases the divide between rhetoric and reality, as Democratic senatorial campaign honchos decide a gay candidate in North Carolina is not worthy of support?

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Former Wall Street investor Jim Neal of Chapel Hill announced he was running for the U.S. Senate. [North Carolina State] Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro declared a week later that she was not running for the U.S. Senate. Both are Democrats. Guess which one received a phone call from U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who heads the Democratic Party's efforts to recruit Senate candidates? ...

Neal...falls into a coveted category of candidates: self-funder, someone who will sink a chunk of his own wealth into the race. Such candidates typically get at least a courtesy meeting from their party's national political committees, particularly in the state where former U.S. Sen. John Edwards showed that an unknown with a lot of money can succeed.

Neal, 50, and others suggest that the fact that he is gay drove the actions of the Democratic Senate committee and other leaders of a party that criticizes Republicans for their anti-gay rights platform. … "There are a lot of people within the Democratic Party establishment who are uncomfortable with my candidacy," Neal said last week. ...

A former staffer at the national Democratic Senate committee said he was surprised Schumer didn't at least meet with Neal. The gay community has reliably contributed to Democrats, said the former staffer, who asked not to be identified....

Yes, yes, the GOP is, for the most part, worse. But they don't receive the lion's share of gay political dollars, do they.

Last year, Wal-Mart came under attack from the religious right over its "pro-gay agenda"-specifically, its support for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (the retail giant donated $25,000 to the gay business group and agreed to sponsor two of its conferences).

Wal-mart also has an anti-discrimination policy banning discrimination against its LGBT employees, and supports a network for its gay (and lesbian, and bisexual, and transgender) workers.

So why has the Human Rights Campaign, the Washington-based LGBT political lobby, given Wal-Mart a "do not buy" rating in its new consumer guide, at the start of the vital holiday shopping season?

HRC says its because Wal-Mart doesn't provide domestic partner benefits. But given the chain's other gay-inclusive actions, and the attacks it has endured from the anti-gay right for doing so, doesn't HRC's rebuke come off as a wee bit excessive? This seems no way to treat our mostly (if not yet quite 100%) friends.

The explanation, I'd suggest, has all to do with the Democratic Party's strategy of making non-union Wal-Mart a political whipping boy, and HRC's now predominant role as water-carrier for the Democratic Party.

Republican-leaning but frequently libertarian-minded law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) on Guns and Gay Sex (click on "Download the document from Social Science Research Network"):

"[R]easonable regulation" often can be used to cover the true intentions of regulators who actually intend to extinguish or seriously undermine the right at issue. Courts are rightly suspicious of such possibilities in the context of other rights, such as free speech, abortion, sodomy, birth control, or the dormant commerce clause....

We should expect courts to treat the regulation of gun ownership with the same skepticism previously applied to the regulation of gay sex....

More. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide if the city of Washington DC can ban virtually all private (nonstate) possession of guns.

As The Guardian (UK) reports (but I couldn't find in this week's US coverage), one of the plaintiffs is openly gay:

Tom Palmer, one of six plaintiffs named in the original lawsuit challenging the Washington, DC ban, considers the case a matter of life and death. An openly gay scholar in international relations at the rightwing [sic] Cato Institute, he thinks that a handgun saved him years ago in San Jose, California, when a gang threatened him.

"A group of young men started yelling at us, 'faggot', 'homo', 'queer', 'we're going to kill you' and 'they'll never find your bodies'," Mr Palmer said in a March 2003 declaration.

"Fortunately, I was able to pull my handgun out of my backpack, and our assailants backed off."

Here's another take on why 2nd Amendment rights matter to gays.

[This aside, originally intended as a short follow-up to an earlier piece on Iran and gays, was tacked on to the post about gays and guns but generated all of the comments. So I've reposted the guns piece at the top. ]

Okay now, how many comments until our Kos-minded visitors reminded us, for the umpteenth time, that Bush equals Hitler? (it's a continuing refrain in the comments to last week's post taking issue with academics protesting criticism of Iran's executions of gay citizens).

Speaking of some of our frequent commenters, this may explain it.

For several years now, IGFer John Corvino has been touring colleges to speak on "What's Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?" The talk has evolved into a unique mixture of humor, logic, and life experience, and it forces even people who think they know the subject-on either side-to examine old assumptions.

Now it's available on DVD. Just in time for the holidays, too. Check out the preview...you've never seen a philosopher lecture like this, guaranteed.