IGF CultureWatch

Take a few minutes to visit a remarkable website, www.kamenypapers.org. Over a period spanning decades, Frank Kameny's courage and conviction probably did more for the cause of gay equality than any other single force in America. The Kameny project, led by Charles Francis and Bob Witeck, is working to safeguard his papers for posterity by archiving them at a major library. And what papers! This treasure trove of civil-rights source material spans 25 boxes of correspondence, legal documents, brochures, photos, memorabilia, even the original signs carried in the landmark Washington and Philadelphia pickets of 1965-68. The Kameny Project offers a taste of the riches online. (Check out the Congressman who writes Frank, "Please do not contaminate my mail with such filthy trash." All too typical.) Frank Kameny is very much alive and well, feisty as ever; let's hope this project to memorialize his legacy prospers.

The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, one of the preeminent lesbian cultural gatherings, not only bans women who weren't born women (that is, male-to-female transgendered women), but in a new wrinkle, reports the New York Times, is also saying keep out to "transmen" who are either females transitioning to males or (increasingly) adopting male personas without genital reassignment. So now, the only ones welcome through the gates are "women born as women and living as women."

If any other group discriminated against the transgendered in so blatant a fashion, wouldn't the p.c. police be out in droves?

Here's Dale Carpenter's take on Robert George. George seems to think that an argument against polygamy isn't "principled" unless it's his own argument, which turns out not to be an argument-just an assertion. Money quote:

Those of us who have been making a conservative case for gay marriage do so, fundamentally, because we believe in marriage. We do not want to see it harmed and we do not think that this reform means every proposed reform of marriage, including potentially harmful ones, must be accepted. Ironically, George and the Gang of 300 manifesto-writers agree that gay marriage means anything goes. I don't expect that George will hold to that position when gay marriage is actually recognized (indeed, he'll strongly resist the supposed slippery slope to polygamy then), but the damage he is doing now by making a tactical alliance with them and arguing the line cannot be held will not have been helpful.

More: Maggie Gallagher chimes in. Jonathan Rauch replies here.

Limited blogging through next week due to a family health situation. But I wanted to note Jonathan Rowe's take on the latest calumny from anti-gay crank Paul Cameron and his admirers in Christian-right media.

Unrelatedly, more signs that the Human Rights Campaign has abandoned any pretense of being nonpartisan, with its membership in America Votes, a coalition of the left that mobilizes voters for a full range of big-government, take-your-money schemes.

In his reply to my post, for which I thank him, Robert George fairly notes that many of the family radicals who signed "Beyond Marriage" favor SSM. Of course they do. But so do nearly all left-wing and queer-theory academics and activists, which is what these folks are. (With the exception of Chai Feldblum and a few others, they have not played prominent roles in the same-sex marriage fight. I mean, Cornel West? Gimme a break.) The important distinction is that SSM is only part of what these folks favor, and the rest is what they really care about. As the title of their manifesto proclaims, they are looking beyond same-sex marriage: they favor SSM, not as an end in itself, but as a way-station toward a post-marriage society in which all concepts of family enjoy equal status and marriage is irrelevant.

There's no denying that they speak for a prominent element of the gay-rights movement (not the gay marriage movement; there's a difference). I worry about their influence, as I do about that of socialized-medicine advocates and anti-globalists and gender-abolishers and other members of the ultra-egalitarian left, but I don't think they'll prevail, even within the gay universe, most of which is neither radical nor "queer."

There's a legitimate argument here about whether the culture will interpret gay marriage as "anything goes" or as "marriage goes." Actually, some of both may happen, but I expect the dominant vector to be reaffirmation of marriage's privileged status as the family structure of choice. Parents asking their gay kids, "So, you guys going to get married?", plus the longstanding social preference for the unique commitment of marriage (as expressed, for example, in corporate benefits reserved for married couples), plus the fact that most marrying gay couples marry precisely because they see marriage as a unique commitment - all these, I expect, will lead the culture to read SSM as a return to the values of marriage, not a further flight from them. The wind brings positive straws from Massachusetts, where a number of employers are revoking domestic-partner benefits now that SSM is legal.

In any case, it's hardly fair to saddle homosexuals with the burden of exclusion from marriage in hopes of preventing heterosexual folly. If straights insist on trashing marriage, it's not gays' job to stop them. Question: how many American heterosexuals would give up their own marriages to (maybe) forfend polygamy? Who would even consider asking them to do so? I'm often saddened by otherwise compassionate conservatives' willingness to think of gay people, in the SSM debate, as pawns to be manipulated for some larger social good. They must forgive us for declining to think of ourselves that way.

Regarding polygamy...OK, let me see if I get this. Polygamy destabilizes societies, is inconsistent with liberal democracy, shows pronounced inegalitarian and misogynistic tendencies, is frivolous by comparison to SSM, has no logical connection to SSM, and indeed is logically antithetical to the principle of SSM properly understood (everyone should have the opportunity to marry)...these are not principled arguments? Whereas "one man plus one woman makes baby" is not just a principled barrier to polygamy, it is the only principled barrier?

The problem, which is immediately obvious, is that "one man plus one woman makes baby" is no kind of barrier to polygamy, either logical or practical. Logically, man-plus-woman-makes-baby is a biological fact, but one-plus-one-makes-marriage in no way follows from it. Men are perfectly happy to marry all the women they can make babies with, as they have been wont to do since the dawn of history. Given that most human cultures have been polygamous (and quite a few still are), and that presumably all of these cultures have been well aware that heterosexual couples make babies, it seems self-evident that the man-woman-baby argument has little or no deterrent effect on polygamy.

A point of honest disagreement with George is this: in my opinion, the reasons to oppose polygamy are instrumental, not metaphysical, and all the stronger for that. And they are the same reasons for favoring gay marriage. Society and (generally) individuals are better off when everyone can marry and most people do.

That disagreement aside, I wish George would reconsider his strategy of pooh-poohing all the arguments against polygamy (and polyamory) that don't also militate against SSM - which is to say, virtually all the arguments against polygamy. Surely we could agree that this strategy does monogamy no favors. As SSM and gay partnerships gain acceptance, conservatives will be stuck with their own arguments that any change to the boundaries of marriage entails every change. It will be harder for the public, sensible though it is, to hold the line with conservatives insisting there is no line to hold. Sometimes I wonder if, like Col. Nicholson in "Bridge on the River Kwai," slippery-slope conservatives are forgetting what they're supposed to be defending. (Hint: not polygamy.)

As for polyamory, if by that George means group marriage, it might be different in some ways from polygamy, but it's analytically similar: frivolous, logically antithetical to SSM, and, to judge by the last several thousand years of experience, likely to devolve in the vast majority cases into polygamy. As for fending off formal recognition of non-marital polyamory (e.g., group cohabitation benefits), gay marriage is the surest method of preventing that.

In any case, it's well to remember that all this polygamy/polyamory talk amounts to changing the subject. Gay people are asking only for what straight people currently have: the opportunity to marry someone we choose (not anyone or everyone we choose). When straights get the right to marry two people, their mother, a dog, or a toaster, gay people will want the same opportunity. But not before.

"Less than a week after becoming the 170th member of Congress to affirm that his office does not discriminate in its employment practices based on 'sexual orientation or gender identity and expression,' U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., on Wednesday rescinded his signature on the diversity statement," gay.com reports.

Santorum's signature came after a meeting between the senator and GenderPAC volunteers, who got Santorum to pose for a picture with them (and just what must he have been thinking!). A copy of the senator's statement was faxed to GenderPAC on Aug. 1, and the signature was confirmed the next morning by Santorum's openly gay communications director, Robert Traynham.

But the next day, Santorum faxed GenderPAC a new statement that read in part, "To be clear, my office has not adopted the proposed 'diversity statement' nor the agenda of your organization. ... My name should no longer be reported as having adopted the 'diversity statement.' "

What happened? All too predictable criticism from Santorum's Christian right base, such as this missive from the Agape Press blog:

What does Rick Santorum have to gain by placing his John Hancock on this statement? ... why would Santorum sign a propaganda pledge that bestows legitimacy to a cause Santorum has long fought? Why bolster your opponents at a time when you have them on the ropes? Why let the enemy impose his will on you?

Thus even this obviously disingenuous political feint toward the center gets quashed by the Republican theocratic right.

This attack parody aimed at Joe Lieberman, "Joe and Dub's Fabulous Wedding," trots out a slew of anti-gay stereotypes to demean its target. Sample lyrics: "pansies up and down the aisle," "their Fairy Tale wedding," "afterwards there was dancing, possibly more prancing" - plus the Village People! It's featured at the Huffington Post, the same "progressive" site that showed Lieberman in blackface. (But hey, they can't be bigots; they're on the left!).

Here's hoping Lieberman, now running as an independent, and trounces Lamont in November.

Avee comments: "The oh-so-smug and morally superior left is quick to reach for anti-gay and even anti-black tropes (Condi Rice as Aunt Jemima)." Quite so.

From Ilya Shapiro at TCS Daily:

Lamont adviser Jesse Jackson said in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times Monday that "A loss for Lieberman would be a win for progressives." Jackson went on to fault his party's putative Vice-President ... for "embracing key elements of the conservative agenda," including questioning certain excesses of affirmative action and supporting cuts in capital gains taxes that have ushered in a new class of investors.

Such arguments expose the nasty truth at the heart of the modern "Party of Jefferson": You have to embrace the entire Democratic catechism (abortion on demand, racial preferences, etc.) or risk banishment from this "party of inclusion."

And James Pinkerton writes, on "heretics" and "infidels":

Lieberman had not only to be defeated, but to be crushed and vilified. Which he was. Lieberman supporter Lanny Davis detailed in the pages of The Wall Street Journal all "the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle" that poured down on his candidate, including scurrilous anti-Semitism.... So far, at least, the "infidels" in this particular Demo-drama, aka the Republicans, can sit back and enjoy the heretic-burning show.

Meanwhile, the gay left's John Aravosis of blog America believes the imminent threat of mass murder by Islamofascists is just a great big pro-Republican, anti-Lamont conspiracy:

And isn't it queer that the emergency is declared within a day of Republican party leader Ken Mehlman launching an all-out offensive against Democrats following Joe Lieberman's loss in Connecticut, an offensive in which Mehlman, the White House and Republican operatives are claiming that Democrats no longer care about national security or the war on terror.

No, this is not a parody.

Virginians, who will vote this November on a constitutional amendment excluding any "unmarried individuals" from "union, partnership or other legal status similar to marriage," live with an untested 2004 law prohibiting "civil unions, partnership contracts or other arrangements between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage."

Gay couples now fear (with some justification, say some family-law attorneys) that their shared ownership of homes and businesses could be cast in doubt if a state court feels the underlying contracts too closely mimic the intent of marriage. So it's no surprise that gays are beginning to flee the Old Dominion, reports the Washington Post:

...even though it is more expensive to live in the District or Maryland, where taxes are higher than in Virginia. One former Virginian who moved to the District was shocked to face a $14,000 recordation tax on the purchase of a $650,000 condo; the same tax in Virginia would have been less than $1,000, Johnson said. The buyer proceeded with the sale anyway.

People are not solely motivated by economic ends (although they are more so than liberals will admit); nevertheless, Virginia has succeeded in making even the confiscatory, redistributionist mecca of D.C. appear to be a more rational economic choice for gay people.

More. The Outright Libertarians blog has words of warning using the example of Alabama, which wasted millions on a failed campaign to attract Silicon Valley firms. A first-hand description of one unsuccessful pitch:

The Alabama rep was furious. "You're saying we have to accept that lifestyle to get investment," he fumed. He didn't understand that not harassing or targeting gays is not "accepting a lifestyle," but rather following the dictates of the Bill of Rights.

He insisted that Intel, Apple, AMD, Hewlett-Packard and other companies could simply force their employees to move to Alabama - he wasn't aware that most of the top marketing, strategy, design, engineering and finance people at all of those companies have standing offers for employment at competitors which they could take at any time.

He then insisted that the companies could move their heterosexual-only employees to Alabama. Ignoring the absurdity of such a proposition (can you imagine the HR implications?), he didn't understand (or care to understand) that often, gay employees are the decision-makers in such a scenario and would never go for it.

Priceless.

From U.S. World & News Report, For Gays, New Math: Rethinking Tactics After a Series of Setbacks:

The losses may have been self-inflicted. ... Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force acknowledges, "Our legal strategies got ahead of our political strategies."

Gee, when I said that, some were quick to express their indigation.

More. Trying a different strategy in Colorado: a gay-supported constitutional ballot initiative to secure domestic partnership rights.

This New York Times piece by Jane Gross looks at gay man who marry women and have furtive relationships with men on the side:

They spend decades denying their sexual confusion to themselves and others. They generally limit their encounters with men to anonymous one-night stands and tell all manner of lies if their wives suspect.

What's interesting is that, as Gross points out:

…so-called "Brokeback" marriages have hardly disappeared, as many experts assumed they would, even in an age when gay couples, in certain parts of the country, live openly and raise children just like any family.

Internalized homophobia, guilt, and fear of life outside the culturally enshrined heterosexual norm are still potent forces.

Another article of interest, from the London Times, looks at sexual fluidity. Matther Parris argues that sexuality often doesn't fit neatly into the categories of "gay" and "straight":

I think a substantial preponderance of men are more heterosexual than homosexual, but scattered fairly evenly between 100 per cent and half-and-half; and that the smaller number who think of ourselves as gay are likewise quite evenly distributed along the spectrum from the halfway point.

That's seems a bit too fluid to me, and I think Kinsey was probably right that toward the ends of the spectrum sexual orientation is pretty well fixed and in no sense a "choice." Still, Parris may be right when he notes:

... we who call ourselves gay know well that most men who call themselves "bisexual" are more gay than straight, but afraid or unwilling to say so. But what we overlook is that for every gay posing as a bisexual, there are probably a dozen bisexuals posing as straight.

And in a better world, of course, all that posing wouldn't be necessary because (among consenting adults) who you love and how you build a life together just wouldn't make any difference.