IGF CultureWatch

Over at Slate's Kausfiles, there's a transcript from MSNBC with New Republic editor Peter Beinart debating Ann Coulter over her contention that gay men are inherently more promiscuous than straight men. Coulter says, in passing, "I like gays. I like all gays, and not just the ones who are Ann Coulter drag queens." See, reaching out across party lines works! [Irony alert ;-)]

Right Side of the Rainbow offers his thoughts, noting that:

the people who say gay men are inherently more promiscuous than straight men are usually the same people who say gay men aren't inherently gay. Are we supposed to think that gay men are inherently homosexually promiscuous, but they're not inherently homosexual?

Andrew Sullivan also weighs in:

For bigots, the testosterone problem that is universal among men is somehow inherently-and not just circumstantially-unique to gays. Every discomforting aspect about human nature, in the bigot's mind, becomes associated with a minority they already despise. For Gibson, war is about the Jews. For Kaus and Coulter, promiscuity is about the gays.

Robert George gloats that gay-marriage supporters, in this statement, have finally dropped the veil and blurted out what they really want: plural marriage and other forms of legal recognition for "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner." Well, the statement is wrongheaded, and it's poorly drafted to boot (don't they mean more than two conjugal partners?), but George nonetheless gets it wrong.

First, there's nothing new here. Left-wing family radicals have been saying all this stuff for years. Second, what they're saying has no particular link to same-sex marriage. Few if any of the signers have been leaders of the gay-marriage movement. In fact, many of them (Judith Stacey and Michael Warner, for instance) have expressed ambivalence or outright hostility toward same-sex marriage. That's because, third, they're not particularly interested in including either plural relationships or same-sex couples in marriage; their agenda is to deinstitutionalize marriage by extending legal recognition to everything else-"conjugal" and otherwise. In other words, they don't want to put gays or polygamists on the marriage pedestal; they want to knock the pedestal over. They'd like to see a world where there'd be little legal or social difference between same-sex marriage and same-sex cohabitation.

Fourth, the likeliest way to get where these folks want to go is by not having gay marriage. The result, over time, will be to create and legitimize alternative family structures, including cohabitation benefits. Not by coincidence, "Beyond Marriage" folks are pointing to the recent string of judicial defeats for SSM as evidence that gay-rights supporters should "rethink and redirect" their energies away from marriage, and toward creating a host of marriage substitutes.

Finally, George claims that gay-marriage advocates "have made no serious effort to answer" the argument that there's no logical way to favor same-sex marriage and hold out against polygamy. On what planet? Here on earth, we have answered early and often-and we're still waiting for a substantive reply. If George wants to bone up, he can start here, here, here, here, and here (where he'll find a whole chapter on the subject).

A new marriage ad is making its mark on the web (and, I believe, on MTV). Clever and effective, or patronizing, pleading and overly hip? Click here and scroll down to "Permission" to see for yourself. (Yes, our IGF technology is much inferior to that at AndrewSullivan.com and elsewhere; deal with it.)

More. The link also has additional marriage ads produced by Public Interest. Comments Lebain (and I found this interesting so I'm reposting it all):

I was unfortunate enough to be one of the (small) donors who supported Public Interest productions (www.publicinterest.tv) in the production of these ads. Never again!

First, the ads came out AFTER the important Congressional votes on marriage, and AFTER primaries and the November elections when so many marriage bans were passed (or at least my media kit from the producers arrived after the elections), even though I had donated well in advance of both votes. The producers told me MTV would donate $1M of airtime for the ads, but the ads were delivered so late, most if not all that opportunity was missed.

Second, with the exception of the "Permission" ad, all included the most disgusting imagery possible on such a sensitive subject. Two weiners in a boiling pot? Two donuts? Sex toys and graphic images of piercings? I'm sure the producers had MTV's demographic in mind, but instead of creating spots that respect their young audience, they produced trasparently veiled pornography meant more to shock and disgust their audience.

As a public company with govt. affairs and tax lawyers, MTV also probably didn't want to seem to blatantly endorse one position or the other on marrige. Hence the weak "Think Before You Vote" message rather than a more direct "Vote to Support Marriage Equality."

In response to recent defeats on the marriage equality front, some progressives are returning to a view they unleashed when the marriage debate began but have been soft-pedaling since: that marriage itself should be knocked off its perch as a "privileged" relationship, and government should instead provide support to all manner of cohabitating arrangements. A new "Beyond Marriage" manifesto backing this view was issued last week, signed by some 250 left-liberal LGBT activists.

Washington Blade editor Chris Crain responds in Revenge of the Anti-Conjugalists, writing that "realizing the Right's worst fears" - about gay marriage being the frontline of an attack against marriage itself - "is the last thing our movement needs to do at this critical juncture."

Note: The progressives want various non-conjugal relationships to receive access to "all vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor" and so on. This makes their argument distinct (if superficially similar) to the view expressed by some libertarians that government should simply get out of the marriage-sanctifying business and leave that to private religious institutions and contracts.

Update. No surprise; social conservatives have picked up on the lesbigay left's new manifesto. Robert P. George writes in First Things:

The choice facing us as a nation is this: Either we retain as legally normative the traditional conjugal understanding of marriage as the exclusive union of one man and one woman, or we give legal standing and public approbation to every form of consensual sexual partnering and child rearing, including polygamy and polyamory. Just ask those notable "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied activists, scholars educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers." They'll tell you exactly what lies "beyond gay marriage." They already have.

And the rest of us are the ones who have to deal with the fallout.

Anti-Jews and Anti-Gay, Mel Gibson Go Away.

But seriously, Jew-hatred and gay-bashing typically go together like peas and carrots, don't they.

In the grand scheme of things, which has the greater impact: Another judicial defeat for marriage equality, this time in Washington state, or Lance Bass of N'Sync coming out?

Comment sample.
Big Daddy: Lance Bass. People don't follow political discourse, but everyone seems to read People magazine.

I guess they meant well. But publishing this ad in newspapers, showing that the usual gang of leftwing activists, liberal politicians and big-labor leaders (and some progressive religious folks) support marriage equality made me bristle. In my view, if big labor is for it, then it certainly can't be good. I think many who aren't on the liberal left have the same visceral reaction.

I wonder if any Republican or conservative gay people (Log Cabin? Andrew Sullivan?) were even approached. And what about respected libertarian conservative figures, such as Charles Murray, who favor allowing same-sex marriage (as noted here)? Nope, no reaching out across party lines in this ad.

Maybe the aim was to shore up left-liberal support. But if they alienate independents, libertarians and centrists, what's gained? More likely, there was no strategy behind this ad at all.

Comments sample:
kittynboi: There seems to be little evidence that the right wing will support us if we drop the support of the left wing.

Avee: If we continue to present gay equality as part of a broad-based leftwing agenda (unions!), we will NEVER expand the range of our support out to the center, much less to the libertarian right. We will continue to remain a leftwing niche, preaching to ourselves, running ads for ourselves, focused solely on ourselves.

Ryan Sager finds surprising strength for Rudy G. among GOP activists not otherwise prone to support a pro-gay, pro-choice fiscal conservative.

From students Adam Jack Gomolin and Alex Halpern Levy, age 21 and 19 respectively, another sign of what today's Republican hostility toward homosexuality is sowing for the party tomorrow. Money quote:

The Republican Party has two options. First, if it continues with its present policies, it will watch its base crumble as elderly social conservatives are slowly replaced in the electorate by young social progressives. Second, a bold (and perhaps unlikely) move: the Republican Party can return to its small government roots. It can take gay marriage off the national agenda and allow individual states to legislate as they see fit. It can decide that the role of the government is not to tell people how to live their lives, and that the government that governs best dictates least. In this, the GOP must balance the base it has with the base it stands to gain.

These guys add up to six years less than my age. They're the future the GOP is mortgaging.

Why we're losing gay marriage cases. Washington Blade editor Chris Crain writes:

The way most judges see it, though they won't ever say it, there is no point to "doing the right thing" if their decision faces a veto from the people in the form of a constitutional amendment. Not only is it pointless to risk prestige and rule one way, only to see it reversed by amendment, but their authority to rule on countless other issues, including other civil rights cases and even gay rights cases, has been irreversibly undermined.

Will die-hard advocates of the judicial strategy get the message?