IGF CultureWatch

Some odds and ends from here and there.

Michael Bronski continues to make his case for left-wing alliance building. But despite Bronski's pretense that this is all new and ground-breaking, his strategy has been tried (and tried) and failed. The reason is that those groups on the left that Bronski still sees as a progressive vanguard are, in fact, profoundly backward-focused (to the heyday of the '60s and early '70s), pro-"liberation" but obsessed with enforcing political correctness and dreaming of a more powerful, controlling and intrusive big government (with themselves, naturally, as the guiding apparatchiks). That's not "liberation," it's a nightmare, and the overwhelming majority of Americans recognize it as such.

Dan Blatt (aka Gay Patriot West) responds to critics who defend certain activists' refusal to debate gay marriage and want him to shut up about it. Dan does a great job of making it clear why this is such a significant failing.

Off topic, but another indication of what's so wrong with the left, check this out.

Steve Chapman, a libertarian-minded syndicated columnist, explains why Conservatives Are Losing on Gay Rights:

more than half of Americans endorse either gay marriage or civil unions, which are marriages in all but name. Two states (Vermont and Connecticut) have legalized civil unions, without attracting 1 percent of the attention that has gone to Massachusetts. Once considered a radical step, this has taken on the look of a soothing, sensible compromise. ...

A more telling sign is the huge shift in opinion on discrimination. ... That evolution suggests attitudes on gay marriage are likely to grow more positive, not less. The battle for tolerance has largely been won among young people, who will be guiding policy in the not-too-distant future.

He also points to an interesting, and welcome, fact about opposition to gay adoptions:

Growing tolerance presents a huge obstacle to another cause of social conservatives. Earlier this year, they were trumpeting a multi-state push to ban adoption by same-sex couples-to prevent homosexuals from "experimenting on children through gay adoption"...

It seemed a shrewd and logical follow-up to the state-by-state offensive against gay marriage. Since Florida was alone in explicitly outlawing adoptions by same-sex couples, the opponents of gay adoption thought they had a target-rich environment-not to mention a winning issue with voters.

But they had a little problem launching the campaign. Kent Markus, director of the National Center for Adoption Law and Policy at Capital University Law School in Ohio, says that in state after state, "it peeked above the surface and got knocked right back down. Nothing has gained any momentum anywhere in the United States."

Time is on our side, which is why running to liberal courts to mandate full marriage equality-which in many states has provoked support and passage for anti-marriage (and anti-civil union) state constitutional amendments-is not a good strategy. Allowing the democratic (small "d") process to work through representative institutions will assure us eventual victory, without provoking a premature backlash that will freeze in place statewide marriage bans for generations to come.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy website. law professor Ilya Somin argues the federalism case for gay rights, finding that while the federal government has been actively harmful to gay legal equality, real progress has been made in at least some individual states and these can, over time, serve as models for others. He writes:

gays can succeed politically at the local and state level because 1) they tend to be concentrated in a few specific areas, magnifying their influence, 2) those areas will tend to be places where antigay political forces are comparatively weak, and 3) in such relatively tolerant locations, a higher percentage of the already large gay population will be out of the closet and able to participate in pro-gay political action.

Concludes Somin:

there are important lessons here for both the gay rights movement (which should be more wary of the growth of federal power than many of its members seem to be), and for our broader understanding of the relationship between federalism and minority rights.

Here's how to handle Bill O'Reilly, while explaining to conservative America--on Fox, no less--that gay marriage hasn't harmed straight marriage in Scandinavia. Object lesson comes courtesy of Bill Eskridge and Darren Spedale and, of course, their new book on gay marriage in Europe.

The vote against cloture (that is, voting not to allow a Senate floor vote) was 49 to 48 with 3 abstaining or absent. Paul Varnell argues it would have been better if Democrats and moderate Republicans had allowed a floor vote, where opposition to the amendment would have been greater. But keeping the vote on "procedural grounds" allows some to say they didn't actually vote against the amendment while in fact voting against the amendment. And thus the issue goes away for the time being, with limited political capital spent.

The Wall Street Journal makes some good points in today's editorial opposing the amendment. I don't buy their criticism that Lawrence, in abolishing sodomy laws (which the Journal editors favored getting rid of) used language that was too sweeping and thus encouraged state judges to mandate same-sex marriage. But the editors are on the mark when they write of the marriage amendment:

The Founders left such thorny social issues to the states precisely to allow the democratic give and take that can reach a rough consensus, as well as adjust as social mores change....

As for liberals, they might consider that their best chance to change minds is through open state debate, not coercive courts. Polls show Americans are becoming more comfortable with civil unions and other gay rights. In fact, the best thing gay activists could do for themselves at the federal level would be to support repeal of the death tax, since under current law gay couples often lack inheritance rights. That would accomplish more than anything that will emerge from this week's political spectacle over amending the Constitution.

But such thinking outside the lib-left box remains unlikely given the current crop of gay leaders.

More. David Boaz suggests that the amendment's supporters are being disingenuous in claming they did better this time than in 2004. He also writes:

Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter voted for cloture in 2004, though he would have voted against the amendment itself; this year he voted against cloture and quoted two Cato publications in his Senate speech. Judd Gregg [also] joined his New Hampshire colleague John Sununu in voting for federalism over centralism.

He concludes, "Given that younger voters are much more supportive of same-sex marriage than older voters, it seems unlikely that support for an amendment will grow in future years."

IGF contributing author David Link has an op-ed in the Los Angles Times that finds President Bush, in avoiding the word "gay" (or any reference to gay people at all) is trying to define same-sex marriage as a hetero-only issue.

On the other side, conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby opines that calling same-sex marriage opponents "bigots" is uncivil and forestalls, rather than encourages, dialog and debate. It's an interesting question: Are they bigots if they don't know they're bigots? And if they don't know they're bigots, does calling them "bigots" simply fuel their bigotry?

How about when Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) says:

I'm really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we've never had a divorce or any kind of a homosexual relationship.

That's not bigotry?

Sarcasm aside, believing that gays should not have the right to marry their life partner, whether founded on deeply held religious beliefs or not, does suggest you aren't exactly viewing gay people as your equal. But I would agree that such folks are not moved to be less prejudiced by calling them "bigots" who seek to perpetuate "discrimination." It would be far better to make a positive case for same-sex marriage, which most of our Washington-based gay leaders, following Howard Dean's talking points, simply won't do.

On a brighter note (kinda, sorta), the conservative Washington Examiner, known for its close ties to the Bush White House, editorializes:

By bringing up the proposal now, when it is certain to be defeated, and making it clear in comments to the media that they are doing it only to "bring out the base" in November, Bush, Rove and company are also laying the groundwork for permanently shelving the initiative after the ballots are counted. Let the marriage amendment fail now and odds are overwhelming that there will be many other "more winnable" goals for Bush and the GOP leadership to push. (hat tip: Right Side of the Rainbow)

See, they're not "bigots," are they?

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

A sad day for a sinking presidency. This anti-federalist amendment which would ban states from recognizing not only same-sex marriage but also "the legal incidents thereof" (i.e., civil unions and probably even domestic partnerships) is going nowhere, which is the good news. But the response of even those Democrats and moderate Republicans voting against it-i.e., suggesting the topic itself is unworthy of debate-is also indefensible. What a display of gay political impotence all round, and a missed opportunity to make a positive case for the principle of equality (or even something closer to equality, such as civil unions).

Just in time for the Senate debate on the newly retitled Marriage Protection Amendment (Marriage Prevention Amendment would be more like it), here's a major new book on Scandinavia's experience with same-sex unions. In Gay Marriage: For Better or Worse? What We've Learned from the Evidence, Bill Eskridge and Darren Spedale say this:

[O]ur data for Denmark, Norway, and Sweden demonstrate that the trend toward cohabitation and away from marriage slowed down rather than speeded up after enactment of those countries' registered partnership statutes... The Scandinavia-bashing public voices like Santorum, Bork, and Kurtz is a most one-sided, and incorrect, reading of what is going on in these countries.

The book is packed with data and looks to be an important contribution. It's in stock at Amazon.com.

From a pro-life point of view, America is murdering on the order of a million unborn children every year--infanticide to the tune of about 47 million since 1973. Gay marriage, on the other hand, seems unlikely to result in the death of anyone. Even if it's immoral and socially harmful, as many opponents believe, it doesn't victimize anyone, much less kill them. So it was eye-opening when Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, told Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard that gay marriage has "reached the same plane as the right to life issue" among Republican voters.

Unfortunately, he's probably right. Religious conservatives seem to be as outraged by men marrying men as they are about men murdering children. Even if Perkins isn't implying moral equivalence (it's not exactly clear), the very fact that these two issues are "coequal" as political priorities suggests that conservatives have either lost all sense of moral proportion or aren't all that serious about abortion being murder.

In fact, the two issues aren't "coequal" where legislative action is concerned: Conservatives are actively pushing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but they've shelved their drive for a constitutional ban on abortion. Though that may make sense as a purely political decision, it's morally unintelligible--especially given that neither amendment can pass right now. As a symbolic gesture, it's worth trying to ban same-sex matrimony that exists in only one state, but not industrial-scale mass murder all around the country?

I understand that some people of good conscience oppose gay marriage on moral grounds, and that's fine. But someday social conservatives will look back on their panicky response to gay marriage as an occasion when they let hysteria get the better of them.

As President Bush prepares to kow-tow to the social/religious right with a Rose Garden endorsement of the federal "marriage protection" amendment, banning all states from either legislatively or judicially recognizing same-sex unions, let's note more online evidence that it's not only the gay left that opposes the amendment.

Walter Olson chimes in at the excellent Overlawyered.com, citing James Q. Wilson, about as impressive a policy intellectual as the right has to offer, who came out against the amendment in March.

And the libertarian Cato Institute has published IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter's critique of the amendment.

More. The Right Side of the Rainbow blog has an interesting take on nonsense from both sides.

Still more. On Saturday, President Bush used his weekly radio broadcast to call for passage of the amendment. While the Democrats typically use their weekly radio response time to address the same issue as Bush, this week they instead talked about the war in Iraq. That about sums it up, doesn't it?