A Second Hand Conjecture

You may have noticed there’s an ugly and unfortunate current developing in some of the protests against Proposition 8 in California. Namely white gays, blaming blacks for its passage. Even Andrew Sullivan, who has been blaming blacks for a couple of days now, has noticed that perhaps things are getting a little out of hand.

Altogether, as Mark Steyn puts it, this wasn’t quite the possibility for post-election civil discord people were anticipating:

The media were warning that if the election went the wrong way there’d be riots, but I didn’t realize they meant Klansmen in Abercrombie polos roaming West Hollywood itching for a rumble.
(NRO)

One of the most visible recurring problems here is the frustration many gay men and women are experiencing with the question of how blacks could “betray” the cause of universal civil rights, after such a long and noble struggle of their own to secure them. Confronting this matter directly in an opinion in the Los Angeles Times, Jasmyne Cannick raises several worthwhile points of explanation. Most notably, a misunderstanding on the part of white gays about both the origins and requirements of an appeal to the black community:

[T]he black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity — not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.

[...]

Likewise, holding the occasional town-hall meeting in Leimert Park — the one part of the black community where they now feel safe thanks to gentrification — to tell black people how to vote on something gay isn’t effective outreach either.
(LAT)

In a consistent vein she adds on her site:

[G]ays are headed to Long Beach tonight to protest. I wonder though why they are moving from Westwood to Long Beach and skipping past Compton, Watts, and South L.A.?
(Jasmyne Cannick)

While fear and conceit are definitely in evidence, more pertinent is the matter of misdirection in the division between political friends and enemies. In ordinary times, the necessary accord for putting these two parties back into a grudging spiritual alignment would be to unify against the common enemy: the invidious conservative power structure.

Thus the real trouble is that simultaneous with the passage of Proposition 8, this conservative power structure and government has been quite visibly thrown down by the election of Barack Obama and the Democrats. The once titanic foe is now in pieces, scattered and preoccupied with internal reexamination and a painful reconsolidation project. It isn’t a party to this debate, it isn’t even a party with an agenda of any kind at the moment. So it is that without a Tito to oppose in common struggle, the Balkan coalition of Yugoslavian dissidents become Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, almost eager to turn on each other. Head north to peaceful Slovenia says me. Call it Oregon.

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I recall it being reported at the height of the sordid and tedious Monica Lewinsky scandal, that Bill Clinton personally felt he had not violated his wedding vows because in his view, receiving fellatio did not constitute adultery. Evidently Clinton had researched the topic at some length and found a kind of tortured reinforcement for his perspective in the Bible itself. At the time I thought it seemed a rather instructive example of the essential convenience of Clinton’s morality, as well as providing a further lesson that one can find divine justification for almost anything in scripture if they look hard enough.

But in 2003 it was revealed that the New Hampshire Supreme Court had grown to share Clinton’s view as a matter of law. And today, it seems the idea may have trickled into youth culture, as a survey of students at Montrose High School in Colorado revealed a majority of them didn’t consider oral sex to be sex at all. Which may of course provoke lament from those enrolled in the increasingly pessimistic venture of social conservatism, but causes even more distress for our shared language. That’s because if oral sex isn’t sex, what then should we call it? Fellatio, analingus and cunnilingus are cumbersome and particular words after all.

Having consulted the online thesaurus for advice, some social conservatives will perhaps be pleased to learn that in failing to find a suitable synonym it asks, “did you mean irreligious?” But this of course won’t do for the rest of us.

Taking a cue from the dictionary, we might call it “oral stimulation.” However, this may tend to unnecessarily confound the boundaries between a blowjob and an interesting conversation.

Therefore, I propose the use of “oral nonsex” for its utility in both complying with the children’s liberalized definition, and preserving the capricious nature of public morality for the prize of irony. Also, social conservatives disappointed by the purposes of redefinition itself, could be comforted with a gifted advantage over their adversarsies. After all, anyone contending that “oral sex is nonsex”, has a certain literal and yet ridiculous argument on their hands.

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Could a liberal lesbian rights activist actually win South Carolina’s 1st congressional district? Sure looks possible, as Linda Ketner has closed to within 5 in her aggressive challenge to incumbent Rep. Henry Brown. Of interest, Ketner is also a member of  “the Cabinet” which Time just published an interesting piece on. It’s an informal group of gay tech and hereditary millionaires, who have been investing large sums toward a systematic defeat of social conservative Republicans nationwide.

The success of Ketner and other socially liberal Democrats running on explicitly pro-gay rights platforms in traditionally social conservative friendly districts, would certainly tend to complete the trinity of broader Republican political decline. Not only are economic and national security focused conservatives losing on their traditional strong suit thanks to economic woes and Iraq, but the cultural debate may be shifting substantially leftward as well.

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Longtime Clinton ally Leon Panetta pronounces Barack Obama “intimidated” by Sarah Palin, and lost in a deepening cycle of reactive defense. With McCain now winning a majority of independents and erasing the gender gap, the blood is most definitely in the water. It’s now a legitimate question to ask whether McCain can finish him off. My sense is that the Obama campaign isn’t too many more mistakes removed from a serious structural collapse in a significant segment of its support outside the Democratic ranks. Panetta is quite right, Obama needs to regain the initiative and fast.

On that matter Jonathan Freedland is pessimistic. So much so, that he is evidently consumed with stomach pains of grief. He warns us that the entire planet will seek revenge against the United States if we fail to appoint Obama president.
(more…)

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Those of us who remember the political scene of the 1990s remember Bob Barr as a hero of rightwing social conservatives. That was before his peculiar (some say opportunistic) transformation into libertarian civil rights crusader. Anyway, I’d missed this a week ago, but apparently Ed Brayton cornered Barr on his 90s crusade against Wiccans. Barr compared his unsurprisingly changed position on the neo-pagan religion to his former opposition to gays in military, which only reminds us of yet another soc-con cause he once championed and now repudiates.
(via Nate Uncensored via IPR)

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photo: Chris Dunn

The Moderate Voice takes a good and short look at McCain’s politics and notices a compelling absence of social conservative moral lectures, as well as a preference for stressing the characteristics of conservatism that Americans find most appealing: limited government and national security. Jennifer Rubin might add that McCain’s emphasis on pragmatic realism in international affairs, is also the only acceptable antidote to a politics of ambiguous hope from Obama. McCain’s secular politics and taste for moderate political compromise represented vulnerabilities in the nomination fight, but they can become powerful electoral assets in the general election, if he can use them.

(HT: Donklephant)

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It’s time to put “grassroots” in quotation marks for Mike Huckabee’s campaign. Renaissance Ruminations is being harassed by slimy disclaimerless robo-calls and push polls, from liberation theology central. An irritated Riley at Virginia Virtucon, who is experiencing the same problem, made his views known to the Huckabot: “The call cut off once I started giving answers such as “‘No way, no how’ and ‘Bite me.’” According to Riley, the Huckabee campaign is still complaining about Mitt Romney in these calls too. Huckabee’s un-Christian habit for harboring unreasonable and vindictive grudges, is not doing much to improve his well -earned reputation as a scoundrel, among non-soc-con Republicans.

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Huckabee the liberation theologist is now tied with McCain in Rasmussen’s latest poll at 24%. One would hope for South Carolinians to regain their senses prior to the vote, but it doesn’t look good.

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Here’s some splendid news for those of us not delighted by the prospect of a liberation theologist takeover of the Republican Party. Rasmussen is reporting their new South Carolina numbers and Mike Huckabee has lost five points and Fred Thompson gained four since last week. Thompson now stands at 16%, Huckabee at 19%, with McCain reaping the rewards at 28%.

If Huckabee can be stopped in South Carolina, it’s quite probable that will be the end of him. Until of course John McCain’s advisers convince him to name Huckabee as his Vice Presidential nominee in order to appease the soc-con voting bloc (traditionally his strongest adversaries within the party).

Indeed, my friend Jason over at postpolitical (who is an ardent Huckabee supporter) is holding out hope for McCain to win the nomination if Huckabee fails, for precisely this eventuality. Even the slimmest chance of getting Huckabee anywhere near the levers of power is apparently enormously important to his supporters. But is it as important to his opponents to prevent that? It should be.

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