A Second Hand Conjecture

Having failed to legalize gay marriage almost everywhere by democratic means, a proposed new approach by its advocates is to revoke marriage rights for heterosexuals, in a kind of retaliatory equalization. In effect, the idea is to abolish the legal institution of marriage for all, if it is to be that some are excluded from its benefits.

Jack Balkin and Ann Althouse debate the merits of this and generally agree it’s a fine idea, if potentially constitutionally problematic. A spectator can only marvel at how one couldn’t have picked a stratagem more perfectly designed to infuriate defenders of traditional marriage arrangements, and provoke even further opposition to gay marriage.

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Looks like the “Day Without a Gay” civil rights protest intended to send a message to the country about the importance of gay employees and consumers…had no effect whatsoever. Thus the congenitally counterproductive leadership of the gay rights movement can notch another embarrassing disaster onto their totem pole of failure.

Why can’t this movement find effective leadership? Flippantly shirking your presumably safe job for political messaging, when people of all sexual orientations are , was no way to inspire national sympathy for the cause. Would it not have been more logical and positive to have a ‘day with twice the gay’? Say, encouraging gay Americans to double their daily purchasing, or work twice as hard?

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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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As readers will know, I’m certainly no apologist for the social conservative movement in either its style or purposes. But it seems to me to be an awful injustice to lay at their feet the defeat of John McCain, in an election almost exclusively dominated by economic concerns:

If the GOP decides to go in the Bobby Jindal direction (fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism, aggressively anti-gay rights), it will be committing political suicide. As much as anything else, this election was a referendum on the social conservative agenda, and the social conservatives did not win.
(LGF)

A fine verdict that I’m entirely sympathetic to…had Mike Huckabee just gone down in flames, beside defeats for his favored anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened.

As frustrating and silly as the soc-cons can be, one needs to be cautious of the temptation for blaming  them for everything that goes wrong with the Republican party. John McCain is certainly not their creature by any stretch of the imagination, and yet it was the soc-cons in their core red states who arguably remained most loyal to the party.

LGF often understands the silliness of the Democratic penchant for criticizing US allies more frequently and forcefully than avowed enemies. A similar rule might be applied here.

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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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A convicted cocaine dealer in Florida isn’t going to be deported to her native Jamaica, on grounds of the violence she would likely suffer for her lesbianism. It’s not very commonly known by the general public in this country, but human rights groups regard supposedly easy-going Jamaica as the most violently homophobic country on Earth.

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Jesse Helms has died today. And I have lost track of the number of gay friends who have written me congratulatory or celebratory emails and IMs. It really is terrible—yes, the man opposed our right to an equal stake in society, the right to have a family, the right simply to live our lives without men like him imposing his views on us. But celebrating his death? Helms has been a non-issue for years—no matter what crimes one may pin on him, if people really think he could have spoken magic words and suddenly convinced people to stop condomless sex in the 1980s… well, that is simply delusional.

The amount of hate being spewed at a man we all condemned for hatred is simply despicable. And people wonder why I have such problems being associated with other gay men. His family is grieving, just as our families grieved when our loved ones die. To dance upon his grave, no matter how much you opposed his message—one friend even crowed that he was “rotting in hell, paling around with Hitler and Stalin”—is so far beyond the pale, I really am out of words.

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Most people believe that liberals and Democrats are more sympathetic to gay interests than conservatives and Republicans. Count me among those who think this is accurate.

But, not all is what it seems on the surface.

Some Republicans - some very high up - can and have expressed support for those in the gay community.

Allow the Gay Patriot to explain.

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(Originally posted at What if?)

From the moment I purchased “Managing Your Money” software many years ago, I realized that Andrew Tobias is a very smart and very amusing fellow. Later, I discovered that Andy is also warm, friendly and has a huge heart. Despite being a huge business and DNC celebrity (he’s the DNC’s treasurer), he frequently takes times to email-correspond with lil’ ol’ me.

Often, Andy and I disagree on a multitude of policy issues. Nevertheless, on at least one issue, we are quite in agreement: gay folks deserve the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us.

While Andy happens to be gay, I am not. Neither is Jon Kislak, a Floridian active in Republican politics. Mr. Kislak, Andy, I and many others appreciate that your sexual orientation should not be an obstacle to enjoying the same civil rights that heterosexuals have. While I seem unable to put in an excerpt at what if?, please do go to Andy’s site to see what Mr. Kislak has to say. (Just a little warning; you’ll have to scroll down a lot of pro-DNC stuff before you get to it. Forewarned is forearmed! :))

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