In a follow up to my Ryan Sorba post of yesterday, I see that both Erik over at his True/Slant digs and Megan McArdle have taken roughly the same approach to the CPAC audience’s reaction to Sorba. Megan commented,

To me, the news story was this: Sorba got booed off the stage. At CPAC. This seems like great news. So why focus on the sad truth that yes, there are still homophobes out there? Maybe this is just heterosexual privilege, but this seems like a genuinely great moment in gay rights–and the gay conservatives and libertarians who sent met that clip seemed to take it as such.

And Erik noted,

That’s pretty astonishing if you ask me. While Andrew and others lament how awful conservatives have gotten lately, I see quite the opposite. Never before in the history of this country have gays and lesbians received such support from conservatives – and that support is growing at a pretty incredible pace.

Many of the commenters to the post have expressed their skepticism about how much this incident ought to count as a marker of change within American conservatism writ large. I think that skepticism is well founded and in light of Erik and Megan’s comments I would wend more closely towards that skepticism than describing Sorba speaking and getting booed off stage as “astonishing” or “a genuinely great moment in gay rights”. Especially insofar as that skepticism keeps us real about what kind of challenge stands in front of us and keeps us working hard .

It is, at best, a marker of what could perhaps best be described as the slow shifting in a general direction. That general direction is towards a greater acceptance of gay rights within conservative discourse, but the reaction to Sorba isn’t a slam dunk or a touchdown in terms of that movement such that I would call it describe it as Erik and Megan do.

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This interview with Andy Schlafly [below] of conservapedia.com is hard to watch.  It’s almost embarrassing.  I think Colbert is at his best for most of the exchange, and the zinger about creating his own reality is marvelous.  Schlafly really is the ultimate self-parodic conservative, and I’m not just saying that because he has one of the most annoying laughs in the history of television.  He says, and I shit you not, that most of Jesus’ parables were lessons in free market economics. I really am spoiled reading the conservative writers that I do read at the Scene and the Porch and Pomocon and the other little pockets of intellectual conservatism remaining.

But really.  Good grief.  I’ve heard of conservapedia but I never realized how utterly inane the project really was.  Of all the silly things on the internet, this one is beginning to take shape as a future hall-of-famer. That’s the magnificent thing about the internet – there’s always room for one more elegant disaster.

Let’s see – here’s the opening paragraph in the entry on evolution: [Read more →]

Please listen to Jason Kuznicki.

NOTE: SIGNIFICANT UPDATES BELOW THE JUMP.

Every year around this time, the FBI publishes its statutorily-mandated annual report on hate crime statistics.  Like clockwork, every year that report gets misused no matter what the FBI does to discourage that misuse (previous examples of misuse here).  This year is no exception, as several prominent liberal sites have picked up on the lede that this year’s report shows a “sharp increase” in anti-gay hate crime while also noting that race-based hate crimes barely decreased at all. 

The problem is that these particular FBI statistics are virtually useless for evaluating year-to-year trends – always have been, always will be.  This year, the FBI itself went out of its way to warn against such readings, stating “our Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program doesn’t report trends in hate crime stats—yearly increases or decreases often occur because the number of agencies who report to us varies from year to year.”

Yet in reporting an 11 percent increase in hate crimes against gays while lamenting a mere 1% decrease in race-based hate crimes, Think Progress and Feministing ignore this important disclaimer.  This failure is significant because several hundred more law enforcement agencies participated in this year’s survey than last year’s survey: last year’s survey had the participation of 13,241 agencies, this year’s of 13,690.  Of those agencies, 2025 in 2007 and 2145 in 2008 actually reported any hate crimes.  This discrepancy in reporting agencies alone makes a worthwhile one-to-one, year-to-year comparison very difficult to make.  At a minimum, for the purposes of this year’s numbers, the discrepancy in reporting agencies accounts for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the apparent increase in hate crimes against gays.

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Time for some blawging.

Rod Dreher makes the case, once again, that same-sex marriage presents a unique and unavoidable conflict that will drastically undermine religious liberty in this nation, concluding that the ”conflict between gay rights and religious liberty is deep, serious and irresolvable to the satisfaction of both.”  Dreher further argues that:

“It’s one thing if the boundaries of gay rights are set by statute, as in the DC case. It’s another if they are set by a court in a constitutional case. In the former, exemptions for religious organizations can be carved out — but if the Supreme Court decides that gay marriage is a constitutional right, then religious organizations will be given much less room to move, and there’s nothing they will be able to do about it.”

On both counts, Rod misunderstands the nature of the conflict and the role of the legislature and courts in creating (or potentially alleviating) that conflict.

First, the conflict here is definitively not between gay marriage and religious liberty.  It is instead between laws regarding private discrimination and freedom of association, or perhaps between licensing laws and freedom of religion.  As they affect the private sphere and specifically religious organizations, gay rights, and specifically same-sex marriage, represent at most an expansion of existing conflicts rather than any new type of conflict.  Even here, the conflict arises not from whether or not same-sex marriage is permitted, but instead from whether or not statutory laws recognize sexual orientation as an impermissible basis for private discrimination (whether in an employment context, public accommodations context, or otherwise), which is independent of whether same-sex marriage is permitted.

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At the risk of ruffling the feathers of a few of my blogging comrades, I think that Kevin Drum is basically correct when he asks LGBT activists to chill out a little:

Still, even putting that aside, there’s a big segment of the gay community that’s pretty pissed off at Obama right now.  In one sense, I understand: they supported him, his record on gay issues is pretty modest so far, and the only way they’re going to get what they want is by keeping the pressure on him.

At the same time, some of the criticism is way over the top.  Obama doesn’t suddenly become a different person whenever he’s dealing with whatever your particular hot button issue is.  He’s the same guy all the time: cautious, tactical, organized, and prone to prioritizing things pretty carefully.  For better or worse, he’s also sensitive about learning lessons from the Clinton administration, and Clinton obviously failed miserably when he tried to force the Pentagon to accept gays early in his administration.

The gay community has every right to be a little miffed with Obama, and it’s good that they are channeling that frustration into activism.  Even if it takes a little while, sustained pressure will encourage the administration to pick up the pace, and direct more time and energy towards changing the status quo.

That said, I think it’s also important for activists to understand that Obama is on their side, even if he is slow-walking reform.  Jeremy Levine (who blogs at the outstanding Social Science Lite) criticized President Obama’s Friday address as “an empty speech, void of action, conviction, or credibility.”  I’ll agree that Obama’s speech was “void of action,” but to say that it lacked conviction or credibility is more than a little unfair.  In fact, I think it betrays a lack of perspective.  Say what you will about Obama’s speech, the fact that the President of the United States declared his unconditional support for gay rights is kind of a big deal.  In fact, it’s a huge deal, especially when you consider that we aren’t even a year removed from an administration that refined anti-gay hostility and elevated it to a national pastime.

President Bush, if you remember, supported a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, and was generally supportive of state-based efforts to strip gay Americans of their rights.  Indeed, stoking fear and hostility towards gay Americans was part of the Bush administration’s reelection effort.  I mean, to just sort of underscore the degree to which it was open season on gay Americans, the White House consistently opposed the extension of hate crimes legislation to gays, even as the country saw a sharp rise in the number of hate crimes targeted at gays.  Activists are well within their rights to criticize Obama’s speech as “just words,” but in doing so, they miss an important fact about presidential rhetoric: it makes a difference.  It further brings gay concerns into the mainstream and gives them a sense of urgency.

This is certainly not to say that the gay community should ignore the fact that Obama has yet to really move on gay rights, but on the whole, I that it’s far more productive to at least acknowledge that Barack Obama is an ally, and – slow-walking notwithstanding – is openly supportive of gay rights.  Tearing him down politically – as opposed to lobbying and pressuring – only makes his job that much harder.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

“And, yes, Bush, despite being personally compassionate and understanding of gay men and women and hiring them from the very bottom to the very top of his administration (on the condition that they remain closeted at all times), went along. He endorsed marginalizing gays as second class citizens in the very federal constitution “in deference to the need to press every advantage.” And in so doing, he never even acknowledged in any way our existence or dignity or humanity. He never met with a single one of us or our representatives in eight years in office. He never used the word itself in a formal speech. He never even referred in public to the pain and suffering that his policy would entail, to the immense hurt a tiny minority would feel if they were singled out in their own constitution as sub-human. This “uniter-not-a-divider” was indifferent to a policy that would have written a beleaguered and tiny minority out of their own country. But he had to do this “in deference to the need to press every advantage.” To my mind, this makes him worse than Rove: at least Rove was a proud cynic; Bush couldn’t take even that responsibility. I know all this pains Reihan and I know his heart and brilliant mind are in the right place. But he’s being far too generous to the GOP elites.”

So where does this place Obama?  Is he worse than both Bush and Rove?  His constituency is largely in favor of gay rights, and yet still he refuses to do everything in his power to afford that portion of the population equality under the law.  This strikes me as quite a lot more disingenuous than anything the past administration did.  After all, Obama doesn’t have to answer to the Christian Coalition, or any conservative religious organization or base.  What could possibly compel him to drag his feet?

Scott may be right and there may be some prioritizing going on.  I mean, it was far more important for the President to push Chicago’s bid for the Olympics than it is for him to sign the executive order required to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  And hey, it’s one thing to juggle health care reform, stimulus, and climate change schemes – it would be awfully difficult to do that and support gay rights all at the same time.  I mean, a guy’s gotta rest.   And it’s not like DOMA or DADT actually effect anyone’s real lives, do they? [Read more →]

When Andrew Sullivan isn’t doing his best to erase any memory of his vital contribution to the medium, he’s actually a very good blogger. His intensely personal take on the ‘tipping point’ of the gay rights movement is worth your time.

“Saving” marriage obviously means objecting to gay-marriage. But what does this have to do with abortion? Can someone please explain to me what on earth King means? Seriously, I have no idea. ~ Alex Massie, responding to Steve King

King had said, “If we don’t save marriage, we can’t remain pro-life” and in a sense he’s right though not at all in the way he intended it.  There are a number of fires burning in the ongoing culture wars – from immigration to censorship to gay rights and of course, abortion.  Some of these are more controversial than others.  Some are a whole lot less morally clear than others.  And almost universally, the way the culture warriors fight their battles – on the left and the right – is by waging divisive wars, demonizing the other side, and through the incessant politicization of our culture.

Look, to me, the gay marriage debate is not really a controversial item anymore.  I think it’s unequivocally right that gays to be allowed to marry, and for Churches to choose who they do and do not marry.  I believe both the religious and the homosexual population will be protected this way, though I think there’s another trial in store for religious homosexuals, but that’s another story.  In this sense, why Rod Dreher, for instance, is making this about religion is beyond me.  That struggle will be made within the Churches and the individuals who attend them.

However, the issue of abortion is much more difficult.  No matter how hard I try to see it from a pro-choice perspective – and I do try – I cannot think of a fetus as merely that, as merely an extension of the mother.  I think of a fetus as a baby, and I think of babies as people with basic human rights.  As such, I think of abortion as a violation of that baby’s right to life.  I don’t consider girls who receive abortions or their doctors as murderers, though.  I don’t think of pro-choicers as “evil” and in fact, I have a lot of sympathy for the moderates in that camp, because I think more people than not – pro-life and pro-choice – would like to see the end of abortion, they just often disagree about the means by which to achieve that end.  There are deep cultural beliefs at play here, and it’s wrong to think of the other side as “the enemy” or as bad, immoral people – it misses the larger point, and denies them the compassion and respect they deserve. [Read more →]

I read Leviticus last year while studying Judaism and I noticed exactly the same thing Ron Beasley is on to in this post. The problem with fundamentalism is it can’t really operate in the real world; no Christian follows all the laws and commandments set forth in the Torah.  Few Jews – even Orthodox – can manage that, and some Orthodox Jews go to extraordinary lengths to follow all 613 mitzvot.  Find me a Christian who even comes close.  Some Orthodox Jews keep two kitchens just to make sure they’re staying kosher.

This is because in Christianity Jesus said, essentially, that there were two commandments that superseded all the rest:  to love God, and to love our neighbor.  To love in other words, wholly and freely.  Jesus was responding in large part to the folly of the priesthood of His day, which had lost sight of love in favor of all those damn laws and commandments.  There is something strikingly similar about those days and our own.  We condemn gays because of a commandment in Leviticus, but we certainly no longer stone people to death for skipping out on the Sabbath – a far more weighty commandment at least from the ancient perspective.  We’ve largely abandoned the Sabbath in the modern world, but still cling quite fiercely to any and every sexual taboo.

The truth is that we could never, as people actually living in the world, as a part of the world, follow each and every ludicrous, ancient commandment, many of which may have made sense – perhaps even on a purely sanitary level – for the ancients, but which miss the point of Jesus’ two great commandments altogether.

Damon Linker and Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan have been tossing this ball back and forth now for a while.  In his latest, Linker writes:

It seems to me that Rod’s opposition to gay marriage and social acceptance follows less from an argument or an assertion about the world, nature, or God than it does from a disposition or temperament — from a disposition or temperament inclined toward fear. (In retrospect, I can see how significant and telling it is that one of the first questions I posed to Rod in my original post was “What are you afraid of?”, and that Andrew fastened onto that passage in his initial response and returned to it in the title of his longer post in response to Rod. Fear has been at the center of this debate from the beginning.)

Conservatism and faith are both inextricably tied to doubt; the former utilizes doubt as a sort of gauge by which to check and evaluate progress, the latter as a sort of balancing force.  True faith must be contrasted with real doubt.  But what faith and conservatism do not need, and what inevitably leads to their corruption, is fear.  And Linker is right to note that what this debate – at least for Dreher – boils down to, is fear.  This is not to say that all arguments against gay marriage are based in fear, as Conor notes, but certainly many are, and they all miss a larger point. [Read more →]

Regarding Andrew’s post about the full-page anti-gay-marriage ad run in the Salt Lake Tribune, I find I am once again conflicted over the use of the term “Christianist.”  While I do think it rightly applies to many in the politically active fundamentalist, evangelical movement, and certain factions within the Catholic Church, can it really be applied to Mormons?  Mormons are not, by any definition of the word, Christian, so can they truly be labeled Christianists?  I think this an example of labels taking precedence over substance. Do we risk muddying up our own causes when we paint with such broad strokes as to wholly mislabel a group of people that justifiably deserve our criticism?

I think it’s easy to get so caught up in our themes – and in this case, the theme is Christianism, or the politicization of religion and Christianity in general – that we lose sight of the larger issue.  It doesn’t really matter if it’s Christianists or Mormons or Confucianists that oppose gay marriage. The point is that they oppose it on religious grounds, a position antithetical to our nation’s canon of laws.  Certainly religion is taken into account whenever we make judgments based on tradition, and such was the case when our Constitution was founded, but that is not at the heart of this issue.  This sort of reasoning may apply to cultural or personal decisions, but not to political or legal ones.

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Freddie asks:

Hey, why would someone like me be more invested in building a legal defense of gay marriage specifically and a larger lattice of rights to defend gay people generally? Why, maybe because of things like girls getting kicked out of their private high schools because the administration of said high school believes them to be lesbians.

Now, I understand that kicking girls out of school for being lesbians is wrong.  It’s not nearly as wrong as kicking girls out of the US Army for being gay, but that’s a story for another day.

What this really made me think of is the Chicago school board plan to build a “gay-friendly” public school.  Admissions will be lottery-based, but the school in question is expected to be largely composed of gay students seeking some sort of refuge from the daily prejudice they meet in normal schols.

Now what strikes me about this is that the gay-activist movement, or at least a part of the movement, seems to be advocating a sort of gay segregation, a purposeful seperation of gays and straights (or at least “outed” gays) from one another.  This is a legal appraoch to a cultural problem that will no doubt backfire.  How long did civil rights activists have to work to end black/white segregation of schools?  Now the gay movement wants to instigate that very same sort of segregation?

Good intentions aside, I think this is probably the most foolish legalistic approach I’ve heard of out of the gay rights movement.  What’s to stop another school district doing the same thing, not out of good intentions, but to say “protect” their children from the moral degredation they perceive in homosexuality?  Intentions are hard to classify, and extremely difficult to prove in a legal case.

And beyond that, we’re treading on public ground here.  Freddie is rightfully upset about those lesbians being kicked out of a private school, but quite frankly that school, so long as it doesn’t accept public money, is well within their rights to do so.  Do public schools have a right to create a “gay-friendly” school anymore than they have a right to create a “no-gays-allowed” school – or a “don’t ask, don’t tell” school?

I would say no, they don’t.  I understand it must be very hard to face the cultural hostility that many of these kids face every day at school.  But that’s part of the culture war.  And it’s part of being a kid in school.  In the utopian “gay-friendly” school there will probably be nerdy kids who are picked on for not being cool enough, or any other myriad social stigmatisms that make high school less fun that it ought to be.  But that’s life.  The cultural battle won’t be won by hiding from it.