New polling data out today shows yet another bump in support for same-sex marriage after Obama's announcement that he supports it. More importantly, there's an all-time low in opposition, down to 39%. This polling data was taken two weeks after Obama's announcement, so it's reasonable to suggest that what we hoped would happen---that the President coming out to support gay marriage would help normalize it and push more people into the "yes" column---is already coming to pass. Since most people change their minds pretty slowly on this stuff, we can probably see even more dramatic effects down the road.
One very important thing to note from this survey is that contrary to the stereotypes that are constantly brandished about black voters and gay marriage, support for same-sex marriage amongst African-Americans polled is higher than it is amongst the population at large.
The poll also finds that 59 percent of African Americans say they support same-sex marriage, up from an average of 41 percent in polls leading up to Obama’s announcement of his new position on the matter. Though statistically significant, it is a tentative result because of the relatively small sample of black voters in the poll.
It may be tentative, but I think the shift represents something a lot of us have been saying for a long time, which is that opposition to same-sex marriage isn't as hard and fast as the activist homophobes would have you believe. A lot of the negative reaction you get from polling is due to straight up cognitive dissonance; people tend to think of marriage as a heterosexual institution, and the idea of two men or two women marrying each other causes a negative reaction based more on unexamined prejudices than on open bigotry. Which means that all it will take to get those folks to move on the subject is getting used to the idea, and having the President support gay marriage openly is a huge step in that process. One of the most unfortunate tendencies of our species is that we're oriented towards going with the flow over all other things, and if we imagine the flow is against gay marriage, a lot of us will be against it for no other reason than that. But that also means that all we need to do to fix the problem is change the direction of the flow.
That's why visibility is so important. There was a knee-jerk Eeyore reaction to Obama's comments about supporting gay marriage from many liberals, which is to immediately minimize and say it doesn't matter, because blah blah policy is the only thing that matters. (Of course, as some prominent gay journalists pointed out, Obama's policies were way ahead of his public statements in the pro-gay direction.) This polling data strongly suggests against that claim, as does piles of research on why people believe the things they do. Perception is important. Leadership is important. I made a couple of silly jokes about the rapper-a-day rate of celebrities coming out after Obama and saying they support gay marriage, but that sort of thing matters. Bringing the privilege of being straight men who are famous and well-liked to the table matters. In an ideal world where rationality was the only factor, it shouldn't, but people being the pack animals we are, celebrity endorsements for legal gay marriage from the likes of Jay-Z and Ice Cube matter. This is only the beginning; I really do think Obama's announcement will look like a major tipping point when this is all history.
Gay marriage opponents often take pains to claim that it's not that they're against gay people---how dare you say that!---but that they just want to protect "traditional marriage". This story is implausible on its surface, of course. They've accepted many changes to marriage law, such as legal divorce. Plus, if "that's the way we've always done it" was a real argument, they should also resist everything from the computer to the automobile, which have changed society in ways that affect them directly far more than gay marriage could.
But even beyond that, you have direct evidence that opposition to gay marriage is part of a larger belief that gay people should face formal discrimination for housing, health care, and employment, to punish them for being different. "Traditional marriage" is being used as a cover to advocate for discrimination against people just because they're gay. See Bob Marshall, a GOP legislator in Virginia who is really, really obsessed with people who aren't having sex with him, and he fears are having too much fun. He's backed legislation to punish those sex-having ladies, and now on the grounds of their sexy, sexy gay relationships.
Virginia state Del. Bob Marshall (R) has launched an effort to block an openly gay judge from being considered for a post on a general district court.
Marshall said he believes that Tracy Thorne-Begland, a Richmond-based prosecutor who lives with his partner and two adopted children, should be removed from the list of potential appointees. Thorne-Begland's sexual orientation would conflict with his ability to hold up the state's constitution, Marshall said.
"Marriage is between one man and one woman, and the the applicant has represented himself in public in a relationship that we don't recognize in Virginia," Marshall said in an interview with WRIC, the ABC affiliate in Richmond.
So there you have it: Banning gay marriage is really about putting gay people into a formal second class that can be barred from certain jobs, and I'm sure if Marshall had his way, pretty much all jobs.
The underlying assumption of this argument is that a minimum requirement for judges is that they can't be in a public relationship that isn't recognized by the state. Marshall would like you to believe this is a criteria that's always been around and is just now being abandoned, but as far as I can tell, the "judges must be in legally recognized public relationships" is a brand-spanking new requirement. It would also mean that any straight judge who is dating someone would also be barred from the bench, since they're in a public relationship that isn't marriage. One also wonders if Marshall would make this a retroactive requirement, meaning that even if a judge is married now, if they dated their spouse prior to the marriage, they should be barred from the bench. He is an anti-sex fanatic---he backed the "personhood" bill that would basically classify all sexually active straight women of reproductive age as "pregnant", barring them from wide swaths of medical care and certain kinds of employment just because they touch penises---so I wouldn't be surprised. Take this train of thought to its logical conclusion, and if you've ever been alone with another person not a relative, we have to assume you've had sex outside of a legallly recognized relationship and shouldn't ever be considered for the bench. This niftily eliminates 100% of candidates, allowing wingnutty legislatures to pass any kind of hateful law they want with no check on it, but I'm sure that benefit is just a bonus for Bob Marshall.
In the quick rush of responses to Obama's declaration that he does, in fact, support same-sex marriage, my favorite so far has been E.J. Graff's. She makes two very important points that liberals who want to pick this apart and find reasons to be unhappy with Obama need to consider. First, the notion that Obama isn't supporting his personal beliefs with policy is simply wrong. While he did the political thing and afffirmed the ridiculous claim that this is a state issue, his administration has, in fact, not acted in a way that suggests he really believes that. They support the end of DOMA, they don't enforce it, and they support a law that would end it. They believe, correctly, that it's unconstitutional. Outside of that, this isn't his fight. States either have to decide to legalize it or the courts will have to make them, but that's about it. Second of all, she powerfully puts down the liberal tendency to take statements like this as "just words" that don't mean anything:
There's something very deep about having your government declare you a stranger to its laws, defining your love as outside all respectable recognition. For my president to stand up and say that I should belong fully to my nation, that my wife and I should be considered as fully married as my brother and his wife—well, it reopens and washes out some very deeply incised sense of exclusion, a scar inflicted when, at age 15, I first panicked at the realization that I might be queer.
Words matter. Every action that changes the world started with someone saying or writing words, often lots and lots of words. The President is a moral leader as well as a legal one, and his opinion matters. Not everything in this world is a concrete object to hold on to or a material gain. Symbols matter. Words matter. Obama taking this stance sends the signal that no number of polls could, which is that supporting gay marriage is the mainstream position now. That will help get things moving in a policy way. Not directly, but by helping change the conversation, and making it harder for bigots to plea the moral high ground. In fact, as soon as this was announced, Shep Smith on Fox News straight up said that liberals have the moral high ground on this. Belief precedes policy. Don't ever forget that, even if doing so makes you feel like a rebel and iconoclast.
Gay marriage is always a strange issue for me, because I generally am not into marriage. I have no plans on it, ever, because I think it's a patriarchal institution that can't be rooted enough from its origins in the idea that one person can own another to be salvaged. Obviously, the continued success of egalitarian models of marriage challenges my belief to an extent, but the fact that divorce continues to be harder than it should be and the way that married couples are privileged over everyone else makes me circle back around to the idea that in order for marriage to truly be a good institution, it would have to change so much that it wouldn't look like marriage anymore.
But I also believe in love, and I believe a lot of people get married because they want to express that love, and I don't have a problem with that. I even like weddings! I was just in one! (Which meant getting asked a lot when I'm getting married, but you know, I've gotten better at saying, "I don't believe in marriage" in a cheery voice that makes it hard to argue.) More importantly, shutting a group of people out of a right such as marriage for no other reason than bigotry goes against every value I hold. It really is telling people that they're less-than for no real reason other than they're different from you. Like E.J. said, this sort of thing is fundamentally about hurting people by excluding them, and changing that matters. If I were gay, I don't think I'd want to be married any more than I do now. But I sure as shit wouldn't want to be told that I didn't deserve the right. It's also important to think about what kind of message support for gay marriage sends to gay youth; it lets them know that even if their immediate family or social circles don't accept them, the President does. And so do a lot of people. In fact, supporting them is mainstream. That's going to get a lot of sad kids through tough times. And that's reason enough to celebrate this.
Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.
I have some strong concerns about how they established "same-sex desire", because none of the tests they used strike me as establishing desire. At best, interest. Which causes serious problems for the causal claims here, since it may also be that straight people who have internalized a high degree of homophobia linger over the suggestion of gayness simply because the forbidden is inherently attractive. I don't think sexual orientation is a "choice", I do think it's more fluid and complex than people think, and authoritarians may actually cause otherwise straight people in their midst to linger more over fantasies of same-sex sex. Additionally, some of the tests were just about what pictures you like to look at, and I'm really unclear that sexual attraction is the main or sole determinant in how you make that choice.
Still, can there be any doubt that someone raised in a homophobic environment who has strong attractions to the same sex is likely to react to this by becoming even more homophobic in hopes of chasing the attraction away? Attraction and revulsion have a very strange relationship with each other, but this expression of it is probably the strongest, because the person feeling this has nothing but incentives to double down on the paranoia.
As a good liberal, I suppose I'm supposed to downplay this kind of information and point to the almighty systems as the "real" problem, but I'm not a good liberal, I guess. Because while systemic issues are the problem, the main reason that systems are shaped the way they are is that actual human beings shape them. If homophobes stopped being homophobes, then there wouldn't be an obstacle to full equality for GLBT folks. Some times I think we focus so much on systems that we forget that it's people who shape them, which is how we magically live in a country where sexism and racism flourish while everyone pretends that sexists and racists are rarer than unicorns.
These conditions arise as a result of faulty bonding and identification with the same-sex parent, starting in early life. They indicate deep-seated gender self-alienation (TG's cross-identify with an opposite-sex figure), and are preventable and treatable.
The writings of well-known figures like Chastity Bono, James Morris, and Richard Raskind confirm this pattern.
Psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons's articles "Gender Identity Disorder in Children" and "The Desire for a Sex Change" are instructive.
The Left has been lying to the public for decades, with false science and false argument. "Gays" are a manufactured "minority" used for political purposes.
The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality has the real information (http://www.narth.com).
More and more Americans are learning the truth. GayScam, this fraud, will be ended. The laws will be adjusted accordingly.
--Sharon Kass Washington, D.C.
I responded:
Well, you weren't born an asshole, either, but I still think it's wrong to take your computer away.
And then, feeling like perhaps she doesn't have the mental acuity to get the joke, I followed up with:
I'll add that no one is born religious, either. That condition arises, often as in your case, because of a strong hatred in the heart that can't be rationalized by real world evidence. So fantasies of gods and demons arise, giving the religious person justifications for their ugliness and irrational hatred, in this case of queer people. These fantasies are preventable, and treatable.
Since you appear to have blanket refusal for giving anyone rights for conditions they weren't "born" with, to be consistent, you should work on banning the practice of religion. After all, the question of homosexuality or transgenderism being inherent at birth is still up in the air, but no one believes babies are born religious.
"Blame the mother" is an old, and thoroughly discredited theory. Quacks like to cling to it, often in all sorts of ways, for the same reason that anti-vaxxers talk vaguely about "toxins" in vaccines. The reason is that nearly anyone's experiences can be framed this way, if need be. If your mom showed you affection as a child---and mothers are known to do t hat---and you were clingy and needy---I have rarely seen a child that is not---then a manipulative bigot can use that as "evidence" that you overly identified with your parent. Perversely, if your mother was actually distant or unaffectionate, that also can be used, as you'll then be told that you were made clingier by lack of affection. Once you've determined that being queer is a "disease" with its roots in childhood, you're able to exploit anything from even the most idyllic childhood and claim that as the cause.
Ironically, Kass is not only wrong that "more and more" Americans are turning against gay people, but she has it completely backwards. As the real-world evidence piles in that being gay or transgendered is not inherently damaging, and certainly is not experienced as "choice" any more than being straight is, more and more Americans are coming around to support gay and transgender rights. This includes the American Psychological Association, which says:
There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.
They also take this position on transgendered people:
Many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder. For these individuals, the significant problem is finding affordable resources, such as counseling, hormone therapy, medical procedures, and the social support necessary to freely express their gender identity and minimize discrimination. Many other obstacles may lead to distress, including a lack of acceptance within society, direct or indirect experiences with discrimination, or assault. These experiences may lead many transgender people to suffer with anxiety, depression, or related disorders at higher rates than nontransgender persons.
In other words, what psychological distress stems from being transgendered is not inherent to the state, but a result of bigotry. Anyone who claims to be concerned about the mental health of gay and transgendered people should respond, then, with acceptance. Like I said in the comments at the Girl Scouts post, I hear a lot of complaints from bigots about how they don't like accepting people, but so far, I have not heard one give a substantive example of genuine damage to themselves that could occur by just accepting people for who they are.
Sharp readers will notice that I didn't engage in the debate over whether or not people are "born this way". Empowering Lady Gaga lyrics aside, the reason is twofold. One, the evidence is sketchy for any claims about where queerness "comes" from, and in fact, many of us think that's because we're asking the wrong question. Asking where queerness "comes" from implies that cisgendered and straight is a baseline, and anything that differs from that is deviant and needs an explanation. I think of queerness like I do being left-handed: most people are right-handed, but some of us are left-handed. We don't think of left-handed people as deviant so much as we accept that in any population of people, there's going to be some diversity in orientation, as in personality.
The second reason is that it's beside the point. My sense is that sexual orientation and gender identity are probably a mish-mash of genetic, environmental, and experiential influences, but even if you could somehow prove that it's all experiential, so what? It doesn't change the needs of queer people to get proper medical care, social acceptance, and legal rights. I don't give a fuck about this "choice" argument. There is a small subset of the GLBT community that can legitimately be said to be making the "choice" to be at least perceived as gay: bisexual people who really could date either way but have chosen a same-sex partner. So what? I still don't think they should face employment discrimination, being kicked out of community organizations, or being forced not to marry the person they love. It's a completely moot argument, in the pragmatic sense. A lot of identities are partially social constructs, but we still recognize them as real and extend legal protections from discrimination. On the far end, you have religion, which is 100% a choice and completely a social construct, but religious people, in fact, enjoy many legal protections for their religion. On the other end of the spectrum, you have things like race and gender, which are socially constructed but often have easily recognizable physical markers that let people know "what" you are. Gayness is rightly perceived as closer to the race/gender side of the spectrum, since all available evidence shows that it's mostly experienced as not a choice. But it doesn't really matter to me; what matters is that it's on the spectrum, and therefore people who are gay or transgendered deserve to be protected.
I'm taking the rest of the day off---though I'll be on Twitter for the debates tonight---to honor MLK Day. Everyone should celebrate by getting some relaxing in. That said, I had to take the time to respond to someone who had the nerve to use this holiday to send off bigoted missives.
Igor Volsky at Think Progress examines whether or not Rick Perry's comparison of homosexuality to alcoholism will hurt him in the campaign. I think it probably will---that kind of overt bigotry is becoming less acceptable by the hour lately. Igor agrees, to an extent, saying that bigotry like this makes you look bad and distracts from economic issues, pointing out that it hurt Ken Buck in his bid for Senate in Colorado. He adds:
Republican presidential candidates from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney continue to make offensive and homophobic remarks in debates and on the campaign trail, despite the public’s growing acceptance of gay people. It’s unlikely that these positions will resonate with a constituency beyond the party’s social conservative base, since, as Paul Thornton notes in today’s Los Angeles Times, “the radical ideas espoused by Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and others are [already] held up not for genuine consideration but for scorn.” “Perry’s and Bachmann’s views aren’t weighed against President Obama’s ‘evolving’ stance on same-sex marriage; rather, they are simply ridiculed. It says as much about our society as it does the candidates.” And if that’s the case, then Buck’s candidacy was the first in what may be a long line of Republican contenders who will pay a political price for their homophobia until they learn to accept and respect the LGBT community.
Here's what I find fascinating about all this: the "homosexuality is like alcoholism" thing actually came about because social conservatives are trying to sound more tolerant of gays. It's actually an attempt to evade accusations of bigotry. The old line was basically that gays are molesters and perverts who only do gay stuff because they're bad people. The narrative is that gays are broken people with a disease, a compulsion---and that they need "help" to overcome it. But the public saw through that attempt at revisionism as quickly as it was concocted.
In fact, many conservatives have moved past even that and are trying to argue that they believe that sexual orientation is fixed and gay people deserve rights. They've retreated to arguing that opposition to marriage equality isn't discrimination at all, but somehow "protecting traditional marriage". Again, their attempts to evade the label of "bigot" by cleaning up bigoted arguments isn't working. Each new move lasts a couple years, and then the public starts to see through the new gambit, as well.
Of course, the rates of progress vary by community. I think the very far right is still stuck in the "gays are demons who snatch children" mode, the larger Christian right is in the "gays are sick people who need 'help'" phase, the "traditional marriage" coalition is collapsing since it was a last-ditch effort to retain inequality in more liberal areas, and people of moderate to liberal politics have accepted gay people and are moving on.
Update:Nona Willis Aronowitz came to the same conclusion as me. Great minds, you know the drill. She has even more statistics, some showing again that men's attachment to marriage is, if anything, stronger than women's. Which makes sense, since at least with straight marriage, men get more out of it on average.
Ruh-roh: statistics have come out showing that in these early years of same sex marriage being legal in some states, lesbians are hitting the altar far more than gay men. Like far, far more.
In Connecticut, 3,252 lesbian couples have been married since 2008, compared to 2,053 male couples. In Massachusetts, 8,404 female couples, 4,911 male. In New Hampshire, 1,113 pairs of women, 411 pairs of men. In Iowa, 1,376 lesbian marriages, 772 gay male marriages. In Vermont, 1,157 to 597.
These numbers are even more amazing when you realize that gay men way outnumber lesbians. Cue the sexist stereotypes about how women are monogamous and men are promiscuous! And that men want to avoid commitment while women are eager to put a ring on it.
There's just one problem with that stereotype: it isn't true and never has been. Susan Faludi debunked this one in "Backlash" and recent research indicates that single men are just as eager to get married as single women. If anything, men are more attached to the institution than women, as women file for divorce far more than men do. So this disparity can't really be boiled down to men v. women. Now, it could be that this is a matter of comparing apples to oranges---there's reasons to think that straight people and gay people of the same gender have different sets of motivations and circumstances on average that would change their willingness to get married---but I think there's a very simple explanation for this that hasn't been considered in any blogging I've seen on this. Maybe it's as much about who you're marrying as that you're marrying. Research consistently shows that married men---who until recently have all been in straight marriages---fare better psychologically, physically, and financially than single men. Women do better in some ways, but not nearly to the degree that men do. This might indicate that the institution itself has some magical effects on men, but I think a large part of it is that being married to a woman is good for you and more of a value-add to your life than being married to a man, stastically speaking. (Obviously, individuals vary.) Which makes sense. Women are socialized to be caregivers in a way men aren't, and so by marrying one, you get cared for more. I'm guessing lesbians aren't immune to these trends, and thus are quicker to get married.
So some songs about weddings and marriage for your Friday:
Yes, the general attitude towards marriage in my music collection is negative. Your point?
As I'm sure you all realize, the fact that New York tipped over into the "legal same sex marriage" column is a big deal. There are 44 more states to go, and the usual suspects in the South will be the biggest struggle, but the size and influence of New York will help usher this process along. Once straight people start to realize nothing is really going to be that different from them, they'll stop caring. Many people are quietly adjusting towards a less bigoted point of view about gay people.
Watching wingnut reactions in light of this information has been interesting. The reactions indicate that they get that the tide has really turned against them, because there's not a whole lot of calm, confident rebukes to New York's actions. When the writing's on the wall, there's basically two reactions: give up and shut up, or turn into a rabid, screaming maniac. As Roy notes, many right wing bloggers have decided that there's no time like the present to stop adding to the pile of bigoted comments that will be recorded in the history books as the utterings of villains.
But the folks at the National Review by and large have gone with the "foaming at the mouth" response, as chronicled at Think Progress. Gay rights proponents were compared to Kim Jong Il and Bull Connor, and of course, there were endless insinuations that people will be fucking in the streets. The overwrought imaginations of the wingnuttery never stop amazing me. There were a couple of actual supporters of gay marriage at the National Review and a couple of people who realized there's no time like the present to shut the fuck up, but overall the theme was that having to live in a world where gay couples can be full citizens was the exact same thing as having dogs sicced on you because you sat at a lunch counter.
What's interesting about all this is that the more gains that gay activists achieve, the more obvious it is that the people who oppose them are screaming bigots and nothing more. As someone who has been an interested witness to all this, I have to say it's absolutely fascinating. When I was young, being a homophobic bigot was basically hiding in plain sight, because bigots were able to conduct themselves with grace and dignity. But now the pressure is on and their true natures are coming out. You learn so much about people when they're squeezed a little.
Liberals have a tendency (much more pronounced in 2007 and 2008 but still evident) to imagine that Barack Obama is just as liberal as them. Because he's obviously smart, because he dabbled with genuine leftism in his youth, and because he opposed Iraq, liberals think he's actually Paul Krugman, forced by electoral circumstance (or cowardice) to talk and govern like George H.W. Bush. Coincidentally, this is also Newt Gingrich and Stanley Kurtz's thesis. It's silly when they say he's hiding his socialism behind a veneer of centrism and it's silly when liberals say he's doing the same.
But on one issue it's pretty obvious that Barack Obama is simply hiding his dangerous radicalism: same-sex marriage. He famously signed a questionnaire affirming his support for same-sex marriage in 1996. But he apparently thought that he couldn't remain so liberal if he wanted to be a national political figure. By 2008 he opposed gay marriage, favoring the more reasonable-sounding civil unions instead. He did still oppose DOMA, though, and he plainly understood why gay couples need legal recognition.
The only thing that Alex is missing is that there's another liberal tendency that is probably just as irritating: being addicted to feeling betrayed to the point of concocting conspiracy theories that posit that all Democratic leaders are secretly Republicans. It's black-and-white thinking, for sure, but it's widespread. These liberals will seek any evidence they can find that Democrat X is exactly like the most far right nutter out there, even though the evidence tends to suggest that said Democrat is a fence-straddling centrist who is too afraid of his shadow to ever commit to a point of view, which is completely unlike far right Republican assholes. While the vast majority of people I spoke to at Netroots had a nuanced view of Obama, I did run across in the past few days, online and offline, people who were pushing the "Obama is a member of the religous right" line. For instance, knowledge that Obama's administration---like Clinton's before it---had put a minor amount of funding into some abstinence-only programs was rolled up into being the same thing as Bush mandating that all schools teach nothing but abstinence, unless they get their federal sex education dollars revoked. (This was after the zombie abstinence-only was brought up on a panel, so I can somewhat see why it's confusing, but still.) And, to my dismay and surprise, a Facebook friend insisted that there was no difference between Michele Bachmann's point of view on gay marriage and Obama's view. The method used to determine this was to find the most reasonable-sounding thing Bachmann has said (her garbled and clearly facetious claim during the GOP debate that she wants to leave it to the states---which also requires ignoring that she wants a constitutional ban at the same time) and then to round up Obama's weaseling statements while ignoring his actual opposition to DOMA and his appointment of Supreme Court judges who are likely to vote against it.
I can't actually believe that people believe this stuff when they say it. I think there's an emotional reward to claiming that Obama hates the gays just as much as Bachmann, because it makes things nice and simple. Plus, enough time has passed that we've forgotten how much damage a Ralph Nader situation can do. I'm as unhappy as everyone with the fact that Democrats are cowards, but I still remember the Bush years, and pretending that Democrats are the exact same thing as Republicans didn't do us any favors then. And Republicans are even more radical now. Pretending Bush and Gore were the same is why we're in two wars and there's a solid chance that Roe v Wade is going to be overturned. Oh yeah, and if Gore had been elected and had all those Supreme Court appointments that Bush ended up getting? The gay rights movement would be fully empowered right now to challenge gay marriage bans in the high court with assurance that they would win.
This is where I blame Obama and all Democrats like him: Look, when you clearly agree with left on an issue, you have a real chance to kneecap the people who are eager to claim you're a closet Republican by coming out firmly on the side of the left. Obama allows the paranoids to claim he hates gays by playing the centrist position when we all know that he's far too damn smart to believe the blooey about civil unions. It's also galling now that half the country supports gay marriage. The game is over. The main person you're hurting is yourself with this "civil unions" and "I'm evolving" crap. Throw those of us who are in the trenches arguing with the paranoids a bone and say what you mean, so we can point to it. We're your main weapon against a Ralph Nader, you know. Work with us here.
Because as it stands, I honestly think that Obama could sign a repeal of DOMA, and people would still be claiming that he's a closet homophobe, because he'd probably do so while spouting some legalese that allows him to avoid saying the magic words, "I support marriage equality," and losing the two or three votes that he probably still gets for that.
If you haven't seen this yet, it's kind of amazing---opponents of gay marriage in California are trying to appeal the decision overturning Prop 8 on the grounds that the judge is gay and so can't be allowed to rule on gay issues. Amazing because they're always denying this is about bigotry, and yet bigotry is the only grounds the appeal is being made on. Of course, the argument against gay marriage that's forwarded to hide the bigotry is that it somehow threatens straight marriage, so by their own measures, straight people should be even less objective.
We shouldn't be too surprised by this, though. This is just the judicial version of a common right wing trope about elections, which is to complain that if Group X (never straight white men) was excluded from election results, they would have gone a different way. The underlying assumption is that non-white people, women, and gay people just count for less. Our citizenship is viewed as a novelty, and not real like that of straight people/non-white people/men, depending on the circumstances. I'm genuinely surprised I haven't seen anyone suggest that women should be excluded from legislating about reproductive rights on these grounds as well. Though Allen West is veering closer to coming out and saying just that any day.
The good news is this is the dumbest argument I've ever heard. They're getting increasingly bad about hiding their bigotry. This is the end game, and while it may still take some time for gay marriage to be legalized across the land, pro-gay folks are winning.
Steph Herold, writing at Feministe, put up a post that’s been gnawing on my brain for a few days, and I want to post a couple of points arguing with Steph and a larger point offering an answer to her question. Steph asks why the gay rights movement is ahead of the abortion rights movement, observing that “Glee” had an episode with two dudes kissing and it was considered sweet and romantic, and you’d never see such a positive portrayal of abortion on TV. She is right that positive portrayals of abortion on scripted TV—-at least, as positive as you can get, which is to say portraying it as an acceptable decision that, while no fun for the woman involved, doesn’t cause permanent damage either—-are rare. I can only think of two, one in 1972 on “Maude” and one recently on “Friday Night Lights”. But I would hardly say that the gay rights movement is ahead of the abortion rights movement for that.
To dial this down a little harder, I think Steph is a tad vague on her terms, even saying at one point, “To compare the gay rights movement and the feminist movement is an impossible task,” which I disagree with, since I think few movements in the liberal world have so much overlap. I realize there are liberal feminists and some gay rights activists (mostly male) who don’t see it that way, but overall, I feel that the two movements are functionally fighting for the same goal, an overturn of the patriarchy. It’s natural to ask ourselves why we’re making better ground on this front than that, such as how within feminism you might ask whether anti-rape activism is doing better or worse than pro-choice activism. What I think Steph is talking about is specifically the gay marriage movement versus the abortion rights movement, because her example—-the applauding of a monogamous gay teenage romance—-is indeed part of the larger shift towards accepting same-sex relationships that follow the models we accept for opposite-sex relationships in our society.
On this front, I dispute that gay rights are doing better. When we talk about “rights”, for instance, we are duty-bound to look at one’s actual rights to do something, and not just certain cultural markers like “will they show this on TV?” Bluntly put, abortion rights are much more widespread than gay marriage rights. You can legally get an abortion in all 50 states in the country, even though it’s really hard to nearly impossible in some. You are still allowed to cross state lines to get an abortion in states that are more favorable to the right. With gay marriage, neither is true.
I also want to quarrel a little with Steph, who switches gears from gay marriage to AIDS activism, to laud ACT UP for its 80s and 90s success in overcoming legal and cultural barriers to a proper response to the the AIDS crisis. She is implicitly contrasting ACT UP from that era to some of the more fearful and small-c conservative pro-choice orgs nowadays, but I have to point out that the pro-choice movement also used to be more like ACT UP used to be. ACT UP is comparable to the Redstockings and groups that organized abortion speak-outs, which are like the pride events that Steph longs for. And in both cases, as the demands were actually met to a degree, the radical activism faded away—-the radical pro-choice movement that had ACT UP-style actions faded away after abortion was legalized, and ACT UP hasn’t really been raiding places in a long time, now that HIV is taken seriously as a public health issue. In the gay rights movement, the behemoth orgs face the same criticisms as they do in the pro-choice movement—-being fearful and conservative. For instance, many of the big wigs, from what I understand, are trying to avoid a Supreme Court showdown on gay marriage for fear of losing.
I bring these criticisms up because I don’t think that the problem Steph is talking about isn’t there. She’s right that the gay marriage movement has forward momentum and the abortion rights movement has been losing ground since Roe v. Wade, and lately at an accelerated pace. I just think she wants to lay blame on the activists and the movement where it doesn’t apply, and I understand this urge, because our movement is within our control and if it’s just a matter of fixing that, then we win. But I don’t really think that’s it.
There are a couple of alternate theories. One may just be regression to the mean. When a group makes a big leap forward, there’s often a backlash that sets them back. Two steps forward, one step back is the nature of progressivism. You see this with the anti-racism movement, for sure. Desegregation was a major victory, but then there was a backlash that resulted in white flight, a massive de-funding of anti-poverty programs and an escalation of the prison-industrial complex, and so the dream has definitely been deferred. For all we know, anti-gay organizers are already working on the backlash strategy to find a backdoor to depriving gay people of their rights after they’ve been formally recognized across the land.
Attorney General Eric Holder said President Barack Obama has concluded that the administration cannot defend the federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. He noted that the congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act “contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships - precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the (Constitution’s)Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”....
Holder wrote to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that Obama has concluded the Defense of Marriage Act fails to meet a rigorous standard under which courts view with suspicion any laws targeting minority groups who have suffered a history of discrimination.
It’s hard to tell what prompted this, and it’s possible it was a why-not sort of thing. But I like to think that the Obama administration sees challenges to gay marriage bans percolating up through the courts, and he’s throwing his hat in with the pro-same-sex-marriage people to send a signal to the Supreme Court. As basically everyone knows, the wild card vote should gay marriage come in front of the court is Anthony Kennedy. I’ve been fairly confident for a long time now that Kennedy would vote to strike down bans against same-sex marriage and legalize it across the country, because he wrote the decision for Lawrence v Texas. Yes, it’s been argued that he hedged his bets in that decision and said that it didn’t indicate the legalization of same-sex marriage, but that’s kind of standard bet-hedging in judicial decisions, from what I understand. What is more interesting to me was that Kennedy was extremely sentimental (in a good way) about Lawrence, reading the decision aloud to please all the people whose private sexual choices he just mandated cannot be made criminal.
Now opponents of gay marriage will find that not only with the Justice Department not back them if this gets to the Supreme Court, odds are high they’ll write an amicus brief suggesting same-sex marriage be legalized. That sort of thing can and probably will have a profound impact on Kennedy.
That’s just my prediction. Feel free to spin your own!
So, the State Department (under Hillary Clinton) has changed the passport application to make life easier for gay parents and other non-traditional families, by changing the terms “Mother” and “Father” to “Parent 1” and “Parent 2”. This will make life a lot easier on gay parents, who currently have to carry like 15 kinds of proof of legal custody in order to travel over national borders with their children. Fox News reported on it, and naturally, they had to give plenty of space for professional bigots to screech about the evils of a decision that quite literally has nothing to do with them, and is probably something they wouldn’t even notice if they weren’t trolling around looking for reasons to believe gays have too much freedom of movement.
But I must say I detect a note of malaise. The professional bigots aren’t really bringing their A game anymore, but instead copying and pasting the same anti-gay screed they’ve trotted out a million times before.
“Only in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness could it be considered an ‘improvement’ for a birth-related document to provide less information about the circumstances of that birth,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote in a statement to Fox News Radio. “This is clearly designed to advance the causes of same-sex ‘marriage’ and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act.”
Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, agreed. “It’s part of an overall attempt at political correctness to diminish the distinction between men and women and to somehow suggest you don’t need both a father and a mother to raise a child successfully,” said Jeffress. “(This decision) was made to make homosexual couples feel more comfortable in rearing children.”
These quotes could be about pretty much anything, if you think about it. They’re totally phoning it in. The heavy use of scare quotes where they’re inappropriate? Check. Suggesting that it’s pointless to have children for any other reason than to prove the virility of heterosexual men? Check. Dropping the word “homosexual” a lot in hopes that people think about butt sex instead of two same-sex parents trying to corral a toddler through airline security, just like everyone else? Check. Suggesting that the only acceptable response to homosexuality from the government is ghettoizing people, depriving them of their basic freedom of movement, and seeking ways to shake their finger at them for who they are? Check.
This bigotry is really weak sauce. They should take some notes from Michele Bachmann. Why just push one wingnut resentment button when you can just be like a kid in an elevator hitting every floor? I mean, this is about passports, which implies travel to foreign nations. There are way more buttons you could be wacking with this one. Let me rewrite it for them.
“Only in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness could it be considered an ‘improvement’ for a birth-related document to provide less information about the circumstances of that birth,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote in a statement to Fox News Radio. “What kind of pansy, egg-headed world do these homosexuals live in that they need to be traveling with children anyway? We have peer-reviewed research that indicates that homosexuals only want to travel with children so they can take them to countries that practice socialism. What kind of nation allows two men to take a child to a place like Paris for a re-education camp in socialized medicine, homosexual marriage, and pacifism?”
Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, agreed. “It’s part of an overall attempt at political correctness to allow homosexuals to cross over our borders, when we know they can’t be up to any good traveling around, no doubt drinking wine and eating cheese that doesn’t come presliced,” said Jeffress. “Passports are for Christians going on missions in foreign countries, not so some frou-frou art lovers can indoctrinate their fake children into leftist hedonism by taking them to Louvre.”
See what I mean? Passports are a rich mine, where you can bash people for having intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and for not hating the French. Also, for seeing children as people who deserve adventure and fun, instead of tiny little Satanic rebels who need any spiritedness beat out of them. They could have totally linked gay rights with all these things, and failed miserably. I think they’re losing steam. The DADT repeal is driving home how the bigots are going to lose this battle, as they have in the past. Tony Perkins spent the first half of his career trying to cover up his association with racist groups. Now he’s turning into the George Wallace figure of the gay rights movement, and that’s got to be demoralizing. Of course, I couldn’t think of a better person for it to happen to.
Dave Weigel’s suggestion for a Palin tweet index is clever and sadly on target. It is true that the number of words exhausted on every little tweet and flutter from her has gotten out of control. I suppose you could say this post is an example. But, what I realized his post was that while the main reason that Palin probably loves the brevity of Twitter is that coming up with more than 140 characters can take her all damn day, there’s also something else going on in her favor. Either she stumbled upon this by accident and is working it (the likeliest explanation), or she’s an evil genius. Either way, it’s working. I realized that the brevity of Twitter makes it easier for Sarah Palin to be a cipher for the various strains of wingnut out there.
The example Dave whips out demonstrates this perfectly. It all started when Tammy Bruce, whose racism outweighs her pro-gay concerns enough to drive her into the Republican party, tweeted:
But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already—the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bed.
It was in response to this scandal. I’d be curious to see if you guys can get to the tweet, since I’m not authorized to see it, which may mean it’s closed off to the public now or that Tammy Bruce blocked me from seeing it after I made fun of her for having shit for brains, the proof of which will become evident soon.
Sarah Palin retweeted this, in an action that seemed incredibly mysterious to anyone not familiar with the Palin Corollary of Occam’s Razor, which is, “If stupidity is a plausible explanation for her choice, it’s the likeliest explanation.” And indeed, you can see how Palin retweeted this out of sheer dumbheadedness. Without knowing that Bruce is a lesbian or much about the context, with a side dose of not reading it too closely, it’s possible that she just saw the word “homos”, thought it was a gay joke, and thought to retweet it.
But Bruce has really worked her ass off to interpret this retweeting as some sort of evidence that Bible-thumping Sarah Palin is a secret Friend of the Gays.
When it comes to Sarah Palin’s position on DADT, I have never asked her about it and she has never spoken to me about it–but I assess her as a Conservative with Libertarian influence. Both her husband and son are Independents, with Mr. Palin serving as his wife’s primary adviser. I will remind people of things already in the public realm about the governor–she refused to veto partner benefits legislation as governor of Alaska and is a firm believer in fairness and “live and let live.” She is not a Culture Warrior, however. She is, which should be apparent by her Facebook postings and opinion pieces, a Policy Wonk. She is also, which is clearly evident, a charismatic leader who remains grounded by her character, faith and family.
I’m sorry, but someone who makes eating cookies vs. eating vegetables an occasion for culture war is a dyed-in-the-wool culture warrior, and have I mentioned the word “abortion” yet? The only reason that Todd Palin isn’t a Republican is because he has aligned himself with parties that see the Republicans as too left wing, and he’s thrown in with the Alaska Independence Party, an offshoot of the Constitution Party that wishes to turn America into a theocracy.
The law of our Creator defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The marriage covenant is the foundation of the family, and the family is fundamental in the maintenance of a stable, healthy and prosperous social order. No government may legitimately authorize or define marriage or family relations contrary to what God has instituted. We are opposed to amending the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of defining marriage.
We reject the notion that sexual offenders are deserving of legal favor or special protection, and affirm the rights of states and localities to proscribe offensive sexual behavior. We oppose all efforts to impose a new sexual legal order through the federal court system. We stand against so-called “sexual orientation” and “hate crime” statutes that attempt to legitimize inappropriate sexual behavior and to stifle public resistance to its expression. We oppose government funding of “partner” benefits for unmarried individuals. Finally, we oppose any legal recognition of homosexual unions.
Basically, no gay marriage, and really, the fundamentalist Christian church should have all power to say who is and isn’t married.
Of course, Bruce also thinks Palin is a policy wonk, so she’s far off into fantasy land. Palin also took a couple of swipes at gay people in her latest book “America by Heart”.
Anyway, the point. And that is Palin says something cryptic on Twitter, almost surely due to straight up dumbassery. But because it’s cryptic, her fans can read whatever fool thing they want into it. She’s all things to all wingnuts. No wonder she’s so popular.
This rant by John McCain about the DADT repeal is something else:
Direct quote:
And you know, we’ll repeal it. And all over America, they’ll be gold stars put up in windows in the rural towns and communities all over America that don’t partake in the elite schools that bar military recruiters from campus, that don’t partake in the salons of Georgetown and the other liberal bastions here and around the country.
Seventy-seven percent of Americans support gays serving openly in the military. Thus, we are forced to assume that McCain thinks 77% of Americans follow the path from an Ivy League school into a Georgetown cocktail party. Which really calls into question this term “elite”. If three quarters of Americans are going to Harvard, is that really an “elite” education?
He also claims that the people that will be celebrating this didn’t serve in the military or even know someone who did/does. Which is funny, because that creates an interesting paradox. If the only people who support repeal have no experience with the military, then why is there a law banning openly gay service members? By definition, those people are interested in repeal, but in McCain’s formula, they don’t even exist. Why ban something that doesn’t happen? Granted, he used the term “most”, but seriously, he’s trying to create a dichotomy between Real Americans With Patriotic Family Values Who Only Have Missionary Heterosex In The Dark Before Praying and Perverted Liberals Who Eat Bon Bons And Screw Each Other In The Ass For Fun On Big Piles Of Money. And I’m going to say there’s a lot more overlap there than you’d think.
But what’s really fascinating about this rant is how it’s total capitulation to the principle that anything that pisses off liberals is good. Indeed, I’m thinking about 99% of what being a conservative is about right now is a combination of insecure masculinity issues and punishing liberals for thinking they’re so smart. So much so that huge chunks of this country basically waste time and money or hurt themselves doing things that liberals don’t actually care about in order to piss us off (voting for Bristol Palin on “Dancing With The Stars” comes to mind, as does slurping down tons of fatty food that will eventually kill you to prove a point to people who actually wouldn’t know the difference if you switched to whole grains). If you take this garbled rant from McCain and rebuild what he’s trying to say, it seems that his point is that gay service members should be deprived of their rights, because it will piss off liberals. And pissing off liberals is important, because they drink better cocktails than you do, and they all went to Harvard, and so a little being pissed off evens the score somehow.
For the record, I don’t think I even met anyone who went to Harvard until I was like at least 25. I have still never been to a Georgetown cocktail party, though I have been to many tailgate parties. I also sign off on what Scott said here:
What a bullet this country dodged in 2008. Frankly, I’m not sure he was even the best candidate on his party’s ticket at this point…
As I'm sure you all realize, the fact that New York tipped over into the "legal same sex marriage" column is a big deal. There are 44 more states to go, and the usual suspects in the South will be the biggest struggle, but the size and influence of New York will help usher this process along. Once straight people start to realize nothing is really going to be that different from them, they'll stop caring. Many people are quietly adjusting towards a less bigoted point of view about gay people. 
If you haven't seen this yet, it's kind of amazing---opponents of gay marriage in California are trying to 
So, the State Department (under Hillary Clinton) has changed the passport application to make life easier for gay parents and other non-traditional families, by changing the terms “Mother” and “Father” to “Parent 1” and “Parent 2”. This will make life a lot easier on gay parents, who currently have to carry like 15 kinds of proof of legal custody in order to travel over national borders with their children. 
Dave Weigel’s suggestion for a