Gay & lesbian rights and Donald Trump

I am on the e-mailing list of the Human Rights Campaign, mainly I think because I endorsed the gay marriage referendum in Maryland a few years ago. Unfortunately, the HRC has come out strongly against Donald Trump's candidacy, and in this action has forced me to strongly oppose this organization. Mr. Trump invited openly-gay industrialist Peter Thiel to speak at the convention last week. Mr. Thiel must have been worried about being booed for parts of his speech, but this did not occur. And Mr. Trump specifically complimented the delegates for that.

Donald Trump will not single-handedly make the GOP into a pro-LGB party, but he is working to move it in that direction. And HRC's backing of Clinton is working against Trump's attempts in that direction. I say “Shame on you!” to the HRC.

I don't “get” transgender!

A few years ago, in this state (Maryland) there was a referendum on permitting gay marriage. At one point I signed a petition in favor of marriage equality, and as a result I was put on the e-mail mailing list of Marylanders for Marriage Equality, and ultimately on the mailing list of their affiliate, the Human Rights Campaign. Since I agree with a lot of what HRC stands for, I have no problem with that, although HRC's strong advocacy of Democratic Party candidates leaves me behind; there are other issues, more important to me than gay rights, which keep me on the Republican side in most elections.

Lately I have been receiving e-mail from HRC about the recent laws passed in Mississippi and North Carolina curtailing gay rights, and most of what HRC says makes sense. But in one way, I agree with what these states have done, and that part of the laws would meet with my approval if I were a legislator or executive involved with a state lawmaking process.

The laws state that a person must use the bathroom appropriate for the gender named on his/her birth certificate. I see nothing wrong with such a provision. I really do not understand why a person who is biologically male can call himself a woman, or one who is biologically female can call herself a man. In other words, I cannot understand transgender.

Bruce Jenner has fathered a child, so he is unquestionably a male, regardless of whether he dresses in drag or chooses to call himself “Caitlyn.” And in general the real test of someone's gender comes down to one thing: Is there a Y chromosome in his/her genome? (I deliberately use that rather than a test of the number of X chromosomes, because it is a known fact that people with unusual genetic makeup like one X and no other sex chromosome, or XXY, are biologically whatever sex the presence or absence of a Y chromosome determines. See the article on Klinefelter's syndrome, for example.) Apparently Bruce Jenner and his ilk have some new definition of “female” or “woman,” which allows them to claim they are; I would love to see that definition.

If Bruce Jenner dresses up in female attire, he is just a man in drag. If some day he has his male parts surgically removed, he will still be only a castrated male. This does not mean he cannot do these things; only that he can never become truly female.

And what does a man who likes to pretend he is a woman gain by being considered one? He does not gain the opportunity to marry a man; he already has that right, via the Windsor decision. He does not gain any other right that women have, either. Unless, of course, you count the right to use the ladies' restroom in those states that have not passed bills like the one to which I am referring.

Some men are attracted to men rather than women, and some women to women rather than men. (And some men and women are attracted to both!) Allowing them to marry the partner of their choice does not hurt anyone. Certainly, it does not prevent straight people from marrying their opposite-sex partners. So marriage equality is a reasonable thing. Anti-discrimination laws are also good things, as nobody should be treated unfairly just because of whom he/she loves. But there is a real danger that someone might claim to be transgender, just to get a free peek at the opposite sex. (In my younger days, I had an immense curiosity as to what a female body looked like!) While if a “transgender boy” (who is really a girl) is forced to use the ladies' restroom, or a “transgender girl” (who is really a boy) is forced to use the men's restroom, they only get to see bodies like their own!

An interesting discussion

It is so nice when you can argue with somebody on the basis of their principles without compromising your own beliefs. Such a discussion happened this afternoon.

My wife and I were sitting at a long table in the café area of a supermarket (with a Starbucks inside, so the café was jointly used for both sets of customers), and a woman sitting a couple of seat-lengths away started a conversation.

She began by asking whether we were Christians, to which both of us replied in the negative; then “Are you Jewish?” getting this time a “Yes” from both of us. She then went on to say that her mother was Jewish, but she now “follows Christ.” To which I simply responded, “We don't.”

At this point I expected to get a long sermon on why one should follow Jesus' teachings, but fortunatey this did not happen. Instead the next thing that came from her mouth was “What do you think of all these homosexual laws?” Obviously that, rather than a defense of Christianity, was her main point. And I simply answered “Well, they deserve their rights.” Her response was “God created men and women.” And this really totally opened up the discussion to my own answer, which she, obviously, had no basis to refute: “God created, among all of us, those homosexuals you don't seem to like.” She was simply reduced to “If that's what you believe…” — and she fell silent.

I was actually expecting her to make some remarks about the Book of Leviticus — in which case I would point out that she probably violates a lot of those commandments too, like eating pork — But from this point on she had nothing more to say.

Basically, I believe there are two sorts of commandments: those that are universal, like those directing us to be ethical towards our fellow humans, and those for a specific time and place. God (or His prophets) could not tell a people who had neither clocks nor thermometers that they needed to cook pork at at least some minimum temperature for at least some minimum time, so He simply said not to ever eat it. And the anti-homosexual commandment — like the one against “spilling one's seed” — was in the same context as “Be fruitful and multiply” — to ensure that the Jewish population would grow in a world which was underpopulated. So I don't think God meant those commandments to be universal. I didn't, however, need to go into these principles in this discussion.

All in all, an interesting discussion.

Scott Walker as candidate

So now Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has announced his candidacy for the Presidential nomination for next year's election — not a surprise, really; it was expected by most people. And while a few months ago I would simply have added Gov. Walker to the list of candidates I could support if New Jersey Governor Chris Christie can't make it, now I have a little more to pause about regarding him.

Gov. Walker has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision. He's even proposed a constitutional amendment to revoke it. Now, he has not the slightest chance of actually getting such an amendment through — it would require 67 Senators to support it, and then 290 Representatives, and even if it got those, which is rather unlikely, 38 State legislatures would have to approve it — there is a chance that Gov. Walker, as President, would take some seriously anti-gay action. So this counts against him. On the other hand, I'm very happy with the way he's taken on Big Labor as Governor. I think we need people with that kind of courage. Organized Labor has far too much power.

So my feelings on Gov. Walker are quite mixed.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand "transgender"

If you read my posts related to the subject, you realize that I'm all for equal rights for gay and lesbian people. But one group that is usually grouped with them I can't understand. When someone like Bruce Jenner says he is now a woman, and wants to be called “Caitlin,” it just puzzles me. I am certain that every cell in his body still has the same XY chromosome inventory it did when he was “Bruce.”

Now I think Mike Huckabee's comment, as reported by CNN, is a little nasty:

Mike Huckabee says there's a time he wishes he could've been transgender: When it was time to hit the high school showers.

If he “could have felt like a woman,” the Republican former Arkansas governor joked earlier this year, then he could have seen his female classmates without their clothes on.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee said.

“I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.’ You're laughing because it sounds so ridiculous doesn't it?”

I think Bruce Jenner must have more serious reasons than to be able to see naked women in a shower — after all, he's been married and fathered children! — but I cannot figure out what he hopes to gain by being considered a female. He cannot function as a biological female, bearing children and such; even if they cut off his genitalia they cannot implant functioning ovaries into him. If he wants to marry a man, there are a lot of states (not all 50 to be sure, but the majority, by now) which would let him do so, even as a man; I suspect the others would not, even if he calls himself a female. If he just prefers dressing like a woman and using make-up — as he does on that magazine cover, I think he's free to do so, though I think it's weird.

But I guess he'd still have the right to do so — not all crossdressers even want to be called female — and so I can't really understand what is in his head. And you will notice that (as in the case of Bradley Manning) I still refer to him as “him.”

Intolerance?

Suppose we had someone who proclaimed, “God didn't intend the races to mix. That's why He put them on different continents” — an argument which I remember having been used to justify segregation half a century ago, and at least one Website is proclaiming the same as a justification for opposing interracial marriage even today. And suppose such a person were to use this belief as a basis for refusing to provide a professional service to an interracial couple. A photographer would refuse to photograph their wedding ceremony, or a baker would refuse to provide a cake, or a florist to provide the floral decorations. Such a person would rightly be described as racist, and despite their pleas that they are simply obeying God's laws, their business would be shut down for violation of antidiscrimination laws.

Thankfully, such people are rare today, despite my finding the Website I linked to. But we see the same arguments — God's laws being superior to man's — being used by anti-gay bigots who want to be able to withhold their professional services from same-sex marriages. They have even gotten some State legislatures to consider, and even pass, legislation which would legitimize their bigotry (the Governor of Arizona recently vetoed such an act!) under the name of religious freedom. And these bigots have the nerve to claim that people who want to condemn them for trying to obey their religiosly-motivated beliefs are being “intolerant”!

Discrimination is discrimination, even if religiously motivated. And to use religion as a reason to refuse to do business with someone because of who they are is contemptible.

The real issue in the Brendan Eich story

In the discussion over the resignation of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, a lot of issues have come up, some of them legitimate in my eyes and some not.

A column in The New Yorker's site entitled “How Mozilla Lost Its C. E. O.,” by James Surowiecki has a good summary of the story:

When Brendan Eich stepped down as the C.E.O. of Mozilla, on Thursday, after a mere two weeks on the job, it was perhaps the least surprising C.E.O. departure ever. Eich was one of the co-founders of Mozilla — which makes open-source software, including the Firefox browser — and is a brilliant software engineer who had been the company’s chief technology officer. But Eich was also well known for his opposition to gay marriage: in 2008, he donated a thousand dollars to support Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex marriage. The initial revelation of that donation, back in 2012, led to a welter of criticism that eventually died down. But, by elevating Eich to C.E.O., the Mozilla board brought his past to the forefront once again. While Eich attempted to defuse the problem with conciliatory blog posts and interviews about diversity and inclusiveness, he didn’t actually say that his views on gay marriage had changed. That, inevitably, provoked a uprising within the Mozilla community: a public petition was circulated demanding that he step down, the dating site OkCupid recommended that its customers stop using Firefox, and some Mozilla employees (though far from all of them) called for his resignation.

People are arguing that it is “not the liberal thing” to make someone leave a position because of his position on a political issue (especially a position with which a majority of Americans — or at least of Californians, as evinced by the result of the referendum vote — agreed!) and even some strong gay-rights advocates signed the post linked to here, which says in part:

The gay rights struggle is about freedom and equality for all. The best and most free society is one that allows the largest number to live true to their core beliefs and identities. It is a society that allows its members to speak their minds and shape their own aspirations.

The natural consequence of true liberty is diversity. Unless a society can figure out a way to reach perfect agreement, conflicting views will be inevitable. Any effort to impose conformity, through government or any other means, by punishing the misguided for believing incorrectly will impoverish society intellectually and oppress it politically.

The test of our commitment to liberal principles is not our eagerness to hear ideas we share, but our willingness to consider seriously those we oppose.

But I agree more with the column by Forbes columnist Richard Levick, entitled “Brendan Eich Is a ‘Person’ — and So Is Mozilla,” which basically points out that this is not a case of Eich's First Amendment right to free speech; Mozilla is a private corporation, with the right to take any action it feels is in its corporate interest. As Levick says,

Mozilla’s brand could only have been further threatened by protracting the discussion. … Open-mindedness may be the cultural hallmark of Silicon Valley, but it does not extend to those perceived (correctly or not) as opposed to open-mindedness itself. Why should it?

…I have the right to disparage anyone, but I’ll be in for a surprise if I expect people to still respect me afterward. And it sure wouldn’t be too good for business!

It has been mentioned by Levick and others that at the time of the Prop. 8 referendum, the basic principle that marriage is a heterosexual thing was endorsed by none other than Barack Obama, but Levick does not mention that Obama has officially reversed himself on that issue, while Eich did not (and conceivably could have saved his job if he had made a sufficiently contrite renunciation of his earlier position). Instead Levick, in the place where I put one of the ellipses in the earlier quote, has:

There is no small irony in the fact that you can reverse positions on this critical “social” issue and become President of the United States, but not the CEO of a company — at least not this company where the CEO’s stance was perilously at odds with the values of its stakeholders.

He misses something there: Eich never took that step of renouncing his earlier stance (see the New Yorker quote above); he appealed, instead, to a sort of “Look at how I'm behaving on LGBT issues now” attitude. And that was simply not enough.

Just as I, as an individual, have the right to boycott Chick-Fil-A (not because of its stance on gay marriage, which is bad enough, but because the Cathy family, which owns the company, chooses to enforce the Christian Sabbath on its franchisees, requiring them to close on Sunday whether they want to or not!) certainly OKCupid has the right to favor a boycott of Mozilla. And in fact it was a pretty toothless boycott — they merely suggested people download a different browser; they did not make their site inaccessible to Firefox users! All they really did was suggest that people boycott Firefox. This is certainly within their freedom of speech rights!

Perhaps the only thing that perhaps should have been done differently is for Brendan Eich to have renounced his earlier views — if he is really now a supporter of equal rights for same-sex couples. This would have saved his job. And if he still maintains his earlier position, then it was good that he was forced out. This position is obviously anathema to enough Mozilla employees and customers that it is bad for Mozilla to keep him as CEO. Levick's remark that “…I have the right to disparage anyone, but I’ll be in for a surprise if I expect people to still respect me afterward. And it sure wouldn’t be too good for business!” still applies.

Both sides are doing it

There are now conservative sites like The Washington Times, who put out an editorial with the title “For left, it’s tolerance and diversity for me, but not for thee,” attacking the lberal press for a double standard. And there are liberal sites like Mark Stern's blog on Slate, that accuse conservatives of the same thing. Really, though, they are both cases of the pot calling the kettle black.

Liberals like Mark Stern like to accuse conservatives of refusing to allow companies like Mozilla their freedom of association — the right to get rid of someone who they find to be against their values — while those same conservatives insist that the Boy Scouts should have the same right they deny to Mozilla. And conservatives like the Washington Times point to the Hobby Lobby case, where liberals want to deny a company the right to exercise its owners' values, while those same liberals cheer Mozilla's doing the same thing.

I think we should be consistent. If Hobby Lobby can run itself according to its owners' values — and I think they should — so can Mozilla. But how this relates to the Boy Scouts is somewhat different. The Boy Scouts are not a company whose shareholders oppose gay rights. They are a membership organization. I can't really equate the Scouts' desire to purge themselves of gays to Mozilla's wanting to avoid having a homophobe as the face of the company.

How NOT to gain the support of people like me

Very recently I got an appeal, by mail, from the Human Rights Campaign, an organization whose main purpose, equal rights for people of all sexual orientations, is one which I support. However, the letter is one I would say was counterproductive with me, and would be to all people who generally agree with me.

The letter starts right off with two paragraphs ending with “Just take a look at what we're up against,” and follows it with an anti-homosexual quote from the Texas GOP platform and a homophobic quote from an unnamed member of a Tea Party group. And a few paragraphs down, it has praise for President Obama — the same President Obama who took three years to come around to recognizing the unconstitutionality of DOMA! — contrasting him with “the Republican leadership in Congress.” Granted that it's unfortunate that they did choose to try to defend the indefensible DOMA; but there is not a single word in the entire letter saying a good word for any Republican — though three Republican Senators have come out in support of same-sex marriage — or a bad word about any Democrat — especially President Obama, who sat on all gay rights issues for three years, though he had the power, for example, to end “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” on Jan. 20, 2009.

There was an enclosure in the letter, featuring a quote by President Obama, and listing, as people who have spoken out in favor of marriage equality, such Democratic political figures as Hillary Clinton, Senator Al Franken, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. No mention of a single Republican, though they could have given such people as Senators Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Lisa Murkowski. Any such Democratically partisan mailing is hardly guaranteed to elicit any sympathetic response from me.

A lull in the posting rate

I've not been posting much lately — only once a week or less often. And I notice that most of my favorite blogs, like Dennis Sanders' “Big Tent Revue” and Tom Bowler's “Libertarian Leanings,” have also slacked off. I wonder if this is because Barack Obama's Presidency is going to last till 2017, and nothing we say can change that? (And of course, even Congressional elections are 1½ years away.)

Next month, the Supreme Court will probably issue its decisions on Hollingsworth v. Perry (the California Prop. 8 case) and United States v. Windsor (the case challenging the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”). I will certainly post comments on these decisions once we know what they are. But until then it is mere speculation. I know how I would rule. On Windsor, it is clear to me that DOMA is unconstitutional, because it conflicts with the Tenth Amendment-based right of States to define “marriage.” On Hollingsworth, my feeling is more nuanced. Because of that Tenth Amendment argument, it is not appropriate to declare same-sex marriage legal everywhere in the 50 States. Appeal to the precedent of Loving v. Virginia is attractive, and probably if there were more than 11 states with same-sex marriage on the books, would make sense. But clearly there is not a nationwide consensus on this issue. I think, if I were a Supreme Court Justice, however, the precedent I would follow is Romer v. Evans. Basically, to take away rights that people already have is unconstitutional, and this is what Prop. 8 did. And on this basis, the Court would, in my opinion, be right to invalidate Prop. 8, while not forcing those states without laws authorizing same-sex marriage on the books to institute it.

But this is my position. i cannot get inside the heads of the nine Supreme Court justices. So I cannot comment on their decision until they issue it, probably next month.

President Obama, gay rights, and the sequester

Recently, Chad Griffin, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, sent out an email praising President Obama for the administration's filing a brief before the Supreme Court, arguing that that a law denying gay and lesbian couples the ability to marry is unconstitutional. Since HRC is basically a one-issue organization, focusing on gay rights, I suppose that Griffin was justified in sending this email; however, it would have been fairer if he had pointed out that the pro-gay-rights side is also getting support on the other side of the aisle: another brief was filed by a group supported by Clint Eastwood and Jon Huntsman, for example, and one of the two lead lawyers on the pro-gay-rights side is Theodore Olson. Griffin, however, made the email a hearty thank-you to a President whose commitment to gay rights is better to be characterized as more political than heartfelt. This is, after all, a President who could have ended “Don't ask, don't tell” by a stroke of his pen on Jan. 20, 2009; in fact he waited years to do so.

As for me, my attitude is “Sure, Mr. President, you're on the right side here, but you've been such a bad president with regard to other issues that this one act hardly balances it.” From insisting that no solution to the problems arising from the “sequester” is acceptable without raising taxes, to claiming the Senate was in “recess” when it really wasn't, in order to pack the NLRB with pro-union flacks, Pres. Obama has done so much that is bad for this country that he will not get off, in my eyes, just because he's done one thing right for a change.

The next two years (at least)

For the next two years, I see the most gridlocked government one could imagine in Washington. A Barack Obama just given four more years in the White House will submit bill after bill of legislation inspired by Karl Marx, and while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will dutifully attempt to get the bills through the House of Representatives, she will not have the votes. In most cases, they will receive a total of zero votes from the GOP side, since Obama has no intention of compromising in a meaningful way. His idea of a compromise, as shown in the last four years, is "you adopt my program." Since the Republicans will still control the House, none of Obama's bills will pass, but the bills the House passes, if they get through the Senate at all, will be vetoed by President Obama. And since the Republicans do not have a 2/3 majority in the House, and do not even control the Senate, there will not be enough votes to override a veto. The only legislation that will go through will be relatively uncontroversial stuff like naming a post officde after a deceased congressman.

If any new developments occur at all, they will come out of the Supreme Court. It will rule on some gay rights cases, and very likely on other cases that nobody can foresee at present. It may even kill some parts of Obamacare, though the program itself has been ruled constitutional. But the future of the Court's decisions will also be affected by Court retirements. And President Obama may be able to put another Elena Kagan on the Court, since the Senate will be Democratic and the House has no role in ratifying appointments.

It is going to be two more years of skirmishing between a far-left President Obama and a Tea Party-influenced GOP controlled House of Representatives. And our system has survived (see the last two years of Harry Truman's first term). So it will survive again. But I can't expect anything great to come out of the next two years.

Please don't blame the whole Republican Party!

As a result of this to-do over Chick-fil-A, some like Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh have proclaimed a “liberal war on Christianity” and the other side has made statements that this is rather a Republican war on gay rights, and all others who do not share the Cathy family's fundamentalist Christian views. It is not the Republican Party that should be blamed. Mike Huckabee does not represent the views of all Republicans. He certainly does not represent my views; I've been boycotting Chick-fil-A for a long time, years before this latest spat over gay marriage came out. And let us face it, the Republican Party includes Huckabee, but it also includes Richard Tisei, an openly gay candidate for a Massachusetts Congressional seat this November. Just like the Democratic Party includes a large range of political opinions — look at former Congressman Bart Stupak, for example.

What really gets to me is the Religious Right's “war on Christianity” claim. The Christians in this country still have too much domination here. The only day I cannot go to the Smithsonian Institution's museums, for example, is December 25^th — not because it is Isaac Newton's birthday, but because it is the day Christians celebrate as the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they call “Christ.” Banks are allowed to close on Sundays, and except for the Toronto Dominion Bank's U. S. branches, they do. They can't close on Saturday and stay open on Sunday, even if they have a Jewish CEO. There are still so many ways that Christians can impose their worldview on everyone else. I wish there were a war on Christianity's excesses, at least. I'd join it.

I can't sympathize with Chick-fil-A

The Voice of Reason blog does not like Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's criticism of Chick-fil-A for its anti-gay-marriage stance. And, curiously, the blog owner calls Menino a bigot! I can't agree. The Cathy family (S. Truett Cathy, who founded the company, and Dan Cathy, his son and current president) has a record of intolerance and bigotry second to none. Well before this flap over gay marriage, I began boycotting Chick-fil-A because of its policy forbidding franchisees from opening on Sundays. I see no reason to relax my boycott, and probably never will, because the Cathy family seems unlikely to change its stance. I've never tasted their product, but I'm sure I can live without it.

Let me be clear: Certainly, in their capacity of private businessmen, the Cathys have the First Amendment right to express their religious beliefs. But those of us who feel differently have an equal right to withhold our custom. And given that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Mayor Menino has every right to do what he can to make it difficult for Chick-fil-A in Boston.

Another commendation, of course, goes to Jim Henson, whose company had been supplying toys to Chick-fil-A for kids' meals but has withdrawn from their partnership.

The Cathys, of course, can console themselves with the strong support that Mike Huckabee has given them. But to me that is simply one bigoted Religious Right person supporting another. I've never thought very highly of Huckabee to begin with, and this is just a sign of his consistently being on the wrong side.

What have the two in common?

In Virginia, judges are elected by the legislative branch, unlike most of our states (Only Virginia and South Carolina do it this way). And the General Assembly, as it is called there, just got through a process where a judicial candidate, Tracy Thorne-Begland, was denied election because he is gay and living with a partner. One particular Republican delegate, Robert G. Marshall, led the opposition to Thorne-Begland, and 31 Republicans altogether opposed him, which was enough to kill the nomination.

This kind of bigotry saddens me, and makes me ashamed to be a member of the same party. However, the other party stands for all sorts of other things I cannot abide, so you will not see me joining the Democrats. I am a Republican because I oppose the Democrats' economic policies, whether it's fealty to organized labor or socialistic approaches to business, and because I oppose most Democrats' foreign policy positions. What the connection is between Republican economic and foreign-policy positions, which I favor, and this sort of homophobic bigotry I cannot fathom. And in fact there are conservative Republicans, from Dick Cheney to Michael Barone (columnist in the National Review and Washington Examiner), who support gay marriage, so it is still possible to detach these issues from each other. But how can the party shed this anti-gay image? Somehow it must. The Republican party is, on other issues, the party of individual freedom. It cannot be the party of coercion in this instance.

Obama and gay marriage

President Barack Obama has now officially endorsed gay marriage. And I think this puts him on the right side of this issue, so I can hardly be opposed to him for that reason. But I hesitate to mark this as the world-shaking event that many in the media are proclaiming it. There are a number of reasons why I think it will have little consequense.

First of all, marriage is a state-level issue. Obama has already come out against defending DOMA, which is the one Federal law affecting marriage, so this is no change for him; otherwise, it carries as much weight as would a state Governor expressing himself on foreign policy.

Secondly, among people who oppose gay marriage and oppose Obama's re-election, it can only deepen an opposition that was already there; they were not going to vote for Obama this November anyway, and so this opposition will not change anything.

Third, among people who support gay marriage and support Obama's re-election, it can only get him more support from people who would have voted for him anyway; so again, nothing will be changed.

So what about people who are for gay marriage, but at present against Obama's re-election? Will any of them shift their support from Romney to Obama? Not very likely. Most of them, I imagine, are like me — gay marriage is a relatively minor issue, and my opposition to Obama (and I presume that of others in this category of prospective voter) is due to other actions that Obama has taken as President.

The remaining group of people conststs of people who are against gay marriage, but at present for Obama's re-election. Some people think Obama is being courageous in making this statement, because he might offend them. But who are they likely to be? If you look at the recent Maryland gay-marriage controversy, the only normally-liberal legislators who opposed gay marriage were African-Americans, mostly in Prince George's County. They were responding to African-American clergy who were religious conservatives, even if socially liberal. Bur the African-American community is so proud of Barack Obama that I would be surprised if his support decreased very much in that community because he came out for gay marriage. So this was hardly the risk some people seem to think it is.

An interesting blog post

The Urban Right is a blog by an African-American Republican named D. R. Tucker. I do not always agree with what I have seen him post, but a posting dated Thursday takes a position which I would like to echo.

What do Republicans say to their gay friends?

How do they explain the fact that so many in the GOP’s base seem to be enthralled by Rick Santorum, who has never said one positive word about an LGBT person in his entire political career?

How do they justify the party’s history of denigrating the gay rights movement and characterizing same-sex marriage in apocalyptic terms?

How do they excuse the talk-radio tirades, the religious right’s ridicule, the punditocracy’s prejudice?

I can’t speak for every Republican, but I know I've made plenty of excuses for the GOP’s homophobia. My logic was pretty simple: to denounce GOP gay-bashing would be to help “the left,” and helping “the left” was simply out of the question.

So I didn’t complain when George W. Bush exploited fears about same-sex marriage to renew his lease on the White House. I didn’t speak up when self-righteous senators and reactionary representatives made noises about passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. I didn’t turn the dial when conservative radio and television personalities insisted that gays and lesbians were grotesque and loathsome.

I kept my mouth shut. For the team.

I am convinced that there are millions of Republican voters opting to keep their mouths shut for the team despite knowing in their hearts that homophobia is not morally right. They are so fixated on having Republicans win federal elections that they have chosen to ignore the reckless rhetoric those Republicans are relying on to win.

They need to speak up. Right now.

Ignoring homophobia is a fundamentally senseless act. Think about it: the Republicans who kept their mouths shut about Bush’s gay-bashing and supported his re-election effectively gave Bush the opportunity to thoroughly wreck the GOP, thus clearing a path for Barack Obama. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to speak out before it was too late?

There’s no downside to standing up against Republican homophobia—but the pain of remaining silent is tremendous. The hurt of conscience is more intense than any physical suffering. It’s a hurt I feel every time I recall the days when I said nothing as Republicans came after gay and lesbian families and denounced them in the cruelest terms possible.

Republicans of conscience—the ones that are still left, that is—must stand up now and call out Santorum and every other Republican who refuses to give the minimum standard of respect to gays and lesbians. The hatred must stop, and it must stop today.

The ends of an electoral outcome cannot justify the means. When a Republican pundit or politician opens his or her mouth to denounce gay rights, they should immediately hear millions of voices responding, “Stop it!”

By doing so, we will hasten the day when openly homophobic figures like Santorum won’t even think of running for President. We will hasten the day when both political parties recognize the importance of appealing to gays and lesbians. We will hasten the day when equality is the guaranteed winner of every election.

I will die regretting the years I declined to speak out against Republican homophobia. I should have realized that any GOP victory dependent on the denigration of gays and lesbians will go down in history as a stolen victory.

I can’t change the past, but I can certainly learn from it. The most important lesson to be learned is the moral necessity of calling out homophobia and opposing the vicious vision of those don’t believe in treating gays and lesbians as equals. Thus, let me be the first to say: “Rick Santorum, shut up already!”

I think we need people to speak up within the GOP who are willing to express sentiments like these.

Marion Barry, Dave Catania, and the District of Columbia electorate

Today, have to apologize to those who look to this blog for observations of nation-wide import; I'm dealing with a very local thing. But it actually has national relevance, so read on.

David Catania is gay. Marion Barry is African-American. Both are Council members of the District of Columbia. Catania's sexual orientation, and Barry's race, should not matter. But they do — as was shown in a recent event. The D. C. Council has 12 members — usually 13, but one, Harry Thomas, has resigned over a criminal indictment (which in itself helps to make the point that this post will get around to!) There was a retreat for Council members, at which Catania and Barry got into a shouting match. Barry suggested that Catania was prejudiced against black men, something for which there is absolutely no evidence. (But it seems that many African-American politicians cannot accept that there are groups, such as gay people, who also have been the targets of discrimination. For them, discrimination against African-Americans is an evil that must be stamped out, while discrimination against anyone else is a fiction that doesn't exist. So Barry — as well as many African-American members of the Maryland General Assembly [State legislature], voted against gay marriage when the issue came up before them.) And Catania, who might have been excused for losing his cool, still went, in my opinion, too far, shouting, “F— you, Marion!”

What a dysfunctional legislative body! Yet Marion Barry — who was caught in a crack sting while he was Mayor — gets elected time after time to the Council. And it's not just the current members of the D. C. Council. Shortly after I first came into this area, a Council member named Douglas Moore got upset at a truck driver who parked in an area reserved for Council members, and ended up biting the driver!

Yet the voters of the District keep voting for people like these. And they complain that they do not have the political rights that residents of the 50 States do. Well, when the Senators and Representatives look at the kind of people that D. C. voters elect to office, it does not surprise me that they do not consider the District of Columbia as worthy of giving full and equal political rights to. A voting public that elects people like Thomas, Barry, and Catania, and has elected Moore in the past, has not shown their worthiness.

On the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

While my previous post was critical of the position taken by Dennis Sanders on his blog, I certainly concur with him in his celebrating the end of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Of course, as a publicly declared gay man, Sanders has more reason to celebrate it than many other people, but I think that all people who believe in the concept of equal rights should be happy in this — but yet it is not quite a total victory for equal rights. As long as the ironically mistitled "Defense of Marriage Act" is still on the books, gay military personnel cannot provide their spouses with the same benefits that straight ones can. However, that bill will hopefully be declared unconstitutional — the Obama administration has refused to defend it, one of the few things this president has done right.

It is a good feeling to see pictures like the Navy lieutenant who went up to Vermont to marry his partner. It will be interesting to see the outcome of legal cases where expelled gay ex-servicemen and -women are suing to get equal treatment (they were only granted half the standard severance pay, for example).

I can't really see the point of view of people who want to be in the military — I did everything I could to ensure I was not drafted, back when I was called! — but certainly, if someone wants to be there, a simple concern for equality has to say that this is a positive step.

I really don't understand

In just about a month, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in our military services will end. What I cannot understand was the point in continuing it in place once it was decided that it would go. Why should a gay serviceman or -woman be subject to discharge for revealing, now, something which would have no effect if he/she reveals it about him/herself in another month?

I understand that the service chiefs wanted time to educate people about the new rules — but it still would make more sense to begin this education and immediately state that no further discharges of service personnel who revealed that they were gay would take place, both, upon the decision to end DADT.

If anyone can tell me the justification for continuing DADT once the decision to end it was made, I'd like to know it.