News for the Week Ended November 17, 2010
BY ANN ROSTOW
Hey Willow! EWTHTT
Good morning readers. It is a spectacular day in Austin Texas. Cloudless bright blue sky, a slight breeze, temperature heading up to the high 70s. What shall I do today? A walk? A round of golf? A drive through the hill country in the convertible? Or maybe I’ll just sit here in front of my laptop and write about gay court cases and Willow Palin for hours on end until the sun slips west, the shadows lengthen and the air chills, at which point I’ll go to the car wash and then meet Mel in a dark cozy bar.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do! (I promised Mel that I’d clean her car today. In fact, I lost a bet on a pool game two months ago and she ran out of patience so I said I’d do it this afternoon after I finish my column.)
As for Willow, she sent a nasty Facebook message to one of the kids in her school who dissed Sarah’s reality TV show. Willow called the guy a faggot, using little stars to mitigate the slur, and said he was “so gay,” and “disgusting.” Or it was something like that. Bristol added her two cents to the exchange, and one of them wrote “stfu,” which I translated after several minutes of thought.”
“Stfu” is not one of the cyber acronyms I use myself, and in fact, as the years go by I have become more and more circumspect about language. I remember an editor here in Texas who deleted the word “fuck” from one of my columns several years ago, which annoyed me. He explained that the word is jarring, it distracts and detracts from the context, and it should be reserved for rare moments in order to preserve its power. I had to agree. Unless used properly, it demeans the writer.
I also remember a French executive who worked for a UK-based company where I was a consultant years ago. This elegant man constantly used the words “shit” and “shitty,” in the casual and innocent way they would be used in French. In English, it was astounding.
“That’s a shitty deal.”
“This research is shit!”
Of course “merde” and “emerdante” are quite inoffensive terms in his native tongue, but it did strike me at the time that language is a delicate instrument and that salty talk is not always funny or brash. Sometimes it makes you look like a fool, although in this instance we all knew that our Gallic colleague was simply losing himself in translation.
My headline acronym, for the record, stands for the not unreasonable demand: “enough with the homophobic trash talk.”
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Wasilla Gorilla
Now, speaking of Sarah’s TV show, I read that it got huge ratings, and I confess Mel and I contributed to the head count. Earlier on Sunday night, she asked jokingly if I wanted to watch “Palin’s Alaska” or whatever it was called and I gave her an emphatic no.
But then we were checking the channel guide and there it was. We had to turn it on for a minute and we were somewhat hooked. So much so that we switched to football for a few minutes and decided to return to Alaska.
Sarah Palin is very cute in this show. She’s engaging. When little Piper licks the cake spoon and puts it back in the bowl, Sarah catches her and tells her that’s gross and not to do it again. When Willow’s boyfriend sneaks up the stairs to Willow’s room, Sarah sees him from the corner of her eye and calls her daughter on her cell phone and gets the miscreant downstairs in a flash. Although the audience wonders why the boy would try such a stunt in front of several TV cameras, the scene still works.
Even Sarah’s annoyance with author Joe McGinniss (who rented the house next door in order to write a book about her last summer) seems understandable. The Palins check to see if he’s on his upstairs porch as they return from a fishing trip much as any of us would scout out a nosy neighbor.
That said, the picture perfect family complete with the fun-loving and endearingly goofy matriarch seems as close to “reality” as a Christmas card photo. We are not shown the massive ego, the greed, the ambition, the control freak, or the unfocussed hostility that characterize the Palin profiles in let’s say, Vanity Fair. That’s not to say that I believe everything I read in Vanity Fair, but almost.
One thing I would say, however, is that Palin’s Alaska does not reflect a woman who wants to be President of the United States. She actually comes right out and says she’d rather be fishing than stuck behind a desk, and I think we can all agree that we’d rather she be fishing as well.
I think she’ll run some trial balloons over the coming months, but I would be surprised if she maintained a presidential campaign through the primaries. And yet, she might start something she can’t stop, trigger a popular wave among her core supporters that only ends with defeat in the polls. Surely the Republicans will not allow this bizarre woman to carry their standard in 2012. Some of my Democratic friends think a Palin nomination would guarantee Obama’s reelection, but I would find it too frightening.
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Conventional Stupidity
Speaking of Obama’s reelection, did any of you read that op-ed from bygone pollsters Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen arguing that Obama should bow out of the 2012 race in order finish his term in a statesmanlike fashion?
The idea that such a gesture would remove politics from the equation over the next two years is so sophomoric that one wonders what Schoen and Caddell have been smoking for the last couple of decades. Alaskan salmon?
What really bothered me however, was the media attention they garnered over the piece. Just because an idea is original or contrarian does not mean that an idea is sound or rational or even worthy of debate.
It reminds me of the stories that pop up every now and then under headlines like “Not All Gays Support Same-Sex Marriage,” that feature one or two gay weirdos telling reporters that marriage is a patriarchal institution to be avoided. You know what? If 95 percent of gays and lesbians support marriage equality, such a headline is simply bad journalism. Write the story if you like, but don’t make it sound as if conventional wisdom is flawed.
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Interminable Military Ban Remains Newsworthy
Can you tell that I’m not in the mood to write about Our News this week?
I haven’t even checked my email in two days, and that’s where all the stories are. I’m reluctant to go there because I have hundreds of messages and it’s overwhelming and labor intensive. OK. For you I’ll do it.
Well, I’m back. That was exhausting. Omaha steaks, free diapers for life, cape candles, Travelocity, hotel deals, thanksgiving recipes, prayer tips. I think there’s a way to get this stuff off my email, but I don’t know how.
Meanwhile, I had asked my housemaid, Myrtille, to ask Cook to prepare a light luncheon of avocado filled with tomatoes stewed in aged balsamic vinegar and butter, and a small glass of very cold rose. As usual, both she and Cook are nowhere to be found and I was obliged to assemble the repast myself. Much like Sarah Palin, I like “working” outside, so I am enjoying my lunch on the screen porch.
My email contained vast numbers of messages about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which I won’t get into. You know that the repeal of the military ban is attached as an amendment to the defense appropriations bill, and that said bill has already passed the House with the repeal in place. The Senate has until early December to follow suit before the end of this session of Congress. But the odds that these lame ducks will fly are long indeed.
Strangely, I read that three gay military groups have issued a letter telling lawmakers that it’s OK to drop the Don’t Ask amendment as long as the Senate passes the defense budget. The Palm Center, OutServe and Knights Out (a West Point group) issued a patriotic statement noting that funding the military is the highest priority, although they still support an end to the ban.
May I just say that this is crazy talk? One way or another, the Senate will fund the Defense Department. It’s not as if we are either going to repeal Don’t Ask, or suddenly bankrupt the Pentagon. So why issue such a gratuitous statement and undermine the slim chances of a repeal by giving cover to antigay lawmakers?
As for the repeal itself, I suppose it’s not dead until it’s dead, but I’m not holding my breath. At this rate, the military ban will still be in place two years from now, voiding the signature first term promise that Obama made to our community. The Don’t Ask court case has just taken up its lengthy residence in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where any outcome will (probably) be appealed, ergo don’t look to the courts to end the ban before the next election.
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Prop 8 Oral Arguments Coming Up
Speaking of the Ninth Circuit, the court has scheduled two hours of oral argument on the Prop 8 case for December 6. The first hour will be devoted to the question of whether anyone has standing to appeal Judge Walker’s marriage equality ruling to begin with. The proponents of Prop 8 will get 15 minutes to argue their case, followed by 15 minutes for lawyers from Imperial County.
Imperial County stepped into the Prop 8 case once it became clear that the issue of standing was in doubt. Since the State of California has declined to defend Prop 8, Imperial County is suggesting that it has the legal right to act on behalf of the unwilling state.
After Imperial gets its fifteen minutes of fame, our side will have half an hour to rebut both parties.
The second hour will be devoted to the underlying merits of the case, starting with the Prop 8 proponents and followed by 15 minutes each from the Olson team and the City of San Francisco. It looks as if the Ninth Circuit is prepared to rule on both the issues of standing and the constitutionality of Prop 8.
Under normal timetables, the court would issue a decision in early March. If the panel agrees that no party had standing to appeal, that part of their decision could be appealed to the full Ninth Circuit, or to the Supreme Court. Quite frankly, I’m not sure what would happen to the underlying case during this process. Maybe it would tag along for the ride up the court ladder.
As far as I can tell, courts can do whatever they like.
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Temps Perdu
What else is new? Are you excited about the royal wedding? Me too! I’m not sure why.
Does it not strike you that the “1900s” now sounds like some ancient time in the distant historical past? I can hardly believe I lived “in the 1900s,” let alone that I spent a sizable chunk of time in that century. I say this because the notion of a royal wedding and princes and princesses seems archaic.
Do you ever look at mailboxes and pay phones and electrical wires and think of photographs in the year 2075? These things are the horse-drawn carriages and gas lamps of our lifetimes.
My grandmother was raised on a square-rigged sailing ship, transporting cargo from Baltimore to South America in the late 1800s, and my granddaughters will probably see the twenty-second century. That just seems paranormal.
Meanwhile I had planned to object to several TV commercials in this column, beginning with the Nationwide ad where “Pam” complains that she signed up for car insurance with some other company and then she never heard from them again!
As Mel noted the other night, and honestly I had asked myself this same question, why would you want your car insurance company to contact you for no reason? The meth addict from Nationwide pledged that his company would treat Pam like a valued member of the family, and even name the company in her honor, but again, do you want that kind of obsessive attention from your car insurer? No, you don’t.
Finally, I am repelled by the scatological trend in toilet paper ads where one brand has decided to “talk frankly” about getting “clean” and keeping your “hands clean” and another has the jumped the shark completely with the tagline: “Enjoy the go.”
Please. Have you no decency? Can we not go back to squeezing and pseudo-scientific displays of absorbency?
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arostow@aol.com
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Nan Parks
Straight Talk
BY NAN PARKS
Hi everyone! Remember me? Nan Parks? I used to write a column called “Straight Talk” for the San Francisco Bay Times and the whole “point” of the column was to give you gay (and lesbian!) folks an idea of how your friends on the straight side of the aisle think. Because sometimes (and don’t get mad at me!) I think you get so wrapped up in your enthusiasm that you try to go a little too far too fast. And you can bet that the “homophobes” out there won’t tell you what they think because they just think bad things no matter what you do so it’s up to people like me, who like you a lot and believe in tolerance for all, to give you a piece of advice now and then.
Well anyway I’m back! And I have to thank Ann Rostow for letting me use her “blog” and everything so “Thanks Ann!” because Ann called me the other week and asked me what I was doing these days and to be honest I haven’t been that busy lately because the boys are grown and out of the house and Doug’s working harder than ever and my sister Carol (who’s a lesbian… gosh I hate that word but Carol insists on it for some reason and that’s sort of one of those things that I can’t help noticing. Because who cares whether you’re called “lesbian” or “gay” or whatever as long as no one is using one of those mean words? Why make a big fuss over something that’s not important when you folks have so many really important things to worry about? Just asking!)
Ooops! Looks like I never finished that sentence but anyway Carol moved to Kansas City of all places because she met a Russian gal named Kelsey (and she’s not really Russian but her family came from there and I know it was a hundred years ago or so and that Kelsey was raised in Lubbock Texas but you know these things stay with you and Kelsey knows how to make all sorts of Russian dishes and has her grandmother’s recipes!) and anyway I’m tickled pink for Carol and I even helped her with her “wedding” a couple of years back!
I have so many things to tell you because it’s been almost ten years since I last wrote a column but I suppose most of you never read that old column to begin with so you probably don’t care about “catching up” with my news. And it seems like so much has changed and you all have made so much progress and I have to say that if you talked to my sister Carol you’d think everything was just as bad or worse than it was in the 1990s because she has just as many complaints about “gay rights” as she ever had! And I guess that her “marriage” doesn’t count for much in Missouri which I think is a shame. But still! She got to get married in California and no one forced her move (although Kelsey got a job in Kansas City so it made a lot of sense for that reason) but my point is that instead of looking at the glass “half full” and being grateful for being able to get “married” in California, all she can think about is how sad she is because she can’t get health insurance from Kelsey’s job and she has to pay for it herself. Which is too bad, I agree and I remember when Doug was out of work for awhile we had to pay for something that was named after a snake and believe me I was not happy to see all that money go our of our bank account (when I could have had quite a shopping spree instead!) but I’m just saying that these kinds of problems are part of everyone’s life--- gay or straight!
So! I must say that I’m a little surprised that we’re still fussing about gay people in the military because I think I wrote my very first column on this same subject back in 1993 and here I am 17 years later (can that be true?) writing about the very same thing! But you know folks, it just goes to show because back those many years ago I thought that it would be a good compromise to allow you folks to serve in the military as long as you didn’t tell anyone that you were gay. Because how hard is that? I know I don’t go around discussing my personal business with the butcher or the baker! And I think that if I were talking a shower with the girls on the base for example I wouldn’t care who was gay or who was straight as long as I didn’t know because I remember back in grade school that there were a lot of rumors about Patty Cratcher and I was always a little uncomfortable in the locker room when she was around and I may have been wrong to feel that way but I was only 13 or 14! (And in case you’re wondering why I put Patty’s name in my column under the circumstances it’s because she did turn out to be a lesbian and she doesn’t care who knows about it so I think it’s OK to “spill the beans” at this point. And Patty, if you’re reading this please don’t take offense in any way and thanks again for helping me make that dodecahedron model for geometry class!)
But anyway my point is that I’ve changed my opinion in all this time and now I don’t see why you folks should have to keep secrets like that and I know both my boys think that everyone should be allowed to serve without these special rules for gay people (but then again my sons are very “gay friendly” and sometimes they think I’m a bit of a stick in the mud even though I’m “gay friendly” myself). So anyway my only suggestion would be that you openly gay soldiers take your showers when none of the straight soldiers are around because otherwise it would be like straight men and women taking showers together and I don’t think any of us would approve of that!
Well that’s enough for my first column this time around and I just want to say how happy I am to be doing some serious writing again after all these years. I hope you keep reading!
BY NAN PARKS
Hi everyone! Remember me? Nan Parks? I used to write a column called “Straight Talk” for the San Francisco Bay Times and the whole “point” of the column was to give you gay (and lesbian!) folks an idea of how your friends on the straight side of the aisle think. Because sometimes (and don’t get mad at me!) I think you get so wrapped up in your enthusiasm that you try to go a little too far too fast. And you can bet that the “homophobes” out there won’t tell you what they think because they just think bad things no matter what you do so it’s up to people like me, who like you a lot and believe in tolerance for all, to give you a piece of advice now and then.
Well anyway I’m back! And I have to thank Ann Rostow for letting me use her “blog” and everything so “Thanks Ann!” because Ann called me the other week and asked me what I was doing these days and to be honest I haven’t been that busy lately because the boys are grown and out of the house and Doug’s working harder than ever and my sister Carol (who’s a lesbian… gosh I hate that word but Carol insists on it for some reason and that’s sort of one of those things that I can’t help noticing. Because who cares whether you’re called “lesbian” or “gay” or whatever as long as no one is using one of those mean words? Why make a big fuss over something that’s not important when you folks have so many really important things to worry about? Just asking!)
Ooops! Looks like I never finished that sentence but anyway Carol moved to Kansas City of all places because she met a Russian gal named Kelsey (and she’s not really Russian but her family came from there and I know it was a hundred years ago or so and that Kelsey was raised in Lubbock Texas but you know these things stay with you and Kelsey knows how to make all sorts of Russian dishes and has her grandmother’s recipes!) and anyway I’m tickled pink for Carol and I even helped her with her “wedding” a couple of years back!
I have so many things to tell you because it’s been almost ten years since I last wrote a column but I suppose most of you never read that old column to begin with so you probably don’t care about “catching up” with my news. And it seems like so much has changed and you all have made so much progress and I have to say that if you talked to my sister Carol you’d think everything was just as bad or worse than it was in the 1990s because she has just as many complaints about “gay rights” as she ever had! And I guess that her “marriage” doesn’t count for much in Missouri which I think is a shame. But still! She got to get married in California and no one forced her move (although Kelsey got a job in Kansas City so it made a lot of sense for that reason) but my point is that instead of looking at the glass “half full” and being grateful for being able to get “married” in California, all she can think about is how sad she is because she can’t get health insurance from Kelsey’s job and she has to pay for it herself. Which is too bad, I agree and I remember when Doug was out of work for awhile we had to pay for something that was named after a snake and believe me I was not happy to see all that money go our of our bank account (when I could have had quite a shopping spree instead!) but I’m just saying that these kinds of problems are part of everyone’s life--- gay or straight!
So! I must say that I’m a little surprised that we’re still fussing about gay people in the military because I think I wrote my very first column on this same subject back in 1993 and here I am 17 years later (can that be true?) writing about the very same thing! But you know folks, it just goes to show because back those many years ago I thought that it would be a good compromise to allow you folks to serve in the military as long as you didn’t tell anyone that you were gay. Because how hard is that? I know I don’t go around discussing my personal business with the butcher or the baker! And I think that if I were talking a shower with the girls on the base for example I wouldn’t care who was gay or who was straight as long as I didn’t know because I remember back in grade school that there were a lot of rumors about Patty Cratcher and I was always a little uncomfortable in the locker room when she was around and I may have been wrong to feel that way but I was only 13 or 14! (And in case you’re wondering why I put Patty’s name in my column under the circumstances it’s because she did turn out to be a lesbian and she doesn’t care who knows about it so I think it’s OK to “spill the beans” at this point. And Patty, if you’re reading this please don’t take offense in any way and thanks again for helping me make that dodecahedron model for geometry class!)
But anyway my point is that I’ve changed my opinion in all this time and now I don’t see why you folks should have to keep secrets like that and I know both my boys think that everyone should be allowed to serve without these special rules for gay people (but then again my sons are very “gay friendly” and sometimes they think I’m a bit of a stick in the mud even though I’m “gay friendly” myself). So anyway my only suggestion would be that you openly gay soldiers take your showers when none of the straight soldiers are around because otherwise it would be like straight men and women taking showers together and I don’t think any of us would approve of that!
Well that’s enough for my first column this time around and I just want to say how happy I am to be doing some serious writing again after all these years. I hope you keep reading!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Brief Democratic Reign Ends With Little To Show
You know, I could go down the election results and pick out the gay rights victories. The new gay mayor of Lexington, the marriage friendly governors in New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland and elsewhere. The first trans judge in history out of Alameda, a fourth gay congressman, etc..
But these wins pale before the loss of the House, expected yes, but no less damaging to our near term future. With the exception of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which still has a chance of being repealed in the lame duck Senate, this is the end of gay rights initiatives on the Hill for the next several years.
Barring some unexpected development in the next two years, Democrats will have a hard time reversing a 50-seat GOP majority. Indeed, the Senate is now so close that it will be up for grabs again in 2012. And if you assume, as I do, that corporate America leans Republican, the impact of Citizens United, the High Court case that authorized unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, will undermine Democratic candidates for years to come.
Considering the pathetic progress we’ve seen on gay rights issues over the last 20 months of full Democratic control, the notion that we can now advance anything but the most innocuous legislative proposal is a pipedream. Whether you blame Obama, the Human Rights Campaign, the Senate Republicans, or Harry Reid, the fact is we had a window of opportunity and that window has slammed shut, leaving our entire agenda trapped in limbo with the un-notable exception of the Hate Crime law.
Personally, I put most of the blame on the shoulders of HRC, where leaders made no effort to revise our Congressional strategy well in advance of the 2008 election. Imagine if gay leaders had developed a major, and winnable, gay rights proposal, put it at the top of the list, and begun a single-minded lobbying effort well before Obama’s election.
Instead, HRC pursued the exact same list of bills they’ve been pushing for 15 years, in the exact same order of priority. First Hate Crimes! Then ENDA! Then Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Then, whatever. The priority had nothing to do with what could actually advance equality, and everything to do with what would be most likely to pass. Ergo we got a hate crime bill, an almost useless achievement and far less than what might have been possible under the circumstances.
The hate crime bill was not just low hanging fruit. It was sitting on the ground and could have been passed without making it our official “Number One Goal.” By emphasizing hate crimes as we did, we handed lawmakers an easy vote that allowed them to satisfy whatever small degree of pressure they may have felt to pass “something” for the GLBT community.
Meanwhile ENDA made no progress, and if the repeal of Don’t Ask won momentum it was thanks to the many other GLBT advocates that focused on the military ban along with the grass roots energy they brought to the fight. But more importantly, our community has had no debate on the legislative priorities themselves.
Sure we support whatever “gay thing” might be introduced in Congress or discussed in committee. But why haven’t the “gay things” under debate changed in nearly two decades? Why are we fighting for a stand-alone bill to hamper workplace discrimination when we could be fighting to add sexual orientation to Title VII? There may be reasons, but where is the conversation? Why, for that matter, are we fighting for a workplace anti-discrimination bill instead of a general gay rights bill that would ban bias in housing and public accommodation as well?
Are these things too hard? Maybe. But there’s an argument to made that the opponents of gay rights are hostile to any proposal while the supporters of let’s say ENDA, would also support a broader bill. The dynamics of the fight would be similar either way, so why fight for symbolic victories when we could fight for more substantial ideas? Even if we lose, it’s preferable in my book to lose a bid for serious change than to lose a bid for symbolic progress. America’s relationship with the GLBT community has improved dramatically since the 1990s. So why are we still working for the same tentative pieces of legislation so many years down the road?
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Brave Iowa Justices Voted Out Of Office
A significant low point in last night’s election was the ouster of the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were up for what is usually a routine vote of approval. All three, who obviously joined in the unanimous opinion in favor of marriage equality last year, were kicked out on roughly 55-45 margins after the national anti-marriage group, NOM, poured bunches of money into the races.
Iowans also lost their Democratic governor Chet Culver. It’s not clear to me that these results will undermine the right to marriage in Iowa. In theory, the state legislature can trigger a public referendum to amend the constitution. However, although Democrats lost control of the house, they maintained a four-vote majority in the state senate. I don’t follow Iowa politics so I have no idea whether this senate is solidly pro-equality and can fend off the calls for a marriage vote. I sure hope so.
But even so, NOM’s goal was to “send a message” to judges in other states that may face the same type of retention vote. In this they seem to have succeeded.
In other bad news for Democrats, the Blues suffered big defeats at the state legislative level, losing majorities in at least 18 chambers including both the house and senate in New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Democrats also lost both chambers in Alabama and North Carolina, and as I mentioned, they lost the Iowa house. There are others, but the losses are worrisome, not just for redistricting but for any and all statewide gay rights (or wrongs) proposals that might emerge over the next two years in these states.
I think Democrats also lost the New York state senate, although our slim majority in that chamber did not serve us particularly well over its two-year tenure.
Interestingly, Democrats won a number of legislative chambers in the otherwise disappointing 2004 election. Those victories seemed at the time like a harbinger of the national Democratic surges of 2006 and 2008. But under the circumstances, let’s just call them coincidental.
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Obama Under the Gun
I’ve had the TV on all day, watching election analysis and Obama’s press conference. Now, however, I have a Closer rerun on which is making it hard to concentrate on news writing. Sometimes, when you have the TV on, it’s hard to shut it off even if you don’t particularly want it on. It’s like a friend who comes over and stays around even when you’d rather be alone.
At any rate, for all my complaints about Obama’s lack of effort on gay issues, I certainly support his presidency and feel nothing but frustration on his behalf. He inherited an economy in freefall. He stopped it and started a slow but steady rise in economic growth. He stabilized job losses albeit at an unsustainable level. He saved the financial system. He saved the auto industry. He has cut taxes. He passed a health care bill that saves money and increases benefits. And he faces an electorate that cares nothing for facts and votes on the basis of a vague notion that “things aren’t good” and “government is too big.”
But before we get all sloppy, let’s point out that Obama was asked about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during this conference, and although he repeated his support for openly gay service, he also said that it would undermine good order and morale were the policy to bounce around between the courts and Congress, leaving the Pentagon unsure of which policy is in force from day to day.
Well, you know what? Then he should have suspended the policy during the appeal of the Log Cabin Club’s lawsuit and kept it suspended.
As you know, the Log Cabin Club won a great victory in California federal court last September, and last month, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillip ordered the federal government to cease enforcing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during the appeal.
Obama’s Justice Department promptly scurried over to the Ninth Circuit, where last week, Judge Phillips’ order was stayed on a 2-1 panel decision. A different panel will now consider the appeal of Phillips’ underlying decision, a process that will take months.
Meanwhile, the lame duck Senate will debate an amendment to the defense budget that allows Obama to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on his own authority. Since the House has already passed the amendment, and will not do so again under GOP control, this is our last chance to kill the law through legislation. Obama, in turn, has pledged to undo Don’t Ask under the powers granted by the amendment following review of an unnecessary commission report on the subject that is due December 1.
Got all this? It seems as if Don’t Ask is under serious attack and will be reversed fairly soon, either by the court or via the Senate. So why not suspend the policy (under court order) in the interim?
The answer from the president is that uncertainty would prevail, which is true. But what if the Ninth Circuit upholds the law and the Senate takes no action? What then? Will the President just throw up his hands and say “sorry, I tried?” Under these circumstances, Don’t Ask would be alive and well, with no prospects for Congressional repeal.
A president who truly wanted to end the law would take advantage of Phillips’ court order and suspend the discharges for the duration of the appeal, undermining the argument that gay soldiers hurt our armed forces and creating a cohort of openly gay personnel who presumably would be protected from discharge just as the 18,000 married gay couples in California were protected by the California Supreme Court.
Win or lose, the law would be profoundly damaged. And if Obama really believes that suspending Don’t Ask for a few months would severely disrupt military operations, then why is he in favor of repeal to begin with? What’s so hard about it? You issue an order of some sort and it’s done.
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Where’s Isabella?
In other news of note, the insane Arkansas school board member Clint McCance took a star turn on Anderson Cooper and attempted to apologize for the poor choice of words he used on his Facebook page. McCance’s verbal gaffes included wishing all gay kids would commit suicide and expressing pleasure at the fatal consequences of AIDS on the gay male community. McCance, a “Christian,” also resigned over the, um, unfortunate vocabulary.
Normally I’d tee off on the idea that wishing gay kids dead was a simple case of inappropriate language, but I’m running out of space. Oh, McCance received death threats, hundreds of emails and calls, and had to send his family out of state for their safety. Awwww. Did we overreact to your error in judgment? Our bad!
Also, amazingly, the Vermont Supreme Court just issued a ruling in favor of Janet Jenkins. Who, you ask? That can’t be the same Janet Jenkins who has been pursuing a custody case against her ex-partner Lisa Miller for the last decade? Well, yes as a matter of fact!
Miller and Jenkins have been at it since 2003, when the women dissolved their civil union and began an endless battle for custody and or visitation with infant Isabella, who is now 8. Miller, a born again Christian, moved to Virginia and initiated a state-to-state confrontation that came to an end when both the Virginia and the Vermont high courts agreed that the Maple Syrup State had jurisdiction over the case.
Over subsequent years, Miller simply ignored every court order coming out of Vermont, and the family court awarded full custody to Jenkins effective January 1, 2010. Lisa promptly took Isabella and vanished, presumably leaving an appellate lawyer behind to contest the decision. Now, the Vermont justices have confirmed the ruling in Jenkins’ favor, but Lisa is still nowhere to be found. As for little Isabella, I imagine she’s a basket case by now, poor kid.
On the other hand, Isabella will have a hell of an autobiography to sell by the time she’s 21. Think of the TV and movie rights. Lifetime of course!
You know, I could go down the election results and pick out the gay rights victories. The new gay mayor of Lexington, the marriage friendly governors in New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland and elsewhere. The first trans judge in history out of Alameda, a fourth gay congressman, etc..
But these wins pale before the loss of the House, expected yes, but no less damaging to our near term future. With the exception of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which still has a chance of being repealed in the lame duck Senate, this is the end of gay rights initiatives on the Hill for the next several years.
Barring some unexpected development in the next two years, Democrats will have a hard time reversing a 50-seat GOP majority. Indeed, the Senate is now so close that it will be up for grabs again in 2012. And if you assume, as I do, that corporate America leans Republican, the impact of Citizens United, the High Court case that authorized unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, will undermine Democratic candidates for years to come.
Considering the pathetic progress we’ve seen on gay rights issues over the last 20 months of full Democratic control, the notion that we can now advance anything but the most innocuous legislative proposal is a pipedream. Whether you blame Obama, the Human Rights Campaign, the Senate Republicans, or Harry Reid, the fact is we had a window of opportunity and that window has slammed shut, leaving our entire agenda trapped in limbo with the un-notable exception of the Hate Crime law.
Personally, I put most of the blame on the shoulders of HRC, where leaders made no effort to revise our Congressional strategy well in advance of the 2008 election. Imagine if gay leaders had developed a major, and winnable, gay rights proposal, put it at the top of the list, and begun a single-minded lobbying effort well before Obama’s election.
Instead, HRC pursued the exact same list of bills they’ve been pushing for 15 years, in the exact same order of priority. First Hate Crimes! Then ENDA! Then Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Then, whatever. The priority had nothing to do with what could actually advance equality, and everything to do with what would be most likely to pass. Ergo we got a hate crime bill, an almost useless achievement and far less than what might have been possible under the circumstances.
The hate crime bill was not just low hanging fruit. It was sitting on the ground and could have been passed without making it our official “Number One Goal.” By emphasizing hate crimes as we did, we handed lawmakers an easy vote that allowed them to satisfy whatever small degree of pressure they may have felt to pass “something” for the GLBT community.
Meanwhile ENDA made no progress, and if the repeal of Don’t Ask won momentum it was thanks to the many other GLBT advocates that focused on the military ban along with the grass roots energy they brought to the fight. But more importantly, our community has had no debate on the legislative priorities themselves.
Sure we support whatever “gay thing” might be introduced in Congress or discussed in committee. But why haven’t the “gay things” under debate changed in nearly two decades? Why are we fighting for a stand-alone bill to hamper workplace discrimination when we could be fighting to add sexual orientation to Title VII? There may be reasons, but where is the conversation? Why, for that matter, are we fighting for a workplace anti-discrimination bill instead of a general gay rights bill that would ban bias in housing and public accommodation as well?
Are these things too hard? Maybe. But there’s an argument to made that the opponents of gay rights are hostile to any proposal while the supporters of let’s say ENDA, would also support a broader bill. The dynamics of the fight would be similar either way, so why fight for symbolic victories when we could fight for more substantial ideas? Even if we lose, it’s preferable in my book to lose a bid for serious change than to lose a bid for symbolic progress. America’s relationship with the GLBT community has improved dramatically since the 1990s. So why are we still working for the same tentative pieces of legislation so many years down the road?
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Brave Iowa Justices Voted Out Of Office
A significant low point in last night’s election was the ouster of the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were up for what is usually a routine vote of approval. All three, who obviously joined in the unanimous opinion in favor of marriage equality last year, were kicked out on roughly 55-45 margins after the national anti-marriage group, NOM, poured bunches of money into the races.
Iowans also lost their Democratic governor Chet Culver. It’s not clear to me that these results will undermine the right to marriage in Iowa. In theory, the state legislature can trigger a public referendum to amend the constitution. However, although Democrats lost control of the house, they maintained a four-vote majority in the state senate. I don’t follow Iowa politics so I have no idea whether this senate is solidly pro-equality and can fend off the calls for a marriage vote. I sure hope so.
But even so, NOM’s goal was to “send a message” to judges in other states that may face the same type of retention vote. In this they seem to have succeeded.
In other bad news for Democrats, the Blues suffered big defeats at the state legislative level, losing majorities in at least 18 chambers including both the house and senate in New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Democrats also lost both chambers in Alabama and North Carolina, and as I mentioned, they lost the Iowa house. There are others, but the losses are worrisome, not just for redistricting but for any and all statewide gay rights (or wrongs) proposals that might emerge over the next two years in these states.
I think Democrats also lost the New York state senate, although our slim majority in that chamber did not serve us particularly well over its two-year tenure.
Interestingly, Democrats won a number of legislative chambers in the otherwise disappointing 2004 election. Those victories seemed at the time like a harbinger of the national Democratic surges of 2006 and 2008. But under the circumstances, let’s just call them coincidental.
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Obama Under the Gun
I’ve had the TV on all day, watching election analysis and Obama’s press conference. Now, however, I have a Closer rerun on which is making it hard to concentrate on news writing. Sometimes, when you have the TV on, it’s hard to shut it off even if you don’t particularly want it on. It’s like a friend who comes over and stays around even when you’d rather be alone.
At any rate, for all my complaints about Obama’s lack of effort on gay issues, I certainly support his presidency and feel nothing but frustration on his behalf. He inherited an economy in freefall. He stopped it and started a slow but steady rise in economic growth. He stabilized job losses albeit at an unsustainable level. He saved the financial system. He saved the auto industry. He has cut taxes. He passed a health care bill that saves money and increases benefits. And he faces an electorate that cares nothing for facts and votes on the basis of a vague notion that “things aren’t good” and “government is too big.”
But before we get all sloppy, let’s point out that Obama was asked about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during this conference, and although he repeated his support for openly gay service, he also said that it would undermine good order and morale were the policy to bounce around between the courts and Congress, leaving the Pentagon unsure of which policy is in force from day to day.
Well, you know what? Then he should have suspended the policy during the appeal of the Log Cabin Club’s lawsuit and kept it suspended.
As you know, the Log Cabin Club won a great victory in California federal court last September, and last month, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillip ordered the federal government to cease enforcing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell during the appeal.
Obama’s Justice Department promptly scurried over to the Ninth Circuit, where last week, Judge Phillips’ order was stayed on a 2-1 panel decision. A different panel will now consider the appeal of Phillips’ underlying decision, a process that will take months.
Meanwhile, the lame duck Senate will debate an amendment to the defense budget that allows Obama to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on his own authority. Since the House has already passed the amendment, and will not do so again under GOP control, this is our last chance to kill the law through legislation. Obama, in turn, has pledged to undo Don’t Ask under the powers granted by the amendment following review of an unnecessary commission report on the subject that is due December 1.
Got all this? It seems as if Don’t Ask is under serious attack and will be reversed fairly soon, either by the court or via the Senate. So why not suspend the policy (under court order) in the interim?
The answer from the president is that uncertainty would prevail, which is true. But what if the Ninth Circuit upholds the law and the Senate takes no action? What then? Will the President just throw up his hands and say “sorry, I tried?” Under these circumstances, Don’t Ask would be alive and well, with no prospects for Congressional repeal.
A president who truly wanted to end the law would take advantage of Phillips’ court order and suspend the discharges for the duration of the appeal, undermining the argument that gay soldiers hurt our armed forces and creating a cohort of openly gay personnel who presumably would be protected from discharge just as the 18,000 married gay couples in California were protected by the California Supreme Court.
Win or lose, the law would be profoundly damaged. And if Obama really believes that suspending Don’t Ask for a few months would severely disrupt military operations, then why is he in favor of repeal to begin with? What’s so hard about it? You issue an order of some sort and it’s done.
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Where’s Isabella?
In other news of note, the insane Arkansas school board member Clint McCance took a star turn on Anderson Cooper and attempted to apologize for the poor choice of words he used on his Facebook page. McCance’s verbal gaffes included wishing all gay kids would commit suicide and expressing pleasure at the fatal consequences of AIDS on the gay male community. McCance, a “Christian,” also resigned over the, um, unfortunate vocabulary.
Normally I’d tee off on the idea that wishing gay kids dead was a simple case of inappropriate language, but I’m running out of space. Oh, McCance received death threats, hundreds of emails and calls, and had to send his family out of state for their safety. Awwww. Did we overreact to your error in judgment? Our bad!
Also, amazingly, the Vermont Supreme Court just issued a ruling in favor of Janet Jenkins. Who, you ask? That can’t be the same Janet Jenkins who has been pursuing a custody case against her ex-partner Lisa Miller for the last decade? Well, yes as a matter of fact!
Miller and Jenkins have been at it since 2003, when the women dissolved their civil union and began an endless battle for custody and or visitation with infant Isabella, who is now 8. Miller, a born again Christian, moved to Virginia and initiated a state-to-state confrontation that came to an end when both the Virginia and the Vermont high courts agreed that the Maple Syrup State had jurisdiction over the case.
Over subsequent years, Miller simply ignored every court order coming out of Vermont, and the family court awarded full custody to Jenkins effective January 1, 2010. Lisa promptly took Isabella and vanished, presumably leaving an appellate lawyer behind to contest the decision. Now, the Vermont justices have confirmed the ruling in Jenkins’ favor, but Lisa is still nowhere to be found. As for little Isabella, I imagine she’s a basket case by now, poor kid.
On the other hand, Isabella will have a hell of an autobiography to sell by the time she’s 21. Think of the TV and movie rights. Lifetime of course!
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