Why the Right and GOP Can’t Win the Gay Marriage Fight

Just as the changing demographics of the nation spell long term problems for the Republican Party in its current far right/Christianist dominated incarnation, these changes in the nation's population spell long term defeat for the far right and the GOP in the same sex marriage war.  The Christianists have won a number of battles - and may even win on May 8th in North Carolina - but the results of the war against gays in the longer view will be defeat for the far right and those who practice politics of division and hate.  Many on the far right refuse to see that they are on the losing side of history and will likely be viewed no better than rabid segregationists by future generations.  Some, however, seem to be beginning to face reality.  An article in The American Conservative looks at the chronology of LGBT acceptance by society and makes the case as to why the Christianists and their GOP puppets cannot win in the longer term war.  here ares some highlights:

Rod Dreher has made the case that advocates of same-sex marriage are the aggressors on this front of the culture war. But they have presented their argument as a defensive one—a matter of equal rights being unfairly violated—and this has been a masterstroke of propaganda, winning much sympathy for their cause. The thing against which supporters of same-sex marriage have committed their aggression is tradition, specifically the West’s traditional understanding of marriage dating back a thousand years and more.

“Same-sex marriage has only been on the national radar since 1993, when a Hawaii court ruled that the state had to demonstrate just cause for why marriage ought to be denied to same-sex couples,” Dreher wrote on his blog at The American Conservative’s website. “That was fewer than 20 years ago, and in that time, support for same-sex marriage has increased at a pace that is nothing short of revolutionary. According to the trajectory of polling, at some point in the next few years, what had been the settled view of the nature of marriage for millennia will have been rejected by a majority of the American people.”

How has this happened? .   .   .   .   it is a consequence of a shift in the foundations of Western civilization that has been taking place over centuries—a shift from Christian to liberal foundations. So profound is this transformation that even the opponents of same-sex marriage are not exactly fighting to recover the old way of life.

Homosexual activity may be as old as civilization, but the idea of a category of person whose sexual identity is primarily defined by same-sex attraction, yet who is otherwise quite like the mainstream of society, is of recent vintage. That people in this group are not negligible in numbers—amounting to perhaps 5 percent of the general population—has also been a slowly dawning realization.

Once society was widely conscious of this population, and had an inkling of its extent, there was no question of reverting to the status quo ante. The knowledge itself had changed the political question. Not only were homosexuals not going back into the closet, but the rest of society could not forget that they exist. And there had been little in the way of a “traditional” approach to something that was beyond the margin of public consciousness. So now the question arose of how to think about—and act toward—this alarming new population. Should it be included in or excluded from the body politic, and on what terms?

[T]wo things steadily eroded the cultural and legal taboos against homosexuality. The first was that it had come to be seen as an innate desire about which individuals have little choice. The second was that as these strange new beings emerged from their hiding places they didn’t look so frightening—indeed, they looked a lot like everybody else. The great public-relations victory won by the gay-rights movement that hastened the advent of gay marriage was the shift in the 1990s away from a radical, anti-bourgeois image toward one more in keeping with societal norms, from the militancy of ACT-UP to the banality of “Will and Grace.” The gay-marriage effort has been a cause as well as an effect in this change: while same-sex marriage is disturbing to many Americans, it is reassuring to others, suggesting as it does loyalty to a middle-class ideal.

[I]f homosexuals were not going to be under legal or therapeutic penalty, what would become of them? This is the question to which few conservatives can supply a satisfactory answer because the principles that conservatives affirm point toward policies that conflict with their wishes.

The second consistent position that conservatives can embrace, however reluctantly, would be that of providing full legal equality. This could be seen as a capitulation to liberalism; it could also be seen as an acknowledgement of reality. The trouble with this position is that it doesn’t stop where most conservatives would like it to stop: the logic of legal equality certainly demands that homosexuals be allowed to serve in government, including in the military, and prima facie it demands that they be afforded equal access to the institution of marriage. Conservatives can try to draw the line before that point, but doing so requires making an exception to the principle of legal equality, and exceptions are, by their very nature, more difficult to establish than arguments that go along with general rules.

In an age when the Church no longer supplies the institutional framework for family life, the definition of marriage has become radically uncertain. Into this fluid environment—in which individualism or atomism is once again rising to the fore, as in the Roman Empire—the new fact of homosexuality was gradually introduced. The result, same-sex marriage, has shocked conservatives. But this innovation has moved so far so quickly only because it is not at all out of step with the institutions and ideas of our time.

New Study: Teen Suicides Higher in Conservative Areas

A new study that has tracked teen suicides - both by gay teens and those not identified as LGBT - and has documented that suicide rates are higher in conservative areas with low levels of Democrats. So now, in addition to being tied to slow or dying state and local economies, political conservatism/"Christianist religious beliefs also correlate with a higher death rate by suicide among teens of all sexual orientations. Can it be because of the constant negative, hate oriented world view and mistreatment of others who are deemed "other" that mark both political conservatives and far right religious believers? Obviously, it would seem so. This is truly yet another indictment of the toxic nature of both social phenomenons. Once again conservatism is proven to not make for a welcoming society. Instead, judging and denigrating others is the norm. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot on the study findings:
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Suicide attempts by gay teens - and even straight kids - are more common in politically conservative areas where schools don't have programs supporting gay rights, a study involving nearly 32,000 high school students found.
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Those factors raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, said study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher.
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His study found a higher rate of suicide attempts even among kids who weren't bullied or depressed when they lived in counties less supportive of gays and with relatively few Democrats. A high proportion of Democrats was a measure used as a proxy for a more liberal environment.
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"Is it surprising? No. Is it important? Yes," said Dr. Robert Blum of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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e="times new roman">The study relied on teens' self-reporting suicide attempts within the previous year. Roughly 20 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had made an attempt, versus 4 percent of straight kids.
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The study's social index rated counties on five measures: prevalence of same-sex couples; registered Democratic voters; liberal views; schools with gay-straight alliances; schools with policies against bullying gay students; and schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation.
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Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens living in counties with the lowest social index scores were 20 percent more likely to have attempted suicide than gays in counties with the highest index scores. Overall, about 25 percent of gay teens in low-scoring counties had attempted suicide, versus 20 percent of gay teens in high-scoring counties.
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Among straight teens, suicide attempts were 9 percent more common in low-scoring [conservative]counties
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So they next time you hear a far right conservative yammering about being a "loving Christian," know that such is probably not the case and that the individual may well have blood on his/her hands.

It's Conservatives Who Are the Judicial Activists

One of the most common types of whining of the Christianists and crazed loons of the GOP base is that "activist" judges are redefining laws, etc. What that really translates to is that judges are not having their rules controlled by a particular religious doctrine and/or they are extending equality under the civil laws to those whom the religious extremists, white supremacists and other bigots do not like. It is these people, not the federal judiciary (in most cases) that want to turn the Constitution on its head and retain special privileges for whites, far right Christians and others who believe that only they are "true Americans." E.J. Dionne has a op-ed in the Washington Post that looks at how the far right has twisted the political discourse and projected their own agenda onto judges and liberals. Here are some highlights:

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Nowhere has the conservative intellectual offensive been more effective than in transforming our discussion of the judiciary. That is why the coming clash over President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee is so important.
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The test of success for liberals should not simply be winning the confirmation battle. This fight must be the beginning of a long-term effort to expose how radically conservatives have altered our understanding of what the Supreme Court does and how it does it.
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Above all, it should become clear that the danger of judicial activism now comes from the right, not the left. It is conservatives, not liberals, who are using the courts to overturn the decisions made by democratically elected bodies in areas such as pay discrimination, school integration, antitrust laws and worker safety regulation.
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If anyone doubted that the Supreme Court's current conservative majority wants to impose its view no matter what Congress or state legislatures decide -- or what earlier precedents held -- its decision in the Citizens United case should end all qualms.
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Stevens added: "In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules." Citizens United is an extreme case of a general tendency: Conservative judges are regularly invoking their alleged fealty to the "original" intentions of the Founders as a battering ram against attempts to limit the power of large corporations. Such entities were not even in the imaginations of those who wrote the Constitution. To claim to know what the Founders would have made of Exxon Mobil or Goldman Sachs or PepsiCo is an exercise in arrogance.
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What liberals forgot during the years when their side dominated the judiciary is that for much of our history, the courts have played a conservative role. But today's conservatives have not forgotten this legacy. Their goal is to overturn the past 70 years of judicial understandings and bring us back to a time when courts voided minimum-wage laws and all manner of other economic regulations.
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Let's remember that the truly "elitist" judges are the ones who protect the privileges of the powerful over the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment. Let's ignore the claims of conservatives that they are opposed to "legislating from the bench," since it's their judges who are now doing the legislating. If liberals can't successfully challenge conservatives on first principles, they'll never win the fights that matter.

How Racist Extremists Are Hijacking the GOP

I have maintained for some time now that the GOP is be coming a racist party and that the increased racial animosity is being derived from "pro-family" groups which are not only anti-gay, but also anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant. The list goes on and on. The toxic racist attitude of the pro-family crowd and the professional Christians is really nothing new and can be traced back to well before the 2000 election. However, the combination of the election of Barack Obama as president and increases in the recognition of gay rights seems to have pushed some of the haters over the edge. Hence the Department of Homeland Security's release of a report showing that right wing extremists groups are increasing in numbers. There are some interesting points on this whole issue on a blog called The Loop. Here are some highlights:

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In the past several years, the line between the far right and the racist fringe has blurred. These days, it is hard to distinguish between the two. Cultural conservatives are not just welcoming the wing nuts into their camp, they are making obvious overtures to mobilize them. They are intentionally alienating moderate Republicans. And they are shamelessly regurgitating hateful and dangerous propaganda, most of which originated on the fringe.

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Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a 10-page report warning the nation’s law enforcement community about fringe groups and attempts they have made to recruit returning U.S. veterans. The report indicates that more than 200 veterans are also a member of various racist groups. DHS, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive, nonprofit group that has monitored racist, fringe groups since 1981, say the fringe movement is growing. The number of them crept up to 926 in 2008, compared with 888 in 2007.

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“(Cultural conservatives) are injecting poison into the national dialogue, whether they mean it or not is completely besides the point,” Potok said. “This is not a debate we are having. These are just nuts on the far right, and they are being given an incredibly huge platform. And they are doing a lot to buddy up to the radical fringe.” This radical fringe has not been this active since the militia movement of the '80s and '90s. The last time there was a cultural flare-up like this, we ended up with Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph.

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“There were folks like David Duke around back then. The difference between (people like him) and people like Glenn Beck or Bachmann is that (the latter) don’t normally make explicit appeals on a racist basis,” Potok said. “Are they worse? One can definitely make the argument they are worse. With someone like David Duke, no one takes him seriously. But there are a lot of people out there taking Glenn Beck seriously.”

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A few weeks ago, it became very apparent exactly who is taking Beck seriously. In early April, 23-year-old Richard Poplawski, a huge fan of Beck and someone who had been associated with various white supremacy groups, wore a bulletproof vest as he waited for Pittsburgh police officers to enter his home. When they did, he opened fire, killing three of them.

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The conservative movement has grown so far to the right right, they are now kissing cousins with the racist fringe," [Steve] Rendall [of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting] said. Both Sean Hannity and Beck have routinely had guests who were overtly anti-Semitic and racist. And the fact that the media and the Republican Party are both in shambles right now has exacerbated the affiliation.