Matt Yglesias

The Gathering Storm

One of the problems facing opponents of marriage equality is that it’s not as if straight people are being asked to give anything up when gay and lesbian couples want to get married. The lives of heterosexuals will just continue as before. The National Organization for Marriage, however, is ready to try to mobilize people into a state of inchoate fear with this ad designed to make you think that gay marriage is an urgent threat to your liberty:

The closest thing to a legitimate issue here seems to have to do with the Massachusetts public schools. Clearly, a state adopting a non-discriminatory marriage policy doesn’t actually force the state to teach non-discriminatory values in schools. But the two tend to go together. We not only don’t have Jim Crow anymore, but we teach people that racism is wrong. This is, it’s true, a big imposition on racists. And people who don’t like gay people can be legitimately concerned that the spread of gay equality will create an environment in which their children are less likely to share their own prejudices.

On the other hand, that’s all pretty tautological. But what’s the deal with the woman who says “I’m a California doctor forced to choose between my faith and my job”? What is it she wants to do? Does her faith prohibit her from giving medical care to gays and lesbians? That sounds like a pretty sick faith. And a clear violation of existing medical ethics anyway.

Dreher: You Are Nihilists, You Believe in Nothing

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hilzoy, Rod Dreher offers his views on the stakes in delegitimizing homosexuality:

If homosexuality is legitimized — as distinct from being tolerated, which I generally support — then it represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth. It is to lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality. I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human. And I fully expect to lose this argument in the main, because even most conservatives today don’t fully grasp how the logic of what we’ve already conceded as a result of being modern leads to this end.

Well, I agree with Dreher that he’s going to lose this argument. But drawing the red lines around homosexuality seems mighty arbitrary to me. The front lines of the gay rights movement, after all, are at this point about the right to marry rather than the right to have sex, which has basically been conceded. It’s an effort to find social and legal legitimacy for the aspects of a loving sexual relationship that go beyond “nihilistic” desire. Alternatively, if the view is that the only alternative to a nihilistic view of sexuality is a narrow focus on reproduction, then the horse got out of the barn a long time ago with contraceptives.

In other words, even given Dreher’s strongly conservative premises, continued discrimination against gays and lesbians still looks mighty arbitrary and unfair. Basically, conservatives know they can’t enforce their preferences on the heterosexual majority, so they’ll pick on the gay minority instead. It’s as if I were to say that eliminating the home mortgage interest tax deduction only for Asian-American homeowners was a good second-best to my preferred, but infeasible, policy of eliminating it altogether.

A Full Plate is No Excuse for Discrimination

Robert Gates’ statement that we shouldn’t expect the Obama administration to fulfill its pledge to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anytime soon is highly disappointing:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says both he and President Barack Obama have “a lot on our plates right now.” As Gates puts it, “let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”

It’s simply the nature of the military that this “a lot on our plates right now” excuse will almost always be available. In retrospect, the 1990s were a period of relative peace and quiet for the military, but at the time it was seen as a stressful period of multiple deployments (to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia) around the world mixed with efforts at containment in the Gulf and the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs are never going to say “eh . . . we don’t really have much going on these days.”

Meanwhile, racial desegregation of the military actually required a large number of active steps and was successfully carried out near the peak of Cold War tensions. The biggest step toward ending discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military would be the passive step of just not discriminating against them. Gay and lesbian soldiers are already serving. Gates could just decide that with as much on his plate as he has at the moment, he’ll make sure we stop persecuting them.

The Uniting American Families Act

Part of the nature of privilege is that huge problems in other people’s lives can remain invisible to even a good liberal. So it wasn’t until November 2007 when I for the first time met several couples afflicted by the problem that the issue of U.S. immigration law’s unfair treatment of gay and lesbian couples came to my attention. The essence of the matter is that the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act allows U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to sponsor their spouses for immigration purposes. So if you’re stationed in Belgium for a couple of years for work, marry a Belgian, and then want to move back to the United States you can take your husband or wife. But if you’re a man who falls in love with a Belgian man, or a woman who falls in love with a Belgian woman, you’re out of luck. If your company wants to transfer you back to the states, you’ve got a big problem.

At any rate, Jerry Nadler and Pat Leahy have a bill called the Uniting American Families Act that would address this situation. The best solution, of course, would be to let gay and lesbian couples just get married on an equal basis with other couples, thus eliminating the need for special legal workarounds for the secondary discriminatory results of discriminatory marriage rights. But that doesn’t seem to be politically realistic, and this is a small, decent step that could be taken to help relieve a severe source of pain to a lot of people who are needlessly suffering right now.

Jim Moran Stands Up for Equality

Via Robert Farley, the DADT madness continues despite the new president, and thankfully Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) is trying to do something about it:

The Army fired 11 soldiers in January for violating the military’s policy that gay service members must keep their sexuality hidden, according to a Virginia congressman. Democratic Rep. Jim Moran said he has requested monthly updates from the Pentagon on the impact of the policy until it is repealed.

In a statement released on Thursday, Moran said the discharged soldiers included an intelligence collector, a military police officer, four infantry personnel, a health care specialist, a motor-transport operator and a water-treatment specialist.

“How many more good soldiers are we willing to lose due to a bad policy that makes us less safe and secure?” asked Moran, a member of the House panel that oversees military spending.

As Farley says, this is a smart approach from Moran—illustrating, in detail, the practical costs the military is incurring through this discriminatory policy. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is slow-walking repeal of the policy in order to try to demonstrate that it’s listening respectfully to military concerns and turning its attention first to strategic issues in Iraq and Central Asia before focusing on DADT. At the same time, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) has introduced a worthy bill to allow for equality in military service. At this point, top commanders ought to be able to see the handwriting on the wall and basically cut this nonsense out. Everyone knows that equal opportunities to serve is coming around the corner, and it doesn’t help anyone to drum out the last few dozen gay and lesbian military volunteers just before the buzzer.

Equality: Coming Soon to a Federal Employee Near You

Alyssa Rosenberg clues us in on an unheralded major development-in-the-making for equal rights for gays and lesbians. It all starts in the National Zoo:

President Obama has just made John Berry, the current director of the National Zoo, the highest-ranking openly gay appointee ever by tapping him to head the Office of Personnel Management (pending Congressional approval). As an assistant secretary at the Interior department under President Clinton, Berry fought to end a wide range of discriminatory policies, including background checks for gay and lesbian applicants for National Park Service law enforcement jobs, and worked to set up a grievance process for employees who were harassed because of their sexual orientation.

The Office of Personnel Management might not seem like a bully pulpit for a gay rights advocate like Berry. But, unlike workers at more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, the 1.8 million employees who fill the ranks of the federal government don’t have domestic partnership benefits. Their partners can’t participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, a plan that’s been considered a potential model for health care reform. They can’t benefit from retirement programs. And if gay federal employees move for work, their partners can’t benefit from relocation programs.

To extend equality in domestic partnership benefits would actually require legislative change. Here, though, OPM switching sides from the Bush administration’s opposition will make a difference as well, of course, the election results. But beyond that specific issue, there are going to be countless small ways in which having OPM be on the side of equality will make a difference for the federal civilian workforce. And since that workforce is enormous it’s both a big deal for a large number of people and also something that to an extent helps set standards and expectations for a larger swathe of the economy.

Rep Tauscher: “Times Have Changed Dramatically” and It’s Time to End DADT

Rep Ellen Tauscher has been getting kicked around on the blogs a bit for her stance on letting bankruptcy judges modify mortgages, but she also got in the news yesterday by unveiling legislation aimed at ending the unfair “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military. Time has proven DADT to be a fundamentally unworkable compromise that reduces military effectiveness while falling far short of the providing equal rights and opportunities. She talks a bit about the issue here:

On the politics, she’s right to observe that “times have changed dramatically” and that this is relevant. But I do think it’s important to be clear that there was no past time when this was a good policy, there was only a past time when it was politically inconvenient to do the right thing.

Pansy Division

Newt Gingrich warns that “gay and secular fascism” is a “very serious threat”:

I can’t believe this joke is making a political comeback. But I suppose if Liberal Fascism can be a best-seller, more and more conservatives are going to hop on the “let’s call everyone fascists” bandwagon.

Gay Marriage

Jim Henley recounts a conversation with his daughter:

The Littlest Offering, Age 8: What’s that about?

Me: It’s a commercial opposing Proposition 8 in California, which would make it illegal for gay people to get married.

TLO: But that’s an insult to Mary Gay and Vicki! (My stepsisters-in-law in Illinois.)

Me: Yes. And Uncle Tony. (My brother-in-law’s brother in McLean.)

TLO: And Bailey’s dads! (Bailey is a fellow Brownie.)

Me: Yeah, them too.

Jim recounts, “I would never tell you that eight-year-olds possess some inherent wisdom that grownups must always heed, but whenever I hear people complain that a problem with gay marriage is, us regular people just can’t explain it to our kids, I have to ask, what’s so complicated about the concept? Also, my daughter does recognize the human costs of marriage restriction on people she knows and loves.”

Indeed. My upbringing on 12th Street in Manhattan rarely provides me with important insights, but it was like growing up in the future in terms of social acceptance of gays and lesbians. If you’re not acclimated to prevailing discriminatory norms from a very young age, it’s actually very confusing to have them explained to you. There’s no obvious reason to a child that some substantial minority of couples shouldn’t be same sex.

Palin for FMA

One issue on which John McCain is no George W. Bush is the question of a Federal Marriage Amendment that would prevent states from granting equal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples. Bush is for it, McCain is against it. And now it seems Palin is for it:

Normally a VP nominee would avoid contradicting the top of the ticket, but perhaps this is pre-positioning for 2012.

Humphrey on Civil Rights

Just as a bit of convention history, here’s a recording of Hubert Humphrey speaking out, bravely, in favor of the Democrats adopting a Civil Rights plank to their platform back in the 1940s when conventions mattered.

Hey Hey LBJ

Via Petey in comments, a very interesting op-ed by Robert Caro on Lyndon Johnson, the Voting Rights Act, and the remarkable progress we’ve made since the time LBJ threw his weight behind the cause of Civil Rights and the time an African-American could take to the podium to accept a major party presidential nomination. Johnson, of course, came to be despised by the left for Vietnam. But in recent years, I think there’s been a renaissance of appreciation for Johnson, recognizing that whatever his flaws he’s up there with FDR and Abraham Lincoln as the major architects of progressive American domestic policy. Bob Kuttner noted the other day, however, that this rehabilitation unfortunately hasn’t penetrated the halls of the 2008 convention.