Sullivan on "The Gay Debate"

Andrew Sullivan on the "gay debate" (I'm hard put to figure out where to put the quotes on that one.)

Like Sullivan, I didn't see the program on Logo -- not only do I not have Logo, I don't have a TV. (Yes, strange as it may seem, television is not part of my life. I really don't miss it at all.) From all reports, it was much better than anyone expected. 'Nuff said.

There were also, from everything I can glean, no surprises. Everyone pretty much said everything we expected them to say. Sullivan, however, makes some comments that deserve analysis, both because they are right and because they are terribly, terribly wrong.

My own sense, however, is that we haven't moved the Democrats much in many years. They need and want gay money, so they will talk to us. But none of the leading candidates supports our civil equality in marriage, the Ground Zero of the movement.

First off, that's rather an amazing statement. We've moved the whole country in the past few years, and we've moved it significantly. Tell me the Democrats had nothing to do with it. As for marriage, this is, I think, another case of Sullivan touting his favorite cause. Marriage is certainly the most high-profile issue in gay rights right now, but I think calling it "Ground Zero" is overstating the case just a wee bit. Strangely enough, I agree with HRC and the major rights groups that there are much more fundamental things that we need to focus on. (This is not to excuse HRC et al. from getting left in the dust when the marriage thing hit. They never have caught up, which is unforgivable. They have also been completely ineffective in their major campaigns, and I don't think the Democrats being out of power is sufficient excuse. Going into the Bush years we had some potential allies in Congress. Why didn't we make those connections and use them?) Sullivan is right when he suggests later on that we need to be working grassroots level, which HRC no longer seems to have any interest in doing. What he doesn't mention is that we have been, and been very successful at it.

If you're for civil unions but not civil marriage, you need an argument. One is simply the semantic one that your commitment to the heterosexual meaning of the word trumps your understanding that gays are also family members and deserve not to be shunted into a "separate-but-equal" institution. But none of them will admit that. The other answer is that they do support equality in marriage but fear losing votes if they publicly say so. As president, of course, they have virtually no role in the matter - it's for the states. But they're scared of the Rove machine - still.

We need to be challenging them, and we're not. And I mean direct, face-to-face challenges on the order of "Why do you think your personal beliefs should dictate public policy?" (Of course, that's a question I'd like to put to any candidate, on either side.) One error Sullivan makes here is the idea that there is a "heterosexual meaning" to the word "marriage." Hah? There is a set of historical assumptions that we are challenging. The "meaning" he's referring to is one that has been articulated by the Dobson Gang, and our "leadership" (and that includes commentators like Sullivan) has allowed it to stand without challenge in the public discourse. The whole basis of the same-sex marriage movement has to be to remove the idea that "marriage" as a word has application limited to one man/one woman and validity limited to a religious context. This is not a new idea: if one looks at the progress of the Black Civil Rights movement, the feminist movement, and the realignment of the discourse around those movements, it's obvious. (I'd say I'm surprised at Sullivan for that statement, but I'm not: it's no secret that I don't think he examines questions very deeply.)

As for the Rove machine reference, I fear he's right. It's a carry-over from the past twenty years of Democrats behaving like whipped dogs trying to please the one who beats them. It's never going to happen. The only real answer is to bite back, but it should have happened long ago. Somehow they seem to believe that the 28% who still support George Bush are the ones who should be dictating our course, and that to lose them is to lose the country. I have news: the Democrats are never going to have those votes. Ever. The counter of course is not to cater to the memes being manufactured by that side, but to counter them with memes of our own. It will take lots of work and lots of savvy, which is not something I see in the crowd of campaign consultants who are managing to fuck up the message once again. The point is, when you see a poll that indicates an attitude that is not favorable to your position, the appropriate response is not to cater to it, but to counter it. The neo-theo-corporate cons have been doing that for decades (with the willing connivance of Washington and the press). That is why they are controlling the discourse.

If one becomes president and the Democrats maintain the House and Senate, we may get the trivial (and unecessary) hate crimes act passed. I'm not hopeful for much else in the first four years. I think the gay movement should concentrate on supporting and building on marriage rights in the states, shrewdly backing and financing inclusive candidates, Republican and Democratic, and further engaging the under-30s, who will give us equality when they have their moment in the sun. Some no-brainer reforms - removing HIV as a bar to entering the US, for example - could also be pushed. Along with wartime suspension of DADT (they won't abolish it in a first term - political post-traumatic stress disorder will strike again).

I'd like to be able to say that I think Sullivan is wrong in his prognostication, but given the behavior of the Democratic Congress, especially the Senate (although considering that Lieberman is still in office, it's questionable whether we can really say the Democrats have a majority there, no matter how slim), he could very well be right, notwithstanding the fact that there is great pressure to repeal DADT right now (which repeal, of course, the Deciderer will veto). I don't agree with his statement that passing a hate crimes bill is "trivial and unnecessary." That's just Sullivan showing his libertarian card; I've yet to see a cogent argument against hate-crimes laws, and certainly haven't seen one from Sullivan. (One can question the application in some instances -- another case of left-wing overreaching -- but the concept seems still to be solid.)

I really think Sullivan should flee his Washington-Provincetown axis for a while and come out to the rest of the country -- live in Chicago for six months, just to see what real life is like. It might make his analyses of gay issues a little less fanciful.