Friday Gay Blogging

Jim Burroway has been running a series on the murder of Matthew Shepherd at Box Turtle Bulletin. Shepherd was buried ten years ago today; here's Burroway's post on his funeral, with links to previous commentaries. I'll be honest: I haven't read them closely. It's too painful. But Burroway makes some cogent points.

Ten years ago today also saw Robert Knight’s Family Research Council use the occasion of Matt’s funeral to denounce Phelps — and to boast about their part in the ex-gay advertising blitz that had begun the day before Matt’s murder. The FRC’s statement condemned Phelps’ tactics while sharing his message of condemning Matthew to hell:

While we share Mr. Phelps’ opposition to the homosexual political agenda, his belief that homosexuality is a sin, and his call for punishment of Mr. Shepard’s killers, we do not endorse his tactics, and have asked his group to stop letting themselves be used by the media to crudely caricature Christians.

The ‘truth in love’ media campaign reaches out to people struggling with homosexuality and offers them hope for change and redemption. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, homosexuals are included in a list of sinners, who, if unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God..

My first thought was to equate Knight and his cronies to Pontius Pilate for their handwashing when someone like Phelps makes the news, but by all accounts Pilate really did try to save Christ from execution. Say, rather, that Knight, Dobson, Wildmon, LaBarbera, Phelps, Barber (damn! The list keeps getting longer) are like the mob screaming "Crucify him!": They're perfectly willing to create an atmosphere that condones and even encourages the murder of Matthew Shepherd, but they don't have the balls to take responsibility for it. I can only say that in the final analysis, these people are among the great moral cowards of the age.

Burroway goes on:

And yet, too many things still haven’t changed. It is still legal to fire people from their jobs for being gay. Marriage rights are only secure right now in one state. Wyoming is one of twenty states which still does not have a hate crimes law to cover sexual orientation. And the federal hate crime statute still covers race, religion, and national origin — but not sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.

Yet official statistics continue to show that when hate crmes do occur against LGBT people, those crimes are more likely to be violent crimes when compared to other classes which are already protected.

Which leads, by means of one of those wide segues that my mind seems to favor, to the latest bitch-fight between the gay left and gay right. Dale Carpenter is threatening to take his marbles and go home because Wayne Besen said something he didn't like:

Not long ago columnist Wayne Besen wrote that gay Republicans have “no place” in the “GLBT movement.” Because they support John McCain this year, he charged they are “shamefully in cahoots” with anti-gay forces. He claimed they have a “suicidal tendency” they must overcome. The only thing missing was the tired analogy to Jewish Nazis.

Besen is no kook. He’s a widely read gay writer who fits squarely in the mainstream of the GLBT movement. It’s safe to say he was only expressing openly what many people, especially leaders and activists, within the movement privately think about gay conservatives.

In fact, Besen’s column was only the latest in a barrage of attacks against gay conservatives this election season. Time and again gay conservatives have been called self-hating, treasonous, and selfish. It’s the worst vitriol against gay conservatives I’ve seen in fifteen years in this movement.

The only place I can fault Carpenter is that he's taking the part as the whole. There are any number of gay commentators on the left who question the right's reasons for supporting the Republican party, and especially John McCain, but who aren't willing to consign them to the flames. (Hopefully, I can be numbered among them, although I will readily admit to a lack of patience with the knee-jerk reactions of such as Bruce Carroll, whom I no longer bother to read because I can pretty much predict what he's going to say on any given issue, and if I want to read Alice in Wonderland, I have a copy sitting in my library.) I've had my differences with Carpenter in the past, as I have with Andrew Sullivan, Chris Crain, and Jonathan Rauch, but I do think that they bring a valuable point of view to the argument. At least, in regard to things like hate crimes laws and the like, it's a point of view I can sharpen my teeth on. (And that's the connection to hate crimes. Told ya.)

And, to give Carpenter full credit, there are those commentators on the left who tend to go overboard. (I can give way to snark, for which I do penance on a regular basis, but I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.) All one needs to do is to pop by the Bilerico Project to see unrestrained, brainless leftism in action.

However, Carpenter loses my sympathy when he sinks into playing the victim card:

The co-founder of Manhunt was forced to resign from the company's Board of Directors because he dared to make a campaign contribution to John McCain, which started talk of a boycott against the company. People are free to boycott companies if they want to, but the fact that supporting McCain was seen as worthy of a boycott is deeply disturbing. The GLBT movement does not tolerate such dissent. What’s next, banning conservative columnists from gay newspapers?

Grow up, would you? Frankly, given McCain's positions on basic issues -- marriage, DADT, hate crimes -- and his selection of a raving anti-gay Christianist lunatic as a running mate, yeah, I think support for his candidacy is worth a boycott. And a howler like "the movement does not tolerate dissent" is, aside from pathetic, largely fictitious. It strikes me as being a little projective: it's not the left that tends to march in lockstep.

Regrettably, Carpenter didn't link to Besen's column, and I haven't been able to locate it (perhaps it didn't appear online?). But Besen's response is available. The core of Besen's argument seems to be this:

The issue I have with gay conservatives is that they consistently subjugate GLBT concerns. This is revealed when Carpenter says that “we disagree” with the movements “most visible activists…about how much weight should be given to purely gay issues in a time of economic and military turmoil.”

To a certain extent, he's quite correct. First off, Carpenter and other gay conservatives tend to attack gay activists for being gay activists, while they really do subjugate gay concerns to "conservative" concerns. (And more on those quotes in a moment.) Can I point out one small detail: these are, indeed, gay actvists. What the hell did anyone expect them to be concerned with? More tax cuts for the wealthy?

Besen does allude to one point, although it's not one that either of them confronts directly, and it's all about "conservative" in quotes: "conservative" and "Republican" are not, these days at least, at all the same thing, at least not as commentators such as Carpenter and Sullivan think of it. Sullivan, at least, has figured it out, and routinely divorces his brand of conservatism from what the Republican party has become. (And I feel fully justified in noting that what the Republican party has become is the reason that I, who for most of his voting life has routinely split his vote, no longer consider a Republican candidate as desirable -- even when I would otherwise vote for a Republican, as in Illinois' last gubernatorial election, they are still saddled with that party apparatus and "the base." I voted for the Green party candidate, by the way.)

So part of the problem here is that Carpenter is arguing "conservative" while Besen is arguing "Republican." They're not the same any more, and I would expect Carpenter, at least, to be able to figure that out without help.

I have to permit myself a small measure of bitchiness in response to this comment by Besen:

I wasn’t aware that Congress had to choose between the economy and protecting GLBT people from job discrimination. I had no idea that passing a hate crime law might hinder our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently, Carpenter and other conservatives think they should get to the back of the line and wait for their rights to be doled out at a time of peace and prosperity (when Democrats are in the White House, I presume).

Frankly, Besen doesn't seem to have been keeping his eye on Congress lately, otherwise he might have noticed that the Democrats do seem to be able to focus on only one issue at a time -- at least, when the other issue is gay-related. Somehow, hate crimes, DADT, ENDA, all got pushed aside. (Yeah, ENDA and hate crimes got a valiant (?) attempt -- one attempt. Did anyone else feel like the Democrats were standing there saying "Well, we tried. Now on to other, more important things."?)

As for the whole issue of labeling gay conservatives as "self-loathing," "suicidal" and the like -- that's between them and their therapists. I'll just opine that they are as short-sighted as anyone on the left is blinkered, and let it go at that.

OK -- that's enough weightiness for today.

Waymon Hudson gives us a rundown on the No on 2 ad campaign in Florida.

From Jeremy Hooper, a report on the wingnut reaction to a :"field trip" to a lesbian teacher's wedding in California. What the wingnuts are neglecting to tell people is that the parents all gave their permission. (Isn't there something in the Bible about not bearing false witness? Like a Commandment?) The SF Chronicle article is excellent, by the way.

And that's enough about wingnuts.

Ah, dessert! I think I'm moving to Toronto:



I'm taking a short break, so there may be more.

And then again, there may not.