The PFAW petition is pretty straightforward -- just asking Congress and the President to get rid of DOMA, which was a mistake to begin with. The significance of this is that PFAW is not a gay advocacy organization. As progressive organizations go, it's pretty mainstream. It's even more significant when you realize that PFAW is only one of the establishment progressive organizations coming down on the side of equality -- and most of them quite publicly and vocally. Gay and trans rights issues, especially marriage, have also started showing up on "mainstream" progressive blogs. Crooks and Liars, for example, on a search for "marriage," turned up 638 results -- posts on that blog. A search of Hullabaloo turned up posts by Digby and Tristero (one by Digby, which is delightfully scathing, going back to 2004), even Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has weighed in on the issue. This, I think, marks a sea change -- ten years ago, no one in the mainstream blogosphere was really noticing gay civil rights.
Now contrast Jonathan Rauch:
"Justified or not, fear spread in conservative circles that getting on the wrong side of gay marriage could cost you your job. 'People tell us that their livelihoods have been threatened solely because of their public advocacy opposing same-sex marriage,' said Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage. 'Fine,' say some gay rights activists. “'If they’re going to be bigots, they should be afraid to speak out.' Wrong. What the gay-rights movement has always really stood for is a country where we can all express our identities and convictions without fear: a country without closets, gay or straight."
To say that Rauch is playing Pollyanna here is understating the point, to say the least. First off, taking a quote from Maggie Gallagher, who not only has an agenda but is known to be a liar, at face value speaks to me of naivete verging on stupidity. He's lining up on the side of what Joe Jervis styles the "homocons" -- Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron (GOProud), Bruce Carroll (GayPatriot), and Rauch's co-contributor at Independent Gay Forum, Stephen H. Miller, whose ideology, like the rest of those named, seems to be based on trashing the left rather than any positive statement of principles, at least as reflected in what I've read from them.
Rauch doesn't get it, and that's not based on this statement alone -- I did a full commentary on one of Rauch's essays on marriage, specifically in regard to Kerrigan vs. Commissioner of Public Health (the Connecticut case). My comment at Joe.My.God. on this quote was based on this dog-and-pony show between Rauch and David Blankenhorn, to the effect that they managed to reach a "compromise" on the question of same-sex marriage: second-class status for same-sex relationships. And this is the man who's telling me what the gay civil rights movement is about?
The core of this is actually that Rauch simply has no clue as to the "free marketplace of ideas." No matter that our government is a democratic republic, in the hurly-burly of public discourse this is a democracy. Sure, you have the right to state your opinions, and even lie about the facts. I have the right to challenge you, criticize you, ridicule you, and basically to respond in whatever manner I feel appropriate. So according to Rauch, people like Maggie Gallagher can lie their heads off about us, and we're supposed to just take it? No, Jonathan, that's not the way it works: if you express unpopular opinions, people will react negatively. They may even say mean things about you -- maybe even as mean as the things you've said about them. That's life in America -- deal with it.
Whew! That's the longest post I've written in a while. As your reward for reading all the way through, here's some dessert:
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