Excerpts from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling , in Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights v. Rumsfeld (opinion filed November 29, 2004):
Just as the Boy Scouts believed that ‘homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath’ …, the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to justice and fairness. Just as the Boy Scouts maintained that ‘homosexuals do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of Scouting families’ …, the law schools maintain that military recruiters engaging in exclusionary hiring ‘do not provide a role model consistent with the expectations of’ … their students and the legal community. Just as the Boy Scouts endeavored to ‘inculcate [youth] with the Boy Scouts’ values—both expressively and by example’ …, the law schools endeavor to ‘inculcate’ their students with their chosen values by expression and example in the promulgation and enforcement of their nondiscrimination policies….And just as ‘Dale’s presence in the Boy Scouts would, at the very least, force the organization to send a message, both to youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior’ …, the presence of military recruiters ‘would, at the very least, force the law schools to send a message,’ both to students and the legal community, that the law schools ‘accept’ employment discrimination ‘as a legitimate form of behavior.’….
Moreover, the District Court’s scrutiny of the law schools’ belief that the presence of military recruiters will undermine their expressive message about fairness and social justice violates the Dale Court’s instruction to ‘give deference to an association’s view of what would impair its expression.’….the reason why there was ‘no question’…that a gay scoutmaster would undermine the Boy Scouts’ message was because the Boy Scouts said it would….. In our case, FAIR has supplied written evidence of its belief that the Solomon Amendment’s forcible inclusion of and assistance to military recruiters undermines their efforts to disseminate their chosen message of nondiscrimination. Accordingly, we must give Dale deference to this belief, and conclude that likely satisfies the second element of an expressive association claim…..[Footnote: Furthermore, the law schools are entitled to at least as much deference as the Boy Scouts, as the Supreme Court has recognized in other contexts that universities and law schools ‘occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition,’ Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)].
We presume that the Government has a compelling interest in attracting talented military lawyers. But ‘[i]t is not enough to show that the Government’s ends are compelling; the means must be carefully tailored to achieve those ends.’…[T]he Solomon Amendment could barely be tailored more broadly. Unlike a typical employer, the military has ample resources to recruit through alternative means….The availability of alternative, less speech-restrictive means of effective recruitment is sufficient to render the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional under strict scrutiny analysis…But our path in this case is even clearer. The Government has failed to proffer a shred of evidence that the Solomon Amendment materially enhances its stated goal. And not only might other methods of recruitment yield acceptable results, they might actually fare better than the current system. In fact, it may plausibly be the case that the Solomon Amendment, which has generated much ill will toward the military on law school campuses, actually impedes recruitment…..
[T]he military’s recruiting is expressive of a message with which the law schools disagree. To comply with the Solomon Amendment, the law schools must affirmatively assist military recruiters in the same manner they assist other recruiters, which means they must propagate, accommodate, and subsidize the military’s message. In so doing, the Solomon Amendment conditions funding on a basis that violates the law schools’ First Amendment rights under the compelled speech doctrine….
Unsurprisingly…the record demonstrates that openly gay persons who meet with military recruiters are told by the recruiters that they may not pursue military careers….by directly providing ‘access’ to campuses for speech by military recruiters where law students are told that openly gay applicants may not serve, the Solomon Amendment requires the law schools to allow an objectionable message counter to their beliefs….The statute insists not only on access to campus for military recruiters, but the active and equal assistance of law schools’ career services offices….Like the forced display of an unwanted motto on one’s license plate, or the compulsory recitation of a pledge, this is compelled speech….Like the forced inclusions of a parade contingent, a statement in the extra space of a utility’s billing statement, or a response in a newspaper’s editorial page, this is compelled speech….Like mandatory assessments to support advertisements or political funds, this is compelled speech….
The Government has not shown that the assistance from law schools that the Solomon Amendment requires is narrowly tailored to advance its interest in recruiting….as we noted above, the Government has chosen to submit no evidence that would support the necessity of requiring law schools to provide the military with a forum for, and assistance in, recruiting….The Government fails to offer even an affidavit indicating that enforcement of the Solomon Amendment has enhanced military recruiting efforts. It suggests simply that the scope of the remedy sought by the plaintiffs relieves the Government of its obligation, pursuant to the First Amendment, to justify its curtailment of expression. How this is so we cannot conjure. We are unaware of any case so holding. [Footnote: [T]his is not a case where the Government has presented less evidence than might otherwise be required; here the Government has presented no evidence.] And while the Government emphasizes that the Nation’s military is at stake, invoking the importance of a well-trained military is not a substitute for demonstrating that there is an important governmental interest in opening the law schools to military recruiting. See Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 89 (1981) (‘“[T]he phrase ‘war power’ cannot be invoked as a talismanic incantation to . . . remove constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties.’”…)
…[I]t is hardly ‘common sense,’ as the military alleges, that its presence on campus amidst . . . commotion and opposition has aided its recruitment efforts….[T]he government has chosen not to produce any evidence that it is no more than necessary to further the Government’s interest. Perhaps this explains why the DOD initially objected to the Amendment as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘duplicative.’ 140 Cong. Rec. H3864 (daily ed. May 23, 1994).
[T]he Solomon Amendment cannot condition federal funding on law schools’ compliance with it. FAIR has a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits and satisfies the other injunctive elements as well. We reverse and remand for the District Court to enter a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Solomon Amendment.
“one homosexual can pollute a government office” —U.S. Senate subcommittee report, 1950
Monday, November 29, 2004
Saturday, November 27, 2004
"Matthew, the model gay"
I have some further thoughts on the 20/20 Matthew Shepard program.
1. It's a program whose language and assumptions reflect the continuing media assault on GLBT people in the wake of the November 2 election. The religious right wants this assault to continue, and so does the current administration. We could face an assault on the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate-crimes laws.
2. The program is an outrage. The executive director of NGLTF even wrote, "Direct action would also be an entirely appropriate response." ABC News, in the middle of sweeps month, wants ratings (and surely got them). In essence a battle to win over the Fox News segment, ABC's strategy represents, as my dad put it, a "race to the bottom" in network news reporting.
3. This story hits us where we're strongest. Americans support protections against violence, and the Matthew Shepard story was the major force that galvanized a perhaps rather sizable minority of Americans to come to recognize the reality of antigay violence. I wrote about it in my college newspaper at the time [unfortunately, the web archiving back then did not properly preserve formatting and punctuation of articles]. As my friend Moon said frequently in the period when gay marriage was suddenly hitting the national radar early this year, hate-crimes laws (as flawed as they may be) are a fight that we could win in 2004, if we were able to devote our resources to fighting it instead of trying pitifully to stop even one of the state marriage amendments.
4. The program's major claim is that the murderers were high on crystal meth and the victim was a frequent user of it. These facts somehow diminish the murderer's culpability and confer it on the victim (as when women are blamed for "asking" to be raped). But the shift in the viewer's perception that the program is most likely to create is that concerning Shepard himself. As Michael Bronski put it in this week's Boston Phoenix,
Bronski hits the nail on the head here. This story isn't even really about the killers - it's about the fact that Matthew Shepard was an HIV-positive meth user. This was reported in a Harper's cover story in 1999, as Judy Shepard mentions in her press release today.
5. As much as I hate to say it (and I do), the gay community is partially responsible for the conditions that made this symbolic attack possible - that is, for making Matthew Shepard into the one and only symbol of antigay violence. In addition, there's some truth to a claim that a friend of mine made way back in October, 1998, in the next issue of my college newspaper following my own article's appearance. At the time, I was pretty pissed off by this passage of Corey's article:
At the time, this pissed me off, for at least three reasons. Reason #1: I knew Corey was partly right, even though I thought using the Shepard case to appeal to middle America could be a good "strategy." Reason #2: I felt the personal criticism here added insult to the injury of Corey's not wanting to date me several months previously. Was I right or was I right? Reason #3: It made me feel petty for even thinking about Reason #2 ("forgive me Tim...but the point must be made"). Reason #4: It seemed even more obnoxious given that I in fact organized "the" Matthew Shepard vigil that he was calling "close" to all-white, together with my best friend Talia, who incidentally was and is not white; over 100 people had come, according to the campus paper; and Talia called it "the most intense public mourning experience that [she] ever had." But in very important senses, Corey was right about the potential problems with the significance that Matthew Shepard was coming to take on. And I've forgiven him for the other things. Really.
The Matthew Shepard drama, and my friends' collective response to it at Swarthmore, represented a pretty key episode in my gay identity development, I think. The vigil was followed several months later by a vandalism incident at the Intercultural Center, which led to a huge rally on the campus's main lawn at which my boyfriend Ben was the major speaker. (Ben was later quoted sarcastically and disparagingly in US News and World Report , in one of those boilerplate stories about the excesses of multiculturalism on campus, for having said in that speech that he was "overcome by tears and mucus" when he first heard about the incident.) And then, the following summer, Talia and I stopped in Laramie - even spent the night at her family friend's house there - less than one year after the murder.
To a certain extent, we're stuck with the Shepard case. Its role is not going to disappear, and ABC News needs to be called out. But should we seek above all else to preserve its crucial status in the development of gay politics in the last ten years? Or would we be better served, as Tavia suggested in his reply to my post last night, by trying to paint a richer picture of the diversity and complexity of queer people and what we suffer.
The more I think about it, the 20/20 program is a trap that we simply can't get out of by continuing to rehash the Shepard case. Because, as brutal as it was and as crucial as it was in changing Americans' minds about gay-bashing, there is simply no reason why the larger question of antigay violence or hate-crimes laws should rise or fall on this case. The FBI has even just published data showing a sharp increase in hate crimes involving sexual orientation in 2003 (though I don't see why this might not be partly or, less likely, fully due to an increase in reporting). There are so very, very many other stories to be told.
1. It's a program whose language and assumptions reflect the continuing media assault on GLBT people in the wake of the November 2 election. The religious right wants this assault to continue, and so does the current administration. We could face an assault on the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate-crimes laws.
2. The program is an outrage. The executive director of NGLTF even wrote, "Direct action would also be an entirely appropriate response." ABC News, in the middle of sweeps month, wants ratings (and surely got them). In essence a battle to win over the Fox News segment, ABC's strategy represents, as my dad put it, a "race to the bottom" in network news reporting.
3. This story hits us where we're strongest. Americans support protections against violence, and the Matthew Shepard story was the major force that galvanized a perhaps rather sizable minority of Americans to come to recognize the reality of antigay violence. I wrote about it in my college newspaper at the time [unfortunately, the web archiving back then did not properly preserve formatting and punctuation of articles]. As my friend Moon said frequently in the period when gay marriage was suddenly hitting the national radar early this year, hate-crimes laws (as flawed as they may be) are a fight that we could win in 2004, if we were able to devote our resources to fighting it instead of trying pitifully to stop even one of the state marriage amendments.
4. The program's major claim is that the murderers were high on crystal meth and the victim was a frequent user of it. These facts somehow diminish the murderer's culpability and confer it on the victim (as when women are blamed for "asking" to be raped). But the shift in the viewer's perception that the program is most likely to create is that concerning Shepard himself. As Michael Bronski put it in this week's Boston Phoenix,
Let’s face it: the general population is going to have less sympathy for a wealthy, HIV-positive, meth-snorting college kid who had lived abroad for much of his life than it does for the angelic, fragile icon of Matthew Shepard that has been presented to us over the past six years.
Bronski hits the nail on the head here. This story isn't even really about the killers - it's about the fact that Matthew Shepard was an HIV-positive meth user. This was reported in a Harper's cover story in 1999, as Judy Shepard mentions in her press release today.
5. As much as I hate to say it (and I do), the gay community is partially responsible for the conditions that made this symbolic attack possible - that is, for making Matthew Shepard into the one and only symbol of antigay violence. In addition, there's some truth to a claim that a friend of mine made way back in October, 1998, in the next issue of my college newspaper following my own article's appearance. At the time, I was pretty pissed off by this passage of Corey's article:
Of course - and this is the part nobody wants to think too much about - Matthew is not just any ordinary queer. He is in fact the model American, Aryan, ideal - Matthew was white, middle class, Christian, well mannered, (heretofore white, etc) and yeah he happened to be gay. One newspaper article described him as someone who you would feel comfortable taking care of your grandmother - whoa, theres a lot of political and social history tied up in that statement, hunh? The fact is that we were all duked by the media into feeling remorse for their prototype.
The question is, what does this say about the motivations for our current acute awareness of gay rights issues? Tim *** last week wrote, in part, that one of the lessons of Matthew is that we arent as safe here as we think we are. After all - and forgive me Tim for a slight manipulation of your words, but the point must be made - he was a white college student like many of us (did any body notice the racial makeup of the Matthew Shepard vigil? - it wasnt all white, but it was close), and look what happened. Are we really all so dense as to need to be reminded that people are killed for their sexual practices and their gender bents by being hit over the head with the story of Matthew, the model gay? The answer, apparently, is yes.
At the time, this pissed me off, for at least three reasons. Reason #1: I knew Corey was partly right, even though I thought using the Shepard case to appeal to middle America could be a good "strategy." Reason #2: I felt the personal criticism here added insult to the injury of Corey's not wanting to date me several months previously. Was I right or was I right? Reason #3: It made me feel petty for even thinking about Reason #2 ("forgive me Tim...but the point must be made"). Reason #4: It seemed even more obnoxious given that I in fact organized "the" Matthew Shepard vigil that he was calling "close" to all-white, together with my best friend Talia, who incidentally was and is not white; over 100 people had come, according to the campus paper; and Talia called it "the most intense public mourning experience that [she] ever had." But in very important senses, Corey was right about the potential problems with the significance that Matthew Shepard was coming to take on. And I've forgiven him for the other things. Really.
The Matthew Shepard drama, and my friends' collective response to it at Swarthmore, represented a pretty key episode in my gay identity development, I think. The vigil was followed several months later by a vandalism incident at the Intercultural Center, which led to a huge rally on the campus's main lawn at which my boyfriend Ben was the major speaker. (Ben was later quoted sarcastically and disparagingly in US News and World Report , in one of those boilerplate stories about the excesses of multiculturalism on campus, for having said in that speech that he was "overcome by tears and mucus" when he first heard about the incident.) And then, the following summer, Talia and I stopped in Laramie - even spent the night at her family friend's house there - less than one year after the murder.
To a certain extent, we're stuck with the Shepard case. Its role is not going to disappear, and ABC News needs to be called out. But should we seek above all else to preserve its crucial status in the development of gay politics in the last ten years? Or would we be better served, as Tavia suggested in his reply to my post last night, by trying to paint a richer picture of the diversity and complexity of queer people and what we suffer.
The more I think about it, the 20/20 program is a trap that we simply can't get out of by continuing to rehash the Shepard case. Because, as brutal as it was and as crucial as it was in changing Americans' minds about gay-bashing, there is simply no reason why the larger question of antigay violence or hate-crimes laws should rise or fall on this case. The FBI has even just published data showing a sharp increase in hate crimes involving sexual orientation in 2003 (though I don't see why this might not be partly or, less likely, fully due to an increase in reporting). There are so very, very many other stories to be told.
Friday, November 26, 2004
From someone in Wyoming
Someone posted this on the ABC News message board:
I live in SE Wyoming
Elizabeth got played plain and simple. I moved to Cheyenne 2 years ago and I hate to tell how many times these two killers have tried to find ways get out of jail OR get their sentences reduced. Laramie is only a 40 minute drive from Cheyenne, I work there often and know people there. Southern WY is a very closed society, they don't like outsiders much.It's also a bigoted, racist place. My teenage son is biracial, it's not been easy for him here. This place is like no other place I ever lived-thank God. I spent 22yrs as an Army wife, I lived all over. I know small towns are full of drugs, there's not much else for the kids to do there or in Laramie. But smearing Matthew's memory so these punks can use the media to try to get out? ABC you stepped over the line. Why have none of the WY stations heard of the current story they came up with to get out? Why did they just go national? They are killers, most likely it was a hate crime. Who cares really? It was a brutal killing and they need to stay behind bars. YOu guys at 20/20 got used by two killers and some slick lawyers. I thought you were smarter than that.
Murderers now say they perjured themselves five years ago. So what?
I received numerous forwarded press releases from GLAAD all week about tonight's 20/20 program on ABC News, which was being promoted as a re-examination of Matthew Shepard's October 1998 murder.
I watched the program, and I have to say, I'm not impressed with GLAAD's response to it. It seems to me that the obvious point to make in response is that the Matthew Shepard case is only the tip of the iceberg as far as anti-gay violence is concerned - and that queers of color and trans people are those most affected. In Chicago, there have been at least three dozens-of-stab-wounds murders of gay men just in the past year.
However, I'm not sure it's productive to emphasize GLAAD's poor critique of the program. Instead, I'll focus on the outrageous failings of ABC's reporting of this story.
1. Aaron McKinney claims, in the same interview with Elizabeth Vargas, (1) that he started beating Matthew Shepard with his gun right after Matthew put his hand on his leg, and (2) that sexual orientation had nothing to do with the crime. Why didn't Ms. Vargas follow up on this - or even point it out to viewers?
2. Unless I am missing something, not only do the murderers now say they committed perjury five years ago, but so does the girlfriend, who now disputes her previous testimony and comments on 20/20. If everyone is so convinced their story was invented, why isn't she (and they) facing charges?
3. Hello, the information on the Laramie drug scene and on Shepard's drug use and HIV worries is not new. It was first reported less sensationally in Vanity Fair and Harper's five years ago. Why can't ABC News find its own damn stories?
4. The concluding segment of the program is utterly gratuitous. In it, ABC News seems to be trying to compensate for their hour-long apologia for a murder, by touting the awareness and sensitivity that Americans gained from Shepard's death. Why didn't 20/20 even mention the dozens of queers who get murdered every year in bias-related crimes - or the fact that they are disproportionately African American, Latino, and/or transgender people? A viewer might even watch this program without learning that anti-gay hate crimes DO occur, and frequently (a fact that no one seriously disputes). And anti-violence activism has been a priority of the gay movement since at least the 1970s (for more on this, see THE MAYOR OF CASTRO STREET by Randy Shilts).
5. How can Elizabeth Vargas sleep at night knowing her work is so unprofessional and sensationalistic? Jon Stewart did us all a great service when he appeared on Crossfire and told it like it is.
I watched the program, and I have to say, I'm not impressed with GLAAD's response to it. It seems to me that the obvious point to make in response is that the Matthew Shepard case is only the tip of the iceberg as far as anti-gay violence is concerned - and that queers of color and trans people are those most affected. In Chicago, there have been at least three dozens-of-stab-wounds murders of gay men just in the past year.
However, I'm not sure it's productive to emphasize GLAAD's poor critique of the program. Instead, I'll focus on the outrageous failings of ABC's reporting of this story.
1. Aaron McKinney claims, in the same interview with Elizabeth Vargas, (1) that he started beating Matthew Shepard with his gun right after Matthew put his hand on his leg, and (2) that sexual orientation had nothing to do with the crime. Why didn't Ms. Vargas follow up on this - or even point it out to viewers?
2. Unless I am missing something, not only do the murderers now say they committed perjury five years ago, but so does the girlfriend, who now disputes her previous testimony and comments on 20/20. If everyone is so convinced their story was invented, why isn't she (and they) facing charges?
3. Hello, the information on the Laramie drug scene and on Shepard's drug use and HIV worries is not new. It was first reported less sensationally in Vanity Fair and Harper's five years ago. Why can't ABC News find its own damn stories?
4. The concluding segment of the program is utterly gratuitous. In it, ABC News seems to be trying to compensate for their hour-long apologia for a murder, by touting the awareness and sensitivity that Americans gained from Shepard's death. Why didn't 20/20 even mention the dozens of queers who get murdered every year in bias-related crimes - or the fact that they are disproportionately African American, Latino, and/or transgender people? A viewer might even watch this program without learning that anti-gay hate crimes DO occur, and frequently (a fact that no one seriously disputes). And anti-violence activism has been a priority of the gay movement since at least the 1970s (for more on this, see THE MAYOR OF CASTRO STREET by Randy Shilts).
5. How can Elizabeth Vargas sleep at night knowing her work is so unprofessional and sensationalistic? Jon Stewart did us all a great service when he appeared on Crossfire and told it like it is.
Comments by Senator Kerry
Last Friday, Senator John Kerry read the following remarks about Grandpa on the Senate floor.
HONORING THE LIFE OF MILTON D. STEWART
United States Senate - November 19, 2004
Congressional Record comments by Mr. KERRY of Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to a champion of this Nation's small businesses and to honor the work, dedication and life of Milton D. Stewart, the first Chief Counsel for the Office of Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration. Mr. Stewart passed away at the age of 82, following an extensive and diverse career that included entrepreneurship, government, service to small businesses, law, journalism, and academia.
One of the most highly successful innovations of the House and Senate Small Business Committees came with the creation of the Office of Advocacy within the Small Business Administration. This office was established to represent and advance small business interests before other Federal agencies and the Congress. Congress recognized the importance of small business to the competitiveness of the American economy and understood that government sometimes can get in the way of small businesses doing what they do best--creating jobs.
Over the years, the Office of Advocacy has had a great deal of success and its hand has been strengthened by further congressional action, such as the Regulatory Flexibility Act in 1980 and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act in 1996. The actions of the office have resulted in billions of dollars in regulatory cost savings for small entities, reducing barriers to market entry and promoting entrepreneurship.
This success is due in no small part to the solid beginnings of the Office of Advocacy under the leadership and through the vision of the very first Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Milton D. Stewart. Milt, in his tenure as Chief Counsel from 1978 to 1981, laid the groundwork for the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the first White House Conference on Small Business, the Small Business Innovation Development Act, and many other initiatives that are now considered part of the core small business policies within this country.
Formerly a small business owner and financier, Milt brought a level of commitment and passion for fostering entrepreneurial spirit. Early in his life, in a family-owned small business begun and managed by his parents, he acquired great respect for the skill and courage of small business entrepreneurs. During his tenure in service to small businesses, Milt served as President of the National Small Business Association, the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and the Small Business High Technology Institute.
Milt also had significant government service beginning with the Office of War Information during World War II. He also served as special counsel to Governor Harriman of New York and to the New York State Thruway Authority, a Presidential delegate to the second White House Conference in 1986 and Special Counsel to the third White House Conference Commission in 1995. While he was Chief Counsel, his charisma and vision inspired many of those who worked with him and helped develop sound small business policy for our Nation.
His involvement in and dedication to the small business community has made a difference in the lives of millions of entrepreneurs. Thanks to him, small firms now have a greater voice in the creation and implementation of the regulations that govern the way they do business. His family and friends can take pride in that legacy and in Milt's tremendous public service.
My condolences go out to his wife, Joan, and to his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren on their loss. Together, we mourn the departure of a great man who embodied the American entrepreneurial spirit. He will be greatly missed.
HONORING THE LIFE OF MILTON D. STEWART
United States Senate - November 19, 2004
Congressional Record comments by Mr. KERRY of Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to a champion of this Nation's small businesses and to honor the work, dedication and life of Milton D. Stewart, the first Chief Counsel for the Office of Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration. Mr. Stewart passed away at the age of 82, following an extensive and diverse career that included entrepreneurship, government, service to small businesses, law, journalism, and academia.
One of the most highly successful innovations of the House and Senate Small Business Committees came with the creation of the Office of Advocacy within the Small Business Administration. This office was established to represent and advance small business interests before other Federal agencies and the Congress. Congress recognized the importance of small business to the competitiveness of the American economy and understood that government sometimes can get in the way of small businesses doing what they do best--creating jobs.
Over the years, the Office of Advocacy has had a great deal of success and its hand has been strengthened by further congressional action, such as the Regulatory Flexibility Act in 1980 and the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act in 1996. The actions of the office have resulted in billions of dollars in regulatory cost savings for small entities, reducing barriers to market entry and promoting entrepreneurship.
This success is due in no small part to the solid beginnings of the Office of Advocacy under the leadership and through the vision of the very first Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Milton D. Stewart. Milt, in his tenure as Chief Counsel from 1978 to 1981, laid the groundwork for the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the first White House Conference on Small Business, the Small Business Innovation Development Act, and many other initiatives that are now considered part of the core small business policies within this country.
Formerly a small business owner and financier, Milt brought a level of commitment and passion for fostering entrepreneurial spirit. Early in his life, in a family-owned small business begun and managed by his parents, he acquired great respect for the skill and courage of small business entrepreneurs. During his tenure in service to small businesses, Milt served as President of the National Small Business Association, the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and the Small Business High Technology Institute.
Milt also had significant government service beginning with the Office of War Information during World War II. He also served as special counsel to Governor Harriman of New York and to the New York State Thruway Authority, a Presidential delegate to the second White House Conference in 1986 and Special Counsel to the third White House Conference Commission in 1995. While he was Chief Counsel, his charisma and vision inspired many of those who worked with him and helped develop sound small business policy for our Nation.
His involvement in and dedication to the small business community has made a difference in the lives of millions of entrepreneurs. Thanks to him, small firms now have a greater voice in the creation and implementation of the regulations that govern the way they do business. His family and friends can take pride in that legacy and in Milt's tremendous public service.
My condolences go out to his wife, Joan, and to his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren on their loss. Together, we mourn the departure of a great man who embodied the American entrepreneurial spirit. He will be greatly missed.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Building a Post-9/2 Politics: One foot in front of the other, for starters
I hereby present my annual award for Best Emotional Precision in Political Reporting for 2004:
How come newspapers like The Onion and people in Jon Stewart's line of work are the only media that actually report the news?
Okay, so here's the real thing we ca do to help today. The House Republicans' first order of business after the election was lowering the ethical restraints against themselves - so that Tom Delay will be able to stay Majority Leader even after being indicted by a grand jury. In a hotly contested closed-door voice voice, they voted to drop the rule - that is, to lower the ethical bar. Our job is to create buzz about the issue so that Congressman can be forced to say which way they voted on the rule (such a vote could be an liability in a re-election campaign).
Blogs, and the phone calls their readers make, really do have the potential to change the operation of politics in this bizarre new media world into which we have plunged. I find myself, actully, longing for the experience of the Persian Gulf War, when you watched the networks and you read the papers and yo us about shaming Congressmen into admitting which way they voited when they voted, in a closed-door voice vote, to drop a 1983 party rule that says you can't stay Majority Leader if you've been indicted (as Tom DeLay likely will). Their claim is that the coming indictments are politically motivated, but given the probable scale of Delay's corruption, this claim should really be plausible only to the naive or the right-wing core.
When you make calls like this, you'll feel like you're engaging in the ridiculous. And yet, that's what we've been reduced to, and that's why the Onion capture the spirit of the age so well.
US Inspires World With Attempt at Democratic Election
NEW YORK — Observers from around the world report that they were inspired and moved by America's most recent attempt to hold a public election in accordance with the standards of a democratic republic.
"After all of the recriminations, infighting, and general madness before the election, the people of this fractured nation still found the courage to show up at the polls," said Anas Salman, an Afghan U.N. official who was in New York during the American electoral experiment. "More than half of America's citizens—a large portion of them women—made a valiant attempt to choose their own leader, even though there was no guarantee their votes would be counted. It was truly inspirational."
In the weeks leading up to the election, both of America's political parties alleged fraud in voter registration. Additionally, experts debated the reliability of electronic voting machines, which experienced problems in trial runs and leave no paper trail. Election officials also bemoaned many states' use of outdated punchcard machines....[*].
How come newspapers like The Onion and people in Jon Stewart's line of work are the only media that actually report the news?
Okay, so here's the real thing we ca do to help today. The House Republicans' first order of business after the election was lowering the ethical restraints against themselves - so that Tom Delay will be able to stay Majority Leader even after being indicted by a grand jury. In a hotly contested closed-door voice voice, they voted to drop the rule - that is, to lower the ethical bar. Our job is to create buzz about the issue so that Congressman can be forced to say which way they voted on the rule (such a vote could be an liability in a re-election campaign).
Blogs, and the phone calls their readers make, really do have the potential to change the operation of politics in this bizarre new media world into which we have plunged. I find myself, actully, longing for the experience of the Persian Gulf War, when you watched the networks and you read the papers and yo us about shaming Congressmen into admitting which way they voited when they voted, in a closed-door voice vote, to drop a 1983 party rule that says you can't stay Majority Leader if you've been indicted (as Tom DeLay likely will). Their claim is that the coming indictments are politically motivated, but given the probable scale of Delay's corruption, this claim should really be plausible only to the naive or the right-wing core.
When you make calls like this, you'll feel like you're engaging in the ridiculous. And yet, that's what we've been reduced to, and that's why the Onion capture the spirit of the age so well.
Building a Post-9/2 Politics: One foot in front of the other, for starters
I hereby present my annual award for Best Emotional Precision in Political Reporting for 2004:
How come newspapers like The Onion and people in Jon Stewart's line of work are the only media that actually report the news?
Okay, so here's the real thing we ca do to help today. The House Republicans' first order of business after the election was lowering the ethical restraints against themselves - so that Tom Delay will be able to stay Majority Leader even after being indicted by a grand jury. In a hotly contested closed-door voice voice, they voted to drop the rule - that is, to lower the ethical bar. Our job is to create buzz about the issue so that Congressman can be forced to say which way they voted on the rule (such a vote could be an liability in a re-election campaign).
Blogs, and the phone calls their readers make, really do have the potential to change the operation of politics in this bizarre new media world into which we have plunged. I find myself, actully, longing for the experience of the Persian Gulf War, when you watched the networks and you read the papers and yo us about shaming Congressmen into admitting which way they voited when they voted, in a closed-door voice vote, to drop a 1983 party rule that says you can't stay Majority Leader if you've been indicted (as Tom DeLay likely will). Their claim is that the coming indictments are politically motivated, but given the probable scale of Delay's corruption, this claim should really be plausible only to the naive or the right-wing core.
When you make calls like this, you'll feel like you're engaging in the ridiculous. And yet, that's what we've been reduced to, and that's why the Onion capture the spirit of the age so well.
US Inspires World With Attempt at Democratic Election
NEW YORK — Observers from around the world report that they were inspired and moved by America's most recent attempt to hold a public election in accordance with the standards of a democratic republic.
"After all of the recriminations, infighting, and general madness before the election, the people of this fractured nation still found the courage to show up at the polls," said Anas Salman, an Afghan U.N. official who was in New York during the American electoral experiment. "More than half of America's citizens—a large portion of them women—made a valiant attempt to choose their own leader, even though there was no guarantee their votes would be counted. It was truly inspirational."
In the weeks leading up to the election, both of America's political parties alleged fraud in voter registration. Additionally, experts debated the reliability of electronic voting machines, which experienced problems in trial runs and leave no paper trail. Election officials also bemoaned many states' use of outdated punchcard machines....[*].
How come newspapers like The Onion and people in Jon Stewart's line of work are the only media that actually report the news?
Okay, so here's the real thing we ca do to help today. The House Republicans' first order of business after the election was lowering the ethical restraints against themselves - so that Tom Delay will be able to stay Majority Leader even after being indicted by a grand jury. In a hotly contested closed-door voice voice, they voted to drop the rule - that is, to lower the ethical bar. Our job is to create buzz about the issue so that Congressman can be forced to say which way they voted on the rule (such a vote could be an liability in a re-election campaign).
Blogs, and the phone calls their readers make, really do have the potential to change the operation of politics in this bizarre new media world into which we have plunged. I find myself, actully, longing for the experience of the Persian Gulf War, when you watched the networks and you read the papers and yo us about shaming Congressmen into admitting which way they voited when they voted, in a closed-door voice vote, to drop a 1983 party rule that says you can't stay Majority Leader if you've been indicted (as Tom DeLay likely will). Their claim is that the coming indictments are politically motivated, but given the probable scale of Delay's corruption, this claim should really be plausible only to the naive or the right-wing core.
When you make calls like this, you'll feel like you're engaging in the ridiculous. And yet, that's what we've been reduced to, and that's why the Onion capture the spirit of the age so well.
Monday, November 22, 2004
"the increasingly theocratic despotism...led to intervention in...private sexual expression....In 342 gay marriages...were outlawed"
"Even under the Republic, as has been noted, Cicero regarded the younger Curio's relationship with another man as a marriage, and by the time of the early Empire references to gay marriages abound....But profound changes in the traditional values of the city had begun centuries before the barbarians breached the city walls....As the upper echelons of the Roman government---civil and ecclesiastical---became increasingly dominated by rural outlooks, official attitudes toward Roman social mores were considerably altered. Traditional Roman ideas of sexual propriety, based on marital fidelity, the protection of minors, and the nuclear family, gave way to much more rigid categorization of legitimate sexual outlets, the exclusion of sexual pleasure as a positive good, and general intolerance of sexual deviation....Public aspects of religion and morals had always been the object of some governmental supervision, but the increasingly theocratic despotism of the later Empire often led to intervention in matters such as personal religious conviction or private sexual expression which would have been considered individual under the early emperors....In 342 gay marriages, which had hitherto been legal (at least de facto) and well known, were outlawed in a curiously phrased statute which some authors have regarded as entirely facetious. The highly propagandistic nature of the law and lack of any penalty for noncompliance probably indicate that its imperial drafter(s) expected it to meet with popular opposition or neglect. The first corporal penalty for an act related to homosexuality was imposed in 390....In response to the rising tide of intolerance, gay people began to defend their preferences and criticize their opponents in various literary genres....
Since Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire from the fourth century on and was the only organized force to survive the final disintegration of Roman institutions in the West after the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, it became the conduit through which the narrower morality of the later Empire reached Europe. It was not, however, the author of this morality. The dissolution of the urban society of Rome and the ascendance of less tolerant political and ethical leadership occasioned a steady restriction of sexual freedom which transcended credal boundaries....it is misleading to characterize Christianity as somehow peculiarly liable to antigay feelings or doctrines....."
----John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
(University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 82, 120-1, 123-4, 127-8
Since Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire from the fourth century on and was the only organized force to survive the final disintegration of Roman institutions in the West after the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, it became the conduit through which the narrower morality of the later Empire reached Europe. It was not, however, the author of this morality. The dissolution of the urban society of Rome and the ascendance of less tolerant political and ethical leadership occasioned a steady restriction of sexual freedom which transcended credal boundaries....it is misleading to characterize Christianity as somehow peculiarly liable to antigay feelings or doctrines....."
----John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
(University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 82, 120-1, 123-4, 127-8
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Banning gay marriage - it's a white thing
I made a handy-dandy table here, which I think you all might find interesting.
This table, like any presentation of data, simplifies the exit-poll information. In particular, it fails to distinguish between large and small differences. Most of these differences were quite small, with some exceptions; for instance, Latinos in Ohio were substantially less likely than anyone else to vote Yes.
However, I think the simplification here serves a useful purpose. It helps lay to rest one of my least favorite lies from the religious right: the notion that African American and Latino voters, because of a supposed "family" orientation, are more anti-gay than whites.
This table, like any presentation of data, simplifies the exit-poll information. In particular, it fails to distinguish between large and small differences. Most of these differences were quite small, with some exceptions; for instance, Latinos in Ohio were substantially less likely than anyone else to vote Yes.
However, I think the simplification here serves a useful purpose. It helps lay to rest one of my least favorite lies from the religious right: the notion that African American and Latino voters, because of a supposed "family" orientation, are more anti-gay than whites.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
"I'm not young or hip or anything, but..."
Many of you have probably already heard of Sorryeverybody.com. I actually find it quite beautiful. I would never have thought that a website like this would work as well as this one does...but it really does give you a sense of the depth and breadth and creativity of all the people in this country who really didn't want Bush reelected. I've posted my favorite of the photos up above. Also check out the companion site Apologiesaccepted.com.
I was actually moved to contribute - look for me in Gallery 503!
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Remembering Grandpa
Milton D. Stewart
March 5, 1922--November 4, 2004
One or two of you asked to read the comments I made at Grandpa's funeral, which took place yesterday in Stockton, Illinois. Here they are.
I think Grandpa was the most patriotic American I've ever known. He didn't romanticize this country's past or ignore its flaws, but I think he did understand what is really remarkable about it. He thought everyone had a duty to serve, to better society, and in this task, he did much more than his share.
Grandpa loved history, and he encouraged my own interest in history. I'm going to tell two brief stories about history.
I remember visiting Grandma and Grandpa once in Phoenix, and asking Grandpa about his experience working as the chief staff person for President Truman's civil rights commission, which was something of which I knew my mother, and many other people, were very proud. Grandpa said that when the commission had finished its work, each member in turn made a prediction of how long it would take for all of their recommendations to be implemented. Grandpa was the youngest one in the room, and he predicted one year - maybe two. The most pessimistic people there said five to ten years. "Well," Grandpa said to me, "it took fifty." The last recommendation to be implemented was reparations for Americans of Japanese descent who were interned during World War II, and it happened under President Reagan. Grandpa didn't shy away from the fact that it took far too long; in fact, he drew attention to that fact. But I think he also understood - and was proud - that eventually the recommendations were all implemented. And I think he wanted me to know that part of the story, too.
This weekend, I reread an oral history that Grandpa did with my mother almost ten years ago, and I want to quote for you something that he said, in that interview, about his own mother and father:
It took a long time, I think, before Jews who came to this country were willing to admit that it was gonna be somewhat different here. When they came here, they would not have been surprised to have to move. Because the unspoken predicate of their whole lives was that nothing is necessarily stable. You're in a permanent minority; they may decide to boot you out any day, [or] make your life impossible.
Grandpa lived in a time and a place where a kid from Brooklyn really could grow up to be the first one in his family to go to college; could grow up to advise Presidents, and have expert advice to give them; and could give his grandson better advice on his 10th grade paper about Thomas Jefferson, I'm quite sure, than any of his classmates had. Grandpa's life story is a testament to the fact that things were - in his words - "different here."
Sunday, November 07, 2004
My grandpa's obituary
Milton Stewart Dies; Small-Business Expert
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page C08
Milton D. Stewart, 82, a well-known advocate for small businesses in Washington who was known as "Mr. Small Business," died of pneumonia Nov. 5 at St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix.
Mr. Stewart was appointed in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter as the government's first chief advocate for small business. He organized three White House conferences on small business, in 1980, 1986 and 1995. His career took him from Wall Street to the editorship of Inc. magazine, to academic posts and into the White House and the halls of Congress.
As the Small Business Association's chief counsel for advocacy, he championed small solar firms, independent gas stations and patent-seeking inventors and argued against government regulation.
In 1980, when a study found that time-consuming, duplicative but legally required government forms cost the nation's 10 million small businesses $12.7 billion a year, Mr. Stewart appeared at a Senate hearing to urge congressional action.
"Much of the sense of being overwhelmed by paperwork that small business feels comes from the seeming unpredictability, aimlessness and lack of apparent control of the paperwork flood," he said. "This is where the psychological crunch on the entrepreneurial manager is greatest -- the sense that he does not know what will hit him from the government in the next mail."
He held the government job until 1981, when he formed the Small Business High Technology Institute, a nonprofit agency that promoted innovation in small businesses and fostered relationships between those firms and universities, large companies and the government.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Stewart received a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1945. He received a law degree from George Washington University in 1952.
During World War II, he worked in the Office of War Information in Washington, then served as research director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which produced a 1948 report titled "To Secure These Rights." The report defined the nation's civil rights agenda for the next generation and proposed anti-lynching and anti-poll-tax laws, as well as strengthening the civil rights division of the Department of Justice.
Mr. Stewart then served as an administrative assistant to U.S. Rep. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (D-N.Y.), an analyst in the Bureau of the Budget, a special counsel to New York Gov. Averill Harriman and general counsel to the New York State Thruway Authority. He also worked in the private banking division of a New York investment banking firm in the mid-1950s.
He was a partner in a Wall Street law firm from 1961 to 1965, when he became president of two venture capital companies that later would play a part in his nomination for the SBA job.
He served a year each as president of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and the National Small Business Association. In addition to editing Inc. magazine in the early 1980s, he was a radio commentator on business. He served on Columbia University's Graduate Faculty of Public Law and was an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research.
Mr. Stewart's nomination to the SBA job ran into criticism after it was shown that in 1974 he signed a consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was suspended from investment activities for 60 days for violating SEC rules. The incident involved whether he adequately advised shareholders of the risks involved in an affiliated firm's building lease. His nomination, however, was supported by 125 organizations and individuals, including all the former heads of the SBA.
He moved from Washington to Phoenix in 1981.
His marriage to Dorothy Stewart ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Joan Graves Stewart of Phoenix; two daughters from the first marriage, Ricky Perkins of Lancaster, Calif., and Abigail Stewart of Ann Arbor, Mich.; a son from his first marriage, David Stewart of Garrett Park; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page C08
Milton D. Stewart, 82, a well-known advocate for small businesses in Washington who was known as "Mr. Small Business," died of pneumonia Nov. 5 at St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix.
Mr. Stewart was appointed in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter as the government's first chief advocate for small business. He organized three White House conferences on small business, in 1980, 1986 and 1995. His career took him from Wall Street to the editorship of Inc. magazine, to academic posts and into the White House and the halls of Congress.
As the Small Business Association's chief counsel for advocacy, he championed small solar firms, independent gas stations and patent-seeking inventors and argued against government regulation.
In 1980, when a study found that time-consuming, duplicative but legally required government forms cost the nation's 10 million small businesses $12.7 billion a year, Mr. Stewart appeared at a Senate hearing to urge congressional action.
"Much of the sense of being overwhelmed by paperwork that small business feels comes from the seeming unpredictability, aimlessness and lack of apparent control of the paperwork flood," he said. "This is where the psychological crunch on the entrepreneurial manager is greatest -- the sense that he does not know what will hit him from the government in the next mail."
He held the government job until 1981, when he formed the Small Business High Technology Institute, a nonprofit agency that promoted innovation in small businesses and fostered relationships between those firms and universities, large companies and the government.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Stewart received a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1945. He received a law degree from George Washington University in 1952.
During World War II, he worked in the Office of War Information in Washington, then served as research director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which produced a 1948 report titled "To Secure These Rights." The report defined the nation's civil rights agenda for the next generation and proposed anti-lynching and anti-poll-tax laws, as well as strengthening the civil rights division of the Department of Justice.
Mr. Stewart then served as an administrative assistant to U.S. Rep. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (D-N.Y.), an analyst in the Bureau of the Budget, a special counsel to New York Gov. Averill Harriman and general counsel to the New York State Thruway Authority. He also worked in the private banking division of a New York investment banking firm in the mid-1950s.
He was a partner in a Wall Street law firm from 1961 to 1965, when he became president of two venture capital companies that later would play a part in his nomination for the SBA job.
He served a year each as president of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and the National Small Business Association. In addition to editing Inc. magazine in the early 1980s, he was a radio commentator on business. He served on Columbia University's Graduate Faculty of Public Law and was an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research.
Mr. Stewart's nomination to the SBA job ran into criticism after it was shown that in 1974 he signed a consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was suspended from investment activities for 60 days for violating SEC rules. The incident involved whether he adequately advised shareholders of the risks involved in an affiliated firm's building lease. His nomination, however, was supported by 125 organizations and individuals, including all the former heads of the SBA.
He moved from Washington to Phoenix in 1981.
His marriage to Dorothy Stewart ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Joan Graves Stewart of Phoenix; two daughters from the first marriage, Ricky Perkins of Lancaster, Calif., and Abigail Stewart of Ann Arbor, Mich.; a son from his first marriage, David Stewart of Garrett Park; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Gay Americans and the Election of 2004
Did the election of 2004 show that Americans are against gay rights? After traveling to Oregon and spending ten days volunteering with the effort to defeat that state’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman, I’ll say it: no, they’re not. They’re not against gay rights, and most of them aren’t even against gay marriage. Uncomfortable with it, find it hard to discuss with their family members, and often have little information on precisely what civil marriage actually entails (even though many of them have entered or want to enter into it). Yes, the No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign lost, as most people thoroughly expected. And although the margin (57 to 43 percent) was closer than in any of the ten other states where voters have just decided to alter their states’ founding documents so as to make people like me second-class citizens in perpetuity, it still hurts. And most of all, Bush won.
But was this election decided by evangelicals who are driven to vote on ballot measures—on homosexuality in Ohio, on abortion in Florida this year---and then cast an “incidental” vote for Bush? Or, rather, since strongly held religious-right views on these social issues do not make up anywhere near a majority of voters in any swing state, is it possible we’ve got a job. Our base is about a quarter of the electorate. Their base is about a quarter of the electorate. And we’ve just got to talk to all
those people in the middle.
In Oregon, I dialed at least fifteen hundred phone numbers, knocked on several hundred doors, and talked to a huge number of voters who know and care about gay people and yet are deeply ambivalent, confused, and ill-informed about gay marriage.
For this reason, in the battle to define the marriage debate, key Democratic allies ceded too much ground and gave up on too many people before the conversation even started. Even Barney Frank has joined the chorus of Democrats complaining that we gays just moved too fast and the country wasn't ready. It's too late now. Now is not the time to question whether we should demand equality. Now is the time to fight for equality and social justice harder than ever.
In Oregon – GLBT movement leaders are not emphasizing this, but it’s a fact – our supposed friends left us high and dry. The state AFL-CIO, which has been a critical ally on past gay rights issues, did not take a position on the constitutional amendment, largely for fear of alienating Kerry voters. Nike (based on suburban Beaverton), which had been a key financial backer of efforts to defeat past antigay ballot measures in the state, refused to contribute any money this time around, again for fear that gay marriage is an issue that will hurt them. Consequently, the queer movement had to spend a lot of energy on more protracted struggles to raise smaller chunks of money elsewhere.
Evangelical Christians, no matter how energetic they are about showing up at the polls, simply aren’t anywhere near a majority of voters. They just aren’t. Not in Ohio, not in Florida, and not in America. Most voters (1) do support benefits and protections for gay couples, (2) are uncomfortable with the idea of “gay marriage,” and (3) don't have any clear conception of how the two might be related or why gay people even WANT to get married. Because they have failed to admit the significance of these complex realities, the Democratic leadership that’s now busy selling out their base is not only gutless – they’re also stupid. The Democrats are just going to have to suck it up and do the hard work of explaining what the gay marriage issue is about instead of infantilizing them and assuming that they somehow will never wrap their minds around the idea that inequality hurts people. Gays and lesbians are trying to do this work, but the fact is, we’re a minority, and we can’t do it alone. Gays did not “cost” the Democrats the election, but the Democrats did give up on us when it mattered.
I think the vast majority of Americans simply don’t understand what’s at stake in the gay marriage debate. There’s now broad majority support in this country for all kinds of rights and protections for gays and their families that were considered a pipe dream just ten years ago. Most Americans have gay friends and relatives that they know and like; most support benefits and protections for gay couples; and many straight Americans are aware of some of the inequities that their gay friends and relatives face. Yes, most are uncomfortable with gay marriage. Not dead-set against it, not obsessed with it, not likely to have spent all that much time thinking about it, but uncomfortable. They think it’s weird. To a really, really stunning extent, they actually have no idea what civil marriage is, what effects these amendments will have, or why gay people want to get married. On all three questions, the more Americans learn, the more they support us.
Civil unions and other legislation that provides benefits and protections to same-sex couples now have majority support nationwide. In California, home to one in Americans, partnership protections in realms such as child custody, legal disputes, housing protections, bereavement leaves and other state benefits will become the law of the land on January 1, and that state's Republican governor has recently signed a bill requiring insurance companies to provide coverage to registered domestic partners. Even President Bush embraced civil unions in the final days of the campaign in a desperate attempt to jettison his extremist image.
One of my fellow volunteers literally had to explain to an Oregon voter that a no vote on the constitutional amendment would not jeopardize the legal recognition of her own heterosexual marriage. Tellingly, the other side’s campaign resorted to lies, many of which are less plausible to voters than they once would have been. The Yes on 36 campaign’s website stated that the ultimate purpose of “most gay leaders” trying to win marriage equality is in fact to “destroy” and “abolish” “the family.” In the last week of the election, they sent out a mass mailing of fliers showing a blond little girl on the cover, with the headline, “The classroom will never be the same”; inside, voters were told that if the amendment were not passed, “the details of gay sex” would be taught in Oregon’s public schools. The public schools superintendent issued a statement condemning the flier, but of course it was no use.
We can’t possibly win this fight without the full support of our allies, and that means that supposedly pro-gay unions and pro-gay companies are going to have to do their part. The problem we face is not that most Americans are fundamentalist bigots. As I have said, it’s just not true. The problem we face is that they are successfully bringing on board those too many basically decent people who, this year, voted to ban gay marriage, and who by and large didn’t know what they were voting for.
-----
It’s hard to predict how any individual will feel about gay marriage, but it’s important to find out. The most important thing was to try to meet the voter wherever they are. In ten days in Oregon, I dialed probably fifteen hundred phone numbers and knocked on several hundred doors. I learned how to elicit, from undecided voters and those who said they planned to vote yes, their own feelings about the issue, in order to respond to them accurately and reassuringly. I became familiar with the typical range of concerns that undecided voters voice when asked about the amendment – concerns about their children, concerns about their faith, and concerns about the wisdom of overturning what typically seem to them to be thousands of years of tradition. I learned to provide answers that had proven effective in focus groups and that, I found, indeed worked time and time again. I learned to say “unequal treatment” instead of “discrimination” because undecided voters had not responded well to the word “discrimination” applied to the status of gay people under marriage laws.
I talked to voters in and around Oregon’s largest city, ranging from lily-white Beaverton, where Nike has its headquarters, to poor black neighborhoods in northeast Portland. The campaign concentrated on this population-dense base of support for gay rights, on the theory that potential supporters were concentrated here and that it was important to turn out that base. Everywhere I went, there was a minority of people who were firmly opposed to gay marriage. Many of them give religious reasons for their views – though, very importantly, not all. The No on 36 campaign, then, targeted the large number of voters who were undecided or who had not spent much time thinking about the issue.
I heard every imaginable response from the voters I talked to. Three or four people said things that I found startling and difficult to hear. One man told me, at his front door, that homosexuals who try to get married should go to jail. Another man, when I identified myself on the phone as a volunteer for No on Constitutional Amendment 36 (and we were told always to call it Constitutional Amendment 36, not Measure 36, lest the voter miss the profundity and unalterability of what she was contemplating), said, “Why don’t you go suck some cock?” And on election eve, standing and waving signs at one end of one of Portland’s busiest bridges, there was about one hostile gesture for every twenty honks, smiles, or thumbs-up signs; one guy rolled down his window and said, “You’re gay - fuck you!” (My quick-thinking fellow volunteer, who recently lost his job in New York and had devoted a month to the campaign, shouted back in a tone of utter serenity, “God bless!”)
Those were the absolute worst moments, and they were more than made up for by the scores of deeply touching conversations I had with, with the people who got new information or a new perspective from talking to me. And I can’t pretend it was a one-way exchange – I also learned a lot about where they are and how they perceive homosexuality. I learned to respect their concerns, to repeat them back, and if things went reasonably well, to clinch the deal: “It sounds like you might be thinking about voting No on Constitutional Amendment 36. Can I count on you to vote no?” Canvassing is simply the best way to persuade people - better than TV or radio advertising - because you can elicit, and then respond to, the person's specific concerns. That is, some people are mainly concerned about what will happen to churches, others about their kids and whether or not they will turn out to be gay, and many others have incoherent and often incorrect beliefs about the consequences of passing or defeating the amendment. Voters are confused, and many of them don’t have regular contact with good information.
-----
We have to give people room to admit that they’re uncomfortable with gay marriage. I can’t tell you how much mileage I got from this insight. Simply saying to a voter, in a compassionate tone, “A lot of people are uncomfortable with gay marriage,” gets you off on the right foot. And even more importantly, it’s accurate. We have to be honest if we’re going to win. One thing I found was that many, many people think that gay couples "should" have all the rights that straight couples do, and yet they believe, in some sense or another, that marriage really “should” be only between a man and a woman. They don’t really connect these two “shoulds.” One of my favorite No on 36 TV spots, called "Unsure," began with an African American man saying, "I'll say it - I'm not sure about gay marriage." I think it’s crucial not to loathe or condescend to such folks, because they represent the new vital center that we have to construct. It's OK, it's more than OK, to be uncomfortable with gay marriage – and in fact, if we are fully honest, we must also admit that not all gay people want to get married, and that many gay people are just as surprised as straight people are that this issue has burst onto the political landscape. That admission needs to be the foundation for building common ground – for example, to advance the idea that, since it’s confusing, it's probably not a good idea to put unequal treatment in the state constitution.
What is it like to persuade a voter, a classmate, or a relative? Each conversation simply must take its own course. I had one 18-year-old registered independent come to the door at a house in suburban Beaverton; when I asked him if he would “vote no on Constitutional Amendment 36 to stop the ban on gay marriage,” he said very earnestly that he hoped I wouldn't be offended, but that he was planning to vote Yes. He volunteered that he thought gay couples should have all the same rights that straight couples do, but that it shouldn't be called "marriage." Thinking back to my training on how to reach voters with this particular set of feelings, I said, "it sounds like you support civil unions, then," and he said that yes, he definitely did. Then I explained that “we” don't actually have civil unions in Oregon (no need to bring up the fact that I was “new to the area”), that there is no sign that the legislature will create them, and that a constitutional amendment creates a legal precedent that could be used to uphold unequal treatment in future legal disputes. He listened intently. I did not get this voter to say that he would vote no, but he did say that he'd heard new information from me, and I am quite confident that he thought more about the issue afterward. I left him with our literature.
Reaching an undecided or ambivalent voter and conversing with him or her, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes or even longer, was incredibly inspiring and really not very hard, although I certainly became much more skilled at it over time. The strongest thing we have going for us is that most people don’t have a very clear idea of what marriage is, and are interested in learning more. Many, many young married heterosexuals today know and care about gay friends and relatives and their partners (even if they say they don’t necessarily “approve” of “it”); some have even become quite conscious of the vast web of protections and obligations that they enjoy as married people, and truly want access to those protections to be distributed equally. Many more are really almost embarrassed at how little they understand about this institution that in all likelihood they have either entered into, or else sincerely hope to enter into.
One woman that I reached from a call list (we focused on calling Democratic and independent women over 35, who had been identified as a critical undecided population) told me she was glad I had called because she had not had an opportunity to hear a gay person’s perspective on the amendment. I learned to bite my tongue at complicated moments like this one: I had to suppress the urge to chide her for assuming I was gay or that there could be a single gay perspective (and in fact we had tons of amazing and deeply committed straight volunteers), but I knew that by far the more productive thing to do was to provide her with what she had quite honestly said she wanted, and what at the end of the day I wanted too – a conversation about what this issue means to me.
Many people who did say they were voting for the amendment also said that they had had some doubts because they did have a gay cousin, they really liked their daughter’s gay friend, and so on. Clearly, many straight people know much more about gay people and gay couples than they did ten years ago. Straight people under thirty are vastly more likely than the rest of the electorate to support gay marriage, and to have close friends who are openly gay. And people increasingly know and accept the partners of their gay relatives, and in some cases they are even beginning to talk to them about gay rights, which was almost impossible to imagine on any significant scale just a few years ago.
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The gay marriage debate is not a referendum on the Bible, the family, or whether or not homosexuality is immoral. Those questions simply aren’t what’s on the ballot when a marriage amendment is proposed, and we must persuade people of this point. What’s on the ballot is whether the right to marry is limited to straight people. If a person has a core belief that homosexuality is immoral, or that marriage exists for procreation, I found it was most effective to avoid prolonged discussion of this belief, and to try to steer the conversation toward other areas – for example, to the fact that this had nothing to do with school curriculums (as the opposition claimed), to actual gay people’s actual experiences, and to the point that “while we may disagree about social issues such as marriage, we probably shouldn't put that disagreement in the state constitution.”
We can’t give up on people before we even have the conversation, though, which is what the Democrats, as a party, have done - especially with its most loyal and devoted constituency, African Americans. In African Americans who answered the door, I thought, were more likely to call their (opposite-sex) spouse or other members of the household to talk to me as well, and if they were at all supportive (as most were), were more likely to feel strongly about it. I also have been quite impressed by the number of young straight married couples who just plain think it’s wrong that we can’t get married, and who are learning, from this controversy, more about what their own marriages mean to them.
These things seem clear to me: the more people learn about the issue, the less likely they are to want to ban gay marriage; that many married straight people, especially young ones, are increasingly aware of the rights, both everyday and crisis-related, that they take for granted; there's increasingly overwhelming support for civil unions at least; that people under 30 typically have no problem with gay marriage and are far, far more likely than older people to be comfortable with gay people and find antigay opinions unacceptable; that it matters whether or not people think homosexuality is a choice; and that people very explicitly connect questions of gay rights to actual gay people in their own families. Many people have nieces, nephews, in-laws, or co-workers whom they mentioned – or their child has a friend who has gay or lesbians parents whom they have met and like. The way in which that has played out, as more and more people have come out to their families, is pretty interesting. It creates a different dynamic from when whites vote on black civil rights, since most white Americans only know blacks as friends or coworkers, not family members. Among young people, things look amazingly good. Shouting matches and near-disturbances were reported in the campus paper when Yes on 36 volunteers set up a table at Portland State University. A huge proportion of the people who volunteered to canvass, especially close to election day, were students at public and private universities, community colleges, liberal arts schools, and even high schools.
One woman, on the phone, told me she was “in a long-term heterosexual relationship” and said, “I had several close friends who died.” (“In the 1980s?” I asked, invoking the catastrophe that robbed my gay generation of so many of our elders. “Yes,” she said.) She told me that one friend in particular had felt like a brother to her, and she’d spent weeks at his bedside, helping out with the quotidian needs that become so challenging for someone suffering a gruesome and mysterious illness and death. She said that before he died, her friend had told her that “that within my lifetime, I would see gay people getting married – it would become a reality. And I thought he was wrong at the time, but now I know that he was right.”
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The more people know about us, the more they support us. Time and time again, it became clear to me that voters on both sides of the issue very explicitly weighed the amendment in relation to openly gay friends, and especially to gay people in their own families. Many people are very deeply ambivalent, even if they voted to amend the constitution; one woman, for instance, told me both that she believed homosexuality was immoral and that she thought it was wrong that her gay cousin, who has had the same partner since she was three years old, couldn’t get health insurance through that partner’s job.
The trickiest thing I learned was when to bite my tongue. The training on this point was excellent. Undecided voters clearly don’t think like me, and as I’ve said, it was important to establish something about how they DO think and address their concerns honestly and respectfully, no matter how totally silly they might seem. We sucked it up and said “gay marriage,” not “same-sex marriage,” because it was a more familiar phrase to most voters. If someone said they were worried that their kid would turn out to be gay, I didn’t try to persuade them that would actually be an OK thing – but instead to focus on the fact that this amendment really didn’t have anything to do with whether that was going to happen. This line of argument is right not only strategically but also in a very logical sense: I truly know very little about this person’s life, I don’t have time to learn very much about it, I don’t know their inner hopes and fears, and it’s plainly a lot more likely that I can persuade them in three or four minutes about how to cast their vote than I can about something they perceive as momentous, troubling, and personally fraught.
Even whether gays make good parents - as passionately as I feel about the matter – seemed like a less promising topic of discussion than the comparatively much easier-to-establish facts that gay parents exist and would be adversely affected by the amendment. If someone said they were worried that their kid would turn out to be gay, I did not I did not try to discuss my own interpretation of the Bible or the fact that Jesus didn’t say one word about gay marriage; rather, I tried to get the voter to understand, as quickly as possible, the fact that there were real people who would be hurt by this amendment. Only once, in a conversation in which I wasn’t getting anywhere, did I bring up with a voter the historical analogy of interracial marriage – and that one time, I immediately regretted it. He simply declared that banning interracial marriage was obviously wrong because racial discrimination is wrong – and the conversation reached a dead end with a thud. And he doubtless felt he had occupied the moral high ground.
When the question of children came up, I tried to steer the conversation away from abstractions. It’s good to talk about crisis situations that a family might actually face and how antigay amendments would affect them. In fact, I should say that I suspect that hospital visitation has become our single most effective selling point in part because of the way in which the cost of health care, both routine and emergency, looms as a major daily worry for Americans. The hospital setting “primes” the voter, to use a word I learned from my political scientist brother, to judge the issue in the context of their own feelings, such as (1) their own worries about how public policy might affect them in such a circumstance, and (2) the existing political discourse that constructs having to go to the hospital as a situation in which one is likely to encounter hostile, unreasonable, and cruel bureaucracies and policies.
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We need to find the people who “think we should have the rights” - a surprisingly large population - and show them why that means, among other things, the right to marry. It’s really a tragedy how ill-informed people are. For example, I talked to many people who were totally unaware that civil unions do not currently exist in Oregon - or if they know it, they don’t really think about the fact that that affects the daily lives of gay people in Oregon. They almost certainly don’t know that gay activists have been trying to get them passed by the legislature for thirty years without much prospect of success. Yet even those who know very little about gay politics, when pressed, often support civil unions for long-term couples – or what they tend to refer to, rather interestingly, as “the rights” (as in, “gay people should have all the rights, but . . .”). Along these lines, the No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign sent mailings that listed one hundred of the rights and responsibilities that, under Oregon law, hinge on being married. Many voters, asked for their thoughts on the issue, voice still more incoherent constructions, such as “I think they should be able to visit them if they’re in the hospital but I just don’t know about gay marriage.”
One 19-year-old who saw me canvassing rolled down his window and chatted with me about his ambivalence. Eventually he allowed as how passing an amendment like this one wasn’t going to stop people from being gay, and so it didn’t make any sense to pass it. I was a bit mystified by this logic, but it was logical and I said so, and thanked him for his vote. In African American neighborhoods in northeast Portland, I spoke to many friendly individuals and couples, including a woman who said her husband “wouldn’t be living here any more” if he were to vote yes, and a man who came to the door of his dilapidated house, clearly heard what I had to say, smiled, and said to me that he had already voted and that “We’re in synch. To each his own, right?”
Once, I started a shouting match between neighbors. A woman picking up her mail had volunteered that she was against gay adoption but for gay marriage, and then asked if I was gay. She said that she had considered the matter and was going to vote no. At this point her neighbor in a shady, rundown apartment complex, who had overheard us, said in a voice dripping with mockery, “My friend wants to marry his DOG!” I said, calmly and simply but firmly, that that was not what was not on the ballot. At this point, the woman– who had expressed only lukewarm interest in the whole matter – got totally animated and yelled at the guy: “That is just total crap! This has nothing to do with that! I’m voting no!” And, turning to me, “You have my vote!”
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The single most perplexing conversation I had was on Election Day, over the phone, with a voter in rural, eastern Oregon, who had completed her ballot the previous evening with her husband. After we talked about gay marriage and the legal precedent that a constitutional amendment sets, she told me she wished I had called the night before. She and her husband had both voted yes, her husband had gone out of town on business, and now their ballots were sealed and ready to be dropped off. She said that if she were voting now, she would vote No on Constitutional Amendment 36.
If the ballots hadn’t been sealed, she could have nullified her vote - only on this measure - by marking No as well as Yes. With the ballots sealed, though, I could only tell her that she had the option of visiting her county elections office. Under Oregon law, a voter who makes a mistake may go there and exchange her ballot for a fresh one. I went on Mapquest and got directions to the office in the county seat; it was perhaps a twenty-minute drive from her home. I called that county elections office to find out whether there was a line, and then called her back to let her know there was none at all. She said she would think about it. She really wasn’t sure. Eventually, I must have pressed a bit too hard, because she said, “You can call me twelve times today, and I still won’t be sure what I’ll do about it.” She said she hadn’t decided whether or not she would exchange her ballot, and clearly she wanted to make that decision on her own.
It was very difficult to give up on this voter, to trust her to make her own decision. Part of me wanted to drive two or three hours to visit her in person and persuade her why she should exchange her ballot and vote No on a fresh one. I have no idea whether she did it; I’m inclined to think she probably did not. Her vote wouldn’t have defeated the amendment. I do feel confident, though, that in the future she will weigh questions relating to gay rights differently than she did when she and her husband completed their ballots early this week.
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We lost. But in Multnomah County, which covers central Portland and whose commissioners decided last spring that it would violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection to continue to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, we won by a margin of two to one.
“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.”
--Barack Obama, Boston, July 27, 2004
But was this election decided by evangelicals who are driven to vote on ballot measures—on homosexuality in Ohio, on abortion in Florida this year---and then cast an “incidental” vote for Bush? Or, rather, since strongly held religious-right views on these social issues do not make up anywhere near a majority of voters in any swing state, is it possible we’ve got a job. Our base is about a quarter of the electorate. Their base is about a quarter of the electorate. And we’ve just got to talk to all
those people in the middle.
In Oregon, I dialed at least fifteen hundred phone numbers, knocked on several hundred doors, and talked to a huge number of voters who know and care about gay people and yet are deeply ambivalent, confused, and ill-informed about gay marriage.
For this reason, in the battle to define the marriage debate, key Democratic allies ceded too much ground and gave up on too many people before the conversation even started. Even Barney Frank has joined the chorus of Democrats complaining that we gays just moved too fast and the country wasn't ready. It's too late now. Now is not the time to question whether we should demand equality. Now is the time to fight for equality and social justice harder than ever.
In Oregon – GLBT movement leaders are not emphasizing this, but it’s a fact – our supposed friends left us high and dry. The state AFL-CIO, which has been a critical ally on past gay rights issues, did not take a position on the constitutional amendment, largely for fear of alienating Kerry voters. Nike (based on suburban Beaverton), which had been a key financial backer of efforts to defeat past antigay ballot measures in the state, refused to contribute any money this time around, again for fear that gay marriage is an issue that will hurt them. Consequently, the queer movement had to spend a lot of energy on more protracted struggles to raise smaller chunks of money elsewhere.
Evangelical Christians, no matter how energetic they are about showing up at the polls, simply aren’t anywhere near a majority of voters. They just aren’t. Not in Ohio, not in Florida, and not in America. Most voters (1) do support benefits and protections for gay couples, (2) are uncomfortable with the idea of “gay marriage,” and (3) don't have any clear conception of how the two might be related or why gay people even WANT to get married. Because they have failed to admit the significance of these complex realities, the Democratic leadership that’s now busy selling out their base is not only gutless – they’re also stupid. The Democrats are just going to have to suck it up and do the hard work of explaining what the gay marriage issue is about instead of infantilizing them and assuming that they somehow will never wrap their minds around the idea that inequality hurts people. Gays and lesbians are trying to do this work, but the fact is, we’re a minority, and we can’t do it alone. Gays did not “cost” the Democrats the election, but the Democrats did give up on us when it mattered.
I think the vast majority of Americans simply don’t understand what’s at stake in the gay marriage debate. There’s now broad majority support in this country for all kinds of rights and protections for gays and their families that were considered a pipe dream just ten years ago. Most Americans have gay friends and relatives that they know and like; most support benefits and protections for gay couples; and many straight Americans are aware of some of the inequities that their gay friends and relatives face. Yes, most are uncomfortable with gay marriage. Not dead-set against it, not obsessed with it, not likely to have spent all that much time thinking about it, but uncomfortable. They think it’s weird. To a really, really stunning extent, they actually have no idea what civil marriage is, what effects these amendments will have, or why gay people want to get married. On all three questions, the more Americans learn, the more they support us.
Civil unions and other legislation that provides benefits and protections to same-sex couples now have majority support nationwide. In California, home to one in Americans, partnership protections in realms such as child custody, legal disputes, housing protections, bereavement leaves and other state benefits will become the law of the land on January 1, and that state's Republican governor has recently signed a bill requiring insurance companies to provide coverage to registered domestic partners. Even President Bush embraced civil unions in the final days of the campaign in a desperate attempt to jettison his extremist image.
One of my fellow volunteers literally had to explain to an Oregon voter that a no vote on the constitutional amendment would not jeopardize the legal recognition of her own heterosexual marriage. Tellingly, the other side’s campaign resorted to lies, many of which are less plausible to voters than they once would have been. The Yes on 36 campaign’s website stated that the ultimate purpose of “most gay leaders” trying to win marriage equality is in fact to “destroy” and “abolish” “the family.” In the last week of the election, they sent out a mass mailing of fliers showing a blond little girl on the cover, with the headline, “The classroom will never be the same”; inside, voters were told that if the amendment were not passed, “the details of gay sex” would be taught in Oregon’s public schools. The public schools superintendent issued a statement condemning the flier, but of course it was no use.
We can’t possibly win this fight without the full support of our allies, and that means that supposedly pro-gay unions and pro-gay companies are going to have to do their part. The problem we face is not that most Americans are fundamentalist bigots. As I have said, it’s just not true. The problem we face is that they are successfully bringing on board those too many basically decent people who, this year, voted to ban gay marriage, and who by and large didn’t know what they were voting for.
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It’s hard to predict how any individual will feel about gay marriage, but it’s important to find out. The most important thing was to try to meet the voter wherever they are. In ten days in Oregon, I dialed probably fifteen hundred phone numbers and knocked on several hundred doors. I learned how to elicit, from undecided voters and those who said they planned to vote yes, their own feelings about the issue, in order to respond to them accurately and reassuringly. I became familiar with the typical range of concerns that undecided voters voice when asked about the amendment – concerns about their children, concerns about their faith, and concerns about the wisdom of overturning what typically seem to them to be thousands of years of tradition. I learned to provide answers that had proven effective in focus groups and that, I found, indeed worked time and time again. I learned to say “unequal treatment” instead of “discrimination” because undecided voters had not responded well to the word “discrimination” applied to the status of gay people under marriage laws.
I talked to voters in and around Oregon’s largest city, ranging from lily-white Beaverton, where Nike has its headquarters, to poor black neighborhoods in northeast Portland. The campaign concentrated on this population-dense base of support for gay rights, on the theory that potential supporters were concentrated here and that it was important to turn out that base. Everywhere I went, there was a minority of people who were firmly opposed to gay marriage. Many of them give religious reasons for their views – though, very importantly, not all. The No on 36 campaign, then, targeted the large number of voters who were undecided or who had not spent much time thinking about the issue.
I heard every imaginable response from the voters I talked to. Three or four people said things that I found startling and difficult to hear. One man told me, at his front door, that homosexuals who try to get married should go to jail. Another man, when I identified myself on the phone as a volunteer for No on Constitutional Amendment 36 (and we were told always to call it Constitutional Amendment 36, not Measure 36, lest the voter miss the profundity and unalterability of what she was contemplating), said, “Why don’t you go suck some cock?” And on election eve, standing and waving signs at one end of one of Portland’s busiest bridges, there was about one hostile gesture for every twenty honks, smiles, or thumbs-up signs; one guy rolled down his window and said, “You’re gay - fuck you!” (My quick-thinking fellow volunteer, who recently lost his job in New York and had devoted a month to the campaign, shouted back in a tone of utter serenity, “God bless!”)
Those were the absolute worst moments, and they were more than made up for by the scores of deeply touching conversations I had with, with the people who got new information or a new perspective from talking to me. And I can’t pretend it was a one-way exchange – I also learned a lot about where they are and how they perceive homosexuality. I learned to respect their concerns, to repeat them back, and if things went reasonably well, to clinch the deal: “It sounds like you might be thinking about voting No on Constitutional Amendment 36. Can I count on you to vote no?” Canvassing is simply the best way to persuade people - better than TV or radio advertising - because you can elicit, and then respond to, the person's specific concerns. That is, some people are mainly concerned about what will happen to churches, others about their kids and whether or not they will turn out to be gay, and many others have incoherent and often incorrect beliefs about the consequences of passing or defeating the amendment. Voters are confused, and many of them don’t have regular contact with good information.
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We have to give people room to admit that they’re uncomfortable with gay marriage. I can’t tell you how much mileage I got from this insight. Simply saying to a voter, in a compassionate tone, “A lot of people are uncomfortable with gay marriage,” gets you off on the right foot. And even more importantly, it’s accurate. We have to be honest if we’re going to win. One thing I found was that many, many people think that gay couples "should" have all the rights that straight couples do, and yet they believe, in some sense or another, that marriage really “should” be only between a man and a woman. They don’t really connect these two “shoulds.” One of my favorite No on 36 TV spots, called "Unsure," began with an African American man saying, "I'll say it - I'm not sure about gay marriage." I think it’s crucial not to loathe or condescend to such folks, because they represent the new vital center that we have to construct. It's OK, it's more than OK, to be uncomfortable with gay marriage – and in fact, if we are fully honest, we must also admit that not all gay people want to get married, and that many gay people are just as surprised as straight people are that this issue has burst onto the political landscape. That admission needs to be the foundation for building common ground – for example, to advance the idea that, since it’s confusing, it's probably not a good idea to put unequal treatment in the state constitution.
What is it like to persuade a voter, a classmate, or a relative? Each conversation simply must take its own course. I had one 18-year-old registered independent come to the door at a house in suburban Beaverton; when I asked him if he would “vote no on Constitutional Amendment 36 to stop the ban on gay marriage,” he said very earnestly that he hoped I wouldn't be offended, but that he was planning to vote Yes. He volunteered that he thought gay couples should have all the same rights that straight couples do, but that it shouldn't be called "marriage." Thinking back to my training on how to reach voters with this particular set of feelings, I said, "it sounds like you support civil unions, then," and he said that yes, he definitely did. Then I explained that “we” don't actually have civil unions in Oregon (no need to bring up the fact that I was “new to the area”), that there is no sign that the legislature will create them, and that a constitutional amendment creates a legal precedent that could be used to uphold unequal treatment in future legal disputes. He listened intently. I did not get this voter to say that he would vote no, but he did say that he'd heard new information from me, and I am quite confident that he thought more about the issue afterward. I left him with our literature.
Reaching an undecided or ambivalent voter and conversing with him or her, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes or even longer, was incredibly inspiring and really not very hard, although I certainly became much more skilled at it over time. The strongest thing we have going for us is that most people don’t have a very clear idea of what marriage is, and are interested in learning more. Many, many young married heterosexuals today know and care about gay friends and relatives and their partners (even if they say they don’t necessarily “approve” of “it”); some have even become quite conscious of the vast web of protections and obligations that they enjoy as married people, and truly want access to those protections to be distributed equally. Many more are really almost embarrassed at how little they understand about this institution that in all likelihood they have either entered into, or else sincerely hope to enter into.
One woman that I reached from a call list (we focused on calling Democratic and independent women over 35, who had been identified as a critical undecided population) told me she was glad I had called because she had not had an opportunity to hear a gay person’s perspective on the amendment. I learned to bite my tongue at complicated moments like this one: I had to suppress the urge to chide her for assuming I was gay or that there could be a single gay perspective (and in fact we had tons of amazing and deeply committed straight volunteers), but I knew that by far the more productive thing to do was to provide her with what she had quite honestly said she wanted, and what at the end of the day I wanted too – a conversation about what this issue means to me.
Many people who did say they were voting for the amendment also said that they had had some doubts because they did have a gay cousin, they really liked their daughter’s gay friend, and so on. Clearly, many straight people know much more about gay people and gay couples than they did ten years ago. Straight people under thirty are vastly more likely than the rest of the electorate to support gay marriage, and to have close friends who are openly gay. And people increasingly know and accept the partners of their gay relatives, and in some cases they are even beginning to talk to them about gay rights, which was almost impossible to imagine on any significant scale just a few years ago.
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The gay marriage debate is not a referendum on the Bible, the family, or whether or not homosexuality is immoral. Those questions simply aren’t what’s on the ballot when a marriage amendment is proposed, and we must persuade people of this point. What’s on the ballot is whether the right to marry is limited to straight people. If a person has a core belief that homosexuality is immoral, or that marriage exists for procreation, I found it was most effective to avoid prolonged discussion of this belief, and to try to steer the conversation toward other areas – for example, to the fact that this had nothing to do with school curriculums (as the opposition claimed), to actual gay people’s actual experiences, and to the point that “while we may disagree about social issues such as marriage, we probably shouldn't put that disagreement in the state constitution.”
We can’t give up on people before we even have the conversation, though, which is what the Democrats, as a party, have done - especially with its most loyal and devoted constituency, African Americans. In African Americans who answered the door, I thought, were more likely to call their (opposite-sex) spouse or other members of the household to talk to me as well, and if they were at all supportive (as most were), were more likely to feel strongly about it. I also have been quite impressed by the number of young straight married couples who just plain think it’s wrong that we can’t get married, and who are learning, from this controversy, more about what their own marriages mean to them.
These things seem clear to me: the more people learn about the issue, the less likely they are to want to ban gay marriage; that many married straight people, especially young ones, are increasingly aware of the rights, both everyday and crisis-related, that they take for granted; there's increasingly overwhelming support for civil unions at least; that people under 30 typically have no problem with gay marriage and are far, far more likely than older people to be comfortable with gay people and find antigay opinions unacceptable; that it matters whether or not people think homosexuality is a choice; and that people very explicitly connect questions of gay rights to actual gay people in their own families. Many people have nieces, nephews, in-laws, or co-workers whom they mentioned – or their child has a friend who has gay or lesbians parents whom they have met and like. The way in which that has played out, as more and more people have come out to their families, is pretty interesting. It creates a different dynamic from when whites vote on black civil rights, since most white Americans only know blacks as friends or coworkers, not family members. Among young people, things look amazingly good. Shouting matches and near-disturbances were reported in the campus paper when Yes on 36 volunteers set up a table at Portland State University. A huge proportion of the people who volunteered to canvass, especially close to election day, were students at public and private universities, community colleges, liberal arts schools, and even high schools.
One woman, on the phone, told me she was “in a long-term heterosexual relationship” and said, “I had several close friends who died.” (“In the 1980s?” I asked, invoking the catastrophe that robbed my gay generation of so many of our elders. “Yes,” she said.) She told me that one friend in particular had felt like a brother to her, and she’d spent weeks at his bedside, helping out with the quotidian needs that become so challenging for someone suffering a gruesome and mysterious illness and death. She said that before he died, her friend had told her that “that within my lifetime, I would see gay people getting married – it would become a reality. And I thought he was wrong at the time, but now I know that he was right.”
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The more people know about us, the more they support us. Time and time again, it became clear to me that voters on both sides of the issue very explicitly weighed the amendment in relation to openly gay friends, and especially to gay people in their own families. Many people are very deeply ambivalent, even if they voted to amend the constitution; one woman, for instance, told me both that she believed homosexuality was immoral and that she thought it was wrong that her gay cousin, who has had the same partner since she was three years old, couldn’t get health insurance through that partner’s job.
The trickiest thing I learned was when to bite my tongue. The training on this point was excellent. Undecided voters clearly don’t think like me, and as I’ve said, it was important to establish something about how they DO think and address their concerns honestly and respectfully, no matter how totally silly they might seem. We sucked it up and said “gay marriage,” not “same-sex marriage,” because it was a more familiar phrase to most voters. If someone said they were worried that their kid would turn out to be gay, I didn’t try to persuade them that would actually be an OK thing – but instead to focus on the fact that this amendment really didn’t have anything to do with whether that was going to happen. This line of argument is right not only strategically but also in a very logical sense: I truly know very little about this person’s life, I don’t have time to learn very much about it, I don’t know their inner hopes and fears, and it’s plainly a lot more likely that I can persuade them in three or four minutes about how to cast their vote than I can about something they perceive as momentous, troubling, and personally fraught.
Even whether gays make good parents - as passionately as I feel about the matter – seemed like a less promising topic of discussion than the comparatively much easier-to-establish facts that gay parents exist and would be adversely affected by the amendment. If someone said they were worried that their kid would turn out to be gay, I did not I did not try to discuss my own interpretation of the Bible or the fact that Jesus didn’t say one word about gay marriage; rather, I tried to get the voter to understand, as quickly as possible, the fact that there were real people who would be hurt by this amendment. Only once, in a conversation in which I wasn’t getting anywhere, did I bring up with a voter the historical analogy of interracial marriage – and that one time, I immediately regretted it. He simply declared that banning interracial marriage was obviously wrong because racial discrimination is wrong – and the conversation reached a dead end with a thud. And he doubtless felt he had occupied the moral high ground.
When the question of children came up, I tried to steer the conversation away from abstractions. It’s good to talk about crisis situations that a family might actually face and how antigay amendments would affect them. In fact, I should say that I suspect that hospital visitation has become our single most effective selling point in part because of the way in which the cost of health care, both routine and emergency, looms as a major daily worry for Americans. The hospital setting “primes” the voter, to use a word I learned from my political scientist brother, to judge the issue in the context of their own feelings, such as (1) their own worries about how public policy might affect them in such a circumstance, and (2) the existing political discourse that constructs having to go to the hospital as a situation in which one is likely to encounter hostile, unreasonable, and cruel bureaucracies and policies.
-----
We need to find the people who “think we should have the rights” - a surprisingly large population - and show them why that means, among other things, the right to marry. It’s really a tragedy how ill-informed people are. For example, I talked to many people who were totally unaware that civil unions do not currently exist in Oregon - or if they know it, they don’t really think about the fact that that affects the daily lives of gay people in Oregon. They almost certainly don’t know that gay activists have been trying to get them passed by the legislature for thirty years without much prospect of success. Yet even those who know very little about gay politics, when pressed, often support civil unions for long-term couples – or what they tend to refer to, rather interestingly, as “the rights” (as in, “gay people should have all the rights, but . . .”). Along these lines, the No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign sent mailings that listed one hundred of the rights and responsibilities that, under Oregon law, hinge on being married. Many voters, asked for their thoughts on the issue, voice still more incoherent constructions, such as “I think they should be able to visit them if they’re in the hospital but I just don’t know about gay marriage.”
One 19-year-old who saw me canvassing rolled down his window and chatted with me about his ambivalence. Eventually he allowed as how passing an amendment like this one wasn’t going to stop people from being gay, and so it didn’t make any sense to pass it. I was a bit mystified by this logic, but it was logical and I said so, and thanked him for his vote. In African American neighborhoods in northeast Portland, I spoke to many friendly individuals and couples, including a woman who said her husband “wouldn’t be living here any more” if he were to vote yes, and a man who came to the door of his dilapidated house, clearly heard what I had to say, smiled, and said to me that he had already voted and that “We’re in synch. To each his own, right?”
Once, I started a shouting match between neighbors. A woman picking up her mail had volunteered that she was against gay adoption but for gay marriage, and then asked if I was gay. She said that she had considered the matter and was going to vote no. At this point her neighbor in a shady, rundown apartment complex, who had overheard us, said in a voice dripping with mockery, “My friend wants to marry his DOG!” I said, calmly and simply but firmly, that that was not what was not on the ballot. At this point, the woman– who had expressed only lukewarm interest in the whole matter – got totally animated and yelled at the guy: “That is just total crap! This has nothing to do with that! I’m voting no!” And, turning to me, “You have my vote!”
-----
The single most perplexing conversation I had was on Election Day, over the phone, with a voter in rural, eastern Oregon, who had completed her ballot the previous evening with her husband. After we talked about gay marriage and the legal precedent that a constitutional amendment sets, she told me she wished I had called the night before. She and her husband had both voted yes, her husband had gone out of town on business, and now their ballots were sealed and ready to be dropped off. She said that if she were voting now, she would vote No on Constitutional Amendment 36.
If the ballots hadn’t been sealed, she could have nullified her vote - only on this measure - by marking No as well as Yes. With the ballots sealed, though, I could only tell her that she had the option of visiting her county elections office. Under Oregon law, a voter who makes a mistake may go there and exchange her ballot for a fresh one. I went on Mapquest and got directions to the office in the county seat; it was perhaps a twenty-minute drive from her home. I called that county elections office to find out whether there was a line, and then called her back to let her know there was none at all. She said she would think about it. She really wasn’t sure. Eventually, I must have pressed a bit too hard, because she said, “You can call me twelve times today, and I still won’t be sure what I’ll do about it.” She said she hadn’t decided whether or not she would exchange her ballot, and clearly she wanted to make that decision on her own.
It was very difficult to give up on this voter, to trust her to make her own decision. Part of me wanted to drive two or three hours to visit her in person and persuade her why she should exchange her ballot and vote No on a fresh one. I have no idea whether she did it; I’m inclined to think she probably did not. Her vote wouldn’t have defeated the amendment. I do feel confident, though, that in the future she will weigh questions relating to gay rights differently than she did when she and her husband completed their ballots early this week.
-----
We lost. But in Multnomah County, which covers central Portland and whose commissioners decided last spring that it would violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection to continue to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, we won by a margin of two to one.
“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.”
--Barack Obama, Boston, July 27, 2004
Get on the phone - we want Arlen Specter as Senate Judiciary Committee chair
In 1991, after the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, I'd never have thought I'd want to help make Arlen Specter the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But I'd also never have thought I'd celebrate a landmark pro-gay ruling written by Anthony Kennedy.
We're not likely to win this one, but it's worth a shot.
-tim
***
JimberlyPickett@aol.com wrote:
From: JimberlyPickett@aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 07:49:49 EST
Subject: FRC goes BALLISTIC re: Specter's warning to Bush re: nominating pro-choicers
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
The Family Research Council is FREAKING out over Senator Arlen Specter's
warnings to Bush against nominating pro-life judges.... The following is an action
alert and a press release from the group. They encourage their members to
take action. I encourage you to take action as well. FRC wants their members to
contact Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Republican Committee Members. You
can too, and you should. They give you all the info you need in the alert
below. If you live in a state where one of the listed Senators is from, CALL! We
know FRC will have the phones ringing off the hook. Let's make sure our voices
are part of the cacaphony.
---jim
--------------------------------------------------------
Special Alert - Let the Battle Begin
To: Friends of Family Research Council
From: Tony Perkins, President
Date: November 4, 2004 - Thursday
Let the Battle Begin
In what has to be the height of arrogance and ingratitude,
Senator Arlen Specter, the man set to become the head of
the Judiciary Committee, warned President Bush against
nominating pro-life judges. This is after President Bush
campaigned for Sen. Specter over pro-life Pat Toomey and is
responsible for Specter's re-election to the Senate. While
the senator did vote for the confirmation of Clarence
Thomas, he has spent much of his public life fighting
against the confirmation of pro-life judges--including
leading the fight against Ronald Reagan's nominee to the
Supreme Court, Robert Bork. He has a history of pandering
to the aggressive abortion lobby, and a Specter
chairmanship would be disastrous. As chairman, he would
control the confirmation process of federal judges,
including nominees to the Supreme Court. He would also
determine the makeup of the Senate Judiciary Committee
staff, which would go a long way toward determining the
committee's political and judicial philosophy.
What is especially troubling about the Sen. Specter's
comments is that they come on the heels of an election that
overwhelmingly affirmed pro-life candidates and a
pro-family philosophy. With the addition of five new
pro-life senators, the Senate itself became significantly
more pro-life on Tuesday. Now is not the time to shrink
from the duty to protect the dignity of life and family.
President Bush has stated repeatedly throughout the months
leading up to the election his commitment to a culture of
life and his legacy will likely be defined in large part by
who he appoints to courts in the next four years.
Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist has affirmed his agreement
with the President time and again regarding his
understanding of the courts, the role of the Senate in the
confirmation process, and the dignity of life. Senator
Frist and the overwhelming majority of pro-life Republican
senators on the Judiciary Committee need to stand up for
the President and the American people and oppose the
Specter litmus test. Our pro-life President and his
colleagues in the Senate MUST NOT ALLOW Sen. Specter to
determine the makeup of our courts! Sen. Specter should
not become the next Judiciary Committee chairman.
Call Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Republican
Committee Members
through the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121:
Orrin Hatch
Chuck Grassley
Jon Kyl
Mike Dewine
Jeff Sessions
Lindsey Graham
Larry Craig
Additional Resources:
----------------------
Senate Judiciary Committee
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LK04K07&f=WA04K11&t=e
--------------------------------------------
View this Washington Update online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU04K05&f=WU04K05&t=e
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
View this Press Release online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PR04K04&f=PR04K04&t=e
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 4, 2004
CONTACT: Amber Hildebrand, (202) 393-2100
FRC: Specter Threatens the Appointment of Pro-Life Judges
Washington, D.C. - Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who is
presumed to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year
and who considers himself a "moderate", took no time in
warning the newly reelected President George W. Bush
against attempting nomination of pro-life justices. Family
Research Council president Tony Perkins released the
following statement:
"Senator Specter needs to realize that the victories the
Republican Party had on election night were due to the
Value Voters. A clear mandate has been sent to
Washington--appoint strict Constructionists who will
interpret law, not make it. The Value Voters, who gave the
Republican Party increased majorities in the House and
Senate, clearly affected the presidential race and are owed
judicial nominations that reflect their values:
traditional marriage, pro-life. I hope to see leadership
from the President in regards to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. He must represent the people who voted for him
by standing up to these warnings from Senator Specter.
"What is especially troubling about Sen. Specter's comments
is that they come on the heels of an election that
overwhelmingly affirmed pro-life candidates and with a
pro-family philosophy. With the addition of five new
pro-life senators, the Senate itself became significantly
more pro-life on Tuesday. Now is not the time to shrink
from the duty to protect the dignity of life and family.
President Bush has stated repeatedly throughout the months
leading up to the election his commitment to a culture of
life and his legacy will likely be defined in large part by
who he appoints to the courts in the next four years.
"President Bush could potentially appoint four new justices
to the nation's High Court over the next four years. FRC
hopes to see these nominees reflect the values of the Value
Voters of this election."
-30-
View this Press Release online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PR04K04&f=PR04K04&t=e
We're not likely to win this one, but it's worth a shot.
-tim
***
JimberlyPickett@aol.com wrote:
From: JimberlyPickett@aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 07:49:49 EST
Subject: FRC goes BALLISTIC re: Specter's warning to Bush re: nominating pro-choicers
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
The Family Research Council is FREAKING out over Senator Arlen Specter's
warnings to Bush against nominating pro-life judges.... The following is an action
alert and a press release from the group. They encourage their members to
take action. I encourage you to take action as well. FRC wants their members to
contact Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Republican Committee Members. You
can too, and you should. They give you all the info you need in the alert
below. If you live in a state where one of the listed Senators is from, CALL! We
know FRC will have the phones ringing off the hook. Let's make sure our voices
are part of the cacaphony.
---jim
--------------------------------------------------------
Special Alert - Let the Battle Begin
To: Friends of Family Research Council
From: Tony Perkins, President
Date: November 4, 2004 - Thursday
Let the Battle Begin
In what has to be the height of arrogance and ingratitude,
Senator Arlen Specter, the man set to become the head of
the Judiciary Committee, warned President Bush against
nominating pro-life judges. This is after President Bush
campaigned for Sen. Specter over pro-life Pat Toomey and is
responsible for Specter's re-election to the Senate. While
the senator did vote for the confirmation of Clarence
Thomas, he has spent much of his public life fighting
against the confirmation of pro-life judges--including
leading the fight against Ronald Reagan's nominee to the
Supreme Court, Robert Bork. He has a history of pandering
to the aggressive abortion lobby, and a Specter
chairmanship would be disastrous. As chairman, he would
control the confirmation process of federal judges,
including nominees to the Supreme Court. He would also
determine the makeup of the Senate Judiciary Committee
staff, which would go a long way toward determining the
committee's political and judicial philosophy.
What is especially troubling about the Sen. Specter's
comments is that they come on the heels of an election that
overwhelmingly affirmed pro-life candidates and a
pro-family philosophy. With the addition of five new
pro-life senators, the Senate itself became significantly
more pro-life on Tuesday. Now is not the time to shrink
from the duty to protect the dignity of life and family.
President Bush has stated repeatedly throughout the months
leading up to the election his commitment to a culture of
life and his legacy will likely be defined in large part by
who he appoints to courts in the next four years.
Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist has affirmed his agreement
with the President time and again regarding his
understanding of the courts, the role of the Senate in the
confirmation process, and the dignity of life. Senator
Frist and the overwhelming majority of pro-life Republican
senators on the Judiciary Committee need to stand up for
the President and the American people and oppose the
Specter litmus test. Our pro-life President and his
colleagues in the Senate MUST NOT ALLOW Sen. Specter to
determine the makeup of our courts! Sen. Specter should
not become the next Judiciary Committee chairman.
Call Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Republican
Committee Members
through the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121:
Orrin Hatch
Chuck Grassley
Jon Kyl
Mike Dewine
Jeff Sessions
Lindsey Graham
Larry Craig
Additional Resources:
----------------------
Senate Judiciary Committee
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LK04K07&f=WA04K11&t=e
--------------------------------------------
View this Washington Update online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU04K05&f=WU04K05&t=e
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
View this Press Release online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PR04K04&f=PR04K04&t=e
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 4, 2004
CONTACT: Amber Hildebrand, (202) 393-2100
FRC: Specter Threatens the Appointment of Pro-Life Judges
Washington, D.C. - Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who is
presumed to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year
and who considers himself a "moderate", took no time in
warning the newly reelected President George W. Bush
against attempting nomination of pro-life justices. Family
Research Council president Tony Perkins released the
following statement:
"Senator Specter needs to realize that the victories the
Republican Party had on election night were due to the
Value Voters. A clear mandate has been sent to
Washington--appoint strict Constructionists who will
interpret law, not make it. The Value Voters, who gave the
Republican Party increased majorities in the House and
Senate, clearly affected the presidential race and are owed
judicial nominations that reflect their values:
traditional marriage, pro-life. I hope to see leadership
from the President in regards to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. He must represent the people who voted for him
by standing up to these warnings from Senator Specter.
"What is especially troubling about Sen. Specter's comments
is that they come on the heels of an election that
overwhelmingly affirmed pro-life candidates and with a
pro-family philosophy. With the addition of five new
pro-life senators, the Senate itself became significantly
more pro-life on Tuesday. Now is not the time to shrink
from the duty to protect the dignity of life and family.
President Bush has stated repeatedly throughout the months
leading up to the election his commitment to a culture of
life and his legacy will likely be defined in large part by
who he appoints to the courts in the next four years.
"President Bush could potentially appoint four new justices
to the nation's High Court over the next four years. FRC
hopes to see these nominees reflect the values of the Value
Voters of this election."
-30-
View this Press Release online at:
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PR04K04&f=PR04K04&t=e
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
"We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States."
---Barack Obama, now Senator-elect from Illinois (who has announced that his top priority as America's most influential first-term Senator will be access to health insurance for poor people)
1) MY MORNING IN PORTLAND
I arrived at the airport this morning and an employee at the check-in desk (United - you know, one of the bankrupt ones) mentioned a vacation he plans on taking in six months, then added, "if I have a job then." The woman who checked my luggage said, "Please try to be optimistic. I have two kids to feed."
Then I bought coffee from a woman who asked how I was, and when I said I hadn't gotten much sleep, she said, "Yes, it was pretty awful, wasn't it."
Then watching John Edwards' concession speech on the airport TV, a flight attendant sitting next to me began crying and pretty soon she had tears streaming down her face. She got up and got some napkins, turned to me, and said, "I think I'm going to have to redo my makeup."
2) HOW TO REACT:
A friend of mine called today and left a really voicemail saying "Just calling to make sure you're not on the verge of suicide, to check in and shoot the shit...." I really appreciated it.
Novelist Rick Moody, on Salon:
Email from my brother:
3) HOW NOT TO REACT (?)
The New York Times has run a story called "A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America." I understand the feeling, and I experienced the phenomenon of collective grief in public places today, and I strongly identify with the 25-year-old barmaid's observation that she doesn't know anyone who voted for Bush. And yes, it's true that homosexuality was on the ballot in Ohio and abortion was on the ballot in Florida and this, as the CBC put it, "inspired many direct voting appeals from Catholic and Evangelical pulpits." And yes, I can't stand the way the declaration that the election was a referendum on "moral values," which is, as the Washington Post points out, "basically a code phrase for abortion and gays"?
And yet - and yet, there's something so wrong about this article, and so symptomatic about the state of progressive and liberal politics in America. What happened to class? What happened to corporate power? Why does this piece report exclusively on the views of professionials, teachers, and others in the college-educated, Salon-reading, latte-buying people? Why doesn't the Democratic party wake up to the fact that people in low-wage service-sector jobs can't simply be cast as nameless doormen who give consoling hugs? Why simply cave to the religious right's efforts to cast itself as representative of the heartland?
At the Kerry party at the Oregon Convention Center last night, someone literally said to me that only those in the elite should be allowed to vote, and then today at the Portland airport someone I got into a conversation with said that he thinks only people with college degrees should be allowed to vote. I am not making this up. And on Nov. 2, I heard a long story on "Marketplace" about how for the stake of our stock portfolios we really ought to hope, above all else, that a president is selected by the end of the night.
Honestly, I think part of why Barack Obama has inspired so many people and does represent the future of the Democratic party is that in such tense times he's in a very literal sense a uniter, not a divider. Let's remember the most brilliant oration of this year's Democratic National Convention: "The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States."
1) MY MORNING IN PORTLAND
I arrived at the airport this morning and an employee at the check-in desk (United - you know, one of the bankrupt ones) mentioned a vacation he plans on taking in six months, then added, "if I have a job then." The woman who checked my luggage said, "Please try to be optimistic. I have two kids to feed."
Then I bought coffee from a woman who asked how I was, and when I said I hadn't gotten much sleep, she said, "Yes, it was pretty awful, wasn't it."
Then watching John Edwards' concession speech on the airport TV, a flight attendant sitting next to me began crying and pretty soon she had tears streaming down her face. She got up and got some napkins, turned to me, and said, "I think I'm going to have to redo my makeup."
2) HOW TO REACT:
A friend of mine called today and left a really voicemail saying "Just calling to make sure you're not on the verge of suicide, to check in and shoot the shit...." I really appreciated it.
Novelist Rick Moody, on Salon:
Despair is OK for an afternoon, but it's important to remember: This is the most corrupt presidency in modern history. It's unlikely to improve. So there's lots to do.
Email from my brother:
"What a complete fucking disaster."
3) HOW NOT TO REACT (?)
The New York Times has run a story called "A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America." I understand the feeling, and I experienced the phenomenon of collective grief in public places today, and I strongly identify with the 25-year-old barmaid's observation that she doesn't know anyone who voted for Bush. And yes, it's true that homosexuality was on the ballot in Ohio and abortion was on the ballot in Florida and this, as the CBC put it, "inspired many direct voting appeals from Catholic and Evangelical pulpits." And yes, I can't stand the way the declaration that the election was a referendum on "moral values," which is, as the Washington Post points out, "basically a code phrase for abortion and gays"?
And yet - and yet, there's something so wrong about this article, and so symptomatic about the state of progressive and liberal politics in America. What happened to class? What happened to corporate power? Why does this piece report exclusively on the views of professionials, teachers, and others in the college-educated, Salon-reading, latte-buying people? Why doesn't the Democratic party wake up to the fact that people in low-wage service-sector jobs can't simply be cast as nameless doormen who give consoling hugs? Why simply cave to the religious right's efforts to cast itself as representative of the heartland?
At the Kerry party at the Oregon Convention Center last night, someone literally said to me that only those in the elite should be allowed to vote, and then today at the Portland airport someone I got into a conversation with said that he thinks only people with college degrees should be allowed to vote. I am not making this up. And on Nov. 2, I heard a long story on "Marketplace" about how for the stake of our stock portfolios we really ought to hope, above all else, that a president is selected by the end of the night.
Honestly, I think part of why Barack Obama has inspired so many people and does represent the future of the Democratic party is that in such tense times he's in a very literal sense a uniter, not a divider. Let's remember the most brilliant oration of this year's Democratic National Convention: "The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States."
Friday, October 22, 2004
Bush's new "wolves" ad
Check it out on the Bush front page. From the folks who brought you "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
It's mean to wolves. And it makes me think of Dick Cheney.
It's mean to wolves. And it makes me think of Dick Cheney.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Swift Yacht Vets
Go here and view "John Kerry & The Burning Question." It's amazing.
Also fun are the Swift Yacht Vets and Pleasure Captains for Truth.
Also fun are the Swift Yacht Vets and Pleasure Captains for Truth.
Thought of the day: on writing constitutions
"Men entrusted with the formation of civil constitutions should remember they are painting for eternity: that the smallest defect or redundancy in the system they frame may prove the destruction of millions."
- The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon or English Constitution, an anonymous Revolutionary pamphlet, Pennsylania, 1776, emphasis in original; quoted in Bernard Bailyen, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1967), 184
- The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon or English Constitution, an anonymous Revolutionary pamphlet, Pennsylania, 1776, emphasis in original; quoted in Bernard Bailyen, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1967), 184
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Polls, Manhunt, Oregon, my birthday, Gay.com, and wisdom
1) POLLS. While it's true that some polls put Bush eight points ahead of Kerry now while others show a dead heat, it's also the case that in the history of opinion polling, no incumbent presidential candidate has risen more than 1 percentage point in the final tally from his percentage in the last pre-election Gallup Poll, whereas challengers have typically received two or three points higher on election day than they did in the last poll. The conventional explanation for this phenomenon, among pollsters, is that those who remain undecided until the very last minute usually end up voting for the challenger. However, the demonstrably very high intensity of public interest in this year's presidential race introduces an unknown factor - as do the substantial spikes in registration and the massive get-out-the-vote organizations that each campaign has managed to organize. And while both parties accuse each other of election fraud and there's a decent chance this race, too, will end up in the Supreme Court, and although I sympathize with the bumper sticker that says VOTE FOR BUSH AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE TO VOTE AGAIN, it's also true that this race will see unprecedented election monitoring. In short, to a remarkable extent, pollsters must concede that in this race, all bets are off. (It's true that opinion polls are, in a sense, a political evil; they distract attention from issues and probably contribute to the commercialization of elections. At the same time, opinion polling as a routine component of presidential campaigns has been a part of American political culture for the entire lifespan of my mother and father. It's just gotten more intense in the past decade since the invention of cable news and the 24-hour news cycle.)
My own fervent hope is that the collection of evidence that bloggers are amassing that President Bush wore some kind of earpiece, connected to a mysterious bulging contraption on his back, during one or more presidential debates, and that perhaps this is not actually such an unusual condition for Dubya at his public appearances, will become a major scandal and consume days of TV time in the coming thirteen days. (The White House claims that it was merely a case of a poorly tailored suit. Decide for yourself! Just click here to view incriminating video, photos, and analyses.)
2) MANHUNT. This is the name of Bravo's new hot reality-TV concept, "the search for America's most gorgeous male model," which I was happily able to enjoy at the gym today, where they have cable TV. The premise of the show is that forty stunningly hot young men from all over America, most of whom have never modeled before in their life, are hand-picked and brought to LA to compete for a six-figure contract with a top New York modeling agency. In the everyday lives from which they were snatched, they worked at jobs ranging from "retail sales clerk" to "law student," "real estate agent" to "construction worker."
The show has two parts, really. In Part One, the viewer meets all of the models, who are individually and as a group that's being brought together at a five-star hotel in LA for potentially quite a few weeks of grueling competition with each other. You see scenes like all the models, gathered together and hot-looking, gawking at their host, the supermodel Carmen Electra. The announcer tells you that this is a totally amazing feeling for these guys, to be right there with her - you even get to see one most-goreous aspirant say to the narrator, as if in confession, that he had a poster of Carmen on his bedroom wall back home. You see a slideshow-style presentation of each model, in which the viewer sees a very hot shirtless photo of the model on one half of the screen while the other side shows a series of bullet points, like this:
Then you get to see a few seconds of footage of the model saying something short, witty, and coy. Like, "I've always wanted to just live my life the best I can and you know hopefully give something back." Or "I've never thought of myself as a model, I'm just a college student, I just hang out with my friends and try to remember to go to class."
Go check out the models yourself; you'll see that most of them are white and have buff biceps, pecs, and abs. All but one or two have naturally smooth or one-hundred-percent waxed-and-shaven chests. A couple of them appear to be Latino and have surnames like Rodriguez; one or two looks a little bit Asian or maybe Filipino-looking. Some of them are in school studying something like Marketing, some are real estate agents, and some are baristas. One 21-year-old guy works as a batboy for the Atlanta Braves. Some of them have girlfriends; one 31-year-old Mormon most-gorgeous-aspirant has four kids. Most of them say they played sports in high school or college. A couple of them earnestly confess, during their short, witty, and coy 10-second video clips, that life is all in God's hands or that Jesus is their to role model.
In one totally fascinating case, you see an incredibly hot, African American six-feet-tall 19-year-old named Ron, who has elaborately coiffed, nearly Afro-sized curly hair. Ron's web-dossier announces that, asked "What's the one product or item you can't live without?" he replied "My hairspray and blow dryer." Ron grew up in a "broken home" in small-town South Carolina. Determined to become a male model, he worked his way up, first moving to Myrtle Beach (where gays were more accepted and he thought he could work as a model), and then (when it turned out there was no modeling work in Myrtle Beach) to New York City. Today, he is concocting plans to take the male modeling industry by storm. Asked how he would describe himself, answers, "I would describe myself as America's best male model. He also says something like, "I'm the gay one. Those straight football players can bring their testosterone or whatever, but I've got my fashion sense, and I'm counting on that to carry me through." (You can check out other elements of Ron's dossier here.)
In Part Two, this steadily dwindling group of models appear in two alternating styles of scenes, consisting of (1) various mental and physical challenges (e.g., in the episode I watched, the thirty remaining men were taken off to a remote country road, ordered to strip, and then learn how to skydive and be videotaped before, during, and after); (2) the stunning, heart-pounding melodrama of one or two or three or four of the contestants suddenly being kicked off the show by a shady modeling-industry heavyweight who appears out of nowhere and announces that unfortunately some of them are going to have to leave. One of these industry heavyweights, for instance, is a gracefully-aging fortysomething model, who, we are told, has spent the past 25 years "appearing in all the major mass magazines including the cover of GQ." ("I'm like, I'm thinking, I've never seen you," one of the model-aspirants says.) He tells us, "In some modeling shoots, you overbook the shoot, you have thirty models show up and you gotta send four of them away." This is highly, highly gut-wrenching for the models, who say things like "John, that guy was totally one of the most promising guys here. I totally can't believe that he was picked to leave the show."
Manhunt has several interesting functions. One, it provides numerous opportunities for product placements. For instance, during the trip out to the skydiving facility, the home viewer gets to see the models in little groups from a camera implanted in one of five or six shiny, black Cadillac SUVs that drive down the streets as a motorcade while the gorgeous male models, bouncing at every pothole, make banter over the question, "Where, oh where, might they be taking us?!"
Two, Manhunt provides a kind of snapshot of a range of experiences of postindustrial America. Except that the range is confined to people who admit that, yes, they get lots of compliments on their gorgeous bodies, and who've agreed to put their entire lives on hold for an indeterminate length of time while they attempt, in vicious competition, to remain on the show as long as possible and thus obtain the more lucrative post-expulsion career possible - perhaps singing pop tunes that somebody else wrote for them, or selling exclusive excerpts from their life story to media outlets. Interestingly, I have a former female housemate who might be on a reality show. I actually shared for several months a rather intimate walk-through bedroom suite. She recently completed her JD at the U of C law school, and has been weighing a number of post-degree options, including nonprofit work; some slightly more remunerative work that she would allow herself to do just until she could pay off her loans; or, if it did come through, a legal reality show that's to be in production over a couple of months this fall. I actually haven't heard, since I moved out of the co-op, whether or not she's really truly going to be on the show. But she had somehow made it far enough in the audition process that she was being flown out to LA, which meant she really had quite a good shot at getting on. I remember she said that if this did come through, she was going to be doing it in the weeks right before the November election, and that that would be kind of weird.
3) OREGON. I myself am going to Oregon next week, to spend the last eight days before November 2 canvassing against that state's antigay state constitutional amendment as part of an NGLTF "National Action," going door-to-door furiously every day from 4pm to 11pm (plus optional morning, afternoon, or late-night shifts). I'll be staying in Portland and doing my campaigning in the suburbs. Although I've never been to Portland, I actually have not one but two friends there. I've had romantic/sexual tension with both of them at one time or another, and I dated one of them for a year and a half in college.
4) MY BIRTHDAY. I broke up with Martin, who Thom called my "latest boyfriend" not too long ago, in the middle of my birthday party. Kind of a weird weekend. I mean, I still had a good time at the party for the most part, but the next day was kind of horrible.
5) GAY.COM. This just in from the "Just How Creepy Is the Commercialization of Gay Identity Going to Get?" Department. Gay.com, which has been a cultural studies journal article waiting to happen since day one, and incidentally is how I met Martin, has a new front page in which they celebrate going public (ticker name: LGBT). This means that the company has become a publicly traded firm on the NASDAQ exchange. Two photos show a huge ad for PlanetOut (the "parent company," in the "family" that includes Gay.com) on the world's largest stationary video screen in Times Square, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony with a caption explaining that the website had "celebrating its coming out party today." A banner headline says "PlanetOut Goes Public. To our community and members, thank you for your support." I'm glad to see that gay liberation has progressed to the point where the phrase "coming out" can now be used, in witty unselfconscious ad copy, to mean "becoming a publicly traded corporation."
6) WISDOM. When you are trying to overcome a problem, sometimes the best thing to do is put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes you just need a lot of time to yourself.
Also: Don't let developments in the political life of your nation, however appalling, get in the way of living your life. At least up to a certain point.
My own fervent hope is that the collection of evidence that bloggers are amassing that President Bush wore some kind of earpiece, connected to a mysterious bulging contraption on his back, during one or more presidential debates, and that perhaps this is not actually such an unusual condition for Dubya at his public appearances, will become a major scandal and consume days of TV time in the coming thirteen days. (The White House claims that it was merely a case of a poorly tailored suit. Decide for yourself! Just click here to view incriminating video, photos, and analyses.)
2) MANHUNT. This is the name of Bravo's new hot reality-TV concept, "the search for America's most gorgeous male model," which I was happily able to enjoy at the gym today, where they have cable TV. The premise of the show is that forty stunningly hot young men from all over America, most of whom have never modeled before in their life, are hand-picked and brought to LA to compete for a six-figure contract with a top New York modeling agency. In the everyday lives from which they were snatched, they worked at jobs ranging from "retail sales clerk" to "law student," "real estate agent" to "construction worker."
The show has two parts, really. In Part One, the viewer meets all of the models, who are individually and as a group that's being brought together at a five-star hotel in LA for potentially quite a few weeks of grueling competition with each other. You see scenes like all the models, gathered together and hot-looking, gawking at their host, the supermodel Carmen Electra. The announcer tells you that this is a totally amazing feeling for these guys, to be right there with her - you even get to see one most-goreous aspirant say to the narrator, as if in confession, that he had a poster of Carmen on his bedroom wall back home. You see a slideshow-style presentation of each model, in which the viewer sees a very hot shirtless photo of the model on one half of the screen while the other side shows a series of bullet points, like this:
- Trevor, 22
- From: Sandy Springs, Utah
- Retail Sales Clerk
- Loves to be the center of attention
Then you get to see a few seconds of footage of the model saying something short, witty, and coy. Like, "I've always wanted to just live my life the best I can and you know hopefully give something back." Or "I've never thought of myself as a model, I'm just a college student, I just hang out with my friends and try to remember to go to class."
Go check out the models yourself; you'll see that most of them are white and have buff biceps, pecs, and abs. All but one or two have naturally smooth or one-hundred-percent waxed-and-shaven chests. A couple of them appear to be Latino and have surnames like Rodriguez; one or two looks a little bit Asian or maybe Filipino-looking. Some of them are in school studying something like Marketing, some are real estate agents, and some are baristas. One 21-year-old guy works as a batboy for the Atlanta Braves. Some of them have girlfriends; one 31-year-old Mormon most-gorgeous-aspirant has four kids. Most of them say they played sports in high school or college. A couple of them earnestly confess, during their short, witty, and coy 10-second video clips, that life is all in God's hands or that Jesus is their to role model.
In one totally fascinating case, you see an incredibly hot, African American six-feet-tall 19-year-old named Ron, who has elaborately coiffed, nearly Afro-sized curly hair. Ron's web-dossier announces that, asked "What's the one product or item you can't live without?" he replied "My hairspray and blow dryer." Ron grew up in a "broken home" in small-town South Carolina. Determined to become a male model, he worked his way up, first moving to Myrtle Beach (where gays were more accepted and he thought he could work as a model), and then (when it turned out there was no modeling work in Myrtle Beach) to New York City. Today, he is concocting plans to take the male modeling industry by storm. Asked how he would describe himself, answers, "I would describe myself as America's best male model. He also says something like, "I'm the gay one. Those straight football players can bring their testosterone or whatever, but I've got my fashion sense, and I'm counting on that to carry me through." (You can check out other elements of Ron's dossier here.)
In Part Two, this steadily dwindling group of models appear in two alternating styles of scenes, consisting of (1) various mental and physical challenges (e.g., in the episode I watched, the thirty remaining men were taken off to a remote country road, ordered to strip, and then learn how to skydive and be videotaped before, during, and after); (2) the stunning, heart-pounding melodrama of one or two or three or four of the contestants suddenly being kicked off the show by a shady modeling-industry heavyweight who appears out of nowhere and announces that unfortunately some of them are going to have to leave. One of these industry heavyweights, for instance, is a gracefully-aging fortysomething model, who, we are told, has spent the past 25 years "appearing in all the major mass magazines including the cover of GQ." ("I'm like, I'm thinking, I've never seen you," one of the model-aspirants says.) He tells us, "In some modeling shoots, you overbook the shoot, you have thirty models show up and you gotta send four of them away." This is highly, highly gut-wrenching for the models, who say things like "John, that guy was totally one of the most promising guys here. I totally can't believe that he was picked to leave the show."
Manhunt has several interesting functions. One, it provides numerous opportunities for product placements. For instance, during the trip out to the skydiving facility, the home viewer gets to see the models in little groups from a camera implanted in one of five or six shiny, black Cadillac SUVs that drive down the streets as a motorcade while the gorgeous male models, bouncing at every pothole, make banter over the question, "Where, oh where, might they be taking us?!"
Two, Manhunt provides a kind of snapshot of a range of experiences of postindustrial America. Except that the range is confined to people who admit that, yes, they get lots of compliments on their gorgeous bodies, and who've agreed to put their entire lives on hold for an indeterminate length of time while they attempt, in vicious competition, to remain on the show as long as possible and thus obtain the more lucrative post-expulsion career possible - perhaps singing pop tunes that somebody else wrote for them, or selling exclusive excerpts from their life story to media outlets. Interestingly, I have a former female housemate who might be on a reality show. I actually shared for several months a rather intimate walk-through bedroom suite. She recently completed her JD at the U of C law school, and has been weighing a number of post-degree options, including nonprofit work; some slightly more remunerative work that she would allow herself to do just until she could pay off her loans; or, if it did come through, a legal reality show that's to be in production over a couple of months this fall. I actually haven't heard, since I moved out of the co-op, whether or not she's really truly going to be on the show. But she had somehow made it far enough in the audition process that she was being flown out to LA, which meant she really had quite a good shot at getting on. I remember she said that if this did come through, she was going to be doing it in the weeks right before the November election, and that that would be kind of weird.
3) OREGON. I myself am going to Oregon next week, to spend the last eight days before November 2 canvassing against that state's antigay state constitutional amendment as part of an NGLTF "National Action," going door-to-door furiously every day from 4pm to 11pm (plus optional morning, afternoon, or late-night shifts). I'll be staying in Portland and doing my campaigning in the suburbs. Although I've never been to Portland, I actually have not one but two friends there. I've had romantic/sexual tension with both of them at one time or another, and I dated one of them for a year and a half in college.
4) MY BIRTHDAY. I broke up with Martin, who Thom called my "latest boyfriend" not too long ago, in the middle of my birthday party. Kind of a weird weekend. I mean, I still had a good time at the party for the most part, but the next day was kind of horrible.
5) GAY.COM. This just in from the "Just How Creepy Is the Commercialization of Gay Identity Going to Get?" Department. Gay.com, which has been a cultural studies journal article waiting to happen since day one, and incidentally is how I met Martin, has a new front page in which they celebrate going public (ticker name: LGBT). This means that the company has become a publicly traded firm on the NASDAQ exchange. Two photos show a huge ad for PlanetOut (the "parent company," in the "family" that includes Gay.com) on the world's largest stationary video screen in Times Square, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony with a caption explaining that the website had "celebrating its coming out party today." A banner headline says "PlanetOut Goes Public. To our community and members, thank you for your support." I'm glad to see that gay liberation has progressed to the point where the phrase "coming out" can now be used, in witty unselfconscious ad copy, to mean "becoming a publicly traded corporation."
6) WISDOM. When you are trying to overcome a problem, sometimes the best thing to do is put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes you just need a lot of time to yourself.
Also: Don't let developments in the political life of your nation, however appalling, get in the way of living your life. At least up to a certain point.
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