News from the left

Some of his supporters may not be disappointed at all. He did warn that he might not be able to achieve all his goals in one term. (And for most of his goals, that's a very good thing.) Still, this from today's Washington Times. Obama

will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say.

Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise. However, Mr. Obama first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus and then present legislation to Congress, the advisers said.

"I think 2009 is about foundation building and reaching consensus," said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The group supports military personnel targeted under the ban.

Mr. Sarvis told The Washington Times that he has held "informal discussions" with the Obama transition team on how the new president should proceed on the potentially explosive issue.

Lawrence Korb, an analyst at the Center for American Progress and an adviser to the Obama campaign, said the new administration should set up a Pentagon committee to make recommendations to Congress on a host of manpower issues, including the gay ban.

Apparently Obama remembers how Clinton got sandbagged on this one. But a lot has changed since then. It has been an extraordinary decade of progress in public acceptance of gays, with gay marriage, for example, going from a Falwellian horror fantasy to gin up donations for halting American moral decay to something courts are willing to grant as a right, and the voting public can get close to supporting when asked. And as the article mentions, "Today, gay activists cite national polls that show public sentiment, unlike in 1993, support removing the ban." See one such poll here, from early 2007, with 55 percent support for open gay service in the military.

I imagine if Obama makes this change cleanly at any time in his term, he'll be fondly remembered. Still, his apparent unwillingness to be bold on something he considers a matter of both justice and wise policy--and that he has clear political support on--should be disconcerting to his fans.

Mike Riggs on the disaster of "don't ask, don't tell" back in July.

[Hat tip: John Kluge]

In a settlement with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, the online dating service eHarmony, until now limited to heterosexuals, has agreed to start matching men with men and women with women. The deal resolves a complaint by a gay man who claimed that eHarmony's failure to accommodate homosexuals violated New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination. eHarmony's lawyer said it believed the complaint "resulted from an unfair characterization of our business" but settled because "litigation outcomes can be unpredictable." (Isn't that the main reason anyone settles a lawsuit?) The company's new service for gay singles, Compatiblepartners.net, may also resolve similar litigation in California.

I've never bought the argument that gay marriage—i.e., the government's evenhanded recognition of relationships between couples, without regard to sexual orientation—is a way of forcing "the gay agenda" onto people who object to it. But this coerced agreement, compelling a private business to provide a service it did not want to provide, certainly is. As Michelle Malkin notes, "this case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services."

eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren says the company has declined to serve the gay market because the compatibility research on which it relies to match people was done with heterosexuals and may not be applicable to same-sex couples. But even if he decided to focus on heterosexuals because he disapproves of homosexuality, that should be his right in a free society. Potential customers excluded or offended by that choice then would have a right to go elsewhere, instead of forcibly imposing their preferences. Likewise, competitors would be free to take advantage of eHarmony's perceived shortcomings, as they've been trying to do. Speaking of competitors, wouldn't the principle that justifies forcing eHarmony to match gay singles also require gay dating services to match heterosexuals and Jewish dating services to match Christians?

Katherine Mangu-Ward covered the controversy over eHarmony's "straights only" policy in the November 2007 issue of reason.

[Thanks to John Kluge for the tip.]

When reason.tv spoke with former FEC head Brad Smith earlier this year, he offered this through-the-looking-glass take on campaign finance requirements:

Imagine if George Bush were to announce here in the fading twilight of his presidency that in order to prevent terrorists from infiltrating American political parties and thus asserting control of American government, we needed to introduce the PATRIOT II Act. And the PATRIOT II Act would require citizens to report to the government their political activities. And the government would keep that in a database, which by the way they would then make available to private individuals like employers or maybe groups that might want to protest outside your home...

You know what, we have that law already, and it's called campaign finance, it's called the Federal Election Campaign Act. Which requires you to report to the government, or requires the campaigns to report to the government people who give them money and the government keeps that in a database, and they make that available, anybody can go online and look that stuff up on the Internet.

Ta Da! Meet Scott Eckern, the Mormon artistic director of the California Musical Theater (take a second to ponder that combo) was forced to resign yesterday after activists mining campaign donations publicized the fact that he had given money to the effort to ban gay marriage in California.

It is, of course, the perfect right of the theater to send him packing for any reason, and I personally think anyone who gives money to oppose gay marriage sucks nuts. 

But the whole episode is pretty unsavory. Eckern, who seems to have a decent relationship with his sister (a lesbian), and good relationships with his theater colleagues (lots of gay), was probably not spewing anti-gay bile at work. If he had been, it's hard to imagine he would have lasted for seven years in his current position.

Instead, Eckern's private, personal donation to a legal political cause he believes in was forced into the public eye by government-mandated disclosure. It seems unlikely that Eckern wanted the donation to be made public—he may not have even known that it would be. Though I hesitate to make this comparison for obviously reasons, Eckern was essentially outed by the state for his privately-held views. 

But wait, The New York Times says "the swift resignation was not met with cheers by those on either side." Whew. At least everyone realizes that this is a forced error, that everyone has been put into a terrible position by forces outside of their control.

Or not. Marc Shaiman, the Tony Award-winning composer, told the Times that the entire episode left him "'deeply troubled' because of the potential for backlash against gays who protested Mr. Eckern’s donation." [itals mine]

"It will not help our cause because we will be branded exactly as what we were trying to fight," said Mr. Shaiman, who is gay.

At worst, those who forced out Eckern are guilty of failing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps (as Shaiman can't quite bring himself to admit) a little hypocrisy. Imagine the situation reversed: A small non-profit that focuses on, say, education and happens to be culturally conservative, discovers that an employee has given money to protect gay marriage and fires him.

But the real culprit here is campaign finance laws. Not all political actions should be public actions, and this case illustrates why minorities of all kinds occasionally need privacy to be full participants in political life.

Singer Melissa Etheridge, a California resident who's in a now-non-legit relationship with a "lady friend" after the passing of the Golden State's Proposition 8 (which defined marriage as between one man and one woman), is taking her place in history alongside Lady Godiva, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and Wesley Snipes:

[My spouse] and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books....

Come to think of it, I should get a federal tax break too...

Whole thing here at the Daily Beast.

When it comes to celebrity tax protesters getting away with it, action hero (and cross-dressing star of To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything star) Snipes can tell you personally, "Always bet on black."

Others rebels are not so lucky.

It seems safe to say that the gay marriage movement is worse off now than it would have been if California's Supreme Court had not ruled last spring that the state constitution requires equal treatment of same-sex couples. In response to that decision, voters have, by a 52-to-48-percent margin, enshrined unequal treatment in the constitution instead. This is just the sort of outcome that critics of the decision who oppose discrimination in this area (including reason online contributor Steve Chapman) were worried about.

The Los Angeles Times says the passage of Proposition 8 "throw[s] into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months." But according to Berkeley law professor Joan Hollinger, quoted last summer in The Advocate, "Constitutional scholars agree that the amendment cannot be effective retroactively," since that would violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of state laws "impairing the obligation of contracts."

In May I criticized the constitutional reasoning underlying the California Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. Last month Terry Michael defended the legalization of gay marriage by the courts.

My policy disagreements with Obama aside, last night was of course a historic chapter in America's long and sordid history of race relations.  Unfortunately, another civil rights issue—gay marriage—went down to sweeping defeat.

I don't think the government should be in the business of giving its blessing to committed relationships of any kind.  But to confer preferred tax and right of contract status on straight marriages but not gay ones simply isn't consistent with the principle of equality under the law.

Sadly, that concept seems to be less clear to black Americans than it does to other races, even as the country today celebrates the symbolic achievement of electing America's first black president.

In California, the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage actually failed among white voters, 51-49.  It was the 70 percent support from black voters that put the measure over the top.

Florida's ban would have passed among white voters 60-40.  But it passed among blacks 71-29.

The exit polling data isn't yet ccomplete in Arizona, but that state's ban passed with 56 percent of the vote, but with 55 percent from white and Latino voters.  So it seems likely that blacks were more enthusiastic about banning gay marriage than other ethnicities in that state, too.

Kind of a sad irony if in helping achieve one civil rights milestone, last night's historical black turnout also helped perpetuate state-sanctioned discrimination against gay couples who wish to marry.

(*Headline explanation here.)

From the Wall Street Journal:

Early poll results Tuesday night showed California voters leaning toward overturning same-sex marriage in the state in a decision that could impact how the issue plays out elsewhere in the nation.

Approval of Proposition 8 would be a stunning upset in a $70-million campaign that just weeks ago looked to be running in favor of preserving gay marriage rights.

By 12:34 a.m. in California, 53.1% of voters favored passing Prop 8, as the measure is known, and 46.9% were against it, with 60% of precincts voting, according to the Secretary of State. However, both sides cautioned the vote could be very close and that it might still be early to declare a winner.

The passage of Prop 8, as it is known, would be a major victory for religious conservatives seeking to ban gay marriage in other states, and a crippling setback for the gay rights movement nationwide.

More here.

And just to throw more a wrench into things, the LA Times reports that whites opposed the initiative, blacks supported it, and latinos were split.

So is a new post-racial America one in which gays still get left at the altar? Oy.