Month: April 2006

… To watch South Park tonight. Till the very end of the episode.

"It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it,"  Newt Gingrich, yesterday.

The Pew survey that dissects both Democrats and Republicans into separate groups and polls them on different issues is a fascinating insight into our current politics. It divides Republicans into three groups: "Enterprisers", "Social Conservatives" and "Pro-Government Conservatives." (On that map, I’d be an "enterpriser.") On several issues – the role of government, the power of big business, government regulation, the environment, government’s moralizing role – enterprisers are alone, and in opposition to "social cons" and "pro-gov cons." But on immigration, the enterprisers and pro-gov cons agree with the proposition that "the growing number of newcomers from other countries strengthens American society." Enterprisers back this by a margin of 53 to 38 percent; pro-gov cons back it by an even bigger margin of 62 to 31 percent. But social conservatives believe that growing immigration "threatens traditional American customs and values" by a margin of 68 to 21 percent. If you think of the Bush-Rove years as an attempt to build up the pro-government and social conservatives against the enterprisers, then immigration is a big problem for them. It unravels the Rove coalition. The more heated the debate, the more the Republicans divide. The Democrats are divided too. But because they aren’t in power, the effect is more muted.

(Photo: Dave Einsel/Getty Images)

Israel gets singled out for discrimination. Tom Gross explains.

Here’s another reader confession:

"I am descended (as are thousands of other Americans) from an illegal immigrant named Moses Cleaveland. According to the family history, his activities on behalf of Mr. Cromwell made him unpopular with the authorities and he could not get permission to come to America. He stowed away on a ship. Moses Jr, who spelled his name slightly differently, founded the city of Cleveland, OH.  Another one of his descendants, Grover Cleveland, was President of the United States. I have a more recent ancestor that was forced into Napoleon’s army. He escaped illegally to America, and avoided dying like his friends in the invasion of Russia. A more upright and law-abiding family than the one he started could not be found.
Most of the illustrious Puritan ministers could not get permission to come. They bought tickets in other people’s names, traveled supposedly separately from their families, often with disguises. George Bush himself is descended from at least one of these illegal immigrants, as are most people with colonial New England ancestry.
Before we mistreat illegal aliens, we need to look in the mirror."

Ah, yes. And in the mirror, illegal immigration is closer than it sometimes appears.

On the other hand, when you have an institution that proudly declares it will expell any gay students, regardless of their abilities, then the government clearly shouldn’t be giving that college or institution any public funding. The University of the Cumberlands is asociated with the Southern Baptist Comnvention, a group that came into being in part to defend slavery as an integral part of Christianity. Its current discriminatory policies – this time against gays, not blacks – are a continuation of that Christianist tradition and form part of its distinct character. And if a private school wants to discriminate, I believe it should be free to do so. But it should not expect the broader public to subsidize it. The fact that it is receiving state subsidies while it discriminates is intolerable.

A new fight is breaking out – over Christianists’ right to express intolerance of homosexuals. Money quote from the L.A. Times:

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

There are important distinctions here, it seems to me. Anti-discrimination policies in hiring are so interwoven into the legal fabric that singling out gay people as uniqely ineligible for protection is invidious. You can object to such laws on broad libertarian grounds, as I do, but you can’t pick and choose who gets protected. Similarly, objecting to hate crime laws solely when it comes to protecting gays (Bush’s position) is bigoted on its face. Even if you argue – preposterously – that homosexual orientation is a choice, religious affiliations are also included in hate crime laws, and nothing is more of a choice, in legal terms, than faith. I’d also say that efforts to inform students of the existence and nature of homosexual peers is simply part of a good education. These efforts should never degenerate into advocacy for any political program. But teaching kids that gay kids exist, and deserve respect and dignity, seems to me to be not only legit, but important.

Still, I’m distressed at the attempts to squelch the free speech of bigots and sincere Christianists and Christians alike. Speech codes that inhibit Christianists or even Christians from arguing that they believe gay people should remain celibate or be "cured" are inimical to freedom. Similarly, laws and codes that violate bigots’ freedom of association are also deplorable. If Christianists are indeed prevented from speaking loudly and freely, then they are right to fight back. I’ll happily defend their freedom in this regard, because my opponents’ right to free speech is paramount – even if it amounts to arguing that I should have no civil rights at all. Their freedom of speech and association is mine. It is indissoluble.

Many of you have emailed me about the scripts reprinted below. They’re actually available in book form – and they’re immensely funny and smart. Here’s the Amazon link.

"We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart," – H. L. Mencken.

The new editor of "Out" magazine, Aaron Hicklin, is a straight guy. Money quote from the hetero:

"The gay community has always been at the forefront of defining pop culture and fashion, and never more so than today. While magazines like Details are gay only when it suits them, we are unequivocally gay and forward-looking."

What you mean "we", white man? Seriously, I think it’s great that a straight guy is now heading up a gay magazine. Integration is now the baseline from which many of us operate. Good for Out for being unafraid to pick talent over identity.