Gay Rights – Page 35 – Sheila Kennedy

The Kids Are All Right

Republican Presidential hopefuls keep playing to their (aging and shrinking) base.

Mike Huckabee recently said something to the effect that President Obama isn’t “really” American, because he wasn’t a Boy Scout with a father in Rotary. For his part, Newt Gingrich, that intrepid defender of traditional marriage, wants to impeach President Obama for his decision not to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in court. (Lest you question Gingrich’s commitment to “traditional” marriage, I would point out that he’s had three such marriages himself, and in each one, he dutifully behaved the way men “traditionally” behaved–at least in 19th Century France–by cheating on his wives.)

I hate to tell Newt this, but in the 21st Century, traditions are changing.

A new survey from Pew has confirmed what any objective observer can see: a continuing and rapid rise in support for same-sex marriage since 2009. Currently, 45% say they favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, while 46% are opposed. In Pew surveys conducted in 2010, 42% favored and 48% opposed gay marriage and in 2009, just 37% backed same-sex marriage while 54% were opposed.

And despite the current war on women being waged in Congress, Pew found that opinions about abortion have also liberalized. In 2009, for the first time in many years, the public was evenly divided over whether abortion should be legal or illegal in all or most cases. But support for legal abortion has recovered and now stands at 54%.

Independents have become more supportive of both gay marriage and legal abortion since 2009. Roughly half of independents (51%) now favor same-sex marriage, up from 37% in 2009. And 58% of independents say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 47% in Pew Research Center surveys two years ago.

When you look at the age breakdowns in these and other polls, you’re left with an inescapable conclusion: if we can just hang in there until the old farts in my age cohort die off, the kids will be all right.

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Kicking the Dog–Extended Version

Watching the Indiana legislature reminds me more than anything of those days—and we’ve all had them—when nothing has gone right at the office, we’ve made fools of ourselves in a meeting, and we’re just in a foul mood. So we go home and yell at our spouse, snap at our children and kick the dog.

Our lawmakers are faced with massive problems, not all of which they created themselves. We have horrendous budgetary and fiscal problems, fights over education policy are reaching the boiling point, the Chief Justice and the Governor have stressed the need to rethink incarceration policies, and notwithstanding the constant hype from state officials, Indiana’s job creation has been anemic (to put it mildly).

So our legislators are kicking the dog—in this case, gays and immigrants.

Not that Indiana’s legislature has ever distinguished itself in the “serious and responsible” category. (When the late Harrison Ullmann edited NUVO, he regularly referred to the General Assembly as The World’s Worst Legislature.) But this focus on gays and immigrants (more accurately, brown immigrants) is not only wrongheaded, it’s counterproductive. As the CEO of Cummins, Inc. wrote in this morning’s Indianapolis Star, Cummins has been a bright spot for employment in Indiana, creating jobs at a time when many employers have been cutting back. But much of their growth has depended upon international trade, and immigrant-bashing will hinder further job creation.

“We plan to add even more people given our ambitious plans for growth. These new jobs could be located in many places in the world; for us to add them in Indiana we must have an environment that is welcoming to all people and where diversity is valued and allowed to flourish.”

Cummins was one of the large Indiana employers who testified the last time the legislature tried to amend the Indiana constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. All of them made the same point: legislation bashing “the other” not only accomplishes nothing (immigration policy is a federal responsibility, and there is no same-sex marriage in Indiana), it inhibits job creation and economic development.

As I have previously noted, Indiana’s economic development policy has focused on recruiting and growing high-tech and biotech employers. Those tend to be companies that are gay-friendly, companies that also employ significant numbers of gays. Passing an anti-gay constitutional amendment sends, shall we say, a somewhat “mixed” message.

Leaders of Indiana’s religious and business communities have spoken out against these efforts to marginalize and disenfranchise. Editorial writers and lawyers have cautioned against the unanticipated consequences of the bills currently pending in the Indiana General Assembly. Administrators at institutions of higher education, including my own, have warned that these bills will make it difficult for our international students, and may jeopardize hard-won domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees.

All of these groups have warned that the risks of passing these measures are real, while the “benefits” are non-existent. The immigration bill violates federal law, and if passed, will be struck down, and as many of us have pointed out, the only way Indiana will ever get same-sex marriage is if the United States Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution requires it—and if that happens, a state constitutional provision won’t be enforceable anyway.

I hope some of our legislators are listening, but I doubt it. Kicking the dog doesn’t solve any of our problems, but it’s easier than dealing with fiscal and policy realities. And it evidently makes them feel better.

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Federalism & Hypocrisy

I see that Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller has filed a “friend of the court” brief, urging the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court decision invalidating the “Defense of Marriage Act.” The court held that marriage is a state issue over which the federal legislature lacks authority.

I would have expected Attorney General Zoeller to applaud that ruling—after all, he has argued strenuously against federal authority in a number of other situations. He has even insisted that the federal government lacks authority to interfere with state decisions about Medicare—a federal program. Apparently, it’s okay for the feds to dictate state policies when he agrees with those dictates.

Can we spell hypocrisy?

It isn’t as if there is imminent danger of same-sex marriages being recognized in Indiana. Our appellate court has ruled that there is no state constitutional right to such marriages, and Indiana law has its own “defense of marriage” provision which was unaffected by the ruling.

Of course, the absolute absence of gay marriage in Indiana hasn’t kept the current legislature from reviving a proposed state constitutional amendment explicitly banning same-sex marriage along with anything “substantially similar” (whatever that means). This looks a lot like Oklahoma’s effort to prevent its courts from applying Sharia law—something exactly none of them were doing. Oklahoma lawmakers wanted to signal their hostility to Muslims, and these Indiana lawmakers want to signal their hostility to gays.

The truth of the matter is that the only way Indiana will ever get same-sex marriage is if the United States Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution requires it—and if that happens, a state constitutional provision won’t be enforceable anyway. So reasonable people might wonder why our lawmakers are spending their time on nonexistent issues when we have so many real problems to address.

Continued tilting at this imaginary windmill wouldn’t much matter if it weren’t for the collateral damage the amendment would cause.

Indiana has been trying to recruit and grow high-tech employers—companies that are among the most gay-friendly, and that have significant numbers of gay employees. Passing an anti-gay constitutional amendment won’t exactly promote these economic development efforts. There’s also a concern that writing discrimination into the constitution—the first time a constitutional provision would be used to deny civil rights rather than expand them—sets a dangerous precedent. And far from “protecting” families, this measure’s vague language would make life more difficult for gay Hoosier families without in any way assisting heterosexual ones.

Efforts to improve the economy, grow jobs, streamline government and improve public education would actually help Hoosier families. But I suppose it is easier to pander to anti-gay sentiment than it is to improve life for all Indiana citizens.

On an unrelated note: This is my last column for the Indianapolis Star. I have deeply appreciated the comments and emails from readers over the years—pro and con—and invite those who wish to continue the conversation to do so at www.sheilakennedy.net.

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The Language of Crazy

For the past several months, in these and other columns, I have tried to explain (to myself as much as to my readers) the rising tide of anger and vitriol that seems to have engulfed our country.

I’m not naïve, and I’ve read enough history to know that we haven’t suddenly been uprooted from some past Garden of Eden. There have been plenty of other angry times in our nation’s history; the Civil War was the worst, but hardly the only example. In my own adult lifetime, Martin Luther King, JFK and his brother Bobby were all assassinated. The Sixties gave us the Weathermen and the Yippies, the Chicago police’s display of brutality at the Democratic National Convention, the Kent State massacre and the Watts riots. (It wasn’t all Woodstock and “Flowers in your hair.”) A complete list would fill this newspaper and then some.

But there was something really chilling about the news that an Arizona Congresswoman was shot through the head in an attack that killed several others—including a nine-year old child and a federal judge. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding a “Congress on the Corner” event at a local supermarket—one of those predictable, “keep in touch” “meet and greet” events that politicians routinely sponsor—when she and the others were gunned down in broad daylight. As I write this, the Congresswoman is in critical condition following brain surgery; her survival—and if she does survive, her condition—remains in doubt.

In the aftermath of this horrific episode, the national conversation has focused on whether the debased nature of our political rhetoric encouraged a mentally unstable person to take violent action.

Congresswoman Giffords was one of twenty Democrats who had been “targeted” during the off-year elections by Sarah Palin. Palin’s webpage had featured photos showing each of the twenty as seen through crosshairs on gun-sights. (Not surprisingly, Palin quickly removed the page, and scrubbed the inflammatory photos.) The language employed during the campaign by Representative Gifford’s Tea Party opponent was filled with gun imagery and dark allusions to “Second Amendment remedies.” And who among us did not see the earlier coverage of unhinged people brandishing guns and screaming obscenities at Town Hall meetings about health care reform?

For those who refuse to believe that language has consequences, think about the gay youngsters whose suicides have followed repeated taunts of “faggot,” and other homophobic slurs. Think about the generations of GLBT folks who stayed far back in the closet as a result of the constant, offhand dismissal of gays and lesbians as somehow less than human, less than “normal.”

I am not suggesting that intemperate language “created” this tragedy. There are plenty of other cultural culprits, beginning with the zealots who believe that any restriction of the right to carry a gun, no matter how reasonable, is part of a communist plot. Indeed, last year Jan Brewer, the intellectually-challenged Governor of Arizona, signed into law a bill that lifted all restrictions on the right of Arizona residents to carry concealed weapons. One of the restrictions eliminated by that measure was a requirement of a background check that might have kept a mentally troubled individual from carrying a handgun.

But while violent imagery and intemperate language don’t cause such acts, they absolutely do contribute to the creation of an environment within which the unthinkable becomes just another possibility, where violence becomes a viable option to be explored, and where grievance—real or imaginary—justifies barbarism.

When this sort of rhetoric is employed in the service of bigotry, and a seething, resentful anti-intellectualism, as it currently is, we should not be surprised when violence erupts.

It creates, as they say, a perfect storm.

Another Year

How does that old song go? “Another year older and deeper in debt”? That could be our new national anthem, since it captures both our moral and fiscal deficits.

As I write this, Senate Republicans have refused to allow a vote on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and prospects for bringing it back to the floor before the conclusion of the lame-duck session are iffy, at best. This intransigence has persisted despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense and most of the highest-ranking military officials have testified in favor of repeal, and despite the fact that polls show a sizeable majority of Americans in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

Before you shake your head about the persistence of homophobia, however, let me remind you that the gay community hasn’t been singled out. Senate Republicans have also refused, once again, to fund medical care for the brave men and women who were first responders on 9/11. I don’t use the word “hero” very often, but that’s what these firefighters, police officers and medics were. They braved the inferno that was the Twin Towers in order to rescue those inside, and they are now suffering from injuries and illnesses caused by that rescue operation.

The refusal to repeal DADT is excused by mumbling “unit cohesion.” The refusal to provide desperately-needed medical care to first responders has been justified by several Senators on the basis that the expense would add to the deficit. They have cited the same excuse for their refusal to extend unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who still cannot find work.

The elephant in this room filled with elephants is tax breaks for American families earning over 250,000 a year. As Obama correctly noted in a press conference where he tried to explain his capitulation on the issue, the Senate GOP was holding these measures—and many others—hostage to their insistence that the richest 2% of Americans retain the favorable tax rates they received from George W. Bush.

It is true that helping first responders and unemployed people would cost money. But extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will add billions more to the deficit than those measures would. Furthermore, unemployment benefits put dollars in the hands of people who immediately spend those dollars, and thus stimulate the economy. (People defend our historically low tax rates for the rich by claiming those dollars will be spent to create jobs; however, the evidence shows otherwise.)

So here we are, ending the first decade of the 21^st century facing moral and fiscal bankruptcy.

Our government is broken; it now takes sixty votes to get any measure through the U.S. Senate, making a mockery of democracy and majority rule, and allowing a cohesive and determined minority to hold the nation hostage to the demands of the greedy and privileged. The income gap between rich and poor is wider than it has been since the gilded age, and the strain that gap places on our civic fabric is immense.

This is the environment within which we enter the New Year, and this is the environment within which gay citizens must work to achieve equal rights. It isn’t just DADT repeal—history has plenty of examples of what happens to minority groups during periods of national upheaval and fiscal distress. When times are tough, people look around for someone to blame. In Germany, before WWII, it was the Jews. In the U.S. today, it is gays and immigrants.

People have asked me, over the years, why I advocate for equal rights for gays and lesbians. My answer has always been the same: I’m selfish. I want equality for myself, and I understand that only in a country where everyone is equal can anyone be equal. But the flip side of that is equally true. Gays and lesbians cannot achieve equality in an unequal and inequitable system. We are all in this together.

Happy New Year. I guess.