Will Portman, Matt Salmon, and Me

I fear it is a sign of advancing age that I can remember back to 1996 (and the preceding Dark Ages) when the debate over marriage equality began in earnest and only one Senator–Ron Wyden–openly spoke out in support.  Two others–Ted Kennedy and Carol Mosley-Braun–also supported marriage equality but in a more circumspect manner.  Of those original three, only Wyden still serves in the Senate.

Over the next fifteen years, support for same-sex marriage in the Senate grew slowly; before 2011 only 15 Senators, Democrats all, supported it, although LGBT activists suspected, as they did with President Obama, that many more Senators secretly supported the cause.  Understanding that a craven but Democrat-controlled Senate would be far more beneficial to the LGBT cause than a Republican-controlled Senate, LGBT organization chose not to rock the boat–often to the consternation of the larger and more impatient LGBT community.

In the past two years, and especially since last November, Senatorial support for marriage equality has exploded.  As of the time of this writing, 54 Senators–over half the Senate–support pro-marriage equality legislation.  This no doubt due to the confluence of several factors: (1) consistent polling data showing that a majority supports marriage equality; (2) President Obama’s high-profile endorsement of same-sex marriage and his subsequent reelection; (3) the embrace of marriage equality in the Democratic party platform; (4) the election of Tammy Baldwin the first openly gay Senator; and most importantly (5) the referendum victories in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.  From hereon in, for most Democratic Senators (and all future serious Democratic Presidential candidates) it is far more dangerous to oppose same-sex marriage than to support it.*

Surprisingly, of the 54 Senators who favor marriage equality, two are Republicans.  Mark Kirk of Illinois, whose prior voting record on gay rights issues included a vote against repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, issued a very simple but powerful statement: “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage.  Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most.  [Kirk recently recovered from a stroke.]  Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back–government has no place in the middle.”

Before Kirk announced his support though, Rob Portman of Ohio changed his mind to support same-sex marriage.  To say that his announcement was a great shock is an understatement; his voting record on LGBT rights was abysmal.  Portman, a candidate to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, announced his support for same-sex marriage in an editorial in which he explained how he came to that position.  Two years ago his son Will came out to him, and Rob Portman came to understand that by opposing marriage equality he was hurting his own son.

The response to Portman from the political right was–predictably enough–outrage.  The response from the left however, was more complicated.  Most of us celebrated Portman for his change of heart.  Disappointingly though, there was a lot of anger toward Portman coming from some influential corners.  Dan Savage, wrote that the true hero of the story was Will Portman, a correct enough statement, misguided in the implication that Rob Portman’s actions are somehow less than meaningful.  The argument of Portman critics such as Savage, Paul Krugman, and Matt Yglesias goes something like this:

Rob Portman, like most/all Republicans, lacks empathy.  He was able to comprehend the issues facing gay people only because his son is gay.  Therefore, if someone he loves doesn’t have that problem (such as poverty), Portman has no capacity for empathy.

I acknowledge a grain of truth to this criticism.  Will Portman will never suffer poverty or employment discrimination (the Senator still does not support ENDA), a benefit of being a Senator’s son who attends Yale.  Nevertheless, Savage, Krugman, and Yglesias are flat-out wrong.  Rob Portman changed his mind about marriage equality because someone he loves is gay, and that exemplifies exactly why the central message of the gay rights movement has been a call for gay people to come out.  Rob Portman should be celebrated; he is proof that we change our loved ones’ minds by coming out.

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Following Portman’s announcement, Representative Matthew J. Salmon (R-AZ) commented on television that he too had  gay son, but unlike Portman, he did not support marriage equality.  Claiming his son Matt was “by far one of the most important people in my life,” Congressman Salmon said, “I love him more than I can say.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect, it doesn’t mean that I don’t sympathize with some of the issues.  It just means I haven’t evolved** to that stage.”  Salmon’s statement set off a deserved wave of criticism, but one person who supported him was his son Matt.  (To avoid confusion, the father will be referred to as “Salmon” or as “the Congressman” and the son as “Matt”).

It is impossible to judge another man without walking a mile in his shoes; I acknowledge I do not know Matt’s journey.  I cannot judge him, especially about something as intimate as his relationship to his parents.  Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to watch his gut-wrenching “It Gets Better” (IGB) video, or read the often-harrowing Phoenix New Times account of Matt and his former partner Kent Flake, and not recoil in horror from the emotional hell his family created for him.

The gay activist and writer Michelangelo Signorile wrote a scathing indictment of Salmon who, along with his wife Nancy, was actively involved in the (failed) 2006 campaign to ban legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Arizona.  Nancy headed the campaign and involved Matt.  This is after he came out to her.  (He was in reparative therapy at the time, and he voted in favor of the ballot measure.)  In his IGB video, Matt said that his mother did not get involved in the later, successful 2008 ballot measure, so I suppose that is some progress.

Signorile is a loud, abrasive, and overly opinionated writer and activist.  In this instance however, he is absolutely correct.  The damage that the Salmons did and still do to their son is incalculable whether or not he admits it (whether or not he can admit it).  Signorile writes:

Those parents who do not move on the issue, who reject their children, either by literally throwing them out of their homes or by saying, “I love you, but I don’t accept your ‘lifestyle,’” are putting themselves above their children. For young people in that situation, living as second-class citizens in their own families and fooling themselves into thinking that their parents love them (because they so much want that love from their parents) while allowing their parents to quietly condemn them each and every day, even as they grow into adulthood, the rejection eats away at their self-esteem.

For whatever reason–politics, religion, old-fashioned bigotry–the Salmons do not fully embrace their son.  The Congressman may say that Matt is “by far one of the most important people in my life,” yet his actions show that Matt is not important enough.  If a parent loves his child unconditionally, then there are just some sacrifices the parent has to make.  Belief in one’s own self-righteousness is one of them.

Recently, Matt defended his father on a local Phoenix television station and again on CNN.  He insisted that his father loved him and was not an anti-gay bigot.***  These interviews however, are far from convincing.  Despite claiming that his relationship with his father was never stronger, the hurt, young man who nearly broke down into tears on his IGB video was very much apparent.  Matt tells us that his father loves him, but his answers to reporters’ questions show a contrary picture.  He neither defends (or even explains) his father’s homophobic votes in Congress nor disputes the image of his family from the Phoenix New Times article.  In the local television interview, Matt’s real revelations were (1) a near admission that he regrets that his dad is not like Rob Portman; and (2) the lowest point in his relationship with his father was when Matt left reparative therapy–which all reputable medical and mental health associations consider insidious and harmful junk science.  Worse, when asked if his parents would come to his (theoretical) wedding, Matt said, ”I’m not going to lay that burden on them, but I hope that they do.”  That is the response of something who doesn’t want to admit the real answer is no.  Watching Matt is like watching a helpless captive.  On CNN, Mat said that in order to get his parents to respect his views, he had to respect theirs.  No, no, no!  Their views are that he is less of a person and his love is less meaningful than theirs.  That is a view worth fighting not respecting.

I am sure Matt would not want me to pity him; most likely he would resent for doing so.  Yet after watching this interview, I feel nothing but the most profound pity for him.  He does not know unconditional love, and he is clearly not in a place where he is strong enough to cope without it.  Therefore, he lets his parents emotionally batter him, his father especially so.  Matt should never have appeared before the cameras; it was his father who dragged him into it.  By talking about Matt on national television, the Congressman turned his son into a shield against completely correct charges of homophobia.  He made Matt protect him rather than the other way around.

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Growing up gay in suburban Philadelphia was not as difficult as in some locations; I imagine I would have had a much more difficult time in places like rural Mississippi or inner-city Detroit.  Nevertheless, I did not escape unscathed.  I grew up in the era when AIDS was still “the gay cancer.”  The Defense of Marriage Act was passed and signed into law as I left high school for college.  I knew no openly gay adults, but I knew plenty of homophobes.  In those days I was in deep denial–praying every night for God to make me “normal.”  It didn’t work.

I came out at age 19, late by today’s standards but not so late in the mid-to-late 90′s.  Coming out was a traumatic experience, so much so that I could not even say “I’m gay” to the first person I told.  Being able to say the actual words for the first time happened days afterwards.  The next month I told my parents.  My father was surprised, but relatively supportive.  My mother was neither supportive nor surprised.  She told me she would never be able to reconcile herself to my being gay; a decade and a half later, she has kept her word.  We still speak, but her refusal to support me has damaged our relationship, probably irreparably.

I have a friend who recently married his long-time partner in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.  My friend’s parents knew his partner and treated him well.  When the wedding invitation arrived however, my friend’s parents wrote to him to tell him that they would not attend.  They said that although they tolerated his homosexuality, and felt they had been very good about doing so, approving of his marriage by attending was a bridge too far.  My friend was crushed by the knowledge that his parents refused to see his marriage as anything other than a “marriage.”  Their message was that they believed his relationship to be a camp spectacle–a parody of heterosexual love.  My friend stopped speaking to his parents.

I thought of my mother and my friend as I watched Matt’s interviews.  Whether Matt abandons his parents or stays but with the understanding of the limits of their love is not for anyone to judge.  Matt deserves sympathy, empathy, compassion and support.  I understand Matt Salmon’s pain because I wonder, as he must also, why I don’t deserve the love Rob Portman has for his son Will.

Footnotes:

*  I did not mention the House of Representatives, and with good reason.  Because there are 435 of them and because they represent ever-changing electoral districts, the number who support marriage equality is bound to be skewed by factors such as a redrawn (gerrymandered) Congressional map rather than a true representation of the nation.  What is important at the moment is that there are six open LGBT members of the House.

**  I hate when politicians who claim not to support same-sex marriage use the word “evolve.”  Evolution may be the slow process of adaptation to an environment, but in modern usage, to evolve to get to a more advanced (i.e. better) state of being–as in “we evolved from simple single-celled organisms to complex multicellular ones.”  Therefore, the word “evolve” actually denotes that supporting marriage equality is the morally correct position.  When President Obama said he was evolving, it was seen as a coded message, and it is now when Lisa Murkowski, the (Republican) Senator from Alaska says it.  This brings up the obvious question however: If you understand that supporting marriage equality is morally correct then why aren’t you already supporting it?

***  There are two conflated issues here that must be separated: (1) Congressman Salmon’s love for his son; and (2) Congressman Salmon’s alleged homophobia.  They are not mutually exclusive and should not be treated thus.  The Congressman may love his son more than anything in the world, but that is not a defense against blatant homophobic actions.  The entirety of the American LGBT populace suffers from his regressive votes in Congress, and that is not negated by a personal connection as Matt may want to believe.  One judges a person’s character by their actions far more than by their personal connections.

What’s Important

This year is the first that I have ever donated to a political cause, and it has been for the marriage equality campaigns in Maryland, Maine, Washington, and Minnesota. Obviously, marriage equality is extremely important to and personal for me, but it goes well beyond my own personal beliefs and wishes. Same-sex couples are routinely denied entitlements which heterosexual couples take for granted, including (but not limited to) hospital visitation, joint adoption of children, survivors’ benefits, and even simple recognition from one’s community. The equality laws in Maine, Maryland, and Washington guarantee that, at least at the state level, those benefits will be bestowed; the Minnesota amendment ensures that they will be denied.

For two years I lived in Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts, and during those two years I watched the struggle for marriage equality in that state very closely. I saw both the brightest side of humanity and the darkest. I also witnessed Mitt Romney’s craven and despicable actions. I will never forgive him for the evil that he did. He was defeated then, but this is the man who thinks he should be President.

The anti-equality forces are so desperately trying to portray their position as not bigoted, because they know they know that it is. Marriage, as the law defines it, is a governmental institution. Like it or not, agree or disagree with whether the state should be involved, that is the reality of the situation, full stop. Without laws guaranteeing marriage equality, unions between same-sex couples are permitted to be treated as inferior. The anti-equality forces may want to portray their opposition as something other than bigotry, but that is smoke and mirrors. Their opposition is prejudice, it is homophobia, and it is hatred. It is the doing of actual harm to people who have never harmed others only because of who they are.

If we truly believe that liberty and equality are virtue guaranteed to all souls, then there should be no question how to vote on marriage equality. I so want to believe that the better angels of our nature will finally win out.

Vote for equality in Maine, Maryland, and Washington. Vote against bigotry in Minnesota.

Yes it’s time, but it’s more than that. It’s time long overdue.

A Happy Anniversary

Written on May 17, 2012

Today marks the 8th anniversary of the first same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts which began on May 17, 2004.  I was there for those first ones.  It is one of my happiest memories, and I am truly proud to have been witness to that moment in history.

When the Supreme Judicial Court announced its trailblazing Goodridge decision near the end of 2003, it was like a bomb went off in the country; Massachusetts was ground zero.  Suddenly gay marriage was all over the newspapers and therefore at the forefront of both national and local political debate, not to mention dinner tables everywhere.  2004 would eventually have disastrous consequences in the national election for supporters of marriage equality and the nation at large–the nadir before the inevitable climb upward.  But that was still half a year away.  In Massachusetts however, immediately following Goodridge the tension was palpable.

Given how liberal Massachusetts seems to outsiders, and that in the in eight years since marriage equality is now entrenched, it is easy to forget that the LGBT community nearly lost the battle.  It was scary at times.  The invective tossed at the LGBT community by (1) then-Governor Mitt Romney; (2) the conservative Democrats and the Republicans in the Legislature; and (3) the usual homophobic hate groups was astounding in its blatant viciousness.  Add in certain segments of the media, the Catholic Church (embroiled in its child sex abuse scandal, yet showing off an audacity that comes with a self-imposed moral authority), and large swaths of the electorate, and it felt like the gay community was surviving a siege.  There were days when I could not turn on the television or read the newspaper for fear that I would start crying.

The Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge set a six month deadline for the Legislature to take action or else same-sex marriages would automatically begin.  The deadline date was May 17, 2004, a bit of symbolic timing.  I have no idea if the Court intentionally chose May 17, 2004 because it was the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, but I would like to think that the Justices knew and acted with that message in mind.

As May 17th approached, city halls around Massachusetts put out the word that they would not open early; no matter how momentous the occasion, it was business as usual.  The one exception, naturally, was the People’s Republic of Cambridge, which proclaimed that it would open up at midnight.  No one was going to out-progressive Cambridge.  On May 16th, I made the mistake of watching television, and the coverage of the political debate depressed me.  I wanted to hide in my room, but I thought to myself that I should go to Cambridge City Hall to bear witness and be a voice of support.  I felt it was the least I could do.  It did not cross my mind that other people would be there too.  After wavering back and forth a few times, around 10 at night, I took the T from my Brookline station into Cambridge.

In hindsight, I cannot believe how naive I was.  Thousands of people lined the street from Central Square to Harvard Square as Cambridge City Hall became the sight of the largest wedding party in Massachusetts.  This was about 10:30, and the crowd only increased as it got closer to midnight.  Somehow, despite the crowd, I ended up very near City Hall next to a man with a gigantic rainbow flag and a middle-aged, interracial, lesbian couple who complained that the only wedding song gay men knew was “Chapel of Love” (they were correct).

I texted two of my friends who lived in Cambridge and told them where I was.  Both of them, heterosexual men for the record, immediately left their home to join me.  One of them found me right away, but the other was missing in action for quite some time.  Thanks to the man with the gigantic rainbow flag and the magic of text messages, my missing friend was able to find us.

See, even though there were 10,000 happy, joyous celebrants, the loathsome members of the Fred Phelps clan oozed up to Cambridge to protest with their “God Hates Fags” shtick.  From atop the hill where I stood, we all noticed them, but rather than being the focus of ire, we saw them as ridiculous figures to be laughed at.  After all, there were about 50 of them and 10,000 of us.  And all 10,000 of us had better things to think about than their impotent rage and attention-seeking behavior.  My missing friend however, accidentally wandering into the Phelps protest thinking it was the celebrants.  “After all,” he said to me, “there were all these women holding hands.  What would you think?”  Bright boy that he is, he soon realized his mistake.

As midnight approached more and more videos cameras appeared from media outlets from all around the world.  Then in the distance, police officers in riot gear marched down Massachusetts Avenue.  They turned and walked up the stairs leading to City Hall.  “Wouldn’t it be awesome if they all went into City Hall and got married to each other?” my friend asked me.  Alas, they did not.  But they were the honor guard of sorts, lining the steps as those first same-sex couples went in.

One of the clerks came outside and said something about how people might want to go home because this would take a while.  “That’s okay,” shouted a man in the crowd, “we can wait.”  And then we sang yet another round of “Chapel of Love.”

When the first married couples finally came out they were pelted by showers of rice (and yes, “Chapel of Love” again).  I was standing at least six rows back from the City Hall stairs, and for the next two days I shed rice from my hair.

I did not get home until somewhere around 3 in the morning even though I had to work the next day.  Who wants to leave a party?

The next day was business as usual.  I walked to work, and made sure to pass Cambridge City Hall.  By this point town and city halls around the state had been performing marriages for four or five hours.  In Cambridge were a few supporters lying on the grass yelling congratulations at every gay or straight couple that left the building, but for the most part it was pretty quiet.  Nothing really to see.  The headline of Cambridge’s local newspaper read “The Sky Did Not Fall.”

The mundane morning may have actually been even more important (if less momentous) than the night before.  Nothing was out of the ordinary, indeed the sky had not fallen.  All that was different was that marriage was open to more loving couples.  As such, passing a constitutional amendment to prevent some of those couples from marrying would be more difficult.  It was because of this ordinariness (and the difficulties in getting the state constitution changed) that pro-equality forces eventually succeeded in beating back the proposed amendment.  Since that time, marriage equality has come to Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, Washington, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.  Maine and California had it and lost it (and will no doubt get it again).  There are encouraging signs in New Jersey, Hawaii, Illinois, and Rhode Island will join the club shortly.

In eight years that is an awful lot to be proud of.  And I saw the beginning.

Barack Obama And Marriage Equality

Yesterday, President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, the first time a sitting American President ever made such a declaration.  Historically, presidents have not been at the vanguard of the civil rights movements of their time; Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon Johnson are the major exceptions in American history.

The fact that Obama supports same-sex marriage was not much of a secret despite the fact that he claims this is a new position.  It’s not.  When first running for the Illinois state Senate back in the mid 1990′s, Obama filled out a questionnaire and averred to supporting same-sex marriage.  This was natural given the district he represented, and Obama himself is very much the type who would (and most likely does) have gay friends and acquaintances in his social circle.  But in 2004 when he ran for the US Senate, same-sex marriage was a very polarizing issue as the Karl Rove-led Bush campaign sailed to a second term on a wave of homophobia.  As a result, supporting marriage equality was a no-go for any serious Presidential candidate in 2008.

All the while, more and more Senators, led by the late, great Ted Kennedy, voiced their support for marriage equality.  Also since 2004, more states passed marriage equality laws (or civil unions bills) either through the legislature or through the courts.  LGBT activists became more daring, especially once Obama was elected, and the activists felt that, for the first time ever, they had an ally in the White House.

And the truth is that Obama is an ally.  The frustration that the LGBT community has had with him is somewhat unwarranted.  Yes, it took nearly three-and-a-half years to get him to voice his support for marriage equality, but in those years, he has done far more for the LGBT community than any President has ever done, both big and small.  Executive Orders may be within the purview of the President (and may be reversible by the next President), but no other President has used those Orders to help the LGBT community like Obama has.  He kept his promise to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and most significantly, the Obama Justice Department is no longer defending the Defense of Marriage Act, saying flat-out that it is unconstitutional.  The fact that such a large segment of the LGBT community refuses to recognize exactly what an ally we have is maddening at times.  Trust liberals to not take yes for an answer.

Which brings us to today’s announcement, which came during an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts.  From early this morning there had been rumors that Obama was going to announce his support for marriage equality, although no one could say for certain.  It just felt like now was the time it was going to happen.  We all expected the announcement would come in 2013, safely after the election.  According to some sources, it was intended to come before the Democratic National Convention.  Two things sped up the timing: (1) the passage of a horribly draconian North Carolina state constitutional amendment which severely punishes same-sex couples in that state; and (2) Joe Biden’s support for marriage equality, which he affirmed a few days ago on Meet the Press.  The latter especially ratcheted up the pressure on the White House from activists who could not understand the President’s reticence.

Despite the fact that in the past two years polls have found that the majority, or at least a plurality, of the country supports marriage equality, Obama’s announcement was not a no-risk gamble.  Yes, he will energize his base and his donors (particularly his very wealthy gay donors), but there are still significant risks.  Perhaps the biggest problem is that Obama risks alienating a substantial portion of his most loyal base: African-Americans.  As a bloc, African-Americans are very socially conservative, very church-centered, and tend to vote against gay rights.  (Important note: this is speaking in generalizations.  Not all African-Americans are homophobic, and many people in the LGBT community are themselves African-American.  Some of the most impassioned and beautiful speeches in favor of LGBT equality have come from African-American lawmakers.)  African-Americans were a large part of why Obama won so handily in 2008, and he will need their support again.  Unlike Latinos who support marriage equality in roughly the same numbers as the general population, African-Americans are a stubborn holdout.  Look, no Republican is going to win the African-American vote, especially against a black President, but the danger is that black voters will not turn out in significant enough numbers if they are too disenchanted with Obama.

Yet Obama has been needlessly equivocal.  Even today he was equivocal, parsing out that while he personally believes in same-sex marriage, he also believes it should be left up to the states to decide.  Some activists, most prominently Dan Savage, are calling him out on that.  Possibly correctly.  But they are also not looking beyond the words to the deeds.  Obama may be saying that he wants to let the states decide, but the actions of his government undercut that sentiment, nowhere more forcefully that in the DOJ’s DOMA position.  DOMA is all about state power, and the DOJ is saying that is unconstitutional.  Behind the  DOJ’s action is the message that marriage is a civil right that is being unfairly denied to same-sex couples.  So yes, what Obama said and what he is doing are at odds, but I trust the actions.  Obama’s presidency has at times been revolutionary, but only from a large picture perspective.  It’s been the same with gay rights, almost a pointillist approach; each step that he takes is just another dot in what is a grand masterpiece of making the LGBT community equal.

Which leaves us with the reactions from the peanut gallery.  Progressives are thrilled, pragmatists are scared, and the people who weren’t voting for Obama anyway are still not voting for him.  Fox of course had the classiest reaction.  Or no, I’m sorry, the opposite of class.  Tackiest, perhaps?

But we can’t forget the gay Republicans, who are gnashing their teeth in agony.  Obama has caused this brains to short-circuit.  The head of the Log Cabin Republicans released a statement that is just baffling in its stupidity.  GOProud then followed up with one of equal lunacy.  The basic gist of both statements is that: (1) Obama was disrespectful toward the same-sex couples of North Carolina by making this announcement so soon after they lost their amendment battle; and (2) he is following in the footsteps of Dick Cheney in supporting marriage equality.

Arguing with GOProud and the Log Cabins is a fool’s errand.  Their existence only proves that gays too can care more about money than principle.  But I do want to address both parts of their argument briefly.  (1) What is more disrespectful, announcing that you support marriage equality after the North Carolina defeat or that you oppose marriage equality as well as civil unions as their boy Mitt Romney did both before and after President’s announcement today?  I believe the latter.  (Also, Republicans are the ones responsible for the North Carolina amendment.  Just saying.)  (2)  Dick Cheney is hardly a leader in this issue.  When his influence may have done some good, like say when Bush the Younger tried to pass a constitutional amendment that would have banned all same-sex marriage in this country, he remained silent and implied that he did not support marriage equality despite the fact that his daughter is a lesbian.  Obama, is the President.  He is running for reelection.  He is not taking the easy way out of waiting until he is out of power and then talking about marriage equality from the safety of retirement.

What Obama did today is a small step, but it is an important one.  Every once in a while the arc of the moral universe does bend a little closer to justice.

New Hampshire And Same-Sex Marriage: The Times, They Are A Changin’

In the future, when historians of the LGBT rights movement write their books about American same-sex marriage, they will look to March 21, 2012 as the point of no return, the Gettysburg of the war over LGBT rights.  It was the day that the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted against repealing the state’s same-sex marriage law.

Not repealing a law may not seem like an astounding victory, especially when compared to how much effort it took to get the law enacted not quite three years ago—too-close-for-comfort passages in the New Hampshire House and Senate and then the uncertainty over whether (Democratic) Governor John Lynch would even sign it.  Unlike neighboring Vermont when it passed its same-sex marriage law, New Hampshire’s legislature did not have anywhere near enough votes to overcome a veto.  Lynch, despite a professed personal objection to same-sex marriage, relented and signed the bill into law.  On January 1, 2010, New Hampshire began sanctioning same-sex marriages, which replaced an earlier civil unions law.

Also in 2010, the American public overwhelmingly voted Republican in national and state elections, and New Hampshire’s legislature, which was majority Democrat, became overwhelmingly Republican–so much so that Republicans had enough votes to overcome any gubernatorial veto.  All eyes were fixed on New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage law.  Same-sex marriage advocates were particularly worried given that in the past two years voters in Maine and California took away marriage rights from gay and lesbian couples.  Losing New Hampshire would be extremely painful.  Maybe more so.

It is tempting to paint all of New England as bright azure on the political map, but that is not the case.  Political opinion in New England indeed skews Democrat, but New Hampshire is more purple than blue.  Fitting for a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” there is a very strong libertarian streak in the New Hampshire ethos.  There is a suspicion of big government (ironic given that the New Hampshire legislature, the General Court, is the second largest in the country behind Congress and the fourth largest English-speaking legislature in the world) but there is also a “live and let live” attitude.  In other words, New Hampshire libertarians are closer to true libertarianism rather than Ron Paul acolytes.  Paul is less a libertarian than an isolationist, social conservative who hates the Drug War and the Federal Reserve.  New Hampshire is many things, but Mississippi or Texas it is not.

As expected, there were indeed efforts in New Hampshire to strip same-sex couples of the right to marry.  At first the General Court did not want to take it up, and for a year they successfully avoided it.  But pressure from within (an effort spearheaded by Representative David Bates) and without (groups such as the National Organization for Marriage) eventually brought the issue to a boil.  Governor Lynch vowed to veto any attempt to repeal the same-sex marriage law.  Although the Republicans theoretically hold enough votes to override a veto, a good number of legislators from the very substantial libertarian wing of the party said they would vote against an override–enough of them stood up that proponents of repeal were positive they would not have enough votes to overcome the veto.

Rep. David Bates thought he found a solution, abolish same-sex marriage and in its place reinstate the old civil unions law.  All same-sex marriages would retroactively become civil unions (unlike in California where the marriages that took place prior to Prop 8 remained marriages), which in Bates’s mind, and the mind of some other legislators, was the same thing except for the word.  Abolishing all same-sex couples’ protection was so unlikely that even the bigots at NOM and the state’s branch of the Catholic Church backed the civil unions bill–something they never do.  To Bates and his allies putting forth civil unions was the only way to get the libertarians on his side.  There was some blowback; one Republican legislator, Seth Cohn, was so angry at the attempt to repeal same-sex marriage, that he proposed an amendment to the bill that would ban marriage between left-handed people.  I am not privy to the internal workings of the New Hampshire legislature or pro-marriage forces in New England, but my sense was that the general feeling was that passage of the repeal by the House was inevitable and the real battle would be to garner enough support to prevent an override of the veto–or in the longer term, if the override attempt failed this year, to ensure that the General Court would not be able to pass the bill under a future Republican governor who would sign it.

On March 21, 2012 though the House essentially ended the debate for good.  Not only did the repeal attempt fail, it failed by a substantial margin, 211 to 116.  There are only 103 Democrats in the House.  118 Republicans voted not to repeal the law.  In practical terms that means more Republicans voted against the repeal than for it.  When the law initially passed in 2009, only seven House Republicans voted in favor.

It is very easy for the LGBT community to tar Republicans as homophobic bigots, and this is in large part because the national Republican party does this to itself.  The GOP gladly aligned itself with the so-called Moral Majority in the 1970′s and 80′s, and today any person who seriously wishes to be considered for the Republican Presidential nomination must burnish impressive homophobic credentials.  Why else could Rick Santorum, who offers nothing but a vision for theocracy, do so well?  Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC donated $10,000 to NOM for its efforts to repeal Prop 8.  The homophobia has gotten worse since the Tea Party took over and the party has been steadily driving out anyone who is not ideologically “pure,” especially on matters of abortion and same-sex marriage (remember Dede Scozzafava?)  It’s the opposite side of the coin from the 1960′s and 70′s when the Southern Democrats, who were once part of the New Deal coalition, became Republicans following the passage of civil rights laws and the end of Jim Crow.  They have now driven out liberal and moderate Republicans with their intransigence.

That is why the victory in New Hampshire was so stunning.  It was Republicans who made a gay rights victory possible.  Not just a handful like in Washington, Maryland, or New York.  A majority of voting Republicans–well over 100–turned their backs on the homophobia in their party.  This is the first real indication that LGBT rights is transcending political party and becoming solely a matter of fundamental fairness and human dignity.

Again, New Hampshire is not Mississippi, and I do not expect to see a same-sex marriage bill come out of Jackson any time soon (let alone one with Republican votes), but this is the point of no return.  Some Republicans have started to realize that they can no longer stand athwart history and yell, “Stop.”  Because the Republicans now see their gay siblings, friends, cousins, parents, neighbors, children, grandchildren, coworkers, nieces, and nephews, they are finally able to start looking at the rest of us and see us as humans rather than sexual organs.  Because of that, they would not–could not–take rights away from us.

This is the momentum the LGBT rights movement needed.  There is so much work to be done and very quickly in time for November.  New Hampshire Republicans proved that the work is not in vain.

Ken Mehlman Regrets

Ken Mehlman, the formerly closeted, former head of the Republican National Committee, recently apologized for his role in the 2004 elections when the GOP, in order to reelect George W. Bush, turned same-sex marriage into a wedge issue and demonized the LGBT community.  As a result, nearly a dozen states passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.  The damage done from 2004 will take at least a generation to repair (barring an unlikely miracle from the Supreme Court).

Mehlman was Bush’s campaign manager at the time, which meant he was involved in this strategy at every stage even if he himself did not personally demonize anyone.

Only in song can I properly address Mehlman’s apology.

With apologies to Cole Porter

Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.
He is sorry to cause delay,
But two years ago dear Ken came out as gay, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

In two thousand and four, dear Ken worked for the GOP, Madam.
He knew that he had to win swing states in any way.
So he helped put out filthy lies
And made gays and lesbians into fall guys, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

Two years later the Dems took back power in Washington, Madam
Ken as RNC chief, took upon himself all the blame.
He retired to private life
And then realized he could never have a wife, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

Ken came out, and he vowed to atone and support the gays, Madam.
He raised money for AFER and made calls in New York State.
He says it’s for you and me.
He even got support from Dick Cheney, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

But dear Ken still supports anti-gay GOP candidates, Madam.
And Republicans try to take all of our rights away.
He raised money for John Boehner too.
Thus, that bastard Ken has penance yet to do, Madam.
Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

Ken Mehlman regrets he’s unable to brunch today.

9th Circuit Declares Prop 8 Unconstitutional

I.  Introduction

Today the 9th Circuit, that conservative boogeyman of liberal judicial activism, found Prop 8 to be unconstitutional.  If I may be so immodest, for some legal background about LGBT issues, I would urge you to check out my previous posts, here, here, and here.  Sorry for any redundancies.

II.  A [Very] Little History Which You Probably Already Know

In June 2008, the California Supreme Court issued a very long and beautiful (in a sense) opinion called In re Marriage Cases, which found that a state ban on same-sex marriages violated California’s state constitution.  The only way to overturn the opinion would have been to amend the state constitution, which California voters did via a ballot initiative called Proposition 8 (or Prop 8).  Between the California Supreme Court’s decision and the passage of Prop 8, California same-sex couples had an approximately three-month window to get married.  California already had a strong domestic partnership law which Prop 8 did not affect, and the core holding of In re Marriage Cases, that sexuality was a protected class subject to strict scrutiny review, is still valid to this day.  Nevertheless, Prop 8 was an awful, gut-churning defeat–an injury only compounded when Maine voters overturned their state’s same-sex marriage law the next year.

Following Prop 8, the LGBT rights movements of California were in chaos, in part because gay rights organizations have a surprisingly difficult time working together (there was much finger pointing over who dropped the ball with Prop 8), and in part because they lacked a strong leader and a clear strategy.  As a whole, they lacked a clear response to Prop 8.   The LGBT groups, with Equality California at the forefront, decided not to go back to the ballot box immediately, to the anger of many.  There was a half-hearted attempt to get the California Supreme Court (Strauss v. Horton) to overturn Prop 8 as unconstitutional.  By definition that was impossible.  The Court slapped the effort down, although it did hold that the marriages performed in the above-mentioned three-month window were still valid marriages and domestic partnerships.

The only real option to overturn Prop 8, a lawsuit in the federal courts, was the one option that the gay rights groups did not want to pursue.  Despite the fact that the Supreme Court had handed down such landmark LGBT rights opinions as Lawrence v. Texas (striking down sodomy laws) and Romer v. Evans (striking down a state constitutional amendment that banned LGBT protections), the general consensus was that the Supreme Court majority was too conservative and hostile to give its imprimatur to same-sex marriage.  That is why for years the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was never seriously challenged in federal court despite its blatant unconstitutionality.*

In May 2009, two couples, backed by the newly formed American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), filed suit in federal court to overturn Prop 8.  The suit was originally called Perry v. Schwarzenegger; following the most recent gubernatorial election it is now Perry v. Brown.  To the majority of gay rights groups and supporters this lawsuit was a catastrophic idea (see my first footnote), a feeling exacerbated by the fact that AFER’s attorney was Theodore Olson, the former Solicitor General for George W. Bush and Bush’s attorney during Bush v. Gore.  Olson, aware of the suspicion of him, brought in David Bois, his Bush v. Gore opponent, as co-counsel.  This did not alleviate the grumbling given that neither Olson nor Bois were involved in the LGBT rights movement before, but it was Olson and not groups like Equality California who reminded the nation “justice deferred is justice denied.”  And it was Olson and Bois who mercilessly tore apart any defense (and defenders) of Prop 8 at trial.  In one of life’s little ironies, the most forceful advocate and leader in the response to Prop 8 is a heterosexual, conservative Republican.

In the District (trial) Court, Olson and Bois won handily, aided by a state government (the nominal defendant) that opposed Prop 8 and a woefully weak case provided by the genuine Prop 8 defenders.  Additionally, both are brilliant attorneys who crafted a strong case that had the law on its side.  As it happened, the presiding judge, the now-retired Vaughn R. Walker, is a gay man.  I bring this up for two reasons: (1) after he retired and formally came out (Walker was openly gay but did not address questions about his sexuality until after he retired), the backers of Prop 8 tried to get his opinion discarded on the grounds that he had a vested interest in the decision; and (2) as a gay man, Walker probably thought a lot about the issue for years if not decades.

After Walker announced his decision in August 2010, a resounding victory for the plaintiffs, AFER, and the LGBT community, the opponents of Prop 8 appealed to the 9th Circuit.  Since the decision, there has been a gluttony of little back and forth procedural motions about video tapes, recusals, and who has the right to be a part of the lawsuit (the issue of “standing”) as well as a detour through the California Supreme Court for an advisory opinion. None of this is important for what I am writing about today, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

III.  The 9th Circuit Opinion

Today the 9th Circuit finally handed down its decision and upheld Judge Walker’s opinion.  You can read it for yourself here.  The 9th Circuit’s decision itself was very narrow; the court held that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, not because same-sex marriage is a fundamental right denied to a protected class, but because Prop 8 took away a previously existing right.  Using the Supreme Court’s decision Romer v. Evans as its analytical focus, the 9th Circuit found that Prop 8 was so blatantly discriminatory in its nature and so pervasively harmful, that there could be no motive for the law other than animus–an unacceptable rationale under Romer.

Amidst all the joy, here is what my fellow liberals and gay activists will not say: the 9th Circuit decision is not great in its legal reasoning and a very poor as a piece of legal craftsmanship.  It’s well-meaning but sloppy.  Worse, the opinion is glib (I particularly object to the Groucho Marx quote), and that is very disrespectful for an issue of such magnitude.  Given who the author is, I cannot say I am surprised.  Conservatives have long railed against Judge Stephen Reinhardt, and this opinion will not change their minds one bit.  Reinhardt will not care; he sees himself as the rearguard of the Warren Court’s judicial revolution.  In truth, Reinhardt is less a 9th Circuit William Brennan and more a liberal doppelgänger of Antonin Scalia–a cranky and abrasive loudmouth who prefers to wield his pen as a weapon rather than to use his acumen to shape the law.

To be fair to Reinhardt, the narrow construction of his opinion indicates that for once he actually cares what happens next.  Reinhardt could have written a much broader opinion holding that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under the Constitution.  It would have won plaudits from the left, opprobrium from the right, and immediate retaliation from the Supreme Court.  In most instances, Reinhardt would not care how the Supreme Court reacts; his overly broad opinions are his attacks on the increasing conservatism of the federal judiciary.  This time was different though; Reinhardt understood what was at stake and the dire consequences of overreaching.  Reinhardt may be a cranky, disgruntled coot, but he is also an unwavering ally of the LGBT community.  He knew there was no room for judicial grandstanding and tailored his opinion accordingly.  Perry only affects California and only because Prop 8 altered the state constitution to deprive a specific group (protected by California law) of a fundamental right that they had previously been granted.

Therefore, what troubles me most about today’s decision is not Reinhardt’s opinion but rather that the 9th Circuit panel was not unanimous; if it were unanimous, I would feel more secure about this case’s chances before the Supreme Court.  The 9th Circuit opinion was divided between two liberals and one conservative, and that presages a similar split among the Nine Justices where the balance between liberals and conservatives is less favorable.

I agree with the opinion of Towleroad’s Ari Ezra Waldman who wrote that today’s decision is “the most significant advancement in the fight for marriage equality in American history to date.”  And I agree with his analysis of the case.  Where I disagree with him is when he says that regardless of what happens next, the court “gave us a remarkable statement of gay rights, one that will have an enduring future regardless of the end result of Perry v. Brown.”  He’s wrong.  If the Supreme Court overturns the 9th Circuit, the most important judicial opinion in American gay legal history will be swept aside and have no more authority than a Paul Krugman op-ed.

IV.  The Perry Effect

The big question today is whether the Supreme Court Justices will take this case given how narrow it is and how risk averse they are.  Let me completely dispel any doubt: they will.

Perry, as Waldman correctly points out, is really a proxy fight for national same-sex marriage and LGBT equality.  Given how significant Perry is, narrowness be damned, the Supreme Court cannot dodge it.  With a slew of DOMA cases working their way through the federal courts (see my first footnote below) and more potential marriage equality cases like Perry on the horizon, the Justices are going to have to start making decisions whether they want to or not.  Off the top of my head, I can think of five states where Perry could very well have an impact in not-too-distant future.**

V.  Before the Supreme Court

No matter which side wins at the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy will write the opinion.  He is the so-called “swing vote” at the Court in cases which divide dogmatic liberals and conservatives, and he is in the perfect position to get an assignment that he no doubt craves (Kennedy has his eye firmly fixed on history).  If he sides with the four liberals, he is the most senior Justice and will decide who writes the opinion.  If he sides with the conservatives, no doubt Chief Justice John Roberts will assign him the opinion to keep his vote.  Truthfully, he is most qualified to write it; federal gay rights case-law is based around the jurisprudence of Anthony Kennedy.  It was he who penned the decisions in Romer and Lawrence, and no doubt briefs on both sides will copiously quote his opinions.  (The reason the 9th Circuit’s analysis was almost completely based on Romer is because Reinhardt is trying to send Kennedy a message.)

Because of his central position in gay rights cases, it is also Kennedy’s fault that there is so little clear guidance.  As revered as Lawrence is, that most sacred of sacred cows actually produces very little milk.  Lawrence (to the consternation of Rick Santorum) told gay people, “You have the right to exist.”  Beyond that message and the opinion’s central holding–that consensual homosexual sex is protected by the Constitution–Lawrence actually says very little.

Had the Lawrence Court’s majority wanted to make a stronger statement about gay rights, then Sandra Day O’Connor’s concurrence, which relied on an Equal Protection argument and was a more favorable opinion in the long run, would have carried the day.  Her concurrence offered a much clearer blueprint for the LGBT rights movement even though in her opinion, O’Connor (as was her wont) was noncommittal about the ramifications.  Nevertheless, it was Kennedy’s opinion that garnered the majority, and since Lawrence, courts around the country, both at the federal and state level, have split on how to interpret their own cases in light of Lawrence.  Is it a limited opinion based around privacy laws or is it a really an Equal Protection opinion in disguise?

It should be noted that even if the Supreme Court upholds today’s decision, the Justices can still continue to dodge the Equal Protection issue.  One should not be surprised if that does turn out to be the case.  Regardless, even a tepid Supreme Court opinion in Perry will offer clearer guidance than Lawrence.  Eventually as the cases keep coming–and they will–the Supreme Court will no longer be able to dodge the real issues.  That day is coming soon; let’s hope the majority is on our side.

Footnotes:

* The first real attacks on DOMA are now working their way through the federal courts.  The main cases are not challenging the core of DOMA–that states do not have to recognize legally valid civil unions or same-sex marriages performed in other states.  Rather they are challenging Section 3, which permits the federal government to ignore state-sanctified civil unions and same-sex marriages.  These DOMA suits are gateway lawsuits; because the case for Section 3′s unconstitutionality is so strong, this is an easier lawsuit to bring with the expectation of winning.  The strategy behind these lawsuits is that a victory in Section 3 cases will allow for cracks in DOMA and favorable precedent from the Supreme Court.  The next step would be to invalidate the rest of DOMA and then individual state laws modeled on DOMA using that favorable precedent.  After that, and only after that, could there be a direct federal challenge to state statutes and constitutional amendments explicitly banning same-sex marriage.  This is why the Prop 8 case was so threatening to LGBT rights groups; it put the cart before the horse in terms of legal strategy by forcing the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of same-sex marriage before the appropriate legal groundwork was laid.

**  First, in Maine, GLAD and other equality supporters are trying to get marriage equality back on the ballot.  Should their attempts fail, then they have (non-binding) precedent should they go to court to overturn the 2009 referendum.  Second, the current New Hampshire legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, and a sizable faction wants to overturn the state’s marriage equality law.  Right now there does not seem to be enough support to overturn a promised veto from Governor John Lynch, but if the legislature stays Republican and the next governor is also a Republican, then it is entirely likely that the same-sex marriage law could be overturned.  Third, Washington state is on the verge of passing marriage equality.  The state Senate passed the law, the House will do so tomorrow or thereabouts, and Governor Christine Gregoire promised to sign it into law.  Like Maine and California, Washington has a referendum process.  Given that Washington is in the 9th Circuit, if the law is overturned at the ballot box, then it is virtually certain that the 9th Circuit will overturn it under Perry.  Fourth, marriage equality may or may not pass this time in Maryland.  If it does, Maryland also has a referendum process.  Fifth, the Hawaii Supreme Court was the first state court to find that its state constitution prohibited marriage discrimination.  That decision was overturned by constitutional amendment.

Even if the Supreme Court upholds Perry, any good lawyer can find distinctions with the potential cases in the above mentioned states based on the factual and legal distinctions.  Nevertheless, the odds are that if the Supreme Court upholds Perry, then victory in these other five states is almost assured should the need arise.

Prop 8 Struck Down

In the 9th Circuit, which means a showdown at the Supreme Court.  I’ll write more after I read the opinion, and believe you me, I have much to say.

The Revolution Is Televised

(An apology.  WordPress is messing with my formatting and my paragraphs all merge together no matter what I do.  I am truly sorry about that, and when I learn how to fix it, I will do so.)

A good rule of thumb: when the cast and crew of a television show have to tell you how groundbreaking their program is, it usually isn’t.

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To my mind there have been only two shows that completely revolutionized American television: All in the Family and The Simpsons.  Throughout the history of television, there have been quality shows, influential shows, and even groundbreaking shows.  What makes a revolutionary television show though is that it changes the way television is watched, and more importantly, it changes the societal dialogue.  It’s a tough standard that even the greatest shows on television cannot achieve.

Before All in the Family, American television was fairly quaint in the model of I Love Lucy, the grandmother of all situation comedies.  In retrospect, I Love Lucy was both conformist and groundbreaking at the same time.  Despite the fact that Lucille Ball–and Lucy Ricardo–was the star of the show, ensconced gender roles of the times were unquestionably affirmed–Ricky was the dominant force of the household; in one episode he even spanked Lucy (the first time I saw it, I wanted her to slap him across the face.)  The most compelling relationship of the show though was Lucy and her best pal Ethel, a genius comedy pairing between two women, often imitated but never equalled until their true successors came along in Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone.  After Lucy, television shows progressed but only barely.  Throughout the next decade, sitcoms, even the most funny and intelligent programs such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, maintained the status quo rather than push against it.  Few shows were even as daring as Lucy, with a marriage between American Lucy and Cuban Ricky.*  (Lucy was revolutionary in a more technical way;  the show was a pioneer in the three-camera with live audience format, and singlehandedly developed the rerun and syndication.)

Then came All in the Family.  All in the Family was a zeitgeist, a televised distillation into narrative form of the national debates about gender, religion, sexuality, class, education, politics, and above all race.  Moreover, All in the Family was a weekly morality play, full of unresolved tensions and ambivalent resolutions.   Nothing like it had ever been seen on American sets before, and afterwards any preconceptions of television’s innocence were forever swept away.  Perhaps it is unsurprising that All in the Family was based on an earlier hit British show Till Death Do Us Part.  A show so different could not spring up organically; it had to be imported.

All in the Family introduced television’s most indelible character–Archie Bunker.  Archie is famously and repeatedly described as a “lovable bigot,” but that description entirely misses the point.  Archie is the embodiment of the white, blue-collar worker who in the 60′s and 70′s watched the world around him change.  He does not and cannot understand those changes, so he retreats into anger.  But Archie does not hate; he fears.  In each episode that fear is abrasively confronted by his son-in-law, the liberal, educated, and unemployed Mike Stivic.  Archie is no saint (the saint of All in the Family is his long-suffering wife Edith), but Mike is no hero, despite the fact that he is the mouthpiece of show creator Norman Lear and, ironically, Carroll O’Connor, the actor who brought Archie to life.  The show empathizes with all of its characters, and that is why it was and is so wildly popular.

After All in the Family, no subject (or almost none) was taboo.  If a show did not embrace All in the Family in some way, then it risked irrelevance.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

If I Love Lucy was the grandmother of sitcoms, and All in the Family parented a new era in television, then The Simpsons was the inevitable scion.  Now that the show has been on the air for over two decades(!), and the quality has dipped to a level that renders the show nearly unwatchable, it is easy to forget how powerful and intelligent the earlier seasons of the show actually were.  The Simpsons began life as animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show where both Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner were cast members.

From a purely simplistic level, The Simpsons is a crudely drawn animated show that parodied the typical sitcom family.  That is certainly how George H.W. Bush saw the show when he infamously declared that American families needed to be “a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.”  (Bart’s reply: “Hey, we’re like just like the Waltons.  We’re praying for an end to the Depression too.”)  Unsurprisingly, Bush completely missed the point of the show.  The Simpsons were not the anti-Waltons (or, more accurately for the time, the anti-Cosbys), a family that reveled in its low-class horribleness like their network neighbors the Bundys; rather the show was a razor-sharp satire of American life, full of both highly intelligent and broadly comedic references.  A British Literature professor of mine once said that The Simpsons (at least the first eight or so seasons) was the closest American culture has ever come to producing its own Shakespeare.

It may sound pompous (and my professor was nothing if not pompous), but he was also correct.  Take for example my favorite episode, A Streetcar Named Marge.  The premise was one that the show used before and would use so many times again; Marge, crushed by the weight of caring for her thankless family, channels her energy elsewhere–in this case a community theater production of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire.  Except for the fact that the production she’s in is a musical version called “O, Streetcar” complete with ridiculous songs and over-the-top stagecraft (Blanche DuBois’s descent into madness is represented by her flying around the stage on wires).  In addition to skewering community theater, the episode also references Ayn Rand, The Great Escape, Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock movies, musicals, and one, of course, of the greatest plays in the American repertoire.  Nevertheless, what holds the episode together is the emotional core the writers create by paralleling Marge’s life with Blanche’s (complete with Homer screaming “MAAAARGE! at the top of his lungs), but still giving Marge a happy ending.

An animated cartoon seems an unlikely influence for live action television, yet The Simpsons has had more of an impact on television than any show since All in the Family.  The best shows post-Simpsons are those that abandoned the three camera set and the live audience in order to adopt The Simpsons‘ razor-sharp wit, multi-dimensional gags, and manic energy that the old format could not hold.  These shows learned from The Simpsons that it is okay to trust an audience, a lesson made easier by advent of the DVD.  Multiple viewings reward the audience with a fuller understanding of complicated gags.  It’s a respect that these shows’ writers have for their audiences; this is not the hand-holding of mediocre fluff such as Friends or Everybody Loves Raymond.

The best of this new wave of shows is the short-lived, much-loved Arrested Development.  Arrested Development, in its all-too-brief life, may well be the funniest television program ever.  The reason for the show’s success is not only the mixture of highbrow and lowbrow humor; rather it was the show’s foresight in creating a strong emotional core based around lovable characters who in the real world would be absolutely intolerable.  We care about the Bluth family against our better judgment.

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In contrast to actual revolutionary shows are those shows which pat themselves on the back for being revolutionary but aren’t.  Unfortunately it seems that the shows that trumpet the loudest are those that feature LGBT themes and characters front and center.  Four shows in particular come to mind: Glee, The L-Word, Will & Grace, and the American version of Queer as Folk.  Queer as Folk was especially egregious, airing a special prior to the series premier asking the question “Is America ready for Queer as Folk?”  The implication was that QAF was something completely revolutionary, when in truth it was merely a campy and poorly written soap opera that had copious male nudity.  That fact that these shows were (and are) so well-regarded in the gay community is a tragic sign that there is so little good gay programming.

Perhaps I have been spoiled because I saw a gay-themed show that actually was groundbreaking, and that was the original, British Queer as Folk.  Much ink has been spilled about the show, but there were some very good reasons why the British Queer as Folk was so wonderful despite (or because of) its short life.  It was a well-written, well-plotted, and well-acted show with great characters, realistic stories, and an unapologetic outlook.  Compare that to the show’s American recreation, in which all the characters were in some way manifestations of the creators’ politics and beliefs.  I would say that the American version’s writers put the accent on the wrong syllable, but we are not even talking about the same paragraph let alone the same word.

Will & Grace though earns a special place in Hell.  For all its plaudits, the Emperor has no clothes. I often wondered if the revulsion I felt was anything akin to what African-Americans felt watching Amos ‘n’ Andy.  Will & Grace was bleached of any potential same-sex passion in order to sell “tolerance,” i.e.,  make it palatable to the wider (straight) audience.**  What makes Will & Grace even more grating is that it takes credit for a revolution that it did not earn.  Since Will & Grace first aired, there has been tremendous progress for gay rights, and no doubt the show’s creators believe they are owed credit for changed attitudes about gays and lesbians.  They aren’t.  The progress that was made came as a result of societal change that coincided at the same time as Will & Grace, not because of it.  This was no All in the Family, a show that held a mirror up to American society.  Will & Grace was conciliatory; it lacked All in the Family‘s ambition to confront.

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In the Jan. 2, 2012 edition of The New Yorker, television critic Emily Nussbaum praised a new web-only show called Husbands.  The show was written by Jane Espenson, whose writing credits include, among other shows, the great fantasy series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  There are 11 episodes of Husbands, only a few minutes each.  The show’s conceit is that on the night same-sex marriage is made legal, an openly gay Kardashian-like celebrity drunkenly marries an openly gay professional baseball star (yes, it is pure fantasy) after a night of drunken revelry.  Despite regretting their actions the next morning, the couple, in order to show the world that gays are not taking the institution of marriage lightly, decide to try to make their union work.***

It is easy to criticize, and I don’t actually enjoy doing it.  Criticism is the tearing down of a structure that takes effort to build.  Although some things deserve it (anything Michael Bay touches for example), I feel regret for saying anything negative about such effort, even though I am secure in the knowledge that none of the people I criticize will ever know this blog exists.

For that reason, I feel uneasy about my strong dislike for Husbands.  The people behind the show believe in what they are doing.  Nevertheless, that does not mean I think the show is quality or that I believe Nussbaum is correct (I don’t and she isn’t).  It would be easy enough to ignore a series that only exists on the Internet, but then I heard the creators of the show talk about how nothing like their show had been done before (a romantic comedy sitcom based around two men!)

Husbands suffers from the soft bigotry of low expectations.  Not societal expectations, its own.  The creators openly admire and emulate mediocrity like Mad About You and Dharma and Greg.  Worse, the director is a veteran writer/producer from Will & Grace, a show whose ethos infects every pore of Husbands.  The show models its cheap-joke dialogue and faux-emotional plots after these shows; I know the places I was supposed to laugh because those were the places where I cringed the most.  You can practically hear the canned laughter.

Besides mediocrity, the other major legacy from Will & Grace is the Husbands‘ blatant refusal to be political.  This is fine except that the show’s very premise is based on the political–the idea that same-sex marriage is such a precarious equal rights issue that a Britney Spears quickie-marriage will make all gay people look bad.  This fear underscores the entire show.  There is also an inherent dialogue about what it means to be gay and how and whether to make gender roles when both partners are the same gender.  This is not something that they worried about on Mad About You.  The creators of this show are somehow aware that the show is intrinsically political yet at the same time they are oblivious to it, and that willful obliviousness is maddening.  The show could be so much more than it is free of the constraints of television.  That it chooses to be apolitical and middling while at the same time trumpets itself for being original and groundbreaking smacks of tone deafness at best and pandering at worst.

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Like most gay people, I look forward to an American gay-themed television show that actually is groundbreaking. I just hope that when the show comes, it doesn’t have to tell me that it is.

Footnotes:  

*  This post focuses on long form narrative fictional television: the sitcom and the drama.  Dramas on American television have never had the kind influence or audience as half-hour sitcoms, although I will discuss one in particular later.  The lone drama that could potentially be called revolutionary is The Wire, which chronicled the failure of the drug war and the ensuing metropolitan decay in a style that was more visual novel than televised drama.  Whether The Wire is truly revolutionary will be determined by time.

** I am reminded of the movie Camp, which, like Will & Grace, pandered to straight audiences, yet was inexplicably adored by gay ones.  For example, in a camp that is full of young gay men, the only sex in the movie is heterosexual.  The short answer is that for all of its “tolerance,” the movie considers gay sexuality to be something shameful and embarrassing.

*** I reject the very premise on which Husbands based.  There is a very famous quote from the First Zionist Congress from 1897: “A Jewish state would only be a normal country if Jewish street-cleaners and gardeners worked in the same cities as Jewish doctors, lawyers and businessmen, and when Jewish policemen arrested Jewish prostitutes.”  I feel the same about same-sex marriage;  equality will be achieved only when gay people stop thinking of marriage with reverence and treat it as casually as straight people do.

Wonderful

This Australian ad has been making the rounds among the gay blogs, and with good reason.

Along with some excellent anti-discrimination ads from Argentina, this Australian spot shows what other countries are doing to promote acceptance and equality.

One wonders why US LGBT groups cannot or will not use their resources for something similar.