hunter of justice

Conservative conference shaping up as family values feud

THE event each year in DC for political activists on the right is the C-PAC (C for Conservative) conference. Thousands of activists attend, as do conservative celebrities and the entire stable of Republican presidential hopefuls, for whom it is essentially an audition. The next one is scheduled for February 10-12. but this year the biggest excitement is happening right now.  Conference organizers are allowing GOProud to participate, and some social issues (ie anti-gay and anti-abortion) groups are boycotting the event and blasting the American Conservative Union, the conference organizer. ACU's statement of principles stresses free market and limited government arguments, as does GOProud's statement of its beliefs. 

This may just be the right's version of silly fringe politics, but it is also possible that we may look back on this in a few years and see it as watershed marking the beginning of the end of the coalition of economic and social conservatives in the Republican Party. The Washington Times says that the dispute about GOProud's participation is a sign that "the alliance may now be fraying." More from the newspaper of right-wing record:

Conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart is supporting GOProud's foray into CPAC. "Oh, by the way. Gonna have a party welcoming Gay conservatives to CPAC. Deal with it," he said on his Twitter account last week.

Groups such as Citizen Link, the political-action arm of Focus on the Family, plan to attend this year's CPAC, but say the conference is on a short leash. "It's obvious the influence of social conservatives has been missing and there needs to be more of it," said Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Citizen Link. "If the ACU can't manage this problem that they've brought upon themselves, we'll have to make another decision."...

Andy Blom, executive director of the American Principles Project, called the move to marginalize values voters self-defeating. "The rather arrogant treatment of social conservatives by libertarians is troubling," said Mr. Blom. "Social conservatives are the foot soldiers of the movement. Marriage has never lost an election. Being pro-life does not lose elections. It wins elections. This is not only a serious principle mistake, it's a serious political mistake."...

Breitbart is a web publisher whose comments quoted above seem in line with his rightwing bad boy, Drudge wannabe persona. His website published the heavily edited Shirley Sherrod video that created a scandal and initially led to her firing, until the NAACP released the video in full, making it clear that Breitbart had manipulated the facts way beyond even "truthiness." 

Besides Focus on the Family and American Principles Project, other groups either boycotting C-PAC or threatening to next year if there isn't a policy change include the Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Center for Military Readiness, the Liberty Counsel and the National Organization for Marriage.

Well, you live by the wedge, you die by the wedge. How fitting that gay issues may start to cut in the opposite direction. The right-wing has brilliantly used anti-gay and anti-abortion politics to peel off voters from the Democrats, but now the worm turns. To the I've-got-mine economic libertarian crowd, individual freedom is gospel, and pretty much any form of choice is the holy grail. The appeal to them of allying with vaguely amusing bumpkins from uncool places is that the traditionalist rhetoric could haul in tons of votes, if not dollars. If that calculation changes, which perhaps it is beginning to, the so-called social issues crowd will be looking for a new home.

Suppression of queer speech: The more things change...

Twenty years ago, my friend and colleague David Cole and I represented the NEA 4, gay and feminist artists who were awarded grants through the peer review process at the National Endowment for the Arts, only to lose them when the NEA Director caved in to pressure by rightwingers who attacked their art as obscene and blasphemous. Sound familiar?

Following is an essay by David in the NY Review of Books commenting on how arts censorship ca. 1990 looks from the vantage point of 2010:

On November 29, a conservative website posted an 11-second clip of ants crawling over a crucifix from a 4-minute video made by David Wojnarowicz, an artist who died of AIDS in 1992. The video, Fire in My Belly, was part of a show at the National Portrait Gallery called “Hide/Seek,” said to be the country’s first national exhibition devoted to gay and lesbian themes. Wojnarowicz made the video in 1986 and 1987, as his lover Peter Hujar was dying of AIDS, and as David himself learned that he was HIV-positive; it is an eerie meditation on life, death, violence, and nature, featuring imagery from the Day of the Dead. David later explained that he saw Jesus as a symbol of someone who willingly took on the suffering of the world. A self-appointed conservative guardian of public morality, William Donohue of the Catholic League, saw it differently, and attacked the video clip as blasphemous and demanded that the piece be taken down. The Smithsonian—which runs the National Portrait Gallery and which is funded by the US Government—promptly removed the video from the exhibition, effectively granting Donohue a “heckler’s veto.”

About twenty years ago, a gaunt, respectful, but angry David Wojnarowicz [photo left by Peter Hujar] walked into my office at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York to ask what could be done about a flier that Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association had just sent out to every member of Congress, all major newspapers and TV networks, and thousands of religious ministers throughout the country. The flier featured images of gay male pornography, and claimed that they were David Wojnarowicz’s art, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The claim was blatantly false. David had incorporated small “found” images from gay male pornography in a series of life-sized collages devoted to the challenges of living as a gay man in the 1980s, in a community ravaged by AIDS and beset by condemnation, prejudice, and hatred. But Wildmon had reproduced only the pornographic images, stripping them from their context in the collages, and blatantly twisting the facts to further his homophobic propaganda.

We sued Wildmon, and in 1990, a federal district court ruled that he had violated David’s rights under the New York Artists Authorship Rights Act, which forbids the misrepresentation of an artist’s work. The court ordered Wildmon to cease sending out any further fliers, and to deliver a correction to everyone who received the original flier. Because David’s work had independently obtained wide recognition and was increasing in value—art critic Dan Cameron has called him “one of the most potent voices of his generation”—we were unable to demonstrate that the controversy had caused him financial damages. As a result, the court ordered Wildmon to pay David one dollar in nominal damages. David promptly incorporated the dollar in an artwork inspired by the controversy. Two years later, David died.

Around the same time, the Corcoran closed a show of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs because of pressure from social conservatives, and the NEA revoked funding to four performance artists—Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller—after conservative columnist Robert Novak blasted the endowment for using public money to fund gay and sexually-explicit artwork. We sued the NEA over its denial of funding, and after a court rejected its motion to dismiss the case, the NEA agreed to pay the artists the amount of their grants.

In one sense, David Wojnarowicz and the NEA Four won. The fact that the National Portrait Gallery has now dedicated a major exhibition focused on sexual difference and marginalization in American portraiture is also surely a victory. We live in more tolerant times...

But the battle is far from over...And from the standpoint of publicly funded art, the censors have won. Congress’s response to the “culture wars” was to require the NEA to “take into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public” in making arts funding decisions. The Supreme Court upheld that requirement. Public arts institutions learned that political controversy could jeopardize their financial support, and publicly funded arts have never been the same. When the National Portrait Gallery put on “Hide/Seek,” it made sure to finance it only with private donations, undoubtedly recognizing that it might stir protest. The show’s private funding was insufficient, however, to steel the Smithsonian when it faced criticism. (And now one of the largest private funders, the Andy Warhol Foundation, has threatened to cut off its financial support because the museum caved to pressure).

But while the recent censorship of Wojnarowicz’s work recalls what happened in the early 1990s, the differences are also instructive. When the Corcoran closed the Mapplethorpe show and the NEA revoked Karen Finley’s funding, widespread public outcry followed. The Smithsonian’s decision to remove Wojnarowicz’s video, by contrast, has attracted comparatively little attention. We have come to expect timidity in public arts institutions. In some sense, the surprise is not that the Smithsonian removed the video, but that it put on “Hide/Seek” in the first place.

The muted public response to the current controversy points in two different directions. On the one hand, homosexual self-expression is substantially more accepted today than it was twenty years ago. David would, I think, be surprised and gratified by the changes wrought in American culture... On the other hand, the fundamentalist censorial strain remains a profound force in American society, reflected today in the populist and often intolerant undertones of the religious right and the Tea Party. And one thing has remained a disappointing constant—public institutions’ willingness to cave on issues of public controversy. Like so many other wars, the culture wars of the 1980s have left their traces on America’s character. 

Has anti-gay movement peaked?

In an article called "The New Battle: What It Means to Be an American," writers at Politico argue that President Obama not only promised to end baby-boomer culture wars, he's done it -- only to see "an even more visceral values debate about whether he's moving the country toward socialism and over the very definition of what it means to be American."

At a moment that finds the right energized and seemingly ascendant, the battles over morality-based cultural issues such as gay rights, abortion and illegal drugs that did so much to drive the conservative movement and dominated the political conversation for more than 30 years have abated, giving way not just to broad economic anxiety but to a new set of emotionally charged issues...

In the view of National Review editor Rich Lowry, that sense on the right of a fundamental shift has helped turn the role of government into a cultural issue, filling some of the emotional space formerly occupied by the traditional hot-button issues...

The article points to various reasons and signs: the growing support in the polls for same-sex marriage; the death or retirement of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson; Glenn Beck's ridiculing the question of whether gay marriage threatens the country; and Rush Limbaugh's new friendship with wedding singer Elton John.

Do all these add up to a shift in the focus of the right wing, away from issues more linked to sexuality? Maybe. First abortion, then it together with gay rights have had a 35-year run in dominating the domestic paranoia market - it has to fade sometime. 

There are other signs as well. In the Kagan confirmation hearings, I noticed that the questions posed by Republican senators concerned gay rights more often than abortion, but they concerned gun rights far more often than those two topics put together.

The Politico piece may be on to something, but it's too simplistic and narrow, imho. It's narrow because it, like virtually all journalism coming out of DC, has a shortsighted focus on upcoming elections - even if the writers think they are taking the long view because they consider the 2012 election in addition to the one three months from now.

I also think it is simplistic to imagine that the so-called "cultural issues" will be neatly superseded by something else, even if a considerable amount of right-wing energy shifts to anti-government organizing. What is far more likely is that the different segments of the right will continue to compete among themselves for resources, attention and foot soldiers. I'm guessing that the share to be gotten by anti-gay forces will ebb and flow, but overall move in a downward trajectory.

That's good news, but full civil equality is still a long ways away.

Dawn Johnsen on whether she regrets not having been more calculating and cautious in her commitments: "Not a chance. Never for a moment. Not on your life."

Dawn Johnsen, whose nomination to be Assistant AG in charge of the powerful Office of Legal Counsel was killed by right-wing opposition, made a wonderful speech at the annual conference of the American Constitution Society yesterday, directing her words to law students and young lawyers who might fear that taking principled progressive positions could haunt them later in their careers:

Make no mistake: I do feel that the nearly unprecedented delay of my nomination was wrong. But as to whether I would have changed my positions or softened my stances, or decided to just sit a few issues out, my message could not be more clear or simple: I have no regrets.

From where Dawn worked as a new lawyer (NARAL) through which topics she chose to focus on as a scholar (among others, her condemnation of the torture memos), she has invested her time and talents in advancing principles that matter deeply. If only there were more like her!

Dawn Johnsen and Obama's failure of nerve, or, Lani Guinier revisited

Character assassination is their stock in trade. Guilt by association is their motto.  They have created such a wave of fear and uncertainty that their attacks upon our liberties go almost unchallenged.

Harry Truman, 1951

It was not a surprise that President Obama withdrew the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, who I've written about before and who was endorsed by the NY Times to be Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. Her nomination had been swinging in the wind for a year, the target of a right-wing attack based both on her years as an abortion rights advocate, including her work for NARAL, and her writings as a constitutional law professor attacking the Bush era OLC for its perversions of justice, including production of the torture memos. These two failures of what is taken to be political smarts - i.e., the willingness to say what one believes and what needs to be said - can be fatal for anyone swimming in the mental pablum that passes for mainstream national politics. 

As it so happens, I've known Dawn for many years, know her to be a superb lawyer, a person of real integrity, and about as perfectly qualified to lead OLC (in part because she worked as a staff lawyer there in the Clinton administration) as one can imagine. (Little known fact: she's also a Sunday school teacher.) Funny thing - there's this other woman I've known for years - Lani Guinier, whose nomination as Assistant AG for the Civil Rights Division was withdrawn by President Clinton. And she is - guess what - a superb lawyer, a person of real integrity, and was about as perfectly qualified to lead Civil Rights (in part because she had worked as a staff lawyer there in the Carter administration) as one can imagine. (Don't know if she's a Sunday school teacher.)

I can easily imagine the calculation behind these withdrawals - that the Senate vote (at least on cloture) likely would have come up short to confirm either nominee. And I would bet that in both instances there were Dems from conservative states who were asking the White House not to force them to vote. Clinton folded within a few months on Lani's nomination; Obama should get credit for persisting with Dawn's for more than a year, but for the fact that his nerve failed at precisely the moment that it could have made a difference, when she was not included in his March list of recess appointments.

More important than anything about either President, though, is that these two stories signal the continuing power ceded to the right wing to left-bait, race-bait or, increasingly, gay-bait nominees whose values, experience and intellect make them among the most likely to be genuinely outstanding public servants. Not to mention those whose names are tossed out as too controversial to even nominate or who don't want to go through the heartburn of the process. Every time that happens, it's another little victory for the right wing.

Is homophobia the new anti-semitism?

From The American Prospect:

...[Anti-gay] hatred comes in many guises and from many different directions. But there are some underlying themes, enough so that it's possible to talk about global homophobia as a single concept, akin to anti-Semitism. Indeed, worldwide, the rhetoric of homophobia recapitulates the tropes of classical Jew hatred. Gay people are seen as a subversive internal enemy with dangerous international connections. Even in places where they've been cowed into near invisibility, they're viewed as having an almost occult power. They represent modernism and cosmopolitanism, the bete noirs of every type of fundamentalism. ...

Meanwhile, just as the gay-rights movement has been globalized, so has the religious opposition. "There are currently two major sources of homophobic thought globally," says Hossein Alizadeh, the Iranian-born communications coordinator of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "One is primarily Christian conservative movements that are mainly based in the United States. We see a lot of that fitting into the hatred and violence in Africa, the missionaries that go into different African countries and bring with them the message of hate. The second is Islamic fundamentalism."...

In Iraq, the scapegoating of gays and lesbians as agents of the West has been particularly deadly. "The country was invaded back in 2003, and ever since then things have been going south rather than getting better," Alizadeh says. "People have to blame somebody, and gays seem to be the easiest target. There are lots of comments about how homosexuality did not exist in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. People think the least they can do in order to protect their culture is just to go after gay people and kill them."

... In Africa, despite the near-invisibility of gay people on much of the continent, there's a full-blown gay panic underway, much of it stoked by evangelicals with ties to the American right. Last month, Burundi passed draconian anti-gay legislation, making gay sex punishable by up to two years in prison. Nigeria is currently considering a bill that would criminalize the "coming together of persons of the same sex with the purpose of leaving [sic] together as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship." In Uganda, where same-sex relations are already punishable by life in prison, Christian-right organizations have been accusing homosexuals of "recruitment," leading to calls for even more punitive anti-gay legislation.