Straw Horse in Rudy the Crusader Profile

Matt Bai in the September 9 New York Times magazine looks at Rudy Giuliani's appeal to voters as the anti-terrorism crusader. The piece is probing and perceptive, and asks the critical question whether the former New York mayor's reputation as the tough guy ready to take on Bin Laden is deserved (though it largely accepts the celebratory view of his campaign against crime in New York).

But at a key point in the article, Bai sets up a contrast between Democrats and Republicans on their approach to the terror threat for which he provides no solid evidence -- and it's a comparison that that works to the advantage of the GOP in arguing that it remains the US's daddy party. It's difficult to discern what led Bai to his paradism, and he really needs to flesh his thinking out in some reasonable degree of detail:

Democrats now openly question the entire premise of a “war on terror” (or, as Giuliani likes to call it, a “terrorists’ war on us”), and, privately, at least, they are increasingly willing to argue that Islamic radicals do not represent the same kind of existential threat that the Stalinists did, with their vast military machinery. There is a growing, though not unanimous, feeling in liberal policy circles that remaking the nation’s entire foreign policy around terrorism is an overreaction to what is, essentially, a serious but manageable threat. As one senior Democratic policy aide put it to me recently, the terrorist attacks that claimed some 3,000 innocent American lives were indescribably tragic, but if you had gone to sleep on Sept. 10, 2001, and woken up sometime in 2006, surely you would have thought, to hear the political rhetoric, that several American cities had been wiped off the map. In this view, Al Qaeda is not a defining ideological adversary so much as a stateless, lethal criminal enterprise without any real historical antecedent, and Bush’s war in Iraq has nothing to do with the campaign against organized terrorists — except perhaps to swell their ranks by recklessly throwing around America’s military might.

The Crusader, by Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine, September 9.

Times' Gail Collins Smacks Down Rudy

Gail Collins, the former editorial page editor of the New York Times, now back in the paper's regular op-ed columnist rotation, took direct aim at former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's record at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, not for how he handled himself on 9/11 or how well prepared his administration was for such a catastrophe in the first place, but rather for lethal missteps in protecting the health of those who spent months doing recovery work there.

The degree to which recovery workers, including firefighters, will inject their views into the 2008 presidential race, remains uncertain, but it is not inconceivable that a Swift Boat-style attack could be unleashed on Giuliani. He might well, of course, have better instincts for responding than did John Kerry in 2004.

On September 8, Gail Collins wrote:

Rudy Giuliani is going to be at ground zero next week, taking part in ceremonies to remember the victims of Sept. 11. That was inevitable — the man has so identified himself with 9/11 that it’s amazing he hasn’t tried to patent it.

It’s also a terrible idea.

After the attacks, Giuliani did his best work in front of a microphone, speaking simply and honestly to the city and the nation. Ground zero, on the other hand, is the site of his worst failure.

Read "Giuliani's Ground Zero Legacy" in full.

Absorbing Gay Pain & Praise, Clinton Says She's Evolved

Originally published in Gay City News, October 26-November 1, 2006:

In an appearance early Wednesday evening in front of roughly three-dozen LGBT leaders, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated that she would not oppose efforts by Eliot Spitzer, the odds-on favorite to become the new governor, to enact a same-sex marriage law in New York.

She also suggested that language she used when she first ran for the Senate in 2000 explaining her opposition to marriage equality based on the institution's moral, religious, and traditional foundations had not reflected the "many long conversations" she's had since with "friends" and others, and that her advocacy on LGBT issues "has certainly evolved."

On Wednesday, Clinton presented her position on marriage equality as more one of pragmatism.

"I believe in full equality of benefits, nothing left out," she said. "From my perspective there is a greater likelihood of us getting to that point in civil unions or domestic partnerships and that is my very considered assessment."

Clinton addressed a gathering organized by the Greater Voices Coalition made up of LGBT Democratic organizations citywide. Leaders of those clubs, along with out elected officials, including Democratic district leaders and state committee members, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, state Senator Tom Duane, and Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Daniel O'Donnell, were in attendance. The meeting, which was held at the Upper East Side home of a Clinton supporter, ran for more than an hour.

Representatives of the gay press were invited to the meeting, which was on the record.

The session included both warm, enthusiastic praise for New York's junior Democratic senator and sharp questioning about her posture on marriage equality.

Quinn opened the meeting recalling a number of issues-LGBT-related and not-which she had worked with Clinton on in the 10 months since she's been the Council leader. She focused in particular on their efforts to strategize about the Senate Democrats' response to this summer's efforts by Republicans to revive a federal constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage beaten back in 2004.

"Every single time since I've been elected speaker, I ever time I've picked up the phone to ask Senator Clinton to help the LGBT community, she has said yes," Quinn said. "She's assigned staff, she's taken her own time and political capital to put in on the deal."

Ethan Geto, a long-time gay activist who described himself as an advisor to the senator on LGBT issues, introduced Clinton, addressing what he called "the elephant in the room."

"We're engaged in a dialogue with someone who has the stature, who has the credibility, the viability to be the party's standard bearer in 2008," he said. "I think when you look at Senator Clinton's record, she may not agree with us on every last policy issue, but when you look at the totality of the record, there is no one in this country who may be the president of the United States with whom we have a warmer, a stronger, a closer productive working relationship."

But once the meeting moved from introductions to questions, Clinton faced a considerably more varied reception-and, hands down, the most challenging issue she faced was marriage equality.

Doug Robinson, the co-president of the Out People of Color Political Action Club who with his partner of more than 20 years has raised two sons, spoke about the pressures his family faces in sending both to college without the benefits of marriage's economic advantages. In what began as a strong challenge to Clinton, Robinson said, "We need your support on marriage, we need you to look at that."

Yet, just as Robinson was about to yield the floor for Clinton's response, he offered her a bit of wiggle room.
"Even if you say civil marriage isn't as important as equal benefits, in my mind I don't care what you call it," he concluded. "But I need the same things that everyone does so I can sustain my family."

It was at this point that the senator stated her support for "full equality of benefits, nothing left out," before saying that civil unions offered the more certain route to that goal.

"If you go the next step and say, 'But I want what is called marriage,' you're going to have a problem."

Following up, Allen Roskoff, the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, worked to hold Clinton's feet to the fire. Recalling a conversation he had with her during her first Senate campaign, Roskoff said, "It was right after you said that you were against same-sex marriage on moral, religious, and traditional grounds and I found that incredibly hurtful." He also criticized the senator for volunteering her support for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, even if not asked, and for not speaking during the Senate marriage amendment debate in June regardless of the work she did behind the scenes.

Clinton offered Roskoff some consolation regarding her earlier characterizations of marriage's history as an exclusively heterosexual institution, an argument that she made in an interview with this reporter as well during the 2000 campaign.

"Obviously my friends and people who spoke to me-we've had many long conversations and I think-and which I believe-that the way that I have spoken and I have advocated has certainly evolved and I am happy to be educated and to learn as much as I can," she said.

Clinton went on to defend both DOMA and her decision not to speak during the marriage amendment debate this past June, and in fact linked the two. She said that without being able to point to the U.S. law which bars federal recognition of gay marriage and allows states to similarly refuse to acknowledge such unions from other states, many more members of Congress would have voted to amend the Constitution, especially when that effort had its first vote two years ago.

She explained that her choice not to speak on the Senate floor about the amendment this year was strategic.

"Very few Democrats spoke, because maybe you thought one way, which is that you want people out there speaking for us. We thought as-force the Republicans out there, make them look like they're trying to enshrine discrimination in the Constitution. We don't even want to dignify it."

Later in the discussion, Larry Moss, who as a Democratic state committeeman led the charge for the state party's endorsement of marriage equality, raised the issue with specific reference to politics in Albany. Noting that Spitzer, if elected governor, plans to introduce a "program bill" legalizing gay marriage as a sign of his commitment to the issue, Moss asked, "How do we keep your words from being cover for conservative Democrats who want to compromise with Eliot and say, 'Just do civil unions?'"

Clinton's response was probably the evening's most newsworthy moment.

"My position is consistent," she said. "I support states making the decision. I think that Chuck Schumer would say the same thing. And if anyone ever tried to use our words in any way, we'll review that. Because I think that it should be in the political process and people make a decision and if our governor and our Legislature support marriage in New York, I'm not going to be against that... So I feel very comfortable with being able to refute anybody who tries to pit us or pit me against Eliot."

Asked several moments later by Gary Parker, the Greater Voices leader who chaired the meeting, to clarify that point, Clinton reiterated, "I am not going to speak out against, I'm not going to oppose anything that the governor and the Legislature do."

No other issue raised during the gathering garnered the heat that marriage did. Clinton spoke passionately against what she said was the injustice, waste, and stupidity of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that has led to 10,000 discharges in the past 13 years, including some involving personnel with specialized skills such as language translation. The senator won praise from several at the meeting for her work in blocking Senate approval of a Ryan White AIDS Care Act reauthorization that would mean the loss of millions in federal dollars to New York each year.

Asked by Melissa Sklarz, a transgendered activist who is a former president of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, if she would support the inclusion of gender identity and expression protections in the long-stalled federal employment nondiscrimination act, or ENDA, Clinton noted that the federal hate crimes measure also lacks such language, but said only, "We are very aware of that and we are raising that."

Asked about a measure authored by West Side Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler that would allow immigrant partners of Americans to gain citizenship just as foreign-born married spouses can, Clinton said movement on that awaits a comprehensive solution to the immigration issue that moves beyond the current Republican emphasis on penalties and border fences. With a Democratic Congress, Clinton said, much more is possible "and I think that will be included in it."

Only at the very end of the meeting did Clinton get around to foreign policy, the Iraq War, and what she called the Bush administration's "abuse of power."

"I think they put Nixon to shame," she said, in what was an indisputable crowd-pleaser.

©GayCityNews 2007

Hillary Clinton Talks to Paul Schindler, 2000

In an exclusive interview with lgny's editor in chief Paul Schindler on October 4, 2000, subsequently republished by out.com, Hillary Rodham Clinton made her strongest statement to date about the role the federal government ought to play in recognizing civil unions such as those sanctioned by recent legislation in Vermont. She also broke new ground beyond the policies of her husband's Administration by declaring her support for federal funds earmarked specifically for state and local needle exchange efforts.

In a wide-ranging 25-minute interview held October 4 on the campus of the Brooklyn College Law School in Brooklyn Heights, Rodham Clinton also responded to questions about the distinction she draws between civil union and marriage, her views on the Clinton Administration's failed Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy, hot button inclusiveness issues such as the Boy Scouts and the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade, the political realities surrounding gender identity issues, and her political education on gay and lesbian issues.

Since launching her U.S. Senate campaign more than a year ago, Rodham Clinton has several times spoken generally about her support for extending the full benefits of marriage to lesbians and gay men through domestic partnership. Her response on the issue of federal recognition of Vermont civil unions represents her most specific comments about the role the federal government might play in bringing about these changes. The candidate continues to draw a distinction between civil unions and marriage, which she said has "historic, religious, and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time," open only to a man and a woman. Rodham Clinton dismissed any Church/State separation issues that a "religious and moral" perspective on a civil institution might pose.

Rodham Clinton's statement endorsing federal funding of needle exchange programs marked an important break with the President's policy. Throughout his Administration, Clinton sided with drug czar General Barry McCaffrey who successfully fended off health and scientific officials who pointed to the clear benefits of clean needles in preventing HIV transmission. Housing Works, the AIDS advocacy group, in a press release about a recent AIDS white paper released by Rodham Clinton's campaign, criticized the Senate candidate on this issue. In fact, as Rodham Clinton spoke to lgny, activists from Housing Works were protesting at her midtown campaign headquarters resulting in several arrests.

Rodham Clinton told lgny that the campaign had allowed her the chance to meet with advocates for transgender rights, but she discounted the political viability of trying to amend pending legislation before Congress, such as the Employment NonDiscrimination Act, to address issues of gender identity and expression at this time. In fact, she said, "No one who's a leader in the gay and lesbian community has asked me to do that."

Rodham Clinton also spoke at length about what she described as the "difficult decision" she faced on thorny issues of inclusiveness posed by events such as the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue, which bans openly gay and lesbian marchers. She said she felt constrained by "relationships" and "ongoing commitments" to the Northern Ireland peace process.

In addressing her decision last year to break with the Clinton Administration's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and her political education on gay issues generally, Rodham Clinton described a "revolutionary journey to understanding that took 30 years." In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave a commencement address at Wellesley College in Massachusetts where she talked about the "challenge… to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible." She now has five weeks to find out whether she will be given that chance, and perhaps then six years to prove whether she has the will to do so.

lgny: Since the Vermont civil union decision last December, you have strongly supported the court decision. You've also said you think it's going to come to pass everywhere in time, and also that you would support such a measure in New York State.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Right.

lgny: Would you support a federal effort to recognize and confer the federal portion of benefits that these state civil union measures are not able to convey?

Clinton: Yes.

lgny: In recent decades a lot of voters have looked to the Democratic Party as a guarantor of a clear distinction between Church and State. In one of the comments you made about the possibility of gay marriage I believe you said there were "historic, religious, and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time." Is that kind of position -- which is similar to that taken by other Democrats otherwise strong supporters of gay rights -- is that kind of distinction one that possibly breaches the Church/State distinction that some voters find so important?

Clinton: I don't think so. I think traditional marriage has been vested with a meaning and an interpretation that has an extraordinary strength within, certainly, our society and I don't see that there's any breaching of that in the sense that people have the choice between religious ceremonies and civil ceremonies, but their ceremonies or their marriages need to be legally registered with a marriage license. I don't see that as any breach.

lgny: But not extending that licensing to gay couples?

Clinton: Well, for civil unions.

lgny: On the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy, you came out with a very strong statement I think it was early in December of last year. And since that time you have said that you believe that you in part changed the terms of the debate on this issue. In fact, within a week or two, the Vice President separated himself from the policy and even the President said, I believe, "The policy is out of whack." Can you tell me when and how you came to the conclusion that the policy was in need of repair?

Clinton: I think as I watched it being implemented and some of the problems that were obviously arising from the enforcement struck me as untenable. There didn't seem to me to be a way for the military to play that kind of role. Therefore I think that people who wish to serve their country should be permitted to serve their country and that all people should be governed by the same code of military conduct and should be evaluated for their fitness and performance with respect to their duties that they are asked to carry out and their behavior in the military context. I just think that makes tremendous sense. I believe that we should move toward that.

Now, I know that there's been a good faith effort on the part of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs and others to try to go back and provide better education and accountability for line officers in the enforcement of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I appreciate that because I think its important not to be harassing people and subjecting people to torment and even potential danger as we've seen in the past. But I just concluded in my own mind that it's time for us to let people serve based on their desire to serve and on the ability to perform their service-related jobs.

lgny: Your statement came at the time when the murder trial in the case of Barry Winchell was winding down.

Clinton: Right.

lgny: Were you concerned at that point that in fact the policy might be encouraging more harassment of gay soldiers?

Clinton: Well I think there's evidence of that, it wasn't just my concern. There is evidence and it's what caused, I think, the President and the Secretary to go back to the drawing board and try to raise the level of awareness and understanding. And certainly his death, the increased discharges of people because of off-base activities and honest declarations of sexual orientation that had nothing to do with their service record ... that was all disturbing to me. And then I learned that the military had permitted a lot of people to serve in Desert Storm and only discharged them after they'd made use of their service, which struck me as unfair and hypocritical. So I think that its going to be very difficult to fix what is essentially a contradictory policy that I believe we should move beyond.

lgny: Going back to 1993 when the compromise was first struck I think there was a lot of disappointment within the Administration that it was the best result that was able to be achieved. Certainly there was a lot of disappointment in the lesbian and gay community about what was called a compromise at the time. Did you learn anything in particular that was interesting at that point about gay rights issues and the way in which the public views them and the way in which they can be moved forward?

Clinton: Well I think we've learned since then that there was a tremendous amount of misinformation and bias and stereotyping that was driving decision making and that much of the reason for that was a lack of personal experience and awareness. There were people in the United States Congress as well as in the larger community who believed that they didn't even know gay people -- with very few exceptions, maybe Barney Frank or somebody like that -- but otherwise they had no basis for experience and it was a tremendous obstacle to overcome on the part of the Administration and the advocates. I think we've seen a lot of change in the last seven years. I give much of the credit to the advocacy community because I think there's been a really effective public education campaign that has raised people's awareness. We're not the same country we were in '93 that we are today. But we still have a lot of work to do.

lgny: You issued a white paper on AIDS and HIV a week and a half ago or so and you gave a speech up at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx about AIDS issues. Housing Works is a vibrant community group that has actually had a lot of success in the courts holding Mayor Giuliani's feet to the fire on the delivery of AIDS services here in New York City. They've also played a pretty vigilant role in terms of commenting on your record and positions and on Congressmember Lazio's. They came out with a statement about your white paper and the key issue that they zeroed in on was IV drug use and I'll read from their statement: "Intravenous drugs are now the biggest category of HIV infections and AIDS cases in our state. To have a big impact in the areas of prevention and care we need new federal funds for needle exchange." Do you have a position on federal funding of needle exchange?

Clinton: I believe that New York, with its recent launching, has taken a big step forward to permit state-funded health clinics, which are often jointly or mutually funded in the federal budget, they're not just stand-alone state money, to use funds for needle exchange. I think it's a big step forward. I think that we should go with the science and the science has been pretty clear on this. If we can prevent IV drug use we ought to do it. Recognizing the political realities, I think it has to be an option. I think that we need to say that if the states and localities are willing to do it, the federal government will support it. But I don't know that we're yet at a political critical mass where we can mandate it. But I think we ought to get everything we can done legislatively to provide what ever federal support we could.

lgny: Would that federal support include specific federal dollars earmarked for needle exchange?

Clinton: Yes, so long as the local community or the state accepted that. You wouldn't mandate it on a local community that for whatever reason wouldn't do it or didn¿t want it.

lgny: That's a shift from existing Administration policy.

Clinton: It is.

lgny: Can you tell our readers a little bit about the political education that you had on gay and lesbian issues? You've been a lawyer, you've been a children's activist, a women's activist for many many years. When was it that you began to become informed on gay and lesbian issues and who were some of the people who helped your thinking on that score?

Clinton: Oh gosh. Well one of the people was David Mixner, who has been a friend of mine for a very long time, who I saw last week when I was in L.A. We had been active with David in politics and campaigns before he was, I think, even aware of -- certainly before he was out as being gay. So we kind of lived through David's transition, which was a very important personal experience because we knew his family. His sister is a friend of ours. So we could see what that meant to him. Likewise, there were other personal friends of mine who had the same kind of journey and faced the same kinds of difficulties -- David had a less difficult time in some respects because his sister was really his major family and she was very supportive of him. Other friends of ours faced a much more difficult challenge. I remember a good friend who I went to law school with who had a very hard time. I was close to him. He ended up actually moving to Arkansas and Bill and I spent a lot of time with him. I think you look at these individual experiences of people you care about, who you love -- it's not so dramatic in many instances today as it was 20 years ago -- who are struggling to be who they are and to be acknowledged for who they are as human beings. I think it was one of those revolutionary journeys to understanding that took 30 years.

lgny: But began as early as friends from law school?

Clinton: Yeah, in the '70s. Yeah, the early '70s.

lgny: Your speech at Wellesley in 1969 you talked about making politics the art of the making the impossible possible and clearly there was a strong feminist thrust to the talk you gave. When you were at Wellesley was there open discussion at that time about gay and lesbian issues among the students?

Clinton: Not that I recall. There may have been. But I was so obsessed by the Vietnam War and Bobby Kennedy being killed and Martin Luther King being killed, that it wasn't really part of the general discussion. But this is back in the late '60s.

lgny: So this is really something that came around for you as a discussion in your early adulthood?

Clinton: Yes, that's right.

lgny: One of the challenges that the gay community faces today as we try to get a hate crimes bill passed, and the employment nondiscrimination act, is a challenge from other members of our community, transgender people and people with gender variations, pushing to try to make some of the language in these proposals more inclusive, so we're not strictly talking about a gay person or a lesbian, but a range of people. In your campaign you've had a lot of contact with gay leaders throughout the state. Have you the opportunity to get feedback from members of the transgender community?

Clinton: Yes, we have. Not as much or as frequently but some. I have a few transgendered contributors of some significance. So yes, we have gotten feedback.

lgny: Do you think the goal of broadening the language for ENDA or broadening language in the hate crimes protection act to include gender expression and gender identity, do you think that's a practical goal at this point politically?

Clinton: I think we need to try to move ENDA forward. I think ENDA is such an important legislative goal. I think it's within reach and I think it's a vehicle for widening the circle of rights and freedoms and responsibilities and I would really focus on trying to get that passed.

lgny: In other words, no effort at this point at amending?

Clinton: I don't see at this point that that would be in the best interest of moving the agenda forward.

lgny: What I understand your answer to be is that laudable as that goal might be it might slow the political process down.

Clinton: Well I think that's probably accurate. It may not be the answer people want to hear, but I think it's accurate. We should do everything we can to get ENDA to pass. Legislation is often imperfect at best, and not as inclusive as it needs to be, but you have to build on your victories. Right now we don't have ENDA. I think about the fact that we don't have the hate crimes legislation.

lgny: One of the things that the transgender community points to is that, for example, on hate crimes in New York State, the entire coalition for hate crimes held out to have gays and lesbians included in it. We would have had a hate crimes bill in New York long ago if it had only been for religion and so forth. But everyone hung tough on that. But what the transgender community is saying now is "Wouldn't that approach be appropriate for them as well?" In other words, don't do it piecemeal, include everybody and then move forward.

Clinton: Well no one who's a leader in the gay and lesbian community has asked me to do that. I think there's an understood recognition of the political reality. So for me it's a priority to try to get ENDA passed, which is what I will work on.

lgny: There have been a number of issues that have come up in recent months about inclusion, gay people's inclusion in things, the most recent of course being the Supreme Court ruling on the scouting issue. One of your campaign spokespeople told me that you were opposed to the Supreme Court decision that came down in the scouting case. Once those decisions come down, there are a whole range of other issues that come up -- public school support for the scouts, the President serving as honorary chairperson of the Boy Scouts of America, and earlier this year, you faced a similar but different issue in terms of the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. How do we navigate those kinds of inclusion issues?

Clinton: It's very tough. I'm not going to sit here and tell that there's an easy answer on this issue. You know on Saint Patrick's Day, I marched in two parades, one that was the first all-inclusive parade in Queens that I hope will become an annual tradition But I also have a great deal of history with the Irish community from the work I've done in Northern Ireland and the commitment I've made to peace in Northern Ireland. I felt that I should try to do both, in so far as possible I should try to influence the parade -- and I don't know what my decisions will be in the future -- but for this year being the first time I ever faced it I thought I should make it clear that those who organize the parade should be inclusive, that they should follow the lead of their colleagues in Dublin and be willing to include anyone who is committed to Irish history and traditions and Irish-American relations. But that I would march as a show of respect for particularly the work I had done. So these are not easy issues, they're difficult issues sometimes.

In the Boy Scouts case, freedom of association is a very important fundamental and bedrock principle in our constitution and our way of life. The Supreme Court basically said the Boy Scouts are free to discriminate. That may be the case constitutionally, but I would call on them not to discriminate. I would certainly urge them to think of ways that they could fulfill their mission without being exclusionary. So the're difficult decisions.

lgny: Were you concerned at the time of St Patrick's that some other prominent Democrats in the past, Senator Schumer among them, had made the decision to opt out of that parade. Were you concerned that in some respects you might be breaking ranks on that issue?

Clinton: I was concerned, you know. But I've had a personal involvement in Ireland that Senator Schumer has not had. I've been to Belfast three times. I raised money for a project that I call Vital Voices to involve women in the efforts to end the Troubles there. I've been an active participant with the Prime Minister of Ireland in promoting relations and the like, so for me it was a much more difficult decision, because I have a history, I have these relationships and I have ongoing commitments. But I certainly respect the decisions of any one else to decide differently and as I say I don't know what my decision will be in the future. I keep hoping that the Ancient Order of Hibernians, that they will, you know, see that this will be a better way to honor the full diversity of the Irish experience.

As Iowa Supreme Court Steps In, What Next?

Appeared in Gay City News, September 6-12, 2007

For roughly 18 hours last week in Des Moines, gay and lesbian couples felt the pulse of freedom that their New York City counterparts had yearned for in the spring of 2005, when Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ruled in favor of same-sex plaintiffs here in a marriage equality lawsuit at the district court level.

Polk County, Iowa, Judge Robert B. Hanson, like Ling-Cohan, ruled for six plaintiff couples, and when he announced his decision on August 30 he issued no delay pending appeal. Ling-Cohan stayed the effect of her ruling for 30 days, and when Mayor Michael Bloomberg promptly appealed, that delay became permanent until the matter was resolved at New York's highest c

In Des Moines, the County Recorder and Registrar was under order to begin issuing marriage license applications immediately. As Polk County filed a motion to stay Hanson's ruling pending appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court, it became a race between gay and lesbian couples rushing for licenses and the timing of a judicial response to the motion.

Polk County officials assumed they had a three-business-day leg up, in light of the waiting period mandated in law before couples with a license can wed. But they did not count on the resourcefulness of Sean Fritz, 24, and his 21-year-old boyfriend Tim McQuillan, both students at Iowa State University in Ames, who had met via Facebook.com.

According to the Des Moines Register, Fritz moved fast Thursday afternoon once he learned of Hanson's ruling. After calling McQuillan's mother to ask for her son's hand, he dashed over to the campus computer lab and proposed to Tim, who had not yet learned of the legal victory.

Arriving the next morning at the Polk County offices before 8 a.m., the couple got their license and shrewdly spent an extra $5 on a waiver form that would free them from waiting three days. But, they still needed a judge's signature, so they next headed to the County Courthouse, where another district judge, Scott Rosenberg, agreed to their request.

The couple's next several hours, according to the Register, were spent hotfooting around Des Moines looking for a member of the clergy to officiate at their wedding. Though neither man is Jewish, they first tried a synagogue, but upon learning the rabbi was out, they quickly settled on a Unitarian minister, who married them in his back yard. With TV cameras in tow by this time, Fritz and McQuillan headed back to the County building and filed their marriage certificate at around 10:45.

Roughly 45 minutes later, Hanson acceded to the Polk County motion to stay his own ruling. Twenty-six other gay and lesbian couples applied for marriage licenses in a window that last less than a full day, but none will have the chance to wed legally at least until the issue is resolved in the state Supreme Court, a process that could last until 2009.

Thousands of weddings performed in San Francisco after Mayor Gavin Newsom gave the go-ahead in 2004 were later overturned by the California Supreme Court, and Bloomberg, in appealing Ling-Cohan's ruling, said high court resolution of the issue in New York State was necessary before any weddings took place to avoid the same "confusion" from taking place here.

For now, Fritz and McQuillan have a legally registered marriage, and when queried this week on the status of their union, Lambda Legal, which represented the plaintiff couples in Iowa, responded flatly, via e-mail, "Sean and Tim are married. Period."

For all the other same-sex couples who wish to get married in Iowa, the near-term future is less certain. Polk County's appeal of Hanson's August 30 decision goes to the Iowa Supreme Court, which can either hear arguments itself, or first assign the case to an intermediate level appellate court. In New York and New Jersey, marriage cases went through all three levels of state courts. In contrast, in Massachusetts, where the lawsuit failed at the district level, the appeal went immediately to the Supreme Judicial Court, where gay marriage won.

The other great unknown involves the politics of the issue.

Hanson, in ruling for the plaintiffs, overturned a 1998 Defense of Marriage statute passed in the wake of the 1996 federal DOMA. The issue of same-sex marriage has never been the subject of a constitutional amendment fight in that state.

As in Massachusetts, where the effort to overturn the 2004 marriage victory through amendment has been rebuffed several times, the Iowa Constitution can only be amended if the State Legislature approves a ballot question by a simple majority in each of two successive biennial sessions. So, even if an amendment got legislative approval in the session that runs through the end of 2008, it would need to be approved again in the 2009-2010 session and would only reach voters in November 2010, presumably after the state Supreme Court rules.

The Legislature's mood is uncertain.

The Democrats hold narrow majorities in both the Senate and House, and the governor, Chet Culver, is also a Democrat. Not surprisingly, it was the Republicans who moved to heat up the debate.

"I can't believe this actually happened in Iowa," said the House minority leader, Chris Rants, a Sioux City Republican, as he vowed to press the case to protect the state DOMA in the Iowa Constitution. "What it means is that one person has decided they know better than the whole Legislature."

Meanwhile Culver acted quickly to douse any immediate wildfire, pledging "to follow this matter closely as it continues through the judicial system before determining whether any additional legislative actions are appropriate or necessary." Des Moines Democrat Kevin McCar­thy, the House majority leader, urged his fellow legislators to "take a deep breath and calm down."

The Democrats are the ones in the trickier political spot. While Culver last week reiterated his view that marriage is between a man and a woman, the state party itself is on the record in favor of marriage equality. So Democrats are likely to use their control of the Legislature to block any vote from happening at all, seeing it as a no-win proposition for themselves.

One Iowa, the state's marriage equality advocacy group, however, was unwilling to handi­­cap the landscape in the state capital so soon after the Hanson ruling. As the group works to gauge the current temperature, it continues its efforts with Lambda on a series of community briefings designed to educate members of the LGBT community on the marriage drive while drawing media attention across the state.

That strategy proved effective in mobilizing the community and winning editorial support when Lambda employed it in advance of last year's New Jersey Supreme Court ruling. According to Steven Goldstein, who heads up Garden State Equality, that groundwork was invaluable in keeping the push for full civil marriage alive in the wake of the Legislature's decision to opt for only civil unions when faced with a high court mandate last fall.

In the next week alone, One Iowa and Lambda plan meetings in Des Moines, Sioux City, and Iowa City.

©GayCityNews 2007

Sex Panic

Editor's Letter, Gay City News, September 6-12, 2007:

The issue began to emerge clearer for me when we posted my editor's letter last week online.

Touching broadly on the Larry Craig matter, the letter specifically mocked an absurd question a CNN reporter posed to an undercover Atlanta airport cop about whether pedophilia was involved in any arrests he made and also quoted approvingly a complaint Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force made about public resources being wasted on this sort of law enforcement.

Before long, vituperative postings poured in. None was more disturbing than the following: "I know a toddler who was surrounded by gay perverts in a public bathroom who licked their lips and said they wanted to help him with his pants. But I guess that's alright too, because they're gay, right?"

The contention is clearly apocryphal. In fact, I would argue, it's delusional. But it is also of a piece - even if in very extreme form - of much of what emerged in the public discourse in the past week.

During then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani's late-'90s zoning and nightlife crackdown targeting sex-related businesses, some gay activists termed his campaign a Sex Panic, branding themselves with that name in a form of self-empowerment. A phenomenon documented repeatedly through history, a Sex Panic is a popular and hysterical reaction to perceived transgressions against public morality out of proportion to any underlying reality. Bound by rigid codes of sexual propriety, people simultaneously demonize those whose behavior they fear and exaggerate or perhaps completely misperceive the reality of that behavior.

An example of a Sex Panic unmoored to any reality began in 1983, when one mother's charge of child sex abuse against a preschool run by the McMartin family in California resulted in 208 criminal charges against eight adults, based on accusations that included stories about hidden tunnels, ritual animal killings, Satanic worship, and orgies. Seven years later, all the charges were dropped.

Sex Panics more typically respond to actual shifts in cultural mores, but do so in a manner wholly out of proportion to the extent of change taking place. Doug Ireland, in this issue, writes about the Great Purge in McCarthy-era Britain that followed a prominent gay diplomat's defection.

In the US, McCarthy himself leveled charges of homosexuality coupled with treason against State Department civil servants, and it was during the 1950s that the Postal Service engaged in a vicious campaign targeting anyone receiving sexually-related materials, particularly those gay-oriented, in the mail. Historian William Wright has documented a secret purge of homosexuals at Harvard during the immediate post-World War I years, a time of considerable social, cultural, and labor unrest nationally.

Anyone following the Craig story online has undoubtedly run across the sort of hysteria I found posted to my editor's letter last week. But, let's face it - most of the reaction was over the top. Mitt Romney termed foot-tapping and hand-waving, unwanted and inept as it may have been, "disgusting." Senate Republicans took the unprecedented step of demanding an ethics investigation. Newsweek featured "The Secret World of Online Cruising" and even added a photo gallery, "A Brief History of Online Busts," though most of that turned out to be unrelated to sex.

When the response wasn't "disgusting," it was often "outrageous" or simply "creepy." Most of those I saw commenting on TV, online, or in print felt the need to say their reaction had nothing to do with how they feel about gays, and when Craig denied he is gay, that seemed to relieve many of the burden of issuing that disclaimer quite so emphatically.

But underneath all this was an eagerness- amidst vanishing politically correct outlets - to vent a visceral disgust and hatred of gay sexual behavior, something many Americans seem to feel they are forced to think about. Tucker Carlson busted himself on this score, one night clearly relishing the chance to boast of enlisting a buddy to help bash a man who "bothered" him in a bathroom. When the predictable pushback came the next day, Carlson retreated to the cover that the incident had been a sexual assault and voiced solidarity with victims of similar violence. Mention of a bona fide sexual assault story, of course, had no place in a discussion of what happened in that Minneapolis bathroom.

Meanwhile, the real issue forming the indictment against Larry Craig's public service -- his consistently anti-gay voting record, especially in the hypocritical light of his private conduct -- goes largely unexamined by the media. Those who sought to spotlight the issue pre-Minneapolis are widely dismissed, even condemned, as gay activists with an outing agenda. A society traditionally hostile to the sexual rights of gay men thus suddenly adopts the conceit that privacy above all is sacrosanct.

©GayCityNews 2007

Mindless in Minneapolis -- And Elsewhere

Editor's Letter, Gay City News, August 30-September 5, 2007:

Yet again we face a homosexual scandal involving a gay-baiting right-wing Republican which ought to allow us to savor the hypocrisy but instead threatens the conversation we all hope to have with America.Once among their proudest spear throwers, Larry Craig is now being abandoned by the right at breakneck speed. The Republican Senate conference, which took no position on the July revelation tying ultra-conservative Louisiana Senator David Vittner to the Washington madam scandal, by Tuesday had called for a Senate Ethics investigation of Craig.

Mitt Romney, on whose presidential campaign Craig served, termed the Idaho senator's conduct "disgusting," and mindful of the political need to pin something disgusting on the Democrats compared it to Bill Clinton's Oval Office blowjob. John McCain, in contrast, claimed he wouldn't take "a moral stand" and be "holier than thou" (a dig at the Mormon?), but feels that "when you plead guilty to a crime, then you shouldn't serve." He called on Craig to resign.

Minnesota's Norm Coleman, who has a hometown airport to defend after all, endorsed a Romney-McCain ticket, calling Craig "disgusting" and urging him to resign.

Bow-tied conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, yucking it up with Florida congressman-turned talk show host Joe Scarborough and Dan Abrams on MSNBC, recounted a high school incident in which he was "bothered" in a men's room, left, and returned with someone with whom he "grabbed the guy by the - you know, and grabbed him, and - and- hit him against the stall with his head, actually!" The police soon arrived to arrest Carlson's botherer.

Probably wise of Carlson not to have attacked every American who's wondered if Tucker's gay.

Meanwhile, an Atlanta airport cop bragged to CNN that his team arrested 45 men in bathrooms there this year and sometimes goes online to arrange hook-ups with others. A clueless, but suitably alarmist CNN correspondent asked if the behavior ever involves pedophilia. That red meat seemed too much even for the proud tearoom morals enforcer.

In Sacramento, on the local CBS affiliate, the morning news anchor and the weatherman attempted to act out the scene in the Minneapolis airport bathroom on live television. Again, everyone shared a round of laughs.

All of this hooey comes amidst an ongoing jihad waged by Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle against the scourge of lewdness by "homosexual" men-he refuses to call us "gay" because we are, he said, for the most part "unhappy." Naugle's rhetoric combined with the disgust-cum-titters occasioned by the Craig matter may have some Americans wondering how bad this public sex problem has become. By the way, the Fort Lauderdale police report a grand total of four lewdness arrests in the past two-and-a-half years.

Largely absent from the national debate has been the question of why law enforcement resources at security-challenged locations such as the Minneapolis and Atlanta airports are being tied up chasing down behavior such as Craig's. The cop in Minneapolis from his own description was sitting in that stall for a good while. The Atlanta officer volunteered the information about recruiting pigeons online.

And anyone who has done any serious reporting on lewdness arrests, as this newspaper has, knows that entrapment is at least 50 percent of that game. Did Larry Craig receive some subtle invitation as he in turn was signaling his own interest peering through that stall door's crack - or is he just one unlucky dumb bastard?

Last year, when Congressman Mark Foley's Internet naughty chat scandal broke, two Democratic challengers to GOP incumbents targeted their opponents as protectors of child predators. They both lost. Hopefully their behavior, widely seen as over-the-top, taught the Democrats something.

Those of us in the gay community - let's be smart too. Enjoy a laugh or two, but let's not get into the demonizing game too enthusiastically. Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force struck just the right balance: "What's up with elected officials like Senator Craig? They stand for so-called 'family values' and fight basic protections for gay people while furtively seeking other men for sex. Infuriating pathetic hypocrites.

"What more can you say?"

But then he added, "And by the way, why are Minneapolis tax dollars being used to have plainclothes police officers lurking idly in airport restroom stalls?"

©GayCityNews 2007