Via Glenn:

CHANGE: Same-Sex Couples in CA, NV & WA Reap Big Federal Tax Bonuses: “Thanks to a 1996 federal law aimed at preserving traditional marriage, thousands of same-sex couples in California, Nevada, and Washington state could get big tax bonuses on their federal returns starting this year. The bonuses are off-limits to heterosexual married couples—a sharp reminder of the ‘marriage penalty’ that often dings two-earner couples.” Sounds like somebody in Congress, or the Clinton Administration, should have thought that whole “Defense of Marriage Act” thing through a bit more.

Via e-mail, reader Peter Hughes alerted me to a looming victory for gay rights in the most unlikely of places, the Lone Star State.  According to the Houston Chronicle,

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he’s in favor of the idea.

This is great news for gay people whom many believe are more vulnerable than straights for harassment based on our sexuality.  If a potential bashers know that gay students might be packing, they’ll be less likely to attack.  And if they do attack, gay people will better be able to defend themselves.

Kudos to Texas legislators for considering providing gay men and lesbians with an important tool to protect against ourselves against those who would do us harm.  Let’s hope gay organizations in Texas and nationwide push the legislature to act speedily on this important gay rights measure.

After the elected members of both houses of the state legislature passed a bill recognizing civil unions, the elected governor of Illinois signed a bill recognizing same-sex civil unions:

The measure, approved last month during the General Assembly’s lame-duck session, lets gays and lesbians use civil unions as a way to enjoy several of the same rights as people who are married, ranging from sharing a nursing home room to being involved in dramatic end-of-life decisions.

The law takes effect June 1 once signed. It also applies to heterosexual couples, signifying a step short of marriage.

While it is a good thing that the bill allows same-sex couples to seek protections and privileges for their relationships, it is unfortunate that the legislation also applies to mixed-sex couples who already enjoy the option of seeking state recognition of their unions as marriages.

Still, it is a step in the right direction.  Kudos to the elected officials in the appropriate branches of Illinois state government for moving forward on such recognition.

Remember, the American Left wants you to believe the GZM is good, nothing to worry about, and Islam is the “Religion of Peace”.

The new imam at the Ground Zero mosque and cultural center believes people who are gay were probably abused as children and that people who leave Islam and preach a new religion should be jailed.

Abdallah Adhami’s remarks on homosexuals, religious freedom and other topics have brought renewed criticism of the proposed community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, which purports to be an inclusive organization.

Adhami, in a lecture on the Web site of his nonprofit, Sakeenah, says being gay is a “painful trial” caused by past trauma.

“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life,” he says. “A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”

Charming.  The Gay Left would be taking to the streets if this Imam’s last name was “Palin”.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In an interview with the Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein, Harry Stein, author of, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next To A Republican, recently released in paperback, offers an anecdote which corresponds with the experience of this blogger — and many of our readers.  Answering the question, ”What is it like being a Republican in San Francisco?“, he offers

Well, as one (gay) Republican I spoke to out there put it, it’s a lot easier to be gay in San Francisco than a Republican, adding that when he came out as a Republican “friends abandoned me. I got called a fascist, traitor, crazy, insane, a racist.” In the Bizarro World that is San Francisco, fascism is always around the corner and that great bogeyman, the Christian Right, is just waiting to pounce.

Our experience has shown, it’s far easier to be openly gay in conservative circles than it is to be openly conservative in gay circles.  To be sure, we have also met many dyed-in-the-wool left-wingers who treat us with dignity despite our political differences, but there is a common thread running through the anecdotes of our interactions with our fellow gays, stories of individuals insulting, attacking or otherwise avoiding us because of our political opinions.  And they tell us as much to our faces.  Often in the nastiest terms.

Via reader Viking the Kitten.

In a post on ice skater’s Johnny Weir’s comment in coming out as a gay man about “pressure” being “the last thing that would make me want to ‘join’ a community“, Ann Althouse gets at something that many, particularly gay activists, in conversations on coming out:

Some people think of themselves as, above all, individuals, and when others think the most important thing is their membership in a particular group, they resist. They don’t want to be defined by a single quality, especially when it’s a quality that makes other people see them in terms of the group stereotype, and not personal uniqueness. 

There is a lot in which this diva says, so I recommend you both read her post and ponder these words.

It often seems that the gay rights’ movement pursues the notion of group rights rather than individual ones.  That is is why I believe we need develop a conservative message on gays, independent to that developed by the left-leaning gay groups, organizations which are helmed by men and women who with a background in Democratic politics and liberal ideologies seem beholden to statist theories of rights.

Hopefully more on this anon, much more in the coming year.

Well said, Ann. (H/t: Reader Leah)

I’ve long observed that there is a disconnect between how gay marriage advocates talk about the institution they promote and how my gay friends (particularly lesbians) live said relationships.  

The advocates talk about marriage as a “right” to which we are entitled.  It’s all about love and equality, they say.  They tend to eschew terms like monogamy and responsibility and seem clueless about the history of the institution.  

Meanwhile, many gay couples who have sought state recognition of their marriages (in states which grant them that privilege) talk about their relationships in terms nearly identical to their straight peers who elect such state recognition.  They’re aware of about the challenges of relationships, the importance of monogamy as well as the balancing necessary for two individuals (even loving individuals) to live together in harmony.

In short, there seems to be a disconnect between gay marriage as practiced and as promoted, between those in relationships and those who deem themselves spokesman for our “community.”  In his latest column which I found via Instapundit, Jonah Goldberg sort of gets at that disconnect, finding that “the gay left” who once “wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy” has now come to embrace marriage.

Perhaps their problem difficulty in talking about the meaning of marriage comes from their roots in a cultural movement at odds with the values undergirding that institution.

But imagine you hate the institution of marriage and then watch “Modern Family’s” hardworking bourgeois gay couple through those eyes. What’s being subverted? Traditional marriage, or some bohemian identity politics fantasy of homosexuality?

By the way, according to a recent study, “Modern Family” is the No. 1 sitcom among Republicans (and the third show overall behind Glenn Beck and “The Amazing Race”) but not even in the top 15 among Democrats, who prefer darker shows like Showtime‘s “Dexter,” about a serial killer trying to balance work and family between murders.

So, Republicans enjoy a sitcom which includes a gay couple raising a child?!?!  Hmm. . . .  But, I thought they hated gay people. (more…)

Michael Barone has a great piece in the Washington Examiner where he takes note of a phenomenon most welcome to Reagan Republicans like myself, the emergence of a “truce in [the] culture wars” as voters become increasingly concerned about the sour economy and the bloated federal government:

The fact is that there is an ongoing truce on the social issues, because for most Americans they have been overshadowed by concerns raised by the weak economy and the Obama Democrats’ vast increase in the size and scope of government.

And with this truce, comes increasing acceptance of gay people.

There’s a sharp difference between old and young voters on same-sex marriage, and my guess is that young voters will continue to favor it by wide margins as they grow older; but maybe not. In the meantime, discrimination against or disparagement of gays and lesbians is increasingly frowned on by larger and larger majorities.

Indeed, many conservatives frown against such disparagement, with some opponents of state-recognized same-sex marriage treating gay individuals with dignity and favoring civil unions.

It’s Barone.  Read the whole thing.

From a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, “The Tea Party’s brew includes gays and lesbians“:

Mr. Meyerson assumes that gay Americans are politically myopic. National exit polls for the November election showed that 31 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay voted for Republican candidates in House races.

Liberals would like to believe they own the gay vote, as if gays were a monolithic voting bloc whose sole, overriding concern is gay marriage and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Gays are heads of families, professionals and business owners, and issues such as national security, sane economic policy and halting the rapid growth and overreach of government rank far ahead of gay issues for many, though the importance of gay issues can’t be discounted.

The Tea Party movement has three core principles: Fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. While individual Tea Partyers may embrace a wide range of views on social issues, the movement has risen to power because it has formed around this very narrow range of principles most critical to the survival of our nation at this precise moment in history.

The letter’s author Doug Mainwaring may not be a GayPatriot reader, but he sure does sound like one!  :-)

Sees more and more of us freedom-loving gay folk are speaking out!

(H/t:  Instapundit.)

First, kudos to Illinois legislators for passing a law recognizing same-sex civil unions.  This is the way states should go about recognizing gay relationships, through the legislature, not the courts.

But, the bill’s chief sponsor in the state House, state Rep. Greg Harris was wrong to include different-sex couples in this new law’s protections.  Such couples already have an option for recognition of their unions:  marriage.

Still, while an imperfect bill, it is a step in the right direction.

Our visitor ticker at the bottom is about to click to a big number.

Will we get our 4,000,000th visitor on Monday?

Fingers crossed!

One of our critics and one of our staunchest defenders respectively got at the weakness in the argument GOProud and this blog have been making asking the GOP to sidestep social issues.

The critic, Tim, in a comment, contended that my “compromise of not discussing social issues” means that Congress will not move forward on DADT and DOMA repeal while “immigration reform for gays will languish. Somehow,” he adds, “the status quo doesn’t seem that great.”

In a blog post, styled as an open letter to GOProud, North Dallas Thirty looks at the status quo from a different angle and also finds it also not great:

But the key to dealing with social issues is not to ignore them completely. Indeed, by making them off-limits, you infuriate those whose support you need and leave yourself open for the Obama Party to exploit them against you. . . .

Take, for instance, abortion.

Regardless of how you feel about it, the simple fact is this: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi rammed through a bill that not only requires you as a taxpayer to fund abortion, but for that money to be sent to organizations who are covering up statutory rape and refusing to notify parents — and then donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to that same Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

Read the whole thing, not necessarily because I agree with it, but because I do believe he raises some valuable points.  He suggest that instead of avoiding social issues, we “grab” and “reframe them.”

NDXXX is spot on about abortion.  But, I see that not so much as a social issue, but more as a fiscal.  No government should pay for abortion.

And yes, I do acknowledge that social conservatives are part of the GOP coalition.  But, Republicans risk losing independent voters if they bend over backwards trying to appease these folks.  So, keep the focus on fiscal issues, but make clear they understand social conservatives’ concern.

The less government is involved in our lives, the greater influence private institutions will have.  The government should not mandate that social conservatives pay for a medical procedure they find abhorrent. (more…)

During the course of the 2010 campaign, I was working on a blog post/op-ed with the title I use for this post.  But, as I followed the messages of Republican candidates across the country, I realized that, well, they had already gotten the message.  It didn’t seem necessary.  And since it wasn’t a winning issue in the campaign, it shouldn’t be a defining agenda when the 112th Congress convenes in January.

Thanks in part to the unpopular, big-government initiatives of the Obama Democrats and the concomitant (given popular opinion) growth of the Tea Parties, most Republicans campaigned on fiscal issues.  Those who made an issue of gays (or appeared to do as much) didn’t do as well on Election Day as polls forecast.

Now, our good friends at GOProud “and some Tea Party leaders” are pressing Republicans to stay true to their campaign rhetoric and “to keep social issues off” the agenda:

“On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement,” they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. “This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue.”

When Chris Barron of GOProud contacted Bruce and me about the project, each of us eagerly signed on.  His letter is exactly in the spirit of the ideas this blog has been promoting for six year — and that I have been promoting for at last fifteen.  Social conservative Tea Party folk are also signing up:

“When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren’t arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion,” said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

“Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That’s not something I necessarily believe in,” said King. “I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that’s not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots.”

Nice to see a gay conservative group actually working within the framework of conservative groups to keep the focus on the issues which have defined our party at least since the rise of Reagan — and have helped Republicans win elections in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994 and now 2010.

Even the Advocate has picked up on this.  Guess the message is that a gay Republicans can get media attention without attacking their own party.

It is, in large measure, because of George W. Bush that I started blogging.  While I had been so incensed by his decision to back the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in February 2004 that I wrote in Rudy Giuliani in the California primary and had, in March of that year, considered voting Libertarian in the fall election, I came around while following John Kerry’s campaign.

That Democrat seemed more interested in playing to Democratic critics of W and posturing for the media than in addressing the real security threats to our nation.

And while Bush had an imperfect record on domestic issues and intervened in an issue — amending the federal constitution — from which that charter excludes the executive, he did demonstrate a clear recognition of the need to take an aggressive stance against the enemies of the United States.  By the summer of 2004, I was back to supporting his reelection.

It would seem that most gay Republicans would understand that, while disappointed with his stance on the FMA, the nation faced more pressing challenges.  And John Kerry was clearly not up to those challenges.  With so much at stake, Log Cabin could at least have been more diplomatic in the manner of its non-endorsement.  But, they did it in a manner clearly designed to hurt George W. Bush and, with recent revelations about their funding made manifest in recent months confirming suspicion we then had, in a manner intended to help John Kerry.  Not a very responsible thing for a Republican organization to do in time of war.

Thus, when I read Bruce’s post telling Log Cabin to stick it, I eagerly e-mailed him thanking him for speaking up — and later accepted his invitation to join this then-fledgling blog.

I say all this as prelude to a passage which particularly struck me in the former president’s memoir.  When he asked Dick Cheney to serve as his running mate, that great and good man told the then-governor of Texas that his daughter was gay.  ”I could tell,” Bush wrote

. . . what he meant by the way he said it.  Dick clearly loved his daughter.  I felt he was gauging my tolerance.  ”If you have a problem with this, I’m not your man,” he was essentially saying.

I smiled at him and said, “Dick, take your time.  Please talk to Lynne.  And I could not care less about Mary’s orientation.

While we all may remain disappointed about the former president’s stand on FMA, we continue to accumulate evidence that popular notions of his supposed bigotry in the gay community notwithstanding, George W. Bush does not hate gay people.

It would be nice if folks in the gay community acknowledged W’s reaction to his running mate’s openness about his daughter’s sexuality — and to that vice president’s sterling record on gay issues.

In the wake of the 2010 elections, the various gay groups in our nation’s capital, in particular the largest, HRC, can choose to continue as they have and serve as gay versions of the various left-wing advocacy groups or, to shift course and act as non-partisan advocates on behalf of the diverse community of gay and lesbian individuals.  Their current strategy made sense in a Washington where Democrats dominated (as does the partisan strategy of their California counterpart, “Equality California”).

And, to be sure, if you believe big-government to be the means to “solve” the problems facing the gay community, it is entirely honorable to set up shop as a left-wing advocacy group.  The important thing is to be upfront about it.

That said, it’s hard to see how a man of Joe Solmonese’s political pedigree can have any influence in a Washington where John Boehner is now the most powerful legislator.  An ability in the current climate to appeal to Democrats will not help move legislation repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) or recognizing, for the purposes of federal law, same-sex unions.

This is why I’m so gung-ho about GOProud.  They are familiar with the arguments we need make in order to influence a more conservative Congress.

All that said, the 2010 elections should be a wake-up call to the gay groups inside the Beltway that their strategic alliance with the Democratic Party has failed.  It is hard to tell what the future is.  Some Republicans may be willing to move forward on gay issues.  Others may find that by avoiding such issues, they can toss a bone to social conservatives.

Whatever the case, gay groups will have to adopt a new strategy or become gay cheerleaders for the Democratic agenda.  Steadfast, to be sure, in pursuit of their principles, but ineffective in achieving legislative success.

Via a reader’s Facebook page, I caught this clip of Chris Barron on CNN.  What stands out is what he said at two points, points Bruce and I have been making as long as we have been blogging, indeed, were making even before we started blogging:

Starting at about 1:45, Chris begins by saying that we should be “past identity just for the sake of identity politics.”  Then, commenting on the Iowa judges (who ruled in favor of state recognition of same-sex marriage) being voted out, he pointed out that “a strategy that relies solely on the courts is a flawed strategy.”  Hear!  Hear!  Instead, he says gay groups should do the hard work of changing hearts and minds.

Then, about 3 minutes later, starting at about 4:45, he faults the “big-government” agenda of the gay left, pointing out that conservative reforms benefit gay people.

Been waiting to hear this kind of rhetoric on national television from the folks at Log Cabin for about as long I’ve been following Log Cabin.  And now someone is finally getting it across.  Kudos, Chris, job well done!

“Has anyone noticed,” our reader Eddie asked in a recent thread,

. . . that the most gay-unfriendly Tea Partiers lost? Paladino, Buck, and Miller at the top of the list (well, Miller hasn’t technically lost yet) Angle and O’Donell? Those are the ones who made comments or had positions that don’t set well with gay people. And don’t get me wrong, I would still have voted for any of those 5 over the Democrats, but I was just sayin’.

First, dispute Miss O’Donnell’s many inadequacies as a candidate, most of her comments that don’t sit well with gay people date back to the 1990s.  I think she would have lost even without having said such strange things way back when.   I do have some evidence that her attitudes toward gays have shifted since then  – only that changed attitude, as far as I know, did not come out in her unsuccessful campaign.

But, Eddie is onto something.  In the two of the three close Senate races where the Democrat prevailed, the Republican had said things that made it seem he (or she, in the case of Sharron Angle) had not accepted the social changes of the past quarter-century.

This should be a reminder to Republican candidates readying runs to challenge some of the many Democratic Senators whose terms come up for reelection next fall.

Best to focus on economic issues, adopting a live-and-let-live attitude on social issues — as well as fiscal ones.

In analyzing the gay vote in the 2010 elections (that Bruce blogged about here), the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart almost sort of gets it:

If you want more data that gay men and lesbians are pretty much just like everyone else — worried about the economy, freaked out about the direction of the country and perhaps ticked at the slow pace of change with regard to their civil rights — get a load of this exit poll result.

Well, not entirely.  I’m still trying to figure out what he means about civil rights.  If the issue were civil rights, we already have them.

Of course, I was being sarcastic in the first sentence in the previous paragraph; I know what he means, but if we understand the term before it was politicized, well gay people have long had those rights.  Government, as Thomas Jefferson understood, does not give us rights.  It is our Creator who endows us with them.

Government, however, can take them away.  And governments, at least here in the United States, have not prevented us from living in civil society, assembling free, speaking out publicly and voting.  Yes, I know that many gay activists are upset that Congress has not acted on certain legislation near and dear to their hearts — and two bills I believe they should act on, but those bills are CRINO (Civil Rights In Name Only).

That said, it’s nice to see the mainstream media, albeit only in one of their blogs, start paying attention to the fact that gay people have the same concerns as other Americans.   Capehart notes that some (probably including himself) might find the 31% of the gay vote Republicans drew as “amazing, especially when you consider that way too many people think being gay and voting Democratic are one in the same.”

But, it’s only amazing to those who live in a Beltway cocoon and/or learn about gay people from the press releases and public statements of HRC and other such groups — as well as their echo chamber in newspapers like his. (more…)

When I read lefty gay blogs and communicate with gay bloggers and politically aware gay friends, I often hear a different critique on Joe Solmonese than the one I offered last night.

Their basic argument is that the HRC chief, instead of playing offensive on gay issues is playing defense for the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats.  ”Too often,” Stephen H. Miller writes on the Independent Gay Forum’s Culture Watch, “Solmonese has seemed more interested in defending the Obama administration to HRC’s gay donors rather than in playing hardball.”

I wonder if the Senate would have moved on DADT repeal had Solmonese called Harry Reid in May after the House voted on repeal and demanded that he move forward immediately on a vote or risk a loss of HRC support of Democrats in the fall elections.  Surely, he has contacts in the Senate Leader’s office.  Such ultimatum might have worked wonders on the then-vulnerable incumbent.

And while HRC may still have contacts in the offices of the Senate Democratic leadership, Miller says “lines of communication with the GOP . . . appear to be nil”:

Even leaving aside the group’s failed one-party strategy, the people running HRC, as Blatt notes, don’t speak the language of “liberty”; their template for politics is one of “rights.” They live in a different world from the party that now controls the House.

So, now we see two basic criteria HRC’s board should consider in picking a new leader, first, someone who can talk Tea Party Republican and, second, someone willing to play hardball with Senate Democrats.

One thing is clear after reading HRC’s Post-Election Lament; Analysis: if the organization is serious about advocating for gay and lesbian Americans in our nation’s capital, it needs new leadership.  Its leaders just don’t get the issues which helped elect Republicans across the country.  It is time for Joe Solmonese to step down and to be replaced by someone who knows how to “talk Republican”, given that Republicans will soon control one house of Congress.

Solmonese’s background is in left-wing partisan (Democratic) advocacy.  Before coming to HRC, he worked for EMILY’s List, an outfit which defines itself as “a community of progressive Americans dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women“.

In its analysis, HRC almost got the meaning of the election:

Voter anxiety over economic affairs created a difficult environment for incumbents and swept conservative majorities into the U.S. House and state legislatures around the country. Thankfully this election was not characterized by as much wedge-issue demagoguery as we’ve seen in the past but make no mistake, these new leaders are no friends to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Yeah, the new leaders may not be friends (as they define friends) to the gay and lesbian community, but they’re surely not enemies.  HRC did get that the GOP swept to power by ignoring “wedge-issue demagoguery,” but its leaders missed the issue that really resonated across the country (save perhaps in California): that government has gotten too big and is spending too much.

People want government to leave us alone so we can solve our problems on our own.  And that’s a message which should be welcome to gay and lesbian individuals and should certainly not be anathema to the gay community.

If HRC had a leader who understood that message, then he would understand that the results while perhaps damaging to their notion of gay equality (whatever that means) could bode well, very well for the gay community.   Just as government shouldn’t interfere in the marketplace, so it shouldn’t meddle in our homes.   If it wants to have any influence in the 112th Congress, HRC’s leadership needs to tap into the freedom rhetoric that so resonated with the American people in yesterday’s balloting and lobby Congress not to enact laws which limit our liberty.

And to do that, they don’t necessarily need a Republican leader or one from the Tea Party movement, but one familiar with and respectful of the ideas which undergird it.  Joe Solmonese is not such a man.  And that’s why it’s time for him to go.

NB:  Tweaked the post to fix some sentences which didn’t read well.