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The Bigots' Last Hurrah
WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic "The Village of the Damned" with the Broadway staple "A Chorus Line"? You don't need to use your imagination. It's there waiting for you on YouTube under the title "Gathering Storm": a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism.
The actors are supposedly Not Gay. They stand in choral formation before a backdrop of menacing clouds and cheesy lightning effects. "The winds are strong," says a white man to the accompaniment of ominous music. "And I am afraid," a young black woman chimes in. "Those advocates want to change the way I live," says a white woman. But just when all seems lost, the sun breaks through and a smiling black man announces that "a rainbow coalition" is "coming together in love" to save America from the apocalypse of same-sex marriage. It's the swiftest rescue of Western civilization since the heyday of the ambiguously gay duo Batman and Robin.
Far from terrifying anyone, "Gathering Storm" has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert's on Thursday night, in which lightning from "the homo storm" strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A "New Jersey pastor" whose church has been "turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch" declares that he likes gay people, "but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies."
Yet easy to mock as "Gathering Storm" may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America's anti-gay movement.
What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it's idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it's mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.
"Gathering Storm" was produced and broadcast - for a claimed $1.5 million - by an outfit called the National Organization for Marriage. This "national organization," formed in 2007, is a fund-raising and propaganda-spewing Web site fronted by the right-wing Princeton University professor Robert George and the columnist Maggie Gallagher, who was famously caught receiving taxpayers' money to promote Bush administration "marriage initiatives." Until last month, half of the six board members (including George) had some past or present affiliation with Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. (One of them, the son of one of the 12 apostles in the Mormon church hierarchy, recently stepped down.)
Even the anti-Obama "tea parties" flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. Beyond Princeton, most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didn't even make the evening news.
On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to "celebrate what happened in Vermont" because "instead of the courts making a decision, the people did." Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as "a biological error" and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN's Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as "a beautiful thing and a healthy thing." In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were "something else in disguise."
More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had "never" been and "never will be" an "anti-gay-marriage activist." This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson's Focus on the Family.
The Obamas' dog had longer legs on cable than the news from Iowa and Vermont. CNN's weekly press critique, "Reliable Sources," inquired why. The gay blogger John Aravosis suggested that many Americans are more worried about their mortgages than their neighbors' private lives. Besides, Aravosis said, there are "only so many news stories you can do showing guys in tuxes."
As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support "at some point in the 2010s."
Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right's two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state's legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. "The only difference," the judge wrote, is that "civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law."
Some opponents grumbled anyway, reviving their perennial complaint, dating back to Brown v. Board of Education, about activist judges. But the judiciary has long played a leading role in sticking up for the civil rights of minorities so they're not held hostage to a majority vote. Even if the judiciary-overreach argument had merit, it was still moot in Vermont, where the State Legislature, not a court, voted to make same-sex marriage legal and then voted to override the Republican governor's veto.
As the case against equal rights for gay families gets harder and harder to argue on any nonreligious or legal grounds, no wonder so many conservatives are dropping the cause. And if Fox News and Rick Warren won't lead the charge on same-sex marriage, who on the national stage will take their place? The only enthusiastic contenders seem to be Republicans contemplating presidential runs in 2012. As Rich Tafel, the former president of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, pointed out to me last week, what Iowa giveth to the Democrats, Iowa taketh away from his own party. As the first stop in the primary process, the Iowa caucuses provided a crucial boost to Barack Obama's victorious and inclusive Democratic campaign in 2008. But on the G.O.P. side, the caucuses tilt toward the exclusionary hard right.
In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa's Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That's the hurdle facing the party's contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. Palin even broke with John McCain on the issue during their campaign, supporting the federal marriage amendment that he rejects. This month, even as the father of Palin's out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people "degenerates." Such homophobia didn't even play in Alaska - the State Legislature voted the nominee down - and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.
One G.O.P. politician who understands this is the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, who on Friday urged his party to join him in endorsing same-sex marriage. Another is Jon Huntsman Jr., the governor of Utah, who in February endorsed civil unions for gay couples, a position seemingly indistinguishable from Obama's. Huntsman is not some left-coast Hollywood Republican. He's a Mormon presiding over what Gallup ranks as the reddest state in the country.
"We must embrace all citizens as equals," Huntsman told me in an interview last week. "I've always stood tall on this." Has he been hurt by his position? Not remotely. "A lot of people gave the issue more scrutiny after it became the topic of the week," he said, and started to see it "in human terms." Letters, calls, polls and conversations with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has "shifted quite substantially" toward his point of view. Huntsman's approval rating now stands at 84 percent.
He believes that social issues should not be a priority for Republicans in any case during an economic crisis. He also is an outspoken foe of the "nativist language" that has marked the G.O.P. of late. Huntsman doesn't share "the view of some" that "the party was created in 1980." He yearns for it to reclaim Lincoln's faith in "individual dignity."
As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.
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31 Comments so far
Show AllWe must have our distractions you know. Now that racial hatred has been partially defused by the sights and sounds of an intelligent and handsome black family in the White House what is the poor opposition to do? Obviously they continue to need money and votes, so lets turn to homophobia to obtain both.
I would remind everyone that bigotry is alive and well in this nation and on this forum. Just a few short days ago one poster used homophobic remarks to insult, failing, in his wretchedness, to understand that such references are not really insulting to those with an actual brain. We have along way to go apparently before we weed out the despicable haters from our gene pool. But we are inching ever closer I believe.
Red Rick April 19th, 2009 9:22 am, good point. Now that the professional haters have a harder time collecting money on racial bigotry, they've turned to squeezing the teabag of any dollars left in the homophobia slot. (Reminds me of the Christopublican ministers who sent out fundraising letters after the release of "Brokeback Mountain" for "advocating the gay lifestyle" while admitting they hadn't seen it.)
There's also a two-tiered bigotry at work here. I heard of a focus group, a supposed 'cross section of average Americans' evenly divided between heterosexual men and women, who were shown brief clips of women dressed for a wedding kissing each other on the lips. They were asked to evaluate the clips; a vast majority said they interpreted the pictures as two straight women kissing in celebration during a wedding and thought that was just fine. When they were told the women were lesbians who had just been married, 65 percent still thought there was nothing wrong with that. Then the group was shown clips of men kissing -- a majority expressed 'moderate dislike' to 'extreme disgust' and 48 percent agreed it was 'evil,' 'sinful,' 'perverted' or 'against God's will.' Only 20 percent described the lesbian kisses in the same way. Apparently, the majority of America is okay with lesbians marrying and only really uncomfortable with two men getting hitched.
A social scientist or psychologist might want to discover why there is this disparity of opinion in supposedly 'straight' men and women. Why is it more socially acceptable for two women to kiss each other on the lips than two men? (For that matter, I've heard lesbian pornography is more accepted by both sexes than male pornography.)
Could it be the strong undercurrent of latent and repressed male homosexuality in our culture -- from sports arenas to military barracks -- as Psych 101 would indicate, or is it something else?
Bravo to Frank Rich! What a great editorial!
Rich writes: "Most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont." I surely hope there comes a day when we can expect something better than a shrug from our heterosexual sisters and brothers. Why were straight citizens not also celebrating? Equal rights for gay men and lesbians is an enrichment of our democracy and an achievement to celebrate.
I'm straight, and I was celebrating!!
Me too!
I'm straight--at least I was when I was young enough to have any hormones--and I celebrated. It's a matter of human rights. Plus I celebrated, with tears, for a great pal of mine at college who died of AIDS in the 1980s. That's for you, Kris!
Rainborowe
I hope more than a few bigots go broke trying to fund this bullshit.
The most cogent tidbit of Frank Rich's piece is the demographic element: anti-gay bigotry is a graying phenomena. What we are seeing with the "Gathering Storm" and Proposition 8 are the not too graceful death throes of an ethos that knows its' days are numbered and has decided to go down disgracefully. I, for one, plan to mock them all the way to obscurity and historical footnote status, and urge other progressives to do the same.
Yet easy to mock as "Gathering Storm" may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America's anti-gay movement.
Please don't be so quick to dismiss America's Nazi underbelly. It is not soft. Things don't look so hot for them right now. Glenn Beck makes you rub your eyes and guffaw and the icepick-in-the-ear voice of Michelle Malkin still jolts the air. These are violently angry, hate filled and in some cases downright looney fanatics whose blood is boiling. They will not go away.
Yes, Rich and others may be way too optimistic. Financial collapses have a way of bringing dangerous demagogues to power. I fear that this may be near the high water mark for gay rights (as well as other progressive trends that depend on general prosperity), though I hope otherwise. But as we know, hope is slippery and unreliable, and I'm with Mordechai -- watch carefully.
On one hand I agree: be vigilant. But on the other I think you may underestimate the "I just don't give a damn" sector. I grew up when homosexuality was illegal and good people killed themselves when found out. (Alan Turing, for example. Google him if you don't recognize the name.) I lived though years of various reforms, not least of which was the reform in the way people felt about homosexuality. I think that, now, we're at the "Who the hell cares?" moment.
Which doesn't mean that the wingnuts can't stage a nasty rearguard action, but it isn't as threatening as it used to be. But then, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
Rainborowe
Wasn't Turing involved in British cryptography during WW2? I read a novel based on the story of the German Enigma coding machines and I'm pretty sure he was big in that.
Yes, Turing was.
He was also the founder of modern day computer science. The most prestigious award that a computer scientist can earn, awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery, is named in honour of him.
After the ungrateful Brits found out about his homosexuality, they forced him to undergo a "cure". Not long after, severely depressed, he killed himself.
since the Fox News sponsored the anit-Obama tea baggers, maybe they can now form an anti-gay marriage rusty trombone marching band?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
The hard right is on a roll this week. This is what happens when your backers have endless amounts of $$ to fund this crap endlessly. They might have lost almost all of their Nat'l political podiums to shout this vile shit at us day and night, but they sure as hell still have lots of ammo ($$) to shout it on the TV, radio and press day and night.
And we need to deny them the $$. So live frugally and eliminate all excesses. Live simply and you defeat the $$ propaganda monsters and those who buy the politicians for war profiteering and reduced freedom at home. FRUGALITY IS FREEDOM!
If National Organization For Marriage REALLY cared about The Family, they'd have used their one and a half million bucks to help the poor instead of attacking homosexuals. Poverty, the shitty economy, and inequality are the real homewreckers here.
I really cannot understand why I as a heterosexual male am supposed to feel threatened by sexual minorities protecting and strengthening their rights. What do these hate groups who target the GLT community feel they are protecting me from?
If you really wanna Focus On The Family, and we by all means should, we should take these measures...
1-Cancel everyone's debt. Maybe then people won't be losing their homes and couples won't be fighting over who paid this bill or that.
2-Guarantee a job for everyone at a living salary. I say make it $900 for no more, possibly less than 40 hours a week. That way parents aren't as stressed and busy and can spend more time with each other and their kids.
3-Give everyone universal single-payer healthcare and education. That way no one will be worried about getting sick, because if they do, they're covered free of charge. No more medical bills piling up. No more paying for prescriptions. Throw dental and eye care in there as well. Junior's braces and/or glasses/Lasik surgery won't be a strain on any American citizen, except for the obscenely rich, and even that won't strain them a whole lot. If Junior or his mom or dad want to better themselves, they can learn a skill, trade, or field sans crippling student loans or a 2nd or 3rd job.
4-Clean up the environment. Maybe people wouldn't be getting asthma, allergies, cancer, or a host of other maladies if we purified our air and water and made the Earth cooler. I would imagine that clean, renewable fuels wouldn't hurt people's wallets as much either.
5-Protect and expand reproductive freedoms. The less kids people have, the further people can go and the more there is for everyone else. Overpopulation feeds the beast of poverty as much as anything else. Abortion should remain legal and safe, and hopefully rare, and birth control can and should fall under the universal single-payer umbrella. Young people also shouldn't be kept in the dark about sex either. Give them real, healthy sex education instead of abstinence-only garbage. Then you won't see as many teenage girls walking around with toddlers, and therefore, you won't have as many people on the welfare rolls.
6-Protect and expand equal rights for women. Equal pay for equal work will lift women and their families out of the hole also. If it's easier for women to get a leg up in life, girls will have many more positive role models to choose from, and I'd wager you'd see less women becoming strippers and porn actresses. I mean, women with college degrees are taking their clothes off now. Why? Because they need to pay their bills. You think they let drunken slobs ogle and fondle them because they like it?
That's not all, but it's a big headstart. If you're fearful of or angry at homosexuals, think about yourself for a minute. Are you opposed to them having the same rights as everyone else because you're worried about being imposed upon for some reason or is it that you just don't like 'em? If it's that ya just don't like people who don't walk on your side of the street, then you're not gonna get screwed in the ass by anyone but yourself because the people who head the groups that hate sexual minorities certainly 'aint doin' you any favors are they? Are they making your paychecks fatter? Are they making your life easier? No. If anything they're squandering money that could be better spent on other endeavors and diverting attention away from other issues.
Exactly. Guns and Gays is the same type of distractive strawman argument as alleged antisemitism when someone criticizes Israel for crimes against humanity. The corporate interests behind all this crap are all about profit and have nothing to do with substance.
That's a WONDERFUL post, tgrh. It says it all.
Rainborowe
The Mormon Church had better get another cause to put its fabulous wealth behind. Marriage if any kind is a very sore point with a group of people who were (and lets face it, still are) willing to believe in the sanctity (and even superiority) of multiple wife marriage. Mormonism is a dangerous cult, and should be treated as one, no matter how popular their choir. Texas had the right idea, but was clumsy in dealing with a very wily organization.
The Moron Church should have a new symbol with a giant penis sending twelve sperm "apostles" into the "wives" of the big dick. That's all they believe in.
You're right. I also love those Christians who keep declaiming that the Bible says that a marriage is between one man and one woman. I heard one on the radio today. WHERE does it say this? I don't know where they get their Biblical information but I remember learning about one of the patriarchs (Jacob?) who fancied a woman he'd seen. So her father had him work for years to earn her. She, eventually, went veiled to the wedding as was the custom, and then when the veil came off it was one of her many sisters. I believe he went though this seven times until he got the one he wanted--but was married to them all.
The truth is that the Bible is the biggest repository of plural marriages outside the Book of Mormon.
Rainborowe
90% of the world's population is oppressed, Frank Rich.
WHO WANTS MARRIAGE ANYWAY?
I am surprised that the now antiquated institution is getting any support from any segment.
The STUPID church folks should be stoked that somebody still supports their slave rituals at all.
What I want to know about is.. gay divorce. Those numbers should be starting to show up a little now.
A Gathering Storm...look out! It's a Homocaine!
The fascists always need someone to hate...the Nazis persecuted gays too...
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
mujeriego April 19th, 2009 7:23 pm, it appears every fascist system and its authoritarian-personality followers always seek to control the sex lives of others, and then the elite, ala "The Handmaid's Tale," delight in violating all of those 'sacred' sexual taboos. It seems to come with the territory, no pun intended.
Just remember God created Adam and Abe so it all makes sense. Why worry about gays doing whatever they want, they won`t produce very large families with their "marriages". Better to concentrate on getting more tea parties organized as that will really help the country survive.
the true issue that will get these anti-gay marriage loons in an uproar is very simple and needs to be done imo; remove the ability of clergy to legitimize a civil contract. if we assume that the state has an interest in saying who can be married (and that is open to debate) then the only legal description and approval must come from the state. after being granted the license (and thereby being married in the eyes of the state) a couple wishes to have their union blessed by the church of their choice that is no business of the state. the state may not force churches to perform ceremonies that are against the teahcings of the church as that would be an intrusion into religion by the state. the flipside is also true. the church may not legitimize a civil contract and thereby be the determining factor as to who may marry and who may not. that is intrusion into the state by religion.
the state would be free to call it whatever they liked, marriage, civil union etc, that would be the only legal description. any ceremony performed by the church would be for the spiritual needs of the couple or individuals and no business of the state.
bird April 20th, 2009 12:00 pm, I wish the issue had been framed from the beginning as a civil rights issue, pointing out that a state-sanctioned marriage license is no different than a driver's license or a business license, and reinforcing the fact that the state license in no way forces a religious group to provide ceremonies for gay couples.
Unfortunately, some activists on the left pushed the religious aspect of gay marriage, doing harm to the fundamental civil rights issue in the process as the righties exploited that area.
Oh please! You seem to think that the GLBT folks are the only ones who are treated with disrespect and inequality. Women are still not treated with respect or equality, if all the indicators are even halfway correct. Then there is the issue of single adults and the lack of respect we get from just about everyone.
Equality should not be based on marital status, nor should tax advantages, beneficiary designations, salary and promotion, recognition, etc. There will always be bigots in some form or another.
Rockerbabe1 April 20th, 2009 5:27 pm, for once, I agree with you completely. The government should have no role in promoting marriage over single status, home ownership over renting, nor having children over not bearing children. All of the various tax benefits for married couples, home owners and families with kids should be repealed and, of course, women should be treated with respect and as the equal of men.