Lutherans Allow Gay and Lesbian Priests

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which I am a member, voted today to allow congregations to choose priests who are gay.

Way to go, Lutherans!

I'm a member of my Church Council, and attended a Synod Assembly in June, so I know how intense the debate over this is in the church. Conservatives are very upset about it, but liberals are thrilled. The church will undoubtedly lose some members over this, which is very unfortunate. There will be something of a schism.

But the far more important fact is that a very old wound has been healed, and much pain can now be put behind us. We aren't completely there yet: the ELCA still does not recognize gay marriages. But we can now say: Welcome one step closer to the center of the church, gay brothers and lesbian sisters.

Obama and gay rights: Stonewall edition

Frank Rich wrote about gay rights and Obama yesterday, the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. He confessed that he didn't hear anything about Stonewall when it happened, despite his personal interest in civil rights. I don't blame him; I don't think I heard about Stonewall at the very least until I was in college. Rich is frustrated with Obama's lack of action on gay rights, as many liberals are. He comes up with a couple of explanations, and favors this one:

But the most prevalent theory is that Obama, surrounded by Clinton White House alumni with painful memories, doesn’t want to risk gay issues upending his presidency, as they did his predecessor’s in 1993.

Undoubtedly. But I cannot figure out why Rich doesn't go just a little deeper, and look into the Congressional politics. It's really quite simple. There are a number of Democratic senators and representatives, primarily from the South, who absolutely do not want to vote on any gay issues this year. Claire McCaskill from Missouri, Kay Hagan from North Carolina, and Mark Warner from Virginia are probably in this group. I haven't checked out their positions on gay rights, but I would be very surprised if they are pushing for the repeal of either DOMA or DADT. For Obama to push for the repeal of DOMA right now would be a gift to certain Republicans, to say nothing of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. For some of those senators and congresspeople, voting for an expasion of gay rights, particularly gay marriage, might cost them enough votes to lose them an election. That's a very high price.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Obama is being very careful on the repeal of DOMA and DADT because he doesn't want to lose. If he pushes for a repeal of either, and it fails, there will not be another opportunity for at least five years.

Andrew Sullivan is, of course, passionate about this, but I also think he's a little blinded by his own passion. A couple of weeks ago, more frustrated than usual, he wrote

Of course these things can be done. If anyone high up in the Obama administration or the Pelosi-Reid Congress gave a damn, much would have been done.

No, they can't. There is still much work to be done, and there are still many people who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage. There has been amazing progress on gay rights just this year, but let's not forget that Prop. 8 passed in California last year. And it didn't just pass in California: it passed in Los Angeles County, one of the most liberal counties in the country.

Sullivan has a list of things that he thinks supporters of gay rights should do to pressure Obama and the Democrats. I think a much more fruitful approach would be to compile a list of minor things that Obama can do to support gay rights - a checklist, if you will, and then demand action on each of those. Many of them will not require Congressional action. Obama is already working through some of those, and they require a lot of work in the bureaucracy. There are two rationales for this approach. First, it gets a lot of things done. Second, it will lay the ground work for the more dramatic action of repealing DOMA and DADT by showing that gay rights can be expanded, and the politicians supporting such expansion can survive.

Obama takes a small step on gay rights

President Obama today signed an executive order extending some federal benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. It's a small step, but Obama made a point of announcing it himself, to highlight his continued commitment to the cause of gay rights. Good call on his part, as lots of gay rights activists are not happy with him right now.

Unfortunately for those activists, Obama cannot repeal DOMA by himself. There are still something like 40 states that ban gay marriage. There are still a number of moderate Democrats who really, really do not want to vote on this issue, because it might cost them their jobs.

The genius of a move like this is that it actually does some good, but doesn't really give the right enough to take him on. It's a bureaucratic thing, and it won't be noticed by many people. A few more of these, and all of a sudden you're talking about real change.

Today in Los Angeles

Sometimes I feel like I have to take a step back from life, take a deep breath, and realize what an amazing thing it is to be living in the 21st Century in the United States of America.

Today in Los Angeles, three notable things happened:

1. The Los Angeles Lakers won their 15th NBA championship. Go Lakers! It just occurred to me that "Lakers" is an odd name for a team that is based in a desert. Regardless, they won! Congrats Kobe, Phil, and the rest of the team!

2. There was a gay pride march on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, with the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco both in attendance.

3. Not far from the gay pride march, there were protests by Iranians against the results of the elections in Iran. Los Angeles has a large Iranian population. The Mayor of the most famous LA suburb, Beverly Hills, is an Iranian Jew (what makes him particularly cool is that both of his kids went to USC).

Celebration, protest, and revolution.

One hell of a day.

Obama losing ground on gay rights

I've been grudgingly supportive of some of Obama's positions on gay rights that I don't necessarily agree with. I can see why he's dragging his feet on repealing DADT, and I think he sees problems supporting gay marriage, because it will make him a lightning rod for homophobia, at a moment when he doesn't need another reason to piss off moderates and the right.

But he does owe his gay supporters, and he hasn't done much to repay them, or even much to advance the cause of gay rights. This is starting to disappoint.

The latest is a brief filed by the DoJ in a case in California. Andrew Sullivan, by far Obama's most articulate conservative gay supporter, is not happy. AmericaBlog rips the Administration's case to pieces.

A couple of thots, trying to square this with my admiration for Obama:

This is a brief written by someone in the DoJ. Obama quite probably didn't read it. I would be surprised if he were aware of it before today - the DoJ probably files briefs like this every day. In some sense, there is a principle that the civil service lawyers in the DoJ, not the political appointees, should be allowed to make the strongest case possible for the government. They do not care about the political consequences, and they shouldn't.

But this is policy by other means. The Obama DoJ can not make these arguments if they want to avoid the political headaches.

Even if the Obama administration wants to take a hands-off approach to letting the DoJ make the best argument the lawyers think they can, the administration should be prepared to deal with the fallout from the gay community. There are thousands of people who gave lots of time and money to Obama.

Now for some seriously counter-intuitive thinking: Maybe this is a tough-love move by the Obama administration. Maybe they are playing devil's advocate in public. Maybe they are saying to the gay community - OK, you want marriage, and repeal of DADT? Fight for it. Lay the groundwork. Provide us with some political cover.

This makes some sense, because the gay community did not do much fighting last fall over Prop 8. I got the feeling that many members of the gay community, and their liberal friends thot that gay rights in California were a done deal. I include myself in the latter group - I just about assumed that defeating Prop. 8 was a foregone conclusion - this is California in 2009, right?

I'm not sure the gay community realizes the stakes for the Obama administration. Obama won in 2008 because he won states like Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. If he is too closely associated with gay rights, he could easily lose those. And with them, the election.

If I sound schizophrenic on this issue, it's because I am. I am strongly supportive of gay rights, and I am strongly supportive of the Obama administration. I don't think Obama did the right thing with this brief in California, but I'm also not sure that Obama himself had much to do with it. But I do think he should do something about it. He needs to placate some very pissed off -and very legitimately pissed off - solid supporters.

Update: Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar at Harvard, is somewhat supportive of the Administration. He's paying attention to the details of this particular case. It's worth quoting him at length:

As someone who wants to see DOMA dismantled and invalidated, I would love it if this ninth circuit case would evaporate into the ether.

Even though I personally believe that DOMA is unconstitutional, I think that this particular lawsuit is very vulnerable; it’s not anywhere near as strong as the one that was brought in the federal district court in Massachusetts [a suit filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders].

In an environment where the Supreme Court is still quite conservative, what makes a suit a strong one is that it finds a point of entry in which it’s possible to invalidate a law in a number of its applications by using more of a scalpel that might appeal to five justices rather than a bludgeon that will almost certainly ask more of the court than it is willing to do.

What’s strong about the Massachusetts case is that these are concrete situations of people who are legally married under the laws of states like Massachusetts or Vermont, and who are being discriminated against by the federal government with respect to federal benefits simply because they are same-sex couples. There’s no other difference between them and other couples in that state, and the court could agree with that without accepting any of the broader theories advanced in the [Smelt] lawsuit in the central district of California, which is basically a bet-the-farm lawsuit that almost dares a conservative Supreme Court to slap it down.

A strategic Justice Department interested in a litigation strategy that has some realistic chance of success certainly would not have taken [the Smelt] case as the one in which the constitutional vulnerabilities of DOMA should be explored.

He also understands the political reality, and sympathizes with gay groups. But he also understands the legal reality, and how it intersects with the political reality. This was not a good case for challenging DOMA. The disappointment of gay rights groups is an example of what I call the "magic wand" theory of social change. That's the idea that a president can arrive at the White House, start waving a magic wand, and voila! solve all the problems of the world. Doesn't work like that, folks. Again, Tribe is worth quoting at length:

The important point here is that the solicitor general traditionally seeks to dismiss lawsuits against federal laws whenever there is a plausible basis to do it. A lot of the outcry about the administration’s position doesn’t take that institutional reality into account.

It doesn’t surprise me very much because I understand the frustration of some of the groups. They have lived under the burden of DOMA, of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” for a long time, and they understandably hoped that this would be an administration that would side with them on these issues.

And I think the frustration of having to wait so long for a progressive and intelligent president who, nonetheless, occasionally does some things that people find disappointing on matters that cut deeply into where they live -- it’s understandable that would lead to some strong reactions in this case.

The other problem is that this is vastly more important to gay rights groups than it is to Obama. Whether or not a gay person can get married has a major impact on their lives. It has a much greater and more immediate impact than, say, whether or not there is peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. But peace in the Middle East is vastly more important to Obama than whether or not a couple million Americans can get married. It is also far more immediate for Obama; he has a chance to achieve peace in the Middle East right now, and he can't afford to let this chance slip away. Gay marriage is an issue that will be around for a long time. And the odds of repealing DOMA in the next year are, honestly, slim to none. Not while there are still something like 40 states with anti-gay marriage laws on their books.

The Impact of Milk

The WaPo looks at the cultural impact that "Milk" has had. It hasn't made much money; $27 million at the box office.

But my feeling is that it has had, and, more importantly, will have, a dramatic impact. The article points out that it has had a great impact on the younger generation, providing them a glimpse of what the gay rights movement was like back in the day. Because, let's face it, this movie is better than anything that will ever show up in even the most progressive high school textbooks.

As for the impact on the straight population? I think it will be nothing but good, largely because it's such a sweet, positive movie. The scene where he picks up James Franco is one of the most wonderful seduction scenes you will ever see, because it's just so obviously love at first sight. Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk as just a peach of a guy, the kind of man anybody would love to have as their neighbor or coworker or brother-in-law or friend. He's smart, funny, honest, brave and compassionate. What's not to love?

But there is one simple fact about Harvey Milk that may be the most inspiring, and which he had no control over. He is an American, and his story is a quintessentially American story. It's a story about love and freedom. What could be more American?