David Frum: I was wrong about same-sex marriage

[brooklynite]

Washington (CNN) -- I was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. Fourteen years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I forcefully debated the issue at length online (at a time when online debate was a brand new thing).

Yet I find myself strangely untroubled by New York state's vote to authorize same-sex marriage -- a vote that probably signals that most of "blue" states will follow within the next 10 years.

I don't think I'm alone in my reaction either. Most conservatives have reacted with calm -- if not outright approval -- to New York's dramatic decision.

...snip...

The short answer is that the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/frum.gay.marriage

I wonder if reality will catch on...

[WillParkinson]

1. This line bothers me...

Most conservatives have reacted with calm -- if not outright approval -- to New York's dramatic decision.

Then why do we hear wailing and gnashing of teeth so often? Of course it's possible they're only talking to the 'big-wig' types and not the common man.

[brooklynite]

6. "No True Scotsman" analogy

[Drale]

7. Because the people the media give attention

are the people who scream the loudest and threaten the most extreme things like genocide.

[tekisui]

10. If you parse it out, what he is saying is it is no longer an effective

wedge issue. No longer can the economic big-business conservatives exploit this form of bigotry to win elections.

They have taken it about as far as they can. Of course, the bitter bigots will cling to their ignorance, but as a rallying point to win, it is no longer viable.

Which is why Obama should not be afraid to fully embrace marriage equality. He is lagging on the civil rights issue of our time.

[Sheepshank]

17. +1....being against true equality, is not a platform that will win an election

HOWEVER...it is a platform that will help win an election for those involved with exposing it as a non issue, and helping to create another step for true equality.

[defendandprotect]

11. Because oppression of homosexuals provided profits for corps/elites ...

whom these rightwingers were representing --

exploitation of any human being -- based on myths of "inferiority" -- is simply BS

intended to create an oppressed class for profit.


They'll be back -- you can count on that --

look at what they're doing to reproductive freedom and women's rights!

They also quickly overturned the ban on capital punishment costing the states

tens of millions and more to push it and to keep it going.

On and on -- you know the song!

[Recursion]

13. Err... who profited off of it?

One of the biggest conservative pushbacks against the anti-gay venom in the GOP was from Coors, who was more than happy to market beers to gay people.

[closeupready]

21. Scott Coors has been openly gay for at least 20 years.

So, if the personal is political, then that's probably one reason why they climbed on board.

[Recursion]

23. I had forgotten that, but the point stands with other corporate backers of the GOP

Nobody is profiting off homophobia, and in fact it's pretty expensive to shut out an affluent section of the market. If NY is any indicator, it's going to be the profiteers who lead the GOP in the right direction on this.

[Sapphocrat]

28. Re "Nobody is profiting off homophobia," I'm afraid you're mistaken.

Homophobia is a very lucrative business. It would take me many hours to present even a partial rundown of the money involved, and who profits, but if you're truly interested, I'll try to find some time overnight to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Suffice to say, the state marriage bans*** put a lot of money in a lot of pockets; much of that money is traded back and forth between purportedly "not-for-profit" PACs and their supporters; e.g., one homophobe with a sign-making business will clear tens of thousands of dollars in a few short months working for an anti-gay PAC, while also writing off various in-kind contributions -- and then, next year, this homophobe will head up another anti-gay PAC and be rewarded by the same sort of money-trading arrangements with the PAC that gave him all that business last year... etc., etc. (And don't forget that the PACs themselves have paid staff.)

Here's a more concrete example: In Nevada, a professional Anti-Gay by the name of Richard Ziser founded two different anti-gay PACs (originally to pass NV's marriage ban, but one is still very much in business, and still collecting donations) -- Nevada Concerned Citizens and the Coalition to Protect Marriage -- grubstaking them with his own money, then getting reimbursed by donations to the PACs... and then the board of the CPoM turned around and hired Ziser's own "management/consulting" company to manage the CPoM. Ziser hasn't done anything illegal; this is just an example of the way the money goes back and forth.

(And don't even get me started on the donations from one anti-gay PAC to another and back again; and to and from PACs/PAC supporters and individual political candidates; here, I'm thinking of the three-way marriage among the Alliance Defense Fund, ProtectMarriage,com, and Andy Pugno, who ran -- unsuccessfully, thank goodness -- for the CA assembly in 2010.)

None of this -- no one transaction -- may sound like a lot of money, but compound such trading by thousands of people over dozens of campaigns over the past decade and a half, and it adds up. And, the way the money and other favors are traded back and forth, even a casual observer would think: "money laundering."

All this is why anti-gay groups such as the National Organization for Marriage routinely flout state campaign finance disclosure laws by attempting to hide the names of their donors; NOM has gone as far as filing suit to overturn these regulations, as they did in Maine (I have many interesting stories about that episode): Such groups use the excuse that the gays are a violent and dangerous threat to good, honest christians who donate their money merely in order to "protect traditional marriage"; the truth is, they know that is complete bullshit, and want to keep the donor money rolling in -- and they have a better chance of that if they can assuage the hysterical and unfounded fears of their donors by assuring them nobody will ever see donor names.

And this is how NOM has a cool two million to drop so easily into the 2012 election to back up its threat to oust NY Senate Republicans as revenge for supporting equality. Two million is a drop in the bucket to these people.

Believe me, many, many people profit from homophobia. I've spent three years digging deep into the money machinations, and what I've found would knock the socks off even the most dedicated campaign-finance reform advocate.

Sometimes I think hardly anyone understands just how big, and how well-oiled, the Anti-Gay Machine is -- and that may be why some folks don't seem to take LGBT rights (or fears, or our sense of urgency) very seriously. That's why it is extremely important everyone have a better idea of just how much money is involved, and why the anti-gay groups pull out all stops to keep it flowing.

If I could get everyone to understand one thing, it would be this: It's not just "a gay problem." These organizations are not just a few small groups of wild-eyed extremists; they are extremely well-connected -- with seldom more than one degree of separation from some of the most powerful Radical Right organizations in the country, all the way up to the Council for National Policy.

So, if you need more real-life examples, it will take me a while to pull together something comprehensible -- so, really, I hope you will just take my word for it, at least for now.

(Yes, that was my short reply!)


*** And with precious few states left where a new ban still can be enacted, the anti-gay hate groups must turn their attention to other tactics -- such as punishing judges and lawmakers who support equality. When there's nothing immediate on their agenda, they find other excuses to raise (tax-exempt) money and spend it like mad; did you hear about NOM's (Hate) Bus Tours of last summer?

[Recursion]

29. I'm talking corporate backers, not advocates

Look at the GOP funders' story about Cuomo.

[Sapphocrat]

31. But where do you draw the line?

Does a corporation have to be as big as Target or Wal-Mart to count? Do individual CEOs count? Because we've got anti-gay corporate donors coming out of our ears.

[Sapphocrat]

36. Ahem. I still want to know.

I'll apologize if you haven't answered for over six hours because you work swing-shift or something, but still, it's been over six hours.

I hope you'll answer, because I'd like to continue this discussion (assuming it is a discussion).

[valerief]

25. Medical insurance industry did. Fewer marriages, fewer claims. nt

[Recursion]

12. Frum means by "Conservative" roughly what Sullivan does...

...which is to say, something much more relevant to Edmund Burke than Sarah Palin. (And, for that matter, I wouldn't mind too much if there were more Burkean conservatives out there.)

[PoliticAverse]

2. "Most conservatives have reacted with calm -- if not outright approval "

That was sarcasm, right ?

[David__77]

5. It's true, actually. But only among the right-wing elite.

He's talking about the neo-conservatives and "fiscal conservatives." Even the "Christian conservatives" aren't freaking out per se. The elite that runs the Republican Party is not interested in using a tremendous amount of its resources trying to stem the tide, solidifying anti-Republican opinion among socially progressive people.

[Recursion]

14. People like Frum are stuck with an nostalgic view of what "conservative" means

See also Sullivan, the interlocutor he mentions: they're stuck in the mid-90s when mainstream conservatives still held positions that, though often wrong, were not offensive and absurd on their face.

[murphyj87]

3. What should be surprising...

What should be surprising is that a Canadian New Democrat, as David Frum was, was ever against marriage equality.

[provis99]

27. well, Michael Savage is an ex-communist.

Doesn't mean he ever had any sense, either. And Frum was from a prominent Tory family, who campaigned for the NDP as an act of teenage rebellion against his overbearing mother.

[handmade34]

4. once again

proof that reality has a well documented liberal bias

[Enrique]

8. he's full of shit

David Frum is the most insincere person in the world. His opposition to gay marriage was insincere and so is his supposed conversion.

[Shagbark Hickory]

22. +! I don't trust a word he says either.

[Nye Bevan]

9. Come on Obama: you can do this too! (nt)

[Ruby the Liberal]

15. "most of "blue" states will follow within the next 10 years"

Lets hope not. We can surely see this in under 5, no?

[dsc]

16. If you mean Gore's maybe

but if you mean Obama's not really. Remember a significant proportion of even blue states have amendments banning marriage equality.

[Ruby the Liberal]

32. But those are voted in, and this is a rights issue.

I am thinking that lawsuits are going to start accelerating on the whole concept of the legality of "rights by majority vote".

Hope with me that I am right, yes? At least in blue states. We can work on red/purple after DOMA goes poof. (But I am with you on the Obama thing - I don't think he has it in him to get that done).

Normally my glass stays half-empty, but as a hetero ally, I am still on cloud nine over New York. :party:

[dsc]

33. actually that wasn't about Obama

my point is that he won some states that are going to be among the last to see marriage equality. Even among Gore's we have amendments in California, Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin, and several others.

[Ruby the Liberal]

34. Ah gotcha. I am 5'6" and your point flew by at about 5'9".

Sorry!

[dsc]

35. no problem

should have been clearer. To name a couple of examples, Obama carried both Virginia and Indiana. Neither will approve marriage equality in years more probably decades.

[LynneSin]

18. Honestly any libertarian leaning republican should support marriage equality

Because it all boils down to less government regulation.

The only rule on the book about marriage is that it is between 2 consenting adults who are not already married.

[gratuitous]

19. So, will Frum now advocate as forcefully as he opposed?

Or is it enough for him now to put his personal oppression aside, and all is now okay with the world? I surmise that even Frum's weak broth of a column will be more than we can expect from former adversaries in this struggle, so perhaps we should accept his admission of a current "untroubled" state as the best we can get and move on. This will, I'm sure, be the default position as same-sex marriage moves ahead. Nobody will remember the struggle, nobody will remember the opposition and their mean little tactics. We should all go ahead, sing a chorus of "Kumbaya" and go on to whatever's next. If it's remembered at all, it will be remembered for "Well, what was the big deal anyway?"

The truth is, it was (and is) a big deal. This was a fight conservatives picked because they thought it would be an easy victory. They didn't count on the community and its allies having any staying power, and they were totally wrong. Having been as wrong as they've been for as long as they've been wrong, I'm willing to move on to a degree. But I reserve the right to bring it up again when circumstances merit it. "You know how wrong conservatives were on same-sex marriage? This current situation is like that."

[Moostache]

20. The most important thing in that piece needs to be universally applied to right wingers:

David Frum QUOTE: "The short answer is that the case against gay marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test."

You can put just about ANY of their pet issues in place of "gay marriage" in that quote and it is EQUALLY TRUE:

Tax cuts pay for themselves....
the terrorists will "win"....
security demands limits on rights....
government can NEVER be more successful than private ownership....

Reality wins EVERY TIME...the key is just getting people out their ideological trench warfare positions long enough to recognize it.

[valerief]

24. What a dick. Like anyone cares what he thinks. nt

[malaise]

26. Has that moron been right on anything? n/t

[Arkana]

30. If more of our opposition was like Frum and less like Limbaugh,

we might actually have a civil political discourse.