This is the reason we do it.

This story is precisely the reason we continue the struggle for equality of rights for gay people.

Reports are that there was a string of escalating actions being taken against the couple, for no other reason that they are gay. The letter, followed by the vandalism, and the slashing of tires, were each escalations of the previous act. And it culminated in the arson attack that destroyed the home of these men. People could easily be killed in such attacks.

But, I'm no bigot!

But I’m no bigot!

I was reading a column by libertarian-leaning columnist Steve Chapman entitled “Up from Homophobia,” where he explained why he abandoned the anti-gay attitudes that his church and culture had taught him.

Of course, as usual with any article like this, the Christian Right comes in and screams and hollers. All they offer are the same old tired arguments: they speak for God, God revealed to them that he doesn’t like gays, so gay people should have a lesser set of rights from everyone else. And then, they so often, end it with the sad refrain, “But I’m no bigot.” Or, “I’m not prejudiced.” Some even try the sad justification: “Some of my best friends are gay, so I can’t be bigoted.”

Of course I have real problems with their logic. And to illustrate my point let me turn things around a bit. Instead of discussing the rights of gay people let me discuss the rights of born-again Christians, fundamentalists, or whatever other label you may use for them. Allow me to use their typical arguments.

Since this is an exercise in Religious Right logic please do not assume the logic display below is my own. I am channels my inner fundamentalist.

I know that many born-again Christians want to marry, just like normal people. But I don’t think they should be allowed. As for having them in the military, well would you want to bunk with someone who is constantly preaching Jesus and trying to recruit you?

Of course, we know how these Christians are always trying to recruit children. They even send out buses to pick them up and try to convert them. So clearly we can’t have people like this around kids. I guess we can’t stop them from reproducing on their own, but we sure don’t have to let them adopt, act as foster parents or teach kids. And don’t forget the Scouts, we can’t have people like that around impressionable children.

And really, many of us simply aren’t ready to explain the fundamentalist to our own kids. They might not be old enough to handle this topic. So having these Christians flaunting their lifestyle and throwing their religion in our faces is just too much. We can’t tolerate public displays of fundamentalism. What they do in private is their own business but do they have to say grace in public restaurants? And have you noticed how they throw their religion in our faces on television, at all hours of the day, where impressionable youngsters can see these things?

And the Christian Agenda is just too much for any reasonable person. They want laws that force people to hire them. You can’t discriminate on the basis of religion anymore, not like you used to. You have to rent to these people. Hotels have to admit them just like normal people.

Now look, I’m no bigot. I believe in live and let live just as long as they aren’t forcing me to see them in public or deal with them. And look how they are forcing me to accept them by demanding the right to marry. Some of my best friends are Christians, so I can’t be bigoted. I just don’t think we should treat these people as if they are normal.

Okay, I’m finished. Now tell me, if you really heard that view on Christians from someone would you really believe that individual was not a bigot? I wouldn’t. And I don’t believe it when Christians do this about gay people either.

In simple terms, if you want to deny equality of rights to one group of people because of some shared trait, and not because they have actually violated the rights of others, then you are a bigot toward that group.

Surely it would be bigoted for one to deny equality of rights to people because they are black. So why not gays? Ah, say the fundies, black is a trait and gays “choose” to be perverted (their word, not mine). Well, no one with a lick of sense actually believes that being gay is a choice, but let us assume that it is. Would that make a difference? The Christians say it does. But isn’t Christianity a choice? Far more so than sexual orientation.

No one goes door to door asking people to change their sexual orientation. But every day of the year some Christian sect or another is pounding the pavement urging people to change their religion. Religion clearly is a choice. Christians say it is a choice. It is more of a choice than sexual orientation. Yet, if the state denied equality of rights to born-again Christians it would be an outrage.

It would be an outrage just like the anti-equality positions of the Christian Right are an outrage, and for the same reason.

Conservative Party Leader: It Gets Better

David Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK and is Prime Minister. Here he speaks out in defense of gay equality. Can you imagine any Republican being this decent? Maybe Gary Johnson, but that pretty well runs me out of ideas.

Collective rights, petty debates and real pain.

Because many libertarians came to their philosophy from the Right they often bring with them a style of discussion that betrays their roots. While philosophically their position may be correct the way in which they express themselves conveys meanings they do not intend and alienate the people whom they are hoping to address.

Libertarians believe in individual rights. I have no problem with that. Rights do reside entirely in the individual. There is no such thing as collective rights, just the rights of the individual. So it would seem logical for a libertarian to shun terms like “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” or “minority rights,” etc.

We should be clear that people use the term “rights” in two different ways, and without clarifying which one is using can lead to unnecessary confusion. When a libertarian says that someone has “rights” they are referring to the ideal situation, not to the actual situation. It is to the libertarian vision of individual rights that they are referring.

This causes an immediate problem as others may be using the term to describe the actual legal state of rights, not the ideal state of rights. Yes, gay people have precisely the same rights as straight people in the ideal sense of the term. In the actual sense of the term they do not.

Two men, each identical in every important sense of the word, who attempt to join the military may be treated entirely differently if one of those men is gay and the other is not. There is an inequality of legal rights, even if in the ideal sense of the word the two men should have precisely the same rights. Similarly two couples will be treated very differently when it comes to marriage rights if one couple is gay and the other is straight. Legally the rights of gay people in America today are not co-equal to the legal rights enjoyed by their heterosexual siblings.

Often when the term “gay rights” is used it is a term meant to address the inequality of rights that exist, not the ideal sense of rights. It is an attempt to move the actual rights enjoyed by gay people to an equal plain with the rights enjoyed by straight people. The term “gay rights” is often used by someone who has no intention of creating a system of unequal rights. It is not a “special” right that is being sought but precisely the same rights that have been denied gay people by law. Similarly the term “women’s rights” is not generally meant to be a situation where women have different, or superior rights, but precisely the same rights as men. This does not mean that some people use the terms to disguise a campaign for unequal rights, but most people who use these terms do not mean that at all. More often than not their opponents are actually the advocates of unequal rights before the law, individuals who wish to reserve special privileges to a class, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Consider the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Roback Morse. They fight for a system of marriage rights that excludes one class of people—gay couples. They want legal privileges reserved to another specific class of people alone. Yet opponents of equality of rights argue that it is the gay couples that are seeking “special” rights, when in truth they are attempting to eradicate special rights in favor of equality of rights.

There is also another aspect of “rights” which libertarians simply tend to forget, or never realized. While it is true that a person does not have rights because he is a member of a specific group it is true that individuals frequently have their rights violated precisely because he is a member of a specific group.

A woman who is gay may ideally have precisely the same rights as any other adult, but she may be denied some of those rights because she is gay. Taxation may violate rights on a relatively equal basis. A general sales tax hurts everyone regardless of what group he may be a member of while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell disqualifies individuals on the basis of a collective trait, not an individual one.

Racists attack blacks, or Jews, or foreigners, not on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of some collective trait. Ayn Rand described racism as the “lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.” Rand is correct this is what racism does.

Modern prejudices or bigotries basically argue that an individual is not judged by his individual characteristics but simply because he is a member of some larger collective. Instead of judging on the basis of the content of their character the stigmatized individual is judged on the basis of his membership in some collective. Thus a woman may be deemed of lesser value because she is a woman, a black man may be treated like a criminal because he is black, and a gay man may be attacked physically or verbally simply because he is gay.

The bigot ignores all the aspects of the individual and instead focus on some shared collective trait. “All Muslims are... All homosexuals do... The problem with Jews is...” They don’t need to evaluate the individual because they assume the collective trait dominates. Thus all homosexual men are disqualified from the military, not because of any trait of the individual, but because of their group status. A Jew may be attacked, not because he or she has done anything wring, but just because they are Jew.

When individuals are attacked because of their group membership they will quite naturally and reasonable focus on how members of their group are being singled out for attacks. While the terms “gay rights” or “minority rights” or “woman’s rights” are not philosophical precise they are a reasonable response to the attacks these people suffer because they are members of groups. They are not singled out for attack on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of a shared collective trait, usually one of no significance.

But, consider how libertarians respond to this understandable reaction by members of oppressed classes. The libertarian will often tend to ignore the fact that such people are being attacked for their membership in some larger collective. Instead of recognizing what is being conveyed they will attack the use of the collective rights terminology. So they will launch a high-sounding dismissal of the concept of “gay rights” while ignoring the way gay people are denied their rights due to the shared trait of their sexual orientation.

They are technically correct but they have defeated their own purpose. They are ignoring the real troubling issue at stake to concentrate on a less significant detail. By launching into a discourse on how rights are not collective traits they are not informing their listener about the nature of individual rights. They may mean to do that but they are not doing that. They are actually sending the message that they don’t care that the rights of certain people are being denied because of some collective trait. And that makes them sound like conservatives who are often the most vocal collectivists when it comes to denying equality of rights before the law.

The libertarian sentiment should naturally side with those who suffer oppression in a state or culture because of collective traits. Libertarians, who tend to be individualists, ought to be on the side of individuals who are being singled out because of collective, insignificant traits.

Libertarians ought to weigh the two sins being committed. On the one hand the victim uses a term that is imprecise and seems to convey that rights reside in collectives. On the other hand what they are addressing is how they are being harmed by a hate that singles them out collectively not individually. Of these two the violation of individual rights is surely far more severe than a loose use of a term.

The first reaction of the libertarian should be to acknowledge that an individual is having their rights violated due to a collectivist concept regarding who they are. First address the issues of the oppression and collectivist hate. Before you begin lecturing someone about loose terms address the real, significant violation of rights that these victims are attempting to convey. Don’t major on minors.

When I hear the terms “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” I see what people are attempting to convey, not a philosophical debate. Turning it into a philosophical debate ignores the pain and oppression that these people have experienced at the hands of bigots. That is what I would expect from conservatives, not from libertarians. Focus first on the main issues, defend the rights of the individual which are being violated, make an ally and a friend, and they worry about terminology. Put the intent of the phrase ahead of the literal interpretation and give the philosophy lecture after you are established your credibility.

Signs that the culture war is all but over.

The joke used to be that Lydon Johnson declared war on poverty and poverty won. Conservatives declared a culture war, and lost. I have long been convinced that we have entered a post-Christian America. I have argued that the independent voters are more libertarian than either Democrats and Republicans. With these shifts social attitudes will change.

Quite amazingly a recent poll showed men are now more sympathetic to equality of rights for gay people than women. For just about forever polls showed the opposite to be true.

Symbols are important in a culture, they send cultural messages to people which help them to form their values. So consider a couple such symbols.

The Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field, built in 1914. It is on the north side, not far from New Town, and only a few blocks from an apartment where I lived for a few years. The New Town was the chic, heavily gay area of the city, not so much where I was at, but more toward the lake. And it is in this area of the city that the annual Gay Pride parade is held.

The first gay pride festival I ever saw would have been in Chicago and I refuse to remember how many years ago it was. So, there you have Wrigley Field, the symbol of Chicago baseball, of masculine sports. And there you have New Town, dubbed Boy's Town by many because of its heavily male population. And, for all the time I lived in the area, never the twain were to meet. There was Wrigley Field in its isolation, like some giant fortress hung over the neighborhood and there was Boy's Town, as different as night and day.

This Sunday something different will happen as the Gay Pride parade weaves through Boy's Town. In the parade will be a float from the Chicago Cubs. Sports Illustrated noted that just that gesture alone would have won them new friends and fans. But the Cubs went farther than that. Riding the float will be Mr. Cubs himself, the legendary Ernie Banks.

In the world of symbols this gesture tells us just how much America has changed—and I think for the better, at least in this regard.

Chicagoans take their sports seriously and they have been a happy lot since the Chicago Blackhawks won hockey's Stanley Cup in a 2010 victory against the Philadelphia Flyers. A group of gay hockey players sent a letter to the Chicago Blackhawks inviting them to the Pride parade and the team accepted.

The decision was made to take the Stanley Cup into the Pride parade and display it along the route. Defenseman Brent Sopel volunteered to represent the team and will accompany the Cup. Sopel has said he intends to bring his wife and his four kids, Jacob 12, Lyla 8, Jayla 6, and Paul, 20 who was adopted three years when he lost both his parents. Sopel said he wanted to do this and is honored that he can.

Sopel said he was doing as his chance to honor Brendan Burke, the son the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke. Brendan, who played hockey and helped manage a team at university admitted he was gay and many in the hockey world openly showed their support for him. He was killed in a tragic car accident not long ago. Sopel said:

"When Brendan came out, Brian stood by him, and his whole family stood by him, like every family should," said Sopel. "We teach our kids about accepting everybody. Tolerate everybody, to understand where everyone is coming from."

Blackhawks President John McDonough says he understands the symbolic power of the cup and "we recognize the importance of doing this." He made special arrangements to have the cup flown into Chicago, it was on display at the NHL draft in Los Angeles, earlier than scheduled because, "It's important for the city and important for the franchise."

Toronto will be holding its Pride parade as well and Brian Burke will be there. He will be marching the parade route with the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays group. Many people don't realize that the U.S. Olympics hockey team all wore name tags saying: "In memory of Branden Burke."

These are all just symbols but behind the symbols there is a shift of gigantic proportions taking place in America.

God-awful parents and a good mother

In the past I've discovered some pretty horrendous parents. There was the woman who used her adult son's stroke as an excuse to claim guardianship of him in order to forbid him from seeing his partner of 25 years—because her religion didn't approve of his lifestyle. And because there are no equality-of-marriage rights she got away with it.

Then there was the case of Derrick Martin who fought for his right to go to his school prom with the date of his choice: Richard Goodman. Since this was happening in rural Georgia, where possums are plentiful and brains scarce, Derrick's parents threw him out of the house.

While their are some god-awful parents out there, by which I mean parents who are awful because of their god this doesn't tell the story of all parents. There are actually good and decent parents in the world and they don't get enough publicity.

Consider Leesa Nixon as an example. What she did was not covered by the media. Leesa has five kids and lives in North Carolina, not precisely one of the centers of enlightenment. (That's Leesa on the left.)

The story begins with a boy named Chase, who is not related to Leesa. Chase had gone through the bureaucratic BS that schools impose these days to attend the prom dance. He turned in the paperwork and waited for permission. Instead he got called to the Principal's office.

Chase described the experience himself:

“Today, April 6, 2010 I was called into the Principal’s office, I was unaware of the reason at the time. When I entered the office, Mrs. Parker was in the room, sitting at her desk and so was Mr. Samuel, the Vice Principal. Mr. Samuel was sitting in the corner of her office. I went in and Mrs. Parker, the Principal, asked me to shut the door, which, I did.

Mrs. Parker then asked me to sit down, and I think I did, though I only remember standing, but I believe I sat down. Mrs. Parker then tells me, that she didn’t realize it until she looked at my permission form for prom again that I was planning to bring a boy to the prom or something like that, and then she informed me that I couldn’t bring a friend as my date.

Mrs. Parker stated, that it was because other people would want to bring friends and it’s a rule that they’ve had for a while now, that you could not bring friends to the prom. I informed Mrs. Parker that Jordan is not my friend, but my boyfriend and she replied that she knew my situation was different but she couldn’t let me bring him.

According to Chase the school suggested he bring a "back-up friend" who is female instead. Chase said he'd rather not attend if he couldn't bring a date. Leesa very quickly learned of the situation and intervened. "I called and spoke with his principal and informed her that not allowing Chase to bring his boyfriend to the prom was discrimination and a violation of his constitutionally protect rights. I threatened to call the ACLU, (which I did) and go to the media."

The school got hold of their attorney and decided to change their policy. But they couldn't bring themselves to accept that gay students date members of the same sex. So now all such dates are referred to as "guests" instead. Because the school left the matter alone it didn't get much publicity.

So why did Leesa Nixon intervene on behalf of Chase? Simple: she was protecting her son, Jordan. Jordan (left) and Chase (right) are dating. When Jordan was 14 he went to a gay couple, friends of the family, and told them he was gay. They told him that he really needed to tell his mother and that there was nothing to worry about. He did. Soon after he started dating Chase. And not only did he fall in love with Chase but his mother absolutely approves of his choice. Leesa says that Chase "is a part of my family. I love him so much! He is a wonderful person and I could not have picked a better person for my son to fall in love with, if I had made him myself!!!"

On her blog Leesa wrote:

My son came home from their house...I remember we didn't even make in the door before he said, "Mom, I need to tell you something." Well, I looked him straight in the eye and replied, "Your gay aren't you?" Shocked the living shit out of him!!!! Hey I didn't become Queen Faghag to my friends for my lack of gaydar!!!

My son just looked at me and said, "yes, how did you know?" I will admit I started to cry, not because he is gay, but because I was watching all my dreams of a look-a-like grandchild fly right out the window. (he is the only child that looks like me...in fact he is more like me then I readily admit..we even have the same taste in men.)

Truthfully, the main thing I felt was fear...fear that some asshole would find out my son was gay and kill him or hurt him in someway. He is so young and trusting! The thought of loosing him is terrifying. I love this child more then my life, it was never a question of accepting him just the way he is for me, but of protecting him from the crazy, bible thumping idiots in this world, who although their bible tells them not to...judge anyone and everyone who isn't just like them, harshly.

Leesa not only display a caring, loving attitude but a sense of humor as well. She wrote about a school sponsored over-nighter and how the teachers came to her because they weren't sure where to put Jordan. They wondered if he should share a room with girls instead of other guys. (If a school announced that policy every straight male in school would "come out" within in the hour.) Leesa first joked that they could put Jordan with the girls and "they would be perfectly safe" but then "I told them to put him with the other boys, that he was gay... not a rapist."

In another post she told of Jordan getting into a big fight with Chase right in front of her. "Unfortunately, for him, he was in the wrong and then had to spend the next 6 hours begging for forgiveness, just like a straight man." Jordan may have bite off more than he can chew. Mom is so pleased with his boyfriend she writes: "I live in fear that they will break up and Chase will no longer be around... I would miss him so much and I love like one of my own." I believe here. And actually I think that Chase and Jordan are very lucky. Leesa says that her son did buy a ring for Chased and popped "the big question... but they are still so young. I can only hope that are in forever because I couldn't ask for a better son-in-law!" This may also be the dream mother-in-law as well.

Given the bad news from some parents I felt that it proper to acknowledge a good parent as well.

As a libertarian I look a social relationships. Libertarianism is really all about how we treat one another—that none of us have the right to violate the life, liberty or property of others. Libertarianism requires us to respect others. Libertarianism restrains us, by forbidding us from violating the rights of others. In this sense it is an "other-directed" morality. True, it doesn't speak to many private matters. But I do think libertarian principles are good ones and useful within the family. Of course, religious fanatics like Jenny Roeback Morse, contend just the opposite, that the "laissez-faire family" is inherently deficient. (As expected she is also an antigay campaigner.)

It seems to be that Leesa is inherently libertarian in her parenting skills. She is respecting the fact that her son is gay and respecting his choices in his relationships. She is protecting his rights (and no government school has the right to discriminate) and supporting him. She is basically following a libertarian maxim: live and let live. But there is another derivation of that slogan that is equally libertarian and equally important: love and let love. And she has done that.

The Other is Us.

Humans have a concept of self and other. The other is not them. On an individual basis that makes sense. But humans tend to collectivize that concept. So we end up with “Us” and “Others.”

Defining the “Us” is difficult. So we take shortcuts, we define “Us” by an exclusionary rule: Us is not Other. Instead of trying to define what makes “Us” us, we concentrate on what makes us different from the Other.

Each of Us tends to assume that the Us group is good. It must be, we are part of it. So the Other must be not good, since they are not Us. If they are good they may well then be evil, or even a threat and danger. So every Us group tends to distrust and attack those it classifies as Other.

In human history the Us tended to be defined on arbitrary, nonsensical criteria. To be Us you were of our race, our nationality, spoke our language, or belonged to our religion. Those were basic categories of group. Each Us group tended to despise each Other group. Yet the moral character of the individual is not determined by which of these groups he happens to be born into. The German Us group distrusted the French Us group and neither trusted the British Us group.

Us groups benefit from the presence of the Other. If those who see themselves as Us feel threatened by the Other, whether the threat is real or imaginary matters not, they the Us group will tend to be more united. People will lock arms in the face of a common enemy. Political leaders have long known this to be the case, which is why they tend to invent common enemies who present a threat. Politicians raise the matter of “threats” in order to force their Us group to coalesce around them and give them the power they claim they need in order to face the dangerous Other.

To a large degree this tendency to define humans as Us and Other has led to a great deal of misery. Yet many individuals continually push this destructive concept. Such is the nature of the rabid fundamentalist or the patriotic nationalist.

But we don’t just engage in the Us and Other dichotomy on a global level but on a community level as well. In the United States, both the Right and the Left, try to use this Us/Other concept for their own political agenda. The Right will define immigrants as Other, or gays as Other. The Left demonizes businessmen or gun owners. The problem with Left-wing demonization is that it doesn’t resonate as well as does the Right-wing kind. It isn’t that the Left doesn’t engage in such practice, it’s just that they are not currently as good at it — no matter how hard Michael Moore tries.

That isn’t to say that the Left has not been very good at using the Other for political purposes. Contrary to common perception the main advocates of anti-Semitic hatred in the West were Left-wing theorists. What Hitler and the Nazis did was adopt a scapegoating technique used by people like Marx. Marx claimed that the spirit of capitalism was Jewish. The rabid anti-Semites of the 19th century were Marxists and socialists of various stripes. Hitler’s National Socialists merely appropriated a technique that had been used in European politics. And the anti-Jewish images he played on were ones used previously by Marx and others. It should be noted there was no shortage of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union under Communist rule either.

I was reading a description of a debate in New England where people were asked to testify on the matter of gay marriage. The author spoke of how confusing it was. Individuals that one would assume were against the equality of marriage rights stood up and defended them. Others, who people assumed to be supportive, were not. It became difficult to look out on the sea of faces and tell who was who.

One of the great difficulties that gay people have faced, in the battle for marriage equality, has been that so many gay people are in hiding. The closet, forged by centuries of violent political repression, is still strong. People enter this world with the assumption by everyone around them, that they are straight. When they aren’t it confuses things.

But this is precisely why I think that gays can win the battle. While silly old women like Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Morse try to define gays as the Other, and as a threat to the great Us, they face an insurmountable problem. Gay Others are not like Jewish Others. One does noit discover that one accidentally gave birth to Jew, but many parents do discover they have a gay child.

The hateful Religious Right tries to classify gays as the Other. But this Other is unlike most other Others. They are us. Gay people are our children, our cousins, our friends, and our neighbors. And as more and more realize that gays are not the Other, but Us, the Right loses its ability to stop the progress that is being made. This is a point that legal theorist Charles Fried, often called a conservative, tends to make in his interesting book Modern Liberty. Fried noted individuals could either imagine how they would feel if they were gay, and thus grant equal rights, or deny such rights. But the denial, he said, also means “to deny their humanity, which would be hideous, for we are talking of thinking, feeling human beings who are literally our brothers and sisters.”

There are so many Others who need to be included with Us. I think of the poor immigrants who are blamed so unfairly, and treated so badly, by the political Right and unionists and similar groups. Are they not Us as well? Are they not Us because they speak Spanish? Because their skin is browner than our own?

When the Abolitionists fought slavery they first had to destroy the concept that slaves were Others. The great liberal and pottery make, Josiah Wedgewood, created a symbol of a slave in chains with the motto “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?”

Where is the dividing line between Us and Other? Is not the greater Us, the human race, sufficient? Why must we seek out Others and isolate them?

It isn’t that there are no differences. There are. And there are some that are important. The violent man, the one who would harm others, or destroy the lives of others, these are people worthy of shunning. But race, nationality, language, and other such criteria are not worthy of consideration.

What we need to do, and something we libertarians must always emphasize as individualists, is to stress the common humanity of each of us. We are all human. All Others are human. When we realize this simple premise we understand that the Other is Us. There is no distinction.

Let's put it to a vote.

A cute commercial from Ireland about the absurdity of putting the rights of people to a public vote.

Bureacrats have no right to discriminate.

In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan the so-called Justice Minister, Don Morgan, has announced they will entertain legislation to exempt marriage commissioners from having to perform same-sex weddings. The reason given is that this “respects” the freedom of religion of these state employees. Morgan said: “We also have rights of people that have deeply held religious beliefs, and if we can accommodate both sets of beliefs or both views... that would be our preferred course.”

Not long ago a fundamentalist Christian in England refused to perform civil unions for gay couples because it offends her religious beliefs.

There is some really confused thinking on this matter. This idea that the “rights” of antigay Christians are being violated is absurd. An employee is in a contractual relationship with their employer. They are hired to perform a specific job. If they refuse to perform that job, for any reason, then it is the right of the employer to remove them from that position.

What if gay employees of the state announced that they would not perform their job for anyone who was a born-again Christian? Would anyone argue that it is their “right” to do this and still keep their job?

That the beliefs in question are “religious” is of absolutely no consequence. The “religious beliefs” of a Christian are no more sacrosanct than the political beliefs of a socialist, or the ethical beliefs of a humanist. People have the right to believe anything they want. But, what they don’t have is a right to a specific job, if they are unwilling to do the work.

Any employer would have the right to fire workers who refuse to work, even if those workers pretend their temporary strike is inspired by God and that the Holy Ghost is directing them to the picket line.

While any employer is free to fire workers who refuse to do their jobs, whether on orders from Jesus or Marx, the government is in aposition which actually mandates that it fire such workers. A private employer may choose to accommodate the religious fantasies of their employees whenever they want. Government may not. A church has the right to refuse to perform marriages for any reason. It may discriminate against others on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. But government employees are not private individuals but public servants. What a minister does in his church is one thing, what a Christian does in his job in government is quite another.

The difference is that government agencies are tax-supported. If an agency is going to give one class of citizens second rate service then it shouldn’t tax them. Government agencies are supported by tax money and there is no way for those who are discriminated against by it to avoid paying for that agency. If a particular grocery store refused to serve gay customers those customers could go elsewhere. But government is a monopoly provider. As such it has no right to discriminate and a positive obligation not to do so.

There are all sorts of prejudiced people in the world and they imagine all sorts of fantastical reasons to justify their petty and stupid beliefs. There are churches that still teach that black people are “beasts of the field” and that Jews are the “children of Satan.” Would a member of that church, who is employed in a state agency, have the right to refuse service to blacks and Jews? If not, why not? Does the right to refuse service, on the grounds of religious fantasies, only apply in some cases but not others? Is there a reason that antigay Christians are given exemptions from their jobs while religiously-inspired bigots of other kinds are denied those same rights?

Can a religiously-inspired firefighter refuse to douse the flames of the home of a gay couple? Can a Jesus-saturated police officer refuse to protect that gay couple from violence merely because he disproves of their “sinful lifestyle?” What if gay firefighters let churches burn and gay police officers turned their backs on Christians? Could a gay marriage commissioner refuse to perform marriages for Baptists?

Rights go in both directions. If a Christian bureaucrat can refuse service to gay taxpayers then why can’t gays refuse to pay taxes?

This is not a matter of Christians having their rights respected. There simply is no such thing as a right to a government pay check. They ought to have the right to seek state employment on the same terms as everyone else. And everyone else is expected to do the jobs for which they are hired. What we have here is a demand by Christians to gain special rights, that is rights that other groups are not allowed to have.

If this law is passed Christian bureaucrats can refuse service to the gay citizen but gay bureaucrats would not be free to refuse service to Christian citizens. It is clear that Christians are seeking a special privilege, not equal rights.

The libertarian would abolish most of these positions, given their druthers. But while those positions exist then the bureaucrats who hold those positions are not entitled to deny service based on their own prejudices—no matter what the source of those prejudices may be. As long as those positions exist, and I hope it won’t be long, they should be open to any citizen who has the ability to do the work in question. If they are unwilling to do the job, either all the time or some of the time, then they deserve to be fired. If a religious fanatic wishes to work for the state they have to do so on exactly the same terms as all other employees.

A libertarian look at Harvey Milk.

Above is a 90-minute documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. Milk, though he was once a Goldwater supporter, came on to the American political scene as a candidate of the Left. So why would a libertarian admire and respect Milk?

There is a false assumption, a grossly false assumption, that libertarianism is some sort of Right-wing philosophy. I would assert most strongly, it is not. Properly understood libertarianism in its “classical liberal” incarnation was the original Left wing of politics. The Right wished to “conserve” the prevalent social order. Liberals did not. They wished to reform it in many different way including ending the feudal system, abolition of the church/state alliance and ending the government coddling of certain business interests through subsidies, monopolies and protectionism. There was very, very little which classical liberals though worthy of conserving. The advocates of conserving the social order were called conservatives and their method for doing so was the use of State force.

When the socialists arose they embraced many of the goals that true liberals were seeking. But these socialists thought it possible to achieve liberal ends through the use of State force, in other words while adopting liberal goals they clung to conservative means. As the socialist/communist movement evolved certain erroneous premises which they had embraced pushed many into a totalitarian camp. At that point these “Leftists” had ceased seeking even liberal ends and had become full-fledged conservatives preserving the political power structure through coercive means.

This created a crisis within the political Left. Many in the Left still passionately embraced the ends of the classical liberals. They opposed the totalitarianism of the conservative Left yet they were having problems giving up the idea that state power was the best method of achieving liberal goals. Most of modern Leftists, Harvey included, fall into this category. For the libertarian they are as confused as the modern conservative. Neither consistently advocates freedom yet neither consistently wants to undermine it. Whether their premises undermine such freedom is a different matter, but neither does so intentionally, with the exception of the more extreme elements.

Conservatives today want economic liberalism but shy away from social liberalism. Socialists and Progressives want social liberalism, and the results of economic liberalism but cling to State power. So, for the true libertarian, both the Left and the Right share similar flaws and have similar virtues. But many libertarians, who came from the Right, still cling to irrational hatred for the Left. This blinds them to the common ground that libertarians share with our friends on the Left.

A rational discussion of modern politics, from a libertarian perspective, requires us to understand, and appreciate, the common ground that we share with the Left as well. Yet this is inadequately done.

It is from this perspective that I wish to discuss the impact of Harvey Milk.

One thing that is clear from this documentary is that Harvey did passionately believe in trying to help those who were hurt, or oppressed, by the legal/political system of his day. He spoke of the needs of the various minorities to work together to defend their rights. This passion comes right out of the historical natural of classical liberalism. Unfortunately it is a passion that many libertarians have forgotten, to the detriment of libertarianism in general.

Classical liberalism originated, not as an economic philosophy, but as a philosophy that defended the rights of minorities. Freedom of religious dissent was a battle that the nascent liberals were fighting well before Adam Smith penned his Wealth of Nations (1776). Milton’s neo-liberal defense of free speech, Areopagitica, was published in 1643. John Locke’s essay, A Letter Concerning Toleration, was published in 1689. Both of these documents, while pushing boundaries for freedom, still made compromises to state control that modern libertarians (or many left-liberals) would no longer make. But certainly in their day they were radical calls for expanding individual freedom.

It should be remembered that these early liberals, arguing for expansion of freedom of thought, faced obstacles that later economic liberals did not face. While advocates of free trade were opposed by the landed interests and big business of the day, they did not face the Holy Inquisition, trials for heresy, mob violence, or execution. Of course, even today, modern libertarians find it easier to defend economic liberalism as “conservatives” will still do their level best to punish us for any forays into social liberalism—hence the reason so many “libertarian” think tanks and organizations don’t talk about the social aspects of freedom. But, for a libertarian to avoid social freedom, it is like a sprinter trying to run with just one leg. You can do it, but is it really worth the effort?

Classical liberals were in the forefront of the Abolitionist movement, a cause that was very unpopular when they started. But the evil of human slavery, defended by Scripture and conservative interests, was eventually abolished. After the successful campaigns regarding religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and the abolition of slavery, we see the first real move toward economic liberalism. Freedom of markets did not lead the liberal movement until the creation of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839—slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 but Vermont had banned it in 1777 and Massachusetts in 1783.

Even when Richard Cobden and John Bright, created the Anti-Corn Law League the emphasis of much of their work was on the dire effects that state protectionism had on the working classes and the poor. Much of the impetus for promoting economic freedom was that it was necessary if poverty and hunger were to be abolished. That passion, to see the most vulnerable in society, made better off was a primary motivation of our liberal forefathers. And even our promotion of economic freedom was intimately tied to this desire.

State power always has been, and always will be, the sanctuary of the rich and powerful. It protects them from the competitive nature of markets and from the wishes and will of the consumers and workers. This is why true liberals have opposed efforts by pseudo-liberals on the Left to expand state power. We believe that such power is inherently counter-productive and destructive to the well being of all of but a rich and powerful elite. Such power structures, however, are particularly destructive to the well being of the most vulnerable groups in our society.

True liberalism was aligned with European movements that sought to end the ghettoization of the Jews, something promoted by the Church and religious elements of society. Liberalism worked to extend the franchise and legal rights to women. It was closely involved with the movement to extend equal rights before the law to African-Americans as well. And, for all ages, classical liberalism was a major force in opposition to imperialism and war.

Classical liberalism has always been about the emancipation of all people and the legal equality of all people, in regime of freedom. Economic liberty is incredibly important, but not as an end in itself. Economic freedom is necessary to achieve the social goals of classical liberalism. Economic freedom means that the power elites can’t confiscate the wealth of the working classes. Economic freedom makes emancipation of the Jews, women, gays, and even “illegal” immigrants possible. Economic freedom is always a necessary component in the real liberal’s agenda: the full emancipation of the individual to live their life, as they wish, provided they respect the equal rights of others. Economic freedom is the means to the social goals of liberalism. Classical liberals would argue that economic freedom is the necessary means for achieving those goals.

When one studies the life of Harvey Milk one finds that the passions he shared were, for the most part, liberal passions—and I mean classical liberal passions. In his short political career he broke ground for the rights of gay and lesbian people and opposed the horrendous efforts of the bigots around the Briggs Initiative. It should also be noted that many libertarians were very active in the campaign against Briggs and that the libertarian-leaning Ronald Reagan even opposed the measure and wrote an editorial against it.

Previously I quoted Nathaniel Branden as saying:

I think it’s unfortunate that Libertarians so often leave the initiative to the Leftists. For example, it was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to oppose our involvement in Viet Nam. It was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to oppose the draft. It was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to denounce racism in this country.

Never mind that the Leftists had their own motives for doing so and that those motives would not be the motives of Libertarians. The fact remains that we should have never have involved ourselves in Viet Nam, the draft is evil, and racism is contemptible. Libertarians—the true defenders of individual rights—should have been the first to speak up on these subjects, loudly and clearly and publicly.

I don’t mean that these are the only issues to which Libertarians should address themselves. Far from it. But it would have been immensely important had Libertarians been the first to speak up on these problems. I think it’s unfortunate that Libertarians so often leave the initiative to the Leftists. For example, it was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to oppose our involvement in Viet Nam. It was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to oppose the draft. It was the Leftists who were the first—publicly and in a big way—to denounce racism in this country.

It is vital, if modern libertarianism or classical liberalism is to remain true to its roots, that we revive this passionate defense of those most under threat by the expansion of state power. We are the only consistent advocates of freedom for the oppressed and the powerless. And when we see others, even those who fail to understand the link between social and economic freedom, who are passionate about individual rights we ought to applaud them and encourage them. There were aspects to Harvey’s political program that real liberals could not support. But we can appreciate his passion for the oppressed and embrace that aspect of who he was. We can acknowledge the important role he played in helping further individual rights in modern America. We can do these things—and we should.

The Left/Right assault on individual rights moves ahead.

No doubt conservatives are applauding the decision of the California Supreme Court. And while I don’t think that decision will mean the demise of equal marriage rights in California, I don’t think the decision is a good one. And, surely any conservative that believes in individual rights (and there must be a couple such creatures left in existence) shouldn’t applaud the decision.

There is much in this decision that ought to scare the shit out of anyone who believes in rights. Let’s look at just a couple of points.

The court said that the Attorney General, who supported the overturning of Prop 8, “characterizes certain rights as ‘inalienable’.” The court responds that, “the ‘inalienable nature of a constitutional right never has been understood to preclude the adoption of a constitutional amendment that limits or restricts the scope or application of such a right.”

The term “inalienable” means: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred. But not in California. All inalienable rights in California apparently are alienable after all. A right that cannot be transferred is one that no one can transfer, including a vote of the majority of the voters. What the California court seems to be saying is that the very concept of “rights” is non-existent and all that anyone enjoys are legal privileges, which may be repealed anytime the dominant power in the state wishes to do so.

Of course the initiative process was pushed through in California in 1911, during the heyday of the Progressive movement there. It was a Left-wing “reform” which basically enshrined majority rule as the dominant principle. I don’t mean majority rule in the sense of the majority being able to elect officials. I mean that the majority can decide what rights the minorities have. That idea would horrify the Founders but the Progressives liked it.

What the Progressives liked about popular referendums was that they felt they could around Constitutional restraints on government power that way. Constitutions tended to limit state power and Progressives wanted big government with expansive powers. They argued that “the people” had unlimited powers and could do virtually anything they wished. Therefore “the people” could give the state such powers. Our Founders, of course, argued that while government comes from the people that there are rights, which precede, and are superior, to all government.

These rights, said the Founders, were inherent in human nature. The term “natural rights” was often used to explain them. They argued that since rights precede government that the purpose of government is protect such rights and that no government, not even one supported by the majority, could properly trespass on those rights. “Not so,” screamed the Progressives. And joining them in that chorus are the modern day conservatives.

The court actually noted that the Attorney General “cites selected excerpts from a number of mid-19th-century opinions that gave voice to the natural-rights jurisprudence that was common in that era.” To be fair, this “natural-rights jurisprudence” was also common to the Founding Fathers and inspired such things as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. But, don’t worry say the Republican justices in California: “As pointed out in the response filed by interveners, however, the expansive natural-rights jurisprudence of that time long has been discredited….”

The “interveners” were those individuals who supported Prop 8. At least one of them, if not all of them, were thus arguing in the Supreme Court that there are no such things as rights, just legal privileges which the state, in the form of the majority, may take away whenever they feel like it. That is what conservatives were arguing in order to indulge their antigay passions. In a second passage the court says: “The natural-law jurisprudence reflected in passages from the few early judicial opinions relied upon by the Attorney General has been discredited for many years….”

The justices said that while Constitutions often, I would say normally, restrict the power of majorities to strip minorities of their rights, “the California Constitution contains no such restraints” which “place some subjects or portions of the constitution off-limits to the amending process…”

The concept of rights is not just a limitation on the powers of the state but also limitations on the powers that one person may exert over another person. Rights mark boundaries where no one, not even majorities are allowed to trespass. When conservatives are arguing that this doctrine is “discredited” and that majorities may do whatever damn well they please, then conservatives have joined the most radical wings of the Progressive movement.

In many ways this ruling had the world upside-down. Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat, was appealing to natural rights and limitations on the power of majorities, while the conservatives were arguing for expansive powers for the state and claiming that natural rights are discredited and may be ignored. In the long run I suspect the conservative/Progressive theory will continue to dominate the courts since so many judges, as political appointees, are beholden to the powers that be. Since the Progressive/conservative alliance against individual rights loosens the reins of government power the political elites will tend to be drawn to this theory. After all, this theory says they may pretty much do what they wish since rights are a quant fiction from the 19th century.

When liberty kisses justice: equality of rights.

The Iowa Supreme Court set the cat amongst the pigeons with their ruling on whether or not the state can ban gay marriage, based on the state’s constitution. Their decision, I believe, is the correct one. Iowa’s state constitution has an equal protection clause. One of the principles of American justice, a principle that religion-besotted conservatives have intentionally swept under the rug, is that legislation is not the supreme law of the land. Above legislation are the constitutions of the various states. It ought to be that way at the federal level as well, but too often isn’t, hence runaway big government.

The god-botherers out there scream when a court rules as this one did. They exhibit their own ignorance by bleating that the justices are legislating from the bench. But what these justices are required to do is judge whether or not legislative law is consistent with, or in violation of, constitutional law. That is their job! They are not usurping powers but judiciously engaging in their primary job.

Members of God’s Own Party (GOP) in Iowa pushed through legislation that explicitly banned gays from having the same marriage rights as straights. The Iowa constitution promises equality of rights before the law. There are exceptions to the concept of equality of rights (more than I think acceptable). With the legislation saying one thing, and the constitution promising another, the Supreme Court is then brought in to resolve the conflict. This means they have to decide, based on the evidence presented to them, whether denying gay couples equal protection qualifies as a legitimate exception or not.

What the Iowa court did, in this case, was issue a very conservative ruling. They upheld constitutional law, and some of the best constitutional law, that Americans have. The radicals in the courtroom were the plethora of religiously-inspired special interest groups demanding that constitutional principles be ignored because they imagine that some supernatural being has demanded that one class of people be treated badly. The Justices were respecting the law, not making law. They said:

The Iowa Constitution is the cornerstone of governing in Iowa. Like the United States Constitution, the Iowa Constitution creates a remarkable blueprint for government. It establishes three separate, but equal, branches of government and delineates the limited roles and powers of each branch. See Iowa Const. art. III, § 1 (“The powers of the government of Iowa shall be divided into three separate departments—the legislative, the executive, and the judicial: and no person charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any function appertaining to either of the others, except in cases hereinafter expressly directed or permitted.”). Among other basic principles essential to our form of government, the constitution defines certain individual rights upon which the government may not infringe. See Iowa Const. art. I (“Bill of Rights”). Equal protection of the law is one of the guaranteed rights. See Iowa Const. art. I, § 6. All these rights and principles are declared and undeniably accepted as the supreme law of this state, against which no contrary law can stand. See Iowa Const. art. XII, § 1 (“This constitution shall be the supreme law of the state, and any law inconsistent therewith, shall be void.”).

The ruling noted that: “This court, consistent with its role to interpret the law and resolve disputes, now has the responsibility to determine if the law enacted by the legislative branch and enforced by the executive branch violates Iowa's Constitution.” Conservatives, who are wailing in distress over the court’s action, ought to remember that the prime cause of over-reaching government today is the result of Courts not checking legislators and executives when their actions violate Constitutional guarantees.

The justices also noted that public opinion matters not one bit. “A statute inconsistent with the Iowa Constitution must be declared void, even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion.” Jefferson addressed this when he said: “What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.” Popular prejudice, even if widespread, in itself, is not sufficient cause for making a minority less than equal. The Iowa justices wrote that “the very purpose of limiting the power of the elected branches of government by constitutional provisions like the Equal Protection Clause is [according to Justice Robert Jackson] ‘to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.’”

The idea that law should reflect popular viewpoints, which is implicit in the conservative view, and explicit in many cases, is not even a conservative viewpoint. What today’s conservatives are promoting is a Left-populist view held by some of the more Left-wing justices of the past. During the Progressive Era, the political Left was stymied when they wished to push through legislation that inhibited property rights, freedom of trade, freedom of contract, and such similar “economic” issues. Such laws, while popular with the public, violated various constitutional provisions as they had been historically interpreted. This became most apparent in the early days of the New Deal, where Roosevelt’s anger with the Court overturning popular legislation reached a crescendo with FDR threatening to push through a change on the number of justices on the bench so he could pack the court with fellow “progressives.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the Left-leaning justices pushed a new theory of Constitutional interpretation. He said that Constitutional provisions should be interpreted in light of “the felt necessities of the times, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed and unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men.” He said, “What proximate test of excellence can be found except correspondence with the actual equilibrium of force in the community—that is, conformity to the wishes of the dominant power? Of course, such conformity may lead to destruction, and it is desirable that the dominant power should be wise. But wise or not, the proximate test of a good government is that the dominant power has its way.”

Holmes explicitly stated that constitutional principles of the Founders should be ignored. He claimed: “Everyone instinctively recognizes that in these days the justification of a law for us cannot be found in the fact that our fathers always have followed it. It must be found in some help which the law brings toward reaching a social end which the governing power of the community has made up its mind that it wants.” Conservatives have adopted this left-wing view rather explicitly, at least when it comes to the equality of rights of homosexuals. Mention the gay issue and conservatives, who cling to constitutional principles on property and economics, suddenly become raving Progressives demanding that the rights of the one be subjected to the approval of the majority.

But what of the claim that the Founders did not explicitly mention the legal equality of homosexuals when they designed our Constitutional principles? Clearly that is true. After all it was a bit over two centuries ago. What the Founders intended to do was set out some basic principles; principles which they knew were not being applied consistently, across the board. For instance, while some Founders were quite opposed to the issue of slavery, they did not write a Constitution explicitly forbidding it. Such a Constitution could not be ratified, given the prejudices of the Southern states on the matter.

The Founders were aware that the expansion of liberty, and equality before the law, was a long-term project, perhaps an unending one. Future generations would each fight their own battles for the extension of these libertarian principles. At no point did the Founders attempt to enumerate all the rights held by the individual. As James Wilson said, at the time, “Who would be bold enough to undertake to enumerate all the rights of the people?” The Ninth Amendment quite explicitly acknowledges that such an enumeration is not possible and that the failure to list specific rights in the Bill of Rights does not mean the right does not exist. What the Founders gave us was a list of precise, enumerated powers of government and broad, unspecified concepts of individual rights.

Each generation faces new questions about rights not faced by previous generations. The Founders did not believe that their list of rights was exhaustive. So they did not try to enumerate such rights. They said they were offering future generations the broad principles with which they should work when facing new controversies about individual liberty. Jefferson’s said that the “most sacred” duty of government is “to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” That principle was enshrined in the Iowa Constitution, as it was in most state constitutions. Jefferson said our principles of government “secure to all… citizens a perfect equality of rights.”

But today, conservatives are leading a stampede to undermine the concept of equality of rights before the law. They are arguing that their religious sentiments and imaginations require the law to explicitly embrace an inequality of rights. This is precisely what Prop 8 did in California and what many other such “constitutional amendments” have been intended to do. They have radically rewritten a basic constitutional principle, that of equality of rights, and substituted for it one that demands inequality of rights. Such a revolutionary change to a founding principle is hardly conservative in any sense of the word. It is a shockingly revolutionary attempt to overturn the founding principles of the Republic.

The classical liberal views of the Founders were not static. Liberalism itself is not static, but dynamic. It is not that the foundational principles change, but that they are applied to new situations in new times. Even the Founders were captives of their own time and culture, as far-seeing as many of them were. The application of constitutional liberal principles to African-Americans was simply not something that the political culture of their day could accept. But those principles were eventually accepted, albeit it after much hardship, debate and public outrage, somewhat similar to the sort of reaction we see today as these principles are slowly being applied to gay people as well.

Hayek said that true liberalism “wants to go elsewhere, not to stand still.” By this, he meant that liberals accept change when that change is consistent with foundational principles. He warned, “one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is fear of change, a timid distrust of the new, as such, while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence of the preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.” Hayek said that conservatives are not afraid of state power at all and thus is unconcerned “with the problems of how the powers of government should be limited” but are worried about “who wields them.” He warned that the conservative “like the socialist” “regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.”

Lord Samuel Brittan once argued that: “Many of the classical ideas of nineteenth-century liberalism [i.e. classical liberalism] did not come on the statute books until the 1960s. The battle is still far from won, as can be seen from the sentences still passed on ‘obscene publications’ or the hysterical and vindictive attitude adopted by so many authority figures towards the problem of drugs.”

The classical liberalism of the Founders is always going to move us into new territory. And when it does, there will always be conservative forces, fearful of change, finding excuses to cling to previously held, but erroneous, conclusions. The Iowa court said that their responsibility “is to protect constitutional rights of individuals from legislative enactments that have denied those rights, even when the rights have not yet been broadly accepted, were at one time unimagined or challenge a deeply ingrained practice or law viewed to be impervious to the passage of time.” They wrote:

The framers of the Iowa Constitution knew, as did the drafters of the United States Constitution, that “times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,” and as our constitution “endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom” and equality

One of the great things about liberalism, properly understood, is that it doesn’t ask us to cling to the conclusions of the past, just the principles. Those principles embrace a free society, based on individual rights and one that respects the equality of rights before the law. The justices in Iowa did not overturn those principles at all. They unanimously embraced them. And for that they should be applauded.

[Note: this post only covers basic principles as I see them in regards to this case. I urge people to read the entire decision for themselves. Much of the decision discusses why the justices rejected claims that homosexuals, as a class, ought to be denied marriage rights.]

Jefferson regarding majorities and the rights of minorities

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.

"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." --Thomas Jefferson: Note in Destutt de Tracy, "Political Economy,"

"[The] best principles [of our republic] secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to the Citizens of Wilmington, 1809.

"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.

"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823.

The bullet is still smashing down those doors.

My friend Amy and I went out for dinner and a movie tonight. I have to admit it was something of a strange, as well as nostalgic evening for me because of the film. And it may be difficult to explain all this here.

It is not unusual to have lived someplace, or near someplace, that appears in a film. But in this case the film takes place almost entirely in my old neighborhood. More importantly it mostly takes place on my old block. Many of the people depicted in the film were neighbors, people I would pass on the streets.

The film we saw is Gus van Sant’s Milk starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. I have to say that Penn captured the character of Milk almost perfectly.

My apartment in San Francisco has long topped the list of the places where I loved living. San Francisco was, and is, a city I love. I have always said that everyone should live in San Francisco once.

My flat occupied the third floor. On the first floor was a restaurant.To the left of the restaraurant was a door leading to some winding stairs to the second floor where you faced two doors. On the right was the door to some offices used by one of the local businesses. The door on the left was my door. It was deceptive; this door didn’t directly enter my apartment at all. Instead it opened up to a long staircase that made a sharp right turn at the very top. This stairway and hall at the top was just the foyer to the apartment.

At the top of the stairs there was an old large radio from the 1930s and the entire wall, from the second floor up the stairs, was a collection of old film posters which I eventually sold at auction. If you turned left at the top of the stairs you went into another foyer with the bedroom off to the right and the kitchen, pantry, bathroom and porch straight ahead. To the right of the main foyer was my lounge and next to it my library. These two rooms had massive bay windows looking onto Castro while the back faced toward Twin Peaks.

If I sat in my library I could read and watch that continuing soap opera that was Castro Street. Across the street and a bit to the right was what had been Harvey Milk’s business, Castro Camera. Above the shop, facing my side of the street was Harvey’s old apartment.

Seeing this film brought back a flood of memories of my old neighborhood and how it had been a epicenter of a social movement that is still changing America today -- I believe for the better, for the most part.

This films depicts Harvey Milks relative short political career before he was gunned down by the conservative ex-cop politician, Dan White. White snuck through a basement window into city hall and murdered the Mayor Moscone and Milk.

What I didn’t realize, until recently, what that White wanted other victims. One of whom was Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver. That surprised me. While Carol and I differed on many issues we had a strong common ground on defending Second Amendment rights which allowed us to work together on that issue.

Carol Ruth once said that for her a handgun was “a necessary piece of household equipment.” Had White run into Silver, before he killed Moscone and Milk, things may have turned out very differently. Silver was a contributer to a book edited by SF ACLU lawyer Don Kates, Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out. Kates, like Silver was another ally on self-defense issues.

Milk shows an America lurching to the Right as Anita Bryant and Senator John Briggs push their antigay agenda. Milk was a major opponent of those campaigns in California.

During this time period I was a young writer working for a publication in the Midwest. But I paid attention. And when Anita Bryant came to the area I spent the day with her, and her then husband Bob Green, for an article I was writting. It became clear to me that she and Green were not in a harmonious relationship. She spent so much “saving the family” that her own fell apart. By the way they fought in front of me I could see a divorce was coming.

Bob Green struck me as an upleasant character and Kathy Lee Gifford, who had done babysitting for Bryant, said that Green was emotionally abusive. This fit well with what I witnessed. Anita eventually left him, went bankrupt, admitted to a pill addiction and eventually remarried. That was followed by further bankruptcy filings by her and her husband. Of course all this means she is now running a fundamentalist “ministry” out of Oklahoma City.

In the film Harvey tells a rally against Bryant that the audience ought to thank Anita Bryant. He noted that Anita’s hate campaign didn’t destroy the gay community but unified it. And that was tue.

This is precisely what I’ve been saying about the short-sighted Proposition 8. The parallels are intriguing. The antigay campaign that Bryant and Briggs led, Proposition 6, did unite a lot of people and radicalized a whole generation of gay people. And this is what I believe the Mormon sponsored Proposition 8 has done.

I saw Milk in a realtively conservative state in a very conservative town. Yet the cinema had moved Milk to the largest theater they had. The show before the one I saw had a large attendance and so did the showing we attended. What I noticed was the large number of young gay people, in their teens and twenties, who had come out to see this film. Most of them were not even born when Harvey Milk was gunned down.

Yet I can assure you that this film hit them where they live. They are all aware of Prop 8 and the Mormon Church. They saw this film about the Prop 6 campaign run by fundamentalist churches. And they reacted to the message of Harvey Milk.

It is important to contrast their expectations in life to those of gay people from Harvey’s generation. Virtually all gay Americans from Harvey’s era, grew up in a country where it was a crime to be gay. They faced arrest merely for having drinks with friends. The police, even in San Francisco, didn’t mind engaging in some “fag bashing” themselves.

Many of the young people in the showing of Milk have never lived under governments that would arrest them for merely being out with other gay people. Harvey’s generation knew the constant fear of losing a job, being evicted from their apartments just because they were gay. Today’s young gays know little of that. In the time of Milk full grown adults were terrified to be open about their sexual orientation. Many of today’s young gays came out to their parents and friends in junior high school and have always been open. They haven’t always been accepted, and often faced bullies, but they don’t know the closet the way Harvey Milk did.

The gay people of the Milk era were satisfied with token acceptance. It was considered something of an accomplishment just to get the police to stop assaulting you. The idea of full legal equality was just a fantasy. When people are satisfied with “don’t hit me so much” they aren’t likely to ask, “When can I have the same rights you do?”

Today’s young gays have different expectations, so the Prop 8 vote was a real shock to them, it was a wake up call. I’m betting that hundreds of Harvey Milks were born in the Prop 8 defeat. If the Mormon theocracy thinks that they won a victory they will find out precisely how wrong they are. In just this one showing, in one town, on one night, the story of Harvey Milk energized several new young activists who won’t rest until they live in a world where they are treated as equals. That is not what the Mormon leadership intended with their campaign. The young people in the cinema were ready for the message that Harvey Milk had to give them.

There is no doubt that Harvey and I were miles apart on many issues. But neither is there any doubt that I have immense respect for what he did and appreciate his contribution toward legal equality. And while I will fight Harvey’s legacy where he was wrong, I will applaud his legacy where he was correct. And I appreciate that his message, through this film, is reaching a new generation. I fully expect to see the day, in my lifetime, when full legal equality for gay people is achieved.

Conservative victories, such as Prop 8, can not extinguish the desire for equality before the law. In truth such conservative wins may not even slow down the drive for equality but speed excelerate it. Prop 8 recreated unity in the gay community, something that had vanished in the years since Milk was campaigning. Prop 8 made lots of gay people angry. And it put a fire under young gays who were less interested in activism than their older counterparts. Satisfied with many of the gains achieved since the 60s the gay rights movement was moribund; the Mormons and the Prop 8 campaign changed that.

Days before his murder Harvey sat down and recorded his thoughts, thoughts he said he wanted made public only if he were murdered. On that tape he said:”If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” I can’t see today’s generation of gays ever accepting the closet as an acceptable place to live. They are demanding a place at the table. They aren’t asking, they aren’t requesting, they are demanding. And I believe they will succeed.

Those who fought this battle with Harvey are growing tired, weary from the journey. Many of the brave pioneers have died, some like Harvey had their life stolen from them by the very hatred they fought. Until Prop 8, these baby boomers of the gay community were watching political activism fading away. So much had been accomplished, so much had changed, that many of the young didn’t see the need to do the “Harvey Milk thing”. Now they see. In one short campaign the conservatives created tens of thousands of new activists. Tonight the cinema was filled with many of these people. One of the lines Harvey liked to use at his political rallies was: “I’m Harvey Milk. And I’m here to recruit you.” With the wake-up call conveniently provided by the Mormons I suspect that thousands of young people who watch Milk will respond to Havey’s recruitment drive.

For more information on Harvey Milk you might read The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts. In another of those odd overlaps of life I worked with Randy’s brother, Gary, on some political projects of common interest. Gary Shilts is an active libertarian in Illinois.