For Every Citizen?
New York Press,
December 17, 2002
333 7th Ave, 14th Fl., New York, New York 10001
Email: mugger@nypress.com
The Gist
By Michelangelo Signorile
"The founding ideals of our nation and, in fact, the founding ideals
of the political party I represent was, and remains today, the equal dignity
and equal rights of every American," George W. Bush said piously last
week, criticizing Trent Lott for voicing his nostalgic yearnings for the Old
South. "We must continue our advance toward full equality for every
citizen, which demands...a guarantee of civil rights for all."
If Lott’s apologies for his statements were as phony-appearing as his
dubious puff of hair, Bush’s promise to advance "equality for every
citizen" is as empty as the top of Dick Cheney’s shiny bald head.
Bush, after all, is quite proudly against allowing gays and lesbians to
adopt children who desperately need homes. And he supports the Draconian
homosexual-specific Texas sodomy law that even the conservative Supreme Court
that installed him as president is, at this moment, deciding should perhaps be
overturned. Several of the Justices may be mighty embarrassed about the court’s
notorious Hardwick decision in 1986, which has allowed the police in Texas and
12 other states to continue to barge into people’s bedrooms and haul them
off to jail. But not our President, who has said sodomy laws are a
"symbol of traditional values," using the very same terminology that
Southern racists have used to defend segregation.
It’s always good for a few guffaws when politicians like Bush, beholden
to far-right religious conservatives, talk about "equality for every
citizen"—especially when you see the so-called moderate or libertarian
Republicans who support such politicians momentarily skulk into a corner (all
red-faced) when they hear these platitudes, knowing full well that they’ve
made a deal with the devil in order to get their tax cuts, or whatever selfish
thing brought them aboard. (That same scenario often has them looking the
other way of racism too, by the way—until it gets just too bald-faced, as in
the case of Lott’s statements, causing them to suddenly speak up loudly
about someone whose nasty record has been plain as day for the past 30 years.)
But this time the platitudes were so funny that you laughed until you
cried. That’s because, after his Martin Luther King Jr. moment regarding
Lott’s statements, Bush signed executive orders that will allow for
religious discrimination by charities that take federal money as part of Bush’s
faith-based initiatives program. It’s not at all surprising, but the irony
of what he was really saying seemed lost on him entirely: "I’m firmly
against discrimination-and, by the way, I’m signing some executive orders
allowing discrimination!"
As Congressman Jerry Nadler said in a press release, "Today, the
President endorsed the practice of hanging signs on doors that say ‘No Jews
or Catholics Need Apply.’ In fact, he not only endorsed it, he said that the
taxpayers should pay for it."
Even that, however, doesn’t explain the entirety of what will happen
under Bush’s orders. For many charities, anti-gay prejudice will now be
wrapped up in the pretty package of religious freedom, and even in cities and
states where gays and lesbians have worked hard to secure protections, the
charities may be able to discriminate against them. That’s because Bush’s
directives will allow employers to discriminate against individuals who don’t
hold to the strictest tenets of the employer’s professed faith.
So, under the directives, an openly gay Catholic can be fired from a
Catholic charity that gets money through the faith-based program simply
because the Vatican has proclaimed that homosexuality is "objectively
disordered," and thus should not be acted upon. Some people may have been
worried back in 1960 that, if elected, the Catholic John F. Kennedy would be
taking orders from the Vatican, but it’s "born again" Bush II who
has now given the pope a direct say in hiring and firing policies in the
United States.
Most alarmingly, charities that offer housing for people with AIDS will be
able to even more blatantly discriminate. Under Bush’s directive, charities
in the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program may be able to
discriminate directly on the basis of sexual orientation, without even having
to cover it with the religious patina. Thus, a gay man or lesbian working at
an AIDS hospice run by a Christian charity in the program can quite possibly
be fired just for being gay, theoretically, no matter what the laws are in his
or her municipality or state that might protect gays.
So much for "equality for every citizen."
The Story that Almost Wasn’t
It’s been said but it bears repeating that the media were not only slow
on the uptake regarding the Trent Lott story; they almost let it get away. The
clubby Beltway establishment is a mix of media people and politicians, and too
often they protect one another (consciously or not) unless events force them
to do their jobs. And, more and more, that only happens if a story is packaged
and sold—and then clubbed over their heads over and over again.
That is something Republicans, as the opposition party during the Clinton
years, became adept at doing as 24/7 cable news and the Internet exploded and
there was suddenly a lot of time and space to fill. What’s clear about the
Lott story, which almost evaporated over a weekend, is that Democrats and
liberals weren’t pushing it in part because they just don’t have the
machine that Republicans have, which is fueled by talk radio. But more than
that, the Democrats were just plain disorganized and feeble at the outset—surprise,
surprise—with Tom Daschle making a complete ass of himself by quickly
accepting Lott’s first apology.
If there truly were a cabal of liberal ideologues in the media pushing a
liberal Democratic agenda, they’d have jumped on this without any prodding.
The Lott story took off because of online writers, as Paul Krugman noted in
the Times last week, who just wouldn’t let it go and who kept challenging
the mainstream press. Krugman mentioned Joshua Marshall at
talkingpointsmemo.com, among "a few other Internet writers." One of
those other left-of-center bloggers who was as instrumental as Marshall, was
Atrios, aka Eschaton, at atrios.blogspot.com, who has fast become a one-stop
shop for progressives who want to know what’s going on at any hour of the
day or night and want it with a dose of punchy spin. Conservative online
writers came a little later to this story (though, to their credit, they did
become forceful on it, as did some of their print journalism counterparts,
such as Robert George of the New York Post); the usual suspects among them and
their promoters are trying to make as if they were at the very front of this
blog wave.
But in the end, Marshall, whose invaluable contacts gave him documents and
information (and a Larry King/Lott interview minutes before it even aired!),
and Atrios, who made all the important connections to this story and focused
on Lott’s past, gave this controversy its initial momentum. As Krugman
noted, if not for them and a few others, Lott’s remarks might have gotten
lost in the media haze, like so many other things.
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