Last night, I went to a gathering in West Hollywood’s Icandy sponsored by Gay Orbit.
There were about two dozen people there. Some of them were bloggers, such as the “Boi from Troy”, others worked in politics and also blog, such as Matt Szabo. I met a charming and articulate young man named Steve Sion who is running as a Republican for the State Assembly in the 42nd District. These are names that I am dropping, but as I drop them I don’t know whether they are heavy or light. I’m basically apolitical even though I sometimes get passionately political about the current administration.
And the crowd last night had a few budding members of the Log Cabin Club, the Republican and gay group that somehow is finding a way to grow and prosper in a classical garden sprayed by fundamentalist herbicide. They are passionate about all those issues that once defined Republicans: lower taxes, less government, more immigration controls. They are discreetly quiet about flag burning, abortion, the domestic survelliance war, gay marriage prohibitions and other road shows put on by the G.O.P.
Some of them will be attending a two hundred and fifty dollar a plate dinner of the Log Cabin where Governor Schwarzenegger is the keynote speaker. It is being held tonight at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel.
The Governor was applauded by some gays for three bills that benefit domestic partners: one bans discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgenders in employment, housing and the delivery of goods and services. A second bill gives California state workers who retired before January 1, 2005, the opportunity to take advantage of the state’s Domestic Partnership law. The third made homes of domestic partners community property under divorce law.
But Arnold invoked Gay hostility by other actions. He wisely (I think) didn’t jump the gun on same-sex marriage like San Francisco’s Mayor Newsom. He vetoed that marriage granting gays bill passed by the legislature. He is letting the courts decide if it is legal(how un-Republican, deferring to an activist court). He also refused to endorse a censorship type bill that banned “negative appeals” against gays or lesbians by candidates or campaign committees. He is also against the new racial curriculum proposed by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) which requires the addition of Latinos, Mexicans, Asians ,Pacific Islanders, Gays and Lesbians in the history books about California. All of the above mentioned bills are weak, but pander to prejudice, by making sexual or ethnic biology destiny.
The idea that history should be taught as an ethnic ethics course is an outgrowth of the 1960’s “relevance” movement. Since 1969, American students have become increasingly stupider, by any measure, and must of this comes from the weak and fashionable ideology that infects our educational system in promoting political correctness at the expense of intellectual breadth and critical thinking. What if we only bothered to care about Copernicus because he was a Pole and most astronomers were not?
The Log Cabin Republicans have a difficult road to travel. They are gay people in a sexual sub-culture which loudly objects to any deviance from the party line. They are Republicans in a party that demands discipline and dogmatic echoes from the top on down. Both ruling Gays and Republicans require adherence to an ideal and perfectionist image.
But the philosophically deviant Log Cabinites are also Americans, exercising their political muscle and viewpoints in a country that sometimes seems to have forgotten that the individual is the wellspring for vast societal changes. If they have the courage to challenge orthodoxy, we need to pay attention to some of their ideas.
Here in Van Nuys 