Bradley Effect on gay "marriage"?

The public discourse surrounding gay "marriage" has been so dissatisfactory that it may have contributed to the surprise defeats in the last two big referendums. The gay groups' idea of an argument is "BIGOT!!!" (or more-nuanced claims such as "you hate me" or the supremely sophisticated "this argument is by definition bigoted").

Yet, the last two states to hold referendums on the issue were the solidly-blue states of California (in November 2008) and Maine (in November 2009). In both cases, polls were mixed or favored gay marriage slightly in the final days (here is a Maine preview; here is a California rundown) only for the poll that took place on Election Day to come out significantly different. In Maine, the repeal of state legislation won by 5 1/2 points; in California, a constitutional amendment to reverse a state high-court ruling won by 4 1/2 points.

The lead art on this item shows how stunned the pro-gay folks in Maine were by their defeat. Indeed, a report at Politico (where you can see the ghosts of earlier-filed stories) said everything went right for the pro-gay folks, and the various excuses they've given for their spectacular losing streak did not hold -- they were not outspent (can't blame that flood of Mormon and Vatican money); turnout was high (nor the few who are passionate about their bigotry); they were in a liberal state most of whose neighbors have gay marriage (nor their whole cultural narrative of opposing antedivulian knuckle-draggers ignorant of how awesome gay marriage is)

As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, gay marriage advocates were emboldened by what appeared to be higher than expected turnout in Maine. Even before polls opened on Tuesday roughly one-tenth of the state’s registered voters submitted mail-in ballots or voted early.
And in an interview late Tuesday night on MSNBC, Maine Democratic Gov. John Baldacci said that at polling places it looked like “the presidential election all over again.”
“A lot of young people were showing up, a lot of first-time voters were showing up,” Baldacci said. “I was encouraged by that.”
Supporters also hoped money would make a difference in the outcome. The main group working to keep the state’s marriage law on the books, Protect Maine Equality, outraised the leading opposition group, Stand for Marriage, by more than $1 million.

Which led me that very night to think that opposition to gay marriage must "underpoll," meaning "does less well in surveys than on Election Day," for some systemic reason. Pollster Nate Silver looked at the Maine results and also broached the possibility of a "Bradley effect," named after Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles who surprisingly lost a California governor's race he had been leading in the polls.¹

As for the polling, I think we have to seriously consider whether there is some sort of a Bradley Effect in the polling on gay rights issues

The "Bradley effect" posits that people will tell a pollster that they back the black guy while voting for the white one in a voting booth. I should add that even if black candidates suffer from some general "Bradley effect,"² that doesn't mean nefarious racism is the motive. Just as plausible, at face value anyway, as "phew ... I'm free to express my bigotry in the privacy of the voting booth" is that voters are unwilling to dismiss to a pollster (i.e., in a social situation) an underqualified minority or a minority whom they'd never support, for sound ideological reason, from fear of being thought racist.

This latter dynamic, I think, has more to do with gay issues. It is now a fact, that somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 percent of the US population has convinced itself that opposition to gay marriage is, in itself and necessarily, a mere expression of bigotry and prejudice. And that ~30 percent (or whatever exact number) dominate the instruments of culture and information and constitute nearly 100 percent of the experience of most open gays. Indeed, the 8 Maps and the enthusiasm that they and other forms of public menace generated among gays in California in the wake of their defeat indicate that many think "the time for reason is past." Folks are now fearing that a California judge may be preparing a show trial.

The one point gay-"marriage" folks have pounded on the table over and over is "BIGOT!!!" And a "Bradley effect" is the fruit this strategy has borne. Nobody wants to be thought of as a bigot, but yet you cannot persuade someone that he is one. The charge "BIGOT!!!" is not a bid to persuade but an attempt to anathematize. Thus, all it can do is intimidate, which can have an effect in a social situation like talking to a pollster but not a voting booth. This also might explain why legislators, at least in liberal states like Vermont and Maine, can be bent to oppose the popular will -- their votes aren't really secret. The more gay-"marriage" backers yell "BIGOT!!!" the more pronounced this Bradley effect is likely to become.
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¹ Yes, I know that politics scholars and pollsters debate whether there is indeed a "Bradley Effect," and some of the most skeptical are those who were involved the race itself. Whether there is, isn't or once was such an race-based effect doesn't change that the term is a good form of shorthand for a similar phenomenon re gay marriage.
² Though there's so many obvious exceptions that it's near impossible to believe in the Bradley effect as a general rule. It may be possible, nevertheless, to believe it holds in some cases or types of contests.
³ Nor should my willingness to use the term "Bradley effect" in re gay issues be taken to mean that I buy the "sexuality = race" narrative and all it implies.

CPAC fight

I don't have any particular stake in the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual February event in Washington, this year running Feb. 18-20. I'm not much of a joiner and so have never gone, even as [my real name]. And for the same reason and others, I have never had any interest in the various gay-Republican groups, the latest of which is GOProud. They and other groups like Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Unity Coalition have all generally supported the gay political agenda, which I emphatically do not, on public issues like marriage and military service (see 4 and 7 here for GOProud). 

All this by way of saying "I ain't got no dog in this fight." 

But although I'm a political conservative by any rational definition, nothing brings out my inner gay activist more than some of the pro-family groups on the right, as is now happening over this year's CPAC. One of the about 70 sponsoring groups this year is the newly-founded GOProud, and that has a lot of people unhappy. Americans for Truth, Liberty Counsel and Jerry Falwell Jr., Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund and the American Family Association all have denounced GOProud's involvement and/or threatened a boycott. 

Rumblings got so bad that David Keene and Lisa DiPasquale both have issued public defenses of GOProud's involvement -- Keene to Texas radio host Adam McManus and DiPasquale to popular conservative blog Hot Air. Keene said GOProud's "interest is in demonstrating that not all gays are liberals rather than promoting their life style ... we find it difficult to exclude groups because of disagreements on one or two issues no matter how important many of us believe those issues to be," citing disagreements on the Bush administration's wars and immigration. DiPasquale told Hot Air's Ed Morrissey she was "satisfied that they do not represent a 'radical leftist agenda,' as some have stated, and should not be rejected as a CPAC cosponsor."

There's also more at conservative blog Gay Patriot on the issue of whether (as Keene can be read as having said in his e-mail) GOProud will be muzzled at CPAC, which the gay group denies, saying, among other things, that the speakers haven't been picked yet.

We'll see if this goes farther than this (it hasn't broken into the mainstream media, best I can tell). Of the 10 items on GOProud's Legislative Agenda, eight are solidly conservative, while the other two are not. And while I generally favor broad coalitions that include 80-percenters over narrow purist ones -- they're more likely to win, in a democracy -- the political question isn't exactly what makes me ashamed of many social conservatives. No ... it's because reading some of this stuff really makes it harder to believe that social conservative really believe in "love the sinner and reject the sin."

To start with, there's an unseemly interest in reductive and disgusting descriptions of gay sex from the likes of Matt Barber, the kind one expects from cranks like the Catholic Caveman, but not someone who leads a group that aims from respectability. Here is Americans for Truth's rant statement which approvingly quotes the "inimitable" Barber:

It boils down to this: there is nothing "conservative" about — as Barber inimitably puts it — "one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it 'love'." 

... which hardly merits a response (though here is one; starting with "His second point ...")

But more directly -- OK, so GOProud is wrong about marriage and military service. Why does that make *their* participation in CPAC so wrong? More wrong than any of the hundreds of pro-gay-marriage libertarians at CPAC? Or more wrong than the corporate involvement of such libertarian-leaning or -inclusive CPAC-sponsoring groups as the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the Manhattan Institute? And it is a moral certainty that CPAC-sponsoring groups with specific-issue focuses other than pro-family ones (like Americans for Tax Reform or the National Rifle Association, say) include gay-marriage supporters? 

This kind of nonsense does nothing but make a prophet of the Andrew Sullivans of the world and gives credibility to their lies about the Church denying gay people's personhood per se. The issue isn't ... "are (misguided) supporters of gay-marriage et al gonna be at CPAC?" They will -- whether GOProud is there or not. Particularly given those previous comments, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that what these pro-family groups object to is the corporate personhood of GOProud. In other words, the objectionable point is a group of gay people. After all, social conservatives have no problem breaking bread with straight libertarians or bohemian neocons or others who back gay marriage. Social-conservative groups **who involve themselves in politics** have to ... well ... grow up. Get used to the presence of open gays in politics. We don't have gay coodies. Social conservatives might even find that some of "us" are also some of "them."

Latest bit of smarm from St. Hope

Now he wants homosexuality to be an international right. Could this be Obama's "gays in the military moment," an unwanted immediate plunge into the kulturkampf. From the Associated Press:

The Obama administration will endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality that then-President George W. Bush had refused to sign, The Associated Press has learned. ...
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was still being notified of the decision. (CM: Will any member of Congress have the cojones to say nyet to this diktat or make a cause celebre out of it? ... Let's see Wednesday.)
They said the administration had decided to sign the declaration to demonstrate that the United States supports human rights for all. ...
"In the words of the United States Supreme Court, the right to be free from criminalization on the basis of sexual orientation 'has been accepted (CM: By whom, on what basis??) as an integral part of human freedom'," the official said.
According to negotiators, the Bush team had concerns that those parts could commit the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In some states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military. It was not immediately clear on Tuesday how the Obama administration had come to a different conclusion. (CM: See below; I'm not sure they did.)
When it was voted on in December, 66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with anti-gay discrimination.
But 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality — and in several, homosexual acts can be punished by execution. More than 50 nations, including members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, opposed the declaration.
Some Islamic countries said at the time that protecting sexual orientation could lead to "the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts" such as pedophilia and incest. (CM: Now where O where might they have gotten such an idea.) The declaration was also opposed by the Vatican.

I'm frankly torn on this one. Obviously, I don't think sodomy, or any other immoral sexual conduct, should be a capital offense (I won't pretend to be a better man than I am, and I like my neck and spinal cord in one piece). Nor even be an actively prosecuted crime, either.¹

But at the same time, I'm pretty vigorously opposed to making anything a "right" or a "human right" under "international law" or treaties that could be enforceable by the U.N. or any now-realistically-conceivable judicial body. And not for reasons even remotely related to the specifics of homosexual conduct, but rather because I oppose giving the legal class any "words to work with" related to the current kulturkampf, any any words on any topic whatever to the international juridical class ("Davos Man," more or less). Rather, it's to the good of all nations that every nation have the sovereign right, under both the principles of (1) subsidiarity and (2) consent of the governed, to determine its own laws and policies on matters of morality, i.e., all laws and policies. Neither an unelected United Nations nor the international cosmopolitan class are a-priori morally superior to national governments in terms of their values (and more often than not, it's the reverse). And national governments, being closer to the actual people, will be better judges of what morals laws are fitting for a given people.

Further, I frankly doubt that the objective effect of this treaty will include preventing Iran or Afghanistan from hanging or stoning anybody. Iran will simply not sign the treaty, the Iranian Supreme Court will not do a Goodridge or Lawrence, and the Iranians will ignore any international tribunal on the matter. (Though hooray for all these things, in isolation.)

No ... what is much more likely is that some international tribunal or activist U.S. court will cite this treaty, despite its nonbinding nature, as representing some sort of international sensus fidelium and use it or cite it to strike down perceived anti-gay laws. After all, the Supreme Court already has used, as Ed Whelan describes here, a treaty the US did not even ratify as justification for striking down the death penalty for killers under 18. Who knows what can be done with a treaty one does ratify, even if it's nonbinding on its face?

The most cynical part of me, in fact, thinks that's exactly what the Obama administration wants, which is why I don't think the Obama administration necessarily came to a different conclusion from the Bush administration about the legal effects of the treaty. Team Obama just wouldn't mind if some international tribunal or an activist U.S. court were to cite this treaty as a basis for striking down, say, the ban on active homosexuality in the military or the federal or state legal definitions of marriage as a male-female union. Indeed, that'd be the best of both worlds, from their POV.² They and their gay-activist constituencies would get what they want substantively without having to risk political capital in a real political dispute for real stakes. "Hey, we have to do it, it's illegal under ... (bow our heads in reverence) international law."
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¹ I think anti-adultery and anti-sodomy laws are useful to have on the books for other purposes, but I don't wanna go down that rabbit hole right now.
² There'd be a striking parallel to Obama's pusillanimous stance on same-sex marriage, which is the most spectacularly incoherent drivel to come out of his mouth, a 200-proof stream of self-serving political cowardice ... regardless of the merits of the issue, even (especially?) if you back gay marriage. Obama says he's against gay marriage (so far, so good; or, in principle, "booooo!!!"). Yet he opposes codifying that belief into law, whether statutorily or constitutionally, whether at the state or federal level, calling every such law (DOMA, Federal Marriage Amendment, Prop 8, etc.) hateful, bigoted, mean-spirited and the restof the litany. But not doing so so loudly as to risk backlash. At the same time, he praises state-court decisions that strike down such state codifications of his supposed beliefs, and he promises, both affirmatively by whom he praises and negatively by whom he damns, more judges in that mould.

Answer to comboxer

Someone named Konrad sent me three notes in the past few weeks, asking for the Bill Number for the Freedom of Choice Act, which I alluded to in making the point that politics requires that threats pretty much always must be followed through on.

To be honest, I initially dismissed Konrad as a troll, because his unused profile combined with the repetition of his first two notes set off an alarm bell and partially because of a meme making the rounds at the time -- most prominently in this Time magazine (hit) piece by liberal evangelical Amy Sullivan. She assured us that FOCA was a red-herring, a "mythical abortion bill" being railed against by a "well-oiled lobbying campaign" that "some American Catholics are finding ... both curious and troubling ... at a time when the United States is gripped by economic uncertainty and faces serious challenges in hot spots around the globe." Sullivan's piece being in the air meant that Konrad's notes read like the set-up for some liberal's "gotcha" trap ("A-HA ... there IS no such bill ... foiled YOU, Christianist godbagger!!!!").¹

But his latest note, in which he says he has "drafted letter to both the House and Senate and need to insert the bill number" tells me that he deserves an answer. The short answer is that FOCA has not been introduced in the current Congress, so it has no bill number. "Freedom of Choice Act" will suffice for any possible reference, though. Nobody will be confused.

But FOCA will be introduced. Rest assured, according to the sponsor of the legislation, and contrary to Sullivan's earlier report. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the legislation "is among the congressman's priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later." ...

Ilan Kayatsky, Nadler's spokesman, said he anticipates that the bill's other original sponsor, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will introduce FOCA in the U.S. Senate. "We expect it to be more or less the same bill with some minor tweaks," Kayatsky said.

This does not mean FOCA will pass, of course; my bet is that it won't, for a variety of good reasons (the bill is so extreme that a majority of congresscritters probably do oppose it) and not-so-good reasons (kulturkampf liberals prefer stealthy administrative bodies and courts to democratic debate; the administration has tied itself to the mast on economic issues and has other domestic fish it'd rather fry).

But still ...
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¹ Even though true, this view is ridiculously naive (rebuttals at the time were here from Ramesh Ponnuru at NR, here from John McCormack at TWS, and from Matthew Balin at Newsbusters). The indubitable fact that "no such bill has been introduced in the current Congress" does not make FOCA "a piece of legislation that doesn't exist." Or rather it does so only on the most formalist pecksniffery of the sort that would also believe that the U.S. armed forces are dissolved and raised anew with each Congress -- look it up, that's the actual "legal fiction." FOCA has been introduced in several recent Congresses, even though there was no chance of it reaching either chamber's floor and there was a hostile president at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But the fact that a bill got little traction when it had no chance of passage and the party that would mostly favor it had little power -- in the world of Time Magazine senior editors, that actually argues AGAINST its relevance when that party has substantial majorities in both houses and a friendly president who was a former co-sponsor and vowed he would sign it during the campaign. Or at a minimum those new conditions don't change the equation in favor of the bill getting more traction now than in the past.

CM at others' combox -- 6

From a discussion at The Other McCain (HT re site, to Dad29), the first graf, in bold is what I'm responding to (some elaboration by me, now, in italics:
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Robert, I'm speechless. Well, not really. Here's my entire problem with Christianity: Christians sin in any manner they want, profess a belief that Christ has paid for their sins, then continue with their sinful ways. THEN ... condemn others for sins, because those sinners haven't said the magic words "I believe and accept Christ".

Sure ... the way many Christians act is objective counter-witness. But you're conflating three different issues as though they were the same thing:

(1) The failure of Christians to meet Moral Standard X. Note that the actual content or subject matter of the Moral Standard is of no consequence.
(2) The rightness of Moral Standard X.
(3) The role of Moral Standard X in public policy.

That (1) has nothing to do with (2) is, I hope, self-evident without explanation. I suppose if a person believes all moral standards to be self-rationalization for what one does or personalist wish-fulfillment toward some arbitrary ego-ideal, one can deny there is is no link. But those are pretty extreme positions that few people self-consciously hold.

And when you think about it, it's hard to see why (1) should have anything more to do with (3) than with (2). After all, if all men are sinners, then who could ever uphold any Moral Standard? Nobody in good-faith and upon reflection can seriously maintain that only the sinless have the moral space to preach virtue (though many people do say it in bad faith, though charity requires the latter guess upon dealing with a stranger). Now it may well be the case that, to take a pertinent example, that it would be impolitic or embarrassing for a tax cheat to oversee the IRS as its Treasury Secretary, say. But nobody would take Tim Geithner's woes to either (a) argue for the moral goodness of tax-cheating, or (b) argue that the IRS has no right to pursue tax cheats according to law.

(That (2) is a separate question from (3) primarily becomes relevant when we discuss the practical wisdom of the extent of morals legislation, i.e., all legislation, in a given time and place. To take a concrete example, abortion, contraception and masturbation are all intrinsically immoral, but I think the law and society ought to take very different stances on all three -- respectively: illegal, legal but legally-discouraged, legal but socially-discouraged.)

The Spitzer scandal

This conversation took place after a Confession in which I had acknowledged abusing myself three times in the previous 24 hours (reconstructed from the best of my recollection). Father's penance involved a devotion to Mother Teresa, the saint of the darkness and spiritual dryness.

FATHER: A treadmill can be gotten off.
(long pause)
ME: You heard about the New York governor today?
HIM: Yes.
(long pause)
HIM: And you're afraid of the same thing.¹
ME: Yes. I didn't want to say it during Confession so as not to come across as making excuses.
HIM: It puts it in context.
(long pause)
ME: I got a call on my cell today from a prostitute I hired a year ago -- unsolicited, not a call-back.
(long pause)
ME: Big etiquette violation on his part.
(Father nods)
HIM: Might be a setup; delete the number from your phone.
ME: Oh, I've already done so, believe me! I've not even close to being tempted. No way, not now.
(CM lets out some mordant, sarcastic laughter)
ME: Wonderful. That's how perverse I am. I'll resist sin if I fear getting caught.
HIM: That's not the best reason, but it'll do.²

Now to repeat, I am not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not (is that enough "not"s) "blaming" Elliot Spitzer for such a hard fall. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

As Father said, I had been gutted by fear and not for the first time, and I responded in one of the ways people do -- seeking to medicate and forget through escapist private vice (drunkenness and drugs are other examples). I confess that I don't see exactly how, or even whether, this situation would be covered in any of the classic Nine Ways of Being an Accessory.³ And obviously "hey, the New York governor bought a prostitute, so I will too"⁴ is not a self-conscious thought process many people go through.

But the effect of Spitzer's whoremongering on me is, I think, illustrative of how all sin is social and how there is no such thing, ultimately, as a "completely private act." Your acts, everything that you do, becomes a part of the world that everyone else lives in and thus influences everybody else and in ways over which you have no control. Admittedly this next is a greater concern for public figures than other person, but at the end of the day, you can't even really have any knowledge of that influence, only the knowledge that it's there somehow.

I don't expect Elliot Spitzer to care whether he raised anxiety levels in others who have purchased prostitutes or encouraged the masturbatory response -- he has many more-pressing and important-to-him concerns. To make an obviously imperfect bawdy analogy, it's like pissing in the pool. Everybody knows and understands that you can't just pee in your own end. Obviously, one person's discreet whizz is hardly noticeable in any discrete way. But we still know that it circulates, and, if diseased, can infect anyone anywhere in the pool.

The meaning of the term "scandal" has changed. Now it just means "the public fracas over a celebrated person's wrongdoing, often in the personal or private (certainly non-official) sphere." But in the past, as in the phrase "giving scandal," "scandal" meant "the encouragement of bad acts/thoughts in others." And in that sense, Spitzer's purchasing prostitutes, though it may be a "victimless crime" in the sense that bourgeois libertarians imagine -- it is, truly, scandalous. And thus not victimless.
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¹ I'm not even close to being a public figure, so fears at the level of "front page of the New York Times" are completely irrational. Lesser forms of outing ... not so.
² Father has told me in more than one other context that I shouldn't worry so much over doing things for not-the-noblest of motivations.
³ "By counsel. By concealment. By command. By partaking. By consent. By silence. By provocation. By defense of the ill done. By praise or flattery." As I say ... not clear if this fits any example.
⁴ Or as Chris Rock put it apropos of Marion Barry: "How you gonna tell little kids to not get high, when the mayor's on crack. 'Don't get high, you won't be nothing.' / 'I can be mayor'."

CM at others' comboxes -- 3

Jay Anderson recently fisked Barack Obama's pledging his soul to Planned Barrenhood, which, combined with his saying during Tuesday's debate that his vote to save Terri Schiavo was his greatest mistake, makes him the Official Candidate of the Culture of Death™.

Anyhoo, Jay left out one point in Obama's speech as reported. My rebuttal to that point (which Jay later highlighted ... thanks) follows, with only minor edits for clarity. The first paragraph is Obama, criticizing the Supreme Court's decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion:

"For the first time, the Court’s endorsed an abortion restriction without an exception for women’s health. The decision presumed that the health of women is best protected by the Court—not by doctors and not by the woman herself. That presumption is wrong."

Since when, exactly, has a core principle of the Democratic Party been Ayn-Rand-ism in matters of regulating health care?

Every drug has to win state approval to be sold; every person needs some sort of state license to practice medicine at any level (doctor, nurse, aide, pharmacist); every medical procedure needs to have approval of the state or some quasi-state board to be performed; the state holds liable all practice of medicine of which it doesn't approve.

All these decisions -- all of them made a part of the medical landscape by the Democratic Party -- presume EXACTLY that the health of persons of both sexes is best protected by the state, and not by doctors and not by patients themselves. Saying "that presumption is wrong" is deeply dishonest for all non-Libertarians.

If abortion were treated by the state as merely one more medical procedure among others, Planned Parenthood, Obama, et al would be having fits. Parental consent? Clinic rules? Pre- and post-care standards? The train left long ago on the matter of whether the state should regulate medicine or interfere in the doctor-patient relationship, and none of us this side of Ayn Rand want that Express back.