Independent Gay Forum

Last updated

The Independent Gay Forum was an organization that sponsored a website featuring free access to articles and opinions penned by gay economical conservative, center-right Independent and libertarian gay authors. Its raison d'etre was dissatisfaction by some lesbians and gay men with the alleged center-left or liberal orthodoxy of the lesbian and gay rights movement in the United States. It was founded around 1998 and dissolved in 2010, believing its mission had been largely accomplished. Its blog, by Stephen H. Miller, continues at the website IGFCultureWatch, which also hosts the Forum's article archives.

Contents

Rise of the new 'gay right' movement

In 1993, Bruce Bawer published his book A Place at the Table that criticized homophobic social conservatives and U.S. Democratic Party-aligned and center-left lesbians and gay men in the United States. He argued that this political bias produced an unworkable and partisan bias which locked lesbian and gay voters into endorsement of one partisan choice, instead of bipartisan political initiatives that focused on both the Democrat and Republican Parties, as well as questioning the relevance and importance of some broad center-left goals and objectives to lesbian and gay communities in the United States.

Bawer called for full inclusion of gays in mainstream society and criticized what he considered an unrepresentative but highly visible gay subculture that equated homosexuality with promiscuity, hedonism, political correctness or stereotypes like being effeminate or "different" in general.

In 1995, Andrew Sullivan published the book Virtually Normal. Sullivan was a longtime critic of decadence in the gay community, but the book also did something that Bawer did not do. Sullivan criticized what he called the prohibitionist, liberationist, liberal, and conservative approaches to gay rights in favor of a more "classical liberal" or libertarian approach.

In 1996, Bawer edited a collection of writings by mostly gay men and women titled Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy . The authors--including Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, Stephen H. Miller, Paul Varnell, and Norah Vincent--covered a wide range of topics and did not have one political message. Some authors were critical of how the gay rights movement was trying to achieve its goals, some were critical of certain goals such as hate crime laws, and others were critical of both the ends and the means.

These books became labeled in leftist gay circles as the manifesto of a new "Gay Right" though many of the authors in these books would dispute being labeled conservative. Some had libertarian political sympathies.

The Independent Gay Forum became a significant online site for U.S. lesbian and gay authors that endorsed limited-government conservative or libertarian alternatives to what they saw as the 'impractical' center-left bias that 'characterizes' lesbian and gay identity and politics. Additional writers include philosopher John Corvino, activist Richard Rosendall and columnist Jennifer Vanasco.

The website included hundreds of articles on a wide range of political and cultural topics -- marriage, sex, religion, economics, law, politics, activism, books, and gay identity. It also included "IGF Culture Watch", a blog authored by Miller.

Criticism of the IGF

Liberal criticism

Critics of the Independent Gay Forum's writings tend to be drawn between a division between liberals and conservatives and a second division between conservatives and libertarians. The Independent Gay Forum mission statement is to forge a new "gay mainstream" that is committed to more conservative-libertarian values; i.e., limited government, free market capitalism and personal responsibility.

Liberal critics felt that the Independent Gay Forum was too closely aligned with the Republican Party, to be called "Independent", and that its writers demonstrated too little respect for cultural diversity, social justice and social responsibility. IGF writers would often endorse conservative Republican theories about the harm that gun control legislation would pose to lesbian and gay handgun owners, arguing that such controls infringe constitutional rights under the Second Amendment, welfare 'reform', Social Security privatization, abortion, and the neo-conservative theory about initiating military action in order to promote a freedom and democracy in certain nations such as Iran and Iraq.

In another was when Miller supported Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful bid to become governor of California, praising his socially liberal, fiscally conservative philosophy. Liberal critics pointed out that Miller was much less supportive of Vermont Governor Howard Dean's bid for governor who ran on a similar neoliberal philosophy.

In another case, gay liberals also argued that the articles about the late, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan were too partisan and tried to rewrite the Reagan Administration's policies on AIDS and gay rights.

Libertarian criticism

Libertarians criticism of the IGF tends to be tied to a belief that the writers do not go far enough in advocating for reducing government regulations that limit citizens personal and economic life. Yet, a second source of criticism, among libertarians is that the IGF writers do not advocate election law reforms that would allow the Libertarian Party to freely compete for votes in elections.

When Miller defended the work of gay Republicans by using an analogy of the benefits to the consumer that occur when there is more than one grocery store in a town. The message was that gay voters, like consumers, would get a better deal with more competition for their support. This angered many Libertarians as the 'grocery store analogy' ignored the fact that government regulations as ballot access law make it hard for a third political party such as the Libertarian Party to compete for the support of gay citizens because they have to spend limited resources in order to obtain access on the general election ballot with a party affiliation. Thus some libertarians felt that Miller should have been a better advocate for greater voter choice.

Topics

Aside from Miller, other writers have contributed to the Independent Gay Forum and have written numerous articles about current events such as gay marriage, civil unions, the Marriage Protection Amendment, transgender rights, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, hate crime or hate speech bans, the religious right, the military gay ban, Social Security, the War in Iraq, and the Second Amendment.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libertarian Party (United States)</span> American political party

The Libertarian Party (LP) is a political party in the United States that promotes civil liberties, non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism, and limiting the size and scope of government. The party was conceived in August 1971 at meetings in the home of David F. Nolan in Westminster, Colorado, and was officially formed on December 11, 1971, in Colorado Springs. The organizers of the party drew inspiration from the works and ideas of the prominent Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard. The founding of the party was prompted in part due to concerns about the Nixon administration, the Vietnam War, conscription, and the introduction of fiat money.

The Christian right, otherwise referred to as the religious right, are Christian political factions characterized by their strong support of socially conservative and traditionalist policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Sullivan</span> British-American author, editor, and blogger

Andrew Michael Sullivan is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of The New Republic, and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, The Daily Dish, in 2000, and eventually moved his blog to platforms, including Time, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and finally an independent subscription-based format. He announced his retirement from blogging in 2015. From 2016 to 2020, Sullivan was a writer-at-large at New York. He launched his newsletter The Weekly Dish in July 2020.

American electoral politics have been dominated by successive pairs of major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States. Since the 1850s, the two largest political parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—which together have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and controlled the United States Congress since at least 1856. Despite keeping the same names, the two parties have evolved in terms of ideologies, positions, and support bases over their long lifespans, in response to social, cultural, and economic developments—the Democratic Party being the left-of-center party since the time of the New Deal, and the Republican Party now being the right-of-center party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln Chafee</span> American politician (born 1953)

Lincoln Davenport Chafee is an American politician. He was mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island, from 1993 to 1999, a United States Senator from 1999 to 2007, and the 74th Governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015. He was a Democrat from 2013 to 2019; in June 2019, The Boston Globe reported that he became a Libertarian, having previously been a Republican until September 2007 and an independent and then a Democrat in the interim. He is the last non-Democrat to hold statewide and/or Congressional office in Rhode Island.

The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) is an organization affiliated with the Republican Party which advocates for equal rights for LGBT+ Americans, by educating the LGBT+ community and Republicans about each other.

Theodore Bruce Bawer is an American-Norwegian writer. Born and raised in New York, he has been a resident of Norway since 1999 and became a citizen of Norway in 2024. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam.

A South Park Republican is a type of Republican who holds center-right political beliefs influenced by the popular American animated television series South Park. Many may hold generally conservative views on fiscal issues, but more moderate or liberal in regard to social issues such as LGBT rights and abortion. The term is arguably a contemporary variation on the older classical liberal, with an overlay of pop culture aesthetic. The term was coined by Andrew Sullivan in 2001.

Libertarian perspectives on LGBT rights illustrate how libertarian individuals and political parties have applied the libertarian philosophy to the subject of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. In general, libertarians oppose laws which limit the sexual freedom of adults.

<i>Virtually Normal</i> 1995 book by Andrew Sullivan

Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality is a book about the politics of homosexuality by the political commentator Andrew Sullivan, in which the author criticizes four different perspectives on gay rights in American society, which he calls the "Prohibitionist", "Liberationist", "Conservative", and "Liberal" views, seeking to expose internal inconsistencies within each of them. He also criticizes the philosopher Michel Foucault and gay rights activists he considers influenced by Foucault, and argues in favor of same-sex marriage and an end to the don't ask, don't tell policy, which banned service by openly gay people in the US military. However, he makes a case against legislation aimed at preventing private discrimination against gay people.

nonpartisan organization, in American politics, is a non-profit organization organized United States Internal Revenue Code that qualifies certain non-profit organizations for tax-exempt status because they refrain from engaging in certain political activities prohibited for them. The designation "nonpartisan" usually reflects a claim made by organizations about themselves, or by commentators, and not an official category per American law. Rather, certain types of nonprofit organizations are under varying requirements to refrain from election-related political activities, or may be taxed to the extent they engage in electoral politics, so the word affirms a legal requirement. In this context, "nonpartisan" means that the organization, by US tax law, is prohibited from supporting or opposing political candidates, parties, and in some cases other votes like propositions, directly or indirectly, but does not mean that the organization cannot take positions on political issues.

GOProud was an American tax exempt 527 organization supported by fiscally conservative gay men, lesbians, and their allies. GOProud advocated for free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights and worked at the federal and state levels to build strong coalitions of liberal conservative and libertarian activists, organizations and policy makers to advance their shared values and beliefs.

LGBT conservatism refers to LGBT individuals with conservative political views. It is an umbrella term used for what is bifurcated into two specific sub-categories, each with its own term and meaning. The first sub-categorical term, Pre-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to LGBT individuals embracing and promoting the ideology of a traditional conservatism in either a general or specifically-LGBT social context or environment. The second sub-categorical term, Post-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to self-affirming LGBT persons with fiscally, culturally, and politically conservative views. These post-Stonewall conservatives' social views, though generally conservative too, at the same time reflect a self-determination-stemmed and more recent socio-historical "gay-affirmation" on issues like marriage equality for same-sex couples, gay family recognition, civic equality generally for LGBT people in society, and also a positive role for (gay-affirming) religion in LGBT life, though there is not complete unanimity of opinion among them on all issues, especially those regarding the dynamics and politics of the closet and "identity management," and various legal and political issues The first term can include LGBT people who are opposed to same-sex marriage or other LGBTQ rights while the second term, contrastingly, usually refers to self-affirming gay people who unequivocally favor marriage as a legal institution for both heterosexuals and gays and who simultaneously prefer economic and political conservatism more generally. The number of self-affirming LGBT advocates for conservative ideas and policies became more apparent only after the advent of the modern LGBT civil rights movement in the 1970s even as many gay conservatives, labelled as "self-hating" at the time, did remain closeted in areas where anti-gay socially conservative politicians then led the most organized opposition to LGBT rights. The Realpolitik and ideology situations for LGBT conservatives today vary by their own self-definition, and each country's sociopolitical, cultural, and legal LGBT rights landscape.

Jimmy LaSalvia is an American political figure. LaSalvia is the co-founder and former executive director of GOProud, a defunct U.S. political action group. He has also done work for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Christopher R. Barron is an American political activist best known as the cofounder of GOProud, a political organization representing gay conservatives. He is the president of CapSouth Consulting, a political consulting firm, and previously the organizer of LGBT for Trump and the national political director for Log Cabin Republicans, where he directed the organization's federal lobbying efforts and media relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2012 San Diego mayoral election</span>

The 2012 San Diego mayoral election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, to elect the mayor for San Diego. Incumbent mayor Jerry Sanders was term-limited and ineligible to run for re-election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of modern American conservatism</span>

This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences that have affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party (GOP). Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.

<i>Virtual Equality</i> 1995 book by Urvashi Vaid

Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation is a 1995 book about gay rights by lawyer and civil rights activist Urvashi Vaid, in which the author argues that LGBT movements in the United States have been only partially successful in achieving their goals, and that gay and lesbian Americans continue to suffer from discrimination and other problems. Vaid maintains that the American gay rights movement must reconsider its tactics and move from advocacy of civil equality to aiming at social change.

Women in conservatism in the United States have advocated for social, political, economic, and cultural conservative policies since anti-suffragism. Leading conservative women such as Phyllis Schlafly have expressed that women should embrace their privileged essential nature. This thread of belief can be traced through the anti-suffrage movement, the Red Scare, and the Reagan Era, and is still present in the 21st century, especially in several conservative women's organizations such as Concerned Women for America and the Independent Women's Forum.

LGBTQ+ conservatism in the United States is a social and political ideology within the LGBTQ+ community that largely aligns with the American conservative movement. LGBTQ+ conservatism is generally more moderate on social issues than social conservatism, instead emphasizing values associated with fiscal conservatism, libertarian conservatism, and neoconservatism.

References