Will the American Political Science Association Cave to the Gay Lobby?

We broke the story right here, and Inside Higher Ed just recently noticed the situation, reporting:

The American Political Science Association is seeking members’ views on whether to relocate its 2012 annual meeting, currently scheduled to be in New Orleans, because of Louisiana’s ban on gay marriage. Several associations in recent years have relocated meetings due to labor issues at convention hotels, and others avoid certain cities based on their states’ policies. But such changes have been expensive for associations, which typically select meeting sites years in advance, and face fees when they change plans. New Orleans has been a popular site for many academic meetings, and some groups have moved meetings there, post-Katrina, as a gesture of support.

The APSA has twice e-mailed members, asking them to take part in a survey about the issue.

Here is the first of the e-mails, and here is the second.

So what would be wrong with the APSA supporting this gay cause?

Quite simply, it would violate the APSA Constitution, which says:

1. It shall be the purpose of this association to encourage the study of Political Science, including Political Theory, Political Institutions, Politics, Public Law, Public Administration, and International Relations.

2. The Association as such is nonpartisan. It will not support political parties or candidates. It will not commit its members on questions of public policy nor take positions not immediately concerned with its direct purpose as stated above.

But let’s be honest about this. College professors tend to be liberal and leftist yahoos, reflexively supporting any politically correct cause.

Indeed, as the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 30, 2008) pointed out:

This is not the first quarrel over the location of the political-science association’s meetings. During the 1970s, the association abandoned plans to meet in Chicago because the Illinois Legislature had not supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

That incident led to a breach-of-contract lawsuit by Hilton Hotels. In settling the lawsuit, the association agreed to meet only in Hilton properties for 10 consecutive years.

Political scientists, who generally think that the United States Constitution can mean whatever you want it to mean, apparently have no trouble with the notion that the Association’s Constitution can mean what they want it to mean.

The only hope for a New Orleans convention is another kind of political correctness: one based on race. Again, from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

And last month the association’s Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession released a statement arguing that “the black and poor communities of the City of New Orleans are still in the process of rebuilding their neighborhoods,” and that “the APSA annual meeting would contribute to the economic recovery of the city.” (The association’s recent conventions have drawn between 6,000 and 7,000 scholars.)

So will it be gay political correctness, or black political correctness?

Our guess is that the gay lobby wins.

And anybody who is paying attention will relearn a lesson they learned in the 70s with the Equal Rights Amendment: given a choice between respecting it’s own Constitution, and signing on to a trendy leftist cause, a group of political scientists will go with the trendy cause.