IGF CultureWatch

What happens when we put all the gay movement's marbles in one party's basket? We're about to find out.

The Human Rights Campaign has finally shed any semblance of staying non-partisan in the fight for gay civil rights. Leaders of the D.C.-based HRC told the Boston Globe in a story published last week that their new strategy is to "become a steady source of funds and grass-roots support for Democrats-more akin to a labor union than a single-issue activist group."

The "new HRC" isn't just belaboring the obvious-that the Democratic Party is clearly better on gay issues than the GOP. HRC's head honchos have gone much further, deciding that the fate of the movement lies inexorably with the fate of Democrats generally, which means throwing money and support wherever Dems say it's needed, even if it means pulling money out of actual pitched battles over our civil rights.

How has the Democrat-ization of HRC worked out so far? For one, HRC took money out of the fight last November to defeat ballot initiatives that ban gay marriage, even those that amended state constitutions. HRC chief Joe Solmonese told the Globe he was "more effective by focusing on candidates."

So HRC sank money instead into quirky priorities of the Democratic National Committee not even marginally relevant to gay rights. As a result, the Globe reported, HRC turned out to be the single largest donor in New Hampshire state Senate races. How exactly does that bring gay Americans closer to equality?

The most obvious danger of the new DNC-controlled HRC is putting all the gay movement's marbles in the Democratic Party basket, even though from Bill Clinton and John Kerry on down, the party has almost never taken a political risk for its gay constituents.

Democrats don't even deliver for organized labor, HRC's supposed new role model. HRC must be the only lobby in the group anywhere, and certainly the only civil rights organization, modeling itself after labor unions. We can all see how powerful they aren't, after sinking themselves into a one-party, no message strategy.

At this point, it's too soon to know whether HRC's blind faith in Democrats will bear fruit, and whether Solmonese will muster the courage to criticize his fellow partisans if they follow previous patterns.

Color me skeptical. Solmonese came to HRC from Emily's List, a women's rights group that chose to officially align itself with the Democratic Party. Clearly, Solmonese envisions something similar for the nation's richest gay rights group.

Unfortunately, people like Solmonese who are so committed to partisanship will forgive all sorts of abuses from their party under the guise of "taking one for the team." They will invariably accept excuse after excuse why now isn't the time for Democrats to expend political capital on the civil rights of gay people.

"What makes you politically powerful is money and membership," the Globe quotes Solmonese as saying. Notice that missing from that poli-sci lesson is anything about the message. In the Solmonese playbook, having a meaningful message just doesn't count. (Neither does Solmonese's claim about membership, since he admitted last year that HRC cooks its books, counting in perpetuity as "members" anyone who's ever given even a single dollar to the organization.) His laser-like focus on politics may be exactly what HRC needs, but in a political director, not a president.

The Solmonese partisan allegiance, along with his disregard for winning hearts and minds, is what's really behind the decision to divert money from ballot measures to backing Democrats. The vote on a number of those ballot measures was close, and one was defeated in Arizona, proving they're winnable. And losing has a serious cost, given the difficulty of re-amending a state constitution to once again permit marriage (and in many cases, even civil unions).

But that isn't the biggest blow to the movement from Solmonese's failure to keep his eyes on the prize, as MLK would say. (Can anyone imagine the Civil Rights Movement putting a political operative at the helm, much less suborning the dream of equality to one political party?) Unlike the countless, faceless races in which HRC spent gay rights money on somewhat-pro-gay Democrats, these ballot initiatives are about "our issues." They represent an important opportunity to engage the public on marriage, something our leaders always say we need to do more of but never seem to get around to doing.

In fact, HRC has wasted lots of money in the past on ballot measures, usually on ads that rather than explaining why we want to marry instead invoke bromides about "not writing discrimination into the constitution" or pointing out gay marriage can be banned other ways. It's the kind of message that tests well with focus groups but doesn't win elections, much less engage on the issue itself, reaching "the mushy middle" of the American public that is sympathetic but can't get over "the M word."

Rather than see HRC money was wasted because of how it was spent, Solmonese instead diverted crucial funds even further from the actual battleground. That's because the new HRC of Joe Solmonese has given up reaching those people, and instead has chosen the lobbyist end-run: sliding money through the backdoor to vie with labor unions for influence in the Democratic Party.

It's a big gamble and one that shows little faith in the power of the message of equality. (Remember the equals sign?) It's certainly no way to run a movement.

Ever since Howard Dean went on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" to proclaim (inaccurately) that the Democratic Party platform calls for "marriage between a man and a woman," the party chair has received a chorus of condemnation from gay rights groups and even gay Democrats.

Patrick Guerriero, the Log Cabin Republicans president, was predictably caustic, quipping that, "Howard Dean puts his foot in his mouth so often that he should open a pedicure wing in the DNC."

That was actually charitable, given that Dean's pronouncement on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network wasn't another of his famous gaffes; he's said the same thing too many times after being told it misrepresents the party's official stance, which is to leave the issue to the states to resolve.

Dean's deliberate misstatement was the latest in a series of disses that ought to convince even the most ardent gay partisan that the Democrats, tasting a return to power after six years on the outs, aren't about to let gay rights stand in the way.

Dean is clearly betting that gay Americans are so disgusted with six years of Republican-controlled Washington that he can afford to anger a few activists while moving the party to the political center. The strategy isn't new; Republicans have been doing it with the Christian conservatives since the Reagan years.

But Dean is miscalculating for two important reasons: First and foremost, gay Americans are fighting for their own civil rights, unlike their counterparts on the right, who are pushing to limit someone else's freedoms. One reason America's history reflects progress by minorities despite hostility from the majority is that the minorities are far more motivated than their foes, not to mention the "mushy middle" that doesn't feel strongly one way or the other.

Second, by treating gay civil rights like just another "special interest" to be alternatively pandered to or ignored, Dean and the Dems only contribute to their party's worst image problem: that of a do-nothing party without clear positions, principles or a plan.

You can forgive Howard Dean for thinking he can get away with it. After all, the nation's richest gay political group has long been willing to play lapdog to the Democratic Party, even after Dean's repeated disses.

It is a central article of faith at the Human Rights Campaign that the success of the gay rights movement is inexorably linked to the success of the Democratic Party, and herein lies the single biggest internal obstacle to equality for gay Americans.

There's no question, of course, that Democrats in general, and almost always in particular, are better on gay rights than their Republican counterparts. And gay rights legislation no doubt stands a greater likelihood of passage if Democrats control Congress -- though history suggests otherwise.

But that doesn't mean that gay rights leaders should sacrifice the movement at the altar of the Democratic Party, and continue crafting their message off the DNC's transparently political talking points.

Yet that's what we see, time and time again, especially at HRC, whose leader Joe Solmonese came from Emily's List, a partisan Democrat group.

True, HRC issued an angry press release after Dean's "700 Club" dalliance, slamming his "serious lack of leadership" on the issue of gay marriage. So why, days later, was Solmonese once again following him?

On Tuesday afternoon, Dean's DNC issued a press release taking to task Bill Frist, the Senate GOP Leader, for ignoring First Lady Laura Bush's recent advice about not using gay marriage "as a campaign tool." Frist and the Republicans don't need to be engaged on the issue of gay marriage, the press release argues, because they're really just trying to change the subject from their own political problems.

(Typical of the Democrats' stealth defense of gays, the primary target audience for the DNC statement was apparently gays. The release isn't posted on the DNC website.)

Still, despite Dean's "serious lack of leadership" on gay marriage, Solmonese and HRC were quick to play follower. Just one hour after the DNC press release went out, HRC issued its "Amen, sister!" reply.

Titled "Senator Frist Pushing a Campaign Strategy Opposed by First Lady Laura Bush," the HRC press release hits all the same talking points, accusing Frist of not taking Laura Bush's sage advice.

Besides the lapdog posture, HRC's willingness to do Dean's Dems' bidding causes lasting harm to the gay rights movement.

Rather than actually defend gay families and make the case for gay marriage, HRC is stuck in a three-year strategy of arguing that the American people don't -- and shouldn't! -- care about marriage equality for gay couples.

"Voters want candidates focused on soaring gas prices, a health care crisis and national security," Solmonese says in the release, "not putting discrimination in the United States Constitution."

What sort of gay rights strategy is it, when the attention of Americans is focused on our issues, to argue that our rights aren't important, and refuse to engage our opponents in the debate over our equality?

Sure it makes political sense for Dean and the DNC to issue press releases, delivered only to us, defending us, and then have the party's senators respond to conservative attacks on our families by arguing that the issue isn't as important as rising gas prices. But what self-respecting gay rights group would echo that argument?

Can anyone imagine Martin Luther King Jr., responding to an attempt to rollback the gains of the Civil Rights Movement by arguing that the issue shouldn't be debated because rising gas prices are more important?

Worst of all, HRC's lapdog strategy reeks of lacking confidence in the arguments for our own equality.

George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, Karl Rove.

To hear our activists tell it, these conservative Republicans ought to be the focus of the gay rights movement.

John Kerry, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Howard Dean.

In fact, "liberal" Democrats and moderate Republicans like these ought to be the main focus of the movement right now.

No amount of Chicken Little rhetoric and frenetic fund-raising will convince the stalwarts of the right to moderate their views, and the next opportunity to unseat them is almost two years away. Even then, how much will we really gain with their successors?

Our so-called allies, who we cheerfully toast at black-tie dinners and lavish with our donations, could be reached and influenced right now with enough pressure applied at the right places.

Instead, for years now, our activists have given a free pass to anyone who will parrot the right words of support for gay rights, and offered them political cover when they compromise away our future for their present.

The recent brouhaha over the president's judicial nominations is a classic example of how we facilitate the abuse of our rights at our own expense. It wasn't a mammoth showdown like the votes last year to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. It wasn't a test of political will like last year's presidential campaign, when Democrat John Kerry withered when pressed on the issue of gay marriage. But the fight over whether Democrats could use the filibuster to block some of President Bush's judicial appointments was the first big test of 2005 for the gay rights movement and its allies. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone failed.

Senate Democrats once again sacrificed gay rights for the greater good of their own political expedience, and our lobbying organizations nodded meekly in understanding, not managing a peep of criticism.

These same Democrats, and their like-minded predecessors, have talked the talk but never walked the walked for years, failing even to pass employment non-discrimination when their party controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.

The nuts and bolts of the filibuster battle were arcane enough to excite only the most ardent political junkie: Senate Democrats had used the filibuster to block 10 of the 45 judges nominated by President Bush to serve on the nation's federal appeals courts, just one step below the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frustrated that the minority party was thwarting the president and his fellow Republicans in the Senate majority, GOP leaders planned to invoke a "nuclear option," cutting off the filibuster with 51 votes, rather than the 60 required by Senate rules.

Of the 10 judges blocked by the Democrats, the one judge with the clearest anti-gay record is William Pryor, the former Alabama attorney general. While in that position, he urged the Supreme Court not to strike down sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas. Pryor argued that constitutional protection for consensual sex between gay people would inevitably lead to similar protections for incest, necrophilia, pedophilia and prostitution.

President Bush managed an end-run around the Democrats' filibuster of Pryor and last year used a "recess appointment" to put Pryor temporarily on the 11th Circuit Appeals Court in Atlanta. The judge from Alabama quickly returned the favor, casting the critical deciding vote upholding Florida's ban on adoption by gays.

But Pryor's "recess appointment" will expire soon if he does not receive official blessing from the U.S. Senate, so when the president re-nominated him this year, gay rights groups quickly condemned the move.

Then the Gang of 14, a group of seven senators from each party, cobbled together a grand compromise: The Democrats agreed to abandon the filibuster on three of the president's worst nominees, including Pryor. In exchange, the Republicans agreed only to delay, for now, a vote on the "nuclear option."

Most progressive civil rights groups criticized the "compromise" because it virtually guaranteed the confirmation of three arch-conservative judges in exchange for little. A vote will still come on the nuclear option, only now it's more likely to involve a nomination to the Supreme Court, when the stakes are infinitely higher.

"We are very disappointed with the decision to move these extremist nominees one step closer to confirmation," said Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice, in a reaction typical of liberal interest groups.

"Is there anybody on our side who is happy?" she asked rhetorically.

Nan Aron, meet Joe Solmonese, the newly installed director of the Human Rights Campaign, lead pacifist organization in the patsy movement for gay civil rights. He's plenty happy with the "compromise."

In language more befitting a judicial pronouncement than an activist organization, HRC and Solmonese issued a statement "lauding" a compromise that "protects our nation."

It certainly didn't protect gay Americans from William Pryor, and how is delaying an inevitable vote on the "nuclear option" any sort of victory? Will the odds be any better for a filibuster when there is even more at stake?

These so-called allies have never protected us at crunch time. They voted for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. One of them, Bill Clinton, even signed that nefarious twosome into law.

They oppose marriage equality, and many won't even go on record about civil unions. They have thus far voted against the president's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, but only on frighteningly tenuous, legalistic grounds.

Our national gay rights groups do not even keep track of how many members of Congress actually back marriage equality. Only two non-gay members, at least judging by the debate on the president's marriage amendment.

In the meantime, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, which used to be counted on as our most aggressive gay rights lobby, issued a navel-gazing statement mumbling something about a "deep foreboding" over the compromise. Perhaps they were still counting the money raised last month at their dinner starring Howard Dean, who was awarded the Task Force Lifetime Achievement Award despite his repeated dismissals of marriage equality with a wave of his hand.

It is not the job of a civil rights movement to offer political cover at crunch time. Conservative groups understand this and never scream more loudly than at their own allies when they waiver. Some liberal groups, like Aron's have learned that critical lesson.

Unless and until our own activists can summon the courage to demand our equality, we surely can't expect politicians to lead the way.

If Log Cabin Republicans are the moral equivalent of Jewish Nazis, what does that make the Stonewall Democrats?

For years, gay Republicans have taken it on the chin from their homo brethren for allegedly contributing to their own oppression, for too easily accepting crumbs from the GOP table, and for failing to get the hint that they're not even welcome in the kitchen.

And ever since President Bush threw his weight behind amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage, the knives have been out and sharpened for any and all gays who ever dared to affiliate with the GOP.

The sad irony is that all this vicious criticism is undeserved. When it comes to political courage, the Log Cabin track record this election season easily outstrips that of its Democratic counterparts, and actually outperforms the allegedly non-partisan gay rights groups.

From the day the president announced his support for an amendment, Log Cabin's leaders have thrown almost all their energy into thwarting the leader of their own party and even working against his re-election.

Under the direction of Patrick Guerriero, a former Massachusetts legislator, Log Cabin launched a national ad campaign against the amendment effort, protested outside the Republican convention, and accepted dozens of invitations to appear on national television criticizing the president and the GOP leadership in Congress.

Guerriero penned a column that argued against Bush's re-election, and then Log Cabin broadened the battlefield, announcing it would file suit challenging the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" restrictions on gays in the military.

If you shrug all that off as exactly what a gay rights group ought to be doing, then your inclination is right even if your conclusion isn't.

In fact, Log Cabin is the only national gay rights group in this critical election year that has consistently taken issue with its own friends and allies in defense of our civil rights.

It's almost unfair to compare Log Cabin with the Stonewall Democrats, its supposed partisan counterpart. Judging by their respective behavior, they're not even in the same category.

Log Cabin has proven its mettle this year as a gay rights group that lobbies the Republican Party. The Stonewall Democrats, on the other hand, have acted more like a Democratic group that lobbies (and recruits) gays.

When John Kerry came out in support of an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution that would overturn marriage equality in the one state where it exists, the Stonewall Dems were stone cold silent.

When 20 percent of the Democrats in the U.S. House voted in favor of the federal marriage amendment, the Stonewall Dems were stone cold silent.

Instead, the Stonewall Democrats criticized House Republicans - a justified slam but hardly courageous. What about the 36 Democrats who voted against our most basic freedoms?

Where was the arm-twisting from the Democratic leadership? Dick Gephardt, the top House Democrat, has a gay daughter, but it was his counterpart, Tom DeLay of Texas, who was out front on marriage equality, albeit on the other side.

There's no excuse for Stonewall's silence. The party's platform is committed to gay rights and opposes the marriage amendment. Gays are a critically important fund-raising and voting bloc.

Stonewall ought to call non-supportive Democrats to task for failing to support their platform and betraying an important constituency.

The supposedly non-partisan national gay groups are no better. Like Log Cabin, the Human Rights Campaign has a former Massachusetts legislator as its new leader. But Cheryl Jacques still acts like she takes her orders from the Democratic whip.

For example, when Dick Cheney ducked a question during the vice presidential debate about rising HIV infection rates among African-American women, Jacques issued a statement calling his ignorance on the topic "inexcusable." And it was.

But what Jacques failed to see, through her partisan-colored glasses, was that John Edwards was every bit as neglectful in his response, spending his entire answer talking about unrelated issues and health care in general.

It used to be that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force could at least be counted on to take both parties to task on our behalf. Matt Foreman, its leader, vowed to the New York Times that gay groups would never back a candidate who supports writing anti-gay discrimination into a constitution state or federal.

When John Kerry did exactly that, the Task Force to its credit did release a statement taking him to task. But less than four months later, the Task Force was lauding the Democratic nominees as "the most gay-supportive presidential ticket in American history."

The gay rights movement is easily the most compliant political lobby in this country. Our opponents readily criticize their own allies when they cross their interests or don't push their agenda.

Gay groups smile and say, "We understand. Of course supporting our rights is too unpopular to justify politically."

Perhaps if John Kerry is elected, and like Bill Clinton betrays his pro-gay rhetoric, these groups will understand the lesson that Log Cabin has learned in the last four years.

There will always be an excuse why now is not the time to fulfill our promise of equality. It will never be politically expedient.

And politicians will never do what they have not been lobbied to do.

Originally published August 22, 2003, in The Washington Blade.

Whoa! Slow down there, homosexuals!

Yeah, we're enjoying a great gay run. For the first time ever, it's now legal everywhere in America for us to have sex with each other, and our relationships even got some validation from the U.S Supreme Court. Canada is poised to open up marriage to same-sex couples, and the stuffy Episcopal Church just confirmed its first openly gay bishop.

Even got pop culture is going gay: "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is the surprise summer TV hit. ABC's "20/20" has declared "it's in to be out" and the cultural arbiters at VH1 last week debuted "Totally Gay!" celebrating all things homosexual.

But let's get real. Gay marriage? In this country? Now? You better think twice about that.

America isn't ready for it. The polls show a backlash from the big pink wave that splashed over the country this summer. In fact, if you don't watch it, conservatives may succeed in amending the Constitution to ban gay marriages once and for all. Remember that's what happened in Hawaii and Alaska a few years ago.

You're better off winning victories incrementally. Focus on employment discrimination and hate crimes. The polling numbers are better and the visceral hostility from the public is not nearly so great.

That's the advice gay rights activists are getting these days from many gay-friendly public officials, and from gay contributors and activists as well.

Well, it's hogwash. And any leader of any gay rights organization who is not prepared to throw the bulk of their efforts right now into the fight for marriage is squandering resources and doesn't deserve the position. That's right; if they're not ready to make their top priority the freedom to marry, then they ought to resign today.

Impractical? How do you figure?

Consider for a moment how many gay Americans you know who have actually suffered from discrimination in the workplace? How many gay couples do you know who have been turned down from buying a house or renting an apartment because of their sexual orientation? How many were ever denied a room at a hotel or a seat in a restaurant because of homophobia?

How many people do you know who've been the victim of a hate crime where the perpetrator has gone unpunished?

Those people are out there, of course, and their stories are tragic.

Now multiply that number by 10 - or even 100, depending upon how broad your social circle is, and you've probably still not counted the number of gay people you know who've been discriminated against by this country's heterosexual-only marriage laws.

Between 90 and 95 percent of Americans get married at some point during their lives. If you carve out the homosexuals who can't get married (acknowledging that some of them were in heterosexual marriages before coming out of the closet) and that means that something approaching 100 percent of the people in this country who can legally say, "I do," in fact do.

The point is that no form of discrimination is more pervasive, or strikes more at the heart of being gay, than denying us the freedom to marry.

Still seem impractical? Consider this.

We are owed no right to work or buy homes free of anti-gay prejudice, and if we are bashed by homophobes, we have no inalienable right to demand that our perpetrators be given extra jail time because their crime was motivated by anti-gay animus.

These "civil rights" laws are add-ons; protections that make sense as good social policy and will no doubt dramatically impact people's lives.

But as social policy, they are often opposed on grounds that have nothing to do with homophobia. Employment and housing protections come at the cost of lawsuits, some of which will be frivolous. Hate crime laws do, at some level, punish thoughts, and pile on to an already Draconian criminal justice system.

None of these arguments wins the day, but they're reasonable and fair-minded; the same can't be said for those who oppose the freedom to marry. This isn't about protecting us from discrimination that might happen in the private sector. This is discrimination, perpetrated by our own government.

Once the government got into the business of issuing civil marriage certificates, and doling out (at last count) some 1,049 benefits and rights as a result of that piece of paper, there is no justification for slamming the door on committed same-sex couples.

As a result, the polls and politicians won't decide marriage, at least not initially. The courts will, and soon - not only in Canada but very soon in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Should we forget about ENDA and hate crime laws? Of course not.

Introduce them both, hold hearings even, and watch them sit there, like the hapless "Bill" on the "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoon. That's been their sad fate for a decade now, no matter which party has controlled the Congress or the White House.

In fact, the best chance these two bills have for passage is a bruising fight over marriage. "Compassionate conservatives" and "moderate Democrats, " looking for some way out of the emotional tussle on gay marriage, are far more likely to vote for these baby-step measures.

But the real battle will be over marriage, and whether to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban them. It's a political fight we should win, if our organizations can work together, and our people will mobilize.

Early signs of that happening are mixed. Various gay groups are meeting in semi-secret "summits" to plan strategy, and hopefully from that will adopt highly visible and courageous campaigns to rally the people to accept civil marriage for gays.

Cutesy focus group strategies won't work here. Neither will the type of in-fighting and turf battles that all too often plague our movement.

We need rallies; we need marches; we need TV advertisements; we need speeches; we need pressure on "gay-friendly" politicians.

This is the big one: The fight we can and should win, and the one that really matters.

IF JERRY FALWELL is right about the way God works, then our newly declared war on terrorism isn't looking too good for the home team. After all, there is no nation on earth less hospitable to and less accepting of gays, feminists and civil libertarians than Afghanistan.

"The Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results." - Rev. Jerry Falwell, on the "700 Club," Sept. 13

Since the Taliban assumed control of that troubled country five years ago, they have crushed the wall separating church and state, and often quite literally on the backs of homosexuals. The punishment for sodomy in Afghanistan is to push over a stone wall on the offending sodomite, almost always resulting in his death. If the defendant somehow survives, God is considered to have commuted his sentence.

Certainly, Falwell is more likely to approve that sort of stone wall than the kind that launched a gay liberation in New York City back in 1969. That's not just being facetious. The stone walls of Afghanistan, like the burning pyres of Salem, Mass., before them, are intended to facilitate an active, angry God to decide who shall live and who shall die.

On that now-famous episode of "The 700 Club," featuring Falwell and host Pat Robertson, the two televangelists talked at length about just that philosophy, played out at the macro level. God has protected the U.S. from attack for more than two centuries, they agreed, because this country was founded as a Christian nation and has tried to adhere to Scripture.

Though both men have set track records for the speed with which they've run away from Falwell's finger-pointing diatribe, neither has renounced the theology behind it.

It was Robertson, remember, who warned the people of Orlando a few years ago that God would consider it a "poke in the eye" that they allowed Gay Pride flags to be hung from street poles. He specifically warned them to watch out for hurricanes, sent or allowed by the angered deity. (Robertson has never satisfactorily accounted for the fact that the next hurricane to hit the southeastern U.S. caused damage not in Orlando, but along the Virginia coast from which he launched his television empire.)

It's easy to dismiss Falwell as the Tinky Winky loon who no one takes seriously anymore, but consider the report in the week's Voice by Laura Douglas-Brown, on the number of like-minded Christians, including Southern Baptists, the country's largest Protestant denomination, and they're joined in those views as well by many Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Muslims.

The next time you find yourself wondering why religious conservatives worry so much about gay rights and tolerance of homosexuality, remember the Falwell sermon about the events of Sept. 11. To him and his fellow travelers, this isn't about what we do in the privacy of our bedrooms and in our lives. These people are driven by a genuine fear of the consequences for their families and their country if God is angered by the acceptance of homosexuality, as Falwell put it, as an "alternative lifestyle."

No more 'godless Communists'

Since Sept. 11, Americans have been learning more and more about this new enemy that struck so viciously at our homeland, targeting civilians and other non-military targets like airplanes and office buildings. Much of the initial attention has focused on terrorism, but President Bush broadened that focus in his speech to Congress last week. He characterized the conflict as one of values, casting our Western style of government against the brutal repression of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This new enemy isn't anything like the "godless Communists" of the Cold War. This time around, the bad guys are ultra God-fearing, albeit from another religious faith. And the Western values that the president says they hate and aim to destroy are not Christianity or religion - he was careful not to make this a religious war between Christians and Muslims. Instead, Bush cited democracy, religious and social tolerance and secular government as the aspects of American society that Osama bin Laden and Taliban keepers found so threatening.

It may have been subtext, but wasn't the president really criticizing these radical Muslims for acting on a theology remarkably close to that adhered to by Falwell and Robertson? Bin Laden and his followers fear God's reprisal for allowing Western culture to corrupt the Islamic world, and that reads much like the standard Falwell stump sermon, preached every Sunday at conservative Christian churches across this country.

In his speech before Congress, the president "condemned" the Taliban for limiting opportunities for women and severely restricting the liberties of the Afghan people. That sounds remarkably like those groups at the other end of Jerry Falwell's pointed finger: feminists and the ACLU.

It's not gays and our civil rights movement that can be perceived on the wrong side this time. It's the Taliban, and their Shiite enemies who govern in Iran, that are the type of repressive religious rulers that will now be viewed as "un-American" and the antithesis of our ideals.

If Falwell and Robertson did not enjoy squirming and spinning out of harm's way the last two weeks, consider the future that lies ahead of them. If we gays and feminists and card-carrying members of the ACLU do our job well, this country will unite behind the very ideals of America that hold so much promise for us and our families.

Gay and lesbian Americans should rally around the president alongside our fellow citizens, and fight for a future that is free from the shackles of outdated fears and legislated morality. That is the Taliban way, not the American way.

WE OUGHT TO BE ashamed of the way the gay community has responded to the death of Jesse Dirkhising.

At the age of 13, Jesse was befriended by an adult gay couple in Rogers, Ark., who convinced him to engage in kinky sex play.

On the night of Sept. 26, 1999, Joshua McCabe, then 21, acted out a detailed bondage scene designed by boyfriend Davis Carpenter, 37, feeding the teen tranquilizers, strapping him facedown on the bed, stuffing dirty underwear in his mouth and taping it over with duct tape, and repeatedly sodomizing him. When McCabe stopped to eat a sandwich, he noticed that Jesse had stopped breathing and called for an ambulance. The youth died that night of asphyxiation.

Conservatives have jumped on the case as proof that the mainstream media and the gay press are less willing to report stories when gays are perpetrators than when we are victims.

The underlying aim of these activists was undoubtedly to publicize the case as an example of how they say gay men are predatory toward the nation's youth, and how deviant gay sex - meaning all gay sex, in their eyes - can kill. Backed into a corner, most of the people we count on to speak responsibly on behalf of gay America let their knee-jerk defensiveness overwhelm any compassion over the awful death of this gay teen.

Responsibility for the death of Jesse Dirkhising no doubt lies primarily with the two men who drugged, raped and tortured him. But there are important lessons for us to be taken from this tragedy.

First and foremost, our leaders should reaffirm that gay adults bear an awesome responsibility to respect the confusion and innocence that comes with youth. Teens the age of Jesse Dirkhising cannot meaningfully consent to sex play of any sort, much less the extreme S&M scene that led to his death. Gay newspaper columnist Paul Varnell, who argues in these pages this week that straight society is more to blame for Jesse's death, made a public case in May 1999 that "child sexual abuse," a term he always bracketed in quotation marks, was in fact not harmful to many teenage males, some of whom found it enjoyable and adventuresome.

Varnell by no means bears personal responsibility for Jesse's death four months later, but he does owe it to his readers to re-examine his thesis about whether we can all "breathe easier, glad that something we thought was harmful turned out not to be so harmful after all."

Second, the leaders of the S&M and leather communities should loudly repeat that responsible gays should steer well clear of the line between the fantasy of non-consensual sex and taking physical advantage over another. The violent end that Jesse met may be unusual, but that makes it all the more important to condemn any scene involving physically dangerous settings and drugs that inhibit good judgment.

It will not be immediately apparent to mainstream Americans, and many gays, that fantasizing about raping and torturing another human bears no connection with acting out that fantasy.

This newspaper reported last year that even the larger gay adult studios are producing videos that depict gang rape. The victim, almost always younger and soft-featured, usually winds up enjoying and consenting to the attack - an especially dangerous message to send. These videos and magazines like them almost never feature the "safe words" that are the keystone of consensual sadomasochistic sex.

The burden is rightly on those who would advocate and celebrate such fantasies to make the case that they are not contributing to a culture of violence and abuse that is more likely to victimize its participants. Third, those with a pulpit to talk about gay male culture ought to explore publicly the dangers that can come from treating each other as sex objects, not human beings.

Joshua McCabe told police that he didn't even know Jesse's last name, even though he had spent considerable time with the youth and had sex with him several times before the night of the rape. He told a fellow inmate that his only use for Jesse was for sex every now and then.

Feminists have long made a connection between how straight men objectify women sexually and how that can lead to disrespect, dehumanization, mistreatment and worse. The powerful story of Jesse Dirkhising presents a unique opportunity to see how the same dynamic plays out among gay men. To many, even acknowledging cultural factors like adult-teen sex, S&M sex play and sexual objectification is too dangerous to countenance. They worry that conservatives will enjoy a P.R. bonanza, trumpeting how even gays admit their deviance comes with a body count.

Sure enough, a Washington Times cover story on the Dirkhising case quoted from a Southern Voice editorial that merely asked the question whether gay culture bore any responsibility for what happened in Rogers, Ark. We can reliably expect more of the same anytime we take responsibility for addressing the social ills within our own community.

But we betray our own kind if we allow that fear to silence us. And we make ourselves hypocrites when we then turn to straight America and ask it to accept its complicity in violence against us.

Just this week, Judy Shepard told a college audience in Hollins, Va., that she does not blame the two men who robbed and beat her son Matthew and left him to die on a Wyoming fencepost.

"I blame society for giving them permission to kill Matt," she said instead. "They never thought they would be in any kind of trouble for killing another fag."

As long as words associated with gay men and lesbians are perceived as insults, she argued, society will implicitly condone anti-gay violence. Those are powerful words, and they're hard for most heterosexuals to hear because they don't personally harbor violent feelings towards us and certainly don't feel responsible for the horrific behavior of Matthew's killers.

If we want them to take seriously Judy Shepard's call to change how mainstream society views us, then we should happily and eagerly take up the cause of rooting out anything in our own backyard that could have contributed to the death of Jesse Dirkhising.

Of course there are important differences in how the two young men died. Matthew's brutal treatment was largely the result of hate for him as a gay man. The subsequent calls for bias crime legislation introduced a public policy element that justified the massive media coverage.

Jesse's brutal treatment was not the result of hatred toward a group of people, but more accurately was the product of gross disregard for the worth of a gay kid. That's not something that legislation can address, but it sure is an issue that ought to be of central importance to our community.

WHEN TWO STRAIGHT MEN in Laramie, Wyo., singled out for violence a young gay man in October 1998, the resulting murder made national headlines for weeks. The words "Matthew Shepard" became synonymous for "hate victim" and his murder the inevitable product of a homophobic culture.

When two gay men in Bentonville, Ark., singled out a 13-year-old in September 1999 for violent sex play, the resulting murder made local headlines and a glimmer of national coverage. But "Jesse Dirkhising" isn't synonymous for anything, except in conservative circles.

Among the right wing, "Jesse Dirkhising" stands for two battle cries: the double standard practiced within the "liberal media" and, at a more subtle level, deviant gay sexual culture and its violent consequence.

It's a little too easy to dismiss the media double standard by pointing out the obvious differences in the killing of Matthew Shepard and the killing of Jesse Dirkhising.

The national media fixated on the Shepard murder because the evidence suggested that the two perpetrators were motivated by anti-gay hate. Instead of stealing the pocket change in Shepard's wallet, they pummeled him with a pistol and left him to die, tied to a fence post.

Beyond the sheer brutality of the crime and the "group prejudice" that played a role in it, the resulting cries for hate crime legislation, in Wyoming and elsewhere, were legitimate news stories.

The Dirkhising killing no doubt matches the Shepard murder in brutality and ugliness. He was a teenager far too young to consent to any sort of sexual encounter; he was heavily drugged, his own underwear placed in his mouth and held in place by duct tape, and repeatedly sodomized.

When police arrived at the chaotic scene, his body was smeared in feces and he had only a faint pulse. The two gay men only called an ambulance after one took a break from the "sex play" to eat a sandwich and noticed the youth was not breathing, according to the police report.

But even taken at its worst, gay activists are right to point out, there was no "group prejudice" behind the Dirkhising killing. No one is alleging that the two gay men deliberately planned the teen's abduction to "get" a straight kid. In fact, the available evidence suggests that Jesse was gay, or at least questioning his sexuality.

Without the presence of prejudice based on sexual orientation, or any other sort of "ism" or "phobia," the Dirkhising story doesn't have the same public policy legs as the Shepard killing. To the mainstream press, it's just another brutal crime, this time committed by two gay men.

But are those distinctions, while important, enough to shrug our shoulders and file away Jesse's murder as the random act of twisted minds that just so happen to be gay?

Almost anytime a gay person is victimized these days, our activists are quick to call upon society to recognize its complicity in the crime. What messages are we communicating, they inevitably ask, that might have led those involved to lash out in this way?

In the case of Jesse Dirkhising, the only ones taking the time to look for larger lessons are social conservatives. And that's truly unfortunate.

For one thing, they've got an axe to grind. Social commentators from the right are snooping for evidence to make a broader social point: Gays are social deviants who engage in behavior that is repugnant to mainstream America. And just by publicizing the story, they purposefully feed the claim that gay adults are out to "recruit" wayward youths, with disastrous results.

Before you sniff at such morbid opportunism, admit to yourself that gay activists did much the same thing, though for a cause you support, after Matthew Shepard's death.

Decent conservatives would acknowledge that no gays would take matters so far as they went in Bentonville, Ark., but that wouldn't end the comparison for them - just as most reasonable gay activists allowed that few heterosexuals were waiting to tie us to fence posts.

Conservatives would argue, however, that the sex-drenched gay culture, and the value-less homosexual lifestyle, were bound to victimize someone like Jesse Dirkhising. And while most youths tricked and trapped by predatory gay men don't wind up dead, they do wind up sexually confused, robbed of their innocence, and torn from the values their parents worked hard to instill in them.

Before you dismiss that conservative diatribe, conjure in your head the mental image of Judy and Dennis Shepard, grieving the loss of their son. The sympathy you feel is likely to overwhelm the stubborn "gray zones" of Matthew's murder - especially the mixed motive of his killers and the extent society is really to blame.

Now imagine the parents of Jesse Dirkhising, sitting in court while prosecutors played tapes of his accused killer, telling police, "Jesse really didn't have anything to offer, except maybe sex now and then." Could you stand in front of them and disclaim any responsibility for gay culture in his killing?

As a minority group, we homosexuals have perfected the art of deconstructing mainstream society for its conscious and subconscious homophobia. Our "gay studies" scholars write treatise after treatise on the topic, and our civil rights groups wear out fax machines with press releases on the subject.

But when it comes to examining whether gay culture plays a role in societal ills, we are sometimes as willfully blind as our conservative foes. We are so defensive about "bad press" and passing judgment on anything sexual, we resist the question at a visceral level.

If the gruesome killing of a gay youth won't at least make us look harder at where our culture might bear some responsibility, what will?

FOR ALL OUR TALK about breaking down societal taboos and giving voice to unpopular points of view, we homosexuals have a verboten topic all our own. We have an awfully difficult time talking about moral values.

It's easy enough to understand why. All our lives, lesbians and gay men have been hammered into submission by "family values" rhetoric and the social and legal condemnation that has come along with it. Understandably, we are wary of the coercive power of public morality and the relative ease with which media-hungry politicians and religious leaders use talk about "values" as a wedge to divide folks into convenient camps: American vs. un-American, the saved vs. the damned, us vs. them.

Our collective take on the historical role of public "values" in this country is not an attractive one. Judeo-Christian moral values have been used, many would say warped, to subdue ethnic minorities (particularly blacks) and women into second-class citizenship, while reserving full participation in American society for the archetypal "straight white male," especially those of the WASP variety.

One by one, each of these oppressed groups has thrown off the yoke of value-laden discrimination, and has won civil rights, cultural acceptance, and greater involvement in the life of the nation.

Now that it looks to be our turn (finally) to live our lives without moral condemnation from the outside, we gays seem loath to open up Pandora's box and allow a free-flowing dialogue of our own about the "lifestyle choices" we make as gay men and lesbians.

And woe to those who dare try to broach that forbidden subject matter. We eat these heretics for lunch - pasting them with vicious personal attacks, impugning their motives, overstating their positions and, most discouraging of all, tarring them as "self-righteous" and accusing them of acting like the Queer Moral Majority.

The ones on the cultural right take the most heat. Gabriel Rotello, Michelangelo Signorile, Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, even Larry Kramer - all caricatured as hypocritical, bitchy moralizing airbags in something of a hysterical (panicked!?) over-reaction to their very passionate arguments about the kind of world we homosexuals should be working toward.

Drug use, unsafe sex, public sex, religion, sexism - each of us makes choices in these areas that affect our lives and the culture and society we share. Why shouldn't these issues be open to vigorous, respectful and civil debate?

To be sure, none of these cultural critics is beyond personal criticism. And some sling mud at their intellectual rivals with at least as much vigor as do their critics.

But is that the point? Should personal attacks pass muster as social criticism? Is it all about engaging in a contest for whose private life best reflects her moral philosophy?

We need to find a language with which we can talk about values without difference of opinion being mistaken for condemnation. Otherwise, we have managed to take live-and-let-live moral relativism to an all new level: Not only is your morality your own business, but when someone else shares her ideas about values and life choices, she's somehow violating your "moral space."

Why be offended when someone else questions your ethical choices? Because it might make you second-guess your own value system? Because you're sick and tired of having to defend your life to someone else, thank you very much? To bow out of that conversation is to check out of life, or at least a thoughtful, examined life.

We'll never win the hearts and minds of Judeo-Christian middle Americans if they adopt the same head-in-the-sand intransigence to our view of how the world should be.

Let's set an example, as a community, of how folks can thoughtfully and respectfully examine their individual value systems without condemnation, recrimination or involving governmental coercion.