IGF CultureWatch

There's nothing wrong with Democrats heading gay-rights groups, even in this Republican age. But the Human Rights Campaign's new leader, Joe Solmonese, is the most partisan Democrat ever hired by a "nonpartisan" national gay political group. While he may surprise us, Solmonese starts with a huge deficit in credibility and influence in Washington, D.C. That's bad for the movement.

With the federal government now firmly in the grips of conservative Republicans, HRC continues to move left. Last year HRC made error after error in this vein: appointing as its executive director Cheryl Jacques, a Massachusetts Democratic legislator whose tenure lasted barely longer than the process to select her; endorsing John Kerry for president so early it lost any hope to influence his campaign; backing transgender inclusion in a federal employment law that would kill the bill; and endorsing a Democratic challenger over Arlen Specter, a senior gay-friendly Republican who's now chairman of the critically important Senate Judiciary Committee. And now Solmonese.

Not long ago HRC was managed competently and smartly, growing in size and power. In the early 1990s the organization was headed by Tim McFeeley, who built strong relationships with GOP members of Congress and hired the group's first Republican lobbyist. Under McFeeley, the group worked with Republicans to pass significant legislation like the Ryan White CARE Act, the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, and a law barring discrimination against HIV-positive people. In the late1990s and continuing through 2003, under the leadership of Elizabeth Birch, HRC could usually be counted on to represent the whole gay community, including Republicans and Independents. Its lobbying, its rhetoric, and its hiring of staff reflected a reality obvious to all but the most obtuse: that gay equality will never be secure if we work only with one party while ignoring or blindly opposing the one in power.

While most of its money and its endorsements understandably went to Democrats, HRC supported gay-friendly Republicans in hotly contested races even when liberal Democrats ran against them, as when the group endorsed Al D'Amato over Chuck Schumer for the U.S. Senate in 1996. The gay left squawked about that but HRC never wobbled. As the Specter race showed, it is inconceivable that HRC would take a similar stand today.

Prior to coming to HRC, Solmonese worked exclusively to elect Democratic candidates. According to Federal Election Commission records obtained by gay activist Michael Petrelis, Solmonese has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates but not one dime to any Republican, no matter how pro-gay.

Solmonese spent the last 12 years working for Emily's List, a fundraising group devoted solely to electing female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. So if you're a male Democrat who supports abortion rights, you get no money. If you're a female Republican who supports abortion rights, you get nothing. But if you're anti-gay and support abortion rights and you're a female Democrat, Emily's List loves you.

An example of the latter is the support given by Emily's List, under Solmonese's leadership, to Inez Tanenbaum, a pro-choice Democrat who ran for the U.S. Senate seat last year in South Carolina. It did not matter to Solmonese's group that Tanenbaum supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the very worst thing a candidate could do right now on the issue of gay equality.

Perhaps that's all in Solmonese's past, a necessary bow to the priorities of his old boss, and he will now adjust to the needs of his new employer. Fair enough, though this well-known track record won't help when he comes calling in Republican congressional offices.

There are more reasons to be concerned. Announcing his appointment, HRC's press release included the obligatory paean to bipartisanship. But this was overwhelmed by an emphasis on how "progressive" Solmonese is. (Progressive is now code language for that unspeakable thing, "liberal.") HRC informs us that he led "efforts to elect progressive candidates." He made Emily's List "the nation's foremost progressive electoral powerhouse." HRC quotes one supporter as praising him for a "tireless drive to create a more progressive America."

A Republican president just won another four-year term. The GOP has won seven out of the last ten presidential elections. Republicans have won majorities in the House of Representatives in six consecutive national elections. The Republican Senate majority grew in 2004 and is coming close to the super-majority needed to ram through anything it wants. The federal courts have become so conservative that liberal academics are starting to talk about the virtues of democracy. In this climate, it is not a political asset in Washington to be a foremost progressive.

That is, it's not a political asset if one wants to appeal to both parties. But that may not be what Solmonese, or HRC, want.

Here is Solmonese, quoted in the Washington Post, introducing himself to the world as a gay leader: "This struggle that we're in in this country right now is not just for GLBT Americans but for all progressives."

Mark that well. Solmonese wants to work for "all progressives." He sees himself leading the whole struggle of the proletariat. It's not just gay rights he wants, but a better world as defined by the left.

That's his right. But HRC once represented "all gays," some of whom are not progressives, and did so in a way that appealed to both parties, not just to the progressive one. With the appointment of Solmonese, it is much harder for HRC to present itself as nonpartisan; indeed, it now barely pretends to be.

The gay-rights movement needs effective political advocacy in Washington, so we must wish Solmonese and HRC the best. But we do so in the way one wishes the best to the unrepentant drunkard as he pours another.

I found myself online the other day chatting with a friend about Abraham Lincoln's perfect thighs. He also had big hands, my friend noted. True, I replied, but he was homely. Ruggedly handsome, he retorted. On it went like that. There we were, cruising the greatest president in American history.

The occasion for this excited chatter was the recent publication of C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. Tripp, now deceased, claims that Lincoln was predominantly homosexual. Indeed, he precisely rates Lincoln a "5" on the famous Kinsey scale that ranges from "0" (entirely heterosexual) to "6" (entirely homosexual). I avoided reading reviews of the book, not wanting to prejudice myself either way. I wanted to see whether it could rise or fall on its own. Now I've read it. There is no need to consult learned Lincoln scholars or to track down important sources and facts Tripp omitted. The book collapses under its own light weight.

There are shards of evidence that Tripp adduces suggestively to support his claim: a vengeful poem Lincoln wrote in which there are a few lines about two boys who marry each other (penned after two male acquaintances excluded Lincoln from their real weddings); the "perfect thighs" comment from a friend of Lincoln (which, for Tripp, by itself "strongly suggests" they had femoral intercourse!); Lincoln's sometimes awkward relations with women; and so on. None of this amounts to much.

Tripp sometimes anachronistically projects onto Lincoln stereotypes of modern urban gay men (e.g., Lincoln avoided "team sports"). Even proof of Lincoln's heterosexual capacity, such as his ability to consummate his marriage to Mary Todd, with whom he had four sons, is in Tripp's hands evidence that he was a "top."

These embarrassments aside, Tripp's case comes down to three main points. In ascending order of persuasiveness, they are: Lincoln matured early; as president, he slept with his bodyguard; and as a young lawyer, he slept with a roommate.

Lincoln probably reached puberty at age 10, about three years earlier than the average. "This is significant," claims Tripp, because the earlier males reach puberty the more likely they are to have homosexual experiences. It's a very weak argument. The gap in homosexual experience between early- and late-maturing males is initially large but decreases over time, becoming negligible by age 30. More importantly, Tripp cites no support for a correlation between early puberty and homosexual orientation. Early-maturing males, like other males, are overwhelmingly heterosexual.

For an eight-month period in 1862-63 Lincoln may have slept occasionally in the same bed at the White House with a personal bodyguard, army captain David Derickson (a father of nine children). The evidence that they slept together is fairly thin, consisting of contemporaneous gossip and unsubstantiated passages in two obscure histories. Even if they did sleep together, it would not be surprising to find the president's personal bodyguard in his bedroom at the lowest point in the Union's fortunes in the Civil War, in a city full of rebel sympathizers and potential assassins.

It's similarly unsurprising to learn that the president's bodyguard accompanied him to church, cabinet meetings, battlefields, and the theater. Yet Tripp treats these outings as if they were dates. Lincoln also told Derickson stories of his early life and shared battle reports with him, again unsurprising for two men who necessarily spent much time together. Yet Tripp likens these conversations to "pillow talk." Such over-interpretation of scanty evidence mars the whole book.

The strongest evidence for Lincoln's homosexuality is his close friendship with Joshua Speed. When Lincoln was a struggling lawyer, the men shared a bed for four years. Lincoln also wrote letters to Speed that, to modern ears, sound unusually tender. This much is familiar ground, and Tripp adds very little to it.

Tripp claims that he, as a homosexual, has detected the hidden romantic significance of the surviving letters, something missed by earlier scholars eager to downplay it. Yet the letters, which Tripp helpfully appends, deal mostly with politics, business, the men's marriages, and similar fare. They are written in the florid style of nineteenth-century correspondence, full of expressions of devotion and anxieties for reunion, but for this gay reader there is nothing very suggestive about them. For Tripp, however, the lack of overt homoeroticism is itself evidence of a "cover up" by the lovers.

As Tripp concedes, it was common in Lincoln's time for men to sleep together in places like boardinghouses and inns. However, four years does seem suspiciously long. Perhaps this too is a modern reaction, according to which all male-male intimacy carries the whiff of homosexuality. If the men's lengthy cohabitation would have raised eyebrows at the time, it is odd that both men freely acknowledged it to friends, even while going to elaborate lengths to "cover up" their relationship in private letters to one another.

I am not saying that Lincoln never had a homosexual experience. Perhaps he did. But it is another thing entirely to claim that Lincoln's orientation was mainly homosexual. Any such claim comes with a heavy burden of persuasion. Modern research suggests that less than five percent of men are primarily homosexual. The odds against Lincoln, or anyone else, being a Kinsey "5" or "6" are at least 20 to 1.

Should we care? Some commentators have suggested that Lincoln's hidden homosexuality may explain his characteristic sadness, sensitivity, and capacity for empathy and sympathy. But these qualities could also be explained by losing a mother when you're a child, living in poverty on a hardscrabble frontier, enduring the deaths of your own children, and leading a divided nation in the most deadly war in its history.

The book's central claim is desperate conjecture based on strained interpretation of fragmentary evidence to reach a very unlikely conclusion. It is a product of the unfortunate tendency in our time to reduce life to its sexual component. The man who saved the Union, who abolished the grotesque evil of slavery, who gave us the magnificent Gettysburg Address and the sublime Second Inaugural, is in Tripp's world just another top. We should leave Lincoln's thighs alone.

Are civil unions, as a political compromise, harmful to the cause of gay marriage? This is a question likely to confront many gay-rights activists in the coming years as a few states move toward legally recognizing gay relationships.

Just this past fall, Connecticut seemed poised to enact a civil-unions law giving gay couples all of the protections, benefits, and responsibilities of marriage under state law. But in January the state gay-marriage advocacy group, Love Makes a Family, began lobbying legislators to oppose the bill. Now legislators are uncertain whether it can pass. Since a gay-marriage bill has no chance of passing this session, the result is that gay couples may get nothing in the short-term.

On its website and in public statements, the Connecticut group has offered two plausible reasons for its all-or-nothing strategy. The first is that civil unions are not a stepping stone to marriage but a dead end. "Make no mistake, if we fight for civil unions, the marriage conversation will end just as it has in Vermont," says the group's president, Anne Stanback, in a statement posted on the organization's website. Stanback notes that Vermont "is the only place where we have an example of what civil union leads to - and it leads to civil union."

The dead-end argument is troubling. It's true that Vermont has made no progress toward gay marriage since its legislature created civil unions in 2000. Though a gay-marriage bill has been filed, it is going nowhere. Even gay advocates in the state seem content to stand pat.

But Vermont is a special case. The fight over civil unions there was a traumatic and divisive one, manifested in unusually bitter election campaigns, angry letters-to-the-editor, and nasty billboards. That should be no surprise: Vermont did not come to the issue incrementally or democratically. Instead, the state supreme court ordered the legislature to recognize gay unions and to do so quickly. The people had no opportunity to adjust themselves gradually to the idea, or to have their voices truly heard. The resulting wounds are deep, and will take long to heal.

Civil unions adopted legislatively in Connecticut, and elsewhere, would write a different and much better story. They would be adopted by a legislature acting on its own, not under court order. There is no reason to believe a civil-union law would have the politically paralyzing effect it has had in Vermont. Instead, adopting civil unions will add a strong weapon to the arsenal of arguments for gay marriage: "We've got the legal benefits, now why not marriage?"

The path of progress for the legislative recognition of gay relationships has been an incremental one, with no single step being a dead end. That has been true in California, where largely symbolic domestic partnerships first created five years ago have grown gradually into something approaching full marriage. It has also been true in foreign countries taking a legislative path, like Sweden and Norway, which enacted limited legal benefits for same-sex couples before moving to comprehensive registered partnerships. It was true in the Netherlands, which implemented domestic partnerships before moving to full marriage. There is little reason to believe that a democratic conversation about the rights of gay couples, once begun, will end with civil unions.

The second argument against civil unions as an intermediate step to marriage is that civil unions send the unacceptable message that gays are second-class citizens. Civil unions, says Stanback, are "a firm message that we are less deserving of dignity, respect, and rights than other citizens and taxpayers." Marriage, by contrast, "is a universally respected cultural, legal, and social institution," she notes. "Very, very few opposite-sex couples would trade their marriage for something called a civil union."

All of that is true and counsels against being satisfied, in the end, with anything short of marriage. But it is not an argument for an all-or-nothing strategy. While second-class citizenship (civil unions) is worse than first-class citizenship (marriage), it is far preferable to third-class citizenship (nothing), at least if we think that attaining second-class status will actually move us forward in the battle for first-class status.

A related and more serious concern is that creating alternative statuses like civil unions may entrench public attitudes hostile to gay marriage, leading to the feared dead end. In a forthcoming book, University of Minnesota sociology professor Kathleen Hull notes the danger that civil unions might "further normalize the treatment of gays and lesbians as a separate class of citizens." If civil unions could be expected to have this effect, they should be resisted while we wait for marriage.

The risk of entrenching gays' separate status through civil unions or other marriage-lite proposals, preventing all further progress, is real but probably not very large. The experience of California and of other countries, noted above, is against it. Gay couples and their families, having tasted legal legitimacy for the first time, are unlikely to be satisfied for long with anything less than full equality. Heterosexuals, having lived through the nonevent of recognizing gay relationships by something short of marriage, will begin to wonder what the fuss was about.

Compromise is the rule of politics. In what promises to be a decades-long struggle for gay marriage, a struggle still in its infancy, we'd do well to remember that. Civil unions are not where we want to be, but they're a lot better than where we are.

Is there anything important at stake in the debate over whether to recognize gay relationships as marriages or as civil unions? I asked that question to a group of gay friends not long ago. Out of 10 people, no one could come up with a very good answer. A few said that as long as the law gave gay couples equivalent legal rights the difference between marriages and civil unions was "semantic." The implication was that the difference is trivial. Since increasing numbers of Americans seem to view civil unions as an acceptable compromise between nothing and full-fledged gay marriage, what's the big deal?

Recognizing gay marriage, as Massachusetts now does, means conferring on gay couples all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities conferred on opposite-sex married couples under state law. Beyond these legal matters, however, recognizing gay marriage offers the promise of something at least as important. That is the social approval and support that come with marriage. Marriage has a long history; it is woven into our cultural fabric. It comes with common expectations and a common language that couples and their families and friends readily recognize.

As practiced in Vermont, civil unions confer on gay couples all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities conferred on opposite-sex married couples under state law. What civil unions cannot offer is the social approval and support that come with marriage. Civil unions have no history; they are not woven into the fabric of our culture. There are no common expectations or language that come with them. To family and friends, a civil union cannot be asserted; it must be explained. Even after the explanation, a civil union is unlikely to be regarded as the equivalent of a marriage.

This difference between gay marriage and civil unions cannot be dismissed as a merely semantic one. Words are the way we frame and experience our lives. They reflect and reinforce what we think of others and what others think of us. "Gay" and "faggot" may describe the same sexual orientation but they are miles apart in meaning.

While the difference between "marriage" and "civil union" is nowhere near as large as the difference between "gay" and "faggot," it is large enough to matter. How do we know that? Just consider the numbers of good people who bristle at calling our relationships "marriages" but are willing to call them "civil unions," even as they are willing to give us the same legal rights under either.

Obviously, for these people, something very important is communicated by he word marriage that has nothing to do with legal rights and benefits. For the same reason, something very important is denied a gay couple by calling their relationship a "civil union" rather than a "marriage." The culture that denies us the word marriage is a culture that denies us more than a word. It denies us the full measure of respect that accompanies the word and that our relationships are entitled to have.

Consider an analogy. Most of the country once banned interracial marriages. When some states began allowing such marriages, a member of the House of Representatives even proposed amending the Constitution to ban them. As late as 1958, some 94 percent of white Americans still opposed interracial unions. By 1967, when the Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional, 16 states still prohibited interracial marriages.

Imagine that someone had proposed the following to interracial couples: "Your relationships have been subjected to terrible discrimination. You deserve all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of marriage. We are going to give you these. Your relationships will be identical to marriage under the law, with one exception. We will not call your relationships 'marriages,' as we do the union of same-race couples. Your relationships will be called 'civil unions.' That's the deal: it's civil unions or nothing."

Would interracial couples have taken the deal? I think most would have; it's better than nothing. In fact it's much better than nothing.

But would they have thought, and would their families and friends have thought, that the difference between interracial civil unions and interracial marriages was trivial? The word difference itself would have spoken volumes. It would both reflect continued discrimination and reinforce continued discrimination.

Where equivalent legal standing is otherwise given, the semantic difference between marriage and civil unions could have no purpose except to stigmatize and isolate previously disfavored relationships. The analogy is not perfect, but much the same cold be said about the difference between gay civil unions and gay marriages.

Two qualifications are in order. First, no matter what gay relationships are called, a significant part of the population will not regard them as equal to heterosexual marriages. To that extent, gay marriage will not provide the same degree of social acceptance and support that heterosexual marriages now get. But attitudes are not static. Law has an educative function, and the sooner the law regards gay couples as the full equivalent of married heterosexuals, the sooner people will come to see them as equivalent. Law can help confer legitimacy, just as it can help deny it.

Second, although civil unions have no history and no commonly accepted language or expectations, this too can change. Gay couples in Vermont, and perhaps soon elsewhere, are truly making history with civil unions. The problem is, they are millennia behind marriage.

The year 2004 was not kind to the country's leading national gay-rights organization. It stumbled badly on the three essential P's of a civil rights organization: people, policy, and politics. It needs to address its deficiencies in all three areas if it is to be an effective voice for gay equality.

Start with HRC's leadership crisis. For years, HRC was guided by the articulate, intelligent, moderate-sounding Elizabeth Birch. She helped transform the group into a real political powerhouse, dramatically enlarging its staff and budget, and for the most part guided it successfully among the tricky shoals of Washington politics.

But Birch stepped down in early 2004 and was replaced by Cheryl Jacques, a Democratic state legislator from Massachusetts. Jacques was newly out of the closet and had no experience in Washington politics. But she seemed like a quick study.

By all accounts, the choice was terrible. Jacques had a management style that irked HRC's staff. As a partisan Democrat, she seems to have had no taste for the compromise so essential in a Capitol dominated by a party hostile to her cause. Her rhetoric was often shrill; worse, she presided over some truly dreadful policy shifts and political maneuvers.

Next, consider policy. In the summer of 2004, after years of principled resistance, HRC announced that it would not support the legislative centerpiece of the national gay rights movement, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), unless it protected transgenders as well as gays from job discrimination. This decision followed years of protest against HRC on the issue by transgender activists and gay leftists.

The reason for HRC's previous unwillingness to add transgender protections to ENDA was obvious: adding "gender identity" would greatly weaken the prospect of passing the bill anytime soon. Jacques penned a column for the gay media defending the about-face for two reasons. First, she offered a lot of blather about respecting the movement's "diversity," as though effectively killing ENDA would enhance diversity.

Second, she argued that protection for gays would be incomplete without protection for transgenders. This appeal to gays' self-interest was untrue, as any honest person familiar with the law should know.

Most irresponsibly, HRC made this symbolic gesture apparently without conducting any research about what its political impact would be. How many congressional sponsors might be lost? How many moderate Republicans and even Democrats would support a transgender-inclusive ENDA? We were never told. When HRC insisted for the first time in 2004 that senators sign a nondiscrimination pledge including "gender identity," many fewer senators signed the pledge than when it had previously included only "sexual orientation." Under Jacques, HRC had done exactly what it resisted doing under Birch: it had sacrificed practical goals for therapeutic grandstanding.

Finally, consider politics. In 2004, HRC sounded and acted in a more partisan Democratic fashion than ever before. Part of this can be attributed to how bad the Republicans have become, especially with the GOP push for a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). But HRC overreacted, endorsing John Kerry in the spring of 2004 and thus ending any leverage its endorsement might have given it over him.

That leverage would have come in handy. Kerry backed a state constitutional amendment in Massachusetts to end gay marriage there, said he had "no problem" with a similar measure on the ballot in Missouri, waffled on the ban on gays in the military, hardly ever even used the word "gay" during the campaign, and never repeated his earlier-stated support for pro-gay measures like ENDA. On gay issues, he was the worst Democratic nominee since Michael Dukakis. But HRC had nothing to say about these matters during the campaign.

The other big political mistake was HRC's failure to endorse the most important gay-friendly Republican in the Senate, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Specter is hated by social conservatives for his pro-gay policy positions, including his opposition to the FMA. He's also in line to become chair of the important Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets judicial nominees.

So why no HRC endorsement? Because Specter voted for a motion to close debate and bring the FMA up for a vote in the Senate. Voting against this procedural "cloture" became the be-all and end-all of HRC's endorsement process (except when it came to the national Democratic nominees, who didn't even bother to show up for the vote but kept HRC's endorsement). It was a wooden and silly decision with ramifications we have yet to appreciate.

Can anything be done to save HRC from the political wilderness? Here are three suggestions. First, HRC should hire a Republican executive director. This will be unpopular among gay leftists, but it should help repair relations with Republicans like Specter and help moderate the group's image and rhetoric in a national political climate likely to be dominated by the GOP for some time.

Second, the group should back off on transgender inclusion in ENDA. HRC can offer the excuse that it had not fully gauged how much opposition there would be to the move. To quell the outcry on the left, have a member of Congress introduce a separate, transgender-inclusive bill supported by HRC.

Third, refocus time and energy on state issues and legislatures. In the current climate, little can be done at the national level except to fend off anti-gay proposals like the FMA. The real action has moved to the states, where some progress toward the legislative recognition of gay relationships may be made and where will be fighting anti-marriage initiatives for several election cycles to come.

Alas, HRC seems unlikely to do any of these things and so its distressing slide into irrelevance will probably continue.

The two guideposts in the battle for gay marriage in the coming years must be federalism and incrementalism. Federalism means focusing on the states.

Incrementalism means taking things slowly. Fortunately, we have a successful template for the recognition of gay relationships. While others were grabbing headlines with dramatic judicial victories, gay Californians were quietly and patiently persuading state legislators to experiment with increasing degrees of legal protection for gay couples. There's still no gay marriage in California, but we're getting awfully close. Here's how it was done.

When first created in 1999, California's domestic partnership program was little more than a formal registry. Two adults of the same sex could sign up as domestic partners if they lived together, agreed to be responsible for each other's basic living expenses, and promised "to share one another's lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring." A domestic partner could terminate the partnership simply by writing a note to the other partner.

That first year, the program created few tangible protections. Domestic partners were given hospital-visitation rights. And cities in California were allowed, but not required, to offer the domestic partners of their employees the same benefits as spouses. That's it.

The next year, 2000, voters in California passed the Knight Initiative, which banned gay marriage. Progress in adding to the rights of domestic partners that year was exceedingly modest. Domestic partners were permitted to secure housing in specially designed accessible residences for the elderly. The legislature also passed a bill allowing domestic partners to use family medical leave to care for a sick partner, but Gov. Gray Davis vetoed the bill, insisting on an "off-season" for gay-related legislation.

The following year, 2001, saw more dramatic progress. Among many other advances, domestic partners were given the right to use stepparent adoption procedures; to sue for the wrongful death of a partner; to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner; and to use sick leave to care for an ill partner. The state also agreed not to tax the value of domestic partner health insurance coverage.

In 2001, legislators also proposed to treat a domestic partner as a "spouse" for purposes of inheritance when a partner dies "intestate," that is, without a will. But the idea was shelved when Davis threatened to veto it.

In 2002, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Davis reversed his position and signed the intestacy bill. Other minor progress was made that year, including a law allowing domestic partners to receive the birth and death records of a partner.

In 2003, the California legislature dramatically expanded the rights and duties of domestic partners. Effective January 1, 2005, domestic partners will be treated like spouses under state law, except for state income tax purposes. (A proposal to allow domestic partners to file joint state income tax returns was withdrawn after a state agency estimated it would cost more than $5 million in lost revenues in the first year alone.) A domestic partner can no longer terminate the relationship simply by sending a note to the other partner. Now the partners will have to get the equivalent of a divorce.

What started as almost nothing for gay partners in 1999 will have become shadow marriage by 2005. Yet there has been no great public outcry in the state, in contrast to the political upheavals that followed the revolutionary judicial victories in Hawaii (1993), Vermont (1999), and Massachusetts (2003).

Two factors account for the difference. First, California domestic partnerships were created democratically. California is so far the only state to enact legislation of general applicability recognizing gay relationships without being forced to do so by courts. This gives people, including losers in the political process, the satisfaction of having been heard by their representatives. As we have seen, courts can be overruled by constitutional amendments. When victories are earned democratically, they're seen as more legitimate and are therefore more secure.

Second, California's gay lobbyists and openly gay legislators proceeded incrementally. They compromised, backing off when necessary. In retrospect, we should thank Gov. Davis for occasionally applying the brakes for us.

Incrementalism does a couple of important things. It forces those uncomfortable with gay relationships to deal with concrete questions rather than abstractions. While it's easy to oppose "gay marriage," it's politically difficult to oppose any single one of the benefits and responsibilities that comprise the legal status of marriage. Sure, gay marriage will destroy civilization. But will it destroy civilization to recognize, for example, the right to file for state disability benefits on behalf of a mentally ill domestic partner, as California did in 2001? It's very difficult for anyone but the most hardened homophobe to oppose that.

Incrementalism also gives the public time to adjust to each advance. One fear of gay marriage is that it will destabilize families. Proceeding by degrees, we can demonstrate that measures to shore up gay families do not threaten heterosexual ones.

With the federal government firmly in the hands of anti-gay conservatives, and with the courts growing fearful of backlash, it's time to pour resources into state legislatures like California's. In a few states, like Connecticut, it may be possible to achieve a near-marriage equivalent in one piece of legislation. In most other states, we'll have to move gradually. There's just no excuse now for legislative inaction in friendly places like New York, Illinois, and New Jersey.

Think big. Start small.

Social conservatives hit the trifecta on Nov. 2, winning the White House and gaining seats in both the House and the Senate. Moreover, the election has been interpreted widely as a referendum for "morality" and against gay marriage. What do we do now?

First, don't panic. The evidence for an anti-gay religious landslide in the 2004 election is actually quite slim. Yes, 22 percent of voters rated "moral values" as the top issue. But 78 percent did not. And Kerry voters comprised almost one-fifth of that 22 percent, so the pro-Bush morality voters were about 17 percent of the total. Some minority of these people support gay equality or think of "moral values" as being mainly about abortion or a candidate's personal integrity. So probably no more than 15 percent of all voters were driven to the polls primarily by a hellfire-and-brimstone opposition to gays.

Second, panic a little. State constitutional amendments banning gay marriage passed easily in 11 states, with majorities ranging from 57 percent in Oregon to 86 percent in Mississippi.

More such state constitutional amendments will be proposed, and adopted, over the next few election cycles. We'll probably see about 30 states ban gay marriage by constitutional amendment when all is said and done.

Exit polls showed that 27 percent of voters favor gay marriage, while 35 percent favor "civil unions." This led some excited gay pundits to proclaim that a whopping 62 percent of the public favors gay marriage or its equivalent.

Don't believe it. Polls on gay marriage cannot be trusted. They systematically undercount opposition, often by 10 or more percentage points, as they did before the election.

As for civil unions, it's doubtful most people understand what the term means, much less understand it in the way gay activists do. Confronted with a polling question containing the actual definition ("Should homosexual couples receive all of the benefits and privileges of marriage, albeit under a different name?"), public support would drop. Informed specifically that gay couples in a civil union would have a right equal to married couples to adopt children, public support would likely fall to levels close to the support for gay marriage.

But there's a deeper reason to be concerned, deeper than particular fights over state amendments. We may be in the midst of a long-term religious revival, a periodic fact of life in this country's history. The revival has been most pronounced among Christian evangelicals who cleave to a literal - and anti-gay - interpretation of the Bible.

The Christian-conservative movement has organized itself politically with increasing vigor and effectiveness. It has now utterly captured the Republican Party, whose hard-right blueprint for victory has been vindicated. For as far as the eye can see the South and West are solidly Republican and religiously conservative. With the exception of Illinois, the Midwest is also trending Republican. By my count, 34 states are now either deep-red Republican or moving in that direction. In the next few election cycles, by fits and starts, we could see a Senate dominated by a party dominated by anti-gay religious conservatives.

This leads to my third suggestion. In the face of resurgent anti-gay religiosity, our best bet is to defend the principle of federalism. Federalism is the basic design of American government by which limited powers are allocated to the federal government to deal with defense, foreign relations, interstate commerce, certain fundamental rights, and a few other matters, while the states largely control everything else, including criminal law, property rights, and, most importantly for our purposes, family law.

Under our system, states are allowed to act as laboratories to experiment with social and economic reforms. Sometimes state reforms work and are then adopted nationally, as when a few states first gave women the right to vote. Sometimes they don't catch on, as when Nevada partially legalized prostitution.

Even many conservative Republicans who oppose particular reforms (like gay marriage) believe that states should be allowed to experiment with them. Federalism-based arguments are the only thing that saved us from a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage this past summer.

With federalism in place, we can use our support in Blue Nation - the relatively secular enclaves in the Northeast, West Coast, and Illinois - to push for positive change (domestic partnerships and civil unions where necessary, marriage where possible). As the results in state races in California, Massachusetts, and Vermont showed, these enclaves are solidifying for pro-gay secularism just as the rest of the country is solidifying for anti-gay religious conservatism. Experiments in recognizing gay relationships can proceed in this state-by-state way until the religious revival subsides, as historically these revivals always have, or the Republican coalition fissures.

In the meantime, this strategy means discouraging lawsuits that try to nationalize the gay-marriage issue. Litigation attempting to force Red Nation to accept gay marriage will only succeed in goading these states into anti-gay constitutional action, which would destroy federalism and any fledgling experiments along with it. We will have to do the hard and time-consuming work of persuading our fellow citizens in the states that they have nothing to fear from encouraging commitment among gay couples.

I still think we win in the long-term, including on marriage. But the election helped to clarify that the long-term is likely to be a very long time indeed. The federalism-based enclave strategy will not please revolutionaries, but it's right in principle, and it's probably the best we can do for now.

Every public discussion of gay issues in America is packed with ambiguity, nuance, and double meaning. This is an egalitarian and liberty-loving country with strong religious faith: Majorities oppose anti-gay discrimination in employment and in the military, but also oppose gay marriage and still believe that homosexual acts are immoral. While most people are comfortable having a gay co-worker, they'd never want a son or daughter to be gay.

The presidential campaign has reflected, and the candidates have manipulated, the country's deep ambivalence about homosexuality.

The Bush Bypass

George W. Bush has developed a stock response to almost any gay-related question. It involves both substantively opposing gay equality and rhetorically reassuring everyone he's not a bigot, all without ever using the word "gay."

Consider Bush's various statements on gay marriage over the past year. Collected and condensed, they amount to this:

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Activist judges and local officials are trying to change this definition, so we must protect marriage. But as we debate this, let's treat everyone with dignity and respect."

The man-and-woman mantra of the first sentence enjoys 70 percent support in elections, but especially appeals to religious conservatives. The second sentence exploits populist resentment of the judiciary. The third, Bush's dignity-and-respect mantra, pivots to reassure gays and their friends and families that Bush doesn't hate gay people.

No matter what the question, Bush almost never actually uses the word gay. (He never uses the word homosexual, either. It is too clinical and old-fashioned for some, too explicit for others.) A substantial part of his political-religious base rejects the idea that there are, properly speaking, "gay people" or homosexuals. For them, the words homosexual or gay are adjectives, not nouns. They describe an act, not a person.

Any time the subject comes up, Bush wants gays and gay-friendly people to interpret his words as a humanitarian concession without having religious conservatives interpret them as any kind of political concession. It is a nice rhetorical trick that plays on the hopes and fears of everyone.

The Kerry Cutoff

John Kerry has a different challenge but plays similar rhetorical tricks. While he has a long Senate record of supporting gay equality, he never mentions gay issues in his presidential campaign unless asked about them.

Even when asked, his answers have gotten increasingly Delphic. His stock response on gay issues now involves confirming he supports liberty while reassuring us he's not for license.

So while he supported letting gays serve in the military during the Democratic primaries, Kerry has since voiced concerns about "unit cohesion" and morale. These are code words for opposing gays in the military.

On gay marriage, Kerry always deploys the man-and-woman mantra. (See above.) Asked to defend his position, he invokes his "religious" convictions. That's a nod to religious conservatives.

When Missouri passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriages - before a single judge there had ordered the state to recognize such marriages - Kerry told the mainstream media he had "no problem" with the amendment. Advised later by a gay reporter that the amendment also banned civil unions, Kerry said he opposed it. Informed still later that the amendment did not in fact ban civil unions, his campaign said he had no position.

So, as Kerry might put it, he actually did support the amendment before he opposed it before he was neutral.

The Edwards Exposè

Most richly ambiguous of all was the performance of John Edwards in the vice presidential debate. Asked about gay marriage, Edwards peppered his response with the man-and-woman mantra no fewer than three times while declaring his opposition to a constitutional amendment and his support for largely unspecified "benefits" for gay couples.

And here is how Edwards began his answer:

"Let me first say that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy."

Highlighting the homosexuality of an opponent's child is a very odd way to begin an answer. While the moderator's question itself had vaguely referred to Cheney's "family experience," nothing in it stated that Cheney's daughter is gay. Edwards must have known that his own comments would be the first time millions of people would hear about it. Why would he introduce this fact into a nationally televised debate?

To many listeners, Edwards' answer humanized the gay-marriage issue by calling attention to the effect that denying marriage has on the lives of actual people. It also affirmed the morality of loving one's own children, gay or not. That message needs to be heard by families who have rejected gay children.

But learning of Cheney's gay daughter likely had a very different effect on some of Bush's conservative supporters. It suggested that the administration might not be as trustworthy on gay issues as they had thought. After all, Edwards just told them that the Cheney half of the Bush-Cheney ticket has been infiltrated by the enemy.

Did Edwards intend to produce that homophobic but politically useful effect? He predictably denies any double-meaning. Such is the complexity of talk about gay issues in this country that we can't be sure.

[Editor's note: The above was penned shortly before the final Bush-Kerry debate in which Kerry similarly raised the issue of Mary Cheney's sexuality, about which the author comments in a subsequent column.]

First used during the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s, outing has been mostly moribund for more than a decade. Now a couple of activists in Washington, D.C., abetted by a few media outlets, have revived it. While outing is justifiable under very narrow circumstances, these recent outings have not met the proper ethical and journalistic standards for doing so.

In recent months, activists Michael Rogers and John Aravosis have claimed that more than 20 members of Congress and congressional staffers are secretly gay. Their claims have been reported in a few gay and alternative newspapers, and have been repeated by Internet bloggers. The goal is to expose the hypocrisy of closeted anti-gay politicians and of closeted staff members who work for anti-gay politicians. This will presumably make closeted gays think twice before supporting anti-gay causes, especially the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Aravosis, himself a former aide to anti-gay Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), has compared the outing campaign to nuclear war. "Mutual assured destruction worked once," he argues, referring to the superpower confrontation during the Cold War. "Maybe it will again."

In the style of a person convinced the world needs him, Aravosis uses an overwrought metaphor. But it is also unintentionally apt. Destruction is the key, for outing has the potential to destroy lives and families. It has the whiff of cannibalism about it. Uplifting the cause of individual rights, it sacrifices real individuals. Defending a movement that has exalted privacy, it destroys personal privacy. Combating homophobia, it relies on homophobia for its power. On its best days, outing is a nasty business.

Nevertheless, outing is justifiable as an ethical and journalistic matter when two criteria are met.

First, the outed person's homosexuality must be directly relevant to some matter of public policy.

Hypocrisy by an officeholder meets this test, as when a closeted politician opposes gay equality for homophobic reasons. An example would be a legislator who declares marriage must be "defended" from gay couples while he has extramarital homosexual affairs.

It is not enough, however, that a closeted politician opposes a gay-rights proposal if the basis for the opposition is non-homophobic. For example, an officeholder might oppose an employment non-discrimination law on the ground that such laws are counterproductive or too costly for employers. She may be wrong; hypocritical she is not.

The relevance requirement would be met by someone like Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), who has made clear the homophobic basis for his opposition to gay equality. For the most part, the members of Congress outed by Rogers and Aravosis meet this first standard.

But others, including the congressional staff members outed in some gay newspapers, do not meet the relevance requirement. Rarely would a staffer's sexual orientation be directly relevant to a public policy debate. Unlike officeholders, staffers do not vote on public policy. They frequently have no influence on what position their boss takes on gay issues. Many work on matters, like environmental policy, that have nothing to do with gay issues.

The main purpose in outing such people is retributive; it is punishment for aiding the enemy, however indirectly. That is an impulse I share, but it is not a matter of public concern.

Even as a device for helping the gay cause, outing congressional staffers is dubious since they can be useful sources of information about anti-gay legislative strategy only if they remain closeted. It's true that outing might deter a few people from working for anti-gay officeholders. But that's almost useless since there's no shortage of eager applicants to take such jobs.

Second, there must be credible evidence made available to the public that establishes the person is probably homosexual.

We must demand that this burden of proof be met because the cost of error can be very high. Outed individuals may lose their jobs, get cut off from their parents and friends, and lose their families - even if they're not really gay. We must also demand credible proof because, frankly, hearsay about celebrity homosexuality is as common as sand on a beach. Is there a movie star, ball player, or politician who hasn't been rumored to dilly-dally?

Few of the recent outings claimed by Rogers and Aravosis, and reported by some gay newspapers, meet this second requirement. If there is an adequate basis for believing that these outed politicians or staffers are gay, the public has often not been given that information.

In one case, a congressman was outed on the basis of an audiotape provided by an anonymous source who claimed the recorded voice was that of the congressman soliciting gay sex. There was no way to verify the information and no way to judge its credibility. That the congressman subsequently dropped his re-election bid lent some credence to the story, but only after the fact.

In another case, the Washington Blade reported in its July 23, 2004, issue that a named person working for the Republican Party had been "outed by local activists." That was it. While the article detailed the person's ties to anti-gay officeholders, it provided no basis for believing the person is gay other than the unsubstantiated claims of Aravosis and Rogers themselves. That isn't journalism; it's gossip.

The desire to punish the wartime traitor, to make an example of him, is understandable. But we must first be convinced that there really has been treason and that punishment will accomplish more than simply inflicting pain.

The Log Cabin Republicans' decision not to endorse George W. Bush does two important things. It maintains LCR's integrity as a group dedicated to equality for gay Americans. And it may actually increase LCR's influence within the GOP.

Before discussing the decision, I should explain my own past affiliation with LCR. I was president of the group's Texas chapter for three tumultuous years in the 1990s, during which we fought precinct-level battles within the party, unsuccessfully sued the Texas GOP for refusing to honor an agreement to give us an information booth at the 1996 state convention, and staged a protest against the party for again refusing us a booth at the 1998 state convention. I also served briefly on LCR's national board. Although I have many friends in LCR, I no longer have any role in the organization.

There has long been a basic divide among gay Republicans. In one corner are the "gay-first Republicans," those who generally support traditional GOP policies on taxes, spending, and foreign affairs, but whose main purpose is to advance their passionate belief in gay equality. They are deeply distressed by the party's anti-gay attitudes. They figure that equality can never be secure until both major parties support it, and that this requires having gay advocates within the GOP. Their belief in most Republican values is genuine, but their activism in LCR is primarily strategic. It is mostly an attempt to advance gays' standing among Republicans, not to advance the GOP's standing among gays. They are gay first and Republican second.

In the other corner are the "Republican-first gays," those who consider themselves Republicans who happen to be gay. The party's anti-gay positions bother them, but not to distraction. Far more important to them are the party positions they agree with, like its foreign and economic policies. Their involvement in LCR is primarily an expression of their disgust for left-dominated gay politics and reflects a desire to bond politically and socially with like-minded gay people. They are Republican first and gay second.

There are gradations of views in between, but these poles roughly describe things. I have always been much closer to the gay-first Republicans.

It has never been accurate to charge, as some benighted people do, that either of these groups is self-hating. Neither supports anti-gay policies, which is what the slander of self-hatred implies. The gay-first Republicans are every bit as dedicated to gay equality as anyone in the gay-rights movement, but believe there is a distinct and essential role they can play in advancing it. The Republican-first gays also oppose anti-gay policies, but give a higher priority to non-gay issues like taxes, just as some gay liberals give a higher priority to non-gay issues like abortion. At worst, the gay-first Republicans can be faulted for occasional tactical errors; the Republican-first gays, for misplaced priorities. But neither group can fairly be indicted for internalized homophobia.

LCR's vote not to endorse Bush, by a 22-2 margin of the group's national directors, was primarily a gay-first Republican decision. It was a strong affirmation that LCR's basic mission is to advance gay equality within the GOP, not to support GOP candidates at all costs.

But even some Republican-first gays in LCR supported the non-endorsement. Bush's betrayal of traditional conservatism on matters like fiscal responsibility and free trade made it easier for them. Republican-first gays could also justify non-endorsement as a way to nudge the party away from extremism and thus to serve the GOP's own long-term political interests.

As long as Republican candidates are making serious progress toward supporting gay equality it makes sense for a partisan organization like LCR to endorse them, even if they're objectively worse on gay issues. LCR helps the cause by showing GOP candidates there are rewards for good behavior.

That's why LCR's endorsement of Bush in 2000 made sense from a gay-rights perspective, even though Bush was objectively worse than Al Gore on gay issues. Bush had publicly met with gay Republicans, the first time a GOP presidential nominee had ever done so, and had pronounced himself a "better man" for having met them. He was making progress.

One million gay voters backed Bush in 2000, twenty-five percent of the total gay vote. In return, Bush continued to make progress by appointing openly gay people to his administration and by maintaining a federal non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation.

Now Bush's advisors have decided that the way to win is to gin up enthusiasm among religious conservatives. So Bush has backed, and has campaigned on, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

That's why LCR's non-endorsement of Bush this year makes sense. Bush has taken a giant leap backward by actively supporting an amendment that is qualitatively more deadly to gay equality than anything any president has ever supported. It's a completely unnecessary and unforgivable betrayal of basic constitutional values.

If LCR had nevertheless endorsed Bush it would have ceased to be an organization devoted to gay equality. It would have become simply another obedient auxiliary of the GOP, albeit one with a twist in its martini, and above all one that Republicans could take for granted.

Thus, this very act of defiance may ultimately make LCR a more viable force in the party. If significantly fewer gays vote for Bush this year, LCR will have helped demonstrate that even among Republican voters there's a political cost to being anti-gay. In a close election, that might mean a lot.