IGF CultureWatch

The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (known as “ENDA”)
is dead, a victim of Republican opposition, Democratic
indifference, and now the foolishness of the country’s richest and
most prominent gay civil rights organization.

Abandoning common sense, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
announced in early August that it will no longer support federal
legal protection for millions of gay workers unless the tiny number
of transgendered workers get that protection at the same time. The
decision is a slap in the face to gay Americans, who generously
fund HRC, and who will now have to wait even longer for protection
from employment discrimination.

ENDA was first introduced in Congress in 1994. From the
beginning, it has been a carefully calculated compromise between
the need for broad protection from discrimination and the practical
realities of a political world just now getting used to the subject
of homosexuality. From the beginning, it banned only employment
discrimination, not discrimination in housing, education, or public
accommodations. From the beginning, it applied only to relatively
large employers. It exempted religious employers. It banned
quotas.

And from the beginning, ENDA protected workers only from
anti-gay discrimination, not from discrimination for a host of
other reasons, like “gender identity and expression,” which would
include transgendered people.

Until this month, HRC opposed adding gender identity to ENDA. In
the judgment of Capitol Hill vote-counters, including uber-liberals
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), a
transgender-inclusive ENDA could not pass Congress. Adding
transgender protection would, in their judgment, scare off
Republican congressional sponsors already in hot water for
supporting protection for gays. That, in turn, would scare off some
moderate Democrats.

Without the support of at least a few Republicans and
moderate-to-conservative Democrats, ENDA could never pass

"There is very much a stifling effect here at the convention," observed Carole Migden, an openly gay California Board of Equalization member and 2004 Democratic National Convention delegate. "But there is an implicit feeling that there is widespread support for our issues that goes unspoken."

What to make of the Boston Democrats? They really like gay people, but they'd really rather the American public didn't know that. And what of gay Democrats? They're high-minded idealists when they criticize gay Republicans for working within a party that doesn't much like gays; but they're sober-minded pragmatists when assessing their own party's treatment of gays. Yes, they acknowledge, the Boston convention was a retreat from gay visibility at past conventions. But, they quickly add, that's necessary to defeat the evil Republicans.

The contrast to the three previous Democratic conventions was remarkable. In 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton actually used the word "gay" in his convention speeches. In his 2000 acceptance speech, Al Gore specifically endorsed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and hate crimes legislation. In 1996 and 2000, rainbow flags were clearly visible in the convention hall, waving in front of the TV cameras during prime-time speeches.

This year, no rainbow flags on the convention floor in prime time. There were six openly gay speakers, which is good and certainly better than what we'll get at the Republican convention. But none of them appeared during the hours when Americans would actually see them. If you're not heard in prime time, do you make a sound?

I heard "gay" mentioned exactly once in four nights of prime-time coverage. If you didn't know better, and confined your convention-watching to the 8-11 p.m. time slot, you wouldn't have known gays even exist.

Most striking was the complete omission of anything gay in the acceptance speeches of John Edwards and John Kerry. Neither man mentioned gay Americans or gay-related legislation. There was no promise to do anything about lifting the ban on gays in the military, no pledge to work for legislation to protect gay people from employment discrimination or from hate crimes, not a word about lifting the ban on HIV-positive immigrants (a ban Kerry voted for), not one syllable devoted to the recognition of civil unions.

Kerry announced his obligatory respect for diversity in language so general President Bush himself could have used it. He also tried to undermine Republican moralism by claiming to support "family values," which for Democrats means raising taxes to pay for social programs and government-controlled health care.

Then there was Kerry's promise not to "misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States." This passage caused much mirth among gay Democrats, who clung to it as possibly a reference to the Bush-supported Federal Marriage Amendment. That's certainly a reasonable interpretation, and no doubt it's what Kerry wanted gay Americans to understand it to mean.

But, in context, it was oblique. To the casual listener, who heard Kerry denounce Attorney General John Ashcroft, it could have been understood as a critique of the Bush administration's overall record on civil liberties. And, since neither Kerry nor Edwards could be bothered to show up to actually vote against the FMA, why give them the benefit of the interpretive doubt?

It's true the 2004 Democratic platform mentions a few of these things, and that's nice. It's also true that Kerry and Edwards announced gay-supportive positions on these matters during the Democratic primaries, and that's even nicer. But in the months since he secured the Democratic nomination, Kerry has hardly mentioned gay Americans or his supportive stands on gay issues.

To many gay Democrats, none of this matters. Typical was the reaction of D.C. delegate and longtime gay activist Phil Pannell, as quoted in the Washington Blade: "The times are different now from what they were when Clinton and Gore gave their speeches. People who typically would be mad about certain policies or certain omissions in speeches are so determined to defeat Bush that they are willing to not let that bother them."

But it does matter. If Kerry shies away from gay issues now, Republicans will justifiably argue that he has no mandate on them once he's elected.

And if fear of political consequences is enough to silence Kerry and the Democrats now, the same reasons will be used to justify their silence later. Before he's elected, we are told, candidate Kerry must do nothing substantive on gay rights so he can get elected. In 2005 and 2006, we will be told, President Kerry must do nothing substantive on gay issues so the Democrats can win the 2006 congressional election. In 2007 and 2008, we will hear, Kerry must do nothing substantive on gay issues so he can be re-elected. And so on.

What I see developing with the Kerry/Edwards no-show at the FMA vote, with the failure of Kerry and Edwards to discuss any gay-related issue since the primaries, with the relative invisibility of "gay" at the Democratic convention, and now with the gearing up of the old excuse factory for them, is a replay of those halcyon years that gave us "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act.

But, bless his heart, Kerry does have an implicit feeling for us that goes unspoken. He is promising us nothing and it's starting to look like that's just what he'll deliver.

On July 14, the Senate effectively killed the Federal Marriage Amendment. Ninety-eight Senators were there; only two were not. Unfortunately, the absentees were John Kerry and John Edwards-the Democratic presidential ticket.

Both had already made it clear they oppose a constitutional amendment, so why not actually vote against it? The answer they have given is disingenuous; the real reason for their absence should be disturbing to anyone who's hoping a President Kerry might actually take some chances to advance gay equality.

Kerry has missed many Senate votes over the past few months while campaigning. However, when a matter has come up that he cares about or that has important political implications-like a veterans' issue-he has altered his campaign schedule to return to Washington. You can tell what really counts for Kerry simply by listing these moments of campaignus interruptus.

According to a Kerry campaign spokesperson, while the Senate was voting on gay Americans' constitutional future, the Democratic nominee was in Boston "preparing for the convention," whatever that means. In this modern age of telephones, fax machines, and email, it's hard to imagine Kerry couldn't have prepared for the Democratic convention from his Washington Senate office. (Edwards was giving a speech in Des Moines, which is more excusable but hardly Earth-shattering.)

Is a last-minute plane flight from Boston to D.C. prohibitively expensive? I checked Travelocity. With one-day's notice you can get a round-trip ticket starting at $201. According to a friend of mine who has raised funds for Kerry in San Francisco, he's gotten more than half a million dollars from gays in the Bay Area alone.

Here are three common excuses for Kerry's absence.

Excuse No. 1:

The vote was on a procedural motion, not the substance of the amendment.

This is the excuse offered by Kerry and Edwards themselves, who claimed they would have attended an actual vote on the FMA. The implication is that this "mere procedural vote" wasn't very important.

That's nonsense. During the 1960s, the most important votes on civil rights legislation were "procedural" votes to close debate. Nobody who knows how Congress operates thinks they're trivial. They're often the most effective way to defeat legislation.

Everyone understood that the July 14 vote would be tantamount to a vote on the FMA itself; indeed, it was probably the only vote we'll have on the FMA this congressional session, perhaps ever. "We are casting this, as are our enemies, that this is absolutely a vote on the FMA, this is not a procedural vote, this is a substantive vote," said Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Cheryl Jacques on July 6.

You can gauge the significance of the vote by the reaction to it. Gay groups rejoiced; religious conservatives vowed to fight another day. The media played it as a knockout punch, not a technical triumph. Here was the front-page headline in the New York Times: "Senators Block Initiative to Ban Same-Sex Unions; Amendment, Endorsed by Bush, Fails After Days of Debate."

Excuse No. 2:

Kerry's vote wasn't needed to defeat the amendment.

This is true, but irrelevant. It ignores the fact that opponents of the FMA considered it essential not just to win, but to win big. Again, listen to HRC's Jacques, speaking to reporters the week before the vote: "It isn't just about narrowly defeating this measure, it's about winning soundly, sending a clear message to the House and to the states [considering state constitutional amendments] that discrimination is wrong.... [Kerry] will be there."

It was unclear immediately before the vote whether the FMA would get a bare majority, which would've been a symbolic majoritarian victory for its advocates (though still short of the 60 votes they needed for cloture). In the end it was close, but they didn't get a majority. But we didn't know that beforehand, and neither did Kerry.

In fact, over the past few months Kerry has hurried back to Washington to vote on other issues even when his vote wasn't "needed." What was different this time?

Excuse No. 3:

"This effort [to pass the FMA] is about re-electing George Bush and we don't blame John Kerry and John Edwards for not participating."

That's the word-for-word rationale I received from HRC's political director the day after the vote. It not only contradicts what HRC said before the vote (see # 1 and #2 above), but it's no excuse at all. Every anti-gay effort in Congress has both political and ideological aims. If avoiding even small political cost on gay issues is reason enough for Kerry to stand down from a fight, please remind me what the point of supporting him is.

That gets us to the real reason Kerry stayed away. Since he has publicly opposed a federal amendment, he's already paid most of whatever political price that opposition will entail. The GOP will still run commercials against him for it, and Bush will bring it up in the presidential debates. His vote would have increased the political cost only slightly.

Kerry does not believe we're worth that small additional political cost, even on an issue as fundamental as amending the Constitution. And politically it's a safe call for Kerry since he believes we have nowhere to go.

Considering only gay issues, a friendly but utterly uncommitted candidate (Kerry) is still preferable to a committed and hostile one (Bush). But let's have no illusions about the choice, or about the likely fecklessness of a Kerry administration.

Sometime the week of July 12 the U.S. Senate may vote on the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriage across the nation. Since few observers believe the amendment will get the requisite two-thirds super-majority needed to pass, the vote will be a cynical attempt by Republican leaders to make gay marriage a campaign issue. Any Democrat who votes against the amendment is likely to be baited on the issue in the future. John Kerry and John Edwards, both Senators, must rise to the bait.

Let's be clear where the blame for this atrocious amendment lies. It is squarely on the shoulders of the GOP, where all anti-gay rhetoric and legislation in this country are born. Despite the strenuous efforts of the Alliance for Marriage to make the FMA seem a bi-partisan cause, the sponsors are overwhelmingly Republican. In the Senate, the only Democrat to sponsor the amendment was Georgia's Zell Miller, who's a Democrat in name only. With a few noble and principled exceptions, Republicans support the FMA.

Then there's the Democrats. At the national level, they've been cotton candy for the gay civil rights movement. All sweet and no substance, they puff out and then evaporate into nothing. The litany of their failures, and excuses for failure, is familiar. Bill Clinton came in promising big, soothing us with nice words, but delivered little and signed the two most anti-gay pieces of federal legislation ever enacted. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) was a direct consequence of his willingness to talk like a big guy and pay like a little guy. He proposed lifting what had been an executive policy banning military service by open homosexuals, then retreated as soon as he encountered resistance.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned federal recognition of gay marriages, was even worse. Clinton signed the bill as if ashamed of it, then touted his support on Christian radio stations. In typical Clinton fashion, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Democrats almost completely abandoned us on both DADT and DOMA.

On DOMA, there were exactly 14 dissenters among Senate Democrats. One of them was John Kerry. (Edwards wasn't yet in the Senate.) Kerry said that he opposed DOMA because it was "nothing more than gay-bashing on the floor of the Senate." (He also said he thought DOMA was unconstitutional, a view he's since retracted.) He was right. There was no good reason for DOMA, even if one opposed gay marriage on policy grounds. Gay marriage was legal nowhere in the country in 1996. There was little likelihood states would be forced to recognize other states' gay marriages, even if it became legal somewhere.

Similarly, there is no good reason to support the FMA, even if one opposes gay marriage. Sure, gay marriage is now legal in one state, Massachusetts. But that is Massachusetts' business; the states have always defined marriage as they see fit. And if it's judicial activism that bothers you, the states are responsible for policing the excesses of their own courts, as they always have been. So when the FMA comes up for a vote the week of July 12, it will be, to borrow a phrase, "nothing more than gay-bashing on the floor of the Senate."

Kerry and Edwards have announced their opposition to the FMA. They think the matter should be left to the states, which is the sensible position taken by Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign (but retracted this year).

But Kerry and Edwards have not been all light and truth on gay marriage. Both are against it. Kerry opposes it, he says, because, well, he just believes marriage is between a man and a woman and, you know, it's a sacrament. It's the sort of stammering response you get from someone who's saying something just because he thinks it's good politics. I suppose that's better than being opposed in principle to gay marriage because at least it augurs a change when the wind shifts. But it doesn't say much for Kerry's ability to lead.

Worse, Kerry supported amending the Massachusetts constitution to ban gay marriage as long as civil unions were allowed. Think about that for a moment. If the position of the Democrats' standard-bearer were adopted universally, the result would be to ban gay marriage in all 50 states. That's just what the FMA would accomplish.

So when the Senate votes on the FMA, where will Kerry and Edwards be? Up to now, Kerry's been spending all his time running around the country campaigning and raising money, which is perfectly understandable for a candidate in a tight race against a well-funded incumbent president. He's missed a lot of votes over the past few months. But he has come back to Washington to vote when it really mattered to him.

Well, a lot of the money he's been raising the past few months has come from gay people. I suggest that when the FMA comes up for a vote, Kerry and Edwards should take a break from taking our money. This isn't a vote on an appropriation for a new post office in Poughkeepsie. It's about stamping second-class status for gay Americans into our most sacred political document.

This election, we must get more from the Democrats than kind words. We must start to demand real commitment and real progress. The Democratic ticket's vote against the FMA would be a start. It's the least they can do.

For gay Americans, any evaluation of Ronald Reagan's legacy begins and ends with his record on AIDS. According to the conventional view, Reagan was responsible for the deaths of thousands of gay men.

On the official day of national mourning for Reagan, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) closed its office to mourn those who have died of AIDS. NGLTF's executive director, Matt Foreman, issued an open letter blasting Reagan for "years of White House silence and inaction." Eric Rofes, a gay author, complained that Reagan "said nothing and did nothing" about AIDS.

But Foreman and some other critics have gone even further, suggesting that criminal malevolence and anti-gay bigotry drove Reagan administration policies on AIDS. "I wouldn't feel so angry if the Reagan administration's failing was due to ignorance or bureaucratic ineptitude," Foreman wrote in his open letter. "No, ... we knew then it was deliberate."

According to Wayne Besen, a former spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, "we were considered expendable and forsaken by the President." Larry Kramer wrote in The Advocate that Reagan was a "murderer," worse even than Adolf Hitler.

Though exaggerated and somewhat misplaced, the negligence theory is arguable. The malice theory is a calumny.

First, it's untrue that the Reagan administration "said nothing" in response to the disease. In June 1983, a year before the virus that causes AIDS had even been publicly identified, Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, announced at the U.S. Conference of Mayors that the department "considers AIDS its number-one health priority." She specifically praised "the excellent work done by gay networks around the nation" that had spread information about the disease.

Despite the oft-repeated claim that Reagan himself didn't mention AIDS publicly until 1987, he actually first discussed it at a press conference in September 1985. Responding to a reporter's question about the need for more funding, Reagan accurately noted that the federal government had already spent more than half a billion dollars on AIDS up to that point. "So, this is a top priority with us," said Reagan. "Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer."

Still, Reagan could have said more. He could have offered sympathy for the dying. He could have inveighed against discrimination. He could have urged prevention education. A master at using the bully pulpit for causes he believed in, Reagan manifestly failed to use it on the subject of AIDS.

In this, it must be noted, he was hardly alone. Most politicians of the age either failed to grasp the seriousness of AIDS or, grasping it, were reluctant to discuss openly a disease spread primarily through anal sex and dirty needles. For years, New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat presiding over the epicenter of the disease, refused even to meet with AIDS groups. AIDS was not mentioned from the podium of either national party convention in 1984. "Silence" about AIDS was a national failing, not one peculiar to Reagan.

Second, it's untrue that the Reagan administration "did nothing" in response to the disease. Deroy Murdock, a gay-friendly conservative columnist, has reviewed federal spending on AIDS programs during the Reagan years. According to Murdock, annual spending rose from eight million dollars in 1982 to more than $2.3 billion in 1989. In all, the federal government spent almost six billion dollars on AIDS during Reagan's tenure.

It's true that Congress repeatedly added to low-ball Reagan budget requests for AIDS. But that is a familiar dynamic between any White House and any Congress: the White House proposes minimal funding for a program knowing that Congress will add to any proposal. In the 1990's, for example, the Republican Congress added to Bill Clinton's budget requests for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.

Reagan's stinginess on AIDS funding, if that's what it was, was not due to anti-gay malevolence but was an extension of his stinginess on funding other domestic programs.

In this, too, Reagan was not alone. In his book And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts notes that in 1983 New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a hero to liberals, nixed (on fiscal grounds) the Republican-dominated state senate's bid to spend $5.2 million on AIDS research and prevention programs. Cuomo's state health commissioner responded to criticism by saying that hypertension was a more important health issue for the state.

Yes, we could have spent more, but that can always be said of federal spending. And it's unclear that additional funding would have accomplished much. "You could have poured half the national budget into AIDS in 1983, and it would have gone down a rat hole," says Michael Fumento, an author specializing in health and science issues. We simply didn't know enough about the disease early on to spend huge sums wisely.

Gay journalist Bob Roehr, who has closely followed AIDS developments for 20 years, concurs. "I have little reason to believe that a different course of action by Reagan would have significantly altered the scientific state of knowledge" toward a "cure" or vaccine, he says.

Aside from spending, it was Reagan's surgeon general who sent the first-ever bulletin to all American homes warning explicitly about AIDS transmission. Reagan created the first presidential commission dealing with AIDS. And, in 1988, Reagan barred discrimination against federal employees with HIV.

As for Reagan being a murderer, we should remember that he didn't give anybody AIDS. We ourselves bear the lion's share of responsibility for that.

When Ronald Reagan died on June 5, many gay Americans lost no tears. The conventional view in gay political circles is that Reagan, a strong conservative, was virulently anti-gay. In this view, Reagan was propelled to office by the newly powerful religious right, and repaid that support with socially conservative administration appointments and policies. (Most unforgivably, according to the conventional view, Reagan did nothing while thousands of gay men died of AIDS. That's a charge I'll address in my next column.) The truth about Reagan and gays, however, is more complicated.

Start with the notion that Reagan himself was anti-gay. Like most of us, Reagan reflected the prejudices of his times. Born in 1911, he grew up in a small-town world that misunderstood and feared homosexuality. He was 62 by the time homosexuality was removed from the official list of mental disorders. According to biographer Lou Cannon, Reagan shared the common view of his time that homosexuality was a sickness. He was not above telling jokes about gays.

Still, perhaps because he worked with gay actors in Hollywood and had gay friends, Reagan was relatively tolerant. Cannon notes that Reagan was "respectful of the privacy of others" and was "not the sort of person who bothers about what people do in their own bedrooms." This attitude was consistent with Reagan's larger philosophical commitment to individual liberty and limited government.

Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis (the politically liberal one), recounted on Time magazine's website that she and her father once watched an awkward kiss between Doris Day and Rock Hudson in a movie. Reagan explained to his daughter that the closeted Hudson would have preferred to kiss a man. "This was said in the same tone that would be used if he had been telling me about people with different colored eyes," recalled Davis, "and I accepted without question that this whole kissing thing wasn't reserved just for men and women."

During Reagan's presidency the first openly gay couple spent a night together in the White House. In a column for The Washington Post on March 18, 1984, Robert Kaiser described the sleep-over: "[The Reagans'] interior decorator, Ted Graber, who oversaw the redecoration of the White House, spent a night in the Reagans' private White House quarters with his male lover, Archie Case, when they came to Washington for Nancy Reagan's 60th birthday party. . . . Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that Ronald Reagan is a closet tolerant."

Tolerance is not acceptance, however, and Reagan made it clear in speeches that he would not cross the line to the latter. Said Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign: "My criticism is that [the gay movement] isn't just asking for civil rights; it's asking for recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone, nor can I."

Aside from his tolerant personal attitude, Reagan's actual record on civil liberties for gays was surprisingly good. Cannon reports that Reagan was "repelled by the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing politics in the late 1970s."

In 1978, for example, Reagan vigorously opposed a California ballot initiative sponsored by religious conservatives that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the public schools. The timing is significant because he was then preparing to run for president, a race in which he would need the support of conservatives and moderates very uncomfortable with homosexual teachers. As Cannon puts it, Reagan was "well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue" but nevertheless "chose to state his convictions."

Reagan penned an op-ed against the so-called Briggs Initiative in which he wrote, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this." This was a remarkably progressive thing for a politician, especially a conservative one about to run for president, to say in 1978. The Briggs Initiative was overwhelmingly defeated. Its sponsors blamed Reagan for the defeat.

Nor does Reagan's record as president support the view that he was strongly anti-gay. Reagan was not much worse on gay issues than Jimmy Carter, his opponent in 1980, who avoided even meeting with gay groups. Walter Mondale, Reagan's opponent in 1984, received only tepid gay support, according to gay activist Urvashi Vaid in her book Virtual Equality. Neither Carter nor Mondale made support for any gay rights measure an issue in their respective campaigns, though their party's platform included a gay rights plank.

The military's ban on service by homosexuals was firmly in place long before Reagan became president. It remained in force during his tenure, of course, but discharges for homosexuality declined every single year of Reagan's presidency, suggesting the administration wasn't interested in anti-gay witch-hunts.

It's true that no pro-gay legislation, like an employment non-discrimination bill, made headway during the Reagan years. But anti-gay legislation also made little progress. Reagan often talked the talk of religious conservatism, but he did not often walk the walk.

His priorities were elsewhere: reviving the country's morale, strengthening national defense to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War, limiting the growth of the federal government, and boosting the economy. At each of these, Reagan succeeded brilliantly. Gays, like all other Americans, continue to benefit from his legacy.

The movement for gay equality in America has come in four basic stages. Each of these stages made a distinct contribution. Each was marked by its own missteps. Each provoked stiff resistance. Each suffered stinging defeats. But each ultimately advanced the cause and prepared the way for the next stage. With the recognition of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts - the first time a state has done so - we have entered the final stage of the gay rights movement.

Stage 1: Emergence

The first stage of the movement covered roughly the middle of the twentieth century up to the time of the Stonewall riot in New York in June, 1969. We might call this stage "Emergence," since it's when homosexuals began to emerge from the closet and to organize politically for the first time.

The atmosphere in the country during the Emergence period was harshly repressive. Homosexuality was considered not just sinful, but a mental disorder. All 50 states had sodomy laws directed and enforced primarily against gay sex. Raids on gay bars were common. Known homosexuals were forbidden in many states to obtain professional and business licenses. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable.

In the face of repression, a few extraordinarily courageous individuals declared that homosexuals were perfectly normal. They formed the first gay political and educational groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. It was during this period that the American Law Institute recommended eliminating sodomy laws, and Illinois became the first state to do so, in 1961.

Stage 2: Liberation

Stonewall marked a new and more radical stage in the gay rights movement. We might call this stage "Liberation," since the gay movement appropriated the rhetoric and methods of other "liberation" movements for women and racial minorities. Liberation is also an appropriate moniker for this second stage because the movement emphasized separation from mainstream American society and institutions through unbridled sexual freedom and revolutionary critiques of existing customs and ways of living. For many activists of this period, fighting for marriage would have seemed like a surrender to heterosexual norms.

During the Liberation period, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders, many more states eliminated their sodomy laws, gay publications and organizations mushroomed, the first openly gay officials were elected, and a few localities banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Yet this second stage engendered a ferocious backlash, led by a newly self-conscious movement of social conservatives now known as the religious right. Anita Bryant infamously led successful drives to repeal gay rights ordinances in places like Miami and St. Paul.

Stage 3: Tolerance

The heady and optimistic second stage of the gay rights movement ended with the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. AIDS soon sapped almost the entire energy of the movement. Gay advocates shifted from emphasizing freedom and separation to emphasizing caring, responsibility, community, and commitment - the preconditions for the development of a marriage ethic. At the same time, the brutal process of dying from a disease identified almost entirely with gay men brought many homosexuals out of the closet for the first time. The protest group ACT-UP, whose antics were sometimes childish and counter-productive, transformed the American medical establishment to be more responsive to patients' needs for care and life-saving drugs.

While some Americans responded to AIDS by calling for quarantines, the predominant reaction was one of sympathy and support. We could call the third stage of the gay-rights movement "Tolerance," since Americans now opposed many forms of discrimination yet a majority remained convinced that homosexuality was morally wrong.

During the Tolerance period, many more civil rights laws were passed, corporate America led the way to the equal treatment of gay couples, and sodomy laws were finally vanquished. Gay couples began to demand benefits, leading to the creation of private and public domestic partnerships and, toward the end of the third stage, civil unions in Vermont. Still, there were reverses, including the codification of the military's gay ban and a federal ban on recognizing gay marriages.

Stage 4: Acceptance?

On May 17, 2004, the day Massachusetts began recognizing same-sex marriages, we entered what I expect will be the end stage of the gay rights movement.

As in each stage of the gay rights movement before this one, gay advocates will be guilty of excesses and will suffer serious setbacks. Beginning this November, we are going to be plastered in a series of anti-gay-marriage initiatives on state ballots around the country. Gay marriage will temporarily win a battle here and there in a few courts, but will overwhelmingly lose. For a time, legislatures will bottle-up or defeat gay marriage bills even in gay-friendly states, like California.

Gay marriage may even lose its toehold in Massachusetts come November 2006, when citizens there may vote on a state constitutional amendment. But I doubt it, and even if we lose in Massachusetts gay marriage will resurface somewhere before long. Having seen that gay marriage causes no harm and brings much joy, Americans will allow it, by fits and starts, to sweep the country.

By the time that happens, perhaps 30 years from now, the need for an organized gay rights movement in this country will be gone. There will still be bigotry and ignorance to fight, in America and around the world, but the heavy political and legal lifting will have been done.

History can't be written before it happens, and there is nothing inevitable about progress. But, if it turns out as I expect, this final phase should be called "Acceptance," since it will end in gays' full inclusion in the nation's legal and social life.

Will gay marriage lead to polygamy? "If we take the step of allowing gay marriages," we are told, "we will slide down a slippery slope to polygamy." For the most part, gay-marriage advocates have been flustered trying to respond to this argument. Often, we respond with something dismissive like, "Don't be ridiculous!" Slippery-slope arguments must be scrutinized with care because the public often believes them and because they divert attention from the core issue: whether gay marriage itself would be a good or bad thing. While the polygamy argument has some superficial appeal, it ultimately doesn't work.

Slippery-slope arguments take the following form: "Proposal X contains within it a principle. That principle not only supports Proposal X but would also support Proposal Y. An honest person supporting Proposal X must therefore also support Proposal Y. While Proposal X may or may not be bad in itself, Proposal Y would surely be very bad. So to avoid adopting Proposal Y, we must not adopt Proposal X."

Substitute "gay marriage" for Proposal X and "polygamous marriage" for Proposal Y and you have a slippery-slope argument against gay marriage.

There are three possible stock responses to every slippery-slope argument. First, one might argue that the supposedly horrible destination(s) down at the bottom of the slope are not so bad, so we need not fear the slide. Second, one could argue that the slope may slide both ways, so that if we do not take the step proposed we may be in danger of sliding down the other side of the policy hill, which would be bad. Third, one could argue that we will not slide down the slippery slope if we take the step proposed because there is a principled stopping point preventing us from reaching the bottom.

In the gay marriage debate, the first stock response would involve arguing that polygamy is unobjectionable. That's an unattractive reply for reasons I'll explain below in connection with response three. The second stock response would involve claiming that if we repress gay marriage, there is nothing to stop us from prohibiting other marriages, like those involving people of different races or infertile people. This second response is the kind of argument lawyers love to make, but is not likely to impress many people as a reason to support same-sex marriage.

It's the third response - that there is a principled stopping point preventing the slide toward polygamy - that best refutes the slippery-slope argument. The argument for gay marriage is indeed an argument for a liberalization of marriage rules. But it is not a call to open marriage to anyone and everyone, any more than the fight against anti-miscegenation laws was a call to open marriage to anyone and everyone.

So, formulating the principled stopping-point, we should ask why the recognition of a new form of monogamous marriage would lead to the revival of polygamous marriage, which has been rejected in most societies that once practiced it? What is "the principle" supporting gay marriage that will lead us to accept multi-partner marriage?

One possible principle uniting the two is that gay marriage, like polygamous marriage, extends marriage beyond partners who may procreate as partners. But that doesn't work because procreation is already not a requirement of marriage. Sterile opposite-sex couples have already taken that step down the slope for us.

A second possible principle uniting gay marriage and polygamous marriage is that both exalt adult love and needs as the basis for marriage. Yet this step down the slope has also already been taken by straight couples. Marriage for the past century or so in the West has become companionate, based on love and commitment. Among straight (and gay) couples, children are a common but not necessary element of the arrangement. So even if gay marriage were justified solely by the love same-sex partners have for one another, recognizing such relationships would be more analogous to taking a step to one side on a slope already partially descended, not an additional step down the slope.

Still, how do we avoid polygamy? Here is where many advocates of gay marriage run into trouble. If we claim that gay couples must be allowed to marry simply because they love each other, there is indeed no principled reason to reject multi-partner marriages. Multiple partners in a relationship are capable of loving each other.

But satisfying individual needs is not "the principle" supporting gay marriage. Instead, gay-marriage advocates should argue that any proposal for the expansion of marriage must be good both (1) for the individuals involved and (2) for the society in which they live. Gay marriage meets both of these criteria. The case for polygamous marriage is distinguishable (and weaker) on both counts, especially the second.

On the first issue - the effect of recognition on the individuals involved - the deprivation to gays of the gay marriage ban is greater than the deprivation to polygamists of the polygamy ban. A polygamist may still marry someone if we ban polygamy; he simply may not marry many someones. The deprivation to the polygamist is large, especially if polygamy involves the exercise of his religious faith, but not total. The gay person, however, has no realistic choice of a mate available under a gay-marriage ban. The deprivation is total.

Further, there is no "polygamous orientation" causing a person to need the close companionship of multiple partners (though some people may prefer it). There is, however, a homosexual orientation, causing a person to need the close companionship of a same-sex partner. The ban on polygamous marriage is the denial of a preference, perhaps a strong one; the ban on gay marriage is the denial of personhood itself.

On the second issue - the effect of recognition on society - the differences between gay marriage and polygamous marriage are more pronounced. There is ample evidence that people who live in stable, committed couples are healthier, happier, and wealthier than those who are single. Gay marriage is a good idea because it will benefit not only the gay couple but their families, friends, neighbors, and taxpayers whose burdens to care for the gay partners singly would be greater.

While multi-partner marriages might benefit the partners involved, the much greater potential for jealousy and rivalry among the partners make for a volatile arrangement, reducing the expected benefits to them and to everyone else. In a multi-partner marriage, it may be unclear who has primary caretaking responsibility if a partner becomes sick or injured; there is no such uncertainty in a two-person marriage. While we have some evidence that children do well when raised by same-sex couples, we have no evidence they do well when raised in communal living arrangements. Since multi-partner marriages will almost always take the form of one man having many wives, they present special risks of exploitation and subordination of women, which is inconsistent with our society's commitment to sex equality.

Perhaps none of these considerations is a decisive argument against polygamous marriages. But at the very least they suggest that gay marriage and polygamous marriage present very different issues. Each should be evaluated on its own merits, not treated as if one is a necessary extension of the other.

Will gay marriage produce more homosexuals? For many who oppose gay marriage, the prospect that it will lead more people to homosexuality is a powerful (if often unstated) reason to oppose it. They need not fear: gay marriage is unlikely to have that effect, though it will probably make it seem as if there are more homosexuals. But even if gay marriage did have the effect of increasing the number of homosexuals in the population, that would not be reason by itself to oppose gay marriage.

Gay marriage will likely affect public attitudes about homosexuality. Gays will be seen in stable, committed, long-term relationships. Those relationships will enjoy as much respect as the law can provide because they will be accorded rights, privileges, and protections equal to heterosexual marriages. They will be called marriages, both in the law and in our culture. This will provide a language of ritual in which to speak about gay relationships that is familiar to straight Americans. Gay couples will no longer be "partners," but spouses or husbands or wives. Gay couples will have engagements, weddings, and honeymoons. These words will be used, for the first time, without winks and nods, without knowing exaggeration.

We can expect, therefore, that over time gay marriage will have the effect of softening opposition to homosexuality in general. It will help alleviate some of the stigma that attaches to homosexuality.

That is not the only, or even the primary, reason to support gay marriage. The better reasons to support it are:

• to encourage long-term coupling among gay men and women,
• to reduce the individual and social miseries often associated with being single,
• to protect existing gay couples from significant legal and social disadvantage, and
• to support the children raised in gay families.

But reducing the hatred of homosexuals will certainly be a welcome consequence of recognizing gay marriages.

For some, however, this positive byproduct of gay marriage carries a significant risk. Gay marriage, in this view, will be a subsidy for homosexuality. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something you get more of it. Similarly, stigma is now part of the cost of homosexuality. Reduce the cost of something and you get more demand for it. Presto, more homosexuals.

Everything we have learned about human sexual orientation in the past half century confounds this seemingly logical conclusion. Human sexual orientation appears to be both unchosen and unchangeable. Whether it is biologically or genetically determined, or simply set at a very young age, sexual orientation does not respond to social influences designed to lead it in a different direction. Efforts to "treat" or to "convert" homosexuals have a long history of failure and no reliable evidence of success.

Further, we have no good evidence for the existence of "waverers," people whose sexual orientation is on the line between homosexuality and heterosexuality and who may be led in one direction or the other by social and personal influences. Homosexuals are not created by seduction, recruitment, or propaganda.

As conservative legal scholar and federal judge Richard Posner has concluded, homosexuality appears "to be no more common in tolerant than in repressive societies." For example, there is no evidence that the relative acceptance of homosexuality in the Netherlands and Belgium, both of which recognize gay marriage, has caused an increase in the number of homosexuals.

So gay marriage will not likely increase the number of homosexuals; it will, however, increase levels of happiness among existing homosexuals. How could that be a bad thing?

By helping to reduce the stigma of homosexuality, gay marriage will also increase the proportion of homosexuals who are open and honest about their sexual orientation. That's because the potential costs of being out - like losing a job, alienating family members and friends, and risking hate violence - will be less likely. So after gay marriage is recognized, it may well seem there are more homosexuals than before.

Perhaps, however, even if gay marriage does not increase the number of homosexuals it will increase the amount of homosexual sexual activity. Again, this would count as a significant cost of gay marriage to many who oppose it.

Would gay marriage lead to an increase in homosexual sexual activity? It is hard to say. On the one hand, we could conjecture that the stigma-reducing effect of gay marriage may lead to more homosexual experimentation, and at a younger age, by homosexuals and even by heterosexuals.

On the other hand, gay marriage may reduce homosexual activity in other ways. As I have argued, gay marriage would not be a subsidy for homosexuality in general because sexual orientation is immune to a system of rewards and punishments. But gay marriage will be a subsidy for homosexual monogamy. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something you get more of it.

So the overall effect of gay marriage may be neither a net gain nor a net loss in homosexual activity.

All of this discussion is predicated on the assumption that there is something bad about homosexuality; otherwise, there would be nothing to fear from an increase in the number of homosexuals or homosexual activity.

And the judgment that homosexuality is somehow bad rests, in turn, on essentially religious grounds. Try as they might to resist this characterization of their position, religion is what opponents of gay marriage must ultimately base their case upon.

Many opponents of gay marriage do so on the grounds that marriage exists primarily for raising children, and that gay couples cannot satisfy this purpose. A strong version of this point holds that gay parents are incompetent to raise children, and perhaps are even dangerous to them (the "competence argument"). A milder version claims that opposite-sex married couples are optimal for child-rearing (the "optimality argument"). The competence argument is factually unsupported and contravened by the laws of every state. The optimality argument may or may not be correct, but either way is irrelevant to the controversy over gay marriage.

The competence argument asserts that children raised by gay parents, as compared to those raised by heterosexual parents, are:

• at higher risk emotionally and cognitively;
• are more apt to be confused about their sexual and gender identity; and
• are more likely to be molested.

Gays, therefore, ought not to raise children.

Since marriage includes a presumptive right to have and raise children, either through conception or adoption, gays ought to be denied marriage. The happiness and needs of gay couples do not justify putting children at risk.

If the competence argument is correct, states should bar gays altogether from parenting. Yet while judges sometimes use homosexuality as one factor among many in making custody and visitation determinations, no state categorically bars gays from raising children. Only one state, Florida, prohibits gays from adopting children. However, even Florida permits gays to raise their own biological children, to obtain custody of children, and to be long-term foster parents. In short, no state has made the policy judgment embodied by the competence argument.

In fact, the strong trend in the country is toward the relaxation of rules disfavoring gay parenting. About half of the states now recognize two-parent adoptions in which same-sex partners both adopt a child. Gay parenting is common. More than one million children are now being raised by gay parents, singly or in couples, in this country. According to the 2000 census, about one-fourth of all same-sex-couple households include children.

The available studies on the effects of gay parenting, while not methodologically perfect, seriously undermine the competence argument. While the studies may not yet prove that gays are just as good as heterosexuals at raising children, they point strongly to the conclusion that gays are at least minimally competent parents.

In a review of 21 studies of gay parenting, sociologists Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz concluded that "every relevant study to date shows that parental sexual orientation per se has no measurable effect on the quality of parent-child relationships or on children's mental health or social adjustment." The minor observed differences between children raised by gay parents and those raised by straight parents "either favor children raised by lesbigay parents, are secondary effects of social prejudice, or represent "difference' of the sort democratic societies should respect and protect." While more work must be done to shore up these conclusions, a strong provisional judgment can be made that the competence argument is factually baseless.

A milder version of the child-rearing objection to gay marriage maintains that even if gays should not be completely barred from parenting, married heterosexual couples should be strongly preferred. This optimality argument holds that, all else being equal, children do best when raised by a married mother and father.

In contrast to the competence argument, there is at least some empirical basis for the optimality argument. There is substantial evidence that children raised in married households are on average happier, healthier, and wealthier than children raised by single parents or by unmarried cohabiting parents. This probably has something to do with the legal and social support marriage provides.

Still, this is shaky empirical support for the optimality argument. There is no good study comparing children raised in married households with children raised by same-sex couples. And, because gay marriage is forbidden, there is no study comparing children raised by opposite-sex married couples with children raised by same-sex married couples.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that opposite-sex married couples provide the optimal environment for child-rearing. That is still no argument against gay marriage. First, even if a primary purpose of marriage is to facilitate child-rearing, it is not an indispensable purpose, as the many childless married couples can attest.

Second, gay marriage won't take any children from mothers and fathers who want to raise them. Consider: there is no shortage of children in the country. There are not enough married couples to raise them all. That's why states allow sub-optimal parenting by singles (gay and straight) and unmarried couples (gay and straight). Almost everyone agrees these sub-optimal arrangements are better than orphanages or foster care, where the outcomes for children are often terrible.

No serious person advocates removing all children from gay parents. So whether or not gay marriage is allowed, children will continue to be raised by gay parents. The only question is, Will these children be raised in homes that may enjoy the protections and benefits of marriage? If it's better for children to be raised by a married opposite-sex couple than by an unmarried opposite-sex couple, it would surely be better for children to be raised by a married same-sex couple than by an unmarried same-sex couple. That's the relevant comparison, not the comparison of married straight couples to gay couples.

If it's really concern for children that's motivating opponents of gay marriage, they ought to rethink their conclusion. They should be pounding the table for gay marriage.