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In the wake of Ann Coulter's use of the word "faggot" to describe presidential candidate John Edwards, the basis of her original joke-however poorly received-was easily forgotten. She had claimed that those who use the slur have to go into rehab, a reference to the exploits of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" star Isaiah Washington, who called one of his gay cast members the f-word last October on the set of the show.

Washington, immediately castigated by organizations like the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, apologized. But not long after, at the Golden Globe awards, Washington told reporters that the incident, "Never happened, never happened." Washington apologized again, and at the behest of his corporate overlords at ABC, said he would seek counseling to cure him of his homophobia.

Yet on March 2, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People gave Washington a coveted Image Award, annually doled out to people of color working in the entertainment industry.

On its own, Coulter's remark was not in poor taste. Imagine how much gays would be laughing if a drag queen had said it. But what was so damaging about Coulter's use of the word was that it validated, for conservative activists who make up the Republican Party base, the unapologetic ridicule and dehumanization of gay people. Coulter is a bestselling author and a popular speaker in Republican circles, no matter how much respectable conservatives may wish to disassociate themselves and the movement from her.

Similarly, the NAACP's decision to award a bigot such as Washington with an honor that has in the past been given to the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and Oprah Winfrey sends the wrong message to a largely black audience, as it essentially validates the use of bigoted language.

But don't expect the national gay organizations-always loyal to the codes of political correctness-to issue some sort of disapproval of the NAACP. Unswerving loyalty to fellow progressive organizations is the sine qua non of gay rights activism today. On its web site, the NAACP describes the Image Awards as the "nation's premier event celebrating the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice." Awarding someone who calls a co-worker a "faggot," lies about it and then lamely checks himself into rehab is hardly the paragon of "social justice."

It should be noted that GLAAD issued a press release on Paris Hilton's use of the word "nigger," revealed in an amateur video (where all of the debutante's exploits seem to arise) shot several years ago. While the brainless, racist musings of the poor man's Anna Nicole Smith invoke the outrage of GLAAD, the homophobic (and thus, more pertinent for a gay organization) bigotry of a star on a highly rated network television show merits less outrage.

It is no secret that homophobia is especially prevalent among African-Americans. A 2003 study of 31 national surveys over an almost 30-year period found that, "Blacks appear to be more likely than Whites to both see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay rights laws," which at first may appear paradoxical, but makes sense in light of the centuries-long legal discrimination that blacks faced in this country.

But support for gay civil rights does not negate the detrimental effect that attitudinal homophobia has on African-American society. Michael Paul Williams, a black columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, noted last week that "if the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military remains a bastion of homophobia, the black community is no slouch in that department."

Imagine the outrage from black Americans if a white television star (irrespective of sexual orientation) called a black co-star a "nigger." The white actor's career would be ruined no matter how earnestly he processed himself through the public shaming ritual that our country has perfected, presided over by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The NAACP's decision to recognize Washington with an award led the Hollywood gossip blog TMZ to speculate, "perhaps there's hope that Michael Richards will get a GLAAD Award" for infamously using the word "nigger" during his act of self-destruction at a comedy club last year.

The NAACP has a long and venerable history of fighting for equal rights under the law, exemplifying the historic change that can result from moral suasion. Honoring a bigot thus goes against everything for which the organization stands.

With the passing of former President Gerald Ford last week at the age of 93, Republicans and Democrats have joined in bipartisan praise of the man who led the country through the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.

President Bush praised Ford as "a man of complete integrity" whose "life was a blessing to America." Conservative politicians, activists and journalists across the country echoed this sentiment. But in their encomiums to the late president, they have conveniently left out one important fact: in his later years, Ford was a prominent ­- though hardly outspoken - supporter of gay rights.

In a 2001 interview with the Detroit News, Ford said, "I have always believed in an inclusive policy, in welcoming gays and others into the party. I think the party has to have an umbrella philosophy if it expects to win elections."

But his support for gay rights was not just a matter of strategic concern; it had a moral basis as well. "I think they ought to be treated equally. Period," the straight-talking ex-President of firm, Midwestern-values said.

With Ford, there was none of the evasiveness that we hear from the current president, who speaks of the gay marriage issue with words like "civility" and "decency," while supporting unreconstructed, anti-gay policies. Nor did Ford have any problem saying the word "gay," one that President Bush has shown incredible reticence in uttering.

In 2001, Ford joined the short-lived Republican Unity Coalition, an organization dedicated to making sexual orientation a "non-issue" in the GOP. Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson served as chair of the organization, and other prominent members included John Danforth, Mary Matalin and Diane Ravitch.

Following the coverage of Ford's passing in the mainstream media, one would have difficulty coming across any mention of his unprecedented support for gay rights. In a symposium on the web site of the leading conservative magazine National Review, not one of the nine conservative historians or journalists that the publication invited to share words on Ford mentioned this interview. Indeed, finding a conservative commentator or politician - aside, of course, from the Log Cabin Republicans - mentioning Ford's support for gay rights has been a futile effort.

That a former United States president would come out, essentially, in favor of gay marriage is no small thing. That he was a rock-solid Republican ought to give conservatives pause before launching into their next attack on the "homosexual agenda."

Gerald Ford was an honest, decent man who did a great service to his country in one of its most troubled times. In his statements on gay rights, he showed a better side of the Republican Party, one we have not seen much of lately, yet Ford reminds us what the party could still become. Ford's support for gay civil rights might have something to do with the fact that the man who saved his life from a 1975 assassination attempt in San Francisco, former Marine and Vietnam veteran Oliver Sipple, was gay.

When Ford took office in 1974, he assured the country that "our long national nightmare" - Watergate - was over. One day, when more Republicans show the same sense of fairness that Ford demonstrated, the door will be closed on our country's long, national nightmare of treating gay people like second-class citizens.

Believe it or not, in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race, Bay State governor and presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights.

That Romney would have run to the left of Ted Kennedy - who so corpulently embodies the catchphrase "big government" - on any issue, never mind one as loaded as gay rights, might sound preposterous, but it's all in writing.

Last week, Bay Windows, a Boston gay newspaper, reprinted excerpts from a letter Romney wrote to the Log Cabin Republicans in 1994, hoping to gain the group's support in his campaign against the veteran Democratic lawmaker and Massachusetts institution.

"If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern," Romney wrote. "My opponent cannot do this. I can and will."

Romney lost that race by a wide margin, but came closer to defeating Kennedy than had any previous challenger in recent memory. Romney's support for the gay community did not end with his loss, however, as his political aspirations dictated otherwise. At the Boston Gay Pride Parade in 2002, when he ran for governor, Romney supporters marched and handed out fliers stating, "Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend."

Twelve years later, Ted Kennedy actually supports "equality for gays and lesbians" as he has been a forthright backer of gay marriage and an outspoken opponent of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has made himself the poster boy for conservative opposition to gay marriage, conveniently positioned as he is at the geographical epicenter of the debate. The thought of Romney attending a Pride parade today is unthinkable. It is unlikely he would make it out alive.

Rather than making gay equality a mainstream concern, Romney has used the gays whom he was courting just four years ago as part of his nationwide comedy routine. That Romney is supposedly the lone sane person in a commonwealth full of radicals has become the crux of his presidential narrative. His stock line at GOP fundraising dinners across the country is that his being governor of Massachusetts is akin to being a "cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."

Romney won the governorship there in 2002 on reformist credentials; he parachuted in not long after cleaning up the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City Olympics.

Romney's flip-flop on gay rights is part and parcel with a radical shift toward the right in his single term as Massachusetts governor. In a 1994 interview with Bay Windows, when asked about his views toward "conservative Republicans like Pat Robertson or Jesse Helms," Romney came just short of decrying them outright. Yet the mention of those men's names conjured the memory of his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, "fighting to keep the John Birch Society from playing too strong a role in the Republican Party," and his walking out of the 1964 GOP convention after presidential nominee Barry Goldwater pronounced that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Since this interview, Romney has appeared as a guest on Robertson's popular Christian television program "700 Club" and has made outreach to religious conservatives a crucial part of his campaign.

Poor Mitt Romney. As he will soon discover, the evangelical Christian right will brook no opposition to their "values" agenda. They can spot a phony when they see one and are not so cynical as to endorse a charlatan like Romney over someone who has a track record on their issues. There are other potential candidates who fit their bill, who lack the baggage of past expressions of pro-gay support. Sen. Sam Brownback immediately comes to mind.

Romney was unmistakable in his support for gay equality in 1994, and that he would now come out in favor of laws that explicitly ban gay equality indicates one of two possibilities: that his views about the rights of gays underwent a complete and utter transformation in a four-year period or that Romney did the math and figured that he would have a better chance of winning his party's nomination if he ran to the right of John McCain.

So, is Mitt Romney a hypocrite, an opportunist or a nihilist? Can I choose all three?

The month of November was one of fault and redemption for the state of Israel, recognizable through the prism of the lives of its gay citizens.

The fault lay in the response by small, yet vocal, segments of the Orthodox Jewish community to the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, originally scheduled for Nov. 10. Though this was to be the city's fifth annual parade, ultra-religious Orthodox youth took to the streets in the weeks before in violent rioting and some rabbis denounced the event as an abomination on Judaism's holiest city.

This outrage was nothing new for Israel. Last year an Orthodox man stabbed three parade-goers and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Ultimately, parade organizers reached a compromise with the city's police (who were not opposed to a parade on principle but were fearful at the possibility of violence) and held a rally at a Jerusalem soccer stadium.

In an ironic ecumenical twist, religious fundamentalists from both the Jewish and Muslim communities came together to condemn the parade. It's disappointing that this unusual and erstwhile cooperation was motivated by a common bigotry, rather than, say, a shared realization that terrorism and military occupation is hurting both Israelis and Palestinians. Yet finding peace in the Middle East has always proved more difficult than raining down epithets on the gays, reliable targets for fundamentalists of all confessional stripes.

The Lord, however, does work in mysterious ways. A mere two weeks after the riots, redemption came in the form of a 6-1 decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling that gay couples legally married outside of Israel must receive recognition by the country's marriage registry.

The response from ultra-religious members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, was vocal. "We don't have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here," one member remarked. Yet Israel will continue to thrive as a Jewish state not in spite of, but because of this decision.

Watching the various reactions to these events, the diversity and contradictions of Israel could not have been made more clear. Two hostile and always-competing values of Israeli society were on display: intolerance and pluralism. Those Jews who burned cars and streetlights in riots leading up to the Gay Pride parade proved themselves to be just as fanatical as the Muslim fundamentalists they often criticize. The court's decision moved Israel away from religiously sanctioned discrimination (de facto law in the Arab world) and in the direction of the progressive West, once again demonstrating that Israel stands alone among Middle Eastern countries as a place where gay people live in dignity.

Having just returned from my first visit to Israel, I was amazed at its vibrancy. Contrary to the image that many anti-Zionists purport, Israel is not some white, colonialist settler state oppressing dark-skinned Palestinians, as comforting as this image might seem to those with stubborn leftist political agendas. A great portion of Israelis claim Middle Eastern and African backgrounds; Israel is not an ethnically pure nation of Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin).

Let it never be said the religiously pious are completely lacking in a sense of humor. One young, observant Jewish man I spoke with delivered a characteristically Jewish response to the events surrounding the canceling of the Gay Pride parade: It was not the abomination of sodomy, necessarily, that the ultra-Orthodox opposed, but rather the threat that the parade might prompt the return of the World Pride festival, (originally scheduled for August of this year but canceled in the wake of the recent Lebanon war).

"We don't want all those foreign gays coming here to take our gays," he laughed. In other words: we want our Jewish boys to find other nice Jewish boys. Apparently the threat of intermarriage - the precursor to the dreaded phenomenon of assimilation - traverses sexual orientation.

Last week's court decision was a step forward not only for the state of Israel, but for Jewish people the world over. As a Jew and a Zionist, I could not have been more proud.

With just one word, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah revealed last week what really lies at the heart of the anti-gay marriage agenda. Hatch assured his fellow lawmakers in a debate over the Marriage Protection Amendment:

This might not be a major issue for those who live inside the beltway, but for my neighbors in Salt Lake City, my constituents throughout Utah, and good, decent, clean Americans across the country, this is a critical issue.

"Clean?" What, pray tell, does that make those who of us who oppose the amendment? You do the math.

Remarkably, this slip was hardly remarked upon by the media. The only journalist to note it was Michael Crowley of the New Republic, who mentioned it briefly on the magazine's blog (here and here).

A day after posting Hatch's comment, Crowley discovered that Hatch had erased the word "clean" from his remarks in the Congressional Record. Whatever Hatch meant by the remark, he and his staff decided it was best for his reputation and his cause that the public not know what he actually said.

Those who oppose gay marriage talk about how extending the institution to gay couples will destroy it and lead to polygamy, out-of-wedlock births, higher divorce rates and other horrors. Hatch's insinuation that those who support gay marriage - and more specifically, gays - are dirty, is something conservatives used to say openly but now hardly do.

It's certainly possible to find homosexual sodomy to be a revolting practice personally, and not be homophobic. Many gay-friendly straight men would probably fall into that category. They have gay friends, support gay marriage, watch "Will & Grace," but would rather not think about two men having sex. Who can blame them?

Likewise, gay men who find sex with women to be disgusting could hardly be faulted as heterophobic. After all, that is what makes them gay. But to employ your personal distaste about someone else's private, consensual sexual preferences in an attempt to deny them rights is bigotry pure and simple.

Of course, not all those who oppose gay marriage are bigots. If this were the case, Howard Dean and most otherwise gay-friendly Democratic members of Congress would be bigots.

One Democrat who does support marriage equality, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, did not help constructive debate when he said a vote for the amendment was "a vote for bigotry." With the vast majority of Americans opposed to gay couples marrying, we will win little sympathy by smearing everyone who disagrees as a bigot.

There are legitimate arguments against allowing gay couples to legally wed, some of which have been put forward by gays themselves. Kennedy painted with a broad brush.

But he is nonetheless right that bigotry motivates at least some of those who oppose marriage equality. Kennedy's remark infuriated Hatch, who asked whether the Massachusetts Democrat "really wants to suggest that over half of the United States Senate is a crew of bigots."

Not half the Senate, maybe. It's difficult to know what sort of attitude lies in someone's heart but every now and then, oftentimes unwittingly, they drop us clues. Hatch did just that on the floor of the Senate last week.

A question for Senator Hatch: How is homosexual sodomy (which, I assume, is the act that Hatch finds so detestable) any different from heterosexual sodomy - a practice in which many heterosexual couples regularly engage?

What about those heterosexual couples who partake in other consensual sexual activities of which the senator disapproves? Should they also not be allowed to get married and enjoy the benefits thereof?

More importantly, why do politicians seem to care so much about what grown people do in their bedrooms? If Hatch believes gays and our allies are not "clean," then he ought to explain how that impacts the policy issues surrounding marriage.

Hatch and his supporters might pretend he was defending his constituency from the likes of Kennedy and all those who would denigrate the character of those supportive of the MPA.

I have no doubt the citizens of Utah are "good, decent" citizens, and that they wash themselves on a regular basis. But so are gay Americans. It's hardly unusual behavior for a politician, but something tells me that Hatch was playing dirty.

Amidst this winter's worldwide violent protests over the 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper, the words of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi did little to ease the tensions. "Let Friday be an international day of anger for God and his prophet," he proclaimed several days before a massive, February 3rd protest in which hundreds of British Muslims descended upon the Danish Embassy in London. They bore placards that read, "Butcher those who mock Islam," "Behead those who insult Islam," and, more generally, "Kill those who insult Islam." One protestor was arrested a few days later for dressing as a suicide bomber.

The man who called for the protest is not some obscure Imam known only to radical Islamists. The Egyptian born and Qatar-based Qaradawi is the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars and one of the Arab world's most well-known television preachers. The Daily Telegraph observes that, "he is considered one of the most influential men in modern Sunni Islam." Qaradawi is most known to Britons for his cozy relationship with the left wing Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who has praised him as a "leading progressive Muslim" and hosted him at a conference in 2004.

Following the London bombings of last summer, Livingstone again invited the man he has called a "moderate" to London with the hope of easing inter-cultural tensions. This, in spite of the fact that Qaradawi has called homosexuality a "disease that needs a cure" and the website of which he is the chief scholar, www.islamonline.net, suggests that gays be executed via "burning or stoning to death."

Following the Asian Tsunami of 2004, Livingstone defended Qaradawi after he said that "Tourism areas are areas where the forbidden acts are widespread as well as alcohol consumption, drug use and acts of abomination...Don't they deserve punishment from Allah?" by stating that the Sheikh was a victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Qaradawi has endorsed suicide bombings in Israel as "martyrdom operations," proclaimed that "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!" and is banned from entering the United States.

Despite the fawning he has received from Livingstone and the ambivalence that much of the British left has demonstrated towards his remarks, Qaradawi has had a vocal, liberal critic ever since he became a prominent figure in British debates over Muslim assimilation. He was right then and he is right now. But much of the left doesn't want to hear him.

Peter Tatchell can no longer meet with journalists in his home for fear of physical attack. Requesting an interview, I could have been one of his myriad political enemies out to entice him into a trap. It has happened before; a group feigning to be a black student television crew recently lured Tatchell into welcoming them into his office space only to assault him over his campaign against the Jamaican dance hall "murder music" which calls for gays to be maimed and killed. Had security guards not been in the building at the time, Tatchell says, he could have been seriously injured. There is something wrong with the state of liberal politics when many on the left are upbraiding the avowed socialist Peter Tatchell as a right-winger. But that is just the place where Tatchell, whom the reactionary populist Daily Mail once labeled a "homosexual terrorist," finds himself today.

Though born and raised in Australia, Tatchell is the most visible gay rights figure in Great Britain and part of a long tradition of English radicalism and social activism. For his entire public life he has been associated with the far-left reaches of the British political spectrum, a spectrum that stretches much farther left than it does in the United States. From forming the London chapter of the AIDS direct-action agitation group ACT-UP to standing up for the rights of those perennial targets of the British Conservative party, asylum seekers, Tatchell never deviates from a left-liberal perspective in his approach to politics. His noisy tactics, like commandeering the Archbishop's pulpit during the Easter Sunday service at the Canterbury Cathedral in 1998 to denounce the Church of England's hostility to gays, are a composite of Larry Kramer's self-righteousness and Abbie Hoffman's mischief-making.

Born in Melbourne in 1952, Tatchell founded an anti-Vietnam war group, Christians for Peace in 1970. He immigrated to the UK the following year in order to avoid being drafted to fight alongside American troops. In 1973 he organized a gay rights protest in East Germany but was assaulted by the Stasi and kicked him out of the Communist bloc country. He first came into national British consciousness after he stood as a Labor Party candidate in a 1983 parliamentary by-election for a seat in the southeast London constituency of Bermondsey. Tatchell lost by a large margin and the race has entered the annals of British politics as one of its most notorious because of its rank homophobia. Ironically, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat who won the seat and just lost a campaign to be leader of the party, recently came out of a closet of sorts to pronounce himself bisexual. While most in Tatchell's situation might evince bitterness, Tatchell was astonishingly gracious. "That was 23 years ago-I don't hold a grudge," he told Britain's Independent. On his website, he even went so far as to write, "I don't support the Lib Dems, but if I was a member I would vote for Simon as leader."

Sticking so determinedly with his liberal principles, Tatchell has taken on a number of causes in recent years that are bete noires for many on the left and celebrated by the right. One of his most high-profile targets is Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has shut down independent newspapers, jailed political opponents and denounced gays as "worse than dogs and pigs." In 2001 the Belgium government feted the African dictator while Mugabe¹s goons beat Tatchell about the head after his second unsuccessful attempt at a citizens' arrest (the first was in 1999), leaving him with permanent damage in one eye.

In March, the Zimbabwean government accused him of helping to fund a coup against Mugabe, to which Tatchell responded, "I can't raise enough money to staff an office for my own human rights work, let alone fund an insurrection." Tatchell has found little solace from the supposedly anti-totalitarian left, which, at best views Mugabe as a side effect of Western imperialism rather than an intrinsic evil that should be directly opposed. "Mugabe has killed more black Africans than even apartheid," Tatchell says, an observation that while likely true, hardly represents a consensus in left-wing circles.

Tatchell has also angered blacks due to his lonely campaign against Jamaican reggae dance hall music, a genre whose most popular singers call for the mauling and death of gays in their lyrics. He felt compelled to raise the issue because many gay Jamaicans approached him and were afraid to speak publicly due to the violent homophobia so prevalent in their home country.

In late November, for example, the gay Jamaican AIDS activist Steve Harvey was shot to death just a year after the murder of Brian Williamson, a founder of Jamaica's gay rights movement. "We were deluged with denunciations from black and left activist groups who accused us of having a racist and imperialist agenda," Tatchell said of the black response to his campaign. A spokesman for the Black Music Council threatened, "Don't you even try to change us, because you can't change us. We will never, ever bow. We are ready and we are coming because what you are doing is racism to the extreme," and the New Nation, a black British newspaper, bestowed Tatchell with its "Pest of the Year" award in 2004. When Tatchell called upon the BBC to rescind its decision to broadcast the Music of Black Origin Awards due to its celebration of homophobic Jamaican reggae singers, black Guardian columnist Joseph Harker wrote, "Instead of seeing a sympathetic figure trying to engage with them, black people see only a white man acting like a modern-day missionary, trying to impose his views."

After Tatchell claimed that Malcolm X might have been gay, the British branch of the Nation of Islam branded him a "Godless sodomite." The Voice, a black British newspaper, wrote that "Unwittingly, Tatchell falls into a tradition of many white right-wing historians who have attempted to rewrite important chapters of black history that effectively disown people of the African Diaspora of their own heroes -- re-presenting them in ways that have little meaning or attraction to the young." Tatchell received enough death threats due to his anti-homophobia campaign that the London police placed him under their protection. Meanwhile, Amnesty International, Tatchell says, halted their support of his campaign out of fear of angering the black community. "If the neo-Nazi BNP [British National Party] was advocating the murder of black lesbians and gay men the left would be rising up in mass demonstrations," he says. "When some Jamaican reggae stars advocate exactly the same thing, large sections of the left run a mile."

In the spring of 2005, Tatchell again came out in opposition to Amnesty for their failure to recognize the grievances of gay Palestinians. The silence is caused by what Tatchell believes is the human rights organization's fear of engendering a backlash likely to come about by faulting a movement that holds a firm place in the pantheon of left-wing conscience. He has battled with pro-Palestinian groups -- whom he has frequently stood alongside protesting Israeli occupation -- over their failure to acknowledge the Palestinian Authority's militant homophobia. In 2005, Tatchell presented Amnesty with a dossier on Palestinian oppression of gays culled from interviews with gay Palestinian exiles. He characterized Amnesty's response as, "We're too busy and we don't have time."

But it has been Tatchell's latest crusade against the Mayor of London's favorite imam that has divided the left in a way that is indicative of a much larger trend in European politics, that is, the problem of Muslim integration. Tatchell was amazed that Livingstone, whose political career he had endorsed from his first race for leader of the Greater London Council in 1980, would carry the water of a man the left ought to have condemned as a bigoted theocrat. "I was utterly astonished that this longtime left-winger and supporter of gay rights was prepared to roll out the red carpet for a fundamentalist cleric who believed in the execution of apostates, unchaste women and gay people," Tatchell says. "It went against everything he's ever stood for." Livingstone had always been a prominent and outspoken leader for gay rights, and supported Tatchell in his 1983 race when the leadership of the Labor Party (including Party leader Michael Foote) opposed his running out of a fear that he was too radical and too gay.

Livingstone, known affectionately and derisively (depending on your politics) as "Red Ken," has long been a thorn in the side of Prime Minister Tony Blair and has been a rallying figure for the party's left wing. He is also something of a thug. In March, he called the US Ambassador to Great Britain Robert Tuttle a "chiseling little crook" after Tuttle requested that US envoys not be forced to pay London's congestion out of respect for diplomatic tradition. Livingstone was temporarily suspended from his duties as Mayor in February, after a 2005 incident in which he compared a Jewish journalist to a Nazi. Approached by Oliver Finegold, a reporter for the Evening Standard, outside an event, Livingstone said, "What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?" Informed that Finegold was Jewish, Livingstone added that the reporter was acting like a "concentration camp guard."

Bob Pitt, a member of Livingstone's official research staff who has worked in Britain's Marxist political circles for decades, regularly derides Tatchell and other Muslim moderates on his blog, Islamophobia-watch.com. Late last year he wrote that, "Tatchell, along with many of his fellow self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values, takes refuge in mindless sectarian bigotry." Tatchell points out that Pitt, in the run-up to the NATO invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks, wrote that, "It is perfectly principled for socialists to defend the Taliban against imperialism." On March 25, Tatchell headlined a Freedom of Expression rally in London's famed Trafalgar Square to protest Muslim demands that the cartoons not be printed. Though some right-leaning British organizations like the Libertarian Alliance and the Thatcherite Freedom Association co-sponsored the rally alongside Outrage!, some of Tatchell's left-wing and Muslim critics ("preferring to remain pure and marginal," Tatchell said at the rally) alleged that he was colluding with the fascist British National Party, which he and the rally organizers emphatically deny.

In January, Tatchell was denied an invitation to attend a conference held by a bi-partisan Parliamentary caucus on equality whose stated purpose it is "To raise awareness of the need for measures to provide parity of protection from discrimination and promote equality and dignity for all." On January 31st, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Equalities held a seminar on "potential conflict between different kinds of rights" and one of the panelists was an adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain, a group which has called for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day and whose leader supported the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie, and of which Tatchell has been a perennial target. The organizers claimed that the event was only open to Members of Parliament, but when Tatchell asked an MP who attended the event if such a rule was applied, he found otherwise. "Tatchell now suspects an orchestrated plot to prevent him attending the bash," the Independent reported.

A regular target of verbal and written attack, Tatchell has become used to physical abuse as well. He has been beaten up, threatened with murder, and his house has been vandalized countless times. Yet up until recently most of these assaults came from far right groups. Now, the threats that Tatchell receives come from those normally assumed to have left-wing sympathies: blacks and Muslims. Several years ago he placed bars on his apartment windows.

His lonely work is not only thankless; it also leaves him close to penniless. His is not the glamorous life of many high profile, media-savvy activists. He does not charge expensive lecture fees or have a massive fundraising operation like established, American gay rights organizations. He makes next to nothing (earning a few thousand pounds a year from donations and journalism) and lives in public housing. His is a one-man, thankless, human rights organization

"There are large sections of the left who have now twisted the virtues of multiculturalism into a new form of moral relativism whereby anti-humanitarian practices in non-Western cultures are ignored or even defended in the name of 'cultural sensitivity,'" he says. "It's an ethical and political acrobatics on a monumental scale." But he has found little support amongst his social democrat peers for his political courage. For much of December and January, the Outrage! Website was down, and Tatchell suspects that any number of his new found enemies on the left could be responsible for the hacking. "It was a highly sophisticated cyber attack," he confirmed. "The huge effort involved could only have been politically motivated, with the aim of putting us out of action for a long time. Our site was mined with hundreds of viruses and some curious bits of Arabic script, which may be a pointer to the culprits."

Though Tatchell was, and remains, an opponent of the Iraq war, he had a credible, anti-statist alternative to the Bush-Blair plan that would have warmed the hearts of neo-conservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Just a few days before Coalition troops commenced hostilities, Tatchell was arrested for jumping in front of Prime Minister Tony Blair's limousine in Piccadilly Circus with a sign that read, "Arm the Kurds! Topple Saddam." After his arrest, he said, "The Left's do-nothing, oppositionist stance borders on appeasement. It colludes with Saddam's oppression, and is a shameful betrayal of Iraqis struggling for democracy and human rights." He points out that he has been a vocal opponent of Saddam and the Ba'ath party for decades, joining protests outside the Iraqi embassy in the 1980s, long before the left, (or the right, for that matter), took any interest in Iraq. One would be hard-pressed to find another anti-Bush left-winger of Tatchell's prominence holding such nuanced views.

Though conservatives might like to claim him as a convert, Tatchell is hardly a member of their ranks, in either the philosophical or practical sense. He opposes the "assimilationist" approach of gay conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, because "my agenda is about liberation...I don't want queers to fit in with society as it is, I want them to take the lead alongside liberal progressive straights to fundamentally transform society for the benefit of everyone." He supports lowering the age of consent to 14 and the disestablishment of the Church of England. He is a political radical on nearly every issue and in 2004 defected from Labor due to its rightward drift under Tony Blair and joined the Green Party. "Go red and go green," he wrote in the run up to the 2005 parliamentary elections. This is no Log Cabin Republican.

Many of his former comrades have decried Tatchell as an opportunist and a right-wing dupe seeking support from a public rendered amenable to anti-Muslim arguments by fears of terrorism and cultural incompatibility. But Tatchell has not changed his values one whit in his over four decades of activism. It is not Peter Tatchell who has left the left. It is the left who has left him.

First published in the Yale Daily News on February 14, 2006

There is one word that drives me nuts.

It's not a curse. Its timbre does not make me cringe. Rather, it is the way in which this particular word is used-often to describe me, and others like me, totally against my will-that I find to be so offensive.

The word, if you have not guessed it by now, is "queer."

I do not mind the proper literary usage of the word, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, in appearance or character. Also, of questionable character, suspicious, dubious." I have a problem when gay activists and certain academics use the word in an affirming sense to describe gay people. There is certainly nothing "strange, odd or peculiar" about homosexuality, which has existed, arguably, for nearly as long as human history itself.

The use of this word abounds. At Yale alone there is QPAC: the Queer Political Action Committee. The Yale LGBT Co-Op's e-mail list regularly solicits submissions for "Queer," the "only undergraduate literary and cultural journal related to queerness." The Co-op has also initiated a program, "Queer Peers," to help questioning students by matching them up with an openly gay mentor.

What is a non-queer gay person to do?

Those who popularize the word queer-that is, gay leftists and some gay academics-will not let gay people escape from their queer clutches. Simply by being gay, you are a "queer" whether you like it or not, as its practical use implicates all gay people. When a gay activist or academic speaks of the "queer community" or "queer rights," he, ipso facto, has labeled me a "queer," regardless of whether or not I accept the label.

I am a 22-year-old male who likes to write, performs in sketch comedy, reads lots of magazines, has an obsession with British politics and, oh yeah, I happen to be gay. I'm certainly not "queer." Individual gay people and others associated in the vast and ever-expanding panoply of the homosexual community (the bisexuals, the transsexuals, the omnisexuals, the polysexuals, the genderqueers and so on and so forth) may be "queer," but I-and I assure those queer activists who doubt this-along with the vast majority of homosexuals in this country would much rather be referred to as "gay."

Most straight people I have asked (who by and large are wholly supportive of gay equality) find the word ridiculous and uncomfortable. They see little difference between them and their gay peers, and it is harmful to the gay cause when activists insist on using a word that symbolizes their outright rejection of mainstream culture and its institutions.

For those gay activists whose stated mission is to promote gay equality, it is hypocritical to use the word "queer." If the whole purpose of the gay rights movement has been to convince heterosexual Americans that gay people are just like them, why go about using a word like queer to describe yourself? This is strategic stupidity.

Take a look, for instance, at the Human Rights Campaign, the largest and most respected gay rights organization in the country. While certainly liberal in its politics, HRC is a mainstream and professional group that regularly endorses pro-gay Republicans like Connecticut's Christopher Shays. As HRC's major purpose is to lobby Congress and advocate for gay rights in the mainstream media, it has wisely avoided language that radicalizes the demands of the gay rights movement or promotes the marginalization of gay people-dual purposes that "queer" serves. A brief search of the HRC website shows that the organization rarely, if ever, uses the word queer in its official communications and that it pops up mostly in reference to the television programs Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk.

Unlike the organization fighting on the front lines for the rights of gay Americans and their families, those who use the word "queer" have no interest in having gay people perceived as everyday Americans. They wish to be perceived as part of a sexual vanguard, standing apart from "heteronormative" America, occasionally deigning to stoop down only in the service of "liberating" those suffering under our patriarchal and tyrannical society. Make no mistake: "queer" activists do not think that gay people are just like straight people and they do not want gay people to be just like straight people. They see straight-er, heteronormative-society as oppressive and, like any good radical, wish to remake it.

Gays who use "queer" often state that they are merely reclaiming the word from homophobes, just as some African-Americans have reclaimed one of the ugliest words in historical usage, a word commonly associated with slave masters and southern lawmen. That word, of course, is the "N-word," too ugly to print in a newspaper. White people, and many black people, refer to it with this euphemism because it is so degrading, so rotten to the core, and carries such a distasteful history that it literally sends chills down the spine upon its very utterance. I vividly recall my black sixth-grade English teacher explaining the etymology of the "N-word" and how it has been used for hundreds of years to demean black people.

It is true that some segments of the African-American community have "reclaimed" this word. But notice how those black public figures using the word are not intellectuals, politicians or professionals. They are rap and hip-hop artists. Black writer John McWhorter observes, "After all, why are we not using 'wop,' 'spic,' or 'kike' in this way? Some might object that these terms are all now a tad archaic, but this only begs the question as to why they were not recruited in such fashion when they were current."

"Queer" is old hat. It might have been appropriate in the early and defiant years of the gay rights struggle, but it has now become obsolete and, frankly, infantilizing. To those heterosexuals who feel pressure from noisy activists to use the word "queer" but are understandably uncomfortable doing so: not to worry. I'm gay, and I'd like to keep it that way.

As they are wont to do, the British demonstrated a steely resolve in the wake of this summer's subway bombings. Yet the Britain of the Blitz-the Britain that has been immortalized in the minds of Americans-is showing cracks. A proper analysis of Great Britain's attempts at integration of Muslims is far too great a task for this column, but the behavior of the mayor of that country's capital city is cause for distress.

On first glance, London's gay community could have no better friend than Ken Livingstone. A legendary member of the far-left wing of the Labour Party, the mayor has been an outspoken advocate for gay rights. He started the first Partnership Register in the United Kingdom. He regularly attends the London Gay Pride Parade. He has worked with his city's police force to crack down on homophobic crime.

In spite of this flawless record on gay rights, Livingstone has repeatedly expressed support for radical Islamist cleric Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based imam whom the mayor hosted at City Hall last year. The sheik runs the Web site Islamonline, which, according to the British gay rights group Outrage!, has labeled homosexuals "perverted" and "abominable." Qaradawi himself has called homosexuality a "disease that needs a cure" and his site suggests that gays be executed via "burning or stoning to death." Wives, if they misbehave, are to be beaten, but those concerned about the status of women ought not to be concerned, for the thrashing need only be "light."

Livingstone has called Qaradawi a "leading progressive Muslim" and has said "his is very similar to the position of Pope John XXIII." The Pope was certainly no friend of gays, but one thinks that Livingstone had another comparison in mind. John XXIII, you see, was a reformer who worked to repair the Church's relations with Jews. An odd comparison, nevertheless, given the fact that Qaradawi has called suicide bombings in Israel "martyrdom operations."

In a fit of oxymoronic stupor, Livingstone defended Qaradawi by calling him, "an absolutely sane Islamist."

The sheikh has been banned from entering the United States since 1999. He was invited to a conference in Manchester this summer, but his invitation was later revoked. But Livingstone supported Qaradawi's visit all along-especially after Islamists killed 56 people this summer.

Livingstone's unrepentant embrace of Qaradawi is all the more repulsive in light of revelations made just after the July 7 attacks that gay people may soon be targeted for Islamist terror. Peter Tatchell, the UK's most visible gay rights figure, has stated that he and two other British gay campaigners were informed by anonymous fundamentalists that they are on a "hit list" and are to be "beheaded" and "chopped up" in accordance with "Islamic law."

"If the terrorists want to attack the gay community," Outrage! campaign coordinator Brett Lock said, "they may well attempt to detonate a bomb in a crowded gay bar, restaurant, club or community center." Gay people around the world who have always viewed these locations as places of refuge would be foolish to laugh off the hazard of an Islamist bomb attack on such establishments. Can one imagine a better target in which to murder and maim perverted infidels?

The European left, a natural supporter of homosexual liberation, has bent over backwards in its complete accommodation of Muslims, in spite of the fact that a vocal portion of this community takes a medieval view towards homosexuals. Livingstone has encountered no difficulty in reconciling these conflicting views. Earlier last month in The Morning Star, Britain's Marxist daily, he simultaneously praised his multiculturalism policies and city officials' decision to eliminate regulations hindering London shopkeepers from flying gay pride flags.

Livingstone holds the value of "multiculturalism" as the highest of all, even if that means respecting cultures that seek to destroy ours. The risk of offending a single Muslim is too onerous for Livingstone to condemn those who glorify terror. During the Cold War, the term "useful idiot" (ironically coined by Lenin) was applied to those in the West who excused away or completely ignored the atrocities of Communism. "Red Ken" Livingstone, as he is affectionately known, was a useful idiot then and is no less a useful idiot of the Islamofascists now.

To abandon a class of citizens in order to appease a group judged more politically valuable is more than perverse, it cheapens the ideal of liberalism itself. Democratic citizenship means nothing if we are willing to sell the rights of people down the river because a militant minority demands it.

Much criticism has been leveled at gay organizations for their reluctance to make much ado about the Iranian government's public hanging of two gay youths this past summer. The incident was not a rarity in the Islamic world, but the availability of photographs documenting the murder stunned a gay community complacent when it comes to the rights of gays abroad-perhaps because of our own, relatively tame, struggles here at home.

While the outrage over gay organizations' indifference to the plight of Iranian gays was necessary, it ought to be directed toward a political situation where gay Americans can have more influence: the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In this tumultuous dispute, there is plenty of room for debate about the control of land, whether or not Israeli responses to terror are too aggressive, and what the final political settlement should entail. But let there be no mistake: In Israel, gays enjoy the freedoms and tolerance of a liberal, Western democracy. In the disputed territories run by the Palestinian Authority, gays are routinely harassed, tortured and murdered.

A 2002 article in The New Republic documented the dire predicament of several gay Palestinians. A 21-year-old recalled that he "was forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see." One man fled to Tel Aviv, only to be captured by the Palestinian police upon his return to Nablus, a city in the West Bank.

"They put him in a pit," a friend of the man recalled. "It was the fast of Ramadan, and they decided to make him fast the whole month but without any break at night. They denied him food and water until he died in that hole." Tel Aviv, Israel's flourishing gay hub, has become for Palestinian gays what Miami is for Cubans: a refuge of freedom from tyranny.

In August, Israel evacuated settlers from the Gaza strip, helping to make way for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. But what would a Palestinian state actually look like? That is a question that the United States and Israel must ask before acceding to its creation. Surely, the United States should not expect Israel to agree to live alongside a neighbor that is highly militarized, territorially aggressive, and run by Islamic extremists. Imagine if Canada fit this profile: would we not have serious problems with such a prospect?

Comments earlier this month from Hamas's man in Gaza-newly emboldened by the Israeli pullout-are not encouraging. On the question of gay rights, Mahmoud Zahar recently said, according to the Times of London, "Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?" Hamas is a major player in Palestinian politics; in January, it won 76 out of 118 Gaza municipal council seats in the first-ever election held in the territory.

Granted, gays are oppressed in most areas of the world, so why should the United States pay any particular attention to Palestinian ones? Because our involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process gives us the ability to influence Palestinian politics.

Advocating that the creation of a Palestinian state be conditioned on human rights, and specifically gay rights, is one step gay groups can take. The United States is intimately involved in the creation of a two-state solution, and it would be an affront to the ideals of this country were we to encourage, never mind preside over, the creation of an Islamist regime intent on murdering gay people.

For the same reason that we must see democracy through in Iraq-in order to leave that country behind in a better state than in which we found it-the United States and the international community have the exact same obligation in helping Israelis and Palestinians.

Not surprisingly, gay rights groups have ignored gay Palestinians, as has the pre-eminent human rights organization, Amnesty International. The Palestinian "struggle" has long been a cause celebre for the left and it is tempting to view the Palestinians as an oppressed underdog fighting the imperialist, apartheid Israeli state.

As difficult as life may be for the Palestinians (a predicament caused almost entirely by their support for terrorism and corrupt leaders), nothing can excuse their systematic oppression of gays. By standing up for the rights of gay Palestinians, groups like Amnesty and the Human Rights Campaign may lose support from their more radical members. But these organizations are worth nothing if they remain indifferent to the fates of people they are intended to protect-all for the purpose of maintaining harmony on the left.

Activism has always played a prominent role in the movement for gay civil rights. But now, with the Supreme Court set to hear a case in October deciding the question of whether the federal government can withhold funds to universities whose law schools deny access to military recruiters, the effect of overzealous gay activism has rightfully come into question.

The Supreme Court announced earlier this month that it would hear the appeal of Rumsfeld vs. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, pitting the Defense Department against a coalition of prominent law schools. At Yale, one of the institutions which brought the suit and where I am an undergraduate, I have seen the unfortunate effects of the otherwise well-intentioned gay activists' campaign to prevent the military from recruiting law students to serve in the JAG corps and in keeping ROTC off the college's campus, both because of the military's anti-gay, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

I agree, of course, that the military's policy undermines national security by expelling competent individuals, but I cannot bring myself to support an agenda aimed at hindering the armed forces' vital mission of recruiting talented individuals.

Advocates claim that their opposition to the military's presence is not only a moral statement against discrimination but more importantly will work to erode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Yet since the Vietnam War, when many universities first banished the armed forces, the military has functioned rather well. Seeing that the decisions of individual colleges and law schools to ban recruiting has done nothing to alter the military's policy and shows no sign of affecting military decision making, what does it do?

The unfortunate result is that the people most affected by this posturing - the actual students who make enormous sacrifices to train for the officer corps - are being left out of the debate entirely. Whereas universities that have long prided themselves on providing the country's future leaders used to have a large officer training program in the first half of the century, currently only five students out of a Yale undergraduate class of nearly 5,000 are enrolled in such a program.

To make matters worse, they are often ostracized by liberal students and faculty members, who loathe the military for political reasons unrelated to the ban on service by out gays.

Oftentimes, the best strategy in any fight for gay equality is for people to simply come out of the closet. As homosexuality is an invisible trait, visibility is often the best antidote to ignorant homophobia.

Far more effective than banning military recruiters have been the ever more frequent criticisms of former service members who have since come out and decried "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The military brass itself is far more likely to empathize with someone who once wore a uniform and risked their life than they are to heed the hectoring of a liberal faculty member.

By making homophobia the reigning issue in the debate over military recruitment, gay activists have fostered a form of group-think that necessarily compels all gay people - and all straight people who do not want to be thought of as homophobes - to support their cause. This tactic turns off many potential allies, who are equally supportive of gay rights and a strong national defense.

Sometimes issues affecting gay and lesbian Americans are more nuanced than morally absolutist activists would like them to be. While I may find "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to be unjust, it is more important that my straight peers have the opportunity to serve their country and defend the freedoms that gay activists have also fought so courageously to enshrine.