IGF CultureWatch

Weddings are not just a way for the couple to tell the world "Take it seriously." They're a time-honored ritual for turning partners into spouses; a relationship into a marriage. (Link to 365gay.com column)

"Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?"

From the moment President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, observers have been itching to ask her some version of this question-or as I'll call it, The Question.

For the time being, The Question has subsided. Instead, it has been largely replaced by a meta-question: is The Question even appropriate to ask?

When commentators as disparate as gay-rights advocate Andrew Sullivan and the virulently anti-gay Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth (About Homosexuality), agree on something, it's noteworthy. And both agree that asking Kagan The Question is appropriate.

LaBarbera writes ,

If Kagan is practicing immoral sexual behavior, it reflects on her character as a judicial nominee and her personal bias as potentially one of the most important public officials in America….Besides, in an era of ubiquitous pro-gay messages and pop culture celebration of homosexuality, it's ridiculous that Americans should be left guessing as to whether a Supreme Court nominee has a special, personal interest in homosexuality.

And here's Sullivan:

[Whether Kagan is gay] is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing.

Sullivan adds that since gay-rights issues will likely come before the Court, "and since it would be bizarre to argue that a Justice's sexual orientation will not in some way affect his or her judgment of the issue, it is only logical that this question should be clarified."

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Notwithstanding her short haircut, her penchant for cigars, her enjoyment of softball, and the fact that she's requested her judicial robe in flannel (okay, I made that last one up), no one has found solid evidence that Kagan is a lesbian.

This, despite relentless efforts from across the political spectrum to do so. If she is, it certainly isn't the sort of "open secret" some have claimed.

So, should we just come out and ask her?

It's tempting to give one of the two easy answers to this question, which are

(A) It's nobody's damn business, and certainly not relevant to her nomination,

or

(B) Sure-why not? It's 2010, and not such a big deal anymore.

The right answer is more complicated.

On the one hand, every Justice, like any other citizen, is entitled to some zone of privacy. Of course their private experiences might affect how they rule. But we need to be careful about getting on that slippery slope, lest we turn confirmation hearings into witch hunts.

Moreover, in a questionnaire for her Solicitor General nomination, Kagan rejected the idea that there is a fundamental constitutional right to same-sex marriage-as have some openly gay constitutional scholars. So her being lesbian, even if true, wouldn't guarantee any particular ruling on the specific gay-rights issues likely to come before the Court. Constitutional jurisprudence isn't the same as personal policy preference.

On the other hand, her being a lesbian would give her a unique perspective on the Court, and could certainly influence the other justices in a positive way. As Justice Antonin Scalia once said of Justice Thurgood Marshall (the first African-American justice), "He wouldn't have had to open his mouth to affect the nature of the conference and how seriously the conference would take matters of race."

And Sullivan has a point when he suggests that treating a person's (actual or possible) lesbianism like some dirty little secret is ultimately no more palatable than treating her Jewishness that way. Doing so smacks of complicity in the closet, which Sullivan rightly condemns as an awful relic.

Unfortunately, that awful relic-and the reasons for it-have hardly disappeared. And one need look no further than the ranting of folks like Peter LaBarbera to see why.

In defending The Question, Sullivan writes that "a revolution in attitudes has occurred" on gay issues. But Sullivan's use of the present-perfect tense ("has occurred") is misleading. That revolution IS OCCURRING, and it's far from complete.

I'd love for lesbianism to be as much of a non-issue for Supreme Court nominees as Jewishness. The fracas over Kagan's personal life makes it clear that we're not there yet.

Meanwhile, if I were a Senator at her confirmation hearings, I'd say "There has been much speculation in the media about your personal life. Is that anything you wish to comment on?" Then I'd step back and let Kagan handle it as she sees fit.

When I was a high school sophomore, one of my classmates had the misfortune of popping an erection in the communal shower after gym class. I doubt "Paul" was gay. Most likely, it was a typical teenage case of Mr. Happy having a mind of its own. But fellow students at our all-boys Catholic school teased him mercilessly, calling him a fag, and I joined in.

That's right: I joined in.

Please understand: at the time I was NOT GAY. Sure, I had "gay feelings," which I kept mostly to myself. I also lacked any straight feelings, and I had a decent enough grasp of logic to know that people with "gay feelings" but no "straight feelings" are gay. It was denial, pure and simple, and my teasing Paul was a way to deflect attention away from myself.

When people ask me how I can even for a split second feel sadness for hypocrites like Reverend George "I hired him to carry my luggage" Rekers, the anti-gay crusader who was recently caught hiring an escort from rentboy.com for a European vacation, I answer: Because I know what denial feels like.

True, I came clean about my sexuality at 19, whereas Rekers is still dissembling at 61. True, I participated in some schoolboy teasing-the potential damage of which ought not to be underestimated-whereas Rekers has made a career out of spreading lies about gays, writing books with titles like Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality, and offering highly paid testimony in Florida and Arkansas against gay adoption. There's a huge difference.

But part of preventing future cases like these is first to understand them, and I can understand them best by drawing on my own experience. The human capacity for keeping separate sets of "mental books" is as familiar as it is remarkable.

Why is Rekers' case important? Because it provides yet another stunning example of what it looks like when someone tries to fight his internal demons by scapegoating openly gay and lesbian people. Rekers has spent his life attacking in others what he can't control in himself, harming countless LGBT innocents in the process. This is the danger of the closet.

Rekers insists that he is not gay, and at one level, he's right. The term "gay" often refers to a mode of self-understanding and public identity, and Rekers just isn't there. On this reading, anyone can be a homosexual, but it takes courage to be gay. Sadly, like the Reverend Ted "I'm heterosexual with issues" Haggard before him, Reverend Rekers may never get there.

So let Rekers have his "I'm not gay but my rentboy is" t-shirt. I'll even believe him when he says that there was no sex, strictly speaking. According to the rentboy, "Lucien" (aka Geo, aka Jo-Vanni), in interviews with the Miami New Times and blogger Joe.My.God, their sessions consisted of daily nude massages where Lucien stroked Rekers "across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks," causing Rekers to become "rock hard." (At 61, Rekers doesn't have the same excuse for erections as my high school classmate.)

This is precisely what one would expect from a "Not Gay" deeply closeted homosexual who has spent his career denouncing the "unacceptable health risks of [homosexual] behavior." Rekers can maintain this charade only by drawing the boundaries of "homosexual behavior" about as narrowly as Bill Clinton drew those of "sexual relations"-which, as you'll recall, the president did not have with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. The claims are true on one level-the strained, self-serving, and possibly delusional one.

It's when I imagine these mental contortions that I feel the split second of sympathy for Rekers. As David Link writes at the Independent Gay Forum, "If the glaringly obvious conclusion is true-that Rekers is, in fact, a frustrated homosexual who won't allow himself to actually have sex with another man-then he has created for himself exactly the hell he and his colleagues believe homosexuals are headed for or deserve."

However, it's one thing to create demons for yourself, and quite another to project them onto innocent bystanders whom you then attack as "deviant" in books, articles, and courtroom testimony. Frankly, there aren't enough rentboys in Miami to carry that kind of karmic baggage.

Rekers still insists that he sought out the young man because he wanted to share the Gospel. I recommend starting with the "Truth shall set you free" part, followed by some lessons on penance.

So, we have a new line to add to the file labeled "Seriously?!?"-alongside Reverend Ted Haggard's "I bought the meth but didn't use it," ex-gay leader John Paulk's "I had to use the bathroom and had no idea it was a gay bar," Rep. Eric Massa's "I'm just a salty old sailor," and Senator Larry Craig's "I have a wide stance."

Now add Reverend George Rekers' "I hired him to lift my luggage."

As a co-founder (with James Dobson) of the conservative Family Research Council, a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), and an author of numerous anti-gay works, Dr. Rekers is a major right-wing figure.

And so he did what any straight, family-oriented Baptist minister would do when looking for someone to carry his luggage on a ten-day European excursion. He went to rentboy.com and hired a prostitute.

I can't make this stuff up.

The Miami New Times broke the story this week, complete with details from 20-year-old blond Puerto Rican rentboy "Lucien's" profile: his "smooth, sweet, tight ass," his "perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)" and the fact that he'll "do anything you say as long as you ask." These are important attributes for travel assistants, no doubt.

A blogger at Unzipped.net quickly uncovered the rentboy's profile, which identifies him as Boynextdoor/Geo and was purged of some of the earlier sexual content; the profile has since been removed from the site to protect the young man's privacy.

(Incidentally, we SHOULD protect the young man's privacy. 20-year-olds don't typically go into prostitution because it's the best among many excellent job opportunities.)

Lucien/Geo is the same age as a son that Rekers adopted four years ago, which might not be relevant were it not for Rekers' vigorous opposition to adoption by gays. Rekers testified in favor of nasty homosexual adoption bans in both Arkansas and Florida. Indeed, on the blog page where he repeats his lame luggage excuse, there's a link labeled "Should homosexuals be allowed to adopt children?" This leads to a page full of outright falsehoods, including:

"Large research studies consistently report that a majority of homosexually-behaving adults have a life-time incidence of one or more psychiatric disorders, while a majority of heterosexually-behaving adults do not suffer a psychiatric disorder…. So my professional conclusion that homosexually-behaving adults should not be allowed to adopt children is based on research and logic."

And perhaps personal experience.

This is not funny. It is not even sad. It's disgusting. And I'm tired of feeling sorry for these people.

As the Gay Moralist, I like to give all people the benefit of the doubt. It's not a strategy so much as a matter of empathy. I was once a closeted homosexual conservative myself, and I came close to entering the Catholic priesthood. I often wonder whether, had my life gone slightly differently-different influences, different opportunities, different choices-I'd be missing truths that seem obvious to me now.

I even wonder whether I might have acted out sexually in inappropriate ways-hiring male prostitutes privately while railing against homosexuality publicly, or hitting on college seminary students (not children) in my priestly care. While I'm no longer a believer, the phrase "There but for the grace of God" still resonates with me.

I am not denying that we're responsible for our choices and actions. I'm simply saying that there are often mitigating factors beyond observers' ken. I don't know Rekers personally, and I can only make an educated guess at what demons he wrestles with.

But I know from hard experience that the best way to tame demons is to start being honest with yourself and others. That, instead of using self-respecting gays as a proxy for whatever internal foes you're fighting.

Unsurprisingly, not even Rekers' religious-right buddies are buying his "lift my luggage" line, or his more recent claim (in a message to blogger Joe.My.God) that he spent time with the youth in order to share the Gospel: "Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them."

Lift his luggage? Share the Good News? These lines make great double-entendres for late-night comedians ("Is that what the kids are calling it these days?") but they don't get Rekers a whit closer to addressing his real baggage.

If I've asked it once I've asked it a hundred times: how does marriage equality hurt heterosexuals?

Recently I posed the question yet again to Maggie Gallagher, outgoing president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), as she visited my ethics class at Wayne State University via audio conference.

I "get" that Gallagher wants children to have mothers and fathers, and ideally, their own biological mothers and fathers. What I've never quite gotten is why extending marriage to gays and lesbians undermines that goal. One can be married without having children, one can have children without being married; and (most important) same-sex marriage is not about gay couples' snatching children away from their loving heterosexual parents. No sane person thinks otherwise.

Maggie Gallagher is a sane person. (Wrong, but sane.) For the record, she is not worried that marriage equality would give gays license to kidnap children. Nor does she oppose adoption by gay individuals or couples, although she thinks heterosexual married couples should be preferred. So what's the problem?

At the risk of oversimplifying, one could describe her concern-which she graciously explained to my class-as The Message Argument. The idea is this. The core reason society promotes marriage is to bind mothers and fathers together for the long-term welfare of their offspring. In doing so we send a message: "Children need their mothers and fathers."

But on Gallagher's view, extending marriage to gays and lesbians makes it virtually impossible to sustain that message. The central premise of the marriage-equality movement is that Jack and Bob's marriage is just as valid, qua marriage, as Jack and Jill's. (That's the whole point of calling it "marriage equality.") And if we make that equivalence, we cannot also say that children-some of whom Jack and Bob may be raising-need their mothers and fathers. Indeed, the latter claim would now seem offensive, even bigoted.

So Gallagher's argument poses a dilemma: either maintain the message that children need their mothers and fathers, and thus oppose marriage equality; or else embrace marriage equality, and thus relinquish the message. You can't have both.

Whatever else you want to say about this argument, it's not crazy. It's about how to maintain a message that seems well motivated, at least on the surface: children need their mothers and fathers.

Elsewhere I've argued that the claim "Children need their mothers and fathers" is ambiguous. On one reading it's obviously false. On another, it's more plausible, but it doesn't support the conclusion against marriage equality. For even if we were to grant for the sake of argument that the "ideal" situation for children is, on average, with their own biological mother and father, we ought not to discourage-and deny marriage to-other arrangements: stepfamilies, adoptive families, and same-sex households. It's a non-sequitur.

But that (familiar and ongoing) argument is somewhat beside the point. The Message Argument does not say that promoting children's welfare logically entails denying marriage to gays and lesbians. It says that, in practice, it is virtually impossible to maintain the message "Children need their mothers and fathers" while also promoting the message that "Gay families are just as good as straight ones." And given a choice between the two messages, Gallagher favors the former.

I think urging parents-especially fathers-to stick around for their offspring is an admirable and important goal. It's also one that has personal resonance for Gallagher, who has spoken candidly of her experience as a young single mother left behind by her child's father.

I also think that there are 1001 better ways to achieve this goal than fighting marriage equality. The fact that NOM targets gays and gays alone makes it hard to believe that we are merely collateral damage in their battle to promote children's welfare.

That said, I want to thank Gallagher for clarifying her position. I want to assure her that I'll take The Message dilemma seriously. I plan to grapple with it in future columns (and our forthcoming book).

But I also want to pose for her a counter-dilemma, which I hope she'll take equally seriously.

For it seems to me that, in practice, it is impossible to tell gay couples and families that they are full-fledged members of our society, deserving of equal respect and dignity, while also denying them the legal and social status of marriage.

Yes, marriage sends messages, but "children need their mothers and fathers" is scarcely the only one. Marriage sends the message that it's good for people to have someone special to take care of them, and vice-versa-to have and to hold, for better or worse, till death do they part.

Marriage sends a message about the importance of forming family, even when those families don't include children; about making the transition from being a child in one's family of origin to being an adult in one's family of choice.

Gallagher claims that she loves and respects gay people, and I want to believe her. But how can she sustain that message while also opposing marriage equality? How does her own preferred message not tell gay families-not to mention stepfamilies, adoptive families, and single-parent households-that "Your family isn't real"?

Yes, marriage sends messages. So does its denial.

Those who argue that same-sex parenting "deprives" a child of its mother or father sometimes ask, "How would you feel if your mother or father were taken away?"

My answer to that question is, of course, "I'd feel terrible." But that fact scarcely settles the matter.

I'd feel terrible if anyone close to me were taken away. But that presupposes that the person "taken away" is already a part of my life. It doesn't follow that their not being present in the first place would "deprive" me.

My grandparents were all an important part of my life, but suppose they had all died before I was born. Would anyone have accused my parents of "depriving" me of grandparents, simply by bringing me into existence? Of course not.

I grant that the cases are not exactly parallel. If my grandparents had died before I was born, my parents could hardly be held responsible for their absence (barring matricide or patricide).

By contrast, the lesbian who visits a sperm bank-just like straight women who visit sperm banks-may consciously intend to raise a child in its biological father's absence, and thus has some responsibility for that absence (as does the father).

It is this fact that bothers our opponents. In their view, the lesbian and others in this (hypothetical but common) case are conspiring to deprive the child of its biological father. If we care to answer their concerns, we need to address this case.

Before doing so, however, it is worth pointing out several things. First, the objection doesn't touch those who become parents by adoption. In such cases, opponents might still object that the lesbian is depriving the child of SOME father. But they can't coherently claim that she is depriving it of ITS OWN father-and that is the objection I wish to focus on here. (Presumably, its own father is no longer in the picture-hence the adoption.)

Second, the objection applies equally to heterosexual women who seek anonymous sperm donors. Most people who use sperm banks are heterosexual, and most gays and lesbians never use sperm banks. So this is not an objection to gay parenting or gay marriage per se.

Third, and related, when applied to same-sex marriage the objection involves a blatant non-sequitur. It is one thing to argue against anonymous sperm donation. It is quite another to use that argument to oppose marriage for gays and lesbians. For even if one accepts the "no sperm banks" argument, it seems unfair to punish those gays and lesbians who do not use them. It is also unfair to punish those children whose parents did use them: such children exist, after all, and forbidding marriage to their parents (i.e. the ones that care for them) makes their lives less stable.

With these caveats in mind, we can return to the question at hand: is the lesbian (or for that matter, the straight woman) who uses an anonymous sperm donor "depriving" the child of its biological father?

The problem with answering this question is that the word "depriving" is so loaded that any response is likely to have unintended (and unpalatable) side effects. Answer "yes," and you insult the many good mothers who have used anonymous sperm donors and have provided wonderful lives for their resulting children. You also potentially hurt the children, by suggesting to them that they lead "deprived" lives.

Answer "no," and you seem to ignore the research that says that children do better, on average, with their own biological parents than in other family forms. You also suggest that there's nothing special about growing up with one's own biological father.

I for one wouldn't want to make the latter claim. That's partly because I am moved by the firsthand stories of people who have grown up not knowing one or more of their biological parents and feel a genuine sense of loss as a result. Their longing is real and should not be lightly dismissed.

But it's also because I myself feel that there's something special about the biological bond I have with my parents. The fact that I am literally flesh of their flesh moves me, for reasons that go beyond sentimentality.

The question is whether we can acknowledge this significance without casting aspersions on those whose parent-child bonds are non-biological.

I think we can. To say that the biological bond is special is not to say that it's the only significant bond, or that those who lack it are deprived of something necessary (much less sufficient) for a strong and healthy parent-child relationship.

More to the point, to say that the biological bond is special is hardly justification for "depriving" an entire group of people of the opportunity to marry.

They don't drive Subarus, wear comfortable shoes, or listen to folk music. But are the female pair-bonding albatross discussed in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine lesbians?

Despite its provocative title, the essay "Can Animals Be Gay?" is one of the more thoughtful and nuanced treatments to have appeared in a while. It achieves this largely by ignoring the title-question and instead focusing on what scientific research into animal behavior does-and more to the point, doesn't-tell us about humans.

These are the facts: Lindsay C. Young, a biologist studying a Laysan albatross colony in Kaena Point, Hawaii, discovered in the course of her doctoral research that a third of the nesting pairs there were actually female-female. Albatross typically pair off monogamously, copulate, and then collaboratively incubate the resulting single egg each year. Scientists who have observed nesting pairs generally assume-falsely, it turns out-that they are all male-female. (Albatross are difficult to sex by sight.) So Young and two colleagues published a paper explaining their surprising findings. From the Times essay:

"It turned out that many of the female-female pairs, at Kaena Point and at a colony that Young's colleague studied on Kauai, had been together for 4, 8 or even 19 years - as far back as the biologists' data went, in some cases. The female-female pairs had been incubating eggs together, rearing chicks and just generally passing under everybody's nose for what you might call 'straight' couples."

Like most scientists, Young and her colleagues were careful merely to share their observations, rather than to draw moral or political conclusions. But that didn't stop folks from both sides of the gay-rights debate from drawing foolish inferences and alternately either praising or attacking her research.

Gay-rights opponents derided the work as agenda-driven propaganda. Gay-rights advocates, by contrast, saw it as new evidence for the "naturalness" of homosexuality and even as providing a justification for marriage equality.

The simple truth that both sides overlook is this: Research about animals tells us what other animals' behavior is; it does not tell us what human behavior morally ought to be.

Notice the two key distinctions here. First, although humans are animals, they are not the same as other animals. That doesn't mean that studying other animals can't help us learn more about humans, often by suggesting hypotheses worth testing in humans. But species behave differently, and what's true of albatross, or bonobos, or fruit flies frequently isn't true of humans.

Second, there's the distinction between the descriptive and the normative; between what is and what ought to be. The fact that animals (including human animals) do something does not entail that we morally SHOULD do it.

Which means that all of the empirical research in the world, as interesting and important and valuable as it is, won't settle any moral disputes for us-at least not by itself.

I say "at least not by itself" because there are indirect ways in which this research may be relevant. Young's findings, for example, provide a nice illustration of heterosexist bias among previous scientists, and there are more general moral lessons to be gleaned when we uncover bias.

Moreover, such research can undermine the premises of bad arguments used by the other side. ("Animals don't even do that, therefore it's obviously wrong.") However, it's worth noting that the arguments would be bad even if they were not based on false premises, since they still involve invalid inferences. ("Animals don't cook their food either. What follows?")

There's also the undeniable fact that, whatever their logical flaws, these arguments have emotional resonance. As the Times essay notes:

"What animals do - what's perceived to be 'natural' - seems to carry a strange moral potency: it's out there, irrefutably, as either a validation or a denunciation of our own behavior, depending on how you happen to feel about homosexuality and about nature."

But that's just the point: the conclusion depends on "how you happen to feel." The feelings are doing the work, not the logic.

When bad arguments are used in the service of good aims, what should we do?

Suppose Young's study makes a parent less inclined to kick a gay child out of the house, because the parent (illogically) reads the study as proof that human homosexuality is "natural." This sort of thing happens all the time, and I'm hardly inclined to call up the parent and point out his or her logical lapse.

There are, however, long-range consequences to such laxity. The same logical sloppiness that motivates this particular parent to do the right thing helps others to rationalize discrimination. Repeat after me: what other animals do is one thing; what humans morally ought to do is another. Only when we distinguish those questions can we make a sound case for equality.

Recent reports about students in Mississippi and Georgia seeking to bring same-sex dates to prom stirred memories of my own prom experience.

The year was 1987. I was "straight" then-or so I convinced myself. I knew I had "gay feelings" (as I put it), I knew I had no straight feelings, and I knew that people with gay feelings but no straight feelings are gay. And yet, by not letting these various ideas "touch," I avoided drawing the obvious conclusion. (This, from someone who would later teach elementary logic.)

I had never been on a date with a woman before, or even kissed one. Sure, there was that time in fifth grade when I played spin-the-bottle, but as soon as I figured out what the game was, I ran from the room.

By the time I reached junior high and high school and noticed my "gay feelings," it was easy to find excuses:

"I go to an all-boys Catholic school; I don't know any girls," I told myself and anyone in earshot. "Besides, I'm planning on becoming a priest" (which was true, starting around sophomore year). Pressure's off!

Except that it wasn't. Because my "normal" friends, even the ones who planned on priesthood, sought and found girls. I wasn't feeling what I was "supposed" to feel, and it frightened me.

Patty Anne was someone with whom I served on the parish council. She went to an all-girls Catholic school. I called to invite her to my prom, she accepted, and minutes later she called back to invite me to hers. They were on consecutive nights, so I got a deal on the tux rental.

My prom went smoothly, and at the end of the evening, I gave her a prim kiss on the cheek.

Her prom was a little more involved. One of her friends with whom we were sharing the limo hosted a small pre-event party. Upon arriving, I had two very gay thoughts in rapid succession:

(1) [Upon seeing Patty:] That dress is hideous compared to last night's.

(2) [Upon seeing her friends' dates, all of whom were from a local military academy and looked stunningly handsome in their dress whites:] Uhhhhhh….HELLO!

I laugh about this now, but at the time, (2) was terrifying. Not-noticing girls was one thing, but noticing guys was quite another. And these guys, all dressed up and nicely groomed to impress their girlfriends, were hard for me not to notice.

These were the sorts of things spinning through my head on the post-prom limo ride to a club in Manhattan. Patty and I had the backwards-facing seats on either side of a small television; the remaining couples shared a large bench-seat facing forward.

Suddenly, the other couples started making out.

"Thank god for this little television separating us," I thought.

But the television couldn't protect me. Before I knew it, Patty was sitting on my lap.

We made out. It felt wrong-and that frightened me further.

When the limo dropped me home later that morning, I needed to "process," so I hopped into my car and drove over to my best friend Michael's house.

It was 6 a.m., and I stood in his backyard in my disheveled tux, throwing clothespins at his window to rouse him without waking his parents. (When his mother finally entered the kitchen, she glanced at me and asked, "Oh John-would you like an English muffin?" as if there were nothing unusual about daybreak guests in black tie.)

I think that conversation with Michael was the first time I told anyone other than a priest or a psychologist that I had "gay feelings"-all the while continuing to insist that I was basically straight. Baby steps.

A year later, when I moved from "gay feelings" to just plain "gay," Michael was among the first people I came out to. It would take another year beyond that before he mustered the courage to come out to me.

Which brings us back to Constance McMillen in Mississippi and Derrick Martin in Georgia, two brave young souls.

Constance's prom has been canceled. A private prom is being held instead, and many of her classmates claim to hate her for "ruining" their regular prom.

Derrick, by contrast, will be allowed to attend prom with his boyfriend. The bad news is that his parents have kicked him out of the house over the incident.

How many more children must suffer because of these perverted values? How many more must live in silence and in fear, forced to choose between pretense and rejection, all while being denied the simple joys their peers take for granted?

For that matter, how many more adults must suffer?

That last question became especially poignant after I received comments from Michael on a draft of this column.

You see, Patty Anne, Constance, and Derrick are all their real names. "Michael" is not. He asked me to change it because, as he put it, "I am still pretty covert in my professional life."

The border guard didn't even look up when she asked the question: "Citizenship?"

"U.S."

"And why are you in Canada?"

I paused. She looked up.

I was going to Canada to give a lecture, which would be easy enough to say. But then there would be the inevitable follow-up question: "A lecture on what?"

Instantly I thought back to a story once told to me by Glenn Stanton, my frequent debate-opponent from Focus on the Family. Just prior to Canada's legalization of marriage for gays and lesbians, Glenn went there for a right-wing conference. When the border guard asked him, "Why are you in Canada?" he responded with "For a same-sex marriage conference."

His border guard shot back, "We don't need that shit here."

After relaying the story to me Glenn added, "I thought to myself, what if it had been you, John?"

To which I responded, "Welcome to my world, Glenn."

I live in Detroit, just next to Windsor, Ontario. I go there occasionally for dinner with friends, and most times the crossing is smooth. But if you happen to catch a border guard who's having a bad day, or who's on a power trip, or who's just congenitally an asshole, be prepared for an unpleasant delay. I generally aim to give border guards all and only the information they absolutely need.

And yet a frequent theme in my advocacy work is the importance of coming out. Not just on National Coming Out Day, or at pride parades, or when writing columns for the gay press, but at any time when reference to one's (actual or desired) significant other-or more generally, one's life-would be appropriate. Coming out is an opportunity to teach diversity, and to be a role model for those around us and those who come after us.

More than that, it's a chance for simple honesty: there's something profoundly dehumanizing about treating one's sexual orientation as a dirty little secret. I don't want to be complicit in that.

So (for instance), last Valentine's Day, when a Trader Joe's employee presenting roses to female customers offered me one, saying, "Maybe you have a special girl at home to give this to?" I responded, "I'll give it to my special GUY at home, thanks!"

Giving a diversity lesson to a Trader Joe's employee is one thing; giving one to grumpy border guards is another. Military uniforms intimidate me more than Hawaiian shirts do. In the past, I've been harassed by Texas State troopers for kissing (yes, kissing) another man, and it wasn't fun.

After that Texas incident, I filed a formal complaint, which resulted in the trooper's being put on probation and having to take classes on Texas state law. I'm not afraid to stand up for my rights, but like most people, on some days I just don't want to be bothered.

I admit I'm embarrassed to share these thoughts. It's not just because of the great figures who have stood up for our rights even when it's been inconvenient or dangerous: luminaries like Frank Kameny, Harvey Milk, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon and Harry Hay. I'm sure even they had days when prudence trumped other virtues.

It's because I was facing a CANADIAN BORDER GUARD, for goodness sake. They're not exactly the SS.

So I'm embarrassed that the question gave me pause. But I share the story anyway, because it speaks to the tremendous power of the closet.

"Why are you in Canada?" She repeated the question, startling me from my deliberations.

"I'm giving a lecture at the University of Lethbridge."

"A lecture regarding…?"

"Gay rights."

Now she paused.

"Have you ever been to Lethbridge?" she finally asked.

"No."

"Well, good luck with your talk." Then, as she stamped my declarations form, she leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Really, good luck. It's redneck country, you know."

Okay-so I promise that this is my last column for a while on the definition of marriage. Four out of five in a row is enough.

But I've learned a lot from writing these, especially because of comments from various marriage-equality opponents. Three points stick out.

First, the definitional argument is deeply important to them. Perhaps this shouldn't surprise anyone. But it does surprise me that even those who explicitly acknowledge that marriage is an evolving institution place great weight on what marriage has been, as if that would settle the question once and for all of what marriage can or should be. It doesn't.

Second, marriage does not lend itself to a pithy definition. Whatever marriage is, its definition won't be like, "A triangle is a three-sided plane figure."

That's because marriage is both evolving and multifaceted. Marriage is, among other things, a social institution, a personal commitment, a religious sacrament, and a legal status. It looks different from the spouses' perspective than it does from the outside; it looks different respectively to anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and so on.

Each of these perspectives can tell us something about what marriage is; none of them is complete or final. Any definition they provide, however useful, will be partial.

Third, those who emphasize the definitional argument, when they're not simply begging the question against marriage-equality advocates, often invoke a false dichotomy: Either marriage is a social institution for binding parents (and especially fathers) to their biological offspring, or else it is an adult expression of love-an expression that these opponents variously dismiss as selfish, empty, or "fluttery".

Contrast this with the actual view of most marriage-equality advocates, which is that marriage is both of these things, and then some.

Yes, marriage is the cross-cultural institution that has provided for the needs of children. But how? What makes marriage so suited to this purpose?

I'll hazard a guess: it does so because it is also an abiding commitment between the spouses. It binds them together "for keeps," thus creating a stable environment for any children who arrive.

So the view that marriage consists in abiding love between adults is not merely COMPATIBLE with the view that marriage serves children's welfare; the former actually helps explain the latter.

There's nothing "fluttery" about this. The abiding love of marriage is not just a vague feeling or promise-it's an ongoing activity. I'm reminded of the words of St. Augustine, "Dilige, et quod vis fac": "Love, and do what you want." Augustine knew that true love is challenging; it takes work.

After one of my recent columns, a prominent same-sex marriage opponent wrote:

"I invite you to look back at the entire world history of anthropological thought on the topic of what is marriage, and point out to me even ONE example of ONE scholar who has, based on ethnographic data, said, actually or in effect, since recorded history began, that marriage in human groups is properly defined as the promise of abiding love. If you can identify even one reputable scholar in the history of the world who has made such a statement or implied such a thing, I will grovel before you in abject intellectual humility and gladly buy you the lunch of your choice…"

Well, I couldn't find an anthropologist who said that. Actually, I didn't bother looking. Anthropologists define marriage by its cultural function, and "abiding love" isn't really their angle. But I did find this:

"The inner and essential raison d'etre of marriage is not simply eventual transformation into a family but above all the creation of a lasting personal union between a man and a woman based on love."

What radical, "fluttery" activist wrote these words?

Actually, it was Pope John Paul II.

Of course the late pope defines marriage as "between a man and a woman." No shock there. But the interesting thing is that he writes that marriage is "above all…a lasting personal union…based on love."

Perhaps he was distracted when he wrote this. Perhaps the Radical Gay Agenda had begun to infiltrate the Vatican.

Or perhaps the pope realized what most people know. Marriage is fundamentally a lasting personal union based on love-which is not to say that it is ONLY that.

As I said above-and it bears repeating-any neat definition of marriage will be partial and imperfect. There are counterexamples to this characterization, ways in which it is both too broad and too narrow.

But "marriage" is not definable in the way "triangle" or "bachelor" is.

And when marriage-equality opponents feel compelled to repudiate characterizations of marriage that The Gay Moralist, the previous pope, and most married couples all find obvious, you know they're in trouble.