IGF CultureWatch

First published July 16, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

It is time to begin thinking about what state recognition of gay (civil) marriage means for us, how it will affect our lives and self-concepts, our relationships and our relation to the larger society. The changes will be numerous and profound. Some possibilities:

I suspect that only a few couples will marry right away - mostly older, established couples who will see this as something they have long deserved. More lesbians will probably seize the early opportunity since young women are still socialized to regard marriage as an achievement and the best way to have a relationship.

Most of us will probably hang back a while to watch what happens with the people who do marry. Does it go well for them? Does marriage enhance their lives? Is it confining or liberating in unexpected ways? After a year, are they happy they married or was it a mistake? What sort of unexpected problems do they encounter?

Couples who marry will likely feel more closely bonded together than they did. Even those who thought they didn't need "the piece of paper" will be surprised by how much more real their relationship feels and how much more seriously they are regarded by other people, gays and heterosexuals both.

Married couples may be surprised at how much more comfortable they feel kissing, hugging, and holding hands in public. "We're married" is a pretty good justification in the world's eyes, and that is shorthand for "We are just as married as you are."

Couples who marry will find themselves making extra effort to preserve their marriages through times of adversity and crisis. Divorce can have complications, pains and costs. And what will the people who attended the ceremony and heard those commitment vows say? That the couple gave up too easily? That they weren't fully committed? That they were a failure somehow?

The fact of gay marriage will not much reduce urban gay male promiscuity - at least not right away and not by younger single men. Those men will still trick, have regular play-buddies and anonymous sex; after all, single urban heterosexual men try to pursue active sex lives too.

But I suspect that many young gay men (and a few old roués) will feel threatened, fearing that somehow the basis of their active sex life is in jeopardy: That the pool of available tricks will diminish or that every trick or date is now has the unwelcome potential to develop into something that from the outside looks confining.

Like the process theologian's god, by its sheer existence marriage lures, it beckons, it calls, it invites, it attracts, it welcomes. Marriage adds a final stage, a "telos," a kind of completion to a relationship that has heretofore not been available for gay relationships.

Parents, relatives, and heterosexual friends will add their voices too. They will begin taking a greater interest in our romantic relationships, as they now do those of heterosexuals. Unmarried gays and lesbians will more often be asked, "Are you seeing anyone?" "Is it serious?" "Have you set a date?" Or more insistently, "If you really loved each other you'd get married, you know."

Those pressures will be mild and easily resistible, but coupled gays who have no plans to marry will need to develop - or borrow from similarly situated heterosexuals - pleasant, non-defensive ways of fending off such questions and advice: "We are happy with the way we are, thank you." "If we make a change, we'll be sure to let you know." "Our lives seem to work best this way."

No doubt, in part, heterosexuals simply want to have their own choices validated by seeing others make the same choices. But for most heterosexuals a good marriage still represents a desirable goal and source of happiness that they hope their gay children and friends will find as well. Try not to resent their new intrusiveness; try to see it as a sign of inclusion and acceptance.

But a cautionary note (and this is Uncle Paul speaking now): Some young gays may hasten into marriage before they are ready, partly because it is there and partly because it looks like a refuge from the unstructured flux and rootlessness of the urban gay social world.

Young gay men seem to combine cynicism and romanticism in an unhealthy mix: too cynical about the world around them, but too romantic about themselves and the man of the moment. They need to acquire a good deal of relationship experience before they are able distinguish infatuation from love or even think about marriage.

Young lesbians may be especially tempted into premature marriages. The psychological need for pair bonding seems to be strong in most women - they are the ones who typically press boyfriends for marriage - and the combined bonding desires of two women may overwhelm them long before they can know they are suited to each other. The old joke about the moving van rolling up right after the first date has some psychological truth to it.

"Marry in haste," goes the old adage, "repent at leisure."

First published July 2, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

It was closer than you think. Although the U.S. Supreme Court declared Texas' (and three other states') same-sex sodomy law unconstitutional by 6 to 3, it was by a narrower 5 to 4 majority that the Court declared the heterosexual-inclusive sodomy laws of nine other states unconstitutional and reversed the opprobrious 1986 Bowers v Hardwick decision upholding Georgia's sodomy law.

And the Court reversed Bowers only because Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had written an important gay-supportive, equal protection opinion in Romer v Evans, passed by his earlier argument, which would have been sufficient to strike down the Texas law, to reconsider Bowers, find it deficient in virtually every respect, and declare that Bowers failed to recognize - and the Texas law violated - a right to liberty inherent in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

In sentences that will become famous, Kennedy wrote:

• "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spacial and more transcendent dimension."
• "When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres."
• "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia, who is clearly the Vatican's man on the Supreme Court, ranted impotently and (since we won) amusingly about "homosexual sodomy," "homosexual activists," "the so-called homosexual agenda," and flamboyantly charged that "the court has taken sides in the culture war."

But Scalia, for all his repute for great legal learning, had nothing to offer by way of arguments except: a) a majority should have a right to force others to obey their moral rules no matter what, and b) allowing "homosexual sodomy" removes the only barrier to homosexual marriage. Is there a genuine state interest in criminalizing same-sex sodomy per se? Scalia offered none.

For the rest, Scalia's dissent consisted of ineffective counter-punching, evasions, misrepresentations, sophistry, sneers and dire predictions. There is an old lawyers' admonition that when you don't have the facts or the law on your side, bang on the table. What Scalia wrote was the judicial equivalent of banging his spoon on his high chair.

Legal reasoning aside, a careful reading of the opinions makes clear that the fundamental difference between the pro-gay majority and the anti-gay minority is the majority's willingness to acknowledge - and take legal account of - the fact that gays and lesbians are types of persons just as heterosexuals are and that sexual orientation is a core aspect of a person's being.

Justice O'Connor, whose concurring opinion, though limited to an equal protection argument, is the best argued and best written, explained the significance of this:

• "Those harmed by this law are people who have a same-sex sexual orientation and thus are more likely to engage in behavior prohibited by (the Texas law)."
• "While it is true that the law applies only to conduct, the conduct targeted by this law is conduct that is closely correlated with being homosexual. Under such circumstances, Texas' sodomy law is targeted at more than conduct. It is instead directed toward gay persons as a class."
• "The State cannot single out one identifiable class of citizens for punishment that does not apply to everyone else with moral disapproval as the only asserted state interest for the law."

The difference in approach is signaled by the fact that Kennedy wrote of "homosexual persons," "homosexuals," and "persons who were homosexual." Similarly, O'Connor wrote of "homosexuals," "homosexual persons," "a same-sex sexual orientation," "being homosexual," and even (as above) "gay persons."

By contrast, Scalia wrote almost exclusively of acts: "homosexual sodomy," "homosexual conduct," "consensual sodomy," "homosexual acts," "homosexuality," "sodomy" and "those who engage in homosexual acts."

If the issue of sodomy laws is now settled, can we find anything in this decision for future litigation. Yes, indeed.

"Don't ask, don't tell" and the military's sodomy law are more vulnerable. If neither is quite unconstitutional on the basis of Kennedy's due process argument, they are arguably so under O'Connor's equal protection argument, which Kennedy declared "tenable."

Although O'Connor avoided discussing heterosexual-inclusive sodomy laws like the military's, her argument implies they too would be unconstitutional because of their disparate impact on gays and heterosexuals. Civilian deference to the military has its limits.

Kennedy was canny enough to draw attention to the possibility of gay marriage - without the red flag of naming it - and invite litigation by pointedly leaving the question open, referring to "a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law...."

But the learned Scalia himself opined that O'Connor's reasoning on equal protection grounds "leaves on pretty shaky ground state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples." However that may be, the Defense of Marriage Act is almost surely dead.

First published May 28, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

There is no doubt that Americans are becoming more tolerant of, accepting of and/or comfortable with gays and lesbians. Virtually every public opinion survey shows small increases in support for gay equality over previous surveys.

The reasons seem not far to seek: the increasing visibility of gays in the mass media, popular culture and news stories; the increasing number of gay people coming out to family and friends; the presence of more open gays in the workplace, church, and neighborhood. More people are meeting gays personally, unlearning earlier impressions that gays are strange or threatening.

But is there a way to get a handle on how fast this change in attitudes toward gays is happening? Perhaps so.

The Gallup News Service recently released results of the gay-related questions in Gallup's 2003 Values and Beliefs survey and included some interesting comparative data from previous years.

The survey found that in 2003, 60 percent of voting age Americans think homosexuality should be legal. Back in 1977, when the question was first asked, the survey found that only 43 percent thought homosexuality should be legal. This is a 17 point change in 26 years.

The next question it asked was whether homosexuals should have "equal rights in terms of job opportunities." In 1977, 56 percent said they thought so, but now in 2003, 88 percent say they think so, a 32 point change over 26 years.

Clearly the rate of attitude shifts on gay issues depends on which issue. Gallup analysts suggest that change on the legality of gay sex is slower than that of employment discrimination because the legality issue taps into people's sense of public morality while the employment issue draws on people's attitudes about discrimination and fair play.

So perhaps the most significant question in the survey was the one that asked simply if homosexuality "should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle." More than the others, this question gets close to the root of public attitudes about our lives and loves and people's respect for our sense of who we are as people.

In 1982, when this question was first asked, barely 34 said yes, homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle. Now, in 2003, 54 percent - more than half - say it should be considered legitimate. This is a 20 point rise in 21 years, about a percentage point each year.

That is what I think the average rate of gay progress has tended to be. You could even get roughly the same result if you averaged the 17 point change on the legality issue and the 32 point change on employment discrimination to get an average change of 24 or 25 points over 26 years.

To provide a double check, similar longitudinal data are available from the annual survey of 250,000 college freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. In 1977, the survey found that 47 percent of freshmen thought it was important to have "laws against homosexual relationships." By 2002, only 25 percent agreed, a 22 point decline over 26 years, or not quite 1 point a year.

And on a question about civil marriage for gays, when the question was first asked in 1997, only 51 percent of the freshmen approved, but by 2002, 59 percent approved of it, an eight point increase in only five years.

Does all this mean that Americans as individuals are changing their minds about gay people and gay issues. No doubt some do: parents who discover they have a gay child, people who find a valued co-worker is gay, people who move into friendship circles where there are open gays.

But a larger part of the change probably stems from the plain fact that older people who grew up in more intolerant times and invariably hold the most negative attitudes about gays die and are replaced in the population by younger people who lack anti-gay attitudes because for them a visible gay presence in their lives and among their friends is an everyday matter.

Keep in mind, for instance, that while 60 percent of the adult population thinks homosexuality should not be illegal, 75 percent of the college freshmen agree. If the youngest age group is 15 points more gay supportive than the average, then the oldest age cohort is at least 15 points more anti-gay than the average, a 30 point divergence.

To be sure, college freshmen are more liberal on gay issues than non-college 18 years olds, but follow up surveys have shown that students become even more gay accepting throughout their college years and the age difference shows up in other surveys too, so the general point holds.

As young people grow older, the gay attitudes of each age group comes to resemble those of the one below it from a decade earlier, and because of the increased visibility of gays, people in the youngest age group keep becoming more gay accepting than the people previously in that age group.

The encouraging news here is that while the rate of change is no doubt variable in the short term, it seems fairly constant in the long term, and there seems little the religious right can do to slow or stop it.

First published April 30, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

IN A LONG APRIL 7 INTERVIEW, U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told the Associated Press he supports sodomy laws criminalizing homosexual sex and that if the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws violated a Constitutional right to sexual privacy, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."

Not that I want to prejudice you, but does the term "raving loony" come to mind?

It is worth pointing out first of all that by supporting sodomy laws, Santorum seriously believes homosexuals can and should by required to live as lifelong celibates. Now if anyone dared to suggest that all heterosexuals should lead sexless lives - reproducing, say, by artificial insemination - the idea would be laughingly condemned as preposterous, physically impossible, and deeply offensive. Not even all Catholic clerics manage to live chastely - although they promise to do so, whereas gays never promised that to anyone. Yet Santorum seriously wants to require this for gays.

Homosexual acts are wrong, Santorum goes on to say, because "society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality."

So many errors, so little time! No doubt society's continuance depends on some people having children, but not everyone need have two or more children, only a majority - or else old maids would be jailed, families with only one child would be fined, and celibate religious orders would be banned as criminal conspiracies. In any case, worldwide the risk is overpopulation not the continuance of society.

Nor is there any evidence that decriminalizing sodomy increases the number of gays or decreases the number of babies. Birth rates fall, as in post-war Europe, because heterosexuals decide to have fewer children, not because there are any more homosexuals. Moreover, as psychologist C.A. Tripp points out in "The Homosexual Matrix," societies with high rates of homosexuality frequently have high birth rates as well.

Santorum is right that no legal definition of marriage has included "homosexuality," but the issue is not gay marriage but decriminalizing sodomy. Many states have managed to decriminalize sodomy without instituting gay marriage. So arguing against gay marriage raises an irrelevant issue designed to obscure Santorum's utter lack of arguments for preserving sodomy laws themselves.

Santorum tries to claims that if we assert a right to sexual privacy for sodomy, then there is no available argument against a Constitutional right to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. Let's call this the "Cry havoc!" argument. His claim echoes some Supreme Court justices during the Hardwick deliberations that a Constitution doctrine of gay-inclusive sexual privacy has "no limiting conditions." But, like the justices, he is badly confused. Or dishonest.

First off, sexual privacy has nothing to do with bigamy or polygamy. In the absence of laws against fornication, unmarried heterosexuals can already form private sexual liaisons with any number of adults of the other sex.

But the legal definitions of bigamy and polygamy involve having two or more legal, state recognized relationships, with their attendant legal rights and entailments. That removes bigamy and polygamy from the realm of private sexual conduct into the realm of public (state) approval. Ending sodomy laws gets rid of state involvement; multiple-partner marriage requires state involvement.

As for incest or adultery, most people agree that governments have the right or obligation to prevent specific discernible harms to non-consenting parties. It is one of the few legitimate tasks of government. That is an easily recognizable "limiting condition."

To the extent that incest involves the sexual exploitation of minors or the abuse of authority, governments can legitimately prohibit it. Although laws against adultery seem on the decline and are seldom enforced, adultery may involve harm to the non-participant spouse. To that extent, governments can provide for remedies.

But Santorum goes beyond denying sexual privacy for gays to deny all sexual privacy, including sexual privacy rights already asserted by the Supreme Court, including abortion, the use of birth control even by married couples, and, arguable, the private possession of pornography (primarily used for masturbation).

For Santorum, there is "no limiting condition" to the reach of state intrusion and any sort of privacy goes out the window entirely: "This right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold" (the birth control case). So what Santorum clearly wishes to do is to read Vatican moral doctrines into U.S. Constitutional jurisprudence.

Santorum, alas, is not alone in thinking citizens have absolutely no rights unless the Constitution or the court states them. But this is to get things exactly backwards. Citizens should have the right to live their lives however they wish free of government intrusion. Governments should not be able to intrude unless they can demonstrate some specific Constitutional right to do so, such as to prevent direct harms to others. And, in this instance, any such right is clearly absent.

First published January 29, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

AN ANNUAL SURVEY of college freshmen found that last fall's entering freshmen were more accepting of gays and gay relationships than previous freshmen classes have ever been, despite the fact that they describe themselves as somewhat more moderate or conservative than the previous year.

Each year since 1966 the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles, has surveyed college freshmen about their background, educational and career plans and social attitudes. The results for fall 2002, just released, are based on 280,000 students at 437 colleges and universities.

This time, asked their opinion about the statement "Same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status" (i.e., gay civil marriage), 59.3 percent of the freshmen said they agreed, an increase of 1.4 percent over last year and an all time high since the question was first asked in 1997, when only 50.9 percent agreed.

Interestingly enough, although opinion surveys uniformly show that men are less accepting of gays, this year for the first time freshman men's support for gay marriage rose above 50 percent: it stands at 50.8 percent, a two point increase over the previous year. And support by women reached almost two-thirds: 66.3 percent.

On the other gay-related question, the survey asked whether students agreed that "It is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships" (i.e., sodomy laws). Fewer than one-fourth of the freshmen agreed: 24.8 percent. That figure is virtually unchanged from last year's 24.9 percent, but still represents an all-time low since the question was first asked in 1976.

Here too, there was a marked male/female difference: Fewer than one-fifth of the women (18.5 percent) supported sodomy laws, while nearly one-third of the men (32.6 percent) did so. The male/female differences on gay marriage (15.5 points) and sodomy laws (14.1 points) are, except for a question about gun control, the largest in the survey.

As in previous years, freshmen at schools with high entrance standards were far more gay supportive than freshmen at schools with lower entrance standards. That suggests that the better educated, better informed students are, the more likely they are to be accepting of gays.

And freshmen at private universities are more gay supportive than those at public universities. That suggests that parents who are financially better off are able to give their children wider social, cultural and travel experience, increasing their comfort with social and cultural variety.

Both the greater support for gay civil marriage and the sustained high level of disapproval for sodomy laws takes on additional significance since this year's freshmen seem, at first glance, slightly more conservative than last year's.

This year 27.8 percent of freshmen described themselves as "liberal" or "far left," a decrease of 2.1 points from last year's 29.9 percent. And 21.3 percent of the freshmen described themselves as "conservative" or "far right," an increase of 0.6 points. Most freshmen said they were "middle of the road."

With some reason, the HERI analysts attribute this slight political shift to the impact of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For instance, this year 45 percent of the freshmen agree with the statement "federal military spending should be increased," more than double the 21.4 percent who agreed when the question was last asked in 1993.

But the gay supportive results are anomalous only if "conservative" necessarily means "anti-gay," something that, contrary to progressive left rhetoric, seems less and less true among younger people. Another national survey conducted last year found the same result.

Perhaps more to the point, if this survey's answers are analyzed not as "liberal" versus "conservative" but as "authoritarian" versus "libertarian" - i.e, government intrusion versus leaving individuals alone - then the shifts on gay issue are consistent with many of the other shifts.

For instance: more freshmen this year think marijuana should be legalized and more of them support legal rights for those accused of crimes. At the same time, fewer of this year's freshmen support gun control, campus speech codes, or higher taxes on "wealthy" people.

Taken together these all suggest a slight shift away from reliance on governments or authorities and toward personal autonomy and liberty of action. The slightly increased opposition to sodomy laws and the greater demand for ending government discrimination against gay partners (i.e., government preferential treatment for heterosexual partners) fit with that trend.

Even the new support for higher military spending could be seen as a deeply felt desire to protect traditional American civil, economic and religious liberties from further assault by a violent, authoritarian religious sect.

There may be ideological changes slowly taking place that cannot be captured by the old left/right or progressive/conservative distinctions. If so, we need to avoid letting political labels do our thinking for us. As old Thomas Hobbes once said, "Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools."

First published January 15, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE SUPREME COURT indicated late last year that it would hear the case of "Lawrence and Garner v Texas" (hereafter "Lawrence"), the appeal by two Texas men arrested, briefly jailed and fined for violating a Texas law forbidding homosexual, but not heterosexual, sodomy.

In granting the hearing, the court seemed to be signaling that it was willing to reconsider its widely deplored 1986 "Bowers v Hardwick" decision upholding Georgia's more comprehensive sodomy law. Had the court wished to let Hardwick stand, it would simply have refused to hear Lawrence and Garner's appeal.

Since it takes votes from at least four justices to grant a hearing, that probably means at least four liberal justices (perhaps Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer) think Hardwick was wrongly decided and are reasonably confident they can pick up one or more centrist votes (Kennedy or O'Connor) to overturn it.

A less optimistic view: The justices are well aware that two, possibly three of the oldest justices--including liberal John Paul Stevens and centrist Sandra Day O'Connor--may resign during the Bush presidency and are likely to be replaced by fairly conservative judges. So the liberals may feel that even if their chances of overturning Hardwick are far from certain, this term will be the last chance for many years.

So, will the court overturn Hardwick? The court can do almost anything the majority has a will to do and find ways to interpret precedents to support the decision. So the question might be: Does the court have a will to overturn Hardwick? But that may be the wrong question. The right question may be: Does a majority have a will to uphold Hardwick? It may not.

The Hardwick decision attracts little support. It has been vigorously criticized by many conservative and libertarian as well as liberal legal theorists. Harvard law professor Charles Fried, solicitor general during part of the Reagan administration (1985-89) wrote of Justice White's "stunningly harsh and dismissive opinion."

University of Chicago libertarian law professor (and Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals) Richard Posner wrote that there was "a gratuitousness, an egregiousness, a cruelty, and a meanness" about the Georgia statute itself and argued its unconstitutionality.

And it is well-known that Justice Powell himself, who first voted to overturn Georgia's sodomy law then changed his mind and voted to uphold it, four years later admitted publicly, "I think I probably made a mistake in that one."

The Court hates to reverse earlier decisions, but it is fairly willing to change its mind. Its preferred method is to make some distinction between the older case and the newer one. With Lawrence the materials are available. Hardwick was argued on sexual privacy grounds. Since the Texas law applies only to gays, Lawrence can and will be argued largely on equal protection grounds: Texas denies gays as a class equal treatment under the law.

But more than that, the nation has changed since Hardwick. In 2003 we are now exactly as far beyond Hardwick as Hardwick was beyond Stonewall. Since 1986 the nation's understanding and acceptance of gays--and gay relationships--has greatly increased.

By 2003, far more gays and lesbians are openly gay--two, three, even four times as many as in 1986--and believe it is their moral right to be so. As a result, hardly any reasonably alert person can say, as the elderly Justice Powell claimed in 1986, that they have never known a homosexual. (Powell had had more than a half-dozen gay clerks but none was open with Powell.)

Nor are members of the court immune to a growing understanding and acceptance of gays. Greater exposure to gays may not force the justices to overturn Hardwick but it certainly can dilute the sort of ignorance and hostility that underlay White's decision and Burger's snide concurring opinion. And It may prompt justices to look harder for ways to overturn Hardwick.

Nor, of course, can the justices afford to be completely insensitive to shifts in public opinion if they are to retain respect for the Court and its decisions.

In 2003, the great majority of U.S. adults think sodomy laws should be abolished. While White's decision could note with satisfaction that sodomy laws were part of the American tradition and 24 states retained them in 1986, by 2003, only 13 states have sodomy laws. So sodomy laws are a rapidly waning part of the American tradition.

It is not without significance that in 1986 fears about AIDS had boosted support for sodomy laws to its highest point since the mid-1970s. But as AIDS became better understood and treatments became available, support for sodomy laws plummeted. In 1986, 53 percent of college freshmen favored sodomy laws, but by 2001 support fell to less than one-fourth (24.9).

Hardwick was widely viewed unfavorably in 1986. If the court rules similarly in 2003, the hostile reaction will be far more intense, widespread and sustained. It is hard to believe the Court would issue a decision that would find favor only among droolers.

Originally appeared October 30, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

HARRY HAY, who died recently at the age of 90, was the principal founder in 1950/51 of the early gay Mattachine Society. But Hay lived to see the gay movement grow in a very different direction from his original vision and he denounced it for what most of us would regard as its very successes - legal reform, partner recognition, media visibility - and played little role in organized gay activism after 1953.

Hay had one big idea. After reading Kinsey and recalling a short-lived Chicago gay organization in the 1920s Hay decided that homosexuals should form an organization to advance their interests. And he had the courage and perseverance to create one. But for the rest, his ideas seem now, from a distance of 50 years, largely without merit.

A Communist Party member from 1933 to 1951, Hay was asked to withdraw because Party members felt his homosexuality was "a security risk" (to the Party!) but the Party formally declared him "a lifelong friend of the people" - i.e., non-Party communist. He apparently retained his radical sympathies for the rest of his life, visiting the Soviet Union shortly before its collapse.

As a Communist Hay imbibed secrecy, paranoia and an ideology of authoritarian control by unknown leaders and he brought those to Mattachine. But in 1953 members rebelled, forcing Hay to withdraw. In a 1974 interview, Hay said, "What the opposition wanted was an open, democratic organization." Hay didn't want that: "In order to be such an organization, all the idealism that we held while we were a private organization would have to go."

The "idealism" amounted to this: "... a great transcendent dream of what being Gay was all about. I had proposed from the very beginning that it would be Mattachine's job to find out who we Gays were (and had been over the millennia) and what we were for and, on such bases to find ways to make our contributions to our parent hetero society."

Why that required secret leaders, dictatorial control, and no elections Hay never explained.

Hay's "idealism" had three components: a) gays are qualitatively different from heterosexuals, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, not just in "what they do in bed;" b) the core difference lies in the natural androgyny of homosexuals, that they embody both male and female elements; and c) in order to help promote their acceptance gays need to explain the contribution this difference makes to society.

Each of these deserves extended discussion; this is just a sketch.

Androgyny seemed to be a continuing obsession for Hay. In a 1950 prospectus for what became Mattachine, Hay repeatedly referred to "Society's Androgynous Minority," and "We, the Androgynes of the world." He exaggerated and romanticized intermediate gender roles occasionally found in earlier societies, ignoring examples of masculine warrior homosexuality in other cultures.

Today the idea that gays are androgynous seems based on selective perception and merely a capitulation to a social stereotype. Gay men work out to attract men who are attracted to men. More sports figures are coming out. One 1938 photo of Hay himself suggests a sullen James Dean masculinity. Nor has psychological testing discovered any noticeable psychological androgyny among gays that cannot also be found among educated heterosexuals.

Second, whether gays and lesbians have any intrinsic, special "gay consciousness" at all seems doubtful. Hay told biographer Stuart Timmons, "We differ most from heterosexuals in how we perceive the world. That ability to offer insights and solutions is our contribution to humanity ... ."

It may be that under conditions of prejudice and discrimination, gays can develop a heightened awareness of the arbitrariness of social conventions that impact them differentially, and even learn a heightened sensitivity to unconscious signals and nuances of personal interaction. But whether those would develop in the absence of prejudice and discrimination seems doubtful.

Alternatively gays may, like other minorities, learn to view the world from the mainstream perspective as well as their own. If so, that double vision - like looking at those 3-dimensional "Magic Eye" pictures - may provide a kind of "depth perception." But if so, that capacity would not be limited to gays, but be common to any minority.

Finally, Hay's idea that being gay has to be "about" something, that gays should account for their existence as a group, to answer the question "What are homosexuals for?" feels odd. But steeped as he was in Communist doctrine, Hay thought in terms of classes and "peoples" and conceived of gay liberation as "bargaining ... between Gays and straights as groups."

Most of us today probably realize that the purpose of our individual life is whatever we want it to be and that we can insist on respect as gay individuals whether or not being gay contributes to our purpose. The idea that gays need to justify our existence as gays falsely assumes that reproduction is itself a justification the lack of which gays need to compensate for.

Hay may have been wrong about almost everything. But in the end we do not insist that founders have the right answers, not even ask the right questions. We can honor them as founders and leave it at that.

A slightly different version was published October 23, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY about anti-gay slurs? The received wisdom is that Jesus never addressed the issue of homosexuality. But some interesting evidence suggests that teachings attributed to Jesus indicates strong disapproval of using anti-gay slurs.

In the gospel once attributed to the disciple Matthew, in the collection of ancient teachings gathered together as "The Sermon on the Mount," this passage occurs:

Matthew 5:21: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.

Matthew 5:22: "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Racha, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire."

What is "racha"?

For a long time no one knew what "racha" (later altered to "raca") meant. The word occurred nowhere else in the Bible or other ancient literature, which no doubt is why King James's panel of translators left the word untranslated.

The Revised Standard Version, often a good translation, doesn't even try but translates the whole clause as "Whoever insults his brother he must answer for it in court"--providing no sense of what the insult might be. A coy footnote says that "raca" is "an obscure term of abuse."

Clearly "racha" was unfavorable, some sort of insult. The most prominent guess was that the word was related to the Hebrew word "reqa" meaning "empty," "empty-headed" or "brainless." That would make the insult parallel with "Thou fool" in the last clause of Matthew 5:22.

But in "The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality" published in 1990, in an article on the word "Racha," gay historian Joseph Wallfield, who wrote under the pen name Warren Johansson, revived a 1922 proposal by German philologist Friedrich Schulthess that "racha" should be equated with the Hebrew "rakh" meaning "soft" or "weak", a "weakling" or "effeminate person."

That would make "racha" equivalent to the Greek word "malakos," referring to a receptive partner ("passive" or "effeminate," according to the concepts of the time) in homosexual behavior, a term found in the Epistles attributed to Paul.

Johansson pointed out that the 1922 proposal received substantial support a dozen later in 1934 when an ancient Egyptian papyrus was published written in Greek in 257 B.C. containing the word "rachas" with a parallel text indicating that the word meant "kinaidos" or "faggot."

As an interesting sidelight, Johansson pointed out that modern German underworld slang, which preserves a number of loan-words from Hebrew and Aramaic, uses the word "rach" to mean "tender, soft, effeminate, timid, or cowardly."

There is an additional consideration that weighs against the older, traditional interpretation of "racha" as simply "brainless" or "empty-headed."

Matthew 5:22 contains three major clauses in ascending order of deserved punishment:

• a) anger with a brother, danger of judgment (at a lower court)
• b) calling a brother "racha," danger of being called before the supreme council
• c) calling someone "fool," danger of hell fire.

In this series of three increasingly serious offenses and punishments, calling a brother "racha" deserves a serious, but less severe, punishment than calling someone "fool." So it seems extremely unlikely that "racha" can mean something so similar to "fool" as the older reading of "brainless," or "empty-headed" suggests. "Racha" must be something different. That leaves the effeminacy or anti-gay interpretation of "racha" the more likely reading.

Johansson's suggestion, initially proposed in an obscure gay scholarly quarterly called Cabirion (Winter/Sping, 1984) was widely resisted at first when it was not completely ignored. With time and additional study and thought, however, some of his early critics changed their minds and now accept his reading of the passage.

If Johansson is right, and he seems to be, then the teaching ascribed to Jesus is that his followers should not insult men, impugning their masculinity by accusing them of being "passive" or "effeminate" homosexuals, a type of person generally looked down on at the time.

"What the text in Matthew demonstrates," Johansson concludes, "is that he forbade acts of violence, physical and verbal, against those to whom homosexuality was imputed, in line with the general emphasis on self-restraint and meekness in his teachings."

Johansson cautions that none of his analysis is meant to argue that Jesus accepted or approved of homosexual behavior. The disapproval of homophobia does not necessarily entail approval of homosexuality. Such a claim would have to be based on different arguments and different evidence.

Originally appeared October 16, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

FOR MANY YEARS, the small island nation of Singapore has been home to an uneasy combination of free market capitalism with rapid economic growth on the one hand, and vigorous government controls on social behavior, speech and artistic expression on the other.

Now, however, faced with increasing competition from China, India and other Asian nations, Singapore's government has realized that while free markets are essential, in the long run they are not enough, that something more is needed for economies to remain productive.

That something is creativity - a creativity that enables entrepreneurs to keep discovering and inventing new products or improving old ones, helping them stay competitive in a world economy where everyone else is trying to get ahead of them. Unless you keep inventing something new, you fall behind.

So Singapore's leaders realized that they needed to develop a teeming, vibrant social and cultural environment to retain and attract, entertain and stimulate the creative people who can contribute to Singapore's development. And to do this, they also needed to cultivate and encourage Singapore's own creative talent.

But you cannot just snap your fingers and say, "Be creative." You cannot make creativity happen; you can only let it happen. In Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" when seedy government officials asked archetypal inventor/entrepreneur John Galt what they could do to help him, Galt replied, "Get out of my way."

Creativity, in short, can only come from the free play of a mind unhampered by impositions and limitations. Creativity requires freedom - not just freedom in one area, but freedom period - social, sexual, political, cultural, expressive, etc.

Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong seemed to recognize this in a recent speech: "A culturally vibrant city attracts global creative talent. Singapore needs a few little 'bohemias,'" he said, where artists can "soak in the ambiance, and do their creative stuff."

And so, Singapore's government, which has long been socially and sexually repressive and barred public discussion of such topics as race, religion, and sexuality, is planning to cut back censorship and fumblingly trying to find ways to open itself up to more free discussion and artistic expression.

Fumblingly. Broadcast of "Sex and the City" is banned, but Singaporeans order videos and DVDs from Amazon and hold viewing parties. Censors cut the gay subplot in "Six Feet Under," but approved a production of the play "Six Degrees of Separation" in which the pivotal character is gay.

Cultural groups are pressing for more freedom: "We want no censorship. We want experimental groups taking more risk in arts programs here," one theatrical producer told Reuters, arguing very reasonably, "It's very difficult to be creative when you are scared."

All this will be familiar to readers of Richard Florida's recent book "The Rise of the Creative Class." Florida argued that economic productivity required creative people, creative people require a context of cultural vibrancy, and easy acceptance of gays and "bohemians" was an index of the requisite cultural vitality.

The nucleus of this idea was well-known to economist Joseph Schumpeter more than 50 years ago. Florida rightly cites Schumpeter's insight that "It is not (price) competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization."

Florida's important addition is documentation of the fact that entrepreneurial capitalism requires a creativity that in turn requires an openness and free play of mind that sees the presence of gays and lesbians as a positive indicator of a vibrant and interesting cultural mix.

But beyond that, there are several ways that capitalism, by the habits of mind it requires and inculcates, can specifically promote and encourage the acceptance of gays; so it is useful to sketch out the parallels and some actual connections between how capitalism functions and how tolerance is generated.

• For instance, a creative capitalism may well welcome a gay sexual orientation as a valuable added perspective for a cultural environment that requires a churning variety of ideas, approaches, and methods in order to break away from settled modes of thought and stimulate creative thinking.
• By stressing constant innovation, creative capitalism can lure people away from their old habits of mind and their traditional, unexamined loyalties, attitudes and assumptions derived from village, church and family - all traditional sources of hostility to homosexuality.
• By making production and consumption valued categories of activity, competitive capitalism creates alternative ways of evaluating people - as clients and customers, productive workers, skilled employees, etc. - and competing hierarchies of merit that challenge and reduce the significance of non-economic factors like sexual orientation.
• By producing a stream of new goods and services that consumers can - and must - choose among, capitalism gives people experience in individual choosing and bolsters their confidence in their ability to make competent choices on the basis of their own needs and desires - and their awareness that others are doing the same.

The book on how the psychology of creative, free-market capitalism - "as if by an invisible hand" - gradually produces tolerance then acceptance of gays and lesbians has not yet been written. Some day it will be.

Originally appeared October 2, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

OCTOBER'S OBSERVANCE of Gay History Month provides a welcome opportunity to notice a fascinating new article in "The Journal of the History of Sexuality" revising earlier notions about the history of the Mattachine Society, "Behind the Mask of Respectability" by Martin Meeker.

The orthodox view of Mattachine is that in 1950/51 a group of gay men influenced by leftist ideology and led by Communist Harry Hay, founded the Mattachine Society to promote gay equality and a radical critique of oppressive heterosexual norms.

But, the story goes, in 1953 more conservative Mattachine members forced out the radicals and embraced a more respectable politics, encouraging gays to work within the existing society, leading to a decline in membership, influence, relevance, and eventual dissolution in the mid-1960s.

This view is substantially misleading, says Meeker. Based on interviews with surviving Mattachine members, neglected early gay publications and recently opened archives, Meeker says the actual history was in some ways the reverse of the old story.

Meeker argues that the ideology and the methods of early Mattachine conflicted with each other, inhibiting effectiveness, and the later, more moderate Mattachine posture enabled it to promote gay equality in practical ways while evading public hostility. "Daring and successful politics emerged from an apparently conservative ideology," Meeker says.

To begin with, early Mattachine was not so radical as some historians assumed on the basis of Hay's and other founders' political sympathies. Equal rights and self-esteem for gays may have seemed "radical" in the early 1950s, but they were in principle already the birthright of all Americans. (It was the Soviet-controlled U.S. Communist Party that asked Hay to withdraw after Mattachine was founded.) And many gays were already aware of oppressive mainstream norms based on their experience of prejudice.

Second, early Mattachine also sought bourgeois respectability. Its letterhead listed only mothers and sisters of the founders as Directors, including Harry's own mother. Responding to one member concerned about leftist associations, Mrs. Hay wrote, "Personally I have been a Republican for over fifty years. Incidentally, my husband once was a partner of Herbert Hoover and we often visited the Hoovers in New York."

Third, early Mattachine's Communist-inspired organizational cell structure, secret leadership, figurehead heterosexual Directors, and members' own frequent use of false names fostered mistrust and hampered--actually undermined--Mattachine's ability to challenge gay invisibility and bring gays and lesbians into the public sphere as equals.

Fourth, early Mattachine's emphasis on private, home discussion groups led members to feel that it had little relevance to the problems gays and lesbians faced daily. As later Mattachine leader Hal Call said, "I felt that (Mattachine founders) were sort of pie-in-the-sky, erudite and artistically inclined. Take Harry Hay ... You could never talk to him very long without going way back in history to some ancient Egyptian cult or something of that sort."

Despite some early Mattachine activism such as candidate questionnaires and support for a member entrapped by police, members' unease with the secrecy and the theoretical emphasis led to a 1953 rebellion in which new leadership was democratically elected--initially Hal Call, Don Lucas, and Ken Burns, using their real names and promising more openness.

The new leaders based in San Francisco sought to use the media to put a wholesome public face on homosexuality, involve sympathetic professionals in religion, psychology and sex research, and develop a semi-professional social service agency to help gays and lesbians with their problems.

Former journalist Hal Call became adept at working with mainstream media to counter the "conspiracy of silence" about gays. In 1955 Call founded "Mattachine Review" to reach gays around the country. Together Call and Lucas started Pan Graphic Press to publish the Review, later (after national Mattachine disbanded in 1961) expanding to pamphlets, bar guides, and an early gay newspaper, "Town Talk" (1964).

The work with legal, psychological, religious and sex research professionals has often been misread, Meeker argues. Mattachine did try to involve them when possible in order to bolster its respectability, but the aim was just as much to educate the professional--who inevitably learned a good deal from interacting with ordinary gays and lesbians. The tactic worked: increasing numbers of professionals participated, even soliciting Mattachine members expertise on homosexuality.

Finally, as Mattachine became better known, more gays sought its help. By the late 1950s, in another innovation in gay thinking and gay activism, Mattachine leaders realized the enormous need for a social service agency and began providing legal help, counseling, medical referrals and job placements for gays, In 1958, 300 people sought Mattachine help. By 1964 San Francisco's caseload alone approached 3,000 per year.

So the moderately positioned, post-1953 Mattachine Society was able to conduct more widely varied, aggressive activism than Mattachine's "radical" founders, fostered the ideal of a gay community of healthy individuals, and managed to do so openly and entirely apart from any suspect ideological baggage.