IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared September 18, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

MOST GAYS AND LESBIANS under 40 can hardly imagine the resonance the narrow approval (53 to 47 percent) of Miami/Dade County's gay anti-discrimination law has for those of us who remember the "Anita Bryant era" and her leading role in the 1977 overturn of Miami's first gay anti-discrimination law by a more than two-third vote (69 to 31 percent).

Bryant, you recall, was a former beauty queen, second runner up - i.e., third place - in the 1959 Miss America contest ("I was really disappointed that I didn't get the Miss Congeniality trophy," she said), a popular singer, Christian evangelist, and prominent pitchwoman for Florida orange juice and other products.

After the 1977 passage of a gay anti-discrimination law in Dade County, Bryant said the Lord told her to organize a movement to overturn the law. The resulting organization, Save Our Children, later renamed Protect America's Children, focused on promoting the claim that homosexuals - primarily gay men - recruit children.

"Homosexuals cannot reproduce - so they must recruit," an early Save Our Children statement said. "And to freshen their ranks they must recruit the youth of America." The language conjured up images of drooling perverts sexually molesting young boys. But it turned out that they meant that almost any visible evidence of homosexuality could recruit young people.

They also claimed that gays who did not "flaunt" their orientation - those who stayed in the closet - did not suffer discrimination, that gays were covered by existing non-discrimination law, that adding "sexual orientation" to non-discrimination laws constituted "special privileges" for gays, and that only "militant" homosexuals wanted such laws - so they could recruit young people.

Always the rhetoric returned to the idea of recruitment.

School teachers were the flashpoint. The implication was that gay teachers would promote their sexuality in classes. But the stated claim was that teachers who were "known practicing homosexuals," even if they said nothing were "role models" for impressionable youngsters who would want to imitate them and be homosexual too.

As Bryant explained in her 1977 book "The Anita Bryant Story," "Known homosexual school teachers and their possible role-model impact ... could encourage more homosexuality by inducing pupils to look upon it as an acceptable life style."

Even beyond that, Bryant wanted all gays to stay in the closet because any openly gay person, any "known practicing homosexual," might be a role model for some youth: "One of the purposes of this special-privileges ordinance is to provide role models for _our_ growing children."

Just becoming aware that openly gay people exist could apparently influence young people to become gay. As a later Save Our Children release explained, "What these people really want ... is the legal right to propose to our children that there is an alternate way of life."

One can only be amazed at the astonishing weakness of heterosexuality, that despite its cultural dominance, its presumedly inborn naturalness, and the ubiquity of heterosexual role models, it can be so easily undone by one openly gay person. You have to wonder why anti-gay militants feared that homosexuality was so appealing.

Bryant herself came across as warm, devout, zealous, and wholly untroubled by her vast ignorance. In a long Playboy interview, Bryant claimed that homosexuals are called "fruits" because "they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. God referred to men as trees, and because the homosexuals eat the forbidden fruit, which is male sperm."

Bryant said that Jesus "told us we were not to be concerned by the things the Old Testament said." When Playboy pointed out that Bryant constantly cited the Old Testament to support her opposition to homosexuality, she replied, "Well, when you start nitpicking ... -- and changed the subject.

She claimed that homosexuality was unnatural because "even barnyard animals don't do what homosexual do." When Playboy pointed out that animals engage in homosexuality, Bryant countered brightly, "Well, I've never heard of it" and said it was unnatural even so.

Bryant's "controversial" views, the ridicule they generated, and protests by gays harmed her career. Product endorsements disappeared, a planned television show was canceled, concert bookings dried up, a comeback tour through trailer parks and Elks Clubs failed and she finally disappeared from view.

Did Bryant learn anything from her experience? In 1980 Bryant told Ladies' Home Journal that she was "more inclined to say live and let live, just don't flaunt it or try to legalize it." In other words, the message was unchanged: Gays should stay in the closet and go to prison if they are caught having sex.

And in a 1988 Orlando Sentinel interview she reiterated that gays and lesbians are living in sin, that she regretted nothing and would do it all again, trying to save gays and lesbians from their sad, sick selves.

Even those of us who on libertarian grounds believe, as I do, that non-discrimination laws are unwise public policy can feel grim satisfaction that Bryant's repeal campaign, focused not on personal liberties but on anti-gay slanders, aggressive ignorance, willful misrepresentation, and fundamentalist zealotry, was finally after 25 years repudiated by the electorate.

Good-bye, Anita. It's over.

Author's note:Among other problems with Bryant's fundamentalism, her grasp of the Bible was weak. Eating from the tree of life was not forbidden to Adam. At Genesis 2:16-17, Jahweh tells Adam he may "eat from every tree in the garden" except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus eating from the tree of life, also in the center of the garden (Gen. 2:9) was permitted.

First appeared Sept. 11, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

TWO YEARS AFTER the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness, Chicago-based syndicated advice columnist Eppie Lederer, known to millions as "Ann Landers," would have none of it. She knew better:

"I do not believe homosexuality is just another lifestyle. I believe these people suffer from a serious personality disorder. Some are sicker than others, but sick they are and all the fancy rhetoric by the American Psychiatric Association will not change it."

You can hardly miss the tone of Lily Tomlin's character Ernestine from the telephone company: "WE are the advice columnist. WE are omniscient."

Landers' recent death prompted an outpouring of praise for her sensitivity, her practical intelligence, her concern for her readers. Some of the encomiums mentioned her supportive attitude toward gays and lesbians. But those comments came from people who had not followed her career carefully or else had short memories.

Although Landers did become more gay-friendly during her last decade, throughout most of her long career, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, she insistently told her readers that gays are sick, that they have a serious personality disorder, that homosexuality is abnormal, that homosexuals are miserable and self-hating, that most homosexuals would change if they could, and that heterosexuality is God's plan for mankind.

Some examples: In 1965, she described homosexuality as a "psychological disturbance." In 1973, she wrote that "homosexuality is unnatural. It is, in spite of what some psychiatrists say, a sickness - a dysfunction." In 1978 she called it "a personality disorder."

In 1976, oblivious of the fact that advice columns are a magnet for unhappy people not happy ones, Landers wrote, "My mail tells me a far greater number (of gays) are wretched and miserable. They hate their homosexuality and would give anything to be straight."

When an "open and happy" lesbian wrote to protest, Landers replied stiffly, "A great many people do not believe homosexuality is 'normal and healthy' and I am among them."

Landers referred approvingly to the notorious homophobic psychoanalyst Charles Socarides as a "New York scholar," and in 1978, five years after the psychiatrists depathologized homosexuality, Landers gave space in her "Ann Landers Encyclopedia" to yet another virulent homophobe, psychiatrist and change therapist Harold M. Voth of the Menninger Foundation.

Voth unleashed a tirade, trotting out all the old psychiatric claims about the possibility of curing homosexuality and the whole creaky machinery of neo-Freudian ideology about close-binding mothers and faulty gender identification, finally summarizing:

"To define homosexuality as 'normal' is to assault the fundamental building block of all societies, namely the heterosexual bond and the family which springs from that bond."

By 1983, a decade after the psychiatrists and psychologists changed their position, Landers was still finding reasons to condemn homosexuality, sounding for all the world like Lou Sheldon, Paul Cameron, and Jerry Falwell:

"I stand firm in my contention that homosexuality is not normal. It is my belief that when God made man and women he instilled in them sexual desires for one another so they would procreate. That was his divine plan to people the earth. ... Since their (homosexuals') behavior does not square with the plan for procreation, I believe in that sense they are abnormal."

Ann Landers, meet Laura Schlessinger.

Finally after more than 30 years of telling Americans gays were disordered, sick, miserable, abnormal, and unnatural, in 1992 Landers suddenly reversed course without ever admitting she had been wrong.

After Landers read about research suggesting a genetic component to homosexuality and nearly 75,000 gays and lesbians wrote saying they were happy being gay, one day she announced: "And now Dear Reader, this is Ann: It is my firm conviction that homosexuality is not learned behavior. It is genetic." And Landers rapidly became much more accepting of gays and lesbians

That research had problems and the findings have not been replicated, but Landers' earlier "firm conviction" was not based on science either so it made little difference. And unlike her previous "firm conviction" which helped two generations of young gays feel defective and two generations of parents feel guilty, her revised view no doubt did some good.

Landers can be praised for changing her mind, but not too much. Most experts and other advice columnists realized there was nothing wrong with gays long before Landers. Landers was the last on board. Her twin sister, Pauline Phillips, known to readers as "Dear Abby," had for decades been much more supportive of gays and lesbians.

"It's as if I've always known that there was nothing wrong with gay and lesbian people," Abby told author Eric Marcus in his recent book "Making Gay History." "This is a natural way of life for them. Nobody molested them, Nobody talked them into anything. They were simply born that way. ... Any therapist who would take a gay person and try to change him or her should be in jail."

Too bad Ann Landers didn't listen to Dear Abby.

Originally appeared August 28, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

LET'S TAKE A QUIZ. No peeking at the answers directly below.

1. Which Middle Eastern country has no sodomy laws nor uses vague charges such as "offenses against religion" or "immoral conduct" to prosecute and imprison gays and lesbians?

2. Which Middle Eastern country has a variety of gay organizations which safely conduct gay advocacy efforts?

3. Which Middle Eastern country has a gay and lesbian community center in its capital city?

4. Which Middle Eastern country holds annual Gay Pride parades?

5. Which Middle Eastern country has members of parliament who actively support and speak out on behalf of gays and lesbians?

6. In which Middle Eastern country did the head of state meet with gay activists?

7. Which Middle Eastern country lets gays and lesbians join its military services?

8. Which Middle Eastern country has broadcast programs about gays and lesbians on its television stations?

9. And a bonus question: When gays in Palestine are forced to flee persecution, what Middle Eastern country do they usually flee to?

Answers:

1. Israel
2. Israel
3. Israel
4. Israel
5. Israel
6. Israel
7. Israel
8. Israel
9. Israel

The contrasting treatment of gay men in neighboring Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt is well known: Gays are beheaded or sentenced to long prison terms.

What seems less well known, however, is the appalling treatment of gays under Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza. At least it was less known until Yossi Klein Halevi wrote about it in the August 19th New Republic. Palestine makes rural Texas look like San Francisco.

According to Halevi, one young man discovered to be gay was forced by Palestinian Authority police "to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects." During one interrogation Palestinian police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.

When he was released he fled to Israel. If he were forced to return to Gaza, he said, "The police would kill me."

An American who foolishly moved into the West Bank to live with his Palestinian lover said they told everyone they were just friends, but one day they "found a letter under our door from the Islamic court. It listed the five forms of death prescribed by Islam for homosexuality, including stoning and burning. We fled to Israel that same day," he said.

The head of a Tel Aviv gay organization told Halevi, "The persecution of gays in the Palestinian Authority doesn't just come from the families or the Islamic groups, but from the P.A. itself."

Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic religion law, he said: "It's now impossible to be an open gay in the P.A." He recalled that one gay man in the Palestinian police went to Israel for a short time. When he returned to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority police confined him to a pit without food or water until he died.

A 17-year-old gay youth recalled that he spent months in a Palestinian Authority prison "where interrogators cut him with glass and poured toilet cleaner into his wounds."

The U.S. State Department, which more and more seems to be living on some other planet, blandly noted in a 2001 human rights report, "In the Palestinian territories homosexuals generally are socially marginalized and occasionally receive physical threats." That's one way to put it.

In the last few years, Halevi reports, hundreds of gay Palestinians, mostly from the West Bank, have fled to Israel, usually to Tel Aviv, Israel's most cosmopolitan city. Many are desperately poor, he says, "but at least they're beyond the reach of their families and the P.A."

So it seems clear that Israel is the one country in the region in which gays have legal rights as citizens and live in safety and freedom.

Oddly, however, some gays and lesbians over on the anti-capitalist ("progressive") left sympathize with Palestinian terrorists and support the Palestinian Authority. One such fledgling group calls itself "Queers for Palestine," another is named "Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism" (as if trying to stop terrorism against Israeli civilians is itself terrorism).

To be sure, no one should argue that gays and lesbians must support Israel just because it is vastly more gay-friendly. They don't. They may feel that some other political principles are more important than gay-friendliness.

But gays who support Palestine, and they seem almost entirely on the far reaches of the political left, give the lie to the frequent demand made by gays on the left that the rest of us must support some "progressive" politician or position because it supposedly benefits gays, even though doing so would compromise or violate some basic political principle we as individuals may hold.

Keep "Queers for Palestine" in mind next time some gay left advocate says that because you are gay you have to support some approved "gay" position. And remember the pit, the sewer water, the bag of feces and the toilet bowl cleaner.

Originally appeared July 31, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

Some gays and lesbians, whenever they see a corporate sponsorship of a gay event, or a product promotion to gays, or commercial support for a gay organization, grumble disapprovingly, "What we are, a social movement or a niche market?!"

Well, of course, we are both. And they know that perfectly well. But what they mean is that they think we should be only a social movement, and not an economic target market at all. They want us to fight with one hand tied behind our backs. And the religious right couldn't agree more.

But not only are we both a social movement and a target market, but those two can interact synergistically, each boosting the other; and in many cases the fact that gays are a target market can make its own contribution to our legal and social equality quite independently of any social movement, so we would be foolish to ignore its potential.

Consider a few examples of how the corporate desire to reach the gay/lesbian market helps us.

Corporations advertise their products in the gay press. If you want a gay press, a free gay press, you should be delighted that businesses and corporations view us as a target market. Gay newspapers have to pay writers, editors, sales staff, art and tech people, printing bills, office rent and distributors. The money comes from advertising. No ads, no gay press.

Corporations sponsor large numbers of community events, from Pride parades and festival to national and international gay sports events, from gay arts and film festivals to gay rodeos. Without those sponsorships, participation would be far more expensive, or the events would be greatly scaled down or might not even exist at all.

Corporations that want our patronage are learning that they have to have gay-supportive personnel departments, a non-discrimination policy and spousal benefits for gay partners. Gay consumers increasingly take such factors into account and businesses know that failure in these areas can bring charges of hypocrisy. As a result there is now more acceptance from corporations than governments.

One particular advantage of being viewed as a desirable target market is that by definition that includes all those gays and lesbians who would never, ever do anything overtly "political," but who simply in the process of living their lives buy food, housing, cars, CDs, entertainment, alcohol, etc. And they are part of the gay market just as much as the most zealous activist.

Given these as well as other obvious benefits, you might wonder why anyone, even those on the anti-capitalist gay left, would resist the idea - or the fact - that gays and lesbians are a target market. Let's think of some possibilities; buy the ones you like.

• Fear that, as one book title put it, we would somehow be "selling out," losing something in the process of being a target market. But what could we be losing? We are getting products we want and helping generate the gay supportive results we want from corporations. So we gain twice while losing nothing. The only losers are the groups that don't get the corporate attention we do.
• Hatred of capitalism and businesses. Some people believe that anything businesses do is bad, even being gay-friendly, because businesses are bad, because their primary purpose is to make money instead of providing jobs and manufacturing useful products just out of the goodness of their hearts. The idea seems to be that anything done out of self-interest is bad and should not count even if the effects are beneficial. This discounts 95 percent of the world's progress.
• Hatred of advertising. Some people view ads as crass, repetitive, intrusive. But advertising is simply information and without advertising people would not know about most of the products available on the market or learn about new products that might save us time, entertain us better, improve our lives. And now that gays have a reputation as influential "early adopter" of new products and styles, we benefit from the early targeted advertising that produces.
• Resentment of income differentials. Many people resent the fact that some people, including some urban gays and lesbians, earn more money because the jobs they do are more valuable to the employers who pay them. And they may resent the fact that some people, including many urban gays, have more disposable income to spend but do not spend it as other people wish they would. As sociologist Helmut Schoeck pointed out, many schemes for income redistribution are motivated primarily by envy.

Probably underlying all these is the nagging but unspoken fear that if gays and lesbians achieve legal and social equality within - and, worse yet, by means of - the free market economic system, they will not be interested in supporting revolutionary social and economic change. So they must by all means be dissuaded from making gains that way.

But that is all just 19th century revolutionary romanticism. Most gays and lesbians have never supported revolutionary social change and are not ever likely to. What has happened instead is that we learned how to make existing social and economic processes work for us to improve our lives. A good thing, one might think.

First published July 23, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

RECENTLY I WAS TALKING with a young man about his relationship with his family and asked if his family knew he was gay.

"They know," he said, "but we don't talk about it."

I don't remember my exactly response, but it was something like "Yeah, I understand" or something else equally bland. But sometimes the things you yourself say can nag at you as much as things other people say. And on reflection, I think I was wrong in tacitly agreeing that "not talking" about it is all right.

I think we should talk about "it." Not "it" meaning our sexual activities, not meaning some "lifestyle," but "it" meaning our lives.

After all, you would talk about your life if you were heterosexual. Heterosexual family members talk about their lives all the time. They talk about who they are dating and what that person is like. They talk about who they are living with (roommate, lover, spouse), where they went on vacation and with whom, their out-of-town visitors, the parties and other social events they went to and with whom and so forth.

None of these things are taken to be talking about "it" - if "it" means their sex lives. In fact, it is because they talk about these various aspects of their lives that we can learn that heterosexuality is not just about sex, not even some uniform "lifestyle;" it is about leading a rich, full, active life which comes in a wide range of varieties.

The same is true for gays and lesbians. If you do not talk about your life, the range of activities you engage in, the important people in your life and what they mean to you, your family is left to their imaginings. And because of the so-called "vanity of minor differences," they may well exaggerate the significance of a different sexual orientation.

Differences there are, to be sure, and there is no reason to downplay them: the influence of childlessness, the psychological dynamics of same-sex bonding, greater time for social and cultural interests, and the grating fact of ongoing prejudice in some regions. But the human essentials of living one's life, meeting social, psychological and economic needs, and trying to find meaning in one's existence are about the same.

Most parents and other family members want their children (or siblings) to be happy, to have a fulfilled, rewarding life. We ourselves know how being gay is one way of being happy and leading a rewarding, emotionally fulfilled life. But they may not.

Your job is to help them realize it.

This does not mean you need to force feed information. It does mean that you can be alert for what modern educationists - with their gift for expressing the most commonplace concepts in constantly changing jargon - call "teachable moments," those times when information will seem particularly helpful or enlightening and naturally expressed.

Beyond that, the trick is to assure them in some way that you are open to questions or discussion. Many parents and relatives may never ask anything about your life because they think that would be intrusive or violate your privacy. After all, if you don't talk about it, they may feel you are letting them know that you don't want to talk about it. For all they know, you are uncomfortable about being gay.

And they may not know where to begin or what to ask. So you may have to provide occasional verbal cues or "prompts," teasers that fail to give very complete information and more or less invite questions which then lures the other person into an exchange.

"We went to see a great film last week." Obvious question hanging in the air: What film did you see? Or: "I was at the bar talking with a pilot who had scathing comments about airport security." Obvious information transmitted: there are gay pilots. Obvious questions: what did he say? What is wrong with airport security? Or: "The parade this year had more politicians than ever. I managed to shake hands with a couple." Information transmitted: growing political legitimacy. Possible questions: What parade? What politicians? These may be lame examples, but you get the idea.

If there is a way you can help your family realize that they benefit from your being gay, so much the better. If there is information useful to them that you can pass on - for instance those expert airport security concerns. Or if you met an interesting or important person through being gay: "I was chatting with Judge (fill in the blank) the other day...." Or if you saw something funny in the local gay paper that might entertain them too.

Above all, do not become discouraged. This is a long term project and success is likely to come slowly rather than in a sudden burst of understanding and acceptance. But keep at it unobtrusively but continuously and eventually you will see progress.

Originally appeared July 10, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

On July 6, the day of England's annual Gay Pride parade, British activist Peter Tatchell wrote a column for the left-leaning London Independent deploring changes in the gay movement over the last 30 years.

"We had a beautiful dream," he wrote. "Our demand was liberation. We wanted to change society, not conform to it. Our radical, idealistic vision involved creating a new sexual democracy, without homophobia and misogyny. Erotic shame and guilt would be banished, together with compulsory monogamy, gender roles and the nuclear family."

Tatchell went on to criticize gay organizations that focus on issues such as gay marriage which reflect traditional heterosexual goals, rather than "more contentious issues such as ... consensual sex between underage partners, the censorship of sexual imagery, the timidity of sex education lessons, and the criminalization of sex workers and sadomasochistic relationships."

Tatchell articulates both the nostalgia and the bafflement frequently expressed in the U.S. as well as England by old-timers on the gay left. At some point, the gay movement seemed to slip out from under them and they are not quite sure what happened, why it happened or who to blame.

But Tatchell underestimates both the success of the gay movement and the extent to which society has changed. To a great degree gays and lesbians have achieved the liberation that Tatchell and his colleagues sought from the repression imposed by government and public opinion.

Increasing numbers of gays fully accept themselves and live their lives openly and happily, accepted by family and friends, their sexuality accorded respect and their relationships treated with dignity. If that is not a revolution, then Tatchell is forgetting what a revolution is.

We have even achieved some of the sexual liberation Tatchell sought. Whatever Tatchell's "sexual democracy" means - and majority rule over people's sex lives seems like a dangerous idea - we have moved toward a more libertarian sexual individualism in which people can determine their own sexual and romantic lives, independent of what others think. The right conceptual model here is free market individualism not some governmental "sexual democracy."

Second, Tatchell and other early leaders on the left deceived themselves in assuming that early participants in gay liberation - the "we" he keeps referring to - all supported some sort of social and sexual radicalism. A substantial number of leaders and "activists" no doubt did since people with the most zeal about their views tend to push themselves forward most vigorously.

But the majority of gays even then were all over the political map. The thousands of gays and lesbians who marched in the earliest Gay Pride parades were hardly affirming any left-wing or radical agenda. They were simply making themselves visible, affirming their existence and moral legitimacy.

Films of early gay pride rallies show thousands of well-scrubbed, wholesome-looking gays and lesbians in T-shirts and jeans, looking slightly bored as they are harangued from the stage about the oppression of transvestites, prostitutes, gender roles, etc., and you know they're sitting there thinking, "When does the band get to play?" and "I wonder if that guy over there wants to hook up later."

Third, Tatchell seems to assume that any social movement such as ours should never depart from its original agenda (such as he imagines it). This is the nerve of the current liberationist position and it is repeated endlessly. Unfortunately, Tatchell never offers any argument for it.

But any movement that wants to stay vital and grow has to reflect the goals of its constituents and supporters. And if the primary slogan of gay lib was "come out, wherever you are," gays did come out in large numbers, bringing their own needs, beliefs and personal goals with them.

And it turned out that what most gay and lesbians wanted was "a normal life" - a stable, comfortable home, a primary relationship with someone they loved, a degree of freedom to explore their sexuality, and opportunities to live and socialize free of stigma and prejudice. If they felt any concern about prostitutes, transsexuals, sadomasochism, etc., it was hardly a priority.

Fourth, the good news for Tatchell is that he fails to consider how the open participation of gays in our social institutions will gradually change those institutions. If, as leftists sometimes argue, there is an inherent gay sensibility, they should have faith that it will have an effect wherever it is present. Dennis Altman caught this in his book title "The Homosexualization of America."

But more than that, the presence and legitimacy in our social institutions of people with a slightly different way of engaging with the world will result - is already resulting - in the relaxation of social strictures and open those institutions to other possibilities as well. In a free market of social behavior, once a legal monopoly is broken, more options will offer themselves for consideration.

This is, of course, an unintended effect, but it is a powerful effect nevertheless, and impossible to prevent because it has no direct cause. So Tatchell may obtain more of his goals than he expects, but in modified form and by means he never anticipated.

Originally appeared May 15, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA did a poor job of covering the assassination of openly gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. They unthinkingly repeated the Progressive propaganda claim that he was a right-wing extremist despite the evidence of their own eyes.

Time Magazine called him a member of the "far right." The Associated Press called him a "far right leader" but later admitted he "never fit conveniently into the image of 'extreme right-winger.'" Not that that made them stop and think about what they were writing.

The New York Times referred to him as "maverick right wing populist" - as if that conveyed any meaning - and only later admitted that he "defended an eclectic mix of ideas of both the left and the right."

Perhaps the most incompetent labeling was by the Chicago Tribune which headlined, "Far-right leader killed" with a first paragraph that began "Maverick Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, rising star of the far right in Europe, ... "

Not until the 18th paragraph (if anyone bothered to read that far) did the Tribune's witless reporter deign to mention that "Fortuyn was not a traditional far-right politician ... With his bohemian attitudes, Fortuyn always seemed more in tune with the spirit of a modern, progressive Holland than many of the establishment politician...."

The Tribune continued: "Holland was the first country in Europe to legalize homosexual marriages, regulate prostitution, and permit the sale of marijuana in its famous 'cannabis cafes,' all of which Fortuyn supported."

So it turned out that the sort of "far right politician" Fortuyn was - was, well, "modern" and "progressive." But we mustn't let facts about his actual positions keep us from using stigmatizing labels, must we!

Fortuyn not only supported legal marijuana and prostitution and gay marriage, but right-to-die, reproductive choice and a host of other issues favored by the left. And, as Fortuyn repeatedly emphasized, even his controversial proposal to ban immigration was designed to protect Dutch liberal tolerance from being undermined by authoritarian Muslim immigrants with sexist and homophobic religious views.

So how useful are these labels "left" and "right," "progressive" and conservative"?

For instance: Is gay marriage progressive or conservative? Maybe it is progressive if you advocate it where it doesn't exist, but right-wing if you want to keep it where it does exist. So Dutch Muslims who oppose gay equality are Progressive since they advocate change? Or, if preserving gay marriage is conservative, what is the Dutch left-wing position on gay marriage? The same as the conservative? You see the problems.

• What positions count as "left" or "right"? Are we talking in temporal terms (change versus stasis) in which left and right depend on the political context, or are some issues inherently or necessarily left or right? E.g., is legal abortion always the progressive position?
• How can we accurately label someone who draws positions from both the left and right - e.g., gay marriage, legalized drugs and right-to-die, as well as lower taxes, reduced welfare and privatization of government functions? Which issues should be used for labeling purposes?

Either we have to rank the issues' importance according to some criterion or other and chose the most significant one(s) - or else we have to count up which side most of a person's positions are and use that. Neither seems satisfactory. What if they contradict?

• So: if "left" and "right" are not a very useful way to divide up policy positions, are there better conceptual models available? Are there some, unchanging root philosophical views that can give us a better insight into policy positions? I think there are.

Although Fortuyn was not quite a libertarian, his positions do seem rooted in a neo-liberal ethic of personal liberty, autonomy and accountability, opposing the right of the government to interfere in people's lives, or play favorites on "lifestyle" matters (like sexuality).

That suggests a consistency behind favoring legalized drugs, right to die and gay marriage as well as lower taxes and a reduced welfare state. Certainly governments reduce personal liberty if they take a lot of the money you spent time and effort to earn and give it to someone else to spend.

Someone like Fortuyn then functions as a sort of Rorschach inkblot. Most people looked at the aspect of personal liberty that is most threatening to their ideology to determine the label they applied to him.

Dutch evangelical Christian and Muslim fundamentalists - who opposed his positions on social issues - would presumably think of him as "left-wing." People who labeled him "right-wing," were "progressives" angered by Fortuyn's desire to cut back the extensive welfare state (including endless welfare for new immigrants).

In the end, Progressives seem more interested in redistributing income (called "economic democracy") and enlarging the government than in preserving personal and civil liberties. Conservatives are more interested in imposing restrictive social policies than in preserving economic liberties. When forced to choose, neither side's first agenda is liberty, but expanding control over people's lives.

Originally appeared in slightly different form May 1, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

IT HAS BEEN FASCINATING to watch the ballooning disclosures of sexual improprieties by Catholic priests and the crisis management efforts at minimization, cover-up, denial, and blame shifting by the Catholic hierarchy - as well as the attempts by various Catholic factions to promote their own agendas - from doctrinal crackdown and the expulsion of gay priests to abandoning celibacy and ordaining female priests.

Those of us who are not Catholic have no vested interest in how all this turns out but perhaps it is worthwhile offering some speculations about why this situation arises, if only to stimulate others to offer better speculations.

1. Celibacy is contrary to human nature - that is, the nature of "the human person."

Sex is built into us: It is how we evolved and it is why we evolved. Our ancestors are the early humans who felt the most sexual desire and so had the most sex, passing their genes down to us. No doubt there are some people who because of low sexual desire or superhuman effort can achieve celibacy, but we should not be surprised when many do not.

Accordingly, there are limits to any institution's ability to regulate sex by laws, rules, injunctions, threats, bribes, etc. Churches that try the hardest to regulate sex, channeling it or forbidding it, have more problems with sex than other churches, not just because they are fighting against an intrinsic part of "the human person," but also because they keep people's mind focused on whatever they are supposed to avoid.

2. The Catholic church presumably expects priests to have a healthy, mature attitude toward sex so they can manage their celibacy intelligently.

But it is difficult to know how anyone who has not experienced something significant, such as sex, can know what they are giving up, be sure it was a wise decision, or have a genuinely healthy attitude toward it. It seems possible that they will develop an unhealthy aversion or unhealthy curiosity, or a distorted understanding of its role in the human psyche, including their own.

And maturity is a process that is based on experience and reflection on that experience. How can a sexually inexperienced seminarian acquire the necessary experience to develop this mature attitude? Or if a priest only had sex only as a youth, how can his understanding develop beyond the understanding he had at that point? Isn't it just as likely to be halted, fixated at that age of understanding - and possibly at that age of attraction?

3. If bright, sensitive Catholic youths feel little interest in dating and find they are not strongly attracted to women, they - or their parents - may mistake that response for a call to the priesthood and celibacy. But as many of us know from our own experience, a lack of strong interest in girls and dating was simply a function of being gay but not being fully aware of it yet.

In a religious culture that remains lingeringly repressive and officially homophobic, it may be especially difficult for gay youths to come to the realization they are gay. They may suppress that self-understanding and adopt a false consciousness of "having a vocation," only to realize years later that they were deceiving themselves. Worse yet, many parents and relatives, for their own selfish reasons, may support and encourage the youth's self-deception.

However odd it seems to say so, it may be best to acknowledge that pushing any youth into the priesthood track before he fully understands himself constitutes a particularly offensive kind of child abuse. Yet, an international Catholic organization called the Legion of Christ reportedly recruits boys as young as 10 to leave their families and follow a course of study to become priests.

4. Attempting to expel gay priests, even if one could find them, might have less effect than many conservative Catholics seem to assume.

Some, many of the priests who perpetrate sexual contacts with young males may not be homosexual at all. Sexual desire is sexual desire, and under pressure the usual direction of preference may break down. This is facilitated by the fact that underage teenage youths may be slender and slightly androgynous, lacking some of the distinguishing physical features of adult masculinity.

We have the readily available parallel of heterosexual men in prisons. Deprived of their preferred outlets for sex, a large proportion make do with what is available; then when they return to civil society they resume their preferred behavior.

5. The Catholic church uniquely provides prolonged clerical contact with young males in large numbers through the structure of the Catholic educational system and religious practice - from clerical involvement in Catholic high schools and seminaries to all-male retreats and the institution of altar boys.

Above all, the institution of private confession produces an unusual degree of emotional and psychological vulnerability, repeatedly stirring up a heady mix of sex, guilt, and defenselessness, and provides regular occasions when youths may reveal themselves as confused, vulnerable, or manipulatable.

No doubt much more is involved than I have suggested here. But so far I have seen too little serious discussion of how the Catholic church itself brings about the very situation it claims to deplore.

Originally appeared April 3, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

The New York Times published a dispiriting little article recently about how college students tend to be "guarded and private about their intellectual beliefs." According to one college dean, "Students are interested in hearing another person's point of view, but not interested in engaging it, in challenging it, or being challenged."

Part of the reason must lie in the way that the humanities and social sciences are frequently taught these days, particularly the deadening influence of doctrines such as deconstruction and multiculturalism.

With deconstruction, the point is not to learn about ideas in order to assess their merits and figure out which ones are better and worse, but only to "deconstruct" them - to see where they come from, how they are used and whose interests they serve.

Similarly, multiculturalism teaches students to see all cultural outlooks as self-contained wholes, presumably internally coherent and largely incommensurable with other views. Thus all views are immune to criticism from other views, and therefore, by default, equally valid.

Both doctrines fall prey to severe criticism and each can easily be turned back upon itself: "Deconstruction" can be deconstructed (as excellently by Prof. Stephen Cox in "Critical Review," Winter 1989); and, "multiculturalism" is, after all, just one viewpoint among many, no more valid than some opposing view.

But students probably do not think their own thoughts out to that "meta-analytical" level and their professors are not likely to teach any analysis that calls their teaching into question.

In any case, both doctrines are profoundly anti-intellectual. Neither provides students with any way to discover or develop reasons why they should accept some views and not accept others. They leave the impression that it is impossible and somehow even wrong to try.

This discourages reasoned discussion: It creates a disincentive for students to express any opinion about whether something is good or bad, true or false, right or wrong, if they have been taught that, in the nature of things, their opinion cannot have any justification.

But this means that anyone influenced by these ideas is left without a way to explain to critics why democracy is good, why a free press is good, why individuality is good, why free-market economy is good or why religious freedom is good.

Thoughtful people, philosophers even, once offered persuasive arguments for each of these ideas, and the force of the arguments actually prevailed since each of these institutions we now enjoy constitutes a major change from earli er authoritarian regimes where they were entirely absent.

Even today we face assault from people, Old Testament-minded "Christian Reconstructionist" at home and Islamic militants abroad, who oppose these institutions, so we had better be prepared to argue for them anew rather than treating those other viewpoints as "interesting" but immune from criticism.

As with many issues in the general culture this has direct relevance for gays and lesbians as we seek acceptance as legal and moral equals. Most obviously, both "Christian Reconstructionists" and Islamic militants want homosexuals to be executed.

But even more, we need to be able to prove the merits of our claims to skeptics, the "undecided," and those who are new to our issues. And we need to be able to reassure ourselves, particularly those many of us still in the closet, that our cause is just.

We must be prepared to offer reasons why homosexuality is good: why being gay is not pathological or a psychological defect; why homosexuality is legitimate no matter whether it is genetic, chosen, or the result of obscure psychological processes; why homosexual sex has value and what it contributes to our well-being.

For instance, one of the prominent claims of the religious right is that the American Psychiatric Association simply yielded to political pressure when it removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1973.

But in fact there were a large number of cogent arguments for the change, based on numerous psychological studies and rooted in good psychiatric and psychological principles. We need to be able to reproduce those arguments and show people the religious right is wrong.

What will not work is the kind of response we often hear from gay organizations, that anti-gay claims are "hateful and divisive rhetoric and all fair-minded Americans will reject these hateful and discriminatory words that promote hateful, anti-gay violence," etc., etc. That is just hot air, convincing no one, and implies that we have no good arguments for our side.

Similarly, since our sexual relationships are as valuable in our lives as they are in everyone else's, we must defend our sexual activity as healthy, self-actualizing, fostering relationships, expressing affection, and sometimes just extremely entertaining.

In the face of an artificial distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity, we need to develop and promote a public language to help people see why defenses of our "orientation" but not our "activity" simply grant victory to our opponents.

Humans are not pure spirit and celibacy is contrary to human nature. For us to seek acceptance or inclusion based on the idea that sexual activity is separable from our "selves" is deeply demeaning to the bodies that we are. But most of our gay organizations are silent about sexual behavior while our opponents condemn it as their rhetorical trump card.

Originally appeared March 27, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

Editor's note: Pim Fortuyn, 54, was assassinated May 6, 2002, outside a radio studio in Hilversum, The Netherlands.

Dutch politics has recently been roiled by the emergence of an openly gay candidate who denounces Islam as backward, wants to limit foreign immigration, curtail street crime, improve public services, cut back a welfare state often labeled "bloated," and shake up the bland "old boy network" of Dutch politics.

Pim Fortuyn is generally described as an author, television personality, and former professor of sociology with a Marxist perspective. He has attracted much media attention for employing a butler and traveling in a chauffeur driven Mercedes.

But his ideas are what have aroused most interest. Journalists have difficulty finding an accurate label for him. "Populist" seems the safest, non-polemical term. But his detractors, mostly on the political left, frequently denounce him as racist, fascist and other terms of abuse.

But judging from a New York Times article, those claims seem counter-intuitive, slanderous, even crazed. And it may be Fortuyn's opponents who better deserve the labels they use.

Fortuyn points out, for instance, that many Muslim immigrants do not learn Dutch and refuse to adopt the Dutch national culture of tolerance and equality. The immigrants' version of Islam is backwards, he says, because, among much else, there is no equality between men and women and because Muslim clerical leaders attack homosexuals.

It does seem clear that many Muslim immigrants come from historically sexist and homophobic regions such as Morocco, Turkey and Indonesia, bringing their cultural views with them. And Muslim Imams in Rotterdam have repeatedly denounced gays as immoral. Rotterdam Imam El Moumni said on Dutch television that homosexuality is "a disease that threatens society."

There is a fascinating phenomenon here. A man who urges immigrants to embrace their adopted nation's liberal values of political tolerance, women's equality and respect for gays is the one denounced as a racist and fascist.

Yet insofar as immigrants suppress women, denounce the very existence of gays, and, we may reasonably suppose, are hostile to Jews, the immigrants seem far closer to those who originally bore the labels now being applied to Fortuyn.

At this point we can begin to suspect that terms like "racist" and "fascist" are just empty rhetoric, swear words, with no cognitive content. They are designed merely to delegitimize someone without taking the trouble to provide evidence or argue against their ideas.

One of the deepest political problems for any open, free society is what measures it must take in order to preserve its fundamental values of openness and tolerance against counter-pressures from people who reject those very values. But the problem is scarcely solved by denying the problem exists or by denouncing people who try to preserve a free society as racists or fascists.

The Dutch, with their historical experience of real fascism, can surely recognize and reject any politicians who threaten any sort of authoritarianism. Gays in particular, as targets of fascist oppression, would presumably welcome a politician, gay or not, who wanted to preserve a society where they are accepted.

And sure enough, when a Times reporter visited a gay bar to ask for opinions about Fortuyn, the bar-owner said, "Oh course most of my clients voted for the prof. His ideas about what's wrong are crystal clear."

Most of Fortuyn's other policy ideas don't seem fascist or racist either. Rather the opposite.

He wants local mayors to be popularly elected rather than appointed. Generally, people on the left view democracy and fascism as opposites. But in this case the man who wants to expand democracy is the one labeled racist and fascist. Does this fit a pattern of dissimulation and obfuscation by Fortuyn's critics?

Fortuyn also addresses popular concern about rising crime rates and street violence. According to the Times, police attribute both to "gangs of immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, and the Caribbean." If true, it hardly seems racist to say so. And Fortuyn apparently has support from many earlier immigrants who fear street crime as much as anyone else.

The crime problem may be exacerbated by an inability or unwillingness of more recent young immigrants to acclimate to Dutch culture, even to act out their rejection in anti-social ways. If so, the problem is to foster cultural integration in some way. But vigorous police vigilance can help in the meantime.

Fortuyn also says he would like to revive military conscription. Since The Netherlands is not surrounded by foreign enemies, we can speculate that Fortuyn hopes to draw young immigrants into Dutch culture by requiring common service in the national military.

We can oppose conscription as hostile to personal liberty and believe there are better ways to integrate immigrants, but urging it is hardly fascist. Conscription was supported by U.S. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Even now proposals for mandatory national service come more from the left than the right.

It is worth recalling which U.S. president ended conscription: Richard Nixon. And what presidential candidate first urged an end to conscription: Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Both men were viewed as on the political right.

History is often embarrassing to facile polemics that way.