IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared Oct. 17, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

HISTORICALLY, ISLAMIC CULTURE (or better, cultures) seem to present two different faces toward homosexuality: A deeply hostile, punitive aspect rooted in religious texts and edicts and a more benign aspect ranging from bemused tolerance to open approval and celebration in literature.

We are at present learning a great deal about the most adamantly hostile strain of Islam as represented by the execution of gay men in Afghanistan and Stalinesque show-trials of gay men in Egypt.

According to the gay Muslim group Al-Fatiha, at least six Islamic nations have laws permitting capital punishment for homosexual acts and at least two have executed gays in recent years.

Just as Christian fundamentalists defend sodomy laws by citing biblical texts, Muslim governments often trace their own punitive laws to their official religion, to the Qur'an (or Koran), and the elaborate Islamic legal traditions called Shari'ah developed from it.

There seem to be about eight relevant passage in the Qur'an, all of them strongly negative. Seven refer to the ancient myth of Sodom that Muhammad borrowed from Hebrew scriptures and which apparently impressed him deeply. Here is a sampling, cited in Ibn Warraq's comprehensive "Why I Am Not a Muslim" (Prometheus Books, 1995). (Note: suras are akin to books in the Bible.)

• Sura 4:16. "If two men among you commit indecency, punish them both."
• Sura 7:80-81. "And Lot said to his people: Do you commit indecent acts that no nation has ever committed before? You lust after men in preference to women. You really are a degenerate people."
• Sura 26:165-6. "Will you fornicate with males and abandon your wives, whom God has created for you? Surely you are a people transgressing all limits. ... [The people of Lot] were utterly destroyed."
• Sura 27:55. "And tell of Lot. He said to his people: Do you commit indecency though knowing its shameful character, lusting after men instead of women."

In short, homosexual sex is indecent, degenerate, shameful, lust-driven, and must be punished.

Even apart from the specific injunction to punish homosexual sex, religious regimes have usually felt obligated to punish any "indecency" or "degeneracy" because they supposedly weaken the perpetrator's faith, corrupt his neighbors or offend gods. The allegedly gay men on trial in Egypt are not accused specifically of homosexual acts but of dishonoring Islam.

But there seems to be an ambiguity in the Qur'an. Most Westerners know that the Qur'an is surprisingly specific about the sensory, even sensual pleasures of the Islamic paradise, with food and drink and young maidens tending the needs of the faithful.

But, as Warraq points out, the Qur'an also specifies that male youths (presumably adolescents or ephebes) will also provide for the needs of the faithful:

• Sura 52:24. "And there shall wait on them young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls.
• Sura 56:17. "And there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and pitchers of water and a cup of purest wine."
• Sura 76:19. "They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth, who will seem like scattered pearls to the beholders."

The exact role of these youthful cup-bearers is not stated, perhaps discreetly so, although it is worth noticing the phrase "boys of their own" in Sura 52:24. Some later Islamic cultural traditions certainly assumed physical involvement.

There seems to be a tension throughout between acknowledging the attractiveness of young men, perhaps part of the native Arabic culture Muhammad was appealing to, and the idea imported from Hebrew scriptures or some other strand of earlier Arabic culture that sex with men is somehow shameful or improper.

This ongoing tension between desire and avoidance in Islamic thought seems to ratchet up anxieties and evasions about homosexuality to a high pitch, especially in the exclusively male public world in which even today many men long remain bachelors, not least because polygamy by some men drains the market of women available for marriage.

The same tension lingers after the Qur'anic compilation. According to ethnographer Jim Wafer writing in the excellent anthology "Islamic Homosexualities" (New York Univ. Press, 1997), most of the vast number of supposed statements of Muhammad (called "hadith") collected (or counterfeited) over the next centuries are deeply negative toward homosexuality.

One such hadith reads: "If you see two people who act like the people of Lot, then kill the active and the passive."

But in a few hadiths Muhammad supposedly warned Muslims against lingering glances at young men because they are so attractive. One hadith says: "Keep not company with the sons of kings, for truly souls desire them in a way they do not desire freed slave-girls."

In other words, as with the ancient Greeks, the desire for young men seemed to be completely reasonable and a natural part of the human psyche, not perverse, shameful or immoral. But for Muslims desire was to be resisted in the service of self-control, piety or "submission" ("Islam") to the god and the god's laws.

Those mixed messages were developed and altered, one side or the other gaining ascendancy, as Islam was refracted through a variety of foreign cultures in succeeding centuries.

Originally appeared Sept. 26, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

MOST OF US WHO ARE gay or lesbian Americans wish our nation well in trying to disable and eliminate the terrorist networks responsible for the Sept 11 attacks. Not only are we Americans as much as gays and lesbians, but that effort will directly benefit us.

The fundamentalist terrorists are hostile not just to America's basic institutions of personal freedom, individualism and tolerance, they are especially hostile to the variety of lives those values allow. Specifically, they view homosexuality and tolerance of it as prime examples of Western irreligion and cultural decadence.

So too in the U.S. Some Arab cab drivers have told me they like working Chicago's Halsted St. gay bar strip because "the money is good and gays don't cause problems." But they say some conservative Muslim drivers keep away from Halsted because they want to avoid contact with homosexuals. (Note to those cab drivers: You can do this in America; It's a free country.)

Despite widespread calls for national unity, however, gays and lesbians still have the unfinished project of achieving full social acceptance, so it seems neither wise nor necessary to suspend our own advocacy efforts.

But we need to consider how best to shape our strategy and articulate our goals in the altered political climate. For one thing, in the presence of a threat that affects us all, it seems prudent to avoid any suggestion of divisiveness or sectarian partisanship.

The perils of conspicuous partisanship and agenda-mongering in the present climate quickly became obvious when Rev. Jerry Falwell publicly blamed gays, abortion advocates, civil libertarians, and secularists for helping the terrorist attack happen.

Falwell was stunned to find himself denounced, even vilified, by almost everyone-in newspapers, on television, at the office water cooler. Even President Bush said he disagreed with Falwell, an unprecedented presidential condemnation of a prominent religious figure's religious views.

We can use three related approaches in promoting our goals without being accused of untimely partisanship:

• Emphasize our commonality with all Americans;
• Emphasize that some of us also sustained losses in the terrorist attacks;
• Emphasize our desire to make a positive contribution and our (sometimes untapped) capacity to do so.

Here are a few specific examples.

1. We can collect and publicize stories of the gays and lesbians who were killed and injured in the attacks, so we can show Americans that gays are everywhere, working jobs and living their lives along with other victims.

2. We can point to specific cases of same-sex couples one of whose partners was killed in the attacks. We can point out that married partners are allowed automatic inheritance, taxation, and Social Security benefits, while the gay and lesbian partners are not. That may help Americans see that different outcomes from equal devastation is unfair.

3. We must publicize the stories of gays and lesbians who made contributions during and after the attacks. The story of Mark Bingham who may have helped fight terrorists aboard the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania is now well known.

But there are doubtless stories of others who helped - and will help in the future, for there will likely be more attacks: The story of the gay policemen, the gay firefighters, the gays and lesbians who helped rescue people, who fought terrorists or who warned about them.

4. Gays and lesbians who feel moved to join the military could try to enlist at the local recruiting office, taking along a photographer from the mainstream press to publicize their desire to contribute.

If, as expected, the military issues a "stop-loss" order permitting the retention of avowed gays, we need to point out that supposed concerns about "unit cohesion" prove to have no significance at a time of mobilization, when you would think they would be most important for military effectiveness.

5. Gay men are not permitted to donate blood, but lesbians can. Every lesbian group might consider inviting its members to donate blood as a group: lesbian singing groups, lesbian police officers, cancer projects, social clubs, softball and volleyball teams. Take along a photographer from a mainstream newspaper: Remember the aim is to get publicity for helping.

6. Al-Fatiha, the national gay and lesbian Muslim group, has an unprecedented opportunity to recruit new members and promote itself among moderate Muslims by vigorously condemning terrorism and publicizing passages from the Koran and Muslim tradition urging peace, tolerance, and civility.

7. Many bars and businesses in gay enclaves are displaying American flags. We should draw attention to this spontaneous display of patriotism so Americans can see we have the same feelings they do. Next June we could remember to include American flags along with rainbow flags during Gay Pride parades.

8. Finally, this is an unparalleled opportunity for gays and lesbians to step forward and respond to fundamentalist terrorists by explaining and defending the values of personal freedom, individualism and tolerance that are the foundation of our own existence as a people and a community.

By doing this in the public sphere - and this is the whole purpose - we present ourselves to our fellow citizens as paradigmatic Americans to whom they might well be grateful for rising to the defense of American principles they believe deeply but too often inchoately.

Originally appeared September 19, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., constitute, and were clearly intended as, very serious assaults against international capitalism and free trade, U.S. economic influence, U.S. military power and the whole of America as a symbol of whatever it symbolizes to the perpetrators.

And what does the U.S. symbolize to the fundamentalist Muslims who are the chief suspects in the attacks? Secularism, rationalism, humanism, individualism, personal rights, capitalism. In short: modernity - modern society in all its aspects.

Capitalism? Especially capitalism. A friend sent me part of Iran's Tehran Times Sept. 12 story about the attacks which begins: "Yesterday the United States of America woke up to living terror when the landmarks of the capit alist world were rocked by a series of huge explosions."

If we want to better understand conservative Islam and the attitudes of many Arab Muslims toward the modern Western world, we cannot do better than turn to the useful guidebook, Seyyed Hossein Nasr's "Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World" (Chicago, 1994).

Describing the moral decay of modern Western society which young Muslims must resist and oppose, Nasr explains that the modern world is rooted in a "false view of man and of his society."

That false view includes "individualism, humanism, rationalism, ... rebellion against authority, ... the atomization of the family and the reduction of society to simply the quantitative sum of atomized individuals" - i.e., individualism (p. 245).

And Nasr denounces "Western capitalism and democracy" among the "various ideologies" with which modern society has been indoctrinated (p. 212).

Should anyone have doubts, Nasr regards homosexuality and all proposals for legal and social equality for gay and lesbians as key aspects of this modern, false view of society.

"Moreover, the new styles of living ... demonstrate the disintegration of (Western) society. ... To an even greater extent especially in big cities ... various forms of homosexuality have become more and more prevalent during the last generation" (p. 230-1).

"Even the meaning of the family ... is under severe attack." ... "There are now even those who attempt to break the traditional meaning of marriage as being between the opposite sexes and try to give a new meaning to marriage as being any bond between two human beings even of the same sex as long as they want to live together" (p. 201)

These are not the words of some fanatical Taliban leader in Afghanistan. They are by Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University.

Just as the conservative Muslim worldview replicates Soviet Communism's hostility to Western individualism, personal autonomy, civil liberties, capitalism, economic freedom, sexual and artistic freedom, so it also finds a parallel in the conservative Christian opposition to secularism, individualism, personal autonomy, civil liberties, gender equality, sexual and artistic freedom.

As evidence, we need only recall Rev. Jerry Falwell's now notorious comments on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" in which he blamed the Sept. 11 attacks in part on feminists, secularists, civil liberties advocates, and homosexuals, saying they helped it happen.

Or, as the Christian fundamentalist Family Research Council said in its own denunciation of individualism and personal autonomy following the attacks, "Americans need that strength that comes from placing God first, others second, and self last. Let there be an end to the idolatry of self."

In short, the group is more important than the individual. And most important of all is making the individual subservient to religious authorities who claim to speak for their gods.

Whatever military response the U.S. government decides to make, it will necessarily be inadequate. What is needed is a new "culture war" - or if "war" is the wrong metaphor, then a new cultural advocacy effort.

Modernity has powerful influence, but it does not explain itself well, does not offer its own articulation and justification. We who approve of Modernity and benefit from it - as gays and lesbians have found liberation in modern individualism - must make a much more persuasive case for the value of Modernity than we have so far.

Modernity with its individualism, capitalism, rationality and undermining of religious dominance has more or less invaded an Arabic Muslim culture which is literally in its 1400s, and no doubt feels strange, foreign, threatening, rather as if the same institutions had suddenly appeared in Europe in the 1400s.

Muslim countries have had no Machiavelli or Hobbes or Spinoza to question religion and its texts, no Locke to defend self-ownership and individual rights, no Adam Smith to explain the value of economic freedom and its necessity for prosperity, no John Stuart Mill to defend free speech and discussion, no Karl Popper or Friedrich Hayek to explain why a free and open society has social value for everyone.

This cultural advocacy necessarily includes assisting Islamic religious figures who find a way to make peace with Modernity, promoting greater economic development so people in the Arab world benefit directly from it rather than from graft or government largess, and seeking ways to generate and sustain an Islamic version of the western Humanist Renaissance and Enlightenment they have never yet had.

Originally appeared Sept. 12, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IT SEEMS APPROPRIATE during September, if not long before, to begin preparing for October's observance of Gay and Lesbian History Month.

The idea for a Gay History Month was first proposed back in 1994 as a way to increase gays' and lesbians' appreciation for their own history and a way of making clearer to our friends and fellow citizens the contributions gays and lesbians have made to Western Civilization and the common culture we all value.

The idea quickly drew the attention of a small group of advocates who promoted the idea and wrangled endorsements from major gay organizations such as the Human Right Campaign, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Later that first year they even obtained two or three "official" proclamations from sympathetic political officials.

Eventually October was selected at the best month for Gay and Lesbian History Month because a) it would not conflict with the more celebratory gay pride events of June, b) two months were better than one, c) it would not conflict with any other prominent celebration, and d) October was during the school year and it was anticipated that colleges and universities would be centers of activity on gay history.

The idea of Gay and Lesbian History Month has several obvious advantages:

• It can help provide a sense of pride for young and closeted gays and offer models of courage, creativity and achievement for young gays to emulate.
• It is a way to promote gay visibility without being partisan or seeking any government guarantees or protective rights.
• The objects of interest are safely in the past so the project is one of teaching and learning about facts rather than promoting or threatening anyone's values.
• It is a way of talking about gays and lesbians without talking directly about anyone's sex life. It focuses instead on the accomplishments of gays and lesbians as people who led full, rounded, and interesting lives.
• Perhaps most obviously, it is a way to make clear to skeptical heterosexuals that far from being a threat to Western Civilization, gays and lesbians made some of the greatest contributions to that civilization.

In short, when you sing a song, listen to a symphony, view a painting, attend a church, read a novel or poem or see a play, they may well have been written, composed, painted, or designed by a homosexual. Homophobes do not want people to know this; that is why everyone must.

One of my most vivid memories is of the day when the father of a gay son burst into a meeting of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays and blurted out in a loud and excited tone "Did you know Michelangelo was gay?!"

Discovering that fact seemed to open up a whole new perspective for him on what being gay might mean and how he should think about his son. We could think of it as "gay pride for straights."

There will be controversy, of course, over whether some people were gay or not or when and whether people acted on their same-sex desires. But where there is controversy there is talk, and where there is talk there is awareness, so controversy is not a bad thing.

Absent any public declarations, it will be a matter of looking at people's letters and diaries, family records, the recollections of friends, court proceedings, contemporary gossip, and then weighing the evidence. Where information is currently insufficient, libraries, dusty archives and old trunks in family attics may eventually provide further material.

For example, whether Ravel was gay or Eleanor Roosevelt was lesbian may be uncertain, but Tchaikovsky's homosexuality is not in doubt, nor Michelangelo's, nor Edna St. Vincent Millay's youthful lesbian affairs. Prof. Wayne Dynes's comprehensive and judicious "Encyclopedia of Homosexuality" is a valuable resource on these questions.

Of course, the "famous gays" approach is not all there is to gay and lesbian history. A second area of interest is the question of how gays and lesbians lived in earlier times: How they found one another, how they socialized, how they organized their lives, what kinds of prejudice they encountered and how they protected themselves.

In the last few years, a number of books have appeared about gays in ancient Athens and Rome, several cities in Renaissance Italy, turn of the century Moscow and St. Petersburg, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The similarities to our own lives are often as surprising as the differences.

And finally, of course, after nearly 50 years of organized advocacy we ourselves now have a history of our own as a social movement, as a developing community and a quasi-ethnic group. There are several good books on the history of the gay community, its institutional growth, and its changing cultural practices.

The information is there for people who want to know more about our past and share it with their friends. Make October count.

Originally appeared August 29, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IN HER THOUGHT-PROVOKING new book "Money, Myths, and Change," economist Lee Badgett expresses serious doubt that gays and lesbians constitute a distinguishable "gay market" with different consumption patterns from those of heterosexuals.

At most she allows that readers of gay newspapers, typical of newspaper readers generally, might have higher incomes and that gay men, particularly couples without children, might be a promising target market for upscale products.

Badgett seems to think that a distinguishable gay market would have to reflect "fundamentally" (her word) different product interests, a claim she later modifies to a more reasonable "stronger preferences for certain products or certain product characteristics." Let's see.

There is little robust evidence about the consumer behavior of all gays and lesbians. That research has not been done and may be impossible. It seems more useful to start with what we can observe, the paradigm case of urban gay men, then see how generalizable that model might be.

The most obvious sociological characteristics of urban gay men is that they are preponderantly childless and somewhat more likely than heterosexuals to be single.

Lacking children, they have more disposable income especially when coupled but even when single. And with fewer family obligations and constraints, they will have more time as well as money to spend on personal development, recreation and entertainment.

Since they are disproportionately single (or between relationships), they are more likely to be in the market for a partner/date/trick, to meet friends and socialize in public, to patronize commercial entertainment offerings, and try to enhance their appeal to potential partners.

It is worth noticing that many partnered gay men continue their earlier socializing habits as partners simply because they have the time, find it convenient, can afford to, and see it as enjoyable.

Taken together, these suggest that urban gay men would be somewhat more likely to go out to bars and clubs on weekends, buy more alcohol, and see more movies, plays and concerts.

For at-home recreation they would have reason to buy more popular and classical CDs, more videos (including commercial porn), more computer-related products, more non-business related books.

They would likely have greater interest in fashionable leisure wear, body maintenance from gym memberships to workout supplements, personal health and grooming products, cosmetic surgery, and so forth.

Gay men seem to travel recreationally more, and not just on extended vacations. They may travel to visit an out-of-town partner they know or met on the Internet. Gays in smaller cities travel to larger cities on holiday weekends to explore the turf, look for partners, or escape a socially constricted environment.

Are urban gay men distinctively brand loyal? With greater disposable income they can afford higher quality brands rather than lower, brands with prestige or cachet, or brands with certain masculine or fashion associations, perhaps to impress themselves as much as other people.

Timberland work boots, Levi 501s, Marlboro cigarettes, and Absolut vodka are venerable examples. More current ones might include Calvin Klein and Body Body clothing, and anything with DKNY on it.

Other brand loyalties seems more evanescent, driven by enclave fad or "pack behavior," in a way best described by French sociologist Gabriel Tarde's "laws of social imitation." That would explain the popularity bubbles of Kenneth Cole clothing, Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirts and 2(x)ist underwear.

The task for any marketer is to break into the market, create product differentiation, generate a reputation, cachet or fad, then retain a portion of that clientele when the next fad or quality competition comes along. Advertising can play a role there.

One change we can expect in the future is the slow aging of the "gay market" as gays who came out in the 70s and 80s are staying out, and AIDS does not claim the lives of so many men in their late 30s and 40s. This has noticeably begun to happen already.

With age, gay men's income will increase and their tastes and product needs will gradually shift. There will be a greater demand for real estate and for retirement and financial planning. They will develop more cultivated tastes in music and recreation, seek more interesting vacation destinations, and become more concerned with health maintenance.

They will likely prefer more impressive automobiles and better restaurants, do more home entertaining, drink more wine and less beer. The percentage of smokers will decline: After 30, more people stop smoking than start.

Currently gay men outside urban areas are probably influenced by urban gay consumer behavior only partially and selectively. But that influence is likely to increase as coming out, travel, Internet communication, and gay visibility all increase.

Lesbians, however, seem to diverge considerably from gay men in being more coupled, having more children, earning less money, not being so concentrated in an enclave, and having different interests and socializing patterns. So we lack an adequate understanding of the "lesbian market" or their differentiable consumer behavior.

Originally appeared August 22, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE CLAIM is often made that gays and lesbians suffer employment discrimination. One way to demonstrate this beyond anecdotal reports might be to show that gays and lesbians have lower income levels than similarly situated heterosexuals.

Yet we also like to claim that gays and lesbians represent an economically upscale market with ample disposable income to buy a range of recreational and leisure products, arguing that companies should compete for our business and advertise in our publications.

While these claims are not exactly contradictory, they certainly point in opposite direction and raise a host of questions about discrimination in employment and family benefits, gay people's incomes, gay and lesbian consumer behavior and the nature and extent of the "gay market."

Answering some of these questions is the aim of a new book "Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay men" (University of Chicago Press, 2001), by University of Massachusetts economics professor Lee Badgett..

Badgett's book seems to be the first serious book on the subject. But what makes it particularly valuable is a quality that often irritates the general reader. For instance, in Chapter 2, "The Economic Penalty for Being Gay," she concludes:

"Lesbian/bisexual women earn 11 percent more than heterosexual women. The difference is not statistically significant. ... Gay/bisexal men, however, ... earn 17 percent less than heterosexual men with the same education, race, location, and occupation."

That conclusion is interesting and has some value. But whatever its merit, readers will not get to it until they have read 15 pages that discuss methodology, explain the limitation of the available data, offer alternative interpretations of the evidence, and so forth.

Badgett's aim is to give readers not just a number but a sense of why some of the statistics we read and swallow whole are open to serious doubt, often the result of a series of questionable extrapolations, interpretations, even arbitrary definitions valid in some contexts but not others.

For instance, Badgett notes that other studies using some of the same data--including the biennial General Social Survey (GSS)--but using different categories for sexual orientation confirm lower earning for gay men but find statistically significant higher income for lesbian/bisexual women.

Why lesbians might earn more than heterosexual women is not clear. Badgett wonders if lesbians have more job experience or more commitment to the labor force. That gay men earn less than heterosexual males she takes as evidence of discrimination, a view worth examining another time.

One of Badgett's other interesting discussions is about the gay/lesbian market. Badgett is eager to dispute market research data showing that gays and lesbians have high household incomes and so represent an ideal consumer market.

For instance, a 1988 Simmons Marketing Research survey found that gay newspaper readers have household incomes more than 50 percent higher than heterosexual couples. But Badgett wonders if the figures are correct and suggests even if they are they may not be generalizable to all gays.

People responding to a mail-in survey, she speculates, may be more interested in surveys because of a higher level of education. That would make respondents a relatively high-income group compared with other readers of the same newspaper.

But, she agrees, "It is well known that ... readers of magazines and newspapers tend to be better educated and have higher incomes." So even if reader demographics are slightly skewed, they can indicate "some affluent lesbians and gay men who constitute an attractive potential market."

Then too, if gays and lesbians have fewer children, they would have more disposable income even if their gross incomes were no higher than heterosexuals'. The number of lesbians rearing children seems uncertain, but gay men clearly have far fewer children than heterosexual men.

"Gay male couples are much more likely to match the DINK ["double income, no kids"] model, with two incomes and fewer dependents," Badgett says. "If marketers are searching for consumers with high incomes who might have a high demand for upscale products, their most promising targets would be gay men."

In his 1996 study "American Gay" sociologist Stephen Murray cites several small surveys suggesting that a little less than 50 percent of gay men are partnered. But single gay men would be childless too and so might also have higher than average disposable income.

Badgett's book, of course is not the final word on any of these topics. Nor could it be: The information we have is far too sketchy. Many gays and lesbians are still in the closet and we have little way of learning about them.

Then too, the world is steadily changing--in levels of prejudice, in the number of people out of the closet, in the average age of the open gay population, in the structure of gay people's economic priorities. Data from just a decade ago already feels irrelevant.

And as more employers offer partnership (family) benefits and governments offer partnership registration, gays may (or may not) feel more incentives to become partnered, affecting their economic position, their residential preferences and their consumer behavior.

Originally appeared July 25, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

NO ONE DOUBTS that "globalization" is having marked effects worldwide on how people think about themselves and how they live their lives, not least on how they think about and conduct the sexual aspects of their lives.

Australian sociologist Dennis Altman's new book "Global Sex" (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001) is a useful attempt to show how extensive the influence of globalization is and to separate out its strands and trace the ways each influences people's sexual lives, gays and lesbians as well as heterosexuals.

To begin with, when they say "globalization," people generally mean the decreasing importance of national borders and their growing porousness to technological innovation, to new concepts and ideas, to investment capital and the movement of people themselves.

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of globalization is the increasingly rapid communication of information and ideas by new technologies of personal and mass communication.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out recently that "globalization is largely driven by technology-from the Internet to satellites to cell phones to PC's." And Altman quotes one writer describing globalization as "the chronic intensification of patterns of interconnectedness." A fine phrase.

Even strongly authoritarian regimes from Iran and Afghanistan to China are not able totally to prohibit satellite dishes, prevent private computer ownership, block Internet access or censor all domestic websites.

A second aspect of globalization following immediately upon this is the rapid spread of the language and concepts of human rights, personal liberty and autonomy, and the right to individual self-expression.

To some extent these are promoted by a number of international organizations but even more they are transmitted by American popular culture from Oprah, to Hollywood films to MTV, all emphasizing the importance of the personal, of psychological self-awareness and the value of emotional fulfillment.

In many traditional cultures these are shocking new ideas but they provide encouragement and a justification for resistance as people become aware of how much they have been repressed by governments, religious authorities, or pervasive social pressures.

One important consequence of all this is the spread of the concept of gay and lesbian identities and the legitimacy of that self-understanding in contrast either to native denials that gays and lesbians can exist, or else their repression into various intersexual or cross-gender categories.

A third aspect of globalization is the expansion of free trade and the market economy, permitting industrialization and economic development, what Altman calls "an enormous expansion of the reach of capitalism."

The new industry in developing countries, again facilitated by new technology, creates new jobs that enable many people to rise above subsistence level for the first time and fosters the creation of a middle class with disposable income and an expanded range of lifestyle choices.

New jobs also enable young people in many cultures to move away from home and develop their own lives, exploring their sexuality free of family and community pressures to marry and conform to social expectations. How important this is for gays and lesbians hardly needs emphasizing.

Altman says that in Indonesia, "I was struck by the large number of teenagers flocking to discos, teenagers who had moved away from their villages and families because of the opportunity for work in new factories."

A fourth aspect is the enormous increase in the movement of people. These include travelers and tourists and the influx of Western business managers, all of whom who exemplify new modes of self-presentation and suggest new ways of self-understanding.

But it also includes the migration of guest workers and refugees many of whom remain in contact with their home countries and who transmit or take back home what they see and learn in more industrialized and secularized countries.

As Altman says, "Never underestimate the impact of the 747 on rapid population movements." And he quotes economist Lester Thurow who comments, "The global economy has become physically embodied in our ports, airports, and telecommunications systems...."

Ironically, AIDS, itself spread by global travel, is also prompting a more open discussion of sex including gay sex. Many governments feel forced to raise, often for the first time, issues connected with sex as they try to educate their people about risks from the disease.

For instance, according to one HIV prevention program in El Salvador, "The project built self-esteem within the ... gay community, 'changing their self-destructive image into a constructive one.' For the first time a positive self-identified gay community was established in El Salvador."

This is not Altman's best book. The material seems incompletely digested and there are far too many quotations of vaporous post-modern theorizing strung together in place of cogent analysis. The organization is often unclear and the prose, unusual for Altman, sometimes seems to go slack.

Nevertheless, the schematic above omits a number of interesting points and cautionary comments and it is possible to learn a good deal from the book. Taken with its natural advantage of brevity (170 pages of text) it deserves a wide if critical readership.

Originally appeared July 18, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

HAS ANYONE EVER DONE any research on gay entrepreneurship? It seems not. Yet the role of gays and lesbians in starting and developing small businesses would seem to be a significant aspect of our community's structure and its potential for stability, growth and empowerment.

In recent years entrepreneurship has become an important research topic in the economics profession. Black entrepreneurship has been studied as contributing to material prosperity and social equality for African-Americans. The same is true of women's businesses.

But no one, neither economists nor anyone else, seems to have studied gays and lesbians who notice potential business opportunities and take the risk of exploring and developing them by starting a business and offering a product or service for sale.

Even a recent 300-page book ostensibly on "the economic lives of lesbians and gay men" has little to say on the topic. The author seems oddly uninterested in the possibility that gays might more likely be economic risk takers or that gay businesses might provide social and economic benefits to the community simply by existing.

Yet gay-owned businesses are important to our community. Within any sizable gay enclave there are not only gay-owned bars, but gay restaurants, catering services, bookstores, health clubs, bed and bath shops, hair salons and barber shops, print shops, tanning salons, flower shops, card shops, clothing stores, leather goods stores, photographers, computer service providers, and a host of others-including gay newspapers.

To see why gay and lesbian entrepreneurs are important consider what they provide to the gay community and the community at large.

Gay businesses help root and develop the gay community. Just as gays often are urban pioneers, moving into decaying neighborhoods to help spark their revival, so too gay entrepreneurs, early to notice that migration, may be among the first to move in and begin providing products for those new residents.

They help bolster the economic base of the community, filling empty storefronts, encouraging other businesses to move into the area and augmenting the tax base which provides influence with city officials.

Gay business owners improve the social environment of the gay enclave by pressing for street safety, demanding adequate police protection, promoting neighborhood cleanup, demanding improved public services or securing private alternatives. This in turn lures more gay residents, further developing the neighborhood.

And, of course, just by having gay-owned businesses, gay entrepreneurs provide a kind of psychological comfort for other gays who can feel that the area is friendly because the business owners share common concerns and might take an interest in their needs as residents and friends as well as customers.

Equally important, for the entrepreneurs themselves starting a business is a way of seeking psychological as well as financial autonomy. It frees them from the worry about being treated unequally because they are gay.

And starting a business can tap creative energies and generate greater economic productivity. That in turn could produce a strong sense of self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment may be a private good, but the economic productivity has public benefit.

But all this raises a number of questions.

Are gays and lesbians, with their experience of social hostility and their need for psychological autonomy (and their lack of a dependent family) more likely to be risk-takers and entrepreneurs? Or does lingering homophobia disproportionately pressure them to seek economic independence?

How did gay entrepreneurs decide what kind of business to start? Was it a business they already worked in and knew, or a dream they had long deferred or something they simply saw as an unmet need and a potential niche in the market?

Why did they decide to locate in the gay enclave? Were rents initially lower? Did they already live nearby or decide to move nearby? Are gays and lesbians a primary market for their product or service? Did they want to feel a greater part of the gay community?

How long did starting a business take from plan to opening? How much delay was there in obtaining the necessary city permits, inspections, approvals, and so forth? How much did the formal process cost-the licenses, fees, legal paperwork, payoffs and political contributions ("facilitation fees") to city officials? How significant a factor were business, real estate and sales taxes?

Did they have problems with hostile city inspectors, complicated and out-of-date (and often contradictory) building codes and antiquated zoning laws often designed to frustrate economic development? One business owner told me a city official initially refused to register the name of his store. Another said zoning variances could be bought for a price. Inspectors sometimes want to be bribed.

How does being a gay entrepreneur, paying business taxes, managing personnel and dealing with government regulation affect the entrepreneur's political and social outlook? Are his or her previous views changed by the entrepreneurial experience? If so, how?

No one is looking at these things. And because they are not we are probably underestimating the importance of gay entrepreneurs and how we could help them help our community.

Originally appeared July 4, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IF YOU ARE A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL who wants to promote business and economic development in your city or region, particularly high technology development, the most important thing you can do is create conditions that attract a large number of gays.

That is the fascinating conclusion of a new study, "Technology and Tolerance: The importance of Diversity to High-Technology Growth" by Richard Florida and Gary Gates, published in June by the Brookings Institution.

The argument is relatively simple and straightforward.

Although gay men are disproportionately employed in high-tech industries, gays themselves do not necessarily directly cause high tech business development.

But rather, the presence of gays in an urban area is the most reliable measure, the most sensitive barometer, of an open-minded and creative social atmosphere that draws the highly talented people high tech companies typically seek as employees:

"They (gays) signal a diverse and progressive environment that fosters the creativity and innovation necessary for success in high tech industry."

Thus, alluding to the old coal miners' practice of taking a canary along into a coal mine because of its high sensitivity to toxic coal gases, Florida and Gates call gays "the canaries of the knowledge economy."

Secondarily, because gays often have the disposable income to take advantage of recreational and entertainment offerings and migrate to where they are available, the presence of gays provides a good indicator for the existence of a broad spectrum of lifestyle amenities attractive to other adults.

These observations have an obvious intuitive appeal once you think about them, but is there any way to test them empirically?

There is.

Using 1990 census data on the number of same-sex partners, Florida and Gates developed a "Gay Index" that measured the over or under-representation of gay male couples in an urban area relative to the area's overall population.

Then they compared those figures to a Milken Institute Index designed to measure high-tech industry concentration and growth.

What they found was that urban areas with a high proportion of gays were heavily represented among areas with a high tech business concentration:

The five urban areas with the highest concentration of gay couples were all among the nation's top 15 high-technology areas: San Francisco/San Jose, Washington, Austin (Texas), Atlanta, and San Diego.

And 11 of the top 15 high-technology areas also appeared in the 15 urban areas with the highest proportion of gays.

Further, "Gays not only predict the concentration of high-tech industry, they are also a predictor of its growth. Five of the cities that rank in the top ten for high-technology growth from 1990 to 1998 rank in the top ten for the Gay Index."

Although Florida and Gates agree that some connection between gays and high tech presence may result from their over-representation in the industry, they wryly comment, "it seems difficult to explain how their over-representation would predict (high tech) growth.

"To do so," the observe, "would be to suggest that gays and lesbians are somehow on average more productive or entrepreneurial than their heterosexual counterparts."

Although they relegate this comment to a footnote, they pointedly they say nothing to rule it out as a contributing factor.

Florida and Gates report that they looked at a number of other factors traditionally considered to draw a talented labor pool including climate, professional sports teams, arts and culture, etc., but found only loose correlations with those.

But three "diversity" indexes were far better correlates of high tech presence - the Gay Index, a "Bohemian Index" of writers, artists, and other creative types, and a "Foreign Born" Index.

Of these "the Gay Index does better than other individual measures of social and cultural diversity as a predictor of high-tech location."

Florida and Gates reason as follows:

People in technology businesses are drawn to places known for a diversity of thought and open-mindedness as indicated by their ethnic and social diversity. It is this talented labor pool that draws high tech companies and stimulates high tech growth.

They quote Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina who told a conference of state governors, "Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges. We will go where the highly skilled people are."

Accordingly, Florida and Gates say, cities must begin to combine their goal of providing a better business environment with strategies aimed at improving their diversity and tolerance.

As an example of what they recommend, they cite Austin, Texas, Mayor Kirk Watson who explained, "Austin has benefited from a convergence between technology and our laid back, progressive, creative lifestyle, and music scene. ...

"The key is that we continue to preserve the lifestyle and diversity which enables us to lure companies and people from places like Silicon Valley."

Gary Gates says that he and Florida expect to have a report completed by the end of the summer comparing the 1990 and 2000 census figures.

On the Web: Brookings Institution: "Technology and Tolerance"

Editor's Note: As of March 2002, Gates informed me that the paper examining high technology, diversity, human capital, and employment growth from 1990 to 2000 is still in process. We will add a further note here when it becomes available.

Originally appeared June 27, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

As riots go, the June 1969 "Stonewall riot" was a fairly small affair. If we did not have a parade to commemorate it, it would probably not loom large in our collective memory.

But at some point, New York gays, delighted that some of them had stood up to abusive police, decided to hold an annual demonstration to commemorate that fact and promote gay pride.

We know how that came about.

Beginning in 1965, Washington gay activist Dr. Frank Kameny and New York's Craig Rodwell had organized a July 4th "Annual Reminder" picket at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a reminder that gay Americans were deprived of fundamental human rights.

But in the fall of 1969, a few months after Stonewall, Rodwell, who by then had opened his Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, proposed that the "Annual Reminder" be changed to a New York "demonstration" commemorating gay resistance to be called Christopher Street Liberation Day.

His idea, he wrote, was to encourage gays and lesbians to "affirm our pride, our life-style and our commitment to each other. Despite political and social differences we may have, we are united on this common ground."

He also suggested that gay organizations around the country hold similar demonstrations on the same day: "We propose a nationwide show of support."

The idea spread rapidly. That first year, 1970, both Chicago and Los Angeles held similar marches. San Francisco held a "gay-in" in Golden Gate Park and finally started holding a parade in 1972.

Now virtually every large city and many small ones hold gay pride parades as gays in smaller and smaller cities take the initiative to become publicly visible in their home towns.

Some gays and lesbians criticize the parades, or affect to be "beyond all that." Maybe so, but it is important to keep in mind what the parades accomplish.

-- The parades are an opportunity to gain visibility and publicity for gays even when there is no specific grievance and political goal at stake. They are pro-active rather than reactive, gay-affirming, not gay-defensive.

-- The parades get the attention of politicians and the mass media (newspapers, television). Neither group would believe there are so many gays and lesbians if not for the parades. That forces them to take us more seriously when we do have an issue.

The Stonewall riot itself got six short paragraphs deep inside The New York Times but the first gay pride parade made the front page. Out of the closets and into the headlines.

-- The parades show the general public the fundamental normality of most gays and lesbians. Except for the occasional drag queen, most of the people in the parade look pretty much like their friends and neighbors.

Conservative gays and lesbians sometimes fear that men in leacher jock straps or go-go boys in day-glo bikinis harm "our" image. But except for religious zealots who dislike us anyway, spectators are probably more impressed that the men are healthy, good looking and in such good shape.

-- The parades give a wide variety of gay groups an annual chance to publicize themselves and push their members to be more open by participating in the parade

And the sheer variety of non-sexual gay interest groups has to impress anyone watching: from Presbyterians to softball leagues, from high school students to parents of gays, from interracial couples to political groups.

-- But most of all, the parades enable gays to see lots of other gays, more gays than they have seen anywhere else, more than they can imagine seeing. That can be enormously encouraging, inspiring and even deeply moving for many gays and lesbians.

It is, in fact, one of our chief "recruiting" techniques.

According to Nagourney and Clendinen's "Out for Good," that first march in New York started off from Greenwich Village with just a few hundred people. But as the marchers walked rapidly up Sixth Avenue they would recognize friends watching from the sidelines and urge them to join.

When march leaders reached Central Park and mounted a bluff overlooking the grassy Sheep Meadow area, they looked back "and behind them - stretching out as far as they could see - was line after line after line of homosexuals and their supporters, at least 15 blocks worth. ...

"No one had ever seen so many homosexuals in one place before. On top of the bluff, many of these men and women, who had grown up so isolated and alone, stood in silence and cried."

Notice the logic of the argument here. The parade is what is important, not the "riot." Stonewall was an excuse for the march, but the decision to have a march was the key element in producing the rapid proliferation of gay visibility and activism that followed.

Remember that the next time someone criticizes the parade. No gay person must ever feel alone again.