IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared May 30, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

The effort to promote freedom and legal equality for gays and lesbians has made significant progress in the United States and western Europe.

But there are vast portions of the world where gays and lesbians must live closeted, unrealized, unfulfilled lives blighted by the pressures of rigid social conformity, primitive religious intolerance, fear, prosecution, and even death.

In eastern and central Europe, gays face hostility from authoritarian governments heavily influenced by medieval Catholicism or reinvigorated revanchist Russian and Greek Orthodox religions.

In central and southern Africa, petty tyrants and fundamentalists ministers inveigh against homosexuality as non-African, denounce gays as criminals and threaten to have gays jailed or exiled.

In Islamic countries from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, gays are persecuted, arrested, jailed and sometimes executed.

In India mobs of Hindus, unhindered by the government, have closed theaters showing a gay film. In Communist China, authorities arrest gays at their whim despite liberalization of the penal code.

If multiculturalism means that different cultures have different values and there is no way to prefer one set of values over another, then multiculturalism is a sham and the final enemy of gays and lesbians.

These are nations sunk in ignorance, superstition, barbarism, and moral darkness, and we should say so loudly and repeatedly.

But what we can do about it?

Let us try a thought experiment. Ignoring current political realities, try to imagine some of the things the U.S. government could do if it really want to help gays and lesbians in backward nations.

The U.S. State Department could protest the prosecution and jailing of gays and lesbians, warning that such actions are of "serious concern" to the U.S. government and "not helpful" in maintaining cordial relations with the world's single remaining superpower.

The State Department could designate a "sexual minorities" desk to collect, monitor and report on incidents of anti-gay persecution-arrests, jailings, beatings, acts of censorship and anti-gay statements by government officials..

That desk could make the information public rapidly on a website so target nations would see that they are being monitored. Taking a page from "Atlas Shrugged," the website could list gays and lesbians who flee foreign countries and list the skills and education they take with them so the countries could see what their bigotry is costing them.

Congress could reduce foreign aid to countries that retain sodomy laws or persecute gays. Since much U.S. foreign aid seems to end up in the bank accounts of government officials anyway, the threat of cuts could have significant impact on their behavior.

We could say to them: "You have no natural right to our taxpayers' money. If you want their money you must earn it by good behavior. Stop repressing your citizens. Repeal your sodomy laws. Halt your censorship of gay publications and websites. Educate your citizens."

The Dutch government sends small grants to gay groups in third-world countries. The U.S. could do the same. One hundred grants of $10,000 to $100,000 would cost little but help fledgling gay groups and send a clear message to anti-gay governments.

The most powerful weapons the U.S. has are its ideals of liberty and individuality, free speech, free markets and democracy. In the past we promoted those ideals through a network of U.S. radio stations around the world. We should revive and expand that project.

The Voice of America and Radio Liberty could include substantial programming about U.S. gays, the legitimacy of gay freedom, music by gay artists and reading by gay authors. Since its beginning, the VOA has done exactly one program on gays.

The U.S. could send openly gay ambassadors to anti-gay governments. Forget gay-friendly Luxembourg. Think Saudi Arabia, Namibia, Romania, Cuba, Pakistan. That would force officials to deal with someone gay who represents the world's most powerful nation. [Editor's note: In the fall of 2001, President George W. Bush named openly gay foreign service officer Michael Guest as U.S. ambassador to Romania.]

Gay ambassadors could attend public events with their partners, speak to civil groups and visit gay clubs where they exist. He or she would be an encouragement to gays and lesbians in those countries and a tacit rebuke to the government. Don't worry about sodomy laws: A nation's embassy is by law its own sovereign territory.

So long as the U.S. has an ambassador to the Vatican, that person should be gay. It is high time those men in cassocks at the Vatican secretariat met a gay men who is not repressed, closeted or a hypocrite. It might be a new concept for them.

And finally, the U.S. military must accept openly gay and lesbian servicemembers so that when troops are dispatched to serve in foreign countries, local inhabitants might see openly gay people and, it may be, find it necessary or interesting to interact with them.

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the possibilities, but it give us a sense of how little is being done that could be done, and the beginnings of an activist agenda for the next two decades.

Originally appeared May 16, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

Dr. Robert Spitzer recently presented a controversial study to an American Psychiatric Association convention purporting to show that "some people can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge that."

But his new study is seriously flawed and instead of showing that some "highly motivated gays can change to heterosexuality," it nearly demonstrates the opposite.

Spitzer admits that he had "great difficulty" finding people who claimed to have changed their orientation from gay to straight. Ex-gay groups regularly claim to know of "thousands" of people who have "changed" or "left homosexuality." But after searching for nearly a year and a half, Spitzer could only find 274 possibilities.

Most of the subjects were referrals from religious ex-gay or "change" therapy groups and many were public advocates of change therapy who had a strong incentive to describe their past and present lives in terms of the narrative they absorbed about "overcoming" homosexuality.

Even so, 74 of these carefully selected subjects did not even minimally qualify as "changed." They were just people who had stopped having homosexual sex or stopped calling themselves homosexual.

I would not be any less homosexual if I stopped having gay sex or if I called myself "heterosexual." Yet those are exactly what the ex-gay groups call "healing," "change" and "freedom from homosexuality," and the only sort of change many "ex-gays" experience.

So how homosexual were the remaining 200 candidates before their supposed change? Few seem to have been fully homosexual. Most were bisexual.

Nearly 40 percent of the men said they had felt opposite-sex attraction "sometimes" as a teenager and more than half (54 percent) had engaged in heterosexual sex before trying to change. More than 10 percent of the men never engaged in any gay sex at all.

Barely 60 percent of the women said they felt same-sex attraction "often" as a teenager and nearly 60 percent said they had "sometimes" felt opposite-sex attraction as a teenager. Fully two-thirds (67 percent) had already engaged in heterosexual sex before trying to change.

How heterosexual did these not-fully-homosexual people become after their "change"?

Only 11 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women said they now had "no" homosexual thoughts, feelings, desires, yearning or actual sex. That means almost all the men and most of the women still had at least some minimal homosexual desires.

About 70 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women said they still had more than "minimal" homosexual desires, feelings, etc.

A third of the men still occasionally felt strong homosexual desire and even daydreamed about having gay sex.

Of the 112 men (out of the total 143) who acknowledged that they masturbated, more than half (56 percent) said they used homosexual fantasies some of the time and about one-third (31 percent) said they seldom had opposite-sex masturbation fantasies.

Barely a third (37 percent) of the women said they had no homosexual thoughts, desires, yearning or sex. Nearly half (45 percent) still felt homosexual desires sometimes. And more than a third said they had more than "minimal" homosexual desires.

As psychiatrist C.A. Tripp wrote two decades ago about another "change" therapy, "Anyone gullible enough to see this as any kind of secure change - or any change at all beyond a brittle, desperate, tenuous hold on a forced heterosexuality - is probably lost to reason."

So how did Spitzer define "change" as in "some people can change from gay to straight"?

His definition of "change" was "good heterosexual functioning" which included: a year in a "loving," more than adequate heterosexual relationship; fantasizing about gay sex during heterosexual sex less than 20 percent of the time; and heterosexual sex at least once a month.

If you think heterosexual sex "at least once a month" suggests something short of rampant heterosexual lust or even much heterosexual desire at all, you are probably on the right track.

But even by these loose criteria, one-third of the men (34 percent) and more than half the women (56 percent) failed to qualify. So even with the most likely candidates out of "thousands," a complete switch in sexual orientation scarcely seems to occur.

What Spitzer found instead is some degree of movement along the sexual continuum by people who are fundamentally bisexual. No doubt that is "change," so people can "change" in a sense. But this kind of change is very old news.

In his 1948 volume on the human male, pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey wrote that in his thousands of interviews he noted "frequent changes in ratings of individuals on the heterosexual-homosexual scale ... in the course of their lives" (p. 663).

Since some people spontaneously shift somewhat along the continuum over time - by chance, opportunity or a new perception of attractiveness - it seems more than interesting that Spitzer could find so few who could force themselves to make significant change by conscious effort using therapy, counseling, prayer or will-power.

Originally appeared May 2, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

It is a striking fact that at least half of the dozen most important American composers of the twentieth century were gay.

They include Charles Griffes, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Virgil Thomson and Gian-Carlo Menotti. Except for the earlier Griffes, each made lasting contributions during American music's "Golden Age" (1935-1955) as well as later.

Of these, only Menotti (born 1911) remains alive and active as a musical entrepreneur, stage director and composer.

On July 7, he will turn 90.

Born in Italy, Menotti came to the United States at 17 to study composition at the Curtis Institute. Virtually the first person he met was 18-year-old Samuel Barber, "spoiled," he recalled, but "very handsome."

The two quickly became fast friends, partners, and creative stimuli for each other. For 30 years between 1943 and 1973 they lived together in a large L-shaped house in the countryside north of New York. After a painful separation, Menotti moved to Scotland, which is now his home.

Menotti is best known as an opera composer. He has written more than 20, of which the most popular is the familiar Christmas opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (1951).

Menotti said he did not set out to be an opera composer, but the surprise success of his early "Amelia Goes to the Ball" (1936) decisively changed his plans. The short, tuneful overture quickly became one of Menotti's "Greatest Hits."

Barber often teased - and irritated - Menotti by telling him that "Amelia" remained his best opera.

Later operas include "The Medium" (1947), "The Consul" (1950) and "The Saint of Bleecker Street" (1954). Each ran for several months on Broadway and the latter two won Pulitzer prizes. "The Consul" is generally regarded as his finest work.

Many of Menotti's more recent operas have been "children's operas," including fantasies like "The Bride from Pluto" ("She looks like a pinball machine," one character frets) and "Help, Help, the Globolinks," which pokes fun at modern music by having the invaders from outer space talk in electronic music, afraid of melodies.

Some might say that Menotti's best opera is Barber's "Vanessa" (1958), perhaps the greatest American opera, since Menotti wrote the libretto (the words) that Barber set to music.

Menotti once explained that he hums melodies for all his librettos as he is writing them and he hummed his own melodies for the words he wrote for Barber: "So there is a Menotti's 'Vanessa' floating around somewhere," he said.

Later, when Barber was writing his own music for the words Menotti would shout, "Oh no, it doesn't go like that!" and he said "Barber would get very angry at me."

But for all this, perhaps I am not alone in preferring Menotti's orchestral music. It is not as well known, but I think the music is better. It is not shaped and limited by words and it gives Menotti a chance to develop his musical themes instead of just moving from one to another.

Let me give a few examples.

• The Piano Concerto in F (1945) is an exuberant, light-hearted work, full of catchy tunes and rhythmic vitality. The middle section is a soulful melody that would fit well into one of Menotti's operas. The last section has a brief allusion to George Gershwin whose own earlier piano concerto is in the same key.
• The Violin Concerto (1952) is a melodic work throughout, with a haunting, unforgettable first section and another of Menotti's warmly lyrical songs as the middle section. I do not know why this piece is not more popular.
• The later Triple Concerto (1970) is lighter, playful piece more like 18th century concertos where different instruments alter and play each other's tunes.
• The ballet "Sebastian" (1944) has a melodramatic plot set in 17th century Venice, but the music is excellent. The gently rocking "Barcarole," is often played separately and counts as another of Menotti's "Greatest Hits."
• Finally, the fantasy-ballet "The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore" (1956) is a satire on mindless conformity and equally mindless artistic fads and innovations. For this little work Menotti wrote some of his most ingratiating chamber music.

The plot involves a poet who lives in a castle and takes a different fantastic pet for a walk each Sunday. The townspeople imitate him, callously killing their old pets and getting new ones each week.

When the poet is dying, the townspeople visit him only to find that all his own pets are still alive and surround him at his deathbed. "How could I destroy the children of my fancy?" he asks the shamefaced townspeople. "What would my life have been without their company?"

Barber, who died in 1981, asked that this last section be performed at his own funeral.

In a 1985 interview Menotti said that when he dies he would like to be buried beside Barber where there is a plot waiting for him.

Barber instructed that if Menotti is buried elsewhere, a marker should be put on the empty plot reading "To the memory of two friends."

"But," Menotti said, "I fully expect to be with him."

Originally published April 11, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

BACK IN SEPTEMBER 1999, in Bentonville, Ark., two gay men apparently caused the death of a 13-year-old youth named Jesse Dirkhising in what appears to have been an abusive bondage scene.

There is no evidence that the two men intended to kill the youth: They called an ambulance when they found he had stopped breathing.

But their heedlessness, their own use of drugs and their indifference to Dirkhising's safety and well-being suggest a degree of culpability for which "involuntary manslaughter" scarcely seems adequate.

Reflecting on Dirkhising's death, Southern Voice editor Chris Crain recently wondered editorially if there might be some merit to the conservative argument that "the sex-drenched gay culture and the valueless homosexual lifestyle" are bound to victimize young people.

He noted the conservative concern that even though most such young people do not wind up dead, they may become "sexually confused, robbed of their innocence, and torn from the values their parents worked hard to instill in them."

And he concluded, "If the gruesome killing of a gay youth won't at least make us look harder at where our culture might bear some responsibility, what will?"

These are strong, obviously heartfelt words, not lightly written, and they deserve serious consideration.

But I think Crain in large measure not only misplaces blame but fails to give our community credit for the kinds of moral guidelines it provides.

For one thing, there is little evidence that the two men had significant contact with any gay community or gay culture.

As the police affidavit at their bond hearing made clear, the men seem to have been drifters, moving frequently from town to town. So they would have had little occasion to come into much contact with a gay community or discover whether our community had any values to impart.

But to the extent that there might be a value deficit among gays-especially among young gays, people just coming out, and people living in isolation-it is not necessarily the fault of the gay community.

Mainstream culture promotes a sexual morality that focuses on sexual relationships between men and women. Specifically, it focuses on regulating penis-vagina sex to preserve virginity or prevent pregnancy virtually to the exclusion of any other considerations.

But this single-minded focus provides no guidance to people involved in same-sex relationships, for whom penis-vagina sex and pregnancy are not issues. It can even give the impression that there are no "moral" guidelines for same-sex relationships.

Even more, by condemning same-sex activities as immoral in themselves, mainstream culture implies that there cannot be any sexual morality to guide gays in their activities. All homosexual activity is immoral and that is all there is to say.

This can have at least two further implications.

It may lead some gays to think that if they flout the condemnation of homosexuality, they thereby become "immoralists" who have necessarily cast off society's whole structure of morality and have no obligation to pay attention to any other moral concerns either.

And it may suggest that since their sexual partners are also behaving immorally, the partners' well-being need not be an important concern for them. Since the partners are immoral people they probably deserve anything that happens to them.

This is wildly false, but it is understandable how some people, particularly in religiously conservative regions, might think so.

The more a culture insists on the immorality of homosexuality, the more it encourages heedless, irresponsible behavior by homosexuals.

But contrary to what Crain suggests, it is surely not true that the gay community lacks guidelines for sexual activity. In fact, it is probably only by being part of an ongoing gay community that anyone can learn about and internalize regulative principles for gay sexual interaction.

The sexual morality we have is not act-specific but offers guidelines on how to conduct ourselves, how we should treat other people and conditions under which we should engage in sexual activities.

Most of us realize in the first place that this requires a degree of self-reliance, personal responsibility and continuous alertness. People should not put themselves in situations they cannot get out of. People should not drink or drug themselves into a state where they cannot make rational assessments. Prudence is a cardinal virtue.

Second, it involves a clear sense that force or coercion are wrong and that vulnerable people-too young, too drunk, too drugged, too naive-should not be taken advantage of.

Third, perhaps the most highly developed explicit guidelines-sexual ethics if you like-have been evolved by the leather-S/M community. Explicit guidelines are particularly important there because in the intensity of some S/M activities people can be hurt if someone is careless or something goes wrong.

The three preconditions for S/M activity, repeated almost as a mantra, are "safe, sane, and consensual."

A great deal of wisdom resides in those three words. Both parties have to agree voluntarily and unreservedly. They have to be clear-headed, alert and attentive to the other's responses. And there must be no lingering physical or emotional damage.

That may not be all there is to sexual morality, but it is an excellent start for everyone.

Originally appeared March 28, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

One of the most interesting and controversial government programs currently being developed is one to provide subsidies to religions to operate various treatment, training, and welfare programs.

President George W. Bush made the proposal a major plank of his presidential campaign, perhaps to appeal to evangelical Christian voters. And he recently established an "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" to promote such efforts.

There is a lot to dislike here starting with the sly language of referring not to "religion" but to "faith." As if "people of faith" meant anything else than "people of religions."

Since religions are characterized by their doctrinal claims a better term would be "people of doctrines." But an "Office of Doctrine-Based Initiatives" does not sound quite so warm and fuzzy.

Further, religious doctrines are by nature unprovable claims without rational support - e.g., people rise from the dead, virgins have babies, there is life after death. After all, if the claims were provable, they would simply be part of science - e.g., the earth is round, the sun is hot, light travels fast.

As one early Christian saint blurted out in an exuberant burst of candor, "I believe it because it is absurd!"

So if everyone were candid, they would refer to "people of irrationality" and an "Office of Irrationality-Based Initiatives."

Be that as it may, the question for us is: Is there a gay angle here? I think there are two.

One is that the major recipients of government (taxpayer) money are likely to be Catholic and evangelical Protestant religious organizations. These range from mildly anti-gay to zealously anti-gay.

So there might be some grounds for questioning government subsidies to anti-gay religious groups even if they sometimes do good works.

The second gay angle is that the largest gay and lesbian organizations in the U.S., and the best organized at the community level, is the Metropolitan Community Church.

It might be very interesting to see a gay-oriented church being paid by the federal government to provide welfare, treatment and training services to gays and lesbians as well as other Americans.

There may be a third gay angle hovering in the background. Many government policies that adversely affect gays and lesbians from sodomy laws to the ban on same-sex marriages are based solely on religious doctrine. They serve no defensible secular purpose.

So gays and lesbians might want to be particularly assertive about the separation of church and state. Rather than see the existing separation weakened, they might want to see it enhanced and enforced more comprehensively.

Let us let the Metropolitan Community Church speak for itself and concentrate on the fact that most recipients of government money will be anti-gay religions.

It is important to remember that the fundamentalist Christian worldview is pervaded by a belief in the struggle between their god and Satan. For instance, 84 percent of evangelical Christians believe that "Satan" himself is behind the fight against religion in public life.

With that worldview, evangelicals are not likely to compromise on moral issues since that would mean compromising with Satan.

In a recent poll by Public Agenda, only 36 percent of evangelicals said that deeply religious (i.e., evangelical) elected officials should be willing to compromise on gay rights issues, compared with 68 percent of non-evangelicals who urged compromise.

So it is worth wondering what kind of social and ideological environment these groups would maintain in their government-subsidized programs.

The concern is less their impact on gays and lesbians who might be in the programs than the possibility that such programs might lure other participants toward an evangelical/fundamentalist worldview and reinforce or create more anti-gay prejudice.

For example, more than half (61 percent) of evangelical Christians believe that "deeply religious people" (such as themselves) should spread their religious views - whenever they can. Fewer than half that proportion (26 percent) of non-evangelicals feel that way.

And critics have already pointed out that some drug treatment programs include "intense Bible study."

It is telling that television evangelist Pat Robertson recently said he was concerned if groups like the neo-Hindu Hare Krishnas, or Rev. Moon's Unification Church or L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction Church of Scientology were to receive subsidies.

It is telling because if Robertson did not expect their programs to influence participants' religious and social views he would presumably have less objection to them.

Robertson is certainly aware that religious welfare programs provide those religions with access to vulnerable and potentially malleable clients.

It is natural for people who feel they are being benefited to be grateful to whoever is helping them. And if they make friends among people running the programs, then they may wish to continue in the same social and religious milieu.

That would certainly be a potential source of new members who would likely adopt the religion's position on gay equality and other social issues as well as its theological perspective.

That may be just fine for the new convert, but it may not be so fine for gays and lesbians.

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

One of the recurring concerns for those of us who want to promote liberty and equality for gays is the well-attested fact of popular ignorance about politics, public policy and political issues.

Writing in a special issue of Critical Review devoted to "Public Ignorance" (Fall, 1998), editor Jeffrey Friedman pointed out:

"That the public is overwhelmingly ignorant when it comes to politics ... is a discovery that has been replicated unfailingly by political scientists; indeed, it is one of the strongest findings that have been produced by any social science - possibly the strongest."

Most people do not follow public policy debates, do not know politicians' positions on issues and misstate them when asked. For instance, the vast majority of Americans had never heard of the 1994 "Contract with America" that supposedly won Congress for the Republicans.

Rather, Friedman says, "Most people's political opinions are based not on attention to high-flown political debate, but instead on extremely ill-informed judgments about 'the nature of the times' (prosperity? peace?) and about the interests of the group with which they identify."

If so, then most people are similarly unaware of the reasons we offer to insisting that we be treated as citizens with equal rights and dignity.

But what does it mean for us if, despite our best efforts, the general public does not hear or does not pay attention to our arguments, our concerns and our legitimate claims?

This is particularly troubling for those of us who follow public discussion and try to contribute to it by formulating thoughtful arguments in favor of gay equality.

There is no easy reply, but here are three considerations.

One is that writing and making our arguments may have some effect on the "intellectuals," the few people who do take arguments seriously and have some sense of when an argument is reasonable and when it is not.

It certainly seems that after 40 years of developing and repeating gay-affirming arguments, we have largely convinced most serious intellectuals of the legitimacy of our claims to equality,

Even if most of the public do not follow the details of public issues from year to year, there is some reason to think that over time, as the intellectuals go about their work, there is some "trickle down" effect from their generally supportive attitudes.

No doubt, our ideas do not get transmitted except in the coarsest form - gays feel aggrieved, gays are treated unequally, gays are not going to change - but a generally more positive attitude toward gays does get transmitted: Gays are not so bad, there are lots of gays, gays are not going to change. That in itself is a gain.

A second possibility is that by taking every possible opportunity to present our views, no matter what we say, we at least make ourselves visible to more people. That helps people get used to us and helps counter hostility based on fear and ignorance.

Many years ago, a lesbian and I used to give talks to college classes for a gay student group. We would do a 50 minutes routine full of fascinating facts about the gay community, rigorous arguments for gay normality and insightful analyses of homophobia. We did more than 100 of these.

One time after a class ended, an athletic looking young man came up and announced, "I have a question." "Sure," I said, bracing myself for hostile assumptions. "You look like you work out," he said. "How much can you bench?"

I am convinced now that little we said had any effect. What did have an effect was that we were real, live gay people. The students were not listening to what we said; they were watching us to see what sort of people we were, whether we were likable, whether they could relate to us. The young man had found a way.

Marshall McLuhan became famous for his slogan "The Medium is the Message." I would say instead that often "The Messenger is the Message." But we would never have been invited to classes if we had not had interesting, cogent, intellectually solid ideas to present.

A third reason for trying to offer arguments in the face of thoroughgoing "public ignorance," at least for those of us in the gay press, is that we hope to give readers the information and tools to become more effective advocates for themselves.

One of our goals is to give readers some sense of the value of their lives and the moral legitimacy of their political and social claims to help them resist the solar wind of deprecation that blows unceasingly against most gays and lesbians.

This task includes setting out the rationale for our various ethical, political and social claims as well as examining and explaining the flaws in the various anti-gay views readers are likely to encounter in their lives.

The person who reads these analyses may not remember them in detail, but may at least remember whether the argument seemed convincing at the time and it may help him avoid being hurt or inhibited by anti-gay hostility.

These may be modest results for the use of reason in public discussion, but perhaps they are not without value.

Originally published January 3, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

Many gays fear that with the accession of a Republican administration chances for passing hate-crimes and anti-discrimination laws are greatly decreased.

That would not be much of a loss. And instead of spinning our wheels trying to work for them fruitlessly, we would be wiser to begin working for policy changes that would have far more benefit for us: Specifically, gay marriage and military access. (And, of course, sodomy law repeal in states where sodomy laws are still in force.)

Hate crimes laws, after all, do not benefit most of us. Few gay men and even fewer lesbians are ever victims of hate crimes. Nor is there any reliable evidence that hate crimes laws, where they exist, have any deterrent effect on would-be perpetrators.

Nor do non-discrimination laws do much good. Few of us are ever likely to experience overt job discrimination. In our current tight labor market, discrimination against gays is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

Jurisdictions that have non-discrimination laws find that few claims of discrimination are brought to their attention. To the contrary, almost every week, more companies announce that they will offer domestic partner benefits to attract and retain gay employees.

So hate crimes laws have almost no real impact and non-discrimination laws are a solution to a rapidly disappearing problem.

Continuing advocacy of those laws shows only how locked in gay advocacy groups are to an outmoded "civil rights" model of activism. They are fighting battles that were live issues 20 years ago, but not in 2001.

The right to marry, on the other hand, would constitute a real gain for every gay man and lesbian, all 20 million of us or however many there are.

Gay marriage would provide gay couples with all those social security, tax, inheritance, adoption, and scores of other advantages that heterosexual married couples take for granted.

And gay marriage would be an acknowledgment that gay relationships have the same significance, dignity, and depth of emotional commitment for the people involved that we assume is true for married heterosexuals. In other words, we and our relationships are equally important to society.

The most demeaning religious right argument against gay marriage is that gay and lesbian couples are nothing more than "friends who have sex." Most married heterosexuals would be deeply offended if they were described as "friends who have sex."

Even feminist lesbians who reject the idea of marriage would gain from the legalization of gay marriage because not marrying would then become a moral choice, a statement of their values, rather than an involuntary status forced on them by society.

The other major goal, the right to serve in the military, would also be an immediate benefit to many thousands of gays and lesbians, and in indirect benefit to all the rest of us.

The military is the nation's largest employer, offering job training and job security to its members.

For many young gays who want to or are forced to leave home when they come out, the military would provide a refuge, a social structure and surrogate family much as it currently does for young heterosexuals who want to escape a stultifying home life or community.

Then too, odd as it may seem to the religious right, many young gays and lesbians are sincerely patriotic and might welcome the opportunity to serve their country.

Even gays and lesbians who do not join the military gain in dignity by being deemed capable of contributing usefully to our vital institutions and our national defense.

Some advocates of hate crimes and non-discrimination laws admit that they have little real impact. But they argue that they have important symbolic value. They send the message that gays should be treated decently and with respect.

But the "message" they actually send is ambiguous. The message, however unintentional, is also that gays are weak, likely to be victimized and need help to achieve equality.

And the idea that gays and lesbians need protective legislation is, after all, uncomfortably close to the idea that gays need "special rights."

We can always point out that those laws refer neutrally to "sexual orientation" so they cover heterosexuals too. But we all know the intent is to protect gays.

(No one seriously thinks heterosexuals are likely to be beaten up by rampaging gay gangs, or that most gay employers are likely to fire a person discovered to be heterosexual.)

By contrast, gay marriage and military access, besides having substantial benefits for many gays, would constitute a much more potent and unambiguous symbol that our lives, our relationships, and our ability to contribute to the common good are fully equal to those of heterosexuals.

They send the message, if messages are to be sent, that gays only want the government to treat them equally, to stop putting "special impediments" in their way. Gays only want to be included as equal participants in the civic life of the nation.

Call this the "civic inclusion" model of gay advocacy to distinguish it from the "civil rights" model: Given an equal starting point, gays and lesbians can prove themselves without any specific protections.

First published Nov. 22, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY, the pressure is building to overturn the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy.

"I think it's going to end."

That is Charles Moskos talking. Moskos, a professor of military sociology at Northwestern University, is generally regarded as the principal author and staunchest proponent of DADT.

Moskos told the magazine "Lingua Franca" he thinks the policy will be gone in five or ten years.

It would be easy to cite several reasons for its demise, from the increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians in civil society to the growing importance of the gay vote to both political parties.

But just as important, the arguments supporting the policy are unraveling and there is increasing awareness that its rationale is built on sand.

The reason most often cited for barring gays is "unit cohesion," the idea that the presence of openly gay or lesbian personnel would harm a unit's ability to work effectively.

But an excellent article in the October issue of "Lingua Franca" summarizes the evidence for and against the "unit cohesion" argument-and leaves the rationale in tatters.

Briefly put, the evidence shows that:

• Cohesion is a result or by-product of working together, not a pre-condition for doing so;
• Successful performance is due to agreement on the importance of the task, not social closeness or group pride;
• There is no evidence that more cohesive military units perform better in combat situations.

Surprisingly, Moskos himself seems to dismiss the "unit cohesion" argument as unimportant.

"Fuck unit cohesion. I don't care about that," he told "Lingua Franca."

Moskos' own argument is that gays and lesbians should be barred because of "modesty rights for straights." That is, people (heterosexuals) have the right not to be looked at as objects of sexual desire.

"I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man]," Moskos says.

During the 1993 controversy over DADT, Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., appealed to the same idea in his famous televised visit to a submarine, showing the close quarters the crew lived and worked in.

But Moskos' argument seems very "Old World," prudish, and distant from the realities of recent decades.

Even if we accepted Moskos' parallel between male-female and gay-heterosexual situations:

Nowadays people of both sexes seem comfortable looking at each other's bodies and having their own bodies assessed, comfortable even being viewed as possible objects of sexual desire. They seem to welcome it.

This is an era of bikini swimsuits, Lycra sportswear, revealing underwear and lingerie ads in mainstream newspapers. Men and women both work out a health clubs with little purpose other than to look appealing, as if to say, "Hey, look at me."

But Moskos' parallel itself breaks down at crucial points.

One argument against including women fully in the military has been the fear that the mutual attraction of men and women would create problems of improper fraternization and sexual intimacy. In short, men and women might too much welcome being viewed with sexual desire rather than being offended or upset by it.

But now exactly the opposite argument is being promoted to keep gays and lesbians out: The concern that heterosexuals would not want to be viewed with desire, i.e., the desire would not be mutual. This seems inconsistent.

Another reason Moskos' parallel does not work is that in our society, as in most societies, women are much more encouraged to feel modest about their bodies than men are. Men are hardly encouraged to feel modesty at all.

On the contrary, men are generally expected to feel pride in their body and its attributes, and to welcome, even expect, being viewed with sexual desire as a validation of their attractiveness and manhood, whether they feel desire in return or not.

Thus, for instance, gay men are typically comfortable, even pleased, if a heterosexual woman finds them sexually attractive, even if they do not think of her sexually at all. So the "modesty" argument seems implausible.

Further, if the "modesty" argument had merit, women, as the more modest sex, should oppose the presence of lesbians, who might view them with desire, more than heterosexual men should oppose the presence of gay men.

But just the opposite is true. A small survey of army personnel conducted by Moskos himself in 1998 found that more than half of military women (52 percent) supported letting open gays and lesbians service. Fewer than one-fourth of the women (22 percent) actually opposed gays and lesbians serving.

So the modesty argument breaks down at the one point where it can be tested empirically.

In fact, of course, there has long been a disproportionate presence of lesbians in the military. Objections to them seldom come from heterosexual women who fear being viewed as sexually desirable. Instead the objections come from heterosexual males distressed that the lesbians do not regard them as sexually desirable.

But if gays are a threat neither to unit cohesion nor modesty, there is no rationale remaining for the gay ban except sheer homophobia. And prejudice is not a reason.

Originally published Nov. 15, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

REGARDLESS OF THE RESULTS of any particular election gays and lesbians seem to make ongoing progress toward legal and social equality.

The reason is simple: Politics has a limited, and declining, ability to shape society and social attitudes. Instead, it is social changes and social attitudes that shape politics.

Ultimately politics can only adjust to changes that have already taken place at deeper levels in society; politics can hasten or retard those changes a little, but it cannot alter their direction.

Politics and elections are like the froth on ocean waves. The froth bobs up and down and gets blown around a bit, but the real movement is the great currents moving slowly and inexorably far beneath the surface.

In that light, it seems useful to remind ourselves of a few of the fundamental social, cultural and economic currents that tend to encourage liberty or equality for gays.

1. Increasing gay visibility. As we notice almost every day, gays and lesbians are ever more visible as ordinary parts of society, living lives that are similar in competence and virtue to those of their heterosexual friends, neighbors and co-workers.

In addition, gays have become more visible in the mass entertainment media. This provides gay visibility even for people in conservative parts of the nation whose gay friends have yet to make themselves visible. And it provides mild encouragement for those closeted friends to make themselves visible.

The gays and lesbians people live near and see every day they tend to become used to and comfortable with, especially when they work on projects together and have to depend on one another for their successful completion.

2. Natural demographic changes. Absolutely every poll touching on gay issues shows that young people (18-29) are far more accepting of gays than are older people (65 and above).

Both inclinations are understandable. People tend to accept as normal and natural whatever they grow up experiencing. Young people have grown up in a culture where gays are visible among their friends and in the mass media (see No. 1), so they do not see our existence as a problem.

Older people are more likely to see gays as strange, new, possibly threatening element in society and to think there must be many more gays than formerly because they are seeing more now than they did when they were young.

Overall social attitudes will slowly change as the older people die and the younger people carry their gay-friendly attitudes with them into their adulthood and maturity.

3. Psychology is gay affirming. Psychologists and other therapists firmly reject the idea that homosexuality is anything to regret. Instead they now focus on helping gays accept themselves and flourish in their lives and work.

The change reflects the decline of Freud and neo-Freudian doctrines as well as realizations that "conversion therapies" do not work and that gays normally do not exhibit evidence of pathology.

But is also reflects a greater individualism in psychology - a shift from compelling the individual to adjust to the majority (always for his own good, of course) to a new focus on helping the individual achieve self-acceptance and self-actualization.

It is no accident that the new "personalist" focus owes much to the individualist psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and to the libertarian psychologist Nathaniel Branden, the "Father of the Self-Esteem Movement" and a long-time associate of novelist Ayn Rand.

4. The Protestantization of religion. There is an increasing tendency for people to make up their own minds about questions of doctrine and morality and not automatically accept traditional (and usually anti-gay) church teachings.

This tendency is visible in the growing number of (and denunciations of) "cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose which church teachings to accept. Similarly, Taxes Baptists recently asserted their rights of individual conscience and rejected Southern Baptist attempts to impose doctrinal orthodoxy.

One reason for this is that as people become better educated they develop an increased confidence in their own ability to decide such things for themselves.

But the growing presence of a variety of religions in America and the presence of their adherents even among many people's friends also probably unsettles and weakens the unthinking dogmatism of most people's convictions.

Finally, 5. The new technology-driven economy. The current economic expansion has created increased competition for skilled workers and pressures companies to identify and develop new markets.

The competition for skilled employees not only decreases employers' propensity to discriminate (as spelled out in Gary Becker's book "The Economics of Discrimination"), it also encourages employers to offer partnership benefits and other equalizing inducements to gay and lesbian employees.

The concurrent pressure to target new domestic markets can encourage corporations to seek our patronage as an identifiable "niche market." Part of that includes offering support to gay non-profits and doing nothing to offend us or to aid the opponents of gay equality.

Originally appeared November 8, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

RALPH BLAIR dates the beginning of Evangelicals Concerned to almost exactly a quarter century ago, Nov. 2, 1975, the first time he seriously considered creating an organization for evangelical Christians who are gay or lesbian.

Blair tells the story this way. In 1971, after obtaining his doctoral degree, he established the Homosexual Community Counseling Center in New York to offer counseling and therapy for gays and lesbians who were having difficulty accepting or coping with their homosexuality.

Since Blair had also become known in evangelical Christian circles as one of the few people who argued that one could be gay or lesbian and a faithful Christian, the president of one of the major evangelical institutions and a leader in the evangelical movement suggested they have dinner to discuss Blair's "work with homosexuals."

Blair expected the man to try to dissuade him from his view on homosexuality. But to his surprise, during dinner the man told Blair that he too was gay, but married, deeply closeted and able to express his desires only on business trips away from home.

Blair says he realized the man was typical of many gay people in evangelical churches who live in isolation, confused and conflicted over their same-sex attractions but not knowing how to put their desires together with a committed Christian faith.

"During that dinner" Blair writes, "he and I discussed the need for an evangelical Christian ministry for gay men and lesbians, one that would affirm their sexuality and be a "ministry of reconciliation" for gay evangelicals as well as "for gay men and lesbians who could not hear the gospel from those who could not hear them."

Blair says he also recalled that in the early 1960s one gay activist, himself an atheist, said he thought gays were more concerned with feelings of religious guilt than with difficulties with discriminatory legal statutes.

Less than four months later, Blair held a founding meeting of Evangelicals Concerned in a hotel across the street from where the National Association of Evangelicals was holding its own convention. He distributed flyers during the NAE convention, much to the displeasure of the evangelicals.

In the nearly quarter century since then, EC (as it is usually called) has become an important if inconspicuous presence among gay Christians.

Each summer EC holds well-attended conferences on both coasts. Blair invites prominent gay-supportive evangelicals to speak on themes related to Christian discipleship and other biblical issues. Although the speakers are gay-affirming they do not have to address gay issues at any length.

"I have insisted all along that EC be an organization of evangelical Christians who happen to be gay or lesbian rather than an organization of gays and lesbians who happen to come from evangelical Christian backgrounds," Blair explains. He also helps organize local Bible study groups if people are interested.

Each quarter Blair writes a newsletter about current developments in issues of religion and homosexuality and sends it to his 2,000 subscribers at no cost. He pays particular attention to gay supportive theological shifts, the growing understanding of sexuality and the repeated failures of the "ex-gay" ministries.

Each quarter too Blair also writes a critical analysis of some recent book or article dealing with homosexuality and religion. And he publishes pamphlets containing his annual "connECtions" lectures.

Blair says that his most popular pamphlet though is a single sheet of paper folded in half. On the cover it says, "What Jesus Christ Said About Homosexuality." On the inside it is totally blank. Then on the back cover it says, "That's right. He said absolutely nothing about it."

That, in a way, is the heart of Blair's message both to gays and lesbians and to his fellow evangelicals.

Contrary to the general view, evangelicals are not necessarily fundamentalists. Although evangelicals tend to be conservative theologically, they also tend to stress the priority of the New Testament, particularly Jesus' (and God's) unconditional love and acceptance of all of God's children.

Blair recalls that as a gay youth in high school and college he came to understand Christian ethics to be summed up and lived out as the call to love one another as Jesus loved all humankind.

He says that even as a youth he realized that the New Testament promise that "everything is possible with God" included, as he says, "even God's love of a boy who has crushes on other boys."

Evangelicals Concerned may have little appeal for people from liberal religious backgrounds, for those who doubt the historicity of the bible or are skeptics and atheists.

But there is nothing about being gay that requires a disbelief in gods, even the Christian God.

So for gays and lesbian who have a strong religious background but feel rejected by their earlier faith community, or for gays who have not been religious but seek a deeper self-understanding in a firmly religious context, EC may provide a sort of guidance and a context for spiritual growth and self-awareness.

The website for Evangelicals Concerned is www.ecinc.org. The street address is Evangelicals Concerned, Inc., Suite 1-G, 311 East 72nd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.