IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared June 21, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Destructive religious and psychiatric doctrines have far less power to hurt us now than they did fifty years ago. Here's a list of some of the people to thank for that progress.

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EVERY YEAR DURING Gay Pride Week, there is an upsurge of exhortations to exhibit pride, demonstrate pride, feel pride.

Fair enough. Only I would add this. We should temper our pride with gratitude - a deep sense that we as individuals and as a community owe a great deal to the people who made it possible for us to feel proud.

If there are now an unprecedented number of gays and lesbians who are comfortable with themselves, open about their lives and prepared to assert their full moral legitimacy and legal equality, all this we owe to the people who gave us the tools to work with.

By "tools" I mean the ideas and images we use to create a positive self-concept, the language we speak about ourselves with and the arguments we use to immunize ourselves against destructive religious and psychiatric doctrines.

If gratitude is the proper response when someone does something for you, think of them with gratitude. When you are celebrating your pride, whether you realize it or not, you are exhibiting the results of their work.

There is no room for a complete list, but here are a few of the people who promoted these ideas or helped give them institutional structure.

Alfred C. Kinsey was a pioneer sex researcher and author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and a companion volume on women (1953). Kinsey startled postwar America with his finding that large numbers of men engaged in homosexuality.

Just as important, the books also conducted a running critique of sex-phobic psychiatric (especially Freudian) doctrines from psychiatry never really recovered.

The book was a best seller. Tens of thousands of gay men read Kinsey and took heart that they were essentially normal. It would be fair to say the modern gay liberation movement found its impetus, its bearings and its energy directly from Kinsey.

Mary Renault was an English novelist who emigrated to South Africa in 1948 with her lifelong lover Julie Mullard and began writing a series of highly regarded, exhaustively researched novels set in ancient Greece.

The novels often focused on gay men and their relationships, making the point that gay men were accepted as an ordinary part of the social landscape in Greece. That seemed an almost utopian vision for gay men in the 1950s and 1960s, but it gave visible form and encouragement to gay men's aspirations.

Rev. Troy Perry was one of the first people to assert that his Christian God loves and accepts gays and lesbians and fully accepts their sexual behavior. As Perry put it in his book title, "The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay."

That thought was wildly implausible in 1968 when Perry founded his Metropolitan Community Church. If it is more widely accepted now, that is a measure of Perry's work and his example which resonated far beyond his own denomination.

Ron Gold is one of the unsung heroes of the gay movement. As a leader in the effort to change psychiatrists' view of homosexuality as a disease, Gold drafted statements, conducted negotiations, managed demonstrations and argued with psychiatrists. One important speech was titled, "Stop It! You're Making Me Sick!"

The resulting 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to reverse itself not only meant that gays and lesbians did not have to wonder if they were somehow mentally ill, it also meant that no one could ever again use that argument to deny us legal, social or moral equality.

"Tom of Finland" was the pen name of a real Finnish graphic artist named Touko Laaksonen. In a world and an era when most of the visible gay men were effeminate (think of Liberace), Tom's high quality drawings of well-muscled, extravagantly endowed, masculine men cruising or engaging in sex was a revelation for many gays.

For men wracked with guilt or shame about their homosexuality, Tom's drawings of handsome men enjoying one another presented an alternative model of how to think about themselves and their sexuality. Any one of Tom's drawings is worth 1,000 words of argument or 100 hours of psychotherapy.

Barbara Gittings was one of the most important leaders in the effort to move the conservative American Library Association to a pro-gay position - banning discrimination against gays, fighting anti-gay censorship, and encouraging libraries to stock gay-related books.

Gittings lobbied ALA officials, compiled booklists for libraries to use, helped set up an award for the best gay books of the year, even sponsored a gay kissing booth at ALA conventions to get attention for the gay demands. As a result, the ALA is now one of the most gay-affirmative professional organizations in the country.

There are many heterosexuals who also deserve our gratitude for their efforts on our behalf. To choose just one: Psychotherapist and author George Weinberg, best known to gays and lesbians for his little book "Society and the Healthy Homosexual" (1972).

In less than 150 pages, Weinberg set out the reasons why psychoanalysis is biased, conversion therapy does not work, gays are healthy, and homosexuality is not a problem.

Even more important, Weinberg explained why the real problem is homophobia because homophobic people have irrational fears and beliefs that are inconsistent with mental health. Weinberg, in fact, seems to have invented the term "homophobia" and put it into general use.

So when you think about gay pride, keep in mind your debt, direct or indirect, to some of these people who made it possible.

Originally appeared in June 2000 in the Chicago Free Press.

Anyone can offer reasons for being hostile toward gays, but advice-show maven Dr. Laura Schlessinger offers too many reasons, reasons that collide with each other and result in incoherence. If being gay is truly a "biological error," why would she urge us to seek psychotherapy in the hope of reversing it?

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AS MOST GAYS AND LESBIANS KNOW, Paramount Studios is planning to produce a syndicated television program hosted by social conservative advice maven "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger.

The battle is currently joined between Paramount and Schlessinger who hope to make lots of money, and a number of gay activist groups who hope to discourage potential advertisers so the program will not make money. This is all fair in the economic marketplace.

Schlessinger's strident hostility to homosexuals is well-documented.

Here is a sample quotation:

"I'm sorry, hear it one more time perfectly clearl y. If you're gay or a lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. ... The error is in your inability to relate sexually intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex - it is a biological error."

But the problem here for Schlessinger is that while anyone can offer reasons for their hostility to gays, she offers too many.

At one point or another she has said that homosexuality is a "biological error," that gays are sexually "deviant" and should seek some sort of change or "reparative" psychotherapy, and that as an advocate of Biblical morality she views homosexuality as just plan wrong.

The problem she faces, or rather declines to face, is not only that her reasons are largely discredited, but that it is impossible for anyone to hold all three views simultaneously.

For instance, there are no good replicated scientific studies showing that gays are biologically different from heterosexuals. Schlessinger, who claims to have a doctorate in "physiology," has never pointed to any such studies.

Then too, Schlessinger's claim founders on the very existence of bisexuals. Bisexual men who can presumably relate sexually to other men can also relate "normally" - "sexually intimately, in a loving way" to the opposite sex. So their sexuality is at once biologically erroneous and not erroneous.

But most significantly, if homosexuality were in fact a biological error, there would be little point in telling gays to seek any sort of psychotherapy for it. We do not normally tell people who have diabetes, or sickle cell anemia or a defective heart valve to get psychotherapy to fix their biological error. Why do so with homosexuality?

Schlessinger's second argument is that gay men are in some way "deviant" and should seek psychotherapy to change their sexual desires so they can relate "normally" to women.

Increasingly, of course, this argument is confined almost exclusively to the religious right. By now most people realize that such therapies have little effect and are by-and-large fraudulent.

"Change therapies" seem to work only for people who are bisexual or primarily heterosexual to begin with and few or none of these people say they have lost all homosexual desire. So no change has really occurred. The whole enterprise is a vast semantic deception.

Someone might ask why relating "in a loving way" to the opposite sex is psychologically superior to relating "in a loving way" to the same sex. But Schlessinger seems to have no answer for this because she seems unable to imagine anyone relating lovingly to the same sex.

Sometimes Schlessinger sounds like a girl who just cannot get a date for Saturday night.

Schlessinger's third argument is that homosexuality is somehow immoral. But this does not comport easily with the notion that gays should get therapy.

Psychological problems, pathologies, neuroses and so forth are not normally evaluated in terms of morality. For instance, we do not say that people who are claustrophobic or chronically depressed or have obsessive/compulsive disorder are immoral, so it is not clear why gays should be evaluated in those terms

Nor, to recur to Schlessinger's first argument, do we normally evaluate "biological errors," defects and so forth in moral terms.

Schlessinger usually says she bases her morality on her religious commitment to Orthodox Judaism. All well and good, but then she has no arguments to offer to people who do not share her religious commitment.

Then too, if Schlessinger's morality comes the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the "Old Testament"), she has no grounds for hostility to lesbians. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is there any passage criticizing, condemning or even mentioning lesbians.

To be sure, there is one brief passage (Genesis 3:16) in which the ancient god Yahweh implants heterosexual desire in women. First Yahweh increased the pain of labor and childbirth. Then and only then he condemned women to feel lust for men so they cannot evade that pain by abstaining from sex with men. In other words, female heterosexual desire is part of a punishment.

It is hard to believe Schlessinger could view this as much of a recommendation for female heterosexuality, but it is all there is.

Given the virulence and offensiveness of Schlessinger's views, many gays want to keep her from having a platform on national television. That is one possible option. But there is another.

Many Americans who still feel uneasy about gays and lesbians probably hold some less intense version of Schlessinger's views.

Since Schlessinger's views are so obviously false or self-contradictory, it could be useful to have her making those claims in such an easily rebuttable form.

By showing people that Schlessinger's views are wholly without merit, we can, without putting them on the defensive, show them the same thing about their own.

Originally appeared May 24, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Christian fundamentalists in letters to the editor often contend that if God had wanted there to be homosexuals in the world, he wouldn't have created Adam and Eve. But in reality it's not easy to discern any particular lessons about sex or childbearing from the somewhat confused folktale that has come down to us about the mythical couple.

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FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS often write letters to newspapers denouncing homosexuality, claiming that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" and that the ancient creation story shows "God's plan for mankind." Does it?

The Garden of Eden story is the second of two somewhat conflicting accounts of creation. Genesis first gives a late theologized version (Gen. 1-2:4), then follows it with a much earlier Canaanite legend or folktale (Gen. 2:5-3:24). Adam and Eve appear only in the folktale.

According to the legend, Yahweh decided to create a living being and place him in a garden he is to till. So the god's original plan for mankind was for there to be a single man. It was a rather small garden if one man was sufficient to care for it.

Yahweh apparently intended the man to live forever, since he permitted him to eat from the Tree of Life. The tree functioned as a kind of Fountain of Youth providing the man with continuing life so long as he ate its fruit.

At some point, Yahweh changed his plan and decided that man should have some sort of companion. "It is not good that man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18). This was the god's second plan for mankind.

So Yahweh experimented a bit, creating various other species of living beings (the animals) to provide companionship for the man. But the man rejected them all as companions. Thus Yahweh's second plan for mankind was not a success.

Finally, in mounting frustration, Yahweh formed a third plan: He opened up the man, took out a rib and created a second human being from it, a women. This finally seemed to please the man because it was part of himself. So the god's third plan for mankind was for the man and the woman to live eternally as companions in the garden.

This third plan came to grief when the serpent persuaded the woman to eat the fruit of the one forbidden tree and the man and woman learned to distinguish good from bad.

At that point, Yahweh changed his plan again. Since each of his plans for humans in the garden had been complete and utter failures, he expelled the man and woman from the garden. That was now the god's fourth plan for mankind. More accurately stated, the expulsion amounted to Yahweh's giving up having any plans at all. The man and woman were on their own.

The expulsion was not punishment for eating the forbidden fruit, but to make sure the humans could no longer eat from the Tree of Life and be immortal.

After the man, now named Adam, and the woman were sent out on their own, they had sexual relations (Gen. 4:1) and for the first time the woman bore a child. And so human history began.

Now consider what the ancient legend tells about Yahweh's plans and how much it does and does not explain.

First, the legend shows that having children was not part of any of the god's original plans. Adam and Eve started having children only after Yahweh gave up on them and sent them away. In other words, Adam and Eve started having children only after they were no longer immortal.

For one thing, if the man and woman had produced children while they were in the garden, they and their descendants would have quickly overrun the small place since they all would have been immortal and reproduced endlessly. Yahweh would not want that.

But more importantly, having children, creating descendants, seems to be a kind of surrogate immortality, a pitifully inadequate attempt by Adam and Eve to compensate for the real immortality they had lost.

The sex that Adam and Eve engaged in after leaving the garden is the first mention of heterosexual sex. There is no indication that the man and the woman had sex while they were still in the garden, so heterosexual activity does not seem to be a noticeable part of the god's plan.

Nor does the story explain heterosexual desire. To be sure, immediately after the creation of the woman the overeager narrator intrudes to comment: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).

But such a conclusion is wholly unwarranted. Yahweh does not say this and neither does the man: It is an interpretation from a later era. Fathers and mothers do not even exist at this point in the story.

Nor is there any evidence that Yahweh intended for the man to feel sexual desire for his companion. After all, the god created the various animals intending them to be companions and there is no evidence that Yahweh intended the man to feel sexual desire for the second human any more than for the animals.

True, the man pointed out that the woman was created from his own flesh, but that was only in connection with naming her "woman." It says nothing about his feeling heterosexual desire for her.

But since the two humans were originally part of the same body, we might speculate (as the narrator did) that they might desire to rejoin each other. While that might suggest a strong desire by the rib to rejoin the man, it does not suggest any strong desire for the rib on man's part.

People who lose a body part, say a hand or a kidney or a rib, may well miss it and wish to regain it, but they usually do not feel anything like love or sexual desire for it. Even supposing that the first man did so, his own loss of a rib could not explain heterosexual desire by anyone else since all subsequent men were born with a full complement of ribs.

So, contrary to the expectations of fundamentalist Christians, the Adam and Eve story markedly fails to show that the god's plan includes men's desire for women, heterosexual sex, or the generation of children.

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Author's Note:

After publishing this piece, I realized there is specific textual evidence for the absence of heterosexual desire in the Garden of Eden.

In Gen. 3:16 when Yahweh is expelling Adam and Eve, Yahweh says to Eve, "you shall be eager for your husband" (or "you shall feel an urge for your husband"), indicating that this is something new that Yahweh is instilling in Eve.

Yahweh does this so Eve will not be able to evade the pain of childbirth by abstaining from sexual intercourse. So heterosexual desire, at least in women, is simply the enforcement mechanism for a punishment.

Since translations vary, I should also note that I have used the New English Bible: Oxford Study Edition (Oxford University Press, 1972), the most accurate translation I know, but I have also checked several other well-known translations.

- Paul Varnell

Originally appeared May 17, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Allan Bloom, subject of a new novel by Saul Bellow, stood head and shoulders above most critics of modern education and contemporary culture. But many of the conservatives who lionized him did not know, or did not want to know, or did not want it known that they were admiring a gay man.

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SAUL BELLOW is one of America's most distinguished novelists. Whenever he publishes a new work it is a literary event.

But his most recent novel "Ravelstein," based on Bellow's long friendship with University of Chicago political philosopher Allan Bloom, is something of a political/cultural event as well because it reveals to the general public that Bloom was gay and, apparently, died of AIDS.

Bloom himself became a cultural phenomenon back in 1987 when he published his famous polemic "The Closing of the American Mind," a scathing criticism of modern American university education for its shallowness and triviality.

Bloom expected the book to sell a few thousand copies. To everyone's amazement, sales took off placing the book on the best seller lists for months and making Bloom, as he put it, "The academic equivalent of a rock star."

Bloom's fame arose from the way he corrosively attacked universities for failing to open students' minds by exposing them to the philosophic quest for understanding that enriches the human spirit. The result of that failure, he said, was that students' minds were stunted, their emotional capacities dulled and their souls impoverished.

His critique was sharp; his arguments were cogent.

Because he attacked modern education and contemporary culture, he was adopted and lionized by conservatives who saw him as a supporter and a spokesman.

The "scandal" then of Bellow's new novel is his disclosure that all those conservatives who praised Bloom, quoted his book and cited him as an authority were praising, quoting and citing a gay man. And not only a gay man, but one who led a fairly active "homosexual lifestyle."

That Bloom was gay was hardly a secret. He was comfortable with his sexuality and lived his life openly. His sexuality was common knowledge among his students, friends and colleagues. He lived with a companion to whom he dedicated his last book.

But many conservatives who admired Bloom did not know, or did not want to know, or did not want it known that they were admiring a gay man or that openly gay people might have any value or deserve any credibility.

And so they have accused Bellow of impropriety and betrayal.

They prefer not to "scandalize the faithful" by telling the truth. To do so might weaken people's homophobia or their own legitimacy among other homophobes.

Nothing could better illustrate that just as most social conservatism at the popular level consists of little beside ignorance and fear, at its highest level it consists of little except mysticism, obscurantism and hypocrisy.

But there is no "betrayal" of Bloom. Bloom repeatedly asked, urged, pushed, ordered Bellow to write a fully explicit memoir about him. So any "betrayal" must be must be of other people who are embarrassed by the fact that he was gay.

Bloom would have enjoyed their embarrassment. He experienced anti-gay sentiment at first hand and was treated with condescension and hostility by homophobes who did know of his homosexuality.

One such fierce - perhaps deranged - conservative attacked Bloom's failure to criticize "the so-called 'gay rights' movement, which ... has emerged as the most radical and sinister challenge, not merely to sexual morality, but to all morality." Etc., etc.

But, in fact, most conservatives failed to notice that the philosophic quest Bloom urged cast doubt on all orthodoxies, conservative as well as liberal ones. Bloom repeatedly explained that he was not a conservative at all. "My teachers," he wrote, "Socrates, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche-could hardly be called conservatives."

For instance, despite his broad criticism of modern culture and its failures, Bloom dismissed the conservative view of family values: "I am not arguing here that the old family arrangements were good or that we should or could go back to them."

And there is virtually no criticism of homosexuality or gays in his books. Promoting the acceptance of gays was not one of Bloom's major goals, but he certainly surrendered no territory to homophobes and he pushed back against them without hesitation.

"Neither bourgeois society nor natural science has a place for the nonreproductive aspects of sex," he wrote, and then proceeded to make perfectly clear his distaste for bourgeois society and his hostility to drawing lessons from natural science.

When criticizing Freud, Bloom recommended Plato's "Symposium" instead with its Platonic "myth" explaining the origin of homosexuality as well as heterosexuality: "Anyone who wishes to lay aside his assurance about the superiority of modern psychology might find in Plato a richer explanation of the diversity of erotic expression."

And finally, for those who still did not get the point, "There is certainly legitimate ground to doubt their [men and women's] suitability for each other. ..." But far more conservatives cited Bloom than actually read him.

Readers of Bellow's new "Ravelstein" meet a tall, balding, boisterously funny, stammering, obsessive smoker with trembling hands and sloppy habits.

But they also meet a man of great learning, extraordinary psychological insight and generosity of spirit, who lived by his ideas and was devoted to helping his friends and students understand themselves.

Bloom wrote four thoughtful and fascinating books, including his great work "Love and Friendship," and he translated three others, among them Plato's Republic. One happy outcome of Bellow's memoir would be if people who read about Bloom the man were led to read Bloom the thinker himself.

We could think of "Ravelstein" as Bloom's last work, the Preface you write when the book is finished.

Originally appeared in the Chicago Free Press on May 3, 2000.

Susan Sontag put gays on the cultural map in her magisterial 1964 essay, or so the familiar story goes. In hindsight, however, "Notes on Camp" can be seen as neither as impressive nor as gay-friendly as it seemed at the time.

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IN 1964, A VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN 31-year-old named Susan Sontag made something of a slow motion splash with a 20-page article titled "Notes on Camp."

With a great display of learning, dozens of wide-ranging examples, and a host of distinctions and unexpected connections, Sontag's article took the notion of "Camp" seriously enough to analyze it - to explain what it was, where it came from, how it worked, and what its effects were.

Among her host of examples were Tiffany lamps, Bellini operas, "Swan Lake," "King Kong," old Flash Gordon comics, Noel Coward plays, Aubrey Beardsley drawings, Oscar Wilde's epigrams (the essay quotes several), feather boas, Ronald Firbank novels, and "All About Eve."

Sontag argued that there was more to Camp that just silliness or pretense or fake elegance. According to her, Camp is a whole sensibility that evaluates the world strictly in aesthetic terms.

More specifically Camp is characterized by a love of the theatrical, the artificial or exaggerated, which "converts the serious into the frivolous." It represents "a victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality," producing a kind of moral and political disengagement.

Perhaps most significantly for the time - five years before Stonewall - Sontag pointed to gay men as the primary conduits of Camp taste, its "vanguard" and its "most articulate audience." In fact, she said:

"Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. ... The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony."

Sontag's article, widely read and discussed in the next few years, certainly popularized the idea of camp, both the awareness and the use of it. The article even achieved enough notoriety to be parodied by humorist Fran Lebowitz in a piece called "Notes on Trick."

In retrospect, Sontag's essay does not hold up well. The show of graduate school learning seemed forced, more intended to impress than illuminate, and limited to the parochial knowledge base of the literary elite of her time. The categories often seem arbitrary, the generalizations too sweeping, the distinctions artificial, and examples often ineptly chosen.

For instance, Sontag seems unable to recognize her subject matter. Despite her claim, "Swan Lake" is hardly Camp. That it is so often parodied should prove that; how could you parody Camp? Samuel Barber's fine opera "Vanessa" is hardly Camp just because gay men wrote it and it contains stylized elements.

No one could say Alexander Pope's poetry was Camp if he read more than "The Rape of the Lock," which maybe Sontag didn't. Nor would anyone who loves music say that "much of Mozart" is Camp. Where did she get these bizarre notions?

At some point you begin to suspect that Sontag's knowledge is limited and her appreciation is shallow. In short, she does not know what she is talking about. And the essay begins to fall apart.

Nevertheless, reading the essay in pre-Stonewall America, many gays felt that Sontag was their champion. They felt she had put them on the cultural map, so to speak, and given them legitimacy. They had always wanted to believe they were an important and valuable creative minority and now Sontag seemed to affirm to everyone that they were the bearers of a major sensibility.

No doubt too many gay men found the article useful as a guidebook to social climbing. They picked up useful tips on what to read and see and what to think and say about what they read and saw, regardless of their own personal reactions.

But gays who felt affirmed and legitimized, even lionized, by "Notes on Camp" overlooked several troubling facts.

For one thing, Sontag's essay was published in "Partisan Review," at the time perhaps the premier organ of moral seriousness in political and cultural matters, Camp's chief rival sensibility. In short, "Notes on Camp" was intended as a reconnaissance map of the enemy's territory.

For another, Sontag acknowledged that although she felt drawn to Camp, she also found it offensive and even felt "revulsion" from it.

Further, the analysis of Camp seemed rooted more in many then-current, condescending stereotypes about gays rather than in any serious inquiry into the basis or coherence of Camp's purported properties. For instance:

Gays are playful because they are immature and refuse to grow up and become responsible adults. They are duplicitous and devious, always posing, not wishing or able to be authentic. They exhibit "the psychopathology of affluence" - too much money, too easily bored, too little purpose for living. They are frivolous and shallow, lacking emotional depth and attracted only to the superficial.

Then too, many casual readers failed to notice that Camp turns out to be not really an independent sensibility at all, but derivative and ultimately parasitic on the whole natural, moral basis of human existence, including serious art, undermining and destroying what it depends on.

Finally, Sontag viewed Camp as the core of what might now be called "the homosexual agenda," that is, a concerted effort to undermine morality so people would have no basis for objecting to homosexuality.

"Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense," she wrote. "Camp is the solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation. ..."

A decade later Sontag viciously attacked Camp and its aesthetic sensibility because it was corrupting and "the ethical and cultural issues it raises have become serious, even dangerous." But for those who read carefully, that was her view from the beginning.

Originally appeared April 19, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Of the religious folktales of the world, few have occasioned more hatred and cruelty, suffering and death than the Old Testament story of Sodom, the city purportedly destroyed by Jehovah because its inhabitants were homosexual. The story comes down to us in a highly confused state, and it seems unlikely that most of those who cite it have ever tried to puzzle out its contradictions.

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ONE OF THE MOST BEGUILING but baffling stories preserved in the Old Testament book of Genesis is the ancient folktale of Yahweh's destruction of the city of Sodom (Gen.18:20-19:38).

It would be possible to view the folktale as a charming example of comforting wish-fulfillment revenge fantasy by ancient nomadic tribesmen had the story not been taken literally by so many men who did so much evil: Few stories in the Old Testament have generated more hatred and cruelty, more suffering and death.

The usual interpretation is that the ancient god (1) destroyed Sodom because its inhabitants were homosexual, but (2) spared Lot because he offered hospitality to two angels and tried to protect them from the Sodomites.

It is hard to imagine anyone could believe this interpretation if he had actually read the story. The first element is undermined by inconsistencies in the story; the second by the words of the story itself.

To begin, it is worth pointing out that this god is not omniscient: he does not know for certain what is going on in Sodom, he has only heard reports - "an outcry" as it is expressed. So the god sends two angels to investigate.

When the angels come to the city gate of Sodom, in one of those remarkable coincidences possible only in folk tales, who should they meet but Lot who just happens to be sitting there. Why this is such a coincidence we will see shortly. Lot invites the visitors into his house.

As soon as they hear that two strangers are staying at Lot's house, the entire male population of Sodom - "young and old . . . every one of them" - surround Lot's house and demand that he send the visitors out so the mob can have sex with them.

"Bring them out," they shouted, "so that we can have intercourse with them." Or words to that effect.

Now it is impossible to take any such incident seriously as history. How could the entire male population of a city be homosexual? If all these men were homosexual, how could Sodom sustain its population? Where did the little Sodomites come from?

It is hard to know what a "city" might have meant, but a fair guess would be between 1,000 and 3,000 people. It scarcely seems plausible that so many men (500-1,500) could actually expect to have sex with just two men. Nor is it plausible that the visitors would appeal to the diverse tastes and behavioral preferences of every single man, even if they were homosexual.

Then too, consider the fact that Lot offers his two virgin daughters to be used by the crowd as a substitute. "Let me bring them out to you," he says, "and you can do what you like with them."

But if the men of Sodom had been homosexual why would Lot think they would have any interest in his daughters?

How long has Lot lived in Sodom? Years? You would think he would have noticed something like rampant homosexuality had it existed. You would also have to wonder why he chose to live there. You might even wonder how he could have found the prospective sons-in-law who were engaged to his daughters.

However that may be, when Lot's offer fails to appease the crowd, the visitors pull Lot back into his house and cause the men of Sodom to become blind. They then tell Lot to leave Sodom because they are going to destroy it.

Why? Because, says one angel, "The outcry against it has been so great that the Lord has sent us to destroy it."

This statement makes clear that the god had already decided to destroy Sodom long before the angels arrived and long before any attempted gang-rape. So the whole incident at Lot's house had nothing to do with the reason Sodom was destroyed.

It is also worth pointing out that the incident at Lot's house, however we understand it, is the only one anywhere in the Bible that could suggest any connection between Sodom and homosexuality. There are no others. And, to repeat, that incident was not why Sodom was destroyed.

But why then did the angels spare Lot and tell him to leave town? To reward Lot for his hospitality? Because he tried to protect them from assault?

Because he was the only heterosexual in Sodom? Not at all.

The angel explains that he had already been forbidden to destroy Sodom until Lot is safe: "I can do nothing until you are there" - i.e., in the neighboring town of Zoar, the only one of the five cities of the Plain that was not destroyed.

To understand why, we have to remember who Lot was.

Two chapters earlier in Genesis the god made his covenant with Abraham to create the Hebrew nation. Now it happens that Abraham's brother Haran was Lot's father (Gen. 11:27-28); that is, Lot is Abraham's nephew. Lot is to be saved not for anything he did, but because of who he is.

In the plain words of the folktale narrator: "Thus when God destroyed the cities of the Plain he thought of Abraham and rescued Lot from the disaster" (Gen. 19:29).

So to repeat, neither Sodom's destruction nor Lot's rescue has any connection with the incident at Lot's house nor with Lot's hospitality. The decision to destroy Sodom but save Lot were made by the god before the incident even happened.

The angels then were sent not to investigate at all, but to get Lot out of the city. Which is why it was such a remarkable coincidence that he just happened to be the very first person they encountered at Sodom.

Originally published April 5, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Young gay people often embark on a crash course to learn everything they can about gay culture, which unlike (say) ethnic culture, is something they seldom have absorbed growing up from parents and siblings. Despite misgivings about whether "gay courses" belong in universities, careful scholarship does have a legitimate role to play in illuminating what gay culture is and how it has changed over time.

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THE MICHIGAN CHAPTER of the American Family Association is disturbed. More than usual.

It seems that University of Michigan professor David Halperin scheduled a course for the fall semester titled "How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation."

"Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn how to become one," Halperin explained.

That set off AFA state chair Gary Glenn.

"It is wrong," Glenn said, "that taxpayers are being forced to pay for a class whose purpose is to recruit and initiate teenage men into the homosexual lifestyle."

And, he added, "Nobody has to take a class in how to be African-American or Irish." Take that, Halperin!

Glenn might be on solid grounds if he criticized all taxpayer-funded education. After all, it is nothing more than a forced subsidy for people with children by people who have no children - which would include a majority of gays.

But Glenn conveniently ignores the fact that gays are forced to pay taxes too. In fact, every single time religious right advocates get upset about the use of taxpayer money, they act as if no gays or lesbians ever paid taxes. We need to keep reminding them that we pay taxes too and we expect some representation for our taxation.

So long as I pay taxes, I think I would like my taxes to help pay for this course, or a similar one here in Illinois.

As for Glenn's sparkling observation that no one has to take a class in how to be African-American or Irish, the answer is: Of course not, because they already learned it at home from their parents and family.

For instance, most black children learn their family's history with its stories about slavery, forced segregation, and encounters with prejudice in the United States. They learn about the civil rights struggle, about civil rights leaders and important black people in science, the arts, politics.

They learn where they can go safely and where it is dangerous, how to behave with hostile police, how to cope with prejudiced people, how to cope with random insults and dismissive treatment. They may pick up different ways of talking with blacks and whites, different rules about eye contact, different body languages.

They learn - we might say absorb - these various facts and coping skills from their family as they are growing up.

By contrast, little gay children seldom grow up in a home where they learn information about gays or absorb the nuanced skills of being gay in a skeptical, not to say hostile world.

Most of us grow up alone, without a clue, keeping a furtive eye out for elements of the general culture that will reflect our own developing self-awareness and might, if we are lucky, validate our existence.

Young gays are often surprised to discover both how much gay history and culture there is and how the courtesies and modes of social conduct differ subtly from their previous experience.

When you track down Halperin's course proposal itself, it turns out this is exactly what he wants to explore: How the gay community teaches homosexuals how to be gay.

Halperin posits a number of "cultural artifacts and activities" that play a role in learning how to be a gay man: e.g., Hollywood movies, opera, Broadway musicals, certain classical and popular music, camp humor and drag, diva-worship, body-building or "muscle culture," fashion and interior design.

He says he wants his course to explore whether there are certain classical "gay" works and practices that all gay men need to know, what makes them so essential and what explains why gays are drawn to those things. These are good questions to ask.

Halperin's idea is not new, of course, but his questions are more probing than usual. And he deserves credit for treating gay male community and culture separately and not as part of some imaginary "LGBT community."

But the question is whether Halperin's example of gay "artifacts and activities" are any more than mere stereotypes. Although stereotypes often have a basis in fact, it might be worth asking how widespread those interests actually are or were and exploring whether his examples are limited to a certain time, place and social level.

All that cultural bric-a-brac was often present in pre-Stonewall middle and upper-middle class urban gay communities: At one point every gay home seemed to have a statue of Michelangelo's David and a Judy Garland record.

But the post-Stonewall gay culture saw many of those things dwindle into targets of bemused ridicule, especially among younger gays.

There is another difficulty. Gay men in Berlin in the 1920s, who surely count as gay, were probably not much interested in Broadway musicals or Hollywood movies. That would be even more true of the men in St. Petersburg's gay community at the turn of the last century.

What were they interested in? What did they find in the broader culture that reflected their interests? What did they borrow and adapt to legitimize their existence and tastes? It would be interesting to know.

Perhaps if "gay culture" is at least partly a response to hostility and prejudice, then gay men may adopt not so much specific things, but general types of things. For instance, they might adopt elements of high culture in order to assert some sort of intellectual superiority to compensate for social stigmatization.

Or they might be attracted to stylized or exaggerated elements of the general culture that implicitly offer the comforting thought that the source of oppression is faintly ridiculous.

If so, as gays achieve equality much of "gay culture" may become obsolete.

Originally appeared March 22, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

BY NOW MOST PEOPLE have received the census forms the government wants them to fill out.

I am of two minds about the census. Government interrogatives (viz., "snooping") should be viewed with deep suspicion. Governments are not your friend; government is about social control. The less they know about any of us citizens, the harder it is to interfere in our lives. How often do we need to be reminded that knowledge is power?

But since gays are in large measure an invisible minority, it would promote gay visibility and legitimacy to have more accurate data about gays, lesbians and our relationships. The census is one cheap and convenient way to gather some of that information.

You see the conflict.

So what we have to do is shape our census answer to provide the information we want, but not more.

Even if you want to, though, it is not easy to tell the U.S. Census Bureau you are gay.

If you and your lover live together, Person 2 (you can flip a coin) can indicate in Question 2 of the short form (D-1) that he or she is the "unmarried partner" of Person 1. The Census Bureau recorded 145,000 same-sex couples in 1990, a vast undercount, of course.

Person 2 can also say he or she is the "husband/wife" of Person 1. If the two people are the same sex, the census says it will count them as "unmarried partners." You could also write in "married partner," "lover," "spouse," or the term of your choice in the "Other relative" category, but there is no guarantee those will be counted.

What about gays who do not live with their partner or who have no current partner? Polygamous heterosexual men have a way to indicate all their wives, but single gays have no formal way to indicate they are gay.

So we have to use more creative ways.

Some people who have the long form (D-2) say they plan to answer Question 10 ("What is this person's ancestry or ethnic origin?") by writing in "gay" or "gay American." After all, ethnicity can be interpreted to mean your primary identification. If that is "gay American" then feel free to tell them so.

The late gay scholar Warren Johannson once half-seriously urged gays to call themselves "Sodomite-Americans," arguing that our common spiritual ancestry is the (mythical) city of Sodom. That might be too obscure for census bureaucrats.

However you decide to answer, the point to keep in mind is, as pioneer activist Frank Kameny said recently, "I will define myself to my government; I will not allow my government to define me to me. I am answering the questions, not they. We citizens are the masters; the government are our servants, not the other way round. Never forget it and never let them forget it."

The short form does not ask about ethnicity. But Question 8 asks about "race." Along with "Black" and "White" it offers other options such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan and Korean. But Cambodian (adjacent to Vietnam), Taiwanese and Korean (once again) are listed as ethnicities on the long form, so "race" seems to mean little more than origin or identity.

If so, then gays can justifiably write in "gay" under the heading "Some other race."

That answer might also appeal to liberals who believe the whole idea of "race" is a divisive and reactionary fiction as well as conservatives who dislike treating races differently. Anyone who simply disapproves of the "race" question can write in "human." I have a liberal friend who has done so regularly in past censuses.

As another possibility, you can just write "gay" or "lesbian" in magic marker in big letters across your form and see what happens. Nothing will; it won't get counted. But if many people did that, word world probably leak out to the news media somehow. Remember: "We Are Everywhere," even at the Census Bureau.

Are there disadvantages to collecting data about gays? Perhaps. Many, probably most gays, may not want to say they are gay, so there will be an enormous undercount. Our opponents could use that to argue our political and economic insignificance.

But voter exit polls and marketing surveys are probably adequate as correctives to a census undercount. And each census will show more and more gays as gays are comfortable being open. We have to start some time. It might as well be now.

There are significant advantages to collecting data on gays. It will be fascinating and useful to get information about our numbers, our relationships and our lives.

Economists and political scientists have already made some tentative estimates about gay residential, education, and employment patterns using the scant 1990 data on "same sex partners." With more respondents we will have more reliable data.

Then too, the growth in the number of people saying they are gay would be a rough index of the growth of gays' confidence of social acceptance.

Should we follow the lead of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and urge that a question about sexual orientation be added to the census next time?

Probably not. Census answers are required by law, but some people may fear exposure if they answer honestly. Such people would probably lie and might be wise to do so: the census releases information on a block by block basis.

Could the Census Bureau make the question voluntary? They could but there is no precedent for that and the bureau would probably resist.

But then I plan to resist answering most of the other questions. It is none of their business.

First appeared Feb. 9, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

NOT LONG AGO, I got an e-mail from a college student (how long ago college seems!) who wanted to know what I thought about the term "queer."

To be sure, having once contributed to an anthology called "Beyond Queer," I am more or less on record as thinking the term - and the concept - are not helpful.

I know I feel a visceral dislike for the word. Since it was long used as a term to demean gays it has strong negative associations I would prefer not to be constantly reminded of. I might have even preferred another title for the book.

But when I started mulling it over, I realized I had not given it much thought beyond my immediate reaction. So I suppose there are several things to think, and say, about "queer."

The general argument for "queer" is that it is a term of abuse that gays and lesbians should "reclaim" and use in a positive, affirmative way in order to disarm it. Further, it acknowledges - and embraces - our difference from others and asserts this as a positive good.

But this argument has little general appeal. Most Jews, after all, do not have much interest in reclaiming "kike." Most African-Americans reject "nigger." Few southeast Asians seem to be reclaiming "gook." And for similar reasons most gays continue to avoid the word "queer."

For a while some younger gays and lesbians seemed to be using "queer" but they often gave the impression they were doing so primarily to be linguistically avant-garde and because the language called attention to itself. Even among young people, "queer" now seems dated.

Equally to the point, despite a decade of "queer," "Queer Nation" (now defunct-significantly), and other "queer" assertiveness, sociologist Stephen Murray points out that there is no evidence at all that "fag-bashers or school children hear or use the epithet differently since it has been 'reclaimed.'"

The word is still meant as an insult and the concept is still an invitation to physical assault.

So insistently using the word for ourselves amounts to a kind of obliviousness or denial, a condition Jonathan Swift described as "the serene, peaceful state of being a fool among knaves."

Another argument sometimes offered for "queer" is that "gay" or "gay and lesbian" is too limited and "queer" is more inclusive of the broad community of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc. - virtually anyone divergent in terms of sexuality, gender or mode of self-presentation.

Whether there is, in fact, any real community of these various people seems doubtful. But in any case, the alleged benefit of inclusivity seems to be not a real benefit but more of a loss.

There are important differences between gays and lesbians on one hand, and transvestites, transsexuals and the rest on yet other hands.

Transsexuals say they only wish to correct a physical error in their bodies. Gays, by contrast, have spent countless hours trying to explain that they are not "a woman trapped in a man's body." Transvestites strenuously (and correctly) insist they are not gay despite dressing in women's clothing.

In short, each of these groups of people have a different self-understanding, a different origin for their situation, a different set of problems to cope with, and encounters occasional hostility because of different popular misunderstandings about them.

It obscures intellectual clarity and demeans the dignity of each to lump them together under one all-embracing term and dismiss as unimportant exactly the differences they say are so crucial in their own lives and their self-understanding.

A third argument sometimes offered for "queer" is that it underscores "our" oppositional posture toward mainstream American culture and society. As "queer theory" advocate Michael Warner explains it, just as "gay" is in contrast to heterosexual, so "queer" is in contrast to "normal."

It seems odd that any self-respecting person would accept as legitimate society's-or anyone's- definition of him or her as not normal.

Yet that is exactly what "queer" does. It accepts society's (now waning) assessment and simply tries to make a virtue of a necessity. It seems like sour grapes: "If you won't let me join, I don't even want to be a member of your stupid old club."

In the end, I suppose, anyone's attitude toward mainstream society is a personal matter for them, but I for one don't feel much hostility toward mainstream society. I feel pretty normal, thank you, and if someone does not think I am, that is their problem, not mine. I suspect most gays and lesbians feel the same way.

As writer David Link observed several years ago in an article titled "I Am Not Queer," "I have wrestled with myself over whether, as a gay man, I am queer. I have decided that I am not. Queer is the word of the other, of the outsider. I do not feel as if I am outside anything due to my sexual orientation."

To try to persuade gays and lesbians to think of themselves as "queer," to urge them to present themselves to society as hostile and unassimilable outsiders seems designed to do nothing more than inhibit, even prevent, progress toward equal treatment and equal social regard for gays.

"Queer" starts off claiming to reverse the effects of negative language, but only obscures its continuing impact. It pretends to offer the benefits of a more inclusive and tolerant community but ends by subverting our individual self-understandings in a viscous mash of sex and gender uncertainty. It pretends to be pro-gay but stands athwart the path to full equality and social acceptance, crying, "No, no, don't go there. Stay in your place. You are so useful where you are."

Useful to who?

First appeared Jan. 26, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

YOU HAVE PROBABLY ALREADY SEEN the news reports that comedian Ellen DeGeneres will soon be shooting a pilot for a CBS television series about a woman who hosts an "old-fashioned variety show."

The series, and DeGeneres' character, will also have a fictional behind-the-scenes component along the lines of the "Larry Sanders Show."

Would the character be gay, everyone wanted to know? CBS said it did not care one way or the other and it was up to DeGeneres. As for DeGeneres, she told inquiring reporters, "I'm playing me, so I will be gay. Because as you've heard, I am. Yeah, there was this whole thing about it."

DeGeneres' return is excellent news. She is talented, charming, funny, and pretty. And-a relief after too many years of "Seinfeld"-she seems genuine, authentic. She is the kind of person you would be happy to have as a neighbor.

The new CBS series is a vindication of sorts after ABC canceled her earlier series. But the new program also provides a fresh start, an opportunity to use what she learned about what works and what does not.

It is a little late to do an autopsy on the earlier "Ellen" but perhaps two points are still relevant. People said the earlier show was not funny. That is not fair. It was very funny.

But the humor, like the show itself, ended up focused on the character's lesbian life rather than on Ellen Morgan as a lesbian who is leading a life. That was not enough to draw large audiences. Not yet, anyway.

Second, the studio audience harmed the show by laughing uproariously, excessively, at every gay or lesbian reference -- as if to prove that they "got it." Yet the humor itself was usually very gentle and understated.

The disproportion between the humor and the raucous audience reaction may have had an alienating effect on viewers and given them the uncomfortable feeling that they had intruded into a private performance for an invited audience.

The new program, by contrast, will not focus on DeGeneres' being gay, but on the plot situation: problems running the variety show, managing the staff, coping with guests, conflicts between DeGeneres' life and her program, etc.

The fact that the character is herself gay will be part of the background most of the time but will get noticed once in a while -- a reference, a conversation, even a source of occasional conflict. That is enough to make an impact but keep a larger audience watching so long as the show also entertains them.

Will the fictional audience of the fictional variety show be supposed to know DeGeneres is gay? That is, will she be "out" on the fictional show? There would probably be more opportunity for humorous and illuminating conflict if she were not.

What we are seeing here, in any case, is the triumph of "Will and Grace." Just as DeGeneres' earlier series made "Will and Grace" possible by pioneering an openly gay lead character, now "Will and Grace" makes DeGeneres' second series possible by showing how such a program can be popular and successful if you handle it right.

Almost surely, this is the recipe for future gay characters in the mass media. The homosexuality is there, but not obtruded; the character is gay, but his character is not about being gay. "Entertainment, not preachment" is the motto.

Remember those earnest shows not so long ago where the only thing gay characters did was come our or die of AIDS. Now gays are being shown with rounded lives in which being gay is an aspect but not the whole of our existence. That is a truer and more positive message to communicate. One-dimensionality is crippling in art, as in life.

In a way, the treatment of gays on television recapitulates the four phases many individual gays go through in their own lives. Phase one was total invisibility. Phase two was similar to Tony Randall's short-lived "Love, Sidney," in which people were vaguely aware of the homosexuality but no one ever talked about it.

Phase three, like "Ellen," was a gay person newly out, coping with being gay and trying to discover what that meant for her. Phase four is now to be about gay or lesbian characters who are (more or less) comfortably out of the closet and living their lives -- which may or may not include coping with occasional hostility and looking for a relationship.

What the mass media are now able to depict are the different kinds of lives gays lead, at least the interesting ones. No doubt, most of our lives, like most heterosexuals' lives, are not all that interesting. So there is always going to be some exaggeration, some stylization, some distortion of gay lives, just as there is exaggeration and distortion of everything else on television.

But the gain is that the media will be displaying a variety of gay lives so instead of having just one template for understanding and relating to gays, heterosexuals will have several different ones available to offer a slightly better fit for each new gay person they meet.

This may have little impact on adults who already have a template by which to understand gays and lesbians and are not likely to change.

But young people tend to accept as normal whatever they grow up experiencing. By seeing a variety of gay lives even at second hand through the media, young people will be less likely than their parents to think of gays solely in terms of their sexuality or a fast-lane lifestyle.

By overcoming those one-dimensional stereotypes, we come closer to being viewed as individuals worthy of respect and equal dignity.