IGF CultureWatch

"Gay Pride" was created as a response to the fact that being gay was a stigmatized identity. But nearly 40 years after Stonewall is it OK to abandon the notion of gay pride? Is it all right if I just feel OK about being gay and not make a big fuss-an over-compensatory fuss, frankly-about how proud I am?

If you are young and/or newly out of the closet, you might take pride in your psychological achievement of confronting the remaining stigma and your courage in coming out. And for a few years you might need the encouragement that the notion of "gay pride" can provide. But after five or 10 years, I hope you'd find something else or something more to be proud of.

To be sure, for a long time there will be areas of hostility to gays, primarily religious or ethnic. So where those have considerable influence, "gay pride" is still a valuable (if over-simplified) message to send to young and closeted gays within those communities.

For the rest of us, it is possible to take a kind of derivative pride in the achievements of gays and lesbians in the past-and they are considerable-but it is best to feel pride in something you personally achieved in your life. If that achievement is somehow related to being gay, so much the better.

For instance, you might take pride in being a volunteer for some gay community or AIDS service organization. Or, and I am anticipating a future column here, you could be part of a gay group that provides services to the broader community; not everything has to be directed inward. I am thinking of the "Toys for Tots" projects that leather clubs used to undertake. But, no doubt, there is still plenty of work to do in our community.

The annual Pride Parade is useful, despite its occasional silliness, as the largest and most visible representation of our community to closeted gays and to the general public. It shows our range of religious and social service organizations, the range and vibrancy of gay businesses, and the level of support that large corporations increasingly provide for us. All this helps legitimize us and demonstrates that the gay community is a bustling, thriving community.

It also serves as a kind of psychological boost (however brief) for not-very-active gays. It is not unknown for some parade observer on the spur of the moment to step off the sidelines and join a marching contingent.

For those wary of the television cameras, I will share a personal anecdote. I used to live in a small university town. One year, maybe 30 years ago, during the week after the pride parade, a student I hardly knew came up to me and asked diffidently, "Were you in Chicago last weekend?" "Yes, I was." "Were you in some sort of parade?" "Yes, I was in the Gay Pride Parade." "Cool," he said. "I saw you on television." So the cachet of being on television outweighs any other response.

A few suggestions. The service organizations that depend on volunteers should strongly encourage their volunteers to march in the parade. For instance, the local community center claims "hundreds" of volunteers. If so, show us. And show the general public our level of community spirit. That might encourage others to volunteer as well.

A generation ago, it was difficult to get any politicians except the most liberal from the safest districts to participate in the parade. Not any longer. The number has now grown quite large as every office holder and political aspirant wants the publicity of being in the parade. So now, in order to qualify for admission to the parade, politicians should have to sign a statement saying they support domestic partner benefits in their office and civil unions or gay marriage. If they don't, what are they doing in OUR parade?

The large corporations that enter floats should have to disclose whether they have a non-discrimination clause, whether they offer domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees, whether they have and support a gay employees organization. And they should be encouraged to indicate any corporate support they have given to gay organizations. That information could be noted in the program booklet for the parade.

And finally, I wish there would be groups advocating sexual freedom in opposition to the puritanism of conservative religious sects and the present administration, a group advocating gun ownership and martial arts training for gays as means of self-defense, a gay teachers and professors group, and an artists group advocating community support for the arts. Maybe next year.

Recently I attended the opening of an exhibition of paintings and photographs by 15 or so Chicago gay and lesbian artists at the gay community center. The theme-welcome after Chicago's irritatingly long and difficult winter-was flowers: roses, water lilies, daisies, dahlias, hyacinths and so forth.

The opening was a success by most measures. Several of the artists attended and a number had the forethought to send email announcement and invitations to their friends, understanding that self-promotion is key to artistic success. Also attending were several people interested in or curious about art and happy to have the opportunity to meet some of the artists and talk with them about their work.

There is nothing intimidating here. Art is not some mysterious, esoteric activity. It is a learned craft or skill. And we're not talking Rembrandt or Caravaggio. These are fellow gays and lesbians. Some are mature and very good but some are young, still developing their skills, and have never been in a juried show before. They are all approachable and happy to talk about their work.

The monthly exhibitions at the community center grew out of the Gay and Lesbian Artists Network. While that group has had some organizational difficulties, the group did at least serve the purpose of beginning to bring area gay and lesbian artists together to foster a sense of community and common interest and-at a practical level-share ideas and techniques.

The exhibitions take the next step, which is putting the artists in contact with the larger gay and lesbian community who may be interested in or curious about art, along with some who may collect art and be particularly interested in seeing what fellow gays and lesbians are producing. The paintings and photographs were all for sale and most were affordably priced for even the beginning collector who would like to have an attractive work of art to hang in his or her home.

Even for the most casual viewers, seeing so many different works all on the same theme provides an opportunity to see what kinds of things they like and dislike and helps develop a conscious awareness of their own tastes. Those initial tastes are not static, of course; with exposure to more art, the tastes inevitably shift and develop, but there is nothing wrong with starting somewhere.

It is also worth pointing out that artists, viewers and collectors all serve to support and strengthen the gay community. Not all activism is political activism; there is also cultural activism-promoting the gay community as thriving and creative. This is particularly important as our major cities shift from manufacturing centers to entertainment and cultural centers. The city fathers are well aware of the economic value of cultural vibrancy. A major creative community in the long run can get what it wants.

But to understand the full benefit of this arts activity, you have to pull back and think sociologically. For all the talk of a "gay and lesbian community" there really isn't much sense of community among us. Most of us do not know large numbers of other gays and lesbians. There are at one extreme the fairly limited friendship networks and at the other extreme the relatively impersonal anonymity of the bars.

What we need is a multiplicity of "mediating organizations," groups that are larger and more open than friendship networks but more focused and friendlier than bars. Groups organized around hobbies and interests are the most obvious examples. We need to generate a large number of those for people to join so they can meet other people they have something in common with.

The point is to create more situations where gays and lesbians, old and young, shy and outgoing, can get to know more people outside their niche in the gay community and feel some sense of common ground with them.

After the initial success of the artists group, I thought about proposing one based on an interest in classical music. But there were some logistical problems and people's interests are varied and pretty specific even within classical music. Recently I have run across a few people who email articles about music to one another. That might be a way to begin; not all groups have to start with a big meeting.

But such mediating groups do not need to be based on cultural interests such as concert music or art; those just happen to be my own interests. They can be about whatever interests you.

Since I wrote an earlier column about the persecution of gays in many foreign countries, there have been several more news stories about the plight of gays abroad-in Eastern Europe, in Africa, in portions of Latin America, but particularly in the Muslim theocracies of the Middle East-Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Amazingly, these stories have been accompanied by stories about the refusal of several more civilized nations to grant asylum to gay refugees from those countries because officials refuse to acknowledge that gays are persecuted in other countries. In other words, on no justifiable grounds at all.

Item: "Death squads" of religious militants hunt down men believed to be gays in Iraq and Iran and kill them, first torturing them to force them to reveal the names of other gay men they know.

Item: Just six months ago, speaking at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied that there are homosexuals in Iran. The translation of his remarks was questioned, but no alternate version was ever issued, suggesting that the initial version was substantially correct.

But Dr. Janet Afary argues in a forthcoming book on homosexuality in Iran that Iran has a long history of quietly accepted gay relationships well documented in European and Persian sources. However, she says, the current Iranian government has been actively pursuing, entrapping, and prosecuting gays on grounds such as rape and sex with underage partners, offenses they think will generate greater support.

Several instances have surfaced in recent months of young gay men who were murdered by the government on grounds of rape and underage sex that local gays said were completely without merit but were trumped up to sell the legitimacy of the executions in the West.

Item: Information has come out of Iran that gay men are being offered the option-if they wish to continue having sex with men-of transsexual surgery: having their male genitals removed, being given female hormones, and having other surgery to make them resemble women. Some gay men, feeling that they have no choice, are apparently taking the government up on this offer. Iran is reported to have one of the highest rates of transsexual surgery in the world.

Item: I recently quoted in this column one of my correspondents who said that his taxi driver commented, "In my country they kill gays." Alas, my correspondent did not ask what country that was, but it could have been any one of several in Africa or the Middle East.

Item: 19-year-old gay Iranian Mehdi Kazemi, studying in England, applied for asylum after he learned that his former lover had been tortured and executed in Iran, naming Kazemi as his partner. Denied asylum by British authorities, he fled to several other countries, ending in the Netherlands, which deported him back to England.

After significant protests including demonstrations in London, protests by left wing and gay activist groups in Italy and Britain, a supportive resolution by the European Parliament and dozens of members of the British House of Lords, the British foreign office agreed to review its earlier decision to refuse asylum. Its decision is said to be pending.

As prominent British gay activist Peter Tatchell pointed out during the Kazemi protests, "Gay men in Iran are hanged from public cranes using the barbaric method of slow strangulation, which is deliberately designed to cause maximum suffering."

What can we here in the U.S. do to help change the situation? I suppose the most important thing is to become as informed as possible. Much of the information I have presented here I have learned not through the mainstream U.S. press but through the press releases of Peter Tatchell of the British activist group OutRage, the valuable reporting of Doug Ireland in New York's weekly Gay City News, and the "Euroqueer" and recently-formed "Gays Without Borders" Internet listservs, which anyone can join.

My view is that people who understand the situation will think of things they can do to help, whether it is finding ways to pressure foreign governments or even the U.S.'s own State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service which seems just short of homophobic.

The action might be writing letters to appropriate government figures or protests outside foreign embassies and legations. Gays and lesbians who are politically active can bring the issue to the attention of their favorite official or candidate. Letters to newspapers always have value. The more noise we can make on these issues, the better.

It seems as if a lot of the gay community attention and energy that would normally go to advancing gay equality is being siphoned off by the presidential race, primarily by the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

From a gay advocacy standpoint it is not clear that there is a lot of difference between the positions of Obama and Clinton. They both have articulated relatively gay-supportive positions-except, of course, for gay marriage which is not yet a winner in the court of public opinion.

For most gay voters then, the decision to support one or the other is based mostly on other, non-gay issues or on the symbolic significance that attaches to the first serious presidential candidacy of a woman or a man of mixed-race ancestry.

What I would like to know, however, is how hard the candidate if elected would work, how much of their time and energy they would devote, how much of their post-electoral political clout they would use to move their gay campaign commitments into the reality of policy.

Anyone can state a position, but achieving it is another matter entirely. Legal equality for gay people, equal partnership rights at the federal level, equal right to serve openly in the military, adding sexual orientation to employment non-discrimination legislation-those will take considerable effort.

Will the candidate-if elected-lobby senators and representatives? Will he or she pressure the joint chiefs of staff to approve ending the military gay ban? (The President is their boss, after all.) Will he or she issue the necessary executive orders? Will he or she use the bully pulpit of the presidency to help increase public support for those initiatives? To be sure, moving public opinion is like turning around a battleship-it takes time and continuous pressure, but the time to start is as soon as possible.

After all, both employment non-discrimination and an end of the military gay ban already have substantial majority support. Similarly, there seems to be majority support now at least for same-sex civil unions and equal federal benefits for gay partners. How long must we wait for the majority support we have earned to be translated into legislation and public policy?

What I hope is that every committed Obama and Clinton supporter will not rest satisfied with merely supporting his or her candidate and assume that the candidate will act zealously on their behalf, but will actively let the candidate know that the supporter's money and campaigning energy is based to a significant degree on the candidate's gay positions. You cannot leave this to the professional activists: Their statements are taken for granted as being part of their job and discounted accordingly.

Demand to know what specific actions the candidate-if elected-will take to implement his or her promises on gay issues. Our issues are not important for most people and they will get shunted aside unless we make clear how important they are to us. If we do not do it, who will?

My worry is that once the nominee is determined and the general election campaign begins, the candidates will focus on issues of more general interest-the Iraq War, health care, education, the condition of the economy, and gay issues will be soft pedaled or ignored entirely. We are certainly not going to get much conspicuous support as the candidates of both parties, having presumably locked in their core constituencies, both try to appeal to the political center and not offend any potential voters.

And the related worry is that gay Democratic activists will be so eager to get rid of Republican dominance of the executive branch that they will hesitate to raise our issues in any conspicuous way for fear of antagonizing any centrist voters who might otherwise vote for the Democratic nominee. In other words, they will be pressured to be, and they will want to be, "good boys" and not make waves.

A word on McCain. Writing in the April 8 issue of The Advocate, James Kirchick makes a persuasive case that McCain is no George Bush. He opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment (though not similar state amendments) and he is no partisan of the religious right.

But what Kirchick leaves out is the effect of another conservative on appointments to federal judgeships and the Supreme Court, and the absence of any plan or strategy by McCain for bringing the enormously expensive and deadly Iraq War to a conclusion any time in the next two decades.

I tend to take taxicabs if it is bitterly cold, or late at night, or my destination is some distance away. And I will chat with the driver if he seems open to it-that is, not talking continuously on his cell phone.

One day I was chatting with the driver and he asked if I was married. I could have given the short answer and let it go, but I ventured, "I can't get married," I said. "Gays can't marry in Illinois. We can only get married in Massachusetts."

There was no pause at all. "What makes people gay?" the driver asked. It was as if it was a question he had wondered about before. "Is it genetic or do you choose it or what?" he continued.

Now, I have a kind of complicated phenomenological explanation, but there was no time to try to explain that, so I said, "No one knows for sure what makes some of us gay. Many of us would like to know that ourselves. Certainly none of us chooses to be gay. It is just something we discover about ourselves. But it seems to involve a combination of genetic and constitutional factors and individual personality development." It would have to do.

But this led into question from the driver about how I lived my life, how did I meet men, did I have a partner, do my friends know I'm gay, was I happy with the life, and so forth. The questions poured forth until we reached my destination.

Thinking about it later, I realized that I was engaging in a bit of impromptu gay activism. Here was a man who seemed genuinely interested, so it was worthwhile trying to answer his questions. I may have been the first openly gay person of whom he could ask these questions. I firmly believe that the most effective activism is individual, person-to-person encounters like this.

You can't plan these sudden opportunities, but you can prepare for them by deciding to give the information in passing that you are gay, and deciding to be totally honest. It also helps to have an idea about answers you might give to some of the obvious question. Like everything else, this requires a certain amount of tact and prudence-don't press information on people who seem hostile, etc. The idea is to make a connection and a favorable impression.

And you can look for opportunities to mention being gay. A driver once asked what I did for a living. I could have said, "I'm a writer," and left it at that. But I ventured ahead: "I write for the local gay newspaper." That led to a few questions about gays.

If the driver criticizes President Bush, regardless of your personal politics you can certainly say, "He sure doesn't seem to like gay people like me very much. He doesn't want us to be able to get married."

Nor need this tactic be limited to cabdrivers. Waiting in a group for a bus, one youth-girlfriend in hand-commented "Nice shirt." Since I was bigger than he was (a factor to consider with regard to safety), I answered, "Thanks. My lover-he gave it to me"-pointedly slipping in the gender identifier. "Oh, 'HE', huh?" the young man replied.

A friend summoned for standby jury duty told me he left blank the questions about marital status and said he was prepared to point out to the judge or questioning attorney that he found the question offensive because he was not allowed to get married. Good for him. Would that more people made an issue of the constant "heterosexual assumption."

But sometimes these conversations can take an odd turn. A correspondent wrote recently that when he mentioned gays to his cabdriver the driver replied, "In my country they kill gays." I'm not sure what the right response to that is. Do you say that's barbaric and uncivilized? Do you mention the great Western writers who were gay and wonder what literary losses his country sustained? Do you admit that gays used to be executed in the West until the 18th century, too? Do you say, Well, we are a democracy, not a theocracy run by religious fanatics? I don't know.

Once I hailed a cab as I was leaving the local bathhouse. "What kind of place is that?" the driver asked. "It's a gay bathhouse," I said, feeling my way cautiously. "What goes on in there?" "It's sort of a do-it-yourself bordello," I explained. "You rent a room, shuck off your clothes and walk around to see if you can find mutual interest with another person. If you do, you retire together to your room." "Can anyone go there?" he asked. "Well, it wouldn't be very interesting unless they were gay," I said. Then the driver wondered if I could take him there sometime. I declined and suggested he start with the bars instead.

For the most part-allowing for occasional lapses of taste-I don't write about politics, at least not about the horse-race aspects of which candidates are ahead, which will come out on top, which of their strategies did and didn't work, etc. I follow those matters with some interest but with a sense of detachment. I am not part of that process.

For one thing, there are plenty of other writers in the mainstream and gay press, and innumerable bloggers, television commentators and talk radio personalities who eagerly share their opinions and speculations. I doubt if I have anything new and significant to add, anything that some or all of them haven't already said.

So far as indicating a preference for one candidate over another, whether openly or between the lines, there hardly seems much point. To do that would be an exercise in egotism. I write for a limited-circulation newspaper. Nothing I write is going to affect the outcome of an election. Then too, I understand my job to be writing about gay issues, broadly conceived, and I figure that most people already know who the gay-supportive candidates are.

Nor do I have much enthusiasm for any of the candidates who are or have been running. They all have a few good points on gay or other issues and a large number of bad points: I generally tend to agree more with the criticism candidates make of one another than I do with the candidates themselves. The most that could be said of any of them is that they seem less bad than the others.

It is no secret that I am, on the whole, a libertarian, meaning that I view governments (city, state, federal) with deep suspicion. Government is a Borg, constantly grasping more power, more control, more of our money.

I am in favor of both economic and civil liberties. Economic liberties include lower taxes (for everyone), less government spending, and less government interference in the marketplace and our economic lives. Civil liberties include more freedom from government intrusion into our personal lives, free speech, personal privacy and property rights, abortion and drugs decriminalization. And this necessarily entails equal treatment of gays and heterosexuals.

None of the viable candidates believes anything like this. Which is not surprising because they are part of the government and have a vested interest in promising government policies using government power and government money (ultimately your tax money) for various constituencies.

So, I want there to be a line on the ballot that says "None of the Above." If that line got a majority, the parties would have to go back, find new policy packages and/or new candidates and try again in a second election in, say, three months. At the very least, "None of the Above" would be a safety valve for those of us who feel dissatisfied with the "choices" we are offered.

To be sure, there is the small Libertarian Party which espouses libertarian principles. And I have voted for its candidates pretty regularly in national elections since they first ran a candidate in 1972. The candidate that year was University of Southern California philosophy professor John Hospers who had just written a book called "Libertarianism." As I recall, he got about 6,000 votes nationwide.

I remember casting a write-in vote for Hospers that was almost not counted. A major-party election judge was about to throw out my ballot as a joke vote like Mickey Mouse when a friend of mine stepped in to explain that Hospers was a real candidate of a real party. Hospers also got one vote in the electoral college from a renegade Republican elector in Virginia.

People sometimes say, "But you're throwing away your vote. Don't you want your vote to count?" But I defy anyone to show me that their precious little vote made any difference in any election they have ever voted in. If it didn't, then their vote didn't "count" any more than mine did. They might as well have gone to Starbucks and had an espresso instead of voting.

In fact, we might say my vote "counted" more than theirs because my vote was a larger portion of the vote for the candidate I voted for than theirs was of the candidate they favored.

There you have it. I don't like the major-party candidates, so I vote Libertarian. Is that a protest vote? In a sense, yes. But, of course, I am also voting for what I believe. If I voted for "None of the Above" it wouldn't be clear what I was for. But "None of the Above" should be on the ballot for people to vote for if they aren't libertarian.

David Kinnaman has seen the handwriting on the wall: "As these new generations begin to make up a larger share of the public, homosexuals will gain greater rights and protections-and widespread acceptance-in our culture."

Kinnaman is not happy about this. Kinnaman, who heads the Barna Group, which conducts survey research on and about evangelical Christians, is the author of Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Kinnaman focuses on young people 16-29, particularly those he calls "outsiders"-atheists, agnostics, adherents of other religions and the "unchurched." Those now make up 40 percent of young people, he reports. Just a decade ago Christianity had an overwhelmingly positive image among the young, including outsiders, he says. But no longer.

"Our most recent data show that young outsiders have lost much of their respect for the Christian faith." They hold several negative images of Christianity: it is judgmental (87 percent agreed), too involved in politics (75 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), and out of touch (72 percent).

But the predominant negative perception is that Christianity is "antihomosexual." Fully 91 percent of "outsiders" say Christianity is anti-gay. Remarkably, 80 percent of young churchgoers agree:

"In our research, the perception that Christians are 'against' gays and lesbians-not only objecting to their lifestyle"-i.e., sex-"but also harboring irrational fear and unmerited scorn toward them-has reached critical mass. The gay issue has become the 'big one,' the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity's reputation." In short, "A new generation of adults ... now accepts homosexuality as a legitimate way of life."

Kinnaman's book is meant to warn Christians that their political influence on the issue of homosexuality will ebb and that they need to undertake a "kinder, gentler" approach to gays such as getting to know them, engaging them in conversation, showing compassion, and talking about Jesus instead of initially taking a moralistic approach.

I am not sure that "compassion" is what gays expect these days. Acceptance is what most expect. But given the reiterated condemnations of "the homosexual lifestyle" (i.e., sex) by Kinnaman and his commentators in the book, evangelical Christians cannot offer that. It is their bottom line, their obsession.

But the Jesus of the gospels said nothing to condemn homosexuality. So the Christians eventually have to stop talking about Jesus and talk about "the Bible" (including the Old Testament), or even a rather amorphous (and manipulable) "biblical perspective." Bait and switch.

So the Christians have nothing to offer gays by way of sexual relating. Kinnaman asks, as if uncertain, "Is it still true that homosexuals have deep sexual needs, just like the rest of us?" But all they offer is celibacy. As one commentator writes, "What if we could provide intimate Christ-centered community and accountability for him or her in that pursuit? We believe that community is the answer to everyone feeling loved and human." Somehow it just doesn't seem the same.

Kinnaman moves inconspicuously from inoffensive "first statements" to more offensive "repetitions." He first says Christians oppose "church-sanctioned weddings for same-sex couples," which is part of their freedom in a civil society. But later referring to legislators, he says it is important to affirm that "marriage is between one man and one woman." So he thinks that not only churches should bar gay marriage but the state as well, a very different matter.

And Kinnaman refuses to engage the strongest gay arguments. For instance, asserting that a child needs a mother and a father, he opposes gay adoption. But-putting aside the research on same-sex parenting-there are many children in foster care and innumerable orphans worldwide with no parents at all. Are they better off with no parents or with two loving gay parents? Kinnaman refuses to reply.

Perhaps the most offensive Christian claim is that, as one commentator says, "There is not a special judgment for homosexuals (nor) ... a special righteousness for heterosexuals." Or as a pastor Kinnaman quotes puts it, "The struggle of gays in being attracted to the same sex is not different than my struggle in being attracted to the opposite sex."

What effrontery! All Christians know that loving heterosexual sex within marriage is perfectly legitimate and has a "righteousness" according to their God (Gen. 1:28). The unnamed pastor's attraction to his wife-a member of the opposite sex-has a legitimate mode of sexual expression, so the desire ("temptation") can be acted on. But his doctrine allows nothing for gays. Ultimately, one has to doubt these people's honesty or their intelligence.

College freshmen continued their decade-old upward trend of support for gay marriage in fall 2007, according to a mammoth annual survey of more than 270,000 freshmen at 356 colleges and universities and just released by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles.

One year earlier, in fall 2006, 61.2 percent of college freshmen supported "legal marital status" for gay and lesbian couples. By fall 2007 that percentage had risen by 2.3 percentage points to 63.5 percent.

When the question was first asked in 1997, just 50.9 percent of freshmen supported "legal marital status" for gays. Except for a downward blip in 2004 prompted in part by President George W. Bush's advocacy of a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, the percentage of support has risen at an average rate of slightly over 1 percentage point per year.

The language "legal marital status" was chosen to refer only to civil unions or civil marriage and avoid the issue of whether churches should offer religious marriage ceremonies.

The survey also asked whether "it is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships." Support for such laws fell from 25.6 percent in fall 2006 to 24.3 percent in fall 2007, a drop of 1.3 percentage points.

When that question was first asked in 1976, freshman support for such laws stood at 43.6 percent, so anti-gay attitudes have fallen nearly 20 points in 30 years. Support for anti-gay laws rose briefly during the peak years of the AIDS crisis in 1986 and 1987, but as public anxiety subsided support resumed a steady decline.

The term "homosexual relationships" is ambiguous, however. In 1976 it clearly referred to sodomy laws since legal gay marriage was not a public issue. But now that gay marriage is an issue, some students may take the term to refer to "defense of marriage" laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman. If so, the continued decline in support for such laws is especially welcome news.

As in past years, women were far more gay-supportive than men. More than seven out of ten freshman women (70.3 percent) thought that gays should have the right to legal marital status. Among freshman men a smaller 55.3 percent thought gays should have that right.

Similarly, only 18.1 percent of freshman women-fewer than one out of five-approved of laws prohibiting homosexual behavior, while 31.8 percent of freshman men approved of such laws. Still, this was the first year that support among men fell below one-third.

People have speculated about the reason for male/female differences in attitudes. But two possibilities stand out. When the term homosexual is used, most people probably think of male homosexuals. Most heterosexual men are offended by femininity in other men, so to the extent that gay men are still conceived to be feminine, they tend to be anti-gay. By contrast, most heterosexual women do not seem to be bother by male femininity.

The other possibility is that attitudes toward gay men are influenced by focusing on their sexual behavior, so what has been called the "yuck factor" that affects many male heterosexuals when they think of gay sex comes into play and contaminates their public policy views.

The only obvious way to counter both is for more heterosexuals to get to know gays as individuals, which would reduce their tendency to think of gays' behavior in the abstract.

The freshman survey is designed primarily to elicit information about the freshmen's family and academic background and their college and career plans. But it does contain a small unit asking freshmen whether they agree or disagree with statements about more than a dozen public issues, of which the questions about gay marriage and sodomy laws are a part.

On other issues of potential interest, 56.9 percent support legal abortion; 35.1 percent oppose capital punishment; decriminalized marijuana drew 38.2 percent approval; 25.8 percent supported raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit; only 31.4 percent think military spending should be increased; and 66.2 percent think that the U.S. military should remain all-volunteer.

Thirty-two percent of the freshmen described themselves as "liberal" or "far left," an increase over last year of 1 point, while the percentage describing themselves as "conservative" or "far right" fell by a similar 1 point to 24.6 percent. The rest described themselves as "middle of the road." There was no option offered for "libertarian" (socially liberal, free-market advocate).

And finally, exactly 25 percent described themselves as "Born-Again Christian" and 9.8 percent as "Evangelical." But more than one-fifth (21.4 percent) described themselves as having "no religious preference," an all-time high for that category. There was no option offered for "atheist" or "agnostic."

After I wrote recently about research on homosexuality and people's ill-founded concern that it could lead to preventing homosexuality, I remembered that there is also a cluster of concerns about the survival of the gay enclave or community. Let's take a look at those.

One concern is that gays are becoming "assimilated," that they are becoming more like mainstream society and losing whatever unique qualities and valuable differences they have.

I don't know if gays are inherently, intrinsically different from heterosexuals. Early Mattachine Society manifestos back in 1950 referred to gays as "androgynes," or inherently cross-gendered, a view which still survives in the antics of the "radical fairies."

But I doubt that that is or ever was true. Seeing gays as a mix of male and female because of their orientation to the same sex is, after all, a heterosexist view (anyone attracted to a man must be somehow female) and a social construction of the times.

I suspect that what differences gays seem to embody are the result of some gays interjecting that externally encouraged heterosexist view, are a playful reaction to public prejudice, or are the result of any group of peoples spending time together and developing common qualities.

But if those differences are inherent, they will survive no matter where or how gay live, so the worriers have no cause for concern. That anyone is concerned about this suggests that they fear the differences are not really inherent after all.

Gays do seem to be gradually moving to other parts of major cities or to the suburbs. But living in an enclave is no necessary part of being gay. There have always been gays in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas, as witness the sudden visibility of openly gay couples there in recent census demographics. So that's not new.

What is new is that the people who once were driven to and would have stayed in the protective gay enclave now feel that public acceptance of gays makes them feel comfortable leaving the enclave and moving to other parts of the city or suburbs.

This growth of acceptance, as attested by public opinion surveys, is surely a good thing, not something to be deplored. And those gays who leave the enclave can by their dispersal elsewhere help solidify and increase the acceptance of gays simply by being visible.

In any case, individual gays and gay couples will make these decision about where and how to live based on their own desires, needs and perceptions, and it is impudent for some gays to criticize other gays for their choices as a result of that growing acceptance.

If some gays are leaving the gay enclave, then should people worry--as some do--about the survival of the enclave? In some cities gay bars have closed and others are struggling to survive. I suppose the first thing to ask is: If the enclave no longer serves a significant purpose for gays, then why should we need or want it to survive? Out of sentimental attachment to history?

But the enclave will no doubt survive in some form. Gays are an affinity group. They will always enjoy being with other gay people whether living in a gay residential area or just as visitors. Some gays will still feel a desire to leave less friendly environs for the friendlier ones of the enclave. And unattached gays will always find it useful to go where there is a high density of available partners.

In addition, some of our major cities realize that they have a vested interest in the survival of the gay enclave. Businesses in the enclave are an economic engine for our cities. They are a part of what cities offer out-of-town visitors and metro area residents as part of the effort to reinvent cities as entertainment and recreation centers to replace lost manufacturing income.

Gay bars and clubs, neighborhood inns, bathhouses, gyms and spas, art galleries, gay-friendly shops and bookstores are all part of that mix in addition to gay community festivals such as Chicago's International Mr. Leather contest, Northalsted Market Days, Mardi Gras and Hallowe'en silliness.

Realizing this, Chicago, followed closely by Philadelphia, has already officially recognized the gay entertainment district, erecting rainbow-colored pylons, offering tactical placement and financial support for the gay community center, supporting neighborhood business groups, &c.

But gay businesses can no longer afford to take our gay patronage for granted. They need to spiff up, stay clean, keep their prices reasonable, facilitate parking, control the music volume, and offer special events and entertainment incentives to patronize them. Some have already learned. Others will have to.

When an article about "fruit flies" popped up on a gay website, at first I thought it was about straight women who gravitate toward gay men. (The other, uglier term for such women is "fag hag.")

Alas, the article was referring to actual insects, the annoying little ones that remind you to throw away overripe bananas. Apparently, some researchers at Penn State University have discovered that by getting groups of male flies "drunk" with alcohol fumes, they can induce homosexual behavior. (Just like frat boys.) They observed this behavior in a small transparent chamber, which they called-I am not making this up-a "Flypub."

According to newscientist.com,

"The first time they were exposed to alcohol, groups of male flies became noticeably intoxicated but kept themselves to themselves. But with repeated doses of alcohol on successive days, homosexual courtship became common. From the third day onwards, the flies were forming 'courtship chains' of amorous males."

Yes. And by the fourth day, they were redecorating the Flypub in sleek mid-century modern furniture. By the fifth day, they were serving Cosmopolitans and debating the relative fabulousness of Martha Stewart's new Wedgwood line at Macy's. And so on.

The article continues,

"[Lead researcher Kyung-An Han] argues that the drunken flies provide a good model to explore how alcohol affects human sexual behaviour. While the ability of alcohol to loosen human inhibitions is well known, it is difficult for scientists to study."

Of course it is. Imagine the grant application:

"Describe the proposed methodology."

"Um, well, I'm going to get a bunch of college students drunk and naked, then record their behavior."

Sounds like a shoo-in for funding, no?

It's not that I doubt the merits of such research. Granted, I'm far more interested in figuring out how to keep fruit flies out of my kitchen than how to make them horny. Still, I appreciate the value of scientific inquiry-all else being equal, the more we know about the world, the better.

My problem arises when people start using these studies to draw conclusions about human romantic behavior. While Han has warned against being too quick with such inferences, other researchers and commentators have not been so cautious.

For example, when Austrian researchers in 2005 genetically manipulated a female fruit fly to induce homosexual behavior, Dr. Michael Weiss, chairman of the department of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University, told the International Herald Tribune, "Hopefully this will take the discussion about [human] sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it in the realm of science."

I hope it does no such thing. For two reasons: first, because human sexuality is far richer and more complex than fruit-fly mounting behavior. (Fruit flies don't pout if you don't call the next day-or so I'm told.)

Second, and more generally, because science and morality tell us different things. Science tells us something about why we behave as we do. It does not tell us how we SHOULD behave, which is the domain of morality. Science cannot replace morality or vice-versa.

To put the point another way: while scientific study can reveal the biological origin of our feelings and behaviors, it can't tell us what we should do with them. Should we embrace them? Tolerate them? Change them? Those are moral questions, and simply observing fruit flies-or humans, for that matter-is insufficient to answering them.

But can't these studies prove that homosexual attraction is "natural"? Not in any useful sense. Specifically, not in any sense that would distinguish good feelings and behaviors from bad ones. Discovering the biological origin of a trait is different from discovering its value.

Beyond conflating morality with science, popular commentators on these studies have an unfortunate tendency toward oversimplification.

Consider last year's fruit-fly study at the University of Illinois, which the gay newsmagazine The Advocate announced with the headline, "Study finds gay gene in fruit flies."

Except that it didn't. What the study found was a genetic mutation in fruit flies that rendered them essentially bisexual. Scientists could then switch the flies' behavior between heterosexuality and homosexuality through the use of synapse-altering drugs.

In other words, the study neither found a "gay gene" in fruit flies nor answered any questions about how hardwired or malleable human sexual orientation might be.

Meanwhile, one fruit fly who participated in the Penn State study released the following statement: "Dude, I was so drunk that day-I don't know what happened!"