IGF CultureWatch

There seem to be a number of fears-maybe it would be better to call them concerns-out there at the margins of the gay community over research on the origin(s) of homosexuality and the possibility of changing people's sexual orientation. The concern is mainly that the results of such research could be used to prevent or extirpate homosexuality.

I suspect there isn't much anyone can do about such research. Like all research, it is going to continue because people-including most of us who are gay-want to know more about ourselves and about how the world works. But I also feel sure that any concerns are greatly exaggerated.

Take the issue of research into the origins of (causes of, reasons for) male homosexuality. That would be interesting to know, just as it would be interesting to know the equally mysterious cause(s) of heterosexuality. But scientists aren't quite researching the right thing. Most researchers seem very confused about what homosexuality/homosexual desire actually is. And most seem overly impressed with the fact that most women are also attracted to men and so draw the logically invalid conclusion that male homosexuality must be caused by something female in gay men-as if desire for men can have only one cause.

Clever studies that manage to change an insect's or animal's overall behavior from male typical to female typical are not about homosexuality at all. Male homosexual behavior has no particular connection to acting like a female. It is not thinking or feeling or acting like a woman. It is about a man (whether top or bottom) being attracted as a man to other men. (In some Third World countries some gay men do imitate women as a signaling device, but that practice is being abandoned with the worldwide spread of gay liberation.)

Scientists should be doing research into the origins of homosexual desire. Homosexual desire is largely a cognitive or conceptual matter, so the origin(s) have to be sought in the cognitive (even esthetic) values of the gay individual.

What reasons are there, we might want to know, that result in our being attracted not just to men generically but attracted to (and having a physical response to) a particular man across a crowded room, and not have any response to other men (or women) in the room? What meaning does this person's appearance-and, later, other qualities-hold for us such that we feel desire?

Researchers who try to study twins to find genetic causes forget that twins raised together share a common upbringing, often look alike and have similar personalities, leading parents and others to treat them similarly, generating a similar value system and a similar response to the world in both twins. Even twins reared apart often look alike and/or share common physical capacities, leading people to treat them similarly. Twin studies are also plagued by recruitment biases-using twins who know of their twin's sexuality, which introduces a bias right away.

Studies of the human brain-including some of the most widely publicized-have not been replicated and have been vigorously criticized for methodological flaws and for ignoring the large number of exceptions and counter-examples. The same is true of "gene studies" which also depend on assuming an implausibly low percentage of gay men, to say nothing of not facing the problem of people who feel both homosexual and heterosexual desire.

So I don't mind research on homosexuality. It is just that most of it is pointless, misdirected and based on false assumptions. If researchers ever find the reasons why some men are gay (and others heterosexual), that will be interesting to know. But there is no reason to think that will enable anyone to expunge homosexual desire. The vast number of elements that go into producing anyone's personality and cognitive value system are too varied and too little understood for anyone to be able to control or change.

In fact, most of the studies of people ("ex-gays") who claim to have changed their sexuality have serious methodological problems, from recruitment bias to insufficient follow-up, to a failure to rigorously cross-examine interviewees (such as Kinsey did), to a failure to define what changing "sexual orientation" actually means. It doesn't mean just a change in behavior. It has to mean a change in desire.

Perhaps the best recent book on the topic is Ex-Gay Research, edited by Jack Drescher and Kenneth Zucker (Haworth Press, 2006). It consists of a large number of commentaries, most skeptical, on the controversial study by Robert Spitzer of men and women who claimed they had (more or less) changed their sexual orientation. It is an excellent introduction to the basic issues involved.

I just finished reading an engrossing book titled "The Age of the Bachelor" by Howard Chudacoff. It details the development of a specifically bachelor-oriented culture in major U. S. cities between 1880 and 1930, suggesting why it developed, how extensive it was, and what institutions grew up to service its needs.

Some of the reasons for its development include the rise in the average age of marriage, the rapid increase in immigration, and the difficulty many men working low wage jobs would have had supporting a family. But more important was the development of institutions to meet the needs of single men for meals, housing, companionship and entertainment--thus making it possible for increasing numbers of men to lead a comfortable and satisfying life without any need for marriage.

The extensive array of primarily male institutions that developed or expanded to meet bachelors' living and socializing needs included rooming houses, cafes, saloons, barbershops (given the lack of hot water for shaving in most rooming houses), pool halls, tailor shops, bathhouses (no hot water for bathing either), all-male social clubs and fraternal organizations (Elks, Odd Fellows), vaudeville theaters and music halls, participant and spectator sports, and "red-light districts."

The newly developed YMCAs might offer any or all of the following amenities: rooms for rent, cafeteria and lunch counter, barbershop, gym, swimming pool, shoeshine stand, telephones, employment service, laundry room, game room, newsstand, and even entertainment in the evenings.

There are only a few incidental mentions of gay men in the book, but it seems obvious that some of those bachelors (15 to 20 percent?) were gay and that bachelor culture enabled gay men to meet one another and explore their lives with a new freedom. In some ways the book can serve as a prologue to George Chauncey's "Gay New York"--and gay Boston, gay Chicago, and other major cities where bachelor culture created the conditions for the first wave of gay community.

For instance, not only did primarily bachelor social institutions enable gay men to find one another more easily, but some rooming houses and YMCAs allowed residents to take guests to their rooms. Some bathhouses turned a blind eye to patrons who engaged in sex and some bathhouse employees must have been available for "massages." And there must have been young gay or bisexual men in any of these environments who were willing to engage in sex for a small fee. For much of this we have to make educated guesses but Chudacoff's book gives us the material to do that.

Although modern technology and a developed economy have enabled today's bachelors to have at home conveniences (telephones, hot water, spectator sports) that were once available only publicly, it is still fascinating to see how many of the social and entertainment institutions of modern singles culture and our gay culture have preserved or replicated in one form or another institutions developed around the turn of the century.

"The Age of the Bachelor" is not a new book. It was published in 1999, so you won't see it listed in any of those best books of 2007 or whenever. But not every good book gets the attention it deserves when it is published. This is particularly true of academic books, which tend to survive--if at all--as footnotes in other books. Yet when you seek them out they can turn out to be highly informative in ways you did not expect.

I've run across several other books in the past year, whether gay-specific or not, that I found worthwhile reading. Among them:

Rictor Norton, "The Myth of the Modern Homosexual" (1997). The title refers to the modern "social constructionist" myth that no men or women had a homosexual consciousness until the late 19th century when the word "homosexual" was coined. Drawing on copious historical research tracing self-understood homosexuals back through the centuries, Norton destroys that myth and restores gay history to its full legitimacy. He also shows how flimsy were the arguments advanced to support the myth.

David M. Friedman, "A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis" (2001). Friedman wittily traces the various ways the male member has been viewed in different times and cultures, including religious, anthropological, psychoanalytic, scientific and feminist approaches, and illustrates how the penis has been symbolized (battering ram, measuring stick, cigar, gear shift) over the years.

Michael Sherry, "Gay Artists in Modern American Culture: An Imagined Conspiracy" (2007). Sherry details the increasing number of gay creative artists in the fields of music, theater, and literature in the 1950s and the growth of a homophobic reaction against them. Critics charged them with shallowness, insincerity, inauthenticity and a distorted view of the world. A fascinating recovery of a dismal episode in recent American history.

It is clear to nearly everyone that fundamentalists--Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy--are the chief obstacle to equal freedom for gays and lesbians.

It would not be so irritating if they limited their religious practice to their own lives--not participating in homosexual acts, not inviting known gays into their homes, praying privately for the salvation of homosexuals, etc. But they generally try to go much further and impose their anti-gay religious doctrines on society at large.

Just as they try to have biblical commandments posted in courtrooms, seek taxpayer support for their charities, oppose stem cell research, and oppose use of the HPV vaccine because it could encourage sexual activity, so too they oppose allowing gays to serve openly in the military and all attempts to have the government treat gay couples equally.

They oppose non-discrimination laws that apply only to government policy, oppose "hate crimes" laws that include gays, claiming that they would hamper freedom of speech, and oppose anti-bullying laws for schools, believing it is their children's god-given right to bully little gay children.

Gen. Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the game away when he explained that gays should not serve openly because homosexuality is immoral and the military should not countenance immorality within its ranks. So all these policy arguments for keeping gays out of the military are mere window dressing. The real reason is the religious doctrine that gays are immoral.

What if anything can we do about this? It seems to me that we have three options.

1) We can continue to make our secular arguments, appealing to civil rights, equal freedom, "fair-mindedness," analogies to other minority groups, etc., hoping that they will persuade more people through sheer repetition.

2) We can try to do better at generating and promoting religiously-based arguments for homosexual non-immorality and gay-supportive policies, hoping that those might persuade people who are not evangelical inerrantists. At one time the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force sponsored a Religious Round Table to do this, but it never seemed very articulate or effective. Too bad.

3) We can mount a sustained effort to counter religious literalism and inerrancy themselves. This would include pointing to holy book inconsistencies, contradictions, easily demonstrable errors, readily apparent barbarisms, etc., with the aim of weakening the hold of literalist thinking. Religious belief of any sort is too often given a free pass in this country. But nothing in our tradition of religious tolerance precludes forceful criticism.

Increasingly, I find myself leaning toward adding the third option to the other two. I am encouraged to think this can be productive by two facts. One is the recent publication and substantial sales of books attacking religion by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. No doubt many thoughtful Americans are appalled at religious influence in our current government.

The other encouraging fact is the increasing number of people who claim to have no religion or express no religious preference in public opinion polls, and the decline in regular attendance at religious services over the last three decades among younger Americans (age 21-45), most noticeably among the growing number who remain unmarried.

How to carry out such an initiative is worth discussing. One possibility is protesting preachers, politicians, and other prominent figures who make anti-gay statements. People who have no discomfort with picketing could include that as an option. Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal suggests protesting at upcoming U.S. appearances by the Pope. Would that be helpful?

I have a former-fundamentalist friend who seems to enjoy visiting fundamentalist blogs and websites and posing textual and other religious difficulties for them. It is hard to do this persuasively unless you know the bible really well, but if you do, that would be a possible option. Rarely will you have an effect on the original writer, but you might on other people visiting the website or blog.

Another possibility is writing (e-mailing) to correct newspaper writers who unthinkingly assume the truth of biblical stories, whereas we know that many are merely myths and legends with no historical basis. Randall Helms' book Gospel Fictions is a particularly good source of information.

I'm sure people can think of other ways. Those are just a start. The important point is to counter the pro-religious monopoly of public discourse. Fundamentalist and biblical inerrantist views are not forces for good. They are devices for achieving power and manipulating whole populations. They are divisive, promote fanaticism, and afflict more than they comfort. They must not be allowed to continue to control our lives.

On Nov. 30, a group of 28 retired generals and admirals released a letter urging Congress to repeal the law mandating the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays.

Pointing to studies suggesting that there are more than one million gay and lesbian veterans and 65,000 gays currently in the armed forces, the generals and admirals point out, "They have served our nation honorably."

This letter in itself, of course, will not move Congress to act but it chips away a little more at the legitimacy of the law and it can provide additional support for politicians who are willing to speak out about the issue.

The letter followed by just two days a Nov. 28 CNN forum for GOP presidential contenders in which all the candidates (except Giuliani) expressed support for the current policy, arguing that it is "working" or that it would be disruptive to integrate open gays into the military. Sen. John McCain said specifically that senior generals had told him that the policy is "working."

Is the policy working? Well, a lot of deplorable policies have "worked," depending on your goal, but that doesn't mean that they are the best policies or that other policies would not work better. Racial segregation in the military "worked." For that matter, racial segregation in the whole Southern society "worked" too. At least for white people. Stalin's concentration camps "worked." Islamic "honor killings" of women who have been raped "work" too, I suppose, if you are not the victim. But do many people want to defend those policies as the best policy?

Remember those Arabic linguists a couple of years ago who, despite the military's crying need for Arab-language translators, were discharged because they were gay? Is that an example of the policy "working"? What about all the other skills gays may have been taught that are lost when they are discharged from the military? More examples of the policy "working"?

What is particularly interesting is that people on both sides point to the same fact-that the U.S. is at war-to support their position. In an op-ed article for the New York Times last January, Gen. John Shalikashvili wrote, "Our military has been stretched thin by our deployment in the Middle East and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

By contrast, the Republicans all say that it would be a distraction to allow open gays into the military during wartime. As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee put it, morale and unit cohesion are paramount in the military and the DADT policy protects both. But Huckabee is not well-informed. First, gays are already in the military, an increasing number open about their orientation.

Second, a Rand Corporation study several years ago concluded that what counts is not "unit cohesion" but "mission cohesion"-a common commitment to completing the task at hand. And you might think that a military at war has a more important and easily identifiable mission than a military at peace. So integrating gays during a war would be the best time to do it.

Third, the British military began allowing openly gay personnel to serve several years ago and found-to its expressed surprise-that there were virtually no problems. And fourth, small surveys of military personnel have shown an increasing acceptance of open gays in the military.

The military itself seems to be ignoring the policy. The New York Times points out that discharges of gays dropped by 50 percent between 2001 and 2006-from 1,227 to 612. Military recruiters themselves, hard-pressed to meet their quotas, sometimes ignore the gay ban. I believe I have previously told the story of a friend who told the recruiter he was gay. The recruiter said, "I didn't hear a thing," and promptly signed him up. This is not just a policy that has lost its legitimacy, it is a policy in tatters.

Nevertheless, Republican candidates clutch at any possible rationale for keeping gays out of the military even if it has no basis in fact or prudence. I have no doubt that if the nation were at peace they would all say that because we didn't need more military personnel there was no real need for allowing open gays. (Giuliani, to his credit, has said that if it were peacetime, he would work to rescind DADT.)

No doubt for most of the Republicans, their position is rooted in a religiously motivated hostility to gays. But no doubt too they are aware that most GOP primary voters have similar views, so they are boxed into an inflexible position.

The Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law is one of our community's most important think tanks, producing high-quality studies on sexual orientation and public policy.

Its latest study, Geographic Trends among Same-Sex Couples in the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, points to significant increases in the number of gay couples who report their status on government surveys-from 145,000 in 1990, to just under 600,000 in 2000. The Institute's study then uses the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) of 1.4 million representative adults to determine, among other things, the number of same-sex couples in the U.S. who reported their status. It found that 780,000 couples were willing to be counted.

Unfortunately, the accompanying press release unnecessarily contains a bit of misleading language about that finding. "Unfortunately," because it is a sad fact that some journalists on deadline will use the press release rather than the study itself as the basis for their news story. What the study itself always carefully stipulates as couples "reporting themselves," seems sometimes to be treated in the press release as a finding about the actual number of gay couples.

For example, the release says the report "document(s) a gay demographic explosion in some of the country's most politically and socially conservative regions." I suspect that most of these gay couples were already there. They just decided to acknowledge their existence. So the "explosion" is in self-reporting, not their existence.

The release also says, "The number of same-sex couples in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1990." Actually, the number has "quintupled" (145,000 to 780,000). That's minor. More important is that the language of the release implies that this is now the actual number of gay couples in the U.S.

That would be nonsense, of course. Nobody believes that there were only 145,000 gay couples in 1990, only 600,000 in 2000, and only 780,000 in 2006. Clearly only a fraction of gay couples were willing to acknowledge their existence in the 1990 and 2000 censuses and a somewhat larger fraction were willing to acknowledge their existence in the 2006 ACS.

So what this study is actually finding is an increase in gay couples' openness, not the actual number of gay couples, which remains unknown. To be sure, the release goes on to quote study author Gary Gates saying exactly that: "(M)ore same-sex couples are willing to identify themselves as such on government surveys like the ACS." Fine! But why not say that in the first place and avoid the misleading statement?

So how many gay couples are there really? Two million? Three million? Four million? No one knows. As social tolerance and acceptance increase, the number of gay couples reporting themselves-and perhaps the number of gays forming couples and living together-is bound to increase with each census and ACS report. You want a complete guess? I'd guess there are 2.5 million to 3 million gay couples. Check back in a few years and we'll see if I'm right.

However that may be, most laymen, if not the researchers themselves, seize on these current numbers of open gay couples, just as they seize on the latest survey of the number of self-acknowledged gays, and treat the results as a finding about the actual number, not openness, forgetting that the numbers keep rising.

For instance, last year's Williams Institute study noted that the government's 2002 National Survey of Family Growth asked its sample of more than 12,000 men and women aged 18-44 about their sexual orientation. The survey found that 4.1 percent said they were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. But here is Gates writing in his 2005 Gay and Lesbian Atlas based on the 2000 census: "(T)hese calculations suggest that gay men and lesbians represent 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population."

And here is the 1994 Social Organization of Sexuality by Edward O. Laumann, et al.: "Altogether, 2.8 percent of the men and 1.4 percent of the women reported some level of homosexual (or bisexual) identity." They should have acknowledged that, of course, the actual number is undoubtedly much higher. But everyone wants to seem definitive.

So if this time the ACS finds that 4.1 percent of the population acknowledge being gay, in five years it will probably be 4.7 percent of the population, and in 2015 it will likely be 5.3 percent, and continuing upward. What is the actual percentage? Six percent? Seven percent? Eight percent? No one knows. All I ask is for demographers to acknowledge that they are not measuring the total gay population, only the current degree of openness of that population. Is that so hard to do?

Last weekend, Oct. 19-20, more than 2,000 members of the religious right held a "Values Voter Summit" in Washington, D.C. Several Republican presidential aspirants--Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, Huckabee--addressed the group, all (except Giuliani) trying to assert their conservative and religious credentials.

But a couple of odd elements hovered over the event. John McCain spoke movingly of his Christian faith, but one wonders just what values that religion promotes. Only a few days before he had asserted that the Constitution establishes the U.S. as a Christian nation. But of course it does nothing of the sort.

So either McCain is desperately ignorant about the Constitution, not unusual in a politician, I suppose, or else he was mendaciously playing to a voter constituency who apparently believe just that. Neither seems very admirable. Why did no one publicly ask him exactly where the Constitution says that?

Then at the "summit" itself, Mitt Romney praised families with a mother and father and listed the reasons for their superiority, including more financial resources, more parental time with the children, the assurance of "a compassionate caregiver" when someone becomes ill, etc. But notice that all the advantages Romney mentioned of a mother-father family are also true of any gay or lesbian two-parent family.

Theoretically Romney could be telegraphing actual pro-gay marriage views over the head of his audience while seeming to agree with their opposition. I know of philosophers in repressive regimes who have written that way. But based on Romney's record of opposition to gay marriage, it seems more likely that he stupidly just didn't realize that his reasons don't support his conclusion and his religious blinders prevent him from seeing winvite me to their "values voter" summit. I certainly think of myself as a "values voter" since I try to live my life and cast my vote (or abstain) based on my values.

For instance, I value honesty, civil behavior, tolerance (for other tolerant people), a certain amount of social and cultural variety, personal freedom (including economic and sexual freedom), total disjunction of religion and government, freedom for speech and press (including for thoughts that may dismay or offend people). These, among others, are values I hold.

You will probably notice that several of these values are meant to accommodate or provide for a variety of individuals values. We could call them "meta-values." That's primarily because I admit that I don't know enough about every other person's character and capacities to know what will enable them to flourish and find happiness and personal fulfillment. They may even choose wrongly, but it is their life.

Nor, I will quickly add, do other people, much less the government, know enough about me to know what will bring me happiness and fulfillment-and some of those are things that would bore other people: listening to music by certain composers, going to galleries and learning more about art, reading books by authors I like, conversation with a few good friends, settling in every morning with my New York Times, etc.

So how did it happen that the religious right managed to commandeer and monopolize the notion of values, as if to suggest that all the rest of us don't have values at all? Part of the answer must be that people who hold to rock-ribbed values, particularly values said to be divinely revealed, have a hard time taking seriously any other positions said to be values: Real values are my values, other people's values aren't real values.

Another reason may be that people advocating the two main alternative positions, liberals and libertarians, don't seem comfortable asserting their positions as "values," and are even worse at explaining reasons for them-either in social or individual terms. The next time someone asserts the value of free speech, ask them "Why?" and see what happens. They may say it is in the Constitution, which isn't quite true, but even if it were that would only be providing a source of authority, not a reason for it as a value.

Or the next time someone praises tolerance or diversity, ask them why. Diversity is certainly a fact but we seldom celebrate facts. Nobody says, "Celebrate gravity." And tolerance? If we know the right way to think and act, why let people do otherwise? It only promotes social discord and their own ruin. Or so the Saudi Arabians seem to believe.

So it might be helpful if we started promoting our own values as values and explaining the reasons for them. We have to assume our reasons are better than theirs so if they win this rhetorical battle it will only be by default.

As an appropriate follow-up to last week's column about a New Jersey school district that dropped a gay-inclusive video about different kinds of families, Banned Books Week (BBW) is coming right up, Sept. 29 to Oct. 6.

BBW is a project of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom designed to draw attention to the number of formal challenges to books in school and public libraries lodged by parents or patrons urging that the books be removed from the shelves.

In 2006, there were 546 known attempts to remove books from libraries--and those were just the ones reported. Most book challenges were reported by school libraries--71 percent; most of the rest were reported by public libraries--24 percent. Parents lodged 61 percent of the book challenges, library patrons 15 percent, and administrators 9 percent.

As the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom points out, 546 challenges is more than one per day. Considering the 380 or so challenges to books in school libraries alone, that amounts to more than two a day during the typical 180-day school year.

The challenges were typically lodged on the basis of a small number of objections: sexual content, homosexuality, occult or satanic content, violence, drugs, offensive language, rather vague claims of being "anti-family," of "insensitivity," and the all-purpose "unsuitable to age group."

Not surprisingly, I suppose, given the number of "pro-family activists" around these days, four of the 10 most frequently challenged books drew objections in part because of "homosexuality." As I mentioned last week, the single most frequently challenged book was the children's picture book "And Tango Makes Three," about two male penguins who brood and hatch an egg and begin raising their baby penguin.

"Tango" (and again I urge you to read it) drew objections for homosexuality, anti-family content and unsuitability for age group. Never mind that there is not a hint of homosexuality in the book. Anti-family? The two males with their chick seem more like a traditional family than any single parent household. And since the story is true, Nature appears to have a broader understanding of "family" than the religious right--but some people must not want children to know that.

The other three books that drew challenges in part because of homosexuality were "Athletic Shorts" by Chris Crutcher, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, and books in the "Gossip Girl" series by Cecily von Ziegesar. (Other Top 10 challenged books are listed at the BBW website.)

A year or so ago for a different project I began reading gay-themed children's and "young adult" books. There are quite a number by now--upwards of 200, maybe. I have not read the "Gossip Girl" books but "Athletic Shorts" is a collection of six short stories about young athletes, one of whom has two gay fathers, and another of whom meets a young man dying of AIDS.

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is a sort of omnibus of problem situations high school students might encounter, one of which is the presence of two gay students. Considering all the other things in the book--rape, child abuse, etc.--the two gay youths come across as perhaps the most decent and least troubled characters in the book. Maybe that is what the challengers really objected to. To be honest, I found parts of "Perks" uncomfortable reading, but that is not to say that the book shouldn't be in libraries. It may actually help young people be better prepared if they encounter some of the things included in the book.

Fortunately, not all the challenges to library books are successful. Most are rejected by librarians and library boards--and the books stay on the shelves. In many ways, librarians are real heroes of the First Amendment, dedicated to keeping materials with a variety of social and political viewpoints available for readers.

Many people don't seem to grasp this point. They think that if they and their children use the library and their taxes help pay for the book, they should be able to determine what books the library offers. But they ignore the fact that other people might want to read precisely the books they object to and that their taxes also help pay for the books.

Putting that another way, what they want is to control not only what they and their children take out from the library and read, but what everybody else and their children can take out and read. In other words, they have no regard for individual freedom or respect for the working of other people's minds. I think we know where that can lead.

The Evesham Township School District in New Jersey has been embroiled in a dispute over whether to show Debra Chasnoff's video "That's a Family" about non-traditional families. The video includes families with adopted children, mixed-race families and same-sex couples with children.

According to the New York Times (Sept. 14) several parents objected after the video was shown to third grade students. The objections eventually led to the video being dropped.

Divorce, adoption, even mixed-race parents, those are just facts about the modern world. But same-sex couples with children? That's not a fact. That's a controversy.

Parents who objected to the video claimed that they were not motivated by prejudice against gays but by concern that the video was not suitable for such young children.

The Times quoted one parent as saying, "I don't think it was appropriate. If it was maybe in the fifth grade, but in third grade they're a little too young." But then the parent retracted even that plausible position, adding, "It's something to be discussed within families. I think it's the parents' responsibility to teach the kids about that stuff."

Another parent reportedly said that children "shouldn't learn questionable things in school that they're not ready for and don't understand." What is questionable? Whether gay parents exist? Whether they love their children?

Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said the opposition was fueled not by concerns about parental control but "about fear of gay people."

But I suspect that Goldstein is not quite correct on either point. The opposition to the video was likely fueled not so much by fear of gay people as by plain, old, ordinary antipathy--disapproval, hostility--to gay people and to any mention in the curriculum of their existence.

And the objections were prompted precisely by the issue of parental control. Parents understandably want to determine what and how their children learn, but parents who want to keep their children from knowing about the way the world is are doing them few favors.

It is hard to justify letting some parents control what government (tax-supported) schools teach since the schools are paid for by parents with a variety of values and attitudes. In other words, the objecting parents want to control what other people's children as well as their own are "exposed to."

In other times and places, these are the same type of parents who object to school lessons on other aspects of the modern world--evolution, birth control, sex education, comparative religion. In the past they would have objected to any mention of interracial marriage. And now they are objecting to saying anything about gays--whether gays as parents, gays as couples or just the fact that gays and lesbians exist.

None of the parents bother to explain why they think young children "aren't ready for" and "don't understand" about gay parents or gay couples. What is so hard to understand about two men adopting a child or two women raising the child of one of them from a previous marriage? If children grow up with that information it does not seem odd or incomprehensible; it is just another aspect of a fascinating and varied world they are learning about. The children probably think of the gay couple as "best friends" or "roommates."

The problem is not with the children's understanding, but with the parents' importation of a different issue. When religious conservatives think about gays, they think primarily of sex. Gays? Sex. Gay couples? Sex. Gay parents? Sex. And they do not want their children learning about gay sex. But it is doubtful that third graders connect gay parenting with sex. Conservative parents see sex where it isn't even mentioned.

This is the same mentality that made the children's book "And Tango Makes Three" the library book that drew the most parental objections last year. The book is a charming true story (by all means read it) about two male penguins who together brood and hatch an egg and begin raising the baby penguin. Homophobic parents objected to the book because it was "about homosexuality." But nowhere in the book is there even a hint that the two penguins engaged in sex.

Such beliefs border on psychosis.

If conservative parents fear anything, it is not homosexuals, but that their children may abandon the parents' hostility toward gays and come to accept gays as just another part of the world around them. It is this loss of control over their children's values and social attitudes, not the facts that the children learn, that upsets conservative parents most. But that is always the risk of education.

I have to plead a certain naivet� about this business of restroom sex. I have never solicited anyone for sex in a public restroom; nor, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone ever solicited me. Should I be hurt that no one ever did? Aren't I attractive enough? Do I wear the wrong shoes? What am I doing wrong?

My discomfort with restroom sex, I suppose, is not so much moral as aesthetic. Public restrooms just don't seem very appealing places to spend much time hanging around hoping for sexual connections. The ambiance--the chemical and bodily odors, the noises, the bustle of people going in and out--doesn't seem very erotic. Maybe you get used to it. If you have enough sex in that kind of environment maybe you build up a conditioned response of finding it exciting. But I don't think that's a conditioned response I want to acquire.

Soon after I came out, friends took me to gay bars and told me about gay bathhouses. Those always seemed more attractive and convenient places to scout for sexual partners in the absence of a lover. And at bars and bathhouses if you failed to find a suitable partner, you could always socialize, get to know people, make friends, not just sit there idly on a hard bathroom fixture waiting for Mr. Anybody.

I had heard about this foot-tapping business (no one mentioned the playing footsie part) more than 35 years ago, but I guess I thought of it as something left over from the bad old pre-gay liberation days, something that would die out as people became more open about being gay and found more appealing places to meet other gay men.

But that sanguine view ignored a couple of things. 1) A lot of gay men live and work in locations that don't have gay bars or bathhouses. With them I sympathize. 2) And a lot of gay men remain untouched by the message of gay liberation. They are married with families, or in the closet at work, or adhere to an anti-gay religion, or refuse to acknowledge to themselves that they are gay. Some may even buy the religious line that homosexuality is wrong but find they cannot resist their "weakness."

If they get caught in a restroom or highway rest stop incident, they may vociferously deny they are gay, thus implying that hanging around restrooms or rest stops is what gay men typically do. In other words, if their circumstances inhibit self-acceptance and public disclosure, their behavior on the basis of those circumstances, if revealed, simply supports the religious right's propaganda that "the gay lifestyle" is lonely, seedy, and risky. Thanks for the great PR, guys.

Still, there do seem some openly gay men who enjoy hanging around restrooms or rest stops for just this sort of activity, or at least giving it a try when they have the opportunity. Maybe it is a kind of adventure. Maybe they enjoy the excitement of the uncertain possibility of sex. Behavioral psychologists tell us that the best way to reinforce a behavior is to provide intermittent rewards, not regular ones.

Yet I don't think that I have ever overheard any such communicative behavior or any sounds of sexual activity any time I have had to use a public restroom. That suggests that it is pretty inconspicuous. So where do these (alleged) complaints come from? No one who doesn't want to participate need respond to signals. They probably don't even recognize them as signals unless they are looking for them. And how is any third party harmed by any of this?

I am no fan of Larry Craig. But even if the arresting officer is telling the truth (and it is always wise to be skeptical of vice officers), I have a hard time seeing anything that happened as illegal. Homosexual sex is legal, after all. And people assume they have privacy in their stalls. At most Craig was sending an invitation to engage in legal sex.

Nor does anything that allegedly happened amount to "lewd conduct." Craig tapped his foot, then moved his foot to touch the other person's foot. But Craig moved his foot only because he had a foot-tapping response from the other party. Had the officer not provided that enticement, Craig would presumably not have proceeded. Where is the lewdness? No wonder that charge was dropped. And what was "disorderly" (the vaguest of all charges) about contact between seemingly consenting adults?

And, really, if public establishments seriously wish to prevent sex between men in separate restroom stalls, why don't they simply build the partitions all the way to the floor. That would be an easy way to end the problem!

As you probably already know, on August 11 a churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) approved by a vote of 528 to 431 a resolution that "prays, urges, and encourages" its bishops to refrain from disciplining gay and lesbian clergy known to be in same-sex relationships.

The resolution did not prohibit anti-gay bishops from bringing disciplinary action against clergy in gay relationships, but it gives more or less official permission to gay-supportive bishops who decline to discipline gay clergy to continue what many have already been doing for several years. And it surely sends a signal to bishops who may be uncertain or undecided about what action to take in such cases.

The ostensible reason for the resolution was that a church task force is involved in producing a long-delayed "social statement" on human sexuality and the resolution merely urges bishops not to take any action until the statement is issued in 2009. It is possible that there may have been signals from within the task force that it would recommend a more permissive policy. Certainly if no change were anticipated, the resolution would not have any point. But it is also possible that the resolution was meant as a signal to the task force by church leaders about what direction to take.

This is obviously a step forward for the Lutherans and in a way for all mainstream Protestants. It signals a shift in sentiment by clergy and church leaders in favor of non-celibate gay clergy. But it may not be immediately obvious just how remarkable a resolution this is. Consider several implications.

One was pointed out by the Rev. Bradley Schmeling, a pastor who was recently defrocked after telling his congregation and bishop that he is in a gay relationship. Schmeling told the New York Times, "For the first time, the church is saying that there are partnered gay and lesbian pastors who are serving faithfully and well in our church." True enough, and apparently his congregation agrees because they plan to keep him as their pastor anyway, frock or no frock.

In addition the resolution places the ELCA in the position of embracing some apparent contradictions. For one thing it says that formal church policy forbids sexually active gay clergy, but bishops can cheerfully ignore church policy if they like.

For another, the resolution applies only to gays and lesbians who are already ordained clergy; it does not apply to sexually active gay seminarians who wish to be ordained. No doubt some bishops will take the resolution as not forbidding the ordination of gay applicants, but technically the resolution says if you are already a pastor in a gay relationship you can stay, but if you are not yet a pastor we won't let you in.

This is not an unusual way for large organizations to make policy changes. You plant a contradiction or a new line of thinking somewhere in the system and wait for it to be formally taken account of sometime in the future when conditions are favorable for change. Nor is the technique unknown among Supreme Court justices.

The resolution certainly takes the long view. Every year public opinion about gays and the legitimacy of gay sexuality moves an average of one-half to one percent in a pro-gay direction. Nor are Lutheran church leaders immune to experiencing those changes themselves. So with every year that passes, the chances for a gay-affirmative position improve.

Underneath the conflict between pro- and anti-gay positions, the church is having to decide between Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Jesus as he is presented in the four gospels issued no condemnation of homosexuality although he was eloquent in his condemnation of some other behavior. In addition he often revised, corrected and disobeyed ancient Jewish law.

By contrast, Paul never met Jesus, never heard him preach, didn't know his teachings, and had no knowledge of the gospels (which had not been written yet). The only aspect of Jesus Paul cared about was his supposed resurrection which as a Pharisee he was predisposed to believe anyway. So with his rabbinical training in the early Hebrew texts, he often harkened back to the Hebrew moral codes, including their condemnation of homosexuality, and added them back into early Christianity.

Whether the Lutherans consciously recognize the conflict in these terms or not, they seem to have some sense of what the fundamental issue is. The New York Times quoted Emily Eastwood, head of the gay-supportive Lutherans Concerned, as saying, "The dam of discrimination has been broken. ... The church is on the road to acceptance."