IGF CultureWatch

It is important to keep our main focus on the struggle for gay freedom and equality here in the United States where the forces of anti-gay repression are constantly looking for ways to undermine and reverse our progress.

But it is also worth paying some attention to the abusive treatment of gays and lesbians elsewhere in the world. In many countries outside Western Europe, their situation is much more vulnerable than our own, in some cases dire. Gay progress in the U.S. has been aided by a growing social liberalization during the last 40 years; but in many countries those conditions do not prevail and the struggle of gays is much more difficult. Their advocacy movements are much smaller, ill-funded and more recent than our own, their governments much more repressive, and fundamentalist religion (Catholic, Protestant, Muslim) far more powerful than here.

Religious militia death squads kill gays in Iraq; gays are arrested and sometimes executed on arguably trumped-up charges of rape or pederasty in Iran; vigilante groups kill gays in Brazil; Nigeria is in the grip of contending Muslim and Christian sects competing to be more anti-gay; gays in Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, some Baltic states) are barred from public advocacy and beaten up by skinhead hooligans while police watch complacently. And meanwhile His Holiness inveighs against gays from his Vatican throne while both Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran export homophobic religion.

Little of this makes it into most mainstream newspapers, and none of it is reported it on the early evening television newscasts. It lacks the general appeal of the mindless antics of starlets and hotel heiresses. To follow most of this homophobic zealotry, you have to read the gay press, get on international list-servs, read a few blogs, and hunt out gay columnist Doug Ireland's valuable reporting.

The depressing part is that there are few ways we can help in any direct fashion. It is possible to hold demonstrations and vigils outside foreign embassies and legations, but while that may help raise the profile of the issue a bit in this country, it seems doubtful that they would influence foreign governments, religious fanatics, or militia death squads.

There are a few non-government groups that attempt to work on these issues, but it is hard to find out what they are doing or how effective they are. Several years ago Amnesty International adopted a gay-friendly policy, but they can always use more money and staff.

Following the example of the Soros Foundation which provided photocopiers, fax machines, and computers to dissident groups in Eastern Europe, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission under former director Julie Dorf did valuable service in providing similar aid to Russian gays during the final years of the Soviet Union. But under present management it is not clear what they do-besides boycott Israel, a rare democracy in the region and the only haven for "Palestinian" gays, and issue press releases about harassment of cross-dressers in Latin American.

The small gay section of Human Rights Watch is supposed to monitor the condition of gays in many countries and is clearly overtaxed. Yet they criticize and seem to resent any outside attempts (and even some internal efforts) to support gay activism in those countries; seem insufficiently skeptical of charges religious authoritarian governments lodge against gays who are arrested, and seem infected with a kind of relativist multiculturalism that inhibits claims to natural human rights.

The American government could send letters of protest to foreign governments, but other issues obsess the current administration and its State Department. Their strenuous efforts to retain supporters and mollify opponents of the Iraqi war give them little clout to pressure foreign governments on other issues. In any case, it is hard to imagine the current president feeling much pain on behalf of foreign gays or alienating his domestic supporters by making efforts on their behalf.

We have a better chance of getting positive action from a Democratic president, so I hope gay Democratic contributors and supporters begin raising this issue with their candidates. Ask them what steps they will take to counter the repression of fellow gays and lesbians in other countries. Force them to ask their research staffs to look into the matter, get them on record, make them realize that this is a significant issue. The time to raise the issue is now while they are still soliciting gay votes and money, before they go all centrist after the primaries are over.

Several years ago I wrote a piece titled "Toward a Gay Foreign Policy," posted at the Independent Gay Forum. I still advocate the suggestions I made there. But we need to go further and plan what we want a Democratic administration to do and how we can press them to do it.

Allow, if you will, a few dissenting notes from gay orthodoxy. If a writer only wrote things you agreed with, what good is he? And why read him? Better just talk to yourself in the mirror. "Politically correct" originated as an orthodoxy-enforcing Communist Party term in the 1930s.

• Pride weekend and the Pride parade are becoming more like Mardi Gras every year-something we do mainly because a) it is traditional and b) it brings revenue into the city from suburban and regional visitors who buy food and alcohol, shop, maybe rent overnight accommodations, and spend money on other tourist things while here.

• It may be all very well to take government (taxpayers') money for various gay projects-after all everyone else does it too-but there is always the risk that to get the money one's agenda will be compromised or that people will shape their agenda to things the government (i.e., politicians) would approve-avoiding "sensitive" issues, for instance. "He who pays the piper calls the tune." And politicians always want a payback in the form of political support. It is better to rely on private funding from individuals, supportive corporations or sympathetic foundations less subject to majoritarian dictates.

• Gay leaders repeat endlessly that abortion is a gay issue, but it isn't. Personally, I support all forms of abortion: A fetus may be "human" but it is not a "person." Nevertheless, how abortion can be an issue for gays and lesbians whose sexual activity does not produce fetuses is never explained. Yes, some lesbians might want to get pregnant but then abort a badly deformed fetus. Fine. Get an abortion, but don't say doing it is a gay issue just because you are gay. Gay leaders say people have a right to control their own bodies. I agree. But do they mean it? Do they therefore also defend, as I do, the right to assisted suicide, S/M, drug use, ex-gay therapy, prostitution, promiscuity, etc.? And the central issue remains whether a fetus is just part of a woman's body or an autonomous person. That argument is seldom joined.

• The gay left seems terminally afflicted with "mission drift." As if there were not enough work to do to attain gay equality, they want to include other issues as part of our agenda such as environmentalism, global warming, free trade limitations, illegal immigration, government health care, support for unions, etc. To some gays, those issues are more important than gay freedom and equality. Well, fine, there are plenty of organizations working on those issues. Go join those. But don't try to claim that those are gay issues just because they might affect some gays. I may even be on the other side-and I'm gay too.

• GLBT (or more recently-ladies first) LGBT is a relatively young orthodoxy. It originates from a 1995 meeting of gay organization leaders in Washington who decided that we were no longer the gay/lesbian movement but the "gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender" movement. Well, I don't feel bound by what "gay leaders" try to dictate. It was amusing at the time to hear people initially spit out the whole litany (instead of just saying "gay") before the acronym was contrived. But these aren't all one movement and what we have in common is limited.

• I don't have much in common with a man who want to be a woman. Gays can support transsexuals in their political efforts and work together on areas of common concern (e.g., defamation by Prof. Michael Bailey), but by and large their issues are not my issues, nor are mine theirs. Awkwardly, they embody the very 19th century stereotype about gays we have been trying to overcome for 100 years--that gay men are women trapped in male bodies. Even less do I have anything in common with some transvestite heterosexual man who wants to wear a frilly frock around the house. Fine, do it with my blessing, but that doesn't make him part of the gay movement.

• And bisexuals? How many bisexual men are there in our movement? No doubt there are a few-there are always a few of everything. But as the prominent gay psychiatrist Richard Pillard said in a 2003 interview "I think female sexual orientation is more variable than is male. Men seem more often to be fixed from early adolescence, even from early childhood." Some women are no doubt technically "bisexual," but most admit, as one informed me, that "of course" she had a "preference." And years ago, when I wrote something skeptical about bisexuality, I got three indignant replies from "bisexual" women-all of whom admitted that they were in relationships with men.

Let the fur fly.

It has been only 56 years since the 1951 publication of Edward Sagarin's pseudonymous "The Homosexual in America," which can be said to mark the beginnings of the American gay rights movement. And it has been only 38 years since the Stonewall events of 1969 that gave the movement a valuable boost.

Gays and lesbians have made remarkably fast progress in the intervening years, although viewed on a day-to-day basis it seems painfully slow. Millions of gays are now out of the closet, public support for the acceptance of gays is growing, substantial majorities favor ending the military ban on gays, gay marriage or full civil unions enjoy majority support, and more.

The combined effect of our everyday visibility and the cogency of our arguments continue to undermine long-standing and deeply rooted prejudice. That is something to celebrate in the run-up to our late June festivities.

Think how frustrated the zealots of the religious/social right wing must be at this progress. They endlessly criticize us as "radical homosexual activists"--enemies of family, church, and nation. No doubt there is a lingering handful of old gay Marxists and Marxian lesbian feminists, but don't forget that for the religious right, "radical homosexual activist" is their term for any person who is open about his sexual orientation. In their view, that is "radical" because our very visibility constitutes an argument "in the flesh" for our benignity and the legitimacy of our claim to equality.

Far from being radicals of any sort, most of us are just plain ol' bourgeois. How much more bourgeois can you be than wanting to marry the person you love and wanting to serve in the military? What we want, in short, is full inclusion in society--something we had (at considerable psychological cost) when we were all in the closet, and something we still deserve now that we are out.

Interestingly this same inclusion is feared by the radical left as well as the religious right. The radical left scorns our full inclusion as "assimilation," with that word's implication that, once included, gays will somehow lose all those unique qualities they have--qualities that could not survive without the continued pressure of hostility, discrimination and exclusion. I don't know if gays have any unique qualities, but I doubt if any such would be lost if we achieved equality.

Consider how bourgeois we really are. Much of the early "gay liberation" polemics seemed heavily focused on sexual liberation--the liberating of the libido (a la Herbert Marcuse). Certainly the legitimacy of gay sex needed to be vigorously asserted in the face of harsh state sodomy laws and discomfort among many gays about their sexual desires.

But sexual liberation is now much less an issue and more of a background assumption. It is an availability rather than a mandate. The task for most gays has become not so much one of obtaining more sex with more partners, but that of finding a way to integrate their sexual desires with their emotional longings. In this gays are no different from most heterosexual Americans.

More gays are even procreating children or adopting them through U.S. adoption agencies or from abroad. One couple I know adopted a baby from China, another from Russia. As one male friend explained to me, "The biological clock was ticking."

I have never heard the ticking of that particular clock, but I can accept it as a metaphor for some people's nagging sense that something is incomplete in their lives as a gay or lesbian couple. Only polemicists for the religious could argue that it is better for a child to have no parents rather than one parent or two parents of the same sex.

The gay neighborhoods of many of our largest cities seem to be slowly losing their gay density as more gay men move to other areas of large cities or to the suburbs. San Francisco and Chicago are good examples. Often this follows finding a partner and their desire to have a house of their own.

Sometimes they move to find lower living costs but equally often they move to find peace and quiet. I have not seen sociological research on this, and we probably won't have a clear idea until a new edition of Gary Gates' valuable "Gay and Lesbian Atlas" based on the 2010 census data. But that population drift could also have an impact on gay business.

And finally, let's point out that "queer" is pretty dead. It never really caught on. Longtime gay writer and activist Gabriel Rotello called it "the word that failed." It was floated as a generic term for gays (etc.) on the assumption that adopting a term of opprobrium would somehow reduce the hostility of homophobes among whom it originally arose. To paraphrase Orwell, that is a belief so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it.

For years I have been irked by the news media's unwillingness or inability to ask intelligent and probing follow-up questions when politicians, political preachers or other newsmakers make woefully ignorant or mendacious statements about gays.

If they refer to being gay as a choice, newspeople could ask, "Do you mean to say that feeling sexual desire for a man or a woman is a choice between equally attractive options?" or "Did you personally feel sexual desire for people of the same sex as strongly as you did for people of the opposite sex?" or 'When did you decide to feel sexual desire for women rather than men? Was that hard to decide?"

Or when know-nothings like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame natural disasters or enemy attacks on gays and lesbians (or abortionists or feminists), why don't newspeople ask if it is not instead God's judgment on preachers who distort God's message of love for the world? Or ask if the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia was caused by homosexuals (etc.) in that region? Or when something good happens, does that indicate God's approval of homosexuals (etc.)?

There are several ways to probe homophobic statements. A newsperson could ask for clarification of exactly how something could be true, or ask why the newsmaker rejects alternative possibilities, or cite a recognized authority in disagreement, or pose counter-examples. Newsmen usually know in advance what a prominent person will say on an issue, so you would think that part of their preparation would be to have follow-up questions on hand. Apparently not.

Several recent examples of idiocy were on display at the early-June New Hampshire forum for Republican presidential aspirants. Asked about the military's exclusionary "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said, "This is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment in the middle of a war." And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who knows better) said, "This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this one."

But a prepared questioner could have asked, "So in other words you would support allowing openly gay soldiers in time of peace?" Or the questioner could have asked, "But as you doubtless know, discharges of gay soldiers traditionally go down rather than up during times of war. Doesn't that suggest that the military wants all the manpower it can get during wartime?"

Or he could have asked, "But what is your evidence that this is any sort of social experiment? Did not the British military integrate openly gay soldiers in 2000? I have here a New York Times story datelined May 20 citing the British Ministry of Defense position that 'none of its fears--about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness--have come to pass.' Why do you think it would be different in the U.S.?"

Or he could have asked, "But as you are no doubt aware former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this year reversing his previous anti-gay position and advocating the inclusion of openly gay and lesbian soldiers. Is your perception of the military's needs more accurate than his?" Or he could more aggressively have asked, "To what extent is your position, like that of Gen. Peter Pace, based on a belief that homosexuality is immoral?"

According to the New York Times, several Republican candidates also said the current policy was "working well"? A smart questioner could have asked for a definition of "working well." Does the separation of more than 50 gay Arabic translators mean the policy is "working well? Does the refusal to accept people with needed language skills, or gay computer experts, or gay doctors and nurses mean the policy is "working well"?

Or the questioner could have pointed out that Southerners could claim that racial segregation in the military before 1948 "worked well" in the sense that it "worked" despite the obvious injustice and stigmatization involved. "Working well" is hardly a guarantee that something is good. And it evades the obvious possibility that something else could work better. After all, steam engines "worked well." So did rotary dial telephones. So did whale oil lamps.

And where in all this is GLAAD? Remember GLAAD--The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation? If news reporters cannot think of follow-up questions, why isn't GLAAD preparing a "Guide to Follow-Up Questions" on gay marriage, gay military access, gay adoption and foster care, etc.? They could distribute such a guide to newspeople, essentially doing their preparation for them. But GLAAD just doesn't seem interested. Its staff is probably too busy arranging their next gala awards banquet for television and movie stars.

Well, here we are again. It's Gay Pride month. If you are old and jaded, or for that matter young and jaded, your reaction is probably a sardonic "Oh, Whoopee-do." That is usually my first reaction too. But then I think about it for a while and end up deciding that gay pride is a pretty good idea.

Think back half a century. "When our American movement for full civil rights and equality for homosexuals got launched fifty-six years ago, we had a huge range of basic problems to tackle. We were denounced as immoral and sinful. We were punished as criminals and lawbreakers. We were labeled 'sick' and needing a 'cure.' We were mostly invisible as gay, which made it hard for gay men and lesbians to develop good social lives and to create a movement to battle injustice and prejudice." That's the late pioneer gay activist Barbara Gittings.

And now? Although we have not yet achieved social, legal, and political equality, there are ample grounds for feeling pleased, proud even, about the progress we have made.

In the 1950s barely a handful of gays and lesbians were out of the closet. Most were closeted not out of shame, I suspect, but because of a very real fear of discrimination and hostility and that people would automatically think less of them if they were known to be gay. Now there are millions of gays and lesbians, perhaps including you, who are confidently open about their orientation and think that if other people disapprove of homosexuality, so much the worse for them: they are simply ignorant. What a remarkable change!

Today many young people have the same fears that all gays did fifty years ago. But now we have created resources--books, websites, gay clubs in schools and colleges--that they can access to help them through those fears as a phase and not a life-long condition.

Partly because more people have gotten to know us personally, we have moved public opinion from almost universal disapproval of homosexuals to a kind of split decision. A 2004 Pew Center survey found that 49 percent of the public said homosexuality should be accepted by society, while only 44 percent said it should be discouraged. And the momentum is on our side as each generation expresses more gay-positive attitudes than the one preceding it.

In most cities we have formed numerous community groups to help promote gay economic, cultural, and political progress and to help other gay people with their quality of life--old gays, young gays, deaf gays, people with AIDS, parents of gays, etc. Large numbers of gay and lesbian volunteers help these organizations function effectively. Fifty years ago there was--nothing.

A friend remarked the other day that every time he passes by Chicago's new gay community center he sees people going in and out whom he has never seen before. It made him realize, he said, how many more people are actively involved in gay community programs than he had thought.

These are volunteers who could be doing something else with their time but who obviously find it rewarding, even self-actualizing, to contribute to the community. No doubt it is also an important way publicly to affirm the value of their identity by involving it in a contribution to society.

Fifty years ago, some employers fired gays and lesbians. By contrast, we are now an identifiable and quantifiably large market. That has helped persuade numerous companies to adopt non-discrimination and partner benefits programs for their gay employees. More than most social and political activists admit, economic behavior is the fundamental social force in society. Economic change brings other change in its wake, sometimes kicking and screaming but ineluctably. Businesses that want to maximize their income need to maximize our patronage.

The social and economic progress we have made in the last 50 years has been partly obscured because it has not been fully reflected in the political realm. But beneath the notice of hostile presidents and congresses we have won increasing social acceptance. The election of more supportive national officials from either party should help political progress catch up with our social and economic progress.

Finally, keep in mind that what the first gay activists undertook was a moral revolution. Fifty years ago, few prominent people challenged the idea that homosexuality was morally wrong or "sinful." It must feel very odd for recent Catholic popes to see within their lifetimes the rise of a mass movement of people who utterly reject 2000 years of tradition on a fundamental moral issue like homosexuality and say, in effect, "I reject what you preach. I'm moral; you're not." Popes hate that!

Old Age too creeps up on little cat feet. It happens while you are busy doing something else, usually something far more interesting. And it happens so gradually that you don't realize it is happening to you. Which is fine because it really isn't a big deal.

When we were young we all expected being old to feel very different from being young, but it doesn't, at least not enough to be a qualitative change. More often, getting older is something that you notice in other people, not in yourself.

But once in a while you get clues from the way other people behave toward you. More people call you "Sir" or "Mister." Nobody calls you "Dude" or "Guy." Once I was called "Grandpa." A few weeks ago I was carrying some groceries onto a bus and a young woman offered me her seat. Sales clerks seem more willing to offer assistance, I suppose thinking I am more likely to need it. A casual acquaintance at a bar recently asked how old I was and let out a little gasp when I told him, as if to say, "What? And not dead yet?"

Another clue is that most of your old college professors, all the major modern thinkers you learned from, most of the modern authors whose books you enjoyed are now dead--even the long-lived ones. Just to take a few recent examples, Milton Friedman, Kurt Vonnegut, Barbara Gittings. Many others died further back--in the 1970s and 1980s. You get the disconcerting feeling that it all depends on your generation now. I sure hope the others are doing their part because I can't do it alone.

You become vaguely aware that time grows shorter, that there are a lot of things you've been meaning to do "someday" and that if you don't do them pretty soon you won't get them done ever. As of my birthday a few days ago, the actuarial tables give me several more years, which isn't so bad, really. You can do a lot in several years.

But the point is that somewhere along in the aging process you begin to take seriously the idea that life has a terminus and that--surprisingly--this actually applies to you too. This is nothing as big and gloomy as the Existentialists' "sense of one's own mortality," just a kind of "Oh, if not now (or soon), then never."

So you have to begin a kind of triage among your various goals, casting aside the less important and never-very-heartfelt ones (e.g., reading Proust), and resolve at least to begin working on the others. In the last few years, for instance, I've been spending some of my free time learning more about art to make up for a deficiency in my education. It turned out to be enjoyable as well as interesting.

For the same reason, I've started occasionally reading some books generally regarded as a "classic," many of which turned out to be pretty good. Other people will have different goals: travel to a foreign country they have never seen, taking up a hobby or craft, getting involved in local politics. Whatever it is, it is time to do it.

One of the most common beliefs about growing older is that aging is accompanied by a decline in energy level. No doubt that is true. But the decline is so gradual that you hardly notice it and scarcely feel the loss as it is occurring. Don't worry about it. Just accept it as part of the gift of a long life. A lot of gay men never got that gift.

One of the great benefits of growing older is the natural ability to act mature. Most of us who are older have, I think, developed a kind of reserve and restraint, a degree of emotional stability, a bemused attitude toward life, a greater degree of empathy in our relationships, and a broader perspective. Those are gains not to be disguised or abandoned.

Once in a while you see some older gay man acting as if he were in his 20s, as if he thinks that is a great age to be. It doesn't work. In fact, it only highlights how old he really is by drawing attention to his failure to be what he is trying for. People, including the young, will respect you more for being a good example of whatever age you really are.

And frankly, young gays need older gay people as exemplars of how they themselves can grow up rather than remaining, for lack of visible alternatives, in the state of perpetual adolescence we sometimes see in younger gays at the bars. Our "culture," such as it is, must get over the excessive focus on youth and youthfulness. Even if it is only a stereotype, it is one that we help perpetuate by not challenging it directly.

Over the last several years, a number of gay and lesbian characters have appeared in mainstream comic books, most often as incidental or occasional characters, but in a few cases, as important main characters.

You might remember "The Rawhide Kid," an older comic character who was reinvented for a five part series as a super gunslinger and gay man with a modern gay sensibility and exquisite taste but inserted back into the old west.

Gay novelist Robert Rodi's comic series just a few years ago, "Code Name: Knockout," was one of the most enjoyable--smart, funny, and entirely gay positive with a gay male sidekick for the voluptuous heroine.

But the most significant gay characters have to be Apollo and the Midnighter, ongoing major characters in the ensemble cast of the science fiction comic series "The Authority." Like the other main characters Apollo and the Midnighter are genetically enhanced super-humans who live on a sort of spaceship and spend their time fighting super-villains on earth as well as from the future, other dimensions, and parallel universes.

Blond Apollo can fly and is nourished by solar radiation. The Midnighter, clad entirely in black, is the ultimate fighting machine who can anticipate his opponents' moves. The origin of their relationship is obscure, but they are deeply in love and their relationship is comfortably accepted by the other members of the Authority.

Their relationship is not always in the forefront of the action, but it is constantly there as part of the background. In one episode where they were separated and their survival was in doubt, when they were reunited they hugged and kissed passionately, leading another character to yell playfully, "Hey, you two, get a room."

Midnighter is apparently a popular character. He now has his own series as well. In one recent issue (No. 5) when Midnighter encounters some friendly people from the 96th century, one of the women asks if he wants to have sex, and Midnighter explains that he is gay. The concept makes no sense to her and she eventually explains that in her time there is no gender-based sexual preference at all. At that Midnighter bursts out laughing and exclaims "That's great. That really is outstanding," and then louder, "Hey, can you hear me in the Bible Belt? You're all wasting your time."

In the following issue (No. 6) the Apollo-Midnighter relationship is re-imagined as taking place in Shogunate Japan. Midnighter is a wandering samurai who is hired by the Shogun after he kills the Shogun's guards who challenge him. Eventually Apollo, also a wandering samurai, passes by and after a standoff in the briefest of sparing, they agree not to fight. Instead they become lovers.

Apollo joins the Shogun's household and tells the fascinated Shogun of the many things he has seen in his wide travels. "It was a joyful time," says the Midnighter. "By day I did my duty. The nights were ours." Fearing to lose his power and influence, the Shogun's prime minister hires men to kill the pair in their bed. The two fight back killing all the attackers, but Apollo too is killed. His last words to Midnighter: "I love you."

Midnighter buries him in a wooded area. "We were happy in these woods," he explains. "We walked together and the shining sun seemed not one-tenth as bright as he. It seemed a fitting place." Bereft, Midnighter leaves the Shogun's service, but returns a year later to kill the prime minister.

This story is told as a series of flashbacks to a group of samurai swordsmen Midnighter has lured to Apollo's gravesite by sending each an invitation addressed to "To the greatest swordsman in all the land." Throughout Midnighter's story, the assembled samurai express disgust and revulsion at the idea of two men as lovers and seek to challenge and kill him. At the end Midnighter springs upon them and kills them all, leaving their bodies as a sacrifice to his dead lover.

The narrative that continues inside Midnighter's head explains, "Every year I come here and bring my lover (sacrifices). And every year I weep for it is all I know." And he walks off alone under a cloudy, wintry sky.

It is a depressing ending, but in a way satisfying as a gay revenge fantasy. Still, I cannot imagine what the young straight men who typically buy comic books make of this. Maybe they are lured by the vividly depicted violence and gore itself. Or maybe they adjust the revenge motif to their own particular targets. Or maybe, just maybe, they absorb the notion that homophobia springs from irrational hatred and deserves to be condemned.

It's getting to be a tradition. Like some ancient Hebrew prophet, Larry Kramer descends from Mt. Sinai, or maybe just Mt. Kramer, and ascends a podium in the harsh, barren deserts of New York City to deliver his latest denunciations and warnings to a world awaiting them with decreasingly bated breath.

These presentations are generally attended by a public of younger gays and characterized by substantial exaggerations of fact, hyperbolic rhetoric, and a certain amount of vulgarity--all of which are apparently how Kramer thinks you communicate with fellow gays. Think of it as performance art.

The burden of Kramer's latest speech was that everybody hates us: politicians, judges, the U.S. government, "they," "them," "America"--they all hate us. "We are still facing the same danger, our extermination, and from the same entity, our own country." Even our so-called friends are not willing to fight for us, he says.

Kramer's view is that the best, the only, response to all this is a newly formulated, hierarchical organized ACT-UP: an Army Corps to Unleash Power.

Kramer points to genuine injustices and the malign neglect of many gay concerns: equal treatment of gay relationships, the ban on immigration of foreign partners, anti-gay violence, the murder of gays abroad. But the gay press writes about these things regularly and the national and state gay organizations work on those as well as other issues such as military access and gay adoption. Kramer is unjust to say that "our movement has confined its feeble demands to marriage." Nor does he acknowledge that marriage would solve some of the problems he lists--e.g., tax equality and partner immigration.

In addition, there are conceptual problems with Kramer's new solution. When ACT-UP was created it had:

• A specific set of goals--the development of effective treatments for AIDS, faster drug trials and access to those drugs and research for a cure.

• A specific set of targets: the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical firms, and Presidents Reagan and Bush and their administrations.

• An intensely involved constituency of HIV-infected gay men who knew that their lives literally depended on their activism.

But in Kramer's proposed new organization and its vastly expanded agenda, who specifically are the targets, what are the specific goals and where is the intensely concerned constituency? A "Lo here, Lo there" approach to a wide array of gay issues seems at risk of a quick diffusion of focus, exhaustion of energy and rapid demise.

Kramer focuses on politicians. "Much of what I am calling for involves laws, changing them, getting them," he says. And he proposes an omnibus gay rights bill and "hold(ing) every politician's feet to this fire until he or she supports it." Great. How do we do that? By demonstrations? Can you produce personnel regularly? And sometimes demonstrations can be counter-productive by antagonizing politicians and public opinion. Then with votes? But Kramer says "There is not one single candidate running for public office anywhere that deserves our support."

And Kramer forgets that politicians are elected by "the people" so politicians are not going to change until they sense a change in popular sentiment regarding gays. So persuading the American public about gay moral equality has to be a vital part of the project. But how do you do that, especially if the people are our enemy, and if, as Kramer says, "They hate us and want us dead"? Kramer even seems to scorn "our own country's 'democratic process.'"

In short, Kramer's speech does not seem to cohere. Some parts conflict with other parts or depend on supports that Kramer has already yanked away.

Nor does Kramer seem to have thought through what is involved in changing Americans' minds about gays and lesbians so they will stop "hating" us. He seems to want to threaten and bully people into respecting and fearing gays as he claims the original ACT-UP did to drug companies and government agencies. But that probably won't work with a whole nation.

And as always Kramer simply ignores the obvious political progress gays have made in the last 20 years. He exaggerates the number of our opponents, distorts the extent of their power and intensity of their hostility and exaggerates the extent and likelihood of looming homophobia. He airily dismisses the existence of genuine friends and supporters. And he repeatedly distorts facts to support his claims--a column topic in itself. Not a way to build credibilty for a new movement.

It is amazing how well the General Peter Pace episode turned out. The underlying homophobia of the military's gay ban was fully exposed, prominent politicians challenged the nation's highest military officer, and for the first time leading presidential contenders openly stated that homosexuality was not immoral. It was a breakthrough moment.

Recall that Gen. Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Chicago Tribune, "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way. As an individual, I would not want it to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior."

Since he offered no other reason for the policy, the Tribune not unreasonably wrote that Pace supported the gay ban because he thought homosexuality was immoral.

When Pace was attacked by gay groups for his comments and learned of the strong disagreement by Republican Sen. John Warner of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pace expressed "regret," said he was stating his personal moral views, and offered no apology. He further claimed that the military gay ban "does not make a judgment about the morality of individual acts." But of course it does. Why else may heterosexuals talk about their sexuality but homosexuals not do so?

Furthermore, Pace again offered no rationale for the policy--none of this absurd pretense about maintaining discipline or unit cohesion or a fear of showers.

Pace's comparison of gays with adulterers does not even survive casual examination. Pace said, "Military members who sleep with other military members' wives are immoral in their conduct." But the compoarison is too broad because a single gay serviceman might have sex with another single serviceman of the same rank. No marriage is violated, no third party is harmed. Or a gay serviceman might have sex with someone outside the military. The military does not prosecute servicemen who have sex with civilian women.

And Pace's argument is too narrow because there is a great deal of "immorality" that the military tolerates. Many conservative Christians regard abortion, even birth control as immoral, but does the military punish people who use birth control? Some religions view any oral and anal sex as immoral. But does the military prosecute men for giving or receiving oral sex by a woman? And if not, what exactly is the difference between oral sex performed on a man by a man or by a woman.

This shows once again that when many otherwise intelligent people try to talk about homosexuality it overloads their mental circuits and blocks their ability to think clearly. They lose their ability to analyze their own arguments and say all kinds of illogical nonsense.

It would take a whole separate column to follow the adventures of Senators Clinton and Obama through the political thickets of responding to Pace's comments. Asked on ABC News about Pace's view of homosexual immorality, Clinton's ambiguous response, "Well, I'm going to leave that to others to conclude," was no profile in courage. Obama was no better: Newsday reported that he declined on three separate occasions to respond at all.

Later a Clinton spokesman said she "obviously" disagreed with Pace. No, it wasn't obvious. The next night her campaign tried again, quoting Clinton as saying, "I disagree with what he said and do not share his view, plain and simple." Later still, associating herself with Republican Sen. Warner, she finally stated through a spokesperson that she did not believe homosexuality is immoral. Obama too through a spokesman later said he did not think homosexuality is immoral.

These were important breakthroughs. Anyone who remembers how politicians kowtowed to Gen. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the 1993 controversy over ending the military's ban on gays cannot help but be gratified by the current willingness of politicians to stand up to the head of the military.

And it is an important breakthrough that a prominent Republican senator and two of the leading Democratic contenders for the Presidency are willing to say that homosexuality is not immoral. Many people take their bearings from what prominent public figures say, so it is enormously encouraging that a few of the most important public figures are finally willing to speak out about our moral legitimacy. Our job is to increase their number.

Analyses of why the Republican party lost both houses of Congress in the 2006 election are still coming in and doubtless will continue for some time.

One of the most interesting is by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in a post-election "Addendum" to his book "Words that Work" (Hyperion, 2007). Luntz argues that Republicans failed to communicate any principles or vision, that they seemed "rudderless ... disjointed, out-of-touch, and adrift." He could have added arrogant and corrupt.

Luntz argues that Republicans were not only inept but sometimes simply wrong. He cites the bungled war in Iraq, intervention in the Terry Schiavo case, fumbled Hurricane Katrina relief, the porkitude of that Alaska "Bridge to Nowhere," and the poorly explained Prescription Drug Benefit.

He could have cited others: The Mark Foley affair, the Jack Abramoff scandal, the threat of warrantless wiretaps, the endless delays in approving Plan B birth control, and the obvious lie that "we" were making progress in Iraq even as military and civilian deaths climbed precipitously.

As more than one centrist or GOP-leaning voter told me, "I'm just so disgusted I'm voting straight Democrat." Not that the Democrats offered any alternatives. All they had to do was say, "We aren't them." In 1946 the Republicans won the first post-Roosevelt election with the slogan, "Had enough? Vote Republican." This time it was the Democrats' turn.

But where in all this were gay issues? Yes, seven out of eight states approved gay marriage bans but those seemed to have little impact on other races just as analyses of 2004 Ohio results suggested that the anti-gay amendment had no impact on Pres. Bush's narrow victory there. In fact, some have speculated an amendment in Virginia helped 2006 Democratic senate candidate James Webb by drawing Democratic black voters to the polls to vote for the gay marriage ban.

However that may be, I want to offer a thought about how gay issues may have played an unobtrusive, almost subterranean role in the election.

For one thing, introducing the amendment banning gay marriage a second time when it had previously failed reinforced the idea that the GOP was controlled by the religious right. Thus it could be viewed as part of a cluster of moralist, religion-based policies such as opposition to Plan B and sex education, bans on abortion, and the Terry Schiavo intrusion that made Americans uneasy.

Second, although most Americans oppose gay marriage, most Americans also oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to ban it. Thus the GOP's repeated efforts suggested a zeal for a federal government solution where none was wanted and supported the perception that the GOP was becoming the party of big and intrusive government--as witness the warrantless wiretaps, suggestions for national ID cards, intrusive airport searches, and ballooning federal deficits--very much the sorts of things Barry Goldwater warned about in 1964.

Although issues such as gay adoption rights, permanent partner immigration, hate crimes laws, or a federal non-discrimination law probably had little impact, the gay military ban probably did play--again--a subterranean role. Most Americans now favor the integration of gays into the military so the current ban even on skilled gay personnel such as Arab translators made clear that the GOP's homophobic policies were getting in the way of its other avowed goal--an effective military. It is not that Americans are zealous to have gays in the military but the ban added to the general sense that there was something wrong with the conduct of the war.

So it seems that gay issues seldom if ever determine who voters will vote for, but they can play a kind of unobtrusive role as part of a cluster of issues that can be related to overall perceptions about the role or efficiency of government, the presence of sectarian influence and questions of honesty, clarity and transparency.

If this is true, gays need to explain gay issues in terms not only of justice, fairness, and non-discrimination, but relate them to clusters of issues that can touch Americans' basic concerns about the proper limits on government, the dangers of overreach, opposition to scientific knowledge, governmental prejudice against citizens, mutually inconsistent policies, hypocrisy (corruption while moralistic) and cynicism (tolerating Foley's behavior while being publicly anti-gay).

This all requires a number of things: that gay organizations find ways to raise their voices a little more, that they find new clusters of issues to relate our concerns to, and that they manage to persuade our congressional and gubernatorial supporters to speak out more often and more clearly about our issues in the context of these clusters of ideas.