IGF CultureWatch

If not the morning after the election, then soon thereafter, we will all move from the false certitudes and pretended stark choices of the political contest to the contingencies of actually having to govern. And given the nastiness and disconnect from reality of some campaign ads, you are probably as ready as I am for this election season to be over.

Lately, my email inbox has been a competition between the Democratic National Committee and a horde of people who want to enlarge my penis, send me winnings from a lottery I never entered, renew my account information at banks I never heard of, and appoint me the American agent for various well-funded overseas enterprises that are desperate to receive the benefit of my investment skills. I am particularly doubtful as to why I am being wooed so assiduously by someone who signs his messages, "Governor Howard Dean, M.D."

I love the fundraising emails that repeat a link to facilitate online giving after every couple of paragraphs, like a child tugging at its mother in the supermarket: "Mommy, Mommy, click on this, click on this!" If voters are really as stupid as campaign managers seem convinced that we are, then perhaps we shouldn't blame those Diebold electronic voting machines for any strange results that occur on Election Day.

On October 18, Gov. Dean sent me one of those "Feed me! Feed me!" emails seeking dollars from "people just like you who believe that every Democrat should own a piece of this party - in contrast to the special interests and lobbyists that own the Republican Party (as if Americans needed another reminder of that, Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney pleaded guilty to corruption charges on Friday)." Somehow, Dean neglected to mention Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, who was videotaped accepting $100,000 in bribe money, $90,000 of which was later found stuffed in his freezer.

On October 19, Hillary Clinton sent me an email on behalf of Tim Mahoney, the Democrat running for Mark Foley's seat in Congress. Inevitably, she talked about the need "to protect our children," just as Maryland Republican senatorial candidate Michael Steele does in a TV spot. This annoyed me despite my own criticism of Foley's abuse of his office, because few people honestly think of 16-year-olds as children, and the Democratic cries of outrage have been over-amplified by opportunism.

Sen. Clinton's message continued, "Florida's 16th district deserves better representation than Mark Foley - and we all deserve a better Congress!" While I agree that Congress will be improved by getting rid of the Republican leadership, I see no evidence that, the page scandal aside, Rep. Foley was such a poor representative in comparison to many of Clinton's Democratic colleagues.

Let's have a look at the Human Rights Campaign's Congressional Scorecard. Mark Foley's scores for the 109th and 108th Congresses: 75 and 88. Sen. Clinton (D-New York): 89 and 88. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California): 88 and 75. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa): 78 and 75. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana): 89 and 75. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida): 89 and 75. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas): 89 and 63. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan): 78 and 63. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana): 67 and 50. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada): 67 and 63.

To be sure, Democrats overall were much better than Republicans. For example, ten Democratic senators earned perfect 100s from HRC in the 109th, compared to one Republican, Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island). But the close races that will decide who controls the 110th Congress are between particular individuals, not statistics. Red-state Democrats, in order to defeat their Republican opponents, typically run to the right. For example, Tennessee Democratic senatorial candidate Rep. Harold Ford earned HRC scores of 25 and 44 in the 109th and 108th Congresses, after earning a 100 in the 107th. That shows the effect higher ambitions can have on a Bible-Belt politician.

None of this is meant to discourage those who seek a change in leadership on Capitol Hill. I am simply trying to administer a dose of reality. Even if the Democrats take control of both houses, they will almost certainly have narrow majorities, and the overall numbers on gay-related issues are unlikely to change much. The main difference, and it's a big one, will be in who gets to set the legislative calendar and run committees. Imagine the extraordinary moment when Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts, HRC score 100) takes over the Financial Services Committee.

The value of a Democratic Congress would not be that it would pass pro-gay legislation (which would only provoke a presidential veto), but that it would apply brakes to the hell-bound train of the nation's current leadership. That may be reason enough for deciding your vote this time out, but let's keep our eyes open. The last Democrat-controlled Congress gave us Don't Ask/Don't Tell and a ban on immigration for HIV-positive persons.

Looking ahead to the 2008 presidential race, the Democrats will need more than public disaffection with a retiring George W. Bush. They will need a candidate who can appeal to voters across the political spectrum. As it happens, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois, HRC score 89 for the 109th) just announced he is considering a run. He is bright, attractive, inspiring, and a deft centrist. He has charisma Hillary can only dream of. Please don't throw cold water on me for a while. I am entitled to dream, aren't I?

It's October, and the leaves are turning Code Orange and Red. But just when we were expecting another conveniently timed terror alert, the Republicans have begun self-destructing. Suddenly there appears an increased likelihood that they will lose at least one house of Congress, if only due to their inept handling of a scandal and not because they are shredding the Constitution, recruiting enemies faster than our soldiers could ever kill them, and bankrupting America.

While it is a relief to see Republicans firing at each other for a change instead of at the rest of us, we cannot count on it to last. The fact that the ruling party's bumbling militarism, extra-legal methods, and imperial arrogance toward the rest of the world have advanced democracy neither at home nor abroad is insufficient to swing the election unless enough conservatives join liberals in this conclusion.

Into the breach steps multi-threat blogger, columnist, pundit and famous homosexual Andrew Sullivan, offering a conservative antidote to George W. Bush's toxic alchemy of politics and fundamentalism. Sullivan's new book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back, published this week, is a harsh assessment of the current Republican Party.

Describing the president's refusal to hear alternative viewpoints, inability to concede error, and virtual treason charges against his critics, Sullivan argues that the best way to understand Bush is in the light of his born-again conviction that he is on a mission from God.

When Bush described civil marriage as "a sacred institution," he was doing more than appealing to his evangelical base by attacking gays. He was seeking to usurp states' rights, violate the Establishment Clause, and erode the secular public square in which Americans negotiate their differences.

As Sullivan observes, fundamentalists are threatened not only by homosexuals but by the entire modern world: "If you take your beliefs from books written more than a thousand years ago, and if you believe in these texts literally, then the appearance of the modern world must truly terrify." This fear leads to a retreat into denial masked by certitude. Pope Benedict XVI, for example, insists that no one's conscience is authentic if it differs at all from his medievalist views. Sullivan compares this to the old Marxist line about "false consciousness."

Sullivan devastatingly dissects the theocons' recourse to "natural law," which comes from Aristotle by way of Aquinas and serves mainly to mask a religious purpose. For example, the view of sex held by natural lawyers like Robert P. George renders even most heterosexual sex "unnatural." Sullivan notes that one sign of sex having natural functions beyond reproduction is the existence of the clitoris, which is not essential for reproduction but is the main source of a woman's sexual pleasure. The trouble with the theocon idea of nature is that it is based not on empirical observation but on abstract notions of what things are "for."

One of the most chilling illustrations of Bush's fundamentalist politics, Sullivan writes, was his handling of the Terri Schiavo case. This president who resisted interrupting his vacation to deal with Hurricane Katrina flew back to Washington to sign a bill purporting to save a woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state for fifteen years.

Sullivan, inspired by Montaigne's amused sense of human fallibility, proposes a conservative politics of modesty and restraint based on individual citizens' freedom to pursue happiness rather than on a centralized imposition of virtue. He states, "The defining characteristic of the conservative is that he knows what he doesn't know."

Sullivan's case for "the conservatism of doubt" is buttressed by a luminous discussion of British philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott rested his philosophy on skepticism rather than dogma, stressed the contingency of human existence, and taught that the proper function of politics is not to press a particular result but to secure freedom.

The book's tone is not lecturing but conversational. Sullivan is most eloquent when he describes how Jesus talked in parables, offered more questions than answers, and commanded his disciples to love one another. Sullivan contrasts this with the religious right's shrill bossiness, mega-churches that resemble shopping malls, and obsessive slanders against gay people.

At a Cato Institute discussion of Sullivan's book on October 3, conservative columnist David Brooks argued that the GOP's excesses stem more from partisan tribalism than from fundamentalism. He has a point: those in power have been allowing partisan interests to trump their principles since the dawn of the republic. Reports on the Mark Foley scandal suggest that House Republican leaders were more concerned about the pots of money Foley raised for them than about his improper conduct. Furthermore, the use of evangelical rhetoric by prominent Republicans like Tom DeLay appears entirely cynical. But the fundamentalist political furor that Bush and his allies helped unleash is no less dangerous for the instigators' impure motives.

The theocons may not be able to revive the glories and certitudes of Christendom, but they can do a lot of damage to our country while they try. Sullivan counters them not with a program but with an alternative political philosophy. At a time of anti-immigrant fear-mongering, it is fitting that this privileged immigrant should call on his adopted country to heed the better angels of its nature and stand up to its religious bullies. As his admirable book shows, the best way to defend liberties under threat is to exercise them vigorously.

Nearly three decades after Anita Bryant's notorious "Save the Children" campaign, increasing numbers of gay people are doing just that - giving loving homes to children that straight people have thrown away or have had taken from them due to neglect or abuse. No good deed goes unpunished, of course. Anita's heirs don't want us saving children. What is surprising is that efforts to make "gay adoption" a red meat issue in this year's election have mostly fizzled.

It is seven years since I sat in the visitor's gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives and watched as an amendment that would have banned adoptions by unmarried couples in the District of Columbia was narrowly defeated. The reference to unmarried couples thinly veiled the measure's anti-gay purpose, and its defeat was a big victory for the Human Rights Campaign. Since then, the issue has not been used again by Congress to attack gay Washingtonians at the expense of orphaned children.

This year there have been encouraging developments in many states. Anti-gay adoption bills in Arizona and Ohio stalled in their respective statehouses. A Virginia bill to prohibit doctors and other health professionals from helping unmarried women become pregnant failed to win support. In Utah, the governor vetoed an anti-gay parenting bill. The Indiana Supreme Court let stand a ruling allowing adoptions by unmarried couples. A federal judge struck down an Oklahoma law barring recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples from other jurisdictions.

It is hard to see what threat is posed by gay parents when so many children of heterosexual households go home each day to single, divorced or absent parents. Voters seem to understand this, since the issue has not caught fire as some had hoped. With many thousands of children in need of homes, the question is not whether a given child will have an idealized set of parents. "The question," as Congressman Barney Frank says, "is whether the child will be adopted at all."

Gay parents are quietly changing the social landscape simply by being a part of it. The right wing showed its awareness of this in early 2005, when PBS pulled the "Sugartime!" segment of Postcards from Buster off the air after U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings condemned it for showing the lesbian parents of the children Buster was visiting at a Vermont farm. WGBH, which produces the program, still made the segment available to PBS affiliates. When WETA in D.C. refused to run it, some colleagues and I wrote to the station's management protesting their caving in to the radical right's insistence that gay parents should be invisible.

WETA's polite but evasive reply included, "I hope you will continue to enjoy the many fine programs that we bring to the community and that you will not allow one decision to color your entire opinion of WETA." This implied that we were the ones being unfair, despite the fact that WETA happily took gay viewers' money while acquiescing in an anti-gay slander. But Buster and his friends had the last laugh. Not only did at least 45 PBS stations run the "Sugartime!" segment, the Family Pride Coalition and Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere have used it as an educational tool.

With the boom in gay parenting, my Dupont Circle neighborhood is awash in baby carriers and strollers. Children bring the world alive in new ways, and they can teach us a lot. For example, babies are not blank slates. This dawned on me 25 years ago when I sensed my newborn niece Jennifer's personality as we looked at each other through the glass of the hospital nursery. I generally thought of infants as noise and poop generators, and wasn't expecting anything more than a vague smile probably caused by gas. Yet there Jenny was, not a generic Muppet baby at all but a particular person already striking up a friendship. As with many of life's mysteries, I cannot explain it, I can only attest to it.

My friend Robert's great-nephew Joshua used to follow him everywhere, and wanted to be just like him. When Robert hosted a holiday party at his home for his office staff, Joshua greeted each guest just as he had watched his uncle do. Once, as Joshua played beside Robert with his Spiderman action figure, he started crying because Spiderman had "died" - meaning the doll wouldn't stand up. Robert saved the day by fixing Spidey good as new, and Joshua was overjoyed. When I think of all the children who have no Uncle Robert in their lives, I don't know whether to be angry or sad that some people are more eager to use them as props for telling cruel lies than to give them the nurturing they need.

In the early 1990s, a song by Fred Small called "Everything Possible" was popularized by the gay vocal quintet The Flirtations, and was subsequently sung by many gay choruses. It includes the line, "You can be anybody that you want to be." I appreciate its message of unconditional love and acceptance, but I think it goes a bit squishy. Children can be sturdy creatures if we give them some guidance and support. Better to tell them this: The only person you can ever be is yourself, but you are the one who gets to decide who that is. And I will always be here to help you become the best possible you.

A quick test of your commitment to the First Amendment is to ask yourself whether you support the American Civil Liberties Union in its lawsuit defending the right of the anti-gay Phelps clan to conduct its hateful demonstrations outside the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. Many will answer no, saying something like, "I'm all for freedom of speech, but it has limits."

The same sentiment was widely uttered earlier this year after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Many commentators seriously asserted that no one has a right to offend other people's beliefs. Similar views are often expressed about protesters burning the American flag.

In the current session of the Washington D.C. city council, a bill to protect adolescents and children from the corrupting influence of violent or obscene video games was co-introduced by every council member but one. Its sponsors, including the openly gay chair of the committee with jurisdiction, were unmoved by the lack of evidence that viewing videos causes violent behavior, or by the fact that similar censorship laws elsewhere have consistently been overturned as unconstitutional. The lone dissenting council member, unsurprisingly, was also that body's leading civil libertarian. Fortunately, the council chair, now running for mayor, has heeded the city's attorney general on the bill's dubious constitutionality and withdrawn her support.

Recently, a draft rulemaking was published for implementation of the D.C. Human Rights Act's prohibition against discrimination based on "gender identity or expression." The local ACLU chapter and the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (of which I am a member) raised First Amendment concerns about a provision declaring the use of certain words in the workplace as presumptive evidence of discrimination. ACLU cited the Supreme Court in Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden, which stated that "simple teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of employment." Rather than consider that perhaps the regulations should be tightened to withstand court scrutiny, the leader of the transgender activists expressed disappointment that anyone would raise First Amendment concerns, because "the First Amendment has often been used against us." Here was a member of a persecuted minority treating the keystone of American civil liberties as a hindrance.

In 2000, the ACLU was widely attacked for defending the free speech rights of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). In response to the criticism, an ACLU statement noted that over the years it had represented such diverse clients as a fundamentalist Christian church, a Santerian church, Oliver North and the National Socialist Party, adding, "In spite of all that, the ACLU has never advocated Christianity, ritual animal sacrifice, trading arms for hostages or genocide. In representing NAMBLA today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children.

"What the ACLU does advocate is robust freedom of speech for everyone. The lawsuit involved here, were it to succeed, would strike at the heart of freedom of speech. The case is based on a shocking murder. But the lawsuit says the crime is the responsibility not of those who committed the murder, but of someone who posted vile material on the Internet. The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not."

I myself took part in the expulsion of NAMBLA and other pedophile groups from the International Lesbian and Gay Association in 1994, and toward that end I wrote a critique of NAMBLA that was printed in several gay papers. I used a copy of the NAMBLA Bulletin as the basis of my critique, which would have been impossible had it been censored by the government. Objectionable opinions are more effectively addressed by rebuttal than concealment.

As members of a minority group, LGBT people should be especially alert to censorship's two-edged sword. In her excellent book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, ACLU President Nadine Strossen points out that the anti-pornography campaign led by feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin ended up being used against feminists themselves. After Canada, heeding the MacDworkinites, banned pornography that could be considered dehumanizing or degrading to women, Canadian officials began seizing shipments of books to gay and women's bookstores, including works by Dworkin herself.

Freedom of speech means nothing if not the right to offend, short of defamation and other narrowly drawn exceptions. In a 1943 Supreme Court ruling against forcing anyone to say or even stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Robert Jackson wrote, "Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom."

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote of academic freedom at the University of Virginia, "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is free to combat it."

You should not seek liberties for yourself that you would deny to others. Sure, it takes more effort to refute something offensive than simply to say, "Shut up," but if we cannot make our case without silencing our critics, we are in trouble. There is no good substitute for persuasion, and there are no shortcuts to freedom.

On July 26, a few hundred leftist LGBT activists and allies issued a manifesto entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," stating they "hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today." At over 3000 words, the document is far too radical, fails to focus on LGBT rights, is abysmally ill-timed, plays into the hands of the anti-gay right and reflects the old penchant of the gay left for building strategic bridges to nowhere.

The signatories are primarily from the liberationist wing of the LGBT movement. By contrast, those of us on the assimilationist side do not seek a revolution, we simply want equal rights. This dichotomy has existed since Harry Hay was expelled from the Mattachine Society in 1953. By long habit, the liberationists are using recent setbacks to portray us as a community under siege, as if we had not made astonishing progress and the polls were not shifting in our favor.

Some of the signatories, like Paula Ettelbrick, have long opposed the fight for equal marriage rights because they regard marriage as an oppressive patriarchal institution. Contrary to their static viewpoint, marriage and the rights of women have changed greatly over the past half-century, as reflected by landmark Supreme Court decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird and Roe v. Wade.

The manifesto decries "corporate greed" while ignoring the fact that the corporate sector has outstripped the public sector in granting domestic partner benefits. Indeed, the sweeping socialist rhetoric made me want to break into a hearty rendition of "The Internationale." Somehow, the grim and bloody history of utopian schemes does not discourage the True Believers, who seek to liberate us all from the most successful economic system in the history of the world because of its flaws. This reminds me of the Quentin Crisp line, "Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."

To show that their proposal "is neither utopian nor unrealistic," they point out that "in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives." The radical right does claim that same-sex marriage will lead to an explosion of polygamy and other unorthodox arrangements, but how in the world do we advance the gay-rights cause by letting our enemies frame the discussion?

The manifesto's all-inclusiveness reflects the longstanding liberationist opposition to focusing primarily on LGBT issues, because, they say, all oppressions are linked. No other minority group has been so apologetic about working for its own interests. The same liberationists who make a fetish of diversity (instead of simply dealing with it as many of us have learned to do) also habitually denigrate white men, which suggests they are inspired more by guilt or revenge than by egalitarianism.

The manifesto touts a long list of issues, including health care, housing, Social Security, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance. How is all of this the special province of the gay community? Taking on every non-gay-specific issue only makes us a bigger target for our adversaries. Marriage equality and the incremental steps toward it will pose enough of a challenge for the next couple of decades.

Society is continually changing, though not all at once. Those who regard marriage as oppressive treat it as monolithic and unchanging, which ironically is precisely how our adversaries on the religious right see it.

On the contrary, allowing same-sex couples to marry is just one more reform enhancing a foundational institution of society. The liberationists object to the special status accorded marriage, citing (for example) the needs of poor non-traditional families, which are "disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women." Not only do the manifesto writers show no interest in examining which taxpayer-funded solutions have worked and which have not, they treat the high number of broken homes in the black community as a mere lifestyle choice instead of a tragedy.

Another theme of the document is gender nonconformity. As someone who has worked in practical ways for transgender rights for many years, I see no need to spin all of society around every variation in order to defend diversity. Efforts by Queer Theorists to redefine "sex" and "gender" have obscured more than enlightened. While gender roles vary significantly from culture to culture, the division of the sexes into male and female is a result of biology, not a social construct. The fact that a small number of people fall between the two stools, and deserve protection, does not change this basic duality in our genetic makeup. The notion that tolerance requires abolishing our biologically derived categories is, well, perverse.

Unlike the manifesto writers, I do not consider myself part of a "queer" community, and I have no intention of accepting "gender queer" as a serious category. Mind you, I am a longtime gay rights activist; the average American voter will be even less receptive to the permanent revolution implied by these counterculturists who emphasize differences rather than common values, victimhood rather than inner strength, and entitlement rather than responsibility. Demanding equal legal status for every conceivable type of relationship, including polyamory, is a strategy for permanent outsider status.

The rallying cry about leaving no one behind brings to mind the overcrowded, un-seaworthy boats in which so many Cuban refugees have drowned. Flying the false flag of liberation, the authors of the Beyond Marriage manifesto would have us all climb aboard a ship of fools.

On July 19, protests were held around the world marking the first anniversary of the hanging of two gay teens, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, in Mashhad, Iran. The teens were hanged on charges that they raped a 13-year-old boy, charges widely believed to have been trumped up to silence critics. Simon Forbes and Peter Tatchell of the British gay rights group OutRage issued a joint call with the Paris-based International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) for worldwide protests with the message, "Iran: Stop Killing Gays! Stop Killing Kids!"

In Washington, Rob Anderson led a protest at Dupont Circle. In San Francisco, Michael Petrelis assembled speakers at Harvey Milk Plaza. In Provincetown, Andrew Sullivan led a quiet vigil outside Town Hall. In Toronto, Arsham Parsi, Human Rights Secretary of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO), spoke at a commemorative gathering. In Iran, PGLO members lit candles privately.

During the planning of the protests, OutRage proposed five demands, which were endorsed by PGLO and IDAHO. They included ending all executions in Iran; stopping the arrest and torture of LGBT Iranians; halting the deportation to Iran of LGBT and other asylum seekers; supporting Iranians struggling for democracy; and opposing foreign military intervention in Iran.

Some organizers in an email exchange questioned the need for a list of demands. Andrew Sullivan wrote, "The images tell you everything. We just need to stop and remember. The rest we can debate later." I emailed to say that the list of demands omitted 'opposition to Holocaust denial' and 'opposition to nuclear saber rattling'." But the European organizers kept their demands, while stressing that organizers in other cities were free to adopt them or not.

On July 7, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) announced that it would join the July 19 worldwide action with a vigil against the death penalty, outside the Iranian mission to the United Nations. On July 13, however, IGLHRC pulled out of the protest and announced it was moving its July 19 event and changing its focus to one of introspection for Westerners. (The Iranian mission protest was held by others, organized by Andy Humm.) Joining IGLHRC at New York's LGBT Community Center were Human Rights Watch (HRW), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and others. IGLHRC said that the worldwide call for protests raised questions like "How do we avoid reinforcing stereotypes and playing into hostilities prompted by our own government?"

The reference to "our own government" was illuminated by a July 18 email from Scott Long of HRW to Peter Tatchell, writing, "Months of US pressure on Iran have only inflated the popularity of the Ahmedinejad government" - thus changing the subject to Ugly Americans. Long accused the protest organizers of rank speculation, and claimed that the concentration on the Mashhad hangings "pins refugees' fates and lives on a single undetermined case, rather than on an analysis of the overall situation in Iran" - despite the fact that OutRage three months ago published a report of a nine-month investigation by Simon Forbes into numerous cases based on information gathered from sources inside Iran.

While acknowledging that Iran tortures and kills people for homosexual conduct, Long stated, "There is no basis whatever for imputing a Westernized 'gay' identity to these youths" - thereby employing a Western social-constructionist trope belied by the involvement of self-identified gay Iranians in the July 19 organizing. Long contradicted his professed respect for Tatchell's work by injecting lines like "I do not play games with the dead" (as if Tatchell does), "Look at the world, not just London and New York," and "Do you have a plan for change, or just for catharsis?"

Tatchell, whose brave international activism has gone far beyond mere catharsis, had written in a July 14 open letter to Long and IGLHRC's Paula Ettelbrick that Iranian sources claim that Asgari and Marhoni were gay and were hanged for being lovers. Tatchell wrote, "I am not prepared to give the benefit of doubt to the murderous regime in Tehran...." He also noted that the July 19 protest message was worded more broadly, without reference to the Mashhad case.

In a July 6 interview in Gay City News, Doug Ireland quotes Mani (not his real name), a 24-year-old PGLO activist living in Iran: "You who live serenely and comfortably on the other side of Iran's frontiers, be aware that those who think and feel and love like you do in Iran are executed for the crime of homosexuality, are assassinated, kidnapped, and barred from working in offices…. Be fair and tell us what difference there is between us and you. Isn't it time that all homosexuals around the world rise up and come to our defense?" On July 19, people in dozens of cities worldwide answered a resounding Yes.

HRW has written over 50 affidavits for Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, and is preparing a report on abuses in Iran based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is commendable, but does not justify belittling the efforts of others.

The condescension of some professional activists is both illiberal and pointless. No one needs permission from a central committee to fight for our rightful place in the world. Demonstrations are insufficient, to be sure, but the global protests on July 19, organized via the Internet, shone a light on a grave injustice. That is a good and necessary thing to do, the snipings of would-be gatekeepers notwithstanding.

After last week's General Convention of The Episcopal Church, held in Columbus, Ohio, gay attendees and their allies were taking a while to absorb its meaning. As friends of mine on the scene noted, the worst did not happen. No resolution was adopted expressing regret or apology for the election of Gene Robinson as a bishop in 2003. Nor was a resolution adopted halting the development of rites for same-sex unions. Also, gay-supportive Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada was elected the first woman presiding bishop.

On the other hand, the day after the Convention voted to reject the anti-gay Windsor Report, bishops (with help from Jefferts Schori, and using what many have called heavy-handed tactics) pushed through a resolution "to engage in a process of healing and reconciliation," and to "call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."

Bishop Robinson writes, "The scene of gay and lesbian deputies, willing to fall on their own swords for the presumed good of the Church, voting for this resolution against their own self-interest was an act of self-sacrifice that I won't soon forget.

"Keeping us in conversation with the Anglican Communion was the goal - for which the price was declaring gay and lesbian people unfit material for the episcopate. Only time will tell whether or not even that was accomplished. Within minutes - yes, MINUTES - the conservatives both within our Church and in Africa declared our sacrificial action woefully inadequate. It felt like a kick in the teeth...."

The Anglican Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, a leader of the right-wing forces, concluded a June 23 open letter to the Episcopal Church USA with this: "We assure all those Scripturally faithful dioceses and congregations alienated and marginalised within your Provincial structure that we have heard their cries." That's like a guy confiding in you that he intends to marry your wife after she divorces you. Akinola seeks reconciliation the way a predator does with its prey. This is not about theology, it is about power, and gay issues are merely a pretext for the power grab.

These are the makings of a schism. The Western branches of the Communion can hardly allow themselves to be overrun by medieval obscurantism in the name of unity. As Akinola himself stated after the destruction of Christian churches in northern Nigeria by Islamist thugs, "From all indications, it is very clear now that the sacrifices of the Christians in this country for peaceful co-existence with people of other faiths has [sic] been sadly misunderstood to be weakness."

How right you are, Eminence. The impulse toward compromise on the part of tolerant progressives is exploited by intolerant conservatives who have no interest in compromise. There is no reason why continuing a conversation should require unilateral concessions. The appeasement in Columbus was reminiscent of the signing of the Munich Agreement by Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The difference in this case is that the appeased aggressor won't bother to sign a phony peace agreement.

Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark Cathedral, contrasts Akinola's obsession over homosexuality with his church's relative silence regarding Nigeria's "massive abuse of women, polygamy, female mutilation and stoning for adultery." In the Gospel of John, of course, when the scribes and Pharisees cite Mosaic law calling for an adulterous woman to be stoned, Jesus replies, "Let the one who has not sinned cast the first stone." But Akinola is far more in sympathy with the Pharisees.

The current acrimony's roots lie in the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which, as retired Bishop John Shelby Spong writes, "was overwhelmed by a homophobic combination of first world Anglican evangelicals with third world Bible quoting Anglican fundamentalists."

More recently, the Windsor Commission called for the 38 national branches of the Anglican Communion to endorse "current Anglican teaching." To the contrary, Spong notes that the Anglican Church "has never recognized an infallible pope or an inerrant Bible," and asks, "Would those Anglicans who have engaged critical biblical scholarship be asked to subscribe to the pre-modern mindset of some third world countries that oppose evolution, interpret the Virgin Birth as literal biology or view the Resurrection as a physical resuscitation?"

The problem is not disunity, but dogmatism. Some people are convinced that they have a lock on divine truth, and that it lies in a literal-minded reading of the Bible. This does not resemble Anglicanism. Others, who value the past two centuries of biblical scholarship as well as extra-Biblical sources such as the reality of God's creation, recognize that as mortals we can never possess the knowledge of God, but can only seek greater understanding. As Bishop Spong observes, "Whenever growth occurs there is always conflict and dislocation." This happened previously over the issue of women bishops. Quite simply, the children of the Enlightenment have to stand and fight for it.

The prophet Ezekiel spoke against false prophets: "They have misled my people by saying 'Peace!' when there is no peace. Instead of my people rebuilding the wall, these men come and slap on plaster. Tell these plasterers: It will rain hard, it will hail, it will blow a gale, and down will come the wall."

Let it come down.

As the Capital Pride parade turns the corner of R Street and 17th, my friends and I stand on our chairs on the patio of Dupont Italian Kitchen and cheer the marchers on. Leading off the parade is the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the Metropolitan Police Department, running their sirens to cheers from the crowd. They are followed by more than a dozen local candidates, as well as the gay marching band, gay-welcoming ministries, athletes preparing for the Gay Games, floats with bodybuilders and drag queens and two-stepping cowboys, and various groups marching behind their banners. As always, the biggest cheers are for the PFLAG parents.

I'm not sure whether it's the arrival of June, the recent change in the political climate, or sheer resilience that makes the crowd's disposition so sunny. Given how much harm the radical right has done to faith, flag and family in the very name of those things, those of us who have been their principal scapegoats would have ample reason to be angry. But I was more depressed than angry a few days earlier, as the U.S. Senate began the week by debating whether to write gay families out of the Constitution.

It wasn't that the Marriage Prevention Amendment (as it ought to be called) had any chance of passage. I was thinking of my lover Patrick, whose permanent asylum application was recently denied by Belgium. If he loses his appeal, he faces deportation back to Africa. One of his uncles there attacked him with a knife four years ago, after learning that he was gay and was involved with me. Patrick fought back, and a few days later I helped him escape Africa. Unable to bring him here to the U.S., all I can do now is help pay his lawyer and hope that the weeks pass quickly until I can see him again.

The day before the Senate vote, civil rights leaders and anti-gay ministers held separate press conferences on the U.S. Senate grounds. Among those gathered by the Human Rights Campaign for the pro-gay event, in addition to the usual talking points, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) expressed pride in the human rights legacy of his state's constitution, and in the Goodridge decision that continues it. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) used words he has used many times, calling on his nation to be "one people, one family, one house, the American house, the American family, the American nation."

At the anti-gay rally earlier in the day, Bishop Harry Jackson of Bowie, Maryland, claimed that same-sex marriage would increase the number of black children without a mother and a father. He did not explain how this would happen. Speaking at the HRC rally, Rev. Nathan Harris of D.C.'s Lincoln Congregational Temple said, "Heterosexual marriage has done a good job on its own of falling apart."

I thanked Rep. Lewis after the HRC rally, and he expressed optimism about the coming election. Whenever I meet him, I marvel anew at the fortitude that enabled him to survive the Freedom Rides and Bloody Sunday four decades ago, and at the good fortune of gay Americans in having such a steadfast ally in this civil rights hero. In his quiet determination and grace I recognize qualities that impressed me about Patrick.

When our personal journeys include fighting for equality as gay people, they can bring estrangement from our families. For many of us, risking that estrangement was an essential part of asserting ourselves, of coming into our own. But a necessary step is not the same as the goal. However far we travel, we often feel the presence of our birth families as we form families of our own. The shared values endure after the fighting is over.

The same is true for us politically as we fight for legal protections that others take for granted, because the people we need to win over include members of our own families. As is illustrated by the ubiquitous story of the disastrous Thanksgiving dinner, sometimes our families can bring out the worst in us, and we find ourselves pouring salt on old wounds. When you have so much shared history with people, it can be hard to turn over a new page. Winning votes among this constituency is politics at its most retail.

Standing near my friends and me during the pride parade is a straight black couple with a toddler of perhaps 18 months. The little boy jumps up and down and claps as he watches a colorful float go by, and there is no sign that his parents see this any differently than an old-fashioned Fourth of July parade. He has not learned to hate, and Mom and Dad show no sign of intending to teach him. In that child, I glimpse our future.

Despite all that my Patrick has gone through with his family, and his strength and resolve in standing up for himself, he still feels strong family ties. He misses his brother terribly. Once when I was with him in Brussels, he learned of the death of a family member. I could feel his anguish at not being able to be there. We decided to send money to help with the funeral expenses, a customary obligation. Prior to that, I was merely Patrick's lover. With that simple act, for the first time, and whether they liked it or not, I was family.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 36,000 same-sex couples are living in America where one partner is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and the other is a foreign national. Thousands more of these binational couples had to emigrate to keep their families together. My own lover is a refugee from Africa currently living in Europe, and even with a sponsorship letter, he cannot obtain as much as a tourist visa.

I met Patrick five years ago during an overseas trip. As our love grew in the months and years that followed, he has survived a murder attempt by his family, lengthy struggles over his papers and asylum applications, unemployment and international wandering. Somehow, despite all of that, we have also known great joy. To the U.S. Government, however, our love is either invisible or a threat to homeland security.

The plight of many similar couples is documented in a report released on May 2 by Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality entitled Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under U.S. Law. Nearly 200 pages, it is available online at immigrationequality.org and hrw.org/reports/2006/us0506/, and documents a broad range of cases, including these:

After a Colombian gay rights activist writes to a guerilla group urging it to end its anti-gay violence, he receives death threats and a savage beating. His American partner helps him get a training visa to the U.S., after which they begin the lengthy, expensive process of filing an asylum claim. After doctors document the Colombian's injuries from the beating, he is interviewed by a clearly hostile official, and weeks later receives a written "Notice of Intent to Deny" in which the word "faggot" is used without quotation marks. The decision is overturned on appeal.

A North Carolina woman's Hungarian partner is forced to leave the country with the children both have raised. A male-to-female transgender is detained for months, housed with male prisoners, denied medication or outside contact and taunted by fellow prisoners with Buju Banton's murderously homophobic song, "Boom Bye Bye."

Even when couples successfully navigate the system, such as by juggling tourist and student and work visas, every plane trip risks deportation or detention. For example, an American woman's Danish partner of nearly 18 years is detained twice while entering the U.S. to visit her. "They asked me why I was going to school, what I was doing there, if I could prove it, why I had left the states, why I was coming back … I was bombarded with questions."

The footnotes accompanying these stories are filled with phrases like "names changed at their request," "requested anonymity," and "last name withheld at his request," in order to protect the security of the interviewees. All this unavoidable secrecy is chilling in itself.

As the report shows, the recent irrational furor over immigrants is nothing new, any more than the stoking of sexual fears. In 1896, one congressman said that immigration needed to be limited "to preserve the human blood and manhood of the American character by the exclusion of depraved human beings." In 1952, during the "red scare" period, the McCarran-Walter Act barred "aliens afflicted with psychopathic personality, epilepsy or mental defect," and Congress made clear that this included homosexuals. The gay immigration ban was not lifted until 1990. A misguided and counterproductive ban on HIV-positive immigrants was passed in 1993 amid similar nativist hysteria, and was signed into law by President Clinton. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) effectively excluded gay couples as families for immigration purposes.

To help end the discrimination against binational gay families, Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality make several recommendations, including repeal of DOMA and the HIV immigration ban, and passage of the Uniting American Families Act. This bill, introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), would add "permanent partner" to the classes of family members who can sponsor a foreign national for immigration to America.

We can learn from South Africa. Its Constitutional Court, in a decision last year affirming equal marriage rights, wrote, "What is at stake is not simply a question of removing an injustice experienced by a particular section of the community. At issue is a need to affirm the very character of our society as one based on tolerance and mutual respect."

Some day America will recognize this, and will extend its longstanding policy favoring family reunification to encompass same-sex couples. But the thousands of us who are affected cannot put our lives on hold indefinitely while waiting for the light to dawn. We must summon the fortitude to carry on. Even for those whose relationships last, a great price is paid in isolation and anguish in addition to the plane tickets, phone bills and legal fees.

I dislike having to politicize the most cherished relationship of my life. I wish I could just marry Patrick and have him come live with me as he wants to do. But others who know us only as demonized abstractions have come between us, and I will not be bullied into submission. For me the stories in Family, Unvalued are not only depressing and infuriating but also inspiring. But whether our stories are comforting or discomforting, we must keep telling them and supporting groups like Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality - and electing more politicians who defend equal immigration rights - until our homes and families are whole.

"I am not feeling safe at all now and seek legal advice on what the possibilities are and where I can get help."

I received this plea a few days ago from a bisexual in the U.S. military. Fortunately for him, there is more help available today than when Frank Kameny, a combat veteran of the Second World War, began fighting against the military gay ban in the early 1960s. Back then, anti-gay U.S. Government policies covered civil service and security clearances as well as military service. In about 1962, Kameny posted leaflets in the State Department and many other places with the message, "Say nothing. Sign nothing. Get counsel. Fight back." Today there is the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, so I was able to tell my troubled correspondent, "Say nothing. Sign nothing. Call SLDN."

While victories have since been won on civil service and security clearances, the anti-gay military policy remains stubbornly in place. Although it became statutory in 1993, the basic policy is much older. "I encountered it," Kameny recalls, "when I enlisted in the Army on May 18,1943, three days before my 18th birthday. I was asked whether I had homosexual tendencies, and I said no. I have resented for 63 years that I had to lie to serve my country."

One of the resources at www.sldn.org is SLDN's "Survival Guide" to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass." It emphasizes the legal rights that service members have under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the importance of getting an experienced attorney: "A wrong word can mean the difference between staying in or getting kicked out, saving pension or educational benefits versus forfeiting them, even freedom or prison. Signing the wrong thing could mean a waiver ... of legal rights."

The guide includes some sobering observations: "Service members confide in military chaplains at their own risk." "The government considers itself free to introduce illegally-obtained evidence in discharge cases and there is no way to keep that evidence out." "There is no doctor-patient confidentiality in the military."

With considerable understatement, SLDN writes, "On July 19, 1993, former President Clinton proclaimed that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' would put an end to witch hunts. Nevertheless, witch hunts continue in some commands." Well, yes. In this election year, it is important to remember that the execrable law Clinton signed was a bipartisan affair.

In 2003, Clinton wrote to SLDN, "When I proposed lifting the ban on gays in the military, I met strong political opposition. In fact, the Senate voted against my policy with a veto-proof majority." If that statement is not an outright lie, it is at least a lie by omission, because a proposed measure that would have given the President the authority to determine the policy was defeated by less than veto-proof numbers. Thus Clinton could have forced a compromise had he stuck to his guns. Here we see the formerly powerful revising the record to make himself look like a better leader than he was.

The longer the war on terrorism lasts, and the more gay veterans come out, the more untenable the current exclusionary policy is. Similar bans have been abandoned by virtually all of our allies, leaving America increasingly isolated in its backward stance. Not only does the current policy impede military readiness, it places prejudice ahead of our national security. How else can one explain the forcible discharge of several gay Arabic interpreters despite the dire need for their skills?

If gays harm unit cohesion and morale, then why have gay-related discharges decreased since 2001? As SLDN says, "Honor is a Core Value in the military. The policy's requirement that lesbian, gay or bisexual service members live in the closet, lying daily, evading, dissembling and hiding their sexual orientation from peers, superiors and subordinates, directly conflicts with the Service's basic values." Approximately 10,000 gay American patriots have been discharged since 1993. At a time of war, when our volunteer forces are stretched so thin that stop-loss orders are issued, it makes no sense that we have kicked out 10,000 highly skilled and motivated warriors. Whose side are the brass and the policymakers on? Indeed, barring the services of so many with much to offer gives aid and comfort to our enemies, which is one of the definitions of treason in Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution.

Speaking of whose side people are on, our gay service members do not need false allies who use the gay ban merely as an excuse to bash a military that they despise in any case. Years ago, at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's annual Creating Change Conference, lesbian comedian Kate Clinton included this line in her comedy routine: "They say that gays will harm the military. Good!" She got whoops and applause from the crowd. The interests of gays in uniform can hardly be served by people who so gleefully throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Our gay brothers and sisters in military service, in addition to the normal risks of their profession, face threats to their lives and careers from within their own ranks and at the hands of their own government. Those of us who truly respect their service and their sacrifice owe it to them to keep our voices raised against this insane policy, and to support those like SLDN who help them.