IGF CultureWatch

Warning: the following viewpoints are controversial and may offend. Please don't write and try to get me fired (actually, I'm not employed by IGF, so that really won't work anyhow).

The above jest is prompted by this: A recent alert from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took socially conservative columnist Thomas Sowell to task for recently writing, among other things, that "Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have," and "Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football" - statements that GLAAD dismisses as "so silly that, despite their underlying offensiveness, it is difficult to take them seriously."

Sowell also went further into offensiveness, writing "What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS."

That's an ugly comment that should be responded to and exposed for its mendacity. But GLAAD's alert does something else - it also calls on people to write Sowell's distributor, Creators Syndicate, and complain about its distributing "Thomas Sowell's repugnant, bigoted attack on gay and lesbian Americans."

As emotionally satisfying as that might make people feel, it's a questionable tactic. Sowell is very popular, and Creators Syndicate won't drop him because of letters prompted by a gay organization when those letters are clearly from folks who aren't part of Sowell's conservative readership base. Worse, it's a tactic that mirrors what religious conservative groups like the American Family Association do - try to get things banned, or taken off the air, because they don't approve.

Creators Syndicate also distributes lesbian columnist Deb Price. GLAAD's response, "Please write Creators and ask why the presence of one inclusive columnist excuses the publication of anti-gay bigotry from another." But many social conservatives find Price's views deeply offensive to their fundamentalist sensibilities, too.

My experience is that GLAAD doesn't much like to debate; it doesn't seek out opportunities to intellectually engage opponents on the social and religious right. For GLAAD, if it's not hobnobbing with the Hollywood set, it's unleashing angry broadsides. Or trying to get TV/radio personalities off the air (or, in this case, mau-mauing a syndicate over a columnist). Again, this is just what the American Family Association does with authors/personalities/shows it doesn't like.

When we adopt our enemy's tactics, we become what they are. Liberty is based on the active engagement of ideas, and through that engagement convincing the public that your principles are truer and more virtuous than your opponents'. In the words of an old political slogan of the left, "To be attacked by your enemy is a good thing," as it gives you an opportunity to engage the battle (and, in this case, the battle of ideas). We shouldn't be afraid of stepping up to that challenge.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal to Florida's law banning gays from adopting children, leading social conservatives to pledge more such laws.

But opponents of the Florida law say they are ready to combat efforts to duplicate it - and will continue to encourage Florida lawmakers to repeal the ban. And even Florida's attorney in this matter, Casey Walker, told the Supreme Court that "Even though some may disagree with it as a policy matter, the place to change it is the Legislature and not the courts."

I believe courts do have a fundamental role in protecting basic equality under the law, even in the face of the "tyranny of the majority." But we also have to face facts, and in the current political climate even when courts do rule for equal treatment for gays, their decisions can be overturned by state ballot initiatives (or even a U.S. constitutional amendment). There is simply no getting around the need to engage the public (i.e., the voters who either elect judges, or elect those who appoint judges) and win them over.

Today's LA Times story on anti-gay violence in Jamaica puts into perspective the rights and freedoms we enjoy as Americans and Europeans (that is, as non-Third-Worlders). But Jamaica does seem to be a hate-infested hell in a league of its own. As the Times reports:

When gay rights activist Brian Williamson was stabbed to death in June and jubilant crowds danced around his mutilated body, police said he was a robbery victim. When Jamaican reggae dancehall musicians were bumped from U.S. and British concert appearances last year over lyrics encouraging the killing of gays, people here called the censure a failure to respect free speech.

When Human Rights Watch issued a withering condemnation of homophobia in Jamaica in November and accused police and politicians of condoning anti-gay violence and harassment, government spokesmen rejected the report as "lies" and "nonsense," and a senior police official called for sedition charges to be brought against its authors.

The Times also notes that celebrated dancehall singer Beenie Man swoons, "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica - come to execute all the gays." Similar lines in songs by dancehall artist Sizzla prompted British authorities to deny him a visa for five concerts late last year. Another popular singer, Buju Banton, took part in the beating of six gay men in June, as a crowd cheered on the attackers.

Just a sad reminder of how benighted much of the world truly is.

Update: Columnist Mark Steyn thrashes the U.K.'s leftwing Guardian newspaper for trying to to blame Jamaican gay-bashing on the island's colonial heritage.

More Recent Postings
1/02/05 - 1/08/05

As the inauguration approaches, Bay Windows takes a look at splits between gay conservatives who support President Bush and Log Cabin leaders who opposed Bush (hat tip: Gay Patriot).

No official Log Cabin events are scheduled for the inauguration, but LCR will have to deal with the fact that "This year's election saw 23 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual voters cast ballots for Bush according to exit polls, down just two percent from 2000, indicating that conservative gay and lesbian people generally remained faithful to the president."

So, what do you do when your membership (or pool of prospective members) are heading in one direction and you're going the other way?

OK, just a few final words on Sontag, then I'll shut up. Michael Bronski writes in Bay Windows:

The more interesting question concerns Sontag herself. Given that we know Sontag was a woman who enjoyed sexually intimate relationships with other women (indeed, Sontag's friend Doug Ireland recalls in a blog post published the day Sontag died that, "We often talked about sexuality - she was quite amusing in recounting her own amorous adventures with women,") what does it mean that Sontag, given her feminism, her progressive politics, and her commitment to human rights - would not publicly identify herself as a lesbian?

One possible, even obvious, answer is that Sontag's career benefited by her remaining closeted.

That's the conclusion many are now reaching. And what it reveals is something interesting about the left - that the very identity politics it promotes can be so limiting that an intellectual of the left would actively dissuade public reporting of her being gay, so as not to be reduced to a "lesbian intellectual."

That might have served Sontag's career, but it unfortunately reinforced some very negative cultural attitudes (not just, of course, on the left) that must be confronted by those of us who are openly gay and don't want that to be viewed as limiting whatever else we may choose to accomplish in public life.

Today's L.A. Times contains a commentary titled "Susan Sontag and a Case of Curious Silence," which notes:

It seems that editors at what are, arguably, the nation's most respected (and liberal) newspapers believe that one personal detail cannot be mentioned in even the most complete biographies - being a lesbian....

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times found ample room to discuss Sontag's cancer and subsequent mastectomy, which were not seen as lurid details but as necessary information in understanding the work of the author of "Illness as Metaphor." ... However, her relationships with women and how they shaped her thoughts on gay culture and the larger world of outsiders and outlaws (a Sontag fascination) were omitted.

Meanwhile, the conservative Frontpagemagzine.com characterizes Sontag as "a doyenne of radical chic." Yet as a leading light of the intellectual left, her decision to remain closeted raises questions in need of answers.

And aside from Sontag's own motives, why would the liberal media choose to aid in her cover-up? Among the commentators (and tormentors) on yesterday's blog item, "Pillar" offers this:

If a public figure such as Sontag (as opposed to a nebbish congressional staffer who is not a public figure) wanted the liberal media to keep quiet about her being a lesbian, that's worth noting and asking why she didn't want to be identified as gay. Did she think it would have impeded here being taken seriously as a leading anti-American polemicist? If so, doesn't that tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged homophobia (just as quotas tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged racism)?

That's about as good a guess as any I can come up with right now.

Update: Andrew Sullivan weighs in on the brouhaha, writing:

Sontag understood that her lesbianism might limit her appeal in a homophobic culture - even on the extreme left, where she comfortably lived for decades. That was her prerogative. But that's no reason for the media to perpetuate untruths after her death.

Occasionally forthcoming about her relationships, Sontag would then retreat into denial. But in covering public figures in this day and age, the media shouldn't treat being gay as something so "sensitive" it can only be mentioned with the figure's expressed authorization (which is moot, in any event, when that figure is deceased).
--Stephen H. Miller

A brouhaha is brewing over the fact that such liberal bastions as the New York Times, the L.A. Times and Washington Post failed to mention that recently departed author and "public intellectual" Susan Sontag had lived for many years in a lesbian relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz that was not, shall we say, kept secret. According to an item in the N.Y. Daily News:

Don't look for gay ladies in the Gray Lady. The New York Times paid tribute to the late Susan Sontag yesterday with a beautifully written obituary, plus a moving tribute by Charles McGrath, totaling almost 4,000 words. But apparently that wasn't enough space to mention that she was the partner of celebrity portraitist Annie Leibovitz for 20 years.

Writes reporter Steve Koval on the Houston Voice's blog:

Whatever Sontag's reasons for remaining coy about her sexual orientation, why is it that in 2004, the obituary of a famous gay (or bisexual) social critic gets de-gayed?

He then quotes gay firebrand Larry Kramer defending Sontag's public silence on the subject; in Kramer's words:

"Susan is...beyond being a lesbian. I know I'm probably saying something very politically incorrect, but, except for the fact that she has affairs with women, she doesn't really fit into that category.... What she is more than anything else is an 'Intellectual,' with a capital 'I.'

Says Koval, "With all due respect to Larry Kramer, I don't know what 'beyond being a lesbian' means. Apparently, the New York Times and other straight publications do."

The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune, by the way, were among a number of newspapers that did refer to Leibovitz as Sontag's "longtime companion."

For those unfamiliar with Sontag, according to ABC News:

Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history." Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers.

But when it came to gay equality, she kept mostly silent. Even her famous essay on gay men and "camp" sensibility, Paul Varnell notes, was full of caustic observations:

"Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense," she wrote. "Camp is the solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation. ..." A decade later Sontag viciously attacked Camp and its aesthetic sensibility because it was corrupting and "the ethical and cultural issues it raises have become serious, even dangerous." But for those who read carefully, that was her view from the beginning.

So what does this all add up to? I'm not sure. I don't believe in outing, but if a very public person is living openly in a same-sex relationship that's widely recognized within her social circle, then keeping that fact out of her obituary seems, to me, unacceptable. Yet apparently many on the liberal left are quite willing to play "let's pretend" when it comes to one of their own.

As far as we've come since the sexually repressed America portrayed in the movie "Kinsey," ignorance about sexuality continues to fuel much of the antipathy towards gays in this country. Evidence: Rick Sincere (who recently launched his own blog), alerts me to an item defending gay unions on the blog of a straight Republican, Tony Iovino, who observes:

When we see a heterosexual couple, we see them as Dick and Lynn, individual adults who are a couple. We don't think of them as a couple engaging in sex. Think about it -- what if the first thing you thought of when you saw the Cheneys holding hands on a stage was their sexual activities? You'd gag. As you would with just about any couple, other than Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt. But when we see gay couples, we are immediately focused on their sexuality, like you would be drawn to the hair of someone wearing a giant orange Afro wig. And it freaks us out.

That is, I think, the crux of the matter -- the deep sense of unease associated with gay sexuality, seen as legitimatized and promoted by legal recognition of gay unions, along with the strong fear of unleashing sexual anarchy if traditional is altered too rapidly. In any event, chanting "bigots" and "haters" and feeling smugly superior won't make the problem go away.

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12/26/04 - 1/01/05

Joe Perez's Gay Culture and Spirituality blog looks at the dangers of criminalizing hate speech (or even "hate thoughts"), explaining why "the mainstream gay movement in the US needs to be more vocal in our opposition to hate-crime laws that include the 'crime' of offensive speech." But don't expect the movement LGBTers to embrace that idea anytime soon.

Long-time anti-gay neo-con Midge Decter shows she's still full of venom in "Civil Unions: Compromise or Surrender?", in the newsletter Imprimis. Decter fumes:

The term "civil marriage" or "civil union" has become a euphemism for both the legal and social legitimation of homosexuality....

The right to legal marriage that they are demanding is not about them - it is about the rest of us. It is, and is meant to be, a spit in the eye of the way we live. And whatever the variety of efforts to oppose it - another law or even a whole set of laws, let's say, or a constitutional amendment - none of it will matter unless and until all the nice and decent people in America begin to understand that we are in a crisis, and it must be up to them to sustain, and with all good cheer defend, the way they lead their lives....

For it is not compromise that the homosexual rights movement is after. Nor do they even want the standing in the community that heterosexuals have. They are radicals. What they want is not a room of their own; they want to bring the whole damned house down.

As nice as it would be to simply dismiss such vitriol, it's important to realize that this is what a lot of folks actually think, and not just members of the fundamentalist Christian "religious right."