IGF CultureWatch

Last week's issue of Time magazine had, buried in a long piece about American Taliban John Walker Lindh, a suggestion that "Taliban Johnny" had shared a gay relationship with a Pakistani businessman named Khazar Hayat. Here's how it was picked up and sensationalized by the New York Daily News in a piece titled: Bizman: Lindh was my gay lover:

John Walker Lindh's "dangerous journey" into Islamic militancy was cemented by a sexual relationship with a Pakistani businessman who guided the American Taliban turncoat toward schools that fueled his hatred for the United States, [Time] magazine reported yesterday. "It was the beginning of the dangerous journey, the first jaunt, the pleasure journey," Mufti Mohammad Iltimas Khan, a spiritual adviser, said of Lindh's encounter with the businessman.

Time's actual article, The Making of John Walker Lindh, had this to say:

Hayat met Lindh and took him on a tour of various madrasahs, searching for the perfect one from Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the northwest. The young American rejected them all and preferred remaining at Hayat's side. He helped Hayat at his store, a prosperous business dealing in powdered milk. Hayat, who has a wife and four children, says he had sex with Lindh. "He was liking me very much. All the time he wants to be with me," says Hayat, who has a good though not colloquial command of English. "I was loving him. Because love begets love, you know."

But something about this doesn't seem to gel, since earlier news reports had noted Lindh's rejection of his gay father as morally corrupt. Soon after, CNN weighed in with this take, in Pakistani man denies having sex with Taliban American:

Hayat, who said Walker Lindh stayed with him about a month, denied having sexual relations with the young American. "That's nonsense," he said. "We never had any such relationship." Lindh's lawyers deny that their client engaged in any homosexual relationships.

I don't know what the truth is, but it seems like Time's reliance on evidence such as Hyat's fractured English was probably suspect.

Interestingly, while Time was quick to publicize a gay allegation for Lindh, the New York Times treaded a bit too carefully when it came to discussing the homosexual orientation of a true hero. In a Sept. 20 piece titled Killed on 9/11, Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger Than Life,
Daniel J. Wakin writes this of Father Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department chaplain who perished shortly after administering last rites to a firefighter inside the burning World Trade Center:

Many Roman Catholics find in him a positive, indeed shining, example of a priest at a time when the priestly image is suffering from the sexual abuse scandal in the Church. Another group has publicly sung Father Judge's praises since his death: gay rights advocates. Some have spoken openly about what they say was his homosexual orientation, and the former New York City fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said that Father Judge had long ago come out to him. Still, the presence of the gay issue has caused some rancor among other friends, who resent what they say are attempts by the gay rights advocates to use Father Judge to further their agenda. [italics added]

And later:

Father Judge's name is also invoked by gay rights advocates, who maintain that the priest's sexuality was an important part of his make-up as a man and a priest.

Some of Father Judge's friends, however, are angry by what they see as opportunism by some gay rights advocates. These friends emphasize that any sexual orientation that he may have had is irrelevant. Some are hostile to the suggestion he was homosexual.

Actually, quite a number of Father Judge's gay friends have said that he was very much at ease with his homosexual orientation (though no one, as far as I know, has said he was sexually active). Moreover, Father Judge worked with the gay Catholic group Dignity, and marched in the alternative St. Patrick's Day Parade. However, at a time when some in the Vatican hierarchy are calling for purging homosexually oriented priests, the presence of the saintly but gay Father Judge is clearly causing some grief, and much denial. But unlike the shaky case for John Walker Lindh's bent, the evidence is straight-forward (so to speak) about Father Judge. Regardless, many will continue to have difficulty viewing sanctity and homosexuality as coexisting together.
--Stephen H. Miller

True Diversity. Check out veteran gay journalist Rex Wockner's current Wockner Wire opinion column at planetout.com. Rex takes aim at the idea that gays should be defined as creatures of the left merely because of our sexual orientation. He writes:

"The success of the gay movement has created the situation of bourgeois and ordinary and even conservative gays and lesbians becoming the majority of out, proud American homos.

"The screeching, dogmatic leftoids who long dominated American gay public discourse are not merely in retreat, they have become mostly irrelevant. Witness the obsolescence of the inflexibly leftist National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), once the dominant force in American gay activism. --

"I have spent 23 years poking around the gay universe, including the online gay universe for the past nine years, and I can say, without hesitation, that the vast majority of gays and lesbians these days have little in common with the dogma of NGLTF and movement wonks of that ilk. All the leftoid gays are still out there but, in the meantime, everybody else came out of the closet and completely buried them numbers-wise."

I couldn't agree more. As I once again witnessed this weekend the mobs of (mostly) student leftists staging their anti-capitalist, anti-American, window-smashing, police-taunting tantrum in our nation's capital, I was saddened to see, in at least one TV news report, a group brandishing a gay rainbow flag. How sad that these people think the (mostly) free economic system that made possible the social liberation of gay people is "the enemy."

Yet beyond the hot house of campus LGBT politics and its spawn -- the professional activists who dominate the "progressive" LGBT movement -- you"ll find the majority of gays and lesbians. And the future belongs to them.
--Stephen H. Miller

Biting the Hand that Could Save Them. A frightening piece on how the high-pressure anti-market demands of AIDS activists has contributed to a big falloff in the number of new AIDS drugs in development -- AIDS Activists Hinder Their Cause " can be read via a link to the international edition of the Jerusalem Post (and was brought to our attention by Andrewsullivan.com). The author, Roger Bate of the organization Africa Fighting Malaria, reports that:

There are between 5% and 30% fewer anti-AIDS drugs in development than there were a few years ago". Companies producing anti-AIDS drugs were developing fewer products than in the late 1990s. The reduction found was almost a third lower in 2001 than in 1998.

And one likely cause? According to Dr. Des Martin, president of the South African HIV Clinicians Society:

"Among several reasons, the threat of generic competition and attacks on multinational companies could be behind the recent decline in HIV anti-retroviral compounds," [Dr. Martin] says. The latter point is one that the pharma industry apparently does not want discussed widely.

However, admits one drug industry executive:

"we have lost the battle with the activists, and now the market is less profitable. The result is that we are spending less R&D time on anti-retrovirals. Why bother to innovate these products when any advance will not be profitable?"

Actions DO have consequences, and attacking the engines of innovation because they"re driven by (gasp) the profit-motive may have deadly consequences.
--Stephen H. Miller

Sept. 19, 2002

The Human Rights Campaign, the big Washington-based LGBT-rights lobby, has joined the fray with civil rights and feminist groups in opposing the nomination of Michael McConnell for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Log Cabin Republicans, meanwhile, have met with McConnell and endorsed his appointment.

Arguments can be made either way about McConnell. Many gay activists will not forgive that he was an integral part of the Boy Scouts" legal battle to exclude gay scoutmasters (a battle which the Supreme Court gave to the Scouts, ruling that a private association has a constitutional right to choose leaders who agree with the organization's goals).

What is not acceptable, however, is the distortion in HRC's anti-McConnell release, attributing words to McConnell that he never said. Here is an excerpt from HRC's press release:

McConnell's role in the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale lawsuit demonstrates hostility to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. -- The McConnell brief suggests that the Scouts' policy of excluding gay men is comparable to its exclusion of alcohol or substance abusers from leadership positions.

"But prevailing in their [the Boy Scouts] constitutional battle might prove to be a Pyrrhic victory," McConnell warned at a June 2, 2000, colloquium on evangelical civic engagement. "Unless the Boy Scouts can win public sympathy and not be seen as irrationally bigoted, they could become cultural pariahs and viewed in the same way as 'the Nazis in Skokie.'
"The Scouts would then face overwhelming pressure to change their policies regarding homosexuals," continued McConnell. "On the legal front, moreover, the Scouts' traditional ties with schools, national parks, and the military are in jeopardy. Scout supporters must go on the offensive, to highlight the intolerance of gay-rights activists." -- HRC website, all quote marks as in the HRC release

Pretty bad, right, except these words, despite HRC's quote marks, aren't exactly McConnell"s. They"re from a paraphrase of what McConnell said, in the newsletter of a conservative religious policy institute. Here's the relevant excerpt from the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Note the LACK of quotes in the original, which indicates a paraphrase:

But prevailing in their constitutional battle might prove to be a Pyrrhic victory, McConnell warned. Unless the Boy Scouts can win public sympathy and not be seen as irrationally bigoted, they could become cultural pariahs and viewed in the same way as "the Nazis in Skokie." The Scouts would then face overwhelming pressure to change their policies regarding homosexuals. On the legal front, moreover, the Scouts' traditional ties with schools, national parks, and the military are in jeopardy. Scout supporters must "go on the offensive," McConnell counseled, and highlight the intolerance of gay-rights activists. -- Ethics and Policy Center website

Is this a big deal? I think so. Attributing words directly to someone when they"re not really their words is pretty serious, especially when trying to decide if a viewpoint is based on a belief in governmental neutrality regarding moral issues, or rank bigotry. Maybe what McConnell actually said was just as bad, but I don't know (and, after reading HRC's attack, neither do you).

McConnell has opposed adding gays to legislation that protects racial and religious minorities from job discrimination, as HRC notes. But he did support a Salt Lake City ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination based on "lifestyle" and other non-job-related factors. He also defended a Gay Straight Alliance club in Salt Lake City when it was banned from a high school, arguing it had the same rights as other groups to meet on campus under the 1984 Equal Access Act. That's not to say that HRC, as a lobby that puts gay anti-discrimination statutes at the top of its agenda, shouldn't oppose him. But neither should they distort who he is, or what he actually has said.

"Smackdown" Smacked. Some e-mailers have written to say they found the "we"re not gay, it was just a put on" conclusion to World Wrestling Entertainment's "Smackdown" gay wedding to have been quite gay-negative, and ditto the crowd's reactions. What can I say, I based my item on the Washington Post's coverage. Does this mean you can't believe everything you read in the papers"?

Prime-Time Quotas? The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation reports that:

The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters appearing this fall on primetime network television has declined by almost two-thirds compared to the 2001-02 television season". The Fall 2002 season includes only seven lesbian and gay characters in primetime -- all of whom are white. There are no bisexual or transgender characters. Last year, 20 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters regularly appeared on network television.

Proclaims GLAAD's Scott Seomin:

"The diversity of the gay community cannot be conveyed through seven characters, especially when all of those characters are white. This is not merely about the decreasing number of gay and lesbian characters on TV. It is about the total lack of people of color, bisexual and transgender portrayals on network television."

Now, I"m all for more gay characters on the tube. But there's something about GLAAD's rhetoric that's unsettling. For one thing, there's no recognition on GLAAD's part that TV programming decisions are driven by ratings, not by a central planning committee made up of homophobic whte male racists. In the wake of the success of "Will & Grace," there was a big jump in the number of gays on TV. It was TV's typical copycat phenomenon. But many of the new shows bombed in the ratings -- not because they had gay characters, but because they weren't very good.

Should GLAAD be encouraging more gay stories on prime-time television? Absolutely. But failing to understand what caused the gay surge and subsequent decline, playing the race card at a time when there are more black characters than ever, and righteously declaring the need for transgenders of color all comes off as just more stale activist rhetoric.
--Stephen H. Miller

A Sham, but Not All Bad. A bit belatedly, here's last week's Washington Post take on World Wrestling Entertainment's "gay wedding" storyline between pro-wrestlers Billy and Chuck. Yes, it turned out to be as phony baloney as everything else in pro wrestling. But as reporter Hank Stuever points out, the absence of anti-gay invective, or overt audience hostility, says more about gay progress in the American heartland (those "red state" folks) than the decision by the elite New York Times to include same-sex commitment ceremonies among its Weddings announcement.

Remember Stalin? Zimbabwe's President (via rigged elections) Robert Mugabe has put in place a terror-driven land expropriation policy that has spread famine across his country, formerly a food exporter. He has also, notoriously, declared homosexuals "lower than dogs and pigs" and recently launched a campaign against "sexual perverts," avowing that gays have no rights at all. AllAfrica.com reports (via the Zimbabwe Standard) that "Mugabe has, in the past few years, openly paraded his deeply entrenched hatred for homosexuals, attacking them relentlessly"" So, why were members of the New York City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus giving him such a warm reception last week? "I"m honored to host him," said Councilman Charles Barron, as quoted in Newsday. Can you imagine the outcry if it had been conservative council members who had hosted a rightwing, rather than leftwing, dictator with such a murderous and homophobic record?

Autopilot Activism. The Commercial Closet site has a good piece on the refusal of some die-hard lesbigay activists to give up their boycott against Coors Brewing Company. Coors has just launched a new print campaign to once again highlight its gay-positive policies:

Titled "Real History," the ad features a triangle with a list of the company's gay rights accomplishments including: adopting an inclusive non-discrimination policy in 1978, adding same-sex partner health benefits in 1995 and other milestones. Another ad to appear in January will feature six openly gay employees.

As the article notes, the roots of the trouble go back to a broader union boycott in the early 1970s. But while the union boycott ended long ago, and coalitions have been formed with Hispanic and African-American groups, Coors remains dogged by gay activists who, once having sunk their teeth into the company's skin, refuse to ever let go. Their main beef is that some Coors family members give money to conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation. But from what I can see, these are center-right conservative groups, and not the hard-core homo-haters of the religious right. Rather, it's as if the activists simply are unable to rationally revisit any stance once taken. That's one reason I tend to characterize them as "reactionaries," even though they like to call themselves "progressives."

I should note that not all activists are still in the anti-Coors camp; even the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign have accepted funding from Coors in recent years -- and been denounced for it by those even further to the left.
--Stephen H. Miller

Fiendish Floridians? According to a press release from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

"In 2000, African Americans in southern Florida were denied the right to vote and to have their votes counted. In 2002, the gay and Jewish communities are facing the same inexcusable fate," said Lorri L. Jean [NGLTF's executive director].

While irregularities have been reported in precincts countywide, Miami's Jewish and gay communities have been disproportionately hit by voter machine malfunction and other irregularities. -- "How many times must historically oppressed communities be denied the right to participate in elections under the watch of Jeb and George W. Bush?" demanded Jean.

Years ago, there used to be a joke about a hypothetical headline in the old (and, at the time, left-leaning) New York Post: "New York Destroyed; Blacks, Jews Suffer Most." The penchant to claim the mantle of victimhood seems to know no bounds on the left. In fact, the well-reported voting problems in Florida's Dade and Broward counties (that's Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, respectively) have been attributed to the county officials in charge of elections, and these officials are, as it turns out, DEMOCRATS.

Think, for a minute, about NGLTF's suggestion that the brothers Bush managed to pinpoint the precincts with a majority of gay or Jewish votes, and then to arrange for election workers in those exact precincts to be slovenly or ill-trained, and for the expensive, new electronic voting machines to be improperly hooked up -- all in order to undermine the traditionally liberal vote. I mean, just how efficiently fascistic do they really think the Republicans are?

NGLTF's concern was stoked by a ballot initiative from the religious right, which sought to overturn Dade County's gay rights ordinance. Says the NGLTF release:

"In some precincts, there was no ability to vote on any initiatives. In others, voters have complained that when they voted NO on the anti-gay ballot measure, YES votes appear to have registered instead."

Can you spell P-A-R-A-N-O-I-A?

As it turned out, the repeal effort failed 53% to 47%, despite the great GOP conspiracy, and the gay rights measure will stay on the books. As reported by the Miami Herald, racially speaking, the strongest support for keeping the gay rights measure, by far, came from non-Latin, non-black voters (in other words, the white electorate), which voted 73.7% to 26.3% against repeal. Among black voters, the vote was just barely against repeal, 55.5% to 44.5%. And finally, among the heavily Cuban Hispanic voters, the majority favored repealing the gay rights law, 63.2% to 36.8%. Guess that's why NGLTF wasn't concerned about voting foul-ups affecting that minority group.
--Stephen H. Miller

"Anniversary" Reading.This week, you might want to read, or re-read, Bruce Bawer's Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe, in Partisan Review. Bawer touches on a range of issue posed by fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe, including its virulent homophobia:

many Muslim youngsters in the Netherlands attend private Islamic academies (many of which receive subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from the governments of one or more Islamic countries). These schools reinforce the Koran-based sexual morality learned at home"one that allows polygamy (for men), that prescribes severe penalties for female adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that (in the fundamentalist reading, anyway) demands that homosexuals be put to death. If fundamentalist Muslims in Europe do not carry out these punishments, it is not because they"ve advanced beyond such thinking, but because they don't have the power. Like Christian Reconstructionists, a small U.S. sect that wishes to make harsh Old Testament punishments the law of the land, fundamentalist Muslims"whose numbers are, of course, many times larger"believe firmly in the implementation of scriptural penalties.

Another example of how Muslim leaders "have been less and less shy about advertising" their anti-gay views:

In 1999, for example, the Guardian described a student conference on "Islamophobia" at King's College, London, at which a speaker began by announcing politely, "I am a gay Muslim." That effectively ended his presentation: "For members of the majority Muslim audience, the expression was enough to ignite the most passionate opposition. Some people began to shout, while others came raging down to confront the speaker. Security was called and the conference came to a premature end."

Then, in October 1999, the Shari"ah Court of the U.K. declared a fatwa against Terence McNally, who in his play Corpus Christi had depicted Jesus Christ as gay. (In Islam, Jesus is counted among the prophets.) Signing the death order, judge Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed emphasized the concept of honor, charging that the Church of England, by failing to take action against McNally, had "neglected the honour of the Virgin Mary and Jesus." The Daily Telegraph reported that according to the sheikh, "Islamic law states that Mr. McNally can only escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. . . . If he simply repents he would still be executed, but his family would be cared for by the Islamic state carrying out the sentence and he could be buried in a Muslim graveyard."

Writing of a dinner with Dutch friends, however, Bawer recounts:

Criticizing any kind of Islam at all, I gathered, felt too much to them like voicing racial or ethnic prejudice. While freely condemning Protestant fundamentalism"which hardly exists nowadays in that once strictly Calvinist country"they couldn't bring themselves to breathe a negative word about Islamic fundamentalism. There was no logic in this; but the Dutch were clearly still at a point where it seemed possible, and easier, simply to avoid such uncomfortable issues.

His conclusion:

As for those who, after a period in the West, make it obvious that they are unwilling or unable to adapt, they must be sent home and replaced by deserving individuals who can adapt. This may appear extreme, but there is no reasonable alternative. For at stake in all this, ultimately, are the basic freedoms of all Westerners -- not only women and homosexuals, but everyone, including Muslims and former Muslims who wish to live in a place where they can be themselves. At stake, indeed, is Western civilization.

Explaining Myself. A reader shares the following:

I find your columns on the Independent Gay Forum smart and refreshing. However, the jabs at what you call "the gay left" are just divisive and unnecessary. We shouldn't lower ourselves to that level -- even if our adversaries do.

Here's how I responded (after thanking him for his positive comments):

While I understand your point, I can't say I concur. Politically speaking, there is a gay left, which dominates gay political discourse. While most gays are moderate liberals, in the political center, or on the center-right, it is the gay left that has become situated as our institutional voice.

In the marketplace of ideas, vigorous debate is a good thing. And part of debating ideas is to identify the viewpoints being represented. I happen to believe that gay leftists, while they may call themselves "progressives," are actually quite reactionary -- politically speaking, it's a perspective that supports backward-focused socialist economics and, frankly, illiberal policies (speech codes, group-based quotas, etc.). To challenge it, one must call it what it is. I don't mean to be confrontational for the sake of being confrontational. But neither should forthright debate be curtailed.

Another letter commented on a posting about Bill Simon's race for California governor, in which I mentioned the poor record on gay issues of another conservative from the Golden State, Ronald Reagan. I had written, "Can you imagine Ronald Reagan supporting gay adoptions or any kind of domestic partnerships?" The reader berated me for ignoring Reagan's opposition to a voter initiative that sought to ban gays from teaching in the state's public schools. The reader wrote:

It seems peculiar for you to say this without noting that Reagan played a key role in defeating the anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978. Comparable? Perhaps not. But Reagan was a man of his time, and during his years there was no serious discussion of gay adoptions or partnership rights.

I replied:

Of course you're right. It had slipped my mind about Reagan's opposition to the Briggs initiative. I was, however, mindful of Reagan's silence on AIDS, and his alliance building with the religious right. As president, he chose to ignore the gay political movement that was becoming a major political force, as if it simply didn't exist.

It's fascinating to me that so many conservative Republicans just don't understand that being perceived as "anti-gay" now has a significant downside. Bob Dole, while running against Bill Clinton, seemed totally taken aback by the brouhaha when he returned a check from the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and it cost him moderate support by making him look like a bigot. While campaigning in the primaries, George W. Bush was apparently unprepared to answer a straight-forward question on whether he'd meet with gay Republicans, saying no during a live interview (when his campaign had indicated yes), and then seeing controversy develop. And hapless Bill Simon thinks he can say one thing to LCR, and another to Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, and that no one is going to notice.

They are simply mystified that the political ground has shifted. It reminds me of the movie "Spartacus," when a shaken Roman general sputters to Laurence Olivier, when reporting his defeat to the rebel forces, "But they were just...slaves."

--Stephen H. Miller

The Worm Turns. As for my earlier, moderately encouraging posting about California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon, I can only say one thing: Never mind. After reports that Simon had made some positive responses to a Log Cabin Republicans questionnaire, the candidate has run scared. Seeking the good graces of the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the fiercely anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition, Simon disavowed the LCR questionnaire, which he now claims he never saw.

As the AP reports, on the questionnaire Simon (or someone authorized to respond on his behalf) had pledged to declare a Gay Pride Day if elected, said he supported "domestic partnership" laws if they're not based on sexual orientation, and promised to uphold a variety of gay-friendly laws and regulations. He also supported adoptions by gay couples.

But reportedly "under intense pressure from the religious right," he caved. In a letter from Simon that's posted on the Traditional Values Coalition website, the candidate seems to oppose gay adoptions, is against a pride proclamation, and otherwise takes pains to let the religious right know he's one of them.

Now, to be fair, the letter is not full of hateful rhetoric, and in some ways seems deliberately vague. Simon believes:

"the best family environment for a child is a home with a mother and father".We know that there is a good supply of such homes waiting for children"Also, I oppose legislation imposing sexual orientation training guidelines for foster parents."

But, of course, there are children that remain unwanted, unloved, and unadopted (most of those upstanding heterosexual couples Simon reveres only seem to want healthy white newborns). Would Simon seek to outlaw gay adoptions -- he doesn't exactly say so.

And as for gay marriage, Bill Clinton was against that, too. And while I think annual pride proclamations by government officials can promote inclusion and respect, equal treatment under the law should be a far higher priority than symbolic esteem-boosters.

Simon's letter also said he'd "hire the most qualified," presumably regardless of sexual orientation, and that he had no objection to private companies having partnerships.

However, I"m not letting Simon off the hook. Kowtowing to Lou Sheldon is just as bad as a liberal kowtowing to Al Sharpton. Simon had a chance to be a leader, to show that a believer in less expansive government, and an opponent of excessive regulation and taxation, could also be progressive on gay issues (and, by the way, I consider all those views to be progressive, in that they emphasis individual liberty and personal choice). Instead, Simon is seeking to placate the most reactionary forces in the party. He has, so it seems, chosen to embrace the past at the expense of the future.
--Stephen H. Miller