IGF CultureWatch

The outsized victory of California's antigay marriage initiative, Proposition 22, again raises the question of whether the demand for same-sex civil marriage is going anywhere, or at least anywhere anytime soon. After all, the California vote wasn't remotely close - 61 percent supported the proposition that only marriages between one man and one woman will be valid or legally recognized by the state.

Moreover, California isn't an anomaly. In the words of a Janet Parshall, a spokeswoman for the antigay Family Research Council, "If the liberal states of Hawaii, Alaska, and now California can do it, then the 19 other states without 'statutory protection for marriage' can and must do it."

By "statutory protection for marriage," of course, she means states that would legally bar recognition of same-sex marriages should such unions ever become legal in any other state (no state currently grants legitimacy to same-sex marriages, and the national Defense of Marriage Act, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by Bill Clinton, bars the federal government from recognizing such unions).

Sadly, the homophobes may have a point - but, conversely, only up to a point. True, voters in both Hawaii and Alaska recently approved measures to oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriages. In Hawaii, gay activists had thought court-ordered recognition of gay matrimony was a good bet to make the aloha state the first to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but voters short-circuited our hopes by passing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage by a vote of 60 to 29 percent. In Alaska, it was 68 to 32 percent against.

And national Gallup poll finds 62 percent against and 34 percent for same-sex marriage (results that virtually mirrored the California and Hawaii election result).

But then, on March 16, history was made in Vermont, where the state's House voted by 76-69 to adopt a bill allowing same-sex couples to form "civil unions."

According to the Associated Press story, "the bill provides for unions that amount to marriage in everything but name. Partners could apply for a license from town clerks and have their civil union 'certified' by a justice of the peace, a judge or member of the clergy." Moreover, same-sex couples would be entitled to some 300 state benefits and privileges available to married couples in such areas as inheritance, property transfers, medical decisions, insurance and taxes.

The constraints of marriage are also paralleled in civil unions. Partners who want to go their separate ways would have to go through "dissolution" proceedings in Family Court, just as married couples have to pursue a divorce. And partners would assume each other's debts - again, just like married couples.

The biggest difference between actual civil marriage and same-sex civil unions is that the federal government (and probably other states) wouldn't recognize the latter. So when it comes to immigration rights, Social Security, and joint returns to the IRS, same-sex partners would remain single in Washington's eyes.

Given the votes against gay marriage in California, Hawaii, and elsewhere, as well as the historic step forward for civil unions in Vermont, where do we go from here?

Let's keep in mind that even in Vermont, where the states highest court had ruled that gay couples could not be denied "the benefits" afforded to married couples, polls show overwhelming opposition to full same-sex marriage, which is why state legislators decided not to grant gays the right to wed. Instead, they drafted a comprehensive "alternative track" package to satisfy the court's decree.

A Strategic Question: What Is to Be Done?

Some activists argue that the well-funded Washington-based lobbies (principally, the Human Rights Campaign) have been too timid in not campaigning outright for actual gay wedlock. Most of the ads opposing the antigay marriage ballot measures have gingerly labeled the initiatives as "divisive" or "unnecessary" since no state currently recognizes gay marriages anyhow. One ad that ran in California told voters, "Most people don't support gay marriage, but we do support keeping government out of people's private lives," meaning you don't have to favor equality for gays to vote against this.

Mike Marshall, campaign manager for the No on 22 campaign, went so far as to say, "This is a campaign to defeat Proposition 22, not a campaign to legalize gay marriage. ... It would be disingenuous to run a pro gay-marriage ad." But while the intent may have been to bring semi-tolerant voters to our side, clearly this has not proved to be a winning strategy.

More militant voices have argued that the message should have been simply and unequivocally pro-gay marriage, putting committed gay and lesbian couples at the forefront. That might not have carried the day, either, but, say the critics, it could hardly have done worse, and in the long run the only hope is to make the case for gay marriage over time, rather than continually dancing around the issue.

Post Prop. 22, some are calling for a more militant fight. Eric Rofes, a longtime gay radical voice, is urging direct action and civil disobedience. "Activists may take their struggle directly to the people," he writes, "building on rich traditions of militant organizing inspired most recently by ACT-UP."

Others, however, see a renewed focus on substantive domestic partnership benefits as the best step toward spousal equality. After the California vote, Brian Perry of Log Cabin Los Angeles remarked, "There are probably more people willing to accept equal treatment under a different name, such as domestic partnerships. So it might be worth it to create a 'separate but equal' recognition of our relationships and just not use the 'm' word."

Such talk is anathema to the hard-core gay marriage advocates, for whom "separate but equal" means "the back of the bus" - an unacceptable denigration of gay people and our relationships. They may have a point, but I've never liked facile similes. The back of the bus was the back of the bus, literally, thanks to Jim Crow laws. Would a distinct category for same-sex unions, even one that conveyed all the statutory benefits of state-sanctioned matrimony, likewise make us second-class citizens unworthy of the "normal" marriage that any miscreant heterosexual is entitled to ("Who wants to marriage a heterosexual moron?")?

What's in a Name?

As much as I side emotionally with the militants, I'm not so sure. In the northern European countries such as Denmark that have comprehensive partnership recognition, reports are that gay partners consider themselves "married," and that others refer to them as married. Traditionalists, including religious conservatives, are somewhat placated by the fact that the partnerships are a parallel institution that reserves "traditional marriage" for opposite sexers. It doesn't seem to be a big deal.

This, in fact, is what the "best solution" in Vermont might turn out to be - should the bill passed by Vermont's House survive in the state Senate. While civil unions for same-sex couples are not marriages, the are undeniably a significant advance over the weak domestic partner registries that exist in some jurisdictions.

So, metaphorically speaking, would strong domestic partnerships along the lines of civil unions still be "the back of the bus," or would it be more appropriate to say "a rose by any name would smell as sweet"? Like many others, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in Vermont, and judging the results with an open - but optimistic - mind.

What is to be done about "Dr." Laura Schlessinger, radio's top-rated "moral warrior" with a listening audience estimated at 18 million? The good doctor (actually a physiologist, not an M.D.) has called homosexuality "deviant" and referred to gays and lesbians as "biological errors." She seems to believe that homosexuality is a "curable" affliction, and cheers on the ex-gay movement. And now Dr. Laura is about to make the jump from the radio to the boob tube, courtesy of a show this fall from Paramount Television.

Dr. Laura's ascendancy puts a spotlight on an old issue: should gay activists seek to prevent voices opposing gay rights from gaining media exposure? Or, put another way, is opposition to gay equality a form of hate like racism, or is it something different, calling for a different response?

The folks over at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have pursued different tactics at various times on this question, and even spoken with contrary voices about Dr. Laura. According to media accounts, Cathy Renna of GLAAD's National Capital Area office (that's Washington, DC) told a lesbian and gay conference last October that "We're going to go after the media outlets, the radio stations that run her, and get her off."

But GLAAD Executive Director Joan Garry declares on GLAAD's Web site, "We are not in the business of trying to shut down opposing points of view." And, after a recent meeting with Paramount, GLAAD announced what it regards as a substantial victory. While Dr. Laura will have her TV show, the format will ensure that she includes viewpoints contrary to her traditional views on sexual morality (specifics, however, were vague).

Surprise, surprise. This tentative settlement has not been enough for more militant factions. Lesbian activist Robin Tyler, for instance, issued a statement on February 25 that read in part, "GLAAD's position on keeping `a place at the Paramount table' is wrong. No other civil rights movement would allow a hate monger to spew their viciousness on their own show on national television. This community needs to circumvent GLAAD's decision and effectively not support anything that Paramount does until they cancel the show. This includes, but is not limited to picketing every television station that has signed on to carry the show, and not going to movies produced by Paramount."

That strikes me as a bit of activist hyperbole. Aside from the fact that boycotts are notoriously ineffectual (shall we stop watching Paramount's "Star Trek Voyager"?), the view that homosexuality can be "cured," no matter how wrong-headed, is not the same as urging that gay people be lynched or put into ovens. It's counterproductive to ignore that difference.

GLAAD's Garry seems to recognize this, and she responded to Tyler's challenge with this statement: "With those who argue that GLAAD should have been advocating 'pulling the plug' on the Dr. Laura television show from the start, we respectfully disagree. Our plan has been intentional from day one. We have always believed that there were series of cards to play and that it has been our responsibility to play each of them. We are working toward the same end - to ensure that Dr. Laura does not spew her homophobic rhetoric to a television audience and that media professionals are held accountable for portraying the reality of our lives."

Tyler's response: "Our only acceptable position is not 'the freedom to publicly debate with homophobes', but an end to the kind of spewed, continued hatred that reinforces, not just the violence against us, but our youth's high suicide rate. Words are as damaging as deeds."

Adds Alan Klein, a spokesperson for the website/coalition StopDrLaura.com., "We're not about to let her spew her defamatory pseudo-science on national television." (Which all adds up to a lot of strong condemnation of "spewing.")

For her part, Schlessinger told the Associated Press, "I've made anti-gay activist agenda commentaries, but I"ve never made anti-gay commentary." She said that critics who claim her rhetoric creates an environment that leads to harassment and violence are guilty of "the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty." Moreover, she wrote in an August newspaper column that "homosexual activist groups...contact sponsors and call me homophobic, hateful, dangerous and a voice for promoting violence. Why? Because I believe that homosexual behavior is deviant." She went on to claim, "I never have advocated hate or hostility toward homosexuals on or off my program. ... Maintaining an opposing point of view to many aspects of the liberal agenda is terribly difficult because of the hate slung at you." She offered that one sponsor, when contacted by a critic of the show, "asked how shutting me down because I simply had an opposing viewpoint would further the cause of free speech."

What do I make of all of this? No one is more angered by stupid, backward, anti-gay viewpoints such as Dr. Laura's than I am. As a former GLAAD activist and long-ago board member myself, I, too, met with radio and TV station general managers to self-righteously demand that they cease and desist from broadcasting those we deemed unacceptable (including a meeting with WABC in New York City over a then-emergent windbag named Rush Limbaugh).

It was not unusual that the stations would agree to tell the host not to use slurs or confuse homosexuality with pedophilia - a small victory. And typically, we wound up negotiating some sort of "balance," such as more time for talk shows with pro-gay hosts.

However, the problem with demands that the media "silence all dissent" on gay matters is that it comes across as politically correct censorship. Whatever merit there might have been to muffling anti-gay perspectives when there were few pro-gay viewpoints expressed in the media, it's increasingly hard to justify that demand when this season saw some 30 gay or lesbian characters on prime time TV (including on shows from Paramount) and pro-gay themes dominant in theater and Academy Award nominated films, not to mention broadcast on "Oprah" and most other TV talk shows.

All of which is to say that I actually felt GLAAD did the more or less reasonable thing this time round. As a community, we need to distinguish between someone who says "I hate gays" and someone who says "homosexuality is a deviance that can be overcome, for the good of homosexuals." Yes, it's an attitutde that we believe is wrong on all counts, and it's not a positive message for those coming to terms with their sexuality - especially gay kids. But it's not equivalent to the Klan, either.

If we attempt to deny those with a religion-based opposition to homosexuality any mass media forum, where do you then draw the line? If you oppose (as I do) "progressive" students who steal all the copies of conservative campus newspapers and burn them (because the papers advocated "fascistic" viewpoints like opposing affirmative action preferences), than you have to concede that liberal-left activists sometimes wind up promoting censorship. At GLAAD, we tried to block the filming of "Basic Instinct," which in retrospect is a rather benign film (and whose star, Sharon Stone, is now a darling of progressive gays, go figure).

I suspect that in the glare of the TV lights, Dr. Laura's backward views will be seen for what they are, a reactionary response to enlightened social change, and she'll slink back into the smaller niche of talk radio-land. Those offended by Dr. Laura are free to criticize Paramount Television for giving her a show, and in fact www.stopDrLaura.com has been set up for just that purpose. Moreover, it seems fair that GLAAD should seek to negotiate a means of response to her most egregious declarations.

Yet trying to silence Dr. Laura completely, even if it were doable, would only make her a martyr to her followers. With apologies to Robin Tyler, words are NOT as damaging as deeds, and such an assertion is an affront not just to the First Amendment but to the entire liberal tradition. If we truly believe that our cause is just, we should have no fear of subjecting them to public debate.

PARTISAN POLITICS tends to bring out the humorless side of people. The candidate you favor can do no wrong, while his/her opponents can do no right. Add to this syndrome the standard humorlessness of many gay political activists, and you have a prescription for unintentional ridiculousness.

A case in point: the response to reports of John McCain's "gaydar," as first covered in The Washington Post on January 18. During a casual chat with reporters on his campaign bus about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the Republican presidential contender said he had served in the Navy with many gays who had done their job without making an issue of their orientation. Asked how he knew they were homosexual, he replied, "Well, I think we know by behavior and by attitudes. I think it's clear to some of us when some people have that lifestyle. But I didn't pursue it, and I wouldn't pursue it, and I wouldn't pursue it today."

Now, let's look at the response from gay political groups.

David Smith, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbigay political lobby, was not amused by McCain's ability to recognize gays. "He has one up on me, because I can't tell just by behavior and attitudes," he asserted. "He is clearly stereotyping based on mannerisms," asserted Smith. "This is a form of prejudice, and illustrates the struggle that gay people face." The leaders of the Human Rights Campaign, by the way, are strong supporters of Democrat Al Gore's presidential bid.

Kevin Ivers, public affairs director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay GOPers, had a different take. Responding to Smith's contention that all gays are indistinguishable from straights, Ivers remarked, "If there's a gay person anywhere who says they can't walk into a room and tell who some of the gay people are, they're lying." Take that, Mr. Smith.

Ivers added that the exchange showed that McCain "has been thinking about his entire life and when gay people may have played a role in it. He has reached across and said he wants to understand gay people, even though he doesn't always agree with them." The Log Cabin Republicans, by the way, have all but endorsed McCain, who (unlike GOP front-runner George Bush) has met with the group and received over $40,000 in contributions collected by Log Cabin from its members.

Then things really started to get silly. HRC's Smith, in response to Ivers, and unable to ignore the fact that many gay people freely claim to be able to spot a fellow traveler, told the Washington Blade newspaper, "Only gay people can have 'gaydar.' -- To which Ivers replied with the words "disingenuous," "political" and "ridiculous."

I must say, I'm not displeased to see HRC and LCR take off the gloves. There are real disagreements in our community, and the attempt to paper them over in the name of "unity" doesn't serve anyone's interest. By all means, let's have vigorous debate between the left, right, and centrist components of the gay community. But really, over "gaydar"?

In the Washington Post, columnist Geneva Overholser labeled the whole conundrum a "silly tempest." But clearly, she felt McCain (and his defenders) were on firmer ground. "McCain said - in answer to a dumb question - that we can sometimes tell when people are gay," she wrote. "This is so commonly understood to be true that there is a slang word for it: 'gaydar.'" She went on to note, "Unhappily for McCain, common understanding is no defense on matters homosexual - a topic on which the nation is stuck halfway toward enlightenment."

McCain is far from perfect on gay issues in the eyes of most activists. Unlike his Democratic rivals, Gore and Bradley, he has not backed federal gay-rights legislation. But of the candidates on the Republican side, McCain is the clearly the best thing going. What other GOP candidate would say he sees no reason someone openly gay couldn't be president? "I am opposed to discrimination of any kind in America," McCain said when asked about gay rights. He told Log Cabin officials he was "proud to work with you" and that "all my life I've had a visceral dislike for discrimination. ... My goal is to eliminate discrimination." And while he has supported the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, his "gaydar" remarks were apparently meant to convey his awareness that gays and lesbians do serve honorably in the armed forces and should be allowed to do so without being subject to "pursuit." (Log Cabin hopes this is part of an evolving stance, and hints that McCain not only would work to improve things once in office but, as the only GOP veteran in the race, would actually have the clout with the military to do so.)

That's a far cry from real Republican gay bashing, such as GOP firebrand Alan Keyes's declaration that "Homosexuality is an abomination," a slander that drew less criticism than McCain's off-the-cuff observation. In labeling McCain's remarks as anti-gay defamation, gay activists in the Democratic camp were clearly trying to make a mountain out of a molehill in order to attack the one GOP candidate who isn't so bad on issues pertaining to gay folks. They were acting as Democratic activists who happen to be gay (rather than as gay activists who just happen to be Democrats). That's partisanship first and foremost, and it doesn't require "gaydar" or other intuitive powers to recognize it.

YOU'VE ALMOST GOT TO PITY the hapless organizers of the grandly named Millennium March on Washington (MMOW) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) civil rights. The event, scheduled to take place in the nation's capital April 30, has been castigated since it was announced two years ago. Sometimes criticism can shed light, but in the case of the MMOW there's little real debate, and even less light, just endless polemics between the gay left and the "queer" far left. It's hard to side with the critics, but it's also difficult to support the event's organizers.

You might recall that back in February 1998, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's biggest lesbigay lobby, and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the nation's largest lesbigay religious association, proposed a gathering on the National Mall in Washington during the millennial year. The theme would be as novel as it was straightforward: "Faith and Family." This seemed to be smart politics, meant to focus Middle America's attention on gay and lesbian partnerships, gay parenting, gay children, and so on, and to stand up to the religious right's drumbeat that gay love is both "a sin" and a threat to families.

Immediately, there was an uproar of dissent by grassroots "queer" activists. Michael Warner, one of leaders of an "anti-assimilationist" group called "Sex Panic!" proclaimed that "faith and family is an extremely exclusionary theme. ... It is a massive repudiation of the lessons of decades of gay activism" - which, in Warner's view, has presumably been about opposing faith and family (just as the religious right says).

Shortly afterwards, in spring 1998, the Ad Hoc Committee for An Open Process was formed. The network of anti-MMOW grassroots activists charged that the organizers of the march were top-down authoritarians who blithely ignored the supposedly "democratic" organizing principles that had buttressed previous gay marches in the nation's capital. "The way the Millennium March was conceived, articulated, promoted and put out there has really been an insult and a slap in the face to our own history as an l/g/b/t movement," said Leslie Cagan, a long-time New York City-based lesbian activist and member of the Ad Hoc Committee. Of course, others pointed out that what the Committee seemed angriest about was that its cadre of long-time activists, many on the political far left, hadn't been in control of the process this time round.

That's not to say that those activists who did wind up in control of the board of directors for the MMOW have done any kind of a rational job. In fact, they quickly caved into the radical critics and jettisoned the Faith and Family theme. And, as with previous marches, they have taken the admirable goal of racial diversity to an extreme, resorting to race- and gender-based quotas that border on the absurd - a requirement that their governing board be at least 50 percent people of color, regardless of who actually shows up willing to do the work. Is it churlish to note that all non-white minorities together are well under half the U.S. population (which is still 73 percent non-Hispanic white)?

Nevertheless, that wasn't enough for the critics, who are, of course, even further to the left than the MMOW board. Despite the quota, several groups representing people of color have formally distanced themselves from the march due to concerns about "non-inclusivity." As Ad Hoc Committee member Mandy Carter said recently, "One of the ongoing lines that MMOW uses is that 'we have a 50 percent people-of-color board.' When you hear that, you might make an assumption that there would be a huge people-of-color presence for the march and in issues being discussed out there. But that hasn't been the case."

No, as quota critics have long maintained, heavy-handed quota schemes don't promote true racial diversity, only politically correct tokenism. In short, rigid quotas create superficial diversity but work against the equality necessary for true community.

Also in response to charges that the march wasn't "inclusive" enough, the MMOW formally made "racial justice" one of its eight announced "priority issues" on which the march and rally will focus. By this, of course, the organizers mean support for affirmative action programs based on government-mandated racial preferences.

Another "priority issue" announced by the MMOW is hate-crimes legislation. This goal has long been at the forefront of the HRC's political agenda. What's been obscured is that many gays and lesbians, including some activists, think that hate crime laws are a terrible idea, and that punishing a crime based on what the perpetrator was thinking is a dangerous precedent. Hate crime laws would make the penalty for bias-motivated crime more severe. But the criminal justice system has worked well in recent bias-crime cases, including the Matthew Shepard murder. What "greater sentence" than life in prison would hate-crime advocates have demanded? Certainly not the death penalty, which many progressive activists also oppose.

Before concluding, let's look back at the previous March on Washington for gay rights in 1993, which the Ad Hoc Committee has been holding up as a model of democratic organization. In fact, march organizers had mandated 50-percent minority quotas on state organizing committees. Again, if anything less than representation reflecting actual demographics constitutes discrimination (as affirmative action advocates maintain), then gay white men were discriminated against by their own rights march.

Moreover, the '93 event had come under fire for extraordinary poor execution: Due to a complicated march route thousands spent the day waiting to step off the green, and many had still not done so at the end of the day as the rally on the Mall across town was ending. Writing in the liberal "New Republic" magazine, Jacob Weisberg noted that the '93 march "was appallingly organized, failed to coordinate even a single time for a photo-op on the Mall and had as its most memorable quote a lesbian comedian's remark that Hillary Clinton was 'at last a first lady I could fuck.'"

The PC quotient at the '93 event, broadcast live on C-SPAN, was taken to bizarre extremes. The march platform made opposition to welfare reform one of its key planks. Not one speaker who wasn't squarely on the gay left was allowed to address the rally, and the scarcity of gay white male speakers at the all-day event (you could count them on one hand, literally) didn't go unnoticed by the crowd.

Back to the future. In addition to "racial justice" and "hate crimes legislation," the other "high priority" issues announced for the MMOW range from ending GLBT discrimination in the workplace (i.e., support for the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act) to GLBT health care issues (i.e., support for some version of nationalized health care). But shockingly, the whole issue of the right of gays to serve in the military is missing from the MMOW list. And this, despite the fact that in a poll conducted over several months by MMOW organizers and promoted as a "national ballot" that would make for a democratic agenda, that the "right to serve" took eighth place. But MMOW organizers completely dropped it from their announced listing of priority issues.

So I wouldn't hold my breath expecting this year's event in Washington to be much more "inclusive" of the entire lesbian and gay community, at least if diversity is defined as a variety of ideological viewpoints. You won't be hearing anyone from, say, the Independent Gay Forum, a group of libertarian, moderate, and conservative lesbian and gay writers. And I'd be shocked if someone from the Log Cabin Republicans were actually allowed to speak.

The MMOW's currently output of uninspiring, politically correct boilerplate was, I suppose, predictable. But what an opportunity has been missed to take a novel approach away from the politics of grievance. In fact, the MMOW had once shown some promise of originality in delivering a powerful statement for gay affirmation and equality that would have been stronger than the litany of give-me's that will now be the event's focus - and which still won't appease the critics on the left.

Maybe it's time to jettison the idea that we can all come together for one event with a common call for action. But maybe, just maybe, that in itself is a sign of progress.

Originally appeared Dec. 23, 1999, in The Weekly News (Miami), and San Diego Update.

Mary Daly, the fighting feminist professor, has created quite a stir - again. What's interesting about the latest brouhaha is the way it's exposed fault lines within the feminist movement, with implications for the lesbigay movement as well.

For those who haven't been following the story, here's a rundown. Professor Daly, now 70, is considered one of the founding mothers of the feminist movement. She is the author of seven works of feminist philosophy taught in many women's studies courses, and she herself has taught a women-only course in women's studies at Jesuit-run Boston College since 1974. On the heels of a lawsuit brought by a male student claiming that federal anti-discrimination statutes bar any college that receives federal aid from discriminating on the basis of sex, the college is demanding that she stop excluding males from her classroom - or retire. Daly is fighting back.

"I don't think about men," she is quoted as saying in a recent magazine interview. "I really don't care about them. I'm concerned with women's capacities, which have been infinitely diminished under patriarchy. That takes all my energy. I'm not interested in the differences between women and men. I really am totally uninterested in men's capacities."

A recent New York Times story described Daly as "a lesbian feminist battling patriarchy from within a Jesuit institution." Daly has also described herself as a "radical elemental feminist" and has said, "We're living in hell," as she listed "the horror of phallocracy, penocracy, jockocracy, cockocracy, call it whatever - patriarchy."

Some prominent feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Eleanor Smeal, have rallied to Daly's defense. But other influential feminists are distancing themselves from her. Katha Pollitt, for instance, has criticized same-sex education in general and Professor Daly in particular. The media attention Daly has received "confirms a certain stereotype about feminists, which is lesbian separatism," Pollitt disapprovingly told the Times.

In defending the exclusion of male students from her women's studies course, Daly has reflected that, minus the male element, "There's quite an intimate connection in the classroom. ... There's a circulating energy that's extremely exciting and is felt by everybody, that somehow puts me in touch with something real in women."

Here's the rub. It's easy to vilify the Mary Daly school of feminism, with its men/bad women/good ethos. On the other hand, I'll confess there's something about Daly's fighting spirit that appeals to me - especially given the triumph of so much of today's whiny "victim feminism," with its speech codes and star-chamber inquisitions (where an accusation of sexism is tantamount to a finding of guilt). I suspect Mary Daly is not the sort who would run to college authorities complaining that she had been "sexually harassed" by the "male gaze" of a student.

Leaving aside the issue of federal anti-discrimination law, and ignoring for a moment the anti-male animus within Daly's worldview, I'd argue there is, in fact, something is to be said for the maintenance of "women's space." But I'd also argue, contra feminist dogma, that there's something to be said as well for "men's space." Moreover, what is somewhat refreshing about unrepentant lesbian separatism is that it departs from the politically correct assertion that there are no significant differences between men and women.

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger wrote in his classic study "Men in Groups" that, cross-culturally, men have a deep need to bond together in all-male societies and clubs. Today, such bonding rites are often verboten by unisex authorities. Witness what's happened at many liberal arts colleges, subject of an AP story titled "Fraternities Go Underground to Defy College Ban." At colleges where single-sex social organizations have been banned and students are barred from participating in any all-male fraternity activity - even off-campus - fraternity brothers have been turned into outlaws, meeting in secret. So much for freedom of association.

Unseen is how the assault on male association doesn't just strike at our heterosexual brethren; it's also aimed at expunging the ideal of fraternity to which gay male culture once aspired - the chance to revel in the company of men. It has now become difficult in many areas to form new gay men's social organizations (aside, that is, from sex clubs), since any gay male group (a hiking club, for example) immediately faces pressure from the local lesbigay establishment to admit women. Lesbian groups and gatherings promoting an exclusive women's culture for women who love women, in contrast, have typically not faced pressure to gender integrate.

Maybe we could recognize that their is something special about same-gender socialization, and that it's not parallel, say, with racism. Then perhaps we could let people gender associate the way they want to, without making a big deal of it if some want female-only classrooms - or bars, or male-only bridge clubs.

"Iron John" author Robert Bly, an advocate of the "mythopoetic" men's movement, wrote recently in Harper's magazine that "High school girls can usually rattle off any number of reasons to feel pride in their gender, but most young men are hard put to identify any good quality of masculinity, and that is sad indeed." Hmm. Perhaps it's time for male-only courses in men's studies?

Like all movements for social change, the gay and lesbian struggle for equality has spawned radical offshoots. These can sometimes supply energy and verve, as with the early incarnations of ACT UP. But they can also fall prey to a nihilistic impulse and a counterproductive collectivistic ideology.

A recent example of the latter is a group calling itself Sex Panic, which dominated the annual conclave of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force this November in San Diego. Sex Panic was formed earlier this year in New York City by a group of "queer theorists" - primarily from New York and San Francisco academic and activist circles - who oppose the trend of gay "assimilation," which they see as nullifying the sexual outlawry they believe is central to gay culture. They also argue that efforts to curb expressions of outlaw sexuality - from closing sex clubs to crackdowns on "public sex" - demand a militant response.

On the opening day of the NGLTF conference, Sex Panic held a "national summit" that created and endorsed a Declaration of Sexual Rights, which included "an end to the prohibition and stigmatization of public sex."

Lest anyone dismiss Sex Panic as just another insular grouping, the media they're receiving has been extensive. Anti-gay activists are beginning to use the group's rhetorical claim that lots of anonymous gay sex is the answer to "the tyranny of the normal" to buttress anti-gay arguments that homosexuals are out to subvert the moral order.

But it's not just conservatives who are making hay out of the quotability of Sex Panic. A November 11 story in the New York Times focused on the group. The newspaper of record told America, in the lead paragraph no less, how Sex Panic bemoans the backlash against "the sexual practices of homosexuals," such as "police crackdowns on sex in public restrooms" as well as moves against "sex clubs, bathhouses and weekend-long drug parties where men have intercourse with a dozen partners a night." The Times quoted Sex Panic founders who argue that "anonymous sex with multiple partners" and "having as much sex as possible, as publicly as possible" is the cornerstone of gay liberation. The Times also noted that "the debate occurs against a backdrop of evidence that homosexuals are returning to what they call 'bareback sex,' anal intercourse without condoms," a practice that's been defended by some Sex Panic activists.

If the anti-gay right and not the gay left were promoting this image of gay life, our media watchdogs would be up in arms.

So, what can we make of a group that is in open revolt over efforts to gain "mainstream acceptance"? In fact, there are aspects of Sex Panic's agenda that have merit. The harassment and forced closure of private sex clubs which do not otherwise disturb community peace, and police entrapment in gay cruising areas, are indeed abuses of state power.

But just as the infamous North American Man-Boy Love Association holds fast against any and all age of consent laws and thus mixes together decisions by sexually mature teenage boys to engage in consensual sex and the supposed "right" of men to seduce toddlers, so Sex Panic is guilty of a failure to distinguish between association in private clubs and the "right" to have sex in public. And this, I believe, derives from their overall left-wing ideological core. Since socialism posits that there should be no private sphere, only public, it's easy to see why Sex Panic's queer theorists - who are steeped in a neo-Marxist tradition - refuse to see why the private should be held distinct from the public.

Of course, it's not very clear just what Sex Panic means by "public sex." Sometimes they seem to mean sex capable of being seen, or outside your bedrooom. But there's a great difference between "public" group sex in a private club, and sex in a public park - and even there a contrast needs to be made between sex out in the open, and sex obscured from public view. But Sex Panic isn't keen on defining these distinctions.

To get a sense of their confusion, consider the points made by Sex Panic's Eric Rofes at the NGLTF conference. Rofes mingled together "police entrapments, closures of commercial sex establishments [and] encroachments on public sex areas." As the underlying force behind this, he described (in good Marxist fashion) "class-based battles over massive corporate land-grabs" and the "concentration of wealth creating vast economic disparities." So-called "progressives" still insist that capitalism - which values protecting private property and defending personal liberty - is the enemy, while empowering the state to confiscate and redistribute wealth and control economic decisions will somehow lead to "liberation."

As I've hinted, a better strategy is to recognize the clear distinction between the privately owned and public (that is, government owned) arenas. Since sex clubs are privately owned, the state has no business interferring in consensual activities that happen there, even if the patrons choose to foolishly engage in unsafe sex. Using this public/private distinction, a legitimate argument could be made in support of Sex Panic's demands for decriminalizing consensual sex practices and ending harassment of "sex workers." But these activists should be called on to clarify what, exactly, they mean by ending the prohibition and stigmatization of "public sex." That police should not set out to entrap gay men or beat the bushes in the hope of capturing men in the act, is one thing. But to argue that men should be able to have open sex in public restrooms, or in public parks in view of passersby, just won't fly - especially when many "tea room" and park crackdowns follow complaints to the police that public space is being misappropriated.

Maybe progressive theorists should change their tune and start defending the capitalist principles of private property rights and the freedom to engage in business without odious regulatory burdens so long as the rights of others aren't infringed upon. Maybe if gay men want to engage in outdoor sex, they should fund private sex parks. And maybe the idea of further extending the public, government-controlled sphere at the expense of the private and corporate should be seen as fundamentally at odds with the protection of individual rights.

FROM 1992 TO 1993, I WROTE A COLUMN called Media Man for Genre magazine. My modus operandi was to skim through TV, motion picture, and print representations of gay folks, often with the critical eye of a still-zealous activist (at the time, I chaired the media committee of the New York chapter of GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). In a column from August 1992, which I titled "Prime-Time Trepidation," I wrote that "a look back at last season reveals precious few recurring gay roles among the hundreds of characters inhabiting the tube's dramas and sitcoms." I noted that when gays did make an appearance, it was typically a one-shot deal. For example, on CBS's then-popular -- and firmly liberal -- "Murphy Brown," an openly gay co-worker named Rick joined the staff of the series' fictional network news program for an episode about heterosexual angst (Rick mistakenly assumed that series regular Frank Fontana was gay).

But Rick only appeared on that one episode, never to be mentioned again, with his disappearance never explained or alluded to. This, I wrote, was television's lame idea of gay inclusion -- despite the fact that, in real life, the countless gay staffers on network shows were increasingly open about being gay. In fact, on "Murphy Brown," Rick's mistakenly assuming Frank was gay made perfect sense -- every time I watched the show I couldn't help thinking that the dynamics would have worked better if Frank had been gay.

Flash forward to 1999. This past July, a Los Angeles Times headline declared "Gay Roles Proliferate" in the new post-"Ellen" era. During this fall's television season, you can find 17 out and proud gay characters on the four major networks, and some 28 all told, the story reported. More good news: "Gay characters on TV and the story lines surrounding them are also richer and more complex...." Last season, a character on the popular teen drama "Dawson's Creek" came out of the closet, while on "Felicity" the title character contemplated marrying her gay boss to help him with his immigration problems. The Times commented that last year's most promising new comedy was NBC's "Will & Grace" which is about Will Truman, a gay man whose best buddy is a straight woman, and their sitcom friends.

The most "controversial" thing about "Will & Grace" to date, aside from complaints that Will needs to start seriously dating (which, in the new season, he's begun to do), wasn't gay-related at all. Hispanic media activists were in an uproar when they learned that, in an upcoming episode, Grace's sort-of friend, the wealthy and utterly obnoxious Karen, says to a Latina domestic, -- Hey, you're on the clock, tamale. Get to work." The protesters declared "tamale" an ethnic slur of the worst order and, after a brief tempest, the line was changed prior to airing, with "tamale" replaced by "honey."

Which just goes to show that in the realm of media sensitivities, activist critics will be activist critics, whether straight or gay. As for the latter, a press release from GLAAD bemoans that the 1999-2000 TV lineup was "barely realistic" in terms of gay portrayals. Altogether, GLAAD lists a total of 27 "lesbian, gay, or transgendered characters" on broadcast and cable networks for the season, but finds that "the majority of these representations are small, recurring roles." (Memo to GLAAD: "Recurring" is good!)

The release goes on to state that "with over 540 lead or supporting characters on prime time this fall, the gay community encompasses less than 2 percent of total portrayals." Perhaps most worrisome from GLAAD's perspective, these characters are (can you guess?) too white and too male. While NBC has 8 gay characters, only 3 are women. On Showtime's "Rude Awakening," Jackie may be a black lesbian, but GLAAD characterizes her as only a supporting role (an arguable point, given the ensemble cast), and hey, it's only cable. Flippancy aside, it's true that television's representation of people of color is generally pretty dismal, but GLAAD could at least acknowledge that, after Will Truman, probably the most visible out gay character on network TV is Carter Heywood, an African-American who is the Director of Minority Affairs on ABC's "Spin City."

UPN, shockingly, "features no lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered characters this fall." Shame, shame.

Some late night TV comedians -- including Bill Maher of ABC's aptly named "Politically Incorrect" and Craig Kilborn of CBS's "Late Late Show" -- have taken potshots at the activists' claim that 28 (or 27, depending on who's counting) gay characters aren't enough. GLAAD, with its typical humorlessness, is now offended that its media criticism is being criticized. And so it goes.

But for those of us who grew up when there were NO gay or lesbian or bisexual or whathaveyou characters on our 3 network TV stations, save for the occasional child molester (on one notorious episode of "Marcus Welby, M.D." of all things), and then suffered through the inevitable era of the painful coming out of the one-shot gay friend (say, who remembers "Family"?), and still later groaned when advertisers pulled their spots from "thirtysomething" after the show dared to feature a gay couple, it seems that having 28, or even 27, homosexuals on the tube is incredible, and 2 percent of prime time gone lavender is something akin to amazing. So while GLAAD and other media watchdogs undoubtedly have a point or two somewhere in their morass of dogmatic announcements and denouncements, there's truly reason to cheer, as we await -- and anticipate -- even better things to come.

RECENTLY, NEAR ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, plainclothes police officers swooped into an adult video store, entered the video booths, and arrested those men deemed to be engaging in "lewd behavior." The Washington Blade newspaper reported that at least 48 men were taken into custody. One victim, Don Chandler, sat in a cell block with his hands and feet in cuffs from 9 pm until 5:30 am the following morning, charged with "indecent exposure" (behind the locked door of a video booth). When the Annapolis Capital newspaper published Chandler's name, address, and the charges against him, he was summarily fired from his job as director of music and organist at a local Episcopal Church. Chandler is now trying to make ends meet as a part-time piano tuner.

Sadly, his story is all too typical.

Many victims of police sex raids fare even worse. Outside the big cities, it's common for newspapers to publish the names of men taken into custody during police stings, making no distinction between those arrested in private commercial establishments (sex clubs, closed video booths in adult porn stores) and those arrested in public restrooms or public parks. One man committed suicide last January in Pulaski County, Ark., after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock published his name among those arrested in a sex raid. The newspaper, by the way, did not report his suicide and ignored requests from five major gay organizations to discuss its policy of selective publication of the names of men arrested for misdemeanors.

The Fresno Bee in June reported that a sting of a restroom in a local park netted "five schoolteachers, some business executives and a high school football coach." In the case of the teachers and the coach, police were required by law to notify the supervisors of those arrested, ending their teaching careers. The paper noted that one teacher in an earlier raid asked for a court trial in which he was found not guilty. His lawyer argued successfully that an act wasn't lewd if it wasn't witnessed by someone near enough to be offended by it, and the activity in question took place at night, when the only people in that area of the park were police officers and men seeking sex.

Still, few arrestees are willing to take their cases to court and earn more publicity for themselves. Rock star George Michael (arrested in a Beverly Hills park restroom while alone with an officer who indicated an interest in some action) can survive being the center for a scandal; most working stiffs (ahem) can not.

It's been widely reported in the gay press that a slew of television stations from Miami to San Diego have run sensationalist news reports during "sweeps week," showing hidden camera footage of men cruising in parks and rest rooms. The news operations found these sites through listings on the web site cruisingforsex.com. The site is intended to inform about where quick, anonymous sex can be found, but it seems that many listed locales become subject to either police raids and/or local television hidden-camera news coverage. Yikes. Helpfully, the web site provides "alerts" of where recent raids have occurred. For example: At the Paradise Bookstore in Pomona, California, police entered video booths and made apparently random arrests. At the Adult Video store in Hallendale, Florida, undercover police entered booths and "grabbed themselves" before arresting the men unlucky enough to have fallen into their trap. At the Adult Superstore & Theater in Las Vegas, police left arcade doors ajar to invite in guests, who were then arrested. Come into my parlor, said the state-armed spider to the fly.

The alerts listed at the crusingforsex.com site go on and on -- a litany of entrapment. A report from Houston, Texas says that all over town the vice squad is actively monitoring and entrapping men in adult bookstore arcades and theaters. "They will grab their crotches and rub themselves to let people think they aren't cops. They dress sloppy to casual, wearing baseball caps sometimes, shorts and t-shirts, etc., straight looking to gay acting. Will stare at you, or just stand next to you watching the video acting as if they are getting off to it. Many guys are being busted every day."

The consequences can be devastating. One poor soul in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania left the following account: "Nine of us were arrested at Adult World for 'publicly masturbating while other men watched.' That's how it read in the paper with our names published for all to see. Official charges are public indecency and public lewdness. It has ruined my career and marriage. I have not been fired, but I am going to leave due to being either shunned or scorned. It is awful. My wife has thrown me out saying: 'I didn't know you were a queer!' I am without hope."

Finally, I should mention that in these self-reported accounts it is not unusual for the vice cops to extort money on the spot in lieu of arrest. Most men pay up and consider themselves lucky, given the alternative.

I've had my disagreements with the views advocated by the group Sex Panic! before, chiefly for its failure to distinguish between legitimate goals on the sexual privacy front and sexual "rights" that border on the absurd. However, among their aims that I agree with, on good libertarian grounds, are demands for an end to police raids on private sexual businesses, including adult theaters, book/video stores, and clubs. Humiliating and arresting consenting adult patrons and proprietors smacks of police state terror tactics that should not be accepted in a free society. Police entrapment -- often employing hot cops to elicit a solicitation -- also should not be tolerated. Ditto the frequent double standard -- cops will tell a straight couple going at it in a parked car to move on, but arrest a gay couple. The same is often true of those coupling in semi-private places -- such as the beach at night.

In fact, a convincing argument can be made generally against stings targeting sex in obscured outdoor spaces, hidden from public view during the day, or discernible only by flashlight-wielding officers at night. Again, if police would simply tell a straight couple to move on, they have no business treating same-sex couples as criminals, useful in upping their arrest quotas for the week. On the other hand, when Sex Panic! defends sex in public men's rooms as a "right," I still cringe. This is a fight that they will never win, even if (as its advocates claim) such activity takes place with extreme discretion, only when two partners indicate through time-tested ritual that each is interested, and often outside the sight of anyone who might intrude. In the court of public opinion, the majority will never countenance this activity in spaces that are officially public.

Moreover, a growing number of influential gay men (and lesbians) are speaking out against such behavior. Jeff Epperly, editor of the influential Bay Windows gay newspaper in Boston, ran a lacerating editorial last May (1998) against cruisers who want gay organizations to defend their public sexual activities, and the negative public images they generate. Wrote Epperly, "some guy who can't relate to other human beings on a mature level... wants you and me... to take time out from fighting violence and bias to protect his right to be a pig in public." Karen Boothe, president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, has said that the issue of public sex is not representative of the gay community because "as a lesbian, these stories have nothing to do with my life."

As I said, the "right" to restroom sex is not something that its adherents are going to win.

Let's make the fight one which we can, and should, win - the right to private, consensual behavior, and the rights of property owners to run sexually oriented businesses - including commercial establishments set up with the intent to provide private space for sexual encounters. I suspect that more gay men have been harmed by vice cop persecutions than by workplace discrimination. That the well-funded national lesbigay political groups have all but ignored this situation is appalling, and they should be called to account.

In addition, we should not hesitate to lambaste the sleazy slew of TV news reports on restroom sex - often, like the police, employing decoys to start the action and then, sometimes, turning their tapes over to the police so that those captured on film can be arrested. Nice to know the journalistic trade is attracting such public spirited citizens. These journalistic vermin should slither back to the holes in the ground from which they emerged. The same goes for their bubble-headed pseudo-reporters who like to imply that "your children are at risk."

When I was in college (many years ago), I was jolted by John Rechy's The Sexual Outlaw, a searing indictment of the criminalization of homosexuality. "You're making out in a car - and you're sentenced to prison for eight years," Rechy wrote. "Not merely told to move on - but sentenced to prison for eight years... And you keep wondering, why?" Don Chandler, the church director arrested in a video booth, kept in a cell with hands and feet in cuffs for over eight hours, and then fired after the self-righteous local paper printed his name, must be wondering the same thing.

"DAYTONA BEACH Promotes Summer Break for Gay, Lesbian Travelers" was the boosterish headline for a recent story in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. As the article explained, there are two reasons why this Florida resort town's Convention and Visitors Bureau was promoting a three-day spring fling aimed at gays and lesbians -- dollars and cents.

This year's "Beachfest" attracted as many as 20,000 visitors and generated close to $8 million for local businesses, according to tourism officials. Beachfest chairman Jerry Corliss told the Sentinel that when the event was launched in 1994, "We had to knock on business doors asking for financial assistance. Now, they're coming to us (because) they want part of the dollars. This event has grown by leaps and bounds."

Why is this story worth noting? Because in all the hubbub over the religious right's protests against gay friendly businesses and events (think Disney's "Gay Days," or mainstream advertisers on gay-themed TV shows), we sometimes forget that were we not so successful in gaining this sort of corporate backing, the bigots wouldn't be so upset.

Consider Levi Strauss, the nation's largest apparel advertiser. The company ran a 12-page advertising supplement in the November 1998 issue of Out magazine, a leading gay and lesbian publication. The ad featured 10 men and women who are openly gay or lesbian, including actor Wilson Cruz and photographer Eve Fowler. "We're trying to reach 25- to 34-year-olds whom we call urban modernists," Levi Strauss's marketing head told the New York Times. "When we looked at who made up that group, gay men and lesbians are a large part of it."

This is a smart move on the part of the Dockers makers. In a survey by Greenfield Online Inc. and Spare Parts Inc., a marketing communications company, 80 percent of the self-identifying lesbigay respondents said they preferred to buy from companies that spoke to them as gays or lesbians.

The embrace of the gay market, predictably, has incited the gay bashers. The Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association every month has its members send complaints to companies that either sponsor TV shows with gay or lesbian characters or buy ads in gay publications (including Levi Strauss). Other anti-gay groups are also active on this front. The Washington-based Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, for example, recently attacked Anheuser-Busch for sponsoring a "leather pride" street fair in San Francisco.

Alas, the religious right isn't the only group attacking business support for gay events. The gay left is simply beside itself. For example, for the first time in its 28 years, San Francisco's annual gay pride parade (officially, and inclusively, known as "The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Parade") accepted sizable corporate sponsorship. A thick, glossy pride magazine with pricey advertising made it possible for parade organizers to hire paid staff and produce a slicker, higher-tech -- and faster? -- affair, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The capitalism-haters were not amused, and labeled the acceptance of corporate money as a surrender to "commodity fetishism." Said a spokesperson for a group called Lesbian and Gay Insurrection (LAGI), "We find it offensive that the audience, the community, is being marketed as someone to sell something to." Oh, the shame of being a targeted market.

Writing in the August 1998 issue of Out magazine, columnist Pat Califa warned darkly that "these days we are basing our demands for equal rights on the claim that we are a valuable marketplace that ought to be liberated, so it can be exploited like any other natural resource forced to bare its throat to capitalism." Virginia Apuzzo, an assistant to the President and the highest ranking out lesbian in the federal government, chimed in with the market bashers when she declared at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's 1998 Creating Change conference that she hadn't "spent 29 years of my life to become part of a market niche." And a commentator on the popular weekly syndicated radio show "This Way Out" warned, "The idea that all gays and lesbians have large disposable incomes waiting to be reaped, a skewed image at best, may not necessarily be beneficial to the queer movement for equal civil rights."

But no one is claiming that all gays and lesbians are filthy rich; it's just that because most of us don't have children, and many of us live in two-income households (making us DINKS?double income, no kids), we are, in fact, a prime market demographic. Since it seems to me that it's easier to advance the fight for legal equality with the backing of corporate America than without it, the reason that the lefties are upset seems to come down to sheer hatred of the free-enterprise system.

Antagonism toward capitalism, and a romantic attachment to state socialism, aren't new, of course. Since the days of the Gay Liberation Front, which swore Marxist solidarity with liberation movements from Cuba to Vietnam, a knee-jerk scapegoating of capitalism has been a mainstay of gay politics. Not too long ago Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner ("Angels in America") wrote in The Nation magazine that "Homosexuals... like most everyone else, are and will continue to be oppressed by the depredations of capital until some better way of living together can be arrived at." That "better way," Kushner makes clear, is socialism and the elimination of privately owned enterprises.

NGLTF's Urvashi Vaid, a long-time opponent of "mainstreaming" and lesbigay "assimilation" (a sellout of the radical queer cause), has written that "as more of us move into a space where we can be personally gay or lesbian... we risk being appeased."

Rather than aspiring to join the mainstream, Vaid wants lesbians and gays to radicalize American society by "building a powerful, grassroots, political movement rooted in notions of Liberation and not merely Rights."

Vaid never really said what she means by "Liberation," but judging from her speeches it's not hard to figure out. In a 1991 tour de force, she wailed that the world "has taken off its ugly white hood to show its sexist, racist, anti-gay and capitalist face."

She pines, "The gay and lesbian liberation movement has turned into a gay and lesbian marketing movement" and complains that "a political movement is not what is being sold."

All this hoopla over corporate support for our cause! Could it be that the gay left fears that such acceptance could cause gays and lesbians to turn away from socialist daydreams, especially the ones in which they get to be the new commissars? Corporate acceptance may be good for gay people, but it's bad for the worldwide revolution against free markets.

Meanwhile, the same corporate support and mainstream advances that unnerve gay leftists will continue to provoke fierce new attacks by the radical right. That means gays who eschew both the leftover left and homophobic right must carry out an ongoing battle on two fronts, with no rest for the weary. No wonder we need events like Beachfest!

PATRICK BUCHANAN HAS done the nearly impossible; he's made Donald Trump look good.

In the likely face-off between right-wing populist Buchanan and playboy/real-estate mogul Trump for the Reform Party's presidential nomination, "The Donald" doesn't seem so sleazy. On "Meet the Press," Trump blasted Buchanan, saying "He's an anti-semite. ... He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't like the gays." For his part, when asked about gays in the military, Trump responded unequivocally: "It would not disturb me." Not bad, considering the reluctance of most candidates to stand up and defend equal rights for gays.

And what of his opponent? Let's take a trip down memory lane with the best of the worst of Buchanan's commentaries on the perverts who dwell among us.

"Homosexual groups are attempting to mainstream Satanism," Buchanan wrote in 1990. "Our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide."

Buchanan condemned then New York Mayor David Dinkins for his "insult" to Catholics by "prancing with sodomites" during the city's 1991 St. Patrick's Day parade.

In another column he helpfully explained, "To discriminate is to choose. ... And prejudice simply means prejudgment. Not all prejudgments are rooted in ignorance; most are rooted in the inherited wisdom of the race. A visceral recoil from homosexuality is the natural reaction of a healthy society wishing to preserve itself." Sieg Heil!

Buchanan has urged a "thrashing" be given to gay rights groups. "Homosexuality," he wrote, "is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family."

AIDS, it goes without saying, was viewed by Buchanan as a godsend -- literally. He famously declared, "The poor homosexuals, they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting awful retribution." After all, "homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy." The conclusion is obvious: "A prejudice against males who engage in sodomy with one another represents a normal and natural bias in favor of sound morality."

Sinking even lower, on TV's "The McLaughlin Group" Buchanan opined, "What the origin of all of these AIDS cases is, if you go back to it, is homosexuality. From the homosexuals, you get the blood supply tainted," which brings the scourge to innocent children and babies. But of course.

While running for president in 1992, Buchanan aired a TV ad featuring fuzzy footage of half-clad black gay men dancing in studded leather outfits -- images lifted from the late film maker Marlon Riggs' documentary "Tongues Untied." The ad attacked NEA funding of art that "glorified homosexuality, exploited children, and perverted the image of Jesus Christ." That same year, asked by CNN if he stood by his remarks about gays, Buchanan not only said yes, he elaborated on the subject, labeling homosexuality as "morally wrong," "socially ruinous," and "medically destructive."

Buchanan's columns employed the terms "sodomite" "perverted sex," and even "pederast proletariat," and suggested that gays are more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexuals. "How, conceivably, can a sexual practice, condemned through the ages, that leads to such suffering and death, be a positive good?" he pondered.

What all such statements share in common is a desire to inflame popular prejudice against gay people. And yet the news media, while here and there noting that Buchanan opposes "gay rights" or that he's been criticized by gay groups, have never held him truly accountable for his bile. Buchanan's anti-gay venom, when mentioned at all by the media, is usually referred to only after noting his critical comments about Jews and blacks - comments that consist of references to pro-Israel lobbying by Jewish groups, or assertions of black over-dependence on welfare - mild stuff, often stated through innuendo, compared with his direct, unmitigated anti-gay vitriol.

The media's failure to call Buchanan on his anti-gay bigotry to the same extent, say, as it made David Duke anathema for his racism, reflects a wider cultural ambivalence about homosexuality. As a nation, we've reached consensus that racism is wrong, but gayness is still held to be subject to debate. That's why there were no media denunciations of George W. Bush when he stated his support for the Texas sodomy law, which criminalizes consensual same-sex relations. But then again, there were no editorial page denunciations eight years ago when candidate Bill Clinton refused to condemn the Arkansas sodomy statute -- a statue he supported as his state's attorney general and later as governor, despite protest from Arkansas gay groups.

Democrat Bill Bradley is generally viewed as the most pro-gay candidate currently running for president. Yet Bradley can declare at a Human Rights Campaign dinner that "Where justice is concerned, no half-measures are acceptable," and at the same time say that he favors domestic partnership measures but opposes recognition of gay marriage. Just which "half-measures" are the ones that Bradley objects to?

All in all, I'd be a fool to claim that gays haven't made progress in terms of obtaining a degree of political support, especially within the Democratic party (although this gain has been more rhetorical than most gay Democrats are willing to admit). And even among Republicans, few politicos sink to the lower depths of homo-hatred exemplified by the Pat Buchanan quotes given above. And yes, even Buchanan himself has been somewhat quieter on his gay antipathy than in years past, although he in no way recants anything he's said. But the day when anti-gay zealotry is held to the same standard as other forms of bigotry is still to come.