IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared as two columns in The Weekly News (Miami).

GAY AMERICANS OF THE BEARISH PERSUASION have a new heartthrob - Richard, of the number 1 prime-time ratings leader Survivor. The show, airing from 8-9 pm Wednesdays on CBS, concerns a gaggle of disparate Americans transported to a South Seas island - male, female, black, white, urban, rural - and one gay guy, Richard. You know the shtick: they fend for themselves, but also have to engage in orchestrated contests of skill and/or endurance. At the end of each show, someones voted off in a hokey tribal council. As summer ends, the sole survivor will win a million bucks.

Writing about Survivor is tricky, because at least one other show will have aired by the time anyone reads this, and who knows what will be revealed. Still, it's worth noting that Survivor is as big a breakthrough as Ellen or Will and Grace - maybe bigger. And the reason is Richard Hatch (although the media refers to all the ersatz castaways on a first name basis). He's big, hairy, and usually shirtless. Which is to say, he's a bear-lovers' dreamboat. A 39-year-old corporate trainer, on the island he's the chief spear fisherman, which puts him several levels above some of the more obvious slackers. He's also a prime mover behind what has been a successful alliance with Rudy, Susan, and Kelly, who have been deciding in secret to pool their votes each week on one targeted victim, helping to ensure that they'll still be safe, for at least one more week.

This strategy has earned Richard some enemies back here in the real world. Writing in Entertainment Weekly, openly gay critic Mark Harris ripped him to shreds in a column titled "American Schemer." Harris, whose own photo is totally unbearish, called our man Rich a "conniving, manipulative, smarmy, fork-tongued...evil lizard-face, portly gay corporate trainer Machiavellian superstar," and that was just for starters. Comparing him to J.R. Ewing, Harris finally admits that Rich is "utterly mesmerizing."

So Rich flirted with Greg (the straight Ivy Leaguer, who also seemed to be flirting with him) and then voted Greg off while singing under his breath, "Good night, sweetheart, it's time to go...." The fact is, it's a game, fella, and strategy rules. Self-reliant, super-competent Gretchen, voted off a few weeks back, may very well have had the best physical survival skills, but she disdained the idea of sullying herself in an alliance, which she dismissed as nothing but "back stabbing" by "devious rivals." Corporate trainer Rich knows better. This show is all about manipulative relationships and making them work to your advantage.

It's not Gilligan's Island, and it's not summer camp. And while some lefty critics look at Rich's corporate background and paint him as a deceitful exemplar of free-market capitalism (again, the J.R. factor), they miss the point. This is not a "community," it's a contest. After all, no one's planning on sharing the million-dollar booty. Paranoia is the name of the game, and if you can't stand the heat, this island's not for you. As of this writing, several of the others have figured this out and are belatedly trying to put together alliances of their own, including one group of women (who may be trying to lure Kelly to their cause). Stay tuned.

EW's Harris says Rich has "single-handedly eradicated every antigay stereotype of the 20th century (he's not limp-wristed, incompetent...cowardly or effeminate)," but then complains he's "replaced them with every antigay stereotype of the 19th century: Duplicitous, secretive, allying himself with neither gender ... obsessed with bending others to his will...." On the magazine's website, one posting laments, "I wish Richard's being gay wasn't so much on the forefront." Someone else labels him Richard "Vader." Give me a break. Rich knows it's a big game show, and he knows how to play it. I doubt he'll win, but it's great watching him try.

Now, back to something more serious. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. And in all the yammering about whether Richard is a brilliant schemer or a "fat yutz" (as the New York Post put it), the fact that the show is a gargantuan mega hit, and that Rich is, in fact, this season's J.R. Ewing, is downright revolutionary. This is the show that everyone talks about around the water fountain. I'd wager that high school kids are hip to it as well. And it's star player (at least as of this writing) is the gay guy.

There's a cultural paradox here. The U.S. Army has been advertising on Survivor, although openly gay people like Rich are barred from the armed forces. Yet if popular culture is a bellwether, then we know that the entrenched forces of intransigence, be they the U.S. military or Boy Scouts, can't hold out against the tide.

Not that many years ago, after all, there were no gays and lesbians on TV. None. Zero. Nada. Then the ice began to break. But a gay relationship was enough to cause sponsors to flee ABCs "Thirtysomething" a decade or so back. It all seems so quaint. From Melrose Place to Dawson's Creek gays became part of the contemporary video landscape. The producers are even promising that next season you can expect Will to actually start dating men in earnest, without Grace tagging along. Now that's progress.

The following column ran after the show's conclusion.

That the openly "gay guy" was the star and ultimate victor of CBS's mega-popular Survivor - which everyone is calling the '00s equivalent of Dallas - is a real breakthrough that isn't being given enough attention beyond the entertainment pages. The fact is, it just would not have been allowed to happen, network TV-wise, even just a few years ago. Before MTV's Real World made gays on reality TV shows OK for hip cable channels, before Ellen stormed the broadcast networks' closet door, and before Will & Grace was a ratings hit, Richard Hatch, millionaire extraordinaire and self-described "fat naked fag" would never have been considered for a high-profile network TV contest. And if he nevertheless had found his way in, would a jury of former co-contestants - including a hard-edged female trucker and a retired Navy Seal - have voted to give him the loot?

So the times they are a'changin, once more. And having won - and already appeared as the first openly gay person to do one of those "Got Milk" liquid mustache ads - Rich is continuing to break barriers. Just over a decade ago, when Greg Louganis won Olympic gold, he was one of the few top medalists not to be asked to grace a Wheaties box. Even Martina managed only a few, tennis-specific product endorsement spots. Everyone knew why. But having done the milk ad (I mean, how wholesome can you get?) and reportedly in negotiations with leading mega-brands across the spectrum, it seems such Madison Avenue discrimination may be consigned to history's dustbin, where it always belonged.

Next up, now that he's actually won the Survivor $1 million jackpot and become a celebrity gay, we're going to have to decide what to do with Richard. To some he's a hot bear whose proved his mettle, and to others an "evil queen" (as he was mercilessly characterized in a Washington Post sneer-fest). In any case, he's now someone to reckon with, given the massive coverage of his victory by the mainstream media. "Way to Go!: Many Gay Men Inspired by Rich's Win," proclaimed the Philadelphia Daily News. "Gays Hail Guy Who Shattered the Myth," declared the New York Post. These and other stories point to the pride that gays - and gay men, in particular - felt about one of their own coming out on top.

Richard (with whom America is now on a first-name basis, like Cher) gets kudos for being out and proud. He was forthright about being gay on the island, as he forged the now notorious "alliance" with homophobic ex-Navy Seal Rudy and self-described "redneck" trucker Sue, along with conflicted river guide Kelly.

And he doesn't shy from topic Q. Rich is at ease giving interviews about how, growing up gay and overweight, "you could either go inside and never admit who you are or you come out and be comfortable with yourself." He says that while he's not dating anyone, "my goal is to be in a committed relationship in the future with the right man." He appears genuinely pleased by the support he's gotten from the gay community.

One guy-on-the-street interviewee told the Philadelphia Daily News, "People don't usually see depictions of gay people as intelligent and powerful people, but we are like that. We've had to overcome a lot of adversity in our lives. Rich winning Survivor is a very positive thing for our community."

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal has compared Richard Hatch to Shakespeare's loathsome Richard III; the Style section of the Washington Post characterized him as a representative "evil queen" one day and a "scheming nudist" on another; while Entertainment Weekly compared him disapprovingly with J.R. Ewing. Even Michael Musto, a gay columnist at New York's liberal Village Voice, called Rich's victory "a mixed blessing."

So, what do we really know about Richard? We've learned that the 39-year-old corporate trainer from Newport, R.I. is either a savvy strategist or a wily manipulator; a clever bluffer or an outright liar; a champion or a back-stabber; a loving parent of an adopted, emotionally troubled young son or an abusively strict disciplinarian who forces the overweight boy to join him in pre-dawn jogs (to the consternation of local child welfare authorities, who briefly removed the boy from his home but then dismissed their charges); a guy who happens to be at ease with his body or a shameless exhibitionist. See, we know plenty, don't we?

And that's the problem. While those watching the finale at gay bar Survivor parties seem to adore his moxie, the "official" lesbigay activists aren't rushing to embrace him. And why should they, you ask? Well, think of the battle against the "don't ask, don't tell" (i.e., "lie and hide") military policy. Rich not only is an army veteran who went to West Point (albeit briefly), but he forged and led the Survivor alliance with Rudy, who started out dismissive of "queers" and ending up expressing affection for Rich "but not in a homosexual way." Which proves you don't have to like homosexuals to serve with them - and to share close quarters while doing so. Perhaps being gay isn't so detrimental to unit cohesion after all.

But Rich isn't being touted as a gay posterboy. There's the nudism, the dropped "abuse" charge and the widely noted "arrogance." Much of the latter, I'd argue, is simple media homophobia. A straight master strategist is a master strategist; a gay master strategist is an "evil queen."

Rich, however, may yet become another accidental activist. After all , there will be product endorsements, book deals, highly publicized speaking engagements and sitcom cameos. Rich is hot. He may be not be the lesbian and gay establishment's idea of a role model, but he's likely to be someone to contend with for at least a while longer than the next 15 seconds.

And that, in the end, is not a bad thing at all. As Rich told the New York Post, when he was on the island and after, "there was no pressure about my being gay." And he noted, "if I'm also the gay me on TV, well, that's awesome." And it is.

Originally published in 1999.

As Rich Tafel tells it, being a gay Republican isn't easy. Tafel is the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the national federation of gays and lesbians who lobby to make the Grand Old Party more gay-supportive, and to make gays and lesbians more open to a political vision that departs from the big-government ethos of the lesbigay left by advocating less government interference in our bedrooms and our boardrooms.

This counter-agenda calls for lower taxes, an expectation of personal responsibility, and support for that dynamic prosperity generator known as the market economy, unfettered by an overload of often irrational (and politically motivated) regulatory and redistributive mandates. It also calls for equal rights under the law for gays and lesbians, and for all Americans, while eschewing group entitlements.

But Tafel's just-published political memoir, "Party Crasher: A Gay Republican Challenges Politics as Usual," shows what strong opposition gay GOPers face, and not just from the religious right's supplicants in their party. Some of the most intense hostility gay Republicans confront comes from the left-leaning activists who dominate the "official" lesbigay political movement, who effortlessly seem to disregard their otherwise ubiquitous "diversity" mantra whenever the topic turns to inclusion of gay Republicans as a hue in the gay rainbow.

Tafel himself pulls no punches when it comes to what he terms "the knee-jerk, politically correct establishment that dominates gay thinking." Back during the '80s, as a young politico in Massachusetts, he was stunned when the local gay political leadership (including Congressman Barney Frank) chose to support a profoundly anti-gay Democratic nominee for governor, John Silber, against the extraordinarily pro-gay Republican nominee and subsequent victor, William Weld. Tafel notes with pleasure that he saw, not for the last time, "a tide of gay and lesbian voters swing hard against the entire gay political establishment and vote to put a Republican in the state house." In fact, according to exit poll figures, some 33 percent of self-identified gay/lesbian/bisexual voters across the nation routinely pull the Republican lever in congressional elections -- numbers just as routinely ignored by both the leadership of the GOP and the national gay establishment.

"The gay movement's one-party political strategy of simply working within the Democratic Party has clearly failed," Tafel argues. In recent presidential elections, "We were taken for granted by Democrats and written off by Republicans." Bill Clinton was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian and gay political action fund, before the first GOP primary in New Hampshire -- and despite the fact that Clinton not only supported the Defense of Marriage Act -- which Tafel correctly labels the most anti-gay measure ever passed by Congress -- but bragged about signing it, in ads that ran on Christian radio stations.

Contrary to what he terms liberal gay "assimilationists" exemplified by the Human Rights Campaign, and radical gay "liberationists" exemplified by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force -- the two wings of today's "movement" -- he calls for recognition of a third alternative, namely gay and lesbian "libertarians," exemplified by the overlooked one-third to one-quarter of all gay voters who side with the GOP. "Histories of the gay movement divide it into two categories -- liberationist and assimilationist -- with no mention of the libertarians," he writes. "Gay libertarians stress their individualism, so they don't accept the labels of identity politics."

When the emphasis is placed back on individual rights rather than group entitlements, a different sort of gay agenda begins to emerge. As gay libertarian Andrew Sullivan contends in his book "Virtually Normal," the gay community should shift its focus from seeking government protection to removing government-imposed barriers to equal treatment. As Tafel himself notes, Sullivan argues for a new movement strategy: equal marriage rights for gays, lifting the ban on gays in the military, and the repeal of sodomy laws and other government prohibitions that treat gays and lesbians second-class citizens. And that's all. This is farther than Tafel himself is willing to go -- he supports government enforced anti-discrimination provisions, for example. But Tafel notes that while the gay activist leadership is slow to change, "the movement away from group identity politics toward a respect for individuals in all their complexity is growing."

This is the politics that rejects speech codes but favors vigorous debate; that rejects gender and race-based preferential treatment, but favors equal opportunity for individuals based on personal merit; that opposes a welfare state that seeks to redistribute income through taxation, but favors economic policies that foster a growing free market that increases everyone's prosperity.

But let me stop here, lest you think Tafel's book is mostly a snipe at gay liberals and their leftover-left nostrums. In fact, the book's main strength is in Tafel's support of libertarian values and his advocacy for a renewed GOP that remembers why personal liberty was the Republic's (and the Republican Party's) founding principle. It's a message that both the anti-gay leaders of the GOP and the left-liberal leaders of the lesbigay establishment both need to hear.

Originally published in 1999.

Last month, a Michigan jury ordered the producers of the "Jenny Jones Show" to pay $25 million in damages for the 1995 murder of Scott Amedure by Jonathan Schmitz. The civil suit's "wrongful-death" verdict has set off a debate over whether it rendered a deserved punishment or was an extreme over-reaction. In either case, the culprit is said to be homophobia. But whose?

If you need a reminder, during an episode of the Jones show taped on March 6, 1995, the 32-year-old Amedure, who was openly gay, revealed his "secret crush" on his friend, a surprised, 24-year-old (and presumably heterosexual) Schmitz. Three days later, Schmitz bought a shotgun and bullets and killed Amedure at his home in Orion Township, Michigan. Throughout the first criminal trial, Schmitz's defense centered around his public "humiliation" as the provocation for murder -- a variant of the so-called "homosexual panic" defense. Schmitz was nevertheless found guilty, but the verdict was thrown out on a technicality. He's scheduled to be re-tried later this year. In the meantime, Amedure's family brought and won the civil suit against the Jones show.

Back after the 1995 murder, groups such as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) strenuously condemned Jenny Jones and her show, blaming its alleged sensationalism and circus atmosphere for "using" and debasing gay people -- although the openly gay Amedure seemed quite happy to be "used" as the instigator of the planned surprise. Schmitz, for his part, knew the situation was a unsuspected crush, and the show's producers claim he was told it could be from either sex. Nevertheless, through a supposed chain of dubious causality, the Jones show was accused of creating the "context" for Amedure's subsequent murder by intentionally setting up the killer for embarrassment and shame.

Others, however, objected to blaming Jenny Jones and/or her producers, and even suggested the show was being "inclusive" toward gay people. After all, no one would have objected if the "surprise crush" had been between two opposite-sex heterosexuals, one of whom was unsuspecting. GLAAD itself had frequently denounced what it termed "defamation by exclusion," such as leaving gay couples out of stories on romantic predicaments.

This apparent "damned if they do, and damned if they don't" conundrum was amplified by the civil suit and the resultant verdict against the Jones show. Was the program homophobic, or was the jury that convicted it? Will the verdict make talk show producers think twice about treating gay issues in a "sensationalistic" way, or will it make them think twice about treating gay issues at all? And if the show was a guilty party that instigated the killing, doesn't that make Schmitz "less guilty" of the murder he committed?

That, in any event, is the view of some activists over the $25 million verdict. "Homophobia has been victorious," states a press release from the Triangle Foundation, a gay-rights lobby in Michigan. "The verdict against the �Jenny Jones Show' and its producers is a tragic mistake," says Jeffrey Montgomery, the group's executive director. "Shifting blame from the actual, admitted killer and trying to establish some mitigating factor -- in this case a TV show -- is rooted in homophobia, as was the strategy to make the case against them." Regrettably, he adds, the victim's family "has written the script for John Schmitz's team to follow, virtually insuring that the killer of Scott Amedure will walk." All in all, "it's a shameful verdict," says Montgomery, "a shame for us all."

GLAAD, for its part, having gone on record condemning the Jones show in no uncertain terms, has apparently become sensitive to criticism that in doing so it abetted Schmitz's "panic" defense. In a fence-straddling statement after the civil verdict, GLAAD leader Joan Garry states that "It's important that talk shows and other media be held accountable for their sensationalism -- in that sense, at least, this ruling is encouraging." But she then adds, "The danger here is that this ruling will undermine the perception of Schmitz's culpability in Scott Amedure's murder....A ruling that denounces sensationalism and the conviction of a man who killed based on fear and prejudice are not mutually exclusive."

Try as it might, GLAAD really can't have it both ways, and I side with the Triangle Foundation and other critics of the verdict. If Schmitz felt justified in killing based on the fact he was "humiliated" by a public announcement that a male acquaintance had a "secret crush" on him, that is not the fault of the show's producers. To claim as the jury -- and GLAAD -- would that Schmitz could be so mortified by this revelation that he would predictably be driven to shoot Amedure at point-blank range with a shotgun is, in the words of Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper, "an astoundingly unfair burden to place on any program."

Talks shows of this type deal in humorous and "embarrassing" set ups, and they should not fear to treat situations that bring gay and straight people together. Even premises such as Howard Stern's "lesbian dating game" -- also stridently denounced by GLAAD, although no one is forcing the willing lesbian guests to participate -- are a sign that gay folks are becoming part of American culture, including schlock popular culture.

You can't advocate for inclusivity on one hand, and then criticize scenarios that fall below an idealized presentation of gays as noble, oppressed victims. You cannot support the First Amendment for gay images that many find "shocking," and then approve of censorious civil suits that hold talk shows responsible for subsequent violence.

Memo to GLAAD: the killer was guilty, period.

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.

IN EARLY FEBRUARY the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbigay political group, and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the nation's largest lesbigay religious organization, announced they would sponsor the country's fourth national March on Washington to promote the lesbian and gay (and bisexual and transgender) cause. The so-called Millennium March on Washington for Equal Rights, to take place in the spring of 2000, would be the successor to Washington marches held in 1979, 1987, and 1993.

Well, if HRC and MCC thought that they were going to do an end-run around the usual gaggle of "grassroots" activists, they soon discovered otherwise. The uproar from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and other, more left-leaning organizations was so powerful that HRC quickly backtracked and announced that plans for the Millennium March were on hold. "We decided a much larger group of gay people will come together to talk about a national march and a 50-state march," said HRC head Elizabeth Birch. "We agreed to just pause and have more people at the table."

What this means, alas, is that everybody and her aunt will now demand the right to "organize" the event. Expect multitudinous ethnic-identity variants to clamor for quotas on the national steering committee, but don't be surprised when they hang out the "only leftists need apply" sign. Some kinds of diversity are not to be tolerated.

That, of course, is what happened last time around, with predictable results. The 1993 March on Washington for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Rights was characterized by abysmal planning. As Jacob Weisberg noted in the liberal New Republic magazine, the event "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.'" Moreover, few participants lobbied their Congressmembers while in town - one of the main reasons political protests are held in Washington in the first place.

That's not to say that many, maybe even most who descended on Washington weren't energized by being in the nation's capital with hundreds of thousands of compatriots. But it's hard to argue with Weisberg's account. For starters, the idea of a literal "march" around the National Mall followed by an afternoon rally in front of the Capitol was a logistics nightmare. Worse, most of the participants spent the entire day waiting (and waiting, and waiting) to march, so that even as the rally was ending around 5pm many were still in line to take their turn around the empty Mall, deflating the numbers at the media-covered rally.

The religious right Promise Keepers, by the way, understood this and dispensed with the "march" concept altogether. Their recent gathering was one all-day rally, with everyone together all the time. No danger that their numbers would be diluted by sprawling participants all over the place.

Of course, the '93 March on Washington's poor execution should have been no surprise since from the get-go priority was given not to organizational efficiency, but to an arch form of political correctness. Consider this: in their quest for "diversity," march organizers mandated gender parity and 50 percent people of color quotas on all state organizing committees - even in states that were more than 90 percent white. The same gender and race "diversity" dominated speaker selection, with the number of "pale males" (i.e., white men) addressing the crowd kept small enough to be counted on one hand. However, as noted, the call for diversity did not extend to ideological matters; virtually every speaker echoed the organizers' call for a broad left-wing alliance to overthrow capitalism, establish socialism, and (oh, yeah) have gay equality.

Do I exaggerate? Speakers took the podium to demand everything from mandated bilingual education and welfare as a "right" (known as "equitable income redistribution" in order to "end poverty") to government-provided free-of-charge sex-change operations for transsexual prisoners. These, in fact, were among the mind-boggling 55 planks of the official platform adopted by the national steering committee.

Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself. Here's my recommendation: make the Millennium March an all-day rally focused on what should have been our movement's primary goal all along, ending all discrimination by the government that makes us second-class citizens - "sodomy" laws in almost half our states, the military gay ban, and the federal marriage exclusion codified by the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act signed by HRC's favorite president, Bill Clinton. OK, throw in workplace anti-discrimination laws. But that's it. Period.

But I won't hold my breath, as we go marching on.

The Religious Right theocrats may win an occasional skirmish, but by all accounts they've been losing the "culture wars" for some time. The public has reached consensus on abortion (leave it legal, except for viable fetuses about to be born), pre-marital sex (go for it, as long as the partners are of legal age), extra-marital sex (not good, but nothing to impeach a president over), and homosexuality ("They're Here, They're Queer, We're Used to It," to quote a recent cover of the conservative National Review).

These positions can change, of course, and on the gay issue attitudes are still evolving from mere toleration to full recognition of legal equality. But these are battles being waged in a fight that is clearly being won by the hundreds of thousands of gay men and lesbians who are not cowering in their closets. In short, the religious right is on the ropes.

Evidence of this can be found in the response received by a coalition of religious-right groups, including the American Family Association, the Christian Family Network, and Concerned Women For America, which asked the declared presidential candidates to sign an anti-gay "pledge." The statement included the candidate's promise to "uphold the sacred institution of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman," to "vigilantly defend this age-old institution against any effort -- judicial or legislative -- to redefine it to include same-sex relationships," to "resist all attempts to provide the benefits and privileges traditionally accorded married couples to unmarried 'domestic partners'," to "oppose all judicial and legislative efforts to place children in homosexual households," to "oppose the promotion of homosexuality as normative in America's public schools," and to oppose "special legal protections based on sexual behavior or preference." That's a lot of "opposes"!

The "pledge" departs from sound conservatism -- the belief in limited government and individual liberty -- in a number of ways, especially by demanding intrusion by the federal government into areas typically left to the states (marriage), to local governments (public education), and to private agencies (adoption). And it even appears to urge measures to restrict private companies from offering domestic partnership benefits to their own employees.

Predictably, the GOP candidates who've positioned themselves on the "cultural right" compliantly signed on the dotted line, including Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer. What's news, however, is that all three of the GOP's national frontrunners -- George W. Bush, Liddy Dole, and John McCain -- refused to take the pledge. That, in itself, is a sign of the times.

Perhaps because the hard right is losing, it's interesting to watch some of its theorists revealing their true beliefs. The Sept.-Oct. issue of Family Policy, a publication of the Family Research Council, contains several articles blasting the widespread use of contraception. Yes, contraception! I suppose these ideologues feel that if they're going to lose the culture war, they might as well be honest about what their real aims have always been -- to control and regulate all aspects of private, personal, sexual behavior.

One of the articles is "The Deconstruction of Perversion: Paraphilias Come Out of the Closet," by Patrick F. Fagan, a fellow in family issues at the Heritage Foundation. He blames the easy availability of contraception for the rise and increasing openness of "paraphilias" (i.e., "perversions"), including homosexuality, pedophilia, sado-masochism, and voyeurism.

Writes Fagan, "The 'coming out' of paraphilias would never have occurred without the aid of contraception." Legal and accessible birth control, he laments, has led to "infertile sexual pleasure [becoming] an end in itself," which in turn has undermined traditional taboos. He concludes that only an understanding of "the role of contraception in the advance of sexual perversions" will provide "the substantive moral alternative to the distortion of sexuality needed in late twentieth-century America."

The funny thing about this argument is that, leaving aside the reactionary political program, it contains more than a kernel of truth. After "the pill" became widespread during the early '60s, human sexuality was freed as never before from being necessarily tied to procreation. Heterosexuals who value sex as much for emotional intimacy (or even, post-Playboy, physical recreation) as for reproduction can more easily make the leap into seeing "non-procreative" homosexuality as an acceptable variant of sexual expression.

More fundamentally, the idea that the widespread acceptance and use of contraception could be rolled back is about as likely as the horse-and-buggy replacing the car. If this is the position that the anti-gay right finds itself advocating, than we can rest assured that their jeremiads represent the dying embers of yesterday's fires.

I enjoy reading letters to the editor supporting equal treatment for gay people, especially those in small, regional, "heartland" newspapers. I find it encouraging that pro-gay voices are being raised in burgs where you wouldn't think the "movement" had penetrated. But that doesn't mean I always agree with the views expressed on what's in the "gay" interest. Take, for example, a letter that ran a few weeks ago in the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune under the title "Vouchers prompt fear for gays."

The letter writer, Luann Conaty, prefaced her remarks by noting she is "the mother of a gay man and the stepmother of a lesbian." She notes that Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, has just signed a bill permitting tax dollars to be used to send students from failing public schools to the schools of their choice, including private and religious schools. Ms. Conaty worries about anti-gay discrimination that gay or lesbian students might face in religious schools, and remarks, "I could have been a prime candidate to send my son to a religious school under this system, not knowing that he was struggling with his sexual identity. I assure you he would have been at least brainwashed about the 'evils' of his sexual orientation and, at worst, humiliated, emotionally abused and perhaps physically attacked." After its publication, this letter was distributed via e-mail by a group called (take a breath) The Coalition for Safer Schools' Actual or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project.

I marvel that Ms. Conaty and her activist allies express such concern about anti-gay harassment in private, religious schools at a time when attacks on gay students in the American public school system are rampant. A story on high school harassment last May in the Los Angeles Times noted that teachers and administrators ignored "pervasive anti-gay abuse" in the halls of a suburban high school in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, south of San Jose, where "the words 'faggot' and 'dyke' were uttered about as often as 'hello' and 'goodbye'." Slurs were hissed at one out lesbian student in class, and "scribbled on her locker and on pornographic death threats, including a picture of a bound and gagged women with a slit throat." I wonder if the GLBT anti-school-choice activists are glad that this student was kept trapped in the public school system.

Or consider the pervasive anti-gay abuse at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rampage. The Denver Post reported that members of Columbine's now-notorious Trench Coat Mafia were "tormented" by jocks who called them "faggots" and bashed them into their lockers when they walked down the school halls. A story in the online magazine Salon noted, "it's clear that 'gay' is one of the worst epithets to use against a high school student in Littleton." Time magazine's post-Columbine story looked at patterns of violence, and found that anti-gay taunting was also a factor in provoking killing rampages in Pearl, Mississippi and West Paducah, Kentucky.

Of course, the issue isn't that some disturbed straight boys turn to murder in the wake of anti-gay taunting; the issue is the anti-gay harassment and physical abuse that kids who are gay (or perceived as gay) face in the public school system, and the persistent lack of concern shown by public school teachers and administrators.

Following Matthew Shepard's murder, a CBS poll found that nearly half of 11th graders said gay and lesbian students were abused verbally and otherwise at their schools. At the same time, a CNN story reported that public school officials used "community values" to defend their inaction. "You have to...not be so sensitive and so open that you are promoting something that certain portions of your parent population and students would be opposed to," said Paul Houston, a spokesman for the American Association of High School Administrators.

A few public high school students have won lawsuits charging that their schools failed to protect them from anti-gay attacks, but that hasn't stopped other school districts from imposing what they call "prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction" or forbidding gay and lesbian student groups from meeting. Maybe, just maybe, school vouchers could be part of the remedy instead of the threat that some activists fear.

A Pro-gay Case for School Choice

Advocates for school choice argue that under the status quo the government pays noncompetitive public schools a "head price" for each of their captive students. Alternatively, with school choice parents are free to send their children to the public school of their choosing or to receive a scholarship voucher to help pay for a private school. This "market competition" forces the public schools to compete for students, creating better, more responsive schools. And since the private school tuition support is always less than what the government pays the public schools per pupil, the system is more economical to boot.

Yes, school choice proposals includes parochial schools, but I know at least some Catholic school veterans who tell me that, unlike at many public schools, gay baiting and bashing simply would not have been tolerated at their alma mater, regardless of the Church's teachings about sexuality. Richard Sincere of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), a libertarian gay group, says his all-male Catholic school was a far cry from the hate-and-fear-filled hallways of Columbine High. In fact, demonstrating respect for fellow students was ingrained and fostered by the faculty on a daily basis, with an affirmative attempt on the part of administrators to make sure different sorts of students mixed with each other, so jocks worked on the school play and musicians assisted the basketball coach.

It could be that one reason this example seems so far from the reality of most public schools is that the public system has become, like most government monopolies, insulated, corrupt and lazy, with little regard for serving its "customers" (the students and their parents). While students in public high schools report widespread harassment, with many going so far as to say in online discussion groups that they understand how Harris and Klebold felt, we're just not hearing that cry of pain from private school students.

But more than simply providing for safer schools, allowing for choice supports a real diversity of educational options for students -- including allowing them to attend public or private schools that have gay-supportive reputations or curriculums, or that allow students to organize gay-straight alliances. It could even mean that more public school districts would be willing to experiment with alternatives along the lines of New York City's Harvey Milk school, which takes openly gay, lesbian, and transgendered students who've dropped out -- or fled -- their local schools.

That's not a perfect solution, since some kids come from homophobic homes, or from homes where parents just don't care at all. But competition is the engine of innovation and improvement. In the long run, applying market competition to force government-funded and operated public schools to compete would provide an economic incentive to curb the worst aspects of high school hell faced by all students, gay and straight, trapped in schools that just don't give a damn.

The Politics of School Choice

So, why are some vocal lesbigay activists so opposed to school choice? The main opponents of choice reforms are the teachers' unions, and public employee unions are the bedrock of the Democratic Party. Moreover, school choice is seen as a "Republican" issue. The result: in the name of alliance politics, gays and lesbians are once again being asked to take the left side of an issue which has nothing to do with gay equality per se and everything to do with maintaining entrenched government bureaucracies.

It's ironic that so-called progressives want to keep economically disadvantaged kids imprisoned in rotting public schools. And it's unconscionable that some in the lesbigay movement, whose leaders insist we support a "broad social agenda" with a "multi-issue" focus, want us to add opposition to school choice to the mix.

Who Decides?

To sum up, the disagreement over school choice is one of basic principle -- whether parents should be able to choose how their money (taken by the government as school taxes) is used to fund their children's education, or whether the state should decide. The anti-choice side seems to be saying, as regards gay students, that once progressives take control of the state (or the school district) that policies will be implemented to teach tolerance and enforce anti-discrimination. I just don't buy it; too many of today's noncompetitive public schools can't even teach reading, writing and math, so why on earth should we expect they would be more successful with sensitivity training?

Furthermore, there will always be political resistance to attempts to mandate that public schools teach 'gay is ok' when some parents who must send their kids there believe (often based on their religious convictions) that being gay is, at the very least, not morally equivalent to being straight. That's the sort of social engineering that gives rise to an effective backlash, as happened in New York City over its proposed Rainbow ("Heather Has Two Mommies") Curriculum.

Yes, choice may give some tax money back to some parents who will choose to send their kids to conservative religious academies. That's what choice means -- parents decide, not Hillary Clinton. Still more pupils would be able to flee the worst public schools and attend far more tolerant private schools, or go to public schools that do a better job of ensuring that they don't get beat up in the hallways. When the bad schools and their union employees have to pay a financial price, there will be a real incentive to improve those institutions, or face going out of business.

Finally, you may hear that the pro-school-choice side wants to "destroy public education." Again, I don't believe that. It seems the only hope for our highly dysfunctional schools is not throwing even more money at them, but to engender competition and its universal byproducts -- efficiency and innovation. To be blunt, I am sorry that the teachers' unions are more interested in protecting their iron rice bowls than in seeing how necessary these reforms are.

By fostering a diversity of educational options, school choice could strike at the heart of the one-size-fits-all public system predicated on fears of offending some homophobes' "community values," and instead would allow both public and private schools to "market" a gay-inclusive alternative. At the very least, this would help besieged gay students to escape from the Columbine Highs of the world and seek out competitive institutions that foster human decency, rather than bigoted depravity.

In the end, wouldn't that be a better choice?

Last month [June 1999], Slate - Microsoft's Web-based magazine - featured a four-part debate between Urvashi Vaid, director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, and David Brooks, senior editor at the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. Vaid has for many years been a leading light of the lesbigay left, and is known for inveighing against gay and lesbian "mainstreaming." Brooks is a conservative Republican, but one who hasn't engaged in gay-baiting. Their exchange, although ostensibly about recent books on the lesbian and gay movement, illuminated the difficulty that the gay left and the straight right have in finding a common language to discuss gays and society. But aside from that, I'd argue that both sides managed to score points that non-dogmatic gays might benefit from keeping in mind.

To show what I mean, I'll do my best to briefly summarize and quote the views put forth by Vaid and Brooks on two primary subjects: sexual liberation and economic liberty. And I'll try to explain why I think the "progressive" Vaid is mostly right about the former, while the "conservative" Brooks has the better argument about the latter.

First, let's talk sex. Vaid argues there are "two competing visions of sex in America" over whether sexual pleasure is "inherently dangerous" or "inherently morally neutral (or even good)." She observes that "a redefinition of sexuality and its relationship to morality and spirituality is at the heart of the challenge that homosexuality poses -- and part of why it is so threatening." As if to prove Vaid's point, Brooks responds that "anybody -- straight or gay -- who has more than five sex partners in a year is probably doing something sleazy," and adds, "I think promiscuity is the key issue....People like me who believe that homosexuality can become a respectably part of the society we have inherited believe that it must uphold monogamy, without always living up to it, just as straight culture does."

To this, Vaid responds by asserting there isn't anything wrong with "responsible promiscuity" and that "ethical behavior in sex involves not doing harm to others or yourself, it involves behaving in a responsible manner. If my partner and I decide to open up our 11-year relationship and have other lovers, while continuing to live together, why should it render us any less decent than you? Private consensual adult sexual activity is the business of consenting adults."

Brooks shoots back, "Anyone who can come up with the phrase 'Responsible Promiscuity' should be living here in Washington occupying a senior post in the Clinton administration" (a pretty good retort). He adds, "I want to live in the same community as you," but "without shared norms -- about consensual adult sexual activity too -- community erodes.... Trust is gone and life is nasty, brutish, and short."

For my part, I think it's too simplistic for conservatives to charge that non-monogamy, in "open" relationships or otherwise, is too great a threat to society to be acquiesced to. Conservatives are going to have to accept a "live and let live" reality in order to co-exist with those, gay and straight, who have a radically different attitude from theirs on sexual pleasure. Accepting personally responsibility for ones actions IS important--a point that liberals too often fail to grasp--but responsiblity and monogamy are not synonymous.

But if my libertarian sympathies lead me to side with Vaid on sex, I found her totally disingenuous (and even dishonest) when the debate turned to economics. Vaid didn't raise the topic, but an offhand comment she made about the "pro-Nicaragua lesbian movement" leads Brooks to respond that, on Nicaragua, Vaid "took the side of a Communist kleptocracy that the people of Nicaragua booted out of office as soon as they got the chance (and elected a woman besides!)."

He explains that he was looking through the Web site of the Independent Gay Forum, which publishes writings by centrist, conservative, and libertarian gays and lesbians. At the site, he came upon an article about corporate America's efforts to reach out to the gay market, in which Vaid is quoted as saying that America has "taken off its ugly white hood to show its sexist, racist, anti-gay and capitalist face." He sums up by saying that "If gay and lesbian liberation means a New Left-style assault on mainstream American values and institutions, like the regulated market system we now enjoy, then I will be against the gay and lesbian liberation movement and so will many of the people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause."

A confession here. The article Brooks refers to is titled Corporate Liberation, and was written by none other than me (although Brooks doesn't name me).

Vaid responds testily that, although she did in fact make the statement attributed to her, it was lifted "completely out of context" because she wasn't referring to marketing per se, as Brooks seemed to suggest. She then accuses him of "McCarthyite red-baiting crap." Vaid asserts that although she is "proud to be a leftist," what she believes in is "socially responsible capitalism."

This, as I noted, is disingenuous, for Vaid has written in left-wing publications that she not only is a socialist, but a socialist on the radical left "syndicalist" fringe to boot. That's why her quote, lumping "capitalism" in with racism, sexism, and all the other social evils, was so revealing. Why doesn't she have the courage to defend her economic convictions when addressing a general audience?

rooks understands that a free economy is the basis for all other freedoms. Vaid believes that "society" should make economic decisions for its members (based, no doubt, on "consensus"), rather then letting individuals decide for themselves. On the other hand, Vaid believes that adults should be free to lead the sexual lives that give them pleasure, as long as their relationships are consensual and among adults. Brooks thinks that the "community" should enforce social norms and stigmatize those who aren't monogamous and relegate them beyond the pale.

Responsible folks might reasonably conclude that both sides of this debate uphold one form of freedom only to vilify another.