IGF CultureWatch

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.

First published in late June 1999 in The Weekly News (Miami) and other gay newspapers.

Organizers of next April's Millennium March on Washington (MMOW), which aims to "promote equal rights for all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals," are celebrating their commitment to diversity, defined as "parity by gender and for people of color." According to the group's recent press release, "The movement has progressed so that the board of directors of this march are [sic] now made up of 60 percent people of color, African American, Native American, Latino/latina and Asian American, as well as 60 percent women."

This commitment to "parity," and even "parity plus," is now so common among lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgendered activist groups that it's barely alluded to, even though all non-white minorities together are considerably under half of the US population (which is still 73 percent non-Hispanic white). And while women are a bit more than 50 percent of the general population, surveys repeatedly suggest that gay males outnumber lesbians by close to 2 to 1. But I really don't want to get into the numbers game, because for those of us who believe personal merit, rather than identity group membership, should be the determining factor for selecting leadership, the whole issue of "proportional representation" based on race or gender is offensive.

I point this out not to be churlish, and at the risk of inviting the inevitable, and mindless, critique of "racist and sexist." But when a policy becomes as ingrained within our community as "parity" has become, it deserves to be given a second look. Consider, for example, that at the last March on Washington, in 1993, the smattering of gay white males allowed to be speakers at the all-day rally could be counted on one hand, literally. If anything less than representation reflecting actual demographics constitutes discrimination, then pale gay males were discriminated against by their own rights march! Aside from those deemed fit to speak, organizers had also mandated 50 percent minority quotas on state organizing committees.

The following year, for the Stonewall 25th anniversary march and rally in New York City, the event's executive committee required 50 percent gender parity and 25 percent representation by people of color. But since many of the regional delegations that filled the larger national steering committee failed to achieve their quotas, it was decided at a planning meeting (held that summer in Milwaukee) that women present could cast three votes apiece, and people of color, two. This meant giving more weight to the vote of a black lesbian than to that of a black man, and more weight to his vote than to that of a gay white male. (One delegate suggested that to improve gender and skin color "parity" at future planning meetings, some of those who were of the wrong gender and racial classification should stay home.)

The parity mantra isn't limited to national marches. A few years ago, a national planning meeting of representatives from chapters of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation operated under a convoluted quota requirement that went this way: Each chapter sent two delegates to the meeting, but unless one of the two delegates was a person of color and one was a woman, the chapter was penalized by getting only one vote instead of two. To avoid this, only when one delegate was a lesbian of color could the second be a gay white male (I said it was convoluted).

Over time, well-intended support for greater inclusiveness in the gay and lesbian movement has become twisted into something altogether different. Rather than fostering greater mutuality grounded in an appreciation of diversity, what has emerged is a politically correct tribalism that champions apportioning representation based on gender and race/ethnicity, creating superficial diversity that works against the equality vital for true community. At the heart of the parity paradox is the illiberal assumption that we can only be represented by someone of our own gender and skin color (with the caveat that the candidate be on the political left, or else she or he is likely to be dismissed as an "inauthentic" representative of his/her respective identity group).

"Diversity," in effect, has become a veil for positing the fundamental differentness of people based on their race or sex, rather than suggesting something altogether different (and desirable) -- the removal of barriers that separate. Just how insidious has this become? At a forum sponsored by the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Journalists that I attended in New York City, someone loudly protested that an African-American panelist wasn't dark-toned enough to provide adequate "diversity."

Another predictable outcome is tokenism, with some female and minority delegates selected solely on the basis of race and gender. This means that others, who truly are qualified, get tarred with the "token" stigma.

When good faith attempts to foster diversity on the basis of equality, such as affirmative outreach, are replaced by rigidly applied quotas to ensure parity, chasms are created that no amount of "diversity training" can overcome. And, despite all the self-righteous rhetoric, often the not-so-subtle subtext is that the participation of gay white guys is not desirable, and that the optimum "diversity" would be 100% "progressive" women of color. This message, in fact, may go a long way toward answering the question posed by a recent cover story in The Advocate magazine, which asked, "Where are the men" in today's gay rights movement?

Anyone who dares raise objections to "parity" can expect to receive a lecture about the primacy of diversity. I know this from personal experience, as I was once scolded as "someone who thinks white men are the main victims of discrimination" simply for raising the issue of gender and race quotas at an activist gathering. For that reason, many who sense that hostility toward gay white men, rather than desires for equality and community, is at play have learned not to express the opposition they feel toward these policies. Many others, often with badly needed technical expertise, steer clear of activist organizations altogether.

At one time, of course, characterizing individuals on the basis of their gender and race and treating all other characteristics as secondary would itself have been called sexist and racist, and rightly so. Apportioning votes on the basis of skin color or sex is not only profoundly anti-democratic and anti-liberal, but profoundly un-American.

Nobody should dispute that in the recent past women and people of color were formally excluded from power. But if policies based on remedying collective guilt (rather than fostering equal opportunity) rankle society at large, a growing number of gay white men also are expressing resentment toward the "oppression hierarchies" that classify them as privileged members of the patriarchy and belittle the bigotry they, too, face every day.

Unlike guarantees of equal opportunity for all comers, requiring an outcome of parity ultimately work against a united, diverse, and truly democratic (as in one person, one vote) lesbian and gay movement. It's time to reexamine received dogma and to once again join together to work for real equality by emphasizing our common humanity. In short, it's time to stop defining diversity as the application of parity requirements that not only disproportionately discriminate against gay white males, but serve to reduce all concerned to stand-ins for their race and gender.

First appeared in early May 1999 in Bay Windows (Boston) and other gay newspapers.

ANTI-GAY ACTIVISTS have had great success milking the claim that laws prohibiting discrimination against gay people serve to create "special rights." In fact, lately they've made the same charge about granting us the right to marry, to serve in the military, and to adopt children. They even go so far as to claim that repealing the so-called sodomy laws that turn gay lovers into criminals is tantamount to granting us those self-same "special rights."

It seems that, in the lexicon of the bigots, mere equality under the law for lesbians and gays becomes equivalent to granting us an unfair and undeserved privilege (i.e., who do those perverts think they are, expecting to be treated the same as you and me?). Or perhaps it's just that they know if they repeat the "special rights" charge ad nauseam, then like any big lie it will eventually come to be perceived as true.

In fairness, there is a distinction that ought to be recognized between ensuring the government's non-discrimination against gays and lesbians (that is, prohibiting the state from treating sexual orientation as a reason to diminish the legal rights of citizenship), and limiting discrimination in the private sector. Some impressive gay intellects, including writer Andrew Sullivan, believe that the gay/lesbian political movement has put far too much emphasis on passing laws that limit the discretion of private employers and landlords to choose whom they hire or rent to, and not enough on prohibiting discrimination by the state itself. Gay libertarians argue that allowing the government to intrude into private decisions for any reason only serves to diminish everyone's liberty and freedom to associate with whomever they choose, whereas discrimination by the state against a class of citizens is never acceptable, since the government represents all of us, and all of us are taxed to support it. That's a debate that probably should be given more attention, but it's not my focus here.

Instead, I think it's worth noting the specious logic of those conservatives who support the principle that it's okay to prohibit private-sector discrimination against some groups, including those defined by race, nationality, or religious belief, but that extending this protection on the basis of sexual orientation is to uniquely afford us, again, "special rights." The argument usually goes that the reason sexual orientation is different is because it's a "lifestyle choice." As the anti-gay Family Research Council put it in a recent policy statement, "Unlike race, homosexuality is not a manifest characteristic, but a behavior."

Hmmm. Leaving aside the body of evidence indicating, at the very least, some genetic predisposition for being gay, there's a clear logical flaw in this right-wing rhetoric. For while race and nationality are indeed a matter of birth, one's religion needn't be.

David Boaz, author of the book "Libertarianism: A Primer" and a contributor to the Independent Gay Forum, has highlighted the issue of consistency about different protected classes. "Conservatives say gays shouldn't be protected, but blacks should, because being gay is something you choose, unlike your race," he writes. "But their reasoning is doubly wrong in that case: Most of us believe you DON'T choose your sexual orientation; but you DO choose your religion, which category conservatives want to protect." In fact, religious rightists, especially those who are "born again," stress that their brand of faith is something freely chosen. And, of course, many choose to adopt a faith different from their upbringing, while others abandon faith entirely.

Some conservative African-Americans, most notably General Colin Powell, claim that gays don't deserve protections because you can hide your sexual orientation, but not your race. While that's true enough, you can also hide your religious beliefs, yet no "anti gay rights" conservative to date has been willing to abandon hypocrisy and say that civil rights protections also should not extend to religion.

In fact, a growing number of civil rights cases before the federal courts focus on claims of workplace discrimination against fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews. Many of these involve the plaintiffs' claim that requiring them to work on certain religious holidays amounts to discrimination, even though all employees are expected to work on those days (talk about demanding special rights!).

Leaving aside the die-hard "born agains," some who believe that religious belief should be a protected category, but that sexual orientation shouldn't, might argue that you don't really "choose" religious belief, it chooses you. That is, you either are drawn to the doctrines and ritual expressions of a particular sect, or you aren't. But then again, even if you believe that being gay is also a choice (as, in fact, some gay and lesbian radicals proclaim), then how much "choice" do we really have about what we choose? Like religious belief, it either strikes one as right on a deep, subjective level, or it doesn't.

The point of all this is to expose just how idiotic the argument that "gay rights" are somehow of a "special" nature, at least when juxtaposed to civil rights protections based on religion.

Looking back on it, I'm amazed that lesbian and gay activists have spent so much energy trying to convince people that sexual orientation is akin to race, when the religious belief analogy seems so much easier to justify. If the right wing is against "lifestyle choices" receiving anti-discrimination protection, then they should be forced to be consistent, and to surrender the "special rights" granted on the basis of religion.

After all, fair is fair.

First appeared in April 1999 in Miami's Weekly News and other publications.

SHOULD GAY MEN AND LESBIANS arm themselves for self-preservation? The question itself comes across as incendiary. Most gay folks, after all, abhor violence. Firearms are a part of the world of criminals, thugs, and bigoted rednecks. Guns are the weapons of patriarchy. We seek to live in peace and want to end, not instigate, human brutality.

But the world doesn't seem so simple anymore. Gay people constantly face the threat of violence. Every day we are attacked, beaten and, yes, even killed. The media seem only recently to have discovered this, with the high-powered coverage of the sensational murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, followed by the brutal killing of Billy Jack Gaither in Alabama. But scan any gay paper and it's hard to avoid stories of gay people badly beaten and bashed in what are termed "unprovoked attacks."

I've been thinking about the issue lately, after reading a column by Jonathan Rauch in the March 20, 1999 issue of National Journal, a Washington-based policy weekly. Rauch is also a contributor to the Independent Gay Forum -- a group of gay writers exploring new approaches to old problems. He begins his column, titled "And Don't Forget Your Gun," with an anecdote about Tom, who found himself "running, possibly for his life," one summer evening in San Jose, as he and a friend were walking through "a dicey neighborhood." They caught the eye of a group of urban youth, one of whom yelled, "Hey, you faggots!" The gang then rose "like a flock of gulls...shouting taunts and threats: When we're done with you, they'll find your bodies!"

As Rauch tells it, what happened next stopped the attackers in their tracks. "Tom suddenly stops, turns, and levels a semiautomatic handgun" that he pulled out of his backpack. The gang turns tail and runs.

The moral: protect thyself. Being in shape and knowing some jujitsu isn't enough. Buy a handgun and learn how to use it.

But, you say, putting more guns on the street is nothing but an invitation to urban mayhem. If everyone carried a concealed weapon, our cities would all become Dodge City. Arming the citizenry is no way to stop crime. Being pro-gun is a surrender to violence.

The pro-gun lobby points out that violent crimes, including street attacks, actually decrease in jurisdictions that have okayed carrying concealed weapons. But having just said this, I can hear the gasps among some readers. The fact that gay people could possibly be on the same side of an issue as the National Rifle Association -- the very personification of a "conservative" lobby -- is enough to provoke some activists to come "gunning" for me, if only metaphorically. We all know that Charlton Heston and his friends are the enemy, right?

Now I know this issue is complex. I suspect that I could never bring myself to own -- or especially use -- a gun. Apart from the danger of self-injury, I don't think I would ever risk taking someone else's life, even in an attack situation. I know many other gay men and women feel the same.

But I also believe we should at least think about guns more than we have. Gay people are a minority, and minorities make easy targets. Look at Kosovo. At the risk of reaching too far to make a point, it's worth noting that the Nazis strengthened gun control laws after taking power in 1933, and began house-to-house searches to discover firearms in the homes of suspected opponents. Soon after, Jews were barred from businesses involving firearms, and on November 11, 1938, Hitler issued a decree forbidding Jews from possessing firearms, knives, or truncheons under any circumstances and to surrender them immediately, thus ensuring that no effective defense could be waged against his genocide (which began in earnest in 1941).

Gays in America aren't in that situation, but we confront "little Hitlers" every day, and some of us don't survive. What if a gun defense were common enough that would-be attackers couldn't be sure of what they were in for if they decided on a fun night of fag bashing? It's not an unreasonable query. Almost half of all Americans live in the 31 states with so-called "shall issue" laws, which require the authorities to approve a permit for anyone over 21 who is mentally sound, has no criminal record, pays a fee, and takes a gun safety course. Should gay people be encouraged to take advantage of the right to bear arms?

There's another reason I've been thinking about how complicated and confused the whole "gun issue" is. I just saw Bernadette Peters in the Broadway revival of "Annie Get Your Gun." My fellow gays in the audience went wild over the show, which tells the story of sharp-shooter Annie Oakley (who discovers, to her chagrin, that "you can't get a man with a gun"). The real Annie Oakley was arguably the first great female professional athlete in America, and spent her life breaking down barriers against women. But she generally isn't lionized by contemporary feminists, according to a recent biography. Why? One reason is that she advocated that women learn how to use guns and arm themselves. During her life, she encouraged the formation of Annie Oakley gun clubs for women, which sprouted across the country. That legacy leaves many modern feminists and liberals uneasy.

I suspect most gay people will never agree to carrying lethal weapons. But rigorous debate on the pros and cons of arming ourselves for self-defense, rather than a simplistic rejection, just might lead some to consider the option, which could mean more lives saved, rather than lost, due to guns.

Appeared June 3, 1998, in the Miami Weekly News, and other gay newspapers.

IN NEW YORK CITY, Cardinal John O'Connor was furious over a proposed law extending certain legal rights to gay and unmarried couples. Said the Cardinal, recognizing domestic partnerships is tantamount to "legislating that marriage does not matter." He added, "it is imperative, in my judgment, that no law be passed contrary to natural moral law and Western tradition." Natural morality, that is, as interpreted by Cardinal O'Connor.

The New York bill, which was passed by the City Council despite the Cardinal's objections, requires city agencies (not private businesses) to treat unmarried couples who are registered with the city clerk the same way they treat married couples. A surviving partner is allowed to live on in a rent-stabilized apartment, for example. And registered partners of city employees are eligible for family health insurance. The bill was proposed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican backed by the Log Cabin Club, the gay GOPers. Giuliani defended the bill as "a human rights issue" aimed at preventing discrimination.

Governments like New York City's are merely following the lead of the private sector, where one out of ten organizations now offers some kind of domestic partner benefits, according to surveys. And the majority of DP policies are written to apply to both same-sex and opposite sex couples, as in the New York proposal. Personally, I don't believe it's wrong to limit benefits to same-sex only domestic partners (as the Walt Disney Company does). Straights, after all, have the option to wed. That's why I feel little sympathy for the Bell Atlantic employee who is suing the telephone giant for denying health benefits to his live-in girlfriend (and claiming he's being discriminated against for NOT being gay!).

Of course, the argument over whether DP benefits should be granted to all unmarried couples or only those of the same sex (who would get married if they could, but legally can't) is a debatable point within the lesbian and gay community. Gay moderates (often labeled as assimilationists) tend to favor same-sex only DP because it most narrowly solves the imbalance in marriage laws, serving as a substitute until true marriage equality can be achieved. Employers are thus making amends for an unfair government dictate by creating a somewhat more equal playing field. In fact, some argue, opening domestic partnerships to heterosexuals who choose not to marry does, in fact, undermine marriage.

This view is opposed by some lesbian and gay "progressives" who regard marriage as an oppressive, patriarchal institution. Therefore, they say, benefits should be offered to both gay and hetero couples who want equal benefits but don't want to be committed to the institution of matrimony.

Interestingly, an even more expansive view is being supported by some religious conservatives. In San Francisco, the city's Catholic Charities objected to an ordinance requiring city contractors to give benefits to their employees' gay, lesbian, and straight unmarried domestic partners. Archbishop William Bevada accused the city of trying to force the Roman Catholic Church to violate its moral teachings. An agreement was hammered out in which Catholic Charities now allows any employee to designate "a legally domiciled member of the employee's household" to receive benefits formerly provided only to a spouse. Similarly, San Francisco-based BankAmerica (now merging with NationsBank) permits an employee to sign up any adult household member, including relatives -- a more encompassing definition of domestic partners, to be sure, but one in which the very nature of partners as spousal equivalents, rather than mere housemates, is jettisoned.

The Catholic bishops in California are now objecting to a bill being debated the state Assembly because it does NOT include household members who are related by blood, specifically saying they would approve of the bill if it included household relatives (such as an adult child sharing a home with an elderly parent). An argument could be made that such a DP model, entirely separate from the religious trappings of marriage, mitigates much of the religious-based criticism DP benefits face (in California at least). By including non-romantic relationships, it gives religious conservatives the option of pretending the DP relationship needn't be a sexual one, and thus they can close their eyes to the gay relationships that will be included.

Of course, all these variations on a theme wouldn't be necessary if gays could simply marry their partners, like everyone else. Either that will happen, I predict, or get ready for DP benefits so broadly defined as to include acquaintances and pets.

Originally published April 22, 1996, in the New York Native.

WHY IS IT THAT SO MANY ACTIVISTS see the current renewed emphasis on "values" as simply a reactionary plot to oppress gays and lesbians, keep women subordinate, and preserve "white skin privilege"? True, calls for the assertion of "traditional family values" by the religious right often include a hefty dose of anti-gay venom, but the yearning for a new commitment to personal responsibility and rectitude goes far beyond the diatribes of the intolerant right. From Bill Clinton's State of the Union address to best-sellers such as Bill Bennett's The Book of Virtues and Ben Wattenberg's Values Matter Most, and from plans to "end welfare as we know it" to efforts to elevate personal merit over group-based entitlement, the call for a return to moral discipline is widespread.

While some dissident gay intellectuals - Bruce Bawer, Andrew Sullivan, and Jonathan Rauch come to mind - have argued that traditional morality, including the commitment of marriage, can and must be expanded to encompass out-and-proud gay people, many movement activists who came of age in the post-Stonewall years reject such assimilationist pleading as a betrayal of "liberation" and a surrender to oppressive bourgeois morality. Feminists see a plot to restore "patriarchy."

Values advocates, alternatively, argue that crime, welfare dependency, and other social pathologies can be traced to the rejection since the 1960s of "shame" as a motivating concept. That's the thesis in books such as Saving Face: America and the Politics of Shame by Stuart Schneiderman, a former anti-Vietnam War activist who is now a psychoanalyst. Drawing on the work of anthropologist Ruth Benedict, he defines shame as the fear of looking bad before others, an internalized monitor that keeps bad behavior in check. "Shame cultures educate by persuasion," he says, "by showing the right things to do."

In America today, where shame has been banished as unhealthy, only the fear of punishment for major transgressions maintains what remains of civil order. Schneiderman writes that as a consequence, "Obnoxious and insulting behavior becomes acceptable" while "the idea of being a 'pillar' of the community sounds like a stale joke."

But there's a reason why we, as gays and lesbians, tend to resist the idea of a healthy sense of shame, and it's developed in another recently published book. In Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives, Lev Raphael argues that "most gay men and lesbians grow up learning that to be gay is to be sick, to be unnatural, to be a sinner. By adolescence such negative attitudes have produced and reinforced a single, powerful emotion: shame, the feeling that you're inferior and judged as 'bad' not for what you do, but for what you are: gay."

It's hard to argue with that perspective, as well. The trouble is that many who want to get rid of the bad shame (internalized homophobia) would throw the baby (civil behavior) out with the bath water. This is the camp that likes to argue that because some values proponents don't support gay equality, we must oppose all of the "personal responsibility" positions that it happens they do support. Moreover, this line of reasoning goes, we must make allies with all groups that continue to define themselves in revolt against bourgeois normality.

Yet welfare as a way of life is now too expensive for American taxpayers to maintain, even if the besieged middle class weren't demanding tax relief. And as the cry heats up to jettison liberal judges who think criminals are "oppressed" by police, our movement could find itself on the backward-marching side of history, even more so than today, when activists loudly defend maintaining preferences based on group membership rather than individual merit and oppose attempts to reform the very welfare system that breeds dependence and despondency.

But what about the anti-sex message in all this shame talk? One answer is to dare to make distinctions when it comes to sexual behavior. We can, for example, say forthrightly that gay men and lesbians should overcome and heal the scars produced by the negative self-images imposed on us owing to our sexuality. Like other adults, we must be free to lead healthy, hearty, but responsible and safe sex lives, whether or not we choose to form committed relationships. Moreover, gay and lesbian youth should have access to information and resources so they do not grow up mired in the self-negating belief that they are sick or "queer," so to speak.

On the other hand, teenagers unequipped emotionally to make the self-assertions and engage in the negotiations required for safe sex are better off remaining abstinent for awhile, and a heathy sense of shame regarding premature sexual behavior is not a bad thing. Despite liberal sex-ed programs and free condom distributions, rates of AIDS transmission are up among gay male teens, and teen pregnancy rates have skyrocketed (up 9 percent from 1985 to 1990). Children reared in welfare-dependent, fatherless homes have become an inner-city norm, and demograpahic experts say juvenile crime is soaring as a result. [Since '96, with welfare reform and a more 'conservative' mood in the country, some of the statistics cited above for social pathology have begun to reverse.]

For all our sakes, these teenage mothers, and the boys who notch their belts for every girl they get pregnant, could use more than a little dose of old-fashioned shame.

Still, many lesbigay activists can't see the forest for the trees. Arlene Zarembka, a lesbian-feminist writer, asserted last year that "welfare reform has become a phrase for re-asserting patriarchal control over women." It accomplished this, she claimed, by "arresting the independence" of women because they are lesbians or otherwise choose not to marry but still want children - and somebody to support them. Moreover, she even decried efforts to "penalize women for bearing an additional child" while on welfare by not increasing the welfare-recipient's taxpayer-funded benefits. Similar writings by self-styled "liberationists" celebrate teenage sexual expression and romanticize criminal behavior.

But as fears of "moral meltdown" escalate, the pendulum clearly is swinging back toward a renewed emphasis on personal shame and civility. Those who argue otherwise are woefully out of touch with the tenor of the times. Movement activists who oppose the trend toward tying individual accountability to a renewed sense of shame will only convince the bigots that they are right to see homosexuality as inherently destructive to the social order and restraint on which civil society rests.