Dropped from the Rams, and maybe from professional football entirely. Some are blaming an ESPN story inquiring about Sam’s showering with or without the team and related publicity. Very sad if that’s the reason why.
More. A possible reprieve, with the Dallas Cowboys. Now that would be interesting, Texas-wise.
Rape and lesser incidents of sexual misconduct on college campus must not be tolerated, but false accusations without due process for the accused, often leading to sanctions or being expelled and a public record that can’t be challenged, are not justice. That’s been true of male-female student relationships on campus (where charges often follow sex that occurred while both individuals were inebriated or stoned), and now it’s been extended to gays, as the Washington Post reports about a case at Brandeis.
The charges here, however, involve a couple that dated for two years and, after the breakup, one accused the other of violations such as staring too much at him while he was undressed in the bathroom, and kissing him while he was asleep and thus unable to consent (did I mention this was a two-year relationship)?
The accused, who was not entitled to legal counsel, was sanctioned by university officials but not expelled. But “he is incensed that his life was turned upside down with what he believes was flagrant disregard for his due-process rights. And he worries about how the sanctions might affect his future.” The accuser “is outraged that the university did not expel his ex-boyfriend.”
The Post reports:
The current and former college students describe themselves as victims of false accusations amid a national campaign — led by the White House — to stamp out sexual violence on campuses. While the federal push to increase awareness of sexual assault is aimed at keeping students safe and holding the nation’s colleges and universities accountable, some of the accused say the pressure on their schools has led to an unfair tipping of the scales against them.
Maybe these incidents should be left to the judicial system when there is evidence of an actual crime. Otherwise, students should learn they are expected to take responsibility for their actions, including bad relationship decisions and morning-after regrets.
More. “Wink” comments:
So many microaggressions! This article should have had a trigger warning. I feel violated and plan to sue.
Furthermore. From Philadelphia Magazine: “The battle over what constitutes sexual assault on college campuses is reaching new levels of absurdity.” You think? But don’t try to tell that to Sen. Claire McCaskill.
A report last week from the Department of Health & Human Services/Centers for Disease Control finds that only 1.6% of Americans identify as gay or lesbian and 0.7% identify as bisexual, meaning just 2.3% of the population identifies as LGB (T’s were not included). The findings are based on data from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey.
In past years, such low numbers would result in considerable pushback from LGBT activists, who have long bandied about the figure of 10% for gay America, citing Kinsey’s research in the 1940s, to the consternation of social conservatives. Others have put the number at around 5%, and indeed exit polling typically places the self-identified LGB vote around that figure.
Maybe because the new stats come from the Obama administration, the response has been…crickets. Or maybe with victories coming so quickly on marriage equality and given Obama’s new executive order on nondiscrimination among federal contractors, the numbers game just isn’t that important.
But 1.6% seems way out of whack with everyday experience, even with the expectation that gay people gravitate to larger cities in big numbers. Are people lying to government survey takers? Or to themselves despite their sexual behavior? And do we in fact go to the polls in numbers far out of proportion with Americans overall? Perhaps better analysis will be forthcoming.
More. The Washington Post quotes a few spokesfolk at second-tier and regional LGBT groups who take issue with the survey’s low LGB count, while the Human Rights Campaign says the number isn’t important.
Furthermore. I just came across these lessons about sex from big data at Time online:
3. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Like any good data scientist, Rudder lets literature—in this case, Thoreau—explain the human condition. Rudder cites a Google engineer who found that searches for “depictions of gay men” (by which the engineer meant gay porn) occur at the rate of 5% across every state, roughly the proportion of the world’s population that social scientists have estimated to be gay. So if a poll shows you that, for instance, 1% of a state’s population is gay, the other 4% is probably still out there.4. Searches for “Is my husband gay?” occur in states where gay marriage is least accepted.
Here’s a Big Data nugget you can see for yourself: Type “Is my husband” in Google, and look at your first result. Rudder notes that this search is most common in South Carolina and Louisiana, two states with some of the lowest same-sex marriage approval rates.
MereOrthodoxy blogger Matthew Lee Anderson joins me at TNR to argue that the chicken and coffee wars are distracting us from the real debate.
Sally Ride is an American hero. She is also an icon for women’s equality.
And, as Andrew Sullivan puts it, she is the absent heroine of the gay rights movement.
That is not necessarily damning. There’s only so much one human being can do with her life.
But I don’t want to let Ride get off as easily as the media is allowing. The New York Times obituary is typically lazy:
Dr. Ride was known for guarding her privacy. She rejected most offers for product endorsements, memoirs and movies, and her reticence lasted to the end. At her request, NASA kept her illness secret.
There are different kinds of privacy. Resisting the commercial temptations of fame is not the same thing as keeping the fact that you have cancer a family matter. And neither of those is the same as staying in the closet.
Ride was born into the two revolutions that directly affected her life: women’s equality and gay equality. She took up one of those revolutions, and rejected the other.
Her life’s work was to make sure girls who were interested in science would not feel the pressure she faced to repress that inner drive. She was instrumental in helping to change that, and the world is better for her accomplishments.
But the gay rights revolution was not her thing. Even those of us who pay close attention had no idea she was a lesbian, much less a woman who had maintained a 27 year relationship with another woman.
No one has an obligation to be politically active. Vito Russo, in the new HBO documentary about his very politically active life, articulates the point well:
This is a good question: What makes people political in their lives? The world is full of injustice. Some people it bothers, some people it doesn’t. Me, it bothers.
The injustice of gay inequality, and particularly the injustice of the closet did not bother Ride. Or, maybe more accurately, it did not bother her enough to do anything with the public side of her life to try and change it. She simply accepted the closet, and took advantage of the work that others were doing on that front in order to live in a not-very-public-but-not-entirely-private lesbian relationship.
She shares this approach to the gay rights revolution with Mary Cheney. They are among the free-riders of this struggle, letting others do the fighting.
The psychological damage that cultural homophobia did to those of Ride’s generation cannot be underestimated, and maybe her passivity can be forgiven or excused or pitied. In the world she grew up in, that brand of privacy was often the only natural protective device that those who lacked Russo’s political spirit and intolerance of injustice had.
But it’s time to retire privacy as the Get Out Of Politics Free Card. Fear can still justify the closet in many places and circumstances. So can personal economic strategy, I suppose. But not privacy. That cramped isolationism is exactly the thing we are fighting. It’s a form of self-indulgence at best, and more often it’s just shame. We should draw a distinction between external forces that make coming out problematic, and internal ones that are corrosive remnants of an older view of homosexuality.
Even heterosexuals are lining up to support our equality today. Ted Olson and David Boies, Lady Gaga and Brad Pitt, Ben Cohen and Scott Fujita are on the front lines of our battle. The bar should be extremely high for any of us to remain aloof from our own fight for our own self-worth. Every homosexual does not need to be out in the streets if they are not politically inclined. But that’s not a matter of privacy, it’s a matter of preference. It should go by its right name.
I am as glad – and grateful – as anyone for Anderson Cooper’s non-coming-out coming out. There are some lessons in this story worth talking about.
People who know Cooper seem to agree with him that he was not really in the closet except with respect to the general public. That is a telling fact. As the walls of the closet have come down on the private side of people’s lives, there is still that remaining door that can be opened or closed to the public. The people we know on our side of the door – the private side – are far more likely today to know we are homosexual than they ever have been. Cooper enjoyed that private side of the closet with his family and friends.
But Cooper is not like the rest of us (and not just in what he does for a black t-shirt). For those of us without a public face, the need to come out or not to others – to decide whether to open that door — is a recurring issue; we are always meeting new people, and regularly face the problem of how much to reveal to whom, and in what circumstances.
People like Cooper who have a large public reputation have to deal with this a little differently. Word spreads about the famous, particularly about something as personal and controversial (or at least pretty interesting) as homosexuality. News of my homosexuality never hit Twitter; it never really achieved a threshold of being news. For Cooper, opening that door once to a world that knows him as a personality pretty much brings him out in toto. There will still be pockets of cluelessness, but for the most part, this is a one-time deal for someone of Cooper’s stature.
The Entertainment Weekly story that got this story moving makes the point that it’s possible for even celebrities today to come out without its being a big deal, and Cooper’s example contradicts that (in the short term, since it was kind of newsish) but reaffirms the larger point, having such a short shelf-life. Writing this post all of two days after Andrew Sullivan broke the story already feels like I’m stretching it out.
But that’s where the political aspect of sexual orientation comes in. For me, when it comes to sexual orientation and politics, I was born this way. It has taken me a long time to accept that some people – a lot of people – are not born political, or at least don’t take to politics naturally. I see a need for lesbians and gay men to take political action, but as people who are more activist than me can tell you, it’s always been an uphill battle.
Cooper reports on political stories, but as a journalist he should not be an activist. As a gay man, that puts him in a difficult spot.
A lot of politically active lesbians and gay men resent celebrities who are privately lesbian or gay, but have not opened the public door. We have an enormous public relations job to do, and need all the help we can get. That is one of the things that animated the movement to out politicians and celebrities – the idea that they had an obligation to use their public face to help us all gain equality. The worst of the worst were the ones who worked against legal equality, but the desire for even neutral or supportive public figures to come out – or be dragged out – came from the mathematical problem of being a minority in the first place. We start out with numbers that are staggeringly against us in a democracy, and then have the additional problem of members of our group who won’t even admit they belong.
Cooper seems to have struggled with that. He mentions “the unintended outcomes” of maintaining his privacy, and says he may have given the impression that he is trying to hide something that makes him uncomfortable, ashamed or afraid. His coming out was intended to – and does — clarify any misimpressions.
But those misimpressions are, and always have been, a perfectly natural consequence of silence. If about 95% of the population is heterosexual, and someone doesn’t positively identify as homosexual, is it unreasonable for people to assume that individual is straight? The open discussion of homosexuality over the last quarter century or so changes the bet somewhat, since silence now looks more telling, when it isn’t downright implausible. Yet many people still cling to the fig leaf of privacy as if it were without consequence.
In this impressive compilation of Cooper in the field, one quote stood out: “Journalists don’t like to become part of the story, but unfortunately they have been made part of the story. . . . “ That, I am afraid, is true of sexual orientation as well. Our inequality is embedded in the status quo that recognizes only heterosexual relationships, and if we say or do nothing, we are part of a story that tolerates and accepts our second-class status. We cannot get out of that story, or create a more appropriate status quo unless we act, unless we speak, unless we stand up as lesbians and gay men.
The false neutrality of silence is clear in this story about Jitters and Bliss Coffee. The company claims to be neutral when it comes to marriage. They say they don’t have a public position on the matter, and “respect the views of all their customers.” To demonstrate that neutrality, they joined up with the National Organization for Marriage to offer NOM members a non-Starbuck’s coffee option, since Starbuck’s has taken a position supporting marriage equality.
That is the neutrality of the status quo, being nakedly manipulated to preserve itself. Our silence, their silence, anyone’s silence is a vote for NOM, is a vote for the bias and prejudice that are woven into the fabric of current law.
In this politicized environment, privacy equals silence, and silence equals — well, not death anymore, but certainly some spiritual damage. That was the unholy balance that Cooper upset. Neutrality is a primary virtue of the journalistic profession, but when “neutrality” means “the status quo,” and if the status quo is, itself, biased, then neutrality is not neutral. Anderson Cooper’s coming out helps expose that truth.
The LA Times asks this morning why Neil Patrick Harris can’t host everything, and I have to agree. He did another great job at the Tonys last night.
It wasn’t a great Broadway season (they had to take their opening number, from last year’s hit, “The Book of Mormon”), and the Tonys aren’t exactly at the heart of American culture, but NPH has charm and talent, honed in television work, and solid appeal to television audiences.
I am beginning to think of him and his counterpart in hosting ability, Ellen Degeneres, as the Mormon missionaries of the gay rights movement. Both of them are clean-cut, attractive without being distant or glamorous, and have a presence that wears well over time. And when they ring the doorbells of Americans, they are usually welcome.
The good will they have built up is their own, but it can’t help but resonate positively for the rest of us as the culture moves toward equality. I’m glad we have both of them.
I was in San Francisco yesterday, about to go on stage to deliver a National Coming Out Day lecture, when I learned of the death of Frank Kameny. He was 86, and he died peacefully at home, apparently of heart failure.
Frank is a giant of the gay rights movement, and I hope his passing gets the attention it deserves—both to honor a great man, and to remind everyone of important but neglected chapters of our history. When Dr. Franklin Kameny was fired from his government job in 1957 for being gay, there was no national gay civil rights movement. It took pioneers like him to make it happen.
A Harvard-trained Ph.D. and World War II veteran, Frank lost his job as an Army Map Service astronomer for being a homosexual. Unsure of his future employability and outraged by the injustice, he petitioned all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. That firing and subsequent refusal sparked a tireless lifetime of activism.
(Incidentally, in 2009 the Federal Office of Personnel Management finally issued Frank a formal apology for the firing. In his inimitable style, he promptly replied that he was looking forward to his five decades of back pay.)
In 1961 Frank co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C.—a “homophile organization” based on the original group in California. Soon thereafter, in 1963, he began a decades-long campaign to revoke D.C.’s sodomy law. He personally drafted the repeal bill that was passed 30 years later.
In 1965, he picketed in front of the White House for gay rights. Signs from that demonstration, stored in his attic for decades, are now in the Smithsonian’s collection.
In 1971, he became the first openly gay person to run for Congress. (He came in fourth, which itself was a kind of victory given the anti-gay sentiment of the era.) He was instrumental in the battle that led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973. He continued to fight over the decades against employment discrimination, sodomy laws, the military ban—unjust discrimination in all its forms.
Even in his 80s, Frank continued to send off pointed letters in pursuit of justice. He was fond of reminding me and other “young” activists, whenever he heard us complaining amongst ourselves, “Don’t tell us. Tell them. Contact the people who can do something about it.” (Even now I can hear his booming, irrepressible voice.) He served as an invaluable moral elder to me and multiple generations of gay activists, whom he constantly reminded of the slogan he coined in 1968: “Gay is good!”
One of my favorite personal experiences with him happened shortly after the 2004 documentary “Gay Pioneers” was released. Frank came to Detroit to speak at a screening of the film, and he visited my house for dinner. Frank was not much of a drinker, but when I offered after-dinner drinks in my living room, he asked if I had any peach schnapps. Oddly enough, I did, so I poured him some. Then some more, and more again, not really keeping track. Finally, when it was time to leave for the film, we all stood up…
…and Frank proceeded to trip over my coffee table and fall flat on the floor.
Everyone gasped. A news headline flashed before my mind: “Young gay writer kills veteran gay activist with cordial.” But then Frank laughed, spryly jumped up, and boomed in his unforgettable voice, “Too much peach schnapps!!!”
We proceeded to the movie, and as usual, Frank delivered a brilliant, commanding, rousing speech.
As soon as I fly home, I’ll be raising a glass of peach schnapps to Frank Kameny. Always remember: Gay is good.
I think Andrew pretty much sums up the problem of choice. We choose our friends, but when it comes to love, the notion of choice is, at best, compromised and subsumed. Those who argue that homosexuality is a choice view us, and view our relationships, as friendships either perverted or at best gone wrong. We have often been called, even sometimes sympathetically, “friends” (Uncle Albert and his “friend” will be coming to dinner), but that was a nice way of avoiding the real subject. It kept the language of same-sex relationships in a closet of its own, a frame that helped everyone cope.
You don’t hear that kind of language from our supporters any more. Only our opponents are clinging to that outmoded notion of choice. They think the whole debate over same-sex relationships is about our choice of friends. They still can’t, or won’t, imagine that the flood of emotions and connections that they recognize as love can occur between two people of the same sex. I’m sure that a lot of them don’t even think it’s demeaning to our relationships to view them as falling within the kind of choices we make about our friends. They want us to have friends. They just refuse to believe that the powerful and mysterious forces they remember and/or experience with love can happen, for some people, with members of their own sex, and are every bit as gratifying and amazing — are, in fact, the same thing they know so well.
All we have been trying to do for the last half century or so (“All!”) is edge the public’s understanding of our relationships closer to what we actually feel and live. We have friends, sometimes lots of them. We choose them and treasure them. But when it comes to love, we aren’t the ones doing the choosing. Heterosexuals know that about themselves, and as Jonathan Rauch notes below, an emerging majority of them are coming to understand that we are sometimes lucky enough to be swept up in the same wonderful mystery.
Contra Lady Gaga, I neither know nor care whether I was born this way.