Speak Up

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It's hard, these days, figuring out what you can and can't say about homosexuality. This is a problem I never imagined the gay rights movement would lead us to.

David Axelrod described the new world order most succinctly on behalf of the White House. Discussion of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's sexual orientation "has no place in this process. It wasn't … an avenue of inquiry on our part and it shouldn't be on anybody else's' part." Printing an old photo of Kagan playing softball goes too far. If you think I'm overstating the case, even Andrew Sullivan has agreed to shut up about it. This is serious.

Ramin Setoodeh from Newsweek also learned -- the hard way -- the current preference for avoiding The Subject unless you're clear on the party line. His misbegotten essay about gay actors portraying heterosexual characters was not well received, but it did have a point, which Dan Savage distilled in one sentence on Joy Behar's show better than Setoodeh's whole article: American audiences still retain some powerful notions about sexual orientation that they carry with them into the theater, and that can affect their view of how convincing an actor's performance is. That is as unfortunate as it is inarguable. Setoodeh tripped over his own argument (as who among us has not), but it doesn't seem to me Newsweek needs to apologize for publishing it in the first place, as GLAAD demands. The excellent responses are well worth the provocation.

But it's not just Democrats and the gay left who want to stifle discussion of sexual orientation. George Rekers is all set (he keeps saying) to file a defamation suit because people have the nerve to infer he might be a little light in the loafers after his excellent adventure with a young man not his husband in Europe.

What all of these stories have in common is that none of the participants actually wants to fully shut off discussion about homosexuality. Axelrod, Setoodeh, GLAAD and Rekers all have track records, and with the exception of Setoodeh, leverage the subject when it suits their purposes (which, for GLAAD and Rekers is nearly all the time). What the politically inclined among them are trying to do is corral us into having only the discussion they want us to have.

I confess there are plenty of times I'd like that, too. But I try to keep a bit of humility about the limits of my own knowledge and opinions, and if I'm provably wrong, accept the correction as generously as I can, accounting for my disappointment.

This has always been the fundamental problem with Don't Ask, Don't Tell and its fountainhead, the closet. Such regimes cannot succeed unless everyone is properly coerced and follows the rules with precision. If anyone says what they're not supposed to, the whole edifice trembles. Which is to say both ideas embody human folly.

This is, and has always been, exactly the antithesis of the first amendment. Americans (and we're not the only ones) can only ignore something for so long before somebody will speak up or out. And that is true whether the White House or GLAAD or the military establishment or George Rekers is trying to enforce a narrow view - and it's true whether what's being said is good or bad for any particular party.

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Liberal Line: ‘Bisexual Erasure’

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Eugene Volokh discusses the new liberal line being taken by Elena Kagan advocates, i.e., "She can't be lesbian, she's dated men." Says Volokh,

seems to me pretty odd to see assertions...that she must be straight because she has dated men.... As I understand it, the great majority of women who are not purely heterosexual are actually to some degree bisexual.

That's certainly what the surveys, and everyday observation, seem to suggest (not to mention lessons learned from TV's Grey's Anatomy).

But the Obama administration and its fellow travelers-including, it seems, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, as quoted here-have decreed that questions about Kagan's personal relationships are out of bounds (unlike, say, for relationship questions about nominees who are unquestionable straight), and any suggestion she might not be exclusively heterosexual is a smear. (Reminds me of how so many feminists joined with liberal men to argue that it was a terrible thing Sarah Palin wasn't staying at home, where she belonged, to raise her children.)

More. In response to the disbelieving commenter, here's one example (hat tip: Bobby)-the Washington Post's Sally Quinn, as recounted by Politico: " 'Her first priority has to be her children,' Quinn wrote. 'When the phone rings at 3 in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?' "

But I grant you, liberal men were far more likely to engage in this sort of thing, and worse.

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A Columnist’s Farewell

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When I first pitched a column to the editor of a gay newspaper in Chicago, I was expecting to write some short, snappy, girl-around-town pieces for a year or two.

I thought I'd write about what was going on in the bars, in the conference rooms - I'd pass along the gossip everyone wanted to know.

"Nah," my editor said, after listening a moment. "I don't like that idea. But I like the idea of you writing a column. Just tell your own stories."

"Tell your own stories," he said. And so I did.

For 14 years, I've been telling my stories to readers of gay papers from Washington State to Washington, DC. I've talked about the struggle to get my dad to accept my lesbian self; falling in love and breaking up; and, most popularly, I've talked about my dog Max, still barking at 16.

Those stories somehow persuaded readers to tell theirs and share them with me - originally through the actual mail (I still have all of those and tried to answer most of them), then email, and now as comments on posted columns, or as commentary on blogs of their own.

One reader, from Oklahoma, asked if he should come out to his parents, even though they were socially conservative. I still wonder how he's doing, though he wrote me about seven years ago. Another engaged me in a debate about whether there's a place for gays and lesbians in Evangelical churches. He just wrote again recently.

When I still lived in Chicago, I met readers for drinks and for breakfast, sometimes in their homes. Occasionally, someone on the street would call out to me while I was walking my dog. In my pajamas.

In those days, the days before the web, writing a column for newspapers felt intimate. People picked up their free paper on the corner and shared it with a cup of coffee. I felt like I was writing for a community - and I could be pretty sure that someone responding to a column had likely read others and knew me pretty well. It was like we were continuing a conversation.

The web changed life for columnists. It became more important that columns were topical riffs on the news (the web is fueled by hits and hits are fueled by keywords which are easy to search for). When I started running a website myself (I'm the editor of the news site 365gay.com), I started writing columns I wanted to run, things that clarified or put a new spin on the news story of the week.

There were fewer of my own stories. And that made me start to feel like what I was doing, anyone could do. And maybe I should step aside and make room for the new young woman or young man who could.

When the Chicago Free Press closed at the beginning of this month - a paper that was my editorial home longer than the city was my actual home - the conversation came to an end.

But oh, I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss your stories. I'm going to miss sharing mine, as if we were friends talking quietly over an afternoon cup of tea. Thanks for being there. And if you ever see me in New York - walking Max, I'm sure in my pajamas - I hope you'll say hello.

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Rekers’s Rentboy

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So, we have a new line to add to the file labeled "Seriously?!?"-alongside Reverend Ted Haggard's "I bought the meth but didn't use it," ex-gay leader John Paulk's "I had to use the bathroom and had no idea it was a gay bar," Rep. Eric Massa's "I'm just a salty old sailor," and Senator Larry Craig's "I have a wide stance."

Now add Reverend George Rekers' "I hired him to lift my luggage."

As a co-founder (with James Dobson) of the conservative Family Research Council, a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), and an author of numerous anti-gay works, Dr. Rekers is a major right-wing figure.

And so he did what any straight, family-oriented Baptist minister would do when looking for someone to carry his luggage on a ten-day European excursion. He went to rentboy.com and hired a prostitute.

I can't make this stuff up.

The Miami New Times broke the story this week, complete with details from 20-year-old blond Puerto Rican rentboy "Lucien's" profile: his "smooth, sweet, tight ass," his "perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)" and the fact that he'll "do anything you say as long as you ask." These are important attributes for travel assistants, no doubt.

A blogger at Unzipped.net quickly uncovered the rentboy's profile, which identifies him as Boynextdoor/Geo and was purged of some of the earlier sexual content; the profile has since been removed from the site to protect the young man's privacy.

(Incidentally, we SHOULD protect the young man's privacy. 20-year-olds don't typically go into prostitution because it's the best among many excellent job opportunities.)

Lucien/Geo is the same age as a son that Rekers adopted four years ago, which might not be relevant were it not for Rekers' vigorous opposition to adoption by gays. Rekers testified in favor of nasty homosexual adoption bans in both Arkansas and Florida. Indeed, on the blog page where he repeats his lame luggage excuse, there's a link labeled "Should homosexuals be allowed to adopt children?" This leads to a page full of outright falsehoods, including:

"Large research studies consistently report that a majority of homosexually-behaving adults have a life-time incidence of one or more psychiatric disorders, while a majority of heterosexually-behaving adults do not suffer a psychiatric disorder…. So my professional conclusion that homosexually-behaving adults should not be allowed to adopt children is based on research and logic."

And perhaps personal experience.

This is not funny. It is not even sad. It's disgusting. And I'm tired of feeling sorry for these people.

As the Gay Moralist, I like to give all people the benefit of the doubt. It's not a strategy so much as a matter of empathy. I was once a closeted homosexual conservative myself, and I came close to entering the Catholic priesthood. I often wonder whether, had my life gone slightly differently-different influences, different opportunities, different choices-I'd be missing truths that seem obvious to me now.

I even wonder whether I might have acted out sexually in inappropriate ways-hiring male prostitutes privately while railing against homosexuality publicly, or hitting on college seminary students (not children) in my priestly care. While I'm no longer a believer, the phrase "There but for the grace of God" still resonates with me.

I am not denying that we're responsible for our choices and actions. I'm simply saying that there are often mitigating factors beyond observers' ken. I don't know Rekers personally, and I can only make an educated guess at what demons he wrestles with.

But I know from hard experience that the best way to tame demons is to start being honest with yourself and others. That, instead of using self-respecting gays as a proxy for whatever internal foes you're fighting.

Unsurprisingly, not even Rekers' religious-right buddies are buying his "lift my luggage" line, or his more recent claim (in a message to blogger Joe.My.God) that he spent time with the youth in order to share the Gospel: "Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them."

Lift his luggage? Share the Good News? These lines make great double-entendres for late-night comedians ("Is that what the kids are calling it these days?") but they don't get Rekers a whit closer to addressing his real baggage.

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Kagan’s Military Problem, and Ours

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Leaving aside the brouhaha over whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is in the closet-and the Obama administration's contention that even to ask is a "slur"-there is a bigger gay-related issue with the nominee. As dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan barred military recruitment on campus because the military discriminates against gay people. She reversed herself when it looked like mega-endowment-rich Harvard Law would otherwise lose funds that the government takes from Joe Taxpayer and gives to the elite university.

As former New Republic editor Peter Beinart, himself a liberal, writes at The Daily Beast:

The United States military is not Procter and Gamble. It is not just another employer. It is the institution whose members risk their lives to protect the country. You can disagree with the policies of the American military; you can even hate them, but you can't alienate yourself from the institution without in a certain sense alienating yourself from the country. Barring the military from campus is a bit like barring the president or even the flag. It's more than a statement of criticism; it's a statement of national estrangement.

At the conservative National Review, Ed Whelan blogs:

It's also worth emphasizing that what Kagan mischaracterized as the "military's policy" is in fact the Clinton administration's implementation of a provision of the defense-appropriations law that a Democratic-controlled Congress enacted in 1993 (with Clinton's signature). Instead of taking potshots at military recruiters who were merely complying with the law, did Kagan ever exclude from campus any of the politicians responsible for the law? Of course not. Indeed, whatever moral opposition Kagan had to the law when it was adopted didn't deter her from seeking and obtaining employment in the Clinton White House. Nor will it keep her from palling around with the many senators who voted for it, such as Vice President Biden.

Let's be clear: I abhor "don't ask, don't tell" as much as Elena Kagan. But something is very wrong about Harvard faculty and students taking the view, during a time of war, that the military's gay ban means that they need not consider serving in the armed force.

Working to keep the military from recruiting Harvard's "best and the brightest"-the soon-to-be power elite-was never the way to oppose the congressionally imposed military gay ban. But it sure gave Harvard elitists the perfect excuse for leaving the fighting, and the dying, to those with calloused hands.

More on Kagan. Politico reports that the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is complaining about a Wall Street Journal photo showing Kagan playing softball, whining it implies she's a lesbian (sadly, I'm not making this up). Chris Barron of the conservative gay group GOProud comments to Politico, "I fully expect the White House to push back and claim Kagan never played softball and that it's a smear to insinuate she did."

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GOP, v.2?

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California U.S. Senate Candidate Tom Campbell, leading in the GOP primary, has an interview with Frontiers magazine on marriage equality and individual freedom:

Tom Campbell does not look or act like the Republican politicians LGBT people are used to seeing on cable news. He's more Clark Kent with a sense of humor. But underneath that collegial demeanor is the steel spine of a strongly principled moderate/conservative Republican with a laser focus on federalism, less government and more individual freedom.
....

Interestingly to LGBTs, Campbell is leading among the usually anti-gay Republicans, despite his long-held views as a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-marriage equality social moderate.

Many gay people say they will never vote for the party of Lincoln because of its past decades of opposition to gay equality. But what if there were a brilliant Republican U.S. senator from the nation's largest state who opposed Proposition 8? Mightn't that help to bring about the Republican party they'd prefer to see? Along with Sen. Scott Brown (who calls marriage equality in Massachusetts "a settled issue"), wouldn't we begin to see, finally, a less southern, less conservative-religious party? And why wouldn't that be a really good thing?

More. David Boaz takes aim at Sarah Palin's misguided endorsement of Campbell's chief primary opponent, failed CEO Carly Fiorina.

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Do ‘Family Values’ Weaken Families?

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Massachusetts, original U.S. home of same-sex marriage, has the country's lowest divorce rate-a fact we same-sex marriage proponents aren't shy about pointing out. But that's just part of a pattern. Across the board, core red/conservative/Republican states have significantly higher divorce rates and teen-pregnancy states than core blue/liberal/Democratic ones.

Coincidence? Probably not...

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Wrecking Rekers

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Most everybody who's at all interested in gay rights has an opinion about Dr. George Rekers' recent vacation. The Miami New Times did some good journalism in discovering the noted anti-gay doctor's weeklong trip to Europe with a sexy, young male companion/rentboy/prostitute/sex worker.

Rekers presents himself as a scientific authority on homosexuality, and Florida's Attorney General, Bill McCollum (who is now running for Governor, and from Rekers) bought the pitch and paid him $87,000 as one of only two witnesses to defend Florida's gay adoption ban. Rekers testified under oath that lesbians and gay men are mentally unstable and thus unsuitable to be adoptive parents.

I have no idea why Rekers, a 61 year old married man, was taking a vacation in Europe with a 20 year old male; perhaps his wife knows. His explanations covered a lot of territory in their various incarnations: He needed someone to "lift his luggage" because of a recent surgery; He was just evangelizing a sinner (and paying a few thousand dollars for the opportunity, perhaps from the money earned from McCollum and the Florida taxpayers); He had no idea the young man advertised on the explicit Rentboy.com, touting his endowment and willingness to please customers; He was "never involved in any illegal or sexual behavior with his travel assistant."

It may not have been illegal, but if the "travel assistant" is to be believed, reasonable people could conclude that nude body massages involving "the long stroke" across Rekers' penis, thigh and anus is "sexual behavior." I guess it depends on what the meaning of "penis" is.

But as the right once again curdles in embarrassment, and the left piles on, I'd like to offer this observation: If the glaringly obvious conclusion is true, that Rekers is, in fact, a frustrated homosexual who won't allow himself to actually have sex with another man, then he has created for himself, exactly the hell he and his colleagues believe homosexuals are headed for or deserve. I can't imagine what it must be like to share a room - naked - with an attractive young man I've paid a lot of money to, and not have sex with him. Whether that's hell or not, it's certainly got all the earmarks of earthly torture.

And that's really the point. This is the torture closeted lesbians and gay men were forced to negotiate in the days when any disclosure of their sexual orientation could land them in jail, or worse. Even the most private moments could result in exposure, prosecution or blackmail, and the fear of going too far distorted the most intimate relationships. That was daily life for a person of homosexual orientation.

And this is the way the anti-gay side continues to believe the world ought to be. Rekers is, in fact, living in that world, the one so many of the rest of us have left behind as we've claimed our self-respect. His world - his hell - is now inhabited only by those who want it, or believe it is their fate.

That's the small, mean justice of this story.

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Marriage and Messages

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If I've asked it once I've asked it a hundred times: how does marriage equality hurt heterosexuals?

Recently I posed the question yet again to Maggie Gallagher, outgoing president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), as she visited my ethics class at Wayne State University via audio conference.

I "get" that Gallagher wants children to have mothers and fathers, and ideally, their own biological mothers and fathers. What I've never quite gotten is why extending marriage to gays and lesbians undermines that goal. One can be married without having children, one can have children without being married; and (most important) same-sex marriage is not about gay couples' snatching children away from their loving heterosexual parents. No sane person thinks otherwise.

Maggie Gallagher is a sane person. (Wrong, but sane.) For the record, she is not worried that marriage equality would give gays license to kidnap children. Nor does she oppose adoption by gay individuals or couples, although she thinks heterosexual married couples should be preferred. So what's the problem?

At the risk of oversimplifying, one could describe her concern-which she graciously explained to my class-as The Message Argument. The idea is this. The core reason society promotes marriage is to bind mothers and fathers together for the long-term welfare of their offspring. In doing so we send a message: "Children need their mothers and fathers."

But on Gallagher's view, extending marriage to gays and lesbians makes it virtually impossible to sustain that message. The central premise of the marriage-equality movement is that Jack and Bob's marriage is just as valid, qua marriage, as Jack and Jill's. (That's the whole point of calling it "marriage equality.") And if we make that equivalence, we cannot also say that children-some of whom Jack and Bob may be raising-need their mothers and fathers. Indeed, the latter claim would now seem offensive, even bigoted.

So Gallagher's argument poses a dilemma: either maintain the message that children need their mothers and fathers, and thus oppose marriage equality; or else embrace marriage equality, and thus relinquish the message. You can't have both.

Whatever else you want to say about this argument, it's not crazy. It's about how to maintain a message that seems well motivated, at least on the surface: children need their mothers and fathers.

Elsewhere I've argued that the claim "Children need their mothers and fathers" is ambiguous. On one reading it's obviously false. On another, it's more plausible, but it doesn't support the conclusion against marriage equality. For even if we were to grant for the sake of argument that the "ideal" situation for children is, on average, with their own biological mother and father, we ought not to discourage-and deny marriage to-other arrangements: stepfamilies, adoptive families, and same-sex households. It's a non-sequitur.

But that (familiar and ongoing) argument is somewhat beside the point. The Message Argument does not say that promoting children's welfare logically entails denying marriage to gays and lesbians. It says that, in practice, it is virtually impossible to maintain the message "Children need their mothers and fathers" while also promoting the message that "Gay families are just as good as straight ones." And given a choice between the two messages, Gallagher favors the former.

I think urging parents-especially fathers-to stick around for their offspring is an admirable and important goal. It's also one that has personal resonance for Gallagher, who has spoken candidly of her experience as a young single mother left behind by her child's father.

I also think that there are 1001 better ways to achieve this goal than fighting marriage equality. The fact that NOM targets gays and gays alone makes it hard to believe that we are merely collateral damage in their battle to promote children's welfare.

That said, I want to thank Gallagher for clarifying her position. I want to assure her that I'll take The Message dilemma seriously. I plan to grapple with it in future columns (and our forthcoming book).

But I also want to pose for her a counter-dilemma, which I hope she'll take equally seriously.

For it seems to me that, in practice, it is impossible to tell gay couples and families that they are full-fledged members of our society, deserving of equal respect and dignity, while also denying them the legal and social status of marriage.

Yes, marriage sends messages, but "children need their mothers and fathers" is scarcely the only one. Marriage sends the message that it's good for people to have someone special to take care of them, and vice-versa-to have and to hold, for better or worse, till death do they part.

Marriage sends a message about the importance of forming family, even when those families don't include children; about making the transition from being a child in one's family of origin to being an adult in one's family of choice.

Gallagher claims that she loves and respects gay people, and I want to believe her. But how can she sustain that message while also opposing marriage equality? How does her own preferred message not tell gay families-not to mention stepfamilies, adoptive families, and single-parent households-that "Your family isn't real"?

Yes, marriage sends messages. So does its denial.

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If Only Obama Knew!

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sent Congress a letter stating that that ending the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy before the military conducts a thorough review (translation: not this year) "would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter." After all, those serving in the military expect to make political policy and dislike taking orders, right?

A release from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network states:

Gay rights advocates are furious after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking for the Administration in a letter to the Hill, effectively killed the chances of a vote on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before the Midterms. And if the Democrats lose the House, repeal-a firm Obama campaign promise-may be deferred indefinitely.

Uh, oh, guess who's been thrown under the bus.

Not surprisingly, the Obama fundraisers at the Human Rights Campaign are spinning the Gates letter as if the Defense Secretary had operated independently, like some sort of loose cannon (reminds me of how in Russia during the '30s Gulag prisoners used to lament, "if only Stalin knew!"). States an HRC release:

Today's letter from Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton flies in the face of the President's commitment in the State of the Union address to work with Congress to repeal the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law this year.... It is inconceivable that the Secretary of Defense would so blatantly undermine the Commander-in-Chief's policy commitment.

But as scholars at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out in a release titled Experts: Obama Administration Defers "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Repeal Two Years:

Christopher Neff, Deputy Executive Director of the Palm Center, believes that Secretary Gates' letter is a signal from the White House, not just the Pentagon. "Today's letter represents a public effort by the Obama Administration to put a stop to Congressional repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' in 2010. Clearly, the Department of Defense is not its own branch of government. The Secretary of Defense serves the President."

Somebody tell the Human Rights Campaign.

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