IGF CultureWatch

Lots of gay news sites and blogs, and not just the skanky ones, have recently been repeating rumors that a certain seventeen-year-old movie hunk is gay. Rolling Stone Magazine practically badgered the kid about his sexual orientation in an interview.

Am I the only person who thinks this is reprehensible? This is a kid we are talking about. Yes, he looks like he just stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch campaign, but he is still a kid. He is probably living with his parents, he is dealing all of the drama that comes with being a star, and I am fairly certain he would rather not have to deal with this.

We are not talking about the famous middle-aged socialite son of a renowned designer who invites the press to cover every element of his life but inexplicably refuses to answer simple straightforward questions about whether or not he is gay, giving rise to the implication that being gay is a deep, dark, shameful thing (as a purely hypothetical example). We are talking about a seventeen-year-old.

To the actor's credit, he dealt with Rolling Stone's obnoxious inquires really well. There were no freaked-out denials or feigned indignation. He pretty much just ignored the questioner, which was a classier response than was deserved.

Gay people should know better than to indulge in this sort of thing. We all had to deal with coming out. We know how traumatic it is. If the actor is gay, this is just the kind of thing that makes coming out more difficult. Any gay blogger or journalist who tries to drive up traffic with this "story" should be ashamed.

I feel a bit guilty about focusing on Adam Lambert and music and marriage and other local issues when there is a real threat to gay rights in Uganda. "Gay rights" sounds almost quaint in this context, given that the proposed law is the closest thing I've seen in my lifetime to the Nuremberg Laws.

American bloggers seem to have coalesced around calling it the "Kill Gays" bill, and I obviously agree that if it were enacted, it would ultimately lead to that. In its present version, the death penalty would apply to "aggravated homosexuality," which includes sex with a minor or a disability, or someone with AIDS.

This is bad enough. But by focusing on the limited circumstances in which the law would impose state-sanctioned death, I think we run the risk of missing the far broader and more dangerous part of the text: the part that establishes "The offence of homosexuality."

That was implicit in America's ancient sodomy laws, which were sometimes no more specific than prohibiting "the crime against nature." That could be any of a million things, but most people understood it to be homosexuality in some form. Those laws are now a thing of the past, both here and in other civilized nations.

Uganda is determined to uncivilize itself and head straight into a new Dark Age by formally and explicitly criminalizing an offense they call homosexuality. In fact, the bill, itself, says that current law is defective because it ". . .has no comprehensive provision catering for [sic] anti homosexuality."

The bill's single-minded focus on punishing homosexuality is breathtaking. The mere intention to commit homosexuality will expose the offender to life imprisonment. The law also prohibits and punishes speaking publicly in favor of gay rights in any form. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a progressive dream by comparison.

But even that is not enough for this thuggish piece of aggression. Anyone who even knows about someone who is gay has an obligation to turn them in - whether it's a family member, a dear friend or a stranger. Failure to do that is also a punishable offense.

All of this arises from the premise that homosexuality, by itself, is an "offence." Once that is established in the law, everything else flows from it. The power of the state to protect citizens from danger is called into play in all its majesty and force, up to and including making sure that citizens who are not themselves homosexual must report to the authorities any real or suspected violations. This is how genocides start.

Calling the bill "retrograde" seems wildly inadequate. The modern world has come so far on gay equality, and this detestable and gruesome scheme looks like a sick joke.

But it is not. Its proponents have put it forward in all seriousness. Its vile assumptions and loathsome, inevitable consequences deserve to be condemned explicitly. Box Turtle Bulletin has done a thorough and excellent job of covering this story, and its archives are a primary source for anyone who is interested.

Let's get this straight, errr correct. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, a libertarian-leaning Reagan-appointee, orders health benefits for a lesbian spouse of a federal employee, and the Obama White House, through its highest ranking openly gay appointee (John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management), attempts to thwart the judge's order? Get ready for calls to protest. Oh, sorry, make that write more checks to Democrats.

More. The Obama Administration is opposing DOMA as "unfair" but defending it (separate and unequal treatment of gays) as "constitutional" at the same time. It appears that gay legal equality may be the sole area of U.S. law where Eric Holder's Justice Department is not leaning over backwards to take the liberal-left judicial line.

Should people be able to vote on the rights of minorities like this? I know I'd be mad -- and probably file a lawsuit -- if anyone tried something like it in my country.

I've been thinking about Adam Lambert from a different direction, which I hope provides context that has been missing from this discussion. In a nutshell, we need to consider that Lambert grew up in a generation that wasn't sufficiently schooled in the double standard he is now struggling with.

He was born in 1982. When he was 11, the nation was having its tortured conversation about gay equality with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, followed by the even worse spectacle of the Defense of Marriage Act. While each was a slap in the face to equal rights, the simple fact that kids - that everyone - could hear this very public political discussion reveals how little was left of the closet during Lambert's youth.

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s and 70s (and, it goes without saying, earlier) took the closet for granted - which is why so many of us fought so hard to dismantle it. As a boy growing up in California - and in the theater - Lambert may have simply accepted his sexual orientation, irrespective of public misunderstandings of homosexuality. I certainly don't know this, but Lambert's interview on the CBS Early Show gave me the impression that he truly doesn't see what the fuss is about.

That seems to be characteristic of younger people, and it's an important point of reference. They take it for granted that kissing is an acceptable (and sometimes thrilling) behavior, and don't have a different rule for gays. Those who are agitated by a same-sex kiss, from the Mormon authorities in Salt Lake City to the ABC censors, look as puritan and quaint to them as the folks who put Lucy and Ricky in two different beds.

Grabbing a dancer and shoving him into your crotch is a different matter. Lambert made a game attempt to argue it was spontaneous, and that might be true. Or it might not. But whether that instantaneous move was more like Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl or her crotch-grabbing move on the same show Lambert was on, the bottom line is that this kind of thing is a given in popular music and dancing today, across the board. Whether it's local officials trying to prevent kids at school dances from pretty explicit and unambiguous sexual gyrations, or graphic lyrics, or choreography that may be inspired by the Kama Sutra, we live in a world, and at a time, when popular music is a sexual playpen.

Whether that's good or bad, ABC censors and CBS interviewers and all the other fretters and worrywarts who are aflutter (if not a-Twitter) over Lambert give the appearance of inhabiting a nearly vanished world where gay people could be chastised for things straight people do all the time.

Lambert and his generation are reacting rationally to the hallucinations about homosexuality that older generations grew up with and still cling to. Their view is naturally egalitarian; gay people are part of the world. The closet is another risible relic to them, like commercials for cigarettes. They see the double standard for what it is: unnecessary.

Requiring Catholic social service programs to extend benefits to same-sex spouses has become the key rallying point against a same-sex marriage bill being debated by the Washington, D.C., city council. Some jurisdictions that have passed marriage-equality legislation, such as the state of New Hampshire, broadly exempt programs affiliated with religious organizations from recognizing same-sex spouses; the D.C. proposal would not.

The council also rejected an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

Much discussion takes the form of denouncing the Neanderthal right for its hidebound bigotry standing in the way of true progress and all things good. That may or may not be accurate, but it's certainly not good politics. Forcing religious affiliates to violate their dogmatic principles gives social conservatives a huge rallying cry, and to many independent non-bigots it appears to be using the state to force behavior that violates personal conscience, and a step too far.

A broad religious exemption might be an affront to "equality" (and there are counter-arguments of a libertarian nature that could be made here), but at the very least it would allow us to advance without courting such intense reaction. Take note that New Hampshire, with its broad religious exemption, is one of the very few jurisdictions in which marriage equality looks like it may have some staying power.

More. The efforts of gay marriage supporters in D.C. are directed at having the council pass the measure and then fighting attempts by opponents to hold a referendum. Right now, should marriage equality come before the voters, it would be expected to lose, as it has lost in every jurisdiction where voters have had their say. Time to re-evaluate the strategy, one might think.

Note: Due to a server issue over Thanksgiving weekend, some posted comments were inadvertently lost. Sorry about that.

I've had music on my mind the last few days, so it makes sense that's what jumped out at me when I heard this radio ad trying to stir up New Jersey voters about same-sex marriage. The agitated, worrisome musical theme kicks in about 20 seconds in, and its tone has pretty clear, recent echoes. It's the same kind of troubling, urgent and grim theme used in the Yes on 1 ads in Maine and the Reject Referendum 71 ads in Washington.

There's nothing new in this. Music is one of the key elements in any kind of advertising or propaganda. But it's still telling. The emotions our religious opponents have to appeal to - the emotions that help them win - are not the fair-minded and positive ones which are the only feelings we have available to work with. We have no agitation or worry or fear to exploit among heterosexuals. They only reasons they would have to vote for our equality involve justice and fairness and an honest understanding of the fact that we aren't so different from them. We can only appeal to what is best in heterosexuals.

The anxiety in the right's music is the anxiety of their movement, and, I am afraid, of their souls.