IGF CultureWatch

Some ice may be breaking in Uganda. Box Turtle Bulletin links to an essay written by John Nagenda, a senior advisor to President Museveni, opposing the anti-homosexuality bill.

The colorfully written piece brings into focus the part of the bill that I think transcends any particular penalty: death, imprisonment or even misdemeanor fine. Its original sin is its naïve and vicious attempt to enforce purity - to create a Uganda free of "any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex," and even "the promotion or recognition of such sexual relations," whether inside or outside the country. Its target is only a small minority, but it intends to be comprehensive. Every citizen is coerced into turning in suspected violators, or themselves facing prosecution.

To describe the bill, Nagenda invokes a word Americans will understand -- McCarthyism - and helpfully explains to his fellow Ugandans how witch-hunts occur. But he then offers an even more apt analogy: the Inquisition.

Christians of good conscience have powerful reasons to be hypersensitive about this. There should be no doubt, after the extensive investigative work Box Turtle Bulletin has done, that several American Christians had a formative role in the bill's inception. They have exported their misguided notions about homosexuality, and Ugandan politicians bought the goods, and placed them at the very heart of their new crusade.

The bill states, as a matter of law, that same-sex attraction "is not an innate and immutable characteristic." At the very least, that is a matter of controversy, and it is barely that to anyone who has seriously considered the issue. Only a fringe group of religious fanatics and deranged psychologists manqué insist, today, that homosexuals are just heterosexuals gone wrong, and should man up and marry a good opposite-sex partner.

Nevertheless, this merry band found in some Ugandan politicians the credulous audience lacking in America (at least among politicians who wish to be taken seriously), and the result is what would be expected when ignorant religious beliefs are married to political ambition. By asserting pseudoscience as an enforceable principle of law, the bill strips homosexuals of their very existence, turns them into nothing more than errant - and criminal - heterosexuals, and enlists all good citizens into the war against them.

This turns homosexuality into heresy. That is what American Christianists have been trying to do here - return us to the days when homosexuality was criminal, homosexuals were ashamed and silent, and heterosexuals could count on the police to enforce that shame and silence. Any citizen with a petty grievance or a niggling suspicion was empowered to press the levers of power. When rumors are evidence, people can destroy one another at will.

It doesn't take a lot to see how much damage that can cause, and has caused - particularly for anyone who's paid even the slightest attention to history. From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the Holocaust, the quest for purity inevitably brings out the worst in us, not the best.

Uganda can avoid learning that lesson the hard way. But they'll need to listen to better advice than America's traveling snake-oil salesmen are giving them. Nagenda's essay is a good sign that common sense may prevail.

Would a bigot help?

That's an important question in thinking about Rick Warren. He has been as harmful to gay equality as any religious figure on the right, particularly for his role in urging his parishioners - and everyone else who "believes what the Bible says" - to vote against marriage equality in California -- all the while denying he had done any such thing.

He has also played a starring role in stirring up the pot in Uganda against homosexuals. Which is why his strong and explicit statement against the anti-homosexuality bill there is so important. As Rachel Maddow says, "better late than never."

So is he a bigot? The epithet is potent enough to do to our opponents what they do to us - charge them with a fundamental lack of humanity or decency. Warren's statement is a firm assertion of both, and does him credit.

But Warren is all over the map on gay equality. On her show last night, Maddow clearly nailed Warren's incoherence, both on Prop. 8 and on his role in Uganda. But that is where I think a bit of empathy may be in order (and I know this will be controversial).

Like so many other heterosexuals of his age and older, Warren is caught in a bind. He believed the lies and misperceptions about homosexuality that history, particularly as embodied in his religion, have taught him. He relied on those distortions, and built his belief system around them.

For many years, we did too. It was hard to realize and then live out the truth about our own lives against those perversions of truth. But as the Catholic church learns daily, you cannot deny nature long without paying a price. Sex and intimacy are fundamental to human beings, and cannot be either renounced or faked. We learned that the hard way, and are trying to correct the record so it doesn't happen again.

Warren is obviously struggling with that. His conversation after Prop. 8 with Melissa Etheridge may have been a turning point. But his loyalty to the lies history taught him about us still permits him to blind himself to the lies he tells himself. And no lies are more persuasive then those.

No one should go easy on Warren. It is the relentlessness of Maddow and Andrew Sullivan and particularly Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin that has put the pressure on him to correct the problem he was complicit in in Uganda. The fact he has done so can make an enormous difference.

But he lives here, and is accountable here. The inconsistency of his position on homosexuality is more apparent with each passing day. A bigot, I think, would refuse to face that. I'm not sure whether Warren is a bigot in that sense. But his action now should give us reason to hope. He can be a powerful ally.

This is exactly what I was worried about. By taking the death penalty out of the Uganda anti-homosexuality bill, the government has improved the bill's reputation, and its chances.

The Minister of Ethics and Integrity, James Nsaba Buturo said the government supports the bill because homosexuality and lesbianism are "repugnant to the Ugandan culture," but wanted a more "refined" set of punishments. Death was too much, so the refinements include life in prison and reeducation.

Whether the punishment is sufficiently refined or not, Buturo articulates the rotten core of this bill: a heterosexual majority running roughshod over the dignity of a very small, and very vulnerable minority for no reason other than political dominance. And heterosexuals can get swept into the vortex; the bill imposes a regime of controlled speech and opinion, where objections to homosexuality may be freely uttered, but support is prohibited.

I don't know about Ugandan culture, but that abuse of power is repugnant to any civilized government. And I am afraid our heated rhetoric has not helped. To my mind, at least, this was never about the death penalty; it was always about the discrimination. But after we set the stage with our focus on government murder, the bill now looks, to many people, ever so much more reasonable. We may have cause to regret our inadvertent aid in making that happen.

The commenters on Non-bigotry made some very good arguments. Lymis is right on point that the rabbi is a textbook example of someone who is prejudiced (whether or not that is bigotry). In contrast, Pauliji has no doubt the rabbi is a bigot. Joe Perez has a lengthy post at his blog that I think John Corvino is more qualified to respond to than me. I think this topic is worth more time, and I'd like to devote a few posts over the next week to examining arguments made by some specific people who oppose marriage equality.

Senator Paul Sarlo was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was a No vote from the start. However, he ran the very controversial hearing well, and the explanation of his vote is respectful:

Yes, I am opposed to the bill at this point in time, but their (Garden State Equality) advocacy has come a long way, and I am quite certain some time in the near future, I believe the tide has turned a little bit, and they will win with their issue. I am still opposed personally because of my religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic, and as senator of the 36th District, which is mostly made up of Irish and Italian Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.

Two things seem important to me about this statement. First, while I can't speak for New Jersey's legislature, I have worked in and with California's for over a decade. It is rare here for any legislator voting in a public hearing to cite his or her religion as the (or even a) reason for their vote. While particular religious arguments may be made (biblical passages about charity, for example, to support public welfare programs), outside of gay rights (and the very rare bill these days in California about abortion) an individual's religious beliefs are simply not used as a political argument. That is a consistent anomaly in the debate over gay rights.

Sen. Sarlo's concern about the religious beliefs of his constituents is a slightly different matter, but actually intensifies the inherent problem. While the Orthodox Jews in his district would probably strongly support his vote, only about half of his fellow Catholics would, if they are like Catholics in the rest of the nation. And I assume he has Jewish voters in his district who are not orthodox and support same-sex marriage. Moreover, this explicit appeal to specific groups quite obviously leaves out all of his constituents who are nonreligious, or belong to other religions. This may not be a political problem in his district, but as a general public policy matter, it is certainly unfair, if not unwise.

But he says something else that is even more telling. He is sure that "they" (Garden State Equality and by extension, lesbians and gay men) will win "their" issue. Equality is certainly our issue by virtue of the fact that we don't have it and must fight for it. But the concept is a constitutional one, and as such, it does not "belong" to any minority, but to all citizens. "Equal Justice Under Law" is carved into the entrance to the United States Supreme Court, not for any particular "us," but as a guiding principle for the laws that apply to the nation we all share.

Sen. Sarlo separates himself from this foundation when he assigns the fight for equal laws to us. The stunning success of the gay rights movement has been to help heterosexuals see exactly this point. They have as much stake in honoring the constitution as we have battling not to be excluded from it.

To be fair, Sen. Sarlo does understand this. His state's supreme court ruled that same-sex couples did not have equal rights in New Jersey, and told the legislature they must resolve that discrepancy. Sarlo believes that comprehensive civil unions satisfy the command of equality. But the religion he cites as authority for opposing our equal marriage does not support laws that grant us civil unions. He does not explain how he resolves that inconsistency.

I don't think Sen. Sarlo is a bigot. Unlike some of our most vocal opponents, he is comfortable articulating that we are entitled to equality, and differs only on the means of achieving that. That seems to me an important factor in deciding whether to level a charge of bigotry. What do you think?

I thought a lot about John Corvino's piece on bigotry while listening to the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on same-sex marriage yesterday. I deeply agree with John that the word "bigot" should be used sparingly so that its very strong condemnatory force is not diluted. Many people who don't support same-sex marriage are not bigots, and it does not help us to use the epithet promiscuously.

John tries to tease out a more helpful definition of "bigot" than dictionaries provide, and moves the ball downfield a bit. But he sets himself a hard task.

That struck home for me when a rabbi (whose name I did not catch) testified against the New Jersey bill, and asked the legislators to think about the fate of an "innocent lonely child" who is adopted by a same-sex married couple. His testimony is at the 8:18 mark in Blue Jersey's live blog. The unadorned words do not capture the rabbi's deep, fearful concern for this hypothetical child.

I obviously can't speak about what moved this man. But listening to him, it is tragically clear that there is no room at all in his world for the simple possibility that such a child might not be lonely in a loving home headed by a gay couple, or that the child could thrive and have a wonderful life. The irony is that by eliminating such a possibility from his imagination, he may be preventing some real child that tangible benefit.

It is this moral editing - this internal censorship of good possibilities - that exempts some people from being called bigots. I can't really imagine how anyone could do that - suppress from their consciousness a fellow human being's decency or happiness or value. But it is something necessary (if not sufficient) for prejudice to prevail. I don't think this rabbi wishes us harm; but it is just not within him to see us as blessed. His cramped view of the world takes something essential away from us.

That is a blindness, but I don't think it is necessarily blameworthy. To my mind, it not as condemnable as the actions of those who can (and do) see us in our ordinary lives, yet intentionally exploit the bias against us for political advantage. The harm to our equality is the same in either case, but there is a moral difference that we should acknowledge.

It is possible this learned man falls into the latter category. But until we know for sure, I don't think we can call him a bigot. We can, though, wish him to see us more generously.

The extraordinary Frank Kameny, whose stubborn activism in the face of fierce repression did so much for gay rights, emails movingly about his attendance at the swearing-in of David Huebner, the new openly gay ambassador to New Zealand Samoa. Excerpted with Frank's permission...

I was invited by the White House, and attended, a ceremony on Friday afternoon December 4, which, at the time and even more so in retrospect, left me feeling deeply touched, satisfied and comforted. On two major levels this would have been so utterly beyond even being imagined when I became involved a half-century ago that I felt that comment would be in order. And so I thought I might share it. Unlike the Salahis, I WAS invited by the White House and my name WAS on the guest lists at the doors.

The occasion was the swearing in of David Huebner as Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Huebner is a 49-year-old prestigious, very openly gay attorney. He is white. His partner of some 20 years, Duane McWaine is a medical doctor-psychiatrist. He is black. Numerous members of both Huebner's and McWaine's extended families were present and visibly cheerfully comingled.

The actual formal swearing-in was done by Vice President Biden. I had been assigned a seat in the front row center. As he came by, Biden recognized me from previous encounters, greeted me effusively, and told the mothers what I was "an important person."

Biden then gave a very nice speech, emphasizing diversity as doubly manifested by Huebner and McWaine. In the course of it, he suggested that since McWaine, like ambassadorial spouses generally, was going to have to put his own professional practice on hold while he accompanied Huebner, perhaps a compensatory salary ought to be paid to ambassadors' spouses.

On both counts - racial and gay - this would have been totally beyond inagining back in the 1960s, when I began agitating. So while we have a way to go - all is certainly not yet aright - we have certainly come a very, very, very long way in what, from an historical standpoint, is a rather short time. I'm sure that I won't be around to see the final resolution of these issues - if they are ever totally resolved, -- but many of you will certainly see us even closer to resolution than we are now. Work hard and be persistent and patient.

Gay IS Good. And the only race is the Human Race. Pound away at those and never compromise, however slightly.

Officials in Uganda may be responding to our rhetoric rather than our rationale. Box Turtle Bulletin notes that amendments to the anti-homosexuality bill could replace the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" with a life sentence. That may be why BTB is now only referring to the bill as the "Anti-Gay Bill" rather than the "Kill Gays Bill."

But this is exactly why I was originally troubled by our inflammatory rhetoric that seemed to focus more on the penalty than the problem.

The death penalty is the ultimate government-sponsored punishment, and reveals the vicious and inhuman impulse behind the legislation. But even if the bill included only fixed prison terms, it is every bit as retrograde and malicious. It explicitly carves out homosexuality from the moral and legal universe. It establishes a civil world in which lesbians and gay men have no place; worse than that, it makes us criminals, and attempts to make even our supporters complicit in the crime of our mere existence. Citizens may not even speak favorably of homosexuality, or write affirmingly about equality without criminal sanction.

But to the extent America has any moral high ground on this issue, it is only a matter of degree. Both DOMA and DADT do implicitly what this bill is proud to say it does - invoke the force of the law to treat homosexuals as a different kind of being from heterosexuals, and draw specific rules that apply only to homosexuals, with entirely different rules applicable to heterosexuals. For any heterosexuals reading this, try to imagine a law that would result in your dismissal if you mentioned your spouse. Then imagine what it might be like if you could not publicly even testify before Congress about that law's unfairness, because even that would have the same result. And try to imagine what a law to allow you the qualified ability to speak might look like. Finally, imagine someone telling you this whole scheme is not a violation of your right to free speech.

To be sure, ours are only civil sanctions, not criminal ones, and the penalties are economic, psychological and social. That makes it easier for many heterosexuals to invoke a plausible deniability about the segregation the laws impose. No prison time here.

But irrespective of the kind of penalty, this is the most craven and degraded use of law. Fortunately, after many decades of work, we have the social and constitutional structure in the U.S. to minimize the damage, and fight for something better. I don't see anything like that to protect the homosexual citizens of Uganda.