IGF CultureWatch

The scene at the White House East Room on June 29 was incongruous, if predictable. Nearly 200 gay leaders were assembled to hear the soothing words of the president, who has yet to do anything significant regarding the causes for which they lobby. But that didn't stop the activists from fawning over Barack Obama; the Washington Blade reported that cries of "I love you!" could be heard from the crowd. Such embarrassing expressions of infatuation were not owing to the open bar.

In the four decades that it has been politically active, the gay community has stood foursquare behind the Democratic Party. Gay identification with liberalism in general and the Democrats in particular is so strong that many conflate the success of the party with that of the movement. Gays overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates and pour millions of dollars into Democratic coffers. Homosexuality and political liberalism are inextricably intertwined in the popular consciousness. Even when Democrats support antigay measures - like the odious Defense of Marriage Act and "don't ask, don't tell," for which we have Bill Clinton to thank - gays rally to the party with votes and cash.

More telling than this ostensibly "pro-gay" president's dilatory strategy on moving legislation, however, is the mix of indignation and bewilderment on the part of so many gay activists. Given their unconditional support for Democrats, how can gays credibly claim to be surprised that Democratic politicians take us for granted? Why move pro-gay legislation forward when there are no consequences for doing nothing? The relationship between gays and Democrats is like battered wife syndrome. We keep coming back for more abuse.

"The facade of the gay movement has always been that Republicans are the bad guys," says Rich Tafel, the former executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "Now that [Republicans] are completely powerless, the illusion that the Democrats are everything is being torn down." That's a wise perception as far as the cowardice and double-talk of the Democrats goes. But is there any hope for gays on the other side of the aisle?

In an ideal world the GOP would be a more hospitable place for the gay electorate. Battered in the 2008 congressional election and having waved goodbye to one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of polling, the Republican Party is now in the early stages of a long and vicious rebuilding phase. One would hope that as they examine the factors that have contributed to their downfall, Republicans will recognize that their positions on issues affecting gay Americans have played some part.

Unfortunately, with the internal disarray of the Log Cabin Republicans, the party is lacking the institutional apparatus to support pro-gay figures from within. Many gay Republicans understandably gave up on their party long ago; President Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment was the last nail in the coffin for this beleaguered crew. The creation of the Log Cabin splinter group GOProud earlier this year should not be taken as a resurgence of gay support for Republicans, as it had more to do with personality differences between the leaders of both organizations than a newfound burst of conservatism among gays.

If Republican leaders were smart (which, to be sure, they show few signs of being), one of the first steps they could take to persuade younger voters of their electoral worthiness would be to drop active opposition to gay rights. If they can't be persuaded to do this on substantive grounds, then the polling numbers ought to convince them that their platform will soon prove to be a huge electoral liability.

That's because the political utility of gay bashing is past its peak. With each passing day more and more Americans see the sense of allowing same-sex couples to gain legal recognition for their relationships and patriotic gay Americans to serve openly in the nation's armed forces. Younger voters overwhelmingly support gay rights, and the more the party solidifies its reputation as a bulwark against this major societal shift, the greater will be the lasting damage to its reputation, much like Richard Nixon's southern strategy doomed the Republican Party - once the political home of African-Americans - with black voters. Adopting a more tolerant stance is also in the best traditions of a party that purports to stand for individual liberty, limited government, and the fundamental right of Americans to live their lives as they see fit - all tenets of the gay rights movement.

The more perceptive Republicans realize this. Take Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain. In a matter of months she's written, talked, and tweeted her way into becoming the most outspoken Republican advocate for gay rights, doing everything from a photo shoot on behalf of the No H8 campaign to raising money for the Trevor Project anti-suicide hotline to acting as the keynote speaker at this year's Log Cabin Republicans convention. Gays should welcome whatever support they can find within the ranks of the GOP, but at the end of the day McCain is the daughter of a failed presidential candidate who was never particularly popular among Republicans in the first place. She's not a potential party leader.

As for an actual elected official who could lead the party out of the antigay wilderness, such hopes rested largely on the shoulders of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, a Mormon who, in contrast to the leaders of his church, supports civil unions for gay couples. Earlier this year, however, in a brilliant political move that neutralized a rising star and potential rival, President Obama appointed Huntsman as his ambassador to China. And so the gays' loss is the country's gain.

In June former vice president Dick Cheney reiterated, however vaguely, his support for gay marriage, stating, "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish." This was not exactly news; Cheney, after all, has a gay daughter, and he registered his opposition to the FMA in the 2004 presidential campaign. And it's slightly disingenuous for gay conservatives like those in GOProud to trumpet Cheney's halfhearted endorsement of gay marriage as proof that he's better on the issue than Obama. Cheney did nothing to press the cause of gay rights when he was in the White House. Now that he's liberated to speak his mind on a whole host of topics - something he's shown no hesitation in doing - he can only be bothered to talk about gay rights when pressed by reporters. If Cheney can launch a campaign attacking the Obama administration's antiterrorism policies, why can't he find time to rebut the antigay figures on the right wing of his own party who wish to treat his daughter as a second-class citizen? Surely, as a former secretary of Defense, Cheney has insights into the utility of "don't ask, don't tell"?

The apparent self-inflicted immolation of Sarah Palin's political career cannot be viewed as anything but a boon for gay rights. Though she has a scant record on the issues, as the GOP's vice-presidential candidate, Palin opposed the man at the top of the ticket with her support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. And her careerist attempt to position herself as the standard-bearer of the party's socially conservative wing suggests that she would effortlessly embrace its antigay politics were she to run for national office. But even with Palin out of the picture (for now), there's little reason to be hopeful about the 2012 GOP field. Front-runner Mitt Romney cemented his reputation as a flip-flopper largely due to his cynical positioning as a "pro-family" candidate during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, trumpeting his opposition to gay marriage during his years as Massachusetts governor to win over evangelicals wary of his Mormonism. Mike Huckabee, another 2012 contender, campaigned on explicitly conservative Christian themes, while Newt Gingrich railed about "gay and secular fascism" in the wake of Proposition 8.

So is a gay-friendly GOP too much to hope for? Probably, at least in the near future. But just because the Republican Party shows little sign of moderating does not mean that Democrats should get a free ride, and the decision by some major gay activists and donors to boycott a June DNC fund-raiser is a welcome development. Obama has delivered major speeches on divisive topics like race and abortion, speeches that, unlike so much political pabulum these days, made Americans think. Why can't he deliver a White House address tearing down the last acceptable social prejudice? His unique station as the nation's first African-American president provides him with a historic opportunity to do just that.

Divining what the president might say were he inclined to deliver such a game-changing speech is not difficult; a recent proclamation he issued celebrating June as LGBT Pride Month contained a few hints. "As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled," Obama declared, "all Americans are affected." By framing the lack of equality for gays as an issue that affects all citizens - and not just those directly affected by discriminatory laws - the president went further than any of his predecessors in emphasizing the fundamental injustice of the status quo, and he intimated that his sweeping promise of "change" will also benefit gay people. As a candidate, Obama complained about those who criticized his campaign as offering "just words." But words are all he's offered thus far, leading us to the conclusion that the conflation of the Democratic Party's interests and those of the gay rights movement is a status quo equally in need of change.

Robert George's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts," contains both sense and nonsense-but more of the latter.

George, a Princeton professor of jurisprudence and founder of the American Principles Project, is a preeminent conservative scholar. In the op-ed, he considers the federal lawsuit challenging California's Proposition 8 and claims that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality would be "disastrous," constituting a "judicial usurpation" of popular authority and inflaming the culture wars beyond repair.

First, the good points: George is quite right to insist that the Court's role is to interpret the Constitution, not to make policy. He's also right to argue that marriage law has been, and should be, tied closely to the needs of children. And he exhibits a refreshing "don't panic" attitude, asserting that "democracy is working"-although by democracy, he seems to mean only voter referenda, and not our more complex representative system, with its various checks and balances. On the latter, broader understanding, I'd agree that "democracy is working:" in the last year, five additional states have embraced marriage equality.

But the misunderstandings in George's piece are legion.

(1) George provides a lengthy analogy with the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which recognized abortion rights. But while this analogy may be relevant to the culture-war angle, it says absolutely nothing about the legal merits-since rather different issues were at stake in Roe.

What's more, it's not even clear how relevant it is to the culture-war angle. Most abortion opponents believe that abortion involves large-scale killing of innocent babies. Compare that to Adam and Steve setting up house in the suburbs. Whatever your view of homosexuality, there's no comparison in terms of moral urgency.

(2) George also considers-and summarily rejects-an analogy with the 1967 Loving v. Virginia. He writes,

"The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy."

Seriously? Perhaps "everyone agreed" that they were marriages in some sense-as one could say equally about same-sex marriages-but they certainly didn't agree that they were valid marriages. When the Loving trial court judge declared, "The fact that [God] separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix," he expressed the widespread view that interracial marriage violated a divinely ordained natural order.

George's reference to the "evil regime of white supremacy" is also telling. In order to undermine any analogy between racial prejudice and homophobia, right-wingers often paint all those who opposed interracial-marriage as angry KKK types. But most opponents of miscegenation sincerely believed that the Bible condemns it, that it's unnatural, and that it's bad for children. In other words, they cited the same "respectable" reasons as modern-day marriage-equality opponents.

That these two groups cite the same reasons doesn't show that their arguments are equally bad or their motives equally flawed. It does show, however, that religious conviction doesn't secure a free pass for discrimination, and that friendly, well-intentioned folks can nevertheless be guilty of bigotry.

(3) George, a noted natural-law theorist, asserts that marriage "takes its distinctive character" from bodily unions of the procreative kind. By "procreative kind," George doesn't mean that procreation must be intended, or even possible-oddly, sterile heterosexuals can have sex "of the procreative kind" on George's view. He means penis-in-vagina. According to George,

"This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages."

"Historically" is the key word here-as in "not any more." There's a reason consummation laws have been almost universally discarded (and were seldom invoked when present). Such laws reflected, not the law's majestic correspondence with Catholic natural-law doctrine, but an outdated mixture of concerns about male lineage and female purity.

(4) Finally, George asserts the standard false dilemma: Either accept the traditional natural-law understanding of marriage, or else have no principled basis for any marriage regulation:

"If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union-and thus to procreation-will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy."

No principled basis? How about the fact that polygamy-which historically is far more common than monogamy-is highly correlated with a variety of social ills? Or that the stability provided by long-term romantic pair-bonding is good for individuals and society-far more profoundly than typical "friendships"? Or that the state legally regulates important contracts of all sorts, and the commitment to "for better or worse, 'til death do us part" is a pretty important contract? Here as elsewhere, George seems incapable of recognizing any principles beyond those prescribed by a narrow natural-law theory.

Ultimately, the trouble with George is that his theory-which is supposed to be rooted in "nature"-is in fact divorced from reality. The reality is that gay people exist, fall in love, pair off, settle down, and build lives together-sometimes with children, often without. When we do, we seek the same legal protection for our relationships that other Americans take for granted. If the denial of such protections is not an appropriate subject for judicial scrutiny, I'm not sure what is.

Last October, Bill Meezan, my cousin, left his home in Columbus, Ohio, for a business trip to Philadelphia. Bill is the dean of Ohio State University's College of Social Work, and he travels quite a bit. In Philadelphia, he thought he felt an old cold coming back. Then he developed a nasty cough. On October 31, he went to the hospital.

He remembers nothing of that day, but Mike Brittenback recalls sharply how doctors in Philadelphia called him in Columbus to say they suspected pneumonia. Mike, an organist and choirmaster, is Bill's partner of 30 years. A few hours later that Friday, they called back to confirm the diagnosis. Mike was concerned but not alarmed.

At 3 a.m. the next day, the phone woke him up. It was a doctor in Philadelphia. Mike needed to come to Philadelphia immediately. Bill had gone into septic shock and might not survive more than a few hours.

* * *

"Here's the key principle," Peter Sprigg, a gay-marriage opponent with the Family Research Council, said in an April radio interview on Southern California's KCRW. "Society gives benefits to marriage because marriage gives benefits to society. And therefore the burden of proof has to be on the advocates of same-sex marriage to demonstrate that homosexual relationships benefit society. Not just benefit the individuals who participate but benefit society in the same way and to the same degree that heterosexual marriage does. And that's a burden that I don't think they can meet."

Can't they?

* * *

Having just been told, at 3 a.m., that his partner of three decades might die within hours, Mike Brittenback was told something else: Before rushing to Bill's side, he needed to collect and bring with him documents proving his medical power of attorney. This indignity, unheard-of in the world of heterosexual marriage, is a commonplace of American gay life.

Frantic, Mike tore through the house but could not find the papers. He would need to retrieve them from a safe-deposit box. Which was at a bank. Which did not open until 9 a.m.

Somehow Mike made it through the next six hours, "crying and frantic and all kinds of awful things running through my mind," fetched the documents, and got on the road. By some higher mercy, those lost hours did not cost Bill his life. When Mike arrived in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, Bill was still alive, though in grave danger.

Mike had packed clothes for a week.

* * *

National Review has a cover story this month by Maggie Gallagher, a prominent anti-gay-marriage activist, subtitled: "Why Gay Marriage Isn't Inevitable." She is right, in a sense. Most states explicitly ban same-sex marriage, often by constitutional amendment, and the country remains deeply divided. The national argument over marriage's meaning will go on for years to come.

In another sense, however, she is wrong. Never again will America _not_ have gay marriage, and never again will less than a majority favor some kind of legal and social recognition for same-sex couples. The genie that gay-marriage opponents still hope to stuff back into the bottle is out and out for good.

Oddly, Gallagher, Sprigg, and other gay-marriage opponents don't understand why this has happened. It comes down not to demographics (young people are more likely than their elders to favor gay marriage, but the demographics are changing quite slowly), nor to liberal elites' cultural influence (Gallagher's explanation). It comes down to Mike and Bill.

* * *

At the hospital, Mike found Bill in an induced coma, attached to so much equipment that the only place Mike could touch him without touching a tube was on the forehead.

A vigil began. Mike spent days at Bill's bedside and nights at a hotel. His career and personal life mostly stopped while he fielded queries from friends and relatives, kept in close touch with Bill's anxious parents, and dealt with mail and household business from Columbus. Above all, he managed Bill's care.

Bill had repeated setbacks. Two cardiac arrests. The dialysis machine kept failing. Thrush spread to the lungs. Heart arrhythmia. Hallucinations. Trouble removing a breathing tube. In person by day, on the phone at night, doctors huddled with Mike.

Days stretched into weeks. Thanksgiving came and went. Six weeks passed in Philadelphia. "I never missed a day," Mike recalls. "I felt he needed me there. I really felt he knew I was there. He would smile when I came in, even when he was in an induced coma."

* * *

Peter Sprigg and Maggie Gallagher are cut from different cloths in some respects-Sprigg condemns homosexuality, whereas Gallagher accepts it-but they have in common what they offer to couples like Mike and Bill: silence. The same is true of nearly all other prominent opponents of same-sex marriage. (David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values is an honorable exception.)

If gay couples can't be allowed to marry, what _should_ they be able to do? Asked this question, cultural conservatives say, in the words of Tom Lehrer's song about the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, "That's not my department." Effectively, conservatives are saying that what Mike and Bill do for each other has no significance outside their own bedroom.

But what happened in that hospital in Philadelphia for those six weeks was not just Mike and Bill's business, a fact that is self-evident to any reasonable human being who hears the story. "Mike was making a medical decision at least once a day that would have serious consequences," Bill told me. Who but a life partner would or could have done that? Who but a life partner will drop everything to provide constant care? Bill's mother told me that if not for Mike, her son would have died. Faced with this reality, what kind of person, morally, simply turns away and offers silence?

Not the sort of person who populates the United States of America. If Republicans wonder why they find themselves culturally marginalized, particularly by younger Americans, they might consider the fact that when the party looks at couples like Mike and Bill it sees, in effect, nothing.

* * *

By Thanksgiving, Bill was stable enough to be brought out of sedation. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he formulated a plan. Tubes and a tracheostomy prevented talking, but almost as soon as he could write on a whiteboard, he scrawled a message for Mike. "Will you marry me?"

Mike broke down. "I cried. It was tears of joy."

In January, now back in Columbus, Bill was finally released from the hospital, his weight down by more than a fourth. Over the next few months, he underwent weeks of physical therapy, and Mike developed post-traumatic stress disorder, and Bill's mother died, and Bill decided not to renew his deanship. In the press of events, the marriage proposal seemed to recede. In conversations with Mike, Bill equivocated about when to tie the knot.

* * *

Conservatives have a decision to make. They can continue pretending that the bond between Mike and Bill does not exist, is of no social value, or has no place on conservatives' agenda. Doing so would be of a piece with their retreat to economic Hooverism, their embrace of cultural Palinism, and, in general, their preference for purity over relevance.

Or they can acknowledge what to most of the country is already obvious: Whether the nation finally settles on marriage or on something else for gay couples, Bill and Mike are now in the mainstream and the Republican Party is not. If cultural conservatism continues to treat same-sex couples as outside the social covenant, the currents of history will flow right around it, and future generations of conservatives will wonder how their predecessors could ever have made such a callous and politically costly mistake.

* * *

This month, Mike and Bill will vacation on Cape Cod. Mike is expecting to relax. Bill has been shopping, secretly, for wedding rings. His equivocation, of course, is a ruse. Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts. On August 20, without warning Mike, Bill will produce the same whiteboard that he used in the hospital last year, and on it he will again write, "Will you marry me?" Four days later, they will be married in a small ceremony with friends.

"When I asked him to marry me in the hospital," Bill says, "I have never seen a smile on his face like that. I have never seen that kind of joy. Ever. I want to re-create that. And that's why I want this to be a surprise."

And so it will be, reader, if you can keep a secret.

Last month, former president Bill Clinton joined the increasing number of Democratic politicians who publicly back same-sex marriage. Granted, Clinton's endorsement - offered in response to a questioner at a Washington conference for liberal college activists - was heavily qualified: Clinton said he is "basically in support" of providing legal recognition to gay couples.

This latter-day epiphany from the man who signed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions, earned warm praise from gay activists. "I personally support people doing what they want to do," Clinton said, and people seemed to believe his apparent change of heart.

Others, however, claimed to know that he has been for gay marriage all along. Kerry Eleveld, Washington correspondent for The Advocate, wrote that "no one ever really believed [Clinton] opposed marriage equality. Call it craven politics, but everyone knows Clinton signed DOMA into law before the '96 election to avoid a potential GOP family-values offensive at the ballot box." Eleveld and others contend that support for same-sex marriage among liberal elected officials is a given. It's just that pesky political exigencies prevent them from publicly expressing their "real" beliefs.

There's no doubt that part of Clinton's motivation for signing DOMA was to prevent the Republican Party from using it as a wedge issue. But whether or not that law went against his actual convictions, it is part of Clinton's legacy to the gay community, along with "don't ask, don't tell." Repealing both is the most important task of the gay rights movement today.

When it comes to same-sex marriage, the movement can't count on support from the current president either. When White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Clinton's comments, he told reporters that his boss "does not support" same-sex marriage. "He supports civil unions," Gibbs assured. And despite President Obama's statement that he opposes the ban on gays serving openly in the military, Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.) last week said that the White House pressured him to withdraw an amendment that would have prohibited funds from being spent on investigating "don't ask, don't tell" violations.

Even if Obama does in fact believe in marriage equality, he hasn't done - and is unlikely to do - much to forward the cause. And apart from some toothless sniping from a handful of gay activists and donors, he seems to be getting away with it. In this way, the presumed (yet secret) good intentions of Democrats can wind up doing more harm than good: They tell the gay community that Democrats are at least better than the GOP, thus providing an excuse that can be employed endlessly while they stall.

This trust in covert backing from liberal elected officials is an article of faith among most supporters of same-sex marriage. In a recent interview with Newsweek, gay playwright Tony Kushner spoke of Obama's secret belief in the righteousness of same-sex marriage as if it were painfully obvious. "Pbbbht! Of course he's in favor of gay marriage!" Kushner exclaimed. His views were echoed by Steve Hildebrand, a gay political consultant who served as Obama's deputy national campaign director. "I do believe that in his heart he will fight his tail off until we've achieved full equality in the gay community," he told journalist Rex Wockner. I've lost track of the number of liberal friends and acquaintances, gay and straight alike, who assure me that Obama "really" supports same-sex marriage and, furthermore, that this point is obvious.

How can they be so sure? People want to like political leaders, and when someone as charismatic as Clinton or Obama comes along, it's easy to ignore the facts that get in the way of an idealized image. That liberal politicians are indifferent - if not outright opposed - to same-sex marriage stands at utter odds with liberals' notion of an enlightened community of like-minded progressives. "Does anybody actually believe that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama think that we shouldn't have - that this man who is a constitutional-law scholar - is it a complicated issue?" Kushner sputtered, as if anyone who disagreed were an imbecile.

Because people such as Kushner view political liberalism as a positive personality trait and not just a worldview, they assume that someone who opposed the Iraq war and sees himself as a "citizen of the world" would also believe in the right of gays to marry. People cannot conceive that such a cosmopolitan and eloquent man as Obama would disagree with them on an issue that they consider a no-brainer.

This is convenient for liberals because it allows them to deflect blame from politicians they like onto those they don't, namely conservatives, the sincerity of whose opposition to same-sex marriage they never challenge. If only Republicans desisted in their homophobia, this narrative goes, justifiably timid liberals would come out of their closets of prevarication, so to speak, and support gay marriage unambiguously.

Framing gay rights as a strictly partisan issue also allows liberals to obscure the awkward fact that while they are more likely than conservatives to support same-sex marriage, a key Democratic constituency, African Americans, overwhelmingly opposes it. Obama's history on the issue does have a complicating twist. On a 1996 Illinois Senate race questionnaire, Obama (or more likely a staffer) wrote, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." Liberals take from this revelation the assumption that Obama's apparent flip was insincere.

But there is nothing in his record since he became a national political figure that should give them any reason to think he will revert to his supposedly pro-gay-marriage position. And if Obama actually does believe in same-sex marriage, that makes his public opposition to it worse than it would be if he were genuinely opposed. How is it in any way reassuring to liberals to suppose that a politician agrees with them while selling them down the river? Even if Obama's apparent flip isn't genuine, he nonetheless acts as if it were, rendering his supposedly silent support worthless in tangible political terms. Whatever he "really" thinks, Obama's stance on gay marriage is virtually indistinguishable from that of John McCain.

For some time, liberal politicians have taken a largely wink-and-nod approach to gay issues. They've done so with the excuse that the culture must catch up before any progress can be made (an excuse that conveniently doesn't apply to other liberal interest groups, such as unions and trial lawyers, that do very well when Democrats are in power). Obama paid tribute to this timeworn tactic recently when he told gay activists at the White House: "I want you to know that I expect and hope to be judged not by words, but by the promises my administration keeps. By the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."

Talking about "feelings" is a cuddly liberal pastime, and Obama's promise conjures up the phrase that Clinton famously entered into our political lexicon when he told an angry AIDS activist, "I feel your pain." Maybe now, when it comes to same-sex marriage, he finally does. But it would be nice to have a sitting president whose feelings translate into action.

Some of my friends have been discussing what should be the "gay agenda"-or even if there needs to be such a thing-after we obtain marriage and military access. Well, yes, there are a number of concerns that will still need to be addressed, but I think the whole discussion is a little premature.

Nationwide marriage will be a long time coming. It is still not permitted in 45 states, and expressly forbidden in a majority. So obtaining marriage will be a long, hard slog through the courts and legislatures, and probably several public referendums. States with sizable evangelical populations, especially in the South, will be resistant. And the U. S. Supreme Court is not likely to rule on the issue until a substantial majority of states have already approved gay marriage-just as it ruled against sodomy laws only after most states had already struck down their own sodomy laws.

And while I hope I am wrong, I fear that any change from Don't Ask, Don't Tell will not be a clean rejection of the anti-gay policy but some sort of compromise measure that doesn't allow complete freedom for gays. Even if there is a clean rejection of the policy, there are plenty of pockets of anti-gay sentiment in the military that will need to be addressed. The evangelical dominance at the U.S. Air Force Academy is only one example.

But putting those issues aside, are there other issues of concern to gays that our community should address? One obvious one is second-parent adoption for gay couples. It is absurd and simply discriminatory to say that one parent can adopt a child but not the other if the adopting couple are gay or lesbian. The main person who would benefit from such a policy change would be the child who would be guaranteed a loving parent with legal rights to the child if the adopting parent dies.

Another issue is the decent treatment of aging gays in nursing homes and elder care facilities. All of us, if we are lucky, will live into ripe old age and want to be treated with dignity and respect. But not everyone will share my own positive experience in a nursing home. The elderly are the least gay-accepting demographic in the country, and while that may slowly change, it is not changing very fast. Aging gays will need patient advocates to make sure they are getting treated as they deserve, and visitors to keep up their sprits and do occasional small favors. In addition, many aging gays have a need to feel useful and relevant in some way, not just feel that they are being put out to pasture. We as a community need to find ways to make use of that desire.

A third candidate issue is the treatment of gay and lesbian youth in and around schools. We all know plenty of stories of young gays and lesbians who are bullied and harassed in schools but whose schools do little or nothing to correct the situation. The youths need mentors, and people willing to take their concerns to school administrators and counselors. We also need to press for the inclusion of gay materials in school curriculums-history, literature, social studies, etc., to help inhibit the development of anti-gay attitudes.

Even assuming that every gay person who is in prison or jail is there for a good reason, no prison sentence should carry the additional penalty of sexual assault. Several studies have attested to the presence of sexual assault of gays and other vulnerable prisoners-assault by other prisoners and sometimes even by guards and prison staff. This is a situation that needs to be monitored and addressed.

And finally, we need to find ways to address the homophobia in evangelical and Pentecostal churches in the black and Latino communities. This is not something white gays can do. It is something that African American and Latino gays themselves can do most effectively. But we can help (when asked) with financial contributions, advice, etc.

The Chicago school system now has an openly gay head. Earlier this year, Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed former Chicago Transit Authority head (and before that mayoral Chief of Staff) Ron Huberman to head the school system with an obvious mandate to improve what are often called "the failing Chicago schools."

The situation may be unique. I know of no other school system with an openly gay head, certainly not one of any major city. Huberman's homosexuality was well known within the gay community, and certainly to Mayor Daley, but how widely it was known among the general public is doubtful. In any case, shortly after he was appointed, Huberman "came out" publicly during an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, a disclosure that had all the earmarks of a preemptive strike. Oddly there has been little noticeable objection, not even from the generally homophobic black religious establishment.

No doubt Huberman will be focusing on improving standard measures of school effectiveness such as improving test scores, reducing dropout rates, and reducing teacher turnover. But from our point of view one major problem which may not get addressed unless we push it as a priority is bullying-specifically anti-gay bullying. This is hardly irrelevant to the other concerns: Bullying of students who are or are perceived as gay or "different" can make young people afraid to go to school, resulting in poor attendance, higher dropout rates, and even occasional suicide-as was the case recently with a 15-year-old boy in Western Springs.

Even for those young people who manage to stick it out, bullying creates a poor learning environment and can cause considerable residual emotional damage. A robust-looking man, Huberman probably did not face bullying in school, but he surely knows that many young gays do, and I hope that reducing bullying would be a priority for him. Numerous studies by GLSEN-the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network-have documented its pervasiveness.

The issue can be confronted on two major fronts. In briefest outline here they are.

The schools need to get serious about all bullying, making it an expellable offense-a mandatory ten-day suspension with mandatory counseling for a first offense, and expulsion after a second offense. That may not do much for bullies, some of whom probably do not want to be in school anyway, but it will do much to improve the lives and learning of vulnerable youths.

Huberman also needs to appoint a Special Assistant for Anti-Bullying Initiatives or "Anti-Bullying Czar" to survey programs in other school systems that have helped reduce bullying and institute them in the Chicago schools systemwide.

But reducing anti-gay pressures in the schools is not enough. Positive support mechanisms must be set up. First, the city must encourage the creation of Gay/Straight Alliances at all middle and high schools. It should seek out gay and gay-friendly teachers to act as advisors and provide them (and all administrators) with copies of the "Equal Access" law which mandates the acceptance of a wide variety of student clubs, including, courts have decided, gay student groups.

Second, Chicago must create not just one school but an archipelago of explicitly gay-inclusive and gay-supportive schools across the city for students to escape to if they do not feel safe at their current school.

Third, the city must promote regular schoolwide assemblies on the issue of tolerance and acceptance of all ethnicities and orientations, featuring appropriate speakers, including known athletes where possible to serve as exemplars.

Fourth, the city should facilitate an annual day-long conference of members of existing Gay/Straight Alliances and potential G/SA members at other schools to get to know one another, provide mutual encouragement, and network on ways to address common concerns.

If the schools cannot do at least these things, they cannot be said to be serious about bullying and anti-gay harassment. We as a community will be watching.

Recently, delegates to the Episcopal church's triennial general conference voted to allow the ordination of gay bishops, a vote that overturned a de facto moratorium on ordaining gay bishops that was approved three years ago.

I agree almost entirely with the analysis offered by my fellow Chicago Free Press columnist Jennifer Vanasco. But there are a couple of additional points worth adding.

The vote was "overwhelming" (according to The New York Times)-more than two-thirds of both houses of the convention voting in favor of the new policy. Since most of those votes were probably not new converts to the gay side, that means that those votes have always been there but just not cast on our side.

Instead, they were temporarily persuaded by the appeals of Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, not to do anything that would rupture the Anglican Communion, many parts of which, particularly in Africa, are fiercely anti-gay

Williams made the same appeal this time too, telling the convention, "I hope and pray that there won't be decisions in the coming days that will push us further apart."

But the appeal did not work this time. Instead the convention voted to stand up for its principles of inclusion and acceptance of gays and, implicitly, for the acceptance of homosexuality as a legitimate mode of sexual expression. As one church leader put it, "real relationships are built on authenticity."

It is amazing how frequently calls for "unity"-religious, political, organizational-amount to one side urging the other side to abandon its principles and support a policy or view it does not believe in.

No doubt there will be angry denunciations from anti-gay provinces of the Anglican Communion and threats to withdraw or else expel the Episcopal Church. They have already sought to form alliances with anti-gay dioceses in the U.S., although with limited success.

But the Episcopalians have more or less brought this on themselves. For decades, wealthy American churches have sent millions of dollars to Africa to support proselytizing and missionary work to convert Africans to Christianity.

The result was to provide a homophobic rule book-as both the Old and New Testaments certainly seem to be-without any decent training in the historical and critical analysis of the bible that is commonplace in American seminaries. As one Episcopalian cleric told a startled friend of mine, "Some African bishops have little more than an eighth-grade education." So the message the Africans and others learned was a Bible-based homophobia.

Those Episcopal churches might be well-advised to start sending their millions of dollars to support gay rights and gay equality efforts both within and outside of the African churches to try to undo some of the damage they have done.

The main reason Williams' appeal did not work this time was that it seemed clear that another delay would have had no effect and that the appeal would be repeated again in another three years. It had been hoped that a few years' breathing room on the issue would allow some progress by the Africans (and other homophobic dioceses) in learning more about homosexuality and the historical and critical analysis of the Bible.

But the Africans showed no movement in that direction and instead dug in their heels on the issue. That means that the same urging would be given every time the issue came up, ad infinitum, and Episcopalians would never be able to institute their gay-supportive beliefs. This they were finally unwilling to do.

As if to indicate "Now we're serious about this," the convention also voted to develop formal rites for gay and lesbian unions. But that is a separate issue and deserves separate treatment another time.