The Gay Agenda after Marriage

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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.

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No Roe

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Andrew Sullivan does a good job of showing how Robert George's WSJ piece about same-sex marriage seems to leave no reasonable option for lesbians and gay men in our society. But George illustrates something else that's at least as important: He wants us to view court decisions about same-sex marriage through the same lens as those regarding abortion. That's his preference, but it's not at all necessary.

It all started with Roe v. Wade, as you know, which was the "judicial usurpation of authority." If a future court were to rule in favor of same-sex marriage as a constitutional matter, George argues it would amount to judges trying to "peddle a strained and contentious reading of the Constitution-one whose dubiousness would undermine any ruling's legitimacy." Judges should not resolve morally charged policy issues "according to their personal lights."

Who couldn't agree with that? But does George's constitution really have nothing to say about all people being treated equally? It is true that Roe (and far more important, its predecessor, Griswold v. Connecticut) had to stretch to find constitutional penumbras and emanations. But no such ephemera are necessary to conclude that lesbians and gay men, too, are citizens, and that laws must apply equally to them. At the very least, whether and how equality might apply to marriage laws needs a radically different kind of constitutional analysis than Roe demanded.

This focus on Roe is magician's misdirection. Gay equality is certainly controversial enough, and it is true that court decisions about marriage equality reverberate through the culture. But that is not necessarily because the judges have exercised any usurpation of their authority, it is because the prejudice about homosexuality is still deeply rooted. Judges ruling in favor of gay equality are caricatured as acting on personal prejudices, but it may not be their prejudices that are at issue.

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Shiny Political Objects

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Amen to Dale's post. I'd add one additional point. The political class offers us these shiny political objects because our leadership (and, to be fair, many of us) give them the impression that they'll make us happy. A natural consequence of asking for things other than the hard ones: marriage and the military -- is that we allow politicians to work on the easy ones at the expense of what we really need.

California's legislature, like the President, is seeking to honor Harvey Milk, but they're doing it after having done their work on the hard issue of marriage (and getting preempted by the voters). I don't want to diminish the political importance of symbolic or accessory accomplishments, like hate crimes laws. These can and do pave the way in the political process for the momentous achievements that are needed. Presidential honors to openly gay and lesbian citizens do let the nation know that honor and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive, and show that the President was speaking honestly when he said his vision of America includes lesbians and gay men.

But this is not hard work. By definition, presidential honors go to people whose reputations are well-established. It is the rest of us -- the undistinguished ones who have to live under federal laws that mandate discrimination against us -- who aren't much helped by honors like these. Changes in the law are the only thing that will make a difference in our everyday lives, and for a minority that continues to be denied the dignity of the constitution's equal protection clause, that means we can only depend on political majorities. We have done a monumental job of getting this nation close to majority support -- and have gone above and beyond the call of 50% when it comes to the military -- but are at the point of either diminishing returns or sheer exhaustion right now. Either way, it is only those like the President who have it in their power and talent to make the closing case.

Honoring Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King is good for Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King, but those honors do not change a single word of a single discriminatory federal law. Anything less than that is costume jewelry.

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Happy Days Are Not Here Again

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Congratulations to Billie Jean King and to Harvey Milk (posthumously) for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I figure these medals, though deserved by the recipients, cost the gay-rights movement about $5 million each.

We were told in 2006 that we needed a Democratic Congress to pass gay-rights legislation. We got one and nothing much happened. Two years later, we were told we needed a filibuster-proof Senate majority. It was delivered, but nothing valuable is passing the Senate. We were told we needed a Democratic president. We elected one and nothing's moving. It wasn't enough. It will never be enough. The problem is not that the Democratic Party is useless, at least not completely. (And useless is still better than hostile.) The problem is not that the president has more important things to do, though he does.

The core of the problem is that every "gay rights" measure is still viewed by politicians, political pundits, and the most energized actvists on both sides, as liberal. That's true even where majorities tell pollsters they support the measure, as with passing ENDA and repealing DADT. Liberals are proud gay rights is their cause. Conservatives are delighted it's not. The association of gay rights and liberalism is easy and unquestioned across the political spectrum -- the last bastion of bipartisan consensus.

But as the healthcare debate is reminding us, this is not a left or even center-left country. We may have a Democratic majority in Congress, but we don't have a liberal majority. We haven't had one since 1965. If we didn't get one after the misrule of the past few years, we aren't going to get one. So electing more Democrats is not the answer, or at least not the whole of the answer. Building grand progressive coalitions is not the answer.

We must break the consensus about gay rights. We must challenge the assumption that gays are just the next group with a list of demands. The political culture must come to see military service by gays as patriotic and honorable, which it is, not as a civil right or as a social experiment, which it is not. It must see gay marriage as an embrace of responsibility and tradition, which it is, not as hedonism or as yet more sexual license, which it is not. It must see gay rights not as left, but as right.

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Preventing Anti-Gay Bullying

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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.

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Self-Made Schism

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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.

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America’s Reasonable God

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The estimable Peter LaBarbera commented on my post about GLAAD. Some folks here replied with varying levels of snark and/or mockery. LaBarbera does tend to bring that out in people.

But I think his comment deserves a bit more, because I think his assumption helps clarify the distance between us. He says, "When will the entertainment industry catch up with reality and cast a sympathetic FORMER homosexual character who is content with his sexuality in a major film? The "gay-as-victim" shtick is getting so tiresome."

I couldn't agree more with his final sentence. That is one of the things that distinguishes IGF, I hope. But what about those former homosexuals who are content with their sexuality?

It's here that I think LaBarbera and his supporters are at odds with the vast majority of America. it's not that we don't think there are people who describe themselves as ex-gays, or even who have found someone of the opposite sex to marry and are content with, even proud of their lives.

But very few people think those folks are "former" homosexuals. Rather, I think most of us agree with Alan Chambers. Chambers, who is the president of Exodus Intenational, is candid that he continues to "struggle" with his homosexuality, but that his religion helps him to resist that temptation.

While most Americans understand sexual temptation, they don't "struggle" with their sexual orientation, and I doubt very many today imagine God demands that exertion of homosexuals any longer. If homosexuals want to make that deal with their God, they certainly can, but that God is looking increasingly unreasonable. Why should secular gays be in the same class as Catholic priests? Even American Catholics are evenly split on priestly celibacy, with 55% of all Americans saying that rule appears to have outlived any usefulness it might once have had.

I don't know what kind of God LaBarbera has in mind, but I think the deity he and Chambers worship is not the one the rest of us envision. If some TV producer wants to do a modern-day Thorn Birds, with a gay man in the role of the priest (maybe Richard Chamberlain is still available), he might give it a try. But I think that God might get a lot less sympathy than the one in the original could count on.

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How Do You Solve A Problem Like MREA?

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The Palm Center's just released report, A Self-Inflicted Wound: How and why gays gave the White House a free pass on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell', reveals how it's not just politicians who stand in the way of DADT repeal, but some of our own leaders. The Military Readiness Enhancement Act, or MREA, is ready to go, with 164 co-sponsors. Independently, the President really could do something unilaterally, but won't. And according to the report, he has been given cover by gay leaders.

Aaron Belkin's position will raise any number of hackles, and it should. Here's mine: Like most politically active minority groups, we don't actually elect any of our "leaders." They are generally self-selected, and over time, that process of self-selection can become incestuous. Small groups of like-minded individuals designate themselves, in various combinations, to represent the interest of the group, and exercise a pretty free ability to determine what they believe that interest is.

Belkin doesn't name any names, but the problems facing DADT repeal speak for themselves. Between 69-75% of Americans now support eliminating this blot on our national reputation, but the fear of a backlash like the one Bill Clinton suffered has the political classes paralyzed and positively verklempt. How much more public support is needed to give them comfort? Do we have to wait until support rises to 80%? 90%?

This is a funhouse mirror image of why minorities are given special consideration in the constitution. Not only are our politicians afraid of a majority's biases about a minority, they are now even afraid of a minority of the majority's biases about the minority.

Can't anyone in our leadership point that out?

I don't know if this phenomenon has a name (I'd suggest CEGSSS: Clinton-Era Gay Shell-Shock Syndrome), but if our leaders can't guide politicians through it, what good are they? I'm sure Rahm Emanuel is no easy project, but are the rest of us supposed to live through the aftereffects of his trauma forever?

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We’re Here, We’re Queer, We Were on Primetime Network TV 647 Hours Last Year (Not Counting Cable)

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I'm really wondering whether we need GLAAD anymore. They've just released their Network Responsibility Index for 2008-09 to "serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representations." ABC led the pack among networks; of its 1,146.5 total hours of primetime programming, 269.5 hours (24%) included LGBT impressions. The CW came in second with 138 LGBT-inclusive hours, or 20% of its primetime offerings. CBS gave us the back of their hand, devoting only 60 hours -- 5% of its schedule -- to us. For shame.

In 1985, when GLAAD was a startup, this kind of monitoring was not only valuable, but necessary. Back then, the New York Times had a specific editorial policy against use of the word "gay," to describe us. GLAAD is the reason that changed, and they can claim credit for much more. They've helped us change the world.

But now we are in the position where we can complain when one network only shows us five percent of the time -- a number pretty close to our actual percentage in the population. Anyone tuned only to ABC would have had to put up with 269.5 hours of us. How helpful is it, really, that we know, to the decimal point, total network hours, percentages (subdivided by race, as well; Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives lose serious GLAAD-cred on that point) and year-over-year differentials of GLAAD-approved achievement? Are we studying stuff now, not because we need to, but just because we can?

I don't know how much it cost to do all this monitoring, and slicing and dicing of the data, nor how much was spent to produce the 39-page, very glossy report. But in a world where we have some important and expensive political work to do in (for example) Maine, New York and possibly Washington (and let's not forget California), is this really the best use of $11 million? Do we really need GLAAD as an institution any more? More important, if we ever decided we didn't, would it be possible to get rid of them?

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Render Unto Caesar. . .

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I was obviously -- and happily -- wrong in worrying about Charlotte. Despite some troubling rhetoric from religious leaders, the gay pride event there went off without a hitch. About 500 believers prayed peacefully, even mingled with the crowd of about 10,000. This shows how people of contrasting beliefs should be able to interact. The Christians, in their red shirts, believe God has "A Better Way" for us, and just like anyone else who is trying to sell us something, whether it's a car, a life insurance policy or a religious way of life, we should respond to their pitch with some measure of the politeness in which it is offered, and any credibility we think is warranted. If and when we give them a clear signal of No Sale, everyone should be able to continue on their way.

Which led me to thinking about a customer they were able to close the deal with: Alan Chambers. He's just published a book called Leaving Homosexuality, about his struggle with unwanted homosexual attraction. An interview with him at CitizenLink fascinated me because, even more pointedly than the protesters in Charlotte, he seems to be able to draw a line between his religious beliefs and the civil society. He seems quite candid in admitting he finds other men sexually appealing. But in his view, acting on that attraction is sinful:

The key thought here is the opposite of homosexuality isn't heterosexuality. It's holiness. There are people who are conflicted with their sexuality, involved with homosexuality, and there is a way out for those who want it. But it doesn't say that they're going into heterosexuality, because that's not the point. The point is that people can leave whatever it is that God calls less than His best and move into something that is His best, becoming more like He is.

That strikes me as getting it just about right. If you hold his religious belief (which interestingly implies that God is heterosexual, something I don't think I've heard before), then you should probably avoid that particular sin. Plenty of religions are questioning that premise right now, but not the one Chambers belongs to.

An awful lot of us, though, are accepting of our homosexual orientation. And Chambers acknowledges that his path is only "for those who want it." The rest of us live in the secular world, governed by secular laws and (in part) by our human desires and affections. Chambers and the Charlotte protesters can try to talk us out of those, but they can't force us to believe something we don't. That's something the First Amendment -- both in the religion clauses and in the free speech clause -- got exactly right. Neither religion nor government can demand belief. Yet that is the knot at the heart of the religious opposition to homosexuality. Because they cannot enforce belief, they are trying to use the law to corral acceptance, but acceptance is, itself, a belief -- and one that is growing.

As we learn every day from the rest of the world, living with people who hold contrasting or inconsistent beliefs is the only alternative to civil unrest and even violence. The Charlotte protest and the Chambers interview show a civility -- and a clear separation of religion from the law -- that I think is admirable. I thought someone should say that.

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