Come out, come out. . . except the homosexuals — you guys stay in

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The U.S. Census is gearing up a monumental effort to make sure minorities are counted in 2010.

But that effort will not apply to homosexuals. As I argued in The Pretenders, the Census folks, far from seeking us out, are doing all they can to make sure we are not counted -- at least not our married couples.

And that is a very clear public policy choice. The government wants, very much, to know how many racial and ethnic minority members we have, so it can make sure their concerns are being addressed. But the government does not want to know how many same-sex couples there are, which frustrates the ability to have our concerns addressed.

The Census is a very good way of discerning what the government wants to know, and what the government wants to keep hidden. And it is up to us to keep asking why they have an interest in keeping the number of our publicly acknowledged relationships invisible.

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Conscientious objections

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When Jonathan says the Brookings Institution panel was A Great Debate, he isn't kidding. Jon and David Blankenhorn articulated the philosophical change in style they are aiming for: a discussion that pits two good things against one another (in Blankenhorn's words) rather than one about bigots against perverts (Jon).

If that were all that was said, the debate would have been worth everyone's time.

But another theme emerged, and it will be the crux of the political problem if the compromise gets any takers -- as I hope it will. In order to get the federal government to accept state laws recognizing same-sex couples, states would have to enact robust religious conscience laws making clear that religious organizations would be protected against lawsuits forcing them to recognize same-sex relationships.

But "conscience" is not an organizational attribute, it is a personal one, and the compromise would apparently have to stretch far enough to reach individuals. Everyone agrees the government may not intrude in the sacramental role of religious organizations, but what about religious individuals who function in the civil realm? They claim that their religious beliefs against same-sex marriage would prohibit them from performing their non-religious duties, and want protection for that as well - and the way I read the compromise, it would also include protection for these individuals.

This is where the compromise becomes most pointed. Justices of the Peace work for the state, not the church, yet some have refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples because they have religious objections. In the debate, Professor Robin Wilson discussed the dilemma when a same-sex couple faces a civil servant who refuses to perform the civil ceremony prescribed by the state. There are normally other JPs available, and as with some pharmacists who refuse to perform their job of dispensing contraceptives for religious reasons, as long as the customers are served by someone, all needs can be met - though participants on both sides will have been forced to face, for a bit, the other side's arguments and sensitivities.

But it's important to remember that this accommodation is not a constitutional matter. The constitution does not require states to go this far in accommodating individual religious beliefs. That was established in a 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division v. Smith, which upheld a state law that criminalized drug use, and a prosecution of Native Americans who ingested peyote in a religious practice. If the constitution required a general religious exemption from laws that are generally applicable to everyone, the court reasoned, then each religious believer could become a law unto himself, with a personal veto over any legal obligations he determined were offensive.

The opinion was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, an energetic proponent of religious freedom as a constitutional right, but also a man who's savvy to how people can abuse the courts.

If states have to accommodate even individual religious beliefs against gay marriage, we will need to be wary of the same sort of abuse Scalia was concerned with in Smith. But that is no reason not to try.

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Why Only Two?

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Recent discussions of various civil-union proposals have revived some familiar questions, including "Why limit such recognition to couples, as opposed to larger groups?" and "Why limit it to romantic/sexual couples, as opposed to other interdependent relationships?"

Such questions come from various quarters, including both friends and foes of marriage equality. Although they're sometimes offered as "gotcha" challenges, they deserve serious reflection.

I was mulling them over recently when two events occurred that hinted at an answer.

The first was a phone call from my home-security monitoring company about a false alarm I triggered with smoke from a minor kitchen disaster.

"While we have you on the phone," the operator suggested, "can we update your emergency numbers?"

"Sure," I said, remembering that some of my listed neighbors had eliminated their land lines.

After going through the numbers, she said, "So, you've given me your community patrol number, and numbers for Scott, Sarah, and Mike-all neighbors. But this Mark person-what's your relationship to him?"

"He's my partner."

"Um, roommate?"

"No," I replied, "partner."

"I don't have a box for 'partner,'" she retorted. "I have a box for 'roommate.'"

"Fine," I said, "roommate." Then I hastily hung up and returned to the kitchen, since I didn't want my "roommate" to come home to a burned dinner. (Later, I regretted not asking for, and insisting on, the box for "husband.")

The second event occurred not long afterward, when my high school called asking for a donation for their "Torch Fund" endowment.

Some background: I attended Chaminade, an all-boys Catholic prep school on Long Island. For years I notified them of my various milestones for their newsletter, and for years they declined to publish anything gay-related-publications, awards, whatever-despite their regular listings of the most insipid details of my classmates' lives.

So now, whenever they ask me for money, I politely tell them where they can stick their Torch. I did so again this time.

"I understand," the caller replied. "But while I have you on the phone, let me update your records…"

Here we go again, I thought.

Eventually she came to, "Any update in your marital status? Can we list a spouse?"

"Well, you CAN," I responded testily, "but I suspect you won't. My spouse's name is Mark."

"Why not?" she replied, seeming unfazed. "And his last name?"

I doubt his listing will stand long. But what interested me was this: here was someone representing my conservative high school, and she had a box-in her mind, anyway-for my same-sex spouse.

For all I know, she might be a paid solicitor with no other connection to the school. But she illustrates a significant cultural shift toward recognizing the reality of gay and lesbian lives.

The reality is this: like our straight counterparts, we tend to fall in love, pair off and settle down. It's not for everyone, but it's a significant enough pattern to merit acknowledgement.

And that's at least the germ of an answer to the questions raised above.

Why do we give special legal recognition to romantic pair-bonds? We do so because they're a significant-and very common-human category, for straights and gays alike. They benefit individuals and society in palpable ways-ways that, on average, "roommates" and most other groupings can't match.

To put it simply, we recognize them because it makes sense for the law to recognize common and valuable ways that people organize their lives.

Of course, there are other significant human relationships. Some of these, like blood ties, the law already acknowledges. Others (like polygamy) pose serious social costs.

Still others may deserve more legal recognition than they currently receive, or may be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. (I doubt that we need to change marriage or civil-union law to accommodate unrelated cohabitating spinsters, for example.)

But none of these other unrecognized relationships holds a candle to same-sex pair-bonds when it comes to widespread mismatch between the social reality and the legal recognition.

Which brings me back to Mark. Mark is not just some dude I share expenses with. He's the person I've committed my life to, for better or for worse, 'til death do us part. We exchanged such vows publicly, although the law still views us as strangers.

In short, he is-whether the law or our home-security company recognizes it-my spouse.

We fall in love, we pair off, we build lives together. The law may be a blunt instrument, but it need not be so blunt as to call that "roommates."

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Clock Ticking on Democrats’ Hegemony

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There are signs that, as is usual in non-presidential year congressional elections, the party in power (the Democrats) are headed toward losing a substantial number of seats in 2010. Respected pollster Charles Cook provides this analysis.

Given the Democrats' misdirected spending binge, yielding trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and their bumbling efforts to fix the nation's banking crisis, it's likely the GOP could retake the House and pick up several seats in the Senate, robbing the Democrats of their near filibuster-proof super-majority.

Which is just to say, this may be a quickly passing moment when the Democrats have near-supreme power with the White House and Congress. If we are ever going to get the party that gay people have chosen to fund and support to do anything substantial on our behalf - with repealing don't ask, don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act at the top of the legal-equality agenda - now is the time.

As we get closer to 2010, the Democrats are going to get increasingly hesitant to raise our issues. This is it; and if "it" doesn't happen, that means the Democrats get to fundraise on our issues for years to come, while we get to write them checks while listening to campaign rhetoric about how inclusive they are.

More. In the comments, "avee" responds to "BoBN" thusly:

BobN: For folks who constantly complain about the "trough" of Democrat-led government, you sure complain loudly when the slop isn't doled out pronto!

Avee: No, Bob, I'm not asking for billions, er, trillions in taxpayers' money; just equal rights under the law. See, I'm not a Democrat. Just asking for equal legal rights.

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A Great Debate

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Can gay-marriage proponents and religious conservatives strike a bargain? David Blankenhorn and I proposed federal civil unions with a religious opt-out last month in a New York Times article, and recently we got a chance to try it out at a Brookings Institution panel.

Representatives of the Human Rights Campaign and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations didn't sign on the dotted line (not that they were expected to). But neither did they slam the door. And the give-and-take over the meaning of civil rights and the limits of compromise was fascinating. Listen to an audio podcast or read a transcript here.

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Mainline Protestants Accept Gays

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This just in* from Pew: 56 percent of mainline Protestants think homosexuality should be accepted. That's Episcopalians/Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians. And here's a pleasant surprise: 40 percent of Baptists.

To be sure, evangelical acceptance remains low, at 26 percent. But the days of the cobra-mongoose relationship between Christianity and homosexuality are ending faster than even many of us appreciate.

* Actually, it's 2007 data. What would the numbers look like today?

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We’re in the Dictionary!

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The website WorldNetDaily has discovered that Merriam-Webster has changed the definition of the word "marriage" to include same-sex couples. They've posted a mournful video at the site, ending with a warning for people to "WAKE UP!"

WND is a little late to the party, since this change took place in 2003 - and followed by three years a similar change by Houghton-Mifflin in 2000.

But better late than never.

This is obviously a crushing event for the Christianists. As the culture has been changing on gay marriage, their only refuge in the civil society was the dictionary. Their own religious arguments are persuasive to them, but citations to the Book of Hebrews or Matthew (included in a 1913 dictionary definition) don't go a long way to persuade the non-religious - or even many American religious believers. The most recent Field Poll in California found that 31% of Protestants, 45% of Catholics and 63% of believers in some other religion support full marriage rights for same-sex couples. That's why the Prop. 8 proponents relied so heavily on appeals to the "definition of marriage," and "the meaning of marriage" in their ballot arguments. Definitions are - well, they're defined. We know what they are - just go to the dictionary. They're not just citing their Bibles, they've got another big book on their side as well.

The problem is that dictionaries are not static. Language follows the culture, and words are as dynamic as the populations who use them.
More important, the meaning of words as they are actually used is not subject to popular votes - it is subject to actual usage.

Neither of these dictionary definitions overrides the most common meaning of "marriage" as the union of a man and a woman. That would be absurd, and it would be counter to common sense. But it is equally absurd for a dictionary to blind itself to an emerging, and well-understood change that is happening in the culture. Even those who oppose same-sex marriage cannot deny what it is they are fighting over: marriage between two people of the same sex.

As the right has been fighting over the legal definition of marriage, they have been giving greater prominence to the alternate understanding that so many people are now adopting. Under the revised rules of equality the right is demanding, gays must fight for a majority to achieve marital equality - and we're only inches away. But dictionary definitions don't need majorities. If a significant number of people are, in fact, using a word with a new meaning, they have an obligation to include that meaning on the list of other meanings the word has.

Despite the harrowing cries of the right, that is all gays are asking - not to displace the heterosexual understanding of marriage, but to be included in it as we are: people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual. And by the very fact of fighting this battle, our opponents made sure we'd get into the dictionary.

Thanks.

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Tax Dollars for Tyrants

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I recently excerpted the HIV/AIDS-related items from the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2008 (online at www.glaa.org). The grim survey ranges from Russia (where Moscow officials undermine prevention efforts by accusing foreign HIV/AIDS organizations of encouraging pedophilia, prostitution and drug use) to Burma and Cambodia (where sex trafficking victims are at risk for HIV/AIDS as well as physical and mental abuse). In Africa, AIDS orphans from Kenya to Swaziland resort to prostitution for survival, while adults from Burundi to Malawi rape children out of a belief that sex with virgins will cleanse them of HIV. These heartbreaking practices occur even in South Africa despite its modern economy.

One program to combat the global AIDS pandemic is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). It was reauthorized last year at $48 billion, which pays for a lot of effective prevention and treatment - at least to the extent that the funds are not being channeled to anti-science and anti-gay religious zealots.

James Kirchick of The New Republic wrote on March 10, "The problems with PEPFAR were inherent in the 2003 legislation establishing the program." For example, a third of PEPFAR prevention funds were reserved for pushing abstinence until marriage. Kirchick writes, "Many organizations combating HIV - whether groups that worked with prostitutes, gays, or intravenous drug users - have been either neglected or explicitly prohibited from receiving U.S. money, while evangelical Christian organizations have had little problem accessing funds. In this way, while PEPFAR distributed drugs to millions of people living with the disease, the program undermined the global fight against HIV transmission."

Charles Francis, a disillusioned former Bush appointee to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, seeks a course correction from the new president and Congress. He wrote to me last week about the need to reverse the Bush legacy that includes alliances with violent homophobes like Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa and born-again Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza. The latter's ruling party organized a March 6 demonstration in Bujumbura in which thousands of people demanded the criminalization of homosexuality.

"Today," Francis writes, "we see this wave growing dangerously across the continent, from Senegal, where AIDS activists are now imprisoned, to Nigeria, where lawmakers want to jail gay people merely for living together, to Uganda, where three Americans recently held a public seminar on the 'Homosexual Agenda.' It is time to put a 'hold' on PEPFAR until Congress can demand the transparency and the necessary reform for this program."

African despots regularly charge their foreign critics with neocolonialism, and accuse dissidents at home of collaborating with them. In truth, Western nations have been known to use their economic strength to recolonize by other means. But past abuses by others do not justify these rulers' present abuses, and there can hardly be a more incoherent basis for policymaking than using post-colonial guilt to justify subsidizing oppressive regimes. Instead, we should heed brave activists like Christian Rumu, vice chairman of the Burundian gay rights group ARDHO, who called the March 6 demonstration "pure propaganda crafted for the 2010 elections."

I know a nurse who was born in Burundi and who lectured there last year on HIV prevention. He also has family in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he nearly lost a nephew a few years ago when his family took the sick child to a traditional healer instead of a doctor. After tentatively diagnosing a form of meningitis over the phone, my friend angrily ordered his family to take the boy to a hospital immediately. He called ahead and discussed treatment with the doctor, as a result of which the boy soon returned to health.

Alas, many similar children have no relative with medical training to look out for them. American foreign aid can help remedy this, but not if it is funneled through religious fanatics who exploit underdeveloped populations' resistance to modern science for the purpose of spreading their own willful ignorance and prejudice.

We cannot prevent American fundamentalists from promoting their dogma overseas; and we have to deal with the reality that religious-affiliated groups provide a large portion of overall health services in many countries. But our government must stand squarely on the side of science; direct funds to underserved high-risk populations, especially men who have sex with men; and resist bankrolling ideologically-driven misinformation that makes things worse.

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Sex and Distortion

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Sometimes we gay writers do such a good job cutting down one another that we scarcely need our enemies.

Consider a recent column in Bay Windows, a New England GLBT newspaper, where Jeff Epperly identifies me as a "gay conservative" who's a "a bit touched in the head when it comes to sexual issues."

Epperly's column analyzes "the tendency among right-wingers, gay or straight, that the louder they complain about that which offends their sexual sensibilities, the greater the chance that they are getting freaky with those same sexual acts in their personal life."

Apparently I'm one of those freaky right-wingers.

I don't know Epperly personally, although Bay Windows was one of the first papers to run my work, and Epperly was editor at the time. (I have great respect for the publication.) On what basis does he diagnose my supposed sexual neurosis?

Oddly, he bases it on a column in which I, too, discuss conservatives' obsession with sex.

In that column, I point out our opponents' tendency to reduce our sexual intimacy to its bare mechanics. Since they find those mechanics weird, they label our sex-and by extension, us-as disgusting, unnatural, perverse.

My response was to point out that when we reduce it to bare mechanics, it's not just gay sex that's weird, but ALL sex. (There's a reason people call it "doing the nasty.") But it's silly to think about sex merely in terms of mechanics.

I illustrated by way of an e-mail exchange with a closeted gay British 15-year-old, whose parents went off on a tirade about how disgusting it was for a man to stick his penis up another man's bum. (With stunning insensitivity, Epperly describes the youth as "equally obsessed with the alleged grossness of homosexual sex.")

Epperly quotes from my response to the young man:

"In the abstract, of course it's weird (and from some perspectives, gross) to think of a man sticking his penis up another man's bum. But isn't all sex weird in the abstract? Sticking a penis in a vagina, which bleeds once a month? Sucking on a penis, something both straight women and gay men do? Pressing your mouth-which you use for eating-against another person's mouth, and touching tongues, and exchanging saliva (i.e. kissing)? Weird! Gross! (In the abstract, anyway.)"

Perhaps if I had stopped there, Epperly might have been justified in his conclusion: "I know this is simply a gay conservative's variation on the 'we're just like you' argument to heterosexuals, but somehow I think that 'our sex is as gross as yours' is not the most effective argument in the world. But it says a lot about the person delivering it."

But of course, I didn't stop there. Immediately thereafter-in a section that Epperly, tellingly, doesn't quote-I wrote:

"Sex makes no sense in the abstract. But then you have urges, and you eventually act on them, and what once seemed weird and gross becomes…wow.

"Our opponents recognize this in their own lives, but they can't envision it elsewhere. It's a profound failure of moral imagination-which is essential for empathy, which is at the foundation of the Golden Rule."

The Golden Rule is something Epperly might brush up on. Or the Principle of Charity.

The point of that column was that our opponents are using a double standard. For their sex, they see the deeper emotional picture. For our sex, they see only the mechanics. No wonder they find it weird.

Epperly seems so keen to peg me a "gay conservative" that he completely misses-or deliberately distorts-that point.

(Though perhaps I shouldn't write "keen to peg me," since that wording might just fuel his hypothesis about my sex obsession.)

I always find it funny when people label me a gay conservative. It's true that I write for the moderate-to-conservative Independent Gay Forum. And in some ways, given my work as "The Gay Moralist," the label is apt. But in many of the standard ways it's not.

I haven't voted Republican in two decades, except in a primary where the Democrat ran uncontested. I'm an avowed atheist. While I support marriage equality, I don't believe that marriage is for everyone, and in my column I've defended sexual pleasure for its own sake. I've also publicly supported affirmative action.

Of course, even if I were a hardcore gay conservative, I'd deserve a fair reading-just like anyone else.

As a columnist, I'm used to the occasional reader setting me up as a straw-man and then psychoanalyzing me on the basis of that straw-man. It comes with the territory.

But from a fellow writer-particularly one who shares my disdain for sexual small-mindedness and the distortions it engenders-I hope for better.

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Michael Steele in the Lion’s Den

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New GOP Party Chair Michael Steele says some interesting things-certainly not all bad-about his party and gays in his GQ interview. Some excerpts (the magazine left in the "ums" and used "gonna" for "going," which is not standard journalistic practice but serves to make Steele seem less articulate):

On gay marriage: "I have been, um, supportive of a lot of my friends who are gay in some of the core things that they believe are important to them....the ability to be able to share in the information of your partner, to have the ability to-particularly in times of crisis-to manage their affairs and to help them through that as others-you know, as family members or others-would be able to do. I just draw the line at the gay marriage....[F]rom my faith tradition and upbringing, I believe that marriage-that institution, the sanctity of it-is reserved for a man and a woman. That's just my view. And I'm not gonna jump up and down and beat people upside the head about it, and tell gays that they're wrong for wanting to aspire to that, and all of that craziness. That's why I believe that the states should have an opportunity to address that issue."

On a federal constitutional amendment: "I don't like mucking around with the Constitution.... I think that the states are the best laboratory, the best place for those decisions to be made, because they will then reflect the majority of the community in which the issue is raised. And that's exactly what a republic is all about."

On whether people choose to be gay, as the anti-gay right claims: "Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay.' It's like saying, 'Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black.'"

Steele has made his share of missteps as he tries to move his party in a somewhat broader direction. He's been criticized by the right for his moderation on some issues (he has said he's personally anti-abortion but it should remain an indivdiual choice), and for his criticism of Rush Limbaugh's bombast (about which he was forced to recant), while attacked from the left (and mocked, of course, on Saturday Night Live) for being a black Republican. Still, the level of vitriol directed at him from left and right indicates he may be trying to do something positive, at least on the social issues front.

(For a contrary, far more negative assessment, see James Kirchick's "Rusted Steele." For its part, the Log Cabin Republicans welcomed Steele's appointment but chided him for saying his party would not support federal recognition of civil unions.)

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