IGF CultureWatch

On Oct. 7, 1801, Nehemiah Dodge signed a letter on behalf of himself and his fellow Baptist parishioners from Danbury, Conn. In it, they congratulated the newly elected Thomas Jefferson on his victory and urged him to uphold a policy of governmental non-interference in private religious matters. In Jefferson's response to the Danbury Baptists, he assured them that he personally interpreted the First Amendment as building "a wall of separation between Church & State." And that letter, of course, is the origin of that famously worded principle.

Now, it would be foolish to think that this Nov. 4 was the first time in over 207 years that Jefferson's letter and intent was ignored, disregarded or willfully turned on its head. America, after all, is a Western democracy in which the secular and sacred mix and mingle to an almost ridiculous degree. I'm not ecstatic about exercising my most fundamental democratic right - the right to vote - in a church. Or about taking the SAT with a bloody crucifix gazing down upon me. Divine inspiration, indeed.

But this past Tuesday, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment revoking marriage equality from gay and lesbian couples. It passed thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons. When I say "no small part," I actually mean that LDS church members donated an estimated 77 percent of the funding for 'Yes on 8' groups. LDS churches around the country read out a letter in June from the church leadership encouraging members to "do all you can do" in support of the amendment. The church itself made a $2,078.97 donation to cover the travel costs of several church leaders traveling to California for a 'Yes on 8' meeting.

The tragicomic aspect of this is that the Mormon church was likely doing this, in part, to increase its evangelical bona fides in the larger religious community. The less-than-eager reception to Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy apparently spurred a rivalry with gay couples in California the unfortunate bystanders: anyone you can condemn, I can condemn better!

This issue would stay in the realm of social movement and future litigation if it were not for that peculiar characteristic of American religious organizations: tax-free status. In an effort to buttress Jefferson's wall, we have decided that the government has no place collecting money from organizations with a religious purpose (or, for that matter, charitable, scientific, "testing for public safety," literary or educational purposes).

The law governing tax-free status is appropriately accompanied by the concomitant responsibility that those organizations not engage in activities including "carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation." The wall, as it were, is barbed on both sides.

Mormon leaders have already put out statements denying any coercion or coordinated policy in encouraging church members to donate time or money. The donation from the church to send leaders to a California meeting seems to belie that claim, as do accounts of church members' souls and eternal salvation being threatened if they did not donate. If our measuring stick is explicit and centrally coordinated encouragement, it's not likely that we'll find any smoking gun. But the weight of evidence suggests a systematic effort by the LDS church to influence the amendment.

Religions these days would have you believe that these are in fact impingements on the free exercise of faith, arguing, for example, that being "forced" to recognize gay marriage is a violation of the First Amendment. That argument is as old, pernicious and outright stupid as those against teaching evolution or against interracial marriage. Using that metric, everything is potentially religious, because all laws include some aspect of "societal recognition" of some right or principle.

In reality, of course, no Mormon church, nor any other church, would be forced to officiate a same-sex marriage. And for the record, the line of gays beating down the door to become Mormon is rather short (and, I would venture to guess, rather self-loathing).

The First Amendment really is our most important constitutional principle; without it, we lose the ability to debate everything else and exercise free thought. And that includes the free exercise of religion. But when religions renege on their side of the bargain, we need to hold them to task. I urge you to find any of a number of websites that show you how to file an IRS complaint easily. This isn't about dictating belief or governmental interference - this is about making sure that Jefferson's wall stays strong and keeps on separating, in both directions.

For decades, bigots objected to interracial marriage because the participants were too different from each other. But now the bigots are objecting to same-sex marriage because-get this-this participants are too much alike. Many of today's bigots are in the same demographic groups as the bigots back then, so I wish they'd make up their minds whether it is sameness or difference they object too.

Homophobes like to argue that if we legalize gay civil marriage it will lead to heterosexual polygamy. As usual with homophobes, they have things backwards. For much of recorded history, marriage was a man and a number of women, depending on the man's economic status. Any reader of the Old Testament knows this. That tradition continues to this day in Muslim countries and existed for several decades among Mormons in the U.S. So, as same-sex marriage becomes a reality, we can accurately say that polygamy preceded same-sex marriage, not followed as a result.

"Ex-gay" advocates and their fundamentalist supporters say that one of the reasons people "become" homosexual is that they were "molested" as youths. Since almost all molesters are men, that means that young males molested by a man develop a sexual desire for men, but young woman molested by a man develop a sexual desire for women. So molestation supposedly makes men's desires turn toward the sex of the molester, but women's desires turn away from the sex of the m olester. No one has explained this contradiction. And how do they explain the far larger number of male and female youths who were molested but did not "become" homosexual? What does that do to their theory?

Robert Cary, director of "Save Me," a small-budget fictional film about an ex-gay ministry said, "Many [ex-gay functionaries] genuinely believe that they are helping people to live good lives. But they believe that you're born with your religion and choose your sexuality, when that is the opposite of the truth."-The Times of London, Oct. 7, 2008.

It is interesting that Alcoholics Anonymous insists that people who used to drink a lot but now abstain continue to refer to themselves as alcoholics long after they have stopped drinking. By contrast, the "ex-gay" proponents insist that people who used to engage in homosexuality but are trying to abstain not refer to themselves as homosexuals. One of them is surely wrong. I suspect both are.

I am not sure that sexual orientation makes us a community. We may be what Kurt Vonnegut called a "granfalloon." I think I have more in common with the thoughtful heterosexual man who likes music and art and literature than I do with a gay man who loves drag queens, "divas," and hip-hop. As hostility to gays lessens and gay people's defensive clannishness declines, other factors than sexuality will become more important in our lives. Will gays then become completely absorbed into the mainstream? That's not likely; unattached gays will still want same-sex partners and seek out places where those are most available. That does have some social ramifications.

And finally, two belated notes for Gay History Month. First, gay liberation did not begin with Stonewall; one source was in the arts community. "As some of us would later learn, if we didn't know already, sexual preference did play a part in the politics of the New York art world. New York Surrealists like Pavel Tchelitchew and Eugene Berman belonged to a gay subculture that had found greater acceptance in the uptown worlds of ballet and fashion than in the downtown Cedar Tavern scene populated by Pollock, Rothko, and company." -Herbert Muschamp, "The Secret History," New York Times, Jan. 8, 2006, section 2, pg. 1.

Art journalist Calvin Tomkins agrees: "Quite a few of the sixties artists were either bisexual or homosexual, and not a bit uptight about it. The attention and money lavished on the newcomers led to talk if a 'homintern,' a network of homosexual artists, dealers, and numerous curators in league to promote the work of certain favorites at the expense of 'straight' talents." -Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time (1980), p. 260.

Second, it seems to me that sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey redefined homosexuality. Before Kinsey, the homosexual was the man who was penetrated, whether by bottoming in anal sex or by fellating a man. The man getting fellated was simply "trade" and could consider himself (and often was) heterosexual. But Kinsey defined homosexuality as having an orgasm with another man. So if the man getting fellated had an orgasm, Kinsey counted that as a homosexual act. And if the man doing the fellating did not have an orgasm, then he was not included in the count.

On election night, I was less anxious about who would become president than about whether a certain little girl could marry her princess.

I'm talking about the little Latina girl in the California "Yes on 8" commercials, who comes home from school to tell her mommy about a fairy tale in which a prince marries another prince.

"And I can marry a princess!" she cheerfully announces, prompting a worried look from her mother and a voiceover in which a law professor warns that if gay marriage isn't stopped, parental rights will be trampled.

Statistically speaking, the chances that she'll want to marry a princess are low. In any case, reading the "wrong" fairy tales won't alter her sexual orientation. If books had that sort of influence, every Cinderella would grow up to desire a Prince Charming and vice-versa.

In the real world, some Cinderellas fall in love with other Cinderellas; some princes fall in love with other princes. In California, they may be allowed to live happily ever after, but they won't (for the time being) be allowed to get married. Prop. 8 passed 52-48%, after a $74 million battle. (A similar measure passed in Arizona, and Florida voted to prohibit not just same-sex marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships.)

I say "for the time being" because nobody expects this to be the end of the story. California same-sex couples will continue to receive the statewide legal incidents of marriage via domestic partnerships. Meanwhile, other states, mainly along the coasts, will recognize same-sex couples: some with domestic partnerships, some with civil unions, and a few with outright marriage.

Eventually, this hodgepodge will prove legally unwieldy, or socially inconvenient, or morally embarrassing-probably all of the above-and California will revisit the marriage question. If trends continue, marriage equality will someday win the day.

In the meantime, what difference does it make if princes and princes can only have "domestic partnerships" but not marriage?

It makes a difference in two important ways. The first is legal: because of this amendment, a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts (for example) will have absolutely no legal standing when traveling through California. The text is clear: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California."

Since our Massachusetts couple has marriage, and not "domestic partnership," the Golden State would treat them as nothing more than roommates-which could prove devastating in an emergency situation.

As the law professor intones in that "Yes on 8" commercial: "Think it can't happen? It's already happening." The hodgepodge of legal statuses for same-sex couples has proven a legal nightmare for those who travel or relocate.

The second difference is less tangible but just as powerful: the cultural significance of marriage.

Here we saw a fundamental tension in the "Yes on 8" message. On the one hand, they argued that since gays had "all the rights" of marriage, there was no reason to demand the word itself. On the other hand, their tenacious fight to keep the word exclusive attests to its significance.

Because, you see, princesses don't dream about someday "domestically partnering with" the person they fall in love with. They dream about marrying him-or, in a minority of cases, HER.

To that minority, 52% of California voters sent a discriminatory message: you are not good enough for marriage. Your relationships-no matter how loving, how committed, how exemplary-are not "real" marriage.

One thing that opponents and supporters of Prop. 8 agree on: "real" marriage transcends state recognition of it. And that's another reason why this debate will continue. Because it's not just a debate about what California should or should not legally recognize. It's also about what sort of relationships are morally valuable, and why.

Notably, same-sex relationships were virtually invisible in the "No on 8" campaign. I assume that's because campaign research showed that images of gay couples don't resonate with undecided voters.

Maybe that's true in the short run. But in the long run, people are far more likely to support gay rights when they know gay people and see the palpable ways in which marriage matters to us.

Moving forward, then, we gay and lesbian citizens need to tell our stories. We need to show that gays, like everyone else, want someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse. We need to show that when we find such relationships, it's a good thing-not just for us but for the community at large.

We need to explain that we are not interested in confusing children, or in forcing princesses on little girls who don't want them. But we also need to show that girls who grow up to want princesses deserve to live happily ever after, too.

If trends continue, we will someday make that case-in time for that little girl to marry whomever she chooses.

On the eve of the election, I am pleased that my fellow Democrats have finally learned not to concede "moral values" language to the other side.

In past elections, we heard a lot about "values voters"-a code-term for right-wingers on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Senator Obama, among his many talents, has made the case that we should all be "values voters;" that foreign, economic, and environmental policy are moral issues; and that compassion, equality, and justice are values, too.

Still, my fellow liberals often have a hard time with the language of morals-whether because of an admirable humility, a lamentable wishy-washiness, or both.

That aversion results in a number of common but dumb claims about morality and ethics. (Like most philosophers, I use the terms interchangeably-there is no "standard" distinction.) Here's my take on these claims:

(1) "Morality is a private matter." To put it bluntly, this claim is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. It's about what we as a society embrace, what we merely tolerate, and what we absolutely forbid.

While morality respects certain private spheres-and while some moral decisions are best left to those most intimately affected by them-morality is generally quite the opposite of a "private" matter.

(2) "You shouldn't judge other people." This claim is not only false, it's self-defeating. (If you shouldn't judge other people, then why are you telling me what to do?)

The reason this claim sounds remotely plausible is because of a slight ambiguity in what it means to "judge other people." Should you go around wagging your finger in people's faces? Of course not. No one likes a know-it-all, and pompous moralizing is counterproductive.

But it doesn't follow that we shouldn't make any moral judgments about other people's behavior. Doing so is often the best way to figure out what traits to emulate and what mistakes to avoid.

(3) "I don't need anyone's moral approval." If this claim means that individuals don't need the moral approval of any other given individual, then fine: there will always be those whose moralizing is ill-informed, sloppy or insensitive-and thus best avoided. But to deny that we need the moral approval of anyone at all overlooks morality's crucial social role.

Morality, unlike law, does not have formal enforcement procedures: police and courts and the like. It relies instead on social pressure-encouraging glances and raised eyebrows, nudges and winks, inclusion and ostracism. (Interestingly, some right-wing bloggers have reacted to my recent work by worrying about "court-enforced moral approval"-as if that concept made any sense.)

Moral pressure can help us be our best selves. But in order for it to work, we need to take other people's moral opinions seriously most of the time. Just as unreasonable or unenforceable laws erode our confidence in law itself (think Prohibition), widespread dismissal of others' moral views erodes morality's social function.

(4) "Morality is just a matter of opinion." Whether boxers are preferable to briefs is "just" a matter of opinion. Whether coffee tastes better with cream and sugar is "just" a matter of opinion. To call our moral values "just" a matter of opinion, by contrast, is to ignore their social and personal significance.

The problem here is that people start with a legitimate distinction between facts and values-in other words, between descriptions of the world and normative judgments about it. Unfortunately, the fact/value distinction morphs into the much fuzzier fact/opinion distinction, which then morphs into the fact/ "mere" opinion distinction-suggesting that values are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

(5) "There's no point in arguing about morality." Moral problems are practical problems: they're problems about what to do. "Agreeing to disagree" is fine when the stakes are low or when the status quo is tolerable. But when something is badly wrong in the world, we should strive to repair it. That often requires making a persuasive moral case to our neighbors.

My own experience as "The Gay Moralist" suggests that moral arguments can make a difference-which is not to say they do so instantly or easily. Sometimes they require an extended back-and-forth. Sometimes, they help us get a foot in the door so that an emotional connection can be made. But the idea that they never work is not merely defeatist, it's downright false.

In short, we should all be moralists-liberals and conservatives, religious and secular, red-staters and blue-staters-because we all need to figure out how to live together.