IGF CultureWatch

I was there.

I was on the floor of the Democratic National Convention when Barack Obama accepted the nomination in a thundering speech. I was there when the flags waved, when the fireworks exploded to the vibrant strings of movie-music, when confetti was shot from an air gun and pushed by the wind.

I was there, and what I remember most clearly are two things: the standing ovation when Obama mentioned coming to an agreement over gay rights, and the woman with the rainbow flag.

First, the applause. Applause lines are applause lines, and candidates at their own conventions have many of them.

But when Obama said, "I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free from discrimination," everyone around me stood up.

And I was not standing by liberal California or New York, either. I was next to the Arizona delegates, across from Wisconsin, behind Iowa. They all stood. They all cheered wildly, as if he had been talking about them personally, about their own families, about their own rights.

Second, the rainbow flag. There was an African-American woman in the Ohio section, dressed in vibrant purple, and the entire time Obama was speaking, she held her right arm straight up, holding an American flag and a rainbow flag together.

She didn't wave them happily. She didn't bring her flags down during the quiet parts of the speeches, the way everyone else did.

Instead, she was her own silent protest, her own one-woman reminder, that justice needed to be done.

These things, together, are the two that most heartened me at the convention.

Yes, I have drunk the holy water. Yes, I believe we must vote for Obama, because he is our best chance at full civil rights right now, and this is a point where we must take every opportunity we can.

Yes, even so, I noted that with other examples, Obama uses the collective "we" - he'll say things like, "We run little leagues," when I'm sure he has never run a little league in his life; but gay people are always "brothers and sisters." To him, we are still the other.

But in this election, noting things like that are interesting, but trivial. This is an important election, a serious election. There is a gulf between Obama and McCain (especially with the nomination of the very socially conservative Gov. Palin) and if we are committed to fighting for our civil rights the way we say we are, then we must vote accordingly. We must keep perspective.

Nevertheless, more moving to me than being included in Obama's laundry list - although that was important - was the genuine thunder of feeling expressed by the delegates. They are in this with us. That's what it felt like. These Democrats from around the country, from large empty states and small crowded ones, these governors and senators and union workers and retirees, they feel our rights are important and vital, and a central part of "change" and "hope."

They are our allies, and most of them are straight.

And that woman, that woman with the flag. She reminded me that it is people like her, people who stand up and announce who they are before the applause when acceptance is not certain, people who stand up and say, I am gay and I deserve full rights, it is those kinds of people that draw attention to places where the government must stitch together the torn places and create justice.

Is it people like this woman who draw attention to a cause and change hearts one by one.

What truly propels us forward is the will of the people. The small, lonely, fierce voices of the oppressed and the loud call of the collective will. Government, we must remember, is rarely the center of change. In our democracy, government usually acts in response to the people, it does not lead the charge.

And the will of the people has changed in our case, is changing.

Not everyone. Not everywhere. But maybe enough to make a difference. Maybe enough to sweep away the last of the federal legal barriers to our civil rights.

We stand for ourselves and now others are standing with us. We are winning. There is no going back.

Two weeks ago, news emerged that the co-founder of the website Manhunt.net had contributed $2,300 to the presidential campaign of John McCain. Uproar ensued.

Haven't heard of Manhunt?

Unless you're a gay man, that's to be expected. It's one of the most popular gay websites in the world, with 1 million registered members in the U.S. alone and 400,000 unique visitors a month. As its name implies, it's a site where many gay men go to find casual sexual encounters. Manhunt and sites like it have revolutionized one formative aspect of gay culture, taking what was once a public activity to the privacy of one's home.

Except that the Internet, as Jonathan Crutchley recently discovered, isn't really private. A successful real estate developer, he founded Manhunt with his life partner, Larry Basile, in 2001. He ran into trouble when Out, a gay magazine, published an article about the website in its current issue. The article, in passing, referred to Crutchley - who until last week was chairman of the board at Manhunt - as a "liberal Republican." That tidbit apparently shocked gay blogger Andy Towle, who within seconds found Crutchley's donation to McCain on a contributor database and posted the news on his website.

The shaming and condemnation of Crutchley was swift and unforgiving.

"Let's show MANHUNT what we in the gay community think of members of our community who support politicians who vote against the interests of the community," an anonymous commenter wrote. "Delete your MANHUNT profile!" Michelangelo Signorile, a gay liberal radio host, labeled Crutchley "asinine" simply for supporting McCain.

Rarely do you come across a political candidate who shares each and every one of your political views, and Crutchley's support for McCain was hardly different from that of any other donor who doesn't make the perfect the enemy of the good. "I believe McCain will be a better commander in chief than Obama, who also opposes gay marriage," Crutchley wrote on a website that covers the online personal ad industry. "If we have an experienced, seasoned person defending the country in this dangerous age, we will be able to argue about the gay agenda later."

That explanation might not please every gay activist, but it is a feeling shared by many gay people. According to exit polls, about 25% of gays voted for George W. Bush in the last two presidential elections (the actual number is likely higher, seeing that many gays do not identify themselves as such to pollsters).

The fact that Crutchley is a Republican ought not to come as much of a surprise then, especially considering that he's a self-made millionaire. And he's hardly a radical right-winger either. "I'm a Massachusetts Republican," he wrote, "which is about the same as being an Alabama Democrat."

But such nuance is apparently irrelevant to those who equate homosexuality with political liberalism. Manhunt hasn't revealed how many people canceled their profiles. However, just how poisonous Crutchley's politics can be in a gay milieu can be deduced from the speed with which he stepped down from his position as chairman - at "the request of the board," according to Basile. (Crutchley maintains his co-ownership of the site, meaning that subscribers will continue to put money into the pocket of an "evil" Republican in order to fulfill their sexual desires.)

In an open letter that's been all over the blogosphere, Basile reassured users of the website that his partner's political beliefs were his own. "It is too bad for the website if we lose customers, but PLEASE never refer to me as a Republican. I consider it an offense," he wrote.

Basile, who proudly pointed to his donation to the Barack Obama campaign in his letter, also claimed to the Boston Herald that the McCain campaign returned Crutchley's donation and that Crutchley, realizing the error of his ways, now supports Obama. There has been no independent verification of these claims, as neither the McCain campaign nor Crutchley have spoken to the media about the contretemps. If the intent was to silence a conservative gay voice, it appears to have succeeded.

The hue and cry over Crutchley's politics is all too familiar. Why can't gay activists countenance the idea of a "Massachusetts Republican"? Liberal intolerance. In the minds of too many on the left, gay people (like women and ethnic minorities) have to be liberal and support Democratic candidates. To do otherwise - that is, to have opinions on issues (even issues utterly unrelated to gay rights) that don't follow the left-wing line - is to be a traitor to the gay "community."

For too long, many gay-rights activists have acted as if throwing temper tantrums will magically bring about their political agenda. But labeling everyone with whom they don't agree a "bigot" does not help the worthy cause of gay equality.

The truth of the matter is that civil rights for gays can't come about without the help of Republicans. And this means that gay people - and straight supporters of gay equality - need to stand with, not silence, people like Crutchley who are working to change the GOP from within.

Gays need only look to California, where a state Supreme Court loaded with Republican appointees legalized gay marriage and the Republican governor is one of the most powerful pro-gay publicly elected officials in the country, to understand the importance of making gay rights a bipartisan cause.

Gayness is a sexual orientation, not a political one. Aside from their sexuality, gay people are no different from heterosexuals. There are gay people of all races, income levels, occupations, body types and, yes, political beliefs. Gay liberals are always crowing about the importance of "diversity" and lauding its importance on matters of race and gender. Too bad diversity doesn't count when it comes to politics.

The news last Wednesday that pioneer lesbian activist Del Martin had died came as a shock. Not because she wasn't old. At 87, she was. But because she and her partner Phyllis Lyon have been creative forces in the gay liberation and women's movements during all of my own long activist life-and back far earlier as well. They seemed eternal presences. It never occurred to me that either might die.

Dorothy ("Del") Martin was a native San Franciscan, born there on May 5, 1921. She was graduated from what is now San Francisco State University where she became managing editor of the student newspaper. While there she married the paper's business manager James Martin and two years later they had a daughter. But they eventually divorced.

She moved to Seattle to take a job with a newspaper for the construction industry, where she met Lyon and the two became fast friends. One evening in 1952, Lyon wrote, "Sitting on the couch in my apartment, she made what I considered a half pass at me-I completed the other half. We had sex together for the first time." In short order they became partners.

Early in their relationship they tried to imitate male/female heterosexual roles, as did most lesbian couples at the time. Lyon recalled that "we were in the butch/femme bag ourselves. ... We had no other pattern." (Martin once referred to herself as a "sissy butch.") But they eventually abandoned the attempt "because neither one of us really fit into those roles."

Moving back to San Francisco, the two did not know any other lesbians until a gay male friend introduced them to a lesbian friend of his. One evening in 1955 the lesbian friend called and said, "Would you like to join me, my partner, and two other couples in starting a secret club for lesbians." Of course they would! They named the secret club the "Daughters of Bilitis," after a small book of lesbian-themed poems, "Songs of Bilitis," by turn-of-the-century French writer Pierre Louys who created Bilitis as an openly lesbian contemporary of Sappho.

When the group decided to formalize its organization, Martin was selected as president. In 1960 she followed Lyon as the editor of the DOB magazine, "The Ladder." The name was chosen to imply that lesbians, as individuals and as a group, hoped to achieve higher social status.

The first issue was mimeographed and stapled by hand. They mailed it to 175 people, everyone the DOB members knew. "There was a fantastic outpouring of gratitude for 'The Ladder,'" Lyon wrote, "beyond anything we expected." After the first issues, letters began coming in from women asking how to meet other lesbians. Invariably Martin and Lyon replied, "Move to a large city." Still good advice today.

When the minister of the progressive Glide Memorial Church formed the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in 1964, he invited Martin to join. The next year Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike invited her to join his new Diocesan Commission on Homosexuality. That began Martin's growing involvement in non-DOB activities, eventually to extend to women's issues generally.

Our of their experience dealing with lesbian issues in a growing number of speaking engagements and requests for information, in 1972 the two women published the important "Lesbian/Woman," a candid, pioneering book, informative for both lesbians and curious heterosexuals. Now in its revised third edition, the book still reads well today. I have bought copies, loaned them to friends, and never gotten them back.

Also in 1972 they helped found the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club named after Gertrude Stein's longtime lover. In 1976 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appointed Martin to his Commission on the Status of Women. In that same year Martin published "Battered Wives," which added impetus to the movement to establish women's shelters across the country.

As Lyon wrote later of Martin, "The number of speeches she gave and the workshops she was involved in at universities and colleges, mental health associations, women's groups of various kinds, and law enforcement agencies increased at a rapid pace." She also continued to write magazine articles promoting her concerns.

In the late 1980s as Martin and Lyon, both then in their 60s, felt themselves aging, the final phase of Martin's activist career centered on the problems of the aging in our society. Most notably, perhaps, both women were appointed to the 1995 White House conference on aging.

Gratifyingly, barely two months before Martin's death, she and Lyon were enabled at long last to legalize their lifelong relationship. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom invited them to be the first couple married after a California Supreme Court ruling declared same-sex marriages were a constitutional right.

We have just over two months to go before California voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to prohibit marriage for gay couples. If the amendment passes, marriage will be lost for millions of people. The gay-marriage movement as a whole will be set back many years. (Full disclosure: I have contributed, so far, $1,000 to defeat Prop 8.) With that in mind, I have some warnings and suggestions for thinking about the fight over Prop 8.

1. Ignore the polls. A poll taken by the Los Angeles Times shortly after the California Supreme Court decision showed that 54 percent of registered voters would support the amendment, while only 35 percent would oppose it. That caused alarm. However, gay-marriage advocates have taken comfort in the results of two subsequent Field polls, one in late May and the other in July. Both showed 51 percent of Californians opposed to the amendment, 42 percent supporting it, and seven percent undecided. Another Field poll is due out in September.

My advice is to ignore the polls, act on the assumption that this will be a very close vote, and that as of now we're behind. Here's why.

Of the states that have voted on gay marriage so far, 27 out of 28 have banned it. Pre-election polls in those states have consistently underestimated support for gay-marriage bans, many by ten percent or more. Just eight years ago, a Field poll taken on the eve of a vote to ban gay marriage in California by statute showed only 53 percent support - within the margin of error. Hopes were high. But in the actual election, 61 percent of California voters supported it. Nobody knows for sure why polls undercount opposition to gay marriage. It may be that voters are afraid to tell pollsters they oppose something labeled a civil right. It may be that opponents of gay marriage are more energized to actually vote. Whatever the reason, polls on the issue are unreliable. So a Field poll showing that only 42 percent support the gay-marriage ban probably means that about 52 percent support it. That means (1) it's close, and (2) we're behind.

2. Do it yourself. Up to now, the gay-marriage movement has been propelled mostly by litigation. This has given many the impression that courts will protect their rights, regardless of what happens in state legislatures and elections. Don't bet on it.

If Prop 8 passes, it is extremely unlikely the California state courts will undo it. The next step would be to ask a federal court in California to overturn the ban on the ground that it violates the U.S. Constitution.

The federal courts in California include some of the most liberal judges in the country, so it's possible gay-marriage supporters would win. But I doubt it. No federal court anywhere has held that there's a constitutional right to gay marriage, or that a state can't ban it. A decision in favor of gay marriage could go to the Supreme Court, which has given no indication it is ready to force gay marriage on the entire country. We either win on election day or we lose gay marriage in California for years to come.

3. Expand the coalition. Many opponents of Prop 8 take solace in the fact that large numbers of Democrats will vote on November 4 to support Barack Obama. Democratic voters favor gay marriage.

However, the picture is more complicated than that. In polls, blacks are among the most likely to oppose gay marriage. To the extent Obama's candidacy brings them out in large numbers, that bodes ill for defeating Prop 8. On the other hand, Obama has attracted lots of young people and they are the age group most likely to support gay marriage. However, people under 30 are historically the least likely age group to vote. What this means is that we can't count on an Obama tide in California to beat Prop 8.

That suggests some special emphasis should be placed on expanding the coalition beyond the usual liberal interest groups and civil-rights organizations. Republican opposition to Prop 8 could be a key, with the GOP state governor and a few other elected officials leading the way. It also means enlisting independents and religious leaders. The campaign against Prop 8 should highlight their views.

4. It's about marriage, stupid. In just about every vote on this issue so far, including the California vote eight years ago, gay-marriage supporters have tried to divert attention from the main question: marriage. They have issued ominous warnings about far-right conspiracies to trash constitutions, turn back clocks, and the like. That strategy has failed everywhere (except in Arizona, where the proposed amendment did go beyond banning gay marriage).

It doesn't fool voters, who know they're voting on gay marriage and have a good idea how they feel about it. The California state attorney general recently changed the title of the amendment from "Limit on marriage" to "Eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry." This was greeted as a great victory by gay-marriage advocates. But it is potentially a double-edge sword. On the one hand, few Americans like to "eliminate rights." On the other, it reminds voters that we're dealing with "same-sex couples" wanting "to marry."

Thus, the merits of marriage for gay families must be squarely confronted. An intensive two-month campaign won't win over diehards, but it may win enough others to carry the day.