IGF CultureWatch

"Gay Pride" was created as a response to the fact that being gay was a stigmatized identity. But nearly 40 years after Stonewall is it OK to abandon the notion of gay pride? Is it all right if I just feel OK about being gay and not make a big fuss-an over-compensatory fuss, frankly-about how proud I am?

If you are young and/or newly out of the closet, you might take pride in your psychological achievement of confronting the remaining stigma and your courage in coming out. And for a few years you might need the encouragement that the notion of "gay pride" can provide. But after five or 10 years, I hope you'd find something else or something more to be proud of.

To be sure, for a long time there will be areas of hostility to gays, primarily religious or ethnic. So where those have considerable influence, "gay pride" is still a valuable (if over-simplified) message to send to young and closeted gays within those communities.

For the rest of us, it is possible to take a kind of derivative pride in the achievements of gays and lesbians in the past-and they are considerable-but it is best to feel pride in something you personally achieved in your life. If that achievement is somehow related to being gay, so much the better.

For instance, you might take pride in being a volunteer for some gay community or AIDS service organization. Or, and I am anticipating a future column here, you could be part of a gay group that provides services to the broader community; not everything has to be directed inward. I am thinking of the "Toys for Tots" projects that leather clubs used to undertake. But, no doubt, there is still plenty of work to do in our community.

The annual Pride Parade is useful, despite its occasional silliness, as the largest and most visible representation of our community to closeted gays and to the general public. It shows our range of religious and social service organizations, the range and vibrancy of gay businesses, and the level of support that large corporations increasingly provide for us. All this helps legitimize us and demonstrates that the gay community is a bustling, thriving community.

It also serves as a kind of psychological boost (however brief) for not-very-active gays. It is not unknown for some parade observer on the spur of the moment to step off the sidelines and join a marching contingent.

For those wary of the television cameras, I will share a personal anecdote. I used to live in a small university town. One year, maybe 30 years ago, during the week after the pride parade, a student I hardly knew came up to me and asked diffidently, "Were you in Chicago last weekend?" "Yes, I was." "Were you in some sort of parade?" "Yes, I was in the Gay Pride Parade." "Cool," he said. "I saw you on television." So the cachet of being on television outweighs any other response.

A few suggestions. The service organizations that depend on volunteers should strongly encourage their volunteers to march in the parade. For instance, the local community center claims "hundreds" of volunteers. If so, show us. And show the general public our level of community spirit. That might encourage others to volunteer as well.

A generation ago, it was difficult to get any politicians except the most liberal from the safest districts to participate in the parade. Not any longer. The number has now grown quite large as every office holder and political aspirant wants the publicity of being in the parade. So now, in order to qualify for admission to the parade, politicians should have to sign a statement saying they support domestic partner benefits in their office and civil unions or gay marriage. If they don't, what are they doing in OUR parade?

The large corporations that enter floats should have to disclose whether they have a non-discrimination clause, whether they offer domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees, whether they have and support a gay employees organization. And they should be encouraged to indicate any corporate support they have given to gay organizations. That information could be noted in the program booklet for the parade.

And finally, I wish there would be groups advocating sexual freedom in opposition to the puritanism of conservative religious sects and the present administration, a group advocating gun ownership and martial arts training for gays as means of self-defense, a gay teachers and professors group, and an artists group advocating community support for the arts. Maybe next year.

When strangers stare at me across a bar, I like to imagine it's because they find me attractive. More often than not, however, it's because they recognize me from the local gay paper.

"You're John Corvino, aren't you? The Gay Moralist?"

It happened just last weekend as I was vacationing in Saugatuck, a gay-friendly resort town on Lake Michigan. I was at tea dance, and I had drunk quite a bit of tea-of the Long Island iced variety. I tend to become flirtatious when inebriated, and at the time the stranger approached, I had my arms around two very handsome fellow partygoers.

The stranger leaned in. "So you're the Gay Moralist?" He said it in an almost accusatory tone.

"Yes-that's me."

"Looks more like the Gay IMmoralist to me," he sneered, before turning and abruptly walking away.

Maybe he was jealous, I told myself. Or maybe he assumed I was cheating on my husband, who in fact was standing just a few feet away. Perhaps he just disapproved of my inebriation (though judging from his breath, he had quite a few drinks himself). In any case, his comment stuck with me. Was I setting a bad example? And why should I care?

I title my column "The Gay Moralist" because I'm an ethics professor who writes about moral subjects, not because I hold myself up as a moral exemplar. Having said that, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a good time, even one that includes drinking and flirtation. Such things-in moderation-can contribute to life's joy, and there's moral value in joy.

To say that is not to endorse hedonism. Hedonism is the view that pleasure is the ONLY moral value. I'm a pluralist about value, and I believe that there are times when pleasure (especially transitory pleasure) must be sacrificed for greater goods.

Nor is it to embrace relativism, the view that moral truth is whatever we believe it to be. Human beings can, and do, get ethics wrong sometimes, as any honest look at history (including one's personal history) should make clear.

But one way to get ethics wrong is to insist that pleasure is never a moral value, or worse yet, that it's a moral evil. Pity those cultures who think that, for example, dancing is immoral.

There are philosophical traditions which teach-foolishly-that pleasure never constitutes a reason for action. They then get themselves in a twist over seemingly easy questions such as whether chewing gum is permissible apart from its teeth-cleaning tendencies. Relax, guys. Have a freakin' cookie.

Certainly there are pleasures-such as drinking and flirting-that can easily get out of hand. Maybe that's why we tend to think of them as "naughty," even when indulged in moderation. Or perhaps we've inherited the puritanism of our forebears. In any case, I freely admit that I've had moments of excess, amply earning my other, unofficial nickname, "The Naughty Professor." (Given human nature, that column might attract even more readers than "The Gay Moralist.") As Aristotle said, "Moderation in all things-even moderation itself."

Aristotle understood that while moderation is crucial, it is important to guard against slipping from a reasonable caution into an unhealthy-and morally undesirable-puritanism. It is especially important for gays to do so, since so many in the world would deny us pleasure-including some important pleasures related to human intimacy.

There are those who caricature gays as being obsessed with pleasure. No doubt some are. Perhaps they're overreacting to being denied certain pleasures for too long, or perhaps, having been rejected by "normal" society, they lack appropriate social restraints. Everyone needs a moral community, for both its positive and negative injunctions.

But the proper alternative to excessive indulgence is not puritanism; it's moderation. Our opponents believe that there is never an appropriate context for homoerotic pleasure, so they present us with dilemma: you can either embrace gayness or embrace morality, but not both. It's a false dilemma, and we ought to denounce it. Put another way, we can reject their bad moralizing without rejecting moralizing altogether.

The fact is that we are all moralists, since we all must decide what to endorse, what to tolerate, and what to forbid. As "The Gay Moralist," I just happen to write about such things.

"Marriage," the minister said, "is a going forth, a bold step into the future; it is risking what we are for the sake of what we can be."

Marriage is a risk.

We forget that, I think.

It seems very mainstream, this marriage thing, it IS mainstream, it's something that has been part of the culture for thousands of years.

It is so ordinary, that there are some gay people who look at the fight for equal marriage and shake their heads. "But what is the REASON you want to get married" they say. It's a patriarchal institution, it's anti-queer, it restricts freedom. It has a mean and sordid history, marked by the memory of women treated like property, of miscegenation, of contracts between families of power. It's more progressive, they say, to not get married. Marriage will ruin the gay community, they say, blur its edges, make us the same as everyone else.

Maybe. It's definitely traditional, marriage. Indeed, many of the things we're fighting for - the right to marry, the right to serve openly in the military, the right to not be harassed at a job - really, all of these things are the same thing. We are fighting for the right to be ordinary.

But being ordinary doesn't mean not being brave. You can be both traditional and risky.

My friends Cid and Glenda got married last weekend. It was my first lesbian wedding - I'd been to civil union ceremonies before, and had a domestic partnership ceremony myself years ago. But this was the first lesbian wedding I went to that was legal, the first one I attended where the minister concluded by saying, "By the power invested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts . . ."

Everyone was crying in the congregation when the Rev. Elea Kemler said that. It moved us, to hear a public acknowledgement of the love of two women - to hear a state acknowledging the love of two women. To hear an entire congregation stand up and say, "We do," when the minister asked "Do you who know Cid and Glenda give them your blessings now as they enter into marriage?" being a witness, that was moving.

The public acknowledgement of our relationships and our lives is important to us as gay people. We crave it, because we have been so long hidden in the dark.

That is part of the risk, of course. Two women who get married are taking a public risk, opening themselves up to the hatred, disgust and criticism from those on the right who do not want to understand.

But even braver than that public risk is the private risk.

We don't think about it much, because marriage is in fact such an ordinary thing. We are at the beginning of wedding season now, and brides are everywhere in their white dresses, posing for pictures in gardens amid the flowers of their bridesmaids.

Marriage is a thing straight couples progress into as a matter of course.

But marriage is so new to us still - official only in Massachusetts and now, joyfully, California- that before we marry, we still think hard about it. Our families are likely not pressing for our marriage. It's not expected. It's certainly not required.

And yet marriage is risky. That's why not everyone does it. It asks for a leap of faith, a commitment to loving and supporting someone you can never fully know. Half of all marriages fail. What other venture to people dare to try with a 50 percent failure rate? Would you go to college if you knew that you were as likely to drop out as stay in? Get a job if you knew that there was an even chance you'd be fired?

Marriage is a risk. It is brave. When we fight for the right to marry, we are asking for a chance to be challenged. We are not taking the easy way out. We are saying that in spite of the odds, despite the large possibility of failure, we are willing to live in hope.

"So it is not to lofty words, or institutions even, that we appeal at this hour of commitment," the minister said. "But rather to the resources which you two draw from deep within yourselves - the deep well of human need, united and loving, forgiven and forgiving, whole and complete before a broken and imperfect world."

Marriage is a risk. Let us celebrate those like Cid and Glenda who take it.

So the California Supreme Court did it. In an extraordinary, sophisticated, and far-reaching opinion the court held (1) that the fundamental right to marry protected by the state constitution includes the right of same-sex couples to marry, and (2) that exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage amounts to impermissible sexual-orientation discrimination. The opinion is much stronger analytically than the path-breaking Massachusetts marriage decision from 2003.

The impact of this decision will be political, cultural, and legal. It is the potential legal impact that I will address in this column.

The California decision injects new life into the litigation strategy for obtaining same-sex marriage. It does so in the obvious way that future gay-marriage litigants will be able to cite it as persuasive authority in other states for its ultimate holding that there is a constitutional mandate to allow gay couples to marry.

But it does so additionally because the court that issued it is careful, cautious, and well-respected. The decision is the product of a moderate Republican court (six of whose seven members were appointed by GOP governors), not a liberal "activist" one.

More specifically, it could be influential in a case pending before the state supreme court in Connecticut, which addresses the similar question whether the state may withhold the title of "marriage" to same-sex couples when the state has granted them all of the benefits of marriage under state law.

Other states with civil unions - like New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont - can similarly expect renewed efforts to persuade their state courts to extend marriage itself to same-sex couples.

A possible limiting factor on the influence of the California decision is that it arose in the unusual context of a state that had already granted almost all of the substantive rights of marriage to gay couples under the state's domestic partnership laws. The California court emphasized this point throughout the opinion.

Having granted all the rights of marriage to gay couples, the court held that the state could not stop there. As I've argued before, this kind of decision provides political ammunition to opponents of legal rights for gay families who will warn state legislatures against moving toward any recognition lest state courts require the state to recognize full marriage.

But I think this potential limitation on the legal influence of the California ruling has more bark than bite for two reasons.

First, the California court held that the fundamental right to marry includes the right of same-sex couples to marry, just as it concluded in 1948 that the right to marry includes the right of interracial couples to marry. The California court did not hold that there is a new and separate fundamental right to something called "same-sex marriage." This holding is a first for a state high court in marriage litigation.

The California court's conclusion about the inclusion of gay couples within the pre-existing fundamental right to marry does not itself depend on whether the state has previously created a status for them substantively approximating marriage. The decision depends instead on the substantive interests in personal autonomy, dignity, happiness, and familial fulfillment protected by the right - interests that gay families share with heterosexual ones.

So even if California had not enacted the domestic partnership laws for same-sex couples, the California court should have concluded under its own logic that they were included within the fundamental right to marry. This holding should have some influence on courts in other states.

Second, the holding that excluding gay couples from marriage is impermissible sexual-orientation discrimination also does not depend on whether the state previously enacted domestic partnership laws. If the substantive right of marriage, and the dignitary interest in having the relationship called "marriage" by the state, cannot be denied on the basis of sexual orientation it should not matter whether the state has left gay families completely without legal protection or has protected them but withheld the title marriage. This holding, too, has potential to influence sister state courts in future marriage litigation.

Another possible limitation on the long-term influence of the decision is that California voters may effectively reverse it in November by voting for a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. If that happens, as it did in the 1990s in Hawaii to a pro-gay-marriage ruling, courts in other states will feel freer to ignore the decision. However, the logic and specific legal holdings of the California decision may still be persuasive.

None of this means that courts in other states will follow the California decision. They are free to reject it. They can rely on the larger number of state high courts that have rejected claims for same-sex marriage. They can say that California is unusual in its legal development toward the recognition of gay families. They can distinguish their own precedents from the California precedents. As a practical matter, they may feel pressured to rule against same-sex marriage because they face elections.

My prediction is that we will not see an avalanche of gay-marriage victories in states across the country in the near future. California was one of the last hopes of the gay-marriage litigants, who have lost in many states where the state judiciary was thought to be sympathetic. The litigation strategy hangs by a thread. But, as an analytical and intellectual matter, California's supreme court has set the bar higher than ever before.