IGF CultureWatch

The sign read, "Focus on the Family welcomes Dr. John Corvino and the Bible Babes." I did a double-take. "Bible Babes" sounds like the title of a really bad porn video, but there they were, listed with me on a placard at the welcome desk in Focus on the Family's administration building. I snapped a quick photo.

Focus on the Family aims at "defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide." I was invited by my friend (and frequent debate opponent) Glenn Stanton, who works there.

"You're going WHERE?" my friends had asked. "Aren't you afraid they're going to try to, um, re-program you or something?"

"Don't worry," I responded. "I'm wearing my protective rainbow undergarments."

The truth is that I have long wanted to visit Focus. As a premier organization of the Christian right, Focus is one of the most influential opponents of gay rights in America. Gay-rights advocates and gay-rights opponents spend a lot of time talking ABOUT each other, and I was intrigued by the opportunity for us to talk (and listen) TO each other.

My visit consisted of a campus tour, a lunch, and a meeting with some members of Love Won Out, their "ex-gay" ministry. Although I was there for only a few hours, I learned several things.

First, Focus on the Family is a well-funded, well-organized operation. No surprise there. What impressed me is that the bulk of what they do…is to help families. Because Glenn had to leave town on a family emergency, I ended up taking a standard tour. I expected to hear plenty about how Focus fights the "gay agenda." Instead, I heard plenty about how they help people with parenting issues, relationship challenges, and other basic life concerns.

This is not to deny that fighting gay rights is a key goal for Focus. But that goal seems to constitute a far larger proportion of its public image than of its day-to-day activity-at least based on what I saw.

A second thing my visit made clear was that the people there tend to see God's hand in most aspects of their daily lives. "God lead us here…God blessed us with this…What God has in store…"-the language was constantly providential. This theme continued through my meeting with the ex-gays, whose stories typically included a strong sense of God's direction. Hearing their accounts made me realize that reconciling Christianity with a pro-gay stance will require more than simply addressing bible verses. For it wasn't (merely) the bible that convinced these people to renounce gay relationships. It was their understanding of their personal relationship with God.

These providence-infused accounts resonated with me, despite the fact that I'm now an atheist. For during my own coming-out process-when I was still deeply religious-I too felt that God was guiding me. Twenty years ago, I thought God was telling me "John, you're gay. Not `straight with gay feelings,' and not `going through a phase.' Gay. It's time for you to embrace that." Looking back, I would now describe that voice as my conscience, or perhaps my reflective self. But at the time, I firmly believed it was God.

I recounted my coming-out story to the Love Won Out group, who listened attentively. Then one member asked me, "But isn't it possible that was a deceiver talking? Isn't it possible that you were wrong?"

He seemed surprised when I responded, "Of course. That's always possible. But we have to do our best in discerning the truth, and that's where I believe the truth lies. I'm gay." I explained that believing in an infallible God does not render one infallible. It didn't for me 20 years ago, just as it doesn't for them now.

I'm a big believer in trying to find common ground with one's opponents-after all, we all have to live in the same world together. I believe that gay-rights advocates can find some common ground with Focus on the Family. But my visit also underscored areas of disagreement that will not permit compromise.

For example: I want every child growing up with same-sex attractions to know that it's okay to be gay. That vision is a big part of what motivates my work. That vision is deeply troubling to many (if not all) members of Focus on the Family, who see it as a fundamental threat to their values.

As long as Focus sees me as threatening their kids, and I see them as threatening "ours" (that is, GLBT kids), peaceful coexistence will be an elusive goal. Yet we still have to share the same world. I'm grateful for opportunities like this one to continue the dialogue.

Young gays and lesbians want to be married. And have kids.

That's what the first survey of the aspirations of gay and lesbian youth discovered.

Rockway Institute reported that more than 90 percent of the lesbians and more than 80 percent of the gay males they surveyed "expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30."

About two-thirds of the males and just over half of the females said they thought it was very likely they'd have children.

What's extraordinary about this is just how very ordinary it is.

Ordinary for mainstream society, I mean. When we think of straight young people, we assume they want to get married and have children. There are always those who don't, of course, but they tend to be eccentric outliers.

The gay community, though, has long assumed the opposite of itself (especially gay men), and the mainstream world has assumed the same. Gays were thought to be promiscuous. Gays were artists, not parents. Gays were the outrageous life of the party, not couples who were in bed by 10 p.m.

But maybe the ordinariness of the survey results should not be such a surprise.

The survey participants were 16- to 22-year-olds in urban areas; they've grown up in a world where there are out gay members of Congress, out celebrities and rock stars, out mayors and athletes and CEOs and writers.

They've grown up with gay-straight alliances in their schools, with classmates who had out and happy gay parents, with discussions about whether saying "That's so gay" constitutes prejudice.

Gay and lesbian youth want stable marriages and children?

Of course they do.

Because they have grown up in an America where being gay is starting to seem unremarkable. Where being gay doesn't need to mean living a particular way. Where being gay doesn't have to mean putting limits on your future.

Young gays and lesbians don't want to destroy "traditional marriage" the way social conservatives fear. They want to be traditional - and one state, Massachusetts, allows them to do that. Hopefully others will follow.

These young gay people want what many heterosexuals want: a home, a family, a purposeful life, a job they can pursue with passion. They want to work without fretting they'll be fired for being gay; they want to marry their sweetheart without having to hire a lawyer to make sure they can visit each other in the hospital; they want to raise kids without worrying that their child will be beaten up for having gay parents.

It is my theory - but I don't know this to be true - that as gay and lesbian role models diversify, as we have images of lesbians who drive trucks and lesbians who are fashion models, images of gay men who style hair and images of gay men who are dedicated dads, more people will feel comfortable (and have felt comfortable) coming out.

As it becomes clear that gay people are not all one thing, more people will realize that it is not fitting into the "lifestyle" that proves you are gay - it is not the "gay accent," or the lesbian's comfortable shoes, or the love of club music, or being a Democrat - it is simply loving and being attracted sexually to people of the same gender.

There have always been gays and lesbians who wanted monogamous partners and children, but until the past couple of years, they've been hidden from mainstream society by the gays and lesbians who get more attention - the promiscuous, the party-goers, the style tastemakers.

We love that part of our community. The absolutely fabulous gays are the ones that help define us as being creative, artistic, fun. They're the ones who help us feel special. Different.

But we're also the same.

And that basic similarity is what young gays and lesbians see right away. They have access to it. They know - already! at their age! - that they can have the life they want, whatever that life is.

They can do the party circuit. They can be successful government officials, or artists, or business owners. They can be parents.

Being gay doesn't limit them, because being gay is only one part of who they are. Or perhaps it's that the definition of being gay has expanded. It no longer means only eternal singlehood and a furtive life lived in gay bars and dark city parks. If a lesbian wants to be married, she doesn't have to pretend that she's living with her "best friend." If a gay man wants to be married, he doesn't have to marry a woman and then seek sex in public restrooms.

Now she can marry a woman, and he can marry a man.

And our gay and lesbian youth are planning to do exactly that.

The recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States is cause to reflect on what his papacy has meant so far for gay people. There is some good, but much bad and ugly, to report.

The largest and most pressing public-relations problem confronting the Catholic Church in the United States today is the fallout from the priest sex scandal. Some conservative Catholics have blamed "homosexuals" for the sexual abuse of children by priests, since most of it involved male priests and boys under their supervision. Some suggested that the Church purge all gays from the priesthood.

But an anti-homosexual purge presents both practical and theological problems for the Vatican. As a practical matter, homosexuals are probably disproportionately drawn to the priesthood. It offers young gay Catholics some palliative for the guilt and shame they may feel for being homosexual. It also shields them from embarrassing questions about why they aren't married.

Theologically, the Church distinguishes between innate homosexual orientation, which is not a sin, and homosexual acts, which are. For Catholicism the orientation itself is blameless, so expelling someone from the priesthood for that alone is hard to justify.

Under Benedict, the Vatican's response to the priest scandal has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, current homosexual priests have not been purged, though like all priests they must remain celibate.

On the other hand, in late 2005 the Vatican declared that those who "show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" are not suitable candidates for the priesthood. If, however, these "homosexual tendencies" are "simply the expression of a transitory problem" then the person can be ordained if the tendencies are "overcome at least three years before ordination."

That's a bit convoluted, and the details will have to be worked out over time, but it suggests that mere homosexual orientation unaccompanied by any homosexual acts now justifies forbidding a man to enter the priesthood. In practice, of course, this will not prevent all homosexuals from becoming priests. But it will bar those who understand and openly acknowledge their homosexuality.

If the Vatican under Benedict has blurred the distinction between homosexual acts and orientation, the Pope himself has at least maintained another distinction of importance to gay people.

During his U.S. visit, Benedict spoke of the priest scandal in a way that differentiated between homosexuals and pedophiles. "I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality but pedophilia, which is another thing," he said. "We would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry."

This statement accomplished two important things. First, it reaffirmed that while pedophiles would be expelled from the priesthood, homosexual priests would not be. Second, it repudiated the association of homosexuality with pedophilia, an old and harmful defamation against gay people that has been used to justify much discrimination.

It is significant that a man of Benedict's standing would separate the two, while so many who admire him do not. Despite his religious objection to homosexual acts, Benedict has not ignored all we have learned from the study of homosexuality. He recognizes that homosexual orientation and pedophilia are distinct phenomena. He deserves credit for his willingness to say so publicly.

That's what makes his implied, but extravagant, criticism of gay marriage so disappointing. According to the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a conservative think tank opposed to gay marriage, Benedict has spoken publicly about marriage 111 times. In these speeches, he has connected the traditional definition of marriage to preventing violence, maintaining legal order, and even preserving world peace.

In his January 1 World Day of Peace message, Benedict said: "Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman . . . constitutes an objective obstacle on the path to peace."

Elsewhere he has bemoaned the "growing crisis of the family, which is based on the indissoluble bond of marriage between a man and a woman." When this "truth about man is subverted or the foundation of the family is undermined, peace itself is threatened and the rule of law is compromised, leading inevitably to forms of injustice and violence."

The implication is that gay marriage, along with many other modern developments, will contribute to human catastrophe.

Throughout history, gay people have been blamed for everything from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the Black Plague, to every hurricane, tornado, and earthquake that has ever struck civilization. Add global destabilization to the list.

Benedict is correct that weakening families undermines social stability, with many potential harmful consequences. But to accept Benedict's conclusion, we would have to believe that gay marriage will somehow hurt heterosexual families. Like many others, he seems to bundle gay marriage with a miasma of genuinely harmful trends like illegitimacy and rampant divorce.

The problem is that there is no good reason to indulge that fear. There is no evidence yet that gay marriage has undermined traditional families or contributed to violence, lawlessness, and war in countries like Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain. It is no more plausible to think gay marriage will produce cataclysms than to believe (as expressed by the late Jerry Falwell) that accepting "the gays and the lesbians" contributed to 9/11.

Benedict's concerns about gay marriage are not strictly theological ones. They are empirical, testable by evidence and experience, and thus subject to reasonable criticism outside his faith tradition. Day by day, year by year, they become harder to take seriously.