IGF CultureWatch

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.

Back in the old days, there were those who supported gay rights and those who opposed them-vocally. There was also a third group whose opposition was so deep that they objected even to discussing the issue. For them, to debate gay rights would be to dignify depravity, and depravity merits chilly silence, not invitations to dialogue.

In the last decade or so, a fourth group has appeared mirroring the third. This group's support for gay rights runs so deep that they object even to discussing the issue. For them, to debate gay rights would be to dignify bigotry, and bigotry merits chilly silence, not invitations to dialogue.

While the above sketch is somewhat simplistic, I think it captures an important shift in the gay-rights debate. Increasingly, one finds people on both sides who object not merely to their opponents' position but even to engaging that position. Why debate the obvious, they ask. Surely anyone who holds THAT position must be too stubborn, brainwashed or dumb to reason with.

The upshot is that supporters and opponents of gay rights are talking to each other less and less. This fact distresses me.

It distresses me for several reasons. First, it lulls gay-rights advocates into a complacency where we mistake others' silence for acquiescence. Then we are shocked-shocked!-when, for example, an Oklahoma state representative says that gays pose a greater threat than terrorism-and her constituents rally around her. Think Sally Kern will have a hard time getting re-elected? Think again.

It distresses me, too, because dialogue works. Not always, and not easily, but it makes a difference. Indeed, ironically enough, healthy dialogue about our issues helped move many people from the "supportive-but-open-to-discussion" camp to the "so-supportive-I-can't-believe-we're-discussing-this" camp.

It distresses me most of all because both of the "opposed" camps include families with gay kids. How do we help those kids? How do we let them know that it's okay to be gay, despite the hurtful messages that they're hearing from their parents?

True, it is easier than ever to reach such kids directly, through MTV, the internet, and the like. But some of those messages will be blocked or distorted by their parents. And even those that reach them untrammeled will be counterbalanced by painful opposition. I feel for these kids, and I want to help them. Helping them requires acknowledging their important relationships with people whose views I find deeply wrong.

There are those who find my emphasis on dialogue naïve. As someone who has spent sixteen years traveling the country speaking and debating about homosexuality and ethics, I'm well aware of dialogue's limitations.

Yet I'm also frequently reminded of its power. Recently Aquinas College, a Catholic school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, cancelled a lecture I was scheduled to give because of concerns about my opposition to Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Students angered by the cancellation arranged to have me speak off-campus. The event drew hundreds of audience members, including some who had been critical of my initial invitation. The next day I learned that one of those critics, after hearing my talk, had begun advocating bringing me to campus next year. Over time, such conversions can have a huge impact.

Then there are those who wonder whether the silence I'm lamenting really is a problem at all. My Aquinas cancellation suggests that it is: intentionally or not, the cancellation sent students the message that this topic is literally unspeakable. But the problem is by no means limited to one side. Last year I did a same-sex marriage debate (with Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family) at another Catholic college. A week before the event, my host told me that a student was trying to organize a protest. "Because he doesn't want a gay-rights speaker on a Catholic campus?" I asked.

"No, because he doesn't want your opponent here," she answered. The student thought that opposition to same-sex marriage should not be dignified with a hearing. On a Catholic campus!

That student, like the rest of us, would do well to recall the words of John Stuart Mill. In his 1859 classic On Liberty Mill argued that those who silence opinions - even false ones - rob the world of great gifts:

"If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

The moral of the story? Let's keep talking.

Lesbians are funny.

Just a few years ago, this wasn't obvious. Lesbians were stereotyped as angry and whining. In fact, lesbians were thought to take things way too seriously, to become offended by any slip of the tongue. It was dangerous to talk to lesbians, because if you said something wrong, they might choke you with their flannel shirt, or run you over with their motorcycle.

Remember this joke?

Q: How many lesbians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: That isn't funny.

Gay men had camp. Lesbians had anger.

We were the gay community's wet blanket.

But now lesbians are starting to be seen in a new light. We've got Rosie (who, OK, sometimes falls into the anger category, but still - she produces the Big Gay Sketch Show.) We've got Lily Tomlin. We've got Kate Clinton, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Marga Gomex, Julie Goldman. We've even sort of got Margaret Cho, who identifies as queer and bisexual, though usually seems more like she's a gay man in drag.

Best of all, we've got Ellen, who almost single handedly has helped America find lesbians to be endearingly funny.

Here's a joke from her, back when she did standup: "My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is."

See? Lesbians are funny. And not just to other lesbians. Lesbians are funny to THE ENTIRE WORLD (or at least the English-speaking, non-fundamentalist part of it. Westenhoeffer has made the point that people in the Bible Belt often will just not find lesbians funny, no matter how funny the lesbian actually is. Their morals keep them from laughing.)

Why the change? Why are lesbians seen as funny now when they were seen as angry before? Well, it partly must be because of Ellen's wide audience and general folksiness. But it may also be due in part to the changing role of women.

Vanity Fair's April cover story examined the reasons why women comedians are now appreciated more than ever. It used to be, they say, that women were not considered funny at all (maybe because men valued male cut-ups, but women with wit were frightening and liberated). Women as a group were thought to have no a sense of humor.

But expectations for women and women's roles are changing. As women are more accepted in every level of society, they become more accepted as comedians, too. And women are more likely to let themselves be funny, and to hone their humor.

Or maybe there's an easier answer. Cable. "There are so many hours to fill, and they ran out of men, so then there were women," Nora Ephron joked to VF.

But straight women have an added burden. No longer is it enough that they are funny - now they have to be sexy and glamorous as well, in order to make it big.

As Vanity Fair points out, "It used to be that women were not funny. Then they couldn't be funny if they were pretty. Now a female comedian has to be pretty-even sexy-to get a laugh."

Female straight comedians have to be sexy. But lesbian comedians? Lesbian comedians have a pass. They can be attractive - Ellen certainly is - but they don't have to take the stage in stilettos and a cocktail dress. Audiences understand that lesbians aren't out to attract men, so they're not held to the same high beauty standards as straight women comedians.

Lesbians are outsiders, so they are expected to poke sharp fun at political figures and "regular" people. They are expected to have a quirky, non-mainstream, even shocking perspective.

And they are more free to have the range of physical attractiveness that men have. When's the last time that a male comedian was expected to be handsome?

Lesbian comedians are lucky that way. They don't have to be sexually seductive in order to seduce the audience into laughing. Instead, they can be more like Lucille Ball, emphasizing the comical over their cup size.

The fact that lesbians are becoming more accepted as funny is lucky for the gay community, too. Laughter is a great way to win people over. It's how outsiders have insinuated themselves into the mainstream from time immemorial.

Someday, our funny women might help us laugh all the way to our full civil rights.