IGF CultureWatch

When is it ok to tell a gay joke? Consider three scenarios:

First scenario. In a magazine interview, a person says this: "The one thing I always say that I really, really mean is I should have had a gay son. [My child] doesn't care that Ann Miller can tap without shoes. Doesn't care! This breaks my heart. I've put on the Sirius show-tunes channel in the car and [she] gets upset with me. This is not right!"

Second scenario. In a meeting with an important client, a senior partner in a law firm tells a joke in which he makes light of gay men's attachment to feminine things. The joke ends with the punch-line, "Faggot!"

Third scenario. An interviewer asks a guest who previously starred as an openly gay character on television to turn to the camera and give the audience his "gayest look."

Based only on the information provided, are these jokes all anti-gay? Are all acceptable? Are some acceptable and others not?

From early on, we learn not to make fun of others in a way that is hurtful and demeaning to them. Polite people don't make fun of others' physical and mental infirmities, for example. Jokes about mentally retarded people are the sign of a cad, not a bon vivant.

We also learn that jokes directed against some groups of people - like racial and religious minorities - can be especially harmful because of the discrimination, stigma, and even violence the members of these groups have historically faced. Jokes at the expense of other groups of people - like politicians or lawyers - don't raise the same kinds of concerns because the targets of the fun aren't disadvantaged.

Jokes are often funny when they rely on some generalization about members of the group - some trait or characteristic they are widely believed to share, whether true or not. For this reason, a joke that made fun of Republicans for being too compassionate toward the poor or that took a jab at Moveon.org for being biased in favor of conservatives wouldn't work.

But this same reliance on stereotypes can reinforce prejudice. And prejudice is the first step toward harmful discrimination. Consider jokes that refer to blacks as stupid, lazy, or criminal; or that treat Jews as conspiratorial, undeservedly rich, or miserly. Though properly protected by the First Amendment, such jokes are socially unacceptable because they reinforce harmful prejudgments about these groups.

What's acceptable when it comes to joking about gay people? Very few of us would take the extreme position that it's never acceptable for anyone ever to tell a joke of any kind about gays. Even the gay-media watchdog group, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), is not so humorless.

Jokes about gays are not necessarily objectionable simply because they exploit some kinds of stereotypes about gays. Think of the stereotype of gay men as promiscuous, effeminate, and obsessed with couture and entertainment. These stereotypes were the basis for much of the humor in Will & Grace, which was a breakthrough triumph for the equal treatment of homosexuals on television. (For this reason, the attempted humor in Scenarios 1 and 2 isn't necessarily objectionable on this ground, though it may be for other reasons.)

At the same time, there has been a history of anti-gay discrimination, stigma, and violence that should make us sensitive to the ways in which we joke about homosexuals.

So gays are neither in the category in which are all jokes are presumptively objectionable nor in the category in which all are presumptively acceptable. How do we know when the line is crossed?

There is no bright-line answer applicable to all cases. Everything depends on context. In the three scenarios above, it's impossible to know whether the jokes are "anti-gay" without knowing much more.

The audience matters. If I told you that the person in Scenario 1 was speaking to a general audience magazine, like Time, you might be at least uneasy that she was exploiting stereotypes of gay men as frivolously obsessed with Hollywood and Broadway. If I said she was being interviewed by a gay men's magazine, this concern would be muted. In fact, it was Joan Rivers speaking to Instinct, a periodical for gay men that focuses on celebrities, fashion, and gossip.

The identity and history of the speaker matter. If I told you, for example, that the "senior partner" in Scenario 2 is openly gay, you'd have one kind of reaction. If I said he was a homophobic straight man who believed he was speaking to other heterosexual men, you'd be more concerned. In fact, the latter was true. It happened in my presence when I was a young lawyer and not yet out at my law firm.

Lots of intangibles matter, too, like whether the joke was told in a mean-spirited way or employed stereotypes in a way that undermined the stereotypes themselves. In Scenario 3, the very idea of a giving a "gay look" to a camera is so completely ridiculous that it might be making fun of benighted people who think there is a distinctively "gay look" one can give. In fact, it was Jay Leno on the Tonight Show speaking to actor Ryan Phillipe.

The latter cases are the hardest ones to judge. GLAAD objected to Leno's attempted humor and Leno subsequently apologized. I'm not so sure. It was an awkward moment and not very funny. But bad comedy is not necessarily bad comedy.

Rain had snarled Nairobi's traffic, so after waiting at a standstill for almost two hours, our driver Daniel roared over the divider, faced the oncoming traffic for a harrowing few seconds, and pulled into a side road.

It was really more path than road, alternating between muddy ditches and dust. But we weren't the only ones to take it. So many of us did that we were only prowling around at about three miles an hour, giving us plenty of time to look at the locals - and for the locals to look at us.

This could have been one of the Nairobi slums where post-election violence ripped lives apart a few months ago. A ditch between houses colleted waste; children were without shoes. The buildings huddled close to the road, so close to us it seemed we could touch them if we stuck our arms out wide enough.

The locals lined up to watch the parade of cars go through, and it felt like a parade, like a festival, with people smiling and waving at us and all of us waving back.

One woman caught my attention. She had a butch energy about her, and was wearing a rugby shirt, a long, patterned skirt, a bald head and a vivid smile. She was in her mid-twenties, I thought, or perhaps five years younger.

When the van stopped, waiting for traffic ahead to move forward, she sauntered around to the front of the van, stopping at the open window of a pretty, dark-haired woman I'll call Ann.

"Hello," the Kenyan purred, sliding her elbows onto the window. "How are you?"

I almost laughed in shock and recognition. If she had said, "How YOU doin'" in a dark lesbian bar, it would have sounded exactly the same - as a come on.

"Fine," Ann said briskly. She's straight - I'm not sure she saw it as anything but a friendly gesture. "How are you?"

"I'm gooood. And what's your name?" The van moved forward with a jerk. The Kenyan stayed alongside it for a while, fingertips resting on the van, but then fell behind.

A few minutes later, the van stopped again, and the Kenyan, unhurried, took her place again at the window.

"What's your name?" she asked again, in an intimate voice, and then said, "My name is Caroline." The two of them could have been alone. Ann, flustered perhaps, reached into her bag and handed Caroline a rose. We had vases of them in our hotel rooms.

Caroline pressed it to her chest and turned in a circle. Her face glowed. "I'm in love!" she said. "Marry me!" She called out to a friend, "She gave me a rose!"

Sex between men is illegal in Kenya and punishable by jail time. Sex between women is completely invisible and simply doesn't officially happen.

Homosexuality is considered to be un-African, either a curse bestowed by an angry enemy or a Western disease. Former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi once said, "Kenya has no room for homosexuals and lesbians."

This attitude is not only wrong - it is dangerous.

An American I met while in Kenya does HIV research in Nairobi - he said that a startling number of "men who have sex with men" weren't aware that HIV/AIDS was transmitted through sex, and could be partly prevented through condoms. And, he said, it's difficult to target a community for education, awareness and treatment when you don't know who exactly they are.

Africa's commitment to fighting AIDS doesn't extend to allowing gays and lesbians civil rights in order to help educate them. There is strong hostility to gay organizing in Kenya, as there is in much of Africa, even for health reasons. So most gays and lesbians go to cruising spots, or to places known for their gay clientele, and then home to their wives and husbands.

They are invisible, or try to be. But they still exist.

Caroline exists.

The rose was still clasped to Caroline's chest when the van started moving again. She reached out with the rose to touch it, and ran forward a few steps when it started to pull away.

"What an intense young man," the only male in our group said.

"She was a woman," all the women replied at once.

The van started moving faster, having reached a portion of clear road. Caroline was left behind, a single hand in the air, waving goodbye.

I'm sometimes criticized by fellow gay-rights advocates for being too accommodating towards our opponents. Why dignify gay-rights opponents with a response?

The simple answer is that, like it or not, homosexuality is an issue on which many thoughtful and decent people disagree. Ignoring this disagreement won't make it go away, so instead I strive for productive dialogue.

Against that background, I was especially disappointed when Aquinas College in Grand Rapids revoked my invitation to speak there on April 3rd, calling me on the morning of the event to "postpone" it, and then canceling it one week later. In announcing his decision, Aquinas President C. Edward Balog cited concerns about a policy gap regarding speakers who are critical of Catholic teaching. Local Bishop Walter Hurley was apparently among those encouraging Balog to cancel the event.

In my sixteen years of speaking on gay rights, only once before have I had an event canceled-in Louisiana, a week following Hurricane Katrina. I have presented at religious institutions, including several Catholic colleges. Indeed, I spoke at St. Ambrose College (Davenport, IA) exactly a week before my scheduled Aquinas lecture. These have all been positive events.

My visit to Aquinas was contracted months in advance, and advertising went on for some time prior to the event. Those who invited me knew my position. I aim to promote respect for gay and lesbian persons by critically examining common arguments against same-sex affection. I am not (any longer) a Catholic, and I oppose key aspects of the Church's teaching. I believe that the case against homosexuality is unsound. That said, I have no interest in distorting Catholic teaching. On the contrary, the more clearly a position is set out, the more rigorously we can discuss it.

So when the organizers asked me how I would feel about having an official Catholic response to my talk, I welcomed the suggestion enthusiastically. This is not because I believe that every campus event needs to present "both sides." For one thing, the idea of "both sides" misleadingly suggests that there are two and only two sides to any issue, equally balanced along a clear and non-arbitrary middle ground. In reality, social issues admit of countless possible positions-some reasonable, some less so, and some beyond the pale. It would be both practically impossible and pedagogically undesirable for every event to include every possible perspective. As one critic of my invitation put it, "What's next? Should we invite the KKK to present their views, too?"

Of course we shouldn't. But the KKK analogy fails, and the reason for its failure is instructive. The reason is the same point I make to my critics in the choir: unlike segregation, homosexuality is an issue on which many thoughtful and decent people still disagree. Ignoring this disagreement won't make it go away, so instead let's strive for productive dialogue.

In short, I welcomed the inclusion of a Catholic response because it was entirely consistent with my aims as an educator. It would manifest Aquinas's identity not just as a CATHOLIC College, but as a Catholic COLLEGE-a place where serious discussion of controversial issues could take place. It was a win-win-win proposal: good for me, good for the administration, and (most important) good for the Aquinas students, who presumably attend college in part to learn about diverse perspectives and how to evaluate them. Shutting down the event robbed us all of a valuable teaching moment.

After the cancellation, President Balog was quoted in the Grand Rapids Press as stating, "We want to explore the issue from an academic perspective, not from the perspective of an antagonistic attack to core Catholic values."

This is a gross mischaracterization of my approach, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of my scholarly research or my public advocacy would recognize. It pains me to see such distortion coming from a Catholic college president.

It pains me as an academic, but it also pains me as a former Catholic. I sometimes joke that I'm not a fallen Catholic, because I didn't fall-I leapt. But the truth is that I still have deep affection and respect for the Catholic faith. Affection, because of relationships with countless priests, nuns, and lay theologians who nurtured me in lasting ways. Respect, because of the Church's intellectual and moral tradition, which takes "big questions" seriously and strives to integrate faith and reason.

That affection and respect are sorely tested today.