IGF CultureWatch

It seems as if a lot of the gay community attention and energy that would normally go to advancing gay equality is being siphoned off by the presidential race, primarily by the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

From a gay advocacy standpoint it is not clear that there is a lot of difference between the positions of Obama and Clinton. They both have articulated relatively gay-supportive positions-except, of course, for gay marriage which is not yet a winner in the court of public opinion.

For most gay voters then, the decision to support one or the other is based mostly on other, non-gay issues or on the symbolic significance that attaches to the first serious presidential candidacy of a woman or a man of mixed-race ancestry.

What I would like to know, however, is how hard the candidate if elected would work, how much of their time and energy they would devote, how much of their post-electoral political clout they would use to move their gay campaign commitments into the reality of policy.

Anyone can state a position, but achieving it is another matter entirely. Legal equality for gay people, equal partnership rights at the federal level, equal right to serve openly in the military, adding sexual orientation to employment non-discrimination legislation-those will take considerable effort.

Will the candidate-if elected-lobby senators and representatives? Will he or she pressure the joint chiefs of staff to approve ending the military gay ban? (The President is their boss, after all.) Will he or she issue the necessary executive orders? Will he or she use the bully pulpit of the presidency to help increase public support for those initiatives? To be sure, moving public opinion is like turning around a battleship-it takes time and continuous pressure, but the time to start is as soon as possible.

After all, both employment non-discrimination and an end of the military gay ban already have substantial majority support. Similarly, there seems to be majority support now at least for same-sex civil unions and equal federal benefits for gay partners. How long must we wait for the majority support we have earned to be translated into legislation and public policy?

What I hope is that every committed Obama and Clinton supporter will not rest satisfied with merely supporting his or her candidate and assume that the candidate will act zealously on their behalf, but will actively let the candidate know that the supporter's money and campaigning energy is based to a significant degree on the candidate's gay positions. You cannot leave this to the professional activists: Their statements are taken for granted as being part of their job and discounted accordingly.

Demand to know what specific actions the candidate-if elected-will take to implement his or her promises on gay issues. Our issues are not important for most people and they will get shunted aside unless we make clear how important they are to us. If we do not do it, who will?

My worry is that once the nominee is determined and the general election campaign begins, the candidates will focus on issues of more general interest-the Iraq War, health care, education, the condition of the economy, and gay issues will be soft pedaled or ignored entirely. We are certainly not going to get much conspicuous support as the candidates of both parties, having presumably locked in their core constituencies, both try to appeal to the political center and not offend any potential voters.

And the related worry is that gay Democratic activists will be so eager to get rid of Republican dominance of the executive branch that they will hesitate to raise our issues in any conspicuous way for fear of antagonizing any centrist voters who might otherwise vote for the Democratic nominee. In other words, they will be pressured to be, and they will want to be, "good boys" and not make waves.

A word on McCain. Writing in the April 8 issue of The Advocate, James Kirchick makes a persuasive case that McCain is no George Bush. He opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment (though not similar state amendments) and he is no partisan of the religious right.

But what Kirchick leaves out is the effect of another conservative on appointments to federal judgeships and the Supreme Court, and the absence of any plan or strategy by McCain for bringing the enormously expensive and deadly Iraq War to a conclusion any time in the next two decades.

On Tuesday, unbeknownst to itself, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a gay-rights case. To most people, admittedly, District of Columbia v. Heller is a gun-rights case. In fact, it's the most important gun-rights case in decades, one that may cast a shadow for decades to come. But to gay Americans, and other minorities often targeted with violence, Heller is about civil rights, not shooting clubs.

Nine years ago, one of the first columns I wrote in this space told the story of Tom G. Palmer. One night some years ago in San Jose, he found himself confronting a gang of toughs, as many as 20 of them, intent on gay-bashing him. Taunted as a "faggot," threatened with death, Palmer (and a friend) ran for their lives, only to find the gang in hot pursuit. So Palmer stopped, reached into his backpack, and produced a gun. The gang backed off.

If no gun? "There's no question in my mind," Palmer told me in 1999, "that my friend and I would have been at least very seriously beaten, and maybe killed."

Today Palmer lives in Washington, D.C., which has the most restrictive gun-control law in the country. You can't own a handgun in Washington unless it was registered before 1976 (or unless you are a retired D.C. police officer). You can own a shotgun or rifle, but it must be disassembled or locked (except while being used for lawful recreation or at a place of business; you can protect your store, in other words, but not your home). In Washington, therefore, Palmer could not legally protect himself with a gun, even if the gay-bashers had chased him right into his home.

Although gay life in America is safer today than it once was, anti-gay violence remains all too common. The FBI reports more than 7,000 anti-gay hate crimes in 2005 alone, and since 2003 at least 58 people have been murdered because of their sexual orientation. Perhaps because gay-bashings often begin in intimate settings, the home is the single most prevalent venue for anti-gay attacks. In public, of course, gay-bashers make sure that no cops are around. For that matter, sometimes the police are part of the problem, responding to gay-bashings with indifference, hostility, sometimes abuse.

Those facts are from an amicus brief that two gay groups -- Pink Pistols and Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty -- have filed in Heller. Pink Pistols is a shooting group, formed partly in reaction to stories like Palmer's (and partly, full disclosure, in reaction to an article I wrote urging gays to take up self-defense with guns).

"Recognition of an individual right to keep and bear arms," says the brief, "is literally a matter of life or death" for gay Americans. The Heller plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court to strike down Washington's gun law as unconstitutional. One of those plaintiffs, not coincidentally, is an openly gay man: Tom Palmer.

At issue is the legal meaning and reach of the controversial Second Amendment, which says: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Oddly, the Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on the amendment's meaning. The last important precedent came down a long time ago, in 1939, and it left the issue murky.

In most of the time since then, conventional wisdom assumed that the amendment confers no right on individuals, but instead empowers the states to form militias and other armed forces. In recent years, however, that interpretation has lost ground under academic scrutiny. It has become clearer that the Founders believed just what the amendment said: The people have a right to own firearms of the sort that would have been used in militia service in those days -- that is, pistols and long guns.

Why would the Founders have cared? One reason is as relevant today as ever: Guns were needed for self-defense, a prerogative the Founders regarded as fundamental to freedom. As John Locke wrote, "If any law of nature would seem to be established among all as sacred in the highest degree, ... surely this is self-preservation."

The second reason, by contrast, strikes modern Americans as archaic, if not embarrassing: States' armed populations could resist and overthrow a tyrannical central government, acting as an insurrectionary militia -- much as Americans had recently done in overthrowing British rule. That may have made sense in 1790, but today the insurrectionary rationale would seem to imply a right to keep and bear surface-to-air missiles and grenade launchers, among other things.

Between a right to keep and bear nothing and a right to keep and bear surface-to-air missiles lies a whole lot of middle ground. That the Supreme Court may finally provide some guidance is thus major constitutional news. But what should the Court do?

It could make the Second Amendment a dead letter by finding that it guarantees no individual right at all. This is what the District of Columbia wants. But judicially repealing the Second Amendment would be a mistake, both as a matter of constitutional literacy and also, more important, on moral grounds. The Declaration of Independence's great litany, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," puts life first. A law that prevents people from defending their own lives, even in their own homes, denies the most basic of all human rights.

Instead, the Court could adopt the District's fallback position, which is that even if there is an individual right to gun ownership, the right is so weak that the District's gun law doesn't violate it. This would also be a mistake. If a near-total ban on handguns -- even for self-defense in the home, and bolstered by a prohibition on operable long guns -- does not violate the language and intent of the Second Amendment, then nothing possibly could.

What the plaintiffs in Heller want the Court to do is throw out the D.C. law as unconstitutional, without necessarily saying what other kind of law might pass muster. This keep-it-simple approach has a lot going for it. The Court would place an outer boundary on the argument over the Second Amendment, saying, in effect, "Right now we're presented with an easy case, so we'll make an easy call: The government can't indiscriminately ban guns in the home. What else the government may or may not be able to do we'll decide some other time, when those cases make their way to us."

But that approach would leave some ambiguity about the Second Amendment's reach, which is why the Bush administration is uncomfortable with it. The administration worries that flatly overturning the District's law could leave federal gun laws -- restrictions on machine guns, for instance -- vulnerable to challenge, so it is asking the Court to declare the Second Amendment a kind of intermediate right, one that individuals hold in principle but that the government could often override in practice.

That idea seems strange at best, mischievous at worst. It asks the Court to enshrine a new kind of constitutional right: a "sort of" right, which makes a libertarian gesture but won't get in Washington's way. Think of it as Big Government constitutional conservatism. For the Bush administration, importing Big Government conservatism into the part of the Constitution designed to protect individuals from Big Government may be par for the course, but it would be a far cry from what the Founders had in mind for the Bill of Rights.

A fifth approach makes more sense: The Court would overturn the District's law and add an explanation. Without trying to lay out detailed standards, the Court would clear up confusion about the Second Amendment by unambiguously identifying the core right it protects as reasonable self-defense by competent, law-abiding adults.

Reasonable self-defense leaves room for firearms regulation. Exotic and highly destructive weapons could be restricted or banned, because no one needs a machine gun or grenade launcher for protection against ordinary crime. Felons, not being law-abiding adults, could still be barred from gun ownership.

Most of the government's gun laws, in fact, would have no trouble passing the self-defense test (as the Heartland Institute calls it in an amicus brief), because most gun laws are reasonable and don't leave people defenseless. As for the insurrectionary purpose of the Second Amendment, the Court could either repudiate it explicitly or pass over it in silence, consigning it to irrelevance.

The self-defense test is good policy, because it aligns the Second Amendment with modern needs and sensibilities. It is good law, because it rescues the amendment from being a dead letter or an embarrassment.

And it is morally sound, because it honors in law what gay people know in our hearts: Being forced into victimhood is the ultimate denial not only of safety but of dignity.

I tend to take taxicabs if it is bitterly cold, or late at night, or my destination is some distance away. And I will chat with the driver if he seems open to it-that is, not talking continuously on his cell phone.

One day I was chatting with the driver and he asked if I was married. I could have given the short answer and let it go, but I ventured, "I can't get married," I said. "Gays can't marry in Illinois. We can only get married in Massachusetts."

There was no pause at all. "What makes people gay?" the driver asked. It was as if it was a question he had wondered about before. "Is it genetic or do you choose it or what?" he continued.

Now, I have a kind of complicated phenomenological explanation, but there was no time to try to explain that, so I said, "No one knows for sure what makes some of us gay. Many of us would like to know that ourselves. Certainly none of us chooses to be gay. It is just something we discover about ourselves. But it seems to involve a combination of genetic and constitutional factors and individual personality development." It would have to do.

But this led into question from the driver about how I lived my life, how did I meet men, did I have a partner, do my friends know I'm gay, was I happy with the life, and so forth. The questions poured forth until we reached my destination.

Thinking about it later, I realized that I was engaging in a bit of impromptu gay activism. Here was a man who seemed genuinely interested, so it was worthwhile trying to answer his questions. I may have been the first openly gay person of whom he could ask these questions. I firmly believe that the most effective activism is individual, person-to-person encounters like this.

You can't plan these sudden opportunities, but you can prepare for them by deciding to give the information in passing that you are gay, and deciding to be totally honest. It also helps to have an idea about answers you might give to some of the obvious question. Like everything else, this requires a certain amount of tact and prudence-don't press information on people who seem hostile, etc. The idea is to make a connection and a favorable impression.

And you can look for opportunities to mention being gay. A driver once asked what I did for a living. I could have said, "I'm a writer," and left it at that. But I ventured ahead: "I write for the local gay newspaper." That led to a few questions about gays.

If the driver criticizes President Bush, regardless of your personal politics you can certainly say, "He sure doesn't seem to like gay people like me very much. He doesn't want us to be able to get married."

Nor need this tactic be limited to cabdrivers. Waiting in a group for a bus, one youth-girlfriend in hand-commented "Nice shirt." Since I was bigger than he was (a factor to consider with regard to safety), I answered, "Thanks. My lover-he gave it to me"-pointedly slipping in the gender identifier. "Oh, 'HE', huh?" the young man replied.

A friend summoned for standby jury duty told me he left blank the questions about marital status and said he was prepared to point out to the judge or questioning attorney that he found the question offensive because he was not allowed to get married. Good for him. Would that more people made an issue of the constant "heterosexual assumption."

But sometimes these conversations can take an odd turn. A correspondent wrote recently that when he mentioned gays to his cabdriver the driver replied, "In my country they kill gays." I'm not sure what the right response to that is. Do you say that's barbaric and uncivilized? Do you mention the great Western writers who were gay and wonder what literary losses his country sustained? Do you admit that gays used to be executed in the West until the 18th century, too? Do you say, Well, we are a democracy, not a theocracy run by religious fanatics? I don't know.

Once I hailed a cab as I was leaving the local bathhouse. "What kind of place is that?" the driver asked. "It's a gay bathhouse," I said, feeling my way cautiously. "What goes on in there?" "It's sort of a do-it-yourself bordello," I explained. "You rent a room, shuck off your clothes and walk around to see if you can find mutual interest with another person. If you do, you retire together to your room." "Can anyone go there?" he asked. "Well, it wouldn't be very interesting unless they were gay," I said. Then the driver wondered if I could take him there sometime. I declined and suggested he start with the bars instead.

When Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern gave her now-infamous homophobic rant before a group of fellow Republicans, she remarked that "The very fact that I'm talking to you like this here today puts me in jeopardy." It may have been the truest thing she said that day.

Normally, I would dismiss this particular remark as a pathetic religious-right sympathy ploy. It's hard to take seriously the persecution complex of a group that wields so much power, especially in places like Kern's home state. In jeopardy for making homophobic comments in front of Oklahoma Republicans? Please.

Thanks to the marvel of YouTube, however, Kern's rant received a much wider audience than she anticipated. Listeners all over the country heard Kern claim that "the homosexual agenda is destroying this nation," that gays are indoctrinating our children, and that homosexuality poses a bigger threat to America "than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat."

Kern later claimed, rather implausibly, that her comments were taken out of context, and that she was talking about gays around the country who were contributing money to pro-gay candidates in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

I look forward to joining that group of gays. More precisely, I look forward to sending a big fat check to whatever decent candidate aims to unseat Kern in the next election cycle. I'm sure I'm not alone in that plan. So Kern's remark about her speech putting her in jeopardy may have been surprisingly prescient. One can hope.

Unfortunately, Kern's speech offered little else in the way of insight, unless we're talking about insight into the fears, lies and stereotypes that dominate the religious right's thinking about gays. Kern claimed that "studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades."

I don't know what "studies" Kern is referring to, but the claim is nonsense on its face. Can you name a now-extinct society that "totally embraced" homosexuality? Me neither. (While there have been societies in history that permitted particular homosexual practices, those practices were narrowly circumscribed.)

Kern added that "This stuff is deadly and it's spreading and it will destroy our young people; it will destroy this nation."

I share Kern's concern for our young people, which is one reason I'm eager to unseat her. I remember what it was like to hear such stereotypes as a teenager and to think, "No, no, no-that can't be me." I remember how ugly myths about homosexuality exacerbated my coming-out struggle. I don't want other youths to suffer that.

Kern also claimed that homosexuality "has deadly consequences for those people involved in it; they have more suicides, they're more discouraged, there's more illness [and] their lifespans are shorter."

Again we have unsubstantiated myths and outright falsehoods, this time mixed with a grain of truth. Who wouldn't be "discouraged" in the face of attacks like Kern's? Should anyone be surprised that in Kern's world, gay people-and especially, gay youth-find that their lives are more difficult than others'?

In this respect, Kern behaves like a bully who punches a kid on the playground and then justifies his attack by saying that he's troubled by his victim's bleeding. Yes, Rep. Kern, gay youth are at a higher risk for suicide. But their problem is not homosexuality. Their problem is people like you.

I realize that such accusations of "bloody hands" don't do much to promote dialogue. I have no doubt that Sally Kern is sincere in her beliefs. What's more, some of those beliefs may even stem from virtuous motives-respect for tradition, concern for future generations, love of country and so on. But virtuous motives don't make such beliefs any less false, ugly, or dangerous.

I'm particularly irritated-though by no means surprised-by Kern's attempt to cloak her homophobia in religion. At one point in her original screed she opines that "Not everybody's lifestyle is equal-just like not all religions are equal." She's right about that, too. I'd say that any religion that permits spreading lies or demonizing people because of whom they love is scarcely worthy of respect.

In the wake of this fiasco, Kern has complained that her critics want to deny her free speech. "Obviously, you have the right as an American to choose that lifestyle," she said, "but I also have the right to express my views."

Yes, Rep. Kern, you do. But free speech doesn't give anyone a free pass to say stupid things without repercussions.

In a recent op-ed on GayWired.com, black lesbian commentator Jasmyne Cannick wrote, "Charles Knipp is a self-described 45-year-old fat, gay white man who believes he's on a mission from God. A mission that involves mimicking Black women as his alter ego character Shirley Q. Liquor." After describing what she calls Knipp's "blackface minstrel show," Cannick writes, "I blame gay America, from the political leaders to the club owners, for turning a blind eye to Knipp's blatantly racist routines. We are the reason that his racist act continues to go nearly undetected on the race radar."

Having heard an excerpt of Knipp's act thanks to PamsHouseBlend.com, I think its obscurity is well deserved. Nonetheless, if Cannick wishes to call Knipp out as publicly as possible, that is her right. But it is a big jump from blaming club owners who book the act to blaming all of gay America. Cannick specifically targets white gays. She responds to Knipp's rendition of "a welfare mother with nineteen kids who guzzles malt liquor and drives a Caddy" by making disparaging racial generalizations of her own.

It is certainly easy to understand Cannick's anger at Knipp's insulting portrayals as well as his method of defending himself from her criticism. Knipp recently photoshopped Cannick's head onto a porn actress's body and posted it on his website. Previously, Cannick received death and rape threats after her private e-mail and phone number were posted by Knipp's promoter. Unfortunately, Cannick's response hits innocent and guilty alike.

Cannick says accusingly to white gays, "you usurp the Black Civil Rights Movement's strategies and language." This suggests that the black civil rights movement is the exclusive property of African Americans, which could hardly stray further from the spirit of a movement whose legacy belongs to all Americans.

Cannick says to Knipp, "Most people in your situation settle for surrounding themselves with Black friends, marrying someone Black, moving into a Black neighborhood, listening to hip hop, watching BET, eating Soul Food and voting for Barack Obama. Why don't you give it a try and leave the act of being Black to those of us who are?"

For white people to have black friends, marry someone black, and vote for Barack Obama is merely a reflection of life in a multiracial society. It is happening in numbers far beyond what can be ascribed to a pathological desire for a race change, and merits contempt only if viewed through the prism of racial separatism.

Noting that RuPaul has defended Knipp, Cannick dismisses RuPaul by saying "he's as disconnected from Black America as Ward Connerly." How can someone's racial authenticity depend upon holding particular views? Speaking of Obama, he represents a healthy departure from this perpetual state-of-siege mentality.

Cannick's throwdown with Knipp notwithstanding, there is no evidence that white people in blackface are the next big trend in entertainment. I had never heard of Shirley Q. Liquor until I read about her in an earlier piece by Cannick. In this respect, Cannick risks helping Knipp by increasing his notoriety.

In any event, it is unclear how people who have never even seen Knipp can be blamed for his depredations. Cannick's implication is that Knipp's ability to get paid for his performances proves that white gays in general are racist. Is Knipp playing to packed stadiums? It is peculiar that Cannick seeks to combat racism by venting her own racial hostility. If she wants respect from others, she should offer it herself.

Fortunately, a new generation is emerging which is less deferential to the old racial categories, and for whom racial mixing is increasingly commonplace. For those willing to drop their protective masks of cynicism, this social development might recall the redemption in Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, where descendants of a judge from the Salem witch trials and of one of his victims dispel the old curse between the two families by falling in love.

Be that as it may, it is sad that Cannick would impugn the motives of those of us who have found love across the racial divide. Such attitudes help no one. Instead of the overused tactic of insisting that all white gays join her cause or be accused of racism, she should try something truly radical: treat people as individual human beings who are responsible for what they believe and say and do, the same as she.