Them, Us, or All of Us?

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As it's Easter, let's turn to a more upbeat story regarding gays and religion. The Jewish newspaper The Forward reports that traditionally gay synagogues are now so well accepted that they are grappling with the high percentages of heteros and their families who want to join. (hat tip: Rick Sincere). Excerpt:

That difficulty has become particularly acute at Bet Haverim, where more than half the 300 members are straight. After some confusion with Atlanta's gay newspaper, Bet Haverim's rabbi, Joshua Lesser, asked that Bet Haverim be described as a "gay-founded" synagogue....

"I think that was a profound transformational moment where most of us realized: 'Oh, this is the value of opening up our synagogue. We have created a community of allies,'" Lesser said.

I also hear that something similar has happened in larger MCC churches as well. And even the gay-focused gun-defending (and training) enthusiasts, the Pink Pistols, recount that straights who are uncomfortable with NRA-type groups are joining.

Other minorities have long confronted issues of assimilation vs. independent institutions, and the need to strike a balance that preserves what's best in minority culture while helping to enrich (and being enriched by) the larger community to which we all belong.

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Equality through Visibility

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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.

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Sally Kern’s Free Speech

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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.

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Not Alright with Wright

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Updated March 25

The Washington Blade headline (top of page 1) proclaims Obama pastor backs gay rights. Oh, so that makes the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a good guy as far as we (that is, the "LGBT community") are concerned? Wright's gay defenders represent the sort of inbred myopia that distresses many of us who have moved away from the LGBT left-liberal party line. Rev. Wright may call on the Lord by saying "God damn America," he may blame 9/11 on the "chickens are coming home to roost" for U.S. support of "state terrorism against the Palestinians." He may declare that the U.S. government invented and spread HIV/AIDS "as a means of genocide against people of color." But hey, he upholds the progressive line on gay rights, sort of. Let's rally to his support, and that of his most-famed mentee. (Yes, Obama has stated he disagrees with some cranky statements uttered by his most revered spiritual adviser for the past 20 years. Sorry, my bad.)

More. From the funny pages.

Furthermore: Why the speech was a brilliant fraud. Writes Charles Krauthammer:

Why didn't he leave-why doesn't he leave even today-a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction….

Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

And yet Andrew Sullivan, Chris Crain, and other gay pundits still find themselves in full swoon. And they argue that Wright's support for gay rights balances his instances of hatefulness (Sullivan, here, and Crain, here). Just what, one wonders, would be needed to shake their entrancement?

More still. Bruce Bawer writes:

I was no fan of the late Bill Buckley, but a piece by him in the current Commentary has proven surprisingly timely. In it he describes how he and others, back in the 1960s, dealt with the huge and unwelcome influence in conservative circles of the John Birch Society, whose nutbag leader Robert Welch believed Eisenhower was a Communist agent. What did Buckley do? Give a speech in which he refused to disown Welch, explaining that Welch was a part of the big, complex picture of American conservatism and that he couldn't disown him any more than he could disown his grandmother? No, Buckley sought, through the power of the pen, to weaken the Birch Society's influence and separate Welch from the bulk of his followers. Others, too, took part in this effort. And, over time, it worked. It's called behaving responsibly. It's called leadership

And Gregory Rodriguez writes in the LA Times on what he terms Obama's brilliant bad speech:

Just maybe more progress will be made if average, fair-minded, decent people simply chose not to associate with-and lend their credibility to-haters, extremists or sowers of racial discord. Obama could have taken that simple path any time over the last 20 years. He chose not to. Now it's too late.

Yet still more. Christopher Hitchens' take:

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily.... To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith.

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No Enemies (as Long as They Hate Bush)

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The conservative but not homophobic FrontPageMagazine.com (I've written for them, as have other IGF authors) has an article titled Complicity in Iran's Anti-Gay Jihad. It details how Britain's Labour government has finally reversed course, in the face of public protests, and will (for now) allow Mehdi Kazemi, a 19-year-old Iranian student, to remain in Britian. Kazemi's lover was executed in Iran for sodomy, reportedly after naming Kazemi as his sexual partner. Kazemi would surely be executed had Britain succeeded in deporting him.

Writes Robert Spencer:

Yet despite all this, the Left in America, for all its vaunted concern for gay rights, remains largely silent about Iran. Has The Nation, or Katha Pollitt, rushed to Kazemi's aid? No - not a word about Kazemi has appeared in The Nation. And The Nation is not alone. Although Columbia students did react derisively to Ahmadinejad's denial that there were homosexuals in Iran, the violent persecution of gays in Iran was well-known in the West long before the President of Iran's visit there - and yet he was still welcomed enthusiastically by students who would have lustily reviled Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham, neither of whom has ever called for anything remotely close to the execution of gays, had either of them dared to set foot on campus. And a delegation of Columbia professors, according to Tehran's Mehr News Agency, even planned a trip to Iran in order to present an official apology to Ahmadinejad for the way he was treated by Columbia President Lee Bollinger when he visited the university.

There seems to have been a great silence, as well, from the leading U.S. LGBT groups. Perhaps they think that a friendly dialogue with Ahmadinejad by the next administration will take care of all.

There's more background on this outrageous affair in the Times of London. That Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary in Gordon Brown's govenrment, had to be shamed by activist Peter Tatchell (whose group OutRage! has taken heat from the British left for standing up to Islamofascist homophobia) and by a gay member of the House of Lords before she halted her efforts to send Kazemi to his death is utterly despicable.

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IGF’s Video All-Stars

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IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter, the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, lets us know that video of presentations from the recent symposium Is Gay Marriage Conservative? can now be viewed online.

The symposium was held February 15 at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. The event aimed "to foster civil debate among conservatives and within conservative thought about gay marriage" and focused on "the underlying policy question of whether gay marriage is a good idea from a conservative perspective." As I previously wrote, it's the kind of open exchange of ideas between independent gay intellectuals and prominent conservatives that IGF loves to see, and that the "progressive" LGBT echo chamber organizations have long shunned.

Presenters included Dale, Jonathan Rauch, David Frum and Charles Murray, among others. Check them out!

And while you're in a video watching mode, be sure to spend some time with another IGF contributing author, Wayne State University philosophy professor John Corvino. John fequently debates representatives of the religious right before student audiences. Here, he presents a free 8-minute excerpt from his renowned lecture on the morality of same-sex love.

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“Minstrel” Madness

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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.

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We’re Here, We’re Queer…We’re Moral!

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What's morally wrong with homosexuality? In this video excerpt from his acclaimed lecture-heard in colleges across the country-philosopher and ethicist John Corvino examines the case against same-sex love and finds...there is none.

You can get the whole hour-long lecture on DVD here.

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Sex and Destroy

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What's to say about Eliot Spitzer? If (a) he weren't married, and (b) he hadn't made an issue of cracking down on prostitution services, then I'd say it's nobody's business. But given his mendacity and hypocrisy, that's not the case.

The Washington Examiner does a nice job of comparing Spitzer's imbroglio with other politics and prostitution scandals, which highlights the extent to which prostitution stings have become a favored device in the politics of personal destruction toolkit.

That's another reason why (and again, leaving aside Spitzer's mendacity and hypocrisy), making the purchasing of sexual pleasure illegal opens the door to selective prosecutions and other bad things. Regulate it as might be necessary for health and safety, zone it away from the kiddies, and tax it like other businesses, says I.

The arrangements for the rendezvous at a Washington hotel were caught on a federal wiretap recording last month and laid out in legal papers that reveal the intricacies involved in hiring a $1,200-an-hour call girl and sending her to D.C. from New York.

How nice that the FBI has nothing better to do than elaborate surveillance operations aimed at prosecuting consensual, commercial relations involving adults. What's terrorism, after all, compared to illicit nookie?

You know, if you're a porn director starring in your own films, you can pay a professional to have sex with you and as long as you film it for commercial sale it's all (still, thankfully) legal, despite the efforts of the Meese Commission. How inane does that make our prostitution laws look?

More. Andrew Sullivan picks up on the same theme.

More still.

Client #9, also known as Eliot Spitzer, enthusiastically enlisted in a crusade for tougher anti-prostitution laws and specifically for steps to raise the penalties for "johns" who patronized the women involved. The campaign bore fruit, and in his first months as Governor signed into law what advocates call "the toughest and most comprehensive anti-sex-trade law in the nation". Among other provisions, the law "lays the groundwork for a more aggressive crackdown on demand, by increasing the penalty for patronizing a prostitute, a misdemeanor, to up to a year in jail, from a maximum of three months." (Nina Bernstein, "Foes of Sex Trade Are Stung by the Fall of an Ally", New York Times, Mar. 12). (via Overlawyered.com)

And reader "Avee" comments:

Yes, the FBI may have initially been following a suspicious money transfer in Spitzer's private accounts. But once it became clear this wasn't about corruption or terrorism, but purchasing commercial sex, they continued with the wiretaps and surveillance. So Steve still has a point about the FBI misdirecting its resources at prostitution.

Furthermore. Alan Dershowitz agrees it was entrapment:

Once federal authorities concluded that the "suspicious financial transactions" attributed to Mr. Spitzer did not fit into any of the paradigms for which the statutes were enacted, they should have closed the investigation. It's simply none of the federal government's business that a man may have been moving his own money around in order to keep his wife in the dark about his private sexual peccadilloes.

As [the Wall Street Journal] has reported: "It isn't clear why the FBI sought the wiretap warrant. Federal prostitution probes are exceedingly rare, lawyers say, except in cases involving organized-crime leaders or child abuse. Federal wiretaps are seldom used to make these cases . . ."

And Nora Ephron observes:

This is the problem these guys get into: they're so morally rigid and puritanical in real life (and on some level, so responsible for this priggish world we now live in) that when they get caught committing victimless crimes, everyone thinks they should be punished for sheer hypocrisy.

But they shouldn't really. It's one of the things you have to admire about Senator Larry Craig: he's still there.

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Sexuality: The Front Line of Freedom

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Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (based in New Orleans) became the first and only jurisdiction in the country to recognize an individual's right to bear both arms (in a 2001 case) and to purchase adult toys "designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." The latter case involved a Texas statute that criminalized the promotion and sale of sex toys. As the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro explained:

"The Fifth Circuit's analysis correctly rests on the Supreme Court's 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, which found that Texas's anti-homosexual sodomy statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment right to engage in private intimate conduct. Put simply, there is no state interest compelling enough to overcome the individual right to freedom in the bedroom.

Because the 11th Circuit last year upheld a similar Alabama "obscene device" statute, Shapiro says that "the Fifth Circuit's decision now squarely opens up a 'circuit split,' which means the issue is ripe for the Court to take up next term." Here's hoping the highest court in the land follows the Fifth Circuit and decides that adults are entitled to possess both handguns in the home (in a case now before the Supreme Court) and sex toys.

And here's another look at how liberty and sexuality stand together. Jamie Kirchick writes in the New Republic of how gay porn actor and director Michael Lucas, who is a Jewish Russian immigrant, has run afoul of the politically correct academic crowd because of his unbridled condemnation of homophobia and anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. This particularly brouhaha erupted after Stanford University's student government asked Lucas to host a lecture on sexual health, which caused other students to protests against the invite. Responded Lucas, "It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims."

Kirchick admits that Lucas is often over the top (forgive me), but I like this quote from the story:

"He's from the East Coast," says Mark Kernes, a senior editor at Adult Video News. "Us people on the West Coast are more laid back."

More on gun rights. The Pink Pistols' brief is the lead for the Washington Post story on amicus briefs in the Second Amendment case now before the Court. (IGF contributing author Dale Carpenter helped write the brief.)

More on Jew-bashing + gay-bashing. The most recent in an ongoing series of attacks in France.

Europe capitulates, again. A gay Iranian teenager faces deportation from Britain and execution in his home country after a Dutch court refused to hear his asylum claim.

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