IGF CultureWatch

There seem to be a number of fears-maybe it would be better to call them concerns-out there at the margins of the gay community over research on the origin(s) of homosexuality and the possibility of changing people's sexual orientation. The concern is mainly that the results of such research could be used to prevent or extirpate homosexuality.

I suspect there isn't much anyone can do about such research. Like all research, it is going to continue because people-including most of us who are gay-want to know more about ourselves and about how the world works. But I also feel sure that any concerns are greatly exaggerated.

Take the issue of research into the origins of (causes of, reasons for) male homosexuality. That would be interesting to know, just as it would be interesting to know the equally mysterious cause(s) of heterosexuality. But scientists aren't quite researching the right thing. Most researchers seem very confused about what homosexuality/homosexual desire actually is. And most seem overly impressed with the fact that most women are also attracted to men and so draw the logically invalid conclusion that male homosexuality must be caused by something female in gay men-as if desire for men can have only one cause.

Clever studies that manage to change an insect's or animal's overall behavior from male typical to female typical are not about homosexuality at all. Male homosexual behavior has no particular connection to acting like a female. It is not thinking or feeling or acting like a woman. It is about a man (whether top or bottom) being attracted as a man to other men. (In some Third World countries some gay men do imitate women as a signaling device, but that practice is being abandoned with the worldwide spread of gay liberation.)

Scientists should be doing research into the origins of homosexual desire. Homosexual desire is largely a cognitive or conceptual matter, so the origin(s) have to be sought in the cognitive (even esthetic) values of the gay individual.

What reasons are there, we might want to know, that result in our being attracted not just to men generically but attracted to (and having a physical response to) a particular man across a crowded room, and not have any response to other men (or women) in the room? What meaning does this person's appearance-and, later, other qualities-hold for us such that we feel desire?

Researchers who try to study twins to find genetic causes forget that twins raised together share a common upbringing, often look alike and have similar personalities, leading parents and others to treat them similarly, generating a similar value system and a similar response to the world in both twins. Even twins reared apart often look alike and/or share common physical capacities, leading people to treat them similarly. Twin studies are also plagued by recruitment biases-using twins who know of their twin's sexuality, which introduces a bias right away.

Studies of the human brain-including some of the most widely publicized-have not been replicated and have been vigorously criticized for methodological flaws and for ignoring the large number of exceptions and counter-examples. The same is true of "gene studies" which also depend on assuming an implausibly low percentage of gay men, to say nothing of not facing the problem of people who feel both homosexual and heterosexual desire.

So I don't mind research on homosexuality. It is just that most of it is pointless, misdirected and based on false assumptions. If researchers ever find the reasons why some men are gay (and others heterosexual), that will be interesting to know. But there is no reason to think that will enable anyone to expunge homosexual desire. The vast number of elements that go into producing anyone's personality and cognitive value system are too varied and too little understood for anyone to be able to control or change.

In fact, most of the studies of people ("ex-gays") who claim to have changed their sexuality have serious methodological problems, from recruitment bias to insufficient follow-up, to a failure to rigorously cross-examine interviewees (such as Kinsey did), to a failure to define what changing "sexual orientation" actually means. It doesn't mean just a change in behavior. It has to mean a change in desire.

Perhaps the best recent book on the topic is Ex-Gay Research, edited by Jack Drescher and Kenneth Zucker (Haworth Press, 2006). It consists of a large number of commentaries, most skeptical, on the controversial study by Robert Spitzer of men and women who claimed they had (more or less) changed their sexual orientation. It is an excellent introduction to the basic issues involved.

My grandmother, then a 16-year-old Polish Jew, came to America in 1910 and never looked back. Neither did her son, despite vestigial anti-Semitism early in what became a flourishing legal career. Nor did I, her grandson-not, at least, on account of being Jewish. The experience of anti-Semitism has been as unknown to me in the United States as it was ubiquitous to my European forebears.

To be an American homosexual, however, is more complicated. Few of us feel or want to feel anything but American; but many of us, perhaps most, have at one time or another looked envyingly at Europe.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain allow gay marriage (as do Canada and South Africa). Seven European countries offer nationally recognized civil unions, which are almost the same as marriage, and five offer domestic-partner status. The United States, by contrast, allows same-sex couples to marry in a single, relatively small state: Massachusetts. A few other states offer civil unions or domestic-partner programs. Most states, however, ban same-sex marriage and, often, civil unions.

The federal government in Washington affords no recognition of same-sex couples at all. Heterosexual Americans can obtain residency for their foreign partners for the price of a $25 marriage license; countless gay Americans cannot get residency for their partners at any price. To stay together, more than a few same-sex couples live in exile abroad-often in Europe.

The litany goes on. Nineteen European countries-plus Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and South Africa-allow homosexuals to serve openly in their armed forces; America joins Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia (among others) in banning gay military service. No less important, millions of Americans, particularly but by no means only on the religious right, continue to anathematize homosexuality and campaign for public policies that do the same. In much of Europe, by contrast, homosexuality is just not very controversial. In America, gay people have achieved a large measure of toleration and respect, but being noncontroversial-well, that seems far beyond our reach.

Yet, despite all that, America has some cause for pride, straight as well as gay. To say America is "behind" Europe on gay equality is to overlook that America's coming to terms with homosexuality is a very different kind of project than Europe's, because America is a very different kind of place. In Europe, acceptance of homosexuality is by and large an afterthought in the larger movement toward modernization and secularism. Europe, though more religious than the common U.S. stereotype allows, is decidedly less pious than America-and homosexuality, though condemned by the Abrahamic faiths, poses no conflict at all with secular modernity. If gay people are stable, productive, law-abiding citizens, what could anyone have against them?

Much of Europe has also embraced what American observers sometimes call a deinstitutionalized view of the family, in which all kinds of family structures enjoy equal claim on public recognition and social resources. Marriage, in such settings, is increasingly a mere formality. Children in Denmark and Sweden, for example, are less likely than American kids to be raised by married couples. Yet Danish and Swedish children are more likely to be raised by both their parents. Something other than marriage is the glue holding these Northern European families together. In a post-marital culture, same-sex marriage looks like a lifestyle choice, not a threat.

In short, Europe is dissolving many of the traditions that make homosexuality seem morally and socially problematic. America is not. America has embarked on a harder, perhaps more ambitious, project, which is to reconcile homosexuality with traditional moral scruples and social structures.

The United States is a country of immigrants, of transients, of ethnic diversity. Identity comes less from language, ancestry and birthplace than from creed, community and culture. Americans tend to understand who they are in terms of what they believe and who they believe it with. Millions ground themselves in the Bible, in faith communities or in generations-old unwritten norms, which is why so-called "social issues" like homosexuality and abortion are so central to U.S. politics (mystifyingly so, from a European point of view). This may be good, it may be not so good, but it is a fact, probably a necessary fact in so fluid and diverse a society.

And therefore it is also a fact that America cannot just "outgrow" or "move beyond" its conflicts over homosexuality. America will have to reach a new understanding with homosexuality, one that squares it with the claims of both civic equality and social tradition.

For gay Americans, the bad news is that this reconciliation is a difficult and slow process, the work of generations. The good news is that the work is proceeding apace, faster than I once believed possible.

I was born in 1960, a time when homosexuals were America's vampires: pale, sinister creatures with warped souls and insatiable appetites who lurked in a nighttime underworld and sucked society's lifeblood. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, terrible though it was, helped transform us to mortals. The country saw us bleed and die; it watched as we cared for each other when too often even our own relatives would not. Now, as same-sex love and commitment-to each other and to children-comes front and center, the country is starting to see us as families.

Just a decade ago, same-sex marriage was a nutty joke, a contradiction in terms. Today (according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center) more than a third of Americans support it, and a majority support civil unions. Millions of Americans have come to accept the dignity and morality of homosexual love and commitment, even if they have trouble with gay sex per se. No less important, most gay and straight Americans who support same-sex marriage do so because they believe in marriage, not because they want to dethrone it.

Those who dismiss America as "behind" Europe on social issues often fail to appreciate where America is coming from, and how far it has traveled. Where gay equality is concerned, you can call the United States the most laggard of major secular societies; or you can call it the most progressive of great traditionalist cultures. Or, most accurately, you can say it continues to go its own way by working out how to be both at once. Whatever you call it, I would not trade it.

I just finished reading an engrossing book titled "The Age of the Bachelor" by Howard Chudacoff. It details the development of a specifically bachelor-oriented culture in major U. S. cities between 1880 and 1930, suggesting why it developed, how extensive it was, and what institutions grew up to service its needs.

Some of the reasons for its development include the rise in the average age of marriage, the rapid increase in immigration, and the difficulty many men working low wage jobs would have had supporting a family. But more important was the development of institutions to meet the needs of single men for meals, housing, companionship and entertainment--thus making it possible for increasing numbers of men to lead a comfortable and satisfying life without any need for marriage.

The extensive array of primarily male institutions that developed or expanded to meet bachelors' living and socializing needs included rooming houses, cafes, saloons, barbershops (given the lack of hot water for shaving in most rooming houses), pool halls, tailor shops, bathhouses (no hot water for bathing either), all-male social clubs and fraternal organizations (Elks, Odd Fellows), vaudeville theaters and music halls, participant and spectator sports, and "red-light districts."

The newly developed YMCAs might offer any or all of the following amenities: rooms for rent, cafeteria and lunch counter, barbershop, gym, swimming pool, shoeshine stand, telephones, employment service, laundry room, game room, newsstand, and even entertainment in the evenings.

There are only a few incidental mentions of gay men in the book, but it seems obvious that some of those bachelors (15 to 20 percent?) were gay and that bachelor culture enabled gay men to meet one another and explore their lives with a new freedom. In some ways the book can serve as a prologue to George Chauncey's "Gay New York"--and gay Boston, gay Chicago, and other major cities where bachelor culture created the conditions for the first wave of gay community.

For instance, not only did primarily bachelor social institutions enable gay men to find one another more easily, but some rooming houses and YMCAs allowed residents to take guests to their rooms. Some bathhouses turned a blind eye to patrons who engaged in sex and some bathhouse employees must have been available for "massages." And there must have been young gay or bisexual men in any of these environments who were willing to engage in sex for a small fee. For much of this we have to make educated guesses but Chudacoff's book gives us the material to do that.

Although modern technology and a developed economy have enabled today's bachelors to have at home conveniences (telephones, hot water, spectator sports) that were once available only publicly, it is still fascinating to see how many of the social and entertainment institutions of modern singles culture and our gay culture have preserved or replicated in one form or another institutions developed around the turn of the century.

"The Age of the Bachelor" is not a new book. It was published in 1999, so you won't see it listed in any of those best books of 2007 or whenever. But not every good book gets the attention it deserves when it is published. This is particularly true of academic books, which tend to survive--if at all--as footnotes in other books. Yet when you seek them out they can turn out to be highly informative in ways you did not expect.

I've run across several other books in the past year, whether gay-specific or not, that I found worthwhile reading. Among them:

Rictor Norton, "The Myth of the Modern Homosexual" (1997). The title refers to the modern "social constructionist" myth that no men or women had a homosexual consciousness until the late 19th century when the word "homosexual" was coined. Drawing on copious historical research tracing self-understood homosexuals back through the centuries, Norton destroys that myth and restores gay history to its full legitimacy. He also shows how flimsy were the arguments advanced to support the myth.

David M. Friedman, "A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis" (2001). Friedman wittily traces the various ways the male member has been viewed in different times and cultures, including religious, anthropological, psychoanalytic, scientific and feminist approaches, and illustrates how the penis has been symbolized (battering ram, measuring stick, cigar, gear shift) over the years.

Michael Sherry, "Gay Artists in Modern American Culture: An Imagined Conspiracy" (2007). Sherry details the increasing number of gay creative artists in the fields of music, theater, and literature in the 1950s and the growth of a homophobic reaction against them. Critics charged them with shallowness, insincerity, inauthenticity and a distorted view of the world. A fascinating recovery of a dismal episode in recent American history.

The 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses loom, so what's a gay Republican to do? For many, the answer has been to support Ron Paul. He's not going to win any primaries, but a vote for him could be thought a protest against the theocratic tendencies of the party. It could also be a vote for libertarian principle, which appeals to some. Yet while some of Paul's views are superficially appealing, he's a very bad choice.

Let's start with what's attractive about Paul. First, he's not the other GOP candidates. With the exception of Sen. John McCain, they're about as politically and ideologically unlovely a lot as one can imagine. They're nativist and anti-evolution. Several are running for National Pastor instead of president.

On gay issues, they're as bad as we've ever had. The two candidates with gay-friendly records -- Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney -- have abandoned their erstwhile principles to cozy up to religious conservatives.

All of them support Don't Ask, Don't Tell. All, except McCain, support some kind of anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment. Giuliani, who initially opposed any amendment, has since wobbled.

In walks Ron Paul, formerly a practicing doctor, promising to limit government and sticking by his principles. He would abolish the IRS, the income tax system, and the departments of Education, Energy, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. He would eliminate Medicare and end student loans for education. He would even get government out of the medical licensing business. As he put it in an interview with Google, this means your neighbor could dispense medications.

Part of this is intriguing. If we were starting the world over again, it might make sense to do a lot of things very differently from the way we do them now.

But we are not at liberty to begin the world anew. Taken together, Dr. Paul's radical prescriptions would entail a massive disruption of life in the United States as we know it. Millions of elderly Americans depend on Medicare for basic medical needs. Student loans have given a college education to millions of middle- and lower-income students whose financial needs were not met by private markets. Every person a pharmacist? I'm sorry, but that's just loony. It's also typically reckless of Paul.

He wants the U.S. to quit the United Nations and withdraw from just about every important treaty it has entered. This sort of thing gets applause from conspiracy theorists who think U.S. "sovereignty" is endangered, but it's stupid foreign policy.

He says he supports free trade, but opposes the agreements that have made trade freer.

The best that could be said about a Paul presidency is that almost nothing he believes would become law. We might as well elect Daffy Duck.

But isn't Paul the best of the Republicans on gay issues?

Paul's opposition to a federal marriage amendment is welcome. But he voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as heterosexual for federal purposes. DOMA substantially reduced the legal significance of marriage even for same-sex couples in states where their unions might be permitted. In contrast to the federal marriage amendment, which has no chance of passing, DOMA has done actual harm to gay families.

In an interview with ABC's John Stossel, Paul said that he supports gay marriage. Then he explained what he meant: "Sure, they can do whatever they want and they can call it whatever they want, just so they don't expect to impose their relationship on somebody else. They can't make me, personally, accept what they do, but they can do whatever they want."

There's more than a whiff of homophobia in this. It's akin to, "They have a right to their disgusting behavior."

More importantly, it's not clear what he means by saying gay couples can call their relationships "whatever they want." If he means that gay couples can contract for certain legal rights and call what results a "marriage," that's nothing new. And full legal marriage "imposes" on people in all kinds of ways since married couples have state-granted rights and benefits others don't have.

Paul's answer to this is to abolish marriage as it exists, to "privatize" it. State-sponsored marriage is bound up in our law at all levels of government. Ending state involvement in it is has as little public support as any imaginable policy proposal. So it's naive at best and a cynical dodge at worst to offer gay families "privatized" marriage as the answer to the practical problems they face right now.

Paul says citizens should be able to serve in the military as long as their sexuality is not "disruptive." That suggests he'd apply the same standard to heterosexuals and homosexuals in uniform. But the whole point of opposition to gays in the military is the claim that homosexuality itself degrades unit moral and cohesion. Paul has had nothing to say about this.

Personally, I'd vote for McCain. While I disagree with him on a few things, including campaign finance regulation, he's the candidate in the GOP field with the most potential to be a good president. He has the integrity, the life experience, and the national-security credentials for it. Alone among the Democratic and Republican candidates, he has the credibility with military leaders to end or at least to weaken DADT, if he decided to do that. The others are all talk on the issue.

A vote for Paul, on the other hand, is a flight from responsibility. He is too ideologically hard and pure to be president. A conscientious voter should think harder about the serious choices.