IGF CultureWatch

The Evesham Township School District in New Jersey has been embroiled in a dispute over whether to show Debra Chasnoff's video "That's a Family" about non-traditional families. The video includes families with adopted children, mixed-race families and same-sex couples with children.

According to the New York Times (Sept. 14) several parents objected after the video was shown to third grade students. The objections eventually led to the video being dropped.

Divorce, adoption, even mixed-race parents, those are just facts about the modern world. But same-sex couples with children? That's not a fact. That's a controversy.

Parents who objected to the video claimed that they were not motivated by prejudice against gays but by concern that the video was not suitable for such young children.

The Times quoted one parent as saying, "I don't think it was appropriate. If it was maybe in the fifth grade, but in third grade they're a little too young." But then the parent retracted even that plausible position, adding, "It's something to be discussed within families. I think it's the parents' responsibility to teach the kids about that stuff."

Another parent reportedly said that children "shouldn't learn questionable things in school that they're not ready for and don't understand." What is questionable? Whether gay parents exist? Whether they love their children?

Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said the opposition was fueled not by concerns about parental control but "about fear of gay people."

But I suspect that Goldstein is not quite correct on either point. The opposition to the video was likely fueled not so much by fear of gay people as by plain, old, ordinary antipathy--disapproval, hostility--to gay people and to any mention in the curriculum of their existence.

And the objections were prompted precisely by the issue of parental control. Parents understandably want to determine what and how their children learn, but parents who want to keep their children from knowing about the way the world is are doing them few favors.

It is hard to justify letting some parents control what government (tax-supported) schools teach since the schools are paid for by parents with a variety of values and attitudes. In other words, the objecting parents want to control what other people's children as well as their own are "exposed to."

In other times and places, these are the same type of parents who object to school lessons on other aspects of the modern world--evolution, birth control, sex education, comparative religion. In the past they would have objected to any mention of interracial marriage. And now they are objecting to saying anything about gays--whether gays as parents, gays as couples or just the fact that gays and lesbians exist.

None of the parents bother to explain why they think young children "aren't ready for" and "don't understand" about gay parents or gay couples. What is so hard to understand about two men adopting a child or two women raising the child of one of them from a previous marriage? If children grow up with that information it does not seem odd or incomprehensible; it is just another aspect of a fascinating and varied world they are learning about. The children probably think of the gay couple as "best friends" or "roommates."

The problem is not with the children's understanding, but with the parents' importation of a different issue. When religious conservatives think about gays, they think primarily of sex. Gays? Sex. Gay couples? Sex. Gay parents? Sex. And they do not want their children learning about gay sex. But it is doubtful that third graders connect gay parenting with sex. Conservative parents see sex where it isn't even mentioned.

This is the same mentality that made the children's book "And Tango Makes Three" the library book that drew the most parental objections last year. The book is a charming true story (by all means read it) about two male penguins who together brood and hatch an egg and begin raising the baby penguin. Homophobic parents objected to the book because it was "about homosexuality." But nowhere in the book is there even a hint that the two penguins engaged in sex.

Such beliefs border on psychosis.

If conservative parents fear anything, it is not homosexuals, but that their children may abandon the parents' hostility toward gays and come to accept gays as just another part of the world around them. It is this loss of control over their children's values and social attitudes, not the facts that the children learn, that upsets conservative parents most. But that is always the risk of education.

David Blankenhorn is the kind of same-sex marriage opponent you might consider inviting to your (gay) wedding.

I'm not saying you should. After all, in his books, articles and talks, Blankenhorn has defended the position that same-sex marriage weakens a valuable institution. So when your minister intones "If anyone here has any objections to this union…" all eyes would be on him.

But Blankenhorn is virtually unique among same-sex marriage opponents in his insistence on "the equal dignity of homosexual love." He has stated this belief repeatedly in his talks, particularly those to conservative audiences. And he stated it again recently in an online "bloggingheads" discussion with same-sex marriage advocate Jonathan Rauch. Despite his ultimate opposition, Blankenhorn concedes that there are a number of strong reasons for supporting same-sex marriage, not least being our equal worth.

This is an unusual, refreshing, and significant concession.

Before you call me an Uncle Tom-excited about crumbs from the table rather than demanding my rightful place at it-let me be clear.

I think Blankenhorn is dead wrong in his opposition to same-sex marriage. In particular, his argument is marked by some serious fallacies:

(1) The leap from "Most people who want to dethrone marriage from its privileged position support same-sex marriage" to "Most same-sex-marriage supporters want to dethrone marriage from its privileged position." That's like moving from "Most professional basketball players are tall" to "Most tall people are professional basketball players." In fact, most couples who want same-sex marriage do so precisely because they recognize marriage's special status.

(2) The leap from "Same-sex-marriage support correlates with 'marriage-weakening behaviors' (non-marital cohabitation, single-parent childrearing, divorce)" to "Same-sex marriage should be opposed." Putting aside the questionable claims about correlation, this argument falsely assumes that only bad things correlate with bad things. As I've argued before, that's not so. (Worldwide, affluence correlates with obesity, but it doesn't follow we should oppose affluence.)

Besides, Blankenhorn overlooks all of the good things that correlate with same-sex marriage (higher education rates, support for religious freedom, respect for women, and so on).

(3) The move from "Children do better with their biological parents than in other kinds of arrangements" to "Same-sex marriage is bad for children." Blankenhorn's argument here is more subtle than most. It's not that gay and lesbian couples make bad parents (indeed, Blankenhorn supports gay adoption); it's that same-sex marriage reinforces the notion that marriage isn't primarily about children. And widespread acceptance of that notion-particularly in the hands of the heterosexual majority, who do not escape Blankenhorn's critique-is bad for children. This argument (which deserves more than a cursory treatment) is marked by a number of dubious empirical assumptions; it also ignores children who are already being raised by same-sex parents and would palpably benefit from their parents' legal marriage.

Beyond these concerns, I'm tempted to respond to Blankenhorn's point about "the equal dignity of homosexual love" with an exasperated "Duh!" Yes, we love our partners! We rejoice with them in times of joy; we suffer when they ail; we weep when they die. The failure to notice this is not just obtuse, it's morally careless. Thanking someone for acknowledging it feels akin to thanking the neighbor kids for not peeing on my lawn, or thanking my students for not sleeping in class-those were never supposed to be options, anyway.

Ironically, it's largely because of kids that I resist giving this kind of snarky response. It's all well and good that I think truths about our lives are obvious. But in the real world-the one we actually live in-people believe and spread vicious falsehoods about us. I'm concerned about our kids' hearing them.

Blankenhorn may be mistaken-even badly so-but he isn't vicious. What's more, he has the ear of audiences who would never listen to me, much less to the ideological purists who call me an "Uncle Tom." And he's telling those audiences about the equal dignity of our love. I'm genuinely grateful for that.

Would I prefer that Blankenhorn preached the equal dignity of same-sex love without opposing marriage equality? Of course. But I don't always get what I prefer. And I also realize that, if Blankenhorn shared all of my preferred views, he wouldn't have the attention of opponents I want to convert-if not to marriage equality, then at least to a belief in our equal dignity.

Do I need Blankenhorn's approval for my relationship? Of course not. But public discourse matters. Ideas matter; votes matter. They matter to us, and they matter to those who come after us.

When Blankenhorn tells our opponents about "the equal dignity of homosexual love," he's talking to people with kids. Some of those kids will be gay. For their sake, I'm critical of him. For their sake, I'm also grateful to him.

Mike Rogers of blogActive.com is riding high these days. The scourge of anti-gay politicians who engage in gay sex themselves has been proved right in his charges last October that Idaho Senator Larry Craig was seeking gay sex in public restrooms. In the last few weeks, Rogers has been profiled by the Washington Post, interviewed by cable TV hosts Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews, and called the most feared man on Capitol Hill. The blogosphere has breached the wall of the mainstream media (MSM) that once would have ignored his efforts as unseemly.

I have mixed feelings on the question of outing anti-gay politicians. On the one hand, I agree with Congressman Barney Frank's dictum that "People have a right to privacy, but not to hypocrisy." I am as sick as anyone of being demonized by ruthless political operatives to turn out socially conservative voters. On the other hand, I am troubled by outing as a tactic because it capitalizes on people's homophobia, and it too seems ruthless. Rogers and outing pioneer Michelangelo Signorile reject the term "outing" in favor of "reporting," but the latter is less precise.

I encountered Rogers at a reception Sept. 6 at the Smithsonian Institution honoring 82-year-old gay pioneer Frank Kameny, whose picket signs from the first gay protest outside the White House in 1965 are included in a new exhibit titled "Treasures of American History." The classy affair had a lot of gay movers and shakers and good food and drink. I chatted with Rogers, who is quite affable personally, and he mentioned his next target, another Republican senator. He was praised by several guests, including a disillusioned gay Republican. Rogers acknowledged some awkwardness, as a Republican staffer whom he outed last year stood a few yards away.

As I told Rogers, I am especially opposed to his outing of GOP staffers. Over the years, gay rights activists have obtained a good deal of useful intelligence from Capitol Hill's informal gay network. Often it was staffers for right-wing Republicans who provided the best information at off-the-record meetings. Apparently, I am not the only one: On Monday, via Washington Post "Sleuth" reporter Mary Ann Akers, Rogers announced a change in strategy: he will stop outing staffers. He explained to the Post, "Enough readers expressed concerns that I have decided to now focus on elected officials, those running for office and to high level political appointees in the administration."

Rogers told me that he hates what he does, but he considers it necessary. He thinks it will significantly neutralize the far-right's anti-gay wedge politics. Assuming that is true, I still find it ethically troubling. Vindictiveness hardly seems conducive to expanding support for gay equality, and Rogers's actions smack of vindictiveness even if that is not his intent. You cannot justify playing God by citing the quality of your research.

Looking at Rogers, you might never suspect that he traffics in anyone's sordid secrets. He brings a professional polish to his media appearances. On television he appears relaxed and confident, crisply relays his talking points, and does not stumble or ramble. These skills smoothed his story's transition from the Web to the MSM. Someone who came across as creepy or eccentric would be easier to dismiss.

In January 2006, Rogers sent his then-targeted senator a letter warning him that a vote either for the Federal Marriage Amendment or for the confirmation of Samuel Alito as a Supreme Court justice would lead to the senator's homosexual activities being reported on blogActive.com. Some have suggested that this amounts to criminally punishable blackmail. Legal opinion appears divided on that question, but legality aside, it sure looks like blackmail to me. And how does Rogers avoid arbitrariness in choosing which votes justify outing someone? There was no consensus that Alito was anti-gay when he was nominated, and some evidence to the contrary.

Last week, Rogers wrote, "People are finally getting that gay Americans have had enough … Craig's arrest when coupled with the hypocrisy of his seeking sexual encounters from the very men he actively legislates against, becomes merely the catalyst to expose the dishonesty and secrecy of anti-gay politicians who expect a community to harbor its own."

Our movement has seen radical tactics before. In Washington in 1971, gay activists charged into the Shoreham Hotel's Regency Ballroom to zap the convocation of the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), whose definition of homosexuality as a pathology in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was used to justify anti-gay discrimination. During the confusion, Frank Kameny seized the microphone. He denounced the psychiatrists and insisted that homosexuality was an orientation on par with heterosexuality. The electrifying moment was a declaration of war, a war the gay activists won in 1973 when APA declassified homosexuality as an illness.

Are we at a comparable moment, when a violation of protocol is needed to "get things moving," as Kameny has put it? Or does the use of outing go too far? We need a thoughtful and civil discussion about what effect the use of an inherently negative tactic might have on those who employ it and those on whose behalf it is employed.

It may be that before many socially conservative Americans will reconsider their anti-gay stance, they must become disillusioned with their leaders. Yet they might just as readily react to the shock of outings by hardening their hearts further against gay people. That is something Mike Rogers might want to investigate.

Whenever one of these morality scandals erupts - whether it involves homosexuality, adultery, or being on a list compiled by someone the media calls a "Madam" - it often involves a Republican. Critics love to charge Republicans with hypocrisy - preaching traditional family values to the rest of us by day while trolling bathrooms and pressing sweaty palms to computer keyboards by night.

Whatever explains these other public moral dramas, hypocrisy doesn't fully capture the GOP's plainly dysfunctional relationship to homosexuality. Yes, there are many prominent Republicans whose private actions are inconsistent with their traditional-values personas and thus are properly called hypocrites. Sen. Larry Craig is the latest of them. Jim West had an aggressively anti-gay record both as a Washington state legislator and as mayor of Spokane, yet cruised for gay sex and anonymously told an online acquaintance that he hated the "sex Nazis" who try to regulate people's private lives. There are many other examples.

But there are also many closeted gay Republicans not closely associated with the party's religious right for whom the hypocrisy charge is ill-fitting. Mark Foley, of last year's congressional page scandal, was not an anti-gay member of Congress. While he didn't support everything I wish he had, I'd take his record on gay issues over many Democrats'.

Most gay Republicans despise the party's anti-gay rhetoric and actions. They're Republicans because they're pro-life, support low taxes, want a strong national defense, or for any of a hundred other reasons. You could call it hypocrisy to be gay and work for a generally anti-gay political party, regardless of the gay person's own views or what she does within the party to oppose its anti-gay policy positions, but if so, this is surely a watered-down form of the vice.

What unites these scandals is not really hypocrisy. It's two other things. First, nearly all the gay Republicans working in Washington or elsewhere are to one degree or another closeted. Second, at a personal level, very few Republican officials around them care whether someone is gay.

From the top of the party hierarchy to the bottom, few Republicans personally and viscerally dislike gay people. President Bush has had friends he knew were gay. Vice President Cheney's daughter is gay. Even the most prominently and vigorously anti-gay Republican, Sen. Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum, had a gay spokesperson whom he defended when his homosexuality became known.

The big, open secret in Republican politics is that everyone knows someone gay these days and very few people - excepting some committed anti-gay activists - really care. It's one of the things that drives religious conservatives crazy because it makes the party look like it's not really committed to traditional sexual morality.

So to keep religious conservatives happy the party has done two things. First, it has supported anti-gay public policies.

Second, to keep the talent it needs and simply to be as humane and decent as politically possible toward particular individuals, the party has come up with its own unwritten code: you can be gay and work here, we don't care, but don't talk about it openly and don't do anything to make it known publicly. It's the GOP's own internal version of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

This is ideological schizophrenia: private acceptance welded to public rejection. It's a very brittle alloy.

For the closeted gay Republican, this alloy means a life of desperation and fear and loneliness, of expressing one's true feelings only in the anonymity of the Internet, of furtive bathroom encounters, of late nights darting in and out of dark bars, hoping not to be seen. It means life without a long-term partner, without real love.

Worst of all, it may mean a life of deceiving a spouse and children. Most of the men caught cruising in parks, bathrooms, and other public places are deeply closeted and often married. They don't see themselves as having many other options.

Nevertheless, it seems to work until the day you get caught tapping your toe next to an overzealous cop. Desperation sets in and you say things that bring everyone great joy at your expense, like, "I'm not gay, I just have a wide stance."

For the GOP, this alloy of public rejection and private acceptance means enduring more of these periodic public morality convulsions. How to end it? The private acceptance will continue and, I predict, become even more common as young conservatives comfortable around gay people take over. There will be no purging the party of gays. There is no practical way to purge them, and even if there were, most Republicans would be personally repulsed by the effort.

These closeted politicians, staffers, and party functionaries will periodically be found out and again will come the shock, the pledges to go into rehab, the investigations, the charges of hypocrisy, the schadenfreude from Democrats and libertines, and the sense of betrayal from the party's religious conservatives.

The only practical way out of this for the GOP is to come to the point where its homosexuals no longer feel the need to hide. And _that_ won't happen until the party's public philosophy is more closely aligned with its private one. That will be the day when the GOP greets its gay supporters the way Larry Craig, with unintended irony, greeted reporters at his news conference: "Thank you all very much for coming out today."