IGF CultureWatch

It seemed like a softball question at first. During LOGO's August 10 gay-rights forum for the Democratic presidential candidates, panelist (and rock star) Melissa Etheridge asked New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, "Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?"

Richardson, who has a strong gay-rights record, responded, "It's a choice. It's…"

Several audience members gasped. Wrong answer! Etheridge interrupted, "I don't think you understand the question," prompting nervous laughter throughout the studio. She tried again:

"Do you think I-a homosexual is born that way, or do you think that around seventh grade we go, 'Ooh, I want to be gay'?"

"Seventh grade" is right: at that moment Etheridge seemed like an indulgent schoolteacher, trying to feed a quiz answer to a hapless student. Multiple-choice: A or B (hint: it's obviously not B).

Richardson missed the hint. Instead, he rambled:

"Well, I-I'm not a scientist. It's-you know, I don't see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency. I see it as a matter of love and companionship and people loving each other. I don't like to, like, answer definitions like that that, you know, perhaps are grounded in science or something else that I don't understand."

Audience reaction, and the subsequent commentary, all suggested that Richardson's response was a disaster. One editorial referred to it as his "macaca moment" (recalling Virginia Senator's George Allen's fatal use of that slur during his last campaign).

Richardson should have been prepared for this: Bob Schieffer asked the same question during the 2004 presidential debates, prompting Bush to respond "I don't know" and Kerry to give his infamous "Mary Cheney is a lesbian" answer. Why do smart people stumble over what seems to be a simple question?

Let me hazard a guess: because it's not a simple question. In fact, it's a confused question.

Take Etheridge's first formulation: "Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?" The question actually jumbles together two distinct issues:

(1) How do people become gay? (By genetics? Early environment? Some combination of the above?)

and

(2) Can they change it (i.e. choose to be otherwise)?

The answers to these two questions vary independently. My hair color is biologically determined, but I can change it. The fact that my native language is English is environmentally determined, but I can't change it. (Of course I could learn a new language, but given my age it would never totally subsume my native language.) The point is that a trait's being acquired doesn't mean it isn't deep.

Etheridge's revised version makes the false dilemma even starker: either we're born this way, or else it's an arbitrary whim- "Ooh, I want to be gay." Since it's obviously not a whim, we're supposed to conclude that we're born this way.

"Born this way" is a virtual article of faith among gays. Call me a heretic, but I neither know nor care whether I was born this way. I don't remember the way the world was when I was born (neither do you), and I can't discern my genetic makeup by simple introspection (ditto).

What I do know is that I've had these feelings a long time, and they're a significant part of who I am. Whether I have them because of genetics, or early childhood influences, or some complex medley of factors is a question for scientists-not columnists, rock stars or politicians. In that respect, Richardson's profession of scientific ignorance was both modest and reasonable.

The question "Is it a choice or biological?" involves gross oversimplification. Homosexuality is both, and neither, depending on what one means.

Although we don't choose our romantic feelings, homosexuality (like heterosexuality) certainly involves choices-about whether and how and with whom to express those feelings. When Richardson said "it's a choice," he probably meant that we have the right to make such choices. Good for him.

At the same time, homosexuality (like heterosexuality) surely has biological underpinnings. We're flesh-and-blood creatures. At some level, everything about us is biological, regardless of what causal story about sexual orientation one accepts.

But don't we need to prove we're "born this way" to show that homosexuality is "natural"? Not at all. I wasn't born speaking English, or practicing religion, or writing columns-yet none of these is "unnatural" in any morally relevant sense.

I don't blame gays for being disappointed with Richardson's forum performance: he seemed unprepared and lethargic. But let's not insist that he embrace dogmas that should have no bearing on our rights. Whether or not we're "born this way," there's nothing wrong with our being this way. Thankfully, Richardson seems to get that.

The undeniable success of gay Democrats was on full display in the August 9 presidential candidates' forum. The questions were pretty good, interrupted only by the emotions of Melissa Etheridge. No new positions were taken but the candidates all said pleasant things. The question is, what did the event really accomplish?

In order of appearance, here's how I think the candidates (excluding the quixotic ones) did:

Barack Obama. Obama now orates like a politician, which means his speech is stunted with "ahs" and "uhs" and that he tends to fall back on stock phrases. He's the most interesting and thoughtful of the candidates, but you'd hardly know that nowadays.

Obama avers that we should separate the word "marriage," which he says is religious, from the legal rights associated with marriage. But marriage as religious rite and as legal right are already separate. So Obama is really saying that only for gay couples should the law distinguish rights from marriage. Like the other candidates, he never explains why.

Civil unions, which he supports, may be the best next step. But to say that it is simply a matter of "semantics," as Obama does, suggests either that he is being disingenuous or that at a very deep level he doesn't get it.

Obama made several references to his race ("When you're a black guy . . .") as if this is supposed to immunize him from criticism or give us the sense that he feels our pain. But it has the opposite effect, suggesting that he has not thought very deeply about applying the lessons of his experience to others. When he says, for example, that gay couples should be satisfied with civil unions, it's worth asking whether he thinks his interracial parents should have been satisfied with calling their marriage a civil union.

John Edwards. Edwards is like Phil Hartman's "Caveman Lawyer" from the 1990s Saturday Night Live skit. He stresses humble origins and simulates empathy. Still, he might be good at this as president. Edwards wore his plastic heart on his sleeve as he described meeting homeless gay youth at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and criticized parents who disavow their gay kids. Presidents need to speak in moral terms, not just policy terms, and Edwards comes closest to realizing this.

He committed the only real policy gaffe of the night, insisting that the president could reverse "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" all by himself. That's been untrue since 1993, when the ban on gay service was made federal statute. Even with a Democratic Congress and president it will be very difficult to repeal that law, requiring a president willing to explain publicly why the change is in the country's best interests. But first the president has to understand the policy.

Edwards opposes gay marriage, for no particular reason. Earlier in the campaign he explained that he opposes it for religious reasons, which is probably the only honest account we've heard from any of them. At the forum, he apologized for his earlier candor. He painted this as a matter of separating church from state, but left us with no substitute explanation.

Bill Richardson. On substance, Richardson shined. Especially impressive was his emphasis on actual accomplishments over rhetoric. After the Clinton presidency, many of us are unimpressed by promises; we want results. When it comes to actual accomplishments, Richardson has done more for gay equality than the other Democrats.

I wasn't troubled by Richardson's suggestion that homosexuality is a choice since it seemed that, in context, he was trying to say only that people should be free to be gay. He was also correct, by the way, that we really don't know what causes someone to have a particular sexual orientation. For this bit of honesty, he was flayed by pundits. He did seem tired and listless, so he lost badly in the eyes of those who demand flash and charm.

Hillary Clinton. Clinton's policy positions on gay issues are probably as good as any viable candidate's could be right now. Her problem in general is that she has a hard time conveying personal warmth. This, combined with her association with the last president named Clinton, leaves one wondering whether she's really committed to anything.

Clinton was the cleverest of the lot. She both defended and distanced herself from her husband's two signature anti-gay acts, DADT and DOMA. She painted DADT as an improvement on what came before, which it was not. She was correct that DOMA helped stave off a federal constitutional amendment in 2004, but that was not the rationale when it passed in 1996. These answers were dishonest.

Clinton said she opposed gay marriage for "personal reasons," which tells us nothing except that she is a careful politician.

The truth is, in contrast to the Republicans, there's nothing in the Democratic ethos circa 2007 that justifies opposing gay marriage. The leading contenders oppose it only because it's politically necessary. When the political calculus changes so will they, but not a moment sooner. But it's hard to blame them for not committing political suicide.

All of the Democrats are better on gay issues than any of the Republicans. But we have many times seen these paper commitments decompose in the slightest heat. This presidential forum left us little reason to believe it will be any different this time.

"I can't date someone with a different belief system" is what he told me. I expected this answer from the guy I had been casually seeing. From early on, I suspected that our differing political bents - his liberal, mine more conservative - would ultimately cause a split. Once, we had a heated argument when I said offhandedly that people who could not afford to care for children should not have them (not a policy prescription, just a profession of personal ethics). After that, I tried to avoid political discussions altogether. So his answer did not come as much of a surprise when, a few weeks after we broke up, I asked him for his reasons. His beliefs euphemism didn't render the blow any softer: We're both Jewish.

So much for dating a proud, progressive, and ostensibly tolerant liberal. But with him, as with other liberals I know, tolerance does not always extend to appreciating someone else's differing political views. Now living in Cambridge and having grown up in the suburbs of Boston and gone to school at Yale, I've been surrounded by liberals for nearly all of my life. Most would be astonished to hear that they're the most intolerant people I've ever met. After all, I, the supposedly closed-minded conservative, never considered this guy's liberal politics anathema to the point of wanting to call off our relationship. A Mary Matalin-James Carville pairing (she the Republican adviser to Dick Cheney, he the Democratic strategist who helped Bill Clinton get elected) ours would not be.

As a gay recovering leftist - to my eternal shame, I canvassed for Ralph Nader in high school - I have grown accustomed to having difficulties in the dating world. At Yale, most people knew me as "the gay conservative" for a column I wrote in the school paper, and my notoriety - not the source of sexy fascination that I might have hoped it to be - certainly did not help my dating prospects. My reputation preceded me. Once, at a party, a gay freshman who had only been on campus for a few days was introduced to me and said, "Oh, you're that [expletive] conservative." On Facebook.com - where people of my generation self-importantly advertise themselves to the world - I selected "Libertarian" to describe my "political views." I hate using labels and am hardly a doctrinaire free-marketeer, but I generally believe that government makes a mess of things and that society is better off when the state only does what's absolutely necessary.

Most gay people are liberal, and this is somewhat understandable; the left has embraced gay rights as a part of its political agenda, whereas the right, with some important exceptions, has not. But for many gays, liberalism is just as much a visceral, reactionary tendency as it is a positive affirmation of political belief. Many gays I know - especially those from red states - blame conservatism writ large as the villain that repressed them for so many years. Thus, their homosexuality dictates their political views on everything. For these gays, it is just as much a part of the "coming out" process to be a loud liberal as a proud homosexual.

But there's nothing about my homosexuality that dictates a belief about raising the minimum wage, withdrawing immediately from Iraq, and backing teachers' unions: all liberal causes that I strongly oppose. Yet there's a common, unattractive feature that many conservative gay men share: a serious chip on their shoulder. Being part of a community that is so intolerant of their views, gay conservatives can be embittered, patronizing, and castigatory of their gay brothers. It's not a particularly attractive attitude. Perhaps it's for this reason that I have not started cruising Log Cabin Republican meetings for dates.

Luckily, I am now dating someone who, though more liberal than I, appreciates my political independence. Let's just hope it lasts through this long campaign season.