IGF CultureWatch

It has been only 56 years since the 1951 publication of Edward Sagarin's pseudonymous "The Homosexual in America," which can be said to mark the beginnings of the American gay rights movement. And it has been only 38 years since the Stonewall events of 1969 that gave the movement a valuable boost.

Gays and lesbians have made remarkably fast progress in the intervening years, although viewed on a day-to-day basis it seems painfully slow. Millions of gays are now out of the closet, public support for the acceptance of gays is growing, substantial majorities favor ending the military ban on gays, gay marriage or full civil unions enjoy majority support, and more.

The combined effect of our everyday visibility and the cogency of our arguments continue to undermine long-standing and deeply rooted prejudice. That is something to celebrate in the run-up to our late June festivities.

Think how frustrated the zealots of the religious/social right wing must be at this progress. They endlessly criticize us as "radical homosexual activists"--enemies of family, church, and nation. No doubt there is a lingering handful of old gay Marxists and Marxian lesbian feminists, but don't forget that for the religious right, "radical homosexual activist" is their term for any person who is open about his sexual orientation. In their view, that is "radical" because our very visibility constitutes an argument "in the flesh" for our benignity and the legitimacy of our claim to equality.

Far from being radicals of any sort, most of us are just plain ol' bourgeois. How much more bourgeois can you be than wanting to marry the person you love and wanting to serve in the military? What we want, in short, is full inclusion in society--something we had (at considerable psychological cost) when we were all in the closet, and something we still deserve now that we are out.

Interestingly this same inclusion is feared by the radical left as well as the religious right. The radical left scorns our full inclusion as "assimilation," with that word's implication that, once included, gays will somehow lose all those unique qualities they have--qualities that could not survive without the continued pressure of hostility, discrimination and exclusion. I don't know if gays have any unique qualities, but I doubt if any such would be lost if we achieved equality.

Consider how bourgeois we really are. Much of the early "gay liberation" polemics seemed heavily focused on sexual liberation--the liberating of the libido (a la Herbert Marcuse). Certainly the legitimacy of gay sex needed to be vigorously asserted in the face of harsh state sodomy laws and discomfort among many gays about their sexual desires.

But sexual liberation is now much less an issue and more of a background assumption. It is an availability rather than a mandate. The task for most gays has become not so much one of obtaining more sex with more partners, but that of finding a way to integrate their sexual desires with their emotional longings. In this gays are no different from most heterosexual Americans.

More gays are even procreating children or adopting them through U.S. adoption agencies or from abroad. One couple I know adopted a baby from China, another from Russia. As one male friend explained to me, "The biological clock was ticking."

I have never heard the ticking of that particular clock, but I can accept it as a metaphor for some people's nagging sense that something is incomplete in their lives as a gay or lesbian couple. Only polemicists for the religious could argue that it is better for a child to have no parents rather than one parent or two parents of the same sex.

The gay neighborhoods of many of our largest cities seem to be slowly losing their gay density as more gay men move to other areas of large cities or to the suburbs. San Francisco and Chicago are good examples. Often this follows finding a partner and their desire to have a house of their own.

Sometimes they move to find lower living costs but equally often they move to find peace and quiet. I have not seen sociological research on this, and we probably won't have a clear idea until a new edition of Gary Gates' valuable "Gay and Lesbian Atlas" based on the 2010 census data. But that population drift could also have an impact on gay business.

And finally, let's point out that "queer" is pretty dead. It never really caught on. Longtime gay writer and activist Gabriel Rotello called it "the word that failed." It was floated as a generic term for gays (etc.) on the assumption that adopting a term of opprobrium would somehow reduce the hostility of homophobes among whom it originally arose. To paraphrase Orwell, that is a belief so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it.

On Friday, June 1, I called my friend Robert on his cell phone shortly before 6 p.m., when he is usually preparing to leave his office in Manhattan. This time he was in Brooklyn, approaching Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), which calls itself a "Community Organizing Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color." As Robert pronounced this I added, "When the Rainbow is Enuf," referring to the famously long name of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls.... He laughed and said, "Yes, when does it stop?!"

Titled "Living a Legacy: Celebrating Action, Imagination and Struggle," the fundraiser was to start with food and gallery at 6 p.m., and performers and speakers at 7:30 p.m. The program included several speakers plus performances by the Lavender Light Gospel Choir and the Legendary House of Ninja (those are two separate groups, incidentally). I told Robert I had enjoyed the music of Lavender Light, a member of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses and the world's first non-church-affiliated LGBT gospel choir. By then he was at the church door, and we hung up.

The next morning I returned from breakfast to find this message in Robert's rich, bass-baritone drawl:

"The goddamn thing went on - it started at six with the dinner, and lasted until ten minutes till eleven. And I have to tell you that I knew something about the Audre Lorde Project, and I laud some of the work that they do, but I owe you an apology for some of the things that I've been dismissive about that you've said about some of these groups [meaning leftists]. Some of these people are crazy.

"It's like, America's a horrible place, and we're neo-colonialist and need to open our borders and let everybody in the world come in if they want to for whatever opportunities they want, and we need to end the war on terrorism. Perhaps we need to end the war in Iraq, but why the war on terrorism? Oh, let's just be sitting ducks and let them kill us all. And how America is no longer a democracy despite the fact that you can stand up in this church and say all these things."

Experience suggests that if I were to express these views myself, I would be charged with neo-colonialism, based on the idea that as a white person I have no right to oppress people of color with my opinions. Robert, on the other hand, is African American, though I doubt it will go any better for me on this account with the professionally outraged left, who can charge me with arrogantly appropriating opinions of color. As Katharine Hepburn once said, "Never. The less."

The ALP website (at www.alp.org) includes statements on war, immigration and marriage. In each case, as Robert suggested, they take things to extremes.

ALP opposes not just the war in Iraq but the war in Afghanistan and the war on terrorism. In the case of Afghanistan, the U.S. overthrew the Taliban regime for refusing to turn over the Al Qaeda terrorists who were behind the 9/11 attacks and whom the Taliban were harboring. As to the war on terrorism, ALP throws out the anti-terrorism baby with the Bush Administration bathwater. Many of us who oppose President Bush's use of torture, warrantless wiretaps and suspension of habeas corpus nonetheless recognize the need to defend our country against Islamist extremists. Similarly, one can oppose Bush's unilateralism, military overreach and doctrine of pre-emptive strikes without ignoring the need for a strong military.

ALP not only opposes the recent nativist hysteria on immigration, but states, "Full legalization is a nonnegotiable demand." They oppose the "path to legalization" compromise, oppose all guest worker proposals, and support "immediate access to full legalization" for all illegal aliens. I agree with their call for repeal of the HIV immigration ban; I agree that undocumented workers contribute to America's economy; and I would like family unification with my own foreign partner. But the notion that we have no right to control our borders amounts to a denial of national sovereignty, which is radical indeed. And ALP's rhetoric about dismantling the "prison-industrial complex" is designed to persuade no one.

ALP supports gay people's right to civil marriage, but also embraces the more radical principles of the "Beyond Marriage" manifesto which I criticized last year, and of which ALP's executive director, Kris Hayashi, is a signatory. As an example of the lunacy to which their Marxist-inspired, all-oppressions-are-linked philosophy leads them, they criticize gay-owned businesses that encouraged gay wedding trips to Hawai'i during that state's marriage struggle. This is because "many within the indigenous Hawai'ian sovereignty movement - who had supported same-gender marriage - consider tourism to be one of the most destructive forces impacting Native Hawai'ians and their struggle for sovereignty."

Robert had nothing but praise for one aspect of ALP's celebration: the food. "It was quite ethnically diverse. They had Caribbean food and Indian food and soul food. They served several different kinds of meat, including pork. One of my friends pulled off some pieces of fatback, and this is a guy who's a big health nut, and he went back and had a second piece."

Let's give credit: while they may charge bravely into political irrelevance, seizing the furthest margins of the national conversation, they sure can lay out a first-rate buffet.

When I heard that someone was suing eHarmony for its refusal to provide dating services for same-sex couples, I winced.

It's not that I approve of their policy (I don't). It's not even that I think that their policy, while wrongheaded, is in fact legal (I'll leave that question to those who know California anti-discrimination law).

It's that the last thing the gay-rights movement needs is a frivolous lawsuit.

Some background: eHarmony is an online matching service founded by psychologist Neil Clark Warren (he's the smiling white-haired guy on the commercials). Users of the site must qualify for membership by taking a patented personality test, which creates a profile based on Dr. Warren's "29 areas of compatibility." But first they must indicate whether they are a "man seeking a woman" or a "woman seeking a man."

That last part troubled California resident Linda Carlson, who contacted the company to request a "woman seeking woman" option. They refused, and Carlson sued. Her lawyers are seeking to make this a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all prospective gay and lesbian clients.

Although eHarmony's founder is an evangelical Christian with ties to Focus on the Family, the company claims to have no objection to gays and lesbians per se: it's just that Dr. Warren's system (which is classified and proprietary) doesn't apply to them.

According to a company statement, eHarmony's research "has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages….Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future. It's just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted."

Let's all acknowledge that this rationale is probably a load of hooey. After all, how different can the needs and interests of same-sex couples be? Are you a smoker or non-smoker? Prefer nights-on-the-town or walks-on-the-beach? Love or hate American Idol? Etc.

(On the other hand, if I were designing a personality test to match same-sex couples, I might add some specialized questions: Madonna or Maria Callas? Volvo or Subaru? Mid-century modern or rococo? You get the idea.)

Whatever the reason, eHarmony offers a limited service, one that Linda Carlson doesn't want: it matches people to opposite-sex partners. Should it be forced by law to match people to same-sex partners?

Before you answer, consider the implications: if eHarmony is forced to offer services to gay couples, should Gay.com be forced to offer services to men seeking women (or vice versa)? Should JDate be forced to offer services to Gentiles? Should kosher delis be forced to serve ham and cheese? Where do we draw the line?

One might argue that eHarmony, unlike JDate or Gay.com, does not advertise itself as a "niche" service. But one doubts that Carlson and her attorneys would be satisfied if eHarmony simply tweaked their marketing to prominently feature the word "heterosexual." After all, they are not suing eHarmony for false advertising; they are suing it for discrimination.

Okay, but what if a company wanted to offer dating services only for whites seeking whites? What if they (unconvincingly) claimed that, while they had nothing against black people, they simply didn't have the research to support matching services for blacks?

This is the hard question, and it deserves serious consideration. There are times when discrimination is so ugly and pervasive that the law ought to step in. Traditional racial discrimination was certainly of that level, as is much discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Keep in mind, however, that we're not talking about discrimination in employment, or housing, or transportation. We're not even talking about the Boy Scouts. We are talking about a DATING SERVICE. There are plenty of such services that Linda Carlson could use (Gay.com, Yahoo.com, and Match.com, to name a few), not to mention better uses of the judicial system and movement resources.

Back to the hard question: if a company wanted to offer a service only for whites seeking whites-or blacks seeking blacks, or Asians seeking Asians, or what have you-I might question their motives. If I found them suspect (which they might not be: after all, there are legitimate niche dating services), I would publicly criticize them. If the situation were bad enough, I might support a boycott on the part of advertisers and prospective clients. But I would not advocate government interference.

Carlson's lawyer Todd Schneider claims the lawsuit is about "making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love." Of course they do. But that doesn't mean that the government should force Neil Clark Warren, or anyone else, to assist them.

For years I have been irked by the news media's unwillingness or inability to ask intelligent and probing follow-up questions when politicians, political preachers or other newsmakers make woefully ignorant or mendacious statements about gays.

If they refer to being gay as a choice, newspeople could ask, "Do you mean to say that feeling sexual desire for a man or a woman is a choice between equally attractive options?" or "Did you personally feel sexual desire for people of the same sex as strongly as you did for people of the opposite sex?" or 'When did you decide to feel sexual desire for women rather than men? Was that hard to decide?"

Or when know-nothings like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame natural disasters or enemy attacks on gays and lesbians (or abortionists or feminists), why don't newspeople ask if it is not instead God's judgment on preachers who distort God's message of love for the world? Or ask if the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia was caused by homosexuals (etc.) in that region? Or when something good happens, does that indicate God's approval of homosexuals (etc.)?

There are several ways to probe homophobic statements. A newsperson could ask for clarification of exactly how something could be true, or ask why the newsmaker rejects alternative possibilities, or cite a recognized authority in disagreement, or pose counter-examples. Newsmen usually know in advance what a prominent person will say on an issue, so you would think that part of their preparation would be to have follow-up questions on hand. Apparently not.

Several recent examples of idiocy were on display at the early-June New Hampshire forum for Republican presidential aspirants. Asked about the military's exclusionary "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said, "This is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment in the middle of a war." And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who knows better) said, "This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this one."

But a prepared questioner could have asked, "So in other words you would support allowing openly gay soldiers in time of peace?" Or the questioner could have asked, "But as you doubtless know, discharges of gay soldiers traditionally go down rather than up during times of war. Doesn't that suggest that the military wants all the manpower it can get during wartime?"

Or he could have asked, "But what is your evidence that this is any sort of social experiment? Did not the British military integrate openly gay soldiers in 2000? I have here a New York Times story datelined May 20 citing the British Ministry of Defense position that 'none of its fears--about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness--have come to pass.' Why do you think it would be different in the U.S.?"

Or he could have asked, "But as you are no doubt aware former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this year reversing his previous anti-gay position and advocating the inclusion of openly gay and lesbian soldiers. Is your perception of the military's needs more accurate than his?" Or he could more aggressively have asked, "To what extent is your position, like that of Gen. Peter Pace, based on a belief that homosexuality is immoral?"

According to the New York Times, several Republican candidates also said the current policy was "working well"? A smart questioner could have asked for a definition of "working well." Does the separation of more than 50 gay Arabic translators mean the policy is "working well? Does the refusal to accept people with needed language skills, or gay computer experts, or gay doctors and nurses mean the policy is "working well"?

Or the questioner could have pointed out that Southerners could claim that racial segregation in the military before 1948 "worked well" in the sense that it "worked" despite the obvious injustice and stigmatization involved. "Working well" is hardly a guarantee that something is good. And it evades the obvious possibility that something else could work better. After all, steam engines "worked well." So did rotary dial telephones. So did whale oil lamps.

And where in all this is GLAAD? Remember GLAAD--The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation? If news reporters cannot think of follow-up questions, why isn't GLAAD preparing a "Guide to Follow-Up Questions" on gay marriage, gay military access, gay adoption and foster care, etc.? They could distribute such a guide to newspeople, essentially doing their preparation for them. But GLAAD just doesn't seem interested. Its staff is probably too busy arranging their next gala awards banquet for television and movie stars.