IGF CultureWatch

Last month, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force sent out a press release decrying the Supreme Court's decision in the consolidated cases of Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart. The Task Force said that the decision, which bans a particularly grisly form of terminating a fetus whose head is mostly outside the womb, was "draconian" and that the court had made itself the "tool of the anti-choice movement."

That was hardly the first time the Task Force had spoken out on issues at best tangential to the gay community. In addition to stating policy positions on abortion, the Task Force has decried the war in Iraq, supported racial preferences and opposed social security privatization and welfare reform.

In other words, it has again demonstrated that it is a garden-variety leftist organization masquerading as a gay civil rights group; it only represents the interests of gay people who also happen to be ideologically committed members of the furthest reaches of the political left.

I believe abortion should be, as President Clinton said, "safe, legal and rare." But just because one supports the right of women to have the control over their bodies that abortion laws seek to protect does not mean that gay people, ipso facto, believe that the gay rights movement - which has plenty of significant legal battles of its own to win - ought to take a position on abortion.

The strongest case that the Task Force has is that the legal reasoning used to erode abortion laws is the same as that used to harm gays; that is, a "strict constructionist" view of the Constitution that does not recognize any constitutional right to privacy.

In terms of choosing judges, this may be the rule in practice, but it is hardly a principle that opposition to abortion laws translates into opposition to gay rights; there are, after all, plenty of gays who oppose abortion. Moreover, there is a much stronger constitutional basis for the protection of the rights of consenting adults (in gay rights cases) than the right to take a potential life.

Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case that overturned state sodomy laws, rarely mentioned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and did so only in passing. In that case, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that "the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."

Abortion, reasonable people ought to be able to agree, raises more complicated questions regarding "intrusions" in the "personal and private" lives of individuals, namely, the potentiality of human life. It is for this reason that Kennedy himself, no slouch when it comes to the Constitution and hardly a right-wing reactionary, was able to write the majority opinions in both the pro-gay Lawrence and pro-life Gonzales v. Carhart cases without sounding intellectually inconsistent.

And as if it merited mentioning: abortion is biologically a heterosexual issue. Noting this fact does not make gays who oppose abortion selfish, it merely emphasizes further that abortion is, in its essence, something with which heterosexual women and their partners struggle. The only way in which abortion could ever be tied to gay political concerns is in the rare case when a surrogate or lesbian mother decides, for whatever reason, to abort the fetus that she agreed to carry prior to insemination.

But these instances are morally incomparable with the cases of most heterosexual women who choose to undergo abortions because of an unplanned pregnancy. As the gay columnist and law professor Dale Carpenter has written, "'Oops babies' are simply not a phenomenon common to gay life."

New pre-natal technology will pose interesting questions for gay activists who believe that abortion rights ought to be hewn to the fight for gay equality. For years, gay activists - backed by scientific discoveries - have claimed the existence of a gay gene. In the near future, if this gene is to be found and isolated, what will the Task Force say about those potential parents who wish to abort their gay gene-carrying fetus, just as a woman bearing a fetus with a cleft palate or Down's Syndrome is able to do?

Because of legal abortion, in the not-too-distant future, there may be a vast culling of potential gay lives simply because of the fact that those lives will be gay.

To win equality nationally, the gay rights movement will have to convince many people of the justness of its cause. A lot of those people are religious, live in the middle and southern parts of the United States and fervently oppose abortion. How does taking a position on the most divisive cultural issue of the past three decades advance the cause of gay rights?

Author Gore Vidal, who enjoys provocation, once said that God is a convenient fiction. The same can be said of "gay community." Despite the common tendency to generalize based on gay urban ghettos and prominent liberal voices, the LGBT population is distributed across all neighborhoods, professions, avocations, income levels and viewpoints.

LGBT people are on various sides of disputes over immigration, gun control, tax reform, smoking bans, gangsta rap - and presidential elections. Given the multiplicity of directions in which we are going, it is implausible to describe a particular position as "the gay position." Like the population as a whole, we are scattered across affinity groups and risk groups and political philosophies.

It is easy to lose sight of this as another presidential race heats up and various gay politicos line up behind different candidates. Once you have jumped on board a particular campaign, your job is to emphasize how wonderful your candidate is and how terrible the others are. But with no one other than comic-relief candidate Dennis Kucinich supporting civil marriage equality, and no great courage visible among generally gay-friendly candidates on issues such as gays in the military, there is no slam-dunk gay case to be made for one candidate. Non-gay considerations, therefore, are likely to be the deciding factors.

Last week, Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, who had previously taken a position similar to Hillary Clinton's supporting civil unions but not same-sex marriage, pulled a Mitt Romney. Reacting to New Hampshire's civil unions bill, Giuliani's campaign told the New York Sun, "In this specific case the law states same-sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same-sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it."

If Giuliani prevails in the Republican race, his continued support for the lesser alternative of domestic partnerships might still leave some opening for gay Republicans to push their party in a more gay-accepting direction. But a stronger impression from his stunning flip-flop is a sober reminder of the futility of expecting leadership from politicians on controversial social issues. The GOP will not summon what its greatest standard-bearer called the better angels of its nature until the party's voters repudiate the fanatics to whom Giuliani and Romney are pandering.

Senator Clinton's vague promise of access to a second Clinton White House does not bowl me over any more than her barren slogan, "In it to win it," but she deserves credit for being the only candidate from either major party who responded to the Human Rights Campaign's invitation to meet. And her strong performance in the April 26 Democratic candidates' debate reinforces perceptions that she is the one to beat.

Barack Obama's inspiring delivery and sophisticated responses, coupled with his strong early fundraising, suggest that he has staying power. John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd all performed credibly on April 26, with Senators Biden and Dodd serving a useful purpose just by lending their experienced perspectives to the discussion. In a pleasant departure from the general rhetorical caution, Dodd, expressing support for civil unions, speculated that his young daughters could turn out to be lesbians. In general, the hesitance of the major candidates to address LGBT concerns shows how much work we have left to do.

What common cause can we find in the campaign free-for-all? If you are a Democrat, you may be willing to settle for any of the Democratic candidates, but that leaves out the roughly one-fourth of gay exit-poll responders who vote for Republicans. Frustrating though it may be, it makes no sense to talk of a single, cohesive LGBT movement once it sinks in that our diversity is less a value to be celebrated than a reality to be faced.

Sometimes we can best view people far from us on the political landscape as laboring in another part of the vineyard. But when that metaphor fails - when others appear from our vantage point to be pulling up the vines - then, by recognizing that we cannot police beliefs, we can perhaps make our peace with the fact that all of us are part of the social ferment which over time has led to greater opportunities and freedom.

Election decisions are easier if you use litmus tests. If you refuse to vote for any candidate who does not support marriage equality, you can give up after Kucinich loses. But for those of us intent upon making the best available choice, the presence of multiple gay-friendly candidates is more significant than their imperfections. And having a visible gay presence in multiple campaigns is more important than collectively agreeing on a candidate. It shows that we are an integral part of the body politic, which (at least for this assimilationist) is a victory in itself.

This past weekend I attended a big Italian wedding in New York. I grew up on Long Island, in a family where big Italian weddings are a staple. This one had all the usual trappings: loud music, louder relatives, tons of food.

This one, however, had two grooms.

If you were just passing through the reception hall, you might not have noticed. The male-female ratio was a bit high, but not by much: most of the 140 guests were from the grooms' families. There was a "Nana" (Grandma) dressed in silver from head to toe: silver hair, silver dress, silver shoes. There were buxom aunts with too much makeup; uncles with big moustaches and perfectly slicked hair; excited mothers, proud fathers. Children ran about yanking at their bows and neckties, their Sunday clothes increasingly askew as the day progressed. A DJ kept prodding people to dance, and no one-not even the wait staff-batted an eye at the handful of same-sex couples swaying amidst the others.

At one point my partner leaned over to me and said, "This feels weird."

I knew what he meant. And it wasn't just the weirdness that accompanies all weddings: the gaudy pageantry; the forced intimacy with distant relatives and acquaintances; the cheesy running commentary from the DJ ("on this day, the most important day of their lives…"-ugh). It was the fact that, where we would normally be stealth attendees, we were suddenly the main event. This was not some newfangled "commitment ceremony"-it was a big, old-fashioned Italian wedding, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, godparents, and so on.

Most gays have a strange relationship with weddings. We are stereotypically (and often in fact) connected with their planning and execution, as florists, designers, musicians, priests, and so on. But as guests we are typically outsiders. We gather to celebrate love in a world that doesn't want to hear about ours. We sit at tables with relatives and friends who may not know that we're gay and may not like it if they do. We are warned not to "spoil things" by "making a scene." So when the slow songs play, we dance with Nana. Like the guys on "Queer Eye," we help plan others' events and then retreat invisibly into the background. I've always found it rather cruel.

But not here. And that was weird…in a good way.

One of the grooms has been a friend of mine for 24 years. Bob and I attended high school together: Chaminade, an all-male Catholic prep school on Long Island. In every class we shared I sat behind him, not because of any particular bond between us, but because we sat alphabetically and his last name begins with "Cors".

Lunch was the only time we could choose our seating partners, and there we sat together again, along with about a half-dozen other guys over the course of our four years there. At least five of those guys have turned out to be gay (another is a Catholic priest whose sexual orientation I've never bothered to ask). Go ahead and joke about "gaydar," but somehow we found kindred spirits years before any of us dared to admit-to ourselves or others-our sexual orientation.

Had you told me then that decades later I would be attending the gay wedding of one of my lunch buddies, I would have prayed for you (I was very Catholic then; skepticism set in later). Had you added that I would be attending with my own male partner, I would have…well, I would have prayed for me. By then I was aware enough of my burgeoning gayness to fear it.

So it was particularly sweet for me, in the same week I received the invitation to our twenty-year high school reunion, to stand up with Bob's family and friends and witness his wedding to Joe. It felt good to say "Congratulations" to his Mom and Dad in the receiving line-the same Mom and Dad who posed for graduation pictures with us two decades earlier. It was delightful (though a sobering reminder of my age) to meet his younger sister's children, some of whom will soon be thinking about high school themselves.

Political battles are important and necessary. But the fight for marriage equality will ultimately be won only when our nanas and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews see our marriages as the family-extending events that they are. Congratulations, Joe, Bob, and family.

Rep. Christopher Shays has an odd reason for supporting a proposal designed to eliminate employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

"I want a gentler world," the Connecticut Republican told The Associated Press in a recent interview about the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007. "I want a world where people are nicer to each other and more respectful. I want a more moral world and this legislation meets all those needs."

Shays is a co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio.

This was a curious statement, even for a moderate Republican like Shays. The essence of traditional conservatism, at least philosophically, acknowledges the world as it is, not the way supposedly starry-eyed liberals would like it to be.

Attempting to change people's deep-seated beliefs through the act of the legislative pen seems like something that Republicans make fun of Democrats for doing.

This is not to say that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is unworthy of bipartisan support. The bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the modern-day civil rights agenda. It would make it illegal for employers to determine hiring, firing, promotion or salary decisions on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Discriminating upon the basis of race, gender, national origin, age or disability has long been illegal, and if one accepts that homosexuality is as intrinsic a factor in someone's personhood as these other traits, and agrees that private employers ought not be allowed to discriminate based upon innate characteristics, then the bill should merit support.

Religious institutions and the military (which actively discriminates against open homosexuals already and is permitted to do so under the auspices of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy) would be exempt from the law.

It is currently legal to fire someone because of sexual orientation in 33 states, which the passage of a federal anti-discrimination bill like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would end.

This injustice of not being able to get a job or being fired simply for what one does in the bedroom, or because of one's gender identity, is as pressing for gay-rights advocates as the denial of marriage rights. Unfortunately, there is little credible statistical evidence of such discrimination, but gay-rights advocates are convinced the abundant anecdotal illustrations support their case for passage.

But at the end of the day, there is only so little that government action can do to make people "more moral," in spite of Shays' sanguine forecast. Understanding the confines of government power over the consciences of individuals is something that those on both the left and right would do well to appreciate. Anti-sodomy laws, overturned in 2003, did nothing to stop people from engaging in certain sex acts that some Americans view as immoral.

The prohibition of alcohol - which was mandated by constitutional fiat - did not stop people from drinking booze. Likewise, penalizing private employers for discriminating against homosexuals will not suddenly convert them into full-fledged supporters of gay equality.

There is an important distinction, however, between what people believe and how they act. Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865, but any student of American history knows that active, government discrimination against blacks hardly ended with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

It was not until nearly 100 years later, with passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that blacks-at least in law-were accorded full equality with other citizens. Prior to the passage of this bill, the federal government was repeatedly required, sometimes by physical might, to enforce equal treatment under the law.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where people did not discriminate against those of a different color, gender identity or sexual orientation. Perhaps if people just stopped and listened to the sternly worded resolutions that the United Nations issues every day, then maybe the genocide in Darfur would cease, Robert Mugabe would stop oppressing his starving people, and Muslim countries would mandate that women not be treated as property.

Would all this be so. But mere legislation won't make bigotry go away.