IGF CultureWatch

Opposition to homosexuality has long been marked by bad science. In the past, that usually meant bad psychology or even bad physiology. Today, the more common problem is bad social science, usually involving cherry-picked data about alarming social trends followed by breathtaking leaps of logic connecting these trends to same-sex marriage.

David Blankenhorn positions himself as an exception. In his new book The Future of Marriage, and in a recent Weekly Standard article entitled "Defining Marriage Down…Is No Way to Save It," Blankenhorn makes the familiar argument that supporting same-sex marriage weakens marriage as a valuable social institution. But he claims to do so in way that avoids some of the simplistic analyses common in the debate, including those made by his conservative allies.

In particular, Blankenhorn criticizes Stanley Kurtz's argument that same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and Scandinavia has caused the erosion of traditional marriage there. Blankenhorn rightly recognizes Kurtz's causal claims to be unsupported: "Neither Kurtz nor anyone else can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker," Blankenhorn writes. "Correlation does not imply causation." This is a refreshing concession.

But having made that concession, Blankenhorn proceeds as if it makes no difference: "Scholars and commentators have expended much effort trying in vain to wring proof of causation from the data, all the while ignoring the meaning of some simple correlations that the numbers do indubitably show." But what can these correlations mean, if not that same-sex marriage is causally responsible for the alleged problems? What do the numbers "indubitably show"? Blankenhorn's answer provides a textbook example of a circular argument:

Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior…The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together.

In other words, what the correlations show is that these things are correlated. Not very helpful.

From there, Blankenhorn argues that if things "go together," opposition to one is good reason for opposition to all. He attempts to illustrate by analogy:

"Find some teenagers who smoke, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to drink than their nonsmoking peers. Why? Because teen smoking and drinking tend to hang together." So if you oppose teenage drinking, you ought to oppose teenage smoking, because of the correlation between the two. In a similar way, if you oppose nonmarital cohabitation, single-parent parenting, or other "marriage-weakening behaviors," you ought to oppose same-sex marriage, since they, too, "tend to hang together."

This is breathtakingly bad logic. The analogy sounds initially plausible because teen drinking and teen smoking are both bad things. But the things that correlate with bad things are not necessarily bad. Find some teenagers who have tried cocaine, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to have gone to top-notch public schools than their non-cocaine-using peers. It's not because superior education causes cocaine use. It's because cocaine is an expensive drug, and expensive drugs tend to show up in affluent communities, which tend to have better public schools than their poor counterparts. Yet it would be ridiculous to conclude that, if you oppose teen cocaine use, you ought to oppose top-notch public education.

The whole point of noting that "correlation does not equal cause" is to acknowledge that things that "tend to hang together" are not necessarily mutually reinforcing. They are sometimes both the result of third-party causes, and even more often the result of a complex web of causes that we haven't quite figured out yet. In any case, when babies correlate with dirty bathwater, we don't take that as a reason for throwing out babies.

Which brings me to another significant flaw in Blankenhorn's analysis. Even if we grant that support for same-sex marriage correlates with negative factors such as higher divorce rates, it also seems to correlate with positive factors such as higher education, greater support for religious freedom, and greater respect for women's rights. On Blankenhorn's logic, we ought to oppose those things as well, since they "tend to hang together" with the negative trends.

I don't often find myself agreeing with Stanley Kurtz. But at least he seems to understand that, without the causal connections, the "negative marriage trends" argument gets no traction.

It's getting to be a tradition. Like some ancient Hebrew prophet, Larry Kramer descends from Mt. Sinai, or maybe just Mt. Kramer, and ascends a podium in the harsh, barren deserts of New York City to deliver his latest denunciations and warnings to a world awaiting them with decreasingly bated breath.

These presentations are generally attended by a public of younger gays and characterized by substantial exaggerations of fact, hyperbolic rhetoric, and a certain amount of vulgarity--all of which are apparently how Kramer thinks you communicate with fellow gays. Think of it as performance art.

The burden of Kramer's latest speech was that everybody hates us: politicians, judges, the U.S. government, "they," "them," "America"--they all hate us. "We are still facing the same danger, our extermination, and from the same entity, our own country." Even our so-called friends are not willing to fight for us, he says.

Kramer's view is that the best, the only, response to all this is a newly formulated, hierarchical organized ACT-UP: an Army Corps to Unleash Power.

Kramer points to genuine injustices and the malign neglect of many gay concerns: equal treatment of gay relationships, the ban on immigration of foreign partners, anti-gay violence, the murder of gays abroad. But the gay press writes about these things regularly and the national and state gay organizations work on those as well as other issues such as military access and gay adoption. Kramer is unjust to say that "our movement has confined its feeble demands to marriage." Nor does he acknowledge that marriage would solve some of the problems he lists--e.g., tax equality and partner immigration.

In addition, there are conceptual problems with Kramer's new solution. When ACT-UP was created it had:

• A specific set of goals--the development of effective treatments for AIDS, faster drug trials and access to those drugs and research for a cure.

• A specific set of targets: the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical firms, and Presidents Reagan and Bush and their administrations.

• An intensely involved constituency of HIV-infected gay men who knew that their lives literally depended on their activism.

But in Kramer's proposed new organization and its vastly expanded agenda, who specifically are the targets, what are the specific goals and where is the intensely concerned constituency? A "Lo here, Lo there" approach to a wide array of gay issues seems at risk of a quick diffusion of focus, exhaustion of energy and rapid demise.

Kramer focuses on politicians. "Much of what I am calling for involves laws, changing them, getting them," he says. And he proposes an omnibus gay rights bill and "hold(ing) every politician's feet to this fire until he or she supports it." Great. How do we do that? By demonstrations? Can you produce personnel regularly? And sometimes demonstrations can be counter-productive by antagonizing politicians and public opinion. Then with votes? But Kramer says "There is not one single candidate running for public office anywhere that deserves our support."

And Kramer forgets that politicians are elected by "the people" so politicians are not going to change until they sense a change in popular sentiment regarding gays. So persuading the American public about gay moral equality has to be a vital part of the project. But how do you do that, especially if the people are our enemy, and if, as Kramer says, "They hate us and want us dead"? Kramer even seems to scorn "our own country's 'democratic process.'"

In short, Kramer's speech does not seem to cohere. Some parts conflict with other parts or depend on supports that Kramer has already yanked away.

Nor does Kramer seem to have thought through what is involved in changing Americans' minds about gays and lesbians so they will stop "hating" us. He seems to want to threaten and bully people into respecting and fearing gays as he claims the original ACT-UP did to drug companies and government agencies. But that probably won't work with a whole nation.

And as always Kramer simply ignores the obvious political progress gays have made in the last 20 years. He exaggerates the number of our opponents, distorts the extent of their power and intensity of their hostility and exaggerates the extent and likelihood of looming homophobia. He airily dismisses the existence of genuine friends and supporters. And he repeatedly distorts facts to support his claims--a column topic in itself. Not a way to build credibilty for a new movement.

Two news items in a single week in March together shed some interesting light on the current state of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

First, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, was asked by newspaper reporters to explain why he supports DADT. According to the Chicago Tribune, Pace defended the policy thus:

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace said. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way."

"As an individual," he continued, "I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," Pace said, apparently referring to the military's own constitutionally questionable ban on sodomy.

The comments generated lots of criticism, including from conservative Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a former Secretary of the Navy, who said, "I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral." Pace himself later clarified that he was expressing only his "personal" views.

A significant and growing minority of Americans disagrees with Pace that homosexual acts are immoral.

Even if one thought homosexual acts were immoral, however, it doesn't necessarily follow that gays should be disqualified from service. Lots of people do immoral things -- lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, commit crimes, take the Lord's name in vain, are gluttonous and lustful, worship idols -- but are not automatically disqualified from service on that account. In fact, whatever they think of the morality of homosexual sex, most Americans tell pollsters that they think gays should be able to serve.

Further, Pace's view that allowing gays to serve openly would send a grand cultural message that we condone immorality is very questionable and oddly reductionist. We don't send a message that lying is acceptable by allowing liars to serve.

And the predominant message of allowing gays to serve openly would not seem to be that we condone immorality but that we believe it is good and moral to serve in the military, especially in its hour of need. Why does Pace think that everything a gay person does is mainly about sex rather than, say, honorably serving one's country, as thousands have done in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

All that aside, Pace did us a service by frankly expressing his own moral perspective in defense of the policy. A great many people, in and out of the military, share his idealistic moral view and would have answered in just the way he did. Though Pace and others would no doubt advance other reasons for excluding gays from service, it's revealing that the moral objections came first. They seem to have been the main reason for the policy from the start.

To see why Pace's honesty is so valuable, consider a second DADT news item the very same week. Discharges for homosexuality dropped again in 2006, down to 612 from 1,227 in 2001. Since the advent of the post 9/11 phase of the war on terror, when the country most needs the skills and bodies of its citizens on the front lines, expulsions for homosexuality have dropped by 50 percent.

The common and practical concerns about service by gay personnel expressed when President Clinton proposed lifting the ban in 1993 -- that there would be problems of unit cohesion and morale, damage to enlistment and retention rates, invasion of soldiers' privacy -- have been subordinated to the intense need for the service of these people we've trained and invested in.

When unit cohesion and morale are most important, in time of war, homosexuality is comparatively unimportant. Similarly, the experience of other nations' militaries is that a few open homosexuals are not disruptive and that their service is more valuable than whatever small amount of unease it might cause a few straight soldiers.

Putting these two events together -- the morality concerns expressed by Gen. Pace and the practical decline in DADT enforcement -- yields an insight about how the respective views on the policy have flipped since 1993.

Back then, advocates of gay military service were scolded that the military is an intensely practical venture whose mission is to deter and fight wars -- not a forum for advancing social causes (e.g., the egalitarian claims of homosexuals).

Now advocates of gay military service argue with considerable and growing empirical support that the military is an intensely practical venture whose mission to deter and fight wars is aided by allowing gays to serve without fear of reprisal and expulsion -- not a forum for advancing social causes (e.g., the idea that homosexuality is immoral).

Under DADT, some 10,000 military personnel -- including many with critical skills in which there's a shortage, like Arab linguists -- have been expelled from service solely because it's learned they're gay.

It is now opponents of gay military service who are left to advance a form of idealism that is disconnected from, and unsupported by, considerations of actual military need. Unpersuasive in abstraction, opponents of DADT have increasingly shifted to the practical; shorn of a practical foundation, supporters of DADT must increasingly shift to the abstract.

In the wake of Ann Coulter's use of the word "faggot" to describe presidential candidate John Edwards, the basis of her original joke-however poorly received-was easily forgotten. She had claimed that those who use the slur have to go into rehab, a reference to the exploits of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" star Isaiah Washington, who called one of his gay cast members the f-word last October on the set of the show.

Washington, immediately castigated by organizations like the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, apologized. But not long after, at the Golden Globe awards, Washington told reporters that the incident, "Never happened, never happened." Washington apologized again, and at the behest of his corporate overlords at ABC, said he would seek counseling to cure him of his homophobia.

Yet on March 2, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People gave Washington a coveted Image Award, annually doled out to people of color working in the entertainment industry.

On its own, Coulter's remark was not in poor taste. Imagine how much gays would be laughing if a drag queen had said it. But what was so damaging about Coulter's use of the word was that it validated, for conservative activists who make up the Republican Party base, the unapologetic ridicule and dehumanization of gay people. Coulter is a bestselling author and a popular speaker in Republican circles, no matter how much respectable conservatives may wish to disassociate themselves and the movement from her.

Similarly, the NAACP's decision to award a bigot such as Washington with an honor that has in the past been given to the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and Oprah Winfrey sends the wrong message to a largely black audience, as it essentially validates the use of bigoted language.

But don't expect the national gay organizations-always loyal to the codes of political correctness-to issue some sort of disapproval of the NAACP. Unswerving loyalty to fellow progressive organizations is the sine qua non of gay rights activism today. On its web site, the NAACP describes the Image Awards as the "nation's premier event celebrating the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice." Awarding someone who calls a co-worker a "faggot," lies about it and then lamely checks himself into rehab is hardly the paragon of "social justice."

It should be noted that GLAAD issued a press release on Paris Hilton's use of the word "nigger," revealed in an amateur video (where all of the debutante's exploits seem to arise) shot several years ago. While the brainless, racist musings of the poor man's Anna Nicole Smith invoke the outrage of GLAAD, the homophobic (and thus, more pertinent for a gay organization) bigotry of a star on a highly rated network television show merits less outrage.

It is no secret that homophobia is especially prevalent among African-Americans. A 2003 study of 31 national surveys over an almost 30-year period found that, "Blacks appear to be more likely than Whites to both see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay rights laws," which at first may appear paradoxical, but makes sense in light of the centuries-long legal discrimination that blacks faced in this country.

But support for gay civil rights does not negate the detrimental effect that attitudinal homophobia has on African-American society. Michael Paul Williams, a black columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, noted last week that "if the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military remains a bastion of homophobia, the black community is no slouch in that department."

Imagine the outrage from black Americans if a white television star (irrespective of sexual orientation) called a black co-star a "nigger." The white actor's career would be ruined no matter how earnestly he processed himself through the public shaming ritual that our country has perfected, presided over by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The NAACP's decision to recognize Washington with an award led the Hollywood gossip blog TMZ to speculate, "perhaps there's hope that Michael Richards will get a GLAAD Award" for infamously using the word "nigger" during his act of self-destruction at a comedy club last year.

The NAACP has a long and venerable history of fighting for equal rights under the law, exemplifying the historic change that can result from moral suasion. Honoring a bigot thus goes against everything for which the organization stands.

The gentleman stood up during a lull in the Q&A session, and I was grateful for anyone to break the silence. In recent years I'd become used to this routine: I'd go to a small liberal-arts college to speak on homosexuality. The students, who were increasingly pro-gay, would respond with "friendly fire" or genial shrugs. I'd wait for the opposition to speak up, often to no avail.

Then John spoke. "Since there seems to be a lull," he began, "I suppose that this might be as good a time as any for me to come out...as a religious conservative."

There were no audible gasps, but there was palpable silence. John identified himself as a faculty member in the music department. He spoke for several long minutes, describing himself as theologically conservative but socially and politically liberal, opposed to same-sex marriage within his church but supportive of civil marriage (and adoption) for gays, skeptical of reconciling biblical faith with homosexual relationships but open to arguments for doing so. He also lamented what he perceived as my hostility toward religious believers (some of it deserved, he admitted) and my too-easy dismissal of opponents.

When John finally sat down, I thanked him for his candor and then launched into what was probably an overly defensive clarification of my position. I could tell that neither of us was entirely satisfied by the exchange (the audience for their part seemed quietly fascinated by it). But our time was soon up and that was that.

Until the next day, when John e-mailed me to thank me for my visit. We corresponded for a bit, and then he invited me to get together for coffee when I returned to town for some additional talks the following week.

And so I did. I picked John up at his office in my rented Ford Crown Victoria ("My students are going to think I'm being interrogated by a federal agent," he quipped). I did not quite know what to expect. Thoughtful academic? Stealthy religious nutcase? I had been reading Sam Harris lately (The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation), and as a result I'd become increasingly dubious about "moderate" or "tolerant" religion. (Harris, an outspoken atheist, argues that liberal religion tends to sugarcoat the still-problematic belief in scriptural authority.)

But John defied simple categories, except one that we both shared: college professor. Our common academic training and temperament made it easy to spend several hours together, discussing a paper of mine I had sent him on homosexuality and the bible (he read it within a day, despite being swamped with midterms), analyzing political rhetoric on various sides of the debate, and delving into deeper epistemological questions (What is the proper relationship between faith and reason?). It was a delightful and productive afternoon.

Later that day, John and his wife Sarah invited me to dinner at their home. His wife, I now knew, worked for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, an organization that used to provide me with regular opposition during the early days of my campus speaking. This fact made me slightly apprehensive. But I was delighted by the opportunity to eat somewhere other than the Applebee's next to my hotel, and pleased to spend more time with John and to meet Sarah, so I accepted.

As we chatted over appetizers, Sarah asked me about my life, my family, my work, and my relationship with my partner Mark. At one point I mentioned that Mark and I would be going to Mexico in April for his sister's wedding. We were anxious about it, I explained, since Mark's parents generally refuse to be in the same room with me (they refer to me, not by name, but as "that man"--the one who corrupted their son). Sarah and John seemed genuinely sympathetic.

Then came dinner--a hearty yet delightfully simple meal of soup, salad, and bread. As we sat down, Sarah asked if she could say grace. I nodded and politely folded my hands and bowed my head (what else should polite atheists do during grace? Read the newspaper?). She invoked many blessings, but the one that stuck out most for me was the following:

"Bless John, whom we are delighted to have as our guest. Bless John and Mark, and their relationship. And in particular, bless the family gathering in April..."

I am not a Christian, and I don't believe that one needs to be religious to show warmth and hospitality. But that day kindness came with a Christian flavor, and I was deeply touched by it.