IGF CultureWatch

I've been watching with interest the uproar around the (now pulled) Snickers ad that appeared during the Super Bowl.

You know the one: two men are in a garage; one guy, who is hungry, I guess, from slaving over a car engine, pulls out a Snicker's bar and starts eating; the other, looking at it lustfully, starts chomping from the other end, until they end up in a liplock worthy of Lady and the Tramp.

After a brief-but endless-pause, they jump away from each other, and one yells, "Quick! Do something manly."

So they each rip out patches of their own chest hair.

Gays and lesbians-led by our tigers at GLAAD-weren't pleased by this ad. Nor were folks on the Right, who protested because they found it homoerotic.

Honestly? I found the ad funny.

I mean, not funny in a laugh-out-loud kind of way, but funny-cute. And funny-sexy. And funny-interesting. It was something that caught one's attention, which is the point, really, of ads.

But most people just found it uncomfortable and not funny at all.

Which is telling.

To me, the Snicker's ad was not making fun of gay men as much as it was making fun of homosexual panic, that strange mental condition that forces otherwise sane, rational men into making fools of themselves in order to prove that, really, they're not gay!

"Those silly men!" the ad exclaims. They're so cuckoo that they'll mutilate themselves--or drink engine oil, as they do in an alternate ending-in order to avoid the appearance of enjoying the lips of another man. But we're not fooled, because that second of lust, of erotic interchange, seemed so real, that we know they're trying to blind themselves to the obvious. After all, they don't wipe their mouths. They don't spit. They don't even look disgusted, or shamed---just shocked.

So maybe they're not gay. But for that one moment, each of them sure was turned on by another guy. And we were turned on by them being turned on-which is why anti-gay groups had a problem with the ad.

So why did gays and lesbians have a problem? Hmmmm.

Well, sometimes, I think that we gay and lesbian people can be a little-shall we say-defensive. As soon as something seems kind-of-gay, or sort-of-lesbian, our antenna go up. We watch more closely. We look for others' reactions. We wonder: What should I think about this? What is this saying? Is this good for our community, or is it bad? Is this pro gay or against? How will it affect how the culture sees us? How is it playing in Peoria?

We have good reasons to think this way. Our American culture can be homophobic, as we all know. And that homophobia can turn to violence and discrimination, which are the twin devils we are really concerned about when we splatter the H word around in the media. Here, though, that sensitivity is misplaced.

The real problem with the ad was not the ad itself, but the Snicker's website, which for a while showed videos of famous football players watching the ad and wincing when the men kissed. In some ways, of course, these clips just reinforced the ad's point-straight men are pansies when they see men kissing. They can't handle it, it makes them act stupid and immature, and that's a crazy and strange reaction.

But what those added materials really did was completely subvert-that is, turn around-the ad.

The ad by itself? Actually pretty gay positive.

The ad with the additions of squinch-nosed football players? Clearly not gay positive at all.

This makes me think that the ad in itself was gay positive enough-and uncomfortable enough-and ambiguous enough-that someone at Snickers thought that we ought to be told how to feel about the ad. Because otherwise we might find it homoerotic.

So they put in these clips of football players-real manly men, as we all know-making disgusted faces. That way, it would all be clear. Snickers wasn't for men kissing! Snickers thinks that men kissing is goopy! Blech!

I wish that Snickers would have pulled the video clips of the football players and kept the ads. The clips told us what to think. But the ads spark an important discussion. And we should have let that discussion happen.

No doubt we are in what we could call the "Post-AIDS Era." Not that AIDS is over by any means--people are still contracting HIV and being diagnosed with AIDS--but gay men are no longer obsessed with the disease as they once were and are moving on to ... what?

At one time AIDS was an overwhelming threat to our community and ourselves. Many people spent a great deal of time and energy working singly and with others to respond to and survive the epidemic. That effort provided a focus, a strong sense of community purpose and a source of meaning in many people's lives.

And so what for many gay men feels like the end of a threat also feels like the loss of a sense of mission or purpose and the loss of a common bond with other gay men.

A January 8 article in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that many gay men were now facing the challenge of defining new goals for themselves and, as they saw it, for the community.

The newspaper quoted one Doug Sebesta of a group called the San Francisco Gay Men's Community Initiative that many men said it was hard to meet other gay men outside of sexual encounters and to connect on an emotional or friendship basis.

"People were saying they really have this longing for a sense of community ... that they feel everything is fractured, that everybody is paranoid, and nobody is having any fun."

In the absence of a common threat it is not clear whether it is possible any longer to have a sense of community with the "gay community" After all, being gay in a gay community is no longer the fascinating new experience that it seemed in the 1970s, nor is there the same level of external hostility that produced a kind of community centripetal force. And the community is much larger and more diverse than it was in the 1970s, making it harder to feel confident about what one is relating to.

Instead, what people seem to be wishing for is something more personal, more about friendship with specific people or groups of people.

The traditional advice is to get out and meet people. What is more difficult is getting to know people and having a sense that they know you. More practical advice is to join a community group. To be sure, there are people who go from group to group, "cruising for friends." But the point is to find a group the person is really interested in so he has a reason to keep going back. Getting well acquainted with people over time is key for forming friendships.

The problem is that many cities lack a wide variety of interest groups to choose from. There are religious, political, and recovery groups, but those aren't quite the same thing. AIDS activism, necessary at the time, sucked up a great deal of energy that could have gone into creating other community activities. If it has not dissipated, that energy is currently undirected.

Instead of one new focus for the entire community, what we need is the creation of an array of smaller groups focused on the members' interests in any of a variety of topics. Finding a sense of community with a smaller, identifiable group of people who have a common interest is easier than feeling a sense of community with unknown thousands of gays.

I have written recently of helping start a gay artists network and I will not repeat that story here. But its rapid growth (more than 50 members) suggests a previously unmet interest and offers an successful example of creating a new interest group. Participants are already getting to know one another, discuss common concerns and form friendships.

There must be a vast number of other interests out there that are not being tapped into. A friend has spoken of wanting to start a group of gay actors and theater people. What about amateur musicians? Or jazz fans? Or a literature discussion group?

The point is that with the decline of a common threat our energies can be directed to more personal interests. The organized "gay community" then consists of the aggregate of all these smaller groups. Their overlapping memberships can help knit the community together.

That variety of community group is what we mean when we speak of a "dynamic community"--a community that elicits the energies of its members by providing them with a way to pursue their heterogeneous interests and goals while still rooted in our community. These energies have in large measure been untapped in the last few years, but we have the opportunity to draw on them to build our community anew.

It was a classic bait-and-switch. When gay-rights opponents sought to amend Michigan's constitution to prohibit, not only same-sex marriage, but also "similar union[s] for any purpose," they told us that the amendment was not about taking away employment benefits. They told us that in their speeches. They told us that in their campaign literature. They told us that in their commercials.

They lied.

The initiative passed, the constitution was amended, and before the ink was dry the opponents changed their tune and demanded that municipalities and state universities revoke health-insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners.

For a while it looked like we might win this battle. In a trial court opinion Judge Joyce Draganchuk argued that "health care benefits are not benefits of marriage and cannot be construed as 'benefits of marriage' that are prohibited by [the amendment]."

Last week the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed Draganchuk's decision and ordered an end to health-care benefits for same-sex partners of state employees. They leaned heavily on the reasoning of Attorney General Mike Cox, who argued that the operative clause of the amendment--that "the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose"--is "best interpreted as prohibiting the acknowledgement of both same-sex relationships and unmarried opposite-sex relationships. More simply, the only relationship that may be given any recognition or acknowledgment of validity is the union of one man and one woman in marriage."

But that is not quite what the amendment says. To see why, consider another relationship to which we give "recognition or acknowledgment of validity": the parent-child relationship. Most employers, including state employers, provide health insurance for employees' children, and their doing so does not run afoul of the amendment. The reason is simple: contra Cox, the amendment does not prohibit recognizing relationships other than marriage. It prohibits recognizing them "as a marriage or similar union." Giving health insurance to your employees' domestic partners does not entail that you recognize their relationship "as a marriage or similar union" any more than giving it to their children entails you recognize the parent-child relationship as "a marriage or similar union."

On the other hand, let's be real. The reason certain employers give health-insurance benefits to the same-sex domestic partners (and typically not to the opposite-sex domestic partners) of their employees is precisely because they recognize these relationships as being similar to marriage in relevant ways. Employers know that it is good for employees to have someone at home whose job it is to take care of them (and vice-versa), and gay employees are no different in this respect than anyone else.

Given the makeup of the Michigan Supreme Court, our chance of winning this on appeal is about as good as that of Mike Cox marrying Antonin Scalia. Which means that unless and until the constitution is re-amended (something that won't happen easily), state employers will no longer be able to offer domestic-partner benefits.

This result is tragic for several reasons. It means that people will lose their health insurance. It means that gay employees who availed themselves of these benefits will effectively take a pay cut. And it means that Michigan's state universities, among other state employers, will be less competitive for top talent.

Remember: the people who fought for this assured us that none of this would happen, then they worked hard to make it happen. Family values, indeed.

In his eloquent dissent to Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld the right of states to criminalize homosexual conduct, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote, "It took but three years for the Court to see the error of its analysis in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and to recognize that the threat to national cohesion posed by a refusal to salute the flag was vastly outweighed by the threat to those same values posed by compelling such a salute. I can only hope that here, too, the Court soon will reconsider its analysis and conclude that depriving individuals of the right to choose for themselves how to conduct their intimate relationships poses a far greater threat to the values most deeply rooted in our Nation's history than tolerance of nonconformity could ever do."

It took not three years, but seventeen, for Blackmun's vision to be realized, when in its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas the Court repudiated its earlier position in Bowers. I wept that day with relief and joy. I can only hope that I'll live long enough to shed similar tears at the news that Michigan corrected course and repealed this awful amendment.

Until then, I'm going to work like hell to make it happen. The liars are on notice.

We can all wish Vice Presidential daughter Mary Cheney well in her intention to have a baby. If people want to go to the trouble of producing and caring for helpless infants and the even greater trouble of rearing them to be thoughtful and responsible adults, they deserve our blessing.

First announced a few weeks ago, Cheney's pregnancy recently became news again following her appearance at a panel discussion at New York's Barnard College where for the first time she spoke briefly about and defended her intention to have a child.

According to The New York Times, addressing the largely female audience, Cheney said, "Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years has shown there is no difference between children raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents. What matters is being raised in a stable, loving, environment."

Well said! And the world needs to hear that repeatedly from prominent people, although strict accuracy would note that almost all research has been conducted among female partners and that the research found some marginal differences between children raised by female and opposite-sex couples, some of them to the advantage of same-sex parents' children.

But there was a certain contrived naivet� in her claim that, "This is a baby ... It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate on either side of a political issue. It is my child." No doubt she did not and does not intend her pregnancy to be a political statement, but that does not mean it does not have political significance. It is simply foolish to pretend otherwise.

In our celebrity-driven culture, almost anything a prominent person does is fuel for public discussion. After all, her father is Vice President and Cheney herself has been deeply involved in partisan politics. She managed her father's 2004 vice presidential campaign and even subtitled her recent book, "A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life."

Then too, Cheney can hardy have avoided noticing that parenting by same-sex couples is a controversial topic on the social and religious right. And suddenly here we are with a prominent real-life example of something that is usually discussed in the abstract. So naturally discussion--or rather, polemics--surrounding the issue focus on her as the most prominent example.

A prominent lesbian couple having and raising a child is inevitably a political statement. It asserts in the face of vigorous disagreement that a lesbian couple having a child is just fine.

Mary Cheney also erred in her assessment of a recent exchange between her father and a CNN interviewer. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Vice President Cheney what he thought of religious and social conservatives such as James Dobson who had criticized his daughter for having a baby.

Cheney refused to answer and told Blitzer that he was "over the line." What line would that be, one wonders, and in what way was Blitzer over it? A line separating public and private? Hardly that since Mary's lesbianism and pregnancy are part of the public record. A line barring discussion of parenting by same-sex partners? There is no such line.

Mary Cheney, always a dutiful daughter, expressed the same view when she said that Blitzer "was trying to get a rise out of my father." But Blitzer was in fact giving Cheney an opportunity to defend his daughter against scurrilous attacks.

Most fathers would jump at the opportunity to defend their children. But, of course, the Vice President, among the most political of men, did not want to criticize--or even disagree with--a prominent conservative who has supported the administration. So in a classic example of displaced aggression, Cheney lashed out at Blitzer rather than Dobson, pretending that he had asked an inappropriate question.

But why, one wonders could Cheney not have replied simply, "Dr. Dobson is welcome to his views," or "Lynne and I love our daughter and will love our new grandchild" or even--a little feisty here--"As a father it is personally very painful for me to hear people criticize my daughter."

And it sure would have shown more family values for him to have said, "Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years has shown there is no difference between children raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents. What matters is being raised in a stable, loving, environment."

I suspect that children do benefit from living with any two parents who see the world through different lenses and have different ways of relating to it. So if Dobson were truly worried about optimal parenting he would focus his attention on single parenting rather than attacking gay and lesbian parents.