Seven Ideas for 2007

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The coming year will provide an all too brief respite from all too many people's focus on politics. We do not have to face threats from a GOP Congress, but we aren't going to get much out of a Democratic Congress since they don't want to give the GOP ammunition to attack them with in 2008.

Instead it is an opportunity for community building, for attention to promoting social acceptance of gays, and heading off future assaults from the religious right. Here are some possibilities. If you don't like these, create your own.

We need far stronger gay organizations at the state level. Because of America's federal system, many gay issues are and even more can be determined at the state level-marriage, civil unions, child custody, adoption, non-discrimination, etc. For years the national organizations appealed for funds to fight the GOP hegemony in Congress, starving our state organizations. Now that that threat is absent, it is important to build up state advocacy organizations and community centers, providing for a staff and adequate technical support. This is particularly important in states with a strong conservative presence.

We need a small specialty think tank of gay-supportive theologians to issue counter-arguments when the Catholic Bishops or other religious groups condemn gays, gay relationships, or gay sex. The religious round table of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force seems to limit itself to issuing feeble press releases praising this or condemning that, but it never offers sustained arguments against whatever conservative religious groups say. Over the years I have tried to respond to the Catholic bishops and other homophobic religious statements (in pieces now posted at the Independent Gay Forum), but I am a journalist, not a theologian, so I undoubtedly overlook many excellent arguments-and I am only one small voice.

We need a study of homelessness among gay adults. A new NGLTF study drew attention to the fact that a disproportionate percentage of homeless kids are gay. But we have little information on the proportion of gays among homeless adults. I was talking recently with a homeless man in his 30s. He said simply, "What about people like me?" I had no answer. I know of no studies of homelessness that indicate the proportion who are gay. Nor do I know what unique issues they face, nor where to suggest they go for help, nor how best to help them.

Many of us have urged gays to come out to more people. Let me be more specific: Come out especially to older friends and relatives. A larger percentage of older Americans vote than any other group. And older Americans are the most likely to be anti-gay. Born in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, they grew up when most gays were not open, so they may never have known a gay person when their social and cultural attitudes were formed. Since older Americans are living (and voting) longer, we need to try to remedy those formative impressions.

In states where it is most practical to advocate gay civil unions rather than marriage, we should start using a film clip of President Bush's statement late in the 2004 campaign that if states want to offer civil unions for gays, "They should be able to do that." What more effective propaganda could you offer to conservative voters than Bush's own non-opposition? I do not understand why that clip hasn't been used repeatedly.

Drop "queer." The attempt to "reclaim" it has failed utterly. For most of us it sets our teeth on edge. Gabriel Rotello, a former publisher who once promoted "queer," renounced it in an Advocate opinion piece titled "The Word That Failed." (The literary allusion is obvious.) Some younger gays all full of youthful rebellion-without-responsibility adopted "queer" for a time, viewing it as "edgy" and "in your face." But let me tell you, dear ones, gay liberty and equality are not going to be won by being self-indulgently "edgy" and "in your face." You are just helping our opponents.

We need more heterosexuals to speak out for gay legal equality, but I have no idea how to go about making this happen. The Advocate recently featured comedian and talk show host Bill Maher who regularly speaks out on behalf of gays, but can we somehow induce 10, 20, 100 people with a national reputation to take up our cause? Most prominent whites began supporting black civil rights only when the level of violence, intimidation, and denial of rights in the south was made crystal clear on television news shows. But how often is a gay bashing broadcast? Or a child being yanked away from its lesbian mother or gay father? And how can you film a marriage ceremony that doesn't happen?

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Those Europeans.

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IGF contributing author Bruce Bawer's blog, from a politically incorrect gay cultural critic now living with his Norwegian partner in Oslo, is worth checking out. A recent posting speculates as to why in Europe gay marriages don't raise much ire but gay adoptions do: He writes:

In America, when it comes to gay people adopting kids, the devotion to the American tradition of keeping government out of family matters kicks in, even in the cases of many on the religious right who don't really want to see gay people bringing up kids. For them, the idea of the government regulating families is apparently too sinister even to bring it into play in the lives of gay people. For them, presumably, that slope is just too slippery....

But in Europe? Once gay couples are accepted, registered, and official, they're under the thumb of the social-democratic system.... The system knows that you can't keep people from being gay-but you can forbid them from adopting children. For years I've heard "pro-gay" Norwegian politicians fervently declare that gay people who want to adopt children are simply being selfish. Period! Case closed! That's the mantra here, on both left and right.

And from an earlier posting:

From [Britain's] Gay Community News, which reports that "The leading imam in Manchester...thinks the execution of sexually active gay men is justified." The imam made his comments in a discussion with a Manchester psychotherapist, John Casson, who wanted the imam to clarify the Islamic position on the execution of gays in Iran....

So the question is this: did the gay-dominated but Muslim-friendly BBC report on the Manchester imam's comments? I searched the BBC site and found a brief story [dated two days after the event].... And look how they spun it. The story is framed not as a report of a Muslim leader's affirmation of the legitimacy under Islam of executions of gay people, but as a report of an effort to smear Muslims.

And we think the straitjacket of liberal political correctness is bad here!

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Church of Hate.

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Episcopal parishes in Virginia plan to place themselves under the leadership of the Anglican archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, who has called the growing acceptance of gay relationships a "satanic attack" on the church, and who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.

As I've said before, let those who want to march in lockstep to a gospel of hate go their own way. That such as Akinola is even awarded prominent standing within the Anglican Communion would make me question why anyone who embraces the gospel message would want to be affiliated with such a body at all.

More. Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson nails it.

And more, here.

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Foley, the Wrap Up.

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A House subcommittee report released last week on the Rep. Mark Foley scandal admonishes many of his colleagues who may have known of inappropriate communications between Foley and former House pages for a "disconcerted unwillingness to take responsibility," but did not issue any formal reprimands. Thus this highly politicized "October surprise," launched in large measure by certain gay Democratic outing activists feeding pre-election reports to the media, ends with a whimper.

But the effects are not so easily dismissed. According to the Washington Blade, a Human Rights Campaign poll conducted shortly after Foley resigned showed the scandal made 23 percent of Americans feel "less favorable" toward gays, leading Matt Foreman of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force to comment, "It's going to take us some time to make up that lost ground.... Without in any way, shape or form condoning Foley's egregious and stupid behavior, the uproar that it caused clearly points to continuing evidence of homophobia."

As noted in this Washington Post essay by Philip Kennicott, the new movie The History Boys (based on Alan Bennett's Tony-winning play) focuses on a group of late-teen British students who take a casual attitude toward the flirtations of one of their male teachers. Kennicott points out the contrast with the hysteria unleashed in American society over any sexually tinged intersection between teenagers (especially boys) and adult men. He writes:

The American drama of sexual abuse, played out almost weekly in hysterical terms on [NBC's] "To Catch a Predator," has very little room for the larger continuum of the sexual interactions between adults and youth suggested by Bennett's play.... there is a lot more to be learned about how sex is negotiated-especially between adults and youth who are almost adults-than American popular culture is quite ready to acknowledge.

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Mary Cheney—Unfit Parent?

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Mary Cheney is pregnant. Wish her well.

That's what good folks do when presented with an expectant mother. Behind the scenes they may say or think whatever they like, but publicly they wish the mother-to-be well.

Which puts right-wingers in a bit of a bind. Many of them claim that same-sex parenting selfishly deprives children of a father or a mother. But when one of your own (or at least the daughter of one of your own) is a pregnant lesbian, it's a bit awkward to bring that up.

Not that that's been stopping them. For example, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America writes that Cheney's action "repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation." According to Crouse, Cheney's child "will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers."

Aw, heck-why not just lock Cheney up for child abuse and get it over with?

Actually, I shouldn't joke about this. Accusing people of deliberately harming children-particularly those to which they are about to give birth-is pretty serious. But is the accusation cogent?

We don't know what role, if any, the father will have in Baby Cheney's life (beyond the obvious biological one). But let's assume for the sake of discussion that Mary and her partner intend to raise the child without him.

Crouse's accusation has two parts: first, Cheney harms society by promoting fatherless families, and second, she harms her own child by causing it "emotional devastation," among other problems. Let's take these in order.

No one denies that "fatherless families" are a serious social problem, if by them Crouse means the typical cases of poor unwed teenaged mothers who are abandoned by males that they probably shouldn't have been with in the first place. But one doubts that when these lotharios are pressuring their girlfriends to have sex, the girlfriends are thinking, "Hey, Mary Cheney and other famous lesbians are raising children without fathers-why can't I?" Indeed, one doubts that "thinking" comes into the picture at all.

To compare such situations with that of professional women in a 15-year partnership is ludicrous on its face. Cheney's example may encourage other "fatherless families," but these, like Cheney's, are likely to be of the carefully planned variety.

Crouse cites not a shred of evidence to suggest that planned fatherless families have the problems typical of the more common accidental ones. She can't. Insofar as such things have been researched, the evidence is squarely against her. So says the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology, the American Psychiatric Association, and every other mainstream health organization that has commented publicly on the issue.

Which pretty much takes the wind out of the sails of her other argument, that Cheney's decision harms Cheney's child by assuring it "emotional devastation." The available research says otherwise.

None of this is to deny that fathers are important in their own unique ways or that, in general, fathers bring different (and important) things to childrearing than mothers do. But it is a huge leap from those claims to the claim that lesbian parents "deprive" their children of something.

This past year my maternal grandmother died. Grandmothers are special, as those who are fortunate enough to have them will usually tell you. And in general, they're special in somewhat different ways than grandfathers, just as grandparents are special in somewhat different ways than parents. But if a motherless person were to choose to have children, we wouldn't describe her as "depriving" them of a grandmother-even if we thought that, all else being equal, it is better for children to have them. So even granting for the sake of argument that it is "ideal" for children to have both mothers and fathers, it does not follow that it is wrong to bring them into the world otherwise.

Wish Mary Cheney well. It's the right thing to do.

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The Evangelical Closet.

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Paul Barnes has resigned from the 2,100-member Grace Chapel, a church he founded in suburban Denver, Reuters reports. He is the second Colorado evangelical leader in little over a month has resigned from the pulpit over a scandal involving gay sex:

Barnes' resignation follows last month's admission by high-profile preacher Ted Haggard that he was guilty of unspecified "sexual immorality"' after a male prostitute went public with their liaisons. ... Barnes told his congregation in a videotaped message on Sunday he had "`struggled with homosexuality since he was five years old."

Barnes was confronted by an associate pastor of the church who received an anonymous phone call from a person who heard someone was threatening to go public with the names of Barnes and other evangelical leaders who engaged in homosexual behavior....

The New York Times takes a look at Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance. So maybe the new generation of evangelicals who happen to be gay won't feel that they have live lives of duplicity, hypocrisy and quiet desperation.

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Say Anything.

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Either Mitt Romney was lying back in 1994 when, while running for the senate against Ted Kennedy, he said this in support of full equality for gays and lesbians:

"For some voters, it might be enough to simply match my opponent's record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will."

Or he's lying now as he woos hard-right social conservatives by proclaiming his opposition to gay equality and his support for traditional family values, especially as regards marriage.

Most likely: whatever is politically expedient at the moment becomes Mitt's truth.

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Eyes on the Prize?

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In San Francisco, openly lesbian state senator Carol Migden wants to allow hetero couples to go the "marriage lite" route via domestic partnerships that offer some of the state-provided benefits of marriage with fewer of the mutual obligations. To their credit, some gay activists are politely suggesting that the aim should remain on granting gays full marriage equality, rather than watering down marriage for everyone.

Meanwhile, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has put out an election analysis ballywhooing that in November "LGB [lesbian, gay, bisexual] voters overwhelmingly identified as Democrats (52 percent) and as liberals (43 percent)." Well, I guess if you define 43 percent (or even 52 percent) as "overwhelming."

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The Cheney Baby.

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The Washington Post gossip column explains the legalities facing Mary and Heather.

David Boaz has much more. Responding to social conservative whining, he writes:

...children growing up in single-mom households do have a rough time; they're more likely to drop out of school, commit crimes, and produce fatherless children themselves. ... But the situations aren't analogous. ... all the data about the poor outcomes for fatherless children are based on single-mother households. Mary Cheney's baby won't have a father, but it will have two parents who live together as a loving couple. That's very different from having only one parent....

Although Virginia's refusual to recognize Heather as a co-parent certainly doesn't help matters.

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Libertarians and Liberals.

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An essay in the New Republic by Brink Lindsey, vp for research at the Cato Institute (summarized in this Washington Post column), asks whether libertarians would be better off aligning with liberals rather than conservatives. The issue: conservatives want to impose big government on our personal lives to serve a reactionary morals agenda, while liberals want to turn back the clock on globalization, lower taxes, workplace flexibility and modest business deregulation. Excerpt:

Would libertarians be more comfortable in the company of Democrats? On moral questions-abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research-clearly they would. But on economic issues, the answer is less obvious. For just as Republicans want government to restore traditional values, so Democrats want government to bring back the economic order that existed before globalization. As Lindsey puts it in his New Republic essay, Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s while Democrats want to work there.

If Democrats can get over this nostalgia, there's a chance that liberaltarianism could work.

But don't hold your breath waiting for liberal Democrats to embrace freedom from government in the economic sphere anytime soon. Rising star Barack Obama cut his teeth in the Illinois legislature fighting (sadly, with success), at big labor's behest, to block even modest reform of government overtime mandates, insisting that the jobs for which businesses are forced to pay an hourly rate (rather than a salary), despite what management or even the workers themselves might want, must remain unchanged from the era of the Great Depression.

More. Linday's full New Republic essay is posted on Cato's website, here.

Still more. As Daniel Drezner asks about the Democrat-controlled Congress, "Is there any step towards economic liberalization that they won't block?" (hat tip: Instapundit)

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