IGF CultureWatch

The month of November was one of fault and redemption for the state of Israel, recognizable through the prism of the lives of its gay citizens.

The fault lay in the response by small, yet vocal, segments of the Orthodox Jewish community to the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, originally scheduled for Nov. 10. Though this was to be the city's fifth annual parade, ultra-religious Orthodox youth took to the streets in the weeks before in violent rioting and some rabbis denounced the event as an abomination on Judaism's holiest city.

This outrage was nothing new for Israel. Last year an Orthodox man stabbed three parade-goers and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Ultimately, parade organizers reached a compromise with the city's police (who were not opposed to a parade on principle but were fearful at the possibility of violence) and held a rally at a Jerusalem soccer stadium.

In an ironic ecumenical twist, religious fundamentalists from both the Jewish and Muslim communities came together to condemn the parade. It's disappointing that this unusual and erstwhile cooperation was motivated by a common bigotry, rather than, say, a shared realization that terrorism and military occupation is hurting both Israelis and Palestinians. Yet finding peace in the Middle East has always proved more difficult than raining down epithets on the gays, reliable targets for fundamentalists of all confessional stripes.

The Lord, however, does work in mysterious ways. A mere two weeks after the riots, redemption came in the form of a 6-1 decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling that gay couples legally married outside of Israel must receive recognition by the country's marriage registry.

The response from ultra-religious members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, was vocal. "We don't have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here," one member remarked. Yet Israel will continue to thrive as a Jewish state not in spite of, but because of this decision.

Watching the various reactions to these events, the diversity and contradictions of Israel could not have been made more clear. Two hostile and always-competing values of Israeli society were on display: intolerance and pluralism. Those Jews who burned cars and streetlights in riots leading up to the Gay Pride parade proved themselves to be just as fanatical as the Muslim fundamentalists they often criticize. The court's decision moved Israel away from religiously sanctioned discrimination (de facto law in the Arab world) and in the direction of the progressive West, once again demonstrating that Israel stands alone among Middle Eastern countries as a place where gay people live in dignity.

Having just returned from my first visit to Israel, I was amazed at its vibrancy. Contrary to the image that many anti-Zionists purport, Israel is not some white, colonialist settler state oppressing dark-skinned Palestinians, as comforting as this image might seem to those with stubborn leftist political agendas. A great portion of Israelis claim Middle Eastern and African backgrounds; Israel is not an ethnically pure nation of Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin).

Let it never be said the religiously pious are completely lacking in a sense of humor. One young, observant Jewish man I spoke with delivered a characteristically Jewish response to the events surrounding the canceling of the Gay Pride parade: It was not the abomination of sodomy, necessarily, that the ultra-Orthodox opposed, but rather the threat that the parade might prompt the return of the World Pride festival, (originally scheduled for August of this year but canceled in the wake of the recent Lebanon war).

"We don't want all those foreign gays coming here to take our gays," he laughed. In other words: we want our Jewish boys to find other nice Jewish boys. Apparently the threat of intermarriage - the precursor to the dreaded phenomenon of assimilation - traverses sexual orientation.

Last week's court decision was a step forward not only for the state of Israel, but for Jewish people the world over. As a Jew and a Zionist, I could not have been more proud.

Election Week 2006 marked a turning point in the gay civil rights movement. Our battles are far from ended, but the same midterm correction that reaffirmed the wisdom of our nation's founders has confirmed that the tide of history is with our cause of equality under the law. Several anti-gay politicians were defeated. We won our first statewide marriage initiative. The amendment to write gay families out of the U.S. Constitution is gone with the Republican majority. And marriage equality is reaffirmed in Massachusetts. Let the naysayers grumble all they like. It's time for Thanksgiving.

It is also a time for taking stock. Although we lost 7 of 8 state initiative battles, the fact that the anti-gay vote was held to less than 60 percent in Colorado, South Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin indicates public opinion is shifting toward us, and we can win given sufficient resources. The improved numbers are partly due to increased professionalism. Arizona Together, which led the successful effort to defeat anti-gay Proposition 107, spent $200,000 on voter research, and ultimately raised $2.1 million for their successful campaign.

Key to the Arizona victory was message discipline, which meant not allowing the anti-gay side to control the framing of the debate. While it is easy to fault leaders on our side for not emphasizing the rights of gay couples, our challenge in these ballot fights is to win votes in a particular electoral context with necessarily brief campaign messages. Educating the public about gay families is a crucial ongoing project for our statewide groups (and for each of us), but initiative campaigns must be carefully geared toward the likely voters here and now. Knowing that most Arizonans oppose same-sex marriage, Arizona Together focused its messages instead on the adverse effect the initiative's provision outlawing domestic partnerships would have on many heterosexual couples.

I myself have been a client of Lake Research Partners, the voter research firm used by Arizona Together, and I learned a lot thanks to the sophistication and experience that went into their polling design. It is expensive to hire first-rate consultants, but such research is indispensable in providing the framework for campaign messaging.

In addition to solid research and messaging, hard work made the difference. A Nov. 8 press release from Arizona Together stated, "With a coalition of more than 18,000 volunteers, outreach and education spanned the spectrum including the placement and distribution of more than 3,000 signs statewide; distribution of more than 100,000 pieces of literature through events and door knocking; tens of thousands of phone calls; one million pieces of mailed literature; and a three-week run on TV."

Several who lost their initiative fights said that their states were better organized as a result of the experience, and they might have won had they been able to reach more voters with their message. The state-by-state fight in the years ahead will take a great deal of coordination and identification of new funding sources. National GLBT and allied groups, working with the Equality Federation of statewide groups, have made a good start with grants, field organizing and training.

Fair Wisconsin stated after the election that their get-out-the-vote efforts helped defeat several anti-gay state legislators. South Dakotans Against Discrimination pointed out that, while they lost, they won 48 percent of the vote compared with the 24 percent to 33 percent shown in polls last January. Colorado's referendum to approve domestic partnerships came agonizingly close, winning 47 percent of the vote.

In the long run, the only people who can defeat us in our drive toward equality are ourselves. Claire Guthrie Gastañaga of Virginia's pro-gay Commonwealth Coalition stated, "One of our biggest obstacles in this campaign was that many thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion and were afraid or unwilling to invest themselves in this effort."

Virginians did provide the finest irony of the election. The Washington Times reported on Nov. 1 that Virginia's anti-gay amendment, designed to help Sen. George Allen's re-election bid by rousing conservative voters, appeared to be backfiring. This was because black voters, while they supported the amendment by more than 60 percent according to polls, overwhelmingly favored Allen's Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Additionally, the Commonwealth Coalition spent nearly $1 million and gained a million "no" voters, who also broke for Webb. Thus, demonizing gay people arguably cost Republicans the Senate.

Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association crowed after the election that "only one [state] voted against traditional marriage." I wonder if Mr. Wildmon considers the higher divorce rate in the Bible Belt a part of traditional marriage. The endless hectoring by these hypocritical busybodies is like an inveterate slob criticizing someone else's personal hygiene. If the tormented closet cases and parents in denial about their own gay children were purged from the leadership of the anti-gay movement, it would virtually disappear. Our adversaries' poll numbers are declining because their position depends on defamation and self-delusion.

The Arizona victory was no thanks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who taped two television spots for Prop. 107. In Tennessee, Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr. joined his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, in supporting that state's anti-gay amendment. Ford also attacked the October 25 New Jersey Supreme Court decision on marriage, and boasted of having voted twice for the anti-gay federal marriage amendment. The Tennessee ballot measure won 81 percent of the vote, but Ford was defeated. How must it feel to sell your soul, only to leave empty-handed?

You could almost feel sorry for U.S. Catholic Bishops. Periodically they gather, issue "Tut tutting" pronouncements, and everyone ignores them. You have to wonder why they even bother.

Assembling in Baltimore in mid-November, the bishops delivered themselves of an amusing piece of badinage titled "Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination." There they claimed that although a person with a homosexual inclination is not disordered, the inclination is disordered, that such persons should not marry each other, adopt children or disclose their inclination outside a trusted small group.

In other statements the Bishops opposed contraception and said sexually active homosexuals and heterosexuals using birth control should not take communion. As Spokane Bishop William Skylstad asserted, "There is a mocking reduction of sexuality, debasing it from God's beautiful gift of creation to little more than casual chemistry and inconsequential recreation."

Hardly anyone pays much attention to what the Catholic bishops say about sexuality. The bishops have simply lost the argument. Either they should give up or come up with new and better arguments. But their statements do indicate the Catholic hierarchy's inability to talk coherently about homosexuality.

Consider that word "inclination." The bishops avoid the word "orientation." Orientation suggests something much more fundamental and comprehensive, a part of the basic structure of people's psychological constitution. The bishops would not refer to a mere "heterosexual inclination."

It is as if the bishops refuse to acknowledge the fundamental nature of homosexuality. Although they do not say a homosexual inclination can be changed, it is as if they are leaving an opening for some future statement that homosexual feelings are less deeply rooted than heterosexual ones so they can more easily be suppressed or even replaced.

Although the bishops claim they are reaching out to gay Catholics, few gays are likely to be lured by having their deepest emotions labeled "disordered." Is any gay man likely to agree that, "It is disordered that I love John with all my heart" or "I love John deeply with a disordered love"?

No more than a heterosexual man would feel that way about his love for a female partner. Love is pretty much self-validating. The statement is more likely aimed at reinforcing heterosexual disapprobation of gays and promoting shame, anxiety and self-doubt among vulnerable young gays. Certainly that would be its easily predictable effect.

If a person with a disordered inclination is not a disordered person, why should the bishops disapprove of gays disclosing widely that they are homosexual? Fundamentalist Protestants fear that coming out would solidify a "homosexual identity." There is a whiff of that in the bishops' statement.

But more likely the bishops fear that if people know that friends and neighbors who are decent, friendly and helpful are homosexual, they might think well of gays, want them to be treated equally and stop believing that they have a disorder. Apparently the bishops believe that it is better that people believe damaging stereotypes about gays promoted by anti-gay polemicists. And--what could be clearer?--the bishops hope to silence opposition from self-affirming gays.

If gays are not disordered, it is also unaccountable why the bishops oppose gay adoption. If they do not object to a single parent raising his or her children, then why would they object to a gay person's adopting children? Absent any plausible rationale, their actual reason may be that they do not want gays to seem normal, responsible adults with a capacity for love, affection, and family life.

Bishop Skylstad's statement itself demonstrates deep ignorance of sexuality and human psychology And he perpetrates not one but two obvious errors by reducing sex to "the gift of creation" or else "inconsequential recreation." First, "recreational" sex is hardly inconsequential. Like all play, sex can be life-enhancing and promote psychological development.

Second, Skylstad perpetrates a false dichotomy. Sex can be not only for procreation or recreation. It can also be a mode of personal relating and bonding, certifying affection and solidifying and deepening a human relationship. The bishops seem ignorant of this fact.

Whether sexually active gay Catholics should take communion is not my issue. But traditionally for Christianity the informed conscience is authoritative. The Informed conscience takes into account not only traditional doctrine but also the individual's condition and circumstances. If gays are fully convinced that their sexual activity is not sinful, they should feel free to take communion. Most heterosexual Catholic couples using birth control have already made exactly that determination.