A ‘Guy’ Thing, Not a ‘Gay’ Thing?

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Over at Slate's Kausfiles, there's a transcript from MSNBC with New Republic editor Peter Beinart debating Ann Coulter over her contention that gay men are inherently more promiscuous than straight men. Coulter says, in passing, "I like gays. I like all gays, and not just the ones who are Ann Coulter drag queens." See, reaching out across party lines works! [Irony alert ;-)]

Right Side of the Rainbow offers his thoughts, noting that:

the people who say gay men are inherently more promiscuous than straight men are usually the same people who say gay men aren't inherently gay. Are we supposed to think that gay men are inherently homosexually promiscuous, but they're not inherently homosexual?

Andrew Sullivan also weighs in:

For bigots, the testosterone problem that is universal among men is somehow inherently-and not just circumstantially-unique to gays. Every discomforting aspect about human nature, in the bigot's mind, becomes associated with a minority they already despise. For Gibson, war is about the Jews. For Kaus and Coulter, promiscuity is about the gays.

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Another Casualty of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

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My friend Bridget Altenburg is livid.

Why?

The Army recently dismissed another Arab linguist because he was gay.

I know, I know: a lot of us were angry about that. But Bridget served in the Army for five years after attending West Point. She was a captain and an engineer. She led a unit of 35 soldiers in Bosnia who rebuilt bridges so that Bosnians could vote for their new government; she served as an aide to a three-star general in Kosovo and was perhaps the only woman at the time who was serving as an aide in a hazardous fire zone.

Bridget loved the Army and she did good work there and she would have kept serving. But like the linguist, Bridget is gay. So like the linguist, she had to go.

Bridget wasn't kicked out. She never told-she was never asked.

The general she was an aide to likely knew she was gay and didn't care. Her unit didn't care. But Bridget cared. She had come out to herself while serving and she just couldn't lie any more.

So when her five-year commitment was up, she left. The Army lost another good soldier.

Men and women like Bridget are the secret losses of the Armed Services. We hear about the egregious losses-the newest Arab linguist to be dismissed didn't tell anyone he was gay, he was likely outed by a jealous lover.

But we don't hear much about people like Bridget, whose good character makes them want to serve their country but also makes it impossible for them to do so.

The obvious "don't ask, don't tell" losses, of course, are bad enough. Not just bad-ridiculous. Silly.

Bridget points out that the U.S. soldier currently being held in Iraq for rape and murder was given a waiver for his past criminal history.

"So, you can join the military if you're a criminal, but not if you're gay? It doesn't make sense," Bridget says.

And she's right.

She's also right about the very real worry of military readiness. The armed forces have dismissed 11,000 soldiers through "don't ask," about 800 of them with critical skills-and 300 with crucial language skills. The military needs Arab linguists, of course, so it replaces the gay ones with civilians who don't have as thorough a background check or any type of military commitment, yet have access to critical military information.

Makes you feel safer, doesn't it?

Over 700 soldiers were dismissed for being gay last year alone-in the middle of a war in which the armed forces are not making their recruitment goals.

But those 11,000 discharged gay soldiers don't include people like Bridget, who couldn't bear lying any longer.

"It makes no sense," she says. "'Don't ask, don't tell' doesn't make sense from a military readiness standpoint. It doesn't make sense from a unit cohesion standpoint-nothing disrupts unit cohesion like lying. Being in the Army isn't like some nine-to-five job at Wal-Mart. You bunk with these people. They know you. If you're lying, they know."

And the myth that gay men and lesbians would start hitting on people in their units?

"That hasn't happened with any of our allies who let openly gay soldiers serve-England, Israel," Bridget says. "What do legislators think, that Americans are hornier than people in other countries?"

Besides, she points out, the military has rules about conduct, which should apply equally to gay and straight people. There is no sex in the barracks. Superiors can't date those under them. "If the head of a unit hit on a soldier, he or she could be brought up on charges-not because he or she is gay, but because it's against military law," Bridget says.

There are plenty of ways, she says, to make sure this gay-sex-everywhere nightmare doesn't happen.

But that's not what the law is about, of course.

The law isn't about sense. It's not about unit cohesion. It's not about military readiness. It's about discrimination.

And while the military is discriminating, it's losing people we need to fight for us, like that Arab linguist. And it's losing people like Bridget, who leave exemplary military careers because they are exactly the sorts of people the military wants-men and women who aren't comfortable lying.

"I don't know why I was livid when I heard about that linguist," Bridget says. "It's the same stuff that keeps happening over and over. It's a farce."

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Not So Fast, Mr. George

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Robert George gloats that gay-marriage supporters, in this statement, have finally dropped the veil and blurted out what they really want: plural marriage and other forms of legal recognition for "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner." Well, the statement is wrongheaded, and it's poorly drafted to boot (don't they mean more than two conjugal partners?), but George nonetheless gets it wrong.

First, there's nothing new here. Left-wing family radicals have been saying all this stuff for years. Second, what they're saying has no particular link to same-sex marriage. Few if any of the signers have been leaders of the gay-marriage movement. In fact, many of them (Judith Stacey and Michael Warner, for instance) have expressed ambivalence or outright hostility toward same-sex marriage. That's because, third, they're not particularly interested in including either plural relationships or same-sex couples in marriage; their agenda is to deinstitutionalize marriage by extending legal recognition to everything else-"conjugal" and otherwise. In other words, they don't want to put gays or polygamists on the marriage pedestal; they want to knock the pedestal over. They'd like to see a world where there'd be little legal or social difference between same-sex marriage and same-sex cohabitation.

Fourth, the likeliest way to get where these folks want to go is by not having gay marriage. The result, over time, will be to create and legitimize alternative family structures, including cohabitation benefits. Not by coincidence, "Beyond Marriage" folks are pointing to the recent string of judicial defeats for SSM as evidence that gay-rights supporters should "rethink and redirect" their energies away from marriage, and toward creating a host of marriage substitutes.

Finally, George claims that gay-marriage advocates "have made no serious effort to answer" the argument that there's no logical way to favor same-sex marriage and hold out against polygamy. On what planet? Here on earth, we have answered early and often-and we're still waiting for a substantive reply. If George wants to bone up, he can start here, here, here, here, and here (where he'll find a whole chapter on the subject).

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A Pro-Gay Marriage Ad, for the MTV Generation.

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A new marriage ad is making its mark on the web (and, I believe, on MTV). Clever and effective, or patronizing, pleading and overly hip? Click here and scroll down to "Permission" to see for yourself. (Yes, our IGF technology is much inferior to that at AndrewSullivan.com and elsewhere; deal with it.)

More. The link also has additional marriage ads produced by Public Interest. Comments Lebain (and I found this interesting so I'm reposting it all):

I was unfortunate enough to be one of the (small) donors who supported Public Interest productions (www.publicinterest.tv) in the production of these ads. Never again!

First, the ads came out AFTER the important Congressional votes on marriage, and AFTER primaries and the November elections when so many marriage bans were passed (or at least my media kit from the producers arrived after the elections), even though I had donated well in advance of both votes. The producers told me MTV would donate $1M of airtime for the ads, but the ads were delivered so late, most if not all that opportunity was missed.

Second, with the exception of the "Permission" ad, all included the most disgusting imagery possible on such a sensitive subject. Two weiners in a boiling pot? Two donuts? Sex toys and graphic images of piercings? I'm sure the producers had MTV's demographic in mind, but instead of creating spots that respect their young audience, they produced trasparently veiled pornography meant more to shock and disgust their audience.

As a public company with govt. affairs and tax lawyers, MTV also probably didn't want to seem to blatantly endorse one position or the other on marrige. Hence the weak "Think Before You Vote" message rather than a more direct "Vote to Support Marriage Equality."

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If You Can’t Join It, Destroy It

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In response to recent defeats on the marriage equality front, some progressives are returning to a view they unleashed when the marriage debate began but have been soft-pedaling since: that marriage itself should be knocked off its perch as a "privileged" relationship, and government should instead provide support to all manner of cohabitating arrangements. A new "Beyond Marriage" manifesto backing this view was issued last week, signed by some 250 left-liberal LGBT activists.

Washington Blade editor Chris Crain responds in Revenge of the Anti-Conjugalists, writing that "realizing the Right's worst fears" - about gay marriage being the frontline of an attack against marriage itself - "is the last thing our movement needs to do at this critical juncture."

Note: The progressives want various non-conjugal relationships to receive access to "all vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor" and so on. This makes their argument distinct (if superficially similar) to the view expressed by some libertarians that government should simply get out of the marriage-sanctifying business and leave that to private religious institutions and contracts.

Update. No surprise; social conservatives have picked up on the lesbigay left's new manifesto. Robert P. George writes in First Things:

The choice facing us as a nation is this: Either we retain as legally normative the traditional conjugal understanding of marriage as the exclusive union of one man and one woman, or we give legal standing and public approbation to every form of consensual sexual partnering and child rearing, including polygamy and polyamory. Just ask those notable "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied activists, scholars educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers." They'll tell you exactly what lies "beyond gay marriage." They already have.

And the rest of us are the ones who have to deal with the fallout.

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No Excuses for Iran

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On July 19, protests were held around the world marking the first anniversary of the hanging of two gay teens, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, in Mashhad, Iran. The teens were hanged on charges that they raped a 13-year-old boy, charges widely believed to have been trumped up to silence critics. Simon Forbes and Peter Tatchell of the British gay rights group OutRage issued a joint call with the Paris-based International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) for worldwide protests with the message, "Iran: Stop Killing Gays! Stop Killing Kids!"

In Washington, Rob Anderson led a protest at Dupont Circle. In San Francisco, Michael Petrelis assembled speakers at Harvey Milk Plaza. In Provincetown, Andrew Sullivan led a quiet vigil outside Town Hall. In Toronto, Arsham Parsi, Human Rights Secretary of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO), spoke at a commemorative gathering. In Iran, PGLO members lit candles privately.

During the planning of the protests, OutRage proposed five demands, which were endorsed by PGLO and IDAHO. They included ending all executions in Iran; stopping the arrest and torture of LGBT Iranians; halting the deportation to Iran of LGBT and other asylum seekers; supporting Iranians struggling for democracy; and opposing foreign military intervention in Iran.

Some organizers in an email exchange questioned the need for a list of demands. Andrew Sullivan wrote, "The images tell you everything. We just need to stop and remember. The rest we can debate later." I emailed to say that the list of demands omitted 'opposition to Holocaust denial' and 'opposition to nuclear saber rattling'." But the European organizers kept their demands, while stressing that organizers in other cities were free to adopt them or not.

On July 7, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) announced that it would join the July 19 worldwide action with a vigil against the death penalty, outside the Iranian mission to the United Nations. On July 13, however, IGLHRC pulled out of the protest and announced it was moving its July 19 event and changing its focus to one of introspection for Westerners. (The Iranian mission protest was held by others, organized by Andy Humm.) Joining IGLHRC at New York's LGBT Community Center were Human Rights Watch (HRW), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and others. IGLHRC said that the worldwide call for protests raised questions like "How do we avoid reinforcing stereotypes and playing into hostilities prompted by our own government?"

The reference to "our own government" was illuminated by a July 18 email from Scott Long of HRW to Peter Tatchell, writing, "Months of US pressure on Iran have only inflated the popularity of the Ahmedinejad government" - thus changing the subject to Ugly Americans. Long accused the protest organizers of rank speculation, and claimed that the concentration on the Mashhad hangings "pins refugees' fates and lives on a single undetermined case, rather than on an analysis of the overall situation in Iran" - despite the fact that OutRage three months ago published a report of a nine-month investigation by Simon Forbes into numerous cases based on information gathered from sources inside Iran.

While acknowledging that Iran tortures and kills people for homosexual conduct, Long stated, "There is no basis whatever for imputing a Westernized 'gay' identity to these youths" - thereby employing a Western social-constructionist trope belied by the involvement of self-identified gay Iranians in the July 19 organizing. Long contradicted his professed respect for Tatchell's work by injecting lines like "I do not play games with the dead" (as if Tatchell does), "Look at the world, not just London and New York," and "Do you have a plan for change, or just for catharsis?"

Tatchell, whose brave international activism has gone far beyond mere catharsis, had written in a July 14 open letter to Long and IGLHRC's Paula Ettelbrick that Iranian sources claim that Asgari and Marhoni were gay and were hanged for being lovers. Tatchell wrote, "I am not prepared to give the benefit of doubt to the murderous regime in Tehran...." He also noted that the July 19 protest message was worded more broadly, without reference to the Mashhad case.

In a July 6 interview in Gay City News, Doug Ireland quotes Mani (not his real name), a 24-year-old PGLO activist living in Iran: "You who live serenely and comfortably on the other side of Iran's frontiers, be aware that those who think and feel and love like you do in Iran are executed for the crime of homosexuality, are assassinated, kidnapped, and barred from working in offices…. Be fair and tell us what difference there is between us and you. Isn't it time that all homosexuals around the world rise up and come to our defense?" On July 19, people in dozens of cities worldwide answered a resounding Yes.

HRW has written over 50 affidavits for Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, and is preparing a report on abuses in Iran based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is commendable, but does not justify belittling the efforts of others.

The condescension of some professional activists is both illiberal and pointless. No one needs permission from a central committee to fight for our rightful place in the world. Demonstrations are insufficient, to be sure, but the global protests on July 19, organized via the Internet, shone a light on a grave injustice. That is a good and necessary thing to do, the snipings of would-be gatekeepers notwithstanding.

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The Gang’s All There.

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I guess they meant well. But publishing this ad in newspapers, showing that the usual gang of leftwing activists, liberal politicians and big-labor leaders (and some progressive religious folks) support marriage equality made me bristle. In my view, if big labor is for it, then it certainly can't be good. I think many who aren't on the liberal left have the same visceral reaction.

I wonder if any Republican or conservative gay people (Log Cabin? Andrew Sullivan?) were even approached. And what about respected libertarian conservative figures, such as Charles Murray, who favor allowing same-sex marriage (as noted here)? Nope, no reaching out across party lines in this ad.

Maybe the aim was to shore up left-liberal support. But if they alienate independents, libertarians and centrists, what's gained? More likely, there was no strategy behind this ad at all.

Comments sample:
kittynboi: There seems to be little evidence that the right wing will support us if we drop the support of the left wing.

Avee: If we continue to present gay equality as part of a broad-based leftwing agenda (unions!), we will NEVER expand the range of our support out to the center, much less to the libertarian right. We will continue to remain a leftwing niche, preaching to ourselves, running ads for ourselves, focused solely on ourselves.

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Tomorrow’s Electorate Speaks.

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From students Adam Jack Gomolin and Alex Halpern Levy, age 21 and 19 respectively, another sign of what today's Republican hostility toward homosexuality is sowing for the party tomorrow. Money quote:

The Republican Party has two options. First, if it continues with its present policies, it will watch its base crumble as elderly social conservatives are slowly replaced in the electorate by young social progressives. Second, a bold (and perhaps unlikely) move: the Republican Party can return to its small government roots. It can take gay marriage off the national agenda and allow individual states to legislate as they see fit. It can decide that the role of the government is not to tell people how to live their lives, and that the government that governs best dictates least. In this, the GOP must balance the base it has with the base it stands to gain.

These guys add up to six years less than my age. They're the future the GOP is mortgaging.

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