Gay, Straight or In-Between?

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This New York Times piece by Jane Gross looks at gay man who marry women and have furtive relationships with men on the side:

They spend decades denying their sexual confusion to themselves and others. They generally limit their encounters with men to anonymous one-night stands and tell all manner of lies if their wives suspect.

What's interesting is that, as Gross points out:

…so-called "Brokeback" marriages have hardly disappeared, as many experts assumed they would, even in an age when gay couples, in certain parts of the country, live openly and raise children just like any family.

Internalized homophobia, guilt, and fear of life outside the culturally enshrined heterosexual norm are still potent forces.

Another article of interest, from the London Times, looks at sexual fluidity. Matther Parris argues that sexuality often doesn't fit neatly into the categories of "gay" and "straight":

I think a substantial preponderance of men are more heterosexual than homosexual, but scattered fairly evenly between 100 per cent and half-and-half; and that the smaller number who think of ourselves as gay are likewise quite evenly distributed along the spectrum from the halfway point.

That's seems a bit too fluid to me, and I think Kinsey was probably right that toward the ends of the spectrum sexual orientation is pretty well fixed and in no sense a "choice." Still, Parris may be right when he notes:

... we who call ourselves gay know well that most men who call themselves "bisexual" are more gay than straight, but afraid or unwilling to say so. But what we overlook is that for every gay posing as a bisexual, there are probably a dozen bisexuals posing as straight.

And in a better world, of course, all that posing wouldn't be necessary because (among consenting adults) who you love and how you build a life together just wouldn't make any difference.

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The Washington State Marriage Decision

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For gay-marriage litigants, July was the cruelest month. Prior to the Washington Supreme Court decision in Andersen v. King County, there were two substantive state marriage decisions against them (New York and Connecticut), one quasi-substantive federal decision against them (the 8th Circuit, whose broad language went beyond the state constitutional ban at issue), and three procedural decisions against them upholding the propriety of ballot initiatives banning gay marriage (Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Georgia).

But the day the Washington court handed down its decision may turn out to be the hardest day of all. Andersen is the most careful, closely reasoned, and comprehensive judicial opinion to date rejecting constitutional claims to gay marriage. It is much better, as a matter of conventional legal analysis and craftsmanship, than the New York Court of Appeals decision in Hernandez v. Robles rejecting gay-marriage claims in early July.

Since the principles and arguments on this issue from state-to-state, and even in the federal courts, are not that different, the Washington decision will deserve close attention from other courts. Among the courts next to consider claims for gay marriage, the New Jersey Supreme Court in particular should grapple with, and respond to, Andersen if it intends to uphold a gay-marriage claim.

Andersen shows how legislative advances for gays are a double-edged sword in litigation over marriage. Some courts upholding gay-marriage or civil unions claims have cited legislative progress - eliminating sodomy laws, making adoptions more widely available, passing employment non-discrimination laws - as evidence that times and attitudes are changing and as support for the idea that the legislature has no very good reason to withhold this last bit of progress from them.

Andersen, by contrast, cites legislative progress as a reason to deny that anti-gay discrimination should be of special concern to judges. After all, reasoned the court, gays have made a lot of legislative progress. Thus, they don't need the protection of courts the way racial minorities do. Gays can fend for themselves in the political process, just as most interest groups do.

This is a dubious theory, since historical scholarship has shown that groups tend to get heightened judicial protection only after they've made legislative progress. And once they've gotten that judicial protection, they don't lose it simply because the legislature begins to take their concerns seriously.

Since the court saw no reason to strictly scrutinized the exclusion of gay couples from marriage, it was very easy to uphold the law. The law need only be "rationally related to a legitimate state interest." The court rightly describes this form of review as "extremely deferential" and granting the state "nearly limitless" power to make policy as it sees fit.

The state claimed that its desire to promote procreation and child welfare were good enough reasons under this "rational basis" standard to exclude gay couples from marriage. While they are very poor policy reasons to exclude gay couples - many heterosexual couples don't procreate, yet they can marry - the court concluded that these were minimally "rational" reasons for existing marriage law.

There is a bright spot for gay couples in the Andersen decision."We are acutely aware . . . that many day-to-day decisions that are routine for married couples are more complex, more agonizing, and more costly for same-sex couples," wrote the court. It then listed some of the numerous ways in which marriage law helps families to deal with various crises in life, including the death or incapacity of a partner, no matter whether the couple has children.

Lest you think these are just crocodile tears from a gutless court delivering gay couples to the tender mercies of the heartless legislature, the court continued: "But plaintiffs have affirmatively asked that we not consider any claim regarding statutory benefits and obligations separate from the status of marriage. We thus have no cause for considering whether denial of statutory rights and obligations to same-sex couples, apart from the status of marriage, violates the state or federal constitution." The court ended with a strong suggestion that "the legislature may want to reexamine the impact of the marriage laws on all citizens of this state."

To the state legislature, the message seems to be this: "Get moving on addressing the hardships faced by gay couples and their children, some of which we've listed for you. You don't have to give them marriage and maybe not even all of the rights of marriage, but something needs to be done. If you don't act, we might."

To gay-marriage litigants, the message seems to be this: "Go to the legislature and see what can be done about the sorts of problems you've identified and that we agree exist. If the legislature is unresponsive, come back to us not with a claim for the status of marriage, but with a remedial claim for the benefits and protections of marriage for your families."

My guess is that this twin message was necessary to get the five votes needed to uphold the state's marriage laws.

I've previously written that courts confronting gay-marriage claims may now see three choices: (1) order full marriage (Massachusetts); (2) deny the claims (New York); and (3) compromise on civil unions, with instructions to the legislature to decide on implementation (Vermont).

Choice #3 involves many complications and permutations, but it seems that the Washington court would like very much to give it a try. It's a sensible direction for litigants, legislatures, and courts.

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‘Beyond Marriage’ — to Nowhere

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On July 26, a few hundred leftist LGBT activists and allies issued a manifesto entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," stating they "hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today." At over 3000 words, the document is far too radical, fails to focus on LGBT rights, is abysmally ill-timed, plays into the hands of the anti-gay right and reflects the old penchant of the gay left for building strategic bridges to nowhere.

The signatories are primarily from the liberationist wing of the LGBT movement. By contrast, those of us on the assimilationist side do not seek a revolution, we simply want equal rights. This dichotomy has existed since Harry Hay was expelled from the Mattachine Society in 1953. By long habit, the liberationists are using recent setbacks to portray us as a community under siege, as if we had not made astonishing progress and the polls were not shifting in our favor.

Some of the signatories, like Paula Ettelbrick, have long opposed the fight for equal marriage rights because they regard marriage as an oppressive patriarchal institution. Contrary to their static viewpoint, marriage and the rights of women have changed greatly over the past half-century, as reflected by landmark Supreme Court decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird and Roe v. Wade.

The manifesto decries "corporate greed" while ignoring the fact that the corporate sector has outstripped the public sector in granting domestic partner benefits. Indeed, the sweeping socialist rhetoric made me want to break into a hearty rendition of "The Internationale." Somehow, the grim and bloody history of utopian schemes does not discourage the True Believers, who seek to liberate us all from the most successful economic system in the history of the world because of its flaws. This reminds me of the Quentin Crisp line, "Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."

To show that their proposal "is neither utopian nor unrealistic," they point out that "in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives." The radical right does claim that same-sex marriage will lead to an explosion of polygamy and other unorthodox arrangements, but how in the world do we advance the gay-rights cause by letting our enemies frame the discussion?

The manifesto's all-inclusiveness reflects the longstanding liberationist opposition to focusing primarily on LGBT issues, because, they say, all oppressions are linked. No other minority group has been so apologetic about working for its own interests. The same liberationists who make a fetish of diversity (instead of simply dealing with it as many of us have learned to do) also habitually denigrate white men, which suggests they are inspired more by guilt or revenge than by egalitarianism.

The manifesto touts a long list of issues, including health care, housing, Social Security, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance. How is all of this the special province of the gay community? Taking on every non-gay-specific issue only makes us a bigger target for our adversaries. Marriage equality and the incremental steps toward it will pose enough of a challenge for the next couple of decades.

Society is continually changing, though not all at once. Those who regard marriage as oppressive treat it as monolithic and unchanging, which ironically is precisely how our adversaries on the religious right see it.

On the contrary, allowing same-sex couples to marry is just one more reform enhancing a foundational institution of society. The liberationists object to the special status accorded marriage, citing (for example) the needs of poor non-traditional families, which are "disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women." Not only do the manifesto writers show no interest in examining which taxpayer-funded solutions have worked and which have not, they treat the high number of broken homes in the black community as a mere lifestyle choice instead of a tragedy.

Another theme of the document is gender nonconformity. As someone who has worked in practical ways for transgender rights for many years, I see no need to spin all of society around every variation in order to defend diversity. Efforts by Queer Theorists to redefine "sex" and "gender" have obscured more than enlightened. While gender roles vary significantly from culture to culture, the division of the sexes into male and female is a result of biology, not a social construct. The fact that a small number of people fall between the two stools, and deserve protection, does not change this basic duality in our genetic makeup. The notion that tolerance requires abolishing our biologically derived categories is, well, perverse.

Unlike the manifesto writers, I do not consider myself part of a "queer" community, and I have no intention of accepting "gender queer" as a serious category. Mind you, I am a longtime gay rights activist; the average American voter will be even less receptive to the permanent revolution implied by these counterculturists who emphasize differences rather than common values, victimhood rather than inner strength, and entitlement rather than responsibility. Demanding equal legal status for every conceivable type of relationship, including polyamory, is a strategy for permanent outsider status.

The rallying cry about leaving no one behind brings to mind the overcrowded, un-seaworthy boats in which so many Cuban refugees have drowned. Flying the false flag of liberation, the authors of the Beyond Marriage manifesto would have us all climb aboard a ship of fools.

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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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