IGF CultureWatch

Thirteen years ago as the gays in the military fiasco that led to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was roiling the country then-President Bill Clinton urged gays and lesbians to "Tell your stories" in an effort to sway popular sentiment in their direction.

The advice came far too late to be of any practical use on the military issue, but it was important advice for the long term and we fail to act on it at our peril.

Each year as the Gay Pride parade comes around, gays take to the streets in our big cities carrying signs and chanting slogans about "Gay Pride," "Gay and Proud," etc. I suppose those are good polemical slogans to direct to closeted gays and lesbians to let them know that it is possible to be a proud, self-confident gay person. There are still a lot of gays in the closet.

But I suspect the notion of "gay and proud" has about zero effect on most heterosexuals, a substantial portion of whom are either reflexively antagonistic to gays or undecided about them. There is no logical connection between the fact that a person is proud and the idea that he or she deserves respect or equal freedom. No husband surfing TV channels and happening upon a film clip of a Gay Pride parade is going to turn to his wife and say, "Oh look, Martha, gays are proud now. We should let them have equal rights."

"National Coming Out Day" represented a different approach: A specific occasion on which gays might come out to friends, relatives, whoever. No doubt that is useful. It lets people know that they know gay people and opinion surveys do shows that knowing two or more gay people does correlate with a more positive attitude toward gays.

But I suspect this is true primarily if the respondent already knows, likes and respects the person coming out. If the person coming out is unlikeable or viewed with distaste, coming out might have little impact. It might even increase anti-gay feelings. We have all run into gays and lesbians we want nothing to do with and hope they have the decency to stay in the closet.

Then too, it is not actually clear that coming out changes other people's attitudes about gays. The surveys show a correlation, not causality. It seems equally possible, and perhaps more likely, that gays choose to come out to people whom they think will be receptive--who have already indicated in some way that they are generally open and tolerant.

So we are left with telling our stories. By "tell your stories," Clinton no doubt meant--and it is not his advice alone--explain to people how we gradually realized our homosexuality, the discomforts and hesitations we felt, the pain we felt from people's antagonism, our struggles for self-acceptance, how we conduct our lives now, and so forth.

The point of telling our stories is that it is the most effective possible counter to the idea--and it is not found solely on the religious right--that being gay is some sort of choice or willful indulgence. Logically it makes no sense to say that anyone chooses his sexual and emotional feelings; rather he discovers them, sometimes he is gripped by them, often to his own surprise. But if people thought logically about homosexuality, gays would have achieved equality long ago.

By telling our stories we can help people develop the kind of emotional connection that can lead to a degree of understanding about what we experienced. And by showing the fundamental humanness of our experience, we can reduce some of the mysterious otherness of homosexuality.

But it is not easy for most of us who have been out of the closet for a while to think back to an earlier period when we may have felt uncomfortable about ourselves, tried to suppress our feelings, worried about their implications for our future, and lied to others about our desires. It is often a painful period most of us would rather not recall. It is more comfortable to wear a button that says "Gay and Proud"--as if it were just that easy.

I suspect that recounting that period is particularly difficult for men. In our culture women are permitted, even encouraged, to talk about their feelings and emotions. Men are not. For men, to recount unhappiness, uncertainty and anxiety suggests weakness--a lack of self-confidence and self-control, in short a failure of male competence.

But it is a task that needs to be undertaken nonetheless, selectively, at the right time and under the right conditions. Fortunately, most people are happy to hear a salvation story, a triumph over adversity, a victory for integrity and a happy outcome. Told in that way, our stories can reflect well on us and help others relate to our struggles at the same time.

California state senator Sheila Kuehl introduced a bill to mandate that social studies courses in the state's schools should include the role and contribution to history and contemporary society of gays and lesbians along with several other groups already mandatorily included--women, blacks, Latinos, etc.

This seems like a fine idea and we can hope that similar bills are introduced in other state legislatures. I cannot imagine why the bill specifies only the social sciences and does not include literature and the arts, but you have to start somewhere.

Predictably enough, the homophobes are up in arms over the possibility that their innocent children--who have apparently never heard of Elton John, Rosie O'Donnell or Melissa Etheridge and have never, ever seen "South Park"--might actually learn that gays and lesbians exist and might even have contributed something to society.

The San Jose Mercury News quoted Karen England, executive director of the far right Capitol Resource Institute, as warning, "This is more than just accepting it, it's forcing our kids to embrace it, almost celebrate it." She says her institute prefers that parents teach their children about sexual orientation.

There are so many things wrong with her comment it is hard to know where to begin. First of all, most parents will probably not teach their children anything about "sexual orientation," by which England seems to mean people with orientations other than her own. Most parents don't have much information about gays in history because they themselves never learned about it in school either.

Second, teaching the facts about something does not mean "embracing" or "celebrating" them. I managed to learn a bit about heterosexuals in history without celebrating or embracing it. I learned about the solar system, osmosis, Christianity, and the Soviet Union without celebrating them. They are simply facts that have an impact on our world. The whole point of education is to learn such facts in order to make the world more fully comprehensible, no matter what we think about those facts.

England went on to say that she doesn't really care about people's sexual orientation because a person's contribution to history doesn't hinge on sexual orientation.

"I don't care if, or who, whatever historical figure they want to say is gay," she said. "If we're discussing history, who someone had sex with is inappropriate. I don't think most Californians want history and social sciences taught through the lens of who in history slept with whom."

England honey, we're not talking about sex acts. We're talking about people. But this is so typical. Every time we talk about gays and lesbians, the far right tries to reduce our lives to our sex lives--and then has the nerve to deny that sexuality has any impact on the rest of our lives. Of course it does.

Surely England does not mean to suggest that a heterosexual's sexual orientation has no impact on his or her life. Two examples. Example 1: If Engand's Henry VIII had not been heterosexual, he would not have kept marrying and disposing of his wives and finally establishing the Anglican church to justify his actions. Example 2: No one can doubt that publicity about President Bill Clinton's heterosexual activity certainly created political problems for him during his second term.

There are analogous examples for gay people, although it is easier to find examples in literature and the arts than in political history since research on gays is still an underdeveloped field.

If England's Edward II had not been gay, he might not have been deposed and murdered since his homosexuality so offended English nobles. Had Michelangelo not been gay, he surely would never have painted those voluptuous male nudes in the Sistine Chapel. Had Walt Whitman not been gay he would not have written so passionately about "adhesiveness" and "the love of comrades." Had Californian Harry Hay not been gay, he would not have founded the Mattachine Society. That gay composers Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti were partners significantly influenced the subjects they wrote about and the musical styles they used. Etcetera, etcetera.

But someone might say we really should not have laws specifically mandating the teaching about the sexual orientation of important people. Instead, history and the arts should just be taught fully and honestly. Of course. But the problem is that it has not been and is not being taught fully and honesty and it won't be until legislation is passed to make that happen.

Teachers are not going to teach who is and is not gay if they don't know which people are gay. And where would they have learned that? Textbook manufacturers will not include the information unless they are legally mandated to do so. Teachers will not teach it unless it is in the textbook lest they get into trouble with conservative parents and school boards since even a small minority of parents can make enough noise to intimidate school administrators. And some teachers with attitudes like Karen England's will not teach it even if it is in the textbook unless the law says they must.

Should California students learn that homosexual Californians have no flaws? A bill that just passed the state Senate could make that happen. Textbooks would have to treat lesbians and gay men with the same kid gloves the law now requires for members of other minorities. Equality demands many things, but not this.

The bill begins from a sound premise: that history classes should not be biased. California's schools went through a long period where students learned California and U.S. history without knowing about the contributions women or people of color had made to that progress. Up until 40 years ago, when the role of Native Americans, African-Americans, Latinos and others were brought up, they could be-and were-characterized in social studies classes in stereotypical and demeaning ways.

That's why, in 1965, California began the effort to make sure that our students' introduction to history was not also a course in Prejudice 101. If children are to learn repugnant stereotypes, they shouldn't get their information in school.

Much of the bias came from simple exclusion. Prejudice against certain groups made accomplishment much harder for them. But equality is a powerful motivator. As far back as 1913, the NAACP established its first branch in California. In 1918, four women were elected to the California Assembly. These, and many other documentable facts, were accomplishments precisely because they went against the overwhelming prejudices of their day. They are surely worth teaching to students. The rarity of such accomplishments, should not be used against them, and, in fact, demonstrates how steeply tilted the playing field was.

The 1965 changes to the Education Code served as a corrective, prohibiting biased curricula. But well-intentioned laws, like great civilizations, have their rise and fall. What began as an attempt to solve the problem of curriculum bias against minorities and women has evolved into its converse: a project to avoid anything that "reflects adversely" on them. That language is existing law. And whether related to lesbians and gay men, Latinos, women or anyone else, it is a license to whitewash.

Prejudice against Latinos should not cause Cesar Chavez to be left out of California history, but neither should it require that he be presented as a saint. Father Junipero Serra's shortcomings are part of his legacy, as are Leland Stanford's and Hiram Johnson's. Chavez should be treated no differently. Would it reflect adversely on women if Kathleen Brown's history-making run for Governor were described as a debacle? Possibly. But it's true.

These questions are hard enough when it's clear you are talking about a particular minority, but the discussion is even more complicated for homosexuality. It was not until the 1950s or so that American lesbians and gay men began to assert themselves publicly as homosexual. Remember, Oscar Wilde's famous trial for sodomy in England was premised on his defense that he was not a sodomite. Prior to 1950, it's extremely hard to know who was homosexual without resorting to exactly the sorts of stereotypes-rumors and gossip about bedmates, non-conforming gender behavior, cross-dressing-that the Education Code rightly condemns.

But for over a half century now, we have had people who comfortably identify themselves as gay. Moreover, it is now becoming clear that, whatever New York and San Francisco may think, the struggle for gay equality in this country had its genesis in California, and particularly in Los Angeles. Gay L.A., a major work of local history by Stuart Timmons and Lillian Federman, will be released later this year. It is the first book to fully document L.A.'s monumental contributions to the modern gay rights movement, and it will be a fine source for developing textbook material.

Knowing California's central role in the history of gay equality is one thing. But that's quite different from saying that students who learn the parts played by key figures like Harry Hay and Morris Kight should be prohibited from also knowing that those men could be a couple of very pissy queens. Should textbooks rely for their information about Hay and Kight or Harvey Milk solely from the gay community's hymnal?

Certainly, textbook authors should not go out of their way to find flaws. But neither should they have to avoid the obvious ones for the sake of not reflecting adversely upon someone's group. Even positive prejudice is still prejudice.

Many of the criticisms aimed at SB 1437 are due to the fact that it accepts the current statutory language as its starting point, and adds sexual orientation to the list. Sadly, the bill's author, Senator Sheila Kuehl, is being blamed for the existing law's excesses.

Minimizing bias is a respectable, even an essential goal for all education. That part of the law is important, and gays should be included in it. But steering textbooks away from "adverse" reflections on individuals because of race, gender, or any other group identity is a fool's errand, and bad history to boot.

All right, so the Republicans have had better years. But don't forget their secret weapon. Not an ABM, MIRV, or MX. An MPA: the Marriage Protection Amendment, precision-targeted on same-sex marriage and, through it, the Republican base.

The MPA would amend the U.S. Constitution to forbid gay couples to marry. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., says he will bring the amendment up during the week of June 5. It has zero chance of passing by the required 67-vote majority, as Frist knows. In 2004, the amendment garnered only 48 Senate votes, and the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, figures it will get only about 52 votes this year.

So why bother? Consider Virginia, where in 2004 the Republican-controlled Legislature hit on the promising formula of passing both a whopping tax increase and a gratuitously vindictive anti-gay-marriage law. (The so-called Marriage Affirmation Act outlawed not only gay marriage and civil unions, but also private contracts between same-sex individuals seeking to replicate marital arrangements.) Lyndon Johnson once said, "Hell, give [a man] somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." The Virginia formula was in that vein: Knock the gays hard enough, and maybe conservatives wouldn't notice the tax hike.

In Virginia, the moral-values credit card seemed to have maxed out in 2005; Democrats held the governorship. Nationally, many conservative voters seem to have noticed that the same Republican politicians who are trotting out the marriage amendment have also spent up a storm, created the biggest new entitlement program since LBJ's Great Society, riddled the budget with earmarks, and approved unprecedented restraints on political activity.

Whatever its political merits, the MPA remains as unwise substantively as when it first came up in 2004. Since then, moreover, the case for its necessity has disintegrated.

The question posed by the marriage amendment is not just whether gay marriage is a good idea, but who should decide -- the states or the federal government? From its debut in 2001, the marriage amendment was misleadingly advertised as a restriction on activist courts. In truth, the amendment would strip the power to adopt same-sex marriage not only from judges but from all 50 states' legislators, governors, and electorates.

Defining and regulating marriage has been within states' purview since colonial times. (Utah was required to ban polygamy while it was still a federal territory. On the few occasions when the U.S. Supreme Court has intervened, it has curtailed states' powers to restrict marriage rights, not imposed a definition.)

Why should the federal government usurp the states' authority over marriage? Amendment supporters have insisted that gay marriage anywhere would soon spread everywhere. How, they demanded, could one state have a separate definition of marriage without creating chaos? Unless the federal government stepped in, they said, one or two states would impose same-sex marriage on all the rest.

Actually, states have defined marriage differently for most of the country's history. Until the 1960s, mixed-race marriages were recognized in some states but not others. That each state is entitled to regulate marriage in accord with its public policy views is established legal precedent; otherwise Maryland, say, could start marrying 10-year-olds and every other state would be obliged to go along -- an absurdity. Moreover, in 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which explicitly relieved the states of any obligation to recognize other states' same-sex marriages.

Federal-amendment proponents have claimed that the Supreme Court might strike down DOMA. That argument, already weak on the law (DOMA is almost certainly constitutional), is even weaker now that President Bush's two Supreme Court appointments, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, have solidified the Court's conservative majority. Would-be amenders are now reduced to claiming that the Constitution should be revised to pre-empt a hypothetical ruling by a future Supreme Court. On this prophylactic theory of constitutional jurisprudence, it is hard to imagine what amendment might not be in order.

So far, DOMA has stood up. The country's most liberal federal appeals court, the California-based 9th Circuit, saw off a challenge to DOMA just this month. Meanwhile, for more than two years Massachusetts has been marrying same-sex couples, including couples who travel and move outside the state. Spot the chaos? The wholesale legal confusion?

In fact, what is most remarkable about Massachusetts's gay-marriage experiment is how little legal confusion and inconvenience it has caused. As evidence that a state-by-state approach is unworkable, proponents of a federal amendment can point to a messy Virginia child-custody case and -- well, not much else.

The social ramifications of gay marriage will take time to unfurl; but if rampant legal confusion were going to be the result of Massachusetts' gay marriages, it should have begun to appear by now.

Indeed, few defenders of a state-by-state approach would have dared predict that the Massachusetts experiment would create as few legal tangles as it has. That the states can go their separate ways on gay marriage is no longer a prediction; it is a fact.

MPA supporters note that a court, and not the people, ordered gay marriage in Massachusetts. That is true but not relevant. Congress has no more business overriding state courts than it does overriding state legislatures. If a state fears that its courts will order gay marriage, it can change its constitution, which is exactly what 18 states have already done and what as many as nine more will do in November. More than half the states have statutorily banned gay marriage. A handful of states -- California, New Jersey, New York, and Washington are possibilities -- might wind up with judicially imposed gay marriage; the large majority, it is now clear, will not.

In 2004, MPA advocates liked to say that pre-empting state legislatures and electorates was of no practical consequence, because only judges would support so alien a notion as same-sex marriage. That argument expired last September, when the California Legislature passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, but the question is no longer academic: How do MPA proponents, who claim to champion democratic decision-making, justify handcuffing the democratically elected Legislature of the largest state in the union?

At bottom, what many MPA proponents want to forestall is not judicially enacted gay marriage; it is gay marriage, period. They say that an institution as fundamental as marriage needs a uniform definition: a single moral template for the whole country.

That argument would seem more compelling if marriage were more important than human life. Many of the same conservatives who want the federal government, not the states, to settle gay marriage also want the states, not the federal government, to settle abortion. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., for example, supports the MPA, but he would like to see Roe v. Wade "reinterpreted" so that states would decide the fate of abortion. Although the 2004 Republican platform calls for a "human life amendment to the Constitution," you will look in vain for any such amendment on the Senate floor.

Two questions for anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion Republicans: If states can be allowed to go their own way in defining human life, why not allow them to go their own way in defining marriage? Where constitutional amendments are concerned, why is preventing gay couples from marrying so much more urgent than preventing unborn children from being killed?

It is precisely because marriage is so important, and because it is the subject of such profound moral disagreement, that a one-size-fits-all federal solution is the wrong approach. California and Texas, Massachusetts and Oklahoma take very different views of same-sex marriage. By localizing the most intractable moral issues, federalism prevents national culture wars.

In 2006, that argument is no longer hypothetical. Federalism is working. As the public sees that states are coping competently and that no one state will decide for all the rest, the atmosphere of panic over gay marriage has mercifully subsided, providing the time and calm that the issue needs.

The national Republican leadership's bid to upset this emerging equilibrium is demagoguery, which is sad. Conservative politicians' betrayal of federalist principles to distract attention from their broken promises is cynicism, which is sadder. And none of this is surprising -- which is saddest of all.

Each Memorial Day weekend, Chicago's gay community welcomes thousands of leathermen and women from around the world for the International Mr. Leather contest and its related activities-bar events, leather exhibits, parties, and dissolute behavior at the host hotel. The visitors amble around downtown sightseeing and entertaining the natives, enliven our gay neighborhoods, and fill our bars with good-looking gay men on the prowl.

Although Sunday's IML contest is the main excuse for this temporary mass migration to Chicago, the weekend functions mainly as a "gathering of the tribe"-a chance to visit old friends from around the country, live in leather for a long weekend and have a quick vacation in a major entertainment destination.

Much of Chicago's gay community gets into the spirit of IML: Bars that are not normally leather bars have special events, some of the stores along North Halsted Street emphasize any leather-related merchandise they sell, and one Halsted Street art gallery is even holding a "Leather and Metal Night" featuring metal jewelry on bare-chested models.

No doubt the most popular feature of IML is the Leather Market, which serves as the social and commercial center of the weekend. The Market hosts more than 100 leather-related businesses competing with one another to tempt leathermen with their latest products-clothing, accessories, dungeon equipment, toys, films, etc. As a friend remarked, the Leather Market is "where leathermen engage in capitalist acts with consenting adults."

Until I started interviewing people for articles in the IML Program Guide, I had not fully appreciated how competitive the leather business is. I asked several vendors what they were offering that was new this year and was surprised at how many had new products, new styles they planned to feature.

Most vendors were delighted to talk about their products and the style trends they observed, but a couple, acutely aware of the competition, were wary of divulging much information in advance. "You're not going to publish this before IML are you?" one asked. "Just a couple of weeks," I promised him, "and think of the free publicity."

If some bright young economics student wanted to do a dissertation on gay entrepreneurship-and there still is no serious research on the subject-he or she would do well to study leather businesses as a microcosm of gay business. Any study would explore some of the following:

Each of the businesses tries to think of new products, styles, materials, colors that might catch the eye of leatherfolk. New styles? There are now at least 30 variations on leather harnesses, with multiple straps, chains, buckles, snaps and O-rings. New products? My favorite example is one company's easy-access "Grope Me Overalls." New materials? More clothing is made of various kinds of rubber and now something called "Corbura" (ask the vendor).

And color is everywhere this year. It used to be that you chose leather the way you chose a model T Ford: You could have any color you wanted so long as it was black. But now there are stripes and accents of red, green, blue, yellow, maroon. Old-time leathermen would be aghast. Or envious.

Once one company is seen as having a success with any of these, others quickly produce their own slightly different version. So each business feels a constant pressure to come up with something new each year. And the consumer benefits by having more choices, more styles to choose among and, usually, different prices.

Where do new ideas come from? Almost anywhere. There is no general rule for creativity but recognizing a good idea when you see it is the key to successful entrepreneurship. A business owner may suddenly think, Why has no one ever tried this? Or he may get an idea from some European style (motocross racing) or non-Western culture (a leather kimono). Or he may recall something from history (a leather three-cornered pirate hat). Maybe a patron asks for something to be customized for him, his friends like it, and the vendor decides to try it as a product line. Or he will adapt an idea from the mainstream fashion industry.

How do new leather businesses get started in the first place? Lots of different ways, it seems, which is why we need a serious study. But many are the result of "budding": Someone works for a leather business for a while then leaves to start his own business. Or someone from a parallel business such as mainstream fashion or design decides to apply his knowledge and skills to leather products. Or the owner of a totally unrelated business decides to start a sideline of leather products "just for fun" and it takes off.

Developing better information about these things could increase our understanding of niche markets in the wider economic system.