IGF CultureWatch

What do the Oscars tell us about life? Nothing, of course. "Winning the Academy Award," as Paddy Chayefsky once famously told Vanessa Redgrave, "is not a pivotal moment in history." Yet there is no denying that the Oscars generate a great deal of interest, catching the attention of tens of millions of Americans, including many gay Americans, if only for a few hours. The results are studied by film buffs and trivia lovers for years to come, and become a part of the Zeitgeist.

While unimportant in the great scheme of things, the Oscars are a national institution. They highlight trends in the culture, serve as a milepost in mainstream American film, and provide a glimpse of what the top professionals in one of our countries' most significant industries perceive as the best they and their colleagues have produced in the prior year. As a result, the Oscars serve as a seal of approval for many infrequent film-goers, who are more likely to watch a film on DVD or video, or will watch it when it later on television, if the film has earned the Academy Award.

The Oscar reflects and bolsters Hollywood's bottom-line: an Oscar win in a major category can produce millions of additional dollars for a film, and the best picture Oscar can generate tens of millions in additional revenue-Million Dollar Baby took in an additional $35 million after taking home the Oscar last year-while also serving as a green-light for films with similar themes in the future. For example, the best picture Oscar for Dancing With Wolves revitalized the Western genre, while the award for Chicago did the same for musicals.

It is for that reason that Sunday night's Oscars have some importance to the gay community. The Academy's decision to award the Best Picture Oscar to Crash rather than Brokeback Mountain says that we have a way to go before films with gay characters at their core will receive Hollywood's highest honor. How far, it is difficult to say. The defeat of Brokeback Mountain was a serious blow, one that suggests that Hollywood feels unable to endorse a gay love story with its highest honor, even if it means overturning years of Oscar precedent to do so. Make no mistake, the motion picture academy used a tire iron on Brokeback Mountain Sunday night, a fact that seems to be lost on a few leaders in the gay community, including Neil G. Giuliano, the clueless head of GLAAD, who sent out an e-mail on Monday morning highlighting Brokeback and Capote's four wins and stating that "our community has cause to celebrate" (a sentiment echoed in this subsequent press release).

A positive spin is often appropriate, but not after a setback such as this. Surely the academy members who told the press they would not even see Brokeback Mountain, yet alone vote for it, deserved some criticism from GLAAD. Instead, the organization put the Oscar-produced gay cowboy montage from Sunday's broadcast on their website. Given the end results of the evening, there was little humor to be found in a second viewing of the clips.

None of the press coverage I have seen reflects how much precedent has been broken. It is substantial. No film in history that has won the best picture award from both the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Association has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain. No film that has won the producers', directors' and writers' guild awards has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain. No film that has won the Golden Globe, the directors' guild award and led in Oscar nominations, has ever lost the best picture Oscar, until Brokeback Mountain. I am at a loss to explain why GLAAD thinks this is something worth celebrating.

To its credit, Crash overcame significant obstacles to win best picture. It is only the second film in history to win without having been nominated for the Golden Globe. It is the lowest grossing film to win since The Last Emperor in 1987. It is the first film since Rocky in 1976, 30 years ago, to win best picture with only two other Oscars to its credit. It is the first ensemble drama to win since Grand Hotel in 1931. And it broke more than 75 years of non-parochial voting by Academy members to become the first film set entirely in Los Angeles to take home the golden statue.

Some of us thought that this was the year that a gay-themed film could break through in the top category. And, clearly, it almost did. Ang Lee became the first non-white director to be honored as best director. (I'm sure he earned the respect of every director in Hollywood when he pointedly forgot to individually thank his cast.) Oscar voters may have thought that by giving Lee his Oscar, and rewarding Phillip Seymour Hoffman with the best actor award for his lisping, negative portrayal of Truman Capote, they had insulated themselves from charges of homophobia. They were wrong. The decision to honor Crash with the best picture award, coming after a long, unprecedented season of wins for Brokeback Mountain in critics' and guild polls, leaves a bitter taste, reflected in most of the entertainment industry press.

The shock is perhaps most notably expressed by the LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan who berated Academy voters in a major article in Monday's paper. "In the privacy of the voting booth, as many political candidates who've led in polls only to lose elections have found out, people are free to act out the unspoken fears and unconscious prejudices that they would never breathe to another soul, or, likely, acknowledge to themselves," he wrote. "And at least this year, that acting out doomed Brokeback Mountain."

Others report widespread distaste for Brokeback among the academy's older members, a distaste expressed by Tony Curtis, who told Fox News that he would not even see the film before voting against it. The New York Times on Monday quoted an attendee at an Oscar party who noted, without irony, that older academy voters opposed Brokeback Mountain because it "diminished" cowboys as iconic figures in movies. (Remarks like that suggest that the branding of Brokeback Mountain as a "gay cowboy" film, and the attendant jokes from late-night comics, defined the movie as something other than a serious cry from the heart.)

Turan's opinion, that anti-gay prejudice led to the defeat of Brokeback Mountain, has clearly hit a nerve. Roger Ebert, one of the few public voices of support for Crash in the pre-Oscar campaign, has already responded with a defense of the winner, arguing that the film was superior. That judgment seems to have lost in the initial press reports, where the defeat of Brokeback Mountain is being reported as one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, and a decision that is being seen as a stain on Hollywood's liberal conscience. To be fair, support for Crash among the actors in the academy appears to be widespread. It won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble (an award given to The Birdcage 10 years ago), and actors make up over 20 percent of the academy's voters. And its appears to have been the choice of the Scientologists in the industry, who provided funding for the film-which also explains why the ensemble story set in contemporary Los Angeles contained not a single gay character.

Of course, this is only about Oscars and the movies. Despite George Clooney's absurd assertion in his acceptance speech on Sunday night that Hollywood is a leader in the social arena-an assertion later endorsed by the Oscar producers with another ridiculous montage of films on social issues, a montage that inexplicably included films such as Something's Gotta Give-Hollywood has never been a leader in social causes. It never leads; rather, it reflects. Clooney's claim that the movie industry was out front on AIDS issues was perhaps his most far-fetched notion. Despite its loss of the best picture Oscar, Brokeback Mountain has already become a cultural phenomenon, and it has earned more than $130 million world-wide at the box office, making it one of the most financially successful westerns or gay dramas in history.

It is too early to know what impact the defeat of Brokeback Mountain will have on other films that have recently been green-lighted as a result of its box office appeal. It will be a shame if projects such as The Mayor of Castro Street and The Dreyfuss Affair are now shelved. One certain result will be the loss of many gay supporters at Oscar parties next year. Rather than a time for escapist fun, Oscar-time for several years in the future will bring back memories of the night Brokeback Mountain was denied the top prize to a vastly inferior film. As one who has viewed the annual program with enthusiasm for decades, I know I will not be tuning in next year.

Over the past decade most of us have argued for gay marriage without bothering to weigh the competing merits of the concept of "civil unions." For the most part, our arguments have focused on why, as the subtitle of Jonathan Rauch's definitive book Gay Marriage put it, it is "Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America." And we should keep making those arguments.

But it is crystal clear that in all but a handful of coastal states gay marriage is not going to happen in the near future. The idea is too new for many people to be comfortable with. Gay advocates have too few resources to mount an effective campaign to counter religious right scare tactics. Legislators with an eye cocked toward the next election are not interested. Most conservatives are adamantly hostile and view it as a major issue. And most liberals, even if they favor gay marriage, are only quietly supportive and, unlike conservatives, do not view it as a major issue.

Only an obtuse person fails to learn from experience. So it is time to adjust our strategy and focus our efforts on trying to obtain the decidedly less scary civil unions. Less scary? Apparently so. With no public outcry the Connecticut legislature approved gay civil unions substantially equal to marriage. And President Bush, even while playing to the religious right, said during the 2004 campaign that if states wanted to establish civil unions that was fine.

There are at least three interesting arguments against civil unions, however:

1. By providing gays with the substance of marriage but not the name, states would be declaring gays and lesbians second-class citizens, as if their relationships are not worthy of the name "marriage." In short, civil unions relegate gays to "the back of the bus."

But that expression itself shows where the comparison with African-Americans breaks down. Currently gays have nothing. Are civil unions better than nothing? Emphatically, yes. During state segregation black southerners were at least able to get on the bus and ride to their destination. But not gays. Currently the bus doesn't even stop for gay couples-it just drives right on by. Our task is to get on the bus. Then we can argue about seating arrangements.

2. Civil unions do not provide the 1,100-plus federal benefits and entitlements that go with marriage, from social security survivor benefits, automatic inheritance, right of a married partner to immigrate to the U.S., and so forth. But those deprivations are not unique to civil unions. Legally married gay couples in Massachusetts cannot obtain those benefits, either. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act limited federal benefits to opposite sex couples.

Still, the argument goes, at least being married would give gay couples legal standing to sue in federal court to have the Defense of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional. So it would. And that right exists for married couples in Massachusetts right now. But would you really want that case to work its way up the federal court system and be decided by the Supreme Court, given its current membership? And if, contrary to all reasonable expectations, the Supreme Court did strike it down, consider the massive impetus that would give to the Marriage Protection Amendment being promoted by religious right groups.

3. Civil unions in other states, unlike those in Connecticut and Vermont, would probably include a smaller number of benefits and entitlements than marriage, making them far from equal. But however hard this is to swallow, here again the point is to get a process started. Even if lessor variations on civil unions offer minimal benefits (e.g., hospital visitation), it is almost inevitable that as legislators and the public become comfortable with gay couples in formalized relationships, they will feel more comfortable adding additional benefits over time.

That model has worked well in California where gay couples have obtained more and more benefits with each legislative session. It has also worked in several European countries that have gradually added benefits, in some cases resulting in marriage itself. Most U.S. surveys show majority support for providing some benefits for gay couples. So let us work on obtaining those and then go on to others as the public comfort grows. If you cannot get all the justice you want, take what justice you can get and then work for more.

Once you are in a civil union, you can refer to yourself as "married" if you like. A friend in Vermont who is in a civil union says he and his partner refer to themselves as married. So does everyone else. A friend in Norway reports the same thing: "Oh, you two are married." It seems clear that once people are comfortable with thinking and speaking of same-sex couples as "married," their willingness to accept gay marriage itself is sure to follow.

Question: What's worse than a dozen or so states contemplating gay marriage bans during an election year?

Answer: A dozen or so states contemplating gay adoption bans during an election year.

Welcome to 2006. At least sixteen states are considering laws or ballot initiatives restricting the ability of gay individuals or couples to adopt. I'm not sure that this is politically worse than what happened in 2004, when a similar number of states banned same-sex marriage. Adoption bans might help to get out the right-wing vote, but they might also make right-wingers look petty and politically dishonest to moderates. We've learned some things since 2004, and the issues are different enough to keep things interesting.

But politics aside, the movement to ban gay adoption strikes me as morally and rhetorically worse than the movement to ban gay marriage. One of the most terrible charges you can levy against someone is the accusation that they pose a threat to children. Indeed, the more extreme opponents of gay adoption have referred to it as a form of child abuse. Those are fighting words.

The central argument against gay adoption is the worst kind of argument: it proceeds from what is not true to what does not follow.

What is not true is the claim that same-sex parenting is suboptimal for children. A growing body of research reports no notable differences in well-being between children reared by homosexual parents and those reared by heterosexual parents. In the words of the American Academy of Pediatrics, "a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual." The AAP "supports legislative and legal efforts to provide the possibility of adoption of the child by the second parent or coparent in these families."

But let's suppose the American Academy of Pediatrics is wrong. Suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that same-sex parenting is indeed suboptimal. Even so, it wouldn't follow that it should be banned.

It is probably optimal for parents to have a certain level of education, but it doesn't follow that those with less make bad parents. It is probably optimal for parents to be financially well off, but it doesn't follow that those who are less so make bad parents. And so on. So even if it were true (which it isn't) that same-sex parenting is suboptimal, it would not follow that gays and lesbians make bad parents or that they should be forbidden to adopt--especially when the alternative is for children to be raised by the state, which virtually everyone agrees is a poor option.

Opponents of same-sex parenting often describe it as "deliberately depriving children of a mother or a father." This is another serious charge, and it's worth careful attention.

If I kill a child's mother or father, then I thereby deprive him of his mother or father. If I give a child a home, then I don't thereby "deprive" him of anything--I give him something. By describing same-sex parenting as "depriving" children, opponents are making it sound as if same-sex couples are snatching children's birthparents away from them. The implication is not merely false; it is morally irresponsible.

Anything can be described in such a way as to make it sound bad. When parents choose to live in the city, we can describe them as "deliberately depriving their children of the joys of country life" (or vice-versa). When parents with only female children choose not to have any more children, we can describe them as "deliberately depriving their daughters of a brother." Indeed, we can accuse them of sending a message that "brothers don't matter," just as same-sex parenting opponents accuse lesbian parents of sending a message that fathers don't matter.

Such claims would be laughable if they were not so hurtful. They do not merely badly mis-describe the situation; they falsely accuse good people of doing awful things. And the people hurt by them are not merely gay and lesbian parents: they are, most of all, children--both those in loving same-sex families and those who would be deprived of them by these terrible bans. Here the term "deprive" is apt: when children await adoption, those who stand in their way for spurious reasons do indeed deprive them of something.

Opponents of gay adoption claim that this is a battle for our children's welfare. They're right about that.