IGF CultureWatch

First published in the Yale Daily News on February 14, 2006

There is one word that drives me nuts.

It's not a curse. Its timbre does not make me cringe. Rather, it is the way in which this particular word is used-often to describe me, and others like me, totally against my will-that I find to be so offensive.

The word, if you have not guessed it by now, is "queer."

I do not mind the proper literary usage of the word, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, in appearance or character. Also, of questionable character, suspicious, dubious." I have a problem when gay activists and certain academics use the word in an affirming sense to describe gay people. There is certainly nothing "strange, odd or peculiar" about homosexuality, which has existed, arguably, for nearly as long as human history itself.

The use of this word abounds. At Yale alone there is QPAC: the Queer Political Action Committee. The Yale LGBT Co-Op's e-mail list regularly solicits submissions for "Queer," the "only undergraduate literary and cultural journal related to queerness." The Co-op has also initiated a program, "Queer Peers," to help questioning students by matching them up with an openly gay mentor.

What is a non-queer gay person to do?

Those who popularize the word queer-that is, gay leftists and some gay academics-will not let gay people escape from their queer clutches. Simply by being gay, you are a "queer" whether you like it or not, as its practical use implicates all gay people. When a gay activist or academic speaks of the "queer community" or "queer rights," he, ipso facto, has labeled me a "queer," regardless of whether or not I accept the label.

I am a 22-year-old male who likes to write, performs in sketch comedy, reads lots of magazines, has an obsession with British politics and, oh yeah, I happen to be gay. I'm certainly not "queer." Individual gay people and others associated in the vast and ever-expanding panoply of the homosexual community (the bisexuals, the transsexuals, the omnisexuals, the polysexuals, the genderqueers and so on and so forth) may be "queer," but I-and I assure those queer activists who doubt this-along with the vast majority of homosexuals in this country would much rather be referred to as "gay."

Most straight people I have asked (who by and large are wholly supportive of gay equality) find the word ridiculous and uncomfortable. They see little difference between them and their gay peers, and it is harmful to the gay cause when activists insist on using a word that symbolizes their outright rejection of mainstream culture and its institutions.

For those gay activists whose stated mission is to promote gay equality, it is hypocritical to use the word "queer." If the whole purpose of the gay rights movement has been to convince heterosexual Americans that gay people are just like them, why go about using a word like queer to describe yourself? This is strategic stupidity.

Take a look, for instance, at the Human Rights Campaign, the largest and most respected gay rights organization in the country. While certainly liberal in its politics, HRC is a mainstream and professional group that regularly endorses pro-gay Republicans like Connecticut's Christopher Shays. As HRC's major purpose is to lobby Congress and advocate for gay rights in the mainstream media, it has wisely avoided language that radicalizes the demands of the gay rights movement or promotes the marginalization of gay people-dual purposes that "queer" serves. A brief search of the HRC website shows that the organization rarely, if ever, uses the word queer in its official communications and that it pops up mostly in reference to the television programs Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk.

Unlike the organization fighting on the front lines for the rights of gay Americans and their families, those who use the word "queer" have no interest in having gay people perceived as everyday Americans. They wish to be perceived as part of a sexual vanguard, standing apart from "heteronormative" America, occasionally deigning to stoop down only in the service of "liberating" those suffering under our patriarchal and tyrannical society. Make no mistake: "queer" activists do not think that gay people are just like straight people and they do not want gay people to be just like straight people. They see straight-er, heteronormative-society as oppressive and, like any good radical, wish to remake it.

Gays who use "queer" often state that they are merely reclaiming the word from homophobes, just as some African-Americans have reclaimed one of the ugliest words in historical usage, a word commonly associated with slave masters and southern lawmen. That word, of course, is the "N-word," too ugly to print in a newspaper. White people, and many black people, refer to it with this euphemism because it is so degrading, so rotten to the core, and carries such a distasteful history that it literally sends chills down the spine upon its very utterance. I vividly recall my black sixth-grade English teacher explaining the etymology of the "N-word" and how it has been used for hundreds of years to demean black people.

It is true that some segments of the African-American community have "reclaimed" this word. But notice how those black public figures using the word are not intellectuals, politicians or professionals. They are rap and hip-hop artists. Black writer John McWhorter observes, "After all, why are we not using 'wop,' 'spic,' or 'kike' in this way? Some might object that these terms are all now a tad archaic, but this only begs the question as to why they were not recruited in such fashion when they were current."

"Queer" is old hat. It might have been appropriate in the early and defiant years of the gay rights struggle, but it has now become obsolete and, frankly, infantilizing. To those heterosexuals who feel pressure from noisy activists to use the word "queer" but are understandably uncomfortable doing so: not to worry. I'm gay, and I'd like to keep it that way.

First published in Between the Lines on February 9, 2006.

As I embark upon a week's worth of same-sex marriage debates with Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family, I am bracing myself for his arguments. (There's a useful summary of his position here.)

In every debate we've had, Stanton has brought up Jonathan Yarbrough and Cody Rogahn, the first same-sex couple in Provincetown, Massachusetts to receive a marriage application. Yarbrough and Rogahn have an open relationship. "I think it's possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner," Yarbrough told a reporter on the eve of their wedding. "In our case...we have an open marriage."

This admission is bound to generate an "Aha!" from any same-sex marriage opponent within earshot. "See-we told you so!" they sneer.

Told us what?, I wonder. That some gay people have open relationships? Well, duh.

Glenn's argument seems to be that:

1. Yarbrough and Rogahn are representative of same-sex couples in general, and
2. Allowing such couples to marry will erode respect for monogamy, thereby wreaking havoc on society. Therefore
3. Society should reject same-sex marriage.

Whenever I hear this argument, I think of the first "open" couple I knew-or, to be more precise, the first one of which I was aware. One member was a fellow graduate student; the other, a professor at a different school. At the time I knew them (we've since fallen out of touch) they had been together over 15 years.

Their names? Katie and George.

Yes, the first "open" couple I knew was heterosexual-and married. Aha, yourself.

Katie and George were fully legally married, despite always intending to have an open relationship. They were just as legally married as Mr. and Mrs. Stanton, with all the rights, duties, and privileges appertaining.

Interestingly, conservatives never point to people like Katie and George as evidence that heterosexuals should no longer be allowed to marry. Doing so would commit the fallacy of hasty generalization (among others).

By similar logic, we could point to Britney Spears's 55-hour (pre-Federline) marriage to Jason Allen Alexander and then conclude that celebrities should no longer be allowed to marry (not a bad idea, actually).

Does Britney Spears justify forbidding celebrities to marry?

Stanton's elaboration of his argument is revealing. "If we allow Jonathan Yarbrough and Cody Rogahn to marry," he asks audiences, "what will that say to other married couples? What will it say to the heterosexual couple living next door? The husband might think, 'Hey, that's not a bad idea. I should keep my options open.' How will that affect their marriage?"

Memo to Glenn Stanton: there are already heterosexual couples living next door to Jonathan Yarbrough and Cody Rogahn. (Or so I assume: the couple lives in Glenwood, Minnesota; population 3000-not exactly a gay mecca.) Yet their neighbors are not clamoring to have open relationships any more than they are clamoring to have gay sex.

Nor are Katie and George's neighbors. Nor, for that matter, are Britney Spears's neighbors (which is not to equate her stunt with Katie and George's unconventional but enduring union). The moral of the story? Grownups can think for themselves.

What are conservatives so afraid of? Some homosexual couples, like some heterosexual couples, are what our parents used to call "swingers." Marriage might or might not change that, but it certainly won't entail that every other married couple will follow in their footsteps.

Nobody knows exactly how monogamous gays are compared to straights. More to the point, nobody knows how monogamous gays would be in a society that granted them marriage rights. (If you exclude people from major social institutions like marriage, you shouldn't be surprised if they are less likely to conform to social norms.)

What we do know is that there's a serious double standard involved in allowing people like Katie and George to marry but forbidding people like Jonathan and Cody to do so (except in Massachusetts). You don't have to approve of everything a couple does in order to respect their right to marry.

But the most striking thing about Stanton's position is not its logical gaps, or even its warped view of gay life. The most striking thing is its dim view of heterosexuals, as gullible copycats who can't make simple moral distinctions. The good people of Glenwood deserve better.

First published in the Chicago Free Press on Feb 8, 2006.

It has long been obvious that religious and social conservatives have been conducting a crusade against "homosexuality." But since you cannot suppress homosexuality without suppressing gays and lesbians, that means a crusade against gays and lesbians as people.

For example: The President's past support for sodomy laws; Republican opposition to gays in the military; the administration's support for an unprecedented constitutional ban on same-sex marriage; longtime Republican opposition to counting the number of hate crimes against gays and lesbians; opposition to gay parental custody, adoption, and foster care; and uncritical indulgence of homophobic statements by GOP leaders from Dick Armey to Jesse Helms to Rick Santorum.

Notice how many of these involve big government-i.e., coercion-whether it a government proscription of sexual activity, the institutionalization of anti-gay prejudice in a government agency, or the extension of federal control over a matter traditionally left to the states.

Republicans, who once claimed to be the party of small government and personal liberty, have moved far from that position. Economic conservatives usually advocated minimal government intrusion. Social conservatives advocate the exact opposite.

But there is another, larger, aspect to these issues. While social conservatives probably realize that despite their efforts they cannot entirely stamp out homosexuality (that is to say, homosexuals), they can at least make every effort to render them-us-socially and culturally invisible. Hence they oppose same-sex marriage because it would give gay relationships visibility by being registered with the government. If sodomy laws cannot entirely prevent homosexual activity, at least they help to keep it underground and discourage gays and lesbians from being open about their sexuality. The "Don't ask, Don't tell" ban on open gays in the military is simply an extreme version of this same thing: Saying one is gay or lesbian is designated as "homosexual conduct."

In the same way, although past opposition to counting anti-gay hate crimes was no doubt prompted in part by a view that they should not be taken very seriously because, after all, gays just bring attacks on themselves. But even more it stemmed from a wish to avoid giving gays visibility by collecting and publishing statistics about crimes against them. After all, a gay man being assaulted by a homophobe counts as just another kind of "homosexual conduct."

The U.S. census bureau's disinclination to ask even as a voluntary question if people are gay or lesbian is another example of preserving gay invisibility. And of course, the CDC cannot report risk behavior for AIDS by gay and bisexual men, only by "men who have sex with men." If a man is having recurrent "sex with men" that's what gay or bisexual means, but the CDC cannot acknowledge that gays exist as persons, only that people are engaging in certain types of sexual behavior.

Once you start looking around, examples of the effort to suppress gay visibility leap out at you.

Once you start looking around, examples of the effort to suppress gay visibility leap out at you. "Ex-gay" groups fit in perfectly. Most of them no longer claim that they can significantly change a person's sexual desires. Their main goal is to dissuade people from thinking of themselves as "gay," "lesbian" or "homosexual." As therapy, this is preposterous, but it successfully reduces the number of people identifying themselves to others as homosexual.

Social conservative opposition to television programs with gay or lesbian characters, to performance of plays such as "Angels in America," to Gay/Straight Alliances in "public" (government) schools, to the inclusion of homosexuality in any aspect in sex education courses has exactly the same root: We don't want to see gays represented or made visible in any way.

And especially, they will say, they don't want their children to see gays represented anywhere, although they never quite say why. Sometimes they seem to imply that learning that homosexuals exist will somehow, as if by magic, produce homosexual desire in young people. But it is hard to believe that anyone really thinks that.

I suspect the real social conservative fear is one of two things. Either they fear that if their children, or anyone-even they themselves-learn about gays and lesbians, that will gradually incline them to feel greater tolerance for gays. And that could lead them to question the other "bible values" they have been brought up to believe.

The other possibility is that they fear that a knowledge of gays and lesbians that could lead to greater tolerance would make the lives of gays and lesbians less unpleasant. And that is what they do not want. Not sufficiently trusting their god to punish people they regard as sinners, they are eager to take on that task themselves.

Gay author Wayne Besen once wrote about a friendly conversation with a woman he met on an airplane in the course of which he mentioned that he was gay. The woman stiffened and announced that she did not want to hear that. "Do you want me to lie?" Besen asked. "Yes," said the woman.