IGF CultureWatch

First published in the Bay Area Reporter on February 16, 2006.

Perhaps more than any invention since the printing press, the Internet has decentralized information and opinion. The marketplace of ideas, including ideas about the appropriate tactics and even direction of the gay-rights cause, is more robust than ever. Gay-conservative bloggers and Web sites, of which there are now dozens, are major competitors in this marketplace.

When I began writing my syndicated OutRight column in 1994, a narrow ideological band monopolized the gay press. The views expressed in gay periodicals, either explicitly in opinion columns or implicitly in "news" features, ranged from liberal to radical. It brought to mind what Dorothy Parker once said of Katherine Hepburn's performance in a movie: "She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." This limited range could and did produce disagreement that the protagonists regarded as profound. But to an outsider it was all pretty dismal.

Gay publishers and editors acted as gatekeepers of opinion, defining what was acceptable. There were a handful of libertarians writing for gay papers, but real conservatives could hardly be found. Even gay periodicals that ran my column back then often felt the need to run a left-wing counterpart, as if doing so was necessary to provide "balance" in a paper already dominated by liberal views and reporting.

Two nearly simultaneous developments changed this. First, beginning in the 1980s mainstream gay people, whose wide spectrum of political views mirrors the country's, came out of the closet in large numbers. They could not be ignored. And they could not understand why their sexual orientation necessarily entailed support for things like high marginal tax rates or liberal abortion laws.

Second, the flowering of the Internet in the mid-1990s ensured that anybody could become a self-publisher whose views were immediately available to millions of people.

The day of the opinion gatekeeper is finished. What has taken its place? A cacophony of views, including those of gay conservatives and libertarians, whose energy and intellectual vibrance seems disproportionate to their numbers.

Here are a few of the Web sites and blogs by gay writers who dissent in important ways from the tactics and goals of the gay left and its organizations. Not all of these writers can easily be categorized as either conservative or libertarian. All are committed to equality for gay Americans.

(1) Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.org): This ought to be the first stop for anyone interested in gay conservative and libertarian views. It features columns from more than 40 different writers (including me) on just about every gay-related topic. It also features a terrific blog called CultureWatch, written by Steph H. Miller, who has something trenchant to say about everything.

(2) Andrew Sullivan (www.andrewsullivan.com): Sullivan is the granddaddy of all bloggers, and easily the most widely read gay blogger in the country, getting 70,000 to 80,000 visits a day. Passionate, perceptive, and wickedly smart, he's interesting and challenging even when he's wrong. Cruise him daily.

(3) Jonathan Rauch (www.jonathanrauch.com): Rauch is one of the most influential and finest gay authors on the planet. He writes for respected mainstream publications, like The Atlantic and National Journal, on a wide range of issues. His recent book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, is the best and most concise argument for gay marriage I've ever read. While his Web site is not a blog, it will quickly get you to his irreplaceable work.

(4) Bruce Bawer (www.brucebawer.com): Bawer wrote the most important book of the 1990s on gay issues, A Place at the Table. It awakened a generation of gay Americans to the possibility of an alternative to gay-left orthodoxy. Now he's defending classical liberal values against Muslim extremism. Also not a blog, this site will give you entree to Bawer's best stuff.

(5) Beth Elliott (www.thebethzone.com): Elliott, who has been active on gay issues since the 1970s, calls herself "a girl-kissing California girl with a Southern heritage and a Jesuit education." Her irreverent blog effectively takes on lesbian-feminist shibboleths from a libertarian perspective.

(6) Gay Patriot (www.gaypatriot.net): Two skillful and informed pundits take turns whacking at Democrats and the gay left on this blog. It's probably the most reliably conservative gay blog on the Internet.

(7) Tim Hulsey/My Stupid Dog (www.mystupiddog.blogspot.com): Hulsey, a "gay, conservative grad student and former writing teacher," ruminates articulately on culture and politics. When I want a thoughtful analysis of a movie I'm thinking about seeing, I go to Hulsey's blog.

(8) Jon Rowe (www.jonrowe.blogspot.com): Rowe is a libertarian college professor with a law degree. His blog covers everything from constitutional theory to sex to religion, all the things one shouldn't talk about in polite company. It is intelligent, refined, and measured—qualities badly lacking in much of the blogosphere.

There are many more good ones:

• anothergayrepublican.blogspot.com
• averagegayjoe.blogspot.com
• bigapplegop.blogspot.com
• blogcabinca.org
• boifromtroy.com
• bovinestare.typepad.com
• cakeordeath.wordpress.com
• dyneslines.blogspot.com
• gayandright.blogspot.com
• homocon.com
• lloydletta.blogspot.com
• malcontent.typepad.com
• northdallasthirty.blogspot.com
• queer-conservative.blogspot.com
• republicofm.com
• ricksincerethoughts.blogspot.com
• rightrainbow.com
• thatgayconservative.wordpress.com

and too many more to list.

Be aware that many blogs often offer little more than links to, or quotes from, substantive points made by others, contributing nothing original of their own. But whether you're a budding gay conservative looking for some intellectual support or a skeptical gay liberal monitoring the right, you'll find something on the gay-conservative Internet to keep your mind humming.

First published in the Chicago Free Press on February 15, 2006.

During the 2004 election campaign, the Bush administration hoped that its promotion of a Constitutional ban on gay marriage could help peel off 4 to 5 percent of the most theologically and socially conservative African Americans from the Democrats. But are African Americans as a whole more hostile to gay marriage than are whites?

Few if any recent polls on the issue offered a breakdown of data by black and white respondents. However, a recent report on black college freshmen provides some clues. The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which annually surveys freshmen, issued a report based just on data from freshmen at 440 colleges and universities in fall 2004 who designate themselves "African American/Black."

The survey did seem to find evidence that black freshmen were somewhat more likely than white freshmen to oppose gay marriage:

• 47 percent of black freshmen thought that "same sex couples should have the right to legal marital status" (rounding to the nearest whole percent).

The separately issued comprehensive report on all freshmen, however, found that:

• 57 percent of all freshmen (90 percent of whom were white) thought gay couples should have "legal marital status"-a 10 point greater support.

On the related question of whether "It is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships"-presumably interpreted as prohibitions on gay marriage:

• 36 percent of black freshmen agreed but only 30 percent of all freshmen agreed-a difference of 6 points.

So in the aggregate, black freshmen do seem more likely than whites to oppose gay marriage and to favor (although by a lesser amount) prohibitions on gay marriage. But when examined carefully, the data on black freshmen reveal some interesting subgroup differences.

It turns out that:

• Half (50 percent) of black freshmen at "predominantly white institutions" favor gay civil marriage.
  
  
• But only 42 percent of the black freshmen at "historically black colleges and universities" favor gay marriage, bringing down the average for black freshmen as a whole.

Similarly:

• Only 33 percent of black freshmen at mostly white institutions favor bans on gay marriage, a figure that is only 3 percentage points higher than the average for all freshmen.
  
  
• By contrast, 42 percent of the black freshmen at black colleges favor bans on gay marriage, a figure that is fully 12 points higher than the average for all freshmen.

It seems useful to try to determine reasons for these differences among black freshmen by college type. There are at least two obvious possibilities: location and religion.

First, the vast majority of black colleges are in the South, the most socially conservative section of the U.S. The main reason black colleges were founded in the first place was that state segregation laws in the Confederate south barred black students from attending white institutions. There are few black colleges in other parts of the country.

Second, freshmen at black colleges are more likely to state their religion as "Baptist"--for many the conservative, black National Baptist Convention-than are black freshmen at mostly white schools:

• Only 39 percent of black freshmen at mostly white schools call themselves Baptist while 53 percent of black freshmen at mostly black schools say they are Baptist-a 14 point difference.

The other obvious subgroup difference is between males and females-a difference that parallels white freshman opinion:

• 40 percent of black freshman males support "legal marital status" for gays, but a significantly larger 51 percent of the black freshman women support gay marriage.

On the question about bans on "homosexual relationships:

• 46 percent of the black males support such bans, but only 29 percent of the black women-a 17 point difference.

And on both questions, among black freshmen at mostly white colleges both men and women are more pro-gay than freshman men and women at mostly black colleges.

What all this means for gay advocacy efforts-where gay groups should target their efforts, who can most persuasively represent gay concerns, what kind of arguments will be most persuasive-is a matter for the most tactically adept rather than the most politically doctrinaire members of our movement to determine. But three things seem obvious:

1. They must speak to people in language and with arguments that they will listen to and can relate to. Repeating the same stock phrases about gay civil rights and gay equality, however valid, has limited effect.
   
   
2. They will need to realize that not all African Americans can be reached equally well by the same arguments any more than all white people can.
   
   
3. And they need even more to be aware that compared with a similar survey in 1971, black freshmen have become much less "liberal" or "far left" (down from 50 percent to 36 percent), much more "middle of the road" (up from 38 percent to 47 percent) and more conservative even (up from 12 percent to 17 percent).

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.