IGF CultureWatch

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.

First published, in slightly different form, in The Indianapolis Star on February 6, 2006.

Now that director Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain has lassoed eight Academy Award nominations, millions more Americans likely will see it. Social conservatives should be among those who catch this widely lauded motion picture.

Socio-cons probably have sidestepped this so-called "gay cowboy movie." Too bad. While it hardly screams "family values," Brokeback seriously engages profound issues that merit consideration by those who think seriously about the challenges that families face.

Stylistically, socio-cons need not fear Brokeback as a didactic, in-your-face, gay screed. "We're here. We're queer. Who dropped the saddle soap?" it is not. Nor is this film a flamboyant camp-fest, like the flighty but hilarious The Birdcage or much of The Producers, both coincidentally starring Nathan Lane.

Indeed, as a romance between two thoroughly masculine ranch hands, Brokeback begins to reverse the damage caused by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and similar offerings that reinforce the stereotype that gay men are indispensable when one needs to select fabulous neckties or striking pastels for stunning interiors. How sad that such entertainment still elicits laughs, even as most Americans would be justifiably outraged at any show titled Jewish Guy with a Banker's Eye or The Mexican Gardening Hour.

Beyond equating same-sex affection with manliness, Brokeback addresses important matters on the political agenda. It is impossible to discuss these themes without revealing key plot points. So, if you have not seen Brokeback, please do so soon, then finish this op-ed after the credits roll.

Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, movingly portrayed by Academy Award nominees Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, respectively, find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other one booze-filled evening in 1963. While huddling in a tent from Wyoming's bracing winds, a spontaneous moment of intimacy triggers for Jack and Ennis a long summer that combines hectic days of tending sheep with tranquil nights of tending to each other.

As the young men depart the mountain pastures when their gig ends, they split up and do what society expects of them. Jack competes in the southwestern rodeo circuit where he meets, marries, and has a son with Lureen (Anne Hathaway), herself an equestrian. Ennis weds Alma (Ledger's real-life girlfriend, Oscar nominee Michelle Williams), a quiet, loyal woman who raises their two daughters.

After four years apart, Jack returns to Ennis' small town of Riverton, Wyoming. Their still-smoldering passion flares like a zephyr-swept campfire. They stoke these flames during periodic "fishing trips" where their rods and reels stay untouched.

Jack's and Ennis's marriages grow increasingly cold, leading to a loveless union for the Twists and divorce and a broken home for the Del Mars. As this adulterous relationship spreads pain all around, one need not hark back to the Rockies of the 1960s and '70s to find parallels to Jack and Ennis's situation. Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's wife, Dina, bore him a baby girl before his clandestine affair with an Israeli man named Golan Cipel erupted into view in 2004. The McGreeveys split, and their daughter's live-in dad is now just a visitor.

Similarly, J.L. King's book On the Down Low discusses seemingly heterosexual black husbands who cheat on their spouses with other men. Some lucky wives land in divorce court; the least lucky unwittingly become HIV-positive.

Meanwhile, "you've got the ones that claim they're straight but have sex with men," Sam Beaumont, a gay Oklahoma rancher said in the January 30 People magazine. "And when they come home at night and their wives ask if they've been with a woman, well, they don't have to lie."

Brokeback Mountain should prompt social conservatives to ponder whether it is good family policy to encourage gay men to live lives that are traditional yet untrue. Would honest gay marriages be less destructive than deceitful straight ones? I think so. Many disagree. Even if they oppose it, however, seeing this film may give heterosexual marriage proponents a better insight into why so many Americans advocate homosexual marriage.

Brokeback Mountain also concerns homophobic violence. The October 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming; the July 1999 fatal baseball-bat attack on Army Private Barry Winchell, whose comrades in arms perceived him as gay; and the non-lethal assault on gay soldier Kyle Lawson on October 29, 2005 are just a few fairly recent examples of this phenomenon. Just last February 2, 18-year-old Jacob B. Robida used a hatchet and a gun to wound three patrons, one critically, at Puzzles Lounge, a New Bedford, Massachusetts, gay bar. (Robida died three days later, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, after he killed a female friend and a cop, both in Arkansas.) Such incidents should remind filmgoers that this grave matter was not buried on the Great Plains decades ago.

Beautifully acted, photographed, written, and directed, Brokeback Mountain quietly but powerfully asks questions that are relevant today. Americans left, middle, and right should see this touching, haunting love story, then give it the thorough mulling over it deserves.