IGF CultureWatch

Some of the nastiest mail I receive is not from right-wing homophobes, or even bitter ex-boyfriends, but from members of our own community who think I'm not progressive enough. For example, shortly after I argued in Second Thoughts on Civil Unions that we ought to fight for civil unions now and marriage later, I received an e-mail message with the following subject-line:

"Why are you such an Uncle Tom faggot?"

There was no text to the message, and no signature - just the subject-line. With some ambivalence, I wrote back:

"I received a message from you with the subject-line 'Why are you such an Uncle Tom faggot?' but no text. Was there supposed to be text, or did the question in the subject-line exhaust what you have to say on the issue?"

I didn't expect a response: I just wanted to remind the writer that there was a person receiving his e-mail on the other end of cyberspace. Not that it did much good: a few weeks later I received a message with a similar subject-line and a long tirade accusing me, in the most obnoxious terms possible, of selling out our rights.

That kind of attack is unfortunate for a number of reasons, not least of which that it distracts us from the productive dialogue we should be having instead. I'm the first to admit that I could be wrong in the strategy I proposed for securing equal marriage rights. But if you're going to attack that strategy, please try first to understand it. In brief, I argued that:

1. Properly crafted civil-unions legislation could grant all of the legal incidents of marriage (albeit under a different name). I am not talking about "watered-down" civil unions here; I'm talking about the full legal enchilada.
2. The difference between such unions and marriage, since it is not a difference in legal incidents, appears to be a difference in level of social endorsement carried by the "m-word."
3. Our best strategy (in most states) for securing the tremendously important legal incidents is to fight for them under the name "civil unions."
4. Our best strategy for securing the social endorsement (i.e., marriage under the name "marriage") is first to secure the legal incidents. Then people will look at our civil unions, realize that they are virtually indistinguishable from marriages, start calling them marriages, and gradually forget why they objected to doing so before. That's what happened in Scandinavia, and it's happening elsewhere in Europe.
5. Attempts to force the social endorsement too quickly (by demanding the name "marriage" above and beyond the legal incidents) may backfire, resulting in state constitutional bans not only on gay marriage but also on civil unions. The upshot would be to delay both the legal incidents and the social endorsement.

Any of the above points could be debated by reasonable people, but (4) and (5), especially, merit further discussion, including careful analysis of countries where similar strategies have been attempted. But rather than providing such analysis, my critics accuse me of endorsing a "separate but equal" line akin to that espoused by racial segregationists. Why should we settle for the back of the bus?

The segregationist analogy is a poor one. First, while it is certainly objectionable that we should ride on the back of the bus, we are barely even at the bus stop yet, much less on the bus. Let us not forget that in most places in this country, our relationships have no legal recognition whatsoever.

Second, and more important, I have argued that we should fight for identical legal incidents to those of marriage. This is not the back of the bus or a different bus: it's the same bus with a different name.

Is that name difference silly? Yes, it's silly - maybe even insulting. But when health benefits are denied to committed same-sex couples, when a person can't get bereavement leave upon the death of her same-sex partner; when loving couples are split apart because one partner is a foreigner and can't get citizenship, that's far worse than silly or insulting - it's downright cruel. I contend that we have a fighting chance at ending such cruelty, and that once we do so we'll have an even better chance at ending the silly name-difference (again, see Scandinavia).

I could be wrong, but calling me nasty names doesn't show why I'm wrong. More to the point, it doesn't get us any closer to the front of the bus.

First published January 19, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.

In a vulgar and half-crazed speech delivered at New York's Cooper Union shortly after last November's presidential election, playwright and drama queen Larry Kramer pronounced the gay-rights movement "Dead." Dead. Deceased. Over. Finished.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral: The state of Illinois passed a gay nondiscrimination law. It was as if the corpse suddenly sat up and started waving a cheery hello to the mourners.

On January 10, the Illinois Senate passed the bill by a vote of 30-27. It was the bare minimum necessary for passage, but winning with the minimum votes is a lot better than coming up one vote short of the minimum. In politics, as Eisenhower pointed out, there are no moral victories. You either win or lose.

The next day the Illinois House passed the bill by a vote of 65 to 51, well over the minimum votes necessary, and Governor Blagojevich, as promised, signed it expeditiously on January 21.

One might notice a few things in passing that offer lessons for other states less far along. The law represents the culmination of some 30 years of effort by successive teams of activists starting in 1974 when the Illinois Gay Rights Task Force (then so-named) was formed to work for passage of a nondiscrimination law. The bill's first sponsor was state Rep. Susan Catania, a Republican.

Passage was more or less hopeless during the '70s and '80s. The gay movement was young, desperately underfunded and understaffed. It received little support from a timid and politically passive community. And public opinion was far from taking seriously the idea of equality for gays.

Passage took years of painstaking lobbying in the legislature, public advocacy in the mass media, and a vastly increased number of gay people coming out. Over the years gays were significantly aided by conscientious reporters and supportive columnists in the print media such as Jean Latz Griffin and Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune, and Tom Brune, Howard Wolinsky and Neil Steinberg at the Sun-Times - and unnamed editorial writers at both papers.

But even more, passage required a well-funded and fully staffed political organization created by Equality Illinois, able to help legislators win primaries and elections, able to create political obligations, able to generate multiple thousands of letters, calls and e-mails to legislators. Politics, we are reminded, has little to do with what is right and everything to do with political power.

In the end, the law was passed in the first legislative session in which Democrats controlled both chambers of the legislature and the governorship. Although earlier GOP governors, moderates all, had said they would sign the bill, conservative legislative leaders kept the measure bottled up.

And the bill was approved after the November election, not before, so legislators felt less vulnerable. Three GOP senators and 12 GOP House members joined the majority of Democrats in voting for the bill. Without mentioning any names, it actually helped to have a crazed loony or two on the other side.

But someone might object that one swallow does not make a summer. Well, I hate to sound like Little Mary Sunshine. Gloom and doom always seem so much more profound. And alarm always sells well to people whose egos depend on the feeling that they are significant because they are threatened. But here, more briefly, are other signs of gay progress in January alone.

• The publication of the late C. A. Tripp's long-awaited book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, arguing that Lincoln was predominantly homosexual in orientation, even if it does not convince everyone nevertheless decisively alters the landscape by raising the issue in a thoroughgoing way. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, conservative National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser seemed to accept the general thrust of Tripp's argument. Consider the impact of the book on high school students doing reports on Lincoln or projects on the Civil War.
• Responding to the urging of New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., who acted on the basis of stocks held by the city's pension funds, six more Fortune 500 companies indicated that they would include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination codes - United States Steel, Alcoa, AllTel, Harrah's Entertainment, Owens-Illinois and Coventry Healthcare.
• Bishops of the Episcopal Church of America, responding to theologically untutored, fundamentalist Anglicans in third world countries, said they "deeply regret" not, mind you, having consecrated an openly gay bishop, but the fact that their doing so caused "pain" to some people. In other words, "We're sorry if you are upset." Clearly they felt they were in a strong theological and institutional position and, unlike feckless Anglicans in Britain, were unwilling to back down.
• A study panel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, with an eye to the controversies embroiling Episcopalians, recommended that their church maintain its current policy forbidding same-sex union ceremonies and non-celibate gay clergy, but should "tolerate" (i.e., allow) churches and pastors that practice otherwise. In effect, this gives a green light to speeded up "doctrinal change from below."

This column honors the memory of Al Wardell, valued friend and long-time head of the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Rights Task Force.

Updated from the original published January 13, 2005, in Bay Windows.

The elevation of arch-conservative Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI illustrates an enduring trait of the Catholic Church that was evident even in the tumultuous years of the early 1960s: the tenacity of the Roman Curia (the Vatican bureaucracy) in resisting reform. Ratzinger is the consummate Vatican operative.

The Sixties began promisingly for Holy Mother Church, with Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, and the general opening of the Church to modern times. But the reformist Pope put the Curia in charge of reforming itself. The decade ended with the more repressive Pope Paul VI, an encyclical attacking "the Pill," and a crackdown on dissenting priests. After the brief tenure of the "Smiling Pope" John Paul I in 1978, Pope John Paul II took repression to a new level.

Swiss theologian Hans Küng, who as a young man influenced the agenda for Vatican II, said of John Paul II, "He is a man of what I would call the mediaeval, anti-reformation, anti-modern paradigm of the church, and he tried to convince the whole church to join him in re-establishing this mediaeval papacy." John Paul's chief enforcer in this effort was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Before his elevation, Ratzinger had been prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1981 and dean of the College of Cardinals since 2002. In 1986, Ratzinger issued his notorious "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," stating of homosexuality that "the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."

Also in the letter, after deploring anti-gay violence, Ratzinger justified it:

"When civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase."

His sympathy for violent reactions recalls the phrase in Leviticus 20:13, "their blood shall be on their own heads."

In the same letter, Ratzinger called gay rights advocacy a threat to the family.

In his July 2004 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World," Ratzinger took on feminism and connected it with the gay movement:

"The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes ..., intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality."

Temple University professor Leonard Swidler, co-founder and president of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church and a former colleague of Ratzinger's at the University of Tübingen, wrote to Ratzinger in response, "If you truly wanted a dialogue, why didn't you invite a group of the outstanding women we have in the Catholic Church to talk with you? In your Holy Office you have a whole staff of theological experts who provide you with the results of their research. As far as I can tell, none of them are women theologians - of which there is no dearth."

Küng, who in 1966 helped Ratzinger obtain his faculty position at Tübingen, suggests that Ratzinger's suspicion of liberalism dates to 1968, when he witnessed student revolts at the university. Ratzinger left the university the following year. "To the present day," Küng writes in his recently published memoirs, "Ratzinger has shown phobias about all movements 'from below', whether these are student chaplaincies, groups of priests, movements of Church people, the Iglesia popular or liberation theology."

At Tübingen, Ratzinger was appalled by what he regarded as the supplanting of religion by Marxist political ideology, and later told an interviewer, "There was an instrumentalization by ideologies that were tyrannical, brutal, and cruel." In this one sees echoes of Karol Wojtyla's fight against Soviet Communism, which he continued when he became Pope. Both men made the mistake of over-generalizing from their own experience. As they might realize if they were not acclimatized to authoritarian surroundings, not all critics of Rome are Marxists.

Ratzinger has had his moderate moments. For example, he reportedly dissuaded John Paul II from issuing "infallible" pronouncements declaring the Blessed Virgin Mary "co-redemptrix of the world" and prohibiting birth control. But this moderation appears to be motivated by tactical considerations. Given his other pronouncements, it is likely that the only reason Ratzinger did not re-institute the old Index Prohibitorum (the list of forbidden books that was abolished in Vatican II, and which at times included works by Copernicus, Machiavelli, Erasmus, and Descartes) was that he knew it would be treated as a joke, and would give excellent publicity to the condemned authors.

In one of two June 1997 letters to the Austrian Bishops Conference responding to efforts by the liberal International Movement "We Are Church," Ratzinger wrote,

"The content of these 'Petitions of the People of the Church' consists of a series of demands, several of which deny Catholic teachings and are in flagrant opposition to Church discipline. It is self-evident that such initiatives cannot be condoned by the Church in any manner."

He was not merely saying that the liberal activists were wrong, he demanded their exclusion from the Second European Ecumenical Assembly that year. He wrote,

"These groups far exceed the bounds of legitimate concerns ... they propagate among the faithful an unacceptable democratic model of the Church...."

Dissent and open discussion were simply not to be tolerated.

After the release of the letters caused a media firestorm, Ratzinger wrote a follow-up letter in March 1998 in which he appeared to backtrack:

"A dialogue that seeks to serve the well-being of humanity and the expansion of the God's Kingdom will on the one hand be open to all people of good will and recoil from no important request, but will, on the other hand, lose sight neither of the charge of being custodians of the Gospel and Tradition nor the missionary calling of the Church."

He added, "In principle, there are no objections to the carefully circumscribed participation of members of the 'We are Church' group in the events of the 'delegate day.'"

As Küng observed, "This represents a form of offensive, a maneuver to relieve pressure, rather than genuine dialogue." Not only does Ratzinger declare the We Are Church Movement out of step with Church teaching without bothering to explain why, he reminds the bishops that they are "custodians of the Gospel and Tradition" - by which he means the same Vatican dogma to which the We Are Church movement objects.

Ratzinger and his allies have resisted any accountability to worldly authorities, even in criminal matters. For example, Ratzinger has protected the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the conservative Legion of Christ, from charges that he sexually abused nine seminarians three decades ago. Ratzinger halted a canonical proceeding against Maciel in late 1999 without explanation. When ABC News' Brian Ross asked Ratzinger about Maciel in 2002, Ratzinger literally slapped Ross's hand.

Küng says of John Paul II, "I would agree that he preached the gospel for the poor, he was for human rights in the world. But all this was in blatant contradiction with what he has done in his own Church, because he repressed human rights in the Church." This is unlikely to change with John Paul II's Grand Inquisitor in the Chair of St. Peter, except perhaps to get worse.

First published byScripps Howard News Service on January 13, 2005. Reprinted by permission of the author courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.

Name the greater risk to national security: patriotic military translators who happen to be homosexual or anti-American Islamofascist terrorists who happen to be homicidal? If you picked the latter, thanks for putting U.S. safety first. Alas, the Pentagon disagrees.

According to new Defense Department data, between fiscal years 1998 and 2003, 20 Arabic- and six Farsi-language experts were booted from the military under President Clinton's 1993 Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy. These GIs trained at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Had they graduated - assuming 40-hour work weeks and two-week vacations - they could have dedicated 52,000 man-hours annually to interrogate Arab-speaking bomb builders, interpret intercepted enemy communications, or transmit reassuring words to bewildered Baghdad residents.

Preparation for these vital activities ends when a dedicated warrior is found to be gay. Under Don't Ask, if that GI's homosexuality becomes evident he must stop conjugating verbs and head home.

Just ask former Army sergeant Ian Finkenbinder. The 22-year-old Eugene, Oregon, native spent eight months as an Arabic linguist with the Third Infantry Division in Iraq. As a noncommissioned military intelligence officer, he helped other linguists collect information from captured Iraqis. "Our efforts saved lives and improved the quality of life for soldiers around us," he says from his Baltimore home. He served in units that took enemy fire and merited an Army Commendation Medal and Good Conduct Medal. He earned about $36,000 annually.

After the 3rd I.D. returned to Fort Stewart, Georgia, Finkenbinder sensed that some in his reorganized unit were discussing his personal life behind his back. In November, after a year of increasing discomfort, he handed his commander, Captain James Finnochiaro, a written statement of his homosexuality. Finkenbinder was honorably discharged last month.

"I went to Iraq once," Finkerbinder says. "I met that challenge. I knew perfectly well I would be able to meet that challenge again." Still, he wondered, "whether I would be able to serve an institution that had discriminated against me for four years by asking me to maintain my silence, as well as these isolated incidents of people saying things that they shouldn't."

Since being booted from the Army, Finkenbinder seeks other work for his Arabic-language skills.

At least 74 gay language specialists were jettisoned between 1998 and 2003, including at least 37 after the Sept. 11 attacks.

This problem extends beyond those who can communicate with combative Iraqis, duplicitous Saudis, or atom-splitting Iranians. Including Finkenbinder, at least 74 language specialists have been jettisoned from the military between fiscal 1998 and 2003. At least 37 were dismissed after September 11, reports Nathaniel Frank, an adjunct history professor at New York University. Dr. Frank is also a Senior Research Fellow at U.C. Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military. His findings appear in the January 24 New Republic.

Those whose homosexuality impressed the Pentagon more than their rare verbal talents include 18 Korean speakers (visualize Kim Il-Sung), 11 Russophones, eight Spanish specialists, three Mandarin Chinese experts, three Serbo-Croatian speakers (Kosovo, anyone?), and one each steeped in German, Hebrew, Italian, and Vietnamese.

War with Italy seems highly unlikely, but Americans need to communicate with our Italian Coalition partners in Iraq. Lacking a U.S. Italophone in combat could get Americans, Italians, or innocent Iraqis killed.

Even worse, Arabic- and Farsi-speaking Islamists plot to murder Americans, even as the U.S. sacks those who prepare to interrogate them and unravel their plans. While the Pentagon purges these dedicated public servants, Islamic extremists chatter away.

America "is without a working channel of communications to the world of Muslims and Islam," the Pentagon's Defense Science Board recently warned. The 9/11 Commission concluded that Uncle Sam "lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic and other key languages, resulting in significant backlog of untranslated intercepts."

"This is a cycle of inertia by design," Nathaniel Frank says. "The Pentagon routinely defers to Congress because it's now federal law. But when Don't Ask was devised, Congress deferred to the Pentagon."

While many military officers endorse this policy, others seem frustrated about losing vital teammates. But most will stay mum until Congress acts.

Congress should replace Don't Ask with a nondiscriminatory policy based on conduct, rather than orientation: Soldiers on duty, gay and straight, must keep their hands to themselves, or face expulsion. Barring such reform, commanders should be allowed to retain soldiers whose value to unit safety and mission outweighs any reservations about their sexuality.

Elements of the 3rd I.D. returned to Iraq January 8, this time without Ian Finkenbinder. He is troubled that they are there, and he is here, unable to speak Arabic to help protect them.

"In a way, going to war with people makes them your family, and I am still very close to all of them," he says. "We still communicate as frequently as possible. But there are definitely moments when I wish I were there with them - with my family."

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Interview with Ian Finkenbinder

The following is Deroy Murdock's interview with former Army sergeant Ian Finkenbinder, a one-time Arabic linguist who served in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division. The Army discharged the 22-year-old Eugene, Oregon native under the Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy after he disclosed his homosexuality. Finkenbinder now lives as a civilian in Baltimore.

Deroy Murdock - Question: When were you discharged from the Army?

Ian Finkenbinder - Answer: I got back from Iraq in August '03 and came out with the fact that I am gay in November '04, and I was discharged in December '04. It was an honorable discharge. What I did was I wrote up a statement stating the fact that I am gay and that was pretty much it. I turned it into my commander, Capt. James Finnochiaro.

Q:Why did you offer that statement?

A:I had reached the point where I decided I did not want to live under the fear of possible retribution from the chain of command, or what have you, due to the fact that I am gay. So, I turned in this statement saying I would be willing to serve as long as I could do so as an openly gay soldier.

Q: Did you feel threatened or harassed?

A: There were isolated incidents throughout my service. There was no specific threat upon me at the time. However, I felt the atmosphere where I worked no longer was as comfortable as it had been in the past. As a linguist, I was in the military intelligence community. I was constantly around other people who are at a level of high education who are open and tolerant of different ideas and different kinds of people. Over the course of the past year, after I got back from Iraq, there was a lot of unit reorganization. So I was around people who, even though they were great soldiers, I still didn't feel as comfortable working as openly as I had before.

Q: What would you say to people who wonder whether you made others around you uncomfortable?

A: For the most part, the people I worked with on a one-on-one basis didn't show any signs of being uncomfortable at all, even though they knew about my sexuality. I was not out to the chain of command, but I was to my peers. They were cool with it.

There had been times when my friends had heard people in the chain of command talk about me in reference to my homosexuality. While I dealt with that appropriately at the time, that signaled to me that I was in a different atmosphere than what I was comfortable with.

Q: How do you answer those who might ask if you announced you were gay to avoid being sent back to Iraq?

A: That is the $64,000 question. I went to Iraq once. I met that challenge., I knew perfectly well I would be ale to meet that challenge again. But it came down to me to be sort of a moral question and a personal question for myself: whether I would be able to serve an institution that had discriminated against me for four years by asking me to maintain my silence as well as these isolated incidents of people saying things that they shouldn't. I loved serving in the Army, but it got very tiring to deal continually with these issues that are unique to being gay in the military.

Q: What was your greatest accomplishment as an Arabic-language expert in Iraq? How best did your skills save lives, catch terrorists, etc.?

A: There's nothing really remarkable that I could put it print.

There were times when my abilities as a linguist were put to the test, as were the abilities of those around me. Our efforts saved lives and improved the quality of life for soldiers around us.

Q: Did any of your discussions in Arabic get vital information out of captured Iraqis or others?

A: I myself did not specifically get exceedingly vital information out of Iraqi nationals; there were definitely those who I worked with who gained excellent intelligence that was pretty vital.

I was part of the intelligence gathering effort. My position was military intelligence throughout my Army career, both as a lower enlisted soldier as well as a non-commissioned officer.

Q: What medals or commendations did you earn?

A:I got the Army Commendation Medal while in Iraq. Also, the Good Conduct Medal and the Army Achievement Medal.

Q: Were you shot at? Attacked? Injured?

A: I was not injured. There were times in Iraq where the unit I was serving or attached to came under fire.

Q: Where were you serving when you have your written statement to your commander?

A: Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Q: How much money were you making when you were discharged?

A: I got about $2,200-per-month in take-home pay. That includes all of the entitlements, such as a housing allowance. If you are the best linguist in the Army, you make an extra $200-per-month, as I did. I made about $36,000 annually.

Q: Why didn't you just "not tell," keep your homosexuality to yourself, and serve our country in Iraq?

A:Because it really became important to me that I, as an individual, were recognized as being as important as the heterosexual soldiers around me, and that I had the same individual freedoms as the others around me. The very same rights that we are trying to establish in Iraq as a democracy, I feel I was being denied, to a degree.

There are very few restrictions placed on heterosexual soldiers based on the nature of consensual relationships in which they are allowed to partake. I, on the other hand, was not allowed to be in any form of consensual relationship that would be true to my nature as a gay man. Any restriction in that sense restricted my rights as an individual.

Q: Is the 3rd Infantry Division back in Iraq? Has anyone in it been hurt lately? If so, could you have helped to keep those folks safe?

A: Elements of the 3rd I.D. went back on January 8. None of them has been hurt. Every soldier over there has the potential to keep their comrades safe, but especially those in the field of intelligence gathering.

Q: What do you think about being here when they are in harm's way, and you might be able to help to keep them safe?

A:The decision to come out of the closet was very difficult for me. The people I served with who are over there right now were with me in Iraq the first time. In a way, going to war with people makes them your family, and I am still very close to all of them. We still communicate as frequently as possible. But there are definitely moments when I wish I were there with them - with my family.