IGF CultureWatch

First published on August 19, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.

Aug. 12, 2004, was a blockbuster gay news day. To recap briefly: In the morning the California Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom lacked authority to issue marriage licenses to 4,000 same-sex couples this past spring.

In the afternoon New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey (D) announced "I am a gay American," said he had had an extramarital affair with a man which left him "vulnerable to rumors, false allegations and threats of disclosure," and so planned to resign in three months.

In the evening President George W. Bush appeared on "Larry King" and said it would be "great" if states want to provide legal recognition to same-sex couples. "That's up to states," Bush said. "If they want to provide legal protections for gays, that's great. That's fine."

Each of these deserves comment, but first notice the "meta-news" - the news about the news. In the 1970s there was little gay news. In the 1980s the only gay news was AIDS. But now we who wished for gay visibility are getting our wish in spades. Even the absence of gay issues at the Democratic convention was news. And it is not going to let up for decades.

Even though most of us demand the right to marry, it is hard to disagree with the California Supreme Court. Local officials cannot defy state policy. They can direct enforcement away from some laws (marijuana, commercial sex), but they cannot declare legal something that is illegal, and they lack authority to grant state entitlements.

They can justifiably break the law in token fashion to publicize an issue, as Newsom did, and as a deliberate act of civil disobedience to test the law, as Newsom did while filing suit against California's gay marriage ban. But they cannot on their own change state law.

Gratifyingly, the California court explicitly stated that its ruling did not touch the constitutionality of the California gay marriage ban. That case will not be decided for at least a year or two.

But the court's separate 5-2 vote to nullify Newsom's marriages suggests that at least two justices may already believe the state's ban on gay marriage may be unconstitutional so gay marriage will have vigorous representation in court deliberations. Some of the other five justices may well agree on the issue though not on Newsom's remedy. We need only two more for a majority.

McGreevey's coming out in the context of an extramarital affair and allegations of extortion threats or a sexual harassment suit does not send much of a message about gay pride, or perhaps pride only for married closet queens who give their partners government jobs for which they have no qualifications.

Still, it is perhaps a slight plus for people to know that there are gay government officials, and McGreevey is, at the moment, the highest ranking openly gay official. And to his credit his earlier closetedness did not lead him to don the breastplate of righteousness by being anti-gay. He did sign New Jersey's civil unions legislation.

The charges by partner Golan Cipel seem strained if not preposterous. Cipel reportedly claims that he was coerced, that McGreevey "forcibly performed oral sex on Mr. Cipel without his consent." How awful that must have been for him! But it is difficult - with a straight face - to imagine the scenario by which this would happen. And there were witnesses supposedly?

But McGreevey's integrity does not come off well either. He denied his sexual orientation throughout his career, marrying one woman he said he loved but who apparently divorced him - one wonders why - then marrying a second who he said loved him but does not say he loved. The second marriage was then a contrivance?

Bush's statement on CNN's "Larry King" show that it is fine that states can provide "legal protections for gays" should have stunned people. Had the media not already overdosed on gays that day, Bush's comment would have been major news. It is major news: The social conservative president thinks it is "great" that states are free to offer legal protections to gays. Or "great" for gays if they do. Or something.

Across America, religious right jaws dropped like William "Refrigerator" Perry on a bungee cord. No doubt the Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons gritted their teeth and muttered, "I guess he has to say stuff like that to placate those 'moderates' he needs to win."

Remember that the goal of the religious right is to keep gays invisible to the law. But granting partner benefits would require a state registry of gay couples and that would mean state recognition of gays as gays and gay partnerships as a legitimate entity.

And Bush must know that allowing state legislatures to extend partner benefits would collide with a Federal Marriage Amendment that prohibits any state supreme court from reading its own constitution so as to permit the granting of any "incidents of marriage" to gay couples. Bush is playing a risky game, trusting that neither moderates nor conservatives will see the contradiction and will believe whatever they hope.

If all goes according to plan, the Republican Party will hold a love fest of a national convention in New York next month, just as their Democratic rivals did in July. But not if a small group of socially progressive Republicans stand in their way.

The Log Cabin Republicans, a national organization of gay GOP members, has announced its intention, along with Republicans for Choice and the Republican Youth Majority, to call on the national Republican Party to adopt a "Unity Plank" in its 2004 platform. The plank does not call on the party to endorse gay marriage, gays in the military, government-funded contraception, the Harvey Milk School, partial-birth abortion, or any other controversial policy proposal. The plank, in its totality, reads simply:

"We recognize and respect that Republicans of good faith may not agree with all the planks in the party's platform. This is particularly the case with regard to those planks dealing with abortion, family planning, and gay and lesbian issues. The Republican Party welcomes all people on all sides of these complex issues and encourages their active participation as we work together on those issues upon which we agree."

If the Republicans have any sense, they will accept this innocent proposal from these unfairly marginalized members of their own party. After all, the headline speakers at the convention are Governor Schwarzenegger of California, Governor Pataki of New York, and Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor - all of whom support gay rights. But don't hold your breath.

Considering what they have had to endure, gay Republicans could easily be considered the most loyal members of the GOP. For when it comes to the issues that directly affect gays the Republican Party has been nothing but hostile. The party's leaders have continually opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would make it illegal under federal law to fire someone simply because that person is gay. Currently, this practice is legal in 36 states. Congressional Republicans have consistently opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces, at a time when the most qualified individuals are needed to defend the country. And the Republican Party, led by Mr. Bush, has sought to write discrimination into the Constitution by means of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Despite all this, the Log Cabin Republicans are only requesting that a straightforward, three-sentence plank be included in the party's 2004 platform that would make gay Republicans feel welcome within the party whose candidates they vote for, whose ideals they believe in, and whose treasury they help fund.

Is it too much to ask? Apparently so, because leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans have yet even to receive credentials to attend the convention.

Social issues are divisive, and the party's hard-line stance against gays is not only failing to win over voters - only 4 percent of whom say gay marriage is a decisive issue for them - but it will become a political liability down the road as homophobic public policies become increasingly anachronistic with young people. The polls bear this contention out, and Karl Rove would do well to pay attention. In 2000, Mr. Bush nearly split the 18-to-29-year-old vote with Mr. Gore. But in a recently released Washington Post-ABC News poll, Mr. Kerry now leads the president among that same demographic by a 2-to-1 margin. While the war and the economy are paramount in creating this shift, the one glaring issue that separates this age group from older voters - who are evenly split in the presidential race - is gays.

If the Republican Party wishes to have a future, it must come to grips with the fact that its stances on issues related to homosexuality, while perhaps not strategically risky right now, will prove disastrous in the future if they do not evolve. Voters under 30 are "gay friendly." Half of us support gay marriage and a sizeable majority of us support full legal rights via civil unions. We can claim more openly gay friends, relatives, and coworkers than any other generation of Americans. We view any remark that hints of anti-gay animus with the same mix of disdain and ironic bemusement as we do retrograde comments endorsing racial supremacy.

Young people take pride in our acceptance of gay people and are confident that despite the bitter debate homosexuality is causing in our country now, most Americans will share our point of view within the next 20 years. If Republicans have any idea what is good for them as a party, they will get hip with the times.

The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (known as “ENDA”)
is dead, a victim of Republican opposition, Democratic
indifference, and now the foolishness of the country’s richest and
most prominent gay civil rights organization.

Abandoning common sense, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
announced in early August that it will no longer support federal
legal protection for millions of gay workers unless the tiny number
of transgendered workers get that protection at the same time. The
decision is a slap in the face to gay Americans, who generously
fund HRC, and who will now have to wait even longer for protection
from employment discrimination.

ENDA was first introduced in Congress in 1994. From the
beginning, it has been a carefully calculated compromise between
the need for broad protection from discrimination and the practical
realities of a political world just now getting used to the subject
of homosexuality. From the beginning, it banned only employment
discrimination, not discrimination in housing, education, or public
accommodations. From the beginning, it applied only to relatively
large employers. It exempted religious employers. It banned
quotas.

And from the beginning, ENDA protected workers only from
anti-gay discrimination, not from discrimination for a host of
other reasons, like “gender identity and expression,” which would
include transgendered people.

Until this month, HRC opposed adding gender identity to ENDA. In
the judgment of Capitol Hill vote-counters, including uber-liberals
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), a
transgender-inclusive ENDA could not pass Congress. Adding
transgender protection would, in their judgment, scare off
Republican congressional sponsors already in hot water for
supporting protection for gays. That, in turn, would scare off some
moderate Democrats.

Without the support of at least a few Republicans and
moderate-to-conservative Democrats, ENDA could never pass

First published August 15, 2004, in The New York Times.

What happened to Governor McGreevey - that is, James E. McGreevey, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, who announced his resignation on Aug. 12 because he was secretly gay and had "shamefully" conducted an extramarital affair - was strange, to say the least. Pundits wondered whether there would be broader ramifications for gay civil rights, same-sex marriage or American politics. I doubt it. A rich and seemingly unique concatenation of homosexuality, adultery, suspicions of political featherbedding, and rumors of extortion and sexual harassment made the McGreevey scandal look like an aberration.

What happened to Mr. McGreevey - the man, not the governor - was not strange at all. It was familiar to almost every gay American of Mr. McGreevey's generation. Marriage, not homosexuality, lies at the heart of it.

Mr. McGreevey is 47. I am 44. We have in common being among the early members of the post-Stonewall generation. We came of age in the 1970's, when overt expressions of anti-gay animus were becoming unacceptable in polite company. The worst of official repression was past. Vice-squad raids and scandalous arrests and federal witch hunts were not central fears in our lives. There was still plenty of unofficial discrimination and ugly and ignorant rhetoric, and we all feared the low-grade terrorism known as gay-bashing. But on the whole we were free, as no previous generation had been, to get on with our lives.

There was one thing, however, we knew we could never aspire to do, at least not as homosexuals. We could not marry.

By that I mean not just that gay couples could not marry. Self-acknowledged gay people - coupled or single, adult or adolescent, open or closeted - also could not hope to marry. The very concept of same-sex marriage had yet to surface in public debate. We grew up taking for granted that to be homosexual was to be alienated and isolated, not just for now but for life, from the culture of marriage and all the blessings it brings.

Social-science research has established beyond reasonable doubt that marriage, on average, makes people healthier, happier and financially better off. More than that, however, the prospect of marriage shapes our lives from the first crush, the first date, the first kiss. Even for people who do not eventually choose to marry, the prospect of marriage provides a destination for love and the expectation of a stable home in a welcoming community.

The gay-marriage debate is often conducted as if the whole issue were providing spousal health insurance and Social Security survivors' benefits for existing same-sex couples. All of that matters, but more important, and often overlooked, is the way in which alienation from marriage twists and damages gay souls. In my own case, I did not understand and acknowledge my homosexuality until well into adulthood, but I somehow understood even as a young boy that I would probably never marry. (Children understand marriage long before they understand sex or sexuality.) I coped by struggling for years to suppress every sexual and romantic urge. I convinced myself that I could never love anybody, until the strain of denial became too much to bear.

Others coped differently. Some threw themselves into rebellion against marriage and the bourgeois norms it seemed to represent. Some, to their credit, built firmly coupled gay lives without the social support and investment that marriage brings. And some, determined to lead "normal" lives (meaning, largely, married lives), married.

At what point Mr. McGreevey realized and acknowledged he was gay I don't know. I do know that many gay husbands begin by denying and end by deceiving. Perhaps that was so in his case.

Opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes insist that gays can marry. Marriage, they say, isn't all about sex. It can be about an abstinent, selfless love. Well, as Benjamin Franklin said, where there is marriage without love there will be love without marriage. I'm always startled when some of the same people who say that gays are too promiscuous and irresponsible to marry turn around and urge us into marriages that practically beg to end in adultery and recklessness.

For most human beings, the urge to find and marry one's other half is elemental. It is central to what most people regard as the good life. Gay people's lives are damaged when that aspiration is quashed, of course. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to that. But so are the lives of spouses, of children. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to that, too.

The country is still making up its mind about same-sex marriage. Massachusetts has it. Most states have pre-emptively banned it. On Aug. 12, the California Supreme Court invalidated about 4,000 same-sex marriages performed by the city of San Francisco, but gay-marriage advocates hope that this is a temporary setback. Through litigation now working its way through the system, California's highest court may yet overturn the state's gay-marriage ban.

The McGreevey debacle suggests why all Americans, gay and straight alike, have a stake in universalizing marriage. The greatest promise of same-sex marriage is not the tangible improvement it may bring to today's committed gay couples, but its potential to reinforce the message that marriage is the gold standard for human relationships: that adults and children and gays and straights and society and souls all flourish best when love, sex and marriage go together. Nothing will ever make the discovery of homosexual longings easy for a young person. But homosexuality need not mean growing up, as Jim McGreevey and I and many others did, torn between marriage and love.

One of the most persistent debates surrounding homosexuality regards whether gays are "born that way" or whether homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle."

The debate is ill-formed from the start, in that it conflates two separate questions:

1. How did you become what you are? (By genetics? Early environment? Willful choice? Some combination of the above?),

   and

2. Can you change what you are?

The answers to these two questions vary independently. My dark hair color is genetically determined, but I can change it (though I'd make a rather frightful blonde). The fact that my native language is English is environmentally determined, but I can't change it. (I can learn a new language, of course, but at this stage it would never have the character of my native language.)

The fact that I put the last sentence in parentheses is a matter of willful choice, and, like most matters of willful choice, it can be changed (although my editors had better leave it alone if they know what's good for them). Still, some choices are not so easily undone. Having chosen never to practice piano as a child, it would be possible, but rather challenging, for me to become proficient at piano now.

Of course, sexual orientation is not like piano-playing. I never turned down "straight lessons" as a child. ("No, Mommy, I wanna play with my Easy-Bake oven instead!") I never chose to "become gay," and I'm not even sure how one would go about doing so. We do not choose our romantic feelings - indeed, we often find them thrust upon us at surprising and inopportune times. We discover them; we do not invent them.

So we must be born this way, right?

Wrong. For several reasons. No one is born with romantic feelings, much less engaging in sexual conduct. That comes later. Whether it comes as a result of genetics, or early environment, or watching too many episodes of Wonder Woman is a separate question that can't be settled by simple introspection.

Moreover, the fact that feelings are strong doesn't mean that they're genetically determined. They might be, but they might not. Sexual orientation's involuntariness, which is largely beyond dispute, is separate from its origin, which is still controversial, even among sympathetic scientists.

But here's the good news: It doesn't matter whether we're born this way.

A lot of gay-rights advocates seem to think otherwise. They worry that if we're not "born this way," then homosexuality would be "unnatural" in some morally significant sense.

Nonsense. Again: the fact that I speak English rather than French is learned behavior, but it does not follow that my doing so is unnatural or in need of reparative therapy.

But wouldn't a genetic basis for homosexuality prove that God made us this way? No, it wouldn't - at least not in any helpful sense. Put aside the difficulties about establishing God's existence or discerning divine intentions. The fact is that there are plenty of genetically influenced traits that are nevertheless undesirable. Alcoholism may have a genetic basis, but it doesn't follow that alcoholics ought to drink excessively. Some people may have a genetic predisposition to violence, but they have no more right to attack their neighbors than anyone else. Persons with such tendencies cannot say "God made me this way" as an excuse for acting on their dispositions.

"Whoa!" you might object. "Are you saying that homosexuality is a disorder like alcoholism?" Not at all. The difference between alcoholism and homosexuality is that alcoholism has inherently bad effects whereas homosexuality does not. But this distinction just reinforces my point: we do not determine whether a trait is good by looking at where it came from (genetics, environment, or something else). We determine whether it is good by looking at its effects.

Nor does it matter whether sexual orientation can be changed. For even if it could (which is doubtful in most cases), it doesn't follow that it should. Much like my hair color.

Remember: bad arguments in favor of a good cause are still bad arguments - and in the long run not very good for the cause. This is not to say that we shouldn't frequently remind people that homosexuality, like heterosexuality, is a deep, important, and relatively fixed feature of human personality. It's just that those facts can only get us so far.

In a 1964 speech to the New York Mattachine Society, an early gay rights group, activist Frank Kameny announced:

"We are interested in obtaining rights for our respective minorities as Negroes, as Jews, and as Homosexuals. Why we are Negroes, Jews, or Homosexuals is totally irrelevant, and whether we can be changed to Whites, Christians or heterosexuals is equally irrelevant."

Kameny (who is still going strong at 79) was absolutely right. Too bad people still haven't gotten the message.