IGF CultureWatch

First published on May 26, 2004, in Liberty Education Forum.

We are crossing a major demarcation line in the history of the gay rights movement. After May 17, 2004, gay marriages in America are a legal reality (if only in Massachusetts at first), not just a private commitment or an act of civil disobedience. To be sure, the fight will continue in courts and legislatures for many years, but that does not diminish the magnitude of this moment. The long struggle between gay liberation and integration has essentially been decided, and integration has won.

The conservative nature of this development has not been lost on the liberationists. Their anti-assimilationism is rapidly becoming obsolete, as gay couples across the country demand full inclusion in the central institution of our society.

As with all Lost Causes, some diehards resist recognizing their defeat. In an August 2003 article for The Boston Phoenix decrying the "marriage rights mania," Michael Bronski dismisses marriage rights as "crumbs." The social benefits of marriage aside, few would regard the 1,138 rights and privileges associated with marriage under federal law, or the additional hundreds under state laws, as mere crumbs.

Bronski treats marriage as if it hasn't changed in 50 years. In fact, legalized contraception and abortion, no-fault divorce, and the rise of marriage as an equal partnership have left the institution far different from the oppressive patriarchal tool he portrays. His grim portrait, including his unsubstantiated claim of an "ongoing epidemic of domestic violence among straight and gay couples," reads more like Peter Pan appealing to Wendy to stay in Never Never Land than a serious discussion of real families.

To hear some gay radicals tell it, this wedding season sounds more like a funeral. By adopting the strictures of marriage, so their thinking goes, our community will give up its freedom and lose its fabulousness. Many such qualms are reported by Michael Powell in a March 31, 2004 article in The Washington Post.

These lamentations remind me of the Lena Wertmuller film Swept Away…, in which a desert island is the only place where love can flower for the socially mismatched protagonists. Once they are rescued, their love is doomed. While I honor our movement's pioneers, I do not share this romantic view of our historic social isolation. Just as with the demise of the old Chitlin Circuit, which nurtured many great black performers before mainstream venues were desegregated four decades ago, few will reject the new freedom because it brings challenges along with opportunities.

For years, when faced with gay opponents of marriage, I have argued that their personal aversion was one thing, and opposing my right to choose for myself was quite another. Ten years ago, when I tried to persuade a gay-friendly D.C. mayoral candidate to endorse equal marriage rights, she pointed out that the gay community itself was divided on the issue. Indeed, Evan Wolfson, one of the earliest and staunchest gay marriage advocates, was often subjected to blistering verbal abuse by gay people who resented his rocking the boat for something they didn't even want.

The climate has now irrevocably changed. There is no longer any serious division in our community on the question of civil marriage rights. From coast to coast and across the political spectrum, we were thrilled by the rush of city hall weddings set off by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in February. The allure of alienation is melting away amid the joyous nuptials; the politics of victimhood is losing its grip even amid the anti-gay backlash; and gay families are adjusting their expectations upward. There is a growing recognition that, while the victory is far from won, the tide of history is with us.

It is only natural that such a change would take some adjusting. I can understand the nostalgia that some feel for the early years after Stonewall, when life at the margins of society brought with it a certain freedom. During the gay community's first "out" years, the lack of institutional signposts provided endless opportunities for creativity. But that was the freedom of people roaming uncharted territory. Thirty years ago, the bar scene was one of the few social options. There were no gay choruses, no gay film festivals, no gay chambers of commerce. The idea of openly gay politicians was outlandish even in the most liberal cities. Other than a few classical allusions, gay literature mostly consisted of lurid paperbacks and a magazine that was kept behind the counter at the newsstand.

Today, the number and variety of gay organizations and services is vastly greater. Whatever your interest or need, you're a quick Google search away from finding someone to share it or fill it. The truth is that we are infinitely more free than we were in the "good old days," simply by having more choices.

Twenty years ago, playwright Harvey Fierstein talked about the "perpetual adolescence" of the urban gay milieu, in which sowing one's wild oats became for many a lifetime occupation. The tragedy of AIDS forced our community to grow up, leaving us stronger and more responsible. Marriage is the next step - not just for particular couples as a legal option, but for our community as a social norm and aspiration.

Marriage isn't for everyone, of course. This is as true for gay people as for heterosexuals. But simply by becoming a realistic goal and part of the social landscape in which gay children grow up, it will give them the freedom to color with all the crayons in the box, as gay children before them never could. Imagine being a child again, and being able to blurt out your foolish dreams unselfconsciously, the same as your siblings and playmates. Imagine receiving encouragement for those dreams, and taking that encouragement for granted. Imagine the wondrous ways a child may grow if properly nurtured. That's a radical enough vision for me, and making it come true will be pretty fabulous.

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

With all the legal impediments finally swept away, Massachusetts gay and lesbian couples are now for the first time anywhere in America being incontestably, legally wed.

And not just legally wed, but welcomed with religious marriage ceremonies by the venerable and influential Unitarian church, whose ministers almost to a man - and woman - have made themselves available to same-sex couples wishing a blessing in the religious tradition.

Politics is always with us if only because our uncomprehending opponents try to make our lives a political issue and there are always people who wish to use governments to control, to exclude and to gain preference for themselves. But let us, if only briefly, put politics out of our minds to savor these first few days of legal gay marriage, the consummation of a painful, protracted struggle for a simple acknowledgment of the dignity and virtue of our relationships.

For the rest, the sequelae will just have to play themselves out.

There is no doubt that this is an enormous defeat for religious conservatives, Catholic and evangelical both, who fought this outcome at every step with vast economic resources, religious pressure, especially from the Catholic church, and a seemingly endless series of increasingly bizarre legal arguments ending only with a cold stare from the U.S. Supreme Court itself.

This is also a serious setback for Massachusetts' Mormon governor Mitt Romney, who is reported to have higher aspirations and viewed the gay marriage issue as way to gain national prominence and conservative credentials. But he now has that most unenviable of political reputations - loser.

Further, at the last minute Romney decided to block most out-of-state gay couples from marrying by reviving enforcement of a widely ignored 1913 law designed to prohibit out-of-state interracial couples from marrying in Massachusetts if they could not marry at home. No action could have better illustrated a parallel between the black and gay movements and cemented the image of Romney as a George Wallace of the north.

At the national level, evangelical leaders are deeply discouraged. Consider this doomsday scenario from Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family:

"Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. ... For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The ... goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, ... and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies."

At a soberer level of analysis, The New York Times reported that evangelical leaders are perplexed at the lack of horrified response from "people in the pews." Here is the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition: "I don't see any traction. The calls aren't coming in and I am not sure why."

But the obvious fact evangelical leaders are trying to ignore is that while, no doubt, a majority of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, they don't oppose it all that strongly. It is not exactly biblical, it is an unknown and it "feels" funny. But at some level they realize that contrary to conservative propaganda gay marriage will not harm them or their children personally.

So now evangelical leaders - if they can be called leaders when so few are following - are reduced to hoping against hope that the sight of gay couples marrying in Massachusetts will induce a phobic reaction in their followers. As the puritanical Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, put it, "We need to do a better job of educating our base, although I don't think we can do better than Massachusetts is going to do for us."

But this is just whistling past the graveyard. Over the last decade, evangelical leaders have been relentlessly "educating our base" about the threat of gay marriage - with only modest results, apparently. And if "the people in the pews" were going to be upset by pictures of gay couples marrying, they would have long since been upset - by newspaper and television coverage of happy brides with brides and grooms with grooms in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now.

To the contrary, many people will inevitably find themselves empathizing with the joy and delight they see on the faces of radiant brides and delighted grooms, leaving the Lou Sheldons and Richard Lands sputtering Groucho Marx's classic desperation plea, "Who you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?"

There is, in fact, no better advertisement for gay marriage than gay marriages, which, of course, is exactly why religious conservatives fought so hard to block them from happening anywhere.

It is our moment. Enjoy!