Good News/Bad News.

by on

Two new polls released last Sunday show just about half of Massachusetts voters agree with the ruling by their highest court that the state's ban same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, while around 38% are opposed to gay marriage. That makes it a lot more difficult for anti-gay activists to charge that gay marriage is being forced on an unwilling populace.

Still, a recent nationwide survey shows that 59% oppose gay marriage while 32% favor it. Which is why it's not surprising, just disappointing, that the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution now has over 100 bipartisan sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the very anti-gay (but extremely multicultural) Alliance For Marriage.

Some good news: A few more straight conservatives are making the case for same-sex marriage. I particularly liked this piece from the right-leaning New York Sun, by R.H. Sager, who writes: "Marriage is a contract, it's a choice, it encourages stability. Conservatives like all of those things. Why not extend the institution?"

Moreover, other prominent conservative who haven't been stellar on matters of gay equality are now touting civil unions as an acceptable compromise, including Jonah Goldberg. He gets off this sharp observation:

It's a funny stalemate. The Republicans can't afford to be seen as too "anti-gay," lest the Democrats demagogue them with tolerant suburban voters, and Democrats can't afford to be seen as too "pro-gay" lest the GOP demagogue them in Southern and rural states. So both sides stand there, circling each other like sumo wrestlers, hoping the other side will make the first move.

And still other pundits of the right have come out against the Federal Marriage Amendment, including George Will and David Horowitz. Whether such defections will be enough to stall the support for amending the Constitution during the coming election year is as yet unknown.

The Marriage Ruling &

More Recent Postings

11/16/03 - 11/22/03

0 Comments

Straight Conservatives for Gay Marriage.

by on

David Brooks, a fair-minded conservative who's now a columnist for the New York Times, penned this op-ed on The Power of Marriage. Taking a swipe at fellow conservatives, Brooks admonishes:

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

And, taking a swipe at liberals, he declares:

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote. Marriage is not voting.

Straight conservatives who support gay marriage -- now that's a force to be reckoned with!

Liberals for Undermining Traditional Marriage?

On the other hand, do we really benefit from arguments like Sociologist Says Gay Marriage Does Threaten Established Order, and That's Good?

Meanwhile, in a show of support for heterosexual marriage, both Menendez brothers have now gotten married while in prison for killing their parents.
--Stephen H. Miller

0 Comments

And Now a Word from the Pundits…

by on

"This May Be Good for Marriage" writes liberal syndicated columnist Richard Cohen:

Now along come gay couples to rescue marriage from social and economic irrelevance, casting a queer eye on a straight institution. They seek it for pecuniary reasons -- issues such as estate taxes, etc. -- but also because they seem to be among the last romantics. (No shotgun marriages here.) The odd thing about the opposition to gay marriage is that if the opponents were not so blinded by bigotry and fear, they would see that gay men and lesbians provide the last, best argument for marriage: love and commitment.

Libertarian-minded columnist Steve Chapman argues that "Freedom Evolves in Surprising Ways":

When John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, which historian David McCullough says is "the oldest functioning written constitution in the world," he couldn't have dreamed it would someday be interpreted to sanction homosexual partnerships. At the time, Massachusetts made sodomy punishable by death. These days, however, not much is banned in Boston, or most other venues. --

On this and other activities once stigmatized as sinful, Americans are generally inclined to let freedom ring, even if they don't always like the results. John Adams and his fellow founders would be surprised, but when you decide to protect the pursuit of happiness, there's just no telling where it will lead.

On the other hand, fumes religious rightist Cal Thomas, the Massachusetts ruling:

...is further evidence that G.K. Chesterton's warning has come true: "The danger when men stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing, but that they'll believe in anything."

Marriage was not invented by the Postal Service as a convenient way to deliver the mail. It was established by God as the best arrangement for fallen humanity to organize and protect itself and create and rear children. Even secular sociologists have produced studies showing children need a mother and a father in the home.

And, perhaps striving to be "fair and balanced," conservative Bill O'Reilly told his Fox News audience:

Personally I couldn't care less about gay marriage. If Tommy and Vinny or Joanie and Samantha want to get married, I don't see it as a threat to me or anybody else. But according to a poll by the Pew Research Center, only 32 percent of Americans favor gay marriage. And the will of the people must be taken into account here.

Some are predicting the culture war over gay marriage will become more heated than the abortion fight. Others say that aside from the religious right and the gay community, most Americans are just not emotionally invested in the issue. Keeping an eye on our national pundits will be one way to gauge if that's so.

0 Comments

W.E.B. DuBois Championed Equality — for Everyone

by on

First published Nov. 20, 2003, in The Dartmouth.

Anniversaries do not always neatly coincide with history, but invocations of the past often have much to say about the realities of the present.

These thoughts came to mind as I was reading David Levering Lewis's biography of W.E.B. DuBois. In 1906, DuBois, author of The Souls of Black Folks and founder of the NAACP, met with others in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, for the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement. The choice of location was symbolic: they were commemorating the 100th anniversary of John Brown's birth.

Brown, a white abolitionist who led a raid on the federal armory in Harper's Ferry in hopes of starting a black uprising, was born in 1800, so those who met in Niagara were six years late in their remembrance. And here I am, almost three years early in remembering and invoking the 1906 Niagara meeting. Two centenary remembrances in spirit only. But just as the events of 1906 caused DuBois and others to think of Brown then, so do the events of 2003 cause me to recall Niagara now.

The connections I see between then and now revolve around civil rights for gay Americans. For those who object to comparing black civil rights with gay civil rights, let me, a black gay man, cite Mel Boozer, another black gay man of a generation ago. "I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot. And I can sum up the difference in one word: none." To dismiss the black gay experience as unimportant to a discussion on gay civil rights is akin to dismissing the Harvard-trained DuBois as unrepresentative of blacks and thus unqualified to speak about black civil rights.

He was qualified, and for the Niagara conference, he authored an Address to the Country. "In the past year," DuBois wrote, "the work of the Negro-hater has flourished in the land." That work consisted of disenfranchising black voters, discriminating against blacks in travel and public accommodations, and undermining the education of black children. Nothing close to this type of systemic assault has yet affected gay Americans. But we are seeing the stirrings of this type of majority opposition to the gay minority.

The work of the gay-hater has flourished in the land this past year. In the wake of positive court rulings on behalf of gay Americans, some Americans are demanding that lawmakers bring the "gay scourge" under control, by state law at a minimum, by federal constitutional amendment if necessary. It reminds me of calls in the early twentieth century to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, or calls mid-century, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, to restrict the federal government in race relations or to make busing for integration illegal.

DuBois wrote that "against this [systemic discrimination] the Niagara Movement eternally protests ... We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America." DuBois upset many, but he was right. Blacks were equal in fact and thus must be made equal in law.

The fundamental reason why gay Americans are not yet equal in law - why gays cannot legally protect their relationships and families to the extent that straight people can, cannot serve in the military, and in some places cannot adopt - is because most Americans refuse to accept gay people as equal in fact. The majority of Americans presume that gays are inferior, just as a majority of white Americans (especially in the South) presumed in 1906 that blacks were inferior. And just as whites then were unapologetic about their beliefs, so many straights today are unembarrassed to confess that, to them, gay people are sub-human or, more perniciously, simply need to act straight - have to "pass" - in order to eliminate the "gay problem." But gays will no longer participate in self-oppression; we don't need to pass.

DuBois listed five demands: the right to vote; the elimination of separate accommodations (which he called "un-American, undemocratic, and silly"); the freedom to associate; equity in law enforcement; and proper education. The outer two claims have no immediate parallel to the gay experience, but the inner three certainly do, as laws segregating and singling out gays persist.

DuBois provocatively asked: "Cannot the nation that has absorbed 10 million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb 10 million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?" Again, in echo: cannot America make an equal number of gays fully enfranchised American citizens?

In his biography of John Brown, DuBois wrote that "the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression." And with the price tag of gay repression mounting - in special conclaves lambasting gay clergy, in conservative campaigns denouncing same-sex marriage, in taxpayer dollars fueling attempts to enact laws and amendments that would make gay Americans permanent second-class citizens - we would better use our fiscal and moral capital by giving gays freedom under the law.

John Brown's body may lie a-moldering in the grave, but the undying truth he stood for - freedom cannot be denied - marches on. DuBois knew and invoked that truth in his day. Let us fall into step with this truth now.

0 Comments

The Marriage Ruling, and the Storm to Come.

by on

The AP reports: "Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution, but stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law." (The entire opinion, including the dissent, is available online.)

Meanwhile, the AP continues, "The Massachusetts question will now return to the Legislature, which already is considering a constitutional amendment that would legally define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman." The state's powerful Speaker of the House, Democrat Tom Finneran of Boston, has endorsed the proposal. And so has GOP Governor Mitt Romney.

The worst outcome: Massachusetts amends its state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the ruling gives a huge push to efforts to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment now in Congress, which would amend the U.S. Constitution in the same permanently restrictive manner.
[Update: Given that it can take up to two years to amend the Bay State's constitution, expect opponents to put their effforts into amending the federal Constitution.]

The best outcome: Massachusetts passes a civil unions bill along the lines of Vermont's, granting same-sex couples all the state-granted benefits of marriage, and this passes muster with the Massachusetts courts.

Do I want gays to have the right to marry in the fullest sense. Yes! Do I think that, given the current political climate, court-decreed same-sex marriage will be overturned by elected legislatures and create a groundswell of reaction? Yes again. To paraphrase, "It's the 'M' word, stupid!"

The big picture. In the great, ongoing battle between conservatism and progressivism (ok, one could even say "dialectic," if you must), both sides hold a part of the truth. Conservatives aren't just reactionary nabobs; the truth they hold is that there are some essentials that, if tampered with, lead to chaos (e.g., the folly of "rational" socialism, which sought to replace age-old markets with central planning, and produced tyranny and poverty). Progressives, on the other hand, hew to the truth that times change and if society doesn't evolve to provide human beings with greater liberty and dignity, it will become corrupt and atrophy.

The American revolution was progressivism at its best; the French (Russian, Chinese, etc.) revolutions were progressivism at its worst, and showed the value in the conservatives' worldview ("go slow, don't alter the fundamentals, or at least be exceedingly wary about doing so").

Here we have two "truths," at war with each other. Right now, despite the rulings of some liberal justices, the nation is clearly not yet convinced that same-sex marriage wouldn't destroy an essential bedrock and lead to social breakdown. The best way to demonstrate that, on the contrary, it would be the sort of "good" progress that advances humanity is to let people get used to civil unions on a state by state level, starting where support for gay rights is already high.

Will liberal activists use the courts to overreach and produce a backlash that will set back gay marriage for a generation or more? Or am I being overly cautious and not giving enough credit to the cultural changes that have already taken root in this country? We'll soon see.

Wrong About Everything?

There were two declarations this past week from the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, as summarized in the following headlines:


Guess which declaration is going to be given major play by conservatives (hint: it's not the one that might interfere with their personal lives!).

More Recent Postings

11/09/03 - 11/15/03

0 Comments

The General Was on Hold.

by on

If nothing else, the pressure to hold up the promotion of Maj. Gen. Robert T. Clark to lieutenant general and commander of the Fifth Army, over charges that he ignored persistent anti-gay harassment on a base where a fatal gay bashing occurred in 1999, sends a strong message to the military. As the Washington Blade reports:

Gay groups have said Clark's inattention to anti-gay harassment at the base contributed to an atmosphere that led to the gay-bashing death of Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21. -- [The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network] has pointed to witnesses who testified"that Winchell had been subjected to anti-gay taunts and threats on the base for several months prior to the attack that led to his death. The witnesses testified that officers in charge of Winchell's unit failed to take steps to stop the harassment and that Clark should have intervened to address the harassment problem.

Clark will most likely get his promotion, but the months-long delay should put other military commanders on notice: tolerating attacks against gay servicemembers can be a bad career move.

[Update: On Nov. 18 the Seante approved Gen. Clark's promotion, but the vote represented (in the words of the Washington Blade) "a break from a longstanding Senate tradition of approving promotions for military officers by unanimous consent, without debate." Said an SLDN spokesperson, "Despite the disappointing vote, it's reassuring that we had an historic debate holding Gen. Clark accountable for his actions."]

Meanwhile, the rabidly anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition is running this delightful little piece on its website, Exposed: The Truth About Pfc. Barry Winchell. Could the culture wars get any uglier?

0 Comments

Paul’s Letter to the Romans

by on

First published Nov. 12, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press. This version has been slightly revised.

One of the Bible verses most frequently cited by conservative, anti-gay Christians occurs in the Letter to the Romans, generally attributed - except for its final verses - to the Apostle Paul, Romans 1:26-27:

(26) "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural," (27) "and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Revised Standard Version)

First of all, it is important to notice that although Paul clearly refers to sexual acts between males, it is not clear at all that he is referring to lesbian behavior. Not only does Paul distinguish women from men, but just where the parallelism of the two verses would lead us to expect it he specifically avoids saying anything like "woman committing shameless acts with women." It is only in the case of men that Paul specifies homosexual sex as the "unnatural" behavior he objects to. So Paul may be thinking of some other behavior by women.

Be that as it may, the usual gay Christian interpretation of this passage is that Paul had little concept of a life-long homosexual orientation and so regarded homosexual acts as a deviation from a natural heterosexuality by people who were unusually lustful or wanton or rebellious. In that case Paul's argument would not apply homosexuality as we understand it today.

That may well be true. But, even if so, exactly what theological point Paul was trying to make about homosexual behavior is far from clear and, on closer examination, seems far different from what both gay and anti-gay Christians assume. But that point emerges only when the verses are seen in context of the whole section (or "pericope") where they appear: Romans 1:18-32.

In this insistent and repetitious passage dense with "therefores" and "becauses" that obscure a lack of real argument, Paul asserts that his God's eternal power and deity (singularity, omnipotence) were once perceptible through the "eye of reason" by all men in the things God created.

But despite this evidence for an invisible, transcendent God, people refused to honor and worship him and being "vain in their reasoning" invented pagan gods - "created things," "images resembling mortal man, or birds, or animals or reptiles." (Notice, in passing, the glancing allusion to deified emperors.)

In other words, Paul claims that knowledge of his God had been available and that people who refused to acknowledge him were led astray by their own thinking "and their misguided minds are plunged into darkness." Referring to the ancient Greek and Roman poets, priests and intellectuals, Paul says, "They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves."

And because they fail to acknowledge Paul's invisible God, nothing keeps them from depraved reason and wrong conduct. Here is Paul: "God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves BECAUSE they have bartered away the true God for a false one ..." (Romans 1:24-25, emphasis added).

The word "because" is key. Paul is offering his explanation for homosexual desire and behavior - as well as a generic explanation for other things he regards as improper - including people who are "gossips, slanderers, insolent, haughty, haters of God, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless," etc. (Romans 1:28-31)

So Paul's argument refers to cultures that rejected an earlier natural knowledge of God available by the eye of reason and turned to worship other, visible, pagan gods. And it is the worship of pagan gods that leads them to engage in these various types of conduct Paul deplores.

Put the other way around, Paul's claim is that homosexual desire and behavior are (are only?) the result of belief in pagan gods. And belief in pagan gods comes about when people reject the light of reason and place more confidence in their own theological imaginings.

But if that is so, then Paul's claim about the origin and significance of homosexual desire and conduct can hardly apply to people who did not reject an earlier belief in God and turn to pagan gods. Specifically, it hardly applies to homosexuals who are Christians or Christians who come to realize their homosexuality. Paul amateur theologico-psychologizing has no explanation for such a thing.

Furthermore, it is not clear in any case how a supposed primordial belief in or "perception" of a unitary, transcendent god could have provided anyone with a particular ethical code, much less any specific commands about sexual behavior. Paul was clearly aware of that difficulty because he struggled to fill the gap later by postulating that some pagans have the law "by nature," "written on their hearts" (Romans 2:14-15). But he is unable to explain - nor does he try to explain - how this happens or why some peoples do and others do not have it "by nature."

0 Comments

Mixed Message.

by on

Could there be a better example of the tightrope the Bush administration is walking in the culture wars than the president's letter congratulating the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church on its 35th anniversary -- the same week that he placated the religious right with his support for their "Marriage Protection Week" (while, in another demonstration of political maneuvering, remaining silent on the right's anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment -- the ostensible point of Marriage Protection Week)?

The Right to Dissent.

Andrew Sullivan spells out why the politically correct thought police are bad for gays.

Bad Publicity.

The Harvey Milk High students crime spree story got lots of media attention in NYC last week, and rightwing groups are already making use of it. This New York Post editorial calls for eliminating the school altogether, claiming that it fosters gay/straight segregation. Unanswered is whether these students were just a few bad apples, or whether lax administrators have let things get totally out of hand.

0 Comments

The Sanctity of Marriage.

by on

The following quip has popped up all over the Internet, with various attributions, and has also been published in several newspapers as a letter to the editor:

"The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage."

Quip Debate:A newly posted letter to the editor from Jeff McQuary takes exception. He writes, in part, "Henry is not the spiritual founder of Anglicanism. He was merely the political accident that made the (inevitable) spread of the Protestant Reformation to England happen at the particular moment it did."

A New Generation of Voices.

Eric Eagan, a young gay writer, explains his yearning for kids and normalcy in this Yale Daily News column. In the same paper, Jessamyn Blau explains why, in her view, being gay should not be equated with specific political views. Good to see that some Ivy Leaguers can think for themselves rather than just mouthing those same, old, tired PC platitudes!

Civil Rights, or Civil Liberties?


The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has hired Massachusetts Democratic State Senator Cheryl Jacques as its new executive director. It would be good if she considers the advice provided by Andrew Rapp, the editor-in-chief of Boston's Bay Windows gay newspaper, last July 7 in an editorial headlined "How Now HRC" (no longer available online). Rapp wrote that the group has ineffectively pursued a traditional "civil rights" strategy focused primarily on passing a federal nondiscrimination-in-the-workplace law. But:

The recent victories of our movement illustrate that a more fruitful approach is one that emphasizes civil liberties. In the Lawrence decision, we won a meaningful "equal protection" argument that recognizes gay people as a class, but the much more sweeping win was the finding that all people are entitled to the liberty to have consensual sex in the privacy of their home. The Canadian courts"found that we are entitled to the liberty to choose our partners, regardless of sex.

We are best described as a group of people with a particular stake in expanding civil liberties, rather than a class of people seeking protections under the law. Now we are seeing that civil liberties approach is also more fruitful.

But can an organization as beset with inertia as HRC recognize its failures and retool its strategies?

"The Reagans" and

More Recent Postings

10/26/03 - 11/01/03

0 Comments