The Gay Frontier.

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From this week's issue of Time magazine:

It's tempting to think there are two gay Americas, one frightened and one fabulous, a merely gay America and a fully Queer America. An America where the gay bars darken their windows to hide ashamed patrons, and an America where straight people stand in line to get into gay clubs. An America where the June 26 Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy had more than symbolic consequences, since gay sex was still a crime in 13 states. And an America where instead of arresting gays, the police help clear the streets every June for pride parades, which of course include contingents of gay cops.

The article is "The New Face of Gay Power" by John Cloud, who takes a revealing look at what's happened in the state of Wyoming in the five years since Matthew Shepard's murder.

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Shining a Light on “Ex-Gays.”

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The Miami Herald takes a look at the so-called ex-gay movement and quotes Randy Thomas, communications director for Orlando-based Exodus International, the nation's leading ex-gay group. He's 35 and single, and says he is still a heterosexual virgin because:

"If I were sleeping with a woman, that would be as much sin as sleeping with a man," he said. "It is possible to live without an orgasm. You won't find a death certificate anywhere that says, 'Died of lack of orgasm.' "

Yes, it's another great success for the ex-gay movement!

An Option for Anti-Gay Episcopalians?

The Russian Orthodox Church has demolished a chapel where a priest conducted an unauthorized marriage ceremony between two men.

Another Republican Against the FMA.

The former head of the Nevada Republican Party speaks out against the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment.

More Recent Postings

10/05/03 - 10/11/03

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Gay = Left?

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Leave it to the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force to brag that "Gay, lesbian and bisexual people"were among the most ardent opponents of recalling Governor Gray Davis," as NGLTF put in a post-election press release. Here's a reality check: 42% of gay voters favored recalling Gray Davis, and some 32% of gays voted for Schwarzenegger (plus 4% for the other Republican, Tom McClintock). In a state that's overwhelmingly Democratic, Schwarzenegger and McClintock between them got 60% of the overall vote, including an unexpectedly high number of women, union members, and Hispanic voters. So what does NGLTF think it gains by claiming we're a steadfastly liberal-left voting bloc that's happy to be out of step with mainstream voters?

Skewed News.

The popular website gay.com delivers its own perspective on the news. The story "Rights Groups Hail Defeat Of Anti-Gay Prop" refers to California's Proposition 54, which would have barred the state from collecting racial data on individuals in most circumstances (it was conceived by Ward Connerly, an African-American business leader opposed to race-based preferences). Gay.com reports, however, that the measure was "anti-gay" since "It would have disproportionately affected lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color" ." By that logic, I suppose that tax increases are also "anti-gay" because they confiscate a higher proportion of LGBT taxpayers' income, but you won't see that argument on gay.com!

Also, gay.com's report on "How Gays Voted," which draws heavily on the NGLTF's press release, somehow fails to mention that 32% of the gay vote went to Arnold. Sadly, this type of bias is all too common in much of the gay media.

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The Gay Vote: By the Numbers.

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Here's the breakdown of the gay vote in California, via the Fox News exit poll. When asked, "Are you gay, lesbian, or bisexual?," 4% answered yes. Of these, 52% voted for Bustamante, 32% for Schwarzenegger, and 4% for McClintock.

Also of interest, the Fox News exit poll asked: "How do you feel about California's new law extending domestic partner rights for gays and lesbians?" Of all voters, 21% were enthusiastic; 32% were supportive but not enthusiastic; 29% were opposed but not angry; and 13% were angry (5% didn't answer). Even of those who voted for Schwarzenegger, 34% were either supportive or enthusiastic. These numbers certainly dent the social conservatives' rhetoric about same-sex spousal rights being forced on an unwilling populace!

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Hasta la Vista.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's capture of California's governorship creates the possibility that the GOP in the nation's most populous state could finally be wrestled free of the religious right's stranglehold. After all, social conservatives such as the Traditional Values Coalition spent big bucks trying to defeat Arnold (one TVC press release was titled "Schwarzenegger Candidacy Would 'Terminate'' Moral Leadership in California"). And Schwarzennegger was endorsed by the California Log Cabin Republicans, who noted the Terminator is on record supporting domestic partnerships and gay adoptions.

Incumbent Democrat Gray Davis came to be viewed as a politician who put liberal special interests groups -- government employee unions, the trial lawyers lobby, eco-extremists, minorities who want the rules everyone else follows bent in their favor (as in drivers licenses for illegal aliens) -- above the common good. As California spent itself into near bankruptcy on megagovernment, Davis kept signing into law burdensome new mandates and regulations on businesses, stalling economic growth and new job creation as the rest of the nation began to recover from the post-bubble recession.

Yet gay liberals gave their enthusiastic support to Davis, who signed pro-gay legislation -- including an expansion of domestic partners rights (probably more encompassing than a bill Schwarzenegger might have backed). Yet in the end, does it benefit gays to be seen as just one more group of special interest pleaders in the liberal-left's coalition? Could it be that a fiscally responsible centrist who is 80 percent behind our issues is ultimately better than an out-of-the-mainstream liberal who supports 95 percent of our agenda? These are long-term strategic questions that ought to be considered.

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If It’s Not a Crime to be Gay, Why Can’t We Get Married?

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It didn't take long for many social conservatives to ponder the long-term implications of the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down all antisodomy laws in the U.S. Moves are afoot to advance a constitutional amendment that would bar any state's legalization of same-sex marriage; next week [October 12-18] is "Marriage Protection Week," in which the alleged danger of Lawrence v. Texas will be highlighted across the country. This push toward blanket prohibition, however, sidesteps a basic point about the post-Lawrence world. Whatever you feel about the reasoning of the decision, its result is clear: Gay Americans are no longer criminals. And very few conservatives want to keep them that way. The term "gay citizen" is now simply a fact of life.

In retrospect, this might be the most significant shift on the question of homosexuality in a generation. For if homosexuals are no longer criminals for having consensual private relationships, then they cannot be dismissed as somehow alien or peripheral to our civil society. Moreover, the social transformation of the last decade cannot simply be gainsaid: A poll this week for USA Today found that 67% of the 18-29 age group believe that gay marriage would benefit society. The public as a whole is evenly split on that issue. Many of the people favoring a new tolerance are Republicans and conservatives. And this is inevitable. When the daughter of the vice president is openly gay, it's hard to treat homosexual citizens as some permanent kind of Other, as a threat to civil order and society.

But if conservatives have now endorsed the notion of homosexuals as citizens, they haven't yet fully grasped the implications of that shift. Previously, social policy toward homosexuals was a function of either criminalization or avoidance. People who are either in jail or potentially subject to criminal sanction are already subject to a social policy of a sort. You may disagree with it, but it's social policy on the same lines as that toward drug users or speeders. It's a form of prohibitionism. But when all illegality is removed from gay people, as it has been, that social policy surely has to change.

So what is it? What exactly is the post-Lawrence conservative social policy toward homosexuals? Amazingly, the current answer is entirely a negative one. The majority of social conservatives oppose gay marriage; they oppose gay citizens serving their country in the military; they oppose gay citizens raising children; they oppose protecting gay citizens from workplace discrimination; they oppose including gays in hate-crime legislation, while including every other victimized group; they oppose civil unions; they oppose domestic partnerships; they oppose . . . well, they oppose, for the most part, every single practical measure that brings gay citizens into the mainstream of American life.

This is simply bizarre. Can you think of any other legal, noncriminal minority in society toward which social conservatives have nothing but a negative social policy? What other group in society do conservatives believe should be kept outside integrating social institutions? On what other issue do conservatives favor separatism over integration? We know, in short, what conservatives are against in this matter. But what exactly are they for?

Let me be practical here. If two lesbian women want to share financial responsibility for each other for life, why is it a conservative notion to prevent this? If two men who have lived together for decades want the ability to protect their joint possessions in case one of them dies, why is it a conservative notion that such property be denied the spouse in favor of others? If one member of a young gay couple is badly hurt in a car accident, why is it a conservative notion that his spouse not be allowed to visit him in the intensive-care unit? In all these cases, you have legal citizens trying to take responsibility for one another. By doing so, by setting up relationships that do the "husbanding" work of family, such couples relieve the state of the job of caring for single people without family support. Such couplings help bring emotional calm to the people involved; they educate people into the mundane tasks of social responsibility and mutual caring. When did it become a socially conservative idea that these constructive, humane instincts remain a threat to society as a whole? And how do these small acts of caring actually undermine the heterosexual marriage of the people who live next door?

Some will argue that these and many other benefits and responsibilities can be set up in an ad hoc fashion. You can create powers of attorney, legal contracts and the like, if you really need to. These arrangements can be enormously time-consuming and complex, and they don't always hold up in courts of law, of course. But even if they did, isn't it a strange conservative impulse to make taking responsibility something that the government should make harder rather than easier? One of the key benefits of marriage, after all, is that it also upholds a common ideal of mutual support and caring; it not only enables such acts of responsibility but rewards and celebrates them. In the past you could argue that such measures were inappropriate for a criminal or would-be criminal subgroup. But after Lawrence, that is no longer the case. The question is therefore an insistent one: On what grounds do conservatives believe that discouraging responsibility is a good thing for one group in society? What other legal minority do they or would they treat this way? If a group of African-Americans were to set themselves up and campaign for greater familial responsibility among black couples, do you think conservatives would be greeting them with dismay and discouragement or even a constitutional amendment to stop them?

It is one thing to oppose gay marriage (some, but not all, conservative arguments against it are reasonable, if to my mind unconvincing). But it is another thing to oppose any arrangement that might give greater security, responsibility and opportunity to gay couples. At times, the social conservative position is almost perversely inconsistent: Many oppose what they see as gay promiscuity; but even more strongly, they oppose any social measures that would encourage gay monogamy, such as marriage. What, one wonders, do they want? In this, they actually have lower standards for now-legal citizens than they do for incarcerated criminals: Even murderers on death row have the constitutional right to marry, where the institution could do no conceivable social good. But for millions of citizens currently excluded from such incentives for responsibility, conservatives are prepared even to amend the Constitution to say no.

If this debate is to move forward, a few simple questions therefore have to be answered: What is the social conservative position on civil unions? What aspects of them can conservatives get behind? What details are they less convinced by? These are basic public policy questions to which social conservatives, for the most part, have yet to provide an answer. It's well past time they did.

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The Conservatives’ Dilemma.

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Andrew Sullivan has penned an excellent column, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, taking American conservatives to task for their un-conservative opposition to gay participation in "integrating social institutions." Sullivan asks:

If two lesbian women want to share financial responsibility for each other for life, why is it a conservative notion to prevent this? If two men who have lived together for decades want the ability to protect their joint possessions in case one of them dies, why is it a conservative notion that such property be denied the spouse in favor of others? ...

In all these cases, you have legal citizens trying to take responsibility for one another. By doing so, by setting up relationships that do the "husbanding" work of family, such couples relieve the state of the job of caring for single people without family support. Such couplings help bring emotional calm to the people involved; they educate people into the mundane tasks of social responsibility and mutual caring. When did it become a socially conservative idea that these constructive, humane instincts remain a threat to society as a whole?

We know that the theocratic "wingnuts" will never be convinced, but mainstream conservatives are going to have to grapple with these issues sooner or later.

Marriage Wars.

Yes, it's disappointing that the Bush administration issued an official declaration proclaiming October 12-18 as "Marriage Protection Week." Right-wing religious groups that oppose gay marriage -- and support the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Act (FMA) -- cooked up the idea for Marriage Protection Week in order to mobilize their minions to lobby Congress in support of the FMA. But the text of the White House proclamation never mentions the FMA. It's intent is to once more placate the religious right on the cheap, without doing anything concrete that could seem too intolerant (read "anti-gay"). So while the proclamation declares that

"Marriage Protection Week provides an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages in America"

and Bush calls on all Americans to "join me in expressing support for the institution of marriage," it also states that

"we must continue our work to create a compassionate, welcoming society, where all people are treated with dignity and respect."

No doubt, the proclamation adds legitimacy to those groups fighting against gay marriage, but it also must be disappointing to them that it fails to directly mention, much less endorse the FMA, and even repeats language Bush has used previously to separate himself from the virulent anti-gay rhetoric of the religious right -- which clearly doesn't "welcome" gay people into society, or believe we should be treated with "dignity and respect."

But, of course, Bush can't have it both ways. And his call to welcome all (read "gays") into society while denying us the right to society's bedrock institution -- marriage -- is an internal contradiction too vast to smooth over.

Nevertheless, the rhetorical response to the proclamation by activist groups such as the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force is way over the top. NGLTF terms Bush's proclamation "shocking and appalling" and Marriage Protection Week a "weapon of mass discrimination and fear-mongering" that aims to "demonize and defame gay people and our families." The President is "catering to wealthy and politically power organizations intent on permanently relating a minority to second class citizenship." NGLTF's statement ends with a call to "stand beside gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender America in this terrible and frightening time."

One thing is clear: both sides in the marriage wars are eagerly engaged in "fear-mongering" aimed at keeping their donors blood pressure up -- and their wallets open.

Split Decision.

American public opinion is now split nearly evenly on gay marriages, according to
a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. It found that 48% say "allowing two people of the same sex to legally marry will change our society for the worse," while 50% say it would either have no effect or be an improvement. These stats aren't encouraging to those who'd like to amend the Constitution to ban gays from marrying or otherwise receiving the legal benefits of marriage.

More Recent Postings

09/28/03 - 10/04/03

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Challenging Article 125.

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Bravo to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for petitioning the military's highest court to strike down a law from the Uniform Code of Military Justice that makes private, consensual sodomy a crime -- and one subject to stricter penalties than many violent assaults.

Congress could, of course, revise the military sodomy prohibition, known as Article 125, but has refused to do so. According to Lambda Legal's website:

In 2001, a blue ribbon panel chaired by Judge Walter T. Cox III was tasked to review the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) on its fiftieth anniversary. Calling military sodomy prosecutions "arbitrary, even vindictive," the Cox Commission recommended that Congress repeal Article 125 and replace it with a statute governing sexual abuse similar to laws adopted by many states and in Title 18 of the United States Code. Congress has not acted on the Commission's recommendations and the law remains in effect.

Overturning Article 125 won't end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (or "lie and hide") policy and the risk of discharge if the military learns you're gay. But it would lessen the real danger of prosecution that closeted gays in the military still face while serving their country.

Dualing Marriage Weeks Planned.

The anti-gay Family Research Council and its cohorts (the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America, etc.) are planning to make opposition to gay marriage "the issue of 2004," according to the FRC's website.
The groups have declared October 12-18 to be "Marriage Protection Week," dedicated to mobilizing their grassroots to lobby Congress.

In response, the Metropolitan Community Church is trying to organize a "Marriage Equality Week" campaign during the same week. But in terms of coordination and mobilization, the anti-gays seem to be way ahead of the game.

It's now crystal clear that opposition to gay marriage will be the animating issues for the religious right during the decade ahead, replacing even opposition to abortion.

The Locker Room Closet.

If you haven't read Boston Hearld sports writer Ed Gray's coming out column, you should. The locker rooms of professional sports will likely be one of the last bastions of homophobia to fall.

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Senator Kerry’s Marriage Contortions

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In a recent Advocate interview Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry told reporter Chris Bull that, despite his otherwise strong support for gay rights, he could not bring himself to support gay marriage.

In a previous Washington Post interview Kerry had stated, "Marriage is an institution between men and women for the purpose of having children and procreating."

Whoops - wrong answer. If marriage is for procreating, what's the story with Kerry's current marriage (his second), which is childless?

Having been confronted on this point, Kerry backtracks in the Advocate interview: "I don't make a procreation argument. I was explaining the historical background. Someone was asking me where my opposition came from, and I said it's basically from an old religious belief of what defined marriage. Procreation has nothing to do with my argument."

Whoops again. Religious belief? While Kerry might be right about why most people oppose gay marriage, the reporter was asking for Kerry's reason, not most people's. More precisely, the reporter wanted to know Kerry's political position on the issue. And as Kerry himself recognizes, religion and politics don't mix well. In the same Advocate interview he states, "In 1960, President Kennedy [another Roman Catholic] distinguished between those things secular and those things religious. He drew the line between his church and his state. It is a bright line, and I do not take my articles of faith and seek to legislate them against people who don't share them. The establishment clause regarding religion is clear... "

Confused yet? So was the reporter, who asked, "Doesn't church-state separation apply to marriage?" Kerry's response is a textbook example of arguing in a circle:

"So many people in the country view it as the cultural component of it, the religious component of it. That's how people view it with the religious component of it. "

So, just to make sure I'm clear on his point: We ought not to legislate people's religious beliefs except in the case of their religious beliefs.

Got it.

I don't mean to pick on Kerry here. He's been a solid supporter of gay rights, even voting against the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in an election year. (It passed anyway, and President Clinton signed it into law.)

Moreover, every other Democratic presidential hopeful goes through the same verbal contortions when pressed on the issue of gay marriage. Even Howard Dean, who went to bat for us on civil unions in Vermont, is officially opposed to "gay marriage."

It's an issue they'd all much prefer to avoid. They want to support gays, but they also want to win the election. And thus they must face one of the great paradoxes about American life: We are simultaneously one of the most secular and most religious societies in the world.

Do we support freedom of religion? Oh yes, absolutely. Except when it gets weird. Like that Mormon polygamy thing. And gay marriage - ick.

Marriage and religion are intimately tied in most Americans' minds. Most marriages in this country are performed by clergy - to whom the state gives the power to perform not merely religious but also civil marriage.

Politicians know this. And they have a hard time talking about civil marriage without talking about religion, for two reasons: (1) they want to appeal to a largely religious electorate, and (2) they are themselves largely religious.

And so Kerry, in the same interview, talks about both his religious view of civil marriage and the separation of church and state, without noticing the contradiction.

Similarly, when discussing the (anti-gay) Federal Marriage Amendment, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist calls marriage a "sacrament" and President Bush mentions "sinners." Meanwhile, here in Michigan, Jackson County has passed a resolution against same-sex marriage in order to protect the "sanctity"of traditional marriage, and Lapeer County has passed a similar resolution citing "God's intentions for mankind" and "faith in God through Holy Scriptures."

Kerry had it right when he said that articles of faith ought not to be legislated. By definition, articles of faith go beyond rational evidence (hence "faith"); they are learned through revelation. Law, by contrast, is supposed to be based on reasoned argument.

The problem is that the secular arguments against gay marriage just aren't very good. And so opponents of gay marriage - including politicians - resort to the one area where they may respectably abandon reasoned argument: religious faith. You can't really argue with "God says so."

Writer Michael Woodson asks,

"Suppose the government declared a particular mode of communion, baptism or circumcision to be valid, and required all valid communion, baptism and circumcision to be licensed by the state. Certainly, there would be an uproar - and should be a rebellion. Why is marriage different?"

Damn good question. Don't hold your breath for an answer.

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The Best and the Brightest.

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The Sept. 25 Harvard Crimson reports that the university's very inclusive Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) is being challenged by an upstart Queer Resistance Front, which criticizes the BGLTSA not for being a ridiculously unpronounceable collection of mostly consonants, but for selling out to the mainstream. According to the Crimson's story, the QRF "plans to protest events promoting conservative anti-queer politics, as well as BGLTSA events promoting what QRF organizers describe as mainstream gay politics." The group's organizers desire "not to be included within social categories, but rather to work to disrupt those categories through which social power operates." Ah, America's privileged youth at play.

Whose Loyalty Is Worth Rewarding?

Log Cabin California has endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, which is appropriate, since the Terminator is not only supportive on gay issues but also the only GOP candidate with any chance of winning. Meanwhile, the anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition has gone all out with a million dollar ad campaign attacking Schwarzennegger, preferring once again to lose the election to the Democrats rather than see a centrist Republican win. Maybe its time that the national GOP rethink its view that religious rightists are a constituency they need to placate at all costs.

More Recent Postings

09/21/03 - 09/27/03

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