IGF CultureWatch

We all know that young gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders have a particularly hard time. At their most vulnerable moment, the time in which they are exploring and creating their independent identities - and the time in which many come out to themselves - they have very few safe spaces. Worse, those safe spaces usually don?t include the classroom.

At school, GLBT students are bullied verbally and harassed physically. They see few images of themselves reflected in classroom study or in open, happy gay teachers (who often themselves fear for their jobs). They must also deal with anti-gay talk that permeates the hallways, whether or not it is directed at them: for example, when a straight student calls another straight student a fag, or when a student uses gay as an epithet.

And unlike workers, who may be able to change jobs if they find themselves in a hostile environment, public school students must stay where they are or drop out.

That's why many gays and lesbians are supporting the first gay public school in the country, the Harvey Milk High School in New York, which will open in the fall. It sounds like a good idea, right?

Not to me.

This surprises even myself, since I know the power of, well, homogeneity. I went to a women's college and I know the bonds that form when people who are similar in some way share an educational experience. I know the empowerment that comes from having strong role models and educational materials that reflect who you are. I know what a change it can make when the messages around you are all positive and nurturing.

I also know the statistics. Over 40 percent of LGBT students don't feel safe in their schools. 28 percent drop out annually. 69 percent admit they've been harassed. And they are still three times more likely to commit suicide.

Yet I don't find the Harvey Milk High School empowering. I find it disturbing. It is an admission of failure.

That's because this one school can simply not do enough to correct the problem. Only 170 students will be selected for admission to Harvey Milk, yet there are thousands of gay kids in the New York public school system. In fact, the Heitrick-Martin Institute, which will run the school in partnership with the New York public school system, estimates that there are 100,000 LGBT students in New York City. That means that very, very few, just over 1 percent, will be able to be in this new, nurturing environment.

Sure, those lucky 170 will be tucked safely away in their all-gay classes. But there will still be gay, lesbian and transgender students in the other New York City public schools - and I guarantee you, many of them will continue to be harassed and bullied. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg himself admitted in a press briefing, - I think everybody feels that it's a good idea because some of the kids who are gays and lesbians have been constantly harassed and beaten in other schools. It lets them get an education without having to worry. It solves a discipline problem. And from a pedagogical point of view, this administration - and previous administrations - have thought it was a good idea and we'll continue with that."

The hearts of those who decided to start Harvey Milk are undoubtedly in the right place. But where are their heads? What will happen to those other students? This new school - and this new segregation - will take the pressure off teachers, administrators and Mayor Bloomberg to promote real reform. Because now, when faced with complaints, administrators, legislators and others will be able to simply point them toward Harvey Milk instead of doing the hard work of changing the culture in the schools.

Also, segregation is just a bad idea for public schools. That was true back when policy makers tried to separate black and white students and it's true now. It might solve administrative hassles, but it hinders social education.

Public schools are under funded - and the children who go there are often under educated. But the one advantage to public schools, especially urban public schools, is that kids get exposed to all sorts of cultural, ethnic and, yes, sexual orientation diversity.

And the more students are exposed to different kinds of people in a non-threatening setting, the less likely they are to grow up to be racist or homophobic themselves.

Also, high school is when a lot of students start to question their sexual orientation. Some gays and lesbians have known all their lives that they are gay. But heterosexuality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many more don?t realize it until much later. Can you imagine the pressure of simultaneously applying for a school and worrying if you're gay enough to go?

Though the school will be open to all students gay and straight, the practical reality will likely be that only kids who are comfortable with their gayness or their straightness already - not those who are questioning - will actually apply. But it is exactly those students who will most positively affect the straight students around them.

Do gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender kids need a space where they can be with others like them? Yes. In a support group or a LGBTQ club.

Do they need a space where they can be free of harassment and bullying? Yes. Gay students should be safe in the classroom and hallways of any public school. We can't win that fight by simply shuttling them elsewhere.

Can someone please tell me which country I'm living in? Last week I sat down and watched a popular new television phenomenon. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" turned out to be a hilarious reality show in which five New York City homosexuals fix a hapless straight guy's home, hair, clothes and culture in order to win the heart of his female love interest. Here was a wonderful example of straight men and gay men communicating, laughing and getting along. And the gay guys were all about affirming the straight guy's relationship. At one point, the straight guy actually choked up in gratitude. It was poignant and affirming - for both gays and straights.

The same day the Republican leadership of the Senate put out a report decrying the terrible possibility that gay people might actually one day have the right to marry the person they love. So alarmed were the Senators that some states might grant marriage rights to gays that they proposed amending the very Constitution of the United States to forbid gay marriage (or any legal gay relationship) anywhere, anytime, anyhow. The next day, in a press conference, President Bush came close to endorsing the move. If the high courts in Massachusetts or New Jersey decide that their state constitutions demand equality in marriage (something that most observers believe could happen very soon), the reactionary movement for an anti-gay constitutional amendment could acquire an awful momentum.

How to describe this emotional whiplash? Every day, if you're a gay person, you see amazing advances and terrifying setbacks. Wal-Mart set rules last month to protect its gay employees from discrimination - about as mainstream an endorsement as you can get. Canada just legalized gay marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court just struck down sodomy laws across the land, legitimizing the fact that homosexual is something you are, not something you do. Polls in Massachusetts and New Jersey show majorities in favor of equal marriage rights.

And now the Vatican comes out and announces that granting legal recognition to gay spouses will destroy the family and society. The church argues that gay love is not even "remotely analogous" to heterosexual love. The Anglican Church asks a celibate, newly elected bishop in England to give up his post simply because he is gay. Even the leading Democratic candidates refuse to support equality in marriage. Senator John Kerry, who has no biological children with his current (second) wife, says marriage should be reserved for procreation, and, with few exceptions, the others toe that line too. And a new poll shows a drop in support for gay rights in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision against sodomy laws. Another cyclical backlash against gays - with echoes of the Anita Bryant campaign in the 1970s - looks quite possible.

If, like me, you're gay and politically conservative, the whipsaw is even more intense. As a Catholic, I love my church. But I must come to terms with its hierarchy's hatred of the very core of my being. I admire this President deeply, but I have to acknowledge that he believes my relationship is a threat to his. In the coming weeks, it will be hard not to dread the prospect of this second-class status becoming enshrined in the Constitution. Whatever bridges gays and straights have built between them could be burned in a conflagration of bitterness and anger. This year could be for gays what 1968 was for African Americans: the moment hope turns into rage.

Many say they are not hostile toward gay people; they just don't think gays should be regarded as equal to heterosexuals under the law or that gay love is as valid as straight. How am I or any homosexual supposed to respond to that? How much more personal an issue can you get?

It seems as if heterosexuals are willing to tolerate homosexuals, but only from a position of power. They have few qualms about providing legal protections, decrying hate crimes, watching gay TV shows, even having a relative bring her female spouse to Thanksgiving dinner. Yet arguing that the lesbian couple is legally or morally indistinguishable from a straight couple is where many draw the line. That's why marriage is such a fundamental issue. Allowing gay marriage is not saying, We Will Tolerate You. It's saying, We Are You. This, it seems, we have a hard time doing.

I'll know we've changed when we see a show called "Straight Eye for the Gay Guy." In it a group of heterosexual men prep a gay man for the night he asks his boyfriend to marry him. When the boyfriend says yes, the straight guys cheer, and the gay guy chokes up. That will be the day gay people are no longer ornaments or accessories or objects of either derision or compassion. That will be the day gay people will finally have the description we have been seeking for so long: human beings.

Opponents of gay marriage often warn that gays want to destroy marriage. This is preposterous and alarmist. However, in a recent Washington Blade column, openly gay law professor Nancy Polikoff indeed argues for "abolishing the legal status of marriage for everyone." There are multiple problems with her radical proposal, which boil down to: it shouldn't happen, it ain't gonna happen, and it needlessly fuels the opposition to gay marriage.

Since the 1970s there's been an undercurrent of opposition to marriage on the gay left. Lesbian feminists have criticized its sexist roots, including long-discarded laws subordinating wives to husbands. Gay male sexual liberationists have seen it as stultifying, directing people into dreary traditional patterns of living.

When the idea of gay marriage caught on in the early 1990s, thanks in part to gay conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, these critics initially dismissed it as "assimilationist." We're not "just like straights," they like to say, and we don't want to be.

The argument for gay marriage depends, however, on the idea that gays are "just like straights" in every important respect. Gay couples are just as capable of love, commitment, mutual caretaking, and raising children.

Polikoff acknowledges that marriage confers important advantages to married couples in everything from health benefits to taxation. Gay couples, she agrees, should get these benefits.

But, Polikoff argues, everyone else should get them too. "A legal system that gives benefits to married couples but withholds those benefits from other types of relationships that help people flourish and fulfill critical social functions harms many people, both straight and gay," she writes. A man caring for his sick mother should be able to have her covered on his health insurance, for example. A woman should not lose her home to pay estate taxes when her cohabiting sister dies.

The main problem, according to Polikoff and other critics, is that marriage privileges some relationships over others. If gay marriage is allowed it will still favor married couples over unmarried couples and other relationships. Indeed, under Polikoff's argument, it's hard to see why legal recognition should be limited to couples. Why not recognize relationships of 3, 4, or more people?

There are good reasons to reject Polikoff's idea. The institution of marriage represents an enormous social investment, both in the couple and in the children they often raise. Every single one of the more than 1,000 marital benefits granted at the state and federal level costs us money, whether it's in the form of a Social Security death benefit or tax breaks on transfers of wealth between spouses.

There are many reasons we make that huge investment in marriage but not in other relationships. Marriage adds to social stability, including by curbing promiscuity. It furnishes caretakers to individuals who would otherwise rely on the state. Married people are healthier and wealthier than single people or unmarried cohabitants. Marriage affords a secure environment for children, who do better in married households. Even with today's high divorce rates, marital relationships are also more enduring, which makes our investment in them all the wiser.

Why do they last longer? Partly because of the benefits they get. But mostly, I think, because of the tremendous social support they receive. This support comes out of our history and tradition, not mere laws. The powerful social expectation of marriage becomes equally powerful encouragement and assistance from family and friends for the couple to stay together.

Marriage is important for the social affirmation it offers gay relationships, not just for the legal benefits. Contrary to what Polikoff suggests, not even a landmark Supreme Court decision like Lawrence v. Texas can offer that deep affirmation. No "civil union" or "domestic partnership" can offer it either.

By marrying, couples signal to society in a culturally and historically unique way the strength of their commitment. No other relationship can quite replicate that signal. Society understandably rewards the married couple's public commitment, but cannot be as confident about the durability or depth of other arrangements.

There is nothing inherently wrong with extending some benefits to other caring relationships. Maybe a son should be able to secure health benefits for his ailing mother. But every extension of benefits entails financial costs. Each of these proposed benefits should be weighed on its own merits, applied to those relationships that seem more than transient.

Polikoff probably assumes that abolishing marriage means everyone would get its goodies. At last, health care for all! Don't bet on it. The more likely outcome is that standard marital benefits would be eliminated or reduced to help pay for benefits accorded the newly recognized relationships. The social investment in former marriages would decrease, diminishing the return we all get from that bygone institution.

Marriage, with its culturally and historically rich meaning, and its critical role in children's upbringing, deserves its privileged position. There's just too much at stake to abolish it.

Because of its special place in our culture, and because of its reach far back into our history, marriage isn't going anywhere any time soon. So proposals to end marriage are a nice parlor game for academics, but nothing more.

In this case, though, the game has political consequences. Already a leading opponent of gay marriage, Stanley Kurtz, has cited Polikoff's and others' work as proof that gays are out to destroy marriage.

Polikoff and Kurtz are wrong. We aren't fighting for the right to marry only to see our marriages abolished.

First published August 2, 2003, in the New York Post. Republished courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.

Husbands and wives have less to fear from gay marriage than Southern whites did from the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Mississippi's 478,000 registered white voters, for instance, must have been shocked and awed to see the number of registered black voters in the Magnolia State blossom from 22,000 in 1960 to 175,000 in 1966, the year after President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed that landmark federal poll-access bill. While the Census Bureau found one black Mississippi voter for every 21 white electors in 1960, six years later, that ratio had withered to one black registrant for every 2.7 enrolled whites.

Mississippi's whites, like those elsewhere in the South, certainly could complain that their proportion of the total electorate had waned, as had their collective claim on the attention of anyone they elected. Their concerns obviously paled in comparison to the deliberate political exclusion blacks endured. Thus, extending voting rights to blacks was correct and long overdue.

If black enfranchisement meant the dilution of Caucasian suffrage, whites just had to get over it. And apparently they did. Rather than abandon politics, they kept voting, and do so today.

When it comes to an analogous expansion of marriage to include same-sex spouses, straight couples have less to fret about than did Dixie's white voters four decades ago. Jack and Jill's marriage would not be diluted by letting Bill and Ted wed. There is no reason why Jack and Jill should love each other any less, 'til death do them part, just because Bill and Ted want the same level of commitment for themselves.

If marriage were a zero-sum game in which every gay wedding yielded a straight divorce, the opponents of gay nuptials would wield a mighty powerful argument. However, this worry has all the weight of a handful of airborne rice.

Indeed, the arguments of gay-marriage critics increasingly oscillate between the overblown and the hysterical.

Conservative commentator Steve Sailer contends that gay weddings will cause straight grooms -- already spooked by seating charts and floral arrangements -- to throw up their arms and head for the hills.

"It wouldn't take much to get the average young man to turn even more against participating in an arduous process that seems alien and hostile to him already," Sailer recently wrote. "If some of the most enthusiastic participants [in weddings] become gays, then his aversion will grow even more."

What, then? Will young men stop getting on bended knees to ask their sweethearts for their hands in matrimony?

Meanwhile, columnist Maggie Gallagher has concluded that "polygamy is not worse than gay marriage, it is better." As she explained in the July 14 National Review Online, "At least polygamy, for all its ugly defects, is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children." Perhaps Gallagher meant "mothers-father families." What could be more stable than that?

Libertarian author David Boaz points to the exit from this growing mess. He wonders: Why do either Jack or Jill or Bill and Ted need government's permission to marry or its blessing once they have done so? The state should extract itself from the marriage-license business. Two people who wish to marry should find a minister, rabbi or, say, a Rotary Club president to grace their union. Americans then can withdraw this debate from Washington, D.C. and their state capitols and instead decide in their own churches, synagogues and civic associations which couples do and do not deserve their approval.

For now, gay-marriage critics should admit that heterosexuals pose the biggest risks to straight marriage. Adultery is now sufficiently rampant that websites such as Chatcheaters.com and InfidelityCheck.org troll cyberspace for extramarital e-mail and chatroom liaisons. Divorce, of course, threatens matrimony, as do "marriage lite" arrangements such as domestic partnerships that taste great, but are less filling than actual marriage. If couples can enjoy the benefits of matrimony without pledging mutual fealty before God and family, why not just shack up?

These practices weaken straight matrimony far more than would watching Bill and Ted drive off to Niagara Falls with a "Just Married" sign pinned to their Bronco. Alas, raising the bar for heterosexuals is much more work and much less fun than ranting about homosexuals.

Republished courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.