WWJD: Jesus on Anti-gay Slurs

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A slightly different version was published October 23, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY about anti-gay slurs? The received wisdom is that Jesus never addressed the issue of homosexuality. But some interesting evidence suggests that teachings attributed to Jesus indicates strong disapproval of using anti-gay slurs.

In the gospel once attributed to the disciple Matthew, in the collection of ancient teachings gathered together as "The Sermon on the Mount," this passage occurs:

Matthew 5:21: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.

Matthew 5:22: "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Racha, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire."

What is "racha"?

For a long time no one knew what "racha" (later altered to "raca") meant. The word occurred nowhere else in the Bible or other ancient literature, which no doubt is why King James's panel of translators left the word untranslated.

The Revised Standard Version, often a good translation, doesn't even try but translates the whole clause as "Whoever insults his brother he must answer for it in court"--providing no sense of what the insult might be. A coy footnote says that "raca" is "an obscure term of abuse."

Clearly "racha" was unfavorable, some sort of insult. The most prominent guess was that the word was related to the Hebrew word "reqa" meaning "empty," "empty-headed" or "brainless." That would make the insult parallel with "Thou fool" in the last clause of Matthew 5:22.

But in "The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality" published in 1990, in an article on the word "Racha," gay historian Joseph Wallfield, who wrote under the pen name Warren Johansson, revived a 1922 proposal by German philologist Friedrich Schulthess that "racha" should be equated with the Hebrew "rakh" meaning "soft" or "weak", a "weakling" or "effeminate person."

That would make "racha" equivalent to the Greek word "malakos," referring to a receptive partner ("passive" or "effeminate," according to the concepts of the time) in homosexual behavior, a term found in the Epistles attributed to Paul.

Johansson pointed out that the 1922 proposal received substantial support a dozen later in 1934 when an ancient Egyptian papyrus was published written in Greek in 257 B.C. containing the word "rachas" with a parallel text indicating that the word meant "kinaidos" or "faggot."

As an interesting sidelight, Johansson pointed out that modern German underworld slang, which preserves a number of loan-words from Hebrew and Aramaic, uses the word "rach" to mean "tender, soft, effeminate, timid, or cowardly."

There is an additional consideration that weighs against the older, traditional interpretation of "racha" as simply "brainless" or "empty-headed."

Matthew 5:22 contains three major clauses in ascending order of deserved punishment:

  • a) anger with a brother, danger of judgment (at a lower court)
  • b) calling a brother "racha," danger of being called before the supreme council
  • c) calling someone "fool," danger of hell fire.

In this series of three increasingly serious offenses and punishments, calling a brother "racha" deserves a serious, but less severe, punishment than calling someone "fool." So it seems extremely unlikely that "racha" can mean something so similar to "fool" as the older reading of "brainless," or "empty-headed" suggests. "Racha" must be something different. That leaves the effeminacy or anti-gay interpretation of "racha" the more likely reading.

Johansson's suggestion, initially proposed in an obscure gay scholarly quarterly called Cabirion (Winter/Sping, 1984) was widely resisted at first when it was not completely ignored. With time and additional study and thought, however, some of his early critics changed their minds and now accept his reading of the passage.

If Johansson is right, and he seems to be, then the teaching ascribed to Jesus is that his followers should not insult men, impugning their masculinity by accusing them of being "passive" or "effeminate" homosexuals, a type of person generally looked down on at the time.

"What the text in Matthew demonstrates," Johansson concludes, "is that he forbade acts of violence, physical and verbal, against those to whom homosexuality was imputed, in line with the general emphasis on self-restraint and meekness in his teachings."

Johansson cautions that none of his analysis is meant to argue that Jesus accepted or approved of homosexual behavior. The disapproval of homophobia does not necessarily entail approval of homosexuality. Such a claim would have to be based on different arguments and different evidence.

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85589520

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Baucus Unbowed. Sen. Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, continues to dish out more "Not in Our State" slime, at least in the view of one anti-Baucus website .

Why Gays Hate (some) Republicans. Pennsylvania's GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher boasted he would veto any bill attempting to give state employees domestic partners insurance or other benefits, saying "I think it's even more important to protect Pennsylvania's traditional family values.'' Democratic front-runner Edward G. Rendell signed such a measure as mayor of Philadelphia, but it was struck down by the courts. As the AP story reports, Libertarian Ken Krawchuk "provided the biggest of several laughs of the evening" when he observed, "I think what's good for the goose and the gander is good for the goose and the goose, and the gander and the gander."

Down the Drain. Transgendered and gay students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, calling themselves Restroom Revolution, have launched a petition drive and "mass mobilization" to create coed dorm bathrooms, the Boston Globe reports:

"Transgendered students have nowhere to go to the bathroom on campus," said Mitch Boucher, 33, a PhD candidate organizing the campaign". About 30 Restroom Revolution activists, including leaders of gay and transgendered advocacy groups, met earlier this month and announced their new focus". But at UMass-Amherst the prospects remain uncertain. Efforts to raise awareness of transgendered concerns led to sensitivity training sessions for adult dorm staff and student residential assistants this past summer that will now be conducted annually". But Stephen Pereira, assistant director of the Stonewall Center, a campus resource facility for gay, bisexual, and transgendered students, believes that until the campus community learns more about transgendered students, mobilizing broad-based support may be difficult.

This actually may be a real issue for politicized transgendered students, but it seems to me it's the one issue most likely to arouse primal opposition among those who prefer their public, multi-stall restrooms to be sex-segregated.

Certainly the transgendered, outside of the halls of ivy, face greater issues -- like not being murdered, as highlighted by the recent, awful killing of Eddie/Gwn Araujo, a 17-year-old beaten and strangled recently in California. As the AP reports, stories of attacks are familiar to cross-dressers, and rather transcend trendy on-campus restroom "mobilizations." Making straights use coed johns isn't going to improve matters in this regard.

Unexpected Source. The conservative, and typically very gay-negative, CNSNews.com ran a odd piece titled "Pink Pistols Say Media's Sniper Reporting Off-Target," about the gay and lesbian group that defends the right to bear arms. The story focused on firearms, not sexuality, and never used the words gay or lesbian. Still, it noted:

In addition to defending the Second Amendment, the Pink Pistols also advocates the "rights of consenting adults to love each other how they wish, however they wish."

"We are dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," says a statement on the group's website, which carries the motto, "Pick on someone your own caliber."

Being treated as a legitimate source by the right-wing media is some evidence of progress, I think. It certainly goes against the usual stereotype!

Gay Media Myopia. A report in the Boston Globe quotes attempted shoebomber Richard Reid explaining his motivation as follows:

"This is a war between Islam and democracy," he e-mailed his mother. A society that permits homosexuality and sex outside marriage (and that is marred by alcoholism and drug addiction) also violates God's will, he believed.

It's now undeniable that Islamic extremists would seek to exterminate us, given the chance. Yet there's still a politically correct queasiness about saying so. The current issue of the Washington Blade, one of the nation's largest circulation gay papers, ran (several weeks after the fact) a short article on the stabbing of the openly gay mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, and simply neglected to report that the attacker was at least to some extent motivated by Islamic homo-hatred. The story simple states: "Azedine Berkane, 39, has told investigators that he committed the crime out of dislike of gays and politicians" But as I noted in an earlier posting, the AP reported that he also explained to police that he was a devout Muslin, which is the context for his beliefs. I repeat, yet again: can you imagine how completely different the story would have been reported in the gay press if the perpetrator had been a Christian fundamentalist? Demented multiculturalism, holding that only Western Civilization and Judeo-Christianity are worthy of criticism, is Orwellian indeed.

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85586002

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I"m Back. A bit jet-lagged, but ready to pick up where we left off.

More on Montana. When last we blogged, the news of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus's slimy attack ad had just hit, and I wondered what the response might be. In fact, the Democratic-leaning Human Rights Campaign did come out with a critical statement saying, "HRC deplores any attempt to make a political issue of a candidate's real or perceived sexual orientation," and that "This type of ad has no place in politics, it is an affront to gay people and we hope we have seen the last of this campaign tactic." The HRC release, however, includes a lengthy excerpt from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee denying that the ad traded on anti-gay stereotypes. HRC does not comment on the DSCC statement. Are they trying to have their cake (denouncing a clearly homophobic tactic) and eat it, too (by avoiding giving too much offense to Democrats)?

Mickey Kaus of Slate's kausfiles had an item that includes a link to the ad. Comments Kaus, "It's a fabulous, highly-refined exercise in sleazy, leering innuendo, especially the final few nanoseconds in which Taylor's hand reaches down, down. ...." [toward his customer's crotch]

And finally, it was nice to see Marc Racicot, former governor of Montana and current head of the Republican National Committee, criticize the ad by telling the AP that "What is particularly insidious is that the Democratic Party has tried to present itself as a champion of fair and equal treatment of everyone, including those who are victims of judgment based on sexual orientation." Still, his comments come close to suggesting that labeling someone as gay is what's unacceptable, rather than the offensive stereotypes and, as Kaus says, leering innuendo.

More Political Slime. A Campaign Update from the Democratic National Committee's Office of GLBT Outreach that's making the e-mail rounds (but not posted online) focuses on the race between Oregon's GOP incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith and his opponent, Democrat Bill Bradbury. It's titled "Bradbury Calls on Gordon Smith to Explain Comment Comparing Homosexuality to Adultery and Implying that Gays and Lesbians Should be 'Saved"."

Gordon Smith, you might not realize, is a pro-gay moderate Republican who supports both the proposed federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the proposed federal hate crimes statute, two key items on the liberal gay movement's agenda. His transgression, apparently, was to appear before a group of religious conservatives and to try to mute their opposition to a hate crimes law that would increase penalties for attacks motivated by anti-gay bias. Smith reportedly told them, "If Christ can save a woman's life caught in the act of adultery -- without endorsing her lifestyle, but saving her life -- why can't we do that?"

Said Bradbury, "Smith's quote equating homosexuality with adultery undermines his claim that he supports the gay and lesbian community." Now think about this. Here is Gordon Smith trying to talk to religious conservatives in the language they understand, telling them that even if they don't accept homosexuality based on their religious literalism, they should still support -- or at least not mobilize to oppose -- efforts to curtail anti-gay violence (and, by the way, this is regardless of our own debate about whether a hate crimes bill actually will accomplish this). But oh, he used the word "lifestyle" and drew on a religious parallel. For shame! He's a HOMOPHOBE, so vote him out of office.

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Victory From Defeat: Ten Years After Amendment 2

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Ten years ago this fall, Colorado voters narrowly approved an amendment to the state constitution repealing all existing civil rights protections for gays in the state and prohibiting them in the future. The passage of Amendment 2, as it was known, was hailed as a great victory for social conservatives and augured more such efforts in states around the country that promised to roll back the momentum for gay equality. Today, the unintentional result of Amendment 2 is that gay equality is on stronger ground than ever before.

Social conservatives in Colorado in the early 1990s, like social conservatives across the country, feared the rise of gay rights and the piecemeal erosion of what they view as "traditional family values." In Denver, Boulder, and Aspen, gay equality advocates had succeeded in getting their cities to adopt ordinances protecting gays from discrimination in areas like employment, housing, and public accommodations. State universities and some state agencies had taken similar steps to forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation. Social conservatives believe these measures signal approval of what they consider a dangerous and immoral lifestyle.

As long as decisions about these matters were made at the local level in Colorado, gay advocates could successfully marshal their political clout in relatively tolerant urban, affluent, and university-dominated areas. In these areas, gays have not only been present in disproportionately high numbers, but have been more politically organized and are more apt to live openly. Therefore, more citizens in these areas have been familiar with actual gay people and are less likely to believe hysterical claims about them. The opposite has been true in smaller towns and rural areas, where citizens are less personally familiar with gay people.

The political strategy for antigay social conservatives was thus simple: take the issue of "gay rights" out of the hands of local communities (where, ironically, conservatives generally believe policy decisions should be made) and put them in the hands of voters statewide. This would dilute the political power of gays and of people familiar with gays by overwhelming them with votes from socially conservative voters unfamiliar with gays.

On the eve of the election, supporters of Amendment 2 distributed 800,000 flyers asserting, among other things, "homosexuals commit between one-third and one-half of all recorded child molestations." These claims were false but they successfully diverted attention from the issues of job and housing discrimination that were at the heart of Amendment 2 and the laws it repealed.

Amendment 2 passed by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent. Buoyed by this victory, social conservatives started anti-gay rights drives in more than a dozen other states.

But then something happened. Gays across Colorado and the nation mobilized politically in response to Amendment 2. Legal advocates sued to stop its implementation.

At the national level, the successes for gay equality since Amendment 2 are well known. The number of states protecting gays from discrimination has doubled, from six to twelve. The number of businesses protecting gay employees from discrimination has risen exponentially. More and more employers extend health and other benefits to same-sex domestic partners. Unprecedented numbers of gay characters have flooded TV screens and movie theaters. On and on it goes.

The legal challenge to Amendment 2 resulted in the most gay-positive decision yet from the U.S. Supreme Court, Romer v. Evans, which held that the measure unconstitutionally denied gays the equal protection of the laws. Though the long-term legal significance of Romer remains to be seen, at the very least it halted similar statewide initiatives across the country.

More telling is what happened in Colorado itself. Gays in every part of the state, stunned by what they saw as a personal rebuke from their fellow citizens, came out of the closet for the first time and got politically active.

A recent article in The Denver Post recounted political developments in Colorado in the ten years after the passage of Amendment 2. According to the article, gay activism was most intense in Colorado Springs, the home of antigay organizing in the state. A new gay-rights group, Ground Zero, began within a month. At the group's first press conference several people walked in with bags over their heads, removed them, and declared publicly for the first time they were gay.

An accountant placed a picture of her lover on her desk at work. A car salesman wore a gay pride ribbon on his lapel as he greeted customers. When his co-workers at a construction firm began telling antigay jokes, one previously closeted employee announced: "If you want to talk that trash you better say it to my face, because you are talking about me too."

The leader of the Amendment 2 effort ran for mayor of Colorado Springs and lost to a moderate, who immediately announced a policy of "zero tolerance" for discrimination against city employees. The city even passed its own ordinance banning discrimination against gays, an unthinkable event before the fight over Amendment 2.

A local high school ran an article about the experience of gay students. When social conservatives demanded the school board ban such articles, the board refused.

"In the long run, we didn't achieve our goal," Kevin Tebedo, one of the drafters of Amendment 2, recently told the Post. "As a result of that, nationwide, it was a boon for the homosexual political lobby."

Colorado gay activists agree. As one told the Post, "We know now that we have allies and can defend ourselves. Amendment 2 created a gay community. It is the best thing that ever happened to us."

Another such defeat and we shall overcome.

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Capitalism, Creativity, Tolerance

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Originally appeared October 16, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

FOR MANY YEARS, the small island nation of Singapore has been home to an uneasy combination of free market capitalism with rapid economic growth on the one hand, and vigorous government controls on social behavior, speech and artistic expression on the other.

Now, however, faced with increasing competition from China, India and other Asian nations, Singapore's government has realized that while free markets are essential, in the long run they are not enough, that something more is needed for economies to remain productive.

That something is creativity - a creativity that enables entrepreneurs to keep discovering and inventing new products or improving old ones, helping them stay competitive in a world economy where everyone else is trying to get ahead of them. Unless you keep inventing something new, you fall behind.

So Singapore's leaders realized that they needed to develop a teeming, vibrant social and cultural environment to retain and attract, entertain and stimulate the creative people who can contribute to Singapore's development. And to do this, they also needed to cultivate and encourage Singapore's own creative talent.

But you cannot just snap your fingers and say, "Be creative." You cannot make creativity happen; you can only let it happen. In Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" when seedy government officials asked archetypal inventor/entrepreneur John Galt what they could do to help him, Galt replied, "Get out of my way."

Creativity, in short, can only come from the free play of a mind unhampered by impositions and limitations. Creativity requires freedom - not just freedom in one area, but freedom period - social, sexual, political, cultural, expressive, etc.

Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong seemed to recognize this in a recent speech: "A culturally vibrant city attracts global creative talent. Singapore needs a few little 'bohemias,'" he said, where artists can "soak in the ambiance, and do their creative stuff."

And so, Singapore's government, which has long been socially and sexually repressive and barred public discussion of such topics as race, religion, and sexuality, is planning to cut back censorship and fumblingly trying to find ways to open itself up to more free discussion and artistic expression.

Fumblingly. Broadcast of "Sex and the City" is banned, but Singaporeans order videos and DVDs from Amazon and hold viewing parties. Censors cut the gay subplot in "Six Feet Under," but approved a production of the play "Six Degrees of Separation" in which the pivotal character is gay.

Cultural groups are pressing for more freedom: "We want no censorship. We want experimental groups taking more risk in arts programs here," one theatrical producer told Reuters, arguing very reasonably, "It's very difficult to be creative when you are scared."

All this will be familiar to readers of Richard Florida's recent book "The Rise of the Creative Class." Florida argued that economic productivity required creative people, creative people require a context of cultural vibrancy, and easy acceptance of gays and "bohemians" was an index of the requisite cultural vitality.

The nucleus of this idea was well-known to economist Joseph Schumpeter more than 50 years ago. Florida rightly cites Schumpeter's insight that "It is not (price) competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization."

Florida's important addition is documentation of the fact that entrepreneurial capitalism requires a creativity that in turn requires an openness and free play of mind that sees the presence of gays and lesbians as a positive indicator of a vibrant and interesting cultural mix.

But beyond that, there are several ways that capitalism, by the habits of mind it requires and inculcates, can specifically promote and encourage the acceptance of gays; so it is useful to sketch out the parallels and some actual connections between how capitalism functions and how tolerance is generated.

  • For instance, a creative capitalism may well welcome a gay sexual orientation as a valuable added perspective for a cultural environment that requires a churning variety of ideas, approaches, and methods in order to break away from settled modes of thought and stimulate creative thinking.
  • By stressing constant innovation, creative capitalism can lure people away from their old habits of mind and their traditional, unexamined loyalties, attitudes and assumptions derived from village, church and family - all traditional sources of hostility to homosexuality.
  • By making production and consumption valued categories of activity, competitive capitalism creates alternative ways of evaluating people - as clients and customers, productive workers, skilled employees, etc. - and competing hierarchies of merit that challenge and reduce the significance of non-economic factors like sexual orientation.
  • By producing a stream of new goods and services that consumers can - and must - choose among, capitalism gives people experience in individual choosing and bolsters their confidence in their ability to make competent choices on the basis of their own needs and desires - and their awareness that others are doing the same.

The book on how the psychology of creative, free-market capitalism - "as if by an invisible hand" - gradually produces tolerance then acceptance of gays and lesbians has not yet been written. Some day it will be.

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85546011

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Time Off. I"ll be traveling for the next week and a half and won't be posting. But I"ll be back in touch after Oct. 20th.
--Stephen H. Miller

As I Depart. Let's see if all those liberal GLBT groups that were outraged by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's joking about lesbianism will take offense at a campaign ad by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus (Montana) that seems to have traded on anti-gay stereotypes. In castigating GOP candidate Mike Taylor, who ran a beauty school (and who says he's straight), the Baucus ad shows a videotape of Taylor from the 1980s in which he's wearing an open-front shirt and gold chains while massaging a man's face. Hmmm.


Bears in Toyland. Newsweek's website has a nice piece about Gay Day at Disneyland. Writes Ana Figueroa in A Gay Old Time:

I noticed that throngs of red-shirted men had gathered at the "Grizzly River Rapids" to brave the water ride together.... "Bill," a middle-aged man from the San Fernando Valley, was wringing out his socks after a soaking from the ride. His red shirt read, BEARS LA and had a picture of the Grizzly Mountain attraction on it. The Bears, he explained, are a "Gay Day subgroup." From what I could tell, they are also a rather hirsute subgroup. All the Bears on the ride seemed to have beards, and from what I picked up, a fixation not only with the Grizzly River Rapids but with the "Country Bear Jamboree" attraction at Disneyland.

After trying unsuccessfully to steer me away from the red shirts, my media guides exchanged heated words under their breath. No doubt each blamed the other for letting me stray off the pre-arranged press program. But they needn't have worried that I"d hear anti-Disney utterances. Throughout the park, groups of Gay Day attendees strolled around, enjoying themselves. Perhaps this wasn't the crowd Disney would have liked as a backdrop for its new attraction of rides for little kids. But, then again, there were numerous gay parents there with their children. I asked countless red-shirted patrons if they"ve been hassled by security, or made to feel in any way unwelcome. All replied in the negative.

Just another all-American outing -- and just as it should be.

Too Much of a Good Thing? A new Gallup poll reveals that Americans estimate approximately 20% of the general population is gay or lesbian. About a quarter of the public thinks that more than 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. Note: this is a survey of public perceptions only, not a count of gay people. Actual studies of the gay population often show from 3 to 5% are gay. Activists, twisting a figure from an old Kinsey study, like to claim we're 10%. But it's startling to think that so many Americans think that we are so many.

Comments Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in a press statement: "Clearly, the public realizes that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is sizable. Our hope is that this represents a better understanding of the complex nature of sexual orientation and a growing trend of respect and acceptance for our community and our lives." But I"m not so sure that the oversized guesstimate in this or another poll GLAAD references (but neither of which, contra GLAAD, asked about the transgendered) is necessarily a good thing. All it says, in and of itself, is that Americans think there are more of us -- which for some means, I"m sure, that we"re a larger threat.

Here's another interesting finding by Gallup:

While just slightly more than 50% of the public says that homosexual relations should be legal, well over eight out of ten say that homosexuals should have equal rights. These two questions may play to different norms that exist in contemporary America. The legal question may tap into a general sense of morality, and a reluctance of a more conservative segment of society to sanction what they consider to be deviant behavior. The question about equal opportunity, on the other hand, may invoke the public's attitudes about discrimination, fair play and equal treatment.

Read that again; just over 50% thinks we should be legal, or at least legally allowed to have sex (although I think it's possible some respondents were confused by the term "homosexual relations" and may have thought it referred to gay marriage).

Despite what any poll may mean by itself, if anything, gay people will keep on being who we are, and eventually the American public, however bad with numbers -- or with the concept of equality under the law for all -- will come around.
--Stephen H. Miller

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Someone Else's War. During a rally on Monday organized by Harvard Law School's student-run gay rights group, faculty members urged the university to file suit against the U.S. government. Their aim is to keep the military's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) from recruiting on campus. While I share their disdain for "don't ask, don't tell," do these people really think this is the time to be publicly undermining recruitment efforts? And doing so in the name of gay rights, as the nation prepares for what may be a necessary war to secure our safety from a foreign tyrant armed with weapons of mass destruction, can only cast aspersions on our patriotism -- just the message we don't want to send the military as we lobby to undo the policy.

Said Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, one of O.J. Simpson's trial lawyers, "I don't see the downside of litigating"" They never do.
--Stephen H. Miller

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The Other "Religious Right". As of 6 p.m. Monday, the popular gay news site planetout.com had not listed the stabbing on Sunday of openly gay Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe by a religiously motivated Muslim under either "Today's Headlines" or "Hot Stories". But planetout did have room to regurgitate the fact that GLBT groups are "outraged" at Florida Gov. Jeb Bush over his off the cuff remarks this weekend regarding two women charged with fraud in connection with a foster child's disappearance ("Bet you don't get that in Pensacola," Jeb kidded a group of upstate legislators about the women, one of whom reportedly told co-workers to "Tell my 'wife' I've been arrested.").

I suspect planetout.com will get around to the stabbing, as will the typically "outraged" GLBT groups themselves, perhaps by the time you read this. After all, unlike gay but conservative Dutch political leader Pim Fortuyn, whose assassination by a leftwing animal rights activist earlier this year triggered no outrage whatsoever from GLBT movement groups, Delanoe is a socialist. Still, the delay may be evidence of how touchy and "controversial" it still is for some gay folks to deal with the fact of the virulently homophobic Muslim religious right.

Advocate.com, I should note for the sake of fairness, does lead with Paris mayor stabbed in antigay attack, although unlike some wire accounts the fact that the assailant was motivated by his devout Muslim beliefs is relegated to the final graph. Would they have done the same if Delanoe had been attached by a Christian religious rightist? Dream on.
--Stephen H. Miller

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HRC’s Untimely Correction

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Oct. 3, 2002

More than two weeks after the error was first called to their attention, the Human Rights Campaign has finally corrected its online press release denouncing the nomination of Michael McConnell to the U.S. Court of Appeals. As I noted in my Sept. 19 posting In His Own Words?, HRC put quotes marks around a paraphrase of McConnell's remarks by a conservative group, making it seem as if the words are a direct quote from McConnell. HRC was immediately notified about their error, but waited more than two weeks to post a revision. "Mistakes made in this press release were corrected," readers are now told, with no further elaboration.

In the meantime, reliable Bush-antagonist Michelangelo Signorile picked up the non-quote quote and used it to attack McConnell's nomination in his New York Press column. That's why misquotes are so dangerous; if not corrected quickly, they take on a life of their own. Now you can expect the false quote to be used again and again by gay rights advocates critical of McConnell.

My original posting was not an endorsement of McConnell (who has been endorsed, however, by the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay GOPers), but primarily a criticism of the misuse of quotes by HRC - which I view as a very serious matter, journalistically speaking. I was also critical of HRC's failure to note that McConnell had a few pro-gay notches (such as supporting the rights of students to form an official Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school in conservative Salt Lake City), and to note that while McConnell was part of the Boys Scout's legal defense, that many people also support the right of associations to control their own membership and leadership without necessarily being bigots or homophobes.

Nevertheless, this week the Independent Gay Forum received a rather impassioned letter from Wayne Besen, HRC's Deputy Director of Communications.

Besen writes that:

"Miller is correct to point out that in a recent press release the Human Rights Campaign directly attributed to U.S. Court of Appeals nominee Michael McConnell a statement paraphrasing one of his speeches. As the author of this press release I apologize for this mistake. However, I write to rebut Miller's characterization of McConnell's record and to re-affirm HRC's opposition to his nomination. We do not believe a mistake in punctuation resulted in any distortion of his record. Furthermore, we question the value of Miller's accusations attributing a sinister motive to HRC over an innocent typo."

In case there is any doubt, let me note that the quote marks above indicate that this is taken verbatim from Besen's letter; it is not a paraphrase by a person or group with its own agenda. To put words in someone's mouth they didn't utter, especially when the issue is as high-charged as whether a judicial nominee is anti-gay in his thoughts and emotions, as opposed to a believer in judicial restraint or even an advocate of some sort of equivalence for both religious conservatives and gays (however strained), is not simply "a typo" of no consequence. Quotation marks have a very specific and in some cases legal meaning, which everyone understands. To fail to correct this "typo" for several weeks, during a period when the media was initially focused on the nomination battle, is simply not acceptable.

Besen also writes:

"Miller should redirect his anger to criticizing those who truly threaten our liberty - the extreme right. Although fair criticism of GLBT groups is desirable and understandable, Miller's attacking GLBT groups for opposing a judicial nominee with a consistent anti-gay record is disgraceful and unconscionable."

Let me say this about that: Virtually all gay organization or news websites copiously cover the antics of the religious right; taking aim at the groupthink of the gay liberal-left is still fairly unique, and I make no apologies for marching out of lockstep. If Besen actually did welcome "fair criticism" he wouldn't be so furious that someone had actually dared to, well, criticize.

IGF has posted Besen's entire letter, so you can judge for yourself. Also, you should check out IGF contributor Dale Carpenter's latest Out Right column, defending McConnell. Dale, now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was a student of McConnell's and finds HRC's version of the man a gross distortion. Guess he can expect a little letter from HRC as well.

An Addendum. The McConnell nomination is also discussed by Hastings Wyman, who writes the syndicated Capital Letters column on politics and gays. Wyman writes: "On balance, given that one cannot expect Republican George W. Bush to nominate a lawyer with liberal credentials on social issues for a judgeship, McConnell probably isn't so bad." He also observes, "What is different about this nomination, however, is that even a Republican White House now understands that trying to win at least a modicum of gay support is an important part of the confirmation battle," and shows how this is, in itself, is a sign of progress.

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Peace or Appeasement?

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Arguments can be made on either side about the likely war with Iraq. However, it's regretful that the leadership of the Metropolitan Community Churches - the world's largest gay and lesbian Christian body - have issued a statement about Iraq that suggests American aggression is the true villain. Titled A Call for Peaceful Resolution to Conflict with Iraq,
the statement begins:

Today America and Britain stand poised to go to war against the nation of Iraq and its people. Over the past 12 years international policies toward the Iraqi government have vacillated between support for Iraq in its quest to suppress opposition forces to vilification of the Iraqi nation as the personification of evil.

We call upon all people of faith and people of goodwill everywhere, especially our sisters and brothers in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities who know first hand what it means to be vilified, labeled and violently attacked, and who also know how difficult it is to survive under such circumstances, to join with the friends and members of Metropolitan Community Churches to oppose any further acts of aggression against Iraq.

Well, excuuuse me. But even if the MCC elders don't believe Saddam Hussein's regime of mass murder and his attempts to stockpile weapons of mass destruction represent a threat to the world, do they really think it's the Iraqi people our government is vilifying so that they can be "violently attacked" in "further acts of aggression against Iraq"? I have seen nothing that seeks to degrade the long-suffering people of Iraq; it is clearly the totalitarian regime headed by Saddam Hussein that is being presented - with a good deal of hard evidence - as an ongoing threat. The goal is regime change, which would liberate the people of Iraq.


The left likes to claim that this will be a racist war because the Iraqi army is non-white (if Arabs are non-white, are Jews?). While MCC doesn't use that phrase, it lurks behind the charge that the war will be an attack against the Iraqi people, with a strained equivalence made to gay-bashing in the U.S. Give me a break.

MCC tells us the war will not "promote the equitable distribution of resources" and instead will "divert international attention and resources from more critical issues including world poverty, a rapidly deteriorating ecological destruction, and oppression of too many of the world's peoples." This is stale leftist cant, implying that the war wouldn't make the Iraqi people freer (and allow them to participate in the world's market economy, making them richer), but instead would lead to more oppression and poverty. "We must stand together unequivocally for peace," state the MCC elders. But there are times when passivity in the face of evil is not a righteous act.
--Stephen H. Miller

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