IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared October 25, 2002, in The Washington Blade.

IN A RECENT COMMENTARY circulated to the gay press, gay Muslim activist Faisal Alam laments the absence of gay voices from recent anti-war rallies. I, on the contrary, regard this as a sign of our community's maturity and good sense.

We have been here before. Twelve years ago, several fellow activists and I met with the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to criticize its formal opposition to the Persian Gulf War. In brief, we said that the war was not a gay issue, and that in any case appeasement was not the way toward peace any more than it was in World War II.

Then, to counter the radical gays who had joined the anti-war protests, my friend Barrett Brick and I formed a group called GAIA, which alternately stood for Gays Against Iraqi Aggression and Gays Against Isolationism and Appeasement.

With a large, hand-made placard, Brick applied the slogan "Silence = Death" to those who favored a passive response to Saddam's reckless aggression. This upset the radicals, but it also got the attention of other groups defending the war effort, who were surprised to find gays on their side. We told them that gays have been fighting for America since its founding. We cited polls showing that most gays agreed with the overwhelming majority of Americans who supported the war, not the few who opposed it.

This time around, with NGLTF thus far avoiding its earlier mistake, Alam has taken up the anti-war standard. Remarkably, he manages to write an entire column opposing war with Iraq without once mentioning Saddam Hussein. Instead, he complains that spending money on war would take money from "social welfare programs." But this is as arbitrary as pitting housing needs against mental health needs. Alam ignores the primacy of national defense as a responsibility of government, preferring to call for an unspecified "peaceful solution." The fact that Iraq has violated 16 United Nations resolutions does not convince him that peaceful efforts have failed.

Alam ignores Saddam's long record of international mayhem that brought us to this point. The only country he is willing to blame for anything is the United States. This upside-down worldview would be comical if Alam and others on the anti-American left were not in dead earnest. And because he includes every conceivable issue in the gay agenda, he declares the war with Iraq a "queer" issue, without showing the slightest awareness of which side actually treats gays better. (Hint: It's the one that allows gay Muslims to organize and publish op-eds.)

Alam writes as if gays who disagree with his anti-war stand are all going to "$250 tuxedo dinners" - ignoring the fact that these events are fundraisers for gay causes - and as if enjoying the fruits of our labor is disreputable. He gratuitously insults an extraordinarily generous community, while asserting that "the real fight for freedom" occurs elsewhere. How are the downtrodden helped by this ridiculous, mendacious class warfare?

Alam says we once "understood that single-issue politics would not win us anything." Here he falsifies the history of the gay rights movement in order to portray us as having fallen away from a nobler early period. In fact, some of our movement's pioneers, like DC's Frank Kameny (another critic of NGLTF 12 years ago), maintained a laser-like focus on gay issues.

Alam should check out the website of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC (of which Kameny and I are members) at www.glaa.org, and review our timeline for examples of how much a group singly focused on gay rights can accomplish.

Alam could also learn a lot from English gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell, who opposes war with Iraq but says, "It is disturbing the way the anti-war campaign is ignoring the Iraqi government's monstrous human rights abuses, and is offering no counter-plan for overthrowing the murderous regime in Baghdad."

To the extent that past American policies have contributed to the problem that now threatens the Middle East, we make a fine choice for the ones to do something about it. As even Tatchell says, "A democratic Iraq would be a beacon for human rights throughout the Middle East. It could give lesbian and gay people their first taste of freedom in a region that is dominated by brutal Islamic fundamentalist regimes."

Alam brazenly invokes an early flashpoint of our movement in support of his untimely pacifism. Pardon me, but at Stonewall they fought back.

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.

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.

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.