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Republican Conspiracies Everywhere! I usually don't like to waste ink, or bytes, on gay lefty columnist Michelangelo Signorile, one of the more hysterical voices among the "queer" Bush haters. But his latest ranting in the New York Press is so emblematic of the paranoia that passes as argument among his crowd that it deserves comment.

In a piece titled "Fundie Eruptions," Signorile first turns to the United Nations, where he takes note of a Washington Post story suggesting that Islamic governments and conservative Christians were on the same side in opposing "progressive" family policy issues. Both, for instance, are against gay inclusion in U.N. family policy documents, and oppose abortion as part of U.N.-funded family planning programs. From this account, Signorile feels vindicated in re-affirming his view that Christian conservatives are "the real American Taliban," as Christian and Islamic fundamentalists are "actually down on the killing fields of the culture wars together, battling side by side against the rest of the world."

Since there's really no difference between Pat Robertson and Osama bin Ladin, Signorile further deduces that George W. Bush, having appointed abortion opponents to U.N. delegations, is just as bad as the leaders of the terror regimes of the Middle East. Or, as Signorile phrases it:

"The thought that a president who asserted that he"d liberated the women of Afghanistan -- and used his wife to herald such claims -- is secretly working to undermine women on the rest of the planet is beyond hypocritical."

Yes, the president who "asserted" he had something to do with overthrowing a regime that made women invisible chattel would also oppose making U.S. taxpayers fund abortions through the U.N. shows, I guess, that he's just as bad as Saddam Hussein

Wait, it gets better. Signorile then offers:

"it seemed almost too convenient that just a few days after the revelation about the UN scheme, our attorney general, John Ashcroft, came under attack from some Christian conservatives for not being conservative enough anymore -- specifically because he allowed a deputy to speak at a Dept. of Justice-sponsored gay pride event. How lucky can you get? Just when your administration is exposed as being profoundly intolerant for empowering groups that are working with our most dreaded enemies -- including Iraq and Iran -- your very own Mr. Intolerance is attacked for, well, not being intolerant enough, shifting the debate entirely. Lucky indeed -- unless, perhaps, you helped promote the latter story yourself so that you might look more moderate."

Yes, the religious right's attacks on the Bush administration's gay overtures are being planned in the basement of the White House, as a ploy to make Bush appear "moderate" while he goes about terrorizing the women of the world with his buds Osama and Saddam. Those nefarious Republicans"what will they think of next?

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Did They Make Michael Ovitz an Offer He Couldn't Refuse? First, former Hollywood honcho Michael Ovitz, in a Vanity Fair interview, accuses a tinsel town "gay mafia" of undermining his reign as superagent and motion picture powerhouse. Next, he apologizes for statements that were "inappropriate."

Of course, Ovitz didn't mean there is a real gay "mafia"; he meant a circle of gay insiders including his nemesis, David Geffen. Still, there's nothing like a Hollywood Homosexual Hullabaloo to liven up the summer doldrums.


Proud Mary. The right-wing Christian newswire, CNS News Service, reports that while answering questions after a recent speech, the vice-presidential spouse, Lynn Cheney, "tried to dodge a question from the audience that referenced her daughter, Mary, who is rumored to be homosexual." Actually, Mary is quite out, lives openly with her partner, worked at Coors as their corporate liaison to the gay community, and is now helping the Republican Unity Coalition reach out to gays and lesbians.

Back to the CNS report:

"With an openly gay daughter, why aren't you and the vice president more supportive of gay and lesbian civil rights that could ease her burden?" one audience member asked. "If you met my daughter Mary, you wouldn't think of her as a burdened young woman," Cheney first offered. "She is a wonderful young woman who is just about to finish business school. We are very proud of our entire family." When pressed about the need for getting involved in "the issue of gay and lesbian rights," Cheney cited her husband's comments during the 2000 vice presidential debate with Democratic candidate Joseph Lieberman. "I think that Dick had exactly the right answer when he was asked about this," she said. "He really said that people in our society should have the right to live their lives as they choose."

An affirmation of tolerance, but not quite an endorsement of full equality before the law. On the other hand, I"m glad she told the activist-questioner that not all gays and lesbians go through life seeing themselves as perpetual victims.

Further Fuming by Fundies. Also from the always partial CNS News Service this week was an item headed "Bush's Choice for CDC Head Not Popular with Conservatives" It seems Dr. James Dobson, head of the anti-gay Focus on the Family, is "baffled" by President Bush's decision to name Dr. Julie Gerberding as the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to Dobson:

"There is nothing in the record to indicate her opposition to 'safe-sex' ideology. She has no apparent concern about the ineffectiveness of condom usage, nor any stated disagreement with the positions of the homosexual activist movement, or with the provision of free needles to drug users. -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is already the world's largest promoter of homosexuality and 'safe-sex' programs, and now the president has appointed someone whose positions indicate that the organization will continue dishing out more of the same."

Sounds like another first-class appointment by President Bush.

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A Hero? He CAN"T Be Gay!. An interesting series of posting on Mike Hardy's "Enemy of the Church?" blogsite. Hardy, a Dignity member who focuses on the intersection of gay + Catholic, includes several items over recent days about conservative Catholic attempts to deny that Father Mychal Judge, hero chaplain of the NYC Fire Department who died on 9/11, was actually gay.

As Hardy notes, a screed by Dennis Lynch on the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute website, states:

Victims of the September 11 hijackers were not just people. One victim of the September 11 terrorists was the truth about a Catholic priest. This is the story of how homosexual activists hijacked the truth about Father Mychal Judge. -- As is typical with activists, the truth about someone never stood in their way to advance their agenda. This was true with the homosexual activists who saw in Father Mike's heroic death a chance to attack the Roman Catholic Church. It didn't matter if what they said about Father Mike wasn't true. All that mattered was that a heroic, celibate, faithful Catholic priest could become a homosexual icon.

Never mind that, as Hardy's blog points out, Fr. Judge was active in Dignity (Dignity USA leaders Mary Louise Cervone and Marianne Duddy issued a press release on 9/14 lauding Fr. Judge as a "longtime member," the blogsite notes) or that the November 12 issue of New York Magazine quoted Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen as saying that he knew Father Judge was gay:

But [Fr. Judge] was out to Thomas Von Essen, the fire commissioner. "I had no problem with it," Von Essen says. "I actually knew about his homosexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firefighters to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was gay just had nothing to do with anything.

Now, it may be true that gay anti-Church activists led by Brendan Fay, who failed in their attempt to use the courts to force NYC's St. Patrick's Day Parade to accept a contingent from the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization (ILGO), have been claiming that Fr. Judge was some sort of a leader in the gay community, which, in fact, was not the case. Once again, the disingenuousness of some gay activists provides an opening for anti-gay activists.

The Great Debate. Last Thursday at The New School in New York City, author, pundit, and IGF contributor Andrew Sullivan debated the Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, a long-time Sullivan hater (see my June 19 posting), who argues that there's no place at the table for lesbigays who aren's part of his socialist vanguard. Lesbian author and IGF contributor Norah Vincent was also on hand, as was lesbian Marxist Carmen Vasquez. For some firsthand views of the event, visit the blogsites of Clay Waters and Sasha Castel (scroll down to the earliest posting under Friday, June 28). To read an account from Sullivan himself, see andrewsullivan.com (again, scroll down to Friday, June 28).

Sounds like the gay left was in typical form -- misquoting and misrepresenting their opponents rather than arguing the merits (such as they are) of their own case. My favorite: Castel's remark that:

I wanted to cheer when a self-identified "black lesbian conservative" asked [Goldstein] why she should be excluded from the movement simply for her politics, and he simply could not answer.

Or Waters' comment that:

Sullivan was misquoted by Goldstein in The Nation. ... Goldstein, who doesn't seem to take responsibility for anything he writes, admits "someone did take a statement by Sullivan out of context," but adds petulantly: "I had no way of knowing that the quote had been distorted, because Sullivan never issued a correction. He waited until the Nation piece to spring a trap. Readers of my critique will understand why. Cooking up a scandal is a very effective way to deflect attention from the substance of an argument".No wonder scandalizing has become a weapon of choice for the right. It's Sullivan's first line of defense against any adversary, and in that respect, he is a true conservative."

As Waters observes, Goldstein is saying that Sullivan is responsible for Goldstein's misquoting him (because Sullivan failed to adequately protest an earlier misquote by another Sullivan-hater, whom Golstein then quoted without verifying the (mis)quote from the primary source).

What can I possible add? It's the perfect summation of what the left is all about.

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An Independence Day Like No Other

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Originally appeared June 29, 2002, in National Journal.

EVEN IF YOU BELIEVE, as I do, that the birth of the United States was the single best thing that ever happened to the human race, it is easy, in the procession of years, to become blas? about Independence Day. I suppose this year I will do what I usually do: snooze, sunbathe, shop, maybe brave the crowds to watch fireworks, or maybe not. But it will not be an ordinary Fourth of July. It will be like none before.

Life, it is true, has not changed much since the last Fourth of July, unless you happen to be waiting in the baggage line at Dulles International Airport. Even in Washington, where so much has changed, life is much as it was. "There seems little left of the 'new' post-September America," an article in The Economist recently observed.

Is that really so? Usefully, Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research has assembled a wealth of polling data on post-9/11 America (you can find it by going to www.aei.org and clicking on "War on Terrorism"). The data suggest that there are many respects in which The Economist is right. The rally around the president persists, but the public's approval of Congress, an astonishing and charitable 84 percent in October (according to Gallup/CNN/USA Today), had deflated to a more earthbound 52 percent by June. Trust in the federal government, and belief that the government "is doing all it reasonably can do to try to prevent further terrorist attacks" (ABC News/Washington Post), have likewise floated back down from the stratosphere.

In the aftermath of the attacks last year, three-fourths of the public told Zogby International that they approved of random car searches, and 67 percent approved of random mail searches. By March, a majority had changed their minds, disapproving of both kinds of measures. In September, only 12 percent of respondents told Harris Interactive that they lacked confidence that the government would use expanded surveillance powers properly; by March, the doubting Thomases had doubled to 23 percent. I never thought I would live to see a majority of Americans saying that the media were doing an "excellent" job, but in September that is what they said (in a Pew Research Center poll). By April, that bubble, too, had burst. If Americans normally view powerful institutions with a cynical eye, then America is clearly getting back to normal.

Behavior has also largely reverted. Do you display the flag? The proportion saying yes (in Gallup/CNN/USA Today polls) fell from 82 percent in September to 68 percent in March. Do you pray more than usual? Three-fourths said yes in September, only 37 percent said so in March. Thank goodness, the percentage who reported crying as a result of September 11 fell from 70 percent to only 21 percent. The tears have dried.

And yet, for all that, people insist they are not the same. They are quite firm on that point. At least two polling firms have asked people whether their own lives have changed as a result of September 11, and both found 55 percent saying yes, not just once but consistently, in December, January, and March. Almost three-fourths said the change was for the better.

A skeptic might understandably look around and ask to see some evidence of all this improvement. After all, isn't Congress back to partisan bickering and the public back to shopping? The rejoinder is in the answer to this interesting follow-up question, which ABC and The Post put to respondents who said that 9/11 had changed their lives: "Have [the events of September 11] mainly changed the way you live your day-to-day life or mainly changed the way you feel about things?" In both December and March, respondents said, by about a 3-1 ratio, that what had changed was the way they felt.

What does that mean, exactly? What, if anything, does it amount to? I know of no applicable data and so turn to introspection. Although my own life goes on much as it did, I do not feel as I did on September 10 about myself, and I do not feel as I did about my country.

The largest change for me, after September 11, is that I no longer care so much how long I live. This attitude did not come in a revelatory flash or as a result of thoughtful analysis; quite suddenly, it was simply there. What it means is not that I have little regard for my life or would throw it away. I love living and would fight passionately, I hope, for the privilege. I would be very sorry and bitter to have been aboard one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

On the other hand, I would be very proud to have been on United Airlines Flight 93, whose passengers fought off the terrorists, crashed their plane, and quite possibly saved the Capitol or the White House. The last three or four minutes of those people's lives were more noble than the next three or four decades of my life are likely to be.

Whether I would have had the courage, in their place, to do what they did, I have no idea. What I no longer feel, however, is that it is important to die an old man. There is such a thing as nobility, and it is better to live a short and noble life than a long and ignoble or characterless one. The ancients and many Americans of earlier generations understood this, and I thought I understood it, too; but now I think I never fully grasped what nobility meant until I saw how the firefighters of September 11 marched unhesitatingly up the stairs to oblivion.

Although America has no aristocracy, it has nobility in abundance, nobility that walks among us every day in the streets. In November, Newsweek magazine quoted Osama bin Laden as telling a Pakistani journalist: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us." Well, it is certainly true that Americans love life. What bin Laden did not understand, however, is that many Americans will die willingly, so long as they die in the service of life. Living for life, as Americans do, is not at all the same thing as living merely to live, as bin Laden wrongly believed Americans do.

If others feel as I feel, and perhaps some do, then indeed the country has changed. Not changed in that all who were cowards before September 11 now are brave, or all who were base now are noble. Changed, rather, in that millions of people have taken stock and chosen to be resolute, even at considerable personal cost. Millions, in that sense, have enlisted.

I would like to mention one quite particular and personal respect in which my feelings about the country have changed. As in no national emergency ever before in American history, open homosexuals were participants in the events of September 11. We participated as victims, of course (a co-pilot and several passengers aboard the ill-fated planes, for example, were gay); and we also participated as heroes. The Rev. Mychal Judge, the New York City Fire Department's beloved chaplain, died in the World Trade Center's north tower soon after administering last rites to a firefighter. Mark Bingham, an openly gay passenger, is thought to have been among the leaders in the reconquest of Flight 93.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, mainstream Americans never for a moment begrudged homosexuals their place in the narrative. This was something new. When the Rev. Jerry Falwell blamed, among others, "the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle" for "mak[ing] God mad" and helping bring about the 9/11 attacks, and when the Rev. Pat Robertson concurred, there was no debate about whether they had a point, not even among cultural conservatives. There was merely revulsion. All at once, it was Mychal Judge and Mark Bingham who were in the mainstream, and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who were at odds with core American values.

That is not to deny that many Americans are uncomfortable with homosexuality. It is to affirm that they are much more uncomfortable with intolerance. In the social order that America's militant Islamic enemies would impose, my partner Michael and I would probably not be suffered to live, except perhaps as liars and fugitives. In that sense, this war is not being fought for an abstraction. It is being fought for me. It is being fought for the right of homosexuals to pursue happiness in the only way possible for us. The fact that many of the American fighters do not approve of homosexuality only redoubles my admiration for their sacrifice.

On this Fourth of July, wherever I am and whatever else I may be doing, I will be giving those fighters my thanks. Never have I been as proud of my country and my fellow citizens as I have been since September 11. On no prior Independence Day have I so well understood, and so keenly felt, my debt to the men who, in 1776, risked everything for what they called certain unalienable rights. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and so again, today, do their 285 million descendants; and so do I.

Copyright � 2002 National Journal.

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Another Bush Surprise. To the astonishment of many, including the die-hard Bush-haters of the gay left, the president this week signed into law the Mychal Judge Act, which allows federal death benefits to be paid to the same-sex partners of firefighters and police officers who die in the line of duty. The law is named after the heroic, gay New York City Fire Department chaplain killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

This is another small but significant step forward in terms of the mainstream GOP moving away from the religious right, which, as the New York Times reported, was furious that Bush put his signature on the bill. "I"m very saddened that he signed it, because of the precedent that it sets," lamented Paul Weyrich, rightwing activist and long-time opponent of gay inclusion. Weyrich whined, "Conservatives are becoming somewhat troubled by some of the things that the administration is doing, and if you have just a percentage or two who stay at home, it"ll mean the difference between control or not in the 2002 elections."

That's the anti-gay right's ongoing threat. But there's a contravening factor, as noted in the same article by Charles Cook of the well-regarded Cook Political Report. He observed, "There's a healthy percentage of gay people who if the Republican Party stopped poking them in the eye, some of them would vote Republican." The big-tent faction of the GOP knows this, too, and increasingly they are calling the shots.

The Pledge Flap. What can one say about the ultra-liberal federal appeals court sitting in San Francisco, which on Wednesday found that the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and banned its recitation in public schools under its jurisdiction (an order suspended pending appeal)? On the one hand, it will increase public disdain over what's seen as loony political extremism emanating from the city by the bay. But since San Francisco also is noted for its pro-gay politics, that's not a good thing. If the left is going to go off the deep end, it becomes all the more important to establish that gay equality is not simply a cause of the left, no matter how much this infuriates both the gay left and the religious right.

Beyond Left and Right, Continued. And speaking of transcending left/right politics, syndicated columnist Jim Pinkerton this week quoted IGF contributor (and my partner) David Boaz on the prospects for a libertarian-minded coalition. Writes Pinkerton:

"both major parties hold some libertarian cards, and yet neither party is willing to play a consistent hand. David Boaz"sees a developing "combination of Social Security choice, school choice, social tolerance at home"" in which all those who don't wish to be trod upon find common cause in a newfound alliance of taxpayers, alternate lifestylers and other liberty-lovers."

That suggests one way to plant the struggle for gay equality in the soil of individual rights and liberty, rather than in the muck of identity politics and group-based entitlements.

The P.C. Swamps and What They Breed. Conservative columnist Suzanne Fields writes in her June 27 column, "No Common Sense and No Love of Country," on a poll of college students conducted by the highly respected pollster Frank Luntz. The survey found only 3 percent of students in the fervid fields of academia "strongly agree" that Western culture is superior to the culture of the Arab world. Fully 43 percent "strongly disagree."

Writes Fields,

"They weren't asked to consider specifically why a culture that systematically represses women, executes homosexuals, restricts the press, abrogates freedom of speech and religion and persecutes Christians and Jews is thought to be just as good as a culture that empowers women, works to eliminate prejudice against homosexuals, and guarantees freedom of the press, of speech and of religion."

Did I mention that Fields is a conservative? Here's yet more evidence that the p.c., multiculti, America-bashing left has lost its bearings, and that the pro-liberty right (as opposed to the religious right) seems increasingly to be the real ally of gay inclusion.

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Why the Pride Parade Matters

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Originally appeared as an editorial June 27, 2002, in Bay Windows (Boston).

EACH JUNE, as the roses bloom, discussion in our community focuses on the many complaints about Boston Pride. Prior years brought concerns about nudity and sexual expression in the parade. "Too many bare breasts, simulated copulation, and gyrating boys" is refrain number one. This year, according to The Boston Globe, a leader of the lesbian burlesque troupe The Princesses of Porn complained that Pride presented "a sanitized version of gay life to the public." "Too many elected officials, church groups and families" is refrain number two.

Meanwhile, GLBT leaders bemoan the absence of political activism in Boston Pride. Political groups struggle to get just a few interested souls to attend their forums. While in the next corner, GLBT party-ers bemoan the paucity of good disco festivals, even as promoters struggle to get just a few adventurous souls to attend new events.

It's enough to make you just want to stay at home, which an increasing number of gays and lesbians do. Luckily for the gay community, we are seeing an increase in the attendance and participation of our allies and supporters from the non-gay community. They think Pride is important.

Like Robert Reich, for example.

You may have missed the historic moment, which happened this year at Pride. Many people skip the rally and festival at the end of the march and did not hear Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Robert Reich's announcement that he had made-up his mind to move from "civil unions" to "gay marriage" You weren't alone: the reporters I spoke to who were there thought they misheard the announcement or missed it all together. Gay papers didn't report the big news until weeks after Reich delivered his remarks. Seems the gay media are in synch with the community--we also think nothing important will happen at Pride.

Robert Reich was thinking about the issue of gay marriage before Pride, but according to sources in his campaign, Pride sealed the deal. Spending time with young activist Corey Johnson and meeting people in the march and along the parade route was all Reich needed to move from "civil unions" to "gay marriage".

In a governor's race that has a bonanza of pro-gay candidates, Reich now stands apart from his Democratic primary opponents and joins Libertarian candidate Carla Howell and Green Party contender Jill Stein in support of gay marriage. He has raised the bar on what "pro-gay" means.

So the lesson learned here is: Pride can still have an impact. Just because some of us may not feel the sting of discrimination or experience the drive to belong as strongly as we did in the days of our "just out" gayness, there is an entire community of people out there who are changed for the better by Pride, and by our celebration of unity. You may know a few of them, they're called straight people. It seems they make up 90 percent of the general population. While we're ho-humming another Pride, some of them are attending the parade to get to know us. Manners dictate that we actually be present when our straight friends make a courtesy call.

Who will you bring to next year's Pride?

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Facts, Values, and Nuclear Weapons

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Last week I was invited to give a talk on homosexuality at the Lawrence Livermore National Research Laboratory, which is a nuclear weapons research facility just southeast of San Francisco. (Apparently San Francisco has a dearth of experts on homosexuality, so they need to fly them in from Detroit. Who knew?)

One might wonder, as I did, why they would want a talk on homosexuality at a nuclear weapons research facility. Why not a talk on, say, wartime ethics, or nuclear disarmament, or racial profiling in national security initiatives - all topics which I, as an ethics professor, am eminently qualified to blather on about. But since they asked for the gay talk and since I wasn't about to turn down a free �trip to California, the gay talk is what they got.

My talk, which was perspicuously (if uncreatively) titled "Homosexuality, Morality, and Diversity," was attended by roughly 100 rather serious-looking scientists and engineers. (Since these people are responsible for overseeing enough radioactive material to eliminate entire continents, I found their seriousness reassuring.) The lecture went well, and the Q-and-A session was relatively tame, with predictable questions about gays in the military ("Yes, I've dated some") and the Boy Scouts ("James Dale still hasn't called, but when he does...). One thoughtful senior official asked, "You must find it rather draining to have to deal with these horrible, homophobic arguments day after day as part of your work - how do you do it?" (Answer: I drink.)

One former Eagle Scout introduced herself - yes, herself - after the talk: She was a male-to-female transsexual who transitioned while an employee at Livermore. Her story and others made it increasingly clear why they wanted a talk on sexual diversity at a nuclear weapons research facility.

The most challenging part of the visit, however, was not my talk before the general audience but my earlier lunch meeting with the LGBTA employee group. As is often the case (I've been doing these talks for ten years) the hardest questions and liveliest controversy came during the "friendly fire." Unexpectedly, I found myself in the strange position of being a gay atheist who was defending the religious right (in a sense).

It happened when one of the luncheon attendees - a pregnant lesbian physicist whose partner was also an employee - complained about the employee Bible-study group. "Their problem," she stated bluntly, "is that they want to impose their values on other people. That's the difference between our groups - we believe in 'just the facts' while they want to push values."

I could not agree with her description, and I said as much. For in just a short while I would be giving a talk in which I intended to "push values": values of tolerance, fairness, and diversity. I wasn't going to present "just the facts" - I was going to argue that people ought to behave a certain way in light of those facts. In other words, I was going to moralize.

The word "moralize" tends to turn people off, and with good reason - it's typically associated with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Dr. Laura. In rejecting their brand of moralizing, it is tempting for us to reject moralizing altogether. As the saying goes, "Morality is strictly a private matter."

But this saying is patently false, and the sooner we acknowledge that fact, the better. Morality is about how we treat one another - and that's very much a matter for public concern. It's about fairness and justice. It's about what matters to us - not just as a personal preference, but as a standard for public behavior.

When I say that society's treatment of gays and lesbians is wrong, I'm making a moral claim. I am telling people how they should live: They should accept their gay sons and lesbian daughters; they should be welcoming toward their LGBT neighbors; they should support our civil rights. They ought to do these things because they're the morally right things to do.

The problem with the religious right is not that they push values. The problem is that they push the wrong values: valuing conformity more than diversity; obedience more than freedom. Let us not concede the moral sphere to them. Or the nuclear weapons. (Transsexual Eagle-scout physicists, unite!)

John Corvino, who teaches philosophy at Wayne State University, is no longer considered a security risk in the State of California.

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The Gay Left Exposes Itself. An article in Monday's LA Times, "Gay Pride Confronts an Identity Crisis," notes that "Longtime backers of [the] San Francisco event question the role of conservatives." Well, so much for the left's commitment to "diversity," as if we didn't know that their real aim has been to exclude anyone who doesn't toe their increasingly rigid party line. As reported by Scott Gold:

"a growing number of old-school, left-leaning gay activists are convinced that their movement is being sold to the highest corporate bidder, and that it has become so inclusive that it may rip its once-radical roots out."

I guess some types of inclusion are just TOO inclusive.

The report continues:

"As San Francisco prepares for the annual Gay Pride Parade and Celebration on Saturday and Sunday - an event that is expected to draw a million people to downtown - many liberal gay activists have begun belittling some of their fellow entrants: gay power company executives who rake consumers over the coals, gay landlords who evict hard-working tenants, gay cops who still harass cross-dressers."

And these folks claim to be opposed to stereotypes! Clearly, rather than a gay pride parade, the gay left would much rather be part of a "socialist pride" march, dedicated to nationalized industry, government-owned communal housing, and disbanding the police so everyone can be free to live in peaceful equality. The degree of infantilism here is truly sobering.

America's Future. On a happier, more hopeful note, check out this moving story about a Connecticut high school athlete's very public coming out to his peers, from the Waterbury Republican-American, via the site of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

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A Question You Never Thought You"d Hear. "Is John Ashcroft becoming a liberal?" asked the Washington Post's "Political Notebook" column on June 21. The religious right, it seems, is furious at the attorney general for allowing his deputy, Larry Thompson, to address a gathering of gay Justice Department employees at an event sponsored by the group DOJ Pride. "After all the work we did to stand up to the liberal mudslinging during Ashcroft's confirmation fight, this is what we get?" asked Robert Knight of the anti-gay Culture and Family Institute. As I"ve said before, that's politics, baby. And it's becoming increasingly evident that the future belongs to "big tent" inclusiveness, and not to the exclusionary religious right.

So, just how loony can the anti-gay right get? A press release issued by the group Concerned Women for America (CWA) asks, "Why is Mr. Ashcroft, a committed Christian, using his official capacity to celebrate sin?" CWA's Sandy Rios fumes, "It won't matter if we dismantle terrorism if we implode from within. The presence of a top aide to the attorney general at an event celebrating "gay pride" is a clear endorsement of homosexuality."

This is about as over the top as anything I can recall -- they actually think speaking to a group of gay civil servants is as bad as terrorism!

In contrast, in the Post article the Log Cabin Republicans praised Ashcroft and Thompson for sending gay Justice Department employees the message that "the government is proud of their service" in the war on terrorism.

Remember all the predictions about the anti-gay crusade the Republicans would unleash if Bush won, and then if his attorney general pick was confirmed? As an e-mail I received commented, Ashcroft "catches flack from the right for sanctioning a Pride event, and meanwhile, no matter what he does, most of the gay groups demonize him." That about sums it up.

Patriotism Is Not a Gay Value? Now, for fairness, let's turn to that other contingent of deep thinkers, the gay left. Michael Bronski, in a piece for the Boston Phoenix titled "Rally 'round the fag: The sorry fate of queer politics since September 11" laments that a surge of patriotism was expressed during this year's gay pride celebrations. Writes Bronski:

"few could have predicted that the terrorist attacks' effects on the gay-and-lesbian-rights movement would be so, well, perverse". That was clear this month when Gay Pride celebrations across the country could have just as easily been called American Pride. Take Boston, historically a site of radical gay politics, where the theme of Pride this year was "Proud of Our Heroes." -- It is, indeed, a brave new world. And desperately patriotic flag-waving at Gay Pride events are -- telling us how far we still have to go."

Actually, it's telling us just how far the gay left has fallen into irrelevancy.

A Harbinger? When the Supreme Court voted last week 6-3 to bar executions of the mentally retarded, it reversed its own 1989 decision which found such executions constitutional. Justice Sandra Day O"Connor, who had written the 1989 decision, this time voted the other way, citing a change in national sentiment against executing murderers who are retarded. The Supreme Court is generally loath to directly reverse a prior decision, so the fact that they did so now bodes well for their willingness to reverse their 1986 decision upholding so-called sodomy laws, which still make same-sex partners criminals in many states. Clearly, national sentiment on this issue has also changed, and dramatically so, over the past decade. Let's hope the High Court revisits one of its worst decisions ever before another decade goes by.

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Diplomacy Can Work Wonders

by on

Originally appeared June 20, 2002, in the author's Los Angeles Times column.

I USED TO BE BOTHERED and embarrassed when strangers mistook me for a man, especially when it happened in public restrooms. I felt left out by what Foucaultians and other leftist intellectuals like to call "gender norms." I didn't fit, and to me the fault lay with-to borrow another radical's pet phrase-the heterosexist hegemony, the insidiousness of which had made me into a pariah among my own sex and a virtual Medusa in the eyes of the opposite sex. And all this because I had a boy's wardrobe, short hair, masculine features and a deep voice. Go figure.

If the world couldn't see me through my disguise, I thought, it was the world, not I, who was going to have to change.

And that, in a nutshell, is what leftist gay politics is all about. Making the world change to suit the outcast. Not an ignoble cause on the face of it. Everyone deserves respect, after all, as well as a certain degree of recognition. This is no less than the founding principle of our Bill of Rights. All libertarian-minded folk are in harmony with left liberals on this point-even gay conservatives, whom Village Voice Senior Editor Richard Goldstein has dubbed "homocons." Web pundit Andrew Sullivan and I, who are respectively Goldstein's homocon bogeyman and the Wicked Witch of the West, have been invited to debate Goldstein next week at Manhattan's New School University in a panel discussion titled "The Great Gay Political Debate." At the heart of this debate is no less than the future of gay politics. The issue? How do we go about getting what we want: by rebellion or diplomacy, protest or pragmatism? Certainly the answer is not by simply fighting each other.

Because when it comes down to it, we homocons want the same things the liberals want, that is, fundamental equality and multicultural inclusiveness. We homocons are pursuing goals that are just as noble as those of gay liberals; we simply pursue them in a different way. They want society to come to them, or better yet to succumb to them; we want society to meet us halfway. They see themselves as guerrillas; we, by contrast, see ourselves as ambassadors of sorts.

The so-called gay right is not monolithic, but I suspect Sullivan and others share my belief that politics is deeply personal, that somewhere between the odd individual (us) and the tyrannical majority (them) lies an acceptable peace and that somewhere between the stultifying closet and the topless traipse down Fifth Avenue is something called being yourself with impunity.

Change happens in democratic societies because people bend, because people accommodate one another slowly with an arsenal of goodwill and sound argument, not because they confront one another with a rhetorical blunderbuss in one hand and the sword of righteousness in the other.

Perhaps this sounds facile, a little too Disney for the real, savage "power structure" we live in. But I embrace this simple policy not because it sounds good, or because I am desperate to be accepted by the straight world, or because I lack the courage to undermine or overthrow the enemy-but because it's what works.

When people still mistake me for a man I gently correct them, with a joke if possible. I win my small battles in the restroom instead of the courtroom because I know that juries are made up of people who use public toilets. I prefer to persuade the world one person at a time.

I prefer to think of this as humanist libertarianism rather than conservative politics, but my fellow pundits on the gay left prefer to see it as a capitulation to or collusion with a world they cannot forgive for rejecting them.

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