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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

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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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The Left Strikes Back, in Typical Fashion. I"m all for full and rigorous debate among gays and lesbians from all points on the political spectrum, but the debate should be honest. Unfortunately, Village Voice columnist Richard Goldstein presents a vastly deranged portrait of those he terms "homocons," or gay conservatives, in his new book "The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right," and in a related article he penned for the current issue of The Nation, titled "Fighting the Gay Right." Goldstein feels a particular animus toward Andrew Sullivan, the highly successful gay pundit (and IGF contributor) who blogs away at andrewsullivan.com. But while a full airing of their differing opinions on the gay movement might have been interesting, Goldstein instead grossly distorts Sullivan's views in a way obvious to anyone who has actually read Sullivan's writings. Here's what I mean. Goldstein, in his Nation article, portrays Sullivan as some sort of anti-promiscuity crusader, stating:

"Marriage, Sullivan has written, is the only alternative to "a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation." "

But here's Sullivan's actual quote from his book "Love Undetectable," in which (as Sullivan points out in a response to Goldstein on his website), the context is the destructive effects of homophobia -- particularly in the guise of religion. Writes Sullivan:

"If you teach people that something as deep inside them as their very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets."

See what I mean -- Sullivan was clearly paraphrasing what homophobes say, and showing how such teachings have a harmful effect on gays. Goldstein's distortion makes it appear that the arguments Sullivan is explicitly criticizing are, in fact, Sullivan's views.

Here's another example. Goldstein writes (again, in his Nation article) of "homocons," saying that "they push a single, morally correct way to be gay," and adds, "The gay right is ready to lead a charge on behalf of what it calls "gender patriotism"."

In fact, the only actual use of this phrase is in a bit of drollery titled "Gender Patriots" by IGF's own Dale Carpenter, which is a sarcastic look at queer "gender rebels" who think gays must take up arms against gender differentiation. Carpenter writes:

"Poor souls, our rebels must try to enlist us in a war against gender that few of us believe in, and indeed, one in which most of us appear to be fierce partisans for the other side. It seems that someone, whether from the far right or the far left, is always trying to tell us how to live. But the gender rebels are entitled to their idiosyncratic strategy for achieving equality. I will leave them to the care of Karl Ulrichs, the "third sex" theory, the mythical urnings, and the other anti-gay stereotypes they hold so dear. We gender patriots have work to do."

Looking askew at militant gender rebels is hardly a call to enforce rigid gender roles. And, in fact, it is Goldstein and the gay left who more accurately could be charged with holding out only one correct way to be gay -- the left's way. They, in truth, are the real "attack queers."

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Symbolic Affirmation: Big Deal. One of the bigger stories of Lesbian and Gay Pride Month has been the issuance, or non-issuance, of government proclamations marking June's pride celebrations as "official" (i.e., government recognized). This controversy plays out in localities, states, and at the federal level as officials who court the gay voting bloc sign Pride proclamations, while those who fear alienating social conservatives forgo the exercise. However, when proclamations are issued by cities and states -- or even when Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to formally recognize Pride Month -- the move gets barely any media play. The world at large just doesn't consider this a big deal. However, among lesbigay activists and organizers, it's a very big deal indeed, and much effort is directed into securing proclamations -- and denouncing those officials who choose not to make them.

Which brings us to President Bush, who again declined to issue an official Gay Pride Month proclamation. Said White House Spokeswoman Anne Womack, "The president believes every person should be treated with dignity and respect, but he does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation."

"Bush won't recognize Gay Pride month," declared a story on the planetout.com website:

"[Bush"s] refusal to issue a proclamation is a big deal to us," said Rob Sadler, a board member of Federal GLOBE, a group for GLBT federal employees. "Issuing a proclamation is totally a symbolic act, it doesn't give us any additional tangible rights, but it helps people who work for the federal government feel valued as an employee and it makes us feel like we're doing a good job," said Sadler.

See, I told you it was a "big deal." After all, how can you "feel valued" without an official government proclamation attesting to your inherent worth?

A different view, as you might expect, was voiced by the pro-Bush Log Cabin Republicans. LCR spokesman Kevin Ivers responded in the same article that:

the absence of the proclamation shouldn't be such a big deal. In fact, while the attorney general, John Ashcroft, is a well-known Republican conservative, his second in command, Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, will speak at the gay pride celebration on June 19 in the Justice Department's Great Hall. "This shows that the country is changing for the better," said Ivers." We shouldn't get so hypersensitive about symbolism. Symbolic acts are important, yes, but we have more important things to work on."

But for the activist-minded, symbolism -- and its alleged power -- IS what matters. That's why many activists will admit that even if hate crimes bills and anti-discrimination laws won't actually have much impact in terms of actual litigation, they are important because of the symbolism of "inclusion."

Bush's Balancing Act. Aside from the gay pride celebration at the Justice Department, the Washington Post reports that at the Commerce Department, management is allowing gay employees to proceed with events but has withheld official sponsorship. Official pride proclamations, however, have been issued by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (ok, he's a liberal, anti-profiling-at-airports Democrat) and by Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman. And the State Department co-sponsored with the group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (that's GLIFAA) a talk by Rep. Jim Kolbe, the openly gay Republican congressman from Arizona, on the global challenge of HIV and AIDS.

For symbolism counters, you"d think this was a fairly good haul. But the negative always trumps the positive, and a group of gay employees at the Commerce Department has now filed a complaint charging the agency with discrimination based on sexual orientation. According to another Washington Post story, "Part of the complaint"can be traced to a Commerce decision last year to end official sponsorship of gay pride activities," and the fact that this year the Patent and Trademark Office, a Commerce agency, pulled back its sponsorship of gay pride activities. "Gay pride events will go forward", the Post reports, "but will be sponsored by a gay employee group."

Well, I"m all for symbolic inclusion, but elevating the issuing of pride proclamations into a top movement goal strikes me as identity politics at its silliest. This is the deal: Politicians who are elected with a big gay bloc are more likely to issue proclamations. Bush's constituency, on the other hand, includes a much larger bloc of social conservatives. He"d like not to alienate them will symbolic kow-towing to gay activists, but he"d also like to court a larger share of GOP-leaning gay voters, too. So this administration, which has made several high-level openly gay appointments -- from the head of national AIDS policy to the ambassador to Romania -- is allowing more pride recognition events, with and without "official" sponsorship at the Cabinet level, than any previous GOP administration, but is withholding the big proclamation by the president himself.

Know what? If more gays vote for Bush in 2004, you can bet that he"ll go even further. That's politics, folks.

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The Nostalgia of the Queer Left

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TOWARD THE MIDDLE of his thin new book, The Attack Queers, Richard Goldstein unintentionally reveals what rouses the self-described "queers" among us from bed in the morning. Goldstein, a columnist for the Village Voice, recounts the "elation" he felt at having marched in the 1994 New York St. Patrick's Day Parade with a small group of Irish gays. "We strode past a million people shrieking epithets," he writes of the "frenzied" crowd that greeted the gay contingent. "It was a terrifying spectacle, but utterly exhilarating." Styled as a critique of the gay right, the book reveals far more about the nostalgia for alienation and danger that captivates the queer left.

En route from flawed premises to paranoid conclusion, Goldstein's thesis is this: An insidious alliance between the liberal media and the gay right (the "attack queers" of the title) is undermining the historic commitment of the queer community to liberationist culture and politics.

What's the evidence of this improbable collaboration between the liberal media and "homocons"? Mostly that Andrew Sullivan gets to write columns for the New York Times Magazine and queer leftists don't. It never occurs to Goldstein that the reason for this might be that Sullivan is a better and more original essayist than, say, Michelangelo Signorile. But Sullivan has now been banned from the Times, making the alliance about as durable as the Soviet-German pact of 1939.

Moreover, to sustain this dubious thesis would require a basic understanding of the "gay right." But it's apparent that Goldstein's understanding is limited to a few provocative passages from Sullivan's work (with a little Camille Paglia and Norah Vincent thrown in for gender equity).

Important authors of the gay right go unnoticed. There are only passing nods to Bruce Bawer's seminal book A Place at the Table, of which Goldstein seems to have read only the title. There is no mention of Jonathan Rauch, a senior writer for the National Journal and a regular contributor to The Atlantic. Many more such omissions mar the book.

Even Goldstein's treatment of Sullivan is superficial. There are so many references to Sullivan's "monster" pecs and glutes, as opposed to his actual ideas, that one wonders whether Goldstein's interest in him goes beyond the ideological.

Goldstein also appears oblivious to the well known differences on the political right between conservatives and libertarians. He sees a monolith where there is schism and subtlety.

Not surprisingly, when Goldstein attempts to describe the gay right he falls back on hackneyed caricatures. So he asserts in myriad ways that the gay right "deeply fear[s] difference" and that it thinks there is only one correct way to be gay.

Very nearly the opposite is true. As ideological dissenters from orthodoxy, often maligned for that difference, gay conservatives and libertarians are keenly aware of the value of diversity and of tolerance for difference.

But when queer leftists speak of diversity they do not mean the ideological kind. They mean something very prescriptive about the way gay life is to be lived. They sneer at the deepest aspiration of most gay people for normal lives, lives characterized by acceptance from family and community.

Any affirmation of that impulse is seen by the queer left as a surrender of our alien selves to the dominant culture and as somehow threatening to those who are not, and may never be, accepted.

When challenged to identify what makes gay people fundamentally different from straight people, liberationists tend to offer a short and ambiguous list. Goldstein seems to think it resides in a gay "sensibility" revealed in gay fiction writing. This sensibility comprises "a distinct aesthetic, socially acute and earnestly romantic, albeit laced with irony." Or try this formulation: gays have a "certain temperament, a sensitivity to the complexities of desire, a perspective on society."

If these platitudes mean anything, and it's unclear they do, they reveal an impoverished appreciation for life as lived outside the small circle of writers who produce trendy works like Angels in America.

If there is a distinct gay sensibility, it's unlikely to have come from pleasant parlor readings of Whitman and Proust. It's more likely to have been generated by the constant fear of police raids on gay bars, the snooping of the FBI on early gay organizations, the threat of prosecution for intimacies in one's own home, the separation from the important social recognition marriage offers. That is, it's likely to have come from the government action the dreaded gay right is most concerned to eliminate forever from our lives.

Romanticizing alienation from the norm is the nostalgia of the queer left. Consider the way Goldstein describes the recent efforts of Greenwich Village residents trying to make their neighborhood safer and to protect the value of their property by reducing the presence of drug dealing and public sex. "This has nothing to do with gayness," one lesbian resident told the media. But Goldstein disagrees: "It has everything to do with gayness as it once was, and little to do with what it's becoming."

Here we have real irony. Criticizing gay conservatives, Goldstein ends by calling for a return to "tradition": "the tradition [of 'queer humanism'] that has always held gay people together," "the tradition that consoled us in oppression." He wants us to be progressive by regressing, recapturing some imagined solidarity forged by a brutality it is our aim to end. He wants the frenzied million shrieking at him, as they once did, exhilarating him.

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Hate Crimes Rashomon. Gay politics can be like the classic Japanese film in which the same incident is seen in vastly different ways by various characters. The question is, which interpretation of events seems closer to objective reality, and which is more likely to be informed by ulterior agendas?

On June 11, the Log Cabin Republicans issues a press release titled "LCR Disappointed with Senate Democrats on Hate Crimes Maneuvers, But Optimistic That Breakthrough is Near." Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign, which is closely tied to the Democratic Party (despite a few token Republican endorsements), issued a release titled "Republican Senate Leadership Stalls Hate Crimes Bill." Like I said, it's Rashomon.

At issue is what happened with a federal hate crimes bill that both LCR and HRC support. According to HRC, "Senate Republican leaders strong-armed Republican supporters" to oppose a motion that would have ended debate and brought the bill up for a vote. Said HRC head Elizabeth Birch, "While the Republican leadership talks about wanting to move the business of the nation forward, when it comes to hate crimes legislation, they went out of their way to grind the nation's business to a halt."

But wait, here's LCR's interpretation of the exact same events. "Despite".a pledge on the Senate floor by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) -- the lead Republican on the Judiciary Committee -- to work with the bill's lead sponsors in order to "make the House accept it" and strengthen its chances of enactment into law with improving amendments, the Democratic leadership forced a procedural vote to cut off all debate -- a strategy which drove two original co-sponsors of the bill to vote against them." As LCR explains it, the Republican majority in the House is not going to vote for the bill as it now stands. A major issue is a provision that makes crimes based on gender the subject of federal prosecution, which conservatives fear would, in effect, federalize the prosecution of rape cases at the expense of local law enforcement.

But is the inclusion of "sexual orientation" also at issue? No, says LCR: "In his floor remarks, Sen. Hatch reviewed a series of brutal hate crimes, most of which were committed against gays and, in one case, a transgendered American, and said "no one is more committed than I am" in fighting such crimes with an enhanced federal role, including crimes against gay Americans."

Hatch wants to see the bill pass, says LCR, but wants to offer amendments to gain House support. Hatch's amendments "would leave the definition of a hate crime intact, including sexual orientation," but make modifications involving the relationship between the Justice Department and local authorities. Significantly, Hatch also wants compromise language that would both "ensure the inclusion of gender in the bill"as a protected category" but also address concerns about the federal impact on state prosecution of rape cases.

As LCR sees it, the Democrat leadership entered a motion to cut off debate "only minutes after the bill was brought up, not allowing Hatch's amendments to even be considered." Key Republican sponsors, including Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sen John Ensign (R-NV), then voted against the motion to bring the bill to a vote sans amendments. In this version: "The Democrats used a high-risk strategy"and it not only failed but insulted supporters and prevented a breakthrough deal," said LCR head Rich Tafel.

Maybe both sides are playing politics. But, from my point of view, the Democrats know they have more to gain going into the November election by blaming Republicans for blocking the bill, then by making reasonable compromises over legitimate jurisdictional issues and letting the thing pass. As with the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which the Dems may also bring up knowing it won't pass the GOP House, the game is to mobilize gay voters by ensuring legislative defeat (or near defeat, as long as the GOP can be made the focus of blame). And in this game, HRC knows very well the role it's been assigned to play.

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