IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared May 15, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA did a poor job of covering the assassination of openly gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. They unthinkingly repeated the Progressive propaganda claim that he was a right-wing extremist despite the evidence of their own eyes.

Time Magazine called him a member of the "far right." The Associated Press called him a "far right leader" but later admitted he "never fit conveniently into the image of 'extreme right-winger.'" Not that that made them stop and think about what they were writing.

The New York Times referred to him as "maverick right wing populist" - as if that conveyed any meaning - and only later admitted that he "defended an eclectic mix of ideas of both the left and the right."

Perhaps the most incompetent labeling was by the Chicago Tribune which headlined, "Far-right leader killed" with a first paragraph that began "Maverick Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, rising star of the far right in Europe, ... "

Not until the 18th paragraph (if anyone bothered to read that far) did the Tribune's witless reporter deign to mention that "Fortuyn was not a traditional far-right politician ... With his bohemian attitudes, Fortuyn always seemed more in tune with the spirit of a modern, progressive Holland than many of the establishment politician...."

The Tribune continued: "Holland was the first country in Europe to legalize homosexual marriages, regulate prostitution, and permit the sale of marijuana in its famous 'cannabis cafes,' all of which Fortuyn supported."

So it turned out that the sort of "far right politician" Fortuyn was - was, well, "modern" and "progressive." But we mustn't let facts about his actual positions keep us from using stigmatizing labels, must we!

Fortuyn not only supported legal marijuana and prostitution and gay marriage, but right-to-die, reproductive choice and a host of other issues favored by the left. And, as Fortuyn repeatedly emphasized, even his controversial proposal to ban immigration was designed to protect Dutch liberal tolerance from being undermined by authoritarian Muslim immigrants with sexist and homophobic religious views.

So how useful are these labels "left" and "right," "progressive" and conservative"?

For instance: Is gay marriage progressive or conservative? Maybe it is progressive if you advocate it where it doesn't exist, but right-wing if you want to keep it where it does exist. So Dutch Muslims who oppose gay equality are Progressive since they advocate change? Or, if preserving gay marriage is conservative, what is the Dutch left-wing position on gay marriage? The same as the conservative? You see the problems.

• What positions count as "left" or "right"? Are we talking in temporal terms (change versus stasis) in which left and right depend on the political context, or are some issues inherently or necessarily left or right? E.g., is legal abortion always the progressive position?
• How can we accurately label someone who draws positions from both the left and right - e.g., gay marriage, legalized drugs and right-to-die, as well as lower taxes, reduced welfare and privatization of government functions? Which issues should be used for labeling purposes?

Either we have to rank the issues' importance according to some criterion or other and chose the most significant one(s) - or else we have to count up which side most of a person's positions are and use that. Neither seems satisfactory. What if they contradict?

• So: if "left" and "right" are not a very useful way to divide up policy positions, are there better conceptual models available? Are there some, unchanging root philosophical views that can give us a better insight into policy positions? I think there are.

Although Fortuyn was not quite a libertarian, his positions do seem rooted in a neo-liberal ethic of personal liberty, autonomy and accountability, opposing the right of the government to interfere in people's lives, or play favorites on "lifestyle" matters (like sexuality).

That suggests a consistency behind favoring legalized drugs, right to die and gay marriage as well as lower taxes and a reduced welfare state. Certainly governments reduce personal liberty if they take a lot of the money you spent time and effort to earn and give it to someone else to spend.

Someone like Fortuyn then functions as a sort of Rorschach inkblot. Most people looked at the aspect of personal liberty that is most threatening to their ideology to determine the label they applied to him.

Dutch evangelical Christian and Muslim fundamentalists - who opposed his positions on social issues - would presumably think of him as "left-wing." People who labeled him "right-wing," were "progressives" angered by Fortuyn's desire to cut back the extensive welfare state (including endless welfare for new immigrants).

In the end, Progressives seem more interested in redistributing income (called "economic democracy") and enlarging the government than in preserving personal and civil liberties. Conservatives are more interested in imposing restrictive social policies than in preserving economic liberties. When forced to choose, neither side's first agenda is liberty, but expanding control over people's lives.

Originally appeared May 13, 2002, on the author's website, BruceBawer.com.

Few political figures in recent years have been so widely misrepresented as Pim Fortuyn, who prior to his murder last Monday had been expected to win big in this week's Dutch elections. Fortuyn was almost universally characterized in the U.S. and European media as a paradox: a fascist bigot who sought to close his country's borders to Moslem immigrants but who was also, perversely enough, openly gay.

The image is outrageously unjust. Though his populist style might not have appealed to everyone, Fortuyn was no fascist but a democrat - a passionate believer in Western freedom, tolerance, and pluralism. His party leadership was a racial and ethnic mosaic; his death was mourned by Dutchmen from a broad range of religious and cultural backgrounds. His animus was not against Moslem immigrants themselves but against their often chilling prejudices, which he rightfully recognized as a threat to Dutch democracy. As for his homosexuality, far from being a weird incongruity, it was central to his politics: for his identity as a gay man made it impossible for him to ignore the seriousness of such threats.

Indeed, it is impossible to understand Fortuyn's politics without underscoring a vital fact: namely, that he was an openly gay man living in the only nation on earth where homosexuals enjoy absolutely equal rights - and, perhaps, the nation that offers homosexuals the world's highest degree of social acceptance. Dutch public schools teach children to view the sexes as equal and to regard sexual orientation as a matter of indifference. This is the culmination of a long and extraordinary tradition of Dutch liberty that predates - and that influenced - both the American and French revolutions. It is no coincidence that it was a Dutchman, Spinoza, who more than a century before those revolutions wrote that "the purpose of the state is really freedom."

Fortuyn cherished Dutch freedom - cherished it so much that he refused to close his eyes to the serious challenge it faced from forces within his country's growing Moslem community (which at present makes up about 7 percent of the Dutch population). For decades, Moslems had immigrated to the Netherlands in large numbers; but what resulted was not integration so much as the establishment of insular Islamic communities within Dutch society - including schools that imbued children with prejudices the Dutch thought their country had long since risen above. Within those communities, Fortuyn knew, were women (many of them Dutch-born) who were hardly freer than women under the Taliban. There were religious leaders who expressed anti-democratic views with increasing boldness - among them the imam of Rotterdam (Fortuyn's own city), who in May of last year publicly denounced homosexuality as a "damaging sickness." And then there were the Moslem youths in the town of Ede who took to the streets on September 11, 2001, to celebrate the terrorist attacks on America. Fortuyn knew that, given the higher Moslem birth rate and continued immigration, the percentage of Dutch residents who shared such sentiments could only grow.

What did such developments mean for the future of democracy in the Netherlands - which Descartes, as far back as the 17th century, had described as the only place on earth where one could find absolute liberty? What, for example, would happen to same-sex marriage - that triumph of Dutch liberal democracy - when fundamentalist Moslems gained enough power to eradicate it? After all, Islamic countries not only prohibit gay marriage: they execute people for sodomy. Fortuyn knew that if Dutch Moslems had their way, such punishments would be instituted in the Netherlands as well. Shouldn't any democracy that truly respected its gay citizens take such things seriously? Yet most Dutch politicians, for all their purported liberalism and their vocal proclamations of support for gay rights, would not go near such questions. Fortuyn took them by the horns. His doing so was not an act of intolerance, but an appalled and courageous reaction to intolerance in a country whose media and political establishment are typically silent on such issues.

Right-wing bigot? Hardly. On most issues, Fortuyn was far more liberal than anyone in the U.S. political mainstream. As for the issue of Islam and immigration, if it is honorably liberal to sound the alarm about male supremacism and hatred for homosexuals within fundamentalist Christian communities, why call someone a right-wing extremist bigot for taking these prejudices equally seriously when held by fundamentalist Moslems? Reading some recent misrepresentations of Fortuyn, one has the impression that journalists' consideration for the sensitivities of fundamentalist Moslems has far outweighed their regard for the very right of homosexuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Most Dutch people, however, seem to get it. The impact of Fortuyn's murder on his homeland can hardly be overstated. He voiced concerns that have long troubled his fellow Dutchmen - and others throughout western Europe - but that they didn't dare express. Those concerns cannot be silenced by a few bullets. Indeed, the European movement for immigration reform has only just begun. The new leader of Fortuyn's party, a black man whose parents immigrated from the Cape Verde Islands, may or may not take Fortuyn's place as head of the movement; we must only hope that whoever does will, like Fortuyn, be a genuine democrat and not a Le Pen or a Haider.

For the number-one political problem right now, in the Netherlands and across western Europe, is sorting out genuine racism from the desire to seriously address the challenges to democracy posed by many immigrants' religious beliefs, social prejudices, and political views. The longer these challenges endure without being given sincere attention, the higher an increase there will be in actual bigotry and cultural polarization. It was just such a future that Pim Fortuyn labored so energetically to avoid.

Originally appeared in slightly different form May 1, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

IT HAS BEEN FASCINATING to watch the ballooning disclosures of sexual improprieties by Catholic priests and the crisis management efforts at minimization, cover-up, denial, and blame shifting by the Catholic hierarchy - as well as the attempts by various Catholic factions to promote their own agendas - from doctrinal crackdown and the expulsion of gay priests to abandoning celibacy and ordaining female priests.

Those of us who are not Catholic have no vested interest in how all this turns out but perhaps it is worthwhile offering some speculations about why this situation arises, if only to stimulate others to offer better speculations.

1. Celibacy is contrary to human nature - that is, the nature of "the human person."

Sex is built into us: It is how we evolved and it is why we evolved. Our ancestors are the early humans who felt the most sexual desire and so had the most sex, passing their genes down to us. No doubt there are some people who because of low sexual desire or superhuman effort can achieve celibacy, but we should not be surprised when many do not.

Accordingly, there are limits to any institution's ability to regulate sex by laws, rules, injunctions, threats, bribes, etc. Churches that try the hardest to regulate sex, channeling it or forbidding it, have more problems with sex than other churches, not just because they are fighting against an intrinsic part of "the human person," but also because they keep people's mind focused on whatever they are supposed to avoid.

2. The Catholic church presumably expects priests to have a healthy, mature attitude toward sex so they can manage their celibacy intelligently.

But it is difficult to know how anyone who has not experienced something significant, such as sex, can know what they are giving up, be sure it was a wise decision, or have a genuinely healthy attitude toward it. It seems possible that they will develop an unhealthy aversion or unhealthy curiosity, or a distorted understanding of its role in the human psyche, including their own.

And maturity is a process that is based on experience and reflection on that experience. How can a sexually inexperienced seminarian acquire the necessary experience to develop this mature attitude? Or if a priest only had sex only as a youth, how can his understanding develop beyond the understanding he had at that point? Isn't it just as likely to be halted, fixated at that age of understanding - and possibly at that age of attraction?

3. If bright, sensitive Catholic youths feel little interest in dating and find they are not strongly attracted to women, they - or their parents - may mistake that response for a call to the priesthood and celibacy. But as many of us know from our own experience, a lack of strong interest in girls and dating was simply a function of being gay but not being fully aware of it yet.

In a religious culture that remains lingeringly repressive and officially homophobic, it may be especially difficult for gay youths to come to the realization they are gay. They may suppress that self-understanding and adopt a false consciousness of "having a vocation," only to realize years later that they were deceiving themselves. Worse yet, many parents and relatives, for their own selfish reasons, may support and encourage the youth's self-deception.

However odd it seems to say so, it may be best to acknowledge that pushing any youth into the priesthood track before he fully understands himself constitutes a particularly offensive kind of child abuse. Yet, an international Catholic organization called the Legion of Christ reportedly recruits boys as young as 10 to leave their families and follow a course of study to become priests.

4. Attempting to expel gay priests, even if one could find them, might have less effect than many conservative Catholics seem to assume.

Some, many of the priests who perpetrate sexual contacts with young males may not be homosexual at all. Sexual desire is sexual desire, and under pressure the usual direction of preference may break down. This is facilitated by the fact that underage teenage youths may be slender and slightly androgynous, lacking some of the distinguishing physical features of adult masculinity.

We have the readily available parallel of heterosexual men in prisons. Deprived of their preferred outlets for sex, a large proportion make do with what is available; then when they return to civil society they resume their preferred behavior.

5. The Catholic church uniquely provides prolonged clerical contact with young males in large numbers through the structure of the Catholic educational system and religious practice - from clerical involvement in Catholic high schools and seminaries to all-male retreats and the institution of altar boys.

Above all, the institution of private confession produces an unusual degree of emotional and psychological vulnerability, repeatedly stirring up a heady mix of sex, guilt, and defenselessness, and provides regular occasions when youths may reveal themselves as confused, vulnerable, or manipulatable.

No doubt much more is involved than I have suggested here. But so far I have seen too little serious discussion of how the Catholic church itself brings about the very situation it claims to deplore.

Originally appeared in the May 2002 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.

LAST YEAR the Census Bureau reported a statistic that deserved wider notice than it received: during the 1990s the number of unmarried-partner households in the United States increased by 72 percent. Cohabitation has actually been on the rise for decades, but it started from a small base. Now the numbers (more than five million cohabiting couples) are beginning to look impressive.

Marriage, meanwhile, is headed in the other direction. The annual number of weddings per 1,000 eligible women fell by more than a third from 1970 to 1996. A lot of factors are at work here - for example, people are marrying later - but it seems clear that one of them is the rise in cohabitation. Couples are simply more willing to live together without tying the knot.

Whether this is a bad thing is a contentious question, but it is almost certainly not a good thing. Cohabitation tends to be both less stable and less happy than marriage, and this appears to be true even after accounting for the possibility that the cohabiting type of person may often be different from the marrying type. Research suggests that marriage itself brings something beneficial to the table. Add the fact that a growing share of cohabiting households - now more than a third of them - contain children, and it is hard to be enthusiastic about the trend.

Whom to blame? In part, homosexual couples like me and my partner. Cohabitation used to be stigmatized. "Living in sin" it has been called in recent memory, even among the educated classes. Today cohabitation is often viewed as a different-but-equal alternative to wedlock. Although the drift toward cohabitation would no doubt have happened anyway, the growing visibility and acceptance of same-sex couples probably speeded the change. As one gay activist told the Los Angeles Times last year, "Just the term 'unmarried partner' gave it a dignity and social category."

So (conservatives say) it's true! Homosexuals undermine marriage! To the contrary. The culprit is not the presence of same-sex couples; it is the absence of same-sex marriage.

The emergence into the open of same-sex relationships is an irreversible fact in this country. Traditionalists may not like it, but they cannot change it, so they will have to decide how to deal with it. The far right's plan - try to push homosexuals back into the closet - is not going to work; the majority of Americans are too openhearted for that. Indeed, the currents of public opinion are running the other way. An annual survey of college freshmen found that last year 58 percent - a record high, and up from 51 percent in 1997 - thought that same-sex couples should be able to marry.

Seeing those numbers and others like them, conservatives are desperate to stave off same-sex marriage. For that matter, many moderates remain queasy about legalizing gay marriage; they are sympathetic to homosexuals, but not that sympathetic. Liberation-minded leftists, who spent the 1970s telling us that our parents' marriages were outdated and stuffy, were never crazy about matrimony to begin with. As for gays, the vast majority want the right to marry, but most agree that domestic-partner benefits and other "marriage-lite" arrangements are a lot better than nothing.

The result is the ABM Pact: Anything But Marriage. Enroll same-sex partners in the company health plan, give them some of the legal prerogatives of spousehood, attend their commitment ceremonies, let them register at city hall as partners - just DON'T CALL IT MARRIAGE. In America, and in Europe, too, ABM is rapidly establishing itself as the compromise of choice. Gay partnerships get some social and legal recognition, marriage remains the union of man and woman, and everybody moves on. A shrewd social bargain, no?

No. The last thing supporters of marriage should be doing is setting up an assortment of alternatives, but that is exactly what the ABM Pact does, and not only for gays. Every year more companies and governments (at the state and local level) grant marriagelike benefits to cohabiting partners: "concessions fought for and won mostly by gay groups," as the Los Angeles Times notes, "but enjoyed as well by the much larger population of heterosexual unmarried couples." To which might be added what I think of as the Will & Grace effect: homosexuals are here, we're queer, and nowadays we're kind of cool. ABM, perversely, turns one of the country's more culturally visible minorities into an advertisement for just how cool and successful life outside of wedlock can be.

I doubt that most homosexuals would take their marital vows less seriously than heterosexuals do, as some conservatives insist. Even if I'm wrong, however, surely the exemplary power of failed or unfaithful gay marriages would pale next to the example currently being set by a whole group - an increasingly fashionable group - among whom love and romance and sex and commitment flourish entirely outside of marriage. And can you imagine social conservatives telling any other group to cohabit rather than marry? Can you imagine them saying, "The young men of America's inner cities won't take marriage as seriously as they should, so let's encourage them to shack up with their girlfriends"?

Those who worry about the example gays would set by marrying should be much more worried about the example gays are already setting by not marrying. In getting this backward the advocates of ABM make a mistake that is both ironic and sad. At a time when marriage needs all the support and participation it can get, homosexuals are pleading to move beyond cohabitation. We want the licenses, the vows, the rings, the honeymoons, the anniversaries, the benefits, and, yes, the responsibilities and the routines. And who is telling us to just shack up instead? Self-styled friends of matrimony. Someday conservatives will look back and wonder why they undermined marriage in an effort to keep homosexuals out.