IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared February 13, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

FOR SOME AMERICANS, gays and lesbians are still the dark shadow that hovers at the edge of polite society, waiting to swallow their children.

Maybe they've never articulated their fear, even to themselves; or maybe they still think that we will molest their children or entice them (gasp!) to be like us. They are afraid that being raised by lesbians or gay men will make children unacceptably different - that it will masculinize girls, femininize boys, or simply make them unlike other children and so worse off. They believe that it is one of their sacred duties as parents or potential parents to keep the most vulnerable members of society from swaying under our influence.

But what they forget is that many of us are parents or potential parents already. Between one and 10 million children have at least one gay or lesbian parent. They have come from our bodies or from the bodies of our partners - or we have planned for them, searched for them, waited and hoped and prayed. We have walked the floors with sick children at night, we have helped them with math homework, we have driven them to soccer games. And it is this fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics was honoring this month when it announced that it supported the rights of gays and lesbians to adopt their partner's children.

"Children who are born to or adopted by one member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of two legally recognized parents," the academy said in Pediatrics, its scientific journal.

This is important, because only six states (Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont) and Washington, D.C., currently allow second-parent adoptions outright. Three ban them. And in the rest of the 41 states, the laws are murky, making parents unsure of what their rights actually are until they test them out.

Adoption protects the rights of children, as well as parents. If one parent dies or is incapacitated, adoption permits children to stay in the security of their home with their other parent. It offers them Social Security survivor benefits. It gives children access to health benefits and provides them with a second parent who can consent to medical care. It creates legal ties between a child and each of her parents in the event the adults separate. Basically, it establishes the right for gay and lesbian couples and their children to be families under the law.

Of course this frightens some people. Why wouldn't it? It threatens their very notion of the building blocks of society. Because if the law declares that a lesbian couple and their children are a family, entitled to the legal rights that a family has, then it begins to seem absurd that the couple isn't entitled to the legal benefits of marriage.

Either mother can be her child's next of kin if the child lands in the hospital-�but in most states, neither parent can be the automatic next of kin for each other. The surviving partner doesn't receive Social Security benefits. If the employer of one spouse isn't generous or isn't required to provide benefits by their local state or municipality, the other partner might not have access to health benefits while helping raise their child. The family circle is left with a ragged, gaping tear.

For us, first comes children - but never comes marriage, or at least legal unions in 49 states.

Even so, the American Academy for Pediatrics ruling brings us a step closer to having our families recognized. The widely-respected 55,000 member institution recognizes that we raise healthy, well-adjusted kids-or at least as healthy and well-adjusted as the kids heterosexuals raise. We are just as loving, just as supportive. And our children are just about as likely to be gay, though one study has said they are more likely to be tolerant of gays and lesbians.

But most of all, it recognizes that we have already created and are already creating families. We already have children in our homes, our hearts and our lives. Now we simply need laws in the other 43 states to catch up with the reality.

What the Academy recognizes is that we are like every other family in America except for one thing - our children are not guaranteed the protection of their second parent in places where they cannot be adopted.

The new policy statement doesn't change anything, of course. The laws are still as they were. But hopefully these pediatricians will influence the changing of the laws, both through their collective and individual weight. Hopefully courts will point to this policy statement and decide in favor of America's children, agreeing that since America's pediatricians have declared that it is healthiest for children to be adopted by their second parent, the court will not stand in the way of that adoption.

Until then, we still have work to do. Parents or not, we need to stand together and support through letters to our newspapers and public officials the right of gays and lesbians to adopt their own children. Because the fact is that our families are no different than America's other families - only the laws remain to be changed.

Originally appeared Feb. 6, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

It was bad enough that Afghanistan's repressive Taliban regime publicly executed at least five gay men during its brief existence. Then we learned of Egypt's ongoing arrest, imprisonment and possible torture of gay men, charging them with "offenses against religion" (i.e., Islam).

Now we learn that on January 1, 2002, Saudi Arabian authorities publicly beheaded three gay men after Islamic religious courts in the southwestern city of Abha declared them guilty of "engaging in the extreme obscenity and ugly acts of homosexuality, marrying among themselves and molesting the young," charges obviously exaggerated to provoke public outrage.

With the defeat of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia is now the world's most repressive Islamic regime - with its Taliban-like, truncheon-wielding religious police, a nationwide ban on other religions, state support for fundamentalist religious schools, and complete censorship of media and the Internet.

Troublingly, there have been few noticeable condemnations of the Saudi executions from human rights groups, none from moderate Islamic groups, no expressions of concern from the U.S. or Western European governments.

Gay, human rights and civil liberties groups, here and abroad, should be protesting to the Saudi embassies and the Saudi government. Gay and gay-supportive groups could picket and demonstrate outside the Saudi embassy in Washington. Individual gays and lesbians could send letters of concern and Faxes to the embassy.

The hope would be to raise awareness of the executions and warn repressive Islamic regimes that there is declining public support for American financial or technological aid or military protection for anti-gay regimes.

The Saudi's American ambassador, Prince Bandar, is a key members of the ruling Saud family. If he detected growing U.S. disapproval, with its possible policy consequences, he would transmit that message back to his government.

We may anticipate that in the short run such protests would have little or no impact on the Saudis or the Egyptians since the arrests and execution of gays are generated by a powerful internal dynamic that we have little ability to influence.

In both nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, corrupt, repressive and undemocratic regimes try to mitigate internal political dissent and pressures for social and economic reform by conspicuously enforcing traditional Islamic law and its strict codes of sexual morality.

Arresting and executing gays (along with much else) is part of their means of staying in power. It is meant to reassure a restive populace that they are pious, uphold Islam, have not capitulated to Western decadence and do not need to be reformed.

Against such a strong dynamic any direct actions at our disposal will be frustratingly ineffective. No doubt, too, all the potentially effective actions are frustratingly indirect. Nonetheless we ought to try them - because there is nothing else.

Ultimately tolerance of gays will not happen apart from an overall moderation and liberalization of Muslim societies. Hence we should support initiatives that will force, induce or assist conservative Muslim nations to move toward becoming more tolerant, pluralistic, open societies.

Writing in the January 2002 issue of "Foreign Affairs" former ambassador Martin Indyk sketches out several general policy approaches in dealing with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which I freely adapt, alter, and supplement here to gay-specific purposes.

Conservative Islamic governments must stop subsidizing religious schools that teach an intolerant, fundamentalist version of Islam. Instead, they must begin providing economic and moral support as well as media exposure for moderate Islamic spokesmen and clerics.

They must begin to permit more democracy and popular participation in order to provide an alternative outlet for dissent besides support for fundamentalist Islam. In addition, as foreign policy analyst Joshua Muravchik pointed out, democracy not only allows legitimate grievances to be addressed but people also begin to learn the virtues of moderation and compromise.

They must be pressured to promote an independent "civil society" separate from both religion and government whose institutions would help create the social and political space for Muslim gays to breath and begin to articulate their concerns - as they cannot now.

They must initiate neo-liberal economic reforms to promote private business and industry that can give people independence from government and religious control, a stake in social and economic progress, and personally meaningful work to reduce their psychological need for religious validation of their lives.

They must be persuaded that their persecution of gays promotes disrespect and disdain for Islam, damaging the Islamic cause, by inclining people around the world to view Islam as a narrow, retrograde and punitive religion rather than as a great religious tradition worthy of respect and consideration.

They must stop demonizing America and other liberal Western nations as decadent or Satanic in their state-owned media and schools and begin portraying America as a humane, successful and virtuous nation worthy of respect and emulation.

This is particularly important for gays because America is prominently associated with the acceptance of gays and seen as a fountainhead of the gay movement. As moderate Muslims gradually change their view of the U.S., they may come to see persecution of gays as a cultural excrescence and emblem of social weakness rather than strength.

Originally appeared Jan. 30, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

A RECORD HIGH 58 PERCENT of college freshmen think gay and lesbian couples should have the right to "equal marital status," i.e., civil marriage, according to a survey conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI).

Confirming the pro-gay sentiment, the survey of more than 281,000 freshmen last fall also found that only 25 percent think there should be "laws prohibiting homosexual relationships," the lowest support for that view since the survey first asked about it in 1976.

Both items show an increase in gay support of about 2 points over the 2000 survey, paralleling a similar 2 point increase in the number of students describing themselves as "liberal."

But since only 30 percent of the students say they are either "liberal" (27 percent) or "far left" (3 percent), that means half of the support for gay civil marriage comes from students who say they are "middle-of-the-road" or even "conservative."

In other words, support for gay civil marriage is becoming the "middle of the road" position, perhaps even picking up some small support among "conservative" students who grasp the social benefits of stabilized relationships.

Although the term "legal marital relationships" seems clear, "laws prohibiting homosexual relationships" is not. When the item was introduced in 1976, it referred to sodomy laws, and many students may still think so. However, some states have recently passed "defense of marriage" laws to bar recognition of gay marriage, so other students may now think it refers to those.

That ambiguity is what led the HERI to add the item specifically about "legal marital status" in 1997. At present, it may be best to view the "homosexual relationships" item as an index of tolerance for gays and the "legal marital status" item as an index of the acceptance of gays as equal citizens.

The survey report ("The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2001") also provides a useful breakdown by the sex of the respondents and their schools' average SAT scores, religious affiliation, and private or government ownership.

As in previous years, freshman women were far more gay-supportive than men. Nearly two-thirds of the women (65 percent) supported gay civil marriage, but not quite half of the men (49 percent). The 16 percentage point gender difference was one of the largest for responses on any public issue.

The difference is interesting because women generally are more sexually conservative than men. For instance, 55 percent of the men think it is all right for two people to have sex even if they have known each other for only a short time, but only 32 percent of the women think so.

Most of the freshmen at Catholic colleges (61 percent) and nonsectarian private colleges (63 percent) supported gay marriage, but less than half (44 percent) of those at Protestant-affiliated colleges, some of which are associated with more conservative religious sects.

Gratifyingly, intelligence seems to correlate with support for gay civil marriage. Support for gay civil marriage is stronger at more "selective" universities--ones where freshman had higher SAT scores than at less selective universities. For instance:

At public universities with low or medium entrance requirements (as measured by SAT scores), 53 percent of the freshmen supported gay civil marriage. But 66 percent of the freshman at public universities with high entrance requirements supported gay civil marriage - a 13 point difference.

In exactly the same way, 57 percent of the freshmen at private universities with medium entrance requirements supported gay civil marriage, but 72 percent of freshmen at private universities with high entrance requirements did so - a 15 point difference.

Those comparisons point to another factor as well. Students at private universities are more supportive of gay civil marriage (66 percent) than those at "public" (cheaper, taxpayer subsidized) universities (59 percent) - a 7 point difference.

The data do not explain that difference, but it is plausible that parents who can afford to send their children to private schools have themselves been bet ter educated and are able to expose their children a broader range of cultural and educational experiences while they are growing up.

The survey found increased support for other personal rights and liberties as well.

More than one-third (36.5 percent) of the freshmen said marijuana should be decriminalized, an increase from last year's 34 percent, the highest support since 1980.

In addition, 32 percent said the death penalty should be abolished, a 1 percent increase over last year, again the highest support for abolition since 1980. And the percentage of students who think there is too much concern for the rights of people accused of crimes decreased by 2 percent, continuing a recent downward trend.

In the same way, there was less support for "soak-the-rich" tax rates (down 0.5 percent), for further government control of handguns (down 1 percent), for college prohibitions on racist or sexist speech (down 1.4 percent), and in the number of freshmen who think an individual can do little to change society (down 1 percent).

Some of these trends would be called "liberal" and some "conservative," but taken together they suggest a common libertarian trend away from insisting or relying on government controls and a greater desire to make one's own decision and act on one's own initiative.

Originally appeared Jan. 2, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

Recently Log Cabin Republican leader Rich Tafel posted an editorial commentary at his Liberty Education Forum website criticizing the "victimization" rhetoric employed at times by gay activists.

Some gay writers and leaders, he said, seemed to be arguing that our lives as gays as getting worse and worse while in reality gays are gaining greater acceptance.

"In the end, gay politics became dominated by a 'virtual victimization,' with our own society full of enemies oppressing us. Obscured by this paradigm was the reality that, while we still have barriers to clear, life for gay Americans has never been better," Tafel wrote.

To replace this inaccurate "virtual victimization" paradigm which Tafel linked with identity politics, Tafel urged a post-Sept. 11 paradigm of "United We Stand" in which gays present themselves as fellow citizens helping in the struggle against a far more menacing common opponent. Perhaps Tafel's approach could be described simply as "Accentuate the positive."

Tafel was promptly criticized by other activists and writers for mischaracterizing their arguments ("We don't constantly claim we are victims"), or ignoring the hostility gays encounter ("We are too victims"), or just trying to please Republican officials ("He's giving them an excuse to ignore our grievances").

However that may be, the important question to ask about any activist approach, if we are to keep our integrity and our claims are not mere propaganda, is: Is it authentic? That is, does it draw accurately from our experience and whatever facts we can find?

This past November, the Kaiser Family Foundation released two surveys about gay issues, one of which directly addressed these issues. It asked some 400 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals about their experience of prejudice and view on gay progress.

As it turned out, more than three quarters (76 percent) of gays, lesbians and bisexuals said there is more acceptance of gays and lesbians today compared to a few years ago. Most are comfortably "out" to heterosexual friends (93 percent), family members (84 percent), co-workers (72 percent) and neighbors 66 percent).

Gays and lesbians also felt in control of their lives rather than reacting passively to the world. Many said they had made important decision based on being gay such as where to live (62 percent), what doctor to choose (54 percent) or whether to take a particular job (30 percent).

Although the vast majority (80 percent) think there is "a lot" of prejudice and discrimination against gays and lesbians, less than one quarter (23 percent) said they personally had experienced "a lot" of discrimination. (Three quarters said they had experienced some.)

GAY WRITERS, newspapers, and organizations tend to emphasize the bad things that happen in life. And 2001 was, in some ways, a bad year for gays. The fourth largest city in the country, Houston, voted to ban health and other benefits for the same-sex domestic partners of gay city employees. The military maintained -- at least officially -- its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy despite the wartime need for personnel.

Nevertheless, tucked away in news summaries about anti-gay ballot initiatives and the latest tussles with the Boy Scouts, three little items might have escaped your attention. Each is good news, though some observers out there will manage to find the cloud in the silver lining. Here they are:

(1) Survey shows gays feel more accepted. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently polled by telephone 405 randomly selected, self-identified gays in 15 major U.S. cities. Pollsters interviewed the subjects about their experience of discrimination and their encounters with verbal and physical abuse. The survey found that 76 percent of gay people believe they are more accepted now by their fellow Americans than they were a few years ago.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's survey of the general population, more Americans than ever before report knowing someone who is gay: 62 percent now say they have a gay friend or acquaintance, as compared to 55 percent three years ago and just 24 percent in 1983.

Gay Americans are heeding the call to come out of the closet. And that honesty appears to be paying off in the form of unquestionably softened public attitudes about homosexuality.

Skeptics will point out that the Kaiser survey hardly eliminates doubts about how deep acceptance of homosexuality really is. There are, to begin, the usual questions about survey methodology. Because the survey required gay people to identify themselves as gay (query: what survey of gay people could avoid the reliance on self-identification?) the sample might have been skewed and the results therefore flawed.

But it's hardly clear which way the "flaw" of reliance on self-identification would cut in a survey asking respondents whether they feel accepted. On the one hand, those homosexuals with enough self-confidence to reveal their sexual orientation to a stranger over the phone may overestimate the degree to which others accept them; further, they may have sought out jobs and circles of friends where they really are more accepted. On the other hand, because of their openness, these same people may encounter more overt hostility than gays who remain closeted.

Also, the survey had some bad news. Some 74 percent of the respondents said they had encountered anti-gay verbal abuse, and 32 percent said they had been subjected to physical abuse or property destruction because of their sexual orientation.

But because we don't know when these incidents occurred, and because we have no comparative data from the past, it's hard to know whether there has been deterioration on the abuse front. It's possible that as more gays come out, especially in smaller towns and rural areas, they will be easier targets for the remaining homophobes who mean to do them harm. This suggests rising acceptance may paradoxically accompany a transient rise in hate crimes.

(2) Survey says gays are richer than straights. A new online survey of 6,300 self-identified gay respondents sponsored by OpusComm Group in cooperation with Syracuse University has found that the median combined annual household income among gay couples is $65,000. That's 60 percent higher than the U.S. median household income.

This might sound like good news. It suggests that, whatever obstacles gays face in life, we have overcome them to a large extent.

But the survey met immediate criticism. Dr. Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, lambasted the survey's methodology, arguing that Internet users are not representative in that they tend to be wealthier and better educated than the general population. Badgett's own research has shown that individual gay men make less on the job than straight men. On the other hand, Badgett's research has also shown that gay women earn about the same as straight women (though both groups earn less than men).

The OpusComm Group defends its methodology by pointing out that, as Internet use has become more common, Internet users have become more representative of the general population. They also say the sheer size of the sample makes it more reliable than a smaller survey would be.

What's at stake in this debate? For gay magazines and newspapers, it's about luring potential advertisers who lust after wealthy readers. For gay civil rights advocates, however, surveys like this undercut the case for employment discrimination protection. If we're already better off, why do we need civil rights laws to make us equal?

(3) Survey says gay teens are less suicidal than we thought. Two new studies debunk the common assertion of gay civil rights groups that gay teens are three times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers. The studies, conducted by a Cornell University psychologist, found that gay teens are only slightly more likely to attempt suicide. Research heretofore on the topic had interviewed teens from support groups or shelters, where the most troubled youths are found.

The Cornell studies concluded that gay youth do indeed have more difficult lives. "But most gay kids are healthy and resilient," says the researcher, Ritch Savin-Williams. He adds that studies exaggerating their suicide risk "pathologize gay youth, and that's not fair to them."

Evidence, even if not conclusive, of increasing acceptance, higher levels of income, and less dramatic suicide rates may not serve the cause of portraying gays as helpless victims of homophobia in need of state protection. But, to the extent we can trust this new evidence, it gives some reason for cheer this season.

Gay men have done everything in their power to be seen as sex-obsessed party animals.

Now that I've just committed a crime, I'd appreciate it if you refrain from calling the cops. Okay, I took a little licence there: I will have committed a crime if New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Svend Robinson and his lobbyists have their way.

In response to the recent murder of a gay Vancouver man, Robinson introduced a Private Member's Bill that would include sexual orientation among the grounds protected by Canadian hate crimes legislation.

And gay lobbyists are on side: Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE) expressed its support for Robinson's initiative. Ramping up the rhetoric, EGALE's Executive Director John Fisher stated that "violence, hatred and murder are unacceptable, full stop", and that violence against gays is "implicitly condoned by the federal government as long as [gays] are excluded from hate crimes legislation".

So you're either for the legislation or you're for violence. (Where have we heard rhetoric like that before?) Since no one other than rap stars and pro wrestlers is for violence, we all better get on side.

Unless we say that the gay emperor is naked, which I will do since I come not to praise Fisher but to parse him. By commingling hatred with violence, Fisher words conceal, rather than reveal, the nature of hate crimes legislation. As the Canadian Criminal Code already protects gays from violence and murder, Fisher's real aim is to forestall expressions of hatred. He seeks protection from dangerous speech, not dangerous people; from harmful words, not harmful deeds. That this is so is confirmed by the fact that EGALE supports the inclusion of sexual orientation in the hate propaganda sections of the Criminal Code (ss.318-320), sections that deal exclusively with expression.

And although gays view hate crimes legislation like kids see Santa Claus, the threat to freedom of expression should be reason enough for gays to oppose the law as the most dangerous piece of claptrap since Oscar Wilde was carted off to the Reading Gaol.

Gays were traditionally preoccupied with protecting, rather than proscribing, free expression. Perhaps most famously, Little Sisters, a Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore, challenged the right of Canada Customs' officials to seize books under Canada's obscenity law. After a 15-year battle, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the law but condemned Canada Customs for its discriminatory conduct in seizing a disproportionate number of gay and lesbian titles: "up to 75 per cent of the materialÉdetained and examined for obscenity was directed at homosexual audiences."

The Little Sisters case betrays a critical fact that should encourage gays to rethink and reevaluate their support for hate crimes legislation: Laws proscribing expression are often used against the least popular and least powerful people and positions. Canada's hate propaganda provisions have been applied against Jewish literature, French-Canadian nationalists and a film about Nelson Mandela. It should come as no surprise, then, if the law muzzles gay activism and stifles debate within the gay community itself.

For example: I'm not the author of my opening statement equating gay men with sex-obsessed animals. Nor is it the product of an evangelical preacher. It's a paraphrase of National Journal columnist Jonathan Rauch's review of Out for Good, a history of the gay movement by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney. If Robinson and EGALE are successful in their efforts to limit speech, eloquent writers like Rauch may be the first to fall.

In the final analysis, gays may have the last word on hate speech, but it may prove to be the last words gays have.

Originally appeared December 5, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

SURINA KHAN, head of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in San Francisco, recently circulated an interesting op-ed commentary in which she questioned whether the U.S. "military campaign in Afghanistan is justified."

Strangely, Khan seems to believe it is not. Now let's think about that.

"Will we be safer after the bombing campaign is over?" Khan asks rhetorically. Why, yes. Thank you for asking. We will be lots safer. I felt safer right after the first American bomb was dropped on Taliban military facilities. Finally we were fighting back against people who have bombed U.S. embassies, U.S. ships, U.S. cities.

The primary goal of the military action is to disable Al Qaeda, the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks. But the Taliban regime sheltered and protected Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Disabling the Taliban was simply a necessary preliminary to being able to search for bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.

The fewer Al Qaeda chemical/biological war experts, the fewer Al Qaeda training camps, the fewer arms depots, the fewer surviving Al Qaeda strategists and leaders there are, the safer the United States is. Here is how to remember: More Al Qaeda, bad. Less Al Qaeda, good. No Al Qaeda, best.

Oddly, nowhere in her op-ed piece does Khan so much as mention Al Qaeda or bin Laden. But somehow, that seems like discussing World War II without mentioning Hitler or the Nazi party.

"Will the bombing help us bring the Sept. 11 criminals and future terrorists to justice?" Khan asks?

Why, yes, exactly so. Thanks for asking. The U.S. cannot bring terrorists to justice if it cannot search for and find them. If the U.S. is able to kill Al Qaeda leaders and terrorists, that promotes justice by preventing their ability to commit further attacks on this country.

Alternatively, if and when the U.S. finds terrorists alive, it can grill them for information about past terrorism, future terrorist plans, other Al Qaeda members, financial supporters and so forth. But again, gaining free access to Afghanistan was necessary for that search process.

Khan ominously warns, "The death of civilians from our bombs - 'collateral damage' to use the military term - will bring new volunteers to the cause of terrorism."

Stuff and nonsense. First, there has been little such "collateral damage." Bombs and missiles guided by lasers or using Global Positioning System have been remarkably accurate. Gratifyingly few civilians have been killed - far, far fewer than the number of, ahem, civilians killed in the World Trade towers.

Second, rather than volunteering for anti-U.S. terrorism, Afghans seemed elated to be free of the repressive Taliban regime. They celebrated, they played music, they danced, they crowded into movie theaters, men shaved. As one Afghan man told National Public Radio, "We are grateful to the Pentagon for what they have done."

Afghans were no longer whipped if they failed to pray. Women could show their faces, go out in public alone, begin going to school. People could criticize the regime. Could we call these "collateral benefits" of the bombing? You bet. But not Khan.

But you might ask, why does the IGLHRC take a position on U.S. military actions in Afghanistan. What is the gay angle? Funny you should ask.

"IGLHRC takes a clear position against the bombing of Afghanistan ... our concern grows out of our commitment to defending the full range of human rights."

Well, let's see now. The bombing that helped defeat the Taliban regime brought about freedom from religious repression, freedom of movement for women, freedom to be educated, freedom for the press and other media, and the real possibility of democracy for the first time in decades. Are these part of "the full range of human rights"? One might have thought so.

But Khan seems interested in playing the Human Rights card only when it allows her to criticize the U.S., never when it would forced her to acknowledge U.S. virtues.

Straining to find a rationale for her position, Khan then says she is concerned about the 52 Egyptian men tried on charges related to homosexuality. Khan says she fears the U.S. would not oppose their conviction in order to keep Egypt as an ally against Al Qaeda.

We have all criticized Egypt's persecution of gays. But the idea that Egyptian courts would cater to U.S. desires seems as doubtful as the idea that Egypt's support hinged on U.S. silence about the trial. In any case, about half the men were released and the others given 1-3 year terms.

By contrast, under the Taliban regime homosexuals were executed, and by barbaric means. Somehow, supporting efforts to eliminate a regime that murders homosexuals might seem an even greater priority for the IGLHRC than protesting one that imprisons some for a short while. But not for Khan.

And could the IGLHRC pause to mention that the Egyptian persecution of gays is simply a government response to pressure from Islamic fundamentalists for moral purity codes, exactly the same source of anti-gay persecution as in Afghanistan. No, not a word.

Finally, in a breathtaking display of reckless innocence, Khan blurts out, "Bombs cannot deliver justice."

But, of course, they can.