IGF CultureWatch

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

IF WE HAD TO NAME one American composer whose music is sure to be played for the next hundred or two hundred years, it would have to be Samuel Barber (1910-1981), whose 92 birthday anniversary we celebrate on March 9.

From his earliest compositions Barber showed that he was able to write in his own recognizable melodic style while preserving a linkage to European romantic musical tradition. Without using jazz or folk tunes or experimental techniques, he managed to sound identifiably American simply by being himself.

"My aim," he once explained, "is to write good music that will be comprehensible to as many people as possible, instead of music heard only by small, snobbish musical societies in the large cities."

Even people who care little about classical music have probably heard Barber's most famous piece, the seven minute "Adagio for Strings." It was used in the film "Platoon," in a perfume advertisement and even as part of a rock album. There are almost 40 performances on CD.

When he finished the original string quartet version in 1936, Barber realized that he had written something remarkable. He wrote to a friend, "I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today--it is a knockout!"

Because of its unhurried pace, the Adagio is sometimes played at memorial services. But it is far from a lament. It is abstract music, a careful interweaving of melodic lines that slowly rise to a high pitch of emotional intensity followed by a return to calm.

Composer and critic Virgil Thomson once insisted, "I think it's a love scene ... a detailed love scene ... a smooth, successful love scene. Not a dramatic one, but a very satisfactory one." Thomson may be on to something.

Barber did not publish much music, fewer than 50 works. He was a painstaking craftsman, waiting for inspiration, prone to making repeated revisions. But a higher proportion of his works probably deserve to be called "great" than is true for almost any other modern composer.

He wrote one piano concerto, one violin concerto, one cello concerto, one piano sonata, two short ballets, two symphonies, two major operas. Many have become part of the standard repertoire and most deserve to be recognized as among the best works in the last century.

Barber is particularly interesting, of course, because of his long relationship with fellow composer Gian-Carlo Menotti after they met in 1928 as students at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music.

People who say a composer's sexuality has no influence on his music are wrong. By conditioning whom he has relationships and friendships with, a composer's sexual orientation can influence the kinds of pieces he writes, the texts he sets to music, the instrumentation, even the musical style itself.

Menotti and Barber interacted constantly, encouraging each other, offering suggestions on each other's work. Barber dedicated his first symphony (1936) to Menotti. Menotti wrote one opera text for Barber and helped revise another. The undulating beginning of Barber's "Knoxville" (1948) is reminiscent of Menotti, as is some of his ballet "Medea" (1947). Or vice versa.

Then too, the beautiful slow movement of Barber's piano concerto (1962) started as a piece for a young flute player Barber had a brief affair and long friendship with. Another man Barber had a relationship with introduced him to Pablo Neruda's love poems which Barber used for his orchestral song-cycle "The Lovers" (1971).

There is no space to discuss many of Barber's works. But three deserve mention.

Symphony No. 1 (1936), a condensed, 20-minute symphony, is Barber's first obvious great work and one of the first important American symphonies. It has enough flash and dissonance to be recognizably modern, but is romantic at its core, especially in the beautiful, sad-sounding theme in the slow section.

The Violin Concerto (1939) is Barber's most lyrical, romantic work, full of warm melodies and rich harmonies. By contrast, and this became typical for Barber, the last section is a tumultuous, fiendishly difficult "perpetual motion," a challenge for violinists but exciting to listen to.

Although the concerto fell into disfavor during the 1960s, and '70s when many academic composers and critics promoted intentionally dissonant styles, the "New Romanticism" of the 1980s and '90s led to its revival and there are now at least ten recordings.

The Piano Concerto (1962) is certainly the best American piano concerto, and probably the best in America or Europe in the latter half of the 20th century. Many critics think it is Barber's finest, most important single work. It is hard to disagree.

Listening again to these and other Barber pieces before writing this column reminded me once again what a great composer Barber was and how lucky we are that he refused to be unduly influenced by transitory fads in contemporary music.

Late in life, Barber commented that some composers "feel they must have a new style every year. This, in my case, would be hopeless. ... I just go on doing, as they say, 'my thing.' I believe this takes a certain courage."

Originally appeared Feb. 27, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.

Gay rights activists and national editorial writers are calling for Alabama's Chief Justice Roy Moore to be removed from the bench.

That's exactly what they should do. But in some ways, we are lucky that Justice Moore spoke up.

Two weeks ago, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the heterosexual father of three teenagers (ages 15, 17 and 18) should be granted custody over their lesbian mother, who lives with her partner in California. The mother petitioned for custody in 2000, because the father, she said, was abusive.

Custody decisions are made for all sorts of reasons, including financial status and ability to care for a child. Eight of the justices, overturning a decision of an appellate court, seemed to have made their ruling based on legal principles. But Justice Moore made it clear in a concurring opinion that when he voted with the court, he wasn't just thinking about mundane legal details.

Instead, in his mind, custody was awarded to the father on moral principles - the mother, he believes, is an unfit parent simply because she is a lesbian. And he evidently felt the need to expound on this in detail, because his concurring opinion, which quotes the Bible and legal statutes, takes great pains to pronounce his views.

He writes, "... the homosexual conduct of a parent ... creates a strong presumption of unfitness that is alone sufficient justification for denying that parent custody of his or her own children or prohibiting the adoption of children of others."

He continues, "Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature. ... Such conduct violates both the criminal and civil laws of this State and is destructive to a basic building block of society - the family. ... [Such behavior] is an inherent evil against which children must be protected."

These are heartbreaking words, but we should be grateful that he said something this explicit about how he views gays and lesbians.

Yes, it is horrific that a state's Chief Justice would declare homosexuality to be "an inherent evil." Yes, it is unfortunate that his words are now entered into law as unbinding precedent.

But just think - he was on the bench a month ago, a year ago, and this was his position. He thought these things before - worse, he probably has acted on these things before, to the detriment of those in our community. The public just didn't know.

We could have guessed, perhaps. We already knew that Moore is no liberal. As a trial judge, he tried to keep a plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Last year, when he became Chief Justice he made national news by placing monuments of Ten Commandments (AP called them "washing-machine sized") in the state judicial building.

But his words now give us something to point to. Even if he isn't ousted from the bench (and will he be, in conservative Alabama?) at least lawyers for gays and lesbians know what they are dealing with when they enter his courtroom. His homophobia is officially confirmed.

And the homophobes we know about are slightly less dangerous than the ones in hiding. Because it is not Moore, now, who is a wild card - it is the canny jurist who thinks that gays and lesbians are evil but is too savvy to say it; the jurist who denies a lesbian adoption rights because he thinks all lesbians are unfit parents, but couches his opinions in innocuous legal rigmarole; the jurist who sets low bail for a gay-basher because he secretly believes the victim got what he deserved.

After all, now we know how Moore thinks about gays and lesbians. We know that gays and lesbians can't get a fair trial in his courtroom. And the rest of the country knows that, too - which may mean that gays and lesbians who aren't given their full rights in the Supreme Court of Alabama may find refuge in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Also, his words give an edge to gay activists, who have something they can rally around that will help them raise funds and change minds as they battle homophobia in Alabama and elsewhere. Who can deny that homophobia still exists, when the chief justice of a state supreme court, who is supposed to be impartial, says that gays and lesbians are 'abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature'?

So yes, the words of Chief Justice Roy Moore are horrifying. But we knew that there were people in power who felt that way. It is no surprise to us.

We just don't always know exactly who they are. So let us call for his removal. But let us also be relieved that at least we know that the snake is there on the bench in Alabama, ready to bite. At least we can protect ourselves accordingly, the best we can.

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.