IGF CultureWatch

IF JERRY FALWELL is right about the way God works, then our newly declared war on terrorism isn't looking too good for the home team. After all, there is no nation on earth less hospitable to and less accepting of gays, feminists and civil libertarians than Afghanistan.

"The Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results." - Rev. Jerry Falwell, on the "700 Club," Sept. 13

Since the Taliban assumed control of that troubled country five years ago, they have crushed the wall separating church and state, and often quite literally on the backs of homosexuals. The punishment for sodomy in Afghanistan is to push over a stone wall on the offending sodomite, almost always resulting in his death. If the defendant somehow survives, God is considered to have commuted his sentence.

Certainly, Falwell is more likely to approve that sort of stone wall than the kind that launched a gay liberation in New York City back in 1969. That's not just being facetious. The stone walls of Afghanistan, like the burning pyres of Salem, Mass., before them, are intended to facilitate an active, angry God to decide who shall live and who shall die.

On that now-famous episode of "The 700 Club," featuring Falwell and host Pat Robertson, the two televangelists talked at length about just that philosophy, played out at the macro level. God has protected the U.S. from attack for more than two centuries, they agreed, because this country was founded as a Christian nation and has tried to adhere to Scripture.

Though both men have set track records for the speed with which they've run away from Falwell's finger-pointing diatribe, neither has renounced the theology behind it.

It was Robertson, remember, who warned the people of Orlando a few years ago that God would consider it a "poke in the eye" that they allowed Gay Pride flags to be hung from street poles. He specifically warned them to watch out for hurricanes, sent or allowed by the angered deity. (Robertson has never satisfactorily accounted for the fact that the next hurricane to hit the southeastern U.S. caused damage not in Orlando, but along the Virginia coast from which he launched his television empire.)

It's easy to dismiss Falwell as the Tinky Winky loon who no one takes seriously anymore, but consider the report in the week's Voice by Laura Douglas-Brown, on the number of like-minded Christians, including Southern Baptists, the country's largest Protestant denomination, and they're joined in those views as well by many Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Muslims.

The next time you find yourself wondering why religious conservatives worry so much about gay rights and tolerance of homosexuality, remember the Falwell sermon about the events of Sept. 11. To him and his fellow travelers, this isn't about what we do in the privacy of our bedrooms and in our lives. These people are driven by a genuine fear of the consequences for their families and their country if God is angered by the acceptance of homosexuality, as Falwell put it, as an "alternative lifestyle."

No more 'godless Communists'

Since Sept. 11, Americans have been learning more and more about this new enemy that struck so viciously at our homeland, targeting civilians and other non-military targets like airplanes and office buildings. Much of the initial attention has focused on terrorism, but President Bush broadened that focus in his speech to Congress last week. He characterized the conflict as one of values, casting our Western style of government against the brutal repression of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This new enemy isn't anything like the "godless Communists" of the Cold War. This time around, the bad guys are ultra God-fearing, albeit from another religious faith. And the Western values that the president says they hate and aim to destroy are not Christianity or religion - he was careful not to make this a religious war between Christians and Muslims. Instead, Bush cited democracy, religious and social tolerance and secular government as the aspects of American society that Osama bin Laden and Taliban keepers found so threatening.

It may have been subtext, but wasn't the president really criticizing these radical Muslims for acting on a theology remarkably close to that adhered to by Falwell and Robertson? Bin Laden and his followers fear God's reprisal for allowing Western culture to corrupt the Islamic world, and that reads much like the standard Falwell stump sermon, preached every Sunday at conservative Christian churches across this country.

In his speech before Congress, the president "condemned" the Taliban for limiting opportunities for women and severely restricting the liberties of the Afghan people. That sounds remarkably like those groups at the other end of Jerry Falwell's pointed finger: feminists and the ACLU.

It's not gays and our civil rights movement that can be perceived on the wrong side this time. It's the Taliban, and their Shiite enemies who govern in Iran, that are the type of repressive religious rulers that will now be viewed as "un-American" and the antithesis of our ideals.

If Falwell and Robertson did not enjoy squirming and spinning out of harm's way the last two weeks, consider the future that lies ahead of them. If we gays and feminists and card-carrying members of the ACLU do our job well, this country will unite behind the very ideals of America that hold so much promise for us and our families.

Gay and lesbian Americans should rally around the president alongside our fellow citizens, and fight for a future that is free from the shackles of outdated fears and legislated morality. That is the Taliban way, not the American way.

Originally appeared Sept. 26, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

MOST OF US WHO ARE gay or lesbian Americans wish our nation well in trying to disable and eliminate the terrorist networks responsible for the Sept 11 attacks. Not only are we Americans as much as gays and lesbians, but that effort will directly benefit us.

The fundamentalist terrorists are hostile not just to America's basic institutions of personal freedom, individualism and tolerance, they are especially hostile to the variety of lives those values allow. Specifically, they view homosexuality and tolerance of it as prime examples of Western irreligion and cultural decadence.

So too in the U.S. Some Arab cab drivers have told me they like working Chicago's Halsted St. gay bar strip because "the money is good and gays don't cause problems." But they say some conservative Muslim drivers keep away from Halsted because they want to avoid contact with homosexuals. (Note to those cab drivers: You can do this in America; It's a free country.)

Despite widespread calls for national unity, however, gays and lesbians still have the unfinished project of achieving full social acceptance, so it seems neither wise nor necessary to suspend our own advocacy efforts.

But we need to consider how best to shape our strategy and articulate our goals in the altered political climate. For one thing, in the presence of a threat that affects us all, it seems prudent to avoid any suggestion of divisiveness or sectarian partisanship.

The perils of conspicuous partisanship and agenda-mongering in the present climate quickly became obvious when Rev. Jerry Falwell publicly blamed gays, abortion advocates, civil libertarians, and secularists for helping the terrorist attack happen.

Falwell was stunned to find himself denounced, even vilified, by almost everyone-in newspapers, on television, at the office water cooler. Even President Bush said he disagreed with Falwell, an unprecedented presidential condemnation of a prominent religious figure's religious views.

We can use three related approaches in promoting our goals without being accused of untimely partisanship:

• Emphasize our commonality with all Americans;
• Emphasize that some of us also sustained losses in the terrorist attacks;
• Emphasize our desire to make a positive contribution and our (sometimes untapped) capacity to do so.

Here are a few specific examples.

1. We can collect and publicize stories of the gays and lesbians who were killed and injured in the attacks, so we can show Americans that gays are everywhere, working jobs and living their lives along with other victims.

2. We can point to specific cases of same-sex couples one of whose partners was killed in the attacks. We can point out that married partners are allowed automatic inheritance, taxation, and Social Security benefits, while the gay and lesbian partners are not. That may help Americans see that different outcomes from equal devastation is unfair.

3. We must publicize the stories of gays and lesbians who made contributions during and after the attacks. The story of Mark Bingham who may have helped fight terrorists aboard the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania is now well known.

But there are doubtless stories of others who helped - and will help in the future, for there will likely be more attacks: The story of the gay policemen, the gay firefighters, the gays and lesbians who helped rescue people, who fought terrorists or who warned about them.

4. Gays and lesbians who feel moved to join the military could try to enlist at the local recruiting office, taking along a photographer from the mainstream press to publicize their desire to contribute.

If, as expected, the military issues a "stop-loss" order permitting the retention of avowed gays, we need to point out that supposed concerns about "unit cohesion" prove to have no significance at a time of mobilization, when you would think they would be most important for military effectiveness.

5. Gay men are not permitted to donate blood, but lesbians can. Every lesbian group might consider inviting its members to donate blood as a group: lesbian singing groups, lesbian police officers, cancer projects, social clubs, softball and volleyball teams. Take along a photographer from a mainstream newspaper: Remember the aim is to get publicity for helping.

6. Al-Fatiha, the national gay and lesbian Muslim group, has an unprecedented opportunity to recruit new members and promote itself among moderate Muslims by vigorously condemning terrorism and publicizing passages from the Koran and Muslim tradition urging peace, tolerance, and civility.

7. Many bars and businesses in gay enclaves are displaying American flags. We should draw attention to this spontaneous display of patriotism so Americans can see we have the same feelings they do. Next June we could remember to include American flags along with rainbow flags during Gay Pride parades.

8. Finally, this is an unparalleled opportunity for gays and lesbians to step forward and respond to fundamentalist terrorists by explaining and defending the values of personal freedom, individualism and tolerance that are the foundation of our own existence as a people and a community.

By doing this in the public sphere - and this is the whole purpose - we present ourselves to our fellow citizens as paradigmatic Americans to whom they might well be grateful for rising to the defense of American principles they believe deeply but too often inchoately.

Originally published September 21, 2001, on PlanetOut.

WAR CHANGES EVERYTHING. If there are lessons we can learn from history, this is one of them. And, above everything else, war changes the home front. It churns us all up, it scrambles social norms and makes what was once unthinkable possible. So the First World War was the critical moment for the breakthrough of the movement for women's equality, especially in Europe. The Second World War in America was perhaps the most racially integrating event in this country's history - it is no accident that only three years after it ended, racial segregation was abolished in the armed forces. And the Vietnam war also clearly turned this country's social order upside down, before it regained equilibrium.

And so this war could also do something similar. In fact, it already has. This is the first major war in which the open visible presence of gay and lesbian Americans cannot be denied. Already, the military has suspended its discharges of homosexual servicemembers, because in a war, we cannot afford the waste of resources such pointless persecution incurs. Openly gay soldiers will now fight for our freedom in a way never seen before.

Now is not the time to argue for immediate changes in policy. We have a war to win. But it is a time to keep our eyes and ears open and see what these brave gay and lesbian warriors are all about. When and if this ends, we must remember them; and ensure that, when they return, they are not treated with contempt or ingratitude. The ban must not merely be suspended for the duration of this war. It must never be reinstated - and that must be a non-negotiable demand from all of us.

On the homefront, we already have heroes. These are not gay heroes. They are American heroes - who are also gay. That is the promise of this integrative moment. Let us remember Mark Bingham, a 6' 5" burly, ballsy rugby player, one of the men who, in all likelihood, wrestled a plane to the ground in Pennsylvania. He saved this country from what might have been a terrible assault on the capital. His power and courage and physical strength - his masculine virtue - did more than destroy the purpose of evil men. His valor also destroyed a stereotype in the process. Every jock in America needs to know that a brawny gay rugger player helped save this country from a calamity. No argument from anyone could be as eloquent.

Then there is Father Mychal Judge, an openly gay Catholic priest who served the men and women of New York's Fire Department. Revered by a macho subulture, fearless and strong, a man of faith and fervor, Father Mychal died in the flames of the World Trade Center doing what he has always done - tending to his flock in need. He is not a gay hero. He is an American hero who was also gay. And when this is over, let those in the Church who have done so much to create pain and hurt among good gay men and women who love their faith and serve their world, let them take stock and change their hearts. May they see that there is no contradiction between being gay and Catholic; in fact, may the Church hierarchy finally see that such people are now and always have been an integral pillar of faith and hope in the world. Father Mychal was a giant among them. We shall remember him as well.

For of all wars, this is surely one in which gay America can take a proud and central part. The men who have launched a war on this country see the freedom that gay people have here as one of the central reasons for their hatred. In their twisted perversion of Islam, these monsters believe that gay men and women deserve to be tortured and executed in hideous fashion. They murder and muzzle women; they despise and murder Jews; they demonize gays.

We have rightly seen how Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have destroyed themselves by their hatred in this moment - and we can take solace that America has repudiated their poison. But let us also remember that the men who committed this atrocity make Falwell and Robertson look mild in comparison. They are the Religious Ultra-Right, and they have already murdered us. Given the chance, they would wipe gay people from the face of the earth.

To respond to that threat by cautioning peace or surrender or equivocation is to appease men who would destroy every last vestige of gay America if they could. Gay Americans should not merely support this war as a matter of patriotism and pride; they should support it because the enemy sees us as one of their first targets for destruction. These maniacs despise our freedom; they loathe our diversity; they have contempt for our culture. There is no gray here. There is simply a choice: to cower and run in fear of these monsters or to stand up with every other segment of this country - of every race and creed and gender and sexual orientation - and defeat these messengers of hate in the hope of a brighter, integrated day.

Originally appeared September 19, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., constitute, and were clearly intended as, very serious assaults against international capitalism and free trade, U.S. economic influence, U.S. military power and the whole of America as a symbol of whatever it symbolizes to the perpetrators.

And what does the U.S. symbolize to the fundamentalist Muslims who are the chief suspects in the attacks? Secularism, rationalism, humanism, individualism, personal rights, capitalism. In short: modernity - modern society in all its aspects.

Capitalism? Especially capitalism. A friend sent me part of Iran's Tehran Times Sept. 12 story about the attacks which begins: "Yesterday the United States of America woke up to living terror when the landmarks of the capit alist world were rocked by a series of huge explosions."

If we want to better understand conservative Islam and the attitudes of many Arab Muslims toward the modern Western world, we cannot do better than turn to the useful guidebook, Seyyed Hossein Nasr's "Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World" (Chicago, 1994).

Describing the moral decay of modern Western society which young Muslims must resist and oppose, Nasr explains that the modern world is rooted in a "false view of man and of his society."

That false view includes "individualism, humanism, rationalism, ... rebellion against authority, ... the atomization of the family and the reduction of society to simply the quantitative sum of atomized individuals" - i.e., individualism (p. 245).

And Nasr denounces "Western capitalism and democracy" among the "various ideologies" with which modern society has been indoctrinated (p. 212).

Should anyone have doubts, Nasr regards homosexuality and all proposals for legal and social equality for gay and lesbians as key aspects of this modern, false view of society.

"Moreover, the new styles of living ... demonstrate the disintegration of (Western) society. ... To an even greater extent especially in big cities ... various forms of homosexuality have become more and more prevalent during the last generation" (p. 230-1).

"Even the meaning of the family ... is under severe attack." ... "There are now even those who attempt to break the traditional meaning of marriage as being between the opposite sexes and try to give a new meaning to marriage as being any bond between two human beings even of the same sex as long as they want to live together" (p. 201)

These are not the words of some fanatical Taliban leader in Afghanistan. They are by Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University.

Just as the conservative Muslim worldview replicates Soviet Communism's hostility to Western individualism, personal autonomy, civil liberties, capitalism, economic freedom, sexual and artistic freedom, so it also finds a parallel in the conservative Christian opposition to secularism, individualism, personal autonomy, civil liberties, gender equality, sexual and artistic freedom.

As evidence, we need only recall Rev. Jerry Falwell's now notorious comments on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" in which he blamed the Sept. 11 attacks in part on feminists, secularists, civil liberties advocates, and homosexuals, saying they helped it happen.

Or, as the Christian fundamentalist Family Research Council said in its own denunciation of individualism and personal autonomy following the attacks, "Americans need that strength that comes from placing God first, others second, and self last. Let there be an end to the idolatry of self."

In short, the group is more important than the individual. And most important of all is making the individual subservient to religious authorities who claim to speak for their gods.

Whatever military response the U.S. government decides to make, it will necessarily be inadequate. What is needed is a new "culture war" - or if "war" is the wrong metaphor, then a new cultural advocacy effort.

Modernity has powerful influence, but it does not explain itself well, does not offer its own articulation and justification. We who approve of Modernity and benefit from it - as gays and lesbians have found liberation in modern individualism - must make a much more persuasive case for the value of Modernity than we have so far.

Modernity with its individualism, capitalism, rationality and undermining of religious dominance has more or less invaded an Arabic Muslim culture which is literally in its 1400s, and no doubt feels strange, foreign, threatening, rather as if the same institutions had suddenly appeared in Europe in the 1400s.

Muslim countries have had no Machiavelli or Hobbes or Spinoza to question religion and its texts, no Locke to defend self-ownership and individual rights, no Adam Smith to explain the value of economic freedom and its necessity for prosperity, no John Stuart Mill to defend free speech and discussion, no Karl Popper or Friedrich Hayek to explain why a free and open society has social value for everyone.

This cultural advocacy necessarily includes assisting Islamic religious figures who find a way to make peace with Modernity, promoting greater economic development so people in the Arab world benefit directly from it rather than from graft or government largess, and seeking ways to generate and sustain an Islamic version of the western Humanist Renaissance and Enlightenment they have never yet had.

Originally appeared Sept. 14, 2001, in San Diego Update and other publications.

WHAT CAN I POSSIBLY SAY about the horror inflicted on our country? Nothing can compare with the terrifying, heartrending firsthand accounts of the September 11 attack and its aftermath. But if you will allow me, I'd like to share a few conjectures on what I see as the larger context, and what that might mean for us as gay people, and as a free people.

Looking into the motivation of the alleged suspects and their backers, this attack wasn't just against the U.S. for our aid to Israel, or for our support of conservative (as opposed to radical fundamentalist) Islamic regimes. No, the attack was even more insidious, more evil, if you will. It was meant as part of an ongoing war against Western civilization, against the Enlightenment and the modern, secularized world it has bequeathed to us, by fundamentalists who despise the U.S. as the epitome of this very modernity. In a wider sense, it is modernism and rationalism and progress and individualism that provoked the attack, launched by those who favor an unthinking adherence to theocratic dogma.

Capitalism, globalization, Hollywood, Coca-Cola - they hate it all. But those aspects of the West's modernism that are particularly despised relate to the development of gender equality, sexual freedom, and gay rights -all of which fall into the catchall category of "Western decadence."

Now, we are so accustomed to hearing about how little our rights as gay people are recognized by our own government that we sometimes take for granted how revolutionary it is, in the history of the world, to have obtained the individual liberty that we enjoy. In most theocratic states, for example, being gay is a crime that is severely punished. Attempts by gay people to have any kind of open association are strictly repressed.

Even in Egypt, one of the less extreme Islamic states, recent news stories have reported on the trial of 52 "suspected homosexuals" accused of sexual immorality and "forming a group that propagated extremist ideas and denigrated Islam." There have been reports that the defendants were tortured. Prosecutor Ashraf Helal reportedly told the court, "Egypt has not and will not be a den for the corruption of manhood, and homosexual groups will not establish themselves here."

The defendants' real crime: taking the first steps to socialize openly as gay men.

Egypt, in relative terms, has been less closed to modern currents than the more theocratic states of the Middle East, but progress often breeds reaction and repression, especially in the absence of a democratic tradition. In the states where Islamic fundamentalists hold complete sway, even tentative attempts to publicly associate as gay men would be beyond consideration (and lesbians are even more invisible in countries where all women are banned from the public sphere and forced into head-to-toe veils).

In Afghanistan, noted a recent New York Times report, "the world's purest Islamic state" is premised on "controlling social behavior." It's a land where "freedom" has bowed to religious totalitarianism."

Of course, Islamic fundamentalists aren't the only ones who hold anti-gay views. Within the West itself, there are those who share the revolt against modernism (albeit without the glorification of mass murder/suicide as the key to paradise). But really, how tame our own Christian fundamentalists appear in contrast to what's happening on other parts of the world. Still, imagine the nightmare scenario of Fred Phelps with an air force.

Both Christian and Islamic fundies pine for a time when people simply believed because Scripture told them to do so, when gender roles were rigidly enforced, sexual expression was strictly contained, and homosexuality severely repressed. But it bares repeating: the usual dose of religious and political homophobia here in the land of the free is nothing in comparison with what the real forces of religious fascism look like. And this week, we've been tragically reminded of how precious, and vulnerable, our lives and liberty are.

Let's hope and pray that Western civilization prevails, and that we have the fortitude to stand up to the barbarians who would vanquish modernity and replace it with a new Dark Age.

Originally appeared Sept. 12, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IT SEEMS APPROPRIATE during September, if not long before, to begin preparing for October's observance of Gay and Lesbian History Month.

The idea for a Gay History Month was first proposed back in 1994 as a way to increase gays' and lesbians' appreciation for their own history and a way of making clearer to our friends and fellow citizens the contributions gays and lesbians have made to Western Civilization and the common culture we all value.

The idea quickly drew the attention of a small group of advocates who promoted the idea and wrangled endorsements from major gay organizations such as the Human Right Campaign, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Later that first year they even obtained two or three "official" proclamations from sympathetic political officials.

Eventually October was selected at the best month for Gay and Lesbian History Month because a) it would not conflict with the more celebratory gay pride events of June, b) two months were better than one, c) it would not conflict with any other prominent celebration, and d) October was during the school year and it was anticipated that colleges and universities would be centers of activity on gay history.

The idea of Gay and Lesbian History Month has several obvious advantages:

• It can help provide a sense of pride for young and closeted gays and offer models of courage, creativity and achievement for young gays to emulate.
• It is a way to promote gay visibility without being partisan or seeking any government guarantees or protective rights.
• The objects of interest are safely in the past so the project is one of teaching and learning about facts rather than promoting or threatening anyone's values.
• It is a way of talking about gays and lesbians without talking directly about anyone's sex life. It focuses instead on the accomplishments of gays and lesbians as people who led full, rounded, and interesting lives.
• Perhaps most obviously, it is a way to make clear to skeptical heterosexuals that far from being a threat to Western Civilization, gays and lesbians made some of the greatest contributions to that civilization.

In short, when you sing a song, listen to a symphony, view a painting, attend a church, read a novel or poem or see a play, they may well have been written, composed, painted, or designed by a homosexual. Homophobes do not want people to know this; that is why everyone must.

One of my most vivid memories is of the day when the father of a gay son burst into a meeting of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays and blurted out in a loud and excited tone "Did you know Michelangelo was gay?!"

Discovering that fact seemed to open up a whole new perspective for him on what being gay might mean and how he should think about his son. We could think of it as "gay pride for straights."

There will be controversy, of course, over whether some people were gay or not or when and whether people acted on their same-sex desires. But where there is controversy there is talk, and where there is talk there is awareness, so controversy is not a bad thing.

Absent any public declarations, it will be a matter of looking at people's letters and diaries, family records, the recollections of friends, court proceedings, contemporary gossip, and then weighing the evidence. Where information is currently insufficient, libraries, dusty archives and old trunks in family attics may eventually provide further material.

For example, whether Ravel was gay or Eleanor Roosevelt was lesbian may be uncertain, but Tchaikovsky's homosexuality is not in doubt, nor Michelangelo's, nor Edna St. Vincent Millay's youthful lesbian affairs. Prof. Wayne Dynes's comprehensive and judicious "Encyclopedia of Homosexuality" is a valuable resource on these questions.

Of course, the "famous gays" approach is not all there is to gay and lesbian history. A second area of interest is the question of how gays and lesbians lived in earlier times: How they found one another, how they socialized, how they organized their lives, what kinds of prejudice they encountered and how they protected themselves.

In the last few years, a number of books have appeared about gays in ancient Athens and Rome, several cities in Renaissance Italy, turn of the century Moscow and St. Petersburg, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The similarities to our own lives are often as surprising as the differences.

And finally, of course, after nearly 50 years of organized advocacy we ourselves now have a history of our own as a social movement, as a developing community and a quasi-ethnic group. There are several good books on the history of the gay community, its institutional growth, and its changing cultural practices.

The information is there for people who want to know more about our past and share it with their friends. Make October count.

Originally appeared in the Sept. 6, 2001, issue of Update (San Diego).

LAST MONTH, Reuters reported on the growing speculation that Britain's Prince Charles would, at long last, be permitted to marry his longtime lover, Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles. The story, making its way round Fleet Street, is that Queen Elizabeth has "grudgingly" accepted that the couple should be free to wed, perhaps after next year's Golden Jubilee celebrating her 50-year reign.

What does this bit of British gossip have to do with us? On a superficial level, not much. But I find in the tangled tale of the frustrated prince who, against all convention, yearns to marry his mistress, a (gasp!) divorced woman, a reflection of our larger, and more important, struggle for the right to marry the partners we share our lives with. Both the predicament of the prince, and the fight being waged by gays and lesbians to wed, point toward a common cultural shift. And that is society's realization that allowing a mindless regard for "tradition" to stand in the way of happiness is not, after all, a good thing.

Readers above a certain age will realize just what a departure this would be for Britain and its royals. Was it really a mere half century ago that Princess Margaret, the queen's younger and more rebellious sister, yearned to marry a divorced man, and was told, in no uncertain terms (and by Elizabeth herself, it is said) "No"? She went on to a loveless, but respectable, union that ended, wouldn't you know it, in divorce - making her a bit of an outcast herself.

And a bit earlier still, King Edward, the Duke of Windsor to be, was famously forced to renounce his throne in order "to marry the woman I love," Mrs. Wallis Simpson, also a divorcee.

What has happened in the meantime, of course, has been a sea change in the way we think about divorce. With each of Elizabeth's children save one divorced themselves, it just doesn't seem right to bar poor Charles, the royal heir (divorced and widowed), from remarrying.

According to the Reuters article, which quotes Britain's Spectator magazine, royal courtiers have been "in despair about the religious, legal, and constitutional difficulties of a marriage between Prince Charles and Mrs. Parker-Bowles." Religion is an obstacle due to the royal family's links to the Church of England, of which Charles is due one day to become supreme governor and "protector of the faith." The Anglican Church, despite the break with Roman Catholicism - that business with Henry VIII and his six (count 'em, six) wives, who kept losing their heads - doesn't consider divorce to be, well, "respectable."

In Charles' case, carrying out a long-term clandestine affair with a divorcee could be countenanced, but taking it public and demanding that society recognize and celebrate his "nontraditional" relationship was asking too much. Just like religious conservatives in the good old U.S. of A. would rather see gays living secretive, even promiscuous lives than allow us to marry. The view that it's better to sin secretly (oh, like everyone doesn't know) than to live honestly could apply to both. Hypocrisy triumphant.

But, said the Reuters article, more recently these same royal courtiers who were aghast at the thought of a Charles-Camilla union have become aware that "it is both cruel and absurd that the prince and Mrs. Parker-Bowles should be forced to contemplate old age deprived of the benefits and comfort of marriage." And, as noted earlier, the queen is said to have come around, slowly, to accept this as well.

At the risk of belaboring the comparison, the same, of course, could be said of gays and lesbians who are breaking down society's resistance to our coupledoms.

And here's another parallel - the prince and his consort have been waging an ongoing campaign for acceptance by slowly but steadily "going public" with their affection for one another. No, I don't mean the purloined tapes of phone calls during the past unpleasantness with the late Princess of Wales, in which Charles was caught pining to be a "pair of knickers" on his lady love. No, I mean something far more prosaic. This past June, Charles and Camilla sealed their relationship with their first public kiss. That sensational kiss, Reuters noted, "was heralded by royal-watchers as a milestone," and "underlined Prince Charles' determination that Mrs. Parker-Bowles be publicly accepted as his partner."

Not exactly a "kiss in," but still a calculated move to use a heretofore shocking public display of affection with the clear message of "we're here, we're dear, get used to it."

Reuters continues, "in what has been seen as a carefully orchestrated campaign by Prince Charles' aides, the couple has gradually increased the frequency and profile of engagements they attend together." No going back in the closet for these two.

Eventually, the walls of resistance began to crumble. For we are informed, at the end of the Reuters report, that "Mrs. Parker-Bowles met Queen Elizabeth for the first time last year at a birthday party for former King Constantine of Greece," who is some sort of distant cousin to the British royals.

So there you have it. Even the queen is caving, and letting the notorious divorcee/mistress attend her party out in the open for all to see. Symbolically speaking, Camilla is now becoming part of the family. Just like the first time the folks accepted your lover when you brought him to cousin Ralph's birthday bash? Well, kind of.

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." Straight from the First Amendment, those may be the most important words in the English language for gay Americans. It might be a good idea for some yahoo politicians around the country to read them. I have in mind two politicos in particular, the Governor of South Dakota and the mayor of Oklahoma City, who'd apparently prefer a First Amendment that doesn't apply to homosexuals. They're both fully prepared to sacrifice sound public policy rather than let gays enjoy free speech.

The First Amendment created gay America. For advocates of gay legal and social equality there has been no more reliable and important constitutional text. The freedoms it guarantees - including the freedoms of speech and association - have protected gay cultural and political institutions from state regulation designed to impose a contrary vision of the good life. Gay organizations, bars, newspapers, radio programs, television shows - all these would be swept away in the absence of a strong First Amendment.

Evenhanded and detached from passions to an unusual degree for a jurisprudence, the First Amendment sheltered gays even when most of the country thought we were not just immoral, but also sick and dangerous. In an era of almost unrelenting hostility, law professor William Eskridge has written, the First Amendment supplied "an appealing normative argument in both the political and judicial arenas." The shelter afforded by the First Amendment allowed gays to organize for the purpose of accumulating and applying political power, a precondition for the effective exercise of other important liberties.

In its protection of the rights of those accused of crime, the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause is the First Amendment's only serious constitutional competitor for pride of place in assisting gay-equality advocates. The criminal procedure protections it guarantees have been powerful weapons against state prosecutions of gay people for a variety of criminal offenses, including the violation of sodomy laws.

Yet even these protections did not significantly reduce arrest rates of gay people for consensual sexual crimes until gay political power forced police departments to consider our interests. The development of gay political power, however, has depended in the first instance on the liberty of gays to organize in groups free of state regulation impinging on their internal affairs, including the content of their message and the composition of their membership.

This freedom, in turn, depends on a strong and principled First Amendment committed to protecting unpopular opinions and speech by individuals or groups the state disdains. Government generally cannot discriminate against a person or group based on the content of their message.

Somebody better tell that to South Dakota. As do many states, South Dakota has an adopt-a-highway program that allows private groups to clean up a stretch of road in exchange for a public sign touting the group's contribution to beautification. Hundreds of groups participate.

The state rejected an application from the Sioux City Gay and Lesbian Coalition, however, saying the state does not allow official roadside signs for "advocacy groups." That is news to groups like the College Republicans, the Yankton County Democrats, the Wheat Growers Association, and the Animal Rights Advocates of South Dakota who have adopted stretches of highway and had their groups' names enshrined on the state's roads. It's not that the state forbids participation by advocacy groups; the state forbids participation by advocacy groups whose message it does not like. This the First Amendment, with its requirement of government content-neutrality, does not permit.

Faced with a likely lawsuit based on the First Amendment, Gov. William Janklow at first threatened to cancel the entire program rather than let the gay coalition participate. In the end, he "compromised" by allowing the gay coalition to participate but ordering the state to take down every group's roadside sign. The loss of this public recognition will eliminate a significant incentive for groups to get involved.

Another chop-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move recently came from Oklahoma City. There, the city took down banners on city utility poles heralding the annual gay pride parade, sponsored by the Cimarron Alliance Foundation. The controversial banners displayed a rainbow flame over the name of the group. The city said the banners were inappropriate because of their (here's that word again) "advocacy." Yet the city had no problem allowing other religious and social advocacy groups, like an anti-drug organization, to pay to have their own banners placed on city utility poles.

Under threat of a lawsuit charging a violation of the First Amendment, the city relented and allowed the gay pride banners to reappear this year. Mayor Kirk Humphreys just couldn't understand why. "We are not talking about free speech here," he opined. "We are talking about paid advertising." He said the city was free to pick and choose the messages that appear on public property, just like private companies can choose the messages that appear on their property.

He is doubly wrong. First, advertising is a form of free speech. Second, when it comes to rights guaranteed by the constitution, government is emphatically not like private companies. The Constitution is a constraint on the state, not on private groups.

Now the city proposes to ban almost all advocacy on city property rather than let gay groups' messages appear in the future. Whether the new policy will stand up in court is a large question. What's certain is that, once again, the First Amendment has frustrated an attempt to single us out for silencing.

Originally appeared August 29, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IN HER THOUGHT-PROVOKING new book "Money, Myths, and Change," economist Lee Badgett expresses serious doubt that gays and lesbians constitute a distinguishable "gay market" with different consumption patterns from those of heterosexuals.

At most she allows that readers of gay newspapers, typical of newspaper readers generally, might have higher incomes and that gay men, particularly couples without children, might be a promising target market for upscale products.

Badgett seems to think that a distinguishable gay market would have to reflect "fundamentally" (her word) different product interests, a claim she later modifies to a more reasonable "stronger preferences for certain products or certain product characteristics." Let's see.

There is little robust evidence about the consumer behavior of all gays and lesbians. That research has not been done and may be impossible. It seems more useful to start with what we can observe, the paradigm case of urban gay men, then see how generalizable that model might be.

The most obvious sociological characteristics of urban gay men is that they are preponderantly childless and somewhat more likely than heterosexuals to be single.

Lacking children, they have more disposable income especially when coupled but even when single. And with fewer family obligations and constraints, they will have more time as well as money to spend on personal development, recreation and entertainment.

Since they are disproportionately single (or between relationships), they are more likely to be in the market for a partner/date/trick, to meet friends and socialize in public, to patronize commercial entertainment offerings, and try to enhance their appeal to potential partners.

It is worth noticing that many partnered gay men continue their earlier socializing habits as partners simply because they have the time, find it convenient, can afford to, and see it as enjoyable.

Taken together, these suggest that urban gay men would be somewhat more likely to go out to bars and clubs on weekends, buy more alcohol, and see more movies, plays and concerts.

For at-home recreation they would have reason to buy more popular and classical CDs, more videos (including commercial porn), more computer-related products, more non-business related books.

They would likely have greater interest in fashionable leisure wear, body maintenance from gym memberships to workout supplements, personal health and grooming products, cosmetic surgery, and so forth.

Gay men seem to travel recreationally more, and not just on extended vacations. They may travel to visit an out-of-town partner they know or met on the Internet. Gays in smaller cities travel to larger cities on holiday weekends to explore the turf, look for partners, or escape a socially constricted environment.

Are urban gay men distinctively brand loyal? With greater disposable income they can afford higher quality brands rather than lower, brands with prestige or cachet, or brands with certain masculine or fashion associations, perhaps to impress themselves as much as other people.

Timberland work boots, Levi 501s, Marlboro cigarettes, and Absolut vodka are venerable examples. More current ones might include Calvin Klein and Body Body clothing, and anything with DKNY on it.

Other brand loyalties seems more evanescent, driven by enclave fad or "pack behavior," in a way best described by French sociologist Gabriel Tarde's "laws of social imitation." That would explain the popularity bubbles of Kenneth Cole clothing, Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirts and 2(x)ist underwear.

The task for any marketer is to break into the market, create product differentiation, generate a reputation, cachet or fad, then retain a portion of that clientele when the next fad or quality competition comes along. Advertising can play a role there.

One change we can expect in the future is the slow aging of the "gay market" as gays who came out in the 70s and 80s are staying out, and AIDS does not claim the lives of so many men in their late 30s and 40s. This has noticeably begun to happen already.

With age, gay men's income will increase and their tastes and product needs will gradually shift. There will be a greater demand for real estate and for retirement and financial planning. They will develop more cultivated tastes in music and recreation, seek more interesting vacation destinations, and become more concerned with health maintenance.

They will likely prefer more impressive automobiles and better restaurants, do more home entertaining, drink more wine and less beer. The percentage of smokers will decline: After 30, more people stop smoking than start.

Currently gay men outside urban areas are probably influenced by urban gay consumer behavior only partially and selectively. But that influence is likely to increase as coming out, travel, Internet communication, and gay visibility all increase.

Lesbians, however, seem to diverge considerably from gay men in being more coupled, having more children, earning less money, not being so concentrated in an enclave, and having different interests and socializing patterns. So we lack an adequate understanding of the "lesbian market" or their differentiable consumer behavior.

Originally appeared August 22, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE CLAIM is often made that gays and lesbians suffer employment discrimination. One way to demonstrate this beyond anecdotal reports might be to show that gays and lesbians have lower income levels than similarly situated heterosexuals.

Yet we also like to claim that gays and lesbians represent an economically upscale market with ample disposable income to buy a range of recreational and leisure products, arguing that companies should compete for our business and advertise in our publications.

While these claims are not exactly contradictory, they certainly point in opposite direction and raise a host of questions about discrimination in employment and family benefits, gay people's incomes, gay and lesbian consumer behavior and the nature and extent of the "gay market."

Answering some of these questions is the aim of a new book "Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay men" (University of Chicago Press, 2001), by University of Massachusetts economics professor Lee Badgett..

Badgett's book seems to be the first serious book on the subject. But what makes it particularly valuable is a quality that often irritates the general reader. For instance, in Chapter 2, "The Economic Penalty for Being Gay," she concludes:

"Lesbian/bisexual women earn 11 percent more than heterosexual women. The difference is not statistically significant. ... Gay/bisexal men, however, ... earn 17 percent less than heterosexual men with the same education, race, location, and occupation."

That conclusion is interesting and has some value. But whatever its merit, readers will not get to it until they have read 15 pages that discuss methodology, explain the limitation of the available data, offer alternative interpretations of the evidence, and so forth.

Badgett's aim is to give readers not just a number but a sense of why some of the statistics we read and swallow whole are open to serious doubt, often the result of a series of questionable extrapolations, interpretations, even arbitrary definitions valid in some contexts but not others.

For instance, Badgett notes that other studies using some of the same data--including the biennial General Social Survey (GSS)--but using different categories for sexual orientation confirm lower earning for gay men but find statistically significant higher income for lesbian/bisexual women.

Why lesbians might earn more than heterosexual women is not clear. Badgett wonders if lesbians have more job experience or more commitment to the labor force. That gay men earn less than heterosexual males she takes as evidence of discrimination, a view worth examining another time.

One of Badgett's other interesting discussions is about the gay/lesbian market. Badgett is eager to dispute market research data showing that gays and lesbians have high household incomes and so represent an ideal consumer market.

For instance, a 1988 Simmons Marketing Research survey found that gay newspaper readers have household incomes more than 50 percent higher than heterosexual couples. But Badgett wonders if the figures are correct and suggests even if they are they may not be generalizable to all gays.

People responding to a mail-in survey, she speculates, may be more interested in surveys because of a higher level of education. That would make respondents a relatively high-income group compared with other readers of the same newspaper.

But, she agrees, "It is well known that ... readers of magazines and newspapers tend to be better educated and have higher incomes." So even if reader demographics are slightly skewed, they can indicate "some affluent lesbians and gay men who constitute an attractive potential market."

Then too, if gays and lesbians have fewer children, they would have more disposable income even if their gross incomes were no higher than heterosexuals'. The number of lesbians rearing children seems uncertain, but gay men clearly have far fewer children than heterosexual men.

"Gay male couples are much more likely to match the DINK ["double income, no kids"] model, with two incomes and fewer dependents," Badgett says. "If marketers are searching for consumers with high incomes who might have a high demand for upscale products, their most promising targets would be gay men."

In his 1996 study "American Gay" sociologist Stephen Murray cites several small surveys suggesting that a little less than 50 percent of gay men are partnered. But single gay men would be childless too and so might also have higher than average disposable income.

Badgett's book, of course is not the final word on any of these topics. Nor could it be: The information we have is far too sketchy. Many gays and lesbians are still in the closet and we have little way of learning about them.

Then too, the world is steadily changing--in levels of prejudice, in the number of people out of the closet, in the average age of the open gay population, in the structure of gay people's economic priorities. Data from just a decade ago already feels irrelevant.

And as more employers offer partnership (family) benefits and governments offer partnership registration, gays may (or may not) feel more incentives to become partnered, affecting their economic position, their residential preferences and their consumer behavior.