IGF CultureWatch

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.

Originally appeared November 28, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

In the December Atlantic Monthly, social critic David Brooks explores the similarities and differences between "blue" and "red" America - differences between the liberal, cosmopolitan, coastal areas that typically voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election and the more conservative, community-values oriented "heartland" regions that mostly voted for George Bush.

Brooks not only failed to find any deep cultural divide between the two regions, he also manages to counter a number of common stereotypes about people in the "red," Bush areas held by people who live in the "blue" areas - where most Atlantic Monthly readers live.

For all its emphasis on religious observance and the value of community, Brooks notes that the towns he visited have a lot of tattoo parlors as well as churches. Softball players go to bars to drink after a game. Divorce is tolerated more than it used to be. Teenagers drive recklessly, young women hang around pool halls and Prozac use is common.

Nor is that all. No doubt recalling sociologist Alan Wolfe's claim a couple of years ago that Americans were becoming more accepting of personal differences except for homosexuality, Brooks made specific inquiries about that.

"The local college has a gay-and-lesbian group," Brooks writes. "One conservative clergyman I spoke with estimated that 10 percent of his congregants are gay. He believes that church is the place where one should be able to leave the controversy surrounding this sort of issue behind. Another described how his congregation united behind a young man who was dying of AIDS."

A Pentecostal minister Brooks interviewed said his father, also a minister, routinely preached against television, smoking, provocative dress, and divorce. "But now," Brooks relates, the minister says he himself "would never dream of telling people how to live."

"For one thing, his congregants wouldn't defer. And he is in no rush to condemn others. 'I don't think preaching against homosexuality is what you should do,' he told me. 'A positive message works better.'"

The key to understanding what is different about life in smaller communities is to see it as reflecting not an "ideological" conservatism but a "temperamental" conservatism: "People place tremendous value on being agreeable, civil, and kind. ... They are hesitant to stir one another's passions. ... They work hard to reinforce community bonds."

One important reason is that people do not want to offend other people they will inevitably be running into and dealing with in the future. The editor of one newspaper told Brooks, "We would never take a stance on gun control or abortion." Regarding abortion, another editor said, "It would simply be uncivil to thrust such a raw disagreement in people's faces."

This is a different stance toward living than most of us are accustomed to. In large cities, where the gay movement has its primary locus, people know one another far less, have less reason to trust one another and so fall back on trying to gain acceptance or victory by passing laws.

So much of our participation in public life has involved holding marches and demonstrations, complaining about grievances. Call it "the politics of yelling." At some point it all begins to feel a bit uncivil but there seems little alternative.

In smaller towns where social linkages are far more numerous and robust, difference seemed to be, if not quite accepted, at least accommodated, so long as no one makes a big deal about them. You may well be treated equally so long as you do not demand to be treated equally. These things are managed instead by personal contacts and social pressure.

Bob and Phil who move from the city to run a bed and breakfast, will in due course be accepted as neighbors so long as they mow their yard, go to church together, play softball with the volunteer fire department, make plum cakes for the Christmas bake sale, play horseshoes at the annual Kiwanis "Family Day" picnic. You become part of the community by participating amiably and usefully.

But it is worth keeping in mind that the quietly tolerant attitudes Brooks found do represent a change. Gay men or lesbians are not regularly harassed or as they might have been in the past. And doubtless this is due largely to the aggressive gay visibility in large cities which in turn influenced the mass media: television programs with gay characters, news coverage about gays and AIDS, and so forth.

The "red" areas still have obvious disadvantages. They do not sound like easy places to "come out" or achieve a healthy gay self-understanding, nor likely places to find a partner. Hostility and misunderstanding probably linger especially among younger males. For many of us, such a subdued, small town, near communitarian environment would feel repressive, stultifying.

But tastes differ. As the recent census figures suggest, some couples, especially lesbian couples, who no longer need or want the "meet market" of the big cities, seem to prefer the slower, more subdued pace of suburban, rural, or small-town life. It is gratifying to learn that those areas can offer a qualified acceptance and support.

THE FOLLIES of the anti-war gay left continue. Though eclectic, anti-war commentators seem to share three things: (1) the idea that bombs won't solve anything, (2) a fixation on the "root cause" of terrorism, understood to be the United States itself, and (3) patriophobia, the irrational fear of people who love their country.

Don't get me wrong. The right to dissent is fundamental and must be protected even in times of great national peril. But we have the right to dissent from the dissenters.

The first anti-war fallacy is the old bombs-won't-solve-anything shibboleth. Consider the words of Surina Khan, the executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. In an interview for the Boston Phoenix, Khan maintains that "waging war on Afghanistan is [not] a solution." Tommi Avicolli Mecca, in a guest editorial for the San Francisco Bay Times, asks: "What has bombing accomplished?" After four weeks (!), he writes, "we haven't found [Osama] bin Laden [and] the Taliban is still in power."

Bombs certainly won't cure all the world's ills, but they can be a necessary start when you're dealing with madmen. To take just two recent examples, American military force ended Saddam Hussein's designs on neighboring countries and thwarted Slobodan Milosevic's genocide in Bosnia. Both efforts took more than a few weeks.

But suppose bombs won't solve anything. What's the alternative? Khan offers this: "At IGLHRC, we feel that the response to the murder and terror that we saw on September 11 has to be a response of solidarity and understanding."

"Understanding" for bin Laden and the serial killers he trains? "What we are practicing is good terror," bin Laden recently said on videotape, justifying the murder of Americans on September 11. "We will not stop killing them and whoever supports them."

Khan may want to "understand" people like bin Laden, but there is no substitute for eliminating them. Bin Laden has made it clear: it's either kill or be killed. How many Americans have to die before these anti-war leftists get it?

Their second delusion is to insist we address the root causes of September 11. For Khan, herself born to privilege, the "core, root problem" is the "resentment against the U.S. throughout the world" generated by America's selfish failure to "look beyond its own economic interests."

This about a country that rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War II, that intervened to save countless Muslims from Hussein and Milosevic, that has donated billions of dollars in financial aid to help poor nations feed their people and build infrastructure and acquire medicine, and on and on.

If some people around the world don't grasp those facts it's not because we've been selfish. It's because we haven't been touting our generosity.

For Avicolli Mecca, the real problem is world poverty. Yet there are lots of poor people in the world and very few of them become mass murderers. Bin Laden, himself a Saudi millionaire, is exploiting not poverty but the distrust of modernity long smoldering among religious fundamentalists.

Barbarism doesn't have "root causes"; it is humanity's default condition in the absence of civilization.

But even if poverty and resentment explained the existence of worldwide terrorism, that wouldn't disqualify us from punishing terrorists. There's a good historical case to be made that Anglo-American economic strangulation of Germany and Japan contributed to the rise of fascism and led to World War II. Should we apologize to the ghost of Hitler? Should we have responded to Pearl Harbor with "solidarity and understanding"?

The third anti-war cri de coeur bemoans the fact that some gay people actually kind of like the U.S. This patriophobia sees something sinister in the sudden visibility of national pride.

Khan, a Pakistani now living in the safety and comfort of San Francisco, links American patriotism to homophobia. "In the U.S.," she warns darkly, "people who are most active in promoting nationalism are essentially right-wing organizations." Barney Frank, war-supporter and proud American, call your office.

Perhaps the most paranoid patriophobe is Bay Times columnist Kirk Read. Read, who prides himself on "asking hard questions," announces he's "given up on queer folks having radical politics collectively." But, he reports, "it's been truly spooky to walk through the Castro and see American flags in nearly every business window." Viewing the words "United We Stand" on the outside wall of a Castro gym, Read wants to "spray-paint 'Wake Up' on top of it."

My God! Patriotism on unashamed display in the heart of the Castro! What horror is next? Standing for the national anthem?

Read says he's been "clench-jaw pissed off for the past month" - not because thousands of his fellow citizens are dead, mind you - but because he dislikes the calls for national unity, because he's been asked to donate to the Red Cross, and because he continually hears the song "God Bless America." All this threatens to ensnare us in "the mainstream lockstep of jingoism and war mongering."

Now I'm not much of a flag-waver myself, but I don't sniff a Nuremberg rally in every breeze rustling Old Glory. I'm glad the men who fought our wars to preserve Read's right to dissent weren't so easily spooked.

To most gay Americans the U.S. is basically a good country that sometimes does bad things. To the anti-war gay left, however, this is basically a bad country that sometimes does good things. The war has exposed the fundamental cleavage between them and the rest of us as never before.

Originally appeared Nov. 14, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

I USED TO LIKE Richard Goldstein, the executive editor of New York's Village Voice.

Actually, I liked him a lot. I liked the arguments he used to support gay marriage. I liked how he remembered to be lesbian-inclusive. I thought he had thoughtful, interesting perspectives on the social and political issues relevant to gays and lesbians.

But I only read his articles occasionally, when they happened to come across my desk. And it seems I missed something. Because this past weekend, I heard him speak at a plenary session of Creating Change, the NLGTF's annual convention for progressive GLBT activists.

I came away shaking mad.

The plenary was called "Terrorism, War and Democracy - What Does it Mean for GLBT People?" As might be expected, three of the panelists spoke about their response to the attack and to the war and how these events might play out in our community. Richard Goldstein, however, took it upon himself to attack what he called "the gay right" - especially writers Andrew Sullivan, Norah Vincent and Jonathan Rauch, among others.

Why? Well, several reasons. First, because he said that they are guilty of infighting. That is, they criticize our national organizations and the general GLBT orthodoxy (this is an argument he's made before, in print).

My response to that is: Good. Thinkers think. They criticize. I wouldn't want to be part of a movement that wasn't constantly challenging and checking itself. And, for heaven's sake, Goldstein is a journalist. He, if anyone, should understand that the expression of diverse opinions is what keeps us from being sheep - and what keeps us free. He didn't say which ideas he disagreed with, but in general, I think that an opinion within a movement that differs from the orthodoxy leads people to question what they believe. And sometimes we realize that values we used to hold were wrong.

Second, Goldstein decried the so-called "gay right" because he says that they bring the issues of gay marriage and gays in the military to the forefront, making them more prominent, while they should be arguing for an end to workplace, housing and public accommodation discrimination. "They believe in civil equality, not equal opportunity," he said.

I'm not sure this is fair. Yes, the writers he mentioned likely have advocated at one point or another for gay marriage and for the right for gays and lesbians to serve in the military (an issue that's especially important now.) But I can't imagine that there is a single gay or lesbian writer in America who does not want to see the end to discrimination in all its forms. Does Goldstein honestly think that Jonathan Rauch would advocate for someone to be fired from her job because she's a lesbian?

I don't think so.

Finally, Goldstein said we should revile the gay right because they are "a masculinist group of gay writers." They are men and women who worship and aspire to traditional masculinity and "cannot see beyond their privilege." He then equated masculinism with marriage-and-military advocates: "In times of war, masculinist values come to the forefront and feminist values recede." (As a feminist, this made me especially angry - because we should never assume that just because a person is a woman she holds a certain set of ideas. "Nurturing" ideas aren't female; "Aggressive" ideas aren't male. This sort of thinking is sexist and outmoded.)

"If these people prevail," he continued, "the masculinist version of homosexuality will come to dominate the movement. ... It is the most dangerous thing we face today, I believe."

The "most dangerous thing"? Think about that. Our country was attacked by fundamentalists, our movement is regularly stormed by the Christian right, yet Goldstein believes that the most dangerous thing our movement faces is Andrew Sullivan?

Please.

Andrew Sullivan doesn't head an anti-gay organization. Norah Vincent isn't running for office. Jonathan Rauch isn't secretly plotting to firebomb NLGTF headquarters.

But Goldstein persisted, doing his best to sic the NLGTF activists on these and other "gay right" writers, saying, "Take these people seriously, speak out against them, combat their ideas."

Instead, how about encouraging the activists to think for themselves? Because we are not a monolithic movement - or rather we are not just a movement. We are a culture, a people, with diverse ideas, beliefs and opinions. We don't share one way of looking at politics or religion or society. And in order to win our rights, we shouldn't need to.

Perhaps what Goldstein meant to say - what he has said before, in the Village Voice - is that the mainstream media needs to give space to many different gay voices, not only the ones that seem to push harder against accepted GLBT orthodoxy.

Bully. I agree.

But that is not what he said at Creating Change. What he said was that, in the gay movement, there is an "us" and a "them." And the "us" holds one set of ideas, progressive ideas, and the "them" holds another, conservative, evil set. So evil that we must take our resources of time and energy and battle them instead of our true enemies, those who dispute our very right to exist. This is unfair and untrue.

This, in fact, is the kind of infighting we should battle against. Not the expression of ideas - but the exhortation for us to silence ideas within our community that we disagree with. Everyone, after all, has the right to her or his opinion. Even if they're gay.

Originally appeared Oct. 31, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IT WOULD SCARCELY be politically correct and it would certainly seem rude to claim that Western culture, as exemplified by, say, America, is better than Near Eastern or Islamic culture, as exemplified by, say, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

But perhaps it is useful to point to a number of important differences between the two so we can understand their different natures and potentials.

One aspect of Western culture is that it has two contrasting foundational principles: one is the Jewish and Christian religions, often conveniently referred to as "Jerusalem"; the other is the tradition of philosophy or the search for truth that developed in ancient Greece, often referred to as "Athens."

The two principles, existing in unresolvable tension, have challenged each other's primacy but neither has ever entirely defeated the other.

"Jerusalem" contributes to the moral seriousness with which we approach our lives. "Athens" urges us to hold our beliefs, even and especially our most important beliefs, tentatively and be willing to doubt and question, always alert to the possibility of rejecting our views and considering new truths.

A second aspect of Western culture: "Athens" itself not only creates conceptual space for doubt and questioning, but urges us actively to challenge and criticize our own views. It insists that we seek new sources of information and that we investigate the heavens and the earth to replace faith (or speculation) with knowledge.

This questioning, openness, and experimenting is what generates developments in the arts and sciences, improvements in our understanding, and the social and intellectual changes we call progress. Not all change is progress, but no progress could happen without openness to change.

A third aspect of Western culture: Our openness to critical analysis requires that we accept, even welcome, the presence of numerous competing viewpoints, schools, sects, or ways of looking at things, even different ideas about what is the best way to live. In other words it requires pluralism.

Since we cannot think of everything ourselves, we have to be open to new ideas and interesting concepts wherever they come from. That means we must be open to "foreign" ideas, insights from abroad, intellectual and artistic innovations from other cultures. In short, Western culture by its nature must be "multi-cultural."

To take our own case as just one example, it is important to remember how much the growing equality of gays and lesbians owes to all these factors. Religion's prioritizing of reproduction and its demand for the "right" form of sexual interaction were open to the questioning philosophy requires.

The challenge to rethink settled views spurred scientific and social science research to learn more about gays. Alfred C. Kinsey's studies are a prime example of the Western willingness to challenge previous thinking and replace faith (or self-deception) by knowledge.

Our culture's pluralism allowed pro-gay voices to exist and make their case, and that case was better articulated by being confronted with disagreement. Openness to learning about the ways homosexuality is expressed in other cultures has given us examples to learn from and test our own experience against.

Few of these components of Western culture seem present in Islamic culture.

For Islamic culture, there was never a background or development of any sort of secular or rationalist tradition to defend science when it was attacked. Philosophy never gained serious standing; when taught at all, it was in private with just a few disciples.

Attempts by Alfarabi (870-950) and a few others to promote philosophy were decisively countered by the conservative Baghdad theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111) who denounced philosophy, scientific investigation, atheism and heresy, and promoted an implausible alliance between irrational mysticism and Qur'anic legalism.

According to J.J. Saunders' "History of Medieval Islam," "The attempt of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in Spain to answer Ghazali and defend the pursuit of secular science fell on deaf ears and exposed him to the charge of teaching atheism."

As a result, says Saunders, "The profane sciences, which had always operated on the fringe and had never been free from the suspicion of impiety, were largely and quietly dropped as 'un-Muslim.'" Accordingly, "Arabic philosophy was dead by 1200, Arabic science by 1500."

It was al-Ghazali who promoted Qur'an-based religious schools called "madrasas" that today in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan turn out uneducated young fundamentalists who fight for the Taliban, support Osama bin Laden, and view the struggle against the West as "jihad." Higher education is no different: Two-thirds of all Saudi PhDs are in "Islamic Studies."

There is no pluralism, cultural or religious, in conservative Muslim nations. The whole of Saudi Arabia is regarded as "sacred" Islamic soil. Saudi religious police compel Muslims to attend prayers. The West is resented and signs of its presence are regarded as "Western imperialism."

None of this is to claim that Western culture is better than Islamic culture. It is only to point to marked differences between their attitudes toward faith, science, progress, free discussion, the moral and intellectual autonomy of the individual, and the role of the state in enforcing behavior.

Originally appeared Oct. 21, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

BARELY TWO WEEKS before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the New York Post and Court TV both ran items about the Afghanistan Taliban regime's punishment of two men convicted of homosexuality.

According to those stories, the Taliban's Islamic jurists knew that homosexuality was reprehensible and the sentence should be execution, but they were genuinely puzzled by conflicting Islamic opinion on exactly how the execution should be carried out.

"We have a dilemma on this," one Taliban leader explained. "One group of scholars believes you should take these people to the top of the highest building in the city, and hurl them to their deaths. (The other) believes in a different approach. They recommend you dig a pit near a wall somewhere, put these people in it, then topple the wall so that they are buried alive."

No one thought to point out that these approaches are atavistic survivals of options presented during the earliest days of Islam in the mid-7th century.

The idea of stoning derived from the Qur'an's account of Sodom's destruction by a "rain of stones," apparently Muhammad's misunderstanding of the Hebrew legend's "fire and brimstone" (sulfur), and from a supposed hadith ("saying") of Muhammad urging stoning of both partners found engaging in homosexual sex.

Muhammad's successor, his father-in-law Abu Bakr (reigned 632-34), reportedly had a homosexual burned at the stake. The fourth caliph, Muhammad's son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib (reigned 656-61) ordered a sodomite thrown from the minaret of a mosque. Others he ordered to be stoned.

One of the earliest and most authoritative commentators on the Qur'an, Ibn 'Abbas (died 687) stipulated a two-step execution in which "the sodomite should be thrown from the highest building in the town and then stoned." Later it was decided that if no building were tall enough, the sodomite could be shoved off a cliff.

Subsequent commentators on the Qur'an denounced homosexuality in what ethnologist Jim Wafer calls "extravagant" terms: "Whenever a male mounts another male the throne of God trembles; the angels look on in loathing and say, 'Lord, why do you not command the earth to punish them and the heavens to rain stones on them.'"

These early doctrines and practices were codified by the influential Hanbalite school of law, the most conservative school of Islamic jurisprudence, named after the theologian Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855).

Ibn Hanbal argued that human reasoning was not a reliable guide to truth and that the Qur'an and the habitual behavior of Muhammad, literally understood, offered sufficient guidance for later practice. As a result, Hanbalites uniformly urged execution, usually by stoning.

There were, to be sure, other schools of jurisprudence. The Hanafites, named for Abu Hanifa (699-767), put greater emphasis on individual reasoning and local circumstances. It taught that homosexuality was wrong but did not merit physical punishment because another supposed hadith of Muhammad said Muslim blood should be spilled only for adultery, apostasy, or murder.

But some ambiguity remained. For a married man, homosexuality could be interpreted as adultery -- i.e., sex outside of marriage -- so an individual judge might choose to impose a penalty anyway.

Other schools of jurisprudence urged public whipping, usually 100 lashes, so that the pain of the sodomite might serve as an exemplary warning to others.

Reports of these punishments being carried out in early times are not abundant. Some historians think this means Islamic culture was more tolerant in practice than in principle. But more likely most court records have simply not survived, so we have no information.

What may have protected some homosexuals, though, was the insistence by most Islamic jurists that conviction for homosexuality required witnesses, sometimes as many as four. That meant that homosexuality conducted discreetly and in private might survive unpunished.

What does all this history have to do with us?

Just this. The strict Hanbalite school of jurisprudence remains powerful to this day, and is dominant in Saudi Arabia and Syria. The distinguished Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes the current Hanbalite school as:

"The most strict in its adherence to the Qur'an and the Sunnah (the original practices) and does not rely as do the other schools of law upon the other principles" -- such as the consensus of the learned, the welfare of the community, modern scientific knowledge, or individual human reasoning -- "and, in fact, rejects them."

In addition, the official Saudi Arabian state religion is a puritanical branch of Islam called "Wahhabism," named for the fundamentalist religious leader named Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), who urged an anti-modern, 'restorationist" or "back to the Qur'an" puritanism fully consistent with the Hanbalite school.

It is hardly necessary to remind anyone that Osama bin Laden is a Saudi Arabian who grew up in the state-supported fundamentalist Wahhabi religion; nor that the Saudi government and royal family have channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to fundamentalist Islamic groups worldwide including, according to the New York Times (Oct. 20, 2001), hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their particularly homophobic version of Islam among U.S. Muslims.

Originally appeared Oct. 9, 2001, in the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader.

IN CASE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN, a group called the Alliance for Marriage has proposed an amendment to the federal constitution. "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups." Their spokespeople freely admit they want to make same-sex marriage illegal in America.

According to its Web site, the Alliance hopes "to strengthen the institution of marriage and restore a culture of married fatherhood in American society." But outlawing same-sex marriage will not strengthen and restore marriage, nor will it erase the legal challenges gay couples face. In fact, social and religious conservatives have yet to make a persuasive case why gay couples should be denied the legal incidents that marriage provides. Marriage laws allow couples to protect their property, their representation of each other, and their dependents. And recent events show how gay couples suffer in these areas.

Property. In San Francisco, a dog mauled a woman to death. Under current law, her female partner cannot sue the dog's owners for wrongful death. Not only is she emotionally upended by this tragedy; she risks foreclosure and bankruptcy because she cannot recover the lost wages that her partner earned and that they shared. In Tampa, a policewoman is killed in the line of duty. Her partner will not receive the policewoman's pension, because such pensions go only to married surviving partners, and since the two were women, they could not marry. Throughout the nation, surviving gay partners have lost homes through estate taxes and relatives of the deceased who have the legal right to move in (figuratively and literally). And forget about transferring retirement benefits. Current law poorly protects gay couples and their property.

Representation. Near Spokane, a 35-year-old man lay comatose. His 32-year-old partner can visit him only because the man's family permits him. The hospital spokesman: "If we have a conflicting interest in patients who can't speak for themselves, we look for legal documents. We follow the state statute." And state statutes do not readily recognize the commitments these men made to each other. Most thirtysomethings know whom they want to speak for them if they are unable to speak for themselves. Many get married in anticipation of this kind of crisis. But current laws hamstring gay couples in choosing who speaks for whom -- and in making these choices stick.

Dependents. Like it or not, some gay couples have children: from previous marriages; by artificial insemination; through adoption. Gay parents, like their straight counterparts, have proven themselves fit as parents. But existing laws make it difficult -- and, in some states, impossible -- for both partners to be legal guardians of children they parent together. Not allowing gay parents to legalize their relationship jeopardizes the children when something happens to one of the parents. And the recent federal decision upholding the Florida law banning gays (couples and singles) from adopting while allowing single heterosexuals to adopt shows how laws that punish gays end up hurting children.

These are everyday examples; stories from Sept. 11 abound. Gay couples need property, representation, and dependent protections. No wonder same-sex marriage looms on the horizon.

Conservatives intent on protecting the institution of marriage ought to rethink their strategy. Rather than keeping marriage away from gay couples, the federal government should get out of the marriage business. And this is easy to do.

Enact a federal civil union law. Change the laws with property, representation, and dependent protections from "marriage" to "civil union." Eliminate penalties that keep blended families and elderly couples from getting hitched. Make civil unions available to gays and straights alike. And give marriage back to houses of worship. You want legal protections? Get a civil union. You want marriage? Go to your faith community.

This approach upholds "the sanctity of marriage." Churches, for example, determine the distribution of their holy sacraments; who wants a government official dictating who can receive communion or get baptized? But governments have a compelling interest in granting property, representation, and dependent protections to citizens who want and need them. Through court order and legislative action, governments are extending these protections to gay couples. Conservatives here can grant these protections to all couples and turn the sacrament of marriage over to professionals who regularly handle holy things.

But time is running out to make this cultural shift. When same-sex marriage comes to America, it will not be because gay activists prevailed. It will be because social and religious conservatives refused to offer all Americans a legal alternative to marriage.

IN A GAY COMMUNITY united in support of a just and necessary war against a network of mass murderers and the theocratic dictatorship shielding them, a few isolated voices have distinguished themselves by their mushy-headed disapproval. For these gay-left writers, the real enemies are not Islamic extremists who crash planes into office buildings but U.S. "militarism," gay assimilation, "unthinking patriotism," children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, a president prone to malapropism, and American wealth.

Consider a recent article by the author Michael Bronski. Shortly after the September 11 attack, some gay activists prematurely celebrated when it was believed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" - the policy of discharging openly gay service members - might be suspended during the crisis. Yet Bronski says he is "frightened" by the possibility that gays might be allowed to serve just now. "Why," he asks, "would any gay and lesbian group be happy that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' be lifted?"

Bronski nostalgically lauds the gay liberationists of the late 1960s and early 1970s who sought "social justice, anti-racism, [and] anti-militarism." He avers that gay liberation groups of that era would never have "advocated for the right of American homosexuals to fight in Viet Nam [sic]."

Bronski contrasts this with present-day gay-rights groups, who want the "'right' to be just like everyone else," including the right to defend the country when it's attacked. This is the familiar charge of assimilation, the worst possible offense in the liberationist catalogue.

Instead of wrapping themselves "in a flag of uncritical and unthinking patriotism," writes Bronski, gay groups ought to supply "draft counselors" to young gay men who might want to resist a future draft.

Someone should tell Bronski it's not 1968 anymore and the Vietnam war is over. September 11 was the bloodiest single day in American history, with thousands of civilians killed by a foreign enemy on American soil for the first time in 185 years. Whatever the ideological fixations of a bygone era - and Bronski is wrong as a matter of history to suggest gays in the 1960s weren't fighting to end discrimination in the military - many gay Americans today want very much to serve their country. That's true even - no, especially - when it's directly threatened.

However flawed, Bronski's world-view is at least coherent, a charge that can't be leveled at the next nervous Nellie of the left. Matt Lum, writing in the Texas Triangle, reports it's been "disconcerting" to see "all these red, white and blue flags flapping in my face everywhere I go."

With all the self-satisfaction of someone who imagines he's just discovered a verity, he snickers: "All this talk of freedom and opportunity, the American spirit. For some."

Lum pronounces himself "suspicious" when students recite the words "One Nation, Under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Next, Lum takes shots at President Bush for saying the terrorists "misunderestimated" him and for predicting a "winning victory," as if a verbal miscue matters next to the administration's widely acclaimed, adroit handling of complex diplomatic and military strategy. I suppose this elevation of form over substance - of words over policy - is what we should expect of a generation raised on Bill Clinton's politics.

After creatively observing that "this whole thing seems to be more about beef and petroleum than anything else," Lum closes: "Practice peace, people."

Guess what, Mr. Lum? You have the "freedom and opportunity" to criticize a sitting president at a time of supreme national crisis precisely because, when the need arose, your forebears had "the American spirit" at which you sneer to give their lives to defend your rights.

I guess we can't expect the same self-sacrifice of Lum, who's discombobulated by waving flags. But it's a little bit too much to admonish us to "practice peace" when we're still shoveling up the ashes of 5,000 dead.

Perhaps the most tortured reaction comes from gay-left activist Pokey Anderson, writing in Houston's OutSmart magazine. The September 11 attack, she writes, quoting a wise and knowledgeable uncle, "'is the fruit of our calloused arrogant affluence flaunted before helpless people for decades and decades of their sufferings.'"

This about a country that has given away more of its hard-earned riches than any before in history, that rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War II, that saved millions of Muslims from dictators like Hussein and Milosevic, that has donated billions of dollars in financial aid to help poor nations feed their people and build infrastructure and acquire medicine, and on and on.

If some people around the world don't grasp those facts it's not because we've been flaunting our affluence. It's because we haven't been flaunting our generosity.

Anderson urges against "blindly bombing" innocent people in a mad desire "to lash out at somebody, anybody."

She wrote those words before we began the military response, which has demonstrated beyond doubt that we're not blindly bombing Afghanistan. In fact, given the circumstances, we've been almost unbelievably restrained in our efforts not to harm innocents, even at the expense of quickly eliminating the terrorists who threaten us with every passing day.

A truly militarist nation, lashing out at anybody and blinded by flapping flags and unthinking patriotism, would have disposed of the matter with a couple of well-placed nukes.

The real question is why Anderson or anyone else might have imagined we would blindly bomb innocent people to begin with, so that she found it necessary to caution against it. The whole idea of needlessly killing people seems to me against our history. Why would anyone assume the worst about us?

The answer, I think, is this: To most Americans, including most gay Americans, this is basically a good country that sometimes does bad things. To some on the left, however, this is basically a bad country that sometimes does good things. The war has exposed that fundamental cleavage as never before.

Finally, rather than use "old methods" like "bombing and dirty tricks and saber-rattling" in response to the terrorist strikes, Anderson advises that we rethink our opposition to "numerous treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol" on global warming and attend gatherings like the recent "World Conference Against Racism," memorable mostly for its anti-Semitism.

I have some news for Anderson. Osama bin Laden and his syndicate will not be satisfied by a more equal distribution of wealth or more global warming treaties or more conferences denouncing racism. They are not motivated, as some on the left imagine, by the left's own long list of grievances against the West.

No, Mr. Bronski, Mr. Lum, and Ms. Anderson, they just want you dead. And they want you dead because you live in a strong country that defends religious pluralism and individual liberty, which they abhor.

Now would you please let the rest of us get on with the business of figuring out how to defend you against them?

Originally appeared Oct. 17, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

HISTORICALLY, ISLAMIC CULTURE (or better, cultures) seem to present two different faces toward homosexuality: A deeply hostile, punitive aspect rooted in religious texts and edicts and a more benign aspect ranging from bemused tolerance to open approval and celebration in literature.

We are at present learning a great deal about the most adamantly hostile strain of Islam as represented by the execution of gay men in Afghanistan and Stalinesque show-trials of gay men in Egypt.

According to the gay Muslim group Al-Fatiha, at least six Islamic nations have laws permitting capital punishment for homosexual acts and at least two have executed gays in recent years.

Just as Christian fundamentalists defend sodomy laws by citing biblical texts, Muslim governments often trace their own punitive laws to their official religion, to the Qur'an (or Koran), and the elaborate Islamic legal traditions called Shari'ah developed from it.

There seem to be about eight relevant passage in the Qur'an, all of them strongly negative. Seven refer to the ancient myth of Sodom that Muhammad borrowed from Hebrew scriptures and which apparently impressed him deeply. Here is a sampling, cited in Ibn Warraq's comprehensive "Why I Am Not a Muslim" (Prometheus Books, 1995). (Note: suras are akin to books in the Bible.)

• Sura 4:16. "If two men among you commit indecency, punish them both."
• Sura 7:80-81. "And Lot said to his people: Do you commit indecent acts that no nation has ever committed before? You lust after men in preference to women. You really are a degenerate people."
• Sura 26:165-6. "Will you fornicate with males and abandon your wives, whom God has created for you? Surely you are a people transgressing all limits. ... [The people of Lot] were utterly destroyed."
• Sura 27:55. "And tell of Lot. He said to his people: Do you commit indecency though knowing its shameful character, lusting after men instead of women."

In short, homosexual sex is indecent, degenerate, shameful, lust-driven, and must be punished.

Even apart from the specific injunction to punish homosexual sex, religious regimes have usually felt obligated to punish any "indecency" or "degeneracy" because they supposedly weaken the perpetrator's faith, corrupt his neighbors or offend gods. The allegedly gay men on trial in Egypt are not accused specifically of homosexual acts but of dishonoring Islam.

But there seems to be an ambiguity in the Qur'an. Most Westerners know that the Qur'an is surprisingly specific about the sensory, even sensual pleasures of the Islamic paradise, with food and drink and young maidens tending the needs of the faithful.

But, as Warraq points out, the Qur'an also specifies that male youths (presumably adolescents or ephebes) will also provide for the needs of the faithful:

• Sura 52:24. "And there shall wait on them young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls.
• Sura 56:17. "And there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and pitchers of water and a cup of purest wine."
• Sura 76:19. "They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth, who will seem like scattered pearls to the beholders."

The exact role of these youthful cup-bearers is not stated, perhaps discreetly so, although it is worth noticing the phrase "boys of their own" in Sura 52:24. Some later Islamic cultural traditions certainly assumed physical involvement.

There seems to be a tension throughout between acknowledging the attractiveness of young men, perhaps part of the native Arabic culture Muhammad was appealing to, and the idea imported from Hebrew scriptures or some other strand of earlier Arabic culture that sex with men is somehow shameful or improper.

This ongoing tension between desire and avoidance in Islamic thought seems to ratchet up anxieties and evasions about homosexuality to a high pitch, especially in the exclusively male public world in which even today many men long remain bachelors, not least because polygamy by some men drains the market of women available for marriage.

The same tension lingers after the Qur'anic compilation. According to ethnographer Jim Wafer writing in the excellent anthology "Islamic Homosexualities" (New York Univ. Press, 1997), most of the vast number of supposed statements of Muhammad (called "hadith") collected (or counterfeited) over the next centuries are deeply negative toward homosexuality.

One such hadith reads: "If you see two people who act like the people of Lot, then kill the active and the passive."

But in a few hadiths Muhammad supposedly warned Muslims against lingering glances at young men because they are so attractive. One hadith says: "Keep not company with the sons of kings, for truly souls desire them in a way they do not desire freed slave-girls."

In other words, as with the ancient Greeks, the desire for young men seemed to be completely reasonable and a natural part of the human psyche, not perverse, shameful or immoral. But for Muslims desire was to be resisted in the service of self-control, piety or "submission" ("Islam") to the god and the god's laws.

Those mixed messages were developed and altered, one side or the other gaining ascendancy, as Islam was refracted through a variety of foreign cultures in succeeding centuries.