IGF CultureWatch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, of course, they can.

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.