IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared August 13, 2001, in the author's "TRB From Washington" column, The New Republic.

In the decade or so in which same-sex marriage has been a matter of public debate, several arguments against it have been abandoned. Some opponents initially claimed marriage was about children and so gays couldn't marry. But courts made the obvious point that childless heterosexuals can marry and so the comparison was moot. Others said a change in the definition of marriage would inexorably lead to legal polygamy. But homosexuals weren't asking for the right to marry anyone. They were asking for the right to marry someone. Still others worried that if one state granted such a right, the entire country would have to accept same-sex marriage. But legal scholars pointed out that marriage has not historically been one of those legal judgments that the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution says must be recognized in every state if they are valid in one state. [!?] And if there were any doubt, the Defense of Marriage Act, designed expressly to prohibit such a scenario, was passed by a Republican Congress and President Clinton in 1996.

None of this stopped the Vermont Supreme Court, legislature, and governor from establishing "civil unions," the euphemism for gay marriage in the Ben & Jerry's state. It's been almost exactly a year since civil unions debuted, and social collapse doesn't seem imminent. Perhaps panicked by this nonevent, the social right last month launched a Federal Marriage Amendment, which would bar any state from enacting same-sex marriage, forbid any arrangement designed to give gays equal marriage benefits, and destroy any conceivable claim that conservatives truly believe in states' rights. Even some movement conservatives - most notably The Washington Times - demurred. The Wall Street Journal ran its only op-ed on the matter in opposition.

Perhaps concerned that their movement is sputtering, the opponents of same-sex marriage have turned to new arguments. Stanley Kurtz, the sharpest and fairest of these critics, summed up the case last week in National Review Online. For Kurtz and other cultural conservatives, the deepest issue is sex and sexual difference. "Marriage," Kurtz argues, "springs directly from the ethos of heterosexual sex. Once marriage loses its connection to the differences between men and women, it can only start to resemble a glorified and slightly less temporary version of hooking up."

Let's unpack this. Kurtz's premise is that men and women differ in their sexual-emotional makeup. Men want sex more than stability; women want stability more than sex. Heterosexual marriage is therefore some kind of truce in the sex wars. One side gives sex in return for stability; the other provides stability in return for sex. Both sides benefit, children most of all. Since marriage is defined as the way women tame men, once one gender is missing, this taming institution will cease to work. So, in Kurtz's words, a "world of same-sex marriages is a world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates."

But isn't this backward? Surely the world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates preceded gay marriage. It was heterosexuals in the 1970s who changed marriage into something more like a partnership between equals, with both partners often working and gender roles less rigid than in the past. All homosexuals are saying, three decades later, is that, under the current definition, there's no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is simply an anomaly - and a denial of basic civil equality.

The deeper worry is that gay men simply can't hack monogamy and that any weakening of fidelity in the Clinton-Condit era is too big a risk to take with a vital social institution. One big problem with this argument is that it completely ignores lesbians. So far in Vermont there have been almost twice as many lesbian civil unions as gay male ones - even though most surveys show that gay men outnumber lesbians about two to one. That means lesbians are up to four times more likely to get married than gay men - unsurprising if you buy Kurtz's understanding of male and female sexuality. So if you accept the premise that women are far more monogamous than men, and that therefore lesbian marriages are more likely to be monogamous than even heterosexual ones, the net result of lesbian marriage rights is clearly a gain in monogamy, not a loss. For social conservatives, what's not to like?

But the conservatives are wrong when it comes to gay men as well. Gay men - not because they're gay but because they are men in an all-male subculture - are almost certainly more sexually active with more partners than most straight men. (Straight men would be far more promiscuous, I think, if they could get away with it the way gay guys can.) Many gay men value this sexual freedom more than the stresses and strains of monogamous marriage (and I don't blame them). But this is not true of all gay men. Many actually yearn for social stability, for anchors for their relationships, for the family support and financial security that come with marriage. To deny this is surely to engage in the "soft bigotry of low expectations." They may be a minority at the moment. But with legal marriage, their numbers would surely grow. And they would function as emblems in gay culture of a sexual life linked to stability and love.

So what's the catch? I guess the catch would be if those gay male couples interpret marriage as something in which monogamy is optional. But given the enormous step in gay culture that marriage represents, and given that marriage is entirely voluntary, I see no reason why gay male marriages shouldn't be at least as monogamous as straight ones. Perhaps those of us in the marriage movement need to stress the link between gay marriage and monogamy more clearly. We need to show how renunciation of sexual freedom in an all-male world can be an even greater statement of commitment than among straights. I don't think this is as big a stretch as it sounds. In Denmark, where de facto gay marriage has existed for some time, the rate of marriage among gays is far lower than among straights, but, perhaps as a result, the gay divorce rate is just over one-fifth that of heterosexuals. And, during the first six years in which gay marriage was legal, scholar Darren Spedale has found, the rate of straight marriages rose 10 percent, and the rate of straight divorces decreased by 12 percent. In the only country where we have real data on the impact of gay marriage, the net result has clearly been a conservative one.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Within gay subculture, marriage would not be taken for granted. It's likely to attract older, more mainstream gay couples, its stabilizing ripples spreading through both the subculture and the wider society. Because such marriages would integrate a long-isolated group of people into the world of love and family, they would also help heal the psychic wounds that scar so many gay people and their families. Far from weakening heterosexual marriage, gay marriage would, I bet, help strengthen it, as the culture of marriage finally embraces all citizens. How sad that some conservatives still cannot see that. How encouraging that, in such a short time, so many others have begun to understand.

First published August 10, 2001, in National Review Online.

HATS OFF to Stanley Kurtz for one of the most thoughtful conservative treatments yet of gay marriage ("Love and Marriage" and The Right Balance). Kurtz has advanced the argument on both the social-policy and the constitutional side of the issue. Let me see if I can advance it further still, starting with his argument that sex difference lies at the core of successful marriage.

I've argued that marriage will have many of the same domesticating and healthful effects on homosexuals as on heterosexuals. Kurtz argues, by contrast, that it is women, not marriage, that domesticate men. Traditional marriage, in this view, is a male-female bargain: The man exchanges promiscuity for security and a stable love life. Male-male spouses, however, will continue to be promiscuous within marriage. This will weaken marriage itself. "A world of same-sex marriages is a world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates." Indeed, "our increased tolerance for homosexuality" is already part and parcel of "the weakening of marriage."

There are some important cavils with this line of thinking, the most obvious being (1) that it offers no argument against same-sex marriage for lesbians, (2) that America is already "a world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates" and has been for years, and (3) that "tolerance for homosexuality" is at most a trivial cause of marriage's problems compared with such factors as liberalized divorce laws, women's increased economic independence, the spread of contraception, the decline of the shotgun wedding, and the cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s. Still, Kurtz's argument goes deeper and deserves a deeper reply.

I think he's right that women (and children) domesticate lusty men. That's why everyone is so happy when the town bully takes a bride. But - a crucial point - women and children are not the only things that domesticate men. Marriage itself also does so. The reason is that marriage is not a piece of paper ratifying a pre-existing relationship. It is a caregiving contract that two people make not just with each other but with society, and it's enforced with a whole bundle of rituals and expectations, from public gestures like weddings and rings and anniversary banquets to in-laws and shared finances and joint party invitations addressed to both spouses. Far from being a rubber stamp, marriage is a culture that actively binds people together.

Will extending this culture to homosexuals damage it by ratifying rampant promiscuity, or strengthen it by affirming and extending its reach? This is a question that can only be answered empirically, which is why gay marriage should be tried in a few states (see below). But we do have quite a bit of suggestive evidence, in the form of existing homosexual unions of the all-but-married sort. Of the ones I know, I can't think of any that don't aspire to aspire to fidelity and lifetime commitment, even without a woman in the house. More important, when they fail in this aspiration, they do so in private, so as not to embarrass each other or their friends and family, who accept and respect their partnership. That's all we ask of straights.

In the real world, some married heterosexuals play around a lot (even if they're president), some play around not at all, and some play around a little and get over it. All, however, are allowed to marry. It might be true that on average male-male pairs will be less faithful than male-female ones, who in turn will probably be less faithful on average than female-female ones. But if the question is whether gay marriage should be legal, rather than exactly what any given marriage looks like, those are the wrong averages to look at. Here are the right ones: The average married homosexual man will almost certainly be much less wanton than the average unmarried homosexual man. And I think it's pretty likely that even the average unmarried homosexual man will be significantly less wanton in a gay culture where marriage is expected than in a one where marriage is illegal.

Really, truly, if I thought that homosexuals would treat marriage like an orgy and inspire millions of heterosexuals to do the same, I'd say we're not ready for the privilege. But I don't think that's remotely likely; Vermont isn't full of orgies posing as civil unions. And it's at least as plausible that gay marriage will strengthen marriage as weaken it. When homosexual couples can legally commit to each other for a lifetime, they, too, will be able to say to each other: "If you really care about me, as opposed to just wanting to have sex with me, you'll marry me." Many, probably most, homosexual men want to get off the market and settle down, but it's hard to sort out the serious partners if marriage isn't an option. Allow gays to marry, you don't wreck proper courtship - you allow it to begin. I'm not saying that male-male or female-female courtship is identical to male-female courtship (not that any two are alike anyway). But it doesn't need to be. It only needs to work better than, "If you really care about me, you'll move in with me."

When I started to understand I was gay, a particularly bitter realization was that, whatever the future might hold for me, it would not hold marriage. A life without the possibility of marriage is a deprivation so severe that most heterosexuals can't even imagine it. If I'm right, same-sex marriage will give stability and care and comfort to millions of homosexuals at little or no cost to anyone else. If I'm wrong, it's not a good idea. The only way to find out is to try and see, which is why I favor a federalist approach that lets some state experiment with same-sex marriage when it feels the time and circumstances are right.

In his second article, Kurtz argues that my federalist approach is a daydream. For one thing, the courts might not go along with it. Kurtz is certainly right that the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which says that no state need recognize any other's same-sex marriage, will be challenged in the courts. Everything is challenged in the courts. I'm confident that the courts will uphold the act; I just can't see this or any foreseeable Supreme Court imposing gay marriage nationally by fiat. But, of course, there's no telling what courts may do. The answer is obvious: Write DOMA into the Constitution. An amendment saying, "Nothing in this Constitution shall require any state to recognize as a marriage any union but that of one man and one woman," does the trick. End of problem.

Such an amendment would be much less controversial, and much easier to pass, than the one that the would-be amenders have actually proposed, which bans gay marriage altogether. Why the "not one inch" position, which says that same-sex marriage must never be allowed on even one square inch of U.S. soil, regardless of what the people of any state want? Because, says Kurtz, even if states are not required by the courts to recognize other states' gay marriages, they will be driven to do so by practicalities.

Now, hold on there. It's true that having only a few states recognize gay marriage would lead to confusions and legal tangles. This, however, is what's known as federalism. In other contexts - tax law, corporate charters, environmental rules - we live with confusingly disparate state laws routinely, as any attorney for a national bank will be quick to confirm. It's a hassle, but the benefit is enormous: the ability to experiment with different policies and to let local people create a social and legal climate that suits them (or move to a state where they'll be happier).

My guess is that, after an initial period of confusion, states and the courts would fairly quickly develop workable rules for gay marriage. For instance, a state that had a partnership program might automatically include any resident gay couple with an out-of-state marriage licenses. States that firmly object to same-sex unions, by contrast, will simply tell those couples, "Sorry, you're not officially married here. If you want to be officially married, stay there. Here, you need to write a will." This doesn't seem "next to impossible." It doesn't even seem very difficult. Compared to the headaches of interstate banking laws, it's a piece of cake.

And what's the alternative? National culture war. Support for gay marriage, now at 35 percent, is likely to grow over time, and the argument is passionate. Kurtz's insistence on "all or nothing" risks turning same-sex marriage into the next abortion issue, in which the stakes are so high - national imposition of gay marriage versus national abolition - that extremism runs riot on both sides. And what if Kurtz et al. gamble on all-or-nothing and lose? What if they refuse to try federalism and they fail to pass their constitutional ban and the courts actually do rule that all states must recognize one state's same-sex marriages? Then their rejection of federalism will have brought about exactly the nightmare they feared. If that happens, don't blame us homosexuals for polarizing the argument and "ramming homosexual marriage down the country's throat."

Believe me, Mr. Kurtz: Federalism is the solution, not the problem. At the very least, it should be given a chance. Isn't that what conservatives always tell liberals?

Thanks to Stanley Kurtz for another provocative and richly argued article. Shall we drill a little deeper? If I read him correctly, his argument boils down to something like this:

1. Marriage is rooted essentially in "the underlying dynamic of male-female sexuality." Nothing else can sustain marriage.
2. As a result, it is simply impossible for same-sex (especially male-male) couples to be good marital citizens. They may get married, but they won't act married, and society won't treat them as married.
3. Because homosexuals will do a bad job of "exemplifying modern marriage for the nation" and marriage is in bad enough shape already, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry.
4. Allowing same-sex marriage anywhere in America at any time is effectively the same as mandating it everywhere forever. So same-sex marriage must never be tried anywhere, ever.

Or, to put it a bit coarsely: "I don't believe homosexuals can handle marriage responsibly. And they should never be allowed a chance to prove me wrong. Sorry, gay people, but that's life."

Kurtzism, as I'll take the liberty of calling this approach, gets four things wrong. It misanalyzes marriage. It misunderstands homosexuality. It sits crosswise with liberalism. And it traduces federalism. Other than that, no problem.

Start with Proposition 1. Kurtz argues that, whatever else marriage is about, ultimately and indispensably it's about "the underlying dynamic of male-female sexuality." I'm not sure exactly what this means beyond saying that marriage must be between a man and a woman, so I'm not sure how to address it specifically. Here is what I think marriage is indispensably about: the commitment to care for another person, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do you part.

A marriage can and often does flourish long after the passion has faded, long after the children have gone, and (yes) long after infidelity; it can flourish without children and even without sex. A marriage is a real marriage as long as the spouses continue to affirm that caring for and supporting and comforting each other is the most important task in their lives. A golden anniversary is not a great event because both spouses have held up their end of a "dynamic of male-female sexuality" but because 50 years of devotion is just about the noblest thing that human beings can achieve.

I can't prove I'm right and Kurtz is wrong. But I think my view is much closer to what people actually think their marriages are fundamentally about, and also, by the way, to what marriage should be fundamentally about. Most married people I know regard themselves as more or less equal partners in an intricate relationship whose essential ingredient is the lifelong caregiving contract. Obviously, they'd agree that male-female sexual dynamics play an important role in their marriage; but then, they're male-female couples, so they would say that. If you told them that marriage is fundamentally about (in Kurtz's words) "a man's responsibilities to a woman," rather than a person's responsibilities to a person, they'd look at you funny.

Why is Kurtz so reluctant to put commitment instead of sex roles at the center of marriage? Because, I suspect, he knows homosexuals can form commitments. To cut off this pass, he claims that in practice homosexuals too often won't form commitments (Proposition 2). Same-sex couples, or in any case male same-sex couples, won't act married, and society won't be bothered if they don't, so marriage will become a hollow shell.

I've explained why I believe that a world where everyone, straight and gay, can grow up aspiring to marry will be a world where gays and straights and marriage are all better off. Kurtz has explained why he thinks otherwise. All of that is well and good, but it only gets us so far, because the key questions are all empirical. How would married gay couples behave? How would married heterosexuals react? Unfortunately, we have no direct evidence. One can say that in Vermont, which has a civil-union law, "the institution of marriage has not collapsed," as the governor recently said. One can say that gay men (no one seems worried about lesbians not taking marriage seriously) represent probably 3 percent of the population, and that it seems a stretch to insist that the 97 percent will emulate the 3 percent. But none of that proves anything. Absent some actual experience with same-sex marriage, everything is conjecture.

Still, I think Kurtz's conjecture is based on a view of homosexuality that is both misguided and at least unintentionally demeaning. His article contains this arresting phrase: "As the ultimate symbol of the detachment of sexuality from reproduction, homosexuality embodies the sixties ethos of sexual self-fulfillment." So there you are. My relationship with my partner Michael is about "sexual self-fulfillment," because, I guess, we can't have children. Let me gently but passionately say to Kurtz that this is an affront. It implies that a straight man's life partner is his wife, while a gay man's life partner is just his squeeze. Let me also gently but firmly instruct Kurtz on a point that I and other homosexuals are in a position to know something about. Our partners are not walking dildos and vibrators. Our partners are our companions, our soulmates, our loves.

I'm not familiar with the Stiers book he cites and I couldn't get it on deadline, so I can't comment on it. I can say, though, that I wouldn't be the least surprised if right now, in 2001, grown gay men and women often regard marriage as a novelty or a convenient benefits package. What does Kurtz expect? These are people who grew up knowing they could never marry, who have structured their whole lives outside of marriage, and who have of necessity built their relationships as alternatives to marriage.

I don't expect that homosexuals will all flock to the altar the day after marriage is legalized. You don't take a culture that has been defined forever by exclusion from marriage and expect it to change overnight. I do think that, a few years after legalization, we'll see something new: A whole generation of homosexuals growing up knowing that they can marry, seeing successfully married gay couples out and about, and often being encouraged to marry by their parents and mentors. Making the closet culture the exception rather than the rule for young gay people was the work of one or maybe two generations. The shift to a normative marriage culture may happen just as fast.

I know, I know. Kurtz will simply insist that real, committed marriage will never be normative for homosexuals; gays just don't have that "dynamic of male-female sexuality" thing. Unfortunately, I don't think I can persuade him by telling him about all the gay people I know who have committed their enduring love and care to each other. I doubt I could persuade him even by telling him about all the men I know who have fed and comforted and carried their dying partners, and covered their partners with their bodies to keep them warm, and held their hands at the end and then sobbed and sobbed. Who is more fit to marry, the homosexual who comes home every night to wipe the vomit from the chin of his wasting partner, or the heterosexual who serves his first wife with divorce papers while she is in the hospital with cancer so that he can get on with marrying his second wife? Alas, I think I know what Kurtz would say.

Kurtz cites figures on gay men's fidelity and attitudes toward monogamy. There are lots of problems with these kinds of numbers, but the more interesting question is: Just what does Kurtz think this kind of data proves? Exactly how monogamous do homosexuals have to be in order to earn the right to marry? I'd have thought that being better than 80 percent faithful would be pretty darn good. Would 90 percent satisfy him? Maybe 98.2 percent? And if a group's average fidelity is the qualification for marriage, shouldn't Kurtz let lesbians marry right now? And why are homosexuals the only class of people who are not allowed to marry until they prove, in advance, that they'll be good marital citizens? Last time I checked, heterosexual men were allowed to take a fifth wife, no questions asked, even if they beat their first, abandoned their second, cheated on their third, and attended orgies with their fourth.

For centuries, homosexuals have been barred from marrying and even from having open relationships. The message has been: Furtive, underground sex is all homosexuals deserve. And now Kurtz is insisting (Proposition 3) that homosexuals can't wed because we're not as sexually well-behaved as married heterosexuals? While also insisting that, no matter how badly heterosexuals behave, their right to marry will go unquestioned? Really, the gall!

Forgive my ill temper on that point. I understand that, to Kurtz and many other Americans, same-sex marriage seems a radical concept, an abuse of the term "marriage." What I think Kurtz and too many other opponents of gay marriage fail to appreciate is the radicalism of telling millions of Americans that they can never marry anybody they love. To be prohibited from taking a spouse is not a minor inconvenience. It is a lacerating deprivation. Marriage, probably more even than voting and owning property and having children, is the core element of aspiration to the good life. Kurtz would deprive all homosexuals of any shot at it lest some of them set a poor example. I think this is both inhumane and cuts against liberalism's core principle, which is that people are to be treated ends in themselves, not as means to some utilitarian social end. I am grateful to Kurtz for leaving the door open to domestic-partnership programs as a consolation prize; this is a good-hearted gesture, and I accept it as such. But surely he recognizes that domestic partnership is no substitute for matrimony. Surely, indeed, that is his point in offering it.

Same-sex marriage is too important to be approached thoughtlessly. I'm glad that Kurtz is thinking as strenuously about the possible downsides as I am about the possible upsides. Where he veers toward something like extremism is in his demand that homosexuals be denied any chance to prove his conjectures wrong (Proposition 4). "There is no such thing as an experiment in gay marriage," he says. "Rauch seems to think that if his cost-free portrait of gay marriage turns out to be mistaken, we can simply call off the experiment. But by then it will surely be too late. Such effects take years to play out, decades more to measure, and even when measured, agreement on the meaning of such data is nearly impossible to achieve."

But pretty nearly all major social-policy reforms play out over years and decades, and agreement on how to measure the results is never complete; Kurtz might just as well say that no state should be allowed to try welfare reform or charter schools or a "living wage" because the effects take years to play out, decades to measure, etc. The whole point of federalism is to allow states to try reforms that might not work, and to allow states' voters not me or Stanley Kurtz to decide for themselves what counts as working. In rejecting this principle root and branch, Kurtz emerges as a radical enemy not just of same-sex marriage but of federalism itself.

I don't have much new to say about his peculiar claim that, once any state adopts same-sex marriage, every other state will have to follow, because Kurtz doesn't have anything new to say defending it. He simply re-asserts it. "Imagine a married couple, where one spouse is hospitalized after a car accident in another state, losing visiting rights or the right to make medical decisions, because their marriage isn't recognized in that state," he says, as if the situation is obviously untenable. OK, I've imagined it. That kind of arrangement would be perfectly manageable. Gay spouses in a state with same-sex marriage would understand that they will need a medical power of attorney that's valid out-of-state. None of these complexities is remotely thorny enough to force any state to recognize same-sex marriage against its will. It seems to me that what Kurtz really fears is that one state will adopt same-sex marriage and others will look at it and say, "Actually, that doesn't seem so bad pretty good, even. We don't mind recognizing it even if we don't adopt it ourselves." What he really fears, in other words, is not a disastrous state experiment but a successful one.

Again Kurtz asserts that federal judges will high-handedly impose one state's same-sex marriages on all the others. Again I say that there is just as he says plenty of room in the law for determined judges to decide this legal issue either way, but that any sane Supreme Court will be determined not to impose same-sex marriage on an unwilling nation. And if undemocratic judicial fiat is what worries Kurtz, why does he greet with silence my suggestion that a simple constitutional amendment far easier to pass than the one he supports would solve the problem?

But all of this stuff about states' being "forced" to accept same-sex marriage is a red herring. Kurtz makes it clear that he is no happier if a state adopts same-sex marriage by legislation or plebiscite than by judicial fiat. His proposed constitutional amendment accordingly strips states, and not just judges, of the power to permit same-sex marriage, even if everybody in some state wants to try it. What I suspect Kurtz really knows and fears is that as more homosexuals form devoted and visible unions, and as more of the public accepts and honors those unions, same-sex marriage will seem ever less strange and radical, and ever more in harmony with Americans' core values which it is. Although he fears that same-sex marriage will come to pass over the public's objections, he fears even more that it will come to pass with the public's assent.

I read Stanley Kurtz's latest contribution to our gay-marriage discussion several times, and I came away concluding that his position really does, as I said last time, essentially boil down to: "I don't believe homosexuals can handle marriage responsibly. And they should never be allowed a chance to prove me wrong. Sorry, gay people, but that's life."

Although I do think it's wrong to demand that homosexuals who want to marry prove they'll meet sexual-behavior standards that are never applied to heterosexuals, I don't believe that homosexuals have an absolute right to marriage, and I've been careful, pace Kurtz, not to rest my case on rights. (When I talk casually about, for example, "denying homosexuals the right to marry," I mean 'right' only in the weaker sense of statutory entitlement.) If I thought that legalizing same-sex marriage would destroy or seriously damage marriage for everyone, then I would oppose same-sex marriage as a self-defeating entitlement. My argument is one about presumption. If there is significant doubt about the effects of same-sex marriage and of course neither Kurtz nor I nor anybody else really knows what would happen, and in truth many good and bad and indifferent things would happen then the presumption ought to be that everyone should have a chance to participate in society's most important civic institution. At a bare minimum, if the claim is that homosexuals will wreck marriage, we should not be forever denied any hope of showing that we won't wreck marriage.

It means a lot to me to hear Kurtz say that there is an "inescapable element of tragedy" in having to deny marriage to homosexuals in order to preserve it for everybody else. Many conservatives, probably almost all until very recently, have viewed gay lives and loves as a more or less inconsequential factor in the debate over gay marriage. Their attitude has been, "Why do these homosexuals insist on wrecking marriage? Why don't they just go away and leave well enough alone? So what if they can't marry? Pass the potato chips." Kurtz will have none of that. I thank him.

But "so sorry" only gets Kurtz so far if the tragedy is of his own making. If he really believes that denying marriage to homosexuals is tragic, he should seek to avoid rather than perpetuate the tragedy. If there is any reasonable possibility that the alleged tragic trade-off between gay and straight marriage is imaginary that same-sex and opposite-sex marriage could happily coexist he should look for and embrace a reasonable option that could test that possibility. One such option is to let our federalist system run its course, letting individual states try same-sex marriage if and when they please. Then we'll see what happens. Yet it is Kurtz who seeks to foreclose this option, with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He would thus rule tragedy into being: tragedy in the form of perpetual homosexual alienation from the social institution that's most important for a happy and healthy life. For all that I appreciate Kurtz's stated solicitousness of gay lives and loves and believe me, I do it may be that the old-fashioned conservative "We don't care" was in some ways more honest.

How would we know if gay marriage works? Kurtz charges that it would be very hard ever to persuade me that a state gay-marriage experiment failed, and that I "will clearly oppose a rollback, on principle, anytime before the next 50 years." Here, I think, Kurtz again misapprehends federalist (and democratic) principle. The question isn't what Jonathan Rauch or Stanley Kurtz or any other pointy-head thinks of a state's experience with gay marriage; the question is what the people of that state and of other states think. The whole point of a federalist approach is that it lets the voters of the states decide what sort of arrangement counts as a social-policy success. I will accept their judgment. Why won't he?

Well, on that subject I think Kurtz and I have reached the point of repeating ourselves. Anyway, I've reached that point. So I'll leave the arguments before the reader and pass on to a couple of other threads. Kurtz says that I'm at the conservative end of the gay intelligentsia on marriage, and that a lot of gay radicals and intellectuals think I'm wrong. That's certainly true, but I don't see why it's important. Gay radicals and intellectuals think all sorts of things but are no more likely than anyone else to be right; it's the argument and evidence, not the source, that counts. I think the gay left-winger who says gay matrimony will undermine the norms of marriage is just as wrong as the conservative right-winger who says it. What else can I say?

In any case, the gay intelligentsia are all over the map on marriage. Not long ago, in an article in Reason magazine, I dissected a book by Michael Warner, a prominent and very smart gay radical who argues that sexual norms of any kind are oppressive. He loathes the idea of same-sex marriage precisely because "the effect would be to reinforce the material privileges and cultural normativity of marriage," which would reduce the amount of sexual experimentation going on, which he thinks would be awful. As I'm sure Kurtz knows, there are a lot of gay radicals who share Warner's fear that marriage will change gay culture in appallingly bourgeois ways. Does that show I'm right? Really, I don't think brandishing gay intellectuals gets us anywhere.

It may be more productive to focus on an odd convergence of interests between the world's Michael Warners and Stanley Kurtzes. Warner and his ilk dislike gay marriage, but they can't be against it because they think homosexuals should have equal rights, including the right to marry. So how do they get out of this box? By arguing for a multiplicity of alternatives to marriage, thus eroding marriage's unique prestige.

Don't get me wrong; if I can't get gay marriage, I'll reluctantly take partnership programs, which would do at least something to recognize and nourish stable gay relationships. But from a social point of view, a partnership program indeed, anything that competes with marriage is a poor second choice. Most gay-marriage opponents just say, "Fine, then homosexuals should get nothing." But a few more compassionate and far-sighted opponents people like Kurtz understand that telling homosexuals to go fly a kite is not an option. Americans really believe in the Golden Rule, equal opportunity to pursue happiness, and all that. They're going to want to do something for homosexuals, a desire that will increase as more sons and daughters and siblings and friends come out.

Something really new, without historical precedent, is happening in America. Today, for the first time, a majority is coming to realize that homosexuals actually exist: that we're not just heterosexuals who need treatment or jail. This realization will, must, and should drive change in a society whose institutions are premised on the notion that homosexuals do not actually exist. The question is whether marriage or something else should be the template. If there's one social regularity I can think of, it's that marriage the commitment to care for another person for life has good effects on human populations, and that its denial has bad effects, and that the alternatives are worse. But if Kurtz absolutely cannot accept that this might be true in the case of same-sex unions, then he had better start planning for a nation full of Vermonts, with all kinds of sort-of-marriage programs.

Note that, once partnership programs are set up, heterosexuals who don't want to get married invariably clamor to get in. "How come only the gays get this? No special rights!" As of 1998, all three of the states and all but a handful of the municipalities that offered domestic-partner programs for their workers included opposite-sex couples; so did the large majority of corporate programs. I grant that to some extent "marriage lite" will spread anyway, because some states that bar gay marriage will offer alternatives. But a constitutional ban on gay marriage will force all states that want to do anything for homosexuals to create alternatives to marriage. Employers, too, will create multifarious partnership programs that would be unnecessary if homosexuals could just get married. Is all this good for marriage? Kurtz worries about "the dissolution of marriage and its replacement by an infinitely flexible series of relationship contracts." But that is exactly what he guarantees by withholding the template of marriage!

Polygamy, which rears its ugly head in Kurtz's last paragraph and in his argument against Andrew Sullivan, merits a discussion of its own; here, just a few words. On grounds of both equality and social policy, gay marriage is completely consonant with liberal principles, and polygamy just as completely isn't and the distinction is not hard to understand and sustain. Homosexuals are not asking for the legal right to marry anybody or everybody we love. We are asking for precisely and only the same legal right that heterosexuals enjoy, namely the right to marry somebody we love: one person, as opposed to no one at all. Liberalism holds that similarly situated people should be similarly treated by law. Americans increasingly understand that a gay man who is allowed to marry a woman is not situated similarly to a straight man who is allowed to marry a woman. Nor is a gay man who wants to marry a man situated similarly to a straight man who wants to marry three women or a man who wants to marry his dog or his Volkswagen; he is situated similarly to a heterosexual man who wants to marry one woman. Saying that gay marriage leads to polygamy is no more logically coherent than saying that if blacks (say) demand and are given one vote, whites (say) will inevitably demand and be given two.

Moreover, a liberal regime has a strong social-policy interest in making marriage universal. There's a reason why no polygamous countries are liberal: if some men usually high-status men get multiple wives, then by definition other men usually low-status men get no wives. The result is a restless and destabilizing sexual underclass that must be subdued by some form of repression. Not coincidentally, gay culture, in its own way, for many years had some characteristics of a restless and destabilizing sexual underclass, and it was subdued to some extent by repression. That all began to change when open gay relationships started becoming socially acceptable. Gay marriage is, obviously, completely consonant with liberal aspirations to make marriage something that everyone can aspire to. In fact, it fulfills those aspirations.

Originally appeared August 9, 2001, in the Los Angeles Times.

Conservatives are all for personal responsibility except, of course, when it comes to their own failures. And they're always in favor of less federal intervention until it comes to their most cherished institutions. Which is why marriage gets them coming and going. It's a double bind: a failure for which they refuse to take responsibility and a cherished institution for which they are seeking special federal protection.

Hence what has been mentioned as a possible 28th amendment to the Constitution, the "federal marriage amendment," the preliminary text of which reads: "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."

I should make it clear from the beginning that I am a natural enemy of this absurd codicil; I am a lesbian who favors gay marriage. Regardless of your point of view, you've got to bear in mind that both conservatives and liberals admit that matrimony is a mess. Some studies have reported that half of all marriages end in divorce. The anti-establishment contingent of the left wing tends to lay the blame for this sorry state of affairs on the institution itself, claiming that marriage is failing largely because it is repressive of women. Conservatives, on the other hand, say that the push for legalization of same-sex marriage is the last straw. Witness the July 23 cover story in National Review magazine, which opines that "legal recognition of same-sex marriage ... would in effect abolish the institution by collapsing the moral principles at its foundation."

Of course, in the real world the scenario is that Mr. and Mrs. Right are living in a very old house called marriage, one that is, as old houses often are, beset by termites that have all but worn away the foundation. Naturally, they're very upset about this. They fear for the loss of their home, a fear that is made exponentially worse by the fact that the gay couple next door is happily building a brand new house.

In their despair, the Rights have gotten it into their heads that their neighbors are responsible for the termites. Unable to admit to themselves that if they had taken better care of their house from the beginning, they wouldn't now be facing the loss of it, they project the blame onto poor Adam and Steve. Though any sensible person can see that the one has nothing to do with the other, the Rights have nonetheless begun circulating a petition to clean up the neighborhood. And, well, you get the idea.

But why, you may ask, are conservatives so set on this insensate amendment? The answer is at once simple and complex. American conservatism always has been plagued by an irrational distaste for homosexuality, a robust and righteous hate for the sin that cannot help extending to the sinner. And this has made it well-nigh impossible for the right to see anything but corrosive evil in the gay lobby's push for equal access to heterosexual privilege.

There is no good, objective reason to believe that legalizing gay marriage would adversely affect traditional marriage, just as there is no good reason to believe that restricting marriage to a man and a woman would resuscitate an institution whose problems are human, not cultural. The sex of spouses has nothing to do with why relationships fail. They fail for lack of love or, more precisely, for lack of understanding what love is and what it entails over the long haul.

A constitutional amendment that purports to protect marriage will do nothing for the chronic human inability to love in sickness and in health. To think otherwise is naive. Moreover, to blame a third party for one's conjugal failings is exceedingly uncharitable, not to mention obtuse. But then, that's the nature of blind prejudice.

Originally appeared August 8, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

WHEN A LEAKED MEMO about the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney indicated that the event might be cancelled because of mismanagement and a financial shortfall, there were headlines but not much surprise.

And why should we be surprised? We've seen this before.

We need to think back only as far as last year, when the controversial Millennium March on Washington hovered on the brink of cancellation. To save it, organizers had to scurry to secure an extra $600,000 in last-minute loans from corporate sponsors and individuals.

Most of us also remember when money from the affiliated Millennium Festival went missing - did an insider stuff $500,000 into his or her pockets before he or she left for the night? Or was attendance not as high as organizers thought?

Then there was the 1990 Vancouver games and the 1994 New York games, both of which ended up with deficits. The 1998 Amsterdam games turned out to be a financial disaster, requiring the local government to pony up $2 million so that they could continue.

So now it's Sydney. The gay money curse strikes again.

Trouble is, the curse seems to strike so frequently that many of us have stopped noticing. Who cares if newspapers fold because they lose ad revenue, if vendors are forced to take loans to keep their businesses afloat, or if sports teams are stranded on the other side of the world?

What does it matter if a local government has to bail us out, as long as we get to bask in the gay pride glow we get whenever thousands of us converge together. As long as people have a good time, as long as the community is burnished with an extra polishing of fellow feeling, an event is successful, right?

Wrong.

It is shameful that we refuse to take fiscal responsibility for ourselves, especially now that we are a maturing movement. Perhaps in our movement's childhood and adolescence it was forgivable to live the dream and damn the consequences, but 26 years after Stonewall, we need to think a little first.

If we want to throw a party or put on a competition, we need to pay for it ourselves and not expect others to bail us out. They don't owe us money; they don't owe us in kind donations. The world owes us nothing but rights and respect.

This is important, because the numbers we throw around - $2 million to bail out the Amsterdam games! - represents real money that has an impact on real people. That $2 million could have gone to public transportation, or housing, or health care, or even stayed in tax payers' pockets. Instead, it paid off businesses that would have suffered had they not gotten their expected return. After the Millennium March fiasco, one festival vendor described how he was forced to sell his jeep to pay salaries. Food vendors, it seems, were collectively owed $300,000.

When our special events organizations are not financially responsible, we hurt our supporters - generous individuals, gay and lesbian owned businesses, supportive legislators, friendly corporate sponsors. And when we hurt our supporters, we hurt ourselves.

Why is this happening? Perhaps because our organizations are built on the shoulders of visionaries who dream a world independent of real costs. We depend on people like that; without them, we could never have broken through the brick wall that sealed our closets.

But it is time to silence our inner children who demand extravaganzas and instead cultivate our inner grown-ups, scaling events back to what can be accomplished responsibly. We must hire people who have the experience to manage mammoth, complex events. More, we must take a close look at the events we take for granted and re-evaluate their purpose.

For example, as the world, country by country, is becoming more open to gays and lesbians, we should think about whether we need a Gay Games modeled on the Olympics. Since the Games are more about brotherhood than about international competition (everyone gets a medal, after all), perhaps we should model the Games on the AIDS ride instead, requesting that athletes who wish to participate raise their own funds through local support. Or maybe we should simply have smaller global competitions for sports that are not in the Olympics - like same-sex couple ice skating.

But we also need to ask how necessary it is that we have any national or international gathering that doesn't pay its own way. Once, these events served as proof to the world - and ourselves - that we existed in large numbers. Now they are just places to spend our disposable incomes acquiring rainbow-themed merchandise. Is it possible that these events are financial failures because not enough of us are interested in attending?

It's true that for those newly out or for those living in conservative areas, these gatherings serve to reassure and strengthen. But our local pride events serve the same purpose. Doesn't it make more sense for someone in conservative southern Illinois to seek out a gay presence in Chicago or St. Louis than to travel to Sydney, half a world away?

We must ward off the gay event money curse with fiscal responsibility, experienced management and honest evaluation. We need to play fair with our supporters and sponsors and prove to them that it is worth investing in our movement. It's only sporting.

First published July 27, 2001 in the Wall Street Journal.

THE OTHER DAY I ATTENDED what seemed an unusually disingenuous press conference, even by Washington's standards. The event was the unveiling, by a coalition of church and community groups called the Alliance for Marriage, of a proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The "Federal Marriage Amendment" was soon to be introduced in Congress, the alliance announced. National Review (on the cover), a conservative bellwether, had already endorsed it.

What, exactly, would the amendment do? Speaker after speaker affirmed that its only effect would be to stop unelected judges from ramming homosexual marriage down the throats of an unwilling public. The intent was merely to require proponents of homosexual marriage to "go through the democratic process" rather than the courts. This seemed odd, because in full view, on an easel next to the podium, was displayed the text of the amendment, whose operative sentence read: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."

You didn't have to be James Madison to see that the proposed amendment strips power not from judges but from states. For centuries, since colonial times, family law, including the power to set the terms and conditions of marriage, has been reserved to the states, presumably because this most domestic and intimate sphere is best overseen by institutions that are close to home. The marriage amendment would withdraw from states the power to permit same-sex marriage even if 100 percent of the voters and legislators of some state wanted to allow it.

One reason to revoke such a core state power might be to prevent a single state from effectively adopting same-sex marriage for the whole country. In 1996, however, Congress and President Clinton foreclosed that possibility by enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, which holds that no state need recognize a same-sex marriage performed or sanctioned in any other state. Meanwhile, three dozen states have legislatively passed pre-emptive bans on same-sex marriage. The country is thus almost 75 percent of the way to a national ban.

Under those circumstances, there can be only one reason for a constitutional amendment putting gay marriage out of the reach of not just state judges but of states. The sponsors must be worried that eventually some state's legislators or voters, acting in the old-fashioned democratic way, will decide that same-sex marriage suits their state's temperament or helps solve their state's problems.

That conservatives would contemplate so striking a repudiation of federalism is a sign of the panic that same-sex marriage inspires on the right. As people usually do when they act in a panic, conservatives are making a mistake. Even if you don't believe, as I do, that same-sex marriage is good because it is just and humane, the attempt to pre-empt federalism is bad policy from a conservative point of view.

For there is a compelling and deeply conservative case for thinking that homosexual marriage, far from being the end of civilization as we know it, would be a win-win-win proposition: good for homosexuals, good for heterosexuals, and good for marriage itself. The reason is one that conservatives have long understood: Love and marriage go together. Marriage transmutes love into commitment. Love is often fleeting and crazy-making. Marriage is lasting and stabilizing. For all the troubles that divorce, fatherlessness and illegitimacy have brought, marriage remains far and away the most durable bond that two caring people can forge.

Though some homosexuals have children, even childless homosexuals - in fact, especially childless homosexuals - need and benefit from the care of, and promise to care for, another, till death do you part. Society stands to benefit when all people, including gay people, have this care and make this commitment.

Before rushing to ban same-sex marriage, conservatives ought to remember that the real-world alternative is not the status quo or the status quo minus 30 years. Same-sex unions, however viewed by law, are real and increasingly honored by the growing number of Americans who have gay friends and family members. I take my partner, Michael, to the company Christmas party every year, and my colleagues treat him as my spouse. Because governments, businesses, religions and ordinary people are increasingly supportive of these unions, the likely result of a national ban on same-sex marriage would be the profusion of partnership programs and other versions of "marriage lite" - many of which, majoritarian politics being what it is, will inevitably be opened to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals.

Some left-wing gay activists favor the establishment of diverse alternatives to marriage as a way to weaken the real thing, which they regard as rigid and oppressive. It is odd for conservatives to try to help them. Marriage, like voting and property ownership and other encompassing civic institutions, is strongest when it is universal and unique, without carve-outs or special cases. It works best when society and law send a clear message that marriage is for everyone - gay and straight alike - and that the only way to secure the benefits and recognition of marriage is to get married.

The retort, of course, is that unyoking marriage from its traditional male-female definition will destroy or severely weaken it. But this is an empirical proposition, and there is reason to doubt it. Opponents of same-sex marriage have done a poor job of explaining why the health of heterosexual marriage depends on the exclusion of a small number of homosexuals. Moreover, predictions that homosexual integration would wreck civic communities and public institutions have a perfect record: They are always wrong. When same-sex couples started holding hands on the street and buying houses in the suburbs, neighborhoods did not turn into Sodoms and otherwise solid families did not collapse. The British military, after protesting for years that morale would be ruined by open homosexuals, has instead found their admission to be a nonevent. Integration of open homosexuals into workplaces has not replaced pinstripe suits with stud collars or ruined the collegial spirit in offices across the country.

Like it or not, homosexuality exists and is not going away. The question is how to ensure that it is pro-social rather than antisocial. I believe that marriage, the greatest civilizing institution ever devised, is the answer. I could be wrong; but the broader point, in any case, is that same-sex marriage bears potential benefits as well as risks. The way to find out is to try, which is what federalism is for.

Thanks to America's federalist structure and the existence of the Defense of Marriage Act, the United States is uniquely positioned among all the world's countries to get same-sex marriage right, by neither banning it pre-emptively nor imposing it nationally. Instead, same-sex marriage could be tried in a few places where people feel comfortable with it and believe it would work. Letting states go their separate ways, moreover, is the way to avert culture wars, as the misguided nationalization of abortion law so unpleasantly and frequently reminds us.

Same-sex marriage should not be a federal issue. Conservatives, of all people, should not be attempting to make it one. They have been trumpeting the virtues of federalism for years. Here is a particularly compelling opportunity to heed their own wisdom.

Originally appeared July 25, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

NO ONE DOUBTS that "globalization" is having marked effects worldwide on how people think about themselves and how they live their lives, not least on how they think about and conduct the sexual aspects of their lives.

Australian sociologist Dennis Altman's new book "Global Sex" (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001) is a useful attempt to show how extensive the influence of globalization is and to separate out its strands and trace the ways each influences people's sexual lives, gays and lesbians as well as heterosexuals.

To begin with, when they say "globalization," people generally mean the decreasing importance of national borders and their growing porousness to technological innovation, to new concepts and ideas, to investment capital and the movement of people themselves.

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of globalization is the increasingly rapid communication of information and ideas by new technologies of personal and mass communication.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out recently that "globalization is largely driven by technology-from the Internet to satellites to cell phones to PC's." And Altman quotes one writer describing globalization as "the chronic intensification of patterns of interconnectedness." A fine phrase.

Even strongly authoritarian regimes from Iran and Afghanistan to China are not able totally to prohibit satellite dishes, prevent private computer ownership, block Internet access or censor all domestic websites.

A second aspect of globalization following immediately upon this is the rapid spread of the language and concepts of human rights, personal liberty and autonomy, and the right to individual self-expression.

To some extent these are promoted by a number of international organizations but even more they are transmitted by American popular culture from Oprah, to Hollywood films to MTV, all emphasizing the importance of the personal, of psychological self-awareness and the value of emotional fulfillment.

In many traditional cultures these are shocking new ideas but they provide encouragement and a justification for resistance as people become aware of how much they have been repressed by governments, religious authorities, or pervasive social pressures.

One important consequence of all this is the spread of the concept of gay and lesbian identities and the legitimacy of that self-understanding in contrast either to native denials that gays and lesbians can exist, or else their repression into various intersexual or cross-gender categories.

A third aspect of globalization is the expansion of free trade and the market economy, permitting industrialization and economic development, what Altman calls "an enormous expansion of the reach of capitalism."

The new industry in developing countries, again facilitated by new technology, creates new jobs that enable many people to rise above subsistence level for the first time and fosters the creation of a middle class with disposable income and an expanded range of lifestyle choices.

New jobs also enable young people in many cultures to move away from home and develop their own lives, exploring their sexuality free of family and community pressures to marry and conform to social expectations. How important this is for gays and lesbians hardly needs emphasizing.

Altman says that in Indonesia, "I was struck by the large number of teenagers flocking to discos, teenagers who had moved away from their villages and families because of the opportunity for work in new factories."

A fourth aspect is the enormous increase in the movement of people. These include travelers and tourists and the influx of Western business managers, all of whom who exemplify new modes of self-presentation and suggest new ways of self-understanding.

But it also includes the migration of guest workers and refugees many of whom remain in contact with their home countries and who transmit or take back home what they see and learn in more industrialized and secularized countries.

As Altman says, "Never underestimate the impact of the 747 on rapid population movements." And he quotes economist Lester Thurow who comments, "The global economy has become physically embodied in our ports, airports, and telecommunications systems...."

Ironically, AIDS, itself spread by global travel, is also prompting a more open discussion of sex including gay sex. Many governments feel forced to raise, often for the first time, issues connected with sex as they try to educate their people about risks from the disease.

For instance, according to one HIV prevention program in El Salvador, "The project built self-esteem within the ... gay community, 'changing their self-destructive image into a constructive one.' For the first time a positive self-identified gay community was established in El Salvador."

This is not Altman's best book. The material seems incompletely digested and there are far too many quotations of vaporous post-modern theorizing strung together in place of cogent analysis. The organization is often unclear and the prose, unusual for Altman, sometimes seems to go slack.

Nevertheless, the schematic above omits a number of interesting points and cautionary comments and it is possible to learn a good deal from the book. Taken with its natural advantage of brevity (170 pages of text) it deserves a wide if critical readership.

Originally appeared July 18, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

HAS ANYONE EVER DONE any research on gay entrepreneurship? It seems not. Yet the role of gays and lesbians in starting and developing small businesses would seem to be a significant aspect of our community's structure and its potential for stability, growth and empowerment.

In recent years entrepreneurship has become an important research topic in the economics profession. Black entrepreneurship has been studied as contributing to material prosperity and social equality for African-Americans. The same is true of women's businesses.

But no one, neither economists nor anyone else, seems to have studied gays and lesbians who notice potential business opportunities and take the risk of exploring and developing them by starting a business and offering a product or service for sale.

Even a recent 300-page book ostensibly on "the economic lives of lesbians and gay men" has little to say on the topic. The author seems oddly uninterested in the possibility that gays might more likely be economic risk takers or that gay businesses might provide social and economic benefits to the community simply by existing.

Yet gay-owned businesses are important to our community. Within any sizable gay enclave there are not only gay-owned bars, but gay restaurants, catering services, bookstores, health clubs, bed and bath shops, hair salons and barber shops, print shops, tanning salons, flower shops, card shops, clothing stores, leather goods stores, photographers, computer service providers, and a host of others-including gay newspapers.

To see why gay and lesbian entrepreneurs are important consider what they provide to the gay community and the community at large.

Gay businesses help root and develop the gay community. Just as gays often are urban pioneers, moving into decaying neighborhoods to help spark their revival, so too gay entrepreneurs, early to notice that migration, may be among the first to move in and begin providing products for those new residents.

They help bolster the economic base of the community, filling empty storefronts, encouraging other businesses to move into the area and augmenting the tax base which provides influence with city officials.

Gay business owners improve the social environment of the gay enclave by pressing for street safety, demanding adequate police protection, promoting neighborhood cleanup, demanding improved public services or securing private alternatives. This in turn lures more gay residents, further developing the neighborhood.

And, of course, just by having gay-owned businesses, gay entrepreneurs provide a kind of psychological comfort for other gays who can feel that the area is friendly because the business owners share common concerns and might take an interest in their needs as residents and friends as well as customers.

Equally important, for the entrepreneurs themselves starting a business is a way of seeking psychological as well as financial autonomy. It frees them from the worry about being treated unequally because they are gay.

And starting a business can tap creative energies and generate greater economic productivity. That in turn could produce a strong sense of self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment may be a private good, but the economic productivity has public benefit.

But all this raises a number of questions.

Are gays and lesbians, with their experience of social hostility and their need for psychological autonomy (and their lack of a dependent family) more likely to be risk-takers and entrepreneurs? Or does lingering homophobia disproportionately pressure them to seek economic independence?

How did gay entrepreneurs decide what kind of business to start? Was it a business they already worked in and knew, or a dream they had long deferred or something they simply saw as an unmet need and a potential niche in the market?

Why did they decide to locate in the gay enclave? Were rents initially lower? Did they already live nearby or decide to move nearby? Are gays and lesbians a primary market for their product or service? Did they want to feel a greater part of the gay community?

How long did starting a business take from plan to opening? How much delay was there in obtaining the necessary city permits, inspections, approvals, and so forth? How much did the formal process cost-the licenses, fees, legal paperwork, payoffs and political contributions ("facilitation fees") to city officials? How significant a factor were business, real estate and sales taxes?

Did they have problems with hostile city inspectors, complicated and out-of-date (and often contradictory) building codes and antiquated zoning laws often designed to frustrate economic development? One business owner told me a city official initially refused to register the name of his store. Another said zoning variances could be bought for a price. Inspectors sometimes want to be bribed.

How does being a gay entrepreneur, paying business taxes, managing personnel and dealing with government regulation affect the entrepreneur's political and social outlook? Are his or her previous views changed by the entrepreneurial experience? If so, how?

No one is looking at these things. And because they are not we are probably underestimating the importance of gay entrepreneurs and how we could help them help our community.

Originally appeared July 4, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

IF YOU ARE A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL who wants to promote business and economic development in your city or region, particularly high technology development, the most important thing you can do is create conditions that attract a large number of gays.

That is the fascinating conclusion of a new study, "Technology and Tolerance: The importance of Diversity to High-Technology Growth" by Richard Florida and Gary Gates, published in June by the Brookings Institution.

The argument is relatively simple and straightforward.

Although gay men are disproportionately employed in high-tech industries, gays themselves do not necessarily directly cause high tech business development.

But rather, the presence of gays in an urban area is the most reliable measure, the most sensitive barometer, of an open-minded and creative social atmosphere that draws the highly talented people high tech companies typically seek as employees:

"They (gays) signal a diverse and progressive environment that fosters the creativity and innovation necessary for success in high tech industry."

Thus, alluding to the old coal miners' practice of taking a canary along into a coal mine because of its high sensitivity to toxic coal gases, Florida and Gates call gays "the canaries of the knowledge economy."

Secondarily, because gays often have the disposable income to take advantage of recreational and entertainment offerings and migrate to where they are available, the presence of gays provides a good indicator for the existence of a broad spectrum of lifestyle amenities attractive to other adults.

These observations have an obvious intuitive appeal once you think about them, but is there any way to test them empirically?

There is.

Using 1990 census data on the number of same-sex partners, Florida and Gates developed a "Gay Index" that measured the over or under-representation of gay male couples in an urban area relative to the area's overall population.

Then they compared those figures to a Milken Institute Index designed to measure high-tech industry concentration and growth.

What they found was that urban areas with a high proportion of gays were heavily represented among areas with a high tech business concentration:

The five urban areas with the highest concentration of gay couples were all among the nation's top 15 high-technology areas: San Francisco/San Jose, Washington, Austin (Texas), Atlanta, and San Diego.

And 11 of the top 15 high-technology areas also appeared in the 15 urban areas with the highest proportion of gays.

Further, "Gays not only predict the concentration of high-tech industry, they are also a predictor of its growth. Five of the cities that rank in the top ten for high-technology growth from 1990 to 1998 rank in the top ten for the Gay Index."

Although Florida and Gates agree that some connection between gays and high tech presence may result from their over-representation in the industry, they wryly comment, "it seems difficult to explain how their over-representation would predict (high tech) growth.

"To do so," the observe, "would be to suggest that gays and lesbians are somehow on average more productive or entrepreneurial than their heterosexual counterparts."

Although they relegate this comment to a footnote, they pointedly they say nothing to rule it out as a contributing factor.

Florida and Gates report that they looked at a number of other factors traditionally considered to draw a talented labor pool including climate, professional sports teams, arts and culture, etc., but found only loose correlations with those.

But three "diversity" indexes were far better correlates of high tech presence - the Gay Index, a "Bohemian Index" of writers, artists, and other creative types, and a "Foreign Born" Index.

Of these "the Gay Index does better than other individual measures of social and cultural diversity as a predictor of high-tech location."

Florida and Gates reason as follows:

People in technology businesses are drawn to places known for a diversity of thought and open-mindedness as indicated by their ethnic and social diversity. It is this talented labor pool that draws high tech companies and stimulates high tech growth.

They quote Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina who told a conference of state governors, "Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges. We will go where the highly skilled people are."

Accordingly, Florida and Gates say, cities must begin to combine their goal of providing a better business environment with strategies aimed at improving their diversity and tolerance.

As an example of what they recommend, they cite Austin, Texas, Mayor Kirk Watson who explained, "Austin has benefited from a convergence between technology and our laid back, progressive, creative lifestyle, and music scene. ...

"The key is that we continue to preserve the lifestyle and diversity which enables us to lure companies and people from places like Silicon Valley."

Gary Gates says that he and Florida expect to have a report completed by the end of the summer comparing the 1990 and 2000 census figures.

On the Web: Brookings Institution: "Technology and Tolerance"

Editor's Note: As of March 2002, Gates informed me that the paper examining high technology, diversity, human capital, and employment growth from 1990 to 2000 is still in process. We will add a further note here when it becomes available.

Originally appeared in June 2001 in Update (San Diego).

Accustomed as we are to gay activists' scathing critiques of George W. Bush - some justified, others wildly overblown - it's interesting to note that a conservative group is assailing the president for being too pro-gay.

The Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, issued a report on June 14 titled "The Bush Administration's Republican Homosexual Agenda." They took Bush to task because he "failed to overturn a single Clinton executive order dealing with homosexuality" and "continued the Clinton policy of issuing U.S. Department of Defense regulations to combat 'anti-gay harassment.'"

Yes, that's right. In the view of the anti-gay far right, harassment against service members rumored to be gay is a good thing, and that darn Bush wants to put an end to it.

The report goes on to echo other anti-gay critics who condemned the appointment of openly gay Scott Evertz, a Wisconsin Log Cabin Republican leader, to head the White House AIDS office, and the appointment of Stephen Herbits, an openly gay man and gay rights supporter, as a temporary consultant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Think that's all? Think again. The report also scolds the administration for supporting at the United Nations the "nongovernmental organization" status of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. Next, it speculates about the influence of Vice President Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter. "I think there's a personal connection," Robert Knight, longtime anti-gay activist and author of the report, ominously warned. The full report, by the way, can be found at cultureandfamily.org.

According to the Washington Post, "White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the report's claims."

As well he might, for everything that the anti-gay activists charge the Bush administration with is, apparently, true. These are the same actions that the Log Cabin Republicans have been praising, in fact.

A more recent development, and one that would also inflame the anti-gay right (and delight those gays and lesbians who are not inveterate Bush haters) was this underreported fact: The president opposed anti-gay Senator Jesse Helms' amendment to strip federal financing from school districts that deny Boy Scout troops access to their schools. Almost buried in a June 17 New York Times story was that "Bush told lawmakers from both parties last week that he did not support the provision," which nevertheless eked out passage in the newly Democratic-majority Senate (which wasn't supposed to happen once the Democrats were back in control, or so we were told).

So what's up? Observes gay Republican activist Rick Sincere, "The gay-bashing 'Leviticus crowd,' as [pro-gay GOP presidential adviser] Mary Matalin puts it, simply doesn't get it. They don't understand that they've lost the culture war."

Now as it happens, there was one other recent Bush action, this time widely reported in the gay presses, and used to tar the president as a "bigot": the president's decision not to issue a Gay Pride Month proclamation, unlike former President Clinton. But in the not too distant past, a conservative Republican president would have dismissed the very notion of such a proclamation, declaring that an "immoral lifestyle choice" (or something to that effect) would of course not be given official recognition, lest deviancy be defended and perversity promoted.

That, however, is not what George W. Bush said. "The president believes every person should be treated with dignity and respect but he does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation," said White House spokesman McClellan. A sop to religious conservatives, perhaps, but hardly a clarion call for intolerance. Not by a long shot. And no one tried to stop lesbian and gay federal employee groups within various federal departments from holding very visible pride month celebrations - despite pre-election warnings by Democrats that such activities would no longer be tolerated should the GOP prevail.

Now comes word, as reported in the New York Times of June 19, that the Agriculture Department is advertising for a "gay and lesbian program specialist" to manage its Gay and Lesbian Employment Program, which seeks to improve working conditions for the agency's gay employees. Depending on experience, the permanent position will pay anywhere from $74,697 to $97,108.

According to press accounts, federal agencies in the past have created special positions to handle issues concerning employees who are Hispanic or women, for instance. But the Agriculture Department job appears to be the first comparable position for gay workers in the federal workplace - an advancement, in the face of all the rollback predictions.

Possibly the right wing will go ballistic and the position will be dropped. We'll see. The point isn't that Bush is the best president for gay Americans that he could be, or should be, but that his administration is not nearly as bad as we were told it would be. And that's because the culture winds have shifted so thoroughly that it's now become clear to mainstream conservatives, if not yet to the "Leviticus crowd," that there's no going back.

Originally appeared June 27, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

As riots go, the June 1969 "Stonewall riot" was a fairly small affair. If we did not have a parade to commemorate it, it would probably not loom large in our collective memory.

But at some point, New York gays, delighted that some of them had stood up to abusive police, decided to hold an annual demonstration to commemorate that fact and promote gay pride.

We know how that came about.

Beginning in 1965, Washington gay activist Dr. Frank Kameny and New York's Craig Rodwell had organized a July 4th "Annual Reminder" picket at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a reminder that gay Americans were deprived of fundamental human rights.

But in the fall of 1969, a few months after Stonewall, Rodwell, who by then had opened his Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, proposed that the "Annual Reminder" be changed to a New York "demonstration" commemorating gay resistance to be called Christopher Street Liberation Day.

His idea, he wrote, was to encourage gays and lesbians to "affirm our pride, our life-style and our commitment to each other. Despite political and social differences we may have, we are united on this common ground."

He also suggested that gay organizations around the country hold similar demonstrations on the same day: "We propose a nationwide show of support."

The idea spread rapidly. That first year, 1970, both Chicago and Los Angeles held similar marches. San Francisco held a "gay-in" in Golden Gate Park and finally started holding a parade in 1972.

Now virtually every large city and many small ones hold gay pride parades as gays in smaller and smaller cities take the initiative to become publicly visible in their home towns.

Some gays and lesbians criticize the parades, or affect to be "beyond all that." Maybe so, but it is important to keep in mind what the parades accomplish.

-- The parades are an opportunity to gain visibility and publicity for gays even when there is no specific grievance and political goal at stake. They are pro-active rather than reactive, gay-affirming, not gay-defensive.

-- The parades get the attention of politicians and the mass media (newspapers, television). Neither group would believe there are so many gays and lesbians if not for the parades. That forces them to take us more seriously when we do have an issue.

The Stonewall riot itself got six short paragraphs deep inside The New York Times but the first gay pride parade made the front page. Out of the closets and into the headlines.

-- The parades show the general public the fundamental normality of most gays and lesbians. Except for the occasional drag queen, most of the people in the parade look pretty much like their friends and neighbors.

Conservative gays and lesbians sometimes fear that men in leacher jock straps or go-go boys in day-glo bikinis harm "our" image. But except for religious zealots who dislike us anyway, spectators are probably more impressed that the men are healthy, good looking and in such good shape.

-- The parades give a wide variety of gay groups an annual chance to publicize themselves and push their members to be more open by participating in the parade

And the sheer variety of non-sexual gay interest groups has to impress anyone watching: from Presbyterians to softball leagues, from high school students to parents of gays, from interracial couples to political groups.

-- But most of all, the parades enable gays to see lots of other gays, more gays than they have seen anywhere else, more than they can imagine seeing. That can be enormously encouraging, inspiring and even deeply moving for many gays and lesbians.

It is, in fact, one of our chief "recruiting" techniques.

According to Nagourney and Clendinen's "Out for Good," that first march in New York started off from Greenwich Village with just a few hundred people. But as the marchers walked rapidly up Sixth Avenue they would recognize friends watching from the sidelines and urge them to join.

When march leaders reached Central Park and mounted a bluff overlooking the grassy Sheep Meadow area, they looked back "and behind them - stretching out as far as they could see - was line after line after line of homosexuals and their supporters, at least 15 blocks worth. ...

"No one had ever seen so many homosexuals in one place before. On top of the bluff, many of these men and women, who had grown up so isolated and alone, stood in silence and cried."

Notice the logic of the argument here. The parade is what is important, not the "riot." Stonewall was an excuse for the march, but the decision to have a march was the key element in producing the rapid proliferation of gay visibility and activism that followed.

Remember that the next time someone criticizes the parade. No gay person must ever feel alone again.