IGF CultureWatch

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.

Originally appeared May 30, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

The effort to promote freedom and legal equality for gays and lesbians has made significant progress in the United States and western Europe.

But there are vast portions of the world where gays and lesbians must live closeted, unrealized, unfulfilled lives blighted by the pressures of rigid social conformity, primitive religious intolerance, fear, prosecution, and even death.

In eastern and central Europe, gays face hostility from authoritarian governments heavily influenced by medieval Catholicism or reinvigorated revanchist Russian and Greek Orthodox religions.

In central and southern Africa, petty tyrants and fundamentalists ministers inveigh against homosexuality as non-African, denounce gays as criminals and threaten to have gays jailed or exiled.

In Islamic countries from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, gays are persecuted, arrested, jailed and sometimes executed.

In India mobs of Hindus, unhindered by the government, have closed theaters showing a gay film. In Communist China, authorities arrest gays at their whim despite liberalization of the penal code.

If multiculturalism means that different cultures have different values and there is no way to prefer one set of values over another, then multiculturalism is a sham and the final enemy of gays and lesbians.

These are nations sunk in ignorance, superstition, barbarism, and moral darkness, and we should say so loudly and repeatedly.

But what we can do about it?

Let us try a thought experiment. Ignoring current political realities, try to imagine some of the things the U.S. government could do if it really want to help gays and lesbians in backward nations.

The U.S. State Department could protest the prosecution and jailing of gays and lesbians, warning that such actions are of "serious concern" to the U.S. government and "not helpful" in maintaining cordial relations with the world's single remaining superpower.

The State Department could designate a "sexual minorities" desk to collect, monitor and report on incidents of anti-gay persecution-arrests, jailings, beatings, acts of censorship and anti-gay statements by government officials..

That desk could make the information public rapidly on a website so target nations would see that they are being monitored. Taking a page from "Atlas Shrugged," the website could list gays and lesbians who flee foreign countries and list the skills and education they take with them so the countries could see what their bigotry is costing them.

Congress could reduce foreign aid to countries that retain sodomy laws or persecute gays. Since much U.S. foreign aid seems to end up in the bank accounts of government officials anyway, the threat of cuts could have significant impact on their behavior.

We could say to them: "You have no natural right to our taxpayers' money. If you want their money you must earn it by good behavior. Stop repressing your citizens. Repeal your sodomy laws. Halt your censorship of gay publications and websites. Educate your citizens."

The Dutch government sends small grants to gay groups in third-world countries. The U.S. could do the same. One hundred grants of $10,000 to $100,000 would cost little but help fledgling gay groups and send a clear message to anti-gay governments.

The most powerful weapons the U.S. has are its ideals of liberty and individuality, free speech, free markets and democracy. In the past we promoted those ideals through a network of U.S. radio stations around the world. We should revive and expand that project.

The Voice of America and Radio Liberty could include substantial programming about U.S. gays, the legitimacy of gay freedom, music by gay artists and reading by gay authors. Since its beginning, the VOA has done exactly one program on gays.

The U.S. could send openly gay ambassadors to anti-gay governments. Forget gay-friendly Luxembourg. Think Saudi Arabia, Namibia, Romania, Cuba, Pakistan. That would force officials to deal with someone gay who represents the world's most powerful nation. [Editor's note: In the fall of 2001, President George W. Bush named openly gay foreign service officer Michael Guest as U.S. ambassador to Romania.]

Gay ambassadors could attend public events with their partners, speak to civil groups and visit gay clubs where they exist. He or she would be an encouragement to gays and lesbians in those countries and a tacit rebuke to the government. Don't worry about sodomy laws: A nation's embassy is by law its own sovereign territory.

So long as the U.S. has an ambassador to the Vatican, that person should be gay. It is high time those men in cassocks at the Vatican secretariat met a gay men who is not repressed, closeted or a hypocrite. It might be a new concept for them.

And finally, the U.S. military must accept openly gay and lesbian servicemembers so that when troops are dispatched to serve in foreign countries, local inhabitants might see openly gay people and, it may be, find it necessary or interesting to interact with them.

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the possibilities, but it give us a sense of how little is being done that could be done, and the beginnings of an activist agenda for the next two decades.

Originally published May 28, 2001, in The New Republic.

THERE'S A LITTLE BOTTLE in my medicine cabinet, prescribed by my doctor. The pills are perfectly spherical, opaque, and shiny, like tiny pearls. The medication is called Marinol. It's an anti-nausea medication I take sometimes to deal with what most people on the AIDS cocktail manage day after day, meal after meal. The pills are perfectly legal, and their active component is THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana, which human beings have known for centuries to be able to cure an upset stomach and increase appetite.

Unfortunately, Marinol isn't that good a drug. The relief from nausea quickly dissipates; even the docs prescribing the stuff don't believe it's as effective as the real thing.

So why can't I legally have the real thing? This week, as expected, the Supreme Court struck down an appeal from some cannabis collectives in California for an exemption from a federal law banning marijuana distribution. It turns out this Court isn't the highest in the land after all. (Bada-bing.) But, of course, the Court is simply interpreting a pretty transparent law that bans pot distribution for medical use - so transparent that I'm surprised the Supremes even took the case. The deeper issue is why our society bans medical marijuana at all.

The answer, to anyone who has ever swallowed a Marinol pill, is obvious. The illegal thing in pot is not THC; it's pleasure. The only difference between the pill and a toke is enjoyment. Sure, there's some risk of inhaling smoke into your lungs - but cigarettes are legal (at least until the Democrats win back Congress). The physical dangers of pot-smoking are trivial compared with the dangers of, say, alcohol, even if you factor in an unusually large case of the munchies. And, compared with nicotine or caffeine, marijuana is about as addictive as Gatorade. Yes, you can get psychologically addicted to it - but the same can be said about watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" or subscribing to The New Republic.

No, what the government is worried about is that you might actually have some fun while conquering your nausea. It's enjoyment that the feds want to outlaw. Bush's prospective drug czar, John Walters, seems to believe that a person who derives pleasure from smoking a plant is immoral because he's pleasantly altering his consciousness. But why? Is drinking alcohol immoral? Is the physical and mental enjoyment of a fine wine more moral than the physical and mental enjoyment of a joint? Beats me if I can find any distinction that isn't based on irrational panic.

Besides, we often feel pleasure because we're doing our bodies good. And, sure enough, marijuana's medicinal qualities - for a wide variety of physical problems - are now a matter of record, whatever Congress says. A fascinating piece in last Monday's Los Angeles Times recounted scientists' discoveries about weed's effects on mental and physical functioning. It turns out that marijuana affects a whole range of what are called cannabinoid receptors, and these receptors in turn regulate any number of physical functions. The Times reported that "[i]t is now known that THC mimics chemicals made naturally by our brains - chemicals that influence a smorgasbord of bodily functions including movement, thought and perception. Studying these brain chemicals (known as `endogenous cannabinoids') is increasing our understanding of an array of medical conditions - among them pain, Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome and memory loss. Drug companies are working busily to develop new therapies based on this knowledge." In other words, marijuana works on the human mind and body because it mimics substances we already have, substances that God or evolution gave us. It merely elevates feelings we are already programmed to feel - but in a way that might both heal illness and give pleasure.

Of course, other, more dangerous drugs do this as well. They mimic adrenaline highs or serotonin rushes. But, unlike these other drugs, which have little or no therapeutic value and which require elaborate manufacture or processing, marijuana is a medicine that grows in the earth. It has been used medicinally for centuries. Banning it not only robs us of potential medical breakthroughs - since more widespread use would likely turn up new and unthought-of effects - but it also denies people what should be a perfectly legal pleasure. The tired argument that pot is a "gateway drug" to more serious narcotics is a fallacy. Sure, if you ask hardened drug addicts whether they started with pot, they usually say yes. But I doubt many of them are teetotalers, either. Why wasn't their first beer a gateway drug? And if you ask a bunch of white-collar professionals in their fifties whether they have ever smoked marijuana, they'd probably say yes as well. My favorite example of this is Al Gore. Here's a man who, by all accounts, smoked weed in college. For him, it was a gateway to one of the most responsible careers in public life you can imagine. Yet he was vice president in an administration that presided over almost five million arrests for marijuana use in eight years. The sole tangible way in which pot is a gateway to other illegal drugs is that it is illegal. The best way to end this easy path to worse narcotics is to legalize it and take it out of the hands of criminals and gangs.

Besides, it is only our puritanical culture that insists that health and pleasure are incompatible. Nature suggests the opposite. Good health is deeply, subtly pleasurable. And pleasure - with its reduction of stress and encouragement of positive thinking - is related to good health. I think of an old friend of mine with AIDS who, in a matter of months, turned from a strapping man into a skeleton. He had almost no immune system and no appetite. He spent most of his days in bed, trying to keep himself from throwing up his medications, moving from time to time to take the pressure off his bedsores, and listening to music as he faded in and out of fevered consciousness. Then he smoked pot. His distress eased; he loved listening to music more and more; his appetite slowly came back. He survived long enough to get the protease inhibitors that saved his life. He's now fit and healthy. He has no doubt that pot saved him.

And pleasure was part of his recovery. It helped dissipate the appalling pain and depression that beset him. It made him human again, because a central part of being human is the enjoyment of life's pleasurable gifts - physical, intellectual, artistic, culinary, mental. We need to play as much as we need to eat and sleep. It is bizarre that, in a country founded in part on the pursuit of happiness, we should now be expending so many resources on incarcerating and terrorizing so many people simply because they are doing what their Constitution promised. Pleasure isn't the same thing as happiness, of course, but the responsible, adult enjoyment of the pleasure of something God gave us is surely part of it. Our continued attack on a medicine that, by some divine fluke, is also highly enjoyable demeans everyone who participates in it. If you'll pardon the expression, it's high time we ended it.

Originally appeared May 17, 2001 in Update (San Diego).

Sometimes the anti-gay brigade can't help itself. Its activists drop their pretensions and reveal that what they're about isn't really "upholding traditional family values." Instead, it's anti-gay animus, pure and simple, that stokes their passion.

Here's an example. In Washington State, a bill aimed at curtailing bullying and harassment in public schools became stalled in the legislature after Christian conservatives complained that it amounted to a gay rights measure. How's that? The bill would have required school districts to set up policies against harassment, bullying and intimidation. It also would have mandated that districts train employees and volunteers in the prevention of bullying.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? To most people, perhaps, but not to the anti-gay brigade. In lobbying against the measure, Christian rightists claimed it would amount to censorship of the bullies' rights to "condemn homosexuality." The director of the Christian Coalition of Washington made a dire prediction that this sort of thing would lead to homosexual sensitivity training in schools.

The State Attorney General offered to add language to the bill making it "perfectly clear" that it would not abridge anyone's right to criticize homosexuality on moral grounds. But the anti-gay brigade would have none of it, and the bill, which had sailed through the state Senate with bipartisan support, never made it out of the House Education Committee.

"I think that people thought that this was going to give some special protections to the gay and lesbian communities," said one supporter, Rep. Dave Quall. He commented that what opponents seemed to want was not an anti-harassment bill, but a bill that "protects people's rights to be a bully" under the guise of expressing their religious convictions - as if calling someone a "faggot" in the school yard is a theological discussion.

Let's think about this. Hurling homophobic epithets has become the prime means of harassing and humiliating any student - gay or straight - who is seen as vulnerable. Usually the victims have little choice but to put up with the constant stream of abuse, often internalizing the hate. On rare occasions, lawsuits have been brought against school administrators for their woeful failure to protect the kids in their charge, but it's hardly a viable course of action. And sometimes, in extreme cases, the victims become mentally unhinged, and seek violent revenge against their tormentors - or innocent parties.

None of this seems to concern the anti-gay brigade. If having teenage brownshirts terrorize gay youth (or those whom they perceive as gay) will ensure that homosexuals know their place (i.e., in the closet), then that's fine with them. God's in his heaven, and all is right with the world.

Need another example? In Vermont, that state's historic civil union legislation is under siege. Civil unions, passed last year, allow same-sex partners to formalize their legal relationship and to share all the benefits the state provides to married couples (as well as the same barriers to dissolution, which requires family court action - just like marriage). The anti-gay brigade is beside itself. But in Vermont, the state Supreme Court ruled that gay couples must have access to the more than 300 state rights and benefits that flow from marriage, if not the right to marriage itself.

So, if civil union can't be overturned outright, what is to be done? The solution they've hit on is to try to replace civil unions with what would be termed "reciprocal partnerships" which - get this - would allow unions between sons and mothers, brothers and sisters, and any other two people whether related by blood or not, as long as neither is currently wed to anyone else. That's to say, reciprocal partnerships would not be limited to those who now can join together in a committed and loving (and sexual) relationship, but would instead apply to any two unmarried people who want to share their health insurance, or obtain other benefits heretofore reserved traditionally for committed adult couples.

This means that in the guise of protecting traditional family values, the anti-gay brigade would like to see any two friends or blood relatives gain the special status that marriage has had in the law. You'd think that would be one of the worst possible scenarios if your goal is actually to protect marriage. But if your motivation is to see that gays don't gain equality to marriage rights and to demean gay couples who have joined together in civil unions, then by all means let's devalue the special relationship between committed couples. It's a wonder they didn't include "reciprocal relationships" between people and their pets in their bill (as long as both are otherwise unmarried).

The anti-gay brigade was hard pressed, in testimony before the state legislature, to show that there's a huge demand for reciprocal partnerships between a child and parent, siblings, or a nephew/niece and their aunt/uncle. On the other hand, many couples united in civil unions put forth a powerful case for leaving the law in place as is. "I do not want our civil union weakened by reciprocal partnerships that would equate my relationship [with her partner] to my relationship with my mother, sister, great aunt," said Deb Reed. "Those relationships are qualitatively different."

Obvious, right? Except when the anti-gay brigade is showing its true intentions, which aren't much different from the schoolyard bullies they seek to protect.

IF YOU'VE BEEN THINKING how nifty it would be to convert to heterosexuality, there's good news and bad news. The "good" news is a recent study concluded that, for a very small number of gays, it's possible. The "bad" news is don't bet on it. Whether or not you were born gay, you will almost certainly die gay. So you'd better learn to like it.

Proponents of so-called "reparative therapy" - the effort to make homosexuals into heterosexuals through a variety of techniques, including counseling and religious instruction - have treated the study as a vindication of their efforts. Gay political groups have reacted with horror, attacking the lead researcher himself as biased. Some news outlets described the study as "explosive."

However, it turns out the furor is much ado about very little. The study makes an exceedingly modest conclusion based on questionable methodology.

First, it's important to know what the study did not conclude. It did not conclude that conversion is possible for most - much less for all - gay people, even if they want to change. It did not conclude that homosexual orientation is a matter of choice, like whether to have the chicken or the beef in a restaurant. It certainly did not validate a particular method of conversion.

In fact, Robert Spitzer, the professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who led the study, does not endorse conversion efforts at all. Indeed, he was one of a group of pioneering psychiatrists who successfully lobbied to have homosexuality removed from the official list of mental disorders in 1973. If there's nothing disordered or sick about a trait, why change it?

What the Spitzer study did conclude is that (1) some (2) "highly motivated" (3) gay people can achieve (4) "good heterosexual functioning" (5) for a limited time (6) after more than a decade of effort. Each aspect of this rather limited conclusion deserves closer scrutiny.

Spitzer's study, which has not been published and has not been professionally reviewed for validity or methodology, is based on telephone interviews conducted with 200 people who claimed to have changed from homosexual to heterosexual attraction for a period of at least five years. Each interview lasted approximately 45 minutes, during which the subjects answered 60 questions about their sexual attractions and behavior in the period before and after their effort to change.

That's it. There were no face-to-face interviews; no tests for physiological reactions to various sexual stimuli; no objective verification of the respondents' answers; no long-term study; and no control group.

Of the 200 self-professed converts to heterosexuality, Spitzer concluded that only 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of the women had actually accomplished their goal.

Moreover, this was a very select group of people. It was not 200 gay people taken off the street at random and put through some conversion exercises to see what the outcome might be. Two-thirds of the participants were referred to Spitzer by "ex-gay ministries" that teach homosexuality is sinful or by a notoriously anti-gay outfit called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. These groups have a vested interest in showing their effectiveness, so they're likely to submit for review only their strongest candidates.

Also, there's a good chance many of the participants had been indoctrinated with powerful and repeated doses of anti-gay ideology and religion. Such people are likely to be "highly motivated" (to borrow Spitzer's description of them) to report they've successfully changed even when they haven't.

We can't even be sure they were ever really "gay" at all. It could be that many of them were basically straight but had an occasional, experimental gay experience in their teens or 20s causing them so much guilt they decided to "change" so it would never happen again.

But since we know so little about the participants, having been acquainted with them over a telephone line for less than an hour each, it's hard to say anything about them with confidence.

The male participants claimed to have been trying to change for fourteen years; the women, for twelve years. That's about one-fifth of the adult years of the average person's life span.

And what was the return on this huge investment of time and energy? For the one-year period before the interviews, they achieved "good heterosexual functioning," defined by the researchers to mean having an emotionally satisfying relationship with a person of the opposite sex, having satisfactory sex with that person at least once a month, and rarely or never thinking of gay sex while doing it. Only 11 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women interviewed reported a complete absence of homosexual attraction. Even these figures are almost certainly high, since they are entirely self-reported.

What this study really proves is that, after a heroic and protracted effort, it is possible for a person suffering from an extraordinary level of internalized homophobia to refrain from having gay sex for a limited period of time. It shows that behavior can be modified; it does not show that a person's basic sexual orientation can be altered.

We didn't need a study to reach that conclusion. The long and tragic history of efforts to "repair" gay people - from electric shock to hormone injections to hectoring lectures about damnation - have amply demonstrated that it's possible to ruin gay people's lives. Unfortunately, this limited and flawed study will only fuel that destructive fire.

Originally appeared May 16, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

Dr. Robert Spitzer recently presented a controversial study to an American Psychiatric Association convention purporting to show that "some people can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge that."

But his new study is seriously flawed and instead of showing that some "highly motivated gays can change to heterosexuality," it nearly demonstrates the opposite.

Spitzer admits that he had "great difficulty" finding people who claimed to have changed their orientation from gay to straight. Ex-gay groups regularly claim to know of "thousands" of people who have "changed" or "left homosexuality." But after searching for nearly a year and a half, Spitzer could only find 274 possibilities.

Most of the subjects were referrals from religious ex-gay or "change" therapy groups and many were public advocates of change therapy who had a strong incentive to describe their past and present lives in terms of the narrative they absorbed about "overcoming" homosexuality.

Even so, 74 of these carefully selected subjects did not even minimally qualify as "changed." They were just people who had stopped having homosexual sex or stopped calling themselves homosexual.

I would not be any less homosexual if I stopped having gay sex or if I called myself "heterosexual." Yet those are exactly what the ex-gay groups call "healing," "change" and "freedom from homosexuality," and the only sort of change many "ex-gays" experience.

So how homosexual were the remaining 200 candidates before their supposed change? Few seem to have been fully homosexual. Most were bisexual.

Nearly 40 percent of the men said they had felt opposite-sex attraction "sometimes" as a teenager and more than half (54 percent) had engaged in heterosexual sex before trying to change. More than 10 percent of the men never engaged in any gay sex at all.

Barely 60 percent of the women said they felt same-sex attraction "often" as a teenager and nearly 60 percent said they had "sometimes" felt opposite-sex attraction as a teenager. Fully two-thirds (67 percent) had already engaged in heterosexual sex before trying to change.

How heterosexual did these not-fully-homosexual people become after their "change"?

Only 11 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women said they now had "no" homosexual thoughts, feelings, desires, yearning or actual sex. That means almost all the men and most of the women still had at least some minimal homosexual desires.

About 70 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women said they still had more than "minimal" homosexual desires, feelings, etc.

A third of the men still occasionally felt strong homosexual desire and even daydreamed about having gay sex.

Of the 112 men (out of the total 143) who acknowledged that they masturbated, more than half (56 percent) said they used homosexual fantasies some of the time and about one-third (31 percent) said they seldom had opposite-sex masturbation fantasies.

Barely a third (37 percent) of the women said they had no homosexual thoughts, desires, yearning or sex. Nearly half (45 percent) still felt homosexual desires sometimes. And more than a third said they had more than "minimal" homosexual desires.

As psychiatrist C.A. Tripp wrote two decades ago about another "change" therapy, "Anyone gullible enough to see this as any kind of secure change - or any change at all beyond a brittle, desperate, tenuous hold on a forced heterosexuality - is probably lost to reason."

So how did Spitzer define "change" as in "some people can change from gay to straight"?

His definition of "change" was "good heterosexual functioning" which included: a year in a "loving," more than adequate heterosexual relationship; fantasizing about gay sex during heterosexual sex less than 20 percent of the time; and heterosexual sex at least once a month.

If you think heterosexual sex "at least once a month" suggests something short of rampant heterosexual lust or even much heterosexual desire at all, you are probably on the right track.

But even by these loose criteria, one-third of the men (34 percent) and more than half the women (56 percent) failed to qualify. So even with the most likely candidates out of "thousands," a complete switch in sexual orientation scarcely seems to occur.

What Spitzer found instead is some degree of movement along the sexual continuum by people who are fundamentally bisexual. No doubt that is "change," so people can "change" in a sense. But this kind of change is very old news.

In his 1948 volume on the human male, pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey wrote that in his thousands of interviews he noted "frequent changes in ratings of individuals on the heterosexual-homosexual scale ... in the course of their lives" (p. 663).

Since some people spontaneously shift somewhat along the continuum over time - by chance, opportunity or a new perception of attractiveness - it seems more than interesting that Spitzer could find so few who could force themselves to make significant change by conscious effort using therapy, counseling, prayer or will-power.