IGF CultureWatch

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.

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.