IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared May 9, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

Most of us can recall anti-gay taunts during childhood, whether or not they were directed toward us. I remember the first time I heard someone taunt someone else with "homo"--I didn't know what it meant, but it sounded bad.

In the back of my elementary school bus, large sixth graders would make vicious chants using faggot and fag and homo and 'mo. I heard these slurs bounced around the hallways almost playfully, and spit out by boys who were about to fight. I heard them in quiet corners of the playground, during social events in front of parents and in the middle of the classroom with teachers present.

I never heard any adult insist that the slurs stop.

Bullying playground insults are sometimes dismissed as a harmless rite of passage, but words have power. I knew being gay was bad before I knew what being gay was. Cathy Renna, GLAAD's news media director, explained the power of taunting in The Gay & Lesbian Review: "We learn the emotional content of a word before we learn its definition. As the meaning becomes better understood by us, we often get another surge of emotion--one of power. By using this word or that in the presence of someone else, we can assume the mantle of privilege, for example, or the power to put someone else down. Now if just using a word can be an easy ticket to status and power, the seduction of its use can be irresistible."

Renna was talking about Eminem's use of faggot - but the same can be said of the pervasive use of homophobic slurs on the playground and in the classroom.

Up until now, childhood homophobia may have seemed like it was only a gay issue. But late last month, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that 30 percent of children in sixth through 10th grades reported either bullying other children, being bullied or both.

Let's say that again. Thirty percent of American children have been affected by bullying. Yet an editorial in the same issue of JAMA points out, "These issues have not been as prominent a part of the last two decades of public health efforts to prevent violence as they should."

Bullying, the JAMA study makes clear, has deleterious effects on all involved. Bullies have higher rates of alcohol and tobacco use and are four times more likely to be convicted of criminal behavior by their 20s than those who don't bully. The majority of bullies had at least one conviction--more than a third had more. As for the victims of bullies, they have higher rates of anxiety disorders, depression and low self-esteem. They report troubled relationships with classmates and a high degree of loneliness. Both bullies and victims were more likely than other children to get into fights.

Interestingly, anti-bullying networks in the United Kingdom (where the problem of bullying has been taken much more seriously much earlier than in the U.S.) note that homophobic bullying is the hardest type of bullying to stop. Not because it's more venomous than other types of bullying, but because teachers feel like their hands are tied.

Education and intervention turn out to be the keys to stopping childhood bullying - schools with intervention programs report up to a 50 percent decrease in bullying. But because many teachers are forbidden to "promote" homosexuality, they are afraid to educate students about the realities of gay and lesbian life in order to stop homophobic bullying - in case their actions are seen as being too pro-gay.

Even after the bullying study was released, teachers and activists in the United States continue to fight that same battle. Just last week in Olympia, Wash., state legislators blocked an anti-bullying bill because Christian right constituents protested that it could lead to homosexual sensitivity training in schools.

This is ridiculous, because the children who are targeted, the children who are hurt, aren't necessarily gay children - they are all children. They are children who are being labeled as faggots before they reach puberty; before they even know that their sexual orientation is; in fact, before many of them know what sexual orientation means.

So bullying will be permitted to continue, simply because school districts are afraid of gays and lesbians. Thirty percent of American children will continue to suffer now, simply because school districts are worried that positive images of gays and lesbian might be harmful sometime in the future.

This would be food for satire if it weren't so disastrous. Though the authors of the study didn't link bullies or victims to violence, it seems clear there must be some effect. Gay bashers, after all, are nothing more than bullies with bats. And some of the school shootings, such as the one at Columbine, seem to have bullies' victims - especially victims of homophobic bullying - at their tragic hearts.

Homophobic bullying is more than just a gay and lesbian issue. It is a national public health issue that leads to dangerous social consequences. We know how to stop it. It is irresponsible and inhumane that we do not.

Originally appeared May 2, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

It is a striking fact that at least half of the dozen most important American composers of the twentieth century were gay.

They include Charles Griffes, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Virgil Thomson and Gian-Carlo Menotti. Except for the earlier Griffes, each made lasting contributions during American music's "Golden Age" (1935-1955) as well as later.

Of these, only Menotti (born 1911) remains alive and active as a musical entrepreneur, stage director and composer.

On July 7, he will turn 90.

Born in Italy, Menotti came to the United States at 17 to study composition at the Curtis Institute. Virtually the first person he met was 18-year-old Samuel Barber, "spoiled," he recalled, but "very handsome."

The two quickly became fast friends, partners, and creative stimuli for each other. For 30 years between 1943 and 1973 they lived together in a large L-shaped house in the countryside north of New York. After a painful separation, Menotti moved to Scotland, which is now his home.

Menotti is best known as an opera composer. He has written more than 20, of which the most popular is the familiar Christmas opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (1951).

Menotti said he did not set out to be an opera composer, but the surprise success of his early "Amelia Goes to the Ball" (1936) decisively changed his plans. The short, tuneful overture quickly became one of Menotti's "Greatest Hits."

Barber often teased - and irritated - Menotti by telling him that "Amelia" remained his best opera.

Later operas include "The Medium" (1947), "The Consul" (1950) and "The Saint of Bleecker Street" (1954). Each ran for several months on Broadway and the latter two won Pulitzer prizes. "The Consul" is generally regarded as his finest work.

Many of Menotti's more recent operas have been "children's operas," including fantasies like "The Bride from Pluto" ("She looks like a pinball machine," one character frets) and "Help, Help, the Globolinks," which pokes fun at modern music by having the invaders from outer space talk in electronic music, afraid of melodies.

Some might say that Menotti's best opera is Barber's "Vanessa" (1958), perhaps the greatest American opera, since Menotti wrote the libretto (the words) that Barber set to music.

Menotti once explained that he hums melodies for all his librettos as he is writing them and he hummed his own melodies for the words he wrote for Barber: "So there is a Menotti's 'Vanessa' floating around somewhere," he said.

Later, when Barber was writing his own music for the words Menotti would shout, "Oh no, it doesn't go like that!" and he said "Barber would get very angry at me."

But for all this, perhaps I am not alone in preferring Menotti's orchestral music. It is not as well known, but I think the music is better. It is not shaped and limited by words and it gives Menotti a chance to develop his musical themes instead of just moving from one to another.

Let me give a few examples.

• The Piano Concerto in F (1945) is an exuberant, light-hearted work, full of catchy tunes and rhythmic vitality. The middle section is a soulful melody that would fit well into one of Menotti's operas. The last section has a brief allusion to George Gershwin whose own earlier piano concerto is in the same key.
• The Violin Concerto (1952) is a melodic work throughout, with a haunting, unforgettable first section and another of Menotti's warmly lyrical songs as the middle section. I do not know why this piece is not more popular.
• The later Triple Concerto (1970) is lighter, playful piece more like 18th century concertos where different instruments alter and play each other's tunes.
• The ballet "Sebastian" (1944) has a melodramatic plot set in 17th century Venice, but the music is excellent. The gently rocking "Barcarole," is often played separately and counts as another of Menotti's "Greatest Hits."
• Finally, the fantasy-ballet "The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore" (1956) is a satire on mindless conformity and equally mindless artistic fads and innovations. For this little work Menotti wrote some of his most ingratiating chamber music.

The plot involves a poet who lives in a castle and takes a different fantastic pet for a walk each Sunday. The townspeople imitate him, callously killing their old pets and getting new ones each week.

When the poet is dying, the townspeople visit him only to find that all his own pets are still alive and surround him at his deathbed. "How could I destroy the children of my fancy?" he asks the shamefaced townspeople. "What would my life have been without their company?"

Barber, who died in 1981, asked that this last section be performed at his own funeral.

In a 1985 interview Menotti said that when he dies he would like to be buried beside Barber where there is a plot waiting for him.

Barber instructed that if Menotti is buried elsewhere, a marker should be put on the empty plot reading "To the memory of two friends."

"But," Menotti said, "I fully expect to be with him."

Originally appeared in slightly different form May 2, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

Our own fear is not the only thing that keeps us closeted. Sometimes the fear of others can affect us more powerfully - especially the dark fears of our families.

When we come out, our families have a rainbow of reactions. Some of us are lucky enough to have families - or at least family members - who welcome the news of our sexual orientation with open arms. Others hold such anti-gay positions themselves that they can't reconcile their love for us with their hatred of gays and lesbians, and so they kick us out of their houses and shut us out of their hearts.

But the majority of families fall in the messy middle. They love us, but don't know how to handle the idea of us being gay, lesbian or bisexual. Stereotypes may be all they know about our new community and they are afraid for us. Will we contract AIDS and die? Will we be lonely and beaten and isolated? Will we be fired from our jobs and denied housing?

But perhaps more importantly - and more invidiously - they are afraid for themselves.

Particularly if they don't already live in diverse communities. They look around and think that they are the only ones like them with a gay family member. They don't see the gay uncles and lesbian aunts tucked away in the closets of other families. They don't see the prodigal bisexual daughters and the queer transgender cousins who have moved to cities far away. They only see themselves and know they are different.

And so they worry. Our parents may be concerned that others will think they are bad parents, that they raised us wrong. Our grandparents may worry that others will think they have an immoral family or that they will lose their social standing; our siblings may fret that others may think they have gay tendencies, too. And the one gay, lesbian or bisexual relative that even we don't know about may shake with fear, thinking that his or her closet is about to be burst open before he or she is ready.

This leads to a strange disconnect with our families. They may like our significant others, but be unable to talk to us about gay issues. They may love us and continue to treat us like a valued family member, but refuse to acknowledge our sexual orientation in public, even to close friends. They may buy us the occasional rainbow-themed gift, but ask us not to tell other people they know - our fathers, our grandparents, our siblings, our grandchildren, the neighbors - because those are people "who wouldn't be able to handle it."

What they are really saying is that they themselves can't handle other people knowing - because they are afraid.

Most of us have been conditioned by society to believe that homosexuality is something less than normal. But those of us who are gay, lesbian or bisexual are driven to overcome our fear of abnormality and isolation because before we are out, we already feel abnormal and isolated in our home communities. We already know we don't belong - or that there is a part of us that doesn't belong. We come out because we want to find someone to love, or someone to have sex with, or simply someone - or a community of someones - who understand what we feel. We come out because we cannot do otherwise.

But our families don't have that same motivation. Our families, most of them, have communities that they are happy with already, communities chosen because they share similar values, interests, worries. They don't want to lose their place in a society that they feel safe in.

They can't possibly understand that by coming out as a family with a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender member that they will become part of another community, the GLBT community, which will value them for their support. They do not yet know that they are only one family amid dozens in their communities who are hiding gay family members - and that, by coming out, they create room for other families to come out as well.

That's where we have to help. We need to show our families that there are many places in the world where being GLBT is both accepted and celebrated. It is not enough for our families to just know us--because then we become the exception. They need to know our friends and our extended families. They need to come home with us and see other gays and lesbians holding hands on the street. They need to meet the straight people who love us and the children we babysit and the softball teams we play for. They need to be assured that we live happy lives much like theirs. They need to learn that being accepted as gay is not an exception at all. In many communities, it is the rule.

WE OUGHT TO BE ashamed of the way the gay community has responded to the death of Jesse Dirkhising.

At the age of 13, Jesse was befriended by an adult gay couple in Rogers, Ark., who convinced him to engage in kinky sex play.

On the night of Sept. 26, 1999, Joshua McCabe, then 21, acted out a detailed bondage scene designed by boyfriend Davis Carpenter, 37, feeding the teen tranquilizers, strapping him facedown on the bed, stuffing dirty underwear in his mouth and taping it over with duct tape, and repeatedly sodomizing him. When McCabe stopped to eat a sandwich, he noticed that Jesse had stopped breathing and called for an ambulance. The youth died that night of asphyxiation.

Conservatives have jumped on the case as proof that the mainstream media and the gay press are less willing to report stories when gays are perpetrators than when we are victims.

The underlying aim of these activists was undoubtedly to publicize the case as an example of how they say gay men are predatory toward the nation's youth, and how deviant gay sex - meaning all gay sex, in their eyes - can kill. Backed into a corner, most of the people we count on to speak responsibly on behalf of gay America let their knee-jerk defensiveness overwhelm any compassion over the awful death of this gay teen.

Responsibility for the death of Jesse Dirkhising no doubt lies primarily with the two men who drugged, raped and tortured him. But there are important lessons for us to be taken from this tragedy.

First and foremost, our leaders should reaffirm that gay adults bear an awesome responsibility to respect the confusion and innocence that comes with youth. Teens the age of Jesse Dirkhising cannot meaningfully consent to sex play of any sort, much less the extreme S&M scene that led to his death. Gay newspaper columnist Paul Varnell, who argues in these pages this week that straight society is more to blame for Jesse's death, made a public case in May 1999 that "child sexual abuse," a term he always bracketed in quotation marks, was in fact not harmful to many teenage males, some of whom found it enjoyable and adventuresome.

Varnell by no means bears personal responsibility for Jesse's death four months later, but he does owe it to his readers to re-examine his thesis about whether we can all "breathe easier, glad that something we thought was harmful turned out not to be so harmful after all."

Second, the leaders of the S&M and leather communities should loudly repeat that responsible gays should steer well clear of the line between the fantasy of non-consensual sex and taking physical advantage over another. The violent end that Jesse met may be unusual, but that makes it all the more important to condemn any scene involving physically dangerous settings and drugs that inhibit good judgment.

It will not be immediately apparent to mainstream Americans, and many gays, that fantasizing about raping and torturing another human bears no connection with acting out that fantasy.

This newspaper reported last year that even the larger gay adult studios are producing videos that depict gang rape. The victim, almost always younger and soft-featured, usually winds up enjoying and consenting to the attack - an especially dangerous message to send. These videos and magazines like them almost never feature the "safe words" that are the keystone of consensual sadomasochistic sex.

The burden is rightly on those who would advocate and celebrate such fantasies to make the case that they are not contributing to a culture of violence and abuse that is more likely to victimize its participants. Third, those with a pulpit to talk about gay male culture ought to explore publicly the dangers that can come from treating each other as sex objects, not human beings.

Joshua McCabe told police that he didn't even know Jesse's last name, even though he had spent considerable time with the youth and had sex with him several times before the night of the rape. He told a fellow inmate that his only use for Jesse was for sex every now and then.

Feminists have long made a connection between how straight men objectify women sexually and how that can lead to disrespect, dehumanization, mistreatment and worse. The powerful story of Jesse Dirkhising presents a unique opportunity to see how the same dynamic plays out among gay men. To many, even acknowledging cultural factors like adult-teen sex, S&M sex play and sexual objectification is too dangerous to countenance. They worry that conservatives will enjoy a P.R. bonanza, trumpeting how even gays admit their deviance comes with a body count.

Sure enough, a Washington Times cover story on the Dirkhising case quoted from a Southern Voice editorial that merely asked the question whether gay culture bore any responsibility for what happened in Rogers, Ark. We can reliably expect more of the same anytime we take responsibility for addressing the social ills within our own community.

But we betray our own kind if we allow that fear to silence us. And we make ourselves hypocrites when we then turn to straight America and ask it to accept its complicity in violence against us.

Just this week, Judy Shepard told a college audience in Hollins, Va., that she does not blame the two men who robbed and beat her son Matthew and left him to die on a Wyoming fencepost.

"I blame society for giving them permission to kill Matt," she said instead. "They never thought they would be in any kind of trouble for killing another fag."

As long as words associated with gay men and lesbians are perceived as insults, she argued, society will implicitly condone anti-gay violence. Those are powerful words, and they're hard for most heterosexuals to hear because they don't personally harbor violent feelings towards us and certainly don't feel responsible for the horrific behavior of Matthew's killers.

If we want them to take seriously Judy Shepard's call to change how mainstream society views us, then we should happily and eagerly take up the cause of rooting out anything in our own backyard that could have contributed to the death of Jesse Dirkhising.

Of course there are important differences in how the two young men died. Matthew's brutal treatment was largely the result of hate for him as a gay man. The subsequent calls for bias crime legislation introduced a public policy element that justified the massive media coverage.

Jesse's brutal treatment was not the result of hatred toward a group of people, but more accurately was the product of gross disregard for the worth of a gay kid. That's not something that legislation can address, but it sure is an issue that ought to be of central importance to our community.

Religious conservatives instinctively understand the damage George W. Bush is inflicting on the dying and discredited anti-gay aspects of their world-view.

By appointing Scott Evertz, an openly gay man, to head the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, Bush has crossed an important political and cultural threshold. Incredibly, some gay leaders and writers - who once predicted Bush would never hire an openly gay person - have missed the significance of this moment.

Just as it took a scion of wealth to bring us a New Deal, a Southerner to end segregation, an ardent anti-Communist to open diplomatic relations with China, and a Democrat to end welfare as we knew it, it will take a conservative Republican to cement the gains made by the gay civil rights movement over the years. Bush's action both reflects and reinforces the emerging national consensus that gays should have an equal place in the life of the nation.

Evertz becomes the first openly gay person ever appointed by a Republican president. He also becomes the first gay person to lead the federal AIDS office. Either of these alone would be significant; together, they are a watershed.

The appointment not only proves Bush's oft-professed willingness to hire people regardless of sexual orientation, but it also signals the importance he places on combating AIDS. Just before the Evertz appointment, Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that AIDS is a national security issue. When Republicans call something a matter of national security, you know we mean business.

Evertz will report directly to Margaret La Montagne, Bush's domestic policy advisor, which means he will have access to the highest levels of decisionmaking in the White House. He will also be part of a task force of heavy-hitters - including Secretary of State Colin Powell and gay-friendly Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson - who will address the long-ignored international aspects of the AIDS epidemic.

It's instructive to review the reaction of some gay politicos who toiled mightily to find fault with Bush despite the appointment. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the organizational embodiment of the gay left in Washington, conceded it was "an historic, positive step," but devoted more than half of its press release on the subject to criticism of Bush's proposed budget freezing or barely increasing some elements of federal AIDS funding. This reaction was predictable.

Far more disappointing was the response of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), usually a more sensible and centrist voice for gays in Washington. HRC spokesperson David Smith pooh-poohed the appointment of Evertz, comparing it with the alleged 152 openly gay appointees under Bill Clinton.

Yet none of the Clinton appointees served in a position more critical to gays than the one Evertz will hold. Few, if any, of Clinton's gay appointees had the direct access to the White House that Evertz will have. Personally, I'd rather have one openly gay person serving as the AIDS czar than a hundred appointees under Clinton, the most important of whom labored over patents, housing, and relations with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

The most tortured reaction from the left criticized the appointment because it supposedly represents - I love this - identity politics. Thus, "Queer in America" author Michelangelo Signorile, whose career has skillfully exploited identity politics, has suddenly found Jesus on the issue: "[T]here are pitfalls and limitations to identity-based politics," he announced in a column, "and we're about to find out the hard way."

Similarly, a board member for the Milwaukee gay community center worried the appointment would reinforce stereotypes about gay men: "I almost would have rather heard that a woman was heading [the AIDS office]."

Never mind that many of the country's top experts on AIDS are gay men (who are still disproportionately afflicted by the disease) and that not one of Clinton's three appointees to the position was gay. For people like Signorile, Bush is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Religious conservatives have a far better grasp of what's happening now on gay issues in the GOP. They were furious at news of the Evertz appointment and became downright apoplectic when it was learned, just days later, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had hired another openly gay man to screen applicants for jobs in the Defense Department.

James Dobson, an influential evangelical leader, charged that Bush is "creating confusion and frustration for millions of pro-family, social conservatives." The Family Research Council complained that the appointment "sends the wrong message [about homosexuality] to the American people." Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition indicted the Bush administration for being "absolutely disloyal" to religious conservatives and for "stab[bing] us in the back." Robert Knight, on behalf of Concerned Women for America, accused Bush of "advancing the homosexual agenda through appointments."

The most noteworthy reaction on the right came from Republican leaders in Congress, who said ... nothing. Knee-jerk homophobes in the GOP today, like hold-out segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, are increasingly isolated politically.

When the history of the gay civil rights movement is written, the spring of 2001 will mark an important season of consolidation. It was then, the history will say, that a Republican president finally had the courage to defy the anti-gay rogues in his own party. Though such progress is reversible, Bush, cautiously but perceptibly, is truly "advancing the homosexual agenda," which is, after all, about nothing more than equality.

Originally appeared April 2001 in Miami Weekly News and other publications.

Imagine you're enjoying a romantic evening at home with your paramour. Suddenly, your front door is slammed open and thugs crash their way into your bedroom. But wait, these "thugs" are wearing police uniforms and they're here to arrest you for the criminal activity that you and your love mate are engaged in - so-called "sodomy."

This is not a fictional scenario. In 1998, police burst into a suburban apartment in Houston, Texas, and arrested two consenting adults - Tyrone Garner and John Geddes Lawrence. The men were charged with homosexual conduct and spent the night in jail. The cops were investigating a report of a disturbance involving armed men - a report that later turned out to be false, called in by a neighbor who appeared to have a grudge against gays. The two men, rather than simply paying a fine (the "usual" procedure), submitted to a criminal trial so as to challenge what they regard as an unfair and anachronistic statute. To date, their case is still winding its way through the hierarchy of state courts.

Hard as it is to believe, 13 states and Puerto Rico still have sodomy laws that apply to both heterosexual and homosexual couples (outlawing what used to be termed "unnatural" intercourse, generally oral and anal copulation). Five states, including Texas, target only homosexual activity. Punishments for those convicted vary from fines (it's $500 in Texas) to a theoretical maximum of 10 years in Mississippi, and 5 years to life (yes, life!) in Idaho.

Of course, these laws are rarely enforced and there would be an uproar if a state court actually were to sentence a gay couple to years of imprisonment. However, because the laws remain on the books, they can be used to justify government discrimination against gays and lesbians in a host of areas. Courts in sodomy states routinely deny a gay or lesbian parent custody of their children because he or she is openly engaging in criminal activity (that is, they are involved in a same-sex relationship). Ditto for approval of adoptions. Police departments have refused to hire lesbian and gay officers because they pursue a "lifestyle" that flouts the law.

The news, however, isn't all grim. In March, a circuit judge in Arkansas struck down that state's anti-gay sodomy law, saying it unfairly singles out homosexuals for prosecution (the state had argued that the government had an interest in criminalizing behavior that most of its citizens would find "morally inappropriate"). The decision is sure to be appealed, however, so for the time being Arkansas remains in the "sodomy law" category. In Missouri, an appellate court, adjudicating for a district including only a portion of the state, struck down the sodomy law in 1999, finding that a revision of the state's criminal code had inadvertently decriminalized consensual sodomy in the state. Anti-gay legislators had insisted on an amendment to a law reform proposal that would have maintained the sodomy statute, but apparently botched the job by producing a grammatically inept run-on sentence that was just ambiguous enough to give the court room to conclude that consent was a defense to a sodomy charge.

And in the Texas case of Garner and Lawrence, a three-judge panel of the 14th Court of Appeals ruled last June that the state's sodomy law violated the Equal Rights Amendment of the Texas Constitution by singling out homosexuals (the case is pending before the full 14th Court of Appeals). Suits are also underway in Virginia to invalidate the state's Crimes Against Nature statute. A recent poll commissioned by the gay civil rights group Virginians for Justice found that most residents think the state's sodomy law is unfair and should be eliminated. Interestingly, among male respondents, 48.8 percent said that oral sex between two men should be illegal, but only 26 percent of men felt that oral sex between two women should be prohibited.

An excellent site, by the way, for news and views about current sodomy laws and efforts to repeal them, in the courts and through state legislatures, can be found at www.sodomylaws.com.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state sodomy laws in its infamous Bowers v. Hardwick decision. That ruling, with a slim 5 to 4 majority, focused on Georgia's statute prohibiting sodomy among both straight and gay couples (although Michael Hardwick and his partner were gay -- the police don't arrest consenting adult heterosexuals in the privacy of their bedrooms).

Since the Texas statute applies only to same-sex couples, there may be an opening for a reversal should the Lawrence/Garner case eventually make its way up to the highest court in the land. While a national victory would be reason to rejoice, if these battles must be fought state by state, so be it.

Originally published April 11, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.

BACK IN SEPTEMBER 1999, in Bentonville, Ark., two gay men apparently caused the death of a 13-year-old youth named Jesse Dirkhising in what appears to have been an abusive bondage scene.

There is no evidence that the two men intended to kill the youth: They called an ambulance when they found he had stopped breathing.

But their heedlessness, their own use of drugs and their indifference to Dirkhising's safety and well-being suggest a degree of culpability for which "involuntary manslaughter" scarcely seems adequate.

Reflecting on Dirkhising's death, Southern Voice editor Chris Crain recently wondered editorially if there might be some merit to the conservative argument that "the sex-drenched gay culture and the valueless homosexual lifestyle" are bound to victimize young people.

He noted the conservative concern that even though most such young people do not wind up dead, they may become "sexually confused, robbed of their innocence, and torn from the values their parents worked hard to instill in them."

And he concluded, "If the gruesome killing of a gay youth won't at least make us look harder at where our culture might bear some responsibility, what will?"

These are strong, obviously heartfelt words, not lightly written, and they deserve serious consideration.

But I think Crain in large measure not only misplaces blame but fails to give our community credit for the kinds of moral guidelines it provides.

For one thing, there is little evidence that the two men had significant contact with any gay community or gay culture.

As the police affidavit at their bond hearing made clear, the men seem to have been drifters, moving frequently from town to town. So they would have had little occasion to come into much contact with a gay community or discover whether our community had any values to impart.

But to the extent that there might be a value deficit among gays-especially among young gays, people just coming out, and people living in isolation-it is not necessarily the fault of the gay community.

Mainstream culture promotes a sexual morality that focuses on sexual relationships between men and women. Specifically, it focuses on regulating penis-vagina sex to preserve virginity or prevent pregnancy virtually to the exclusion of any other considerations.

But this single-minded focus provides no guidance to people involved in same-sex relationships, for whom penis-vagina sex and pregnancy are not issues. It can even give the impression that there are no "moral" guidelines for same-sex relationships.

Even more, by condemning same-sex activities as immoral in themselves, mainstream culture implies that there cannot be any sexual morality to guide gays in their activities. All homosexual activity is immoral and that is all there is to say.

This can have at least two further implications.

It may lead some gays to think that if they flout the condemnation of homosexuality, they thereby become "immoralists" who have necessarily cast off society's whole structure of morality and have no obligation to pay attention to any other moral concerns either.

And it may suggest that since their sexual partners are also behaving immorally, the partners' well-being need not be an important concern for them. Since the partners are immoral people they probably deserve anything that happens to them.

This is wildly false, but it is understandable how some people, particularly in religiously conservative regions, might think so.

The more a culture insists on the immorality of homosexuality, the more it encourages heedless, irresponsible behavior by homosexuals.

But contrary to what Crain suggests, it is surely not true that the gay community lacks guidelines for sexual activity. In fact, it is probably only by being part of an ongoing gay community that anyone can learn about and internalize regulative principles for gay sexual interaction.

The sexual morality we have is not act-specific but offers guidelines on how to conduct ourselves, how we should treat other people and conditions under which we should engage in sexual activities.

Most of us realize in the first place that this requires a degree of self-reliance, personal responsibility and continuous alertness. People should not put themselves in situations they cannot get out of. People should not drink or drug themselves into a state where they cannot make rational assessments. Prudence is a cardinal virtue.

Second, it involves a clear sense that force or coercion are wrong and that vulnerable people-too young, too drunk, too drugged, too naive-should not be taken advantage of.

Third, perhaps the most highly developed explicit guidelines-sexual ethics if you like-have been evolved by the leather-S/M community. Explicit guidelines are particularly important there because in the intensity of some S/M activities people can be hurt if someone is careless or something goes wrong.

The three preconditions for S/M activity, repeated almost as a mantra, are "safe, sane, and consensual."

A great deal of wisdom resides in those three words. Both parties have to agree voluntarily and unreservedly. They have to be clear-headed, alert and attentive to the other's responses. And there must be no lingering physical or emotional damage.

That may not be all there is to sexual morality, but it is an excellent start for everyone.

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

One of the most interesting and controversial government programs currently being developed is one to provide subsidies to religions to operate various treatment, training, and welfare programs.

President George W. Bush made the proposal a major plank of his presidential campaign, perhaps to appeal to evangelical Christian voters. And he recently established an "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" to promote such efforts.

There is a lot to dislike here starting with the sly language of referring not to "religion" but to "faith." As if "people of faith" meant anything else than "people of religions."

Since religions are characterized by their doctrinal claims a better term would be "people of doctrines." But an "Office of Doctrine-Based Initiatives" does not sound quite so warm and fuzzy.

Further, religious doctrines are by nature unprovable claims without rational support - e.g., people rise from the dead, virgins have babies, there is life after death. After all, if the claims were provable, they would simply be part of science - e.g., the earth is round, the sun is hot, light travels fast.

As one early Christian saint blurted out in an exuberant burst of candor, "I believe it because it is absurd!"

So if everyone were candid, they would refer to "people of irrationality" and an "Office of Irrationality-Based Initiatives."

Be that as it may, the question for us is: Is there a gay angle here? I think there are two.

One is that the major recipients of government (taxpayer) money are likely to be Catholic and evangelical Protestant religious organizations. These range from mildly anti-gay to zealously anti-gay.

So there might be some grounds for questioning government subsidies to anti-gay religious groups even if they sometimes do good works.

The second gay angle is that the largest gay and lesbian organizations in the U.S., and the best organized at the community level, is the Metropolitan Community Church.

It might be very interesting to see a gay-oriented church being paid by the federal government to provide welfare, treatment and training services to gays and lesbians as well as other Americans.

There may be a third gay angle hovering in the background. Many government policies that adversely affect gays and lesbians from sodomy laws to the ban on same-sex marriages are based solely on religious doctrine. They serve no defensible secular purpose.

So gays and lesbians might want to be particularly assertive about the separation of church and state. Rather than see the existing separation weakened, they might want to see it enhanced and enforced more comprehensively.

Let us let the Metropolitan Community Church speak for itself and concentrate on the fact that most recipients of government money will be anti-gay religions.

It is important to remember that the fundamentalist Christian worldview is pervaded by a belief in the struggle between their god and Satan. For instance, 84 percent of evangelical Christians believe that "Satan" himself is behind the fight against religion in public life.

With that worldview, evangelicals are not likely to compromise on moral issues since that would mean compromising with Satan.

In a recent poll by Public Agenda, only 36 percent of evangelicals said that deeply religious (i.e., evangelical) elected officials should be willing to compromise on gay rights issues, compared with 68 percent of non-evangelicals who urged compromise.

So it is worth wondering what kind of social and ideological environment these groups would maintain in their government-subsidized programs.

The concern is less their impact on gays and lesbians who might be in the programs than the possibility that such programs might lure other participants toward an evangelical/fundamentalist worldview and reinforce or create more anti-gay prejudice.

For example, more than half (61 percent) of evangelical Christians believe that "deeply religious people" (such as themselves) should spread their religious views - whenever they can. Fewer than half that proportion (26 percent) of non-evangelicals feel that way.

And critics have already pointed out that some drug treatment programs include "intense Bible study."

It is telling that television evangelist Pat Robertson recently said he was concerned if groups like the neo-Hindu Hare Krishnas, or Rev. Moon's Unification Church or L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction Church of Scientology were to receive subsidies.

It is telling because if Robertson did not expect their programs to influence participants' religious and social views he would presumably have less objection to them.

Robertson is certainly aware that religious welfare programs provide those religions with access to vulnerable and potentially malleable clients.

It is natural for people who feel they are being benefited to be grateful to whoever is helping them. And if they make friends among people running the programs, then they may wish to continue in the same social and religious milieu.

That would certainly be a potential source of new members who would likely adopt the religion's position on gay equality and other social issues as well as its theological perspective.

That may be just fine for the new convert, but it may not be so fine for gays and lesbians.

Originally appeared March 26, 2001, in the author's "TRB From Washington" column, The New Republic.

Let's see if I can paraphrase the current consensus about drug companies and AIDS in Africa. Oh, why bother when I can simply quote Anthony Lewis? Here he is:

In the United States and Europe, the anti-retroviral drugs that have made AIDS a containable disease for many sufferers cost either the patient or the society $10,000 to $15,000 a year. It has been widely assumed that poorer countries cannot afford them, and in any event do not have health systems that could use them effectively. ... [Tina Rosenberg in The New York Times Magazine] showed that those assumptions are false. Brazil now makes the drugs itself and has cut the cost by nearly 80 percent; government commitment has produced clinics to supervise the treatment effectively. Many lives, and much money, have been saved. The big drug companies are frantically resisting the precedent. And they have great lobbying power in the United States, achieved by campaign donations.

Voilà! AIDS in the developing world, described by Lewis as "the most profound and immediate threat to life on earth," is easily solved. Only the evil drug companies, abetted by evil Republicans, stand in the way - companies whose only argument is their ability to buy politicians using campaign cash. The only problem with this line of thought is that the drug companies, not all of which are "big," actually do have an argument, and the closer you look, the stronger it is.

Start with a simple question: Ever wonder how we have drugs to treat HIV in the first place? Lewis doesn't address this, but those of us who are alive today because of those drugs have had reason to figure it out. You could argue that anti-AIDS drugs are the gift to the world of legions of brilliant scientists and researchers. But that misses the point. The reason we have a treatment for HIV is not the angelic brilliance of anyone per se but the free-market system that rewards serious research with serious money. Ever wonder why the vast majority of such treatments come from U.S.-based companies? Because European pharmaceutical companies have been clobbered by socialized medicine and have moved much of their research and production to the United States. (Ten years ago, half of the ten top-selling drugs in the world were made by European companies. After a decade of price controls and regulation, Europeans now make only three of the top 25.) Ever wonder why Indian scientists are working in U.S.-based labs rather than in India? Because our free-market system gives them incentives to discover rather than reasons to flee. The knockoff companies in India and Brazil so beloved by the left are at best copiers of American products and at worst thieves. They're the Napsters of the drug world - only worse, because they charge for what they steal rather than give it away for free.

So the hard question is: How do we maintain the system that gave us these drugs in the first place while getting them to the largest number of infected people? It seems to me that the recent offer by Merck to sell key anti-retrovirals at one-tenth their Western price is an admirable, if partial, answer. HIV, after all, is not like cancer. It is an epidemic, spreading exponentially across the globe. Waiting for patents to run out and prices to drop in the natural course of events is a death sentence for a generation or more. As long as the domestic markets remain unmolested by populists and regulators, a massive discount from the major pharmaceutical companies for poor countries overseas is actually a stunningly generous gesture. Drug companies, after all, are not designed to cure diseases or please op-ed columnists. They're designed to satisfy shareholders. At least that was the shareholders' assumption when they invested.

What if the drugs are still too expensive? Well, that's where governments and international organizations come in. If we wanted to, we could go a long way toward funding discounted HIV meds for the developing world from Western taxpayers' pockets. In saved lives and rescued economies, it would pay for itself. Besides, in times like this it's simply the right thing to do. But such aid should come with realistic caveats. It's vital to ensure that these meds are taken in the right amounts at the right times - or else they will be ineffective in the patient and generate incurable viral strains in the process. Believe me, ensuring this is harder than it sounds. For almost eight years now I've juggled more than 30 pills a day - with food, without food, at night, in the morning, and on and on. Every year or so the regimen changes. I have more than ten prescriptions to keep track of. Most of the time, you feel sick and exhausted after a dose - a subtle but deep incentive to put off taking it, forget, or just give up. I'm not whining, I'm just making a point. Even with educated, motivated patients, 80 percent adherence is an achievement - and 80 percent still means new drug-resistant viral strains gain a niche in the population at large.

Now think of the consequences of doling out hundreds of pills to people who can barely afford a decent meal or a regular trip to the doctor. Keeping track of the drugs will be hard enough. If Western food aid results in massive theft, corruption, and re-exportation, can you imagine what Africa's kleptomaniac dictators could do with expensive HIV meds? Sure, Brazil has shown that drugs can be successfully administered in controlled circumstances. But Brazil is currently an exception to the rule. Elsewhere our best bet is modest, controlled treatment centers where anti-HIV drugs are delivered with medical monitoring and advice. If these work, let's expand them.

For those without access to these drugs, we can also do a lot, and quite cheaply. For people with AIDS there are plenty of relatively inexpensive post-patent drugs with simple dosings to treat the opportunistic infections that prey on depressed immune systems. This can relieve at least some of the pain and suffering, even if it cannot solve the underlying problem.

This means, tragically, that most people with HIV right now will die of it. That is an appalling prospect - as appalling as the thousands who die of dysentery for lack of clean drinking water or who are killed in war, lost in childbirth, or ravaged by malaria. In the face of this, there is the duty to do all we possibly can. But there's also an imperative not to engage in rituals of easy blame, or to attempt something that cannot realistically be achieved, or to demonize those who are a critical part of the solution. In the current debate, it's worth remembering one simple thing: Most African and Western governments have done virtually nothing to halt this global epidemic and are still balking at major aid. The American private sector, which has been responsible for the lion's share of HIV research, is now offering to pay for 90 percent of the cost of drugs for the developing world at the expense of future profits and research. Now you tell me who the real villains are.

WHEN TWO STRAIGHT MEN in Laramie, Wyo., singled out for violence a young gay man in October 1998, the resulting murder made national headlines for weeks. The words "Matthew Shepard" became synonymous for "hate victim" and his murder the inevitable product of a homophobic culture.

When two gay men in Bentonville, Ark., singled out a 13-year-old in September 1999 for violent sex play, the resulting murder made local headlines and a glimmer of national coverage. But "Jesse Dirkhising" isn't synonymous for anything, except in conservative circles.

Among the right wing, "Jesse Dirkhising" stands for two battle cries: the double standard practiced within the "liberal media" and, at a more subtle level, deviant gay sexual culture and its violent consequence.

It's a little too easy to dismiss the media double standard by pointing out the obvious differences in the killing of Matthew Shepard and the killing of Jesse Dirkhising.

The national media fixated on the Shepard murder because the evidence suggested that the two perpetrators were motivated by anti-gay hate. Instead of stealing the pocket change in Shepard's wallet, they pummeled him with a pistol and left him to die, tied to a fence post.

Beyond the sheer brutality of the crime and the "group prejudice" that played a role in it, the resulting cries for hate crime legislation, in Wyoming and elsewhere, were legitimate news stories.

The Dirkhising killing no doubt matches the Shepard murder in brutality and ugliness. He was a teenager far too young to consent to any sort of sexual encounter; he was heavily drugged, his own underwear placed in his mouth and held in place by duct tape, and repeatedly sodomized.

When police arrived at the chaotic scene, his body was smeared in feces and he had only a faint pulse. The two gay men only called an ambulance after one took a break from the "sex play" to eat a sandwich and noticed the youth was not breathing, according to the police report.

But even taken at its worst, gay activists are right to point out, there was no "group prejudice" behind the Dirkhising killing. No one is alleging that the two gay men deliberately planned the teen's abduction to "get" a straight kid. In fact, the available evidence suggests that Jesse was gay, or at least questioning his sexuality.

Without the presence of prejudice based on sexual orientation, or any other sort of "ism" or "phobia," the Dirkhising story doesn't have the same public policy legs as the Shepard killing. To the mainstream press, it's just another brutal crime, this time committed by two gay men.

But are those distinctions, while important, enough to shrug our shoulders and file away Jesse's murder as the random act of twisted minds that just so happen to be gay?

Almost anytime a gay person is victimized these days, our activists are quick to call upon society to recognize its complicity in the crime. What messages are we communicating, they inevitably ask, that might have led those involved to lash out in this way?

In the case of Jesse Dirkhising, the only ones taking the time to look for larger lessons are social conservatives. And that's truly unfortunate.

For one thing, they've got an axe to grind. Social commentators from the right are snooping for evidence to make a broader social point: Gays are social deviants who engage in behavior that is repugnant to mainstream America. And just by publicizing the story, they purposefully feed the claim that gay adults are out to "recruit" wayward youths, with disastrous results.

Before you sniff at such morbid opportunism, admit to yourself that gay activists did much the same thing, though for a cause you support, after Matthew Shepard's death.

Decent conservatives would acknowledge that no gays would take matters so far as they went in Bentonville, Ark., but that wouldn't end the comparison for them - just as most reasonable gay activists allowed that few heterosexuals were waiting to tie us to fence posts.

Conservatives would argue, however, that the sex-drenched gay culture, and the value-less homosexual lifestyle, were bound to victimize someone like Jesse Dirkhising. And while most youths tricked and trapped by predatory gay men don't wind up dead, they do wind up sexually confused, robbed of their innocence, and torn from the values their parents worked hard to instill in them.

Before you dismiss that conservative diatribe, conjure in your head the mental image of Judy and Dennis Shepard, grieving the loss of their son. The sympathy you feel is likely to overwhelm the stubborn "gray zones" of Matthew's murder - especially the mixed motive of his killers and the extent society is really to blame.

Now imagine the parents of Jesse Dirkhising, sitting in court while prosecutors played tapes of his accused killer, telling police, "Jesse really didn't have anything to offer, except maybe sex now and then." Could you stand in front of them and disclaim any responsibility for gay culture in his killing?

As a minority group, we homosexuals have perfected the art of deconstructing mainstream society for its conscious and subconscious homophobia. Our "gay studies" scholars write treatise after treatise on the topic, and our civil rights groups wear out fax machines with press releases on the subject.

But when it comes to examining whether gay culture plays a role in societal ills, we are sometimes as willfully blind as our conservative foes. We are so defensive about "bad press" and passing judgment on anything sexual, we resist the question at a visceral level.

If the gruesome killing of a gay youth won't at least make us look harder at where our culture might bear some responsibility, what will?