IGF CultureWatch

First published Nov. 22, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY, the pressure is building to overturn the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy.

"I think it's going to end."

That is Charles Moskos talking. Moskos, a professor of military sociology at Northwestern University, is generally regarded as the principal author and staunchest proponent of DADT.

Moskos told the magazine "Lingua Franca" he thinks the policy will be gone in five or ten years.

It would be easy to cite several reasons for its demise, from the increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians in civil society to the growing importance of the gay vote to both political parties.

But just as important, the arguments supporting the policy are unraveling and there is increasing awareness that its rationale is built on sand.

The reason most often cited for barring gays is "unit cohesion," the idea that the presence of openly gay or lesbian personnel would harm a unit's ability to work effectively.

But an excellent article in the October issue of "Lingua Franca" summarizes the evidence for and against the "unit cohesion" argument-and leaves the rationale in tatters.

Briefly put, the evidence shows that:

• Cohesion is a result or by-product of working together, not a pre-condition for doing so;
• Successful performance is due to agreement on the importance of the task, not social closeness or group pride;
• There is no evidence that more cohesive military units perform better in combat situations.

Surprisingly, Moskos himself seems to dismiss the "unit cohesion" argument as unimportant.

"Fuck unit cohesion. I don't care about that," he told "Lingua Franca."

Moskos' own argument is that gays and lesbians should be barred because of "modesty rights for straights." That is, people (heterosexuals) have the right not to be looked at as objects of sexual desire.

"I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man]," Moskos says.

During the 1993 controversy over DADT, Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., appealed to the same idea in his famous televised visit to a submarine, showing the close quarters the crew lived and worked in.

But Moskos' argument seems very "Old World," prudish, and distant from the realities of recent decades.

Even if we accepted Moskos' parallel between male-female and gay-heterosexual situations:

Nowadays people of both sexes seem comfortable looking at each other's bodies and having their own bodies assessed, comfortable even being viewed as possible objects of sexual desire. They seem to welcome it.

This is an era of bikini swimsuits, Lycra sportswear, revealing underwear and lingerie ads in mainstream newspapers. Men and women both work out a health clubs with little purpose other than to look appealing, as if to say, "Hey, look at me."

But Moskos' parallel itself breaks down at crucial points.

One argument against including women fully in the military has been the fear that the mutual attraction of men and women would create problems of improper fraternization and sexual intimacy. In short, men and women might too much welcome being viewed with sexual desire rather than being offended or upset by it.

But now exactly the opposite argument is being promoted to keep gays and lesbians out: The concern that heterosexuals would not want to be viewed with desire, i.e., the desire would not be mutual. This seems inconsistent.

Another reason Moskos' parallel does not work is that in our society, as in most societies, women are much more encouraged to feel modest about their bodies than men are. Men are hardly encouraged to feel modesty at all.

On the contrary, men are generally expected to feel pride in their body and its attributes, and to welcome, even expect, being viewed with sexual desire as a validation of their attractiveness and manhood, whether they feel desire in return or not.

Thus, for instance, gay men are typically comfortable, even pleased, if a heterosexual woman finds them sexually attractive, even if they do not think of her sexually at all. So the "modesty" argument seems implausible.

Further, if the "modesty" argument had merit, women, as the more modest sex, should oppose the presence of lesbians, who might view them with desire, more than heterosexual men should oppose the presence of gay men.

But just the opposite is true. A small survey of army personnel conducted by Moskos himself in 1998 found that more than half of military women (52 percent) supported letting open gays and lesbians service. Fewer than one-fourth of the women (22 percent) actually opposed gays and lesbians serving.

So the modesty argument breaks down at the one point where it can be tested empirically.

In fact, of course, there has long been a disproportionate presence of lesbians in the military. Objections to them seldom come from heterosexual women who fear being viewed as sexually desirable. Instead the objections come from heterosexual males distressed that the lesbians do not regard them as sexually desirable.

But if gays are a threat neither to unit cohesion nor modesty, there is no rationale remaining for the gay ban except sheer homophobia. And prejudice is not a reason.

Originally published Nov. 15, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

REGARDLESS OF THE RESULTS of any particular election gays and lesbians seem to make ongoing progress toward legal and social equality.

The reason is simple: Politics has a limited, and declining, ability to shape society and social attitudes. Instead, it is social changes and social attitudes that shape politics.

Ultimately politics can only adjust to changes that have already taken place at deeper levels in society; politics can hasten or retard those changes a little, but it cannot alter their direction.

Politics and elections are like the froth on ocean waves. The froth bobs up and down and gets blown around a bit, but the real movement is the great currents moving slowly and inexorably far beneath the surface.

In that light, it seems useful to remind ourselves of a few of the fundamental social, cultural and economic currents that tend to encourage liberty or equality for gays.

1. Increasing gay visibility. As we notice almost every day, gays and lesbians are ever more visible as ordinary parts of society, living lives that are similar in competence and virtue to those of their heterosexual friends, neighbors and co-workers.

In addition, gays have become more visible in the mass entertainment media. This provides gay visibility even for people in conservative parts of the nation whose gay friends have yet to make themselves visible. And it provides mild encouragement for those closeted friends to make themselves visible.

The gays and lesbians people live near and see every day they tend to become used to and comfortable with, especially when they work on projects together and have to depend on one another for their successful completion.

2. Natural demographic changes. Absolutely every poll touching on gay issues shows that young people (18-29) are far more accepting of gays than are older people (65 and above).

Both inclinations are understandable. People tend to accept as normal and natural whatever they grow up experiencing. Young people have grown up in a culture where gays are visible among their friends and in the mass media (see No. 1), so they do not see our existence as a problem.

Older people are more likely to see gays as strange, new, possibly threatening element in society and to think there must be many more gays than formerly because they are seeing more now than they did when they were young.

Overall social attitudes will slowly change as the older people die and the younger people carry their gay-friendly attitudes with them into their adulthood and maturity.

3. Psychology is gay affirming. Psychologists and other therapists firmly reject the idea that homosexuality is anything to regret. Instead they now focus on helping gays accept themselves and flourish in their lives and work.

The change reflects the decline of Freud and neo-Freudian doctrines as well as realizations that "conversion therapies" do not work and that gays normally do not exhibit evidence of pathology.

But is also reflects a greater individualism in psychology - a shift from compelling the individual to adjust to the majority (always for his own good, of course) to a new focus on helping the individual achieve self-acceptance and self-actualization.

It is no accident that the new "personalist" focus owes much to the individualist psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and to the libertarian psychologist Nathaniel Branden, the "Father of the Self-Esteem Movement" and a long-time associate of novelist Ayn Rand.

4. The Protestantization of religion. There is an increasing tendency for people to make up their own minds about questions of doctrine and morality and not automatically accept traditional (and usually anti-gay) church teachings.

This tendency is visible in the growing number of (and denunciations of) "cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose which church teachings to accept. Similarly, Taxes Baptists recently asserted their rights of individual conscience and rejected Southern Baptist attempts to impose doctrinal orthodoxy.

One reason for this is that as people become better educated they develop an increased confidence in their own ability to decide such things for themselves.

But the growing presence of a variety of religions in America and the presence of their adherents even among many people's friends also probably unsettles and weakens the unthinking dogmatism of most people's convictions.

Finally, 5. The new technology-driven economy. The current economic expansion has created increased competition for skilled workers and pressures companies to identify and develop new markets.

The competition for skilled employees not only decreases employers' propensity to discriminate (as spelled out in Gary Becker's book "The Economics of Discrimination"), it also encourages employers to offer partnership benefits and other equalizing inducements to gay and lesbian employees.

The concurrent pressure to target new domestic markets can encourage corporations to seek our patronage as an identifiable "niche market." Part of that includes offering support to gay non-profits and doing nothing to offend us or to aid the opponents of gay equality.

Originally appeared November 8, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

RALPH BLAIR dates the beginning of Evangelicals Concerned to almost exactly a quarter century ago, Nov. 2, 1975, the first time he seriously considered creating an organization for evangelical Christians who are gay or lesbian.

Blair tells the story this way. In 1971, after obtaining his doctoral degree, he established the Homosexual Community Counseling Center in New York to offer counseling and therapy for gays and lesbians who were having difficulty accepting or coping with their homosexuality.

Since Blair had also become known in evangelical Christian circles as one of the few people who argued that one could be gay or lesbian and a faithful Christian, the president of one of the major evangelical institutions and a leader in the evangelical movement suggested they have dinner to discuss Blair's "work with homosexuals."

Blair expected the man to try to dissuade him from his view on homosexuality. But to his surprise, during dinner the man told Blair that he too was gay, but married, deeply closeted and able to express his desires only on business trips away from home.

Blair says he realized the man was typical of many gay people in evangelical churches who live in isolation, confused and conflicted over their same-sex attractions but not knowing how to put their desires together with a committed Christian faith.

"During that dinner" Blair writes, "he and I discussed the need for an evangelical Christian ministry for gay men and lesbians, one that would affirm their sexuality and be a "ministry of reconciliation" for gay evangelicals as well as "for gay men and lesbians who could not hear the gospel from those who could not hear them."

Blair says he also recalled that in the early 1960s one gay activist, himself an atheist, said he thought gays were more concerned with feelings of religious guilt than with difficulties with discriminatory legal statutes.

Less than four months later, Blair held a founding meeting of Evangelicals Concerned in a hotel across the street from where the National Association of Evangelicals was holding its own convention. He distributed flyers during the NAE convention, much to the displeasure of the evangelicals.

In the nearly quarter century since then, EC (as it is usually called) has become an important if inconspicuous presence among gay Christians.

Each summer EC holds well-attended conferences on both coasts. Blair invites prominent gay-supportive evangelicals to speak on themes related to Christian discipleship and other biblical issues. Although the speakers are gay-affirming they do not have to address gay issues at any length.

"I have insisted all along that EC be an organization of evangelical Christians who happen to be gay or lesbian rather than an organization of gays and lesbians who happen to come from evangelical Christian backgrounds," Blair explains. He also helps organize local Bible study groups if people are interested.

Each quarter Blair writes a newsletter about current developments in issues of religion and homosexuality and sends it to his 2,000 subscribers at no cost. He pays particular attention to gay supportive theological shifts, the growing understanding of sexuality and the repeated failures of the "ex-gay" ministries.

Each quarter too Blair also writes a critical analysis of some recent book or article dealing with homosexuality and religion. And he publishes pamphlets containing his annual "connECtions" lectures.

Blair says that his most popular pamphlet though is a single sheet of paper folded in half. On the cover it says, "What Jesus Christ Said About Homosexuality." On the inside it is totally blank. Then on the back cover it says, "That's right. He said absolutely nothing about it."

That, in a way, is the heart of Blair's message both to gays and lesbians and to his fellow evangelicals.

Contrary to the general view, evangelicals are not necessarily fundamentalists. Although evangelicals tend to be conservative theologically, they also tend to stress the priority of the New Testament, particularly Jesus' (and God's) unconditional love and acceptance of all of God's children.

Blair recalls that as a gay youth in high school and college he came to understand Christian ethics to be summed up and lived out as the call to love one another as Jesus loved all humankind.

He says that even as a youth he realized that the New Testament promise that "everything is possible with God" included, as he says, "even God's love of a boy who has crushes on other boys."

Evangelicals Concerned may have little appeal for people from liberal religious backgrounds, for those who doubt the historicity of the bible or are skeptics and atheists.

But there is nothing about being gay that requires a disbelief in gods, even the Christian God.

So for gays and lesbian who have a strong religious background but feel rejected by their earlier faith community, or for gays who have not been religious but seek a deeper self-understanding in a firmly religious context, EC may provide a sort of guidance and a context for spiritual growth and self-awareness.

The website for Evangelicals Concerned is www.ecinc.org. The street address is Evangelicals Concerned, Inc., Suite 1-G, 311 East 72nd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.

Originally published October 19, 2000, in The Weekly News (Miami).

Recently, I wrote that the surest sign that progress is being made comes when the more conservative party, in America the GOP, takes its own tentative steps towards acceptance of gays and lesbians. I had been referring to such small signs as providing an openly gay speaker - Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe - with a prime time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention, as well as George W. Bush's decision to finally meet with a group of openly gay and lesbian Republicans.

But there has now been a much more significant sign of GOP progress, as the neck and neck race between George W. and Al Gore hits its final leg. I'm referring, of course, to statements by GOP vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney that reverse a long-standing Republican antipathy toward recognizing gay relationships.

"My own personal view is that people ought to have the right to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. With respect to how that's affected or regulated by the state, those are state decisions. Different states are likely to make different decisions based upon their own wishes and desire of the people of the state, and that's perfectly acceptable." So said Cheney to the Rutland (Vermont) Herald on September 8. Remarkably, this statement got little attention - despite its clear break with GOP dogma that had heretofore disdained the idea of government granting any recognition to same-sex unions and the opposition of many (but not all) Republicans to Vermont's recently enacted civil unions bill.

But then Cheney, whose daughter, Mary, is both openly lesbian and in a long-term relationship, went even further. In his televised debate with Democratic veep nominee Joe Lieberman, the candidates were asked by moderator Bernard Shaw whether "a male who loves a male and a female who loves a female" should have the same constitutional rights as others. Lieberman said that while he supported "the traditional notion of marriage as being limited to a heterosexual couple," his mind was open to doing something to address the unfairness experienced by gay couples.

For his part, Cheney expanded on his own earlier statement: "We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody," he said. "We shouldn't be able to choose and say, 'You get to live free and you don't.' That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into."

Then he dropped the bombshell: "Like Joe, I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into." Not just tolerate, mind you, but accommodate the type of relationships that the religious right condemns as inherently immoral.

Republican Party Chairman Jim Nicholson said after the debate that Bush and Cheney recognize that the civil unions question was "complicated."

"We're a tolerant party," Nicholson said. "We don't support discrimination of any kind."

Well, not quite. Many Republicans (and Democrats) have long supported discriminating against gays in the military, while passing (again, with bipartisan support) a so-called Defense of Marriage Act that forbid the federal government from recognizing gay unions, even if states granted such recognition. Cheney's comments suggested that if states want to recognize gay unions of any stripe, that's up to them and fine with him.

Winnie Stachelberg of the Human Rights Campaign, who rarely has anything pleasant to say about Republicans, announced that Cheney "has taken a big step forward by breaking ranks with the extreme right in the GOP by recognizing that gay and lesbian families have a place in America and that these relationships should be respected."

And American voters seem to agree. An overnight ABC News poll following the vice presidential debate showed that the Bush-Cheney ticket jumped from 49 percent to 51 percent. Of voters who watched the debate, 43 percent thought Cheney had "won" compared with 24 percent who thought Lieberman had carried the day and 27 percent who judged their performance a tie.

Nevertheless, Republican reactionaries howled with displeasure - and disbelief. Gary Bauer accused Cheney of "fuzzy morality" that's "out of step with the beliefs of the many Americans who consider marriage to be a God-ordained institution between a man and a woman." Kenneth Connor, head of the anti-gay Family Research Council, complained that Cheney's views were surely "heartening to those in the gay community who want to redefine marriage to include homosexual unions." And Jerry Falwell declared, "I disagree with Mr. Cheney on his suggestion that the states should be allowed to sanction any relationships they want," suggesting that, in his view, states should be forbidden from doing so.

When Chris Matthews of CNBC asked Falwell if he thought it better that gays be promiscuous rather than offer official recognition that could reinforce same-sex partnerships, Falwell could only blather that homosexuality in all forms was wrong. Increasingly, this view comes across as ridiculous.

Cheney remained unmoved by all the sniping, holding that his "position is unchanged" and that he had answered the question about gay unions "truthfully and accurately." About the criticism, Cheney replied, "I don't pay any attention."

Subsequently, George W. affirmed his opposition to gay marriage. And during the second presidential debate, Bush engaged in blather about "equal rights, not special rights" without ever defining what these "special rights" gays supposedly seek might be. True enough, although Bush didn't refute Cheney's comments when asked about them, nor did he take the opportunity to condemn Vermont-style civil unions. It's a start.

All in all, the simple fact is this. The Republican candidate for vice president said something more "tolerant" and more "accommodating" about equality for gay people than any prominent Republican has ever said. And he boldly stood by his remarks to the point of scorning the anti-gay bigwigs in his party, a flank that is increasingly being diminished. The presidential standard bearing himself isn't willing to go nearly as far, but seems content to let dual messages emerge from his campaign on this hottest of hot-button topics.

That would not have happened if a seismic shift weren't taking place within the GOP. And that's what political progress is about.

Originally published October 11, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

GAY HISTORY MONTH during October not only prompts us to learn about gays and lesbians who made notable contributions to our culture, it also makes us wonder how gays and lesbians lived in the past - how they thought about themselves, how they met and socialized with one another, how they coped with hostility.

One of the most neglected gay pioneers is the Russian writer Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936), poet, novelist and composer, who published the first openly gay novel of modern times, "Wings," in 1906.

Happily, there is now a handsome new illustrated biography, "Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art" by John Malmstad and Nikolay Bogomolov (Harvard University Press, 1999).

Making good use of Kuzmin's extensive diary, his biographers are able to follow his daily life in St. Petersburg, his literary activity, his friendships and affairs, his role in Russia's cultural avant-garde, and his witness to the Soviet destruction of Russian modernism.

But the new biography does more. Al Malmstad notes in a recent article, "Kuzmin's diary makes clear that a gay subculture existed quite openly in Petersburg at the time."

There were, of course, no gay organizations as such, but there were "well-known cruising areas, ... taverns and cafes where gay men socialized, and bathhouses that specialized in a gay clientele."

The bathhouses, real ones, were common in large cities when many homes lacked bathing facilities. People could bathe, or be bathed by an attendant, and have something like a Finnish sauna.

Some of the baths became known as friendly to gay men and provided "attendants," who might provide sexual services for a fee. Contemporary gay slang referred to the baths in French as "pays chauds" - "warm climes," "warm regions."

Kuzmin wrote of one bathhouse visit in his diary, "In the evening I had the urge to go to a bathhouse simply to be stylish, for the fun of it, for cleanliness."

The attendant sent to him, one Alexander, was "tall, very well-built (with) ... light-colored eyes, and almost blond hair." The man was only 22, but had worked at the baths, he said, for eight years.

"Obviously, they fixed me up with a professional," Kuzmin noted. Nevertheless, Kuzmin returned to the same bathhouse several times to see him again.

At one point, Kuzmin and two friends determined to visit every bathhouse in Petersburg, but they got only part way through an initial list of 25 before their enthusiasm began to ebb.

There were other meeting places as well. "Petersburg streets and parks were no strangers to young men of uncertain profession who picked up money by hustling," Malmstad writes.

The extensive gardens behind the Tavrichesky (or Tauride) Palace was the city's most popular gay cruising area and Kuzmin visited often, seeking "escapades," as his gay friends called their encounters.

He had a brief affair with a hustler he met there and dismissed his friends' disapproval by commenting, "You don't talk, after all, about (the poet) Merezhkovsky and Nietzsche during rendez-vous and merry escapades. He is jolly, kind, and well-built, and that's that."

Nevsky Prospect, the main civic and business avenue, seems to have been a late evening cruising place for gay men as well as female prostitutes. "Several young men - professionals were strolling on Nevsky," Kuzmin once noted in his diary.

There seem to have been something like gay bars as well. The composer Tchaikovsky mentions visiting gay taverns in Moscow and no doubt similar taverns existed in Petersburg, although we lack specifics.

Cabarets, however, were a conspicuous part of the city's cultural life, and several were home to the gay-friendly cultural avant-garde.

Perhaps the best known cabaret was the "Stray Dog," (1912-1915) which offered lectures, plays, poetry readings, musicales and improvisatory "performance art." Kuzmin, who visited often, wrote and composed a considerable amount of material for presentation there.

Much of Petersburg's civic and social life, though, consisted of large numbers of private "salons" and social circles where people met regularly to read and discuss. Dostoevsky noted this particular feature of Petersburg life 60 years earlier in 1847:

"It is a well-known fact that the whole of Petersburg is nothing but a collection of an enormous number of small 'circles' each ... (with) its own rules, its own logic and its own oracle."

Some of these circles, especially those with artistic interests, often included gay men - actors, artists, musicians, poets and would-be poets, their lovers and just plain hangers-on.

The openly gay impresario Sergei Diaghilev formed one such circle around his magazine "World of Art" and it was to that group that the young Kuzmin first read "Wings" in 1905 to the excited acclaim of the substantially gay audience.

Later on he was invited to participate in another circle called "Tavern of Hafiz," named after the Persian poet of erotic lyrics. Although not quite a gay circle, it was dominated by people who were or might have been gay.

From all this, we can recognize a kind of gay community coalescing in Petersburg a century ago, perhaps on the verge of assertive visibility. But that possibility was crushed by the Soviet revolution of 1917.

Originally appeared Oct. 5, 2000, in The Weekly News (Miami).

In the struggle for dignity, and equality, victory over our adversaries is not always swift. And the fight isn't always morally unambiguous and controversy-free. The current campaign against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) for barring gay men from serving as troop leaders - as well as for their policies of excluding self-identifying gay youth and professed atheists from being Scouts - raises some complex issues about the value of Scouting activities that some activists would rather ignore.

Some background, first. For those who had hoped that a single Supreme Court ruling would put an end to the anti-gay discrimination championed by the Scouts' Texas-based national headquarters, the eventual ruling in favor of the BSA's right as a private association to exclude gay men (the sole issue before the court) was a keen disappointment. Yet, in the weeks and months following the ruling, battles have begun erupting in locality after locality, as gay rights advocates try to cut government, charitable, and corporate funding for local Scout troops in an effort to pressure the BSA's leaders to stop discriminating. Not all of these efforts have been successful to date, but cumulatively, there's a major move afoot.

Consider some recent battles over funding the Scouts. In Florida, the United Way of Palm Beach County warned local Boy Scouts to prepare to lose $118,000 in contributions in two years if the organization doesn't alter its policy against admitting gays. Miami Beach's city commissioners voted to expand the city's human rights ordinance to deny the waiver of rental fees for municipal facilities to organizations that discriminate. In California, the Glendale Human Relations Coalition asked the city council to stop giving federal block grant funds to groups that discriminate based on sexual orientation and related criteria. The schools chief of Framingham, Mass., announced that the Scouts will no longer be allowed to recruit or distribute material inside the city's schools.

In Chicago, the United Way of Evanston decided to drop its funding for the local Scouts for the 2001-2002 fiscal year. And cities including Chicago, San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., have told local Scout troops that they can no longer use parks, schools and other municipal sites. Connecticut has banned contributions to the Scouts by state employees through a state-run charity.

But local governments that have taken action sometimes face a backlash. Fort Lauderdale commissioners voted to yank $4,167 in city funds that would have gone to the Scouts, and then came under withering attack at a council meeting where the audience was filled with vocal Scout supporters. According to a report in The Miami Herald, several speakers launched blistering attacks at the meeting, and some even clamed gays seek to infiltrate the Boy Scouts to molest children. Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle, the lone dissenter in a 3-1 vote to deny funds to the Scouts, said he was "ashamed" of his city commission for taking action against the Scouts.

In Washington, the GOP-controlled Congress has, expectedly, affirmed the Scouts' special congressional charter. But the Democrats have done no better. President Clinton continues to serve as an honorary Scout leader, and Scouts were trotted out onto the platform at the Democratic National Convention for a patriotic moment (to the boos of a few gay delegates). Recently, Attorney General Janet Reno ruled that the federal government need not sever its ties to the Scouts, such as Jamborees on military property (they're the only private group afforded such a privilege). Responded Scott Cozza, a co-founder of Scouting for All, a group critical of the Scout policy, "Janet Reno appears to be saying yes. ... The Ku Klux Klan could use federal facilities under her reasoning."

Private companies are also facing "the Scouting question." Several well-known firms, including Knight Ridder Inc., announced that in keeping with their own anti-discrimination policies they could no longer fund the Scouts. At first, there were reports that Chase Manhattan Bank was doing the same. But Chase then announced it had only been 'reviewing' its giving criteria. "We temporarily suspended new funding commitments while we conducted our review," stated an official release from the company. "Chase has now completed its review and will continue to fund Scout programs. At the end of the day, we do not want to withdraw funding from those programs because doing so would be harmful to thousands of children who benefit significantly from them. We intend to continue working with the Scouts on this evolving issue."

Some gay rights supporters, understandably, consider this a cop-out. They contend that defunding the Scouts is necessary to end the group's discriminatory behavior - and to send a message that gays are not morally suspect, second-class citizens. "We have to decide, Are we aiding and abetting someone that discriminates?" C. Joan Parker, assistant counsel to the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights, told the New York Times. In Seattle, where the United Way of King County decided it will no longer support Scout programs, a spokesperson said, "We would like to continue a funding relationship and provide services to kids in this community, but those services have to be provided in accordance with our nondiscrimination policy."

The other side of the argument is being made by the Scouts' defenders, who range from outright homophobes to those who may or may not agree with the BSA's policy, but feel that children should not be penalized because of it. This debate is being waged in editorials, opinion columns, and - especially - letters to the editor of newspapers and news magazines. "Don't punish children in need," is the refrain.

It is not enough for gays and lesbians to dismiss such concerns out of hand, especially since it is true that Scouting programs are of particular benefit to disadvantaged boys. To gay rights advocates, it's better that some boys do without Scouting if it will hasten the day when we truly have "Scouting for All."

This would be an easier case to make if the Scouts were, as some of the more adamant anti-Scouts now paint them, more akin to the Hitler Youth (or, if there were such a thing, the Junior Klan), than a racially integrated organization whose national leaders have yet to come to terms with the dynamic cultural changes of the past 20 years.

With some reservations, however, I come down on the side of the activists on this one. I think Scouting is of great value to boys of all races and classes, but the message that gays need not apply is too big a bite of bile for me to swallow. I certainly don't think the government - local, state, or national - should be funding them or giving them special privileges. And I don't mind asking the United Way to give its money to more inclusive youth causes. But most of all, I hope that soon, very soon, the Scouts' national leaders will wake up to the fact that it's the 21st century.

Originally distributed September 29, 2000, by Scripps Howard News Service.

WHEN NOT SERVING Arizona as a Republican state representative, Steve May serves his country. As an Army Reserve First Lieutenant, 28-year-old May has led 200 soldiers in fuel-transport and logistical tasks. He has trained troops to protect themselves from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He even won the Silver Dolphin Award after spending 63 days underwater on the USS Ohio, a Trident missile submarine.

"Lt. May is an intelligent and effective officer," his August 1999 performance evaluation declares. "Put in company command as soon as possible."

So what has the Army done for him lately? A three-colonel panel dismissed May with an honorable discharge on Sept. 17. His offense? He publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, thus negating his record of exemplary conduct.

May is among the 6,000-plus combatants sacked since 1993 for failing to live in a military-strength state of denial called Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Defense Department, meanwhile, still winks at heterosexuals whose improprieties undermine national security.

Steve May was accused not of conduct but of comments unbecoming a soldier. Army officials objected to his statements during a February 1999 legislative debate on a domestic partnership measure. May objected to, among other things, Republican State Rep. Karen Johnson's remark that gays operate "at the lower end of the behavioral spectrum."

"This legislature takes my gay tax dollars," May replied, "and my gay tax dollars spend the same as your straight tax dollars. If you're not going to treat me fairly, stop taking my tax dollars."

May spoke as a civilian, between completion of active duty in 1995 and reactivation in April 1999 during the Balkan War. Despite articles about his sexuality published during his first campaign in 1996, the Army invoked May's House floor speech and subsequent interviews to pry him from his uniform.

The Army never called May disruptive. "Under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law, Army officials don't have to prove that I caused a problem with morale or cohesion," May says by phone. "They just have to prove that I said I'm gay."

Indeed, Capt. Stephen Sherbondy, May's then-commander, explained in August 1999 that "the vast majority of personnel" in May's unit knew of his homosexuality, but "such knowledge has in no way affected morale in his platoon or the other platoons. In fact, the HQ section is functioning better than it has for my past tenure as commander."

Ironically, May says, "I have seen a dozen serious problems of a sexual nature between heterosexual soldiers." In 1995, at Ft. Irwin, Calif., May recalls confronting a male and a female who booted three colleagues from an armored personnel carrier, then had sex in the locked vehicle while their fellow soldiers waited outside. The offending GIs received reprimands and counseling, but eventually were promoted.

May also says that "animosity developed down to the enlisted-man level" when a male soldier in his unit began sleeping with the wife of a GI in another company. Tensions erupted when one company's officers and troops accused their counterparts in the other unit of not restraining the two adulterers.

"All I did was say that I'm gay, and they kicked me out," May complains, "whereas these people who committed violations involving heterosexual conduct were forgiven and promoted."

May has plenty of company. Don't Ask, Don't Tell has accelerated dismissals of gay service men and women. In 1989, President Bush's first year in office, 997 GIs were discharged for homosexuality. In 1993, when Bill Clinton and Albert Gore assumed power, 682 were ejected. By 1998, gay expulsions climbed 71 percent to 1,163 before slipping to 1,046 last year. Through 1999, the Clinton-Gore administration had ousted 6,157 gay men and women in uniform, according to the Washington-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

"Sexual orientation has nothing to do with duty performance," retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman told me. "What is being done now is not just and fair."

Washington should stop policing the private sex lives of those who protect America's freedoms. Jettisoning gay troops who act professionally is as bigoted as banning all openly heterosexual GIs because a relative few have become pregnant at sea or sexually harassed others at Tailhook and Aberdeen. Instead, the Pentagon should impose a simple, universal standard. If soldiers can capture enemy territory, they stay. If they conquer their fellow GIs, they go.

While he was defense secretary, Republican vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney accurately called the ban on avowedly gay soldiers "an old chestnut." It's past time to roast this policy on an open fire.

Originally appeared in two parts in the Chicago Free Press, Sept. 27 and Oct. 4, 2000.

WILL THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY ever change its position opposing homosexuality?

No doubt most gays, including Catholic gays, cheerfully ignore Vatican doctrine on the subject. But the issue is significant for all of us because the Catholic hierarchy is an important political and social pressure group. If it stopped condemning homosexuality, that would greatly help our efforts to achieve legal and social equality.

Current Vatican doctrine holds that homosexuality violates "natural law" because it involves the use of sexual organs in a way that is not open to the possibility of creating new life. Hence it is a misuse of those body parts.

For exactly the same reasons, the Vatican opposes all oral and anal sex, masturbation and the use of condoms -- because those actions also use the sexual organs in ways that cannot create life.

Or so everyone always thought. But now, astonishingly, it turns out that the Vatican allows condoms under certain circumstances.

So if the Vatican says that the "proper" use of sexual organs is not quite the moral absolute we all thought, those who wish to alter the Vatican's position on gay sex will examine the argument carefully.

Last April, Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau of the Pontifical Council for the Family published a little-noticed article in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano entitled, "Prophylactics or Family Values? Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS."

The article came to public attention only after it was discussed in the Jesuit magazine America (Sept. 23).

In his article, Suaudeau explained, "The use of condoms had particularly good results" for halting the transmission of AIDS in Uganda generally and by prostitutes in Thailand.

"The use of prophylactics in these circumstances," i.e., where AIDS is widespread, "is actually a 'lesser evil'" than not using condoms and allowing a fatal disease to spread through a sexually active population.

So some moral goods override the "natural law" imperative that every sexual behavior must have the possibility of creating human life.

Is this shift, as the Scripps Howard News Service called it, "a theological U-turn"?

Oh, no, not at all, Suaudeau said; he was simply explaining his church's position.

"I don't understand why people want to interpret what I stated clearly in my article," he told the New York Times. "But there is no change in church teaching."

That's his story and he's sticking with it.

But when a committee of the National Council of Catholic Bishops proposed in 1988 that AIDS education efforts "could include accurate information about prophylactic devices ... as a means of preventing AIDS," the Vatican pounced.

Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the office of doctrinal purity stated, "To seek the solution to the disease in the promotion of the use of prophylactics is..., above all, unacceptable from a moral point of view."

Bishop Anthony Bosco who drafted the 1988 Catholic bishops' statement said he felt vindicated by Suaudeau's article.

"This proves to me that maybe the logic that led me to that conclusion follows from sound moral principles," Bosco said.

Now if the Vatican can "explain" or "develop" its position on prophylactics in such a way as to move from prohibiting them to allowing them, can it also "explain" or "develop" its position on other issues such as homosexuality?

Of course it can. How could it do so?

We might get some clues from Catholic church historian John Noonan who published a fascinating article entitled "Development in Moral Doctrine" in the journal Theological Studies (1993).

"That the moral teachings of the Catholic Church have changed over time will, I suppose, be denied by almost no one today," Noonan states flatly.

And he undertakes a rapid historical survey of Catholic doctrine on lending money at interest (usury), marriage, slavery, and religious freedom, showing in each case how the Vatican's position changed and explaining the principles that produced the change.

For instance, lending money at interest was once regarded as a mortal sin, contrary to natural law ("money is barren") and contrary to the Gospel ("Lend freely, expecting nothing in return").

But today no one, not even the Vatican, disapproves of putting money is a savings account to earn interest.

For nearly two millennia, the Vatican taught that it was not sinful to own slaves. After all, the Apostle Paul approved of slavery ("slaves, stay with your masters") and actually returned a runaway slave named Onesimus to his master.

Barely a century ago, in 1890, Pope Leo XIII for the first time denounced slavery as immoral and incompatible "with the brotherhood that unites all men," a brotherhood that had previously escaped notice in Rome.

Similarly, the Vatican long taught that heretics had no religious liberty and governments should execute them, a position supported by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and words attributed to Jesus himself.

Only in 1964 was this position finally repudiated by the Second Vatican Council which announced that the freedom to believe was a sacred human right. A previously undetected right, apparently.

Using such precedents for change, the task now is to develop a strong case for certain human, moral goods such that they too override formerly inviolable Vatican doctrines about the "proper" use of sexual organs.

Clues to the nature of these analogous greater goods (or greater evils to be avoided) might be found by examining the way the Vatican was swayed to change its doctrine in the earlier instances of usury, slavery, marriage, and religious freedom.

The Vatican reversed its long-standing condemnation of lending money at interest in the 16th century when moral theologians shifted the focus of their analysis from the loan itself ("money is barren") to the significance the loan had for the people involved.

The theologians came to realize that the lender lost money on an interest-free loan because he had to forgo the opportunity for a profitable investment he could otherwise make with the money. So he deserved some payment in return for his loss: interest.

In the same way, when the Vatican decides to reverse its position on homosexuality, it will shift the focus of moral analysis from the specific acts to the people involved and the purposes, significance, and effects of the actions for them.

For instance, the Vatican will discover that gay and lesbian couples intend to express and validate their love and affection for each other in the most intense way available to them.

The theologians might even discover that the physical intimacy enhances and intensifies the couples' affection, mutual regard, bondedness and loyalty.

When the Vatican reversed its position on slavery in 1890, Pope Leo XIII said slavery was incompatible "with the brotherhood that unites all men," a brotherhood that found expression in Jesus' commands to "love one another" and "love your neighbor as yourself."

The Vatican ignored the Apostle Paul's repeated endorsements of slavery (e.g., Eph. 6:5) in favor of his observation, "There is neither slave nor free...; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28) which the Vatican applied more broadly than Paul himself did.

In the same way, the Vatican may decide that to accord homosexuals and their human desires equal legitimacy with heterosexuals and their desires is a further application of "the brotherhood that unites all men" and an obligation that follows from loving one's neighbor as oneself.

The Vatican could choose to ignore Paul's ignorant comments about homosexuals (in Rom. 1:18-27 he thinks all gays are pagans) in favor of his observation, "There is neither male nor female ... in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28), which can teach that sexual dimorphism is irrelevant in the moral evaluation of love and its expression in human relationships.

In contravention to Jesus' teaching that marriage is permanent and remarriage is adultery, the Vatican has allowed some already married people to remarry. The Apostle Paul himself allowed Christian converts to remarry if their partners did not become Christian and deserted them.

Pope Gregory XIII later allowed converted Catholic slaves to remarry if they did not know whether an absent spouse would also become Catholic. He acted "lest they not persist in their faith." So keeping Catholics "in the faith" can have primacy over a Gospel teaching.

In the same way, if and when enough gays leave Catholicism and gay couples marry in other churches, choosing love over doctrine, the Vatican will feel forced to reverse its position "lest they not persist in their faith."

This has already started. After the gay Catholic organization Dignity attracted a sizable membership, many Catholic dioceses began to establish official diocesan gay/lesbian organizations to keep gays from joining what they regarded as a heretical sect. These diocesan organizations downplay gay sinfulness where they do not ignore it entirely.

But this very effort to retain gays increases pressure on the Vatican to reverse its position. As church historian John Noonan points out, the Vatican reversed its view of usury when loans and credit became part of everyday commercial life and it was forced to examine "the experience of otherwise decent Christians who were bankers and who claimed that banking was compatible with Christianity."

In the same way, the Vatican will feel, and is now feeling, increased pressure to rethink its view of homosexuality for the same reason-the growing presence in the Catholic church of "otherwise decent Christians" who claim that homosexuality "is compatible with Christianity."

And finally, underlying all is the growing awareness by gays and theologians both of the importance and comprehensiveness of the doctrine of the primacy of individual conscience.

The Second Vatican Council (1964) reversed nearly two millennia of Catholic dogma by announcing that freedom of belief is a sacred human right that governments must not coerce. And, we can safely add, by the same token even Catholic doctrine must ultimately yield before it.

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More recommended reading: Mark Jordan's new The Silence of Sodom and Garry Wills' Papal Sin, available from Amazon.com.

Originally appeared Sept. 13, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Under pressure from conservative Christians, Idaho legislators voted to block state-owned Idaho Public Television from airing documentary programs friendly toward gay interests. The episode demonstrates the dangers of letting government insert itself into the business of subsidizing the dissemination of speech and opinion, something that cannot be done in a principled way without offending either majority or minority opinion or both.

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LAST YEAR Idaho Public Television announced that it would broadcast "It's Elementary," a documentary film about the efforts by a few schools to teach tolerance of gays and lesbians to school children.

That's when the controversy started.

Conservative Christian groups sought to block the program. According to the Chicago Tribune account, Christian Coalition spokesman David Ferdinand said the film was "propaganda for the homosexual point of view."

"It spoke directly to the advantages of the gay lifestyle," Ferdinand claimed, "but not to the disadvantages."

It did not, of course, but Idaho Public Television decided it would be prudent to have a companion program to discuss the issues raised in "It's Elementary."

But then Nancy Bloomer, the former head of the Idaho Christian Coalition, refused to participate, saying, "Once a bell has been rung, you can't unring it."

Bloomer's claim is strange. If she meant that once a presentation has been made it is impossible to offer counter-arguments against it, she is clearly wrong. People offer counter-arguments to views presented earlier all the time.

Bloomer may have feared that once the idea of tolerance for gays is discussed it might catch on and tolerance might break out.

Or she may have meant that any program acknowledging that homosexuals even exist should not be broadcast, fearing that talk about homosexuality will plant homosexual desire in the minds of people who never felt it before.

Whatever Bloomer meant, clearly mere balance of competing viewpoints was not her goal. Her goal was to block any discussion about gays at all.

Eventually, under pressure from conservative Christian groups, the legislature passed rules banning public (government) television broadcasts that could encourage people to violate state law.

As it happens, in Idaho, sodomy, fellatio, or any other "unnatural copulation" constitute a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Although critics argued that the rules constituted "prior restraint" on free speech, Idaho's attorney general said the restrictions were legal since the state owned the broadcast license so it was just regulating itself.

Of course, encouraging children - or anyone - to be tolerant, even accepting, of homosexuals is not encouraging anyone to break the law. Perhaps if tolerance were widely accepted it might lead to efforts to decriminalize sodomy. But political advocacy to change the law is not against the law either.

Nevertheless, the state legislature, which allocates state income from taxes, indicated its displeasure by reducing funding to the station. And some legislators now advocate completely privatizing the station, eliminating all taxpayer support.

As state senator Mel Richard said, "The state doesn't belong in the public TV business."

Frankly, getting the government out of the broadcasting business seems like an excellent idea.

The fundamental problem with government (taxpayer) funding of any activity is that every group wants to control it for its own purposes. This is a particularly contentious issue if the government disseminates news and opinion.

The problem? What news? Which opinions?

One solution is to broadcast no controversial positions, only things that have widespread consensus support and offend no one's sensibilities. This would be pretty much limited to old movies, cooking shows and Lawrence Welk reruns.

But we do not need the government to confirm our settled views and provide bland entertainment. It would be better to let taxpayers keep their money and spend it on whatever news sources and entertainment they individually want.

A second solution is for the majority, that is, whoever is in control of the government at the moment, to broadcast the views it wants to promote. Here the majority is simply using tax money to reinforce its majority status. This is very democratic: The majority rules.

As the Christian Coalition's David Ferdinand said about "It's Elementary," "Don't use our tax dollars to support this."

But groups whose views are not represented will then claim they are not getting their tax dollar's worth, that they are suffering taxation without representation. They would be right. And they are often us.

A third solution is for the government to provide a variety of viewpoints found in the population. But then the questions arise again: How much diversity? Which viewpoints? Where do you draw lines?

There is no principled way to answer this.

There are an almost infinite number of ideas and opinions out there in the world, so there will always be viewpoints that are slighted or excluded because they are obscure or "marginal," or "fringe," or "special interest," or "unpopular," or "offensive," or "harmful" or plain wrong.

Most of us can probably think of dozens of ideas and beliefs, some of them ones we hold, that have never been addressed on tax-funded radio or television.

So the only "diverse" viewpoints to be allowed will be a fairly narrow range of "legitimate" or "well-established" or "popular" viewpoints that have a well-mobilized constituency supporting them, which is not really much diversity at all.

So leave the government out of the broadcasting and propaganda businesses. Gays, like other minorities, have a far better chance at visibility and a fair hearing in the free and competitive market of commercial broadcast and cable networks.

Originally appeared in The Weekly News (Miami) on August 31, 2000.

I'M OFTEN AMAZED by the lack of historical memory, even among people who should know better. Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in our attitudes toward the two political parties.

To hear some people talk, you would never realize that the Democrats were once the party of slaveholders, and then the party of Jim Crow segregationists. Clearly, things change. The Democrats found a majority constituency that supported equal rights for African Americans and then rode it to power, leaving the Republicans to play catch-up.

That's why I hold out hope that the GOP's glacial moves this year toward gay "tolerance" and "accommodation" might indicate a gradual but real movement that will escalate into support for gay equality. The reason won't just be that they've discovered the error of their ways, but that they're smart enough to realize which way the winds of popular opinion are blowing. After all, politicians are notorious for realigning their most deeply felt views in order to achieve their supreme goal - victory.

If that sounds both harsh, consider a few recent transformations in the American political scene. Just four years ago, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader refused to denounce the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that forbade the federal government from recognizing gay unions. As the bill was snaking its way through Congress, Nader infamously dismissed concern for the rights of gays as mere "gonadal politics" that would be beneath his dignity as a true progressive to comment upon. Today, however, he claims that supporters of gay rights would have no stronger advocate in the White House than himself should he be elected. Dream on, Ralphie boy.

Or take Al Gore, perhaps the ultimate finger-in-the-wind politico. At the outset of his Congressional career in 1976, Gore called homosexuality "abnormal." In 1980 he voted for an amendment prohibiting the Legal Services Corp. from assisting homosexuals whose rights were denied because of their sexual orientation. As a senator, Gore repeatedly backed anti-gay measures devised by Jesse Helms that sought to deny legal protections for gay people, and supported an amendment to use HIV tests to discriminate against immigrants and people seeking health insurance. Even worse, Gore voted with Helms to restore the anti-gay sodomy law in the District of Columbia after the local city council tried to repeal it.

Gore presumably repudiates these positions these days, but even now he stands behind his support of DOMA - while contradictorily saying he opposed California's statewide version of DOMA that passed in a voter referendum last fall. Gore's opposition, of course, was announced only after Bill Bradley spoke against the California initiative, putting into play lots of gay voters in the state's Democratic primary. But for now, he still is opposed to gay marriage (as are Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats). No doubt if and when public opinion shifts nationally on gay unions, Gore will discover he's in our court on that issue, too.

And then there's Joe Lieberman, who prior to winning the veepstakes had supported school choice and privately held social security accounts, and opposed some types of racial preferences, but who is now backtracking on these issues quicker than a ballerina can pirouette. As columnist Hastings Wyman reported, Lieberman has also had his share of anti-gay votes. In 1993, he, too, voted to prohibit HIV positive people from immigrating to the United States and to kill a domestic partners law that had passed in the District of Columbia. And, going back to 1989, he voted to prevent schools from using educational materials that "promote homosexuality" or portray homosexuality as "normal, natural, or healthy."

My point is not to argue that, in 2000, Democrats aren't clearly more supportive of gay equality than Republicans. Rather, it's to question the attitude that Democrats have always been better, and the corollary that they always will be better. In fact, if you can characterize the Democrats as the party of expansive government and the Republicans as the party of freedom from government and for individual liberty, then a GOP not tethered to anti-gay reactionaries could have much to offer gay Americans - and not only in terms of gay rights. We're not there yet, but I suspect it's where the wind is blowing.

And if so, perhaps we need to call into question our movement's policy of making gays into a Democratic Party caucus. That strategy was exemplified by the Human Rights Campaign, the big Washington-based lesbigay lobby, which endorsed Al Gore for president before the GOP had even nominated a candidate - and at a time when John McCain was actively soliciting gay support in his maverick GOP bid.

The bellwether of progress, let's remember, isn't how warmly our current friends and allies embrace us, but the tentative steps toward acceptance taken by our traditional adversaries. And as long as we have a two-party system, gaining equality for gays and lesbians will require support not only from liberal Democrats, but from the more conservative party as well.

From the end of the Civil War until the 1940s, African-Americans were solidly in the Republican camp. Of course, they usually couldn't vote in the South because Southern Democrats had repealed Reconstruction-era civil rights reforms and actively promoted anti-black discrimination. How strange that now seems. But politics is about change, and as gay assimilation into the mainstream grows, the GOP, with a little encouragement, will come along on gay issues, too. It's blowing in the wind.