IGF CultureWatch

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.

Originally appeared August 30, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

America's most highly regarded Twentieth Century composer of classical music, Aaron Copland, was beloved for his skill at refining into art music the native sounds of America, from Shaker and Appalachian music to rodeo songs and jazz. "The secret of his wisdom," wrote critic Harold Clurman, "can be traced to his utter acceptance of himself at an early age."

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ON NOVEMBER 14, 2000, some of us will celebrate the 100th birthday anniversary of Aaron Copland, America's best known and most highly regarded composer of modern "classical" or "serious" music.

The event is worth celebrating. Copland did more than any other single person to create and promote an authentically American sounding style of classical music and make it accessible to the general public.

The music he created was easily distinguishable from its European counterparts by its folk-style melodies, open harmonies, bright orchestral colors, and the often syncopated, jazzy rhythms. The tempo marking for one piece is "With bounce."

Although he could write complex concert pieces and chamber music, he also sought to bring American music to a wider audience by writing tuneful ballets, Hollywood film music, background music for plays and pieces for high school bands and orchestra. He even wrote a Clarinet Concerto for jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman.

And he wrote patriotic works like "A Lincoln Portrait" and the now famous "Fanfare for the Common Man," a piece which turns up on television occasionally and which he later incorporated into his optimistic and outgoing Third Symphony.

Of his 100 or so compositions, nearly a dozen are now part of the standard concert repertory. Many are fun to listen to; some are easy to whistle. Perhaps no other American composer except Samuel Barber is so often performed and recorded.

His best known works may be the three American-themed ballets "Billy the Kid," "Rodeo," and "Appalachian Spring," the ballet which popularized the old Shaker song "Simple Gifts."

Forty years ago, one foreign critic called "Appalachian Spring," "the most beautiful score to come out of America." It would be hard, even now, to think of more than two or three serious rivals.

Copland has a particular interest for us beyond the merits of his music because he was gay.

Copland's homosexuality was quietly known but little advertised during his lifetime. It has now been elaborately documented, however, in Howard Pollack's recent biography, "Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man."

Despite being born in less tolerant times, after a brief late adolescent period of discomfort Copland apparently accepted his homosexuality with equanimity.

Music critic Paul Moor, a former lover, decided, "By some miracle Aaron remained as free of neurosis as anyone I've ever known." Later Moor added that Copland was "one of the dearest, kindest, most thoughtful and fundamentally good human beings I've ever known."

Copland's friend Harold Clurman added that "The secret of his wisdom can be traced to his utter acceptance of himself at any early age. He made peace with himself and so could be at peace with the whole world."

And Composer David Del Tredici recalled, "In private he was very open about being a gay man. He'd joke about it. It was perfectly natural."

But for Copland being gay was never a political issue. Even after Stonewall (1969), when his friend composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein urged him to "come out" in some public way, Copland grinned and replied, "I think I'll leave that to you, boy."

According to Pollack, Copland had a series of relationships over the years, mostly with young artists and musicians in their early twenties whom he befriended and mentored. The young Bernstein himself apparently was one of them in the early 1940s.

Copland seemed to enjoy being a teacher and father figure, but he also clearly valued the young men's energy and enthusiasm. When David Diamond criticized one of Copland's young lovers for exploiting him, Copland responded, "He's young, he's fresh, he's a lot of fun."

In other words, Copland knew he was getting something out of it too.

The question always arises of whether any artist's homosexuality influences or is detectable in his work. For visual artists and writers, the question may be easy to answer. For composers it seems more doubtful.

Certainly a composer's sexuality can influence the texts he chooses for songs or the stories he makes into operas or writes music about. But is the homosexuality in the music itself?

Erik Johns, one of Copland's lover from the early 1950s, suggested that there might be something there:

"Aaron felt that his sexuality was there in the music ... but also that it was incidental to his major theme. He also knew that homosexual themes may be there in the music, but in a way so abstract that it is very difficult to pinpoint."

Biographer Pollack himself notes that some of Copland's works are infused with a kind of romantic tenderness and relates that once after a good-looking student walked by, Copland, who had written three symphonies remarked to a friend, "There goes my Fourth Symphony."

Finally, some writers have suggested that gay American composers wrote more conservative, accessible music than their heterosexual modernist counterparts. They point to men like Copland, Barber, Bernstein, Menotti, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem and others.

But there are so many heterosexual American composers of conservative, tonal music that the idea seems doubtful.

The question is probably not answerable in any very specific way. But if raising it makes us listen to any composer's music more carefully, then it serves a purpose.

In any case, Happy Birthday, Aaron, and many happy returns.

Originally appeared August 16, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Two years ago Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., spoke up on behalf of those who hold "sincerely held morally based views" of an anti-gay nature, warning that it was wrong to charge them with bigotry just because of their "disdain" for homosexuality. In practice, this means that he expects us not to insist of those who publicly denounce homosexuality that they offer any rational explanation of or defense for their views. It is surprising that our gay leadership does not more vocally challenge such ground rules for debate.

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THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTROVERTED ISSUE about homosexuality is not discrimination, hate crimes or domestic partnerships, but the morality of homosexuality.

Even if gays obtain non-discrimination laws, hate crimes law and domestic partnership benefits, those can do little to counter the underlying moral condemnation which will continue to fester beneath the law and generate hostility, fuel hate crimes, support conversion therapies, encourage gay youth suicide and inhibit the full social acceptance that is our goal.

On the other hand, if we convince people that homosexuality is fully moral then all their inclination to discriminate, engage in gay-bashing or oppose gay marriage disappears. Gay youths and adults could readily accept themselves.

So the gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality.

In this light, consider a disturbing speech by Senator Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., now the Democratic nominee for vice president, printed in the Congressional Record of July 10, 1998. Lieberman said:

"Many Americans continue to believe that homosexuality is immoral and not just because the Bible tells them so. ...

"... This is one of the few areas where Americans of all religious inclinations feel so strongly that they are willing to risk the tag of intolerance to express or hold to their points of view ...

"It is unfair, then, for anyone to automatically conclude that people who express moral reservations or even disdain about homosexuality are bigots, or to publicly attack them as hateful. These are sincerely held morally based views."

Lieberman does not quite say he himself regards homosexuality as immoral. He does say that people who think so and express disdain about homosexuality are not bigots.

The reason they are not bigots, Lieberman says, is that their views are sincerely held and morally based. We know that, he says, because they are willing to risk being accused of intolerance in order to express their opinion.

So if you are willing to risk the accusation of intolerance, then we know your view is sincerely held and morally based and you are not a bigot.

Another way we know a view is morally based, Lieberman says, is that although some people hold it because the Bible says so, others hold it because something else - "not just the Bible" - says so.

What is that something else? Lieberman shies away from telling us. It is just ... something else. As Ayn Rand used to say about similar evasions, "Blank Out!"

But making a moral claim, even on behalf of others, does not relieve anyone of the responsibility for explaining its basis. The test for morality is not consensus, or fervor or sincerity, but reason.

People disagree about whether many things are moral or immoral. The only way to decide which is right is by examining the reasons people offer.

But people who cannot or will not tell us what reasons support reservations about or disdain for homosexuality are refusing to engage in rational discussion.

And holding strong views without providing defensible reasons is what we usually mean by "bigotry."

There are four counter-arguments we can make.

First is the standard, boilerplate condemnation of so-called hate-speech: "All fair minded Americans and progressive thinking people will surely condemn such harmful and divisive speech," etc., etc.

This kind of talk no doubt makes self-avowed "fair minded and progressive thinking" people feel good about themselves, but it does nothing to convince people who are not already convinced, which you would hope is the main point of making a response at all.

Second is the familiar school yard rebuttal of "Well, that's just your opinion." The adult version is, "We live in a pluralistic society where people hold diverse moral views about these issues." Both versions amount to saying that all opinions are equal so the anti-gay view has no more validity than any other.

But this has the unfortunate corollary that then our own pro-gay opinion is no better than the anti-gay one, so there is no reasons for anyone to take our view more seriously than any other. To the contrary, we should be arguing that our view is better than the anti-gay view - more moral, more reasonable, more humane, etc.

A third response is to remind people of the familiar historical counter-examples where "sincerely held, morally based" views based not only on the Bible were clearly immoral and maybe even bigoted.

Slavery and racial segregation are two obvious examples. Another would be the lengthy resistance to legal and social equality for women. A fourth would be the long, painful history of anti-Semitism, something Senator Lieberman should be well aware of.

But these examples only prove that some sincerely held morally based views are wrong. They do not prove that all such views are wrong - clearly some are not - nor that they are wrong about homosexuality.

In any case, these are merely defensive maneuvers, meant only to neutralize anti-gay views. They do nothing to generate pro-gay views or encourage people to see homosexuality as moral.

So we need a fourth response, offering affirmative reasons for why our sexuality and our sexual behavior are moral. But that means our spokespeople would have to engage in moral reasoning and most seem surprisingly reluctant to do that.

If they cannot or will not, perhaps we need better leaders.

Originally appeared August 14, 2000, in The New Republic.

TONY SNOW: OK. Final: I know this is a touchy subject. Jerry Falwell puts out a comment saying that he supports you. He talks about your daughter's sexual orientation. Was that any of his business?

DICK CHENEY: My - I've got two daughters. They are fine women. I'm very proud of both of them. And I think their private lives are private, and I just firmly believe that. I'm running for public office; they're entitled to their privacy.

SNOW: Nothing like a father's love for his daughters.

CHENEY: Right.

A simple question no one seems to want to ask: If Dick Cheney loves and is proud of his openly lesbian daughter, why is he supporting a man who wants her to live under the threat of criminal sanction? It's no secret that Governor George W. Bush has publicly supported Texas's still-extant gays-only sodomy law, which makes private, consensual sex between gay adults a crime. Does Cheney agree with his running mate's position?

And what about his own public history on homosexual equality? On gay matters, Cheney's congressional record is not just bad. It's shocking. Cheney was one of only 13 representatives to vote against the landmark 1988 bill that initiated federal funding for AIDS testing and counseling - putting him to the right of even Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, both of whom voted for it. He was one of only 29 House members to vote against the 1988 Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which merely allowed the federal government to collect data on violent crimes based on race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, and he voted for an amendment that added gratuitously anti-gay language to the bill. He supported measures to cut federal AIDS research and to allow health-insurance discrimination against people with HIV in the District of Columbia. As defense secretary, despite once describing the ban on gays in the military as an "old chestnut," Cheney solidly backed the old policy of harassment of gay soldiers and their ejection, however distinguished their records, from the Armed Forces.

How does Cheney square this history with his belief that his gay daughter, Mary, is "wonderful," "decent," and "hard-working"? I don't know, because the media, which evidently still doesn't regard gay rights as central to our politics, has barely asked. ABC's Cokie Roberts, for example, only brought up the matter at the very end of her interview with Lynne Cheney, the candidate's wife, on last Sunday's "This Week" - as a way of sympathizing with Cheney's plight of having a gay daughter exposed on the campaign trail! The usually dogged Tim Russert dropped the ball entirely in an almost half-hour-long interview with the would-be veep. Fox's Tony Snow raised the issue - but only to assert that it was none of anyone's business. The New York Times, for all its pretensions to have left homophobia behind, has barely touched the subject. The Washington Post buried it.

When asked, the Cheneys simply say the issue is private. According to Newsweek, Lynne Cheney has declared the topic off-limits: "I have just decided that the thing to do when the subject of either of my daughters comes up is to say, `They are wonderful women.'" But this is a preposterous argument. Mary Cheney is a 31-year-old out lesbian. She lives with her partner in Colorado. Her last job was at Coors Brewing Company, where she was responsible specifically for outreach to the gay and lesbian population. She has funneled corporate money into gay causes and talked about homosexuality to redneck beer distributors. In a recent interview with Girlfriends magazine, a glossy publication targeted to a lesbian audience, Mary Cheney said, "The reason I came to work here [at Coors] is because I knew several other lesbians who were very happy here." According to Salon, she introduces her girlfriend as her "life partner," and, according to Time, she came out to her parents in the early '90s. Last week on "Larry King Live," Bob Woodward revealed that her homosexuality was a central factor in Dick Cheney's decision not to run for president in 1996. If Mary Cheney's lesbianism is not a matter of public fact, then nothing is.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have occurred to her parents. Lynne Cheney, for her part, went so far as to deny her daughter's lesbianism entirely. "Mary has never declared such a thing," Lynne Cheney told Roberts on "This Week." "I would like to say that I'm appalled at the media interest in one of my daughters. I have two wonderful daughters. I love them very much. They are bright; they are hard-working; they are decent. And I simply am not going to talk about their personal lives. And I'm surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring it up on this program." Thus, in one of her first public interviews as a potential second lady, Lynne Cheney said two things that are blatantly untrue. The first is that her daughter has never declared her lesbianism. The second is that Lynne Cheney doesn't talk about the private lives of her daughters. In fact, in almost every profile of Lynne Cheney last week, we were informed that she loves spending time with her two granddaughters, the children of her older daughter, Liz. Why is one daughter's heterosexuality a public matter while the other's homosexuality is not?

There are two possible answers to that question, and they shed more light on "compassionate conservatism" than all the klieg lights in Philadelphia. The first is that Dick and Lynne Cheney are genuinely embarrassed by and conflicted about their daughter's lesbianism. But, if this is the case, the Cheneys owe us an explanation. It may not be easy, but, when you enter public life at this level, matters that might have remained common knowledge but have rarely been discussed suddenly demand a response on a national stage. Arizona Senator John McCain had to talk about his divorce and his adopted children. Bush had to talk about his drinking and never stops talking about his faith. When they affect public officials, private matters that have a direct relationship to public concerns are routinely aired. In periods when profound social issues are being debated, this is even truer. At some point in this campaign, Dick Cheney will surely be asked about his views on homosexual equality. It's one of the few issues on which there are real differences between his party and his opponent's. He would have to be a Vulcan - or someone deeply ashamed of his own offspring - not to refer to his own daughter in responding. In a candidate putatively wedded to "compassionate conservatism," one might even hope for more - for a response that adds a human dimension to the inhuman way in which gay people's lives are routinely discussed and caricatured.

There is, however, a second possibility - that the Cheneys don't disapprove of their daughter's lesbianism at all but, for political reasons, must pretend to. After all, Jerry Falwell, one of Bush's key allies on the Christian right, has already described Cheney's daughter as "errant." The Republican platform expresses its opposition to special "rights" for homosexuals. Cheney comes from Wyoming, the state where Matthew Shepard was murdered, and had to represent his constituents in the 1980s. Perhaps he feels obliged not to break publicly with the homophobes who still dominate his party. One small piece of evidence to support this theory is the absence from both Dick Cheney's and Lynne Cheney's records of any known anti-gay slurs, despite their being surrounded by people who bait homosexuals on a regular basis. By all accounts, Cheney has treated his gay staffers decently and was deeply supportive of his Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams during his "outing" ordeal. There is no reason to doubt his affection for his gay daughter.

But, in some respects, this scenario is the more damning one. For, if Cheney personally respects gay people but supports policies that segregate and ostracize them for his own personal advancement, then he truly is contemptible. It's surely worse to oppose homosexual equality for opportunistic rather than for principled reasons. At least Pat Robertson seems to believe he is trying to save gay people from eternal damnation; but to support their continued stigmatization for the sake of a bucket of warm spit is morally pitiful.

Perhaps Cheney, like the rest of us, has grown on this subject over the years. Perhaps he now regrets his small part in making the AIDS epidemic even worse than it might otherwise have been and in casting a vote that declared that violence against gay people was not even worth recording. Perhaps his experience in overseeing the military's persecution of gay servicemembers has led him to have greater sympathy for their plight. (To his credit, he reversed the policy by which the Pentagon once sought to recoup scholarship money from gay soldiers the military had expelled.) Perhaps he has come to believe from observing his own daughter that gay relationships are not merely dysfunctional sexual compulsions akin to kleptomania (as Trent Lott holds) but human achievements of love and commitment. Perhaps he now sees that gay men and women, far from being threats to the traditional family, have always been at its heart.

But, if his views on these matters have evolved, he must say so now. And, if he doesn't, if he remains as silent as he has been, then he should not cavil at the inference that he is proud of his record and sees no problem with a Republican platform that continues to relegate his daughter to second-class citizenship. One can make some excuses for expediency in any political life. But at a certain point expediency becomes hypocrisy. And, when expediency means the civil and legal punishment of one's own child, it is, in fact, worse than hypocrisy. It is betrayal.

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH finished his GOP acceptance speech, with its stirring proclamation, "I believe in tolerance," the first song to play was a Latin tune recently popularized by Ricky Martin. It was the perfect ending to the closet convention.

Bush never spelled out who should be tolerated or what form that tolerance should take. It wasn't a line meant for women or racial minorities, since Bush's party had already openly embraced them and it would be odd for a modern politician to say he "tolerates" women and racial minorities. That leaves gays to be tolerated. Gay Republicans welcomed yet another in a parade of subtle signs that their party wants them. Others were free to interpret it differently.

"I believe in tolerance" is a long rhetorical distance from Pat Buchanan's declaration of a "culture war" at the same convention just eight years ago. But there is something peculiar and halting about this new brand of GOP tolerance. It asks gays to come inside - but to sit still once there.

Tolerance doesn't hate gays. In fact, it loves them - in the closet. Despite all the hoo-ha from skeptical gay organizations and activists, that is progress.

Under Bush's tolerance, gays will not likely be arrested in their homes because the anti-gay Texas sodomy law he supports is only a "symbolic gesture," he says. The new tolerance preserves symbols of disapproval but is embarrassed to act on them.

So gays can serve in the military as long as they keep quiet. Bush and Cheney Don't Ask as long as you Don't Tell. That's the bargain the military struck with gays under President Clinton. It has written the closet into American law. And after a fashion it suits the new Republicans just fine.

The closet, often defended as a situs of "privacy," is prized real estate for both moderate homophobes and ashamed gays. It is a space in which the former may declare he's tolerant and the latter may pretend he isn't despised.

The closet is detested by true-believing gay-haters who would prefer to pursue and punish the homosexuals they find there. The military's anti-gay witchhunts are a model for this. So are strictly-enforced sodomy laws. Bush is not a true-believing gay-hater.

So Republican Jim Kolbe, the most respected and respectable openly gay member of Congress, was allowed to speak to the delegates. It was better than eight years ago, when no openly gay person spoke to the convention. It better than four years ago, when a gay person whose homosexuality was known to his friends but not to delegates, spoke.

Kolbe's speech was purchased at the price that he could not acknowledge his homosexuality, or talk about gay issues, or even use the word "gay," from the lectern. Tolerance could let an openly gay man speak under the illusion that he isn't gay. He could be out and in the closet at the same time.

So Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of the party's vice presidential nominee, was allowed to sit with her parents and watch the convention festivities. Gay activists, in an understandable but somehow pathetic yearning for affirmation, scoured seating charts to determine whether Mary's partner had been allowed to sit near her. She wasn't there. That would have put Mary on a par with her sister, whose heterosexuality was shamelessly paraded before TV cameras in the form of her two children. Tolerance isn't ready for equality.

Lynne Cheney, Mary's mother, announced how proud she was of her "hard-working" and "decent" daughter. But then she denied her daughter had ever publicly acknowledged her homosexuality, an assertion so contrary to the public record it had the ring of pathological self-delusion. Tolerance prefers not to acknowledge publicly what everyone knows. If it can't have the reality of the closet it will have the form.

Here's how one tolerant observer described the new ethos in a message posted to a Website: "Most of us don't care what they [gays] do in the PRIVACY of their own homes. We do care when they get in our faces about it and [we] wish they would shut the hell up and mind their own business!!!"

Here is the same idea stated more delicately: Gays should have "no standing in law." That assertion, from the Republican platform, states the doctrine perfectly. It's not really that gays should be persecuted; it's that they shouldn't be recognized at all.

The Republican Party, the organizational embodiment of conservatism in this country, has learned a valuable lesson from its two consecutive defeats in presidential elections. Homosexuals are among us and they will not be eliminated by any means acceptable to the American people. The question now is, what is to be done with them?

One option is to pursue a religious crusade against gays, arresting them in their homes, investigating them, praying for their souls when they speak, and calling them "errant," as Jerry Falwell put it. Another option is to welcome gays into the institutions of American life, like the military and marriage, connecting gays with mainstream values. Bush hinted at the latter option when he said that his "tolerance" came from, not despite, his religious faith.

For now the party has decided to rest on an unstable middle ground. Like the closet itself, it's better than some conceivable alternatives, and it's an undeniable improvement over where we were, but it's not a stopping place.

Originally appeared August 9, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

As the Mary Cheney affair reveals, many reporters and opinion leaders aren't sure it's right to describe anyone as gay unless they've made a "formal public statement" to that effect. Our author realizes that he's never issued such a formal public statement, and tries his hand at composing one.

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I JUST HAVEN'T MANAGED TO GET ANY WORK done for the last few days. I've spent all my time trying to write my announcement that I am gay.

I didn't even know I needed one. You would think someone would have mentioned it before now. But then I was alerted to my oversight by former National Endowment for the Humanities chair Lynne Cheney. Mrs. Cheney's husband, you will recall, was recently nominated for Vice President by the Republican Party.

When Mrs. Cheney was interviewed on ABC's Sunday morning talk-show "This Week," reporter Cokie Roberts started to ask her about her daughter Mary: "You have a daughter who has now declared that she is openly gay."

Mrs. Cheney immediately exploded, berating Roberts for even broaching the subject:

"Mary has never declared such a thing. I would like to say that I'm appalled at the media interest in one of my daughters. I have two wonderful daughters. ... And I simply am not going to talk about their personal lives. And I am surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring it up on this program."

In reporting this exchange the Chicago Tribune seemed to accept this idea. "Although she has never made a public statement about her sexual orientation. ..."

So we need not just a statement but a "public statement."

The Los Angeles Times went further: "Although Mary Cheney has apparently never made a formal public statement about her sexual identity. ..."

So we need a "formal public statement" as distinguished, I suppose, from an informal public statement.

Let's see now. Mary Cheney has lived for years with a woman whom she describes to friends as her "life partner." She wears a gold wedding band on her left ring finger.

Cheney worked at Coors as their corporate advocate to the gay community. College classmate Catherine Pease told USA Today "It didn't go unnoticed that the daughter of the Secretary of Defense was a lesbian."

And just a few months ago in an interview with the lesbian magazine "Girlfriends" Cheney said, "The reason I came to work here [at Coors] is because I knew several other lesbians who were very happy here."

The Chicago Tribune quotes this very sentence just two brief paragraphs after claiming that Cheney has never made a public statement about being a lesbian.

So I realized that I needed to make some sort of very explicit, formal public statement. What if I died suddenly before making it? My obituary might read, "Paul Varnell. Deceased writer for gay press. Never declared if he was gay."

The Tribune might print an old photo of me holding a large sign saying "I AM GAY" with a caption reading "The late Paul Varnell, shown here maintaining his personal privacy."

And after all my efforts, too! Here I worked for a gay advocacy organization. I talked about gay issues on radio and television. I gave statements to newspapers. I walked in gay pride parades. I write for gay newspapers. I co-edit a gay website.

A few years ago on National Coming Out Day, I realized that I had no one left to come out to. So in a playful mood I called a reporter at the Sun-Times I had worked with on some gay news stories.

"Suzy, It's National Coming Out Day," I announced brightly. "So I just wanted to tell you that I'm gay."

"Oh, Paul!" she laughed, "The whole City Room knows you're gay."

So I thought I was on the right track. I thought this would be enough. But no; I was deceiving myself, living in a fool's paradise. So I began drafting my official, formal, definitive statement, per Cheney's stipulation.

"I, Paul Varnell, am gay."

Short, efficient, to the point. But it could be misunderstood. Lynne Cheney might say that I only alleged I am gay and did not actually "declare" it, to use her words. I tried again.

"I, Paul Varnell, hereby declare that I am gay."

Better, but still not sufficient. I realized this did not make clear that I am "openly" gay, which is what Roberts asked about and Cheney denied. I tried again.

"I, Paul Varnell, hereby declare that I am openly gay."

Hmm. Still not good enough. You see why this has taken me so much time? It isn't as easy as it looks. I forgot to say "publicly" that I am openly gay. I tried again.

"I, Paul Varnell, hereby publicly declare that I am openly gay."

Now this might actually satisfy Mrs. Cheney. But of course, I have not really publicly declared anything until I send this statement to someone. But who do I send it to?

The Mayor? The Governor? Mrs. Cheney? Maybe the local papers - the Tribune and Sun Times. Maybe the New York Times and the Washington Post. Should the Associated Press and Reuters get a copy?

Maybe the Associated Press could keep a data base of all of us who file declarations of being gay. Then it could safely refer to us as gay in its articles and Mrs. Cheney wouldn't get angry.

But there is something wrong here. Nobody talks about his or her sexuality this way. Real people do not "announce" or "declare" or issue "statements," much less "public statements." People just "tell" others they are gay or "indicate" or even "let people know" they are gay.

Only inside the D.C. beltway is something not definite until it is announced in an official statement by some agency spokesperson and confirmed by an official press release on embossed letterhead stationery.

Lynne Cheney and Cokie Roberts have both been in Washington too long. Way too long.

Originally appeared July 2000 in The Weekly News (Miami) and other publications.

WHEN I FIRST HEARD about the group Soulforce, a network of lesbian and gay (and, yes, bisexual and transgendered) activists with plans to protest homophobic doctrines and policies at various Christian denominational gatherings, I was dubious. I remembered all too well ACT-UP's 1989 protest inside New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Chanting "You say don't fuck, we say fuck you!" the demonstrators sought to counter the Catholic Church's anti-gay dogma - and opposition to safe-sex education - by running riot during Holy Mass. Notoriously, one protester threw a communion wafer on the floor and stamped on it. Take that, Christ.

Needless to say, no anti-gay hearts and minds were swayed that Sunday in New York. In fact, many who had originally been supportive of an action were appalled at what occurred. Members of Dignity, the gay Catholic group, had hoped for a more, well, "dignified" witnessing, rather than a raucous tantrum that only served to confirm the traditionalists' view that homosexuality and violent amoral anarchism were one and the same. Moreover, the communion-stomping incident has been cited by anti-gay conservatives over and over again in their diatribes and fund-raising appeals.

So, again, I was dubious about what the Soulforce demonstrations might be like. But I can now say, following several recent actions, that they seem to have found an appropriate form of spiritual protest, with a nod to Gandhi and King instead of the kindergarten bolshevism that too often characterizes gay acting up.

That's not so say that Soulforce doesn't lay it on the line. On July 4th, some 200 protesters planted themselves at the Episcopal Church USA's General Convention, held in Denver, for a 45-minute silent vigil. According to the activists, they "peacefully and symbolically" blocked the entrance to the convention center. Some 73 protesters were then handcuffed and arrested without resistance, in a bid to influence Episcopal Church rules regarding homosexuality. At issue: the 2.4 million-member denomination's unofficial policy of letting each diocese decide the role of gays and lesbians in the church. Conservative Episcopalians say the rule violates biblical morality and want it overturned. Some gays feel it isn't sufficiently gay-accepting.

"The time has come for you to stop the debate, open your arms and welcome all God's children in full acceptance, full inclusion," said Soulforce Chairman Jimmy Creech, a former Methodist minister who was defrocked after performing a holy union ceremony for a gay couple.

One of those arrested in Denver was retired Episcopal Bishop Otis Charles, who said, "After being true to myself and my church that I was gay, I came to understand that God loves me just as I am. There is no place I can be except with Soulforce, speaking the voice of truth about God's children."

Founded by Rev. Dr. Mel White and his partner, Gary Nixon, Soulforce is an interfaith network "determined to help change the minds and hearts of religious leaders whose anti-homosexual campaigns lead (directly or indirectly) to the suffering of God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered children." So says the group's website (www.soulforce.org). White detailed in his book "Stranger at the Gate" his journey from an associate of, and ghost writer, for Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and other religious rightists to a self-accepting gay Christian and minister in the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church.

Soulforce seeks dialogue with its adversaries. But when push comes to shove, its members are willing to follow in King's footsteps and practice nonviolent resistance. In June, Soulforce made its presence felt by submitting to an "arrest action" at the Presbyterian General Assembly in Long Beach, California, and at the Southern Baptist Convention. In November, a Soulforce delegation will conduct another civil disobedience at the meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. Participants in all direct actions are required to sign, wear, and uphold the Soulforce "pledge to nonviolence" used by Dr. King and his marchers in 1963.

While there are some signs that established lesbigay denominational groups - Integrity (Episcopalian), Lutherans Concerned, More Light Presbyterians, and the like - are sometimes uneasy with Soulforce's more aggressive though nonviolent actions, Soulforce points out that a large percentage of its delegations at its protests consist of denomination members, and that "we are people of faith coming in search of reconciliation, not conflict." They also promise they will not "disrupt, anger, or embarrass" as they hold their silent vigils and "revival and renewal" services.

And, unlike secular-political activists, Soulforce members do seem to be infused with the spirit. "I believe I experienced the presence of Jesus on the exit ramp outside the General Conference of the United Methodist Church and in the cells of the Cleveland City Jail," one member notes on the group's website. "What I felt today," writes another, "is that sometimes we need to not only insist on greater and more complete change, but we must celebrate and center ourselves in the wonder, the joy, the love and miracle that we are changing the world."

White himself states that "Unfortunately, our religious adversaries are not being changed by our current approach to activism. One-day marches, rallies or demonstrations do not convince them they are wrong. In fact, too often our public actions convince them they are right." He adds, "We no longer believe that what happens in Congress or the courts will change the minds and hearts of our adversaries nor lead to the understanding and full acceptance that we seek."

That's truer than most lesbigay activists are willing to admit. While legislative lobbying and court suits are important, in many ways they avoid the real challenge - changing attitudes by direct human encounter. As the Supreme Court's recent decision allowing the Boy Scouts of America to discriminate against gay men shows, the fight often must be waged on the level (again) of hearts and minds, appealing to the better angels of human nature, where true - and truly radical - transformation occurs, rather than simply by appeals to judicial fiat backed by state power.

But this will be no easy task. In the same week that Vermont's civil union law took effect, granting same-sex couples state recognition of the relationships, with all the rights and responsibilities the state grants married couples, the Presbyterians approved an amendment to their church's constitution forbidding ministers from conducting same-sex unions.

Religious homophobia remains the bedrock and rationale behind so much of the "secular" discrimination that gays and lesbians face in all walks of life. The curious thing is that religious denominations, if they were consistent, would support gay unions. They represent the loving commitment to maintaining stable relationships that religion otherwise upholds (which is why lesbigay cultural leftists also oppose the idea of gay marriage). Somehow, religious leaders and their flocks must be reached and addressed in the language they understand - as when Rev. White says, "We are your neighbors, and your organists, and your clergy, and your Sunday School teachers, and your deacons, and your ushers, and God's children."

Ultimately, our religious adversaries must be shown that spiritual principles do not support, but oppose, excluding God's lesbian and gay children from this flock. Soulforce could wind up making an important contribution to that effort.

Originally appeared in the Chicago Free Press July 26, 2000.

The considerable impact achieved by the StopDrLaura.com website campaign illustrates not only the remarkable powers of the Internet as an organizing tool, but also the ways in which the economic marketplace can be more sensitive than the political one.

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IN 1993, DURING THE CONTROVERSY over allowing gays to serve openly in the military, congressional offices were flooded with cards, letters, faxes and telephone calls from angry voters urging that the ban be retained.

For its part, the pro-gay side managed to generate only a comparatively small number of supportive messages; some congressmen said they received virtually none at all.

Now contrast: In 2000, advertisers on "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger's projected television show and her current radio program have begun to withdraw under pressure from gays-among them Procter and Gamble, Geico Insurance, Skytel and most recently TCF Bank.

A spokeswoman for Skytel said the company had been "inundated" with messages expressing opposition to its advertising on Schlessinger's program.

What changed in the intervening seven years? What is different here?

Probably the chief factors are: the rapid spread of Internet use, particularly by gays; the one-stop shopping convenience of a dedicated anti-Schlessinger website; the fact of a small number of targets; and the pressure-sensitivity of the economic marketplace compared with an almost pressure-impervious political system.

Everyone is aware of the enormous growth of Internet use; it is one of the most remarkable social facts of our time. And no one doubts the substantial Internet use by gays. At this point, it is rare to meet any gay person who is not online at home or at work. Usually both.

Much of the opposition to Schlessinger has been generated by a website called StopDrLaura.com, founded by gay Internet consultant John Aravosis, who heads Wired Strategies.

Aravosis says that his website has received million of "hits," representing perhaps hundred of thousands of unique visitors.

Aravosis' very useful website offers a generous serving of abrasive quotations about gays from Schlessinger's own program and her interviews elsewhere.

But, more important, it also provides telephone, fax and e-mail contact information for Paramount, which is producing her television show, and for executives at some of Schlessinger's advertisers, urging people to write and express their concern.

In the old days, just a decade ago, people had to gather the facts themselves, try to compose a cogent letter, hunt down the right person and the address to mail it to. No longer. StopDrLaura.com does much of the work for them.

How far can this model of activism be generalized? Would specific websites devoted to other topics be as effective? What about StoptheScouts.com or, since no one really wants to stop the Boy Scouts, maybe DefundScouts.com? Or Gaysinmilitary.com? Or Endsodomylaws.com?

In Schlessinger's case there was one specific target so it was comparatively easy to gather the relevant information about her. And there were only a few people or companies to contact with expressions of disapproval.

It might be possible to generate, say, 20,000-30,000 messages to Paramount or "inundate" Skytel with 5,000-10,000 messages over a short period of time. Those are a lot for a medium-sized company to receive.

But if we are trying to influence a national policy such as the military gay ban, remember that there are 435 U.S. Representatives. Even 30,000 messages dispersed among 435 congressmen comes to fewer than 70 messages per congressman. Not an impressive number.

Since the Boy Scouts is not likely to change its policy in response to outside criticisms, activists would have to put pressure on the numerous United Way campaigns, corporations and foundations that support the Boy Scouts.

Determining which ones provide support, finding contact information for the right executives, and so forth would be an enormous labor, something no volunteer activists like Aravosis and his colleagues could reasonably undertake. And again, there is the problem of a multiplicity of targets, even if the total number of messages were large.

An even more important factor here is that advertisers, as actors in the economic marketplace, are more sensitive to the pressures of small change in sales and support than are politicians.

Most legislators are from so-called "safe" districts, meaning that a modest amount of pressure is not going to influence them one way or the other. They can easily risk the loss of 5 to 7 percent of the vote and still win re-election. All they need is 50 percent plus one vote.

And, of course, they risk losing an equal or larger number of votes on the other side if they alter their position, a serious disincentive for change.

By contrast, most companies would strongly prefer not to lose, or even risk losing, 5 to 7 percent of their sales or market share. That could make the difference between overall profit and loss.

And unlike politicians who risk losses on the other side if they change positions, corporations as advertisers have the option of simple neutrality, avoiding controversy entirely and choosing non-controversial venues for their advertising.

Accepting these provisos and potential limitations, the StopDrLaura.com idea is well worth trying for other purposes. Aravosis himself probably does not have the time to pursue such an endeavor, but if any of the lackluster national gay organizations were smart, they would hire him as a consultant to teach them how to reproduce his efforts.