IGF CultureWatch

Originally appeared in the Chicago Free Press on May 3, 2000.

Susan Sontag put gays on the cultural map in her magisterial 1964 essay, or so the familiar story goes. In hindsight, however, "Notes on Camp" can be seen as neither as impressive nor as gay-friendly as it seemed at the time.

---

IN 1964, A VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN 31-year-old named Susan Sontag made something of a slow motion splash with a 20-page article titled "Notes on Camp."

With a great display of learning, dozens of wide-ranging examples, and a host of distinctions and unexpected connections, Sontag's article took the notion of "Camp" seriously enough to analyze it - to explain what it was, where it came from, how it worked, and what its effects were.

Among her host of examples were Tiffany lamps, Bellini operas, "Swan Lake," "King Kong," old Flash Gordon comics, Noel Coward plays, Aubrey Beardsley drawings, Oscar Wilde's epigrams (the essay quotes several), feather boas, Ronald Firbank novels, and "All About Eve."

Sontag argued that there was more to Camp that just silliness or pretense or fake elegance. According to her, Camp is a whole sensibility that evaluates the world strictly in aesthetic terms.

More specifically Camp is characterized by a love of the theatrical, the artificial or exaggerated, which "converts the serious into the frivolous." It represents "a victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality," producing a kind of moral and political disengagement.

Perhaps most significantly for the time - five years before Stonewall - Sontag pointed to gay men as the primary conduits of Camp taste, its "vanguard" and its "most articulate audience." In fact, she said:

"Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. ... The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony."

Sontag's article, widely read and discussed in the next few years, certainly popularized the idea of camp, both the awareness and the use of it. The article even achieved enough notoriety to be parodied by humorist Fran Lebowitz in a piece called "Notes on Trick."

In retrospect, Sontag's essay does not hold up well. The show of graduate school learning seemed forced, more intended to impress than illuminate, and limited to the parochial knowledge base of the literary elite of her time. The categories often seem arbitrary, the generalizations too sweeping, the distinctions artificial, and examples often ineptly chosen.

For instance, Sontag seems unable to recognize her subject matter. Despite her claim, "Swan Lake" is hardly Camp. That it is so often parodied should prove that; how could you parody Camp? Samuel Barber's fine opera "Vanessa" is hardly Camp just because gay men wrote it and it contains stylized elements.

No one could say Alexander Pope's poetry was Camp if he read more than "The Rape of the Lock," which maybe Sontag didn't. Nor would anyone who loves music say that "much of Mozart" is Camp. Where did she get these bizarre notions?

At some point you begin to suspect that Sontag's knowledge is limited and her appreciation is shallow. In short, she does not know what she is talking about. And the essay begins to fall apart.

Nevertheless, reading the essay in pre-Stonewall America, many gays felt that Sontag was their champion. They felt she had put them on the cultural map, so to speak, and given them legitimacy. They had always wanted to believe they were an important and valuable creative minority and now Sontag seemed to affirm to everyone that they were the bearers of a major sensibility.

No doubt too many gay men found the article useful as a guidebook to social climbing. They picked up useful tips on what to read and see and what to think and say about what they read and saw, regardless of their own personal reactions.

But gays who felt affirmed and legitimized, even lionized, by "Notes on Camp" overlooked several troubling facts.

For one thing, Sontag's essay was published in "Partisan Review," at the time perhaps the premier organ of moral seriousness in political and cultural matters, Camp's chief rival sensibility. In short, "Notes on Camp" was intended as a reconnaissance map of the enemy's territory.

For another, Sontag acknowledged that although she felt drawn to Camp, she also found it offensive and even felt "revulsion" from it.

Further, the analysis of Camp seemed rooted more in many then-current, condescending stereotypes about gays rather than in any serious inquiry into the basis or coherence of Camp's purported properties. For instance:

Gays are playful because they are immature and refuse to grow up and become responsible adults. They are duplicitous and devious, always posing, not wishing or able to be authentic. They exhibit "the psychopathology of affluence" - too much money, too easily bored, too little purpose for living. They are frivolous and shallow, lacking emotional depth and attracted only to the superficial.

Then too, many casual readers failed to notice that Camp turns out to be not really an independent sensibility at all, but derivative and ultimately parasitic on the whole natural, moral basis of human existence, including serious art, undermining and destroying what it depends on.

Finally, Sontag viewed Camp as the core of what might now be called "the homosexual agenda," that is, a concerted effort to undermine morality so people would have no basis for objecting to homosexuality.

"Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense," she wrote. "Camp is the solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation. ..."

A decade later Sontag viciously attacked Camp and its aesthetic sensibility because it was corrupting and "the ethical and cultural issues it raises have become serious, even dangerous." But for those who read carefully, that was her view from the beginning.

Originally appeared May 3, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

I WANTED TO BE A BOY SCOUT when I was a girl. I was a sash-wearing Girl Scout for years, but despite my love of its campfire camaraderie, there was something about the Boy Scouts that always seemed cooler.

Maybe it was those balsa wood cars they raced in the pinewood derby. Or the national parks they hiked in winter. Or the white water rafting, or bottle-rocket projects, or focus on service that actually meant something.

Whatever it was, boy scouting seemed to open up a world of adventure and possibilities. Girl Scouts was kinder, gentler and boring. Activities vary from troop to troop of course, but the only camping I did was in a plush site in the Catskills, where the tents had hardwood floors and beds. And my troop's annual service project entailed planting tulips in front of our suburban branch of the U.S. Post Office.

Times have changed, perhaps (a friend of mine is leading her Girl Scout troop on a trip to Hawaii), but Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were not equivalent then, and I doubt they are today. It is in response to this, after all, that the Boy Scouts started Venturing, a co-ed subdivision of the scouts for 14- to 20-year olds.

But the Boy Scouts keeps girls out and they keep gay boys and men out, too. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this, hearing arguments in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.

Most likely you've heard of the case. James Dale was an Eagle Scout assistant scoutmaster when a newspaper article profiled him as co-president of the gay organization at Rutgers University. When the Boy Scouts responded by kicking him out, Dale sued under New Jersey's anti-discrimination law, which includes sexual orientation.

Last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled for Dale, saying that the Boy Scouts were a public accommodation like the Rotary Club and the JayCees, and therefore not covered by the First Amendment's right of free association.

Now the High Court must decide what sorts of organizations can choose who can belong and what sorts can't. Does merely being gay connote political advocacy? If so, then the Boy Scouts may have the right to exclude gays, because Dale's membership would send a political message that is directly opposite to the message the Boy Scouts want to send.

But Evan Wolfson, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund attorney representing Dale, told The New York Times, "A human being is not speech, other than 'I am who I am.'"

Yet, I'm not sure it really matters if we win this one. Of course it would be wonderful if gays were allowed to openly lead Boy Scout troops. They would introduce generations of boys to the idea that being gay is not a moral failure. They would become role models for manhood.

After all, isn't it better to have men leading the troop, no matter what their sexual orientation, than women, since the boys are supposed to strive to emulate their leaders? I can't imagine a man leading a Girl Scout troop, but because of the shortage of volunteers, I know many women who have taken on leadership of their son's pack.

If the Boy Scouts recognized this on their own, more power to them. But I worry about the ramifications should they be forced to admit gay men and boys. Would they then also need to admit girls to full membership? (After all, as I've said, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts really aren't equivalent organizations). Would the Girl Scouts need to admit men? Would gay and lesbian organizations be forced to accept straight folks in leadership roles? There is a place for the supportive atmosphere of homogeneous organizations. A place for all-girl groups. A place for all-boy groups. A place for all-gay groups.

And, yes, even a place for all-straight groups.

The government shouldn't have the right to decide the membership of private organizations.

The Boy Scouts, however, should do its part, and take responsibility for its homophobia by explicitly saying in its rules that the Boy Scouts is limited to straight boys (right now they just say members must be "clean" and "morally straight." That language is offensive if used to exclude gays).

Perhaps the BSA should have the boys sign an agreement, like the military once required. If parents are made uncomfortable by such a thing, maybe the Boy Scouts will make an accommodation, as they did with girls, and start a special mixed troop.

Or maybe it won't. But then we must do our part. If gay boys and gay men aren't let into the Boy Scouts of America, then we must start our own troops. We must teach leadership to our own children, gay and straight, in our own way. Many minority groups have such a thing on large and small scales. We don't, but we should.

This issue is not simply one of discrimination, but of raising children of character, courage and spirit. Why would we want to hand this important job over to a right-wing organization? Far better for us to step in and do the job ourselves.

Originally appeared April 30, 2000, in The Washington Times.

Originally appeared April 19, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Of the religious folktales of the world, few have occasioned more hatred and cruelty, suffering and death than the Old Testament story of Sodom, the city purportedly destroyed by Jehovah because its inhabitants were homosexual. The story comes down to us in a highly confused state, and it seems unlikely that most of those who cite it have ever tried to puzzle out its contradictions.

---

ONE OF THE MOST BEGUILING but baffling stories preserved in the Old Testament book of Genesis is the ancient folktale of Yahweh's destruction of the city of Sodom (Gen.18:20-19:38).

It would be possible to view the folktale as a charming example of comforting wish-fulfillment revenge fantasy by ancient nomadic tribesmen had the story not been taken literally by so many men who did so much evil: Few stories in the Old Testament have generated more hatred and cruelty, more suffering and death.

The usual interpretation is that the ancient god (1) destroyed Sodom because its inhabitants were homosexual, but (2) spared Lot because he offered hospitality to two angels and tried to protect them from the Sodomites.

It is hard to imagine anyone could believe this interpretation if he had actually read the story. The first element is undermined by inconsistencies in the story; the second by the words of the story itself.

To begin, it is worth pointing out that this god is not omniscient: he does not know for certain what is going on in Sodom, he has only heard reports - "an outcry" as it is expressed. So the god sends two angels to investigate.

When the angels come to the city gate of Sodom, in one of those remarkable coincidences possible only in folk tales, who should they meet but Lot who just happens to be sitting there. Why this is such a coincidence we will see shortly. Lot invites the visitors into his house.

As soon as they hear that two strangers are staying at Lot's house, the entire male population of Sodom - "young and old . . . every one of them" - surround Lot's house and demand that he send the visitors out so the mob can have sex with them.

"Bring them out," they shouted, "so that we can have intercourse with them." Or words to that effect.

Now it is impossible to take any such incident seriously as history. How could the entire male population of a city be homosexual? If all these men were homosexual, how could Sodom sustain its population? Where did the little Sodomites come from?

It is hard to know what a "city" might have meant, but a fair guess would be between 1,000 and 3,000 people. It scarcely seems plausible that so many men (500-1,500) could actually expect to have sex with just two men. Nor is it plausible that the visitors would appeal to the diverse tastes and behavioral preferences of every single man, even if they were homosexual.

Then too, consider the fact that Lot offers his two virgin daughters to be used by the crowd as a substitute. "Let me bring them out to you," he says, "and you can do what you like with them."

But if the men of Sodom had been homosexual why would Lot think they would have any interest in his daughters?

How long has Lot lived in Sodom? Years? You would think he would have noticed something like rampant homosexuality had it existed. You would also have to wonder why he chose to live there. You might even wonder how he could have found the prospective sons-in-law who were engaged to his daughters.

However that may be, when Lot's offer fails to appease the crowd, the visitors pull Lot back into his house and cause the men of Sodom to become blind. They then tell Lot to leave Sodom because they are going to destroy it.

Why? Because, says one angel, "The outcry against it has been so great that the Lord has sent us to destroy it."

This statement makes clear that the god had already decided to destroy Sodom long before the angels arrived and long before any attempted gang-rape. So the whole incident at Lot's house had nothing to do with the reason Sodom was destroyed.

It is also worth pointing out that the incident at Lot's house, however we understand it, is the only one anywhere in the Bible that could suggest any connection between Sodom and homosexuality. There are no others. And, to repeat, that incident was not why Sodom was destroyed.

But why then did the angels spare Lot and tell him to leave town? To reward Lot for his hospitality? Because he tried to protect them from assault?

Because he was the only heterosexual in Sodom? Not at all.

The angel explains that he had already been forbidden to destroy Sodom until Lot is safe: "I can do nothing until you are there" - i.e., in the neighboring town of Zoar, the only one of the five cities of the Plain that was not destroyed.

To understand why, we have to remember who Lot was.

Two chapters earlier in Genesis the god made his covenant with Abraham to create the Hebrew nation. Now it happens that Abraham's brother Haran was Lot's father (Gen. 11:27-28); that is, Lot is Abraham's nephew. Lot is to be saved not for anything he did, but because of who he is.

In the plain words of the folktale narrator: "Thus when God destroyed the cities of the Plain he thought of Abraham and rescued Lot from the disaster" (Gen. 19:29).

So to repeat, neither Sodom's destruction nor Lot's rescue has any connection with the incident at Lot's house nor with Lot's hospitality. The decision to destroy Sodom but save Lot were made by the god before the incident even happened.

The angels then were sent not to investigate at all, but to get Lot out of the city. Which is why it was such a remarkable coincidence that he just happened to be the very first person they encountered at Sodom.

Originally published in The New Republic, April 17, 2000

"HE WAS IMPATIENT with hygiene," Saul Bellow says of his protagonist, Abe Ravelstein. "There was no counting the cigarettes he lit in a day. Most of them he forgot or broke. ... But to prolong his life was not one of Ravelstein's aims. Risk, limit, death's blackout were present in every living moment." This tall, big-handed, almost perfectly bald man - flamboyantly erudite, instinctually elitist, viscerally Jewish - strides and then falters in Bellow's new novel, Ravelstein. He dies of AIDS, another corpse in a plague his political allies largely ignored or belittled. But victimology never tempted him. He almost seemed to embrace the role of outsider, to burnish it and touch it at regular intervals, like a talisman. He had what Bellow describes as "powerful unforgiving enemies" in the academic world and beyond. But "he didn't care a damn about any of them."

I believe it. In fact, I believe most of what's in this book. A roman ? clef, Ravelstein doesn't require a very intricate clef to figure out. It's a rumination on Allan Bloom, the late professor of philosophy and conservative eminence. It is written by a friend and imbued with the honest distance that true friendship uniquely confers.

And, although it is not a book about ideas, it is about a man who lived through ideas, even if he also longed to live beyond them. I still remember reading Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind as a graduate student in political philosophy. I remember its crude but irresistible critique of modern culture and its breakneck tour through Western philosophy in 150-odd pages. With chapters like "From Socrates' Apology to Heidegger's Rektoratsrede," it was priceless preparation for my general exams, if a little abstruse for the legions who bought and never read it.

But, with the publication of Ravelstein, we are presented with two facts that Bloom kept to himself and his friends. Bloom was gay, and he died of AIDS. The salience of these facts is strengthened, not weakened, by Bloom's public silence about them. He knew they mattered. Of all people, he knew the centrality of the things about which we remain silent. So it bears repeating: One of the most influential conservative intellectuals of the last 50 years was gay and died of AIDS. For all our justified concern about privacy and a person's right to rise above his sexual or ethnic identity, we also know this matters. How could it not?

It matters not simply because so many of Bloom's defenders endorse a politics brutally dismissive of homosexual dignity. It matters because this knowledge helps us understand the work Bloom left behind. The core of Bloom's teaching was his insistence on the importance of eros. This "longing" was, for Bloom - following Plato - the essence of philosophy and, in some ways, the essence of living. Retaining the purity of that longing was his life's work. The reason he disliked the modern cult of easy sex was not because he scorned or feared the erotic life but because he revered it. He saw sexual longing as supremely expressed in individual love, and he wanted his students to experience both to the fullest. The writers he investigated most deeply - Rousseau and Plato - were philosophers of eros. "It's very important," Bellow writes, "to understand that he [Ravelstein] was not one of those people for whom love has been debunked and punctured - for whom it is a historical, Romantic myth long in dying but today finally dead. He thought - no, he saw - that every soul was looking for its peculiar other, longing for its complement. ... Love is the highest function of our species - its vocation. ... He never forgot this conviction. It figures in all his judgments."

This love was not a Christian love. Bloom was an atheist and a Jew. There are times, reading him, when one feels he has not merely understood Nietzsche; he has imbibed him. But this awareness of the abyss moved Bloom, unlike Nietzsche, toward love and political conservatism. Love, whether for the truth or for another, because it can raise us out of the abyss. Political conservatism because it best restrains the chaos that modernity threatens. And here Bellow reveals something absent from Bloom's public writing. He was deeply aware of the darkness of modern enlightenment, of the countless monsters from the heart of Goethe's and Nietzsche's civilization who hanged Jews alive - "the meat-hook people," as he describes them in the book. He kept track of them. He knew who they were. And his sober, unillusioned politics was framed to foil them.

Is it too much to think that Bloom's appreciation of love cannot also be extricated from his own experience? If there is a sense of true love's promise in Bloom's work, there is also a deep, deep sense of its difficulty. The book tells us matter-of-factly of Ravelstein's husband. "Nobody questioned the strength of Nikki's attachment to Abe," Bellow writes. "Nikki was perfectly direct - direct, by nature, a handsome, smooth-skinned, black-haired, Oriental, graceful boyish man." Bellow doesn't tell us much about the substance of this relationship. It is relegated in the book - as in our culture - to the shadows, where it nevertheless stands with clarity. It is Nikki who rushes to Ravelstein's bedside, Nikki who is "Ravelstein's heir and his chief mourner." Is it Nikki who appears in the dedication of Bloom's last, and finest, book, Love and Friendship: "To Michael Z. Wu"?

Perhaps Bloom's finest achievement was to write about human love from the perspective of homosexual love and have no one notice the seam. You cannot read him on Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra without seeing those works in a new light. You cannot read his account of Rousseau's La nouvelle Heloise without wanting to go back and read it - more closely - again. Bellow tells us how fascinated Bloom was by others' loves, their mishaps and misunderstandings. It is because he knew so well the deep, natural distinctions between men and women that his literary criticism is so sharp and his advice, according to Bellow, so good. Here is a homosexual who not only appreciates the heterosexual experience but marvels at it.

There will be those, of course, who see in this either hypocrisy or shame. They are wrong. I am unaware of any disparagement of homosexual love in Bloom's writing, although he was rightly revolted by much of what passes today for gay "culture." And he seems at ease with his sexuality in Bellow's book. Nikki is not hidden. Abe regales Bellow with every detail of his sexual escapades. In some ways, I think, Bloom's homosexuality may even have reinforced his conservatism. It helped inform him of the power of love and the lure of danger and the wisdom of a civilization that keeps both in some restraint. The resilience of sexual orientation is also, for many homosexuals, a testament to the awesome power of nature, of what simply is. In Bellow's words, Bloom had "a gift for reading reality - the impulse to put your loving face to it and press your hands against it." Part of that reality was Bloom's need for and witness to the love of one man for another. One day, there will be a conservatism civilized enough to deserve him.

Ours is a diverse movement. No, I'm not just referring to the standard boilerplate of gender, gender-identification, nationality, race, ethnicity, sub-ethnicity, ad infinitum. While those categories are important, our strength also lies in ideological diversity.

Consider the merry band of gay men and lesbians who follow the beat of a libertarian drummer. They've been garnering attention over the past several months by staking out unconventional positions - opposing hate crime laws, for example, because they penalize thoughts (motivation) rather than simply actions. Such arguments haven't endeared gay libertarians to the more mainstream activist community. And now, in the matter of whether the Boy Scouts of America should be forced by judicial decree to drop a ban on gay scoutmasters, the libertarians are being just as unorthodox as ever.

As you may recall, last August New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could not exclude James Dale, a former Eagle Scout, from serving as a scoutmaster simply because he is an out gay man. Dale's cause had been taken up by the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which successfully argued on his behalf before the New Jersey court. The Boy Scouts appealed, claiming that as a private organization they have a right to decide on their membership and what message they want to put out - including the message that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle. The case was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, where it will be argued on April 26, with a ruling expected by the end of June.

Among the many "friend of the court" briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by various pro-gay and anti-gay advocates, the most unusual was filed by Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), a lesbigay group that favors the Boy Scouts' position (that's right, the Boy Scouts position).

The GLIL brief argues that the Boy Scouts of America have a constitutional right to set their own standards for membership and leadership positions, even if that means excluding openly gay Scout leaders from participation. Not, mind you, that they think the Scouts are doing the right thing. "Our brief emphasizes our disagreement with the Boy Scouts' policy of excluding gay members and leaders," writes Richard Sincere, president of GLIL and a former Boy Scout. "But if government forces the Boy Scouts to change that policy, the constitutional rights of all of us - not just the Scouts, but everyone, gay or straight - will be diminished."

Sincere continues, "Freedom does not belong only to those with whom we agree. Gay men and lesbians have suffered when freedom of association has not been respected. We benefit when freedom of speech and freedom of association are vigorously protected. A Supreme Court ruling against the Boy Scouts will have the perverse effect of hurting gay and lesbian Americans."

The GLIL brief argues that the inclusion of gays in all facets of life is profoundly desirable because it sends "a message of tolerance and acceptance." But when a private association is involved, the First Amendment requires that "this message must not be communicated due to government coercion." GLIL points out that, as the Supreme Court has said in the past, freedom of association "plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate." Warning against "creeping infringement" on the freedom of association, GLIL notes that gay organizations often seek to maintain "gay environments," including clubs, retreats, vacations and professional and alumni organizations. Decreeing that the Boy Scouts cannot exclude on the basis of sexual orientation could mean that gay associations could be prohibited from excluding - or even just not welcoming - heterosexuals.

The brief, available at www.gayliberty.org, contains a lengthy history of how in the past the U.S. government has tried to deny gays the right of association - a right that GLIL says we must protect, even at the cost of allowing others to discriminate.

Cutting the Public Purse Strings

Now admittedly, the Boy Scouts case is something of a sticky wicket. Many opposing the Boy Scouts anti-gay stance feel that the Scouts really are not a private membership organization at all, but should be considered a "public" accommodation because of their close relationship with government - particularly the sponsorship of many individual Scouting units by local governments. I've seen strong constitutional arguments on both sides of this issue, which often comes down to debating the degree of the state's involvement in Scouting.

In light of this fact, some libertarians in GLIL have advanced an alternative proposal. They hold that even though the Scouts do receive taxpayer-funded government support and privileges, including those afforded to no other civilian nonprofit organization (such as the right to hold their national Jamboree on military property), the best response isn't to further extend the arm of the state over the Scouts, but to prohibit all instances of that very government patronage. If the Scouts claim a moral imperative to discriminate, perhaps we should treat them like a religious organization and impose a wall of separation between Scouts and state. No more Scout meetings at city halls, fire stations, or public libraries.

It's an intriguing idea, and it would certainly be interesting to see if (or, more likely, when) the loss of government largess would bring about a self-interested change of heart on the part of the Scout's leadership.

Under such a dispensation, if local, state, or federal government continued to directly or indirectly support Scouting activities, they could then be sued. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union and American United for Separation of Church and State recently filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Kentucky for contracting with Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, an organization with a religious policy against hiring gay men and lesbians. It's a more cumbersome solution, to be sure, but one that might avoid pitting the rights of gays to equal protection against the First Amendment's freedom of association.

Newfound Allies

Constitutional issues aside, there's another development related to the GLIL brief that deserves to be noted - the way in which these gay libertarians have been acclaimed by notable conservatives who haven't heretofore been sympathetic to any gay group. George Will recently wrote a column headlined "The Boy Scouts' Unlikely Friends," in which he applauds GLIL and highlights its argument that protecting freedom of association is good for gay folks, too. "America needs a livelier understanding of the ... rights that GLIL understands," writes Will.

Similarly, conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick wrote in his syndicated column, "Remarkably, the most eloquent brief comes from Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty. It says, 'The New Jersey Supreme Court's decision restricting the ability of the Boy Scouts of America to choose its own leaders and define its own membership criteria dangerously erodes the freedom of all Americans, including gay Americans, and should be reversed.'" Concludes Kilpatrick, "I find myself in complete sympathy with that point of view, too."

Of course, hard-core gay-bashers are still wailing that homosexuality is inherently immoral and thus gay people aren't entitled to any "special rights" (including, it often seems, equality under the law). But think about the way that Will and Kilpatrick used the GLIL brief to position themselves as supporting the Boy Scouts without attacking gays per se. In one sense, GLIL has given conservatives a way to spin their opposition to anti-discrimination provisions; on the other hand, conservatives weren't going to support court-ordered gay inclusion in private associations in any event, so at least the GLIL brief provided a way for them to do what they would have done, while eschewing outright homophobia.

And the fact that more and more mainstream conservatives feel a need to eschew outright homophobia is, to my mind, a rather significant cultural indicator - and a reason to cheer on our ideologically diverse community.

Originally published April 5, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Young gay people often embark on a crash course to learn everything they can about gay culture, which unlike (say) ethnic culture, is something they seldom have absorbed growing up from parents and siblings. Despite misgivings about whether "gay courses" belong in universities, careful scholarship does have a legitimate role to play in illuminating what gay culture is and how it has changed over time.

---

THE MICHIGAN CHAPTER of the American Family Association is disturbed. More than usual.

It seems that University of Michigan professor David Halperin scheduled a course for the fall semester titled "How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation."

"Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn how to become one," Halperin explained.

That set off AFA state chair Gary Glenn.

"It is wrong," Glenn said, "that taxpayers are being forced to pay for a class whose purpose is to recruit and initiate teenage men into the homosexual lifestyle."

And, he added, "Nobody has to take a class in how to be African-American or Irish." Take that, Halperin!

Glenn might be on solid grounds if he criticized all taxpayer-funded education. After all, it is nothing more than a forced subsidy for people with children by people who have no children - which would include a majority of gays.

But Glenn conveniently ignores the fact that gays are forced to pay taxes too. In fact, every single time religious right advocates get upset about the use of taxpayer money, they act as if no gays or lesbians ever paid taxes. We need to keep reminding them that we pay taxes too and we expect some representation for our taxation.

So long as I pay taxes, I think I would like my taxes to help pay for this course, or a similar one here in Illinois.

As for Glenn's sparkling observation that no one has to take a class in how to be African-American or Irish, the answer is: Of course not, because they already learned it at home from their parents and family.

For instance, most black children learn their family's history with its stories about slavery, forced segregation, and encounters with prejudice in the United States. They learn about the civil rights struggle, about civil rights leaders and important black people in science, the arts, politics.

They learn where they can go safely and where it is dangerous, how to behave with hostile police, how to cope with prejudiced people, how to cope with random insults and dismissive treatment. They may pick up different ways of talking with blacks and whites, different rules about eye contact, different body languages.

They learn - we might say absorb - these various facts and coping skills from their family as they are growing up.

By contrast, little gay children seldom grow up in a home where they learn information about gays or absorb the nuanced skills of being gay in a skeptical, not to say hostile world.

Most of us grow up alone, without a clue, keeping a furtive eye out for elements of the general culture that will reflect our own developing self-awareness and might, if we are lucky, validate our existence.

Young gays are often surprised to discover both how much gay history and culture there is and how the courtesies and modes of social conduct differ subtly from their previous experience.

When you track down Halperin's course proposal itself, it turns out this is exactly what he wants to explore: How the gay community teaches homosexuals how to be gay.

Halperin posits a number of "cultural artifacts and activities" that play a role in learning how to be a gay man: e.g., Hollywood movies, opera, Broadway musicals, certain classical and popular music, camp humor and drag, diva-worship, body-building or "muscle culture," fashion and interior design.

He says he wants his course to explore whether there are certain classical "gay" works and practices that all gay men need to know, what makes them so essential and what explains why gays are drawn to those things. These are good questions to ask.

Halperin's idea is not new, of course, but his questions are more probing than usual. And he deserves credit for treating gay male community and culture separately and not as part of some imaginary "LGBT community."

But the question is whether Halperin's example of gay "artifacts and activities" are any more than mere stereotypes. Although stereotypes often have a basis in fact, it might be worth asking how widespread those interests actually are or were and exploring whether his examples are limited to a certain time, place and social level.

All that cultural bric-a-brac was often present in pre-Stonewall middle and upper-middle class urban gay communities: At one point every gay home seemed to have a statue of Michelangelo's David and a Judy Garland record.

But the post-Stonewall gay culture saw many of those things dwindle into targets of bemused ridicule, especially among younger gays.

There is another difficulty. Gay men in Berlin in the 1920s, who surely count as gay, were probably not much interested in Broadway musicals or Hollywood movies. That would be even more true of the men in St. Petersburg's gay community at the turn of the last century.

What were they interested in? What did they find in the broader culture that reflected their interests? What did they borrow and adapt to legitimize their existence and tastes? It would be interesting to know.

Perhaps if "gay culture" is at least partly a response to hostility and prejudice, then gay men may adopt not so much specific things, but general types of things. For instance, they might adopt elements of high culture in order to assert some sort of intellectual superiority to compensate for social stigmatization.

Or they might be attracted to stylized or exaggerated elements of the general culture that implicitly offer the comforting thought that the source of oppression is faintly ridiculous.

If so, as gays achieve equality much of "gay culture" may become obsolete.

The outsized victory of California's antigay marriage initiative, Proposition 22, again raises the question of whether the demand for same-sex civil marriage is going anywhere, or at least anywhere anytime soon. After all, the California vote wasn't remotely close - 61 percent supported the proposition that only marriages between one man and one woman will be valid or legally recognized by the state.

Moreover, California isn't an anomaly. In the words of a Janet Parshall, a spokeswoman for the antigay Family Research Council, "If the liberal states of Hawaii, Alaska, and now California can do it, then the 19 other states without 'statutory protection for marriage' can and must do it."

By "statutory protection for marriage," of course, she means states that would legally bar recognition of same-sex marriages should such unions ever become legal in any other state (no state currently grants legitimacy to same-sex marriages, and the national Defense of Marriage Act, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by Bill Clinton, bars the federal government from recognizing such unions).

Sadly, the homophobes may have a point - but, conversely, only up to a point. True, voters in both Hawaii and Alaska recently approved measures to oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriages. In Hawaii, gay activists had thought court-ordered recognition of gay matrimony was a good bet to make the aloha state the first to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but voters short-circuited our hopes by passing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage by a vote of 60 to 29 percent. In Alaska, it was 68 to 32 percent against.

And national Gallup poll finds 62 percent against and 34 percent for same-sex marriage (results that virtually mirrored the California and Hawaii election result).

But then, on March 16, history was made in Vermont, where the state's House voted by 76-69 to adopt a bill allowing same-sex couples to form "civil unions."

According to the Associated Press story, "the bill provides for unions that amount to marriage in everything but name. Partners could apply for a license from town clerks and have their civil union 'certified' by a justice of the peace, a judge or member of the clergy." Moreover, same-sex couples would be entitled to some 300 state benefits and privileges available to married couples in such areas as inheritance, property transfers, medical decisions, insurance and taxes.

The constraints of marriage are also paralleled in civil unions. Partners who want to go their separate ways would have to go through "dissolution" proceedings in Family Court, just as married couples have to pursue a divorce. And partners would assume each other's debts - again, just like married couples.

The biggest difference between actual civil marriage and same-sex civil unions is that the federal government (and probably other states) wouldn't recognize the latter. So when it comes to immigration rights, Social Security, and joint returns to the IRS, same-sex partners would remain single in Washington's eyes.

Given the votes against gay marriage in California, Hawaii, and elsewhere, as well as the historic step forward for civil unions in Vermont, where do we go from here?

Let's keep in mind that even in Vermont, where the states highest court had ruled that gay couples could not be denied "the benefits" afforded to married couples, polls show overwhelming opposition to full same-sex marriage, which is why state legislators decided not to grant gays the right to wed. Instead, they drafted a comprehensive "alternative track" package to satisfy the court's decree.

A Strategic Question: What Is to Be Done?

Some activists argue that the well-funded Washington-based lobbies (principally, the Human Rights Campaign) have been too timid in not campaigning outright for actual gay wedlock. Most of the ads opposing the antigay marriage ballot measures have gingerly labeled the initiatives as "divisive" or "unnecessary" since no state currently recognizes gay marriages anyhow. One ad that ran in California told voters, "Most people don't support gay marriage, but we do support keeping government out of people's private lives," meaning you don't have to favor equality for gays to vote against this.

Mike Marshall, campaign manager for the No on 22 campaign, went so far as to say, "This is a campaign to defeat Proposition 22, not a campaign to legalize gay marriage. ... It would be disingenuous to run a pro gay-marriage ad." But while the intent may have been to bring semi-tolerant voters to our side, clearly this has not proved to be a winning strategy.

More militant voices have argued that the message should have been simply and unequivocally pro-gay marriage, putting committed gay and lesbian couples at the forefront. That might not have carried the day, either, but, say the critics, it could hardly have done worse, and in the long run the only hope is to make the case for gay marriage over time, rather than continually dancing around the issue.

Post Prop. 22, some are calling for a more militant fight. Eric Rofes, a longtime gay radical voice, is urging direct action and civil disobedience. "Activists may take their struggle directly to the people," he writes, "building on rich traditions of militant organizing inspired most recently by ACT-UP."

Others, however, see a renewed focus on substantive domestic partnership benefits as the best step toward spousal equality. After the California vote, Brian Perry of Log Cabin Los Angeles remarked, "There are probably more people willing to accept equal treatment under a different name, such as domestic partnerships. So it might be worth it to create a 'separate but equal' recognition of our relationships and just not use the 'm' word."

Such talk is anathema to the hard-core gay marriage advocates, for whom "separate but equal" means "the back of the bus" - an unacceptable denigration of gay people and our relationships. They may have a point, but I've never liked facile similes. The back of the bus was the back of the bus, literally, thanks to Jim Crow laws. Would a distinct category for same-sex unions, even one that conveyed all the statutory benefits of state-sanctioned matrimony, likewise make us second-class citizens unworthy of the "normal" marriage that any miscreant heterosexual is entitled to ("Who wants to marriage a heterosexual moron?")?

What's in a Name?

As much as I side emotionally with the militants, I'm not so sure. In the northern European countries such as Denmark that have comprehensive partnership recognition, reports are that gay partners consider themselves "married," and that others refer to them as married. Traditionalists, including religious conservatives, are somewhat placated by the fact that the partnerships are a parallel institution that reserves "traditional marriage" for opposite sexers. It doesn't seem to be a big deal.

This, in fact, is what the "best solution" in Vermont might turn out to be - should the bill passed by Vermont's House survive in the state Senate. While civil unions for same-sex couples are not marriages, the are undeniably a significant advance over the weak domestic partner registries that exist in some jurisdictions.

So, metaphorically speaking, would strong domestic partnerships along the lines of civil unions still be "the back of the bus," or would it be more appropriate to say "a rose by any name would smell as sweet"? Like many others, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in Vermont, and judging the results with an open - but optimistic - mind.

Backers of California's so-called Knight Initiative, a local Defense of Marriage Act that would forbid the state from recognizing same-sex matrimony, are reviving the old argument that gay unions will open the floodgates to all sorts of alternative arrangements, including polygamy.

The initiative, which will be put before California voters next March, counts among its supporters Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who ran for California governor as the conservative alternative to then-governor Pete Wilson, and who is expected to run for the Senate in 2000. In a recent opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Unz warned that "Legalizing gay marriages today means legalizing polygamy or group marriages tomorrow." He reasons that if same-sex unions become legal, "How can one then deny the right of two men and three women to achieve personal fulfillment by entering into a legally valid group marriage?" Moreover, "If our common legal structures were to be bent or stretched to accommodate one [nontraditional arrangement], they must be made to accommodate others as well."

Just how great is the polygamous threat in today's America? It turns out there is, in fact, an ongoing debate about polygamy, but it's not between conservatives and progressives. Instead, the polygamy debate highlights a division among religious conservatives themselves. This is most obvious within the Mormon community.

Last year, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt suggested that the practice, with roots in early Mormon doctrine, might be protected under the First Amendment. Although polygamy was officially abandoned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1890, officials estimate that anywhere between 30,000 to 40,000 dissident traditionalist Mormons still practice it despite the risk of excommunication by their church and the lack of state sanction for their (illegal) relationships.

But don't think that polygamists are our allies. For while gay rights activists (and a great many feminists) often claim that same-sex unions are a good thing but polygamy isn't, those in the pro-polygamy camp argue that polygamy is a good thing, but homosexual unions are not. Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, told the Salt Lake Tribune in September 1998 that "For polygamous folks, it is a religious belief and at least through their religious ceremonies they think they are married before God. Homosexuality is not part of somebody's religion." She added, following the brouhaha unleashed by Gov. Leavitt's suggestion of polygamy tolerance, "These people out there living polygamous lives are not bothering anybody."

Not everyone, of course, was so accommodating toward plural matrimony. In reaction to Gov. Leavitt's stance, a group of self-described "former polygamists" held a news conference outside his office and demanded that the state's constitutional ban on polygamy be enforced. Sound familiar?

Here's some history: When the federal government finally succeeded in pressuring the Mormons to abandon polygamy -- in exchange for Utah statehood -- many traditionalists refused to go along and faced arrest for their now-outlawed marriages. Others lost custody of their children, who were forcibly removed from their loving, multiple parents as surely as contemporary courts took away Sharon Bottoms' son from her "unfit" lesbian home.

The debate in Utah is still underway. Just last month, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that a Republican lawmaker wants the state to apologize to polygamists for staging raids to enforce anti-bigamy laws in the 1940s and 50s. Representative David Zolman from Taylorsville, Utah, says a state apology would erect a so-called "peace bridge" to isolated fundamentalist Mormon communities.

However the argument about polygamy isn't limited to the Mormons. At the 1998 world conference of Anglican (Episcopalian) bishops in Lambeth, England, conservative African bishops spearheaded a resolution condemning homosexuality as sinful. On the other hand, the same conservative bishops succeeded in preventing a resolution against polygamy from appearing on the final agenda -- thereby preventing polygamy from being condemned as unchristian, the way homosexuality was. This shouldn't be surprising. The practice of African polygamy remains common.

Throughout most of human history, in fact, polygamy has been the norm, and its prevalence in the world of the Old Testament Hebrews was hardly an oddity. There is no biblical prohibition against a man taking two or more wives. If the patriarchs had multiple spouses, why shouldn't we? Just who are the biblical fundamentalists in this debate? Moreover, if gay marriage poses a "slippery slope" that could lead to polygamy, why didn't polygamy ever lead to same-sex marriage?

These questions aside, when addressing religious hypocrisy the Mormons clearly are in the forefront. Despite the bitter persecution they faced over their own unconventional (by modern standards) form of marriage, their official church today is adamantly supporting the anti-gay marriage Knight initiative, which defines marriage as a one-man, one-woman relationship. Recently the San Francisco board of supervisors called for an investigation of the Mormon Church's tax-exempt status, citing evidence that the church has established a quota for member donations to support the anti-gay initiative. Maybe today's Mormon elders fear that gay marriage will be the "slippery slope" that will lead to the re-establishment of marriages like those of their revered great grandparents.

Or, more likely, the official Mormon leadership is using the Knight initiative to wage war against their own renegade, polygamist brethren.

Polygamy and same-sex marriages are not the same, but I'm enough of a libertarian to think that individuals should be free to enter into the type of matrimonial relationships that seem to suit them best. Nevertheless, I'm no fool. Arguing that the state should recognize polygamy and its variants can only be a losing political argument, and I'm not advocating that we do so.

But maybe the question ought not to be what sort of marriages the state should recognize. Maybe, instead, we should ask whether the state should ultimately be in the marriage recognition business to begin with. Suppose Washington stopped using the tax code's marriage benefits for social engineering. Then if, as some libertarians argue, the government allowed individuals to freely contract for the type of marriage arrangement they desired and left it up to religious institutions to support and solemnize those marriages which their particular flocks wished to sanction, it wouldn't be necessary to fight over whose relationships get the state's seal of approval. That, anyway, is something to think about.

Originally appeared March 22, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

BY NOW MOST PEOPLE have received the census forms the government wants them to fill out.

I am of two minds about the census. Government interrogatives (viz., "snooping") should be viewed with deep suspicion. Governments are not your friend; government is about social control. The less they know about any of us citizens, the harder it is to interfere in our lives. How often do we need to be reminded that knowledge is power?

But since gays are in large measure an invisible minority, it would promote gay visibility and legitimacy to have more accurate data about gays, lesbians and our relationships. The census is one cheap and convenient way to gather some of that information.

You see the conflict.

So what we have to do is shape our census answer to provide the information we want, but not more.

Even if you want to, though, it is not easy to tell the U.S. Census Bureau you are gay.

If you and your lover live together, Person 2 (you can flip a coin) can indicate in Question 2 of the short form (D-1) that he or she is the "unmarried partner" of Person 1. The Census Bureau recorded 145,000 same-sex couples in 1990, a vast undercount, of course.

Person 2 can also say he or she is the "husband/wife" of Person 1. If the two people are the same sex, the census says it will count them as "unmarried partners." You could also write in "married partner," "lover," "spouse," or the term of your choice in the "Other relative" category, but there is no guarantee those will be counted.

What about gays who do not live with their partner or who have no current partner? Polygamous heterosexual men have a way to indicate all their wives, but single gays have no formal way to indicate they are gay.

So we have to use more creative ways.

Some people who have the long form (D-2) say they plan to answer Question 10 ("What is this person's ancestry or ethnic origin?") by writing in "gay" or "gay American." After all, ethnicity can be interpreted to mean your primary identification. If that is "gay American" then feel free to tell them so.

The late gay scholar Warren Johannson once half-seriously urged gays to call themselves "Sodomite-Americans," arguing that our common spiritual ancestry is the (mythical) city of Sodom. That might be too obscure for census bureaucrats.

However you decide to answer, the point to keep in mind is, as pioneer activist Frank Kameny said recently, "I will define myself to my government; I will not allow my government to define me to me. I am answering the questions, not they. We citizens are the masters; the government are our servants, not the other way round. Never forget it and never let them forget it."

The short form does not ask about ethnicity. But Question 8 asks about "race." Along with "Black" and "White" it offers other options such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan and Korean. But Cambodian (adjacent to Vietnam), Taiwanese and Korean (once again) are listed as ethnicities on the long form, so "race" seems to mean little more than origin or identity.

If so, then gays can justifiably write in "gay" under the heading "Some other race."

That answer might also appeal to liberals who believe the whole idea of "race" is a divisive and reactionary fiction as well as conservatives who dislike treating races differently. Anyone who simply disapproves of the "race" question can write in "human." I have a liberal friend who has done so regularly in past censuses.

As another possibility, you can just write "gay" or "lesbian" in magic marker in big letters across your form and see what happens. Nothing will; it won't get counted. But if many people did that, word world probably leak out to the news media somehow. Remember: "We Are Everywhere," even at the Census Bureau.

Are there disadvantages to collecting data about gays? Perhaps. Many, probably most gays, may not want to say they are gay, so there will be an enormous undercount. Our opponents could use that to argue our political and economic insignificance.

But voter exit polls and marketing surveys are probably adequate as correctives to a census undercount. And each census will show more and more gays as gays are comfortable being open. We have to start some time. It might as well be now.

There are significant advantages to collecting data on gays. It will be fascinating and useful to get information about our numbers, our relationships and our lives.

Economists and political scientists have already made some tentative estimates about gay residential, education, and employment patterns using the scant 1990 data on "same sex partners." With more respondents we will have more reliable data.

Then too, the growth in the number of people saying they are gay would be a rough index of the growth of gays' confidence of social acceptance.

Should we follow the lead of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and urge that a question about sexual orientation be added to the census next time?

Probably not. Census answers are required by law, but some people may fear exposure if they answer honestly. Such people would probably lie and might be wise to do so: the census releases information on a block by block basis.

Could the Census Bureau make the question voluntary? They could but there is no precedent for that and the bureau would probably resist.

But then I plan to resist answering most of the other questions. It is none of their business.