IGF CultureWatch

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, one of the religious right organizations produced and distributed a film called The Gay Agenda. The 20-minute video featured lurid scenes from a San Francisco gay pride march and interviews with doctors who had less than enlightened views about gay men and women. I can't say I remember much from that video other than the image of a leather-clad, bare-chested, sweaty man licking the front tire of his motorcycle. But that image is enough to remind me how enraged I was at the time by the crude attempt to tap into the basest fears many people have about those of us who are gay.

The Gay Agenda was intended to scare Americans into believing that if they didn't do something - and do it fast - these outrageous, devil-worshipping, motorcycle-licking hedonists would be moving in next door, invading their children's classrooms and dismantling the very foundation on which our society was built.

Well, that hasn't happened. What happened instead, as evidenced by the video images coming out of Vermont these past couple of weeks, is that the two lesbians who already live next door and have done so without creating a fuss for the past 2 1/2 decades decided to get married. Because they live in Vermont, they went to a justice of the peace and legally tied the knot by getting a "civil union." And as far as I can tell, the ground beneath our feet hasn't yet given way. Yes, gay people want to get married. This shouldn't shock anyone any more than the fact that some gay people behave outrageously - just as some heterosexual people behave outrageously (have you ever been to a football game?). As most of us have been saying for a long time, we gay folks are human beings with the same feelings, desires, weaknesses and strengths as everyone else.

When my significant other and I decided to have a commitment ceremony four years ago, our goal wasn't to undermine society, to destroy the American family or to recruit children into sinful behavior. Our goals were much the same as any two people in our society who love each other and plan to spend their lives together. We wanted to share our happiness with friends and family and to state publicly our commitment to one another, and we wanted our loved ones to know that we considered each other partners for life. Not incidentally, they have treated us this way ever since. To them, we are a couple like any other married couple, with one big exception: Our relationship isn't legal. We live in New York, where we don't have the option of doing anything about that.

Vermont has taken a monumental step in the right direction by giving gay and lesbian couples the rights and privileges they need to care for one another and their families. But Vermont's civil unions, which are not yet recognized outside the state of Vermont or by the federal government, are just the beginning. Gay men and lesbians won't be satisfied with anything less than the same legal rights that non-gay married people take for granted in every state in the union. So if you're already tired of hearing about gay marriage, brace yourselves.

When the day finally comes - and I'm confident it will - that gay and lesbian Americans have the same rights and privileges as everyone else, including the right to legally marry, you won't hear much from us anymore. We'll go about our business and live as conventionally or outrageously as the average Joe and Jane.

And as disappointing as it may be to those who claim that gay men and women are up to no good, given the choice, most of us will opt for legal marriage over tire-licking any day.

WHEN THE SUPREME COURT held that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) may exclude openly gay scoutmasters, many gay civil rights advocates howled. One writer said the result "lent legitimacy to the bigotry of ... institutions all over America." That's one way to describe the function of the First Amendment. I prefer to think of it as something free people should cherish.

The First Amendment protects people, like me, who say and believe good things. It also protects people, like the BSA, who say and believe some bad things. It guarantees freedom of speech, and the concomitant freedom to choose your friends and associates in order to promote your views. It doesn't say, "You have freedom of speech - unless a majority of a legislature in some state can be persuaded otherwise." It doesn't "lend legitimacy" to any belief. Only we, as a people, can do that, through our own words and actions.

Why would we protect a freedom to say and believe bad things? It's not because there's no difference between saying and believing bad things and saying and believing good things. One reason we protect people who say and believe bad things is that we're not very confident about our ability to distinguish between good things and bad things for all time. We should pause when we reflect that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, "time has upset many fighting faiths." Ideas once thought unassailable are now heretical.

Here's an example: New Jersey once had a law forbidding private, consensual gay sex. It was considered a good thing. But because of the First Amendment, those who disagreed were able to persuade New Jersey that the law was wrong. Now the old state sodomy law is considered bad, even terrible.

In fact, New Jersey has stood the old sodomy law on its head, forbidding discrimination against the very people it was once confident were criminals. It is that anti-discrimination law that brought the Scouts to the Supreme Court.

The BSA disagrees with New Jersey's new, improved view of gays. It also disagrees with New Jersey's egalitarian views about females and atheists because it doesn't welcome them, either.

If the Constitution is to protect us, it must protect people we don't like, too. Otherwise, its protections are a lunchtime snack for democratic majorities.

There's self-interest in this high-minded devotion to the BSA's right to discriminate against us. In the past century, democratic majorities have given us sodomy laws, a ban on military service, gay marriage bans, anti-gay adoption laws and much else. With a nod from those same majorities, the police have used their power to raid gay bars, censor gay publications, and harass law-abiding citizens for dressing the wrong way.

Gay equality advocates, as we have learned repeatedly from painful experience, are not often in firm control of the outcomes of democratic decision making. We may have our way today, but tomorrow the barbarians will be back at the gates pressing in.

The remedy for this uncertainty is to withdraw from democratic decision makers certain spheres of private life they have no business regulating. So commercial establishments, as public accommodations that have always been regulated by law, may properly be told not to discriminate. But non-commercial private membership organizations - like the BSA, or the HRC, or the NGLTF - should be allowed to further their missions as they see fit without state interference.

What's most culturally interesting about the case is that the BSA sought constitutional protection from the proponents of gay equality. The constitutional shoe is on the other foot. It's not gays seeking protection from raiding police officers now; it's homophobes seeking protection from raiding gay rights laws.

We should never confuse having a right with what is right, however. People should have the right to burn an American flag as political protest, but I don't think it's ever right to do so. The BSA may have a right to discriminate against gays, but that does not make their discrimination right.

As in the controversy over Dr. Laura, it's the role of conscientious people to expose bigotry. In fact, it's their right to do so. Just as we may urge sponsors not to subsidize a television program we think is wrong, we may urge local governments and charities not to sponsor a private membership organization that has fought tenaciously to discriminate against us.

In the short run, the BSA won't likely fold under such pressure. The group's membership is up and withdrawing sponsors have so far been replaced by new ones. There are probably still more parents out there who would prefer BSA to keep its anti-gay policy because they fear their children will be molested by gay scoutmasters than there are parents who think that fear is irrational and don't want their children to be taught to prejudge.

But, as even the supposedly anti-gay majority Supreme Court decision recognizes, "the public perception of homosexuality in this country has changed" in the direction of "greater societal acceptance." If we keep exercising our rights, our First Amendment rights, to move the country our way, the BSA won't be turning to courts to keep us out - they'll be turning to us to keep them around.

Originally appeared July 12, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

SUDDENLY, for a few weeks in late spring and early summer, religious denominations became a major source of gay news.

United Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians all held annual or biennial conferences during which each tried to reach some sort of consensus on issues such as gay sex, gay clergy and gay marriage or union ceremonies.

During the same period, more than 100,000 European gays attended World Pride 2000 in Rome, an event which Vatican hostility transformed from an ordinary Pride celebration into a vigorous condemnation of Vatican homophobia.

Taken together, these events demonstrate the continuing importance of religion in the lives of many gay people and underscore the role of religion in shaping public attitudes toward gays.

Since many people associate their moral and ethical views with some religious doctrine or other, trying to alter their views of homosexuality requires an empathetic understanding of their religious views and a search for ways to encourage them to re-examine their thinking.

For some people, of course, religions merely provide a rationale, a rationalization, a justification for attitudes they absorb from their social surroundings. Religions may even be just a support for attitudes generated by people's psychological and emotional needs, insecurities and conflicts. For them we can do little.

But a substantial number of decent men and women, particularly those active in religious denominations, remain engaged in trying to develop reasonable and thoughtful moral valuations. These are people it is worthwhile trying to reach.

Just prior to the United Methodists' general conference, the church's publishing house Abingdon Press issued a valuable little book titled "Where the Spirit Leads" by former Indiana University sociology professor James Rutland Wood. The subtitle is "The Evolving Views of United Methodists on Homosexuality."

Barely 135 pages long, the book sets out a traditional Methodist basis for openness to fresh understanding of scripture and several factors that might lead Methodists to a fuller appreciation of gays and lesbians.

Although Wood writes about Methodists, one need not be a Methodist to learn from his book. Presbyterians and Episcopalians will find much of value. Many Catholics and Southern Baptists could learn from it as well.

Wood begins by pointing out that Christian churches must be open to theological and social diversity, as the early church was, and discuss those differences that are based on people's own experience and their thoughtful reflection on it. (Vatican please note.)

Methodists must remain aware, Wood says, of the culture-boundedness of the ancient writers and be open to new formulations of earlier ideas. Wood refers to this as "loving God with our minds" rather than letting controversial issues evoke an ideological response.

"God cannot," he explains, "at any given time reveal all truth to any particular culture. New capacities (or incapacities) to comprehend truth and new situations to apply it may emerge with each new generation or each new society." (Southern Baptists please note.)

And Wood especially urges Methodists to enlarge their networks of personal relationships in accord with the ancient gospel's mandate "to widen our circles of caring and concern. As we do so," he adds, "we often find our ideas and behavior profoundly change." (All religions please note.)

One of the book's greatest contributions is the responses Wood offers from 1996 General Conference delegates about what influenced or changed their views of gays and lesbians. Some said they changed their views at the conference itself.

A conservative delegate said the "general tone of homosexual interaction made me more accepting of homosexuals." Another conservative said the "(personal) witness event was very powerful. It made me rethink and hear other people's pain."

Yet another said his anti-gay attitude "softened" after he read a position paper that traced the biblical history of homosexuality. And a fourth said she "moderated" her position after talking with delegates who had gay and lesbian ministries in their congregations.

A number of other delegates suggested how change would come about within the church generally. Most emphasized personal contact and friendship with gays.

One woman said, "When more of us get to know marginalized people more personally, our prejudices are challenged."

A male delegate said "as more and more United Methodists 'discover' homosexuality among their family members, close friends and church members, this problem will go away."

Another man said that "sharing personal stories (and) struggles is important and life changing."

Throughout the book Wood cites surveys that show a growing acceptance of gays, gay marriage and gay ordination among Methodists. He points out that Methodists, like other Americans, are becoming more comfortable with gays.

More specifically, he notes that women are generally more gay supportive than men and that women are becoming a larger proportion of delegates to Methodist conferences.

In the same way, younger conference delegates and younger Methodists generally are more gay supportive than older Methodists, so as they take their place in church leadership, the church will become increasingly gay affirming.

Since many of these same factors - theological, pastoral, and social - are at work in other churches as well, the lessons to be learned from the Methodists have far wider application.

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

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts of America's right to exclude gays, but in so doing it strengthened a right - that of "expressive association" - which benefits us all. And gays are well situated to win the forthcoming Scouts battle where it should be won - in the court of public opinion, rather than the courts of law. What positive actions can gays take?

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THE BOY SCOUTS WON? Only seemingly. It would be better to say that the Boy Scouts prevailed with a good constitutional argument, supported by weak evidence, craven apprehensions and unthinking hostility.

And gays lost? Not quite. It would be better to say that gays failed to compromise important constitutional principles they themselves depend on and should now concentrate on the effort to prevail, as they deserve to, in the court of public opinion.

Begin at the beginning. The U. S. Constitution enshrines, says the U. S. Supreme Court, a principle of "expressive association," a sort of hybrid of free speech and free association.

Just as we have free speech to express our opinion, and freedom of association to associate with people we like (and exclude people we do not like), so we have a right to implicitly express our views by the very fact of whom we choose to associate with and exclude.

Each of these principles is important for all of us, gays included.

Early in the gay rights movement, the constitutional right of free association was the basis for legal challenges to states that refused to allow gay organizations to incorporate and colleges that sought to bar campus gay organizations.

Had there been no guarantee of free association, most of those groups would never have been allowed to exist.

Expressive association is the principle that allows gays to exclude homophobes from gay organizations such as gay political advocacy groups or gay counseling services.

It also allows gays to exclude neo-Nazi and Klan groups from gay Pride parades. For that matter, expressive association is also the basis for excluding pederast and pedophile groups such as NAMBLA from gay parades.

No thoughtful person should want to see these constitutional principles seriously compromised.

In the case of the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the question was whether the Scouts had defensible reasons for arguing that including gay scout leaders (and, implicitly, gay scouts), was contrary to its principles and its associational message.

The Boy Scouts arguments were tenuous. It tried to argue, for instance, that "morally straight" excluded homosexuality. Today "straight" is indeed a kind of slang for "heterosexual." But the word was not used that way more than 80 years ago when the scout oath was written. "Straight" then meant virtuous, decent, law abiding.

Even less likely, the Boy Scouts said "clean" in the scout law excluded homosexuality. But most scouts have always assumed that "clean" refers to taking regular baths or showers. Even if the word has an overtone of moral purity, it is far from clear what it would include.

Nevertheless, the Boy Scouts had a defensible point. The Boy Scouts had always accepted the traditional religious view of sexual morality which includes the idea that homosexuality is improper, immoral, wrong.

If anyone had asked a scout or scout leader 80 years ago if the Boy Scouts viewed homosexuality as moral behavior, they would have emphatically said, "No." The reaction would have been the same 50 years ago or 30 years ago. Most American citizens would have reacted the same way.

The only reason the Boy Scouts never made opposition to homosexuality an explicit part of its "core" message was that there was never any doubt about the moral status of homosexuality, so it did not need to. Only in recent years has the moral status of homosexuality become a matter of dispute in our society.

None of this means that the Boy Scouts' position is written in stone. The Boy Scouts will eventually change on its own, but probably only after most Americans have changed.

The Boy Scouts, after all, has a strong organizational incentive not to lead social change on the issue. So long as it has a quasi-custodial role over young people, it has to take into account the views and concerns of parents.

Even if Boy Scout officials viewed homosexuality as morally neutral, they would feel a need to accede to the sizable number of parents who think otherwise. And so long as some parents fear their children might be "recruited" by gay scout leaders, officials will feel a need to take that fear into account.

What can gays do then?

We can encourage gay scouts and former scouts to come out and put a wholesome public face on gays in scouting in order to hasten a shift in public opinion.

Gay adults, especially former Boy Scouts, could help form scout-like boys clubs to give young gays-and any other interested youths-some of the same experiences the Boy Scouts offers exclusively by and for heterosexuals. The troops could explore affiliating with the Canadian Scouts, which now accepts gays.

We can begin a concentrated effort to persuade United Way campaigns to exclude local Boy Scout troops as funding recipients.

We can lobby corporations that include gays in their non-discrimination statements to stop supporting the Boy Scouts or apply pressure on the group to change its policy.

We can try to persuade churches that sponsor Boy Scout troops to protest the exclusion of gays and re-evaluate whether to continue sponsoring troops. Gay-supportive troops could march in the gay Pride parades.

We can sue to prevent governmental entities (cities, park districts, schools, police and fire departments) from sponsoring or subsiding Boy Scout troops or permitting the use of government facilities not open to other religious groups.

Change will come when the Boy Scouts sees it as necessary.

Originally appeared June 28, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

We go through this every year. The annual Gay Pride parade brings on the same old chest pounding, breast beating, or tub thumping about diversity, normalization, inclusion, representativeness, self-expression, flamboyance, and much more.

Even as gays and lesbians make economic and social progress in society at large, we seem to make no progress in our internal arguments or rhetoric. Most gays just tune it out - probably rightly.

A favorite current target for the socio-cultural left is the menace of gay "assimilation." "Sex Panic" founder Michael Warner has written of "the trouble with normal." Activist Urvashi Vaid has written of the hostility she feels for bourgeois gay men.

Many other have gleaned in this same field. The latest to add his voice is Mattachine Society co-founder Harry Hay who told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The assimilationist movement is running us into the ground. Most gay people want to be like everyone else."

Hay thinks this is A Bad Thing.

But it is not very clear what Hay means by the "assimilationist movement." There is no organized movement telling gays and lesbians to move, say, to the suburbs and behave like heterosexuals. Besides, that is not really what is happening.

And who is this "us" Hay refers to? It cannot be gays because they are the ones doing it. Hay himself says "most gays" want to be like everyone else.

The point Hay is missing is that it is false to say that gays want to be like everyone else. Gays are already pretty much like everyone else. And this is what Hay, Warner, Vaid and so many others on the cultural left are really unhappy about. And it is why they constantly denounce most of the actually existing gay community.

Their disappointment probably derives ultimately from the ancient Marxist beliefs that the proletariat was the natural vehicle of revolution.

Since the gay left views gays as marginalized and oppressed in the same way classical Marxist thought the proletariat was, they have the same expectations for gays. So when gays do not live up to those expectations, they denounce gays as traitors to, uh, well, the expectations of the gay left.

(The proletariat similarly disappointed classical Marxists: It turned out to be the most conservative social class of all. The workers did not want a revolution; they wanted higher wages and shorter hours.)

The gay left assumed (or hoped) that coming out was a politically transformative act that would somehow (it was never quite clear why) transform torpid, bourgeois closeted gays into zealous out-of-the-closet social radicals. Their message was not simply "Come out" but rather: "Come out and adopt our beliefs and act the way we think you should."

It turned out, of course, that coming out was a transformative process, but psychologically transformative, not politically transformative. Coming out acted along vectors of increased self-esteem, enhanced personal integrity, and a sense of individual empowerment.

Gays who came out of the closet were the very last people willing to be told what to do with their lives. On the contrary, most of them felt more capable of self-determination than they had ever felt before. Trying to tell gays how to act out their liberation just does not work.

There are plenty of ironies here. Harry Hay, long a member of the American Communist Party during its most Stalinist phrase, says he has always been seeking brotherhood.

Referring to a 1930s labor strike he participated in (on Party orders) he told the Chronicle, "The brotherhood was intense. You couldn't be a part of that and not have your life changed."

Hay apparently hoped to find something similar among gays. But as a leader of Mattachine, Hay apparently carried over the Communist Party tendency to be directive and controlling. He claimed to be seeking universal brotherhood, but there are hints he did not always get along so well with actually existing individuals.

If so, it need not be surprising. It is a common enough syndrome among highly ideological people. If you have specific aims and expectations for how people should be, most people are going to disappoint your expectations and turn out to be unworthy. And if they fail to move toward your dream then, of course, they are traitors.

This seems to be the source of Hay's current animus as well as that of the others.

Most gays and lesbians, it seems, want to live happy, healthy, prosperous, fulfilled lives, pretty much the way their friends, relatives, and neighbors do. This perfectly reasonable desire is what is denounced as "assimilation."

But the word "assimilation" is somewhat disingenuous if it is meant to imply that gays are thereby sacrificing something that is part of their natural character or essential nature. No one is urging gays to sacrifice anything inherent in or natural to being gay or lesbian, and clearly gays do not see themselves as doing that.

Much the opposite, in fact. More and more gays are insisting that they be accepted for who they are wherever they happen to be and however they want to live.

Better words for this process might be "inclusion" or "integration" - words that suggest that a person is regarded and treated equally at the same time he remains fully himself. Whatever you call this, it would seem to be not a betrayal of the gay movement, but its triumph.

Originally appeared June 21, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Destructive religious and psychiatric doctrines have far less power to hurt us now than they did fifty years ago. Here's a list of some of the people to thank for that progress.

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EVERY YEAR DURING Gay Pride Week, there is an upsurge of exhortations to exhibit pride, demonstrate pride, feel pride.

Fair enough. Only I would add this. We should temper our pride with gratitude - a deep sense that we as individuals and as a community owe a great deal to the people who made it possible for us to feel proud.

If there are now an unprecedented number of gays and lesbians who are comfortable with themselves, open about their lives and prepared to assert their full moral legitimacy and legal equality, all this we owe to the people who gave us the tools to work with.

By "tools" I mean the ideas and images we use to create a positive self-concept, the language we speak about ourselves with and the arguments we use to immunize ourselves against destructive religious and psychiatric doctrines.

If gratitude is the proper response when someone does something for you, think of them with gratitude. When you are celebrating your pride, whether you realize it or not, you are exhibiting the results of their work.

There is no room for a complete list, but here are a few of the people who promoted these ideas or helped give them institutional structure.

Alfred C. Kinsey was a pioneer sex researcher and author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and a companion volume on women (1953). Kinsey startled postwar America with his finding that large numbers of men engaged in homosexuality.

Just as important, the books also conducted a running critique of sex-phobic psychiatric (especially Freudian) doctrines from psychiatry never really recovered.

The book was a best seller. Tens of thousands of gay men read Kinsey and took heart that they were essentially normal. It would be fair to say the modern gay liberation movement found its impetus, its bearings and its energy directly from Kinsey.

Mary Renault was an English novelist who emigrated to South Africa in 1948 with her lifelong lover Julie Mullard and began writing a series of highly regarded, exhaustively researched novels set in ancient Greece.

The novels often focused on gay men and their relationships, making the point that gay men were accepted as an ordinary part of the social landscape in Greece. That seemed an almost utopian vision for gay men in the 1950s and 1960s, but it gave visible form and encouragement to gay men's aspirations.

Rev. Troy Perry was one of the first people to assert that his Christian God loves and accepts gays and lesbians and fully accepts their sexual behavior. As Perry put it in his book title, "The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay."

That thought was wildly implausible in 1968 when Perry founded his Metropolitan Community Church. If it is more widely accepted now, that is a measure of Perry's work and his example which resonated far beyond his own denomination.

Ron Gold is one of the unsung heroes of the gay movement. As a leader in the effort to change psychiatrists' view of homosexuality as a disease, Gold drafted statements, conducted negotiations, managed demonstrations and argued with psychiatrists. One important speech was titled, "Stop It! You're Making Me Sick!"

The resulting 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to reverse itself not only meant that gays and lesbians did not have to wonder if they were somehow mentally ill, it also meant that no one could ever again use that argument to deny us legal, social or moral equality.

"Tom of Finland" was the pen name of a real Finnish graphic artist named Touko Laaksonen. In a world and an era when most of the visible gay men were effeminate (think of Liberace), Tom's high quality drawings of well-muscled, extravagantly endowed, masculine men cruising or engaging in sex was a revelation for many gays.

For men wracked with guilt or shame about their homosexuality, Tom's drawings of handsome men enjoying one another presented an alternative model of how to think about themselves and their sexuality. Any one of Tom's drawings is worth 1,000 words of argument or 100 hours of psychotherapy.

Barbara Gittings was one of the most important leaders in the effort to move the conservative American Library Association to a pro-gay position - banning discrimination against gays, fighting anti-gay censorship, and encouraging libraries to stock gay-related books.

Gittings lobbied ALA officials, compiled booklists for libraries to use, helped set up an award for the best gay books of the year, even sponsored a gay kissing booth at ALA conventions to get attention for the gay demands. As a result, the ALA is now one of the most gay-affirmative professional organizations in the country.

There are many heterosexuals who also deserve our gratitude for their efforts on our behalf. To choose just one: Psychotherapist and author George Weinberg, best known to gays and lesbians for his little book "Society and the Healthy Homosexual" (1972).

In less than 150 pages, Weinberg set out the reasons why psychoanalysis is biased, conversion therapy does not work, gays are healthy, and homosexuality is not a problem.

Even more important, Weinberg explained why the real problem is homophobia because homophobic people have irrational fears and beliefs that are inconsistent with mental health. Weinberg, in fact, seems to have invented the term "homophobia" and put it into general use.

So when you think about gay pride, keep in mind your debt, direct or indirect, to some of these people who made it possible.

Originally appeared in slightly different form June 10, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

"THE LOVE THAT DARED NOT Speak Its Name," says Hank Stuever in The Washington Post, "now yawns and checks its watch."

Stuever was griping about the Millennium March and the gay movement in general (and I mean gay male; in 3,000 words there was a quick reference to lesbians and Home Depot, and that's about it).

The movement, he says, is dull. These days, we're all about kids, and serving our country, and Crate and Barrel. Hip young straight things may want to be like us, because they have the mistaken belief that we are edgy; but how on the edge can we be, when the largest March contingent was comprised of parents, when March organizers installed a playground for young ones?

"Being gay is boring," Stuever sighs.

Hallelujah.

I like boring. Boring is comfortable. Boring is the bulwark behind our endless trill that we are just like straight people, only with same-sex loves.

Boring will get us our rights faster than outrageous - at least, it will get us white, middle-class rights. The freedom to marry. The freedom to adopt. The legal ability to keep our jobs and our apartments. And once we get those, perhaps we can focus on other rights vital to our community, like equal pay for women, racial justice, protection against perceived-gender bias and education and job training for the poor.

I, too, was struck by the dullness of the March. This was not like a Pride parade, with its aura of community bonding. We were not celebrating our diversity or our spirit.

Instead, this was a virtuoso performance for straight people. Rally speakers were genial celebrities, politicians and other bland figures. Most came to the podium happily supporting the March, the crowd, the movement. There was little divisiveness. There were no radicals. No one threatened violence or insurrection or even civil disobedience.

As for the actual parade from the Washington Monument to the glitzy stage, I saw few bare-chested men or women, fewer leatherpeople in full dress, and no giant penises or Wizard of Oz costumes.

In fact, very little about this March was playful. People took themselves and the March seriously, wearing their politics on their T-shirts instead of embodied in their persons. It was as if 700,000 members of our community had come together to say, "You see, all of you C-SPAN viewers? You see our strollers and our Abercrombie & Fitch hats? We are not frightening perverts. If we had equal rights, your world would not look so very different. You're safe with us."

The WTO protests in Seattle and Washington wound up on the front pages of newspapers all over the country, because protesters were angry, focused and disruptive. We wound up with a story on page A14 of the New York Times.

Why? Happy gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender people aren't news. And our March was more of a festival than a call to action. The most radical thing we were asked to do was vote in November.

All of which makes sense, because, for the most part, our movement is doing well. We have corporate sponsorship. Presidential support. Large, well-endowed organizations. Recognizable celebrities. Our setbacks are inevitably accompanied by gains. We are making steady if slow progress on a variety of issues all over the country. Our anger has been diffused by affluence, our sedition by success.

Thus, we are boring. We are boring to the public, and a little boring to ourselves. And we are proud of it.

Perhaps because, for the first time in our lives, we are able to be boring, when and where we want to. We are able to be our full, awkward selves, instead of the selves pigeonholed by our sexual identities. Boring is beautiful because boring is rebellion. Even now, it's unexpected by homophobics, many of whom seem to think we hide pointed tails under our Gap jeans.

Who would have expected 25 years ago that our fiercest - and perhaps most successful - fight would be simply to be regarded as ordinary?

The best advice of the March came from Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who encapsulated how it was possible to be radical and boring at the same time.

"If you want to live in a world where you can put a picture of your partner on your desk, then put that picture on your desk, and you will live in such a world," she said, her tones ringing through the crowd as if she had said, "I have a dream."

"Blah is bliss," says Stuever.

What could be more ordinary than having a picture of the wife and kids on the desk? The March was full of such moments. It was a plaintive cry for blah; a plea for boring. The theme came, over and over again: We are just like everyone else. We wear the same clothes (if a bit more fashionably), go to the same schools, attend the same churches, raise our children next to yours. We are tired of going to marches, tired of listening to speakers say what we already know, pleading for rights you already have. We applaud politely, yawn and look at our watches.

We are just like you, more concerned with getting the kids to daycare than with changing the world.

And that is why the world is changing.

Originally ran June 7, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

If you ever start feeling jaded about Pride parades or what the gay movement has accomplished, wait for the sea of marchers from P-FLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. What makes their role and their message so powerful? Maybe it's love.

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I THOUGHT I WAS TOO - JADED, I guess. Too jaded to be moved by something as commercial as the Millennium March.

And for a while I wasn't. I watched our people go by, delegation after delegation smiling and waving flags and carrying signs. I snapped pictures. I applauded. But I wasn't moved.

And then they came. PFLAG.

In a sea of red shirts, men and women - parents, most of them - tossed kisses to the crowd and made the American Sign Language hand sign for "I love you." And they said the words, too; over and over, catching the eyes of people in the crowd, catching my eye, they said, "We love you. I'm a mother, I love you. I'm a father, I love you."

I began to cry.

Love is powerful, we all know that. Love is transformative. We say these things enough that they become cliches. But I don't know if I understood exactly how powerful are the words "I love you" until that moment. These were strangers using "I love you" to heal a million hurts and help thousands of hearts.

By saying "I love you," they weren't just saying, "You are our children; we love you because we have to."

They were saying, "We recognize that you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. We recognize your sexual and gender orientation to be an integral part of who you are. And we love that whole person. And we're proud of you for being yourself and being out."

Imagine that. Imagine your parents saying "I love you" to you in that context. Maybe they do that already. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones. Maybe you have parents who can look through their dreams of you and their hopes for you and see the actual you standing before them But maybe, because of your sexual orientation, they won't see you at all.

I thought that I was resigned to the way my parents ignore my sexual orientation. I thought it didn't matter anymore, that I was past caring. But hearing these parents say what my own would not - and hearing them say it directly to me, as if they knew my heart - left me shaken. Left me moved.

These are the kind of moments that draw us together into a family. This is the magic of Pride.

We throw around familial words all the time. We say, "She's a sister," or "He's family." And we mean it, kind of. At least we mean that we recognize in someone else that they share our sexual orientation and so most likely share some of our experiences. We mean that we feel comfortable with other GLBT folk, that we can relax around them in ways we might not be able to relax in straight company.

We use family-type words as synonyms for "community." We mean "they're like us." But in the GLBT context we don't usually use them to mean that we would act as if strangers were actually family. We usually don't hug strangers, or ask intimate questions about their lives, or worry about them, or express our care for them.

But something about Pride, and Pride-like events such as the Millennium March, lets us open up to each other in new ways. Something about Pride fills us with such joy that we are able to let go of our every day petty grievances and be the full and expansive people we are.

Maybe it's love.

During this one month, our community turns inward. We care less about pushing our way out into the world and more about nurturing our own fragile selves. We celebrate the lives that, for too long, were not celebrated by anyone else.

For one month, we let go of the fight, at least a little. We let down the barriers that protect us from regular injustice, from daily name-calling, from small, biting attacks and large, organized threats.

For one month, we unguard our hearts.

And so we become different people. We do hug strangers. We do listen more carefully to people we've just met. We do look out over the crowd, catch someone's arm, and say, "I love you."

I rode on a Pride float once. I did it out of a sense of obligation and support. I wasn't expecting to enjoy the endless, hot ride; I was worried about the threat of supersoakers and catcalls.

But our community gave me a gift. Gave a gift to all of us who rode or marched or strutted down the parade route. People in the crowd, strangers, shouted out to us, "We love you." And from the joy on their faces, the ecstasy in their bodies, we could tell they meant it. They were proud of us for marching. And we were proud of them for being there.

This is the rare, sacred gift we can continue to give each other on Pride. We can love each other in the way we need to be loved: recognizing that our sexual orientations are a vital part of our personhood, understanding that it takes courage, even now, to admit that we're proud to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

We can tell each other, "I'm a sister, I love you. I'm a brother, I love you."

Or, most moving of all, "I'm a parent. I love you."

Originally appeared in June 2000 in the Chicago Free Press.

Anyone can offer reasons for being hostile toward gays, but advice-show maven Dr. Laura Schlessinger offers too many reasons, reasons that collide with each other and result in incoherence. If being gay is truly a "biological error," why would she urge us to seek psychotherapy in the hope of reversing it?

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AS MOST GAYS AND LESBIANS KNOW, Paramount Studios is planning to produce a syndicated television program hosted by social conservative advice maven "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger.

The battle is currently joined between Paramount and Schlessinger who hope to make lots of money, and a number of gay activist groups who hope to discourage potential advertisers so the program will not make money. This is all fair in the economic marketplace.

Schlessinger's strident hostility to homosexuals is well-documented.

Here is a sample quotation:

"I'm sorry, hear it one more time perfectly clearl y. If you're gay or a lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating normally to the opposite sex. ... The error is in your inability to relate sexually intimately, in a loving way to a member of the opposite sex - it is a biological error."

But the problem here for Schlessinger is that while anyone can offer reasons for their hostility to gays, she offers too many.

At one point or another she has said that homosexuality is a "biological error," that gays are sexually "deviant" and should seek some sort of change or "reparative" psychotherapy, and that as an advocate of Biblical morality she views homosexuality as just plan wrong.

The problem she faces, or rather declines to face, is not only that her reasons are largely discredited, but that it is impossible for anyone to hold all three views simultaneously.

For instance, there are no good replicated scientific studies showing that gays are biologically different from heterosexuals. Schlessinger, who claims to have a doctorate in "physiology," has never pointed to any such studies.

Then too, Schlessinger's claim founders on the very existence of bisexuals. Bisexual men who can presumably relate sexually to other men can also relate "normally" - "sexually intimately, in a loving way" to the opposite sex. So their sexuality is at once biologically erroneous and not erroneous.

But most significantly, if homosexuality were in fact a biological error, there would be little point in telling gays to seek any sort of psychotherapy for it. We do not normally tell people who have diabetes, or sickle cell anemia or a defective heart valve to get psychotherapy to fix their biological error. Why do so with homosexuality?

Schlessinger's second argument is that gay men are in some way "deviant" and should seek psychotherapy to change their sexual desires so they can relate "normally" to women.

Increasingly, of course, this argument is confined almost exclusively to the religious right. By now most people realize that such therapies have little effect and are by-and-large fraudulent.

"Change therapies" seem to work only for people who are bisexual or primarily heterosexual to begin with and few or none of these people say they have lost all homosexual desire. So no change has really occurred. The whole enterprise is a vast semantic deception.

Someone might ask why relating "in a loving way" to the opposite sex is psychologically superior to relating "in a loving way" to the same sex. But Schlessinger seems to have no answer for this because she seems unable to imagine anyone relating lovingly to the same sex.

Sometimes Schlessinger sounds like a girl who just cannot get a date for Saturday night.

Schlessinger's third argument is that homosexuality is somehow immoral. But this does not comport easily with the notion that gays should get therapy.

Psychological problems, pathologies, neuroses and so forth are not normally evaluated in terms of morality. For instance, we do not say that people who are claustrophobic or chronically depressed or have obsessive/compulsive disorder are immoral, so it is not clear why gays should be evaluated in those terms

Nor, to recur to Schlessinger's first argument, do we normally evaluate "biological errors," defects and so forth in moral terms.

Schlessinger usually says she bases her morality on her religious commitment to Orthodox Judaism. All well and good, but then she has no arguments to offer to people who do not share her religious commitment.

Then too, if Schlessinger's morality comes the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the "Old Testament"), she has no grounds for hostility to lesbians. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is there any passage criticizing, condemning or even mentioning lesbians.

To be sure, there is one brief passage (Genesis 3:16) in which the ancient god Yahweh implants heterosexual desire in women. First Yahweh increased the pain of labor and childbirth. Then and only then he condemned women to feel lust for men so they cannot evade that pain by abstaining from sex with men. In other words, female heterosexual desire is part of a punishment.

It is hard to believe Schlessinger could view this as much of a recommendation for female heterosexuality, but it is all there is.

Given the virulence and offensiveness of Schlessinger's views, many gays want to keep her from having a platform on national television. That is one possible option. But there is another.

Many Americans who still feel uneasy about gays and lesbians probably hold some less intense version of Schlessinger's views.

Since Schlessinger's views are so obviously false or self-contradictory, it could be useful to have her making those claims in such an easily rebuttable form.

By showing people that Schlessinger's views are wholly without merit, we can, without putting them on the defensive, show them the same thing about their own.

Originally appeared May 24, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

Christian fundamentalists in letters to the editor often contend that if God had wanted there to be homosexuals in the world, he wouldn't have created Adam and Eve. But in reality it's not easy to discern any particular lessons about sex or childbearing from the somewhat confused folktale that has come down to us about the mythical couple.

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FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS often write letters to newspapers denouncing homosexuality, claiming that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" and that the ancient creation story shows "God's plan for mankind." Does it?

The Garden of Eden story is the second of two somewhat conflicting accounts of creation. Genesis first gives a late theologized version (Gen. 1-2:4), then follows it with a much earlier Canaanite legend or folktale (Gen. 2:5-3:24). Adam and Eve appear only in the folktale.

According to the legend, Yahweh decided to create a living being and place him in a garden he is to till. So the god's original plan for mankind was for there to be a single man. It was a rather small garden if one man was sufficient to care for it.

Yahweh apparently intended the man to live forever, since he permitted him to eat from the Tree of Life. The tree functioned as a kind of Fountain of Youth providing the man with continuing life so long as he ate its fruit.

At some point, Yahweh changed his plan and decided that man should have some sort of companion. "It is not good that man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18). This was the god's second plan for mankind.

So Yahweh experimented a bit, creating various other species of living beings (the animals) to provide companionship for the man. But the man rejected them all as companions. Thus Yahweh's second plan for mankind was not a success.

Finally, in mounting frustration, Yahweh formed a third plan: He opened up the man, took out a rib and created a second human being from it, a women. This finally seemed to please the man because it was part of himself. So the god's third plan for mankind was for the man and the woman to live eternally as companions in the garden.

This third plan came to grief when the serpent persuaded the woman to eat the fruit of the one forbidden tree and the man and woman learned to distinguish good from bad.

At that point, Yahweh changed his plan again. Since each of his plans for humans in the garden had been complete and utter failures, he expelled the man and woman from the garden. That was now the god's fourth plan for mankind. More accurately stated, the expulsion amounted to Yahweh's giving up having any plans at all. The man and woman were on their own.

The expulsion was not punishment for eating the forbidden fruit, but to make sure the humans could no longer eat from the Tree of Life and be immortal.

After the man, now named Adam, and the woman were sent out on their own, they had sexual relations (Gen. 4:1) and for the first time the woman bore a child. And so human history began.

Now consider what the ancient legend tells about Yahweh's plans and how much it does and does not explain.

First, the legend shows that having children was not part of any of the god's original plans. Adam and Eve started having children only after Yahweh gave up on them and sent them away. In other words, Adam and Eve started having children only after they were no longer immortal.

For one thing, if the man and woman had produced children while they were in the garden, they and their descendants would have quickly overrun the small place since they all would have been immortal and reproduced endlessly. Yahweh would not want that.

But more importantly, having children, creating descendants, seems to be a kind of surrogate immortality, a pitifully inadequate attempt by Adam and Eve to compensate for the real immortality they had lost.

The sex that Adam and Eve engaged in after leaving the garden is the first mention of heterosexual sex. There is no indication that the man and the woman had sex while they were still in the garden, so heterosexual activity does not seem to be a noticeable part of the god's plan.

Nor does the story explain heterosexual desire. To be sure, immediately after the creation of the woman the overeager narrator intrudes to comment: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).

But such a conclusion is wholly unwarranted. Yahweh does not say this and neither does the man: It is an interpretation from a later era. Fathers and mothers do not even exist at this point in the story.

Nor is there any evidence that Yahweh intended for the man to feel sexual desire for his companion. After all, the god created the various animals intending them to be companions and there is no evidence that Yahweh intended the man to feel sexual desire for the second human any more than for the animals.

True, the man pointed out that the woman was created from his own flesh, but that was only in connection with naming her "woman." It says nothing about his feeling heterosexual desire for her.

But since the two humans were originally part of the same body, we might speculate (as the narrator did) that they might desire to rejoin each other. While that might suggest a strong desire by the rib to rejoin the man, it does not suggest any strong desire for the rib on man's part.

People who lose a body part, say a hand or a kidney or a rib, may well miss it and wish to regain it, but they usually do not feel anything like love or sexual desire for it. Even supposing that the first man did so, his own loss of a rib could not explain heterosexual desire by anyone else since all subsequent men were born with a full complement of ribs.

So, contrary to the expectations of fundamentalist Christians, the Adam and Eve story markedly fails to show that the god's plan includes men's desire for women, heterosexual sex, or the generation of children.

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Author's Note:

After publishing this piece, I realized there is specific textual evidence for the absence of heterosexual desire in the Garden of Eden.

In Gen. 3:16 when Yahweh is expelling Adam and Eve, Yahweh says to Eve, "you shall be eager for your husband" (or "you shall feel an urge for your husband"), indicating that this is something new that Yahweh is instilling in Eve.

Yahweh does this so Eve will not be able to evade the pain of childbirth by abstaining from sexual intercourse. So heterosexual desire, at least in women, is simply the enforcement mechanism for a punishment.

Since translations vary, I should also note that I have used the New English Bible: Oxford Study Edition (Oxford University Press, 1972), the most accurate translation I know, but I have also checked several other well-known translations.

- Paul Varnell