IGF CultureWatch

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.

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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.

First published in Salon March 14, 2000.

ONE NIGHT IN the autumn of 1987, in Little Rock, Ark., a boy named Austin Fulk smelled his own death. He was 17, too young to drink in the bars, so he often hung out in a park that was popular among gay teenagers. On this night the sky was overcast, the ground soggy from a day's rain and the place mostly deserted. He was standing in a dimly lit parking lot, chatting with a man who had driven into town in a pickup truck.

A car drove past very slowly, sped up, turned around and came back. Someone inside yelled something like, "Fucking faggots, get AIDS and die!" Fulk's companion returned the compliment. The car slammed to a stop and four young men piled out, one with a baseball bat, another with a crowbar or tire iron.

"I thought I was about to die," says Austin; but he is alive, and that is because his companion reached into the truck and whipped out a pistol from under the seat, leveled it at the gay-bashers and fired a single shot over their heads. All at once, their courage deserted them. They ran back to their car and drove away.

Austin is one of two gay men I know who believe they were saved from death, or at least a long hospital stay, by guns. Guns, however, will play no part in the program for the gay and lesbian Millennium March that takes place April 30 in Washington. Early on, organizers of the march adopted eight "priority issues," with "hate-crimes legislative protections" first on the list.

A federal hate-crimes statute died in the Republican Congress last year, but mainstream voters and politicians are increasingly receptive. After 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was beaten, tied to a fence post and left to die in 1998, hate-crimes laws emerged as straight America's favorite gay-rights measure. Today almost half the states have bias-crimes laws that cover gay-bashing, and anyway, gay-bashing is already a crime in every state.

I won't quibble over the pros and cons of hate-crimes laws. In a way, I don't need to, because the numbers speak for themselves: The laws are at best insufficient, at worst ineffective. Anti-gay crimes reported to the FBI almost doubled between 1992 and 1998. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs monitors 16 jurisdictions and found 33 anti-gay murders in 1998, up from 14 in 1997. The coalition also found that gay-bashers were becoming more likely to use deadly weapons: guns, baseball bats, knives. There is not a city in America where gay couples can hold hands in public without fear. Gay-bashing is a kind of low-level terrorism designed to signal that, whatever the law may say, queers are pathetic and grotesque. Beyond a certain point, therefore, law can't be the answer.

So it is remarkable that the gay movement in America has never seriously considered a strategy that ought to be glaringly obvious. Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible.

John Lott of Yale University has done extensive research on concealed-gun laws and finds that they reduce violent crime, especially among minorities, who are at greater risk, and above all among women, who are otherwise perceived as easy targets. Even if you disbelieve his research for crime in general, remember that gay-bashers are probably especially ripe for deterrence. They aren't career criminals or super-predators. More often, they are drunken or rowdy youths who decide to prove their manhood by picking on the weakest, most limp-wristed thing they can think of: a faggot.

If it became widely known that homosexuals carry guns and know how to use them, not many bullets would need to be fired. In fact, not all that many gay people would need to carry guns, as long as gay-bashers couldn't tell which ones did. Suddenly, what is now an almost risk-free sport for testosterone-drenched teenagers would become a great deal less attractive.

Won't bullets fly in the streets? Won't blood flow in torrents? If that were going to happen, it would have happened by now. Today almost half of all Americans (and 60 percent of gun owners) live in states that license concealed weapons; abuse of lawfully carried guns turns out to be vanishingly rare. Remember, to get a permit you typically need to register with the police, pay a fee, pass a gun-safety test, have no criminal record, not be crazy and so on. In aggregate, people with concealed-gun permits handle their weapons more safely than off-duty cops.

No doubt some gay-bashers would respond by adding guns to their own arsenals (as they are already doing anyway). Lott's research suggests, however, that the effects of any such "arms races" are more than offset by criminals' desire to steer clear of potentially fatal confrontations. That finding, one can safely guess, applies doubly to gay-bashers, for whom the whole point is to beat up on someone weak. The last thing they want is to risk their lives in a firefight with a trained opponent.

So pink pistols can save lives, which is important. But -- and this is even more important -- they can also change lives.

To see this, consider a somewhat uncomfortable question. After decades of anti-gay killings, many of them unutterably savage, why was it the Shepard murder that finally became a cause celebre among heterosexual Americans?

Many reasons, of course. Shepard looked angelic and could have been anyone's child; the story of his agonizing deathbed countdown riveted attention; the crime and its symbolism were horrible and moving. But there is, I think, one more reason, which is not quite so innocuous. Shepard was small, helpless and childlike. He never had a chance. This made him a sympathetic figure of a sort that is comfortingly familiar to straight Americans: the weak homosexual.

Since time immemorial, weakness has been a defining stereotype of homosexuality. Think of the words you heard on the school playground: "limp-wrist," "pansy," "panty-waist," "fairy." No other minority has been so consistently identified with contemptible weakness. Hate-crimes laws, whatever their other attributes, do nothing to challenge the stereotype of the pathetic faggot. Indeed, they confirm it. By running to the heterosexual majority for protection, homosexuals reaffirm their vulnerability and victimhood.

If anti-Semites hate Israel, that is in no small measure because Israel shattered the ancient stereotype of the helpless and sniveling Jew. Jews with an army! Jews who fight back! You can hate Israel all you like, but you don't bully it. Israel changed the way Jews see themselves, and it changed the way gentiles see Jews.

Guns can do the same thing for homosexuals: emancipate them from their image -- often internalized -- of cringing weakness. Pink pistols, I'll warrant, would do far more for the self-esteem of the next generation of gay men and women than any number of hate-crime laws or anti-discrimination statutes. I don't advocate a swaggering or confrontational attitude toward the American majority, or for that matter toward gay-bashers. Gays shouldn't play Dirty Harry. I also don't favor abandoning other efforts to mobilize law and public opinion against violence. Pink pistols are a kind of civil-rights measure, but they are fully compatible with other, more traditional kinds of civil-rights measures.

Still, the abiding fact is this: Homosexuals have been too vulnerable for too long. We have tried to make a political virtue of our vulnerability, but the gay-bashers aren't listening. Playing the victim card has won us sympathy, but at the cost of respect. So let's make gay-bashing dangerous. We should do that for our own protection. But we should also do it because we will win a full measure of esteem from the public, and from ourselves, only when we make clear our determination to look after ourselves.

Austin Fulk now lives in Virginia. He is a certified pistol instructor and is licensed to carry a concealed firearm. He has never had to use it.

What is to be done about "Dr." Laura Schlessinger, radio's top-rated "moral warrior" with a listening audience estimated at 18 million? The good doctor (actually a physiologist, not an M.D.) has called homosexuality "deviant" and referred to gays and lesbians as "biological errors." She seems to believe that homosexuality is a "curable" affliction, and cheers on the ex-gay movement. And now Dr. Laura is about to make the jump from the radio to the boob tube, courtesy of a show this fall from Paramount Television.

Dr. Laura's ascendancy puts a spotlight on an old issue: should gay activists seek to prevent voices opposing gay rights from gaining media exposure? Or, put another way, is opposition to gay equality a form of hate like racism, or is it something different, calling for a different response?

The folks over at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have pursued different tactics at various times on this question, and even spoken with contrary voices about Dr. Laura. According to media accounts, Cathy Renna of GLAAD's National Capital Area office (that's Washington, DC) told a lesbian and gay conference last October that "We're going to go after the media outlets, the radio stations that run her, and get her off."

But GLAAD Executive Director Joan Garry declares on GLAAD's Web site, "We are not in the business of trying to shut down opposing points of view." And, after a recent meeting with Paramount, GLAAD announced what it regards as a substantial victory. While Dr. Laura will have her TV show, the format will ensure that she includes viewpoints contrary to her traditional views on sexual morality (specifics, however, were vague).

Surprise, surprise. This tentative settlement has not been enough for more militant factions. Lesbian activist Robin Tyler, for instance, issued a statement on February 25 that read in part, "GLAAD's position on keeping `a place at the Paramount table' is wrong. No other civil rights movement would allow a hate monger to spew their viciousness on their own show on national television. This community needs to circumvent GLAAD's decision and effectively not support anything that Paramount does until they cancel the show. This includes, but is not limited to picketing every television station that has signed on to carry the show, and not going to movies produced by Paramount."

That strikes me as a bit of activist hyperbole. Aside from the fact that boycotts are notoriously ineffectual (shall we stop watching Paramount's "Star Trek Voyager"?), the view that homosexuality can be "cured," no matter how wrong-headed, is not the same as urging that gay people be lynched or put into ovens. It's counterproductive to ignore that difference.

GLAAD's Garry seems to recognize this, and she responded to Tyler's challenge with this statement: "With those who argue that GLAAD should have been advocating 'pulling the plug' on the Dr. Laura television show from the start, we respectfully disagree. Our plan has been intentional from day one. We have always believed that there were series of cards to play and that it has been our responsibility to play each of them. We are working toward the same end - to ensure that Dr. Laura does not spew her homophobic rhetoric to a television audience and that media professionals are held accountable for portraying the reality of our lives."

Tyler's response: "Our only acceptable position is not 'the freedom to publicly debate with homophobes', but an end to the kind of spewed, continued hatred that reinforces, not just the violence against us, but our youth's high suicide rate. Words are as damaging as deeds."

Adds Alan Klein, a spokesperson for the website/coalition StopDrLaura.com., "We're not about to let her spew her defamatory pseudo-science on national television." (Which all adds up to a lot of strong condemnation of "spewing.")

For her part, Schlessinger told the Associated Press, "I've made anti-gay activist agenda commentaries, but I"ve never made anti-gay commentary." She said that critics who claim her rhetoric creates an environment that leads to harassment and violence are guilty of "the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty." Moreover, she wrote in an August newspaper column that "homosexual activist groups...contact sponsors and call me homophobic, hateful, dangerous and a voice for promoting violence. Why? Because I believe that homosexual behavior is deviant." She went on to claim, "I never have advocated hate or hostility toward homosexuals on or off my program. ... Maintaining an opposing point of view to many aspects of the liberal agenda is terribly difficult because of the hate slung at you." She offered that one sponsor, when contacted by a critic of the show, "asked how shutting me down because I simply had an opposing viewpoint would further the cause of free speech."

What do I make of all of this? No one is more angered by stupid, backward, anti-gay viewpoints such as Dr. Laura's than I am. As a former GLAAD activist and long-ago board member myself, I, too, met with radio and TV station general managers to self-righteously demand that they cease and desist from broadcasting those we deemed unacceptable (including a meeting with WABC in New York City over a then-emergent windbag named Rush Limbaugh).

It was not unusual that the stations would agree to tell the host not to use slurs or confuse homosexuality with pedophilia - a small victory. And typically, we wound up negotiating some sort of "balance," such as more time for talk shows with pro-gay hosts.

However, the problem with demands that the media "silence all dissent" on gay matters is that it comes across as politically correct censorship. Whatever merit there might have been to muffling anti-gay perspectives when there were few pro-gay viewpoints expressed in the media, it's increasingly hard to justify that demand when this season saw some 30 gay or lesbian characters on prime time TV (including on shows from Paramount) and pro-gay themes dominant in theater and Academy Award nominated films, not to mention broadcast on "Oprah" and most other TV talk shows.

All of which is to say that I actually felt GLAAD did the more or less reasonable thing this time round. As a community, we need to distinguish between someone who says "I hate gays" and someone who says "homosexuality is a deviance that can be overcome, for the good of homosexuals." Yes, it's an attitutde that we believe is wrong on all counts, and it's not a positive message for those coming to terms with their sexuality - especially gay kids. But it's not equivalent to the Klan, either.

If we attempt to deny those with a religion-based opposition to homosexuality any mass media forum, where do you then draw the line? If you oppose (as I do) "progressive" students who steal all the copies of conservative campus newspapers and burn them (because the papers advocated "fascistic" viewpoints like opposing affirmative action preferences), than you have to concede that liberal-left activists sometimes wind up promoting censorship. At GLAAD, we tried to block the filming of "Basic Instinct," which in retrospect is a rather benign film (and whose star, Sharon Stone, is now a darling of progressive gays, go figure).

I suspect that in the glare of the TV lights, Dr. Laura's backward views will be seen for what they are, a reactionary response to enlightened social change, and she'll slink back into the smaller niche of talk radio-land. Those offended by Dr. Laura are free to criticize Paramount Television for giving her a show, and in fact www.stopDrLaura.com has been set up for just that purpose. Moreover, it seems fair that GLAAD should seek to negotiate a means of response to her most egregious declarations.

Yet trying to silence Dr. Laura completely, even if it were doable, would only make her a martyr to her followers. With apologies to Robin Tyler, words are NOT as damaging as deeds, and such an assertion is an affront not just to the First Amendment but to the entire liberal tradition. If we truly believe that our cause is just, we should have no fear of subjecting them to public debate.

PARTISAN POLITICS tends to bring out the humorless side of people. The candidate you favor can do no wrong, while his/her opponents can do no right. Add to this syndrome the standard humorlessness of many gay political activists, and you have a prescription for unintentional ridiculousness.

A case in point: the response to reports of John McCain's "gaydar," as first covered in The Washington Post on January 18. During a casual chat with reporters on his campaign bus about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the Republican presidential contender said he had served in the Navy with many gays who had done their job without making an issue of their orientation. Asked how he knew they were homosexual, he replied, "Well, I think we know by behavior and by attitudes. I think it's clear to some of us when some people have that lifestyle. But I didn't pursue it, and I wouldn't pursue it, and I wouldn't pursue it today."

Now, let's look at the response from gay political groups.

David Smith, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbigay political lobby, was not amused by McCain's ability to recognize gays. "He has one up on me, because I can't tell just by behavior and attitudes," he asserted. "He is clearly stereotyping based on mannerisms," asserted Smith. "This is a form of prejudice, and illustrates the struggle that gay people face." The leaders of the Human Rights Campaign, by the way, are strong supporters of Democrat Al Gore's presidential bid.

Kevin Ivers, public affairs director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay GOPers, had a different take. Responding to Smith's contention that all gays are indistinguishable from straights, Ivers remarked, "If there's a gay person anywhere who says they can't walk into a room and tell who some of the gay people are, they're lying." Take that, Mr. Smith.

Ivers added that the exchange showed that McCain "has been thinking about his entire life and when gay people may have played a role in it. He has reached across and said he wants to understand gay people, even though he doesn't always agree with them." The Log Cabin Republicans, by the way, have all but endorsed McCain, who (unlike GOP front-runner George Bush) has met with the group and received over $40,000 in contributions collected by Log Cabin from its members.

Then things really started to get silly. HRC's Smith, in response to Ivers, and unable to ignore the fact that many gay people freely claim to be able to spot a fellow traveler, told the Washington Blade newspaper, "Only gay people can have 'gaydar.' -- To which Ivers replied with the words "disingenuous," "political" and "ridiculous."

I must say, I'm not displeased to see HRC and LCR take off the gloves. There are real disagreements in our community, and the attempt to paper them over in the name of "unity" doesn't serve anyone's interest. By all means, let's have vigorous debate between the left, right, and centrist components of the gay community. But really, over "gaydar"?

In the Washington Post, columnist Geneva Overholser labeled the whole conundrum a "silly tempest." But clearly, she felt McCain (and his defenders) were on firmer ground. "McCain said - in answer to a dumb question - that we can sometimes tell when people are gay," she wrote. "This is so commonly understood to be true that there is a slang word for it: 'gaydar.'" She went on to note, "Unhappily for McCain, common understanding is no defense on matters homosexual - a topic on which the nation is stuck halfway toward enlightenment."

McCain is far from perfect on gay issues in the eyes of most activists. Unlike his Democratic rivals, Gore and Bradley, he has not backed federal gay-rights legislation. But of the candidates on the Republican side, McCain is the clearly the best thing going. What other GOP candidate would say he sees no reason someone openly gay couldn't be president? "I am opposed to discrimination of any kind in America," McCain said when asked about gay rights. He told Log Cabin officials he was "proud to work with you" and that "all my life I've had a visceral dislike for discrimination. ... My goal is to eliminate discrimination." And while he has supported the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, his "gaydar" remarks were apparently meant to convey his awareness that gays and lesbians do serve honorably in the armed forces and should be allowed to do so without being subject to "pursuit." (Log Cabin hopes this is part of an evolving stance, and hints that McCain not only would work to improve things once in office but, as the only GOP veteran in the race, would actually have the clout with the military to do so.)

That's a far cry from real Republican gay bashing, such as GOP firebrand Alan Keyes's declaration that "Homosexuality is an abomination," a slander that drew less criticism than McCain's off-the-cuff observation. In labeling McCain's remarks as anti-gay defamation, gay activists in the Democratic camp were clearly trying to make a mountain out of a molehill in order to attack the one GOP candidate who isn't so bad on issues pertaining to gay folks. They were acting as Democratic activists who happen to be gay (rather than as gay activists who just happen to be Democrats). That's partisanship first and foremost, and it doesn't require "gaydar" or other intuitive powers to recognize it.

First appeared Feb. 9, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.

NOT LONG AGO, I got an e-mail from a college student (how long ago college seems!) who wanted to know what I thought about the term "queer."

To be sure, having once contributed to an anthology called "Beyond Queer," I am more or less on record as thinking the term - and the concept - are not helpful.

I know I feel a visceral dislike for the word. Since it was long used as a term to demean gays it has strong negative associations I would prefer not to be constantly reminded of. I might have even preferred another title for the book.

But when I started mulling it over, I realized I had not given it much thought beyond my immediate reaction. So I suppose there are several things to think, and say, about "queer."

The general argument for "queer" is that it is a term of abuse that gays and lesbians should "reclaim" and use in a positive, affirmative way in order to disarm it. Further, it acknowledges - and embraces - our difference from others and asserts this as a positive good.

But this argument has little general appeal. Most Jews, after all, do not have much interest in reclaiming "kike." Most African-Americans reject "nigger." Few southeast Asians seem to be reclaiming "gook." And for similar reasons most gays continue to avoid the word "queer."

For a while some younger gays and lesbians seemed to be using "queer" but they often gave the impression they were doing so primarily to be linguistically avant-garde and because the language called attention to itself. Even among young people, "queer" now seems dated.

Equally to the point, despite a decade of "queer," "Queer Nation" (now defunct-significantly), and other "queer" assertiveness, sociologist Stephen Murray points out that there is no evidence at all that "fag-bashers or school children hear or use the epithet differently since it has been 'reclaimed.'"

The word is still meant as an insult and the concept is still an invitation to physical assault.

So insistently using the word for ourselves amounts to a kind of obliviousness or denial, a condition Jonathan Swift described as "the serene, peaceful state of being a fool among knaves."

Another argument sometimes offered for "queer" is that "gay" or "gay and lesbian" is too limited and "queer" is more inclusive of the broad community of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc. - virtually anyone divergent in terms of sexuality, gender or mode of self-presentation.

Whether there is, in fact, any real community of these various people seems doubtful. But in any case, the alleged benefit of inclusivity seems to be not a real benefit but more of a loss.

There are important differences between gays and lesbians on one hand, and transvestites, transsexuals and the rest on yet other hands.

Transsexuals say they only wish to correct a physical error in their bodies. Gays, by contrast, have spent countless hours trying to explain that they are not "a woman trapped in a man's body." Transvestites strenuously (and correctly) insist they are not gay despite dressing in women's clothing.

In short, each of these groups of people have a different self-understanding, a different origin for their situation, a different set of problems to cope with, and encounters occasional hostility because of different popular misunderstandings about them.

It obscures intellectual clarity and demeans the dignity of each to lump them together under one all-embracing term and dismiss as unimportant exactly the differences they say are so crucial in their own lives and their self-understanding.

A third argument sometimes offered for "queer" is that it underscores "our" oppositional posture toward mainstream American culture and society. As "queer theory" advocate Michael Warner explains it, just as "gay" is in contrast to heterosexual, so "queer" is in contrast to "normal."

It seems odd that any self-respecting person would accept as legitimate society's-or anyone's- definition of him or her as not normal.

Yet that is exactly what "queer" does. It accepts society's (now waning) assessment and simply tries to make a virtue of a necessity. It seems like sour grapes: "If you won't let me join, I don't even want to be a member of your stupid old club."

In the end, I suppose, anyone's attitude toward mainstream society is a personal matter for them, but I for one don't feel much hostility toward mainstream society. I feel pretty normal, thank you, and if someone does not think I am, that is their problem, not mine. I suspect most gays and lesbians feel the same way.

As writer David Link observed several years ago in an article titled "I Am Not Queer," "I have wrestled with myself over whether, as a gay man, I am queer. I have decided that I am not. Queer is the word of the other, of the outsider. I do not feel as if I am outside anything due to my sexual orientation."

To try to persuade gays and lesbians to think of themselves as "queer," to urge them to present themselves to society as hostile and unassimilable outsiders seems designed to do nothing more than inhibit, even prevent, progress toward equal treatment and equal social regard for gays.

"Queer" starts off claiming to reverse the effects of negative language, but only obscures its continuing impact. It pretends to offer the benefits of a more inclusive and tolerant community but ends by subverting our individual self-understandings in a viscous mash of sex and gender uncertainty. It pretends to be pro-gay but stands athwart the path to full equality and social acceptance, crying, "No, no, don't go there. Stay in your place. You are so useful where you are."

Useful to who?