IGF CultureWatch

At the recently concluded [1998] Gay Games in Amsterdam, a major brouhaha broke out over a requirement that athletes who define themselves as belonging to the sex different from the one to which they were born should provide proof of what the rules called "completed gender transition."

You'd think this would be a no-brainer. After all, the reason that men compete against men, and women against women, is because the male body is, well, different from the female body and same-sex competition ensures a level playing field, gender wise.

Gay Games organizers, in fact, explained that concerns over fairness and legal liability made it imperative that transgender athletes be put into the proper physical category so that men, with their greater body strength, "whether born or created," did not compete unfairly (or perhaps even dangerously) against women.

But even to talk about "proper categories" is to raise a red flag to those activists nourished on queer theory and its offshoot, the new transgenderism, which holds that all sexual categorization, and the dual-gender system in particular, is by necessity oppressive. In a New York Times story headlined "Event Founded to Fight Bias Is Accused of It," Riki Anne Wilchins, leader of the transgender advocacy group Gender PAC and author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, complained that the organizers were "now forcing another group of athletes to go back into the closet or face a barrage of stigmatizing obstacles." Sydney Levy of the San Francisco-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission asked, somewhat overheatedly, "Where is their sense of fairness and justice�where does discrimination stop?"

It should be reiterated here that no one was trying to ban the transgendered from the Gay Games, only to require that those transsexuals who are (still) physically men compete against men, and women against women, while allowing those who had surgically and hormonally changed gender to happily compete with their new same-sex comrades. Where is the "discrimination" in that? It's certainly more liberal than the Olympic Games, where chromosome testing (to ensure that only men-born-men and women-born-women face off) has been required since 1968.

The reason for the emphatic condemnations of the Gay Games policy rests in the transgender advocates' academically trendy belief that gender itself is a "social construct," not a natural given, and therefore an individual's "self- definition" of gender should be all that matters. In an August 4th letter to Time magazine, Dean LaBate, head of the (take a breath) Michael Callen-Audre Lorde Community Health Center Transgender Health & Education Clinic, takes exception to Time's referring to transgender people as "those whose deepest awareness of their sexuality doesn't correspond to the physical parts they were born with." Writes LaBate: "The term 'transgender' is political and does not refer to any specific anatomy or sexual practice... Especially as a health center, we would deem it dangerously irresponsible to state a single definition of transgender for our clientele or anyone else."

This rejection of gender as an intrinsic concept is given full voice in a book by John Stoltenberg titled The End of Manhood. Stoltenberg takes the view that "The male sex is an abstract fiction," and lauds "the radical feminist critique of gender." He elaborates that "Manhood is a personal and social hoax that exists only through interpersonal and social injustice." Finally, in a virtuoso denial of any natural, underlying distinctions between the sexes (remember, gender is "a political and ethical construction"), Stoltenberg minimizes the physiological differences between a penis and a clitoris, blaming sex researchers for using "arbitrary criteria [to] fudge human experience in order to make 'scientific' distinctions between 'female and male categories' of human sexuality."

Ding, dong, reality calling. The idea that a penis marks a body as "male" only because of social convention influencing self-identification is not one that most gay men (or lesbians) would embrace. Rather than being a viewpoint in support of homosexuality, it's more like an argument favoring an androgynous unisexuality that even most gender benders would find unreflective of their lives.

In a sense, Dean LaBate is right: Transgenderism, the opposition to sexual identities as specifically dual, should not be confused with transsexualism, the desire to undergo sexual reassignment surgery because body and psyche don't match. Transsexuals, arguably, ultimately affirm gender distinctions (or why have the surgery?), whereas being transgendered is about "transgressing gender." What the Gay Games controversy highlights is the way in which ideologically motivated activists who have proclaimed themselves the voice of the new, utopian transgender movement are attempting -- and often succeeding -- in using liberal guilt and Generation X political correctness to impose their will on the community formerly known as gay and lesbian.

AT THE RECENT MILLENNIUM MARCH ON WASHINGTON (MMOW), the one topic that took predominance over all others was, yet again, the relentless demand for more diversity - that is, an acceleration of the fight for racial justice both within the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered/movement and in society as a whole. Of course, anyone who has been around gay politics for more than a millisecond recognizes the pre-eminence of the diversity issue. But is the LGBT movement really as racist (or sexist, or "classist") as we're so often told?

First, a few observations about the march as microcosm. One of the main objections of MMOW critics was that the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign and other organizers failed to sufficiently seek input from people of color. This, despite the fact that the organizing board of the MMOW had a 50 percent people of color requirement (yes, some would say quota). Mere tokenism, huffed the critics.

HRC has strongly supported affirmative action - including race- and gender-based preferences - as part of its legislative agenda. It's even a criterion they use to rate the politicians they'll support. And while most of speakers at the MMOW rally seemed to have been selected as representatives of their respective racial and ethnic minorities, many voiced their solidarity with MMOW critics and used their speaking time to attack the white majority attendees for their lack of commitment to diversity (that is, their racism).

Keith Boykin, a former executive director of the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, spoke for nearly 30 minutes, saying, "I speak because we must broaden the movement to see the intersection of race, gender, class, religion, sexuality, and ethnicity. ... I speak as a member of the family because there are problems in the family that cannot be healed by sweeping them under the sterilized, sanitized rug of homogenized homosexuality. ... I speak to resist the commercialization and commodification of the mainstream gay lifestyle that enriches the privileged few and impoverishes the masses with a bankrupt culture of uniformity."

These quotes come from gay press accounts. What I remember of Boykin's address was his bitter denunciation of Republicans, all Republicans -- so much for celebrating the diversity of our community.

Speaker after speaker focused on issues of race. "Many of our groups and organizations that claim to embrace diversity still remain far too white," said Jack Jackson, a gay member of the National Congress of American Indians. Said Martin Ornelas-Quintero, executive director of the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Organization (LLEGO), "One way that I see that we still have a long way to go is the fact that there had to be meetings of the Millennium March board to decide whether to allocate me an extra three minutes so my message could be delivered in Spanish. That speaks volumes about how much further we have to go."

LLEGO had endorsed the event and taken part in the planning process, but still grumped that Latino leaders had not been sufficiently included in initial discussions about the march.

Still another speaker bemoaned that the attendees were 75 percent white although the speakers were 75 percent not, blaming the "lack of diversity" among marchers on insufficient "outreach." And on and on, repeating demands that the LGBT movement make a "true" commitment to diversity and place more emphasis on racial justice issues.

It must have surprised outside observers that the fight for gay marriage wasn't a central issue for speakers. Even more glaring, the issue of gays in the military was positively shunted aside and given only a few moments at the rally's end - much to the chagrin of gay veterans. Other issues were lost as well. Consider Leslie Powell Sadasivan, a mother whose gay son committed suicide after years of teasing and harassment at school. She had been scheduled to give a three-minute speech at 4:20. As the event droned on, she was given all of 15 seconds at 6:30. The text of her prepared remarks, which she released over the Internet, is searing. Too bad the professional activists couldn't make time for her. Too much gay racism (and sexism and classism) to denounce.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which boycotted the march, declares on its website that it is "imperative that we develop an economic and racial justice agenda for the GLBT movement." It goes on to state, "Many mainstream GLBT organizations have abdicated their responsibility to serve the needs and incorporate the aspirations and values of people of color and low-income people within our communities."

Let's get some perspective here. Sure, racism exists - in society, and in the gay community. But does anyone really think gays and lesbians are as racist as the activists seem to believe? Our movement seems fixated on racial guilt-mongering and identity politics run amuck, with the predictable result that most non-activist gays and lesbians just tune it out. That's too bad, because diversity is a positive good, and we do need to celebrate our differences.

A recent study conducted by the National Conference for Community and Justice found that 83 percent of Americans questioned said blacks were victims of discrimination. And 76 percent said that Hispanics (or, in movement-speak, Latina/os) faced some discrimination. Women and American Indians were next with 67 percent. But when the question was taken beyond racial and ethnic groups, gay Americans were perceived to be the victims of discrimination in greater numbers than blacks. This was a survey of perceptions, of course. But one has to wonder why gay activists are so focused on racism within the gay community while other minority-rights activists pay, at best, lip service to homophobia in their own communities.

The study concludes that one solution to helping America bridge its racial divide would be open, honest conversations across racial, political, ethnic, and gender lines. There's merit in that. But endless denunciation of gay white racism doesn't foster such conversations; it merely shuts them down.

FROM 1992 TO 1993, I WROTE A COLUMN called Media Man for Genre magazine. My modus operandi was to skim through TV, motion picture, and print representations of gay folks, often with the critical eye of a still-zealous activist (at the time, I chaired the media committee of the New York chapter of GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). In a column from August 1992, which I titled "Prime-Time Trepidation," I wrote that "a look back at last season reveals precious few recurring gay roles among the hundreds of characters inhabiting the tube's dramas and sitcoms." I noted that when gays did make an appearance, it was typically a one-shot deal. For example, on CBS's then-popular -- and firmly liberal -- "Murphy Brown," an openly gay co-worker named Rick joined the staff of the series' fictional network news program for an episode about heterosexual angst (Rick mistakenly assumed that series regular Frank Fontana was gay).

But Rick only appeared on that one episode, never to be mentioned again, with his disappearance never explained or alluded to. This, I wrote, was television's lame idea of gay inclusion -- despite the fact that, in real life, the countless gay staffers on network shows were increasingly open about being gay. In fact, on "Murphy Brown," Rick's mistakenly assuming Frank was gay made perfect sense -- every time I watched the show I couldn't help thinking that the dynamics would have worked better if Frank had been gay.

Flash forward to 1999. This past July, a Los Angeles Times headline declared "Gay Roles Proliferate" in the new post-"Ellen" era. During this fall's television season, you can find 17 out and proud gay characters on the four major networks, and some 28 all told, the story reported. More good news: "Gay characters on TV and the story lines surrounding them are also richer and more complex...." Last season, a character on the popular teen drama "Dawson's Creek" came out of the closet, while on "Felicity" the title character contemplated marrying her gay boss to help him with his immigration problems. The Times commented that last year's most promising new comedy was NBC's "Will & Grace" which is about Will Truman, a gay man whose best buddy is a straight woman, and their sitcom friends.

The most "controversial" thing about "Will & Grace" to date, aside from complaints that Will needs to start seriously dating (which, in the new season, he's begun to do), wasn't gay-related at all. Hispanic media activists were in an uproar when they learned that, in an upcoming episode, Grace's sort-of friend, the wealthy and utterly obnoxious Karen, says to a Latina domestic, -- Hey, you're on the clock, tamale. Get to work." The protesters declared "tamale" an ethnic slur of the worst order and, after a brief tempest, the line was changed prior to airing, with "tamale" replaced by "honey."

Which just goes to show that in the realm of media sensitivities, activist critics will be activist critics, whether straight or gay. As for the latter, a press release from GLAAD bemoans that the 1999-2000 TV lineup was "barely realistic" in terms of gay portrayals. Altogether, GLAAD lists a total of 27 "lesbian, gay, or transgendered characters" on broadcast and cable networks for the season, but finds that "the majority of these representations are small, recurring roles." (Memo to GLAAD: "Recurring" is good!)

The release goes on to state that "with over 540 lead or supporting characters on prime time this fall, the gay community encompasses less than 2 percent of total portrayals." Perhaps most worrisome from GLAAD's perspective, these characters are (can you guess?) too white and too male. While NBC has 8 gay characters, only 3 are women. On Showtime's "Rude Awakening," Jackie may be a black lesbian, but GLAAD characterizes her as only a supporting role (an arguable point, given the ensemble cast), and hey, it's only cable. Flippancy aside, it's true that television's representation of people of color is generally pretty dismal, but GLAAD could at least acknowledge that, after Will Truman, probably the most visible out gay character on network TV is Carter Heywood, an African-American who is the Director of Minority Affairs on ABC's "Spin City."

UPN, shockingly, "features no lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered characters this fall." Shame, shame.

Some late night TV comedians -- including Bill Maher of ABC's aptly named "Politically Incorrect" and Craig Kilborn of CBS's "Late Late Show" -- have taken potshots at the activists' claim that 28 (or 27, depending on who's counting) gay characters aren't enough. GLAAD, with its typical humorlessness, is now offended that its media criticism is being criticized. And so it goes.

But for those of us who grew up when there were NO gay or lesbian or bisexual or whathaveyou characters on our 3 network TV stations, save for the occasional child molester (on one notorious episode of "Marcus Welby, M.D." of all things), and then suffered through the inevitable era of the painful coming out of the one-shot gay friend (say, who remembers "Family"?), and still later groaned when advertisers pulled their spots from "thirtysomething" after the show dared to feature a gay couple, it seems that having 28, or even 27, homosexuals on the tube is incredible, and 2 percent of prime time gone lavender is something akin to amazing. So while GLAAD and other media watchdogs undoubtedly have a point or two somewhere in their morass of dogmatic announcements and denouncements, there's truly reason to cheer, as we await -- and anticipate -- even better things to come.

Like all movements for social change, the gay and lesbian struggle for equality has spawned radical offshoots. These can sometimes supply energy and verve, as with the early incarnations of ACT UP. But they can also fall prey to a nihilistic impulse and a counterproductive collectivistic ideology.

A recent example of the latter is a group calling itself Sex Panic, which dominated the annual conclave of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force this November in San Diego. Sex Panic was formed earlier this year in New York City by a group of "queer theorists" - primarily from New York and San Francisco academic and activist circles - who oppose the trend of gay "assimilation," which they see as nullifying the sexual outlawry they believe is central to gay culture. They also argue that efforts to curb expressions of outlaw sexuality - from closing sex clubs to crackdowns on "public sex" - demand a militant response.

On the opening day of the NGLTF conference, Sex Panic held a "national summit" that created and endorsed a Declaration of Sexual Rights, which included "an end to the prohibition and stigmatization of public sex."

Lest anyone dismiss Sex Panic as just another insular grouping, the media they're receiving has been extensive. Anti-gay activists are beginning to use the group's rhetorical claim that lots of anonymous gay sex is the answer to "the tyranny of the normal" to buttress anti-gay arguments that homosexuals are out to subvert the moral order.

But it's not just conservatives who are making hay out of the quotability of Sex Panic. A November 11 story in the New York Times focused on the group. The newspaper of record told America, in the lead paragraph no less, how Sex Panic bemoans the backlash against "the sexual practices of homosexuals," such as "police crackdowns on sex in public restrooms" as well as moves against "sex clubs, bathhouses and weekend-long drug parties where men have intercourse with a dozen partners a night." The Times quoted Sex Panic founders who argue that "anonymous sex with multiple partners" and "having as much sex as possible, as publicly as possible" is the cornerstone of gay liberation. The Times also noted that "the debate occurs against a backdrop of evidence that homosexuals are returning to what they call 'bareback sex,' anal intercourse without condoms," a practice that's been defended by some Sex Panic activists.

If the anti-gay right and not the gay left were promoting this image of gay life, our media watchdogs would be up in arms.

So, what can we make of a group that is in open revolt over efforts to gain "mainstream acceptance"? In fact, there are aspects of Sex Panic's agenda that have merit. The harassment and forced closure of private sex clubs which do not otherwise disturb community peace, and police entrapment in gay cruising areas, are indeed abuses of state power.

But just as the infamous North American Man-Boy Love Association holds fast against any and all age of consent laws and thus mixes together decisions by sexually mature teenage boys to engage in consensual sex and the supposed "right" of men to seduce toddlers, so Sex Panic is guilty of a failure to distinguish between association in private clubs and the "right" to have sex in public. And this, I believe, derives from their overall left-wing ideological core. Since socialism posits that there should be no private sphere, only public, it's easy to see why Sex Panic's queer theorists - who are steeped in a neo-Marxist tradition - refuse to see why the private should be held distinct from the public.

Of course, it's not very clear just what Sex Panic means by "public sex." Sometimes they seem to mean sex capable of being seen, or outside your bedrooom. But there's a great difference between "public" group sex in a private club, and sex in a public park - and even there a contrast needs to be made between sex out in the open, and sex obscured from public view. But Sex Panic isn't keen on defining these distinctions.

To get a sense of their confusion, consider the points made by Sex Panic's Eric Rofes at the NGLTF conference. Rofes mingled together "police entrapments, closures of commercial sex establishments [and] encroachments on public sex areas." As the underlying force behind this, he described (in good Marxist fashion) "class-based battles over massive corporate land-grabs" and the "concentration of wealth creating vast economic disparities." So-called "progressives" still insist that capitalism - which values protecting private property and defending personal liberty - is the enemy, while empowering the state to confiscate and redistribute wealth and control economic decisions will somehow lead to "liberation."

As I've hinted, a better strategy is to recognize the clear distinction between the privately owned and public (that is, government owned) arenas. Since sex clubs are privately owned, the state has no business interferring in consensual activities that happen there, even if the patrons choose to foolishly engage in unsafe sex. Using this public/private distinction, a legitimate argument could be made in support of Sex Panic's demands for decriminalizing consensual sex practices and ending harassment of "sex workers." But these activists should be called on to clarify what, exactly, they mean by ending the prohibition and stigmatization of "public sex." That police should not set out to entrap gay men or beat the bushes in the hope of capturing men in the act, is one thing. But to argue that men should be able to have open sex in public restrooms, or in public parks in view of passersby, just won't fly - especially when many "tea room" and park crackdowns follow complaints to the police that public space is being misappropriated.

Maybe progressive theorists should change their tune and start defending the capitalist principles of private property rights and the freedom to engage in business without odious regulatory burdens so long as the rights of others aren't infringed upon. Maybe if gay men want to engage in outdoor sex, they should fund private sex parks. And maybe the idea of further extending the public, government-controlled sphere at the expense of the private and corporate should be seen as fundamentally at odds with the protection of individual rights.

The primitive idea about gay men, shared by many Christian fundamentalists and other lovers of freedom, is that gays really want to be girls, or girlish. And the primitive idea about men who want to cross over to be girls is that they're really just gay, or just crazy.

Got it?

Gays are faggots, right? And former men like me who have changed gender, well...they're just extreme faggots, or sex-mad nut cases. Northwestern University psychologist J. Michael Bailey, whose new book has created quite a stir, believes both of these ideas.

"Most gay men are feminine," Bailey declares in The Man Who Would Be Queen, "or at least they are feminine in certain ways." The professor's gaydar can spot those Certain Ways from across the street - on the basis, for example, of the pronunciation a man gives the sound s: closer to the front of the mouth, like a woman's. OK, so it turns out Bailey is talking about most gay men...in America...in the late 20th century...or maybe just the ones he was able to find by asking around in Chicago bars. Fortunately, there are other tell-tale signs of homosexuality, such as a deep interest in clothing and show tunes - or, when it comes right down to it, a sexual interest in other men.

And from a long city block away Bailey can spot a real gender crosser - those are the pretty ones, the ones whom the professor feels are sexually "attractive." They're just an extreme form of gay men. He can distinguish them from former men who are not attractive to him, a type that, contrary to what they will say (they are all liars), experience "sexual arousal at the idea of themselves as women."

It's really quite simple, Bailey says. Weird born men (he doesn't talk about born women in the book) are driven by sex. It's either sex with other men or sex with themselves. Sex, sex, sex. "Identity" has nothing to do with it. You can think of Bailey as an identity politician's worst nightmare.

Bailey is attacking the by-now accepted scientific view that whom you love and who you identify yourself to be are not the same issue. Au contraire, says the professor. It's not that formerly male gender crossers have an identity of womanhood, felt or desired, the way you feel or desire that you want to be a lawyer, say, or a resident of Florida. Nor do the more feminine-looking (because earlier changed), pretty ones have such an identity. No "identity" about it. Both are driven by sex, because that's what men are ultimately interested in. Bailey calls gender crossers "men" throughout his book. Born a man, too bad. Like certain second-wave feminists, such as Mary Daly or Germaine Greer, Bailey is an essentialist. As the guys down at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post have always known, men are men and women are women. Period.

No one is surprised that Bailey's ideas have been seized on by the religious right. John Derbyshire, a homophobe who contributes frequently to National Review, wrote a nice piece about the book, drawing the moral: "Male homosexuality, in particular, seems to possess some quality of being intrinsically subversive when let loose in long-established institutions, especially male dominated ones." (Where is Roy Cohn when we need him?) For God's sake, let's not let the queers loose.

If you hated the 1960s and its "homosexual agenda" (thank you, Justice Scalia), you are going to love Bailey's theory. As the guys down at the VFW hall say, queers are just sissy guys; and a guy who wants to become a woman is either just another homo or just another loony. Bailey, to be fair, doesn't share all the scientific and political ideas of his allies the veterans, the homophobes, and the religious right. He wouldn't attack gays and gender crossers with a lead pipe, and I guess he doesn't think God hates fags. Some of his best buddies, after all, are gay or transgendered. Bailey is a very feeling guy. In fact, he spends a lot of time hanging around the less reputable gay bars in Chicago's Boys' Town. Doing research.

Bailey gets his research ideas from an outfit in Toronto called the Clarke Institute. The institute is one dusty corner of the academic study of gender, and until Bailey came along it wasn't doing very well. In 1985 the head of its clinical sexology program, one Ray Blanchard, a rat psychologist by training, devised a theory of "autogynephilia," a word and notion that ever since then he has been trying to float. According to Blanchard and his few but loyal fans (among them Bailey), unpretty, late-changing, nonhomosexual gender crossers (me, for instance) have internalized a female love object (that is, they are still men wanting to have sex, sex, sex with women) and confused it with themselves. They aren't "really" women. Bailey summarizes it flatly in the book: "Autogynephilia can be considered a disorder."

The word disorder is meant to evoke the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the so-called DSM-IV. (The Roman numerals are for the edition, like the Super Bowl.) Bailey and his conservative friends hope to get "autogynephilia" into the next edition of the DSM (Roman numeral V), in order, I suppose, to prevent free people from doing what they harmlessly please. Great idea.

Until the 1973 edition of the DSM, homosexuality was such a "disorder," justifying electroshock therapy for queer kids in the 1950s and early '60s; it did not entirely recover from its illness until the 1986 edition. We let homosexuals get away with it after 1986, say the conservatives; lest the gender crossers get away with it, too...well, it's a little unclear what Bailey would recommend. He's been running away from his book in the months since its publication in April.

But there's no doubt what Bailey's conservative friends want, and will try to get through the book and its sponsorship by the National Academy of Sciences (on that last point hangs a tale; stay tuned). The conservatives want to return to the 1950s in a 2003 form, with summer camps to butch up the sissy boys and feminize the tomboys, with psychiatrists closing down gender reassignment programs (thus the sad case of Johns Hopkins), with gays back in the closet. Bailey is part of the conservative revolt against the "permissive" society - that is, a society in which you can do what you want if it doesn't harm someone else. Sexual conservatives are not libertarians.

At the time, 20 years ago, that the Clarke Institute up in Toronto really got going on Preventing Them, no one paid much attention, except the unfortunate Canadian gender-variant kids and adults who fell into its clutches and were subjected to "cures" by any "therapy" that came to mind. Bailey has some long, sweet passages warmly praising the institute's "therapists." He notes, without suggesting he would disagree, that many people, including his students (he asked them: it was part of his scientific study), declare "autogynephiles" inappropriate for gender change. Stop 'em.

The Clarke Institute cannot bear the thought of adult gender changers like me succeeding as just...women: Episcopalian church ladies and female college profs. So if you come to the institute old, they get you to believe you are an "autogynephile," and can't really hope to be anything else. The institute makes you go out full-time in drag with no hormones or facial surgery to make it possible to pass for an entire year. This would be suicidal in many American towns; I guess Canada is less violent. If you show up with nail polish or, worse, evidence of having started hormones on your own, you are punished, and your clock is turned back to zero, Bailey reports. The result is "men" (Bailey's term, remember) who can stand to run around as guys in gowns forever, thus assuring that Blanchard's theory will hold, at least for this "sample." Men are men; it's hopeless, guys; you will never be women.

The evidence for the institute's notion of "autogynephilia" backing up this psychological violence against its patients is pretty feeble. It's hard anyway to get a reasonable sample of gender crossers. Lynn Conway, a world-famous professor of electrical engineering and computer science emerita at the University of Michigan and member of the National Academy of Engineering, who transitioned in 1968 (she was fired by IBM for it but remade her life and became eminent in her field as a woman without revealing her past; it came out a few years ago) reckons on her Web site (lynnconway.com) that about one in every 400 born males will want to change gender. About one in 2,000 - 40,000 women - already have transitioned. Conway shows that the official numbers - one in 30,000, according to the DSM; one in 20,000, according to Bailey's book, although he's rapidly backing away from that estimate - imply absurdly low figures for completed gender crossers: in the U.S. about 800, which is a factor of 40 or so below the actual number. Where are they? You probably know one. Many just disappear into their target gender. Many others are fearful, not without reason, of being studied by "scientists" like Blanchard or Bailey.

Blanchard's hypothesis suffered the fate of science that can't be replicated, and that's based on narrow data tilted to make things come out right for the scientist proposing it. There's no shame in that. Most scientists are tendentious arguers for their pet theories, the check and balance being that other scientists resist. Almost everyone in the scientific study of sex and gender has checked and balanced and resisted the Clarke Institute's theory. It has proven to be wrong and has been laid aside by the mainstream of gender researchers. But contrary to the high school version of scientific method, old scientific theories never die; they just fade away.

Defending himself from the tsunami of criticism the book has generated, Bailey writes on his Web site (psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/controversy.htm): "At one time, gender patients with clear signs of autogynephilia were deemed inappropriate for [surgery]. They were denigrated as 'not true transsexuals.' These practices were harmful, hurtful, and wrong. Autogynephilic transsexuals are true transsexuals, suffering every bit as much from gender dysphoria [which means 'gender discomfort'; Real Scientists Do Greek] as homosexual transsexuals [the second of the two possible types in Bailey's universe] do. Autogynephilic transsexuals tend to be about as happy as homosexual male-to-female transsexuals with sex reassignment surgery. And both groups are much happier, on average, after transitioning."

Bailey doesn't say anything like this in the book. That omission is quite important for understanding why the book has frightened so many queers and delighted so many conservatives. Bailey does not say in the book that it's OK for people in a free society to express their gender identity - butch lesbian, say, or cowboy straight or womanly gender crosser. Instead he sidles up to the programs on the religious and psychiatric right that try (unsuccessfully, as he admits) to "cure" gender crossers and homosexuals.

Contrary to Bailey and his friends, the real science says that formerly heterosexual gender crossers are not sex-crazed lovers of self. Formerly homosexual gender crossers are not "just" homosexual men (with the emphasis on just and on sex: Bailey never refers to gay people as loving; love, it seems, is something he's a little weak on; in Bailey's mind it's all about sex, sex, sex). And regular, four-square, iron-pumping Ulysses-King David-Socrates-Rock Hudson-type homosexuals are not, as Bailey wants us to believe, "just" feminine guys. Real gender science, to repeat, says that who you are - being "feminine" or wanting to be - is not the same thing as whom you love. That's not too hard to understand. I love my dog. But that doesn't mean I want to become a dog.

Nonetheless, against most of the evidence and all the common sense, Bailey continues to maintain the rejected theory that one's identity and one's affectional preference line up the way the VFW guys think they should. Again, no special shame attaches. In the end, after all, much of science will turn out to be wrong, from Aristotle and Newton down to the single-strand hypothesis for DNA. If this weren't so, science would have advanced at lightning speed, and we'd already know everything.

Bailey writes charmingly and has the knack of suggesting that he's reporting from the front lines of Science, inserting a lot of personal "guesses" and "hunches" into the prose as though he were an actual Scientist with a lifetime of serious consideration of alternative hypotheses and tons of data behind him. You can imagine Bailey with a pipe and a lab coat advertising laxatives on TV. But in his case we have what the physicist Richard Feynman used to call "cargo-cult science": The book has the style of an informal talk with a Serious Scientist who is getting down and personal with you about his science. The stuff looks a little like science, the way the "airports" the highlanders of New Guinea constructed out of coconuts and palm fronds to get the American cargo planes to come back after the war looked a little like airports. It's even in the title of his book, that Science. But sadly, it's scientific nonsense.

Harsh words? Judge for yourself. Throughout the book, Bailey makes a big deal of his academic position. (His bosses at Northwestern seem to agree: they recently promoted this alleged violator of their own human-subjects procedures to chairman of the Psychology Department.) All the way through the book he calls his findings "science." His main evidence for the femininity of gay men (aside from that study of how queers say the two s sounds in science) is a Scientific study of personal ads in some gay newspapers. His other piece of "research" - and the only research this Researcher did on gender crossers - consisted of, first, long talks with one gender crosser in Chicago (named "Cher" in the book; I know her well; she's one of the people who have filed legal complaints against Bailey) and, second, short talks with a half dozen young Hispanic gender-crossing prostitutes whom Cher brought to Bailey under the impression he wanted to help them. It's a sample of convenience of, say, size seven. (One was Cher herself, the only case of alleged "autogynephilia" Bailey has studied; the rest were the other type, of the two types allowed.)

The sample was collected by what looks like a violation of federal law. Northwestern's Office for Human Research is investigating. No one was offered a human subjects form to sign, no one was told she was under study, and no one was told her story would appear in a book. The subjects were enticed by the offer of a document crucial for their gender change. (Gender surgeons require a letter from a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist saying that the patient is in her right mind, if not his right body.) Their lives were used in the book with brutal disregard for their feelings to titillate readers. Bailey even "studies" one of their weddings, to which he was invited as a guest.

That's the legal problem Bailey and his university now face, but the scientific problem they face is worse. The entire sample, representing the world's hundreds of thousands of gender crossers, just happens to live in Chicago. Six-sevenths of the sample are first-generation Hispanic Americans, most working as prostitutes and professional drag queens. (Bailey dropped from his sample women who were not in sex trades.) That's not a very good sample. If most of Bailey's data come from young Hispanic sex workers in Chicago, then he has not put his theory (namely, that gender crossing is about sex, sex, sex, because gender crossers are men, men, men) in much jeopardy.

Randi Ettner, a clinical psychologist who has written the best book on gender problems, Gender Loving Care, and who has seen hundreds of every conceivable kind, has an office in Evanston, a few blocks from Bailey's. Not interested, says Bailey in effect: Leave me alone with my two-category VFW theory and my half-dozen pretty girls off the streets of Boys' Town. He didn't want to talk with gender crossers like, say, me - exhibiting no "autogynephilia," working not as a prostitute but as a professor of economics (now, now: no jokes).

On his Web site (after the book was published) Bailey defends himself by saying that he wasn't really doing original research himself; he was relying on Blanchard. But you know what the scientific community thinks of Blanchard. So that doesn't quite work. And the book keeps emphasizing its Highly Scientific character. Bailey writes, for example, of "recruiting [in gay bars] research subjects for our study of drag queens and transsexuals" and about his own "recent research"; and so on throughout (emphasis added). Those who glory in doing Scientific Research had better have something to back it up. Bailey doesn't. At a July meeting in Bloomington, Indiana, of the International Academy of Sex Research, John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute and one of the most respected sexologists in the world, stood up after Bailey's abbreviated talk and said sternly, "Michael, I would caution you against calling this book 'science' because I have read it, and I can tell you it is not science." Then he sat down, to stunned silence: The sexologists had finally gotten up the courage to resist Bailey, Blanchard, and the Clarke Institute.

Northwestern University seems to have a problem of this sort every 10 years or so. A member of their engineering school mightily embarrassed the place by becoming famous as a Holocaust denier. Now Northwestern has a homophobic, transphobic chair of its psychology department who allegedly violates human-subject review procedures to get dirt on the communities he wants to repathologize. Go Wildcats.

The book has outraged gays, lipstick lesbians, butch dykes, heterosexual cross-dressers. And formerly heterosexual crossers of gender like me: normal boyhood, repressed desires at age 11 in the repressed 1950s, 30 years happily married, two grown children (not talking to me yet: thank you, Professor Bailey and your pathologizing friends), successful, regular guy who decided to change at age 53, did so, and is now even more happy. In particular the book has annoyed academic gender crossers, of whom there are a surprisingly large number.

To name four: Joan Roughgarden, a famous professor of population biology at Stanford, who transitioned five years ago at age 52; Barbara Nash, a famous professor of geology at the University of Utah, who transitioned in 2001 at age 57; that famous Lynn Conway; and yours truly. The academics don't like Bailey's use of the mantle of Science to push a conservative, unscientific agenda worthy of National Review, or of The National Enquirer. They are up in arms; or at least up on the Web (at lynnconway.com). In July, Conway and I filed a formal complaint with Northwestern's vice president of research regarding Bailey's research conduct. That too is posted on the Web.

So is this statement by Ben Barres, a female-to-male gender crosser and professor of neurobiology and developmental biology at Stanford (yeah: the more eminent the university, the more relaxed it is about gender change: Roughgarden and Barres are not the only two at Stanford; and guess which provost helped them? Hint: she's not provost any more, and her first name is Condoleezza): "Bailey truly doesn't get the gender identity dissonance that transsexuals experience - it really is hard for people to understand what they haven't experienced themselves. I have talked with many MtFs [male-to-female gender crossers] who have contacted me, and have listened to the feelings they have gone through their whole lives, and it is always an exact mirror of what I have experienced as an FtM. These MtFs have no reason to lie to me, as I have no power over what treatment they receive. For Bailey to say that most MtFs are primarily doing the gender change because of a fetish [that is, sex, sex, sex] rather than a true gender-identity issue just doesn't ring true to me, or to many other people that have worked in clinics taking care of many MtFs. "

Bailey revives the long-dead notion - as scientifically dead as the psychoanalysis that spawned it - that gender crossers are repressed homosexuals. The revival is dumb on two counts. First, it's scientifically unpersuasive. Psychoanalysis ends up calling nearly everyone a repressed homosexual. Second, it's politically irresponsible. You might as well revive the long-dead notion that Jews are genetically programmed for making money.

Bailey adopts throughout an air of smirking knowingness, especially about gays. On the first page of the book he announces that his gaydar is infallible, that he can Spot 'Em: "Knowing [a man's] occupation and observing him briefly and superficially [is] sufficient, together, for me to guess confidently" that he was a sissy as a boy, is now gay-identified, and may well soon get gender reassignment surgery. He predicts of Danny, an actual 8-year-old living in a northern suburb of Chicago, that when he's grown up "on any October Sundays, he is more likely to be singing show tunes somewhere than to be cheering for the Chicago Bears."

Hey, that's really great, Professor, that you are able to "scientifically predict" little Danny's future, and in such an amusing way!

But consider. What exactly would be the point of "knowing" that Danny will become gay? Bailey never says. True, if one could know that Child X would otherwise become an ax murderer, or Saddam Hussein, intervention might be in order. But gay? Or, for that matter, a gender crosser? What exactly is the problem here? Isn't the "disorder" located in the society that worries about such nonissues rather than in the free person exercising her rights?

It would be like "knowing" that some 8-year-old Janey will grow up to be optimistic, or "knowing" that some 8-year-old Johnny will grow up to be interested in sports. Wonderful: What great Science. You are s-o-o-o smart.

Now: Why would you want to know such a thing? To prevent little Janey from being unreasonably optimistic, through therapy? To throttle back little Johnny's excessive interest in sports, through operant conditioning? Now answer the question when you do not have an intervention that works, like for being gay or being a gender crosser.

Let's assume Bailey got everything right about his informants. (Cher tells me he got much of it wrong, but he wouldn't listen when she told him so.) Suppose even (again contrary to fact, but let's be easy) that the Clarke Institute's failed theory is correct, 100 percent.

So? Why shouldn't a free person be able to express her notions of gender? (Gender expression - your right as a woman to wear pants, say - is the next frontier of this evolving revolution: see www.gpac.org, the Web site for GenderPAC, devoted to freedom whatever your chromosomes or genitals.) And if changing one's genitals is considered a violation of God's law, why aren't nose jobs or cancer cures also abominations?

Ask the libertarian question: Why not? No fair just declaring without sensible argument that it's contrary to natural law. Or saying peevishly, "I can't understand such a desire." Neither can I understand why some people let themselves pay first-year depreciation on automobiles or why other people write books in which they exploit for gain little boys interested in dolls and Hispanic women off the street desperate for a letter to allow gender surgery. But I'm not proposing to put these two disorders into the next DSM to prevent people from engaging in such behavior.

Bailey paints himself in the book and defends himself on his Web site as a helper of gender-varying people. Just what the doctor ordered. Get them help, for Lord's sake, through compulsory psychiatry backed up by the new DSM-V. It's like the old joke about the three most unbelievable sentences: "The check is in the mail"; "Of course I'll respect you in the morning"; and "I'm Mike Bailey, a follower of the Clarke Institute, and I'm here to help you."

I HAD A DREAM THE OTHER NIGHT. I was at a benefit performance of a new Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza, called "Stonewall: The Musical." It reminded me of "Les Miserables" (not a Webber musical, but this was, after all, a dream). The central character was a drag queen named Sylvia, and instead of the dramatic high point of the show taking place atop a barricade on a Paris street in a confrontation between government troops and a band of youthful revolutionaries, the climax in "Stonewall: The Musical" was set in Greenwich Village's Sheridan Square. To the beat of "Supermodel," a chorus line of Ru Paul look-alikes high-kicked in from stage left as a phalanx of goose-stepping New York City policemen - actually the 1970s disco group, the Village People, dressed in riot gear - marched in from stage right.

In the moment before the police started beating heads and ripping bodices, I stood up on my seat and started yelling that this wasn't the way it happened. Sylvia, who was at the center of the chorus line, stopped mid-kick, glared down at me from her ten-inch platform shoes (they didn't wear platform shoes in 1969!), dramatically rolled her eyes, and with hands on hips yelled back at me, "Honey, get over it. Everyone likes this story better." My friend John pulled me back into my seat and the show went on without further interruption. I woke up that morning with a splitting headache.

It's only been 25 years since the real riots broke out at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, but like a ridiculously long game of telephone, the Stonewall legend that's emerged from the end of the line is only an echo of the original event. It kind of reminds me of the lessons I learned in elementary school about "How The West Was Won." Great story, and even a fun movie starring Debbie Reynolds, but not nearly as interesting or complex as the real thing.

The story of what really happened at Stonewall has yet to be distorted and embellished beyond the point of recognition, but it's well on its way. The myth gets a boost every time someone writes about how "heroic drag queens started a riot at the Stonewall Inn, which marked the beginning of the gay rights movement."

After writing Making History, which is about the gay rights struggle from 1945 to 1990, and interviewing people who were at Stonewall Inn the night of the riot, and having read eyewitness accounts of what actually happened, the much-repeated telescoped myth makes me want to scream. Some of my friends have told me to give it up, that the tide is against me. But on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the riot at the Stonewall Inn, I thought I'd make one last effort to set the record straight about a remarkable event that marked a key turning point in the history of the gay and lesbian rights struggle. It also happens to be a great story. So pull up a chair, because it's a couple of minutes to eight, and the curtain's about to rise.

Act I

Location:

The Stonewall Inn: a nondescript two-story building at 53 Christopher Street, just off of Sheridan Square in New York's Greenwich Village.

Dawn Hampton, a torch singer and hat check girl, who went to work at the Stonewall when it opened in 1966, recalled that Stonewall Inn was "the biggest after hours gay dance palace in the city at that time. The place there now is much smaller than the original."

When Ms. Hampton first went to work there, you didn't just walk into the Stonewall, you had to be admitted. "You had to be identified by someone at the door who either assumed or knew you were of that life. I had worked at so many of the gay bars as a performer and hat check girl that I was often called to the door and asked, 'Do you know this person?' You see, at that time there was a lot of entrapment going on. Police would come to a gay bar and pretend that they were of that life. They would try to get someone to make sexual advances, arrest the poor fellow and later come back and bust the bar for allowing deviates and undesirables to be there."

As thoroughly documented by Martin Duberman in his book, Stonewall, the Stonewall Inn was opened by "three Mafia figures... who spent less than a thousand dollars in fixing up the club's interior." The late Morty Manford, who was a nineteen-year-old college student in 1969, recalled that the Stonewall was a dive. "It was my favorite place, but it was shabby, and the glasses they served the watered-down drinks in weren't particularly clean."

eyond the front door and past the coat room, where Dawn Hampton presided, the Stonewall had a main bar, a dance floor, and a juke box. There was another bar in back, with tables where people could sit.

The Patrons:

The Stonewall Inn attracted an eclectic crowd, from teenage college students like Morty Manford to conservatively dressed young men who stopped in with their dates after the theater or opera. "It was a different mind-set then," recalled Dawn Hampton. "On weekends, men dressed up. A lot of them were dating and they would dress in coat and tie."

There was also a sprinkling of young radicals, people like Ronnie Di Brienza, a twenty-six-year old long-haired musician who didn't consider himself gay or straight. "I must consider myself a freak."

The Stonewall Inn was not a generally welcoming place for drag queens, although as Martin Duberman notes, "...a few favored full-time transvestites, like Tiffany, Spanola Jerry, a hairdresser from Sheepshead Bay, and Tammy Novak... were allowed to enter Stonewall in drag..."

The nightly crowd at the Stonewall Inn did include, however, quite a few men that Dick Leitsch described as the "fluffy sweater" type. "It wasn't drag queens. They were sissies, young effeminate guys, giggle girls." Leitsch, who was then executive director of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights group founded in 1950, said you rarely saw people in full drag because "in those days you got busted for dressing up unless you were on your way to or from a licensed masquerade ball."

Sylvia Rivera recalled that if you were a drag queen, you could get into the Stonewall if they knew you, but he favored the Washington Square Bar at Third Street and Broadway. When he dressed up, Sylvia liked to pretend that he was a white woman. "I always like to say that, but really I'm Puerto Rican and Venezuelan."

If men dressed as women were an uncommon sight, real women at the Stonewall Inn were rarer still. More often than not, when Dawn Hampton worked at the Stonewall, she was the only woman there, yet felt fully accepted. "A lot of the kids called me 'Mommie.'"

The Mood:

June 27, 1969, was not an average Friday night at the Stonewall Inn. Earlier that week, on Tuesday night, the police had raided the Stonewall "to gather evidence of illegal sale of alcohol."

Ronnie Di Brienza later wrote in an article in The East Village Other, "On Wednesday and Thursday nights, grumbling could be heard among the limp-wristed set. Predominantly, the theme was, 'this shit has got to stop!' ...It used to be that a fag was happy to get slapped and chased home, as long as they didn't have to have their names splashed onto a court record. Now, times are a-changin'. Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit."

The late film historian, Vito Russo, didn't know about the Tuesday night raid, but he was in a foul mood on Friday night as he approached the Stonewall on his way home from work, because earlier that day he'd attended Judy Garland's funeral. He recalled, "The day before the funeral thousands of people had waited in the street to view the body. They were lined up all the way down Eighty-First Street and on Fifth Avenue by Central Park. They kept the funeral home open around the clock, and more than twenty thousand people filed through. It was a spectacle to behold."

There also happened to be a full moon on the night of June 27, 1969.

Scene 1: The Raid

Morty Manford was at the Stonewall Inn when several plainclothes officers entered the bar around 2:00 a.m. "Whispers went around that the place was being raided. Suddenly, the lights were turned up, the doors were sealed, and all the patrons were held captive until the police decided what they were going to do. I was anxious, but I wasn't afraid. Everybody was anxious, not knowing whether we were going to be arrested or what was going to happen."

"It may have been ten or fifteen minutes later that we were all told to leave. We had to line up, and our identification was checked before we were freed. People who did not have identification or were under age and all transvestites were detained."

Of the two hundred people ejected from the Stonewall that night, five who were dressed as women were detained. According to Village Voice reporter Howard Smith, as he wrote in an article entitled "Full Moon Over The Stonewall," "...Out of five queens checked, three were men and two were [transsexuals], even though all said they were girls." Smith had coincidentally been accompanying the police on the Stonewall raid that night.

Scene 2: The Riot

After being released from the bar, Morty Manford watched and waited outside. "As some of the gays came out of the bar, they would take a bow, and their friends would cheer." It was a colorful scene, Morty recalled, but the tension began to grow.

Howard Smith observed, "Things were already pretty tense: the gay customers freshly ejected from their hangout, prancing high and jubilant in the street, had been joined by quantities of Friday night tourists hawking around for Village-type excitement... Loud defiances mixed with skittish hilarity made for a more dangerous stage of protest; they were feeling their impunity. This kind of crowd freaks easily." The crowd grew to more than 400 people.

Lucian Truscott IV, who was also at the Stonewall that night reporting for the Village Voice, wrote that the scene was initially festive: "Cheers would go up as favorites would emerge from the door, strike a pose, and swish by the detective with a 'Hello there, fella.' The stars were in their element. Wrists were limp, hair was primped, and reactions to the applause were classic. 'I gave them the gay power bit, and they loved it, girls.' 'Have you seen Maxine? Where is my wife - I told her not to go far.'"

Truscott reported that the mood changed once the paddy wagon arrived and three drag queens, the bartender and the doorman were loaded inside. The crowd showered the police with boos and catcalls and "a cry went up to push the paddy wagon over, but it drove away before anything could happen... The next person to come out was a dyke, and she put up a struggle - from car to door to car again."

At this point Smith reported that the police had trouble keeping "the dyke" in the patrol car. "Three times she slid out and tried to walk away. The last time a cop bodily heaved her in. The crowd shrieked, 'Police brutality!' 'Pigs!'"

Sylvia Rivera was watching the whole scene. "It was inhumane, senseless bullshit. They called us animals. We were the lowest scum of the Earth at that time... Suddenly, the nickels, dimes, pennies, and quarters started flying. I threw quarters and pennies and whatnot. 'You already got the payoff, and here's some more!' To be there was so beautiful. It was so exciting. I said, 'Well great, now it's my time. I'm out here being a revolutionary for everybody else, and now it's time to do my thing for my own people.'"

The tension continued to rise. Truscott writes: "Limp wrists were forgotten. Beer cans and bottles were heaved at the windows." Reporter Howard Smith retreated inside the bar along with Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, and the police officers who had conducted the raid. Once inside the bar, they bolted the heavy front door.

From his vantage point outside the bar, Morty remembered seeing someone throw a rock, which broke a window on the second floor of the Stonewall Inn building. "With the shattering of the glass, the crowd collectively exclaimed, 'Ooh.' It was a dramatic gesture of defiance. For me, there was a slight lancing of the festering wound of anger that had been building for so long over this kind of unfair harassment and prejudice. It wasn't my fault that many of the bars where I could meet other gay people were run by organized crime."

Inside the Stonewall, Smith heard the shattering of glass, including at least one of the two large plate glass windows on the first floor. The windows, which were painted black from the inside, were backed by plywood panels.

There was pounding at the door and people yelling. Smith writes: "The door crashes open, beer cans and bottles hurtle in... At that point the only uniformed cop among them gets hit with something under his eye. He hollers, and his hand comes away scarlet... They are all suddenly furious. Three run out to see if they can scare the mob from the door. [Inspector Seymour] Pine leaps out into the crowd and drags a protester inside by the hair."

Outside, with the crowd still growing, Truscott observes, "At the height of the action, a bearded figure was plucked from the crowd and dragged inside... the crowd erupted into cobblestone and bottle heaving. The reaction was solid: they were pissed. The trash can I was standing on was nearly yanked out from under me as a kid tried to grab it for use in the window-smashing melee."

Ronnie Di Brienza, the long-haired musician picks up the story here: "A bunch of 'queens' along with a few 'butch' members, grabbed a parking meter, and began battering the entrance until the door swung open."

Inside, Smith and the police duck as more debris is thrown in through the open door. In response, Smith writes, "The detectives locate a fire hose, the idea being to ward off the madding crowd until reinforcements arrive."

Lucian Truscott describes what happens next: "Several kids took the opportunity to cavort in the spray, and their momentary glee served to stave off what was rapidly becoming a full-scale attack."

Smith grows fearful as the tension escalates. He observes, "By now the minds eye had forgotten the character of the mob; the sound filtering in doesn't suggest dancing faggots any more. It sounds like a powerful rage bent on vendetta..."

The crowd then heaves the uprooted parking meter through one of the plate glass windows. The plywood behind the window gives.

Smith writes, "It seems inevitable that the mob will pour in. A kind of tribal adrenaline rush bolsters all of us; they take out and check pistols. I see both policewomen busy doing the same, and the danger becomes even more real. I find a big wrench behind the bar, jam it into my belt like a scimitar... [Inspector] Pine places a few men on each side of the corridor leading away from the entrance. They aim unwavering at the door... I hear, 'We'll shoot the first motherfucker that comes through the door!'"

From outside the bar, Truscott recalls, "I heard several cries of, 'Let's get some gas.'" Smith notices an arm at the window. It belongs to a man whom Ronnie Di Brienza describes as a "small scrawny, hoody-looking cat." He is holding a can of lighter fluid.

A stream of liquid pours in through the broken window. Smith writes, "A flaring match follows. Pine is not more than 10 feet away [from the window]." Pine aims his gun at the shadows framed by the window. But he doesn't fire.

Smith writes, "The sound of sirens coincides with the shoosh of flames where the lighter fluid was thrown. Later, Pine tells me he didn't shoot because he had heard the sirens in time and felt no need to kill someone if help was arriving. It was that close."

Once reinforcements arrived, in the form of New York City's Tactical Police Force, the streets were cleared in coordinated sweeps of the area. According to newspaper accounts in the days that followed, thirteen people were arrested that night and three policemen suffered minor injuries. No mention was made of civilian casualties.

ACT II

Scene 1: The Aftermath

By the time Vito Russo happened on the scene in front of the Stonewall, the riot was over, although people were still out on the sidewalks yelling at the police. He recalls, "I didn't get to see a lot of the hysteria that's been described in the press because I got there too late. I went to the little triangular park across the street and sat in a tree on a branch. I watched what was going on, but I didn't want to get involved. People were still throwing things, whatever they could find, mostly garbage. Then somebody came along and spray painted a message to the community on the front of Stonewall that this was our neighborhood, and we weren't going to let them take it away from us, that everybody should calm down and go home. But that's not the way it worked out because there were constant confrontations for the next two nights."

Dick Leitsch heard about the melee at the Stonewall on the radio and hurried downtown from his apartment on West 72nd Street. "Considering my position at the time as Executive Director of The Mattachine Society and being in charge of anything gay in New York at that time, I stopped what I was doing and headed down there."

Despite the fact that "things got out of hand," Leitsch remembers the first night as having had a fun and campy atmosphere. "This was uniquely gay. It was much different than the burning of the cities, which happened the year before, and the riots in Chicago at the democratic convention. This was more camp. It was more like satire. I think the funny, campy behavior made more of a point than just the trashing."

The next day, Inspector Pine tried to enlist Mattachine's help in calming the neighborhood. "We'd had a relationship with the police for years," Leitsch recalls. "We'd already gotten them to curtail entrapment and stopped the harassment of licensed bars." (The Stonewall was unlicensed).

Among gay people themselves, both the organized gay community and those who remained on the sidelines, there was intense debate over how to respond to the riot. On one side were those who wanted the riots and mass protests to continue, and on the other were many who wanted an immediate end to the violence and public demonstrations. One fear among those who wanted peace restored was that the police would retaliate with increased bar raids, harassment, and arrests.

Saturday night, the crowds gathered once again in front of the Stonewall, and this time included "onlookers, Eastsiders, and rough street people." Dick Leitsch recalls, "It was all these poor pitiful people who were still thinking that the revolution was going to come because they thought this was it - all the New Left and the tired old 1930s radicals who were waiting for the Communist revolution since 1917. Instead of just defying the cops, they got nasty."

But the majority of the hundreds of people who crowded onto Christopher Street and jammed Sheridan Square were young gay men. And despite some nasty confrontations with the police, there was plenty of humor and camp left over from the previous night. As Lucian Truscott reported: "Friday night's crowd had returned and was being led in 'gay power' cheers by a group of gay cheerleaders. 'We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We have no underwear/ We show our pubic hairs!' ...Hand-holding, kissing, and posing accented each of the cheers with a homosexual liberation that had appeared only fleetingly on the street before."

Not every gay person was thrilled with the very public displays of gay camp and freely expressed same-sex affection. As Truscott observed, "Older boys had strained looks on their faces and talked in concerned whispers as they watched the up-and-coming generation take being gay and flaunt it before the masses."

New York City's Tactical Police Force returned again on Saturday night to clear the hundreds of protesters from the streets. Truscott reported: "The TPF...swept the crowd back to the corner of Waverly Place, where they stopped. A stagnant situation there brought on some gay tomfoolery in the form of a chorus line facing the line of helmeted and club-carrying cops. Just as the line got into a full kick routine, the TPF advanced again and cleared the crowd of screaming gay powerites." By 3:30 a.m. Christopher Street was once again calm, but a new era in the gay rights struggle had already dawned.

Fade to black

Curtain

Epilogue

Isn't that an inspiring story? So the streets weren't filled with drag queens in sequins and heels. So the Stonewall riot didn't mark the start of the gay and lesbian rights struggle. (It wasn't even the first time that gay people challenged police repression.) But gay people - fluffy sweater boys, dykes, sissies, college students, boys in chinos and penny loafers - did in fact challenge police repression. They were finally pushed to the point where they'd had enough, and they fought back.

We can all relate to the sense of frustration and indignity that the Stonewallers experienced. And we can take pride in the actions of those young people in 1969 who lashed out in a way that plenty of us have fantasized about. The notion of bashing back has great visceral appeal, even if it's rarely the appropriate response.

The violent challenge to police harassment and repression at the Stonewall Inn was more than enough to earn the riot a place in gay history - in American history. But the impact of the Stonewall riot went far beyond the confines of Greenwich Village and Manhattan island. For a variety of reasons, the riot was a key turning point in the gay rights struggle across the country. It led to a virtual explosion of activity and organizing, primarily among young people, in the months and years immediately following.

At the time of the riot there were perhaps four dozen gay organizations across the country. By the early 1970s, there were more than four hundred, ranging from college and university groups to chapters of the Metropolitan Community Church - and, the gay liberation movement erupted on the political scene in cities across the country.

As we honor the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riot, there is no harm in celebrating what actually happened at the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall myth has plenty of appeal, but the true story is far more dramatic, exciting, and inspiring than any tale, even if it's seven feet tall (in platform shoes).

In five Canadian cities, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Winnipeg, legislation is being introduced to extend civil marriage rites to same-sex couples. I was asked to offer a short response, stating my opinion on the issue as an Orthodox rabbi. The opportunity to write about this matter triggered my own thinking about the areas where religion and public culture rub up against each other.

My Response

1. I am an ordained Rabbi of America's largest Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary, Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. I held an Orthodox pulpit early in my career and have been a Senior Teaching Fellow at CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership since 1985.

2. I have been asked to address the religious basis for the extension of civil marriage to homosexual couples. The usual split on this issue has been between the religious right and the secular left. The religious right desires to see certain religious values (in this case, exclusive heterosexual marriage) reflected in the society at large, while the secular left wishes to keep the public square free from specific religious values which undermine legitimate individual freedoms.

3. Marriage as an institution has deep roots in every religious tradition. However, the very idea of "civil marriage" was both a blow to the authority of the church (which until then was the only venue for enacting a marriage) and a direct import from religion into secular/civic affairs.

Orthodox Jewish Law - Halacha

4. The Hebrew halacha is translated as Jewish law. It is derived from the verb "to walk." Halacha is a society-building enterprise that maintains internal balance by reorganizing itself in response to changing social realities. When social conditions shift, the halachic reapplication is not experienced as "departure from the law," but as the proper commitment to the Torah's original purposes. While that shift in social consciousness in regard to same-sex relations has not occurred in Orthodox communities, it surely has in the larger society. Orthodox rabbis are beginning to understand that their gay and lesbian congregants are not freely choosing to be gay, but are simply discovering themselves to be essentially different.

5. Under Orthodox Jewish law as it currently stands, same-sex marriage is not permitted. The religious rites of kiddushin can only be enacted between two Jews, one male and the other female. While the rejection of homosexual relations is still normative in most Orthodox communities, halachists are beginning to include in their deliberations the testimony of gay people who wish to remain faithful to the tradition. New halachic strategies, I believe, will, in time, appear under these changing social conditions.

6. Orthodox Judaism places many restrictions on marriage that differ from those placed on civil marriage. Interfaith couples cannot be married. Indeed, a number of couples that might desire the state of matrimony, under Orthodox Jewish law, could not be married. The traditional Jewish community does not marry a male member of the priestly lineage with a divorcee or a convert, nor can a child of an adulterous union marry any Jew at all.

7. Despite the fact that civil marriage is offered to each of these couples, one hears no protest from the Orthodox community over the violation of its sensibilities. Orthodox communities have grown accustomed to the challenges of living in secular societies. Orthodox synagogues in Canada, were they to hire an "improperly married" or intermarried individual, would recognize the civil marriage and provide the appropriate marriage benefits for such persons. Rabbi Novak's speculation that Orthodox Jews would reject civil marriage were same-sex marriages included runs counter to the Orthodox community's historical acceptance of civil marriage as an institution governed by secular society.

Marriage is not a natural institution.

8. Marriage is an institution structured by societies. All marriages are "according to the laws" of some communal body that honors them. They are a feature of civilization, not nature. Marking homosexual marriage as contrary to some natural laws is reminiscent of the justifications put forward in the U.S. for laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

9. Moreover, all sorts of ideas about marriage have changed. Abraham ended up with a wife and a concubine, Jacob with two wives and two concubines. In the Talmud, the famed scholar Rav would travel and call out, "Who will marry me for the day?" This custom of "day marriages" was common in Babylonia among those men who could afford them. While surely not ideal, the rabbis of the age did not protest this use of marriage by one of their most revered teachers. Families are always a subset of the society of which they are a part. Marriage, likewise, is conditioned by the values and sensibilities of the social context. As society has come to understand the essential unchosen nature of same-sex desire, the offering of new forms of matrimony that support such couples would seem consonant with a contemporary sense of justice and social responsibility.

10. Same-sex marriage, like marriage generally, is a conservative institution expressing lifelong commitment, caring, love and support. It is fundamentally not about rights, but about duties. Central to Orthodox Jewish teaching is the importance of family. The rejection of gay coupling is hardly an expression of family values. Indeed, it is just the opposite. It is surely in the interest of families to support such unions that glue us all together by the force of our loving commitments to each other.

11. While it is true that procreation is one of the intents of marriage in our society, same-sex marriages would not prevent such endeavors any more than heterosexual marriages require them. Surely we would not claim that sterile couples or couples who choose not to produce children are not "really" married. Under Jewish law such couples might not be fulfilling the duty to reproduce, but that would have no bearing upon the legitimacy of their marriage. Moreover, adoption and surrogacy offer to gay couples the same potential as they do to heterosexual couples unable to reproduce.

12. Gay people cannot be asked to be straight, but they can be asked to "hold fast to the covenant." Holding fast to the covenant demands that gay people fulfill the mitzvot that are in their power to fulfill. Same-sex couples cannot procreate without outside assistance, but there are other ways to build a family and a marriage.

13. The wisdom of a religious practice lies not in the number of people that support it. Rabbi Novak raises the issue of the size of a religious community to impugn the views of Reform Judaism. It seems unimaginable to me that a Jew, a member of a religion that has endured such relentless persecution coincident with its minority status, should invoke this notion. As a minority religion in North America, the religious marriages of Jews are given civil recognition despite the fact that they are not in keeping with the beliefs of the majority. The comfort Rabbi Novak draws from allegedly being in the majority regarding religious views on same-sex marriage is frightening.

Civic institutions are crucial for religious freedom.

14. While religious organizations might have a hard time admitting it, the institution of civil marriage is one of the public frameworks that allow religious communities to thrive. It allows synagogues and churches to do what they do, to restrict or extend membership and offer or deny access to their services and rites according to their principles. Civil alternatives for contracting a legally recognized marriage insure the freedom of religious communities to shape their own rules. Without civil and diverse religious alternatives for contracting a legally recognized marriage, those who do not conform to religious rules would put great pressure on religious organizations to change.

15. Civil marriage provides an umbrella under which we all can live, despite our very passionate differences. The state ensures that marriage is not denied to anyone based on a couple's particular religious beliefs or their lack of any religious beliefs. Civil recognition is extended to secular marriages and to marriages according to diverse religious traditions, practices and beliefs, including to persons who do not meet the criteria of one or more religions. Conversely, the state does not require any religion to marry anyone who does not meet its criteria (for example, an Orthodox rabbi cannot be compelled to marry a Jew to a Gentile). This situation is not a cause for concern, but rather for celebration. That the civil concept of marriage and diverse religious conceptions of marriage can co-exist not only demonstrates the ability of civilly recognized marriage to be flexible and to be separate from religious practice, but it also ensures the ability of religious marriage to choose its own course. That is certainly a victory for freedom of religion.

AN INCREASINGLY COMMON objection to same-sex marriage takes the form of a slippery-slope argument: "If we allow gay marriage, why not polygamy? Or incest? Or bestiality?" This argument is nothing new, having been used against interracial marriage in the 1960's. But what it lacks in originality it more than makes up for in rhetorical force: given the choice between rejecting homosexuality or accepting a sexual free-for-all, mainstream Americans tend to opt for the former.

Unfortunately, sound-bite arguments don't always lend themselves to sound-bite refutations. Part of the problem is that the polygamy/incest/bestiality argument (PIB argument for short) is not really an argument at all. Instead, it's a challenge: "Okay, Mr. Sexual Liberal: explain to me why polygamy, incest, and bestiality are wrong." Most people are not prepared to do that - certainly not in twenty words or less. And many answers that leap to mind (for example, that PIB relationships violate well-established social norms) won't work for the defender of same-sex relationships (since same-sex relationships, too, violate well-established social norms).

In what follows I respond to the PIB challenge. But first, I wish to set aside two popular responses that I think are inadequate. Call the first the "We really exist" argument. According to this argument, homosexuality is different from polygamy, incest, and bestiality because there are "constitutional" homosexuals, but not constitutional polygamists, incestualists, or bestialists. As Andrew Sullivan writes,

Almost everyone seems to accept, even if they find homosexuality morally troublesome, that it occupies a deeper level of human consciousness than a polygamous impulse. Even the Catholic Church, which believes that homosexuality is an "objective disorder," concedes that it is a profound element of human identity....[P]olygamy is an activity, whereas both homosexuality and heterosexuality are states."

Sullivan is probably right in his description of popular consciousness about homosexuality. Yet traditionalists may reject the idea that homosexuality is an immutable given. At a June 1997 conference at Georgetown University, "Homosexuality and American Public Life," conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher urged her audience to stop thinking of homosexuality as an inevitable, key feature of an individual's personality. Drawing, ironically, on the work of queer theorists, Gallagher proposed instead that homosexuality is a cultural convention - one that ought to be challenged.

If Gallagher and her social constructionist sources are right, the "We really exist" argument must be abandoned. But whether they're right or not, there are good pragmatic reasons for abandoning this argument. "We really exist" sounds dangerously like "We just can't help it." And to this claim there is an obvious response: "Well, alcoholics really exist, too. They can't help their impulses. But we don't encourage them." Though the alcoholism analogy is generally a bad one, it underscores the rhetorical weakness of claiming "We really exist" in response to the (rhetorically strong) PIB challenge.

A second response to the PIB challenge is to argue that as long as PIB relationships are forbidden for heterosexuals, they should be forbidden for homosexuals as well. Call this the "equal options" argument. To put the argument more positively: we homosexuals are not asking to engage in polygamy, incest, or bestiality. We are simply asking to engage in monogamous, non-incestuous relationships with people we love - just like heterosexuals do. As Jonathan Rauch writes,

The hidden assumption of the argument which brackets gay marriage with polygamous or incestuous marriage is that homosexuals want the right to marry anyone they fall for. But, of course, heterosexuals are currently denied that right. They cannot marry their immediate family or all their sex partners. What homosexuals are asking for is the right to marry, not anybody they love, but somebody they love, which is not at all the same thing.

Once again, this argument is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough - at least not far enough to satisfy proponents of the PIB argument. As they see it, permitting homosexuality - even monogamous, non-incestuous, person-to-person homosexuality - involves relaxing traditional sexual mores. The fact that these mores prohibit constitutional homosexuals from marrying somebody they love is no more troubling to traditionalists than the fact that these mores prohibit constitutional pedophiles from marrying somebody they love, since traditionalists believe that there are good reasons for both prohibitions.

In short, both the "we exist" argument and the "equal options" argument are vulnerable to counterexamples: alcoholics really exist, and pedophiles are denied equal marital options. (Indeed, traditionalists are fond of pointing out that, strictly speaking, homosexuals do have "equal" options: they have the option of marrying persons of the oppostite sex. Such traditionalists usually remain silent on whether this option is a good idea for anyone involved, but so it goes.)

There is, I think, a better response to the PIB argument, one that has been suggested by both Sullivan and Rauch (whose contributions to this debate I gratefully acknowledge). It is to deny that arguments for homosexual relationships offer any real support for PIB relationships. Why would proponents of the PIB argument think otherwise? Perhaps they assume that our main argument for homosexual relationships is that they feel good and we want them. If that were our argument, it would indeed offer support for PIB relationships. But that is not our argument: it is a straw man.

A much better argument for homosexual relationships begins with an analogy: homosexual relationships offer virtually all of the benefits of sterile heterosexual relationships; thus, if we approve of the latter, we should approve of the former as well. For example, both heterosexual relationships and homosexual relationships can unite people in a way that ordinary friendship simply cannot. Both can have substantial practical benefits in terms of the health, economic security, and social productivity of the partners. Both can be important constituents of a flourishing life. Yes, they feel good and we want them, but there's a lot more to it than that. These similarities create a strong prima facie case for treating homosexual and heterosexual relationships the same - morally, socially, and politically.

"But wait," say the opponents. "Can't you make the same argument for PIB relationships?" Not quite. It is true that you can use the same form of argument for PIB relationships: PIB relationships have benefits X, Y, and Z and no relevant drawbacks. But whether PIB relationships do in fact have such benefits and lack such drawbacks is an empirical matter, one that will not be settled by looking to homosexual relationships.

To put my point more concretely: to observe that Tom and Dick (and many others like them) flourish in homosexual relationships is not to prove that Greg and Marcia would flourish in an incestuous relationship, or that Mike, Carol, and Alice would flourish in a polygamous relationship, or that Bobby and Tiger would flourish in a bestial relationship. Whether they would or not is a separate question - one that requires a whole new set of data.

Another way to indicate the logical distance between homosexual relationships and PIB relationships is to point out that PIB relationships can be either homosexual or heterosexual. Proponents of the PIB challenge must therefore explain why they group PIB relationships with homosexual relationships rather than heterosexual ones. There's only one plausible reason: PIB and homosexuality have traditionally been condemned. But (whoops!) that's also true of interracial relationships, which traditionalists (typically) no longer condemn. And (whoops again!) they've just argued in a circle: the question at hand is why we should group PIB relationships with homosexual relationships rather than heterosexual ones. Saying that "we've always grouped them together" doesn't answer the question, it begs it.

The question remains, of course, whether PIB relationships do, on balance, have benefits sufficient to warrant their approval. Answering that question requires far more data than I can marshal here. It also requires careful attention to various distinctions: distinctions between morality and public policy, distinctions between the morally permissible and the morally ideal, and - perhaps most important - distinctions between polygamy, incest, and bestiality, which are as different from each other as they each are from homosexuality. In what remains I offer some brief (and admittedly inconclusive) observations about each of these phenomena.

Polygamy provides perhaps the best opportunity among the three for obtaining the requisite data: there have been and continue to be polygamous societies. Most of these are in fact polygynous (multiple-wife) societies, and most of them are sexist. Whether egalitarian polygamous societies are possible is an open question. Whether egalitarian polygamous relationships are possible (as opposed to entire societies) is an easier question. Though I find it difficult to imagine maintaining a relationship with several spouses - having had enough trouble maintaining a relationship with one - I have no doubt that at least some people flourish in them.

This conclusion leaves open the question of whether such relationships should be state-supported. As my acquaintance Josh Goldfoot put it, "Marry your toaster if you like, but please don't try to file a joint tax return with it." Whatever reasons the state has for being in the marriage business (and this point is a matter of considerable debate), these may or may not be good reasons for the state to recognize multiple spouses.

Polygamy also provides the most troublesome case for the traditionalists, since polygamy has Biblical support. True, the Bible reports troublesome jealousies among the sons of various wives, which perhaps should be taken as a lesson. But polygamy is clearly a case where the religious right can't point to "God's eternal law."

Incest, too, is common and expected in some societies - typically in the form of rites of initiation. In our own society incest typically results in various psychological difficulties, difficulties that should at least give pause to the supporter of incest. But one can easily construct a case that circumvents most (if not all) of these difficulties: imagine two adult lesbian sisters who privately engage in what they report to be a fulfilling sexual relationship. Can I prove that such activity is wrong? No - at least not off the top of my head. On the other hand, I don't think it's incumbent upon me to do so. If there are good arguments against such a relationship, they will remain unaffected by the argument in favor of homosexuality. And if the only argument traditionalists can offer against such a relationship is that longstanding tradition prohibits it, so much the worse for traditionalists. Again, that same argument is applicable to interracial relationships, and history has revealed its bankruptcy.

The bestiality analogy is the most irksome of the three, since it reveals that the traditionalists are either woefully dishonest or woefully dense. To compare a homosexual encounter - even a so-called "casual" one - with humping a sheep is to ignore the distinctively human capacities that sexual relationships can (and usually do) engage. As such, it is to reduce sex to its purely physical components - precisely the reduction that traditionalists are fond of accusing us of. That noted, claiming that bestial relationships are qualitatively different from human homosexual relationships does not prove that bestial relationships are immoral. Nor does the lack of mutual consent, since we generally don't seek consent in our dealings with animals. No cow consented to become my shoes, for example.

To be honest, I feel about bestiality much as I feel about sex with inflatable dolls: I don't recommend making a habit out of it, and it's not something I'd care to do myself, but it's hardly worthy of serious moral attention. I feel much the same way about watching infomercials: there are better ways to spend one's time, to be sure, but there are also better things for concerned citizens to worry about.

Why, then, are we even discussing bestiality? Perhaps it's because traditionalists have run out of plausible-sounding arguments against homosexuality, and so now they're grasping at straws. And then there's the emotional factor: mentioning homosexuality won't make people squeamish the way it once did, but mentioning bestiality and incest will at least raise some eyebrows, if not turn some stomachs. In short, the right wing knows that it's losing its cultural war against homosexuality, and it's trying to change the subject. We should steadfastly refuse to join them.

Introduction

WHY IS IT that so many people seem to have negative attitudes towards homosexuality? The thesis that I wish to present is that these attitudes are emotional in character, and that they are not really the result of intellectual analysis, which some pretend or mistakenly think to be the case. I refer to these negative attitudes as "homophobia."

In fact, I propose that intellectual analysis can be used to demonstrate that these emotions are untenable and unreliable as a proper guide to how one should view other people and as a guide to public policy. I furthermore argue that these emotions can and should be altered, although that is a somewhat difficult process; at least, they should not be allowed to form the basis of how one treats fellow human beings, neither in person nor in legislation.

It is important, at the outset, to understand that I view homosexuality as a non-chosen, non-changeable sexual orientation which entails emotional-sexual attraction between persons of the same sex. When I speak of homophobes, I primarily refer to heterosexual men, as they seem to display it more than other categories.

The Crucial Role of Emotional Reactions

There is a lot that unites human beings, but it is also the case that there is a lot that separates us. Although most of us have a capacity for empathy (to which I will appeal later in this essay), it is really quite difficult for us to truly understand how another person experiences life. By analogy, we can interpret many things that others go through in a way which is similar to the way they interpret them, but especially in cases which are unfamiliar to us, we are at a loss when it comes to genuine comprehension. I suggest that many a heterosexual person cannot truly understand the feelings and experiences of a homosexual person, and vice versa.

If it were the case that a heterosexual could truly understand same-sex attraction, and all that goes with it, then I submit that he would not view it negatively. Then he would easily accept the co-existence of this different category of persons on the basis of a realization that it is merely an expression of harmless and edifying love between consenting persons?something which, on reflection, should be acceptable to all.

But the fact is that many heterosexuals do not feel accepting towards homosexuality. Why is that? Because they cannot truly understand homosexuality, as it is a trait of some human beings which they have not themselves experienced, and hence they evaluate it on purely emotional grounds. That is to say, when straight men hear "homosexuality," they proceed to imagine themselves in a situation of homoeroticism, possibly kissing or having anal sex with a man they find unattractive, to which their feelings respond strongly and negatively. They experience disgust at this thought experiment. And that is no surprise, since their nature is wired so as to feel erotically attracted pnly towards persons of the opposite sex. As a result, these people talk and act in a way which communicates this homophobia, and they dislike legal reform which is beneficial to homosexuals for the same reason.

This theory as to the origin of homophobia seems to conflict with the popular notion that negative attitudes towards homosexuality reflect an intellectual analysis, the outcome of which is the presentation of valid reasons, of a non-emotional character, for disliking and working against homosexuality. My view is that there is such a conflict and that my theory is the correct one, which among other things implies that negative attitudes towards homosexuality are primarily fueled by emotional reactions from hypothetical, homoerotic thought experiments performed by heterosexuals. Without such an emotional basis, I posit that there would be virtually no attempts to formulate ostensibly intellectual arguments against homosexuality. The order of causality is

1. emotional disgust when considering homosexuality
2. "intellectual" reasons for disliking homosexuality

and not the other way around. That is, the emotional reactions predate any rules, laws, or other injunctions against homosexuality.

I have personally found this understanding of things confirmed in conversations with some homophobic heterosexuals. They have started out by giving "intellectual" reasons for why they dislike homosexuality (e.g., "it does not produce children"), so as to give a serious impression to the effect that this dislike is based on properly reflected-upon arguments. But then I have inquired what they think of lesbianism, and then they almost always respond by voicing their approval. This, I think, clearly reflects that these men use the thought-experiment procedure I described earlier: and then, they found the thought of their having sex with another man disgusting, whilst they found the sexual fantasy of two women having sex arousing and, therefore, acceptable. In spite of lesbian sex not bringing forth children, I might add.

However, it is important to note that the source of emotions?all of them psychological in character?can be both biological and cultural. The type of emotions described thus far, I mainly take to be of a biological character. But there is also another source of homophobic emotions, namely, the cultural or social influence. If a person is born into a culture where heterosexuality is predominant in all contexts and if it permeates family life, the media, the religions, and legislation, then the biological tendency for a heterosexual to react negatively towards homosexuality is reinforced by the society around him. This is especially the case if, in addition to the total dominance of heterosexuality, explicit homophobia is part of the culture. I think that cultural attitudes of this sort mainly stem from biologically induced emotions, which means that the instinctive homophobia of heterosexuals leads them to incorporate a pro-heterosexual attitude into their life environments. (On the concept of "instinctive homophobia," see Simon LeVay, Queer Science, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996, p. 294.)

Hence, I think that the ordinary heterosexual who is in possession of negative attitudes towards homosexuality has them because of a combination (in varying degrees) of a biologically based, instinctive feeling of disgust and a cultural, internalized disapprobation. The latter, in turn, is the result of other persons having had a biologically based, instinctive feeling of disgust at the thought of homosexuality which they thought proper to spread via modes of upbringing, religious books and sermons, legislation, etc.

Are Homophobic Emotions Acceptable?

If this thesis as to the origin of homophobia is correct, how can these emotions, and the attitudes that go with them, be evaluated? Does the existence of anti-homosexuality emotions display rational moral intuitions, in the sense that they can be shown to contribute to the realization of some reasonable moral value? In other words, are heterosexual homophobes justified in displaying homophobic attitudes? I think not. What I have tried to do above is merely to explain, as a factual matter, the origin of homophobia. Whether homophobia is normatively acceptable is another matter entirely.

As I view the culturally transmitted disapproval of homosexuality as an extension of the biologically based, instinctive dislike, and as I do not think that any occurrence in nature (i.e., anything of biological origin) automatically makes it morally acceptable, we must evaluate emotions rationally and see if their existence is conducive to the attainment of some moral value?or, indeed, if their existence is detrimental to the attainment of some moral value. That is, "is" does not necessarily imply "ought."

So let us begin by specifying that the moral value that we are interested in is the furtherance of the highest possible amount of subjective preference satisfaction in some population. (For a more detailed discussion of this moral principle, and why I deem it reasonable, see my essay My Personal Moral View, available at my personal home pages.) Given this goal, two things follow. First, mere homophobic attitudes cannot really be said to be either good or bad, so long as they remain mere attitudes and are not reflected in any action.

Second, if these attitudes lead to homosexual persons feeling substantially less satisfied in life (perhaps as the result of discriminatory legislation or practices, or as the result of verbal admonitions), then the manifestations of these attitudes can be said to constitute behavior which is inconsistent with our goal. And hence they are irrational. (This assessment rests on the reasonable assumption that such maltreatment of homosexuals induce only minor feelings of satisfaction in homophobes; for more on utilitarianism and the maltreatment of minorities, see R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Level, Method and Point, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, pp. 140-2.) Now, it is possible that there is some other moral value which is better attained by such manifestations, and then they are not irrational, but nevertheless bad, from my moral point of view.

The outcome of this line of reasoning is that actions rooted in negative feelings towards homosexuality are to be discouraged. This could be done in three basic ways.

First, it is perhaps possible, although probably quite difficult, to alter a person's feelings towards homosexuality. After childhood, when it seems that humans are most open to influences of this sort, I would think that such a procedure requires the explicit cooperation of the individual whose feelings need to be changed. One similar example is my own personal feelings towards masturbation. As a child, I felt shame after having masturbated, but as I grew up, I reflected on this act and found it perfectly healthy and beneficial. I then gradually worked at eliminating the negative feelings, and eventually I succeeded.

Second, even if a person retains an instinctive dislike of homosexuality, in the sense that he would not like do engage in same-sex acts himself, he may realize, on an intellectual level, that such feelings are personal, rooted in biology, and not beneficial as a basis for behavior towards other humans. My heterosexual friend Fredrik Bendz is an example of such a person, as told in his essay Homosexuality, available as a link from my personal web pages. My experience tells me that this type of insight often reflects personal contact with someone who happens to be homosexual and whom the instinctive homophobe likes and respects as a person. Such contacts help the heterosexual person gain a bit more understanding of what homosexuality is all about: the simple manifestation of love between persons of the same sex. And such a thing should not be feared or discouraged.

Third, one could impose legal sanctions on persons who defame, discriminate against, or attack homosexuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. In my view, the second approach is the most realistic and functional.

Some Possible Counter-Arguments

But does this account of the origin of homophobia explain the case of homosexuals who have negative attitudes towards their own homosexuality? I will discuss two cases, but I think this phenomenon can be explained by the influence of internalized cultural attitudes. That is, these feelings are not instinctive and biological in origin, but they stem directly from the process of upbringing and the surrounding society (of which organized religions are part). Thus, these feelings really reflect the biologically induced, instinctive attitudes of some heterosexual homophobes of the past.

The first case is my own case. Between the ages of 16 and 27 I was a Christian of the born-again, fundamentalist, bible-believing sort. Before the age of 16, I had felt attracted to other boys for as long as I could remember. As a Christian, I gradually came to regard homosexual acts as sinful, which made me dislike my homosexuality strongly. However, deep down inside, I liked the way I was: it was me, it felt good, and it was about love! Eventually, when I began to realize that Christianity was not true, I could drop the culturally imposed categorization of homosexual acts as sinful, and live my life in accordance with my true self. (Read more in My Personal Story: Growing Up Gay, available at my home pages.)

The second case is about recent similar experiments at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of Georgia. At each experiment, a group of self-identified heterosexual male students were enrolled, and on the basis of their answers to various questions, such as their attitude towards homosexuality, they were divided into two subgroups: one with stated heterosexuals who were accepting of homosexuality and one with stated heterosexuals who were homophobic. All students were then showed different pornographic films, during which their degree of sexual arousal was observed (by measuring the degree of erection carefully).

It turned out, in both experiments, that a large majority of the homophobic "heterosexuals" were sexually turned on by gay pornography, whereas only a small minority of "homo-friendly" heterosexuals were turned on by these films. It seems that Freud's discussion of reaction formation was vindicated in these experiments: homophobes may, to a large extent, be homosexuals who have internalized cultural attitudes of dislike and disgust towards their own sexual orientations (probably unconsciously in most cases). Again, negative attitudes towards homosexuality are the result of culturally transmitted homophobia of some heterosexuals of the past, who felt instinctive revulsion at the thought of engaging in homosexual acts.

Let me illustrate that my understanding of the emotional basis of homophobia is confirmed by many anti-homosexuality rules and laws. For instance, the old testament of the Bible contains a harsh injunction against same-sex acts in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. However, if the basis of this anti-homosexuality attitude was rational reasoning, and not emotions, then how can it be explained that lesbianism is not condemned anywhere in the old testament? Rather, this omission shows us that the basis of these rules are the biologically based and instinctive homophobia of some male Jewish leaders against male homosexuality; but since they did not feel revulsion when contemplating sex between two females, they did not think it immoral.

Also, the laws against homosexual acts in Britain and the states of the U.S. have almost always excluded lesbian sexual acts. How can this be explained, if the basis of these laws is some sort of general, intellectual argument of the type exemplified above? Again, the more plausible interpretation of this omission is that the laws were designed by homophobic heterosexual males, influenced wholly by their biologically and culturally induced feelings, who wanted to make life miserable for many homosexuals, whom the heterosexuals spontaneously disliked.

But if the origin of heterosexuals disliking homosexuality is biological, why do we not see "heterophobic" homosexuals? If they think of themselves having sex with persons of the opposite sex, do they not feel disgusted, just as heterosexuals feel disgusted when contemplating having sex with persons of the same sex? I would say that many homosexuals probably have negative feelings towards engaging in heterosexual sex, but this is not as big a problem as homophobia. It should be remembered that homosexuals have grown up in a heterosexualist culture, where it is expected that everyone is heterosexual and where heterosexual sex and love is utterly dominant (in the family, in the media, in the laws, in the traditions, etc.).

For this reason, homosexuals are much more used to heterosexuality than heterosexuals are to homosexuality. (This is partly because there are far fewer homosexuals in the general population.) The point here is that homosexuals are thus better equipped for understanding heterosexuality than vice versa. This helps them, in spite of not wanting to engage in opposite-sex acts themselves (due to a biologically induced feeling of repulsion or indifference), to accept that others are different from themselves?and that this is acceptable. This acceptance is partly stimulated by the experiences of many homosexuals, of not being accepted themselves. Through empathy, it is recognized that acceptance of persons, irrespective of their sexual orientation, is paramount.

Conclusion

To conclude: the basis of heterosexuals having negative feelings towards homosexuality is originally biological and instinctive (when they thought about having sex with someone of the same sex, they were repulsed). Then, successive generations of heterosexuals were influenced towards having these negative attitudes both because of the same biological instinct, but also because of the cultural disapproval of homosexuality, conveyed in rules, laws, and verbal statements from others. This cultural influence has also affected many homosexuals to view their own homosexuality negatively.

But it is usually not the case, for homophobic persons, that the basis of their attitudes towards homosexuality is rational reasoning, or intellectual argumentation. Such endeavors have, as a rule, been added afterwards, to try to give the homophobia a nicer and more respectable framing. However, these attempts to argue intellectually against homosexuality are utter failures. Alas, if I am right about homophobia being emotionally based, then this realization, of the arguments being faulty, will not cause homophobes to change their attitudes. For them to get to know someone who is a homosexual might.

The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom.
By Michael Bronski, St. Martin's Press, $24.95. 294 pages.

THERE ARE TWO basic schools of thought as to what the gay rights movement should be about. Some of us, who are often erroneously described as assimilationists but who should more accurately be called integrationists, feel that the movement should seek to achieve acceptance, equal rights, and full integration into the present social and political structure. We believe that gay people are not terribly different from straight people, and that we have a realistic hope of achieving (if you will) a place at the table if we intelligently and responsibly address the ignorance and fear of homosexuality that are our chief barriers to full acceptance and equality.

Others, who are usually known as liberationists, maintain that the movement should seek to transform society in radical ways. In their view, gays differ profoundly from straights; our homosexuality represents an extreme challenge to the established order, and obliges us to be instruments of revolutionary social transformation. If we integrationists have sought to shape a practical gay politics -- a politics capable of effecting real improvement in the lives of gay people -- many liberationists cheerfully admit that their own politics are impractical and unrealistic. Among these is Michael Bronski, who in The Pleasure Principle admits that his own "vision of human liberation" involves "an almost utopian desire to remake the world." Some liberationists envision a Marxist heaven; Bronski's utopian dreams are not about economics but about sex.

There is much in this book with which many integrationists will readily agree. Bronski is right, for instance, when he says that Americans have hang-ups about sex, and that these hang-ups play a role in shaping straight attitudes toward homosexuality. When heterosexuals think of homosexuals, in short, they tend to think of sex. They think we have more sex than they do, or better sex than they do, or both, and many of them resent and/or fear us on this account. Most integrationists feel that the best way to address this problem is to get out the word that gay lives are not necessarily any more about sex than straight lives are. Bronski takes the opposite tack: he embraces the notion that homosexuality is all about sex and that gays know more about sexual pleasure than straights do. For this reason, he insists, we should become "pleasure-teachers" who seek to transform society's attitudes toward the joys of the flesh.

Only in a culture with strong Puritan foundations and a deep streak of native romanticism could so smart a writer argue such a silly thesis. It's in the nature of Puritanism, after all, that it spawns not only extreme sexual repression but also, in reaction, a childlike conviction on some people's part that the answer to all of life's problems lies in sexual freedom. (If only!)

In recent years, as more and more gays have come out, it has become increasingly clear that most of us lead more or less conventional lives and hold values far more traditional than stereotypes would suggest. Nothing could be more threatening to gay liberationism, the fortunes of which are tied to the image of gay people as radically different, threatening, and hypersexual. Accordingly, when integrationists have dared to make the simple point that most gays aren't very different in most ways from most straights, liberationists have felt obliged to shoot them down. Bronski, for his part, trains his sights on a passage from my 1993 book A Place at the Table in which I recalled a clean-cut teenage boy whom I had seen in a bookstore, nervously picking up a gay publication that turned out to be full of drag and S&M photos. "Bawer's presumption," writes Bronski, "is that the young boy would be so frightened by images of overt gay male sexuality that he would panic. This conjecture is indicative of how readily the assimilationist trend in the gay movement would separate sexuality from gay identity and from manifestations of gay culture."

"Frightened" and "panic" are Bronski's words, not mine. As I made clear in the book, my concern was not that the boy would be "frightened by images of overt gay male sexuality" but that he would not relate to the particular sexual variations depicted in that publication and would think either "Well, if that's what it means to be gay, then I guess I must not be gay" or "Well, I'm gay, so I guess I'd I'd better try to become like that" or "Well, I'm gay, but I refuse to become like that, so I guess the only alternative is to repress it and marry." As I wrote in the book, "Don't let anyone, straight or gay, tell you who you are." The anecdote resonated with scores of readers who told me in letters and at public appearances: "That boy was me."

Indeed, that boy is legion. But to gay liberationists like Bronski, he needs to be denied, ridiculed, misrepresented, rendered invisible. The survival of gay liberationist ideology depends on it. Bronski denounces conformism - but what The Pleasure Principle reflects, more than anything else, is its author's manifest anxiety over the growing number of gays who fail to conform to his favored model of gay life and thought. Bronski would have us all fall into lockstep and become models of social transgression; but that's not any fairer than pressuring us all to stay in the closet.

Fortunately, there is much in this book that is genuinely valuable and that you don't have to agree with Bronski's thesis in order to appreciate. His discussion of American attitudes toward young people's sexuality, the highlight of which is his analysis of the downfall of Pee Wee Herman and Father Bruce Ritter (of Covenant House fame), is particularly discerning. Bronski is, it must be said, a much better thinker and writer than most liberationists. Yet his program for gay America is so far removed from the reality of most American lives as to be useless. I've gone on more radio call-in shows than I care to remember and fielded calls from evangelical Christian mothers who, in dulcet tones, have told me that as a gay man I'm a tool of the Devil; I tremble to think of what it might be like to grow up gay in their homes. To my mind, gay politics must seek to make things as good as possible as fast as possible for young people in such situations. Bronski's sexual utopianism, alas, fails that test miserably.