IGF CultureWatch

THE MURKY MUCK OF compassionate conservatism is clearing up, and the emerging picture isn't always pretty. Texas Gov. George W. Bush's public statements so far in support of criminalizing gay sex, for example, reveal that his views aren't very compassionate. They're not really conservative, either.

The statements are all the more important as a signal about Bush's attitude toward gays because, although numerous states still have laws that forbid sodomy, only a handful aim solely at gay sex the way the Texas law does.

To be fair to Bush, he inherited his state's anti-gay sodomy law. Although it's been around for decades in one form or another, the current version was adopted by a Democratic state legislature in 1993 as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the state penal code. Then it was signed by a Democratic governor, the sainted Ann Richards, who opposed the measure but did almost nothing to stop it. Still, Bush cannot escape the consequences of what he is saying about it now - and neither can we.

Those who support anti-gay sodomy laws come two ways: hard and soft. The hard-on-sodomy position holds that gay sex should be illegal and those who practice it should be thrown in jail. The hard-liners are fully prepared to have the cops barge into your bedroom, arrest you, and haul you away to make license plates. It doesn't bother them that full implementation of their vision of a moral society would assault the traditional conservative principle of limited government. Rigorous enforcement of anti-gay sodomy laws would require the erection of a police state.

Bush is more flaccid when it comes to sodomy. He has promised to veto any attempt to repeal the Texas sodomy law, which he defends as "a symbolic gesture of traditional values."

Yet Bush has never called for actual enforcement of the law. Thousands of gay Texans violate it every night with little fear that a Bush-inspired Gestapo will kick down their doors. Although last year Houston police did arrest two men having sex in a private home, the incident was so bizarre that it was the exception that proves the rule of non-enforcement.

Implicit in Bush's endorsement of the sodomy law as a mere "symbol" and "gesture" is the idea that it should not be enforced. This soft defense is disingenuous. It says to the religious right, "I share your values." It then winks at everyone else and whispers, "But I don't really mean it." It's the kind of politics that promises something with its fingers crossed behind its back. Is this compassionate conservatism in action?

It is certainly not compassionate. Just what "symbolic gesture" does an anti-gay sodomy law make? It is a signal sent from one segment of the population to another and is clear as can be: You are so dirty and disgusting that even your most intimate, loving moments are a stench in our nostrils. It is a form of caste politics.

If you publicly denounce someone as a criminal, the compassionate act is then to jail him to protect him from the mob you've aroused.

But Bush's position is not conservative, either. The father of modern political conservatism, the 18th-century British statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, would be aghast at Bush's support for a criminal law he is not prepared to enforce.

"A penal law not ordinarily put in execution seems to me to be a very absurd and a very dangerous thing," Burke argued during a passionate speech urging tolerance for religious minorities. He reasoned that if the law at issue punishes a genuine evil it would be irresponsible not to administer it.

However, if its object is not the suppression of some real wrong, "then you ought not to hold even a terror to those whom you ought certainly not to punish." If it is not right to enforce the law against an offender, Burke argued, then "it is neither right nor wise to menace" him with it. "Take them which way you will," he said of unenforced criminal laws, "they are pressed with ugly alternatives."

A real conservative in the Burke mold would either have the courage of his convictions and enforce the law or drop the matter. The existence of sodomy laws as a middle-finger gesture from the traditional-values majority to gay citizens proves Burke's insight that unenforced criminal laws are a menace and a terror to those they target.

What issues politely from the mouth of a politician may finish crudely on a Wyoming plain. If Bush wants symbols, let him ponder Matthew Shepard on his fence. There's the anti-gay symbol of this era.

Shepard didn't get to that spot by accident. He got there because two boys grew up in a culture that judged gays symbolic criminals; because, as young men, they learned it was their place to execute that judgment, even if the law was unwilling to do so; and they learned that in part because - rather than standing up for real decency, the kind that encourages citizens in a diverse and free society to live side-by-side in peace - influential people like George W. Bush indulge a fake and pretentious decency, the kind that plays at moral judgments it no longer believes in.

I may side with Bush on everything from taxes to China, but as long as he thinks I'm an outlaw in my own land, he won't get this Republican's vote.

First appeared on September 8, 1999, in the Chicago Free Press.

AFTER I FINISHED a recent commentary about the slight shift toward gay inclusiveness by some GOP presidential candidates, it occurred to me that the language they use to describe their positions is as interesting as the moves themselves.

The language candidates Elizabeth Dole, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, John McCain use to try to appear more tolerant, accepting or inclusive is intentionally evasive or ambiguous. It is designed to suggest as much as possible to voters on all sides of the issue while actually saying as little as possible.

Keep in mind, though, that obvious efforts at evasion are sometimes significant when there are strong pressures, say from the religious right, not to be evasive about issues such as homosexuality.

Perhaps the chief way Republican candidates try to show they are not anti-gay is their willingness to appoint a gay person to their administration. For instance, Bush said earlier this year that he would hire a homosexual "if someone can do a job and a job that he's qualified for."

This sounds positive enough, and we know that Bush has openly gay advisors. But notice the ambiguity. Bush leaves himself an out by saying that a person has to be qualified for the job. When it comes to political appointments, though, qualifications have a strong subjective component. That is, qualifications are partly a function of the person's acceptability to the constituency he will be working with or speaking for.

Is a Baptist "qualified" to be U.S. ambassador to the Vatican? How about an atheist? Not very likely. Is a union-busting corporate attorney "qualified" to be Secretary of Labor? Probably not. Is a gay man "qualified" to be Secretary of Defense, where he would have to deal with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military's anti-gay policy? What about a gay man as a senior official in the Department of Education, where he might influence policy for teaching our impressionable, vulnerable school children? What about ambassador to Luxembourg, where he would represent the U.S. government? Many Republican senators apparently think not. What about ambassador to Saudi Arabia, where gay sex is illegal?

In other words if there is sufficient objection to an appointment, that in itself means the person is not "qualified." So Bush's willingness to hire "qualified" gays seems considerably weaker and more flexible than it first appears. Maybe he would hire gays only when no one objected. Maybe the only "qualified" homosexuals are those no one knows about. Is this what Bush means? His answer tells us nothing, as it was designed to do.

Forbes' spokesman Bill Dal Col said his candidate too would be willing to appoint a homosexual "if the person is qualified for the job," but quickly added, "as long as it is not a statement on a lifestyle or promoting a lifestyle." That second part is even more evasive, and it is expressed in the language of the religious right with its overtones about choice and recruitment.

But we need to ask what Dal Col means. When is an appointment a statement about a lifestyle or promoting a lifestyle? Whenever a gay person is the first gay appointee to anything? If so, then no gay person can be appointed to anything higher than current gay appointment levels. In fact, almost any appointment of an openly gay person can be considered a statement about his or her lifestyle -- if only the minimal statement that such a "lifestyle" is neutral or irrelevant. In the current social climate, that is itself a statement about homosexuality to the extent that it rejects condemnation.

So the question remains: Would Forbes hire an openly gay person for anything, or is the concept of an appointment that "is not a statement about a lifestyle" an empty category, a concept with no possible examples? Dal Col's answer was meant to leave that question entirely open so as to commit Forbes to absolutely nothing.

Bush and Forbes also oppose "special rights." According to the New York Times Forbes frequently says he wants "equal rights for all, special rights for none." Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told the Times that Bush "doesn't believe in granting legal rights based on sexual orientation." Presumably both are thinking of gay non-discrimination laws or hate crimes laws.

But of course Bush does believe in granting legal rights based on sexual orientation. In Texas, heterosexuals have a legal right to marry the person they love; gays do not. Texas' sodomy law, specifically endorsed by Bush as a statement of "our social values," lets heterosexuals have sex legally, while gays may not. Forbes too opposes the equality of gay marriage and both oppose the right of gays to serve openly in the military, although they approve of open heterosexuals serving.

Which rights then are called "special rights" and which are not? It seems that when heterosexuals have a right that gays lack, and the candidate approves, it is not a "special right." So the "special rights" language does not refer to a real political category; it is merely a rhetorical term, designed to include whatever the candidate wants it to. Whether something is described as a special right or not depends entirely on whether the candidate is for it or against it. If and when Bush or Forbes or anyone else decides to endorse something for gays, he will cease to refer to it as a special right.

So what do these candidates really believe? They believe they would like to be president.

They believe they do not want to alienate voters on either side of a contentious and divisive issue such as homosexuality. They believe any specific position will lose them votes. And they believe they can formulate language that will appeal equally to both sides, allowing each to think the candidate is on their side.

Originally appeared September 4, 1999, in National Journal.

NOT LONG AFTER THE END of the Second World War, a young man named Shiu-kee gathered up a few things and set out to walk from a small village in the Guangdong province of southeastern China. The young man possessed almost nothing in the world, and he hoped to make a better life in Hong Kong. He was not the first young man in his family to make this journey. His elder brother had been vouchsafed the family's scant capital and was sent across the border, where he established himself in business. But the brother broke his promise to return his stake to the family so that others could follow. Shiu-kee thus set out with empty pockets, hoping for the best.

He was a married man with a baby son. Through a matchmaker, he had been paired with a village girl named Yuk-king, whose mother saw Shiu-kee as a hard-working, if poor, young man. The bride and groom met for the first time on their wedding day.

After a few years in Hong Kong, Shiu-kee managed to start a small business, a workshop that made heavy cotton blankets. His prospects looked promising, so he sent for his wife and son to join him in Hong Kong. Middle-class life seemed within their grasp. But then the workshop burned down. The family had no insurance and received no help from the elder brother, and, of course, they were too proud to beg. Thus it was that, in 1961, a baby named Kam-ho was born in a government resettlement building: a warehouse for the dispossessed in a country that does not believe in safety nets.

Kam-ho and his six brothers and sisters and his mother and father - nine of them - lived in one small room, the walls bare concrete, the floor also bare concrete. There was no kitchen or bathroom, no plumbing or central heating. Light was provided by an overhead bulb. They used toilets down the hall and fetched water in pails and cooked over a brazier outside on the mezzanine. They slept over and under one another, sometimes in shifts. In this place Kam-ho spent his early and middle childhood, until his parents, little by little, established themselves as small dealers in the jade business. Finally, they were able to move the family into a small but gloriously middle-class apartment.

Education being paramount in that part of the world, Kam-ho worked devotedly in school and went on to earn a diploma from Hong Kong Polytechnic. He got a job in the tour business and traveled a good deal, and in Tibet he met an American woman. They were both in their 20s and believed they were in love. They got married and lived in Hong Kong for a while, but she hankered for home. In 1990, she brought him to America.

Kam-ho's parents were not pleased that he had married a foreigner, and who would blame them? In the space of only a generation, the family had gone from the world of oxen and arranged marriages to the world of cell phones and multicultural love matches. Still, they were glad that their son had settled down, and they took some pride in his American success. In America, he became known by the English name given him by a teacher in grade school. Kam-ho became Michael.

He became a travel agent, and his wife did this and that, and they lived in a condominium in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. But the marriage did not go well. They tried to nurse it along, but the task was hopeless, and in 1993 they split, painfully.

Eventually it became clearer why their partnership had not worked out. Michael's ex-wife wound up, some years later, living in St. Louis with a girlfriend. As for Michael, he was given a book by a gay co-worker, who had noticed that Michael couldn't keep his eyes off the gardener. The book was a guide for people coming to terms with their sexuality. Michael began another journey.

In 1910, on the other side of the world from Guangdong, a 17-year-old girl named Sara and called Sadie set out from a small town in what was then Austria-Hungary (now it is in Poland) for the port in Hamburg, where she boarded the S.S. Pennsylvania, bound for New York. According to the ship's manifest, Sara carried $20 with her. She intended to join her sister in New York City and work, the manifest said, as a ``parlor maid.''

Her life, like Michael's parents' lives, would not be easy. The sister died in a fire, leaving Sara on her own, with not much by way of education or skill. She married an Austrian man and had four children, but he was a bigamist and had another family. His visits grew rare, and eventually he abandoned Sara altogether. She worked patchily until President Roosevelt's Aid to Dependent Children program was established in 1935 (the program later became Aid to Families with Dependent Children). After that, Sara got by on welfare and charity. The indigent single mother is not, after all, such a new creature in American life, nor is the ``deadbeat dad.'' Sara's third child, a boy nicknamed Sol, never knew his father.

The boy Sol grew up poor. He played stickball in the streets and went to school with his hair full of stinky kerosene to kill lice. But his grades got him into New York's City College, which was still, in those days, a notable institution. He married a vivacious girl and, with the help of the G.I. Bill (he had done an army stint in Korea), entered and graduated from Yale Law School.By the time Sol began practicing law, he had become Oscar, the name on his birth certificate. In his mid-30s, he and his wife lived in a sprawling house they had built on an acre in a fine Sun Belt suburb. Like Kam-ho, Sol had transformed himself in the space of a generation. Actually, in both cases, not even a generation: in the time, rather, that it takes a young man to set off on his own.

Oscar's three children grew up knowing nothing of stickball in the streets or kerosene in the hair. They knew only green playing fields and fragrant shampoo. They might have been removed from their grandmother Sara by two aeons instead of two generations; she remained crabby and Old World, with a heavy accent, till the end. They all attended Ivy League universities. One of them, in time, moved to Washington, D.C. There, in time, he met Kam-ho, who had become Michael.

Today, over a breakfast of orange juice and cereal, the two of them sit on Michael's back patio in the summer and listen to the cicadas sing. Michael's house is not a suburban McMansion, but it has a dishwater, disposal, central air, and two bathrooms (mirabile dictu - plumbing!). Michael owns it and makes a good living running a travel agency. Even so, he is not finished reinventing himself. He has been going to school at night, learning about computer networks. That, he figures, is where the future lies, and he is still young, and this is America.

His parents from Guangdong and Hong Kong, being traditional Chinese who are well advanced in years, believe him to be single and unattached. They ask, often and anxiously, when he will find someone and settle down. They do not know the truth, which is that he has found someone and settled down, because in their world to have a child living as he does is unthinkable, even incomprehensible. Oscar, for his part, knows all about his son. But he was born in America. His mother, Sara, probably would not have understood, and probably would never have been told.

If Michael had stayed in Hong Kong, he might today be unhappily married to a woman. He might be longing in his heart for--for something. Or perhaps he would be single and furtive. What he could not have been is simply himself, living, among his friends and neighbors, as he desires to live.

If Sara had stayed in Poland, she and her children would probably have been killed and her grandchildren never born. By leaving Europe in 1910, she fled, unknowingly, the gas and the fire that consumed the Jews, and she chose, unknowingly, to live. She chose life for her grandson Jon, who chose, and was chosen by, Michael.

America is not what America is because of its venturesome entrepreneurs or its efficient retail sector or its family values or its Judeo-Christian heritage or its rule of law or its constitutional government or its idealistic (sometimes) foreign policy or its melting-pot tradition. Such things are no doubt important. They are American things. But they are not what makes America a dream rather than just a place.

America is a dream because it is a country where you become someone new. In merely the time it takes you to grow up or to watch your children grow up, you can traverse a greater distance than the Hebrews and Egyptians and Greeks and Romans traversed over the course of a civilization's rise and decline. America is a place that remakes you, and that in so doing remakes itself. It is a place where two men, from worlds far away and far apart, sit together on the back patio in the summer, listening to the cicadas sing.

Delivered at the Log Cabin Republican national convention, New York City, August 28, 1999; televised on C-SPAN.

THE INVITATION HAS ME SPEAKING about an "independent vision," and my first reaction on receiving it was, "This guy's not a Republican but we're inviting him anyway." But in fact it's an extremely apt topic, and I'll take the next ten minutes explaining why I think it's so appropriate at the moment.

The bottom line is this: I'm 40 on my next birthday, which is longer than I ever thought I would live. But, in particular, I never thought I would live long enough to see the opportunity that now, at this moment, and in just the last very few years, is opening itself to gay and lesbian Americans.

The center in this country may soon belong to us. The old dynamic where we were the fringe and the centrist position was that we were strange, is very, very rapidly crumbling. And let me also add that the center is where the future is. In many ways the most profoundly interesting and deeply felt pro-gay, non-gay politician in the country is not a Republican and not a Democrat. It's Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, whom I've had the pleasure of interviewing. This is a man who stood up in a campaign debate against two much better-funded candidates, a Republican and a Democrat, and when asked a question about gay rights said that he felt it was dreadful and ridiculous for the government to prevent, for example, a gay man from visiting his sick lover in the hospital; he said that the government should not be against love.

That's not the way Republicans and Democrats talk, but it is the way radical centrists talk. And the radical center, I think, is where we will go and where we will belong, and where the American public increasingly is. To get there, however, requires a kind of new vow of political independence, and thus the "independent vision."

We, I think, meaning gay people, are moving towards the center, but slowly -- and I think not quickly enough, given the extraordinary opportunity that now arises. And that happens mostly as a matter of a historical accident. I recently finished reading a marvelous book called Out for Good, by Adam Nagourney and Dudley Clendinen, a history of the gay movement since 1969 -- a book that's been mysteriously given the back of critics' hands. What comes out of this book very clearly, when you take 30 years of gay history in a single gulp, is the extent to which this movement was born of extremes -- on both the gay left and the right. As you know, the initial activists, the people who were willing to be openly gay, were predominantly of the left and far left. And also, you know, the only conservatives who were willing to talk about homosexuals, who weren't just too embarrassed to do it, was the radical right. So the initial gay groups had names like The Gay Liberation Front, and had their roots in '60s and '70s radicalism.

Now these people of course were important, courageous, bold, and were there when we needed them. But I think also that in 1999, thirty years later, the movement has basically paid its debt to the radical wing of the movement. And it's time to move on.

We are in fact moving on. But we have a hangover from our historical roots: dependence of two kinds. First, political. And second, intellectual.

The political dependence is that fact that from the beginning the gay movement has been linked at the belly button with the Democratic Party. And you all know all about that. And you probably also know the consequences, which I think have not been particularly good for gays and lesbians. It means that because gays are predominantly identified as Democrats, Republicans have typically had no use for us because they weren't getting our votes anyway; that moderates also had no use for us, because they were so turned off by some of the extreme rhetoric and by some of the extreme behavior that they saw from gay and lesbians. And perhaps worst of all, the Democrats used us as doormats, for the most part.

When looking at Bill Clinton's behavior as President, I'm often reminded of how masterly Ronald Reagan was in dealing with the Religious Right. He kept them happy by throwing them a few bones. He would give a speech, now and then, about the need for school prayer, knowing the Supreme Court would never allow it. And he'd give a speech, now and then, about abortion and how terrible it is, knowing again that the Supreme Court would never actually allow him to change the policy. And with a few words, he would keep the Religious Right happy, and they managed for eight years not to notice that he hadn't done a thing for them. [applause]

It was brilliant, and Bill Clinton, being Bill Clinton, noticed it and I think has done the same thing with gays, who also have not noticed that after eight years, not only has he basically not done a thing for us, but we now have two extremely anti-gay pieces of legislation on the books: the Defense of Marriage Act and the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. [applause]

I certainly think it's nice to be met with in the White House, and it's nice to have the odd appointment or two, the ambassadorship to Luxembourg. I'm all for that. But I don't think it's enough. The significance of what you people are doing, and what Rich Tafel is doing, is not, in fact, the overt significance. The overt story line is that you folks are opening up the Republican Party to embrace homosexuals. You're often derided for that work because the Republican Party again and again all but says, "Don't bother, we don't want you." So why would you want to join a club that doesn't want to have you as members?

The real significance of what you're doing, however, is creating the possibility of a homosexual swing vote. There is a large block of people in this country who are gay, who are not deeply committed to either party, who vote Republican, or who are Democrats who will vote for Republicans or who will vote for people like Jesse Ventura, radical centrists. When those people have an alternative to the Democratic Party, both parties will have to fight for us -- and that may be beginning to happen now. In effect, what the Log Cabin Republicans are doing is making the world safe for gay independence, and making it possible to be a genuine gay independent. And only when that happens, [applause] only when we are free to swing and the parties have to bid for us, does our power becomes real.

Meanwhile, by the way, notice what is happening to the Religious Right. They only have one place to go, which is the Republican Party, and because they are now not getting what they want, they are in the same position that we used to be in. They're talking about separatism. More power to them, say I. [applause]

Beyond the political swing vote, however, more important and more fundamental to liberating ourselves from dependence is creating an intellectual center. Now, of course, intellectual sounds awfully airy and abstract, and I don't just mean the Queer Studies people and people like that. I'm talking about a place where you can go, for example, if you are comfortable with basic bourgeois values, like marriage; if you're comfortable with religion; if you believe that basic liberal (small 'l') institutions -- markets and property -- are basically good things that we should keep; if you believe that prosperity is as important in the long-run as equality, and in fact that the two must go hand in hand; and if, finally, you are not a revolutionary, if you don't feel the need to radically reform American society at its roots, if in fact you feel pretty darn happy to be here, and you feel that it's basically the most decent society that the world has ever produced.

If you think all of those things, you need a place to go where all your ideas seem to make sense. And as you all know, the signals from the gay movement have been at best diffident to these ideas and sometimes outright hostile. If you believe that abortion is not particularly a gay issue, you may be puzzled by some of what you hear from the activists, and you will certainly by puzzled by what you hear from the Queer Studies community, and many of the Marxists and so on who run that establishment in the academic institutions.

But on the other hand, if you're a member of this intellectual swing vote, you're probably also in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s.You're of a generation that's used to being out. You have no intention of going back into the closet and pretending to be straight.And you have no intention of ever insisting on anything less than full equality. Full equality means serving in the military, it means being able to get married, it means not being arrested in your home, as two men were in Texas this year, for making love. You simply won't stand for that; it's not on the table.

You need a place to go if you have these ideas, and I think that, too, is beginning to happen -- and really quite recently, in the '90s. To me a landmark was the publication of Bruce Bawer's book A Place at the Table in 1993. Andrew Sullivan's book Virtually Normal has been extremely important. And we're seeing these ideas now come out in various places. I think of Elizabeth Birch as fundamentally an ally in the center, which is where I think we need to be.

The center at the moment, as we've seen from the behavior from the congressional Republicans in impeachment, has become the great terra incognita of American politics and of American thinking. It's an amazing phenomenon to me.Politicians, and the parties, seem to be unable to find the center even if they trip on it. It's just an extraordinary thing; there's an enormous vacuum that's been created. To get there, I think, an important thing we can do, and are beginning to do, is to develop an intellectual critical mass that says to ourselves and to the public: to be a homosexual does not mean that you have to throw away the standard compact with American society. You can be pro-family, you can be pro-church, you can be pro-responsibility. You can also be pro-equality.

I'll end by telling you briefly about an effort that some of us are making to carve out a this intellectual radical center, this independent place, and begin to create a beachhead. We're calling it the Independent Gay Forum, a name that's modeled on the Independent Women's Forum, though I think the group is quite different. And it's small, we don't have much money. We're just a group of basically writers and thinkers, informally associated, who looked around about a year ago, and said, Hey wait a minute, there's now a critical mass of people out there, of writers -- Bawer, Sullivan, David Boaz, Walter Olson, me, Stephen Miller, Paul Varnell, you could go on -- who don't feel at home with the radical left, who don't feel at home with the radical right, who are writing things and saying things.

So we've created a Web site where we are pulling these ideas together and posting new material every week. There's quite a bit of it out there. You can find the Web site at the address www.indegayforum.org. And what you'll find there are articles where we attempt -- there's no orthodoxy, no single point of view -- to explore the ideas in this radical center.

For instance, why carrying concealed weapons can be a very good thing for homosexuals, as a self-defense strategy. Entirely apart from how you feel about gun control, in 31 states, you can get a license and carry a gun. Now only the most law-abiding people in the country do this, because you have to pay a $100 fee, in many states you have to take a gun safety course, you have to not have a criminal record, you can't have any mental problems, and so on. I know three gay people who will personally say that either their lives were saved or that they avoided very long hospital stays because at that critical moment, when the bashers were coming at them, somebody had a gun.

You can find writing about partner benefits, and why, yes, partner benefits may make sense for homosexuals; but that we as homosexuals ought to oppose partner benefits for heterosexuals, because those benefits really are a substitute for marriage and really do undermine the family. And indeed, when gay marriage is legalized, we ought to be against partner benefits for homosexuals as well.

You'll find criticism of the right wing. You'll find, for example, David Boaz's landmark New York Times piece pointing out, as no one had ever done, that the pro-family right has virtually nothing to say about divorce. He counted their publications and discovered that they have reams of stuff on the homosexual threat to the family, but they never want to talk about divorce. Which do you think is the greater threat to American families?

You'll find attacks on the quota mentality among many of the leading gay groups, for example, who want to say that 50 percent of the board for the Washington march, I'm told, has to be of certain colors, certain genders and so on -- and why that's bad for us. A lively debate on hate-crimes laws. Et cetera.

All this, I think, is beginning to come together in an intellectual safe place for independent thinking. And I suppose the message I want to leave you with is that what I fully expect to happen in the next ten years is a convergence of independent thinking and a convergence of independent political activity that means, finally, we will be the swing vote, and we will be the people you have to capture in the center. And that, I think, is the key to our future.

First appeared August 11, 1999, in the Wall Street Journal under the title "New Jersey Supreme Court Ruling on Boy Scouts Threatens Freedom for All - Including Gays."

IN A 30,000-PLUS-WORD DECISION, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that the Boy Scouts may not exclude gay members from participation in the organization. Because the New Jersey court's ruling conflicts with others (including one made in March 1998 by the California Supreme Court), this issue almost certainly will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. For this reason, the New Jersey decision deserves scrutiny as well as criticism.

Three points deserve comment. First, this decision erodes freedom of association. Second, it further expands the definition of "public" at the expense of what is "private." And third, while the Court's written opinion offers a strong argument for why the Boy Scouts should voluntarily change their policy, it fails to demonstrate why the government should force them to do so.

One of the things I learned about as a Boy Scout in the early 1970s was the importance of freedom, as embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Boy Scouts asserted that, were the organization forced to change its membership (and hiring) criteria, its First Amendment rights to free speech, religious liberty, and association would be violated. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled, incredibly, that "application of the [state's] Law Against Discrimination to Boy Scouts of America does not infringe on its First Amendment rights." Of course it infringes on those rights -- the question is whether such infringement is justified. The Garden State's Supreme Court argues that it is, and that the state's non-discrimination law trumps the First Amendment.

Freedom of association is one of our most precious rights. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruling threatens all of us who want to set standards for our organizations -- including gay men and lesbians.

The court's decision -- now limited to New Jersey, but with foreseeable national ramifications --undermines the right of gay men and lesbians to seek and maintain "queer-safe space" such as social clubs, fraternities and sororities, and social service organizations like Washington, D.C.'s Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL). If the Boy Scouts are not free to set their own membership standards -- however "vague" they might be (a key point in the New Jersey court's criticism) -- shouldn't these gay and lesbian organizations also lose their freedom to do so? Very few gay teenagers are likely to attend Saturday afternoon rap groups to discuss personal problems with their peers if they know that they might be forced to share this private space with heterosexual teens as well.

Diluting freedom of association makes it harder to combat government-based anti-gay discrimination. Respect for freedom of association, on the other hand, is the linchpin in persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, which gave state governments the authority to regulate our most intimate associations, sexual relationships. At the same time, the right to associate with whom we wish, when we wish, where we wish, will be an important factor in overturning the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act and various state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.

My colleague, Odell Huff, suggests that the New Jersey court's expansive definition of "public" will have detrimental effects on all citizens. "We should be protecting the private against the intrusion of the 'public,'" said Huff, vice president of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL). He adds: "Of course, we should be wary of any organization, which relies heavily on taxpayers' money to subsidize its activities, asserting a right to discriminate. But the Boy Scouts' reliance on government varies widely from place to place, and in most cases it provides predominantly 'private' space." Moreover, if taxpayers object to the Boy Scouts' use of their money in a "discriminatory" manner, the better course would be to withdraw their money, rather than to circumscribe the Scouts' freedoms of association, expression, and religion.

British scholar Nigel Ashford, writing in the Independent Gay Forum, argues a similar point, noting that Britain and the United States both face the same problem. "The distinction between private and state (usually expressed as 'public') is extremely important in a free society. Unfortunately the definition of the private has become narrowed to include only the person's home, and sometimes not even that. The distinction between private and public should be ownership, not who goes there. 'Public' should mean government owned, not open to the public, as in a bar or club." Ashford goes on to say that "a wide definition of private and a narrow definition of public (state) is the best protection for gays. The alternative is that government can legislate and interfere in areas open to the public," such as bars that cater to a gay clientele, erotic video stores, or even social clubs that meet in private homes. He concludes: "Those who control the power of the state will use it for their own purposes and preferences." A minimization of the private that expands the "public" hurts all of us, gay or straight.

That said, one should not conclude that the Boy Scouts' policy of excluding gay boys and men from their ranks deserves our approval. It does not. The New Jersey Supreme Court documents quite extensively how the Scouts' policy is contradictory and may, in fact, be harmful to the organization itself, as well as to the young men it aims to serve. The policy is archaic and bigoted and should be changed.

Still, a self-contradictory and wrong-headed policy does not require (nor deserve) the action of the state to correct it. Many commentators have noted that the Girl Scouts have chosen to practice non-discrimination in regard to sexual orientation. Lesbians are free to participate in Girl Scout programs. Yet no government action compelled this change in policy. The Girl Scouts' leadership acted on its own.

That is why we should encourage the efforts of those individuals and groups, such as gay former Scouts, who are trying to persuade the BSA to change its membership requirements voluntarily. Their attempts at moral suasion deserve commendation and support.

While on the surface it may appear that gay citizens have won something at the New Jersey Supreme Court, since the rights of all Americans are threatened, gay people have the most to lose.

I OFFER YOU A CHOICE between two hypothetical worlds. Neither of them has ever existed or is likely to exist as far as I can see into the future. But thinking about them as alternatives sheds some light on this enterprise called the gay civil rights movement.

In the first hypothetical world, imagine that we have eliminated every last bit of legal discrimination against gays. We have ended the ban on gays in the military, eradicated anti-gay sodomy laws, and passed laws protecting us from discrimination. Every state has tough hate-crimes legislation. We can legally marry and adopt children in every jurisdiction. We have, in short, secured the entire legislative wish list of most of the movement.

There's only one problem. In this first world, we still face widespread moral condemnation and, hence, social disapproval for being gay. Most gay kids still grow up in families where homosexuality is considered shameful. That shame still translates into unusually high suicide rates for gay youth. Most religions still teach homosexuality is an abomination and that gays are going to hell. Walking down the street holding your lover's hand is still guaranteed to get you nasty stares, maybe ugly insults, possibly physical assault. The law welcomes us, sure, but our families, neighbors, and associates don't. The reigning moral view is that we're deeply wrong.

In the second hypothetical world, imagine that we have erased the moral distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Families think nothing of having a gay kid. They celebrate our relationships as they would any straight child's. Friends regard sexual orientation as unimportant. Most major religions welcome us as God's children and teach that our love is not a sin any more than heterosexual love is. Few look twice when we walk hand-in-hand down the street.

Yet the second world is not perfect, either. It retains legal discrimination. Some states have anti-gay sodomy laws. We have no protection from discrimination. There are almost no state hate-crimes laws. We can't serve openly in the military and can't marry or adopt children. The reigning legal view is that we're second-class citizens.

Which would you choose - the world of pure legal equality or the one of full moral and social acceptance?

Gay civil rights organizations at all levels are almost entirely focused on achieving legal equality. That's understandable. After all, organizations rely on verifiable achievements to raise money. Either this good piece of legislation passes or it does not; either that anti-gay bill is blocked or it is not. We know where we stand with laws. We can look them up in books.

It's a lot harder to measure how we're faring in the hearts of the people around us. The victories and defeats there don't tend to be up or down, black or white. They oblige us to examine how we are doing on the moral plane - the plane on which people actually live and make judgments about others.

Are we or are we not fully part of the society around us? Are we or are we not really wanted and welcomed there? These questions are a lot harder to answer than: Did the civil rights bill make it out of the subcommittee on judicial affairs yesterday?

Partly for that reason, ultimate success in the moral dimension also matters more. If we were equally accepted in the lives of the straight people around us we wouldn't need a law to protect us from discrimination in employment or housing or education. We wouldn't need a hate-crimes law because criminals wouldn't target us for being gay. The sodomy law might remain on the books, but at least no one would ever think to enforce it, much less use it as a public argument against us. Marriage discrimination at the legal level might remain, but our relationships would be as celebrated and supported as any straight marriage.

On the other hand, does anyone really think we'll feel that much more secure in a world soaked in anti-gay hatred just because some legislature passes a hate-crimes law? Will our co-workers respect our worth as equals just because Congress passes a non-discrimination bill? Will anyone respect a marriage they see as founded on abominable sin? Legal victories can seem significant on paper but be almost worthless in practice.

Further, a world characterized by social and moral equality leads more directly and naturally to legal equality than the reverse. You can imagine that a world devoid of sodomy laws would nevertheless retain a lot of bigots. It's harder to see how a world largely free of bigots could retain sodomy laws.

It's not that legal equality is unimportant. It is terribly important. For one thing, it grants some security against a still-hostile world. It can also help to fuel social acceptance. But legal equality by itself will never substitute for the equality we must win in the hearts of the people we live beside.

In June 1963, at the height of tension over black civil rights, President Kennedy said that the country must begin to see racial equality as a moral issue. If gay men and women are to be fully a part of the life of this country our struggle, too, must be seen foremost as a moral one.

I enjoy reading letters to the editor supporting equal treatment for gay people, especially those in small, regional, "heartland" newspapers. I find it encouraging that pro-gay voices are being raised in burgs where you wouldn't think the "movement" had penetrated. But that doesn't mean I always agree with the views expressed on what's in the "gay" interest. Take, for example, a letter that ran a few weeks ago in the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune under the title "Vouchers prompt fear for gays."

The letter writer, Luann Conaty, prefaced her remarks by noting she is "the mother of a gay man and the stepmother of a lesbian." She notes that Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, has just signed a bill permitting tax dollars to be used to send students from failing public schools to the schools of their choice, including private and religious schools. Ms. Conaty worries about anti-gay discrimination that gay or lesbian students might face in religious schools, and remarks, "I could have been a prime candidate to send my son to a religious school under this system, not knowing that he was struggling with his sexual identity. I assure you he would have been at least brainwashed about the 'evils' of his sexual orientation and, at worst, humiliated, emotionally abused and perhaps physically attacked." After its publication, this letter was distributed via e-mail by a group called (take a breath) The Coalition for Safer Schools' Actual or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project.

I marvel that Ms. Conaty and her activist allies express such concern about anti-gay harassment in private, religious schools at a time when attacks on gay students in the American public school system are rampant. A story on high school harassment last May in the Los Angeles Times noted that teachers and administrators ignored "pervasive anti-gay abuse" in the halls of a suburban high school in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, south of San Jose, where "the words 'faggot' and 'dyke' were uttered about as often as 'hello' and 'goodbye'." Slurs were hissed at one out lesbian student in class, and "scribbled on her locker and on pornographic death threats, including a picture of a bound and gagged women with a slit throat." I wonder if the GLBT anti-school-choice activists are glad that this student was kept trapped in the public school system.

Or consider the pervasive anti-gay abuse at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rampage. The Denver Post reported that members of Columbine's now-notorious Trench Coat Mafia were "tormented" by jocks who called them "faggots" and bashed them into their lockers when they walked down the school halls. A story in the online magazine Salon noted, "it's clear that 'gay' is one of the worst epithets to use against a high school student in Littleton." Time magazine's post-Columbine story looked at patterns of violence, and found that anti-gay taunting was also a factor in provoking killing rampages in Pearl, Mississippi and West Paducah, Kentucky.

Of course, the issue isn't that some disturbed straight boys turn to murder in the wake of anti-gay taunting; the issue is the anti-gay harassment and physical abuse that kids who are gay (or perceived as gay) face in the public school system, and the persistent lack of concern shown by public school teachers and administrators.

Following Matthew Shepard's murder, a CBS poll found that nearly half of 11th graders said gay and lesbian students were abused verbally and otherwise at their schools. At the same time, a CNN story reported that public school officials used "community values" to defend their inaction. "You have to...not be so sensitive and so open that you are promoting something that certain portions of your parent population and students would be opposed to," said Paul Houston, a spokesman for the American Association of High School Administrators.

A few public high school students have won lawsuits charging that their schools failed to protect them from anti-gay attacks, but that hasn't stopped other school districts from imposing what they call "prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction" or forbidding gay and lesbian student groups from meeting. Maybe, just maybe, school vouchers could be part of the remedy instead of the threat that some activists fear.

A Pro-gay Case for School Choice

Advocates for school choice argue that under the status quo the government pays noncompetitive public schools a "head price" for each of their captive students. Alternatively, with school choice parents are free to send their children to the public school of their choosing or to receive a scholarship voucher to help pay for a private school. This "market competition" forces the public schools to compete for students, creating better, more responsive schools. And since the private school tuition support is always less than what the government pays the public schools per pupil, the system is more economical to boot.

Yes, school choice proposals includes parochial schools, but I know at least some Catholic school veterans who tell me that, unlike at many public schools, gay baiting and bashing simply would not have been tolerated at their alma mater, regardless of the Church's teachings about sexuality. Richard Sincere of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), a libertarian gay group, says his all-male Catholic school was a far cry from the hate-and-fear-filled hallways of Columbine High. In fact, demonstrating respect for fellow students was ingrained and fostered by the faculty on a daily basis, with an affirmative attempt on the part of administrators to make sure different sorts of students mixed with each other, so jocks worked on the school play and musicians assisted the basketball coach.

It could be that one reason this example seems so far from the reality of most public schools is that the public system has become, like most government monopolies, insulated, corrupt and lazy, with little regard for serving its "customers" (the students and their parents). While students in public high schools report widespread harassment, with many going so far as to say in online discussion groups that they understand how Harris and Klebold felt, we're just not hearing that cry of pain from private school students.

But more than simply providing for safer schools, allowing for choice supports a real diversity of educational options for students -- including allowing them to attend public or private schools that have gay-supportive reputations or curriculums, or that allow students to organize gay-straight alliances. It could even mean that more public school districts would be willing to experiment with alternatives along the lines of New York City's Harvey Milk school, which takes openly gay, lesbian, and transgendered students who've dropped out -- or fled -- their local schools.

That's not a perfect solution, since some kids come from homophobic homes, or from homes where parents just don't care at all. But competition is the engine of innovation and improvement. In the long run, applying market competition to force government-funded and operated public schools to compete would provide an economic incentive to curb the worst aspects of high school hell faced by all students, gay and straight, trapped in schools that just don't give a damn.

The Politics of School Choice

So, why are some vocal lesbigay activists so opposed to school choice? The main opponents of choice reforms are the teachers' unions, and public employee unions are the bedrock of the Democratic Party. Moreover, school choice is seen as a "Republican" issue. The result: in the name of alliance politics, gays and lesbians are once again being asked to take the left side of an issue which has nothing to do with gay equality per se and everything to do with maintaining entrenched government bureaucracies.

It's ironic that so-called progressives want to keep economically disadvantaged kids imprisoned in rotting public schools. And it's unconscionable that some in the lesbigay movement, whose leaders insist we support a "broad social agenda" with a "multi-issue" focus, want us to add opposition to school choice to the mix.

Who Decides?

To sum up, the disagreement over school choice is one of basic principle -- whether parents should be able to choose how their money (taken by the government as school taxes) is used to fund their children's education, or whether the state should decide. The anti-choice side seems to be saying, as regards gay students, that once progressives take control of the state (or the school district) that policies will be implemented to teach tolerance and enforce anti-discrimination. I just don't buy it; too many of today's noncompetitive public schools can't even teach reading, writing and math, so why on earth should we expect they would be more successful with sensitivity training?

Furthermore, there will always be political resistance to attempts to mandate that public schools teach 'gay is ok' when some parents who must send their kids there believe (often based on their religious convictions) that being gay is, at the very least, not morally equivalent to being straight. That's the sort of social engineering that gives rise to an effective backlash, as happened in New York City over its proposed Rainbow ("Heather Has Two Mommies") Curriculum.

Yes, choice may give some tax money back to some parents who will choose to send their kids to conservative religious academies. That's what choice means -- parents decide, not Hillary Clinton. Still more pupils would be able to flee the worst public schools and attend far more tolerant private schools, or go to public schools that do a better job of ensuring that they don't get beat up in the hallways. When the bad schools and their union employees have to pay a financial price, there will be a real incentive to improve those institutions, or face going out of business.

Finally, you may hear that the pro-school-choice side wants to "destroy public education." Again, I don't believe that. It seems the only hope for our highly dysfunctional schools is not throwing even more money at them, but to engender competition and its universal byproducts -- efficiency and innovation. To be blunt, I am sorry that the teachers' unions are more interested in protecting their iron rice bowls than in seeing how necessary these reforms are.

By fostering a diversity of educational options, school choice could strike at the heart of the one-size-fits-all public system predicated on fears of offending some homophobes' "community values," and instead would allow both public and private schools to "market" a gay-inclusive alternative. At the very least, this would help besieged gay students to escape from the Columbine Highs of the world and seek out competitive institutions that foster human decency, rather than bigoted depravity.

In the end, wouldn't that be a better choice?

Originally appeared in The Advocate, July 20, 1999.

THE LAST TIME you saw me in this space I was explaining why I was in Amsterdam. Not to confuse you or anything, but I'm now living in Oslo, Norway.

Why? Well, my partner is Norwegian. We met in the autumn of 1997, and the following spring he came to New York City and stayed for the three months allowed by his tourist visa. From there we headed to Amsterdam for a few months. But where could we live together, legally, long-term? Had we been a straight couple, of course we could have married, enabling him to reside and work in the United States. As a gay couple, however, we had no such option.

What long-term legal options did we have? Only one: to register as partners in Norway, where I, as the spouse of a Norwegian national, could presumably obtain residency. When the time came to leave Amsterdam, then, we flew not to New York but to Oslo.

I fretted endlessly over our partnership plans. Deep down, I couldn't believe Norway would let us do it. My better half was mystified by my worries. And indeed it all proved stunningly simple. One day in April we picked up a form at the Oslo courthouse. We filled it out, secured the necessary supporting documents, and within a few days were scheduled for a ceremony.

On May 7 we presented ourselves at the door of a courthouse chamber used exclusively for same-sex and opposite-sex nuptials. A woman met us, shook our hands cordially, escorted us into the room - a large, elegant space with high windows and royal red curtains - and introduced us to a handsome white-haired magistrate in an impressive black robe. He too shook our hands with a smile, then led us to a table covered with something resembling an altar cloth and lit white candles. Facing us across the table, his expression solemn, he read the words of the ceremony slowly and with dignity. They focused on the gravity of our commitment and on our responsibilities to each other and to society. When it was over we all signed the papers and shook hands yet again as they offered congratulations.

It boggled my mind to realize that my partner and I were now, in the eyes of the kingdom of Norway (though not, needless to say, Uncle Sam), a family. (And they didn't even charge us a fee.)

Is this full-fledged matrimony or merely second-class partnership? True, Norwegian uses different words to denote heterosexual wedlock (ekteskap) and its gay counterpart (partnerskap). And, yes, we're denied two rights accorded straight couples: We can't adopt or demand a wedding in the state church (though activists seek to erase these inequities). Otherwise, however, partnerskap is legally identical to ekteskap. On the dotted line, we are not ugift (single) - we are gift (married).

And I'm still not over it. How could I be? I grew up in a society that told me over and over that I didn't deserve this. For me, our experience at the courthouse underscored how vital it is that young gay Americans be able to grow up taking for granted their right to call their lifemates family.

Obviously my partner and I are far luckier than most international gay couples. His homeland recognizes same-sex unions, and I have a job I can do anywhere. Nonetheless, the stresses - and expenses - we've endured in order to live together legally would have torn many couples apart. The logic underlying civil recognition of marriage is that it strengthens social stability; U.S. immigration policy would seem to be driven by a sadistic zeal to destabilize gay families.

In previous columns I've discussed my desire to live abroad. Yet I never meant to stay away forever. If my partner and I were a straight couple, we could move to the United States at any time. We would welcome that option. I'm an American; I love my country; the consistent preoccupation of my writing has been with American culture and society. I don't want to spend my life as an expatriate. Yet current U.S. law offers no choice. I'm determined to do what I can to help change that. In the meantime, I'm grateful that Norway has provided my partner and me with a place we can both call home.

MUST THE GAY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT tie its fate to uneasy alliances with various left-leaning groups - labor unions, plaintiffs' lawyers, peace activists, the civil rights establishment, reformed Marxists - in order to win equality? After all, even liberals like Bill "The Era of Big Government is Over" Clinton run to the center of the national political spectrum in order to put together an electoral majority.

The evidence suggests that the time may be right to form new alliances that will give us a chance to put together a lasting gay-friendly majority. That evidence comes from no less than the single most homophobic major political party in Western civilization - the Republicans.

A poll of GOP voters has produced some useful and encouraging results. The poll grouped Republicans into five categories: "Moralists" (about 19 percent of all GOP voters), who emphasize cultural and social issues over economic concerns and tend to be both anti-abortion and anti-gay; "Cultural Populists" (26 percent of GOP voters), who also put cultural/social issues ahead of economic ones, but emphasize conservative stands on issues like crime, drugs, affirmative action, and welfare; "Deficit Hawks" (25 percent of GOP voters), who emphasize economic issues, especially the necessity of balanced budgets; "Supply Siders" (20 percent of GOP voters), who also emphasize economic issues, but concentrate on cutting taxes; and "Progressives" (10 percent of GOP voters), who put social/cultural issues first and support a more activist government.

Non-Moralist Republicans constitute 81 percent of the total GOP vote. They are the ones who, along with at least 26 percent of gay voters (and probably more), gave us a Republican Congress in 1994 on the basis of a "Contract with America" that highlighted economic issues and nowhere mentioned gays.

Strong majorities of all GOP voter groups except the Moralists oppose government repression of homosexuality. For example, more than 60 percent each of the Cultural Populists, Deficit Hawks, and Supply Siders, and 83 percent of the Progressives, agree that government has no right to interfere in gays' private lives.

Other polls have shown similar majorities of Republicans who oppose anti-gay discrimination in employment, housing, and even in the military. Their views are represented in public by prominent Republicans like Barry Goldwater, who supported gay equality late in life; William Weld, the most pro-gay governor the nation has ever seen; and commentator Mary Matalin, who said recently that the party did not deserve to be in the majority if it continues gay-baiting.

So if the non-Moralists oppose government repression of homosexuality, and condemn anti-gay discrimination, why haven't they reined in the anti-gay rhetoric and actions of party leaders like Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.)? Though there's only anecdotal evidence of it, part of the reason may be that until now the gay civil rights movement has made little effort to reach out to these groups who (along with independents and moderate Democrats) comprise a solid majority of all voters. On the contrary, many of our organizations and leaders have repeatedly taken stands that seem calculated to offend them.

An example of what I'm talking about occurred in a recent online debate between renowned gay leftist Urvashi Vaid and a senior editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, David Brooks. Vaid has publicly linked capitalism to the evils of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Brooks took note of this and retorted: "If gay and lesbian liberation means a New Left-style assault on mainstream American values and institutions, like the regulated market system we now enjoy, then I will be against the gay and lesbian liberation movement and so will many of the people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause." With nothing to gain except the wrath of the religious right, the non-Moralist Republican majority sees no advantage in standing up for gays and possibly plenty to lose.

So what do these non-Moralists believe in? Most of them oppose affirmative action and gun control, support balanced budgets even at the expense of social programs, and favor school choice in the form of vouchers. Overall, they like free markets and tax cuts and dislike government regulation and lawsuit abuse. None of that is inconsistent with gay equality, but it is incompatible with the views of one or another part of the progressive coalition to which we seem wedded.

If we can show the broad middle of America that gays do not monolithically oppose them on a range of important economic and social issues, we may win their trust and support. If we can show them that equality for gays does not threaten the national consensus in favor of limited government, and even most traditional values, they will not fear our admission to that consensus. That will forge a coalition of the majority, one that will finally bring equality.

None of this will persuade committed gay leftists to slough off their own political agenda, nor should it. Nor should it lead us to the conceit so common on the left that any position we take on these issues is the true "gay position." But it should embolden the rest of us - most gay men and women, I believe - to make ourselves heard in debates about public policy and not fear offending our traditional allies on the left.

The Barry Goldwaters, William Welds, and Mary Matalins of the world can be brought into the fold. But old-style progressive coalition politics will never be able to enlist them. That's a job for the rest of us.