IGF CultureWatch

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.

First appeared in the New York Times, July 5, 1999.

AT ITS BEST, "Out for Good" vividly reports the activism and intramural conflicts of the 1970's gay and lesbian movement. The middle of this book is superb, but its frame weakens it. To end with the funeral of a Los Angeles political patron, Sheldon Andelson, in 1987 is peculiar. An epilogue about Bill Clinton's campaign promises of 1992 is even stranger.

Neither phenomenon makes sense as the climax of the gay and lesbian movement. Was the goal of the historical figures discussed in this book only to be a rarely greased cog in the Democratic Party? For some, it was. But there were and are gay and lesbian congeries of activist sex radicals, socialists and gay libertarians, not just caucuses of the Democratic Party. The authors, Dudley Clendinen, an editorial writer for The New York Times, and Adam Nagourney, a metropolitan reporter for The Times, largely ignore the many disparate groups of gay and lesbian advocates seeking broad social or political changes to dote on those seeking to be part of one political party.

Starting the book with the Stonewall Inn "riot" may make sense for an account of New York gay politics, but other than a symbol, little developed from it. (Even for New York City, another raid -- on the Snake Pit later in the summer of 1969 -- was more consequential for political organizing.) Before Stonewall, San Francisco provided models and precedents both of impolite public protests and of working with and within government for recognition and protection.

There is certainly plenty in the book about San Francisco and Los Angeles politics in the 1970's and 80's, but the foundational role of gay organizing in those cities is ignored to repeat the familiar tale of what was a false start in New York. Perhaps the best indicator of New York's nonleadership is one the authors note. The first municipal gay rights ordinance in the nation was introduced in the New York City Council on Jan. 6, 1971. One was enacted 15 years, 2 months and 14 days later -- following 3 states, 11 counties and 48 other cities.

After the unfortunate choice of an opening point, "Out for Good" is actually less New York-centered than other histories of the gay and lesbian movement during the 70's and 80's. It includes richly detailed accounts of battles in Minnesota and Miami and of a 1973 fire bombing in New Orleans, though the major focal points are California, Boston, New York and Washington. After detailed accounts of the 1977 repeals of gay rights ordinances in Miami and St. Paul, the authors mention but do not tell the story of the first success in combating such a campaign (in Seattle in 1978).

The authors also provide the perspectives of many female leaders, both lesbian separatists and those eager to take over organizations and to control resources mostly supplied by men. Yet there is hardly anything about lesbian mobilizations around such issues as child custody.

The multiple narratives within the book are character-driven. This makes it engaging reading. There are plenty of villains (most of them egomaniacs), some heroes and heroines, and strong plot lines about particular battles. The overall line of development is obscure, not least because the book's two endings are so arbitrary.

With so many would-be leaders and so few followers of any particular one, the authors' focus on those who commanded some media attention at one time or another is predictable. Most of the figures of the gay and lesbian movement who were prominent burned out from infighting, were singed by attacks (often very personal ones) or faded away from exhaustion. Many have died since 1992, when work on this book began. Anyone interested in the perspectives of earlier prominent figures in the gay and lesbian movement has to be grateful for the prodigious efforts the authors made in interviewing 330 people (some multiple times), and to hope that their records will be available to future researchers.

A truly definitive history, which the authors twice claim in the introduction to have produced, has to look beyond celebrities and leaders to those who worked out of the spotlight and to the "free riders" -- that is, the many people who gained from movements to which they contributed no time or energy. A definitive history would also have to provide a clearer analytical framework.

Along with individual profiles, a definitive history of the American gay and lesbian movement needs to compare this movement with those in other countries and with other contemporary movements in the United States. The civil rights movement and the Christian right are two with direct relations to the gay and lesbian movement, and offer useful comparisons of relative success, amount of infighting, frequency of schisms and so on. This lack is especially surprising because Mr. Clendinen has written extensively about the Christian right.

But systematic comparisons would make the book even longer and might not interest those who thrive on gossip about celebrities (even mostly forgotten minor-league ones). Instead of jettisoning background before Stonewall, the authors should have removed the account of mobilizations around AIDS. Their account is more reliable and far better substantiated than Randy Shilts's, but there are other, better analyses of AIDS activism (e.g., the second half of Steven Epstein's "Impure Science"). The authors dwell at inordinate length on David Goodstein, who published The Advocate for most of the years between 1975 and 1985 and repeatedly failed to shape gay movement strategy.

As prodigious as their interviewing efforts were, as interesting and reliable and well documented as their reporting is, and as well written as this book is, a more sweeping history not only of gay politics but also of gay culture can be found in "The Other Side of Silence," by John Loughery. "Out for Good" is the best history of gay mobilizations during the 1970's and useful on the early 80's, but Mr. Loughery's more analytic history, with its longer time frame, remains the best book so far available on the emergence of 20th-century American gay culture and politics.

Last month [June 1999], Slate - Microsoft's Web-based magazine - featured a four-part debate between Urvashi Vaid, director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, and David Brooks, senior editor at the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. Vaid has for many years been a leading light of the lesbigay left, and is known for inveighing against gay and lesbian "mainstreaming." Brooks is a conservative Republican, but one who hasn't engaged in gay-baiting. Their exchange, although ostensibly about recent books on the lesbian and gay movement, illuminated the difficulty that the gay left and the straight right have in finding a common language to discuss gays and society. But aside from that, I'd argue that both sides managed to score points that non-dogmatic gays might benefit from keeping in mind.

To show what I mean, I'll do my best to briefly summarize and quote the views put forth by Vaid and Brooks on two primary subjects: sexual liberation and economic liberty. And I'll try to explain why I think the "progressive" Vaid is mostly right about the former, while the "conservative" Brooks has the better argument about the latter.

First, let's talk sex. Vaid argues there are "two competing visions of sex in America" over whether sexual pleasure is "inherently dangerous" or "inherently morally neutral (or even good)." She observes that "a redefinition of sexuality and its relationship to morality and spirituality is at the heart of the challenge that homosexuality poses -- and part of why it is so threatening." As if to prove Vaid's point, Brooks responds that "anybody -- straight or gay -- who has more than five sex partners in a year is probably doing something sleazy," and adds, "I think promiscuity is the key issue....People like me who believe that homosexuality can become a respectably part of the society we have inherited believe that it must uphold monogamy, without always living up to it, just as straight culture does."

To this, Vaid responds by asserting there isn't anything wrong with "responsible promiscuity" and that "ethical behavior in sex involves not doing harm to others or yourself, it involves behaving in a responsible manner. If my partner and I decide to open up our 11-year relationship and have other lovers, while continuing to live together, why should it render us any less decent than you? Private consensual adult sexual activity is the business of consenting adults."

Brooks shoots back, "Anyone who can come up with the phrase 'Responsible Promiscuity' should be living here in Washington occupying a senior post in the Clinton administration" (a pretty good retort). He adds, "I want to live in the same community as you," but "without shared norms -- about consensual adult sexual activity too -- community erodes.... Trust is gone and life is nasty, brutish, and short."

For my part, I think it's too simplistic for conservatives to charge that non-monogamy, in "open" relationships or otherwise, is too great a threat to society to be acquiesced to. Conservatives are going to have to accept a "live and let live" reality in order to co-exist with those, gay and straight, who have a radically different attitude from theirs on sexual pleasure. Accepting personally responsibility for ones actions IS important--a point that liberals too often fail to grasp--but responsiblity and monogamy are not synonymous.

But if my libertarian sympathies lead me to side with Vaid on sex, I found her totally disingenuous (and even dishonest) when the debate turned to economics. Vaid didn't raise the topic, but an offhand comment she made about the "pro-Nicaragua lesbian movement" leads Brooks to respond that, on Nicaragua, Vaid "took the side of a Communist kleptocracy that the people of Nicaragua booted out of office as soon as they got the chance (and elected a woman besides!)."

He explains that he was looking through the Web site of the Independent Gay Forum, which publishes writings by centrist, conservative, and libertarian gays and lesbians. At the site, he came upon an article about corporate America's efforts to reach out to the gay market, in which Vaid is quoted as saying that America has "taken off its ugly white hood to show its sexist, racist, anti-gay and capitalist face." He sums up by saying that "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."

A confession here. The article Brooks refers to is titled Corporate Liberation, and was written by none other than me (although Brooks doesn't name me).

Vaid responds testily that, although she did in fact make the statement attributed to her, it was lifted "completely out of context" because she wasn't referring to marketing per se, as Brooks seemed to suggest. She then accuses him of "McCarthyite red-baiting crap." Vaid asserts that although she is "proud to be a leftist," what she believes in is "socially responsible capitalism."

This, as I noted, is disingenuous, for Vaid has written in left-wing publications that she not only is a socialist, but a socialist on the radical left "syndicalist" fringe to boot. That's why her quote, lumping "capitalism" in with racism, sexism, and all the other social evils, was so revealing. Why doesn't she have the courage to defend her economic convictions when addressing a general audience?

rooks understands that a free economy is the basis for all other freedoms. Vaid believes that "society" should make economic decisions for its members (based, no doubt, on "consensus"), rather then letting individuals decide for themselves. On the other hand, Vaid believes that adults should be free to lead the sexual lives that give them pleasure, as long as their relationships are consensual and among adults. Brooks thinks that the "community" should enforce social norms and stigmatize those who aren't monogamous and relegate them beyond the pale.

Responsible folks might reasonably conclude that both sides of this debate uphold one form of freedom only to vilify another.

First published in late June 1999 in The Weekly News (Miami) and other gay newspapers.

Organizers of next April's Millennium March on Washington (MMOW), which aims to "promote equal rights for all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals," are celebrating their commitment to diversity, defined as "parity by gender and for people of color." According to the group's recent press release, "The movement has progressed so that the board of directors of this march are [sic] now made up of 60 percent people of color, African American, Native American, Latino/latina and Asian American, as well as 60 percent women."

This commitment to "parity," and even "parity plus," is now so common among lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgendered activist groups that it's barely alluded to, even though all non-white minorities together are considerably under half of the US population (which is still 73 percent non-Hispanic white). And while women are a bit more than 50 percent of the general population, surveys repeatedly suggest that gay males outnumber lesbians by close to 2 to 1. But I really don't want to get into the numbers game, because for those of us who believe personal merit, rather than identity group membership, should be the determining factor for selecting leadership, the whole issue of "proportional representation" based on race or gender is offensive.

I point this out not to be churlish, and at the risk of inviting the inevitable, and mindless, critique of "racist and sexist." But when a policy becomes as ingrained within our community as "parity" has become, it deserves to be given a second look. Consider, for example, that at the last March on Washington, in 1993, the smattering of gay white males allowed to be speakers at the all-day rally could be counted on one hand, literally. If anything less than representation reflecting actual demographics constitutes discrimination, then pale gay males were discriminated against by their own rights march! Aside from those deemed fit to speak, organizers had also mandated 50 percent minority quotas on state organizing committees.

The following year, for the Stonewall 25th anniversary march and rally in New York City, the event's executive committee required 50 percent gender parity and 25 percent representation by people of color. But since many of the regional delegations that filled the larger national steering committee failed to achieve their quotas, it was decided at a planning meeting (held that summer in Milwaukee) that women present could cast three votes apiece, and people of color, two. This meant giving more weight to the vote of a black lesbian than to that of a black man, and more weight to his vote than to that of a gay white male. (One delegate suggested that to improve gender and skin color "parity" at future planning meetings, some of those who were of the wrong gender and racial classification should stay home.)

The parity mantra isn't limited to national marches. A few years ago, a national planning meeting of representatives from chapters of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation operated under a convoluted quota requirement that went this way: Each chapter sent two delegates to the meeting, but unless one of the two delegates was a person of color and one was a woman, the chapter was penalized by getting only one vote instead of two. To avoid this, only when one delegate was a lesbian of color could the second be a gay white male (I said it was convoluted).

Over time, well-intended support for greater inclusiveness in the gay and lesbian movement has become twisted into something altogether different. Rather than fostering greater mutuality grounded in an appreciation of diversity, what has emerged is a politically correct tribalism that champions apportioning representation based on gender and race/ethnicity, creating superficial diversity that works against the equality vital for true community. At the heart of the parity paradox is the illiberal assumption that we can only be represented by someone of our own gender and skin color (with the caveat that the candidate be on the political left, or else she or he is likely to be dismissed as an "inauthentic" representative of his/her respective identity group).

"Diversity," in effect, has become a veil for positing the fundamental differentness of people based on their race or sex, rather than suggesting something altogether different (and desirable) -- the removal of barriers that separate. Just how insidious has this become? At a forum sponsored by the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Journalists that I attended in New York City, someone loudly protested that an African-American panelist wasn't dark-toned enough to provide adequate "diversity."

Another predictable outcome is tokenism, with some female and minority delegates selected solely on the basis of race and gender. This means that others, who truly are qualified, get tarred with the "token" stigma.

When good faith attempts to foster diversity on the basis of equality, such as affirmative outreach, are replaced by rigidly applied quotas to ensure parity, chasms are created that no amount of "diversity training" can overcome. And, despite all the self-righteous rhetoric, often the not-so-subtle subtext is that the participation of gay white guys is not desirable, and that the optimum "diversity" would be 100% "progressive" women of color. This message, in fact, may go a long way toward answering the question posed by a recent cover story in The Advocate magazine, which asked, "Where are the men" in today's gay rights movement?

Anyone who dares raise objections to "parity" can expect to receive a lecture about the primacy of diversity. I know this from personal experience, as I was once scolded as "someone who thinks white men are the main victims of discrimination" simply for raising the issue of gender and race quotas at an activist gathering. For that reason, many who sense that hostility toward gay white men, rather than desires for equality and community, is at play have learned not to express the opposition they feel toward these policies. Many others, often with badly needed technical expertise, steer clear of activist organizations altogether.

At one time, of course, characterizing individuals on the basis of their gender and race and treating all other characteristics as secondary would itself have been called sexist and racist, and rightly so. Apportioning votes on the basis of skin color or sex is not only profoundly anti-democratic and anti-liberal, but profoundly un-American.

Nobody should dispute that in the recent past women and people of color were formally excluded from power. But if policies based on remedying collective guilt (rather than fostering equal opportunity) rankle society at large, a growing number of gay white men also are expressing resentment toward the "oppression hierarchies" that classify them as privileged members of the patriarchy and belittle the bigotry they, too, face every day.

Unlike guarantees of equal opportunity for all comers, requiring an outcome of parity ultimately work against a united, diverse, and truly democratic (as in one person, one vote) lesbian and gay movement. It's time to reexamine received dogma and to once again join together to work for real equality by emphasizing our common humanity. In short, it's time to stop defining diversity as the application of parity requirements that not only disproportionately discriminate against gay white males, but serve to reduce all concerned to stand-ins for their race and gender.