IGF CultureWatch

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.

MY MOM WOULDN'T THINK OF herself as having gay pride. But she has it. It is simpler than the form of gay pride many of us believe in; Mom's gay pride hasn't developed the accretions that sophisticated activists' pride has.

Mom is not a citizen of any Queer Nation. In fact, she doesn't use the word "queer" to talk about gay people at all. In the small town in central Texas where she was raised, queer wasn't a nice word to describe homosexuals. She wouldn't understand the need to reclaim it.

Mom doesn't believe that silence always equals death. When you don't have something good to say, don't say anything. That's not death; it's maturity.

She's never seen a "post-gay."

Mom doesn't think of Hillary Clinton as a "First Lady we can fuck," as comedienne Lea DeLaria described Mrs. Clinton from the stage of the 1993 March on Washington. Mom's never been to a March on Washington. It's not that she's against marches. She just works a lot.

She thinks HIV causes AIDS, so you should avoid getting HIV. Simple-minded, huh?

She wouldn't understand why supporting equality for gay people means that she should oppose NAFTA or the Gulf War, as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force thinks. She doesn't make the connections.

Mom thinks of an "outing" as a trip to the beach or an amusement park, not as the practice of exposing someone's private life to the world in order to embarrass them for some political purpose.

If she thinks of sexual freedom at all, it is probably in the form of relief that the birth-control pill came along when she was growing up. Two children were enough, thank you. If someone tried to explain the concept of an open relationship to her, she'd probably think, what's the point? She's never read Foucault.

She wouldn't storm a church during mass to protest against the anti-gay statements of its leaders. She believes in God, but not too much.

To be honest, I don't think she gets this gay Republican thing either. To her, the Republican Party is just mean to gays. Why bother trying to recall a party to principles of limited government and individual freedom when it has honored those ideas more in the breach than the observance anyway? She probably wonders about my sanity in trying to fight within the GOP. Sometimes I do too.

Mom's gay pride is best exemplified by an exchange she had with a co-worker not long after I told her I am gay. Mom was telling the co-worker about how I had come out and how emotional it all was. The co-worker was very understanding and sympathetic. She put her hand on mom's shoulder and said, "I'll pray with you to change him."

"I don't want to change him," Mom replied, stunned at the suggestion. "He's my son. I love him the way he is."

In most of America in 1999, that is a revolutionary statement. The thing that got to me when she told me that story is that she really believed it. She hadn't learned it as a slogan at some meeting or in the pages of some book. She felt it.

Most parents, even loving parents, would change their children from gay to straight if they could. It would make life easier on everyone, after all. Less fear of getting that midnight call from the police telling you your kid got beaten into a sidewalk somewhere. Less worry about discrimination and ridicule. Less concern about the possibility of a lonely future without kids or a stable relationship. Less anxiety about AIDS.

I suspect a lot of gay people share these fears. I don't think we're really very proud of being gay most of the time -- even many of those who go shouting in the streets declaring their gay pride. I remember during the 1993 March on Washington one speaker asked the crowd whether anyone present would take a pill if it would make them straight. There was silence for a moment. I think it was the saddest silence I ever heard.

Then the crowd's political instincts took over and people shouted, "No!" It was a rehearsed, activist "no," expressed with the kind of exaggerated defiance people use when they don't really believe what they're saying.

I don't know what my life would be like if I were straight. I have no doubt it would be easier in many ways. But if I were straight, I wouldn't be me. I would be some other person. It is difficult to have any kind of pride when, deep down, you want to be someone else.

My mom doesn't want me to be someone else. She would do many things for me. But she would not give me that pill. She makes me proud to be gay.

First appeared in the June 17, 1999, Windy City Times.

MODERN GAY LIBERATION is a creation not of Stonewall but of the 1960s.

In a previous column I sketched some notable examples of gay activism during the 1960s. The examples showed that the pace of gay activism accelerated rapidly in the second half of the decade, virtually assuring a thriving gay movement in the 1970s whether Stonewall happened or not.

However, the 1960s gay movement did not work in isolation. It was aided by large-scale changes in America's public culture, changes that not only helped the gay movement, but encouraged even gays who had no contact with the movement to be more self-accepting and step forward to claim civic equality.

When someone shakes a soft drink can before opening it, then pulls the tab, the contents spurt out. The Sixties were the shaking; Stonewall simply pulled the tab.

As gay historian Jim Levin pointed out in his valuable 1983 study Reflections on the American Homosexual Rights Movement, if there was a single theme underlying the various social trends of the 1960s it is the growing willingness to question received opinion, to "Question Authority" as one button urged, and to assert individual moral autonomy against the agents of social control -- governments, law, religions, psychiatry, even "propriety."

For instance, the 1960s black civil rights movement demonstrated how unjust some laws were and how irrational were the social prejudices behind those laws. It was easy for gays to see parallels to anti-gay laws and realize how the social opprobrium they endured was like prejudice against blacks.

Frank Kameny coined the slogan "Gay is Good" in 1968 in clear imitation of "Black is Beautiful." Whatever else "Black is Beautiful" meant, it meant that equality should not depend on becoming identical to the dominant majority.

The other main model of social protest was the anti-Viet Nam war movement. Increasingly militant demonstrations suggested to gays that it was legitimate to protest government policy and to consider resisting laws which directly threatened them.

Then too, the fact that some heterosexual anti-war protesters claimed to be gay in order to protest the war or avoid the draft suggested to many young gays that it might not be so scary to acknowledge being gay after all.

Perhaps the best example of the 1960s social ethos was the embrace by some young people of the idea of a "counterculture," a lifestyle emphasizing relaxation of rules, hierarchies and traditional moral strictures.

The theme of the counter-culture was the libertarian one of self-exploration and personal authenticity, in contrast to conformity or conventional respectability. A zealous non-judgmental attitude prevailed, a rule of "Do your own thing." The advocacy of personal authenticity was not lost on gays. The politicized New Left held "teach ins," but the counter-culture held "be-ins".

The counter-culture encouraged the use of psychoactive drugs to explore "alternative consciousness." It encouraged the exploration of Asian religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, a plethora of gurus. Despite meager results and more quest than insight, the effect of both was to disestablish moralistic Christianity as the sole model of religion.

The counter-culture fostered sexual expression as a means of helping people find personal liberation and permitted occasional bisexual behavior by heterosexuals for the same reason. Its non-assertive attitudes encouraged a kind of mild androgyny among males that challenged aggressive masculinity and the stereotype that gays were unique in lacking masculinity. When a shocked young women once told one such man that he was wearing "girl's tennis shoes," he looked puzzled, shrugged, and said simply, "I don't care."

The imperatives of personal authenticity and self-discovery were reinforced by the newly reborn women's movement, which urged women to reject traditional social role limitations. Women were encouraged to "raise their consciousness" and rethink their self-concepts and preconceptions about women's capacities and autonomy. The message for women was given powerful impetus by the availability of the birth control pill after 1960, allowing women to assert greater control over their sexuality.

The feminist call to reject socially fostered self-concepts and assert sexual self-ownership had clear relevance for gays, even when not directly aimed at them.

One of the most conspicuous changes during the 1960s was the greater openness about sex. Social historians now argue whether there was actually more sex (yes, some), but there was certainly more talk about it in newspapers, magazines, on television talk shows, in living rooms. There was more sex in novels, in plays, in movies. One small magazine mischievously titled itself Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts.

Partly this was pushed along by the ongoing sexual revolution and the increasing separation of sex from reproduction. But in greater measure it resulted from U.S. Supreme Court decisions steadily restricting the definition of obscenity, allowing an ever-widening range of sexual material to be published.

Inevitably, greater public discussion of homosexuality followed, especially in the latter half of the 1960s, if only because gays were exotic and controversial. The number of newspaper and magazine article multiplied year by year. At one point New York television talk show host David Susskind seemed to have gays on his program so frequently that a contemporary cartoon parodied him by drawing a homosexual interviewing a group of David Susskinds.

Early gay activists solicited and welcomed this publicity, even though it was seldom uniformly favorable, because they saw it as a way of letting closeted gays know they were not alone and sending the message of gay legitimacy to gays they could not reach otherwise. As we know from the results, the strategy worked.

It deserves mention too that during the 1960s there were growing numbers of intellectual challenges to the chief sources of anti-gay oppression: to orthodox Christianity by liberal religion, process theology, and existential theology; to traditional ethical principles by "situation ethics;" and to state enforcement of morals by the concepts of victimless crimes and the over-reach of the criminal law.

Finally, a growing number of researchers and theorists challenged the notion that gays were mentally ill or, like Thomas Szasz, said frankly that the whole concept of mental illness was simply a device for the social control of disapproved behavior.

Despite its excesses and occasional nuttiness, the '60s has a lot to teach us still.

First appeared June 10, 1999, in the Windy City Times.

THIS YEAR IS BEING billed as the 30th anniversary of "Stonewall Riots" of June, 1969 in New York's Greenwich Village.

Hallowed in story and song, "Stonewall," as it is now called, was a weekend-long series of skirmishes between gays and the police that followed a bar raid, often taken to mark the beginning of the modern gay movement.

To be sure, a great deal of gay self-disclosure, activism and institutional development followed rapidly after "Stonewall."

But focusing on "Stonewall" as some sort of beginning or defining moment for the gay movement is deeply misleading. It blocks recognition of the important fact that there was a rapidly growing gay community consciousness in the 1960s, and that there was already a gay movement that not only grew rapidly but accelerated as the 1960s progressed.

Stonewall, we could say, was as much an effect as a cause.

As New York gay historian Jim Levin pointed out in a 1983 monograph on the gay movement, "Stonewall was the trigger for the gun, but the gun was so well loaded that any number of other events might well have fired it."

And veteran activist Frank Kameny comments to me, "I've always believed that our public demonstrations in 1965 and the subsequent ones in 1966, and at Independence Hall thereafter, created the mindset which made the 1969 public demonstration at Stonewall possible, and without which such a public demonstration would have been so unthinkable that it would not have occurred."

Although speculating about alternative history is risky, it also seems safe to say that even if no such catalyzing event as "Stonewall" had happened at all, gay progress would have continued from the 1960s on into the 1970s at an ever-increasing pace. It would simply have happened differently.

Let me give a generous dozen examples of pre-Stonewall gay activism and growth. Notice how the pace accelerates as the decade progresses.

• San Francisco entertainer Jose Sarria, the first openly gay man to run for public office, received 6,000 votes in the 1961 race for city supervisor, the same office Harvey Milk won 16 years later.
• Illinois in 1961 was the first state to decriminalize sodomy. Connecticut followed suit at the end of the decade.
• The first gay business association, the Tavern Guild, was formed in 1962 by gay bars in San Francisco. Within five years, gay bars in other cities formed similar groups.
• A gay magazine distributed in San Francisco's gay bars had a circulation of 7,000 by 1962.
• Frank Kameny organized the first ever picket demonstration for gay rights in America in April 1965 at the White House. Six more pickets followed that year in Washington or Philadelphia, including a second White House picket in October that drew 65 people.
• A national gay association, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, began holding meetings and coordinating local activist efforts in 1966.
• Gays in San Francisco opened a community center in 1966. It was supported, of course, by a thrift shop.
• A Los Angeles rally to protest gay bar raids in which patrons were injured drew several hundred gays early in 1967.
• Craig Rodwell opened the first gay bookstore, Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, in New York in 1967.
• The first campus gay organization, the Student Homophile League, was founded at Columbia University by Robert Martin in 1967. It was quickly followed by gay groups at Cornell and two or three other schools.
• Dick Michaels and Bill Rand founded the biweekly national gay newspaper The Advocate in 1968.
• The Rev. Troy Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church in 1968.
• There were 15 gay organizations in the United States in 1966. By the spring of 1969, just before Stonewall, there were nearly 50.

I offer this dozen or so examples to make clear that during the 1960s there was a small but rapidly growing gay movement that helped ensure the continued growth of activism in the 1970s even had Stonewall not happened.

But to a certain extent people live by symbols, find meaning and structure for their lives in symbols, and Stonewall has become our symbol. Think of a symbol as a kind of mental shorthand -- a conceptual device we use to coalesce a large number of facts, beliefs and feelings into a single manageable package which comes to have some sort of meaning for us, apart from and greater than its constitutive elements.

Stonewall (the event) was an odd combination of guerrilla warfare, camp street theater, and New Age "happening." Noting the growth of avant-garde and experimental theater in New York during the 1960s, historian Wayne Dynes described Stonewall as "simply the most spectacular manifestation of the new funky theater, produced in improvisational style with unpaid actors, and the police playing themselves."

"Stonewall" (the symbol), however, now has come to stand for -- "to mean" -- the aggressive expression of gay moral legitimacy, gay self-determination, and gay assertiveness in the face of institutional (especially governmental) hostility. As a symbol it includes all the earlier activist claims and adds a kind of intransigent and militant posture, "Not with my life, you don't."

After the hostile response to the bar raid, in which a gay crowd kept police trapped inside the bar until reinforcements arrived, the slogans chalked graffiti-like on the sides of buildings included "Gay Power." No matter how imitative of "Black Power" that phrase may have been, for most gays it was a new and startling thought even as braggadocio.

Walking through the Greenwich Village neighborhood after the second night of the disruptions, gay poet and counter-culture icon Allen Ginsberg commented to a reporter, "You know, the guys there were so beautiful. They've lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago."

But "Stonewall" was not automatically a symbol. People chose to make it one because they wanted a symbol. Clearly many people were close enough to being ready to agitate openly for gay equality that it took only the small added impetus of Stonewall to make them take that further step.

It seems almost as if the gay movement was building up so it could take advantage of some event that could sell the gay liberation message of gay equality, gay openness, gay assertiveness to larger numbers of people in an imaginative way.

The Stonewall Inn was an unlicensed bar. It was seedy. The glasses were dirty. The drinks were weak. It charged exorbitant prices.

Seldom has such a sow's ear been made into such a silk purse.

First appeared June 3, 1999, in the Windy City Times.

Along about this time o' year,
My po'r ol' heart fills up with fear.
Examinations 'r comin' roun'-
Like to drive a fella right to the groun'.
- From "The Talking Examination Blues" (circa 1955)

ALONG ABOUT THIS TIME OF YEAR my own poor old heart fills up with fear mainly because editors start making aggressive noises about Stonewall Anniversaries and Gay Pride columns.

Gay Pride is coming up again," they chirp. "You know what that means."

It means I have to think of something new to say about gay pride. This year is even worse.

"And it's the 30th anniversary of Stonewall," they inform me, as if I could escape this fact. "Isn't that exciting?" they burble. But that's ancient history, for goodness sake. In 1969 most young gays weren't even born. Especially most gays under thirty. We might as well celebrate the Battle of Tours, whenever that was.

What is there to say about gay pride? Worse yet, what is there new to say about gay pride? Not much. Nevertheless, yielding to editorial persuasion, and the fact that I would like to keep my job, I have come up with the definitive schema on gay pride. Feel free to take notes.

Thesis one: Being gay is wonderful and we all should feel proud that we are gay.

Put this way the idea of gay pride seems pretty silly. You can really only feel proud about the things you accomplish. But being gay is not something you accomplish; it is something you discover about yourself. You do not choose to be gay any more than you choose your race or height or your eye color.

This is a definitive argument against the whole notion of gay pride. There is no possible rebuttal. Which accounts for the fact that no one bothers to rebut it. But oddly, it makes almost no impression on anyone at all.

People go right ahead talking about gay pride, saying they feel gay pride, claiming they are glad to be gay, and all the rest. So we must try to make sense of what seems on the surface to be nonsensical. This leads to:

Thesis two: True, you don't choose to be gay, but you can choose to come out and you can take pride in coming out, in having the courage to overcome social stigma and affirm your own character.

This thesis at least has the advantage of being defensible. But coming out is getting easier and easier, at least in most places, so coming out is not such a big deal any more. Fifteen year old tots are coming out these days, so doing it in your 20s or 30s does not seem like much of an achievement, much less a source of pride.

Then too, I have known people who are out of the closet but who conduct their lives badly. They may be rude and insensitive. They may act foolishly and even destructively. They can cause pain to others and themselves. Maybe they thought that after they came out, they had no further obligations--as if that were all. Are they examples of gay pride? Not that I would want to introduce to anyone. Sometimes I wish they would just go back into the closet. (I have a list.) These plain facts lead us to:

Thesis three: "Being gay" is, in an important sense, more than just being openly homosexual. It seems to require that you develop the strength of character, the emotional stability, and social equipoise to live openly and function well in a primarily heterosexual society that still offers many opportunities for missteps and miscalculations.

Flourishing in this milieu necessarily involves rolling with some punches, evading others, blocking some karate chops, and occasionally using jujitsu to throw an adversary off-balance. (These are metaphors, please note.) It can also include firm resistance and a calm assertion of one's own dignity. The trick is to understand these techniques and to know which is appropriate under what circumstances. Some gays, alas, do not manage their lives well under these intermittently adverse circumstances. if you can, that is something to take pride in.

Still, the Gay Pride parades and events as we see them today do not seem so individualistic as all this. They do not seem to be involve a collection of people expressing pride about achieving social adeptness. So what is going on? This leads us to:

Thesis four: A gay person might say he was proud of our community and the institutions that we have created over the last thirty or forty years. We created social service, health care institutions and advocacy groups. We created clubs, sports leagues and business groups. We increased our political presence in both parties and in large corporations. Of all these accomplishments we can be proud.

But there is a problem here. The "we" that did the work to create "our" community is some of us "we" but not others of us "we." Some of us "we" (and you know who you are) did absolutely nothing to help. In order to be justifiable, pride in anything should probably be proportional to the contribution a person made to it. Just being around while other people did some work does not seem like much of an achievement.

A person could reply, maybe somewhat testily, "Well, those things show what gays can achieve." So they do. And that is excellent. And people who created those things deserve the credit and deserve to feel a sense of pride. But what about the others? It seems a little odd to say you are proud of someone else's hard work. That sort of collective thinking ultimately seems parasitic; it seems strange to be proud of being a parasite. So we wind up at our final rationale for gay pride:

Thesis five: "gay pride" may lack a firm basis in careful thinking, but it is an entirely understandable and reasonable reaction to past persecution and stigmatization. It represents a kind of over-compensation. Proclaiming "Gay Pride" is something like an archer who aims above the target in order to hit the target. We tell people to be proud in order to overcome the negative messages the culture sends.

Well and good, but since our goal is a society in which gay is viewed as no different from heterosexual, "gay pride" is at best a temporary response in our current transitional era. As acceptance of gays grows over time, it will become less significant, and will finally be irrelevant.

If this is true, then "Gay Pride" is mainly a form of PR propaganda aimed both at the large number of gays who have yet to fully accept themselves, and at those heterosexuals who still find themselves able to feel a smug, disdainful superiority to gays.

This rationale for "Gay Pride" has the most merit, chiefly because it is the most honest.

See you at the parade.

First appeared in early May 1999 in Bay Windows (Boston) and other gay newspapers.

ANTI-GAY ACTIVISTS have had great success milking the claim that laws prohibiting discrimination against gay people serve to create "special rights." In fact, lately they've made the same charge about granting us the right to marry, to serve in the military, and to adopt children. They even go so far as to claim that repealing the so-called sodomy laws that turn gay lovers into criminals is tantamount to granting us those self-same "special rights."

It seems that, in the lexicon of the bigots, mere equality under the law for lesbians and gays becomes equivalent to granting us an unfair and undeserved privilege (i.e., who do those perverts think they are, expecting to be treated the same as you and me?). Or perhaps it's just that they know if they repeat the "special rights" charge ad nauseam, then like any big lie it will eventually come to be perceived as true.

In fairness, there is a distinction that ought to be recognized between ensuring the government's non-discrimination against gays and lesbians (that is, prohibiting the state from treating sexual orientation as a reason to diminish the legal rights of citizenship), and limiting discrimination in the private sector. Some impressive gay intellects, including writer Andrew Sullivan, believe that the gay/lesbian political movement has put far too much emphasis on passing laws that limit the discretion of private employers and landlords to choose whom they hire or rent to, and not enough on prohibiting discrimination by the state itself. Gay libertarians argue that allowing the government to intrude into private decisions for any reason only serves to diminish everyone's liberty and freedom to associate with whomever they choose, whereas discrimination by the state against a class of citizens is never acceptable, since the government represents all of us, and all of us are taxed to support it. That's a debate that probably should be given more attention, but it's not my focus here.

Instead, I think it's worth noting the specious logic of those conservatives who support the principle that it's okay to prohibit private-sector discrimination against some groups, including those defined by race, nationality, or religious belief, but that extending this protection on the basis of sexual orientation is to uniquely afford us, again, "special rights." The argument usually goes that the reason sexual orientation is different is because it's a "lifestyle choice." As the anti-gay Family Research Council put it in a recent policy statement, "Unlike race, homosexuality is not a manifest characteristic, but a behavior."

Hmmm. Leaving aside the body of evidence indicating, at the very least, some genetic predisposition for being gay, there's a clear logical flaw in this right-wing rhetoric. For while race and nationality are indeed a matter of birth, one's religion needn't be.

David Boaz, author of the book "Libertarianism: A Primer" and a contributor to the Independent Gay Forum, has highlighted the issue of consistency about different protected classes. "Conservatives say gays shouldn't be protected, but blacks should, because being gay is something you choose, unlike your race," he writes. "But their reasoning is doubly wrong in that case: Most of us believe you DON'T choose your sexual orientation; but you DO choose your religion, which category conservatives want to protect." In fact, religious rightists, especially those who are "born again," stress that their brand of faith is something freely chosen. And, of course, many choose to adopt a faith different from their upbringing, while others abandon faith entirely.

Some conservative African-Americans, most notably General Colin Powell, claim that gays don't deserve protections because you can hide your sexual orientation, but not your race. While that's true enough, you can also hide your religious beliefs, yet no "anti gay rights" conservative to date has been willing to abandon hypocrisy and say that civil rights protections also should not extend to religion.

In fact, a growing number of civil rights cases before the federal courts focus on claims of workplace discrimination against fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews. Many of these involve the plaintiffs' claim that requiring them to work on certain religious holidays amounts to discrimination, even though all employees are expected to work on those days (talk about demanding special rights!).

Leaving aside the die-hard "born agains," some who believe that religious belief should be a protected category, but that sexual orientation shouldn't, might argue that you don't really "choose" religious belief, it chooses you. That is, you either are drawn to the doctrines and ritual expressions of a particular sect, or you aren't. But then again, even if you believe that being gay is also a choice (as, in fact, some gay and lesbian radicals proclaim), then how much "choice" do we really have about what we choose? Like religious belief, it either strikes one as right on a deep, subjective level, or it doesn't.

The point of all this is to expose just how idiotic the argument that "gay rights" are somehow of a "special" nature, at least when juxtaposed to civil rights protections based on religion.

Looking back on it, I'm amazed that lesbian and gay activists have spent so much energy trying to convince people that sexual orientation is akin to race, when the religious belief analogy seems so much easier to justify. If the right wing is against "lifestyle choices" receiving anti-discrimination protection, then they should be forced to be consistent, and to surrender the "special rights" granted on the basis of religion.

After all, fair is fair.

WHAT DO GAY CONSERVATIVES BELIEVE IN? Can one support equality for gays and at the same time remain faithful to conservatism? Or does embracing one mean abandoning the other?

What follows is an incomplete and simplified attempt to respond to these questions. Religious issues, for example, are omitted, though for many people they are an important part of conservative philosophy. The conservatism described is my own, but it leans much on classic conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke, T.S. Eliot, and Russell Kirk.

First and foremost, conservatism respects tradition and history. It prefers stability to change, continuity to experiment, the tried to the untried. Conservatives recognize the occasional need for reform, of course, for that is one means of a society's preservation. But we approach change with pessimism, caution, and a great deal of humility.

We see society more as a tree than as a machine. It is organic, developing slowly over centuries. The generation that thinks it can wholly remake society according to some preconceived design soon adorns the Hotel de Ville with human heads on pikes, or dots the land with gulags, or encircles the concentration camp with barbed wire.

How does a commitment to tradition square with a belief in gay equality? America's political tradition is centered on the protection of individual liberty and autonomy. This country, at its best, has welcomed those who do not conform to others' judgments about what they should be. The political and religious misfits, the poor, the unwelcome, came here because America promised they would be judged on their own merits.

Yet despite the nation's principled stand on liberty and equality, it also has a legacy of homophobia, just as it once enshrined racism and sexism in its laws. Gay conservatives are dissatisfied with present practices regarding homosexuals - on everything from marriage to the military - precisely because, laid beside the nation's higher tradition of respect for individuality, these anti-gay practices are found wanting.

When principle and higher traditions collide with particular practices, the latter must give way. In his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" and other writings and speeches, Martin Luther King, Jr. appealed not to fashionable third-world nostrums, but to distinctly American notions concerning liberty and equality under law. His rhetoric drew from Jefferson and Lincoln, not Marx or Castro. We see America as he saw it: a great nation that has fallen short of its own noble promise.

Second, conservatives cultivate a profound distrust of government, both because of the encroachments it makes on liberty and because of the unintended mischief it can do. Limited government is our constitutional design. The state's first and primary obligation is to preserve order and protect the physical security and property of the citizenry. Beyond these tasks, conservatives are wary of government involvement.

Government has been no friend of gays, intruding on gay lives with its sodomy laws and so much more. Among other things, it reinforces prejudice through its refusal to recognize gay relationships. It has often done a poor job of protecting our physical security from gay-bashers, either because it did not care or because it implicitly endorsed the beatings.

Crime, as a threat to physical security and property, must be unsentimentally suppressed. According to a recent study, gays live disproportionately in large cities. That's also where crime is most prevalent. Crime is therefore of particular concern to gays. Put more police in the streets, more criminals in jail for a longer time, make punishment surer and swifter, and - gasp - crime goes down.

Third, property rights are at the core of the conservative's vision of a just society. Private property provides a haven into which the citizen can retreat from the coercive and expropriative hand of government, as well as from the irrational prejudices and actions of other citizens. Property rights are therefore both a bulwark against despotism and a haven of privacy.

Gays are well served by a strong system of property rights. Camp Sister Spirit, a privately owned gay women's retreat in Ovett, Miss., was threatened a few years ago by the breakdown of respect for property rights and the reluctance of local authorities to preserve those rights in the face of anti-gay prejudice. The retreat's owners would have fared much better much sooner if the citizens of Ovett had known their property laws from their burning crosses.

Finally, gay conservatives do not recoil from "values" or morality, as the gay left so often seems to do. The learned wisdom of human experience as reflected by widely held moral principles is not lightly to be discarded. Love, courage, thrift, honesty, respect for life, generosity, duty, and many other virtues our parents taught us are powerful instruments for good.

But we gay conservatives have set ourselves on a course to strike intolerance of gays from any respectable enumeration of values worth preserving. Like other generations before us, we have discovered how far removed hatred is from the core of our heritage.

So there it is: respect for the nation's highest traditions, distrust of government encroachments and power, high regard for private property, and adherence to the moral values that make a society good as well as wealthy. All of these broad principles of conservatism are entirely consistent with - and, indeed, should result in - an unapologetic commitment to full civil rights for gay Americans.

IN THE WAKE of the brutal October 1998 murder-robbery of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, the news media, liberal gay rights groups, politicians, and others engaged in a national outcry for swift enactment of hate crime legislation. A hate crime law would, as Joan M. Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, put it, "protect Wyoming gays from the kind of horrors which Matthew Shepard and his family have had to endure." The Wyoming legislature responded in February by voting on several hate crime bills - including one that even included protection of particular occupations, such as ranching, mining, and logging, from "ecoterrorists." A House version of the bill was defeated in committee with a 30-30 tie. Two Senate versions were defeated in committee by wider margins.

National proponents of hate crime laws were quick to pass judgment: Wyoming, rather than being "The Equality State" - Wyoming's official motto, adopted after it became the first state in the nation to grant women the right to vote - was really the "Hate State." Even as Shepard's grieving parents reaffirmed on NBC's Dateline and in Vanity Fair that they did not want their son's death used in a campaign for hate crime legislation or any other political cause, groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) inferred that the legislature had not merely declined to fight intolerance but itself embodied intolerance for failing to pass the bill. "If not now, when?" demanded NGLTF Executive Director Kerry Lobel. "We are extremely disappointed that Wyoming refused to take real leadership on this issue."

Such reactions fit into the "hate crime news formula" that has become increasingly popular since the early 1980s with the media, advocacy groups, academics, and liberal politicians - all of whom have vested interests in fomenting a sense of continuous social crisis. A product of the identity politics mind-set that has come to dominate American society over the past two decades, the hate crime news formula uses widely recognizable and understood images - burning crosses and churches, neo-Nazi goosesteppers, and, most recently, the burned corpse of Billy Jack Gaither in Coosa County, Alabama; James Byrd, chained and dragged behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas; and Shepard's silhouetted body lashed to a Laramie, Wyoming, buck fence - to suggest that the United States is a seething cauldron of hate directed at members of unpopular groups. Although demonstrably false (even the statistics gathered by the advocates of hate crime legislation demonstrate there is thankfully no "epidemic" of such heinous acts), the formula remains popular, partly because it provides the media with a ready-made angle by elevating "ordinary" crimes to matters of urgent, national concern involving sexism, racism, and homophobia. Indeed, the formula provides big ratings and material benefits both to advocates and to their academic allies. And it provides politicians with the opportunity to engage in cost-free, camera-friendly symbolic activity.

With the Shepard case, the Wild West setting of the murder augmented the standard media narrative: Of course, the coverage implied, Wyoming's macho, frontier culture is closed-minded, bigoted, and homophobic - what else could it be? As an NBC reporter put it while standing outside a Laramie drinking joint, "At Wild Willie's Cowboy Bar today, patrons said hate is easy to find here."

Never mind that Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right not only to vote but to own property and to hold office; that it elected the nation's first female governor in 1924; that it ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973; that it was at the forefront of a trend in the 1970s to repeal sodomy laws; and that in the 1990s, more than 70 percent of its voters rejected anti-abortion initiatives. For the media, Wyoming was a natural setting for such a bestial crime. As The New York Times editorial page intoned the day following Shepard's death: "Laramie, the home seat of [Wyoming's] university, is a small town with a masculine culture... [Shepard] died in a coma yesterday, in a state without a hate-crimes law."

Local Outrage

As a Wyoming native (now living in Texas) and a gay man, I find such geographical stereotyping to be more than simply inaccurate and irresponsible. The coverage of the Shepard case delivers a damning lesson about the gross inability of the hate crime news formula to explain complex social situations - and it demonstrates that when the media and advocacy groups are faced with the choice of responding to reality or simply sticking with their scripts, they almost invariably choose the latter. Indeed, had they bothered to get beyond superficial pronouncements, they might have crafted a very different - and much more accurate - tale, one that reflected the outrage and sadness of area residents and put their rejection of hate crime legislation in its proper context. Far from symbolizing the last frontier of intolerance, Wyoming instead has said no to identity politics and the divisive, separatist group consciousness that hate crime legislation both reflects and perpetuates. While it is surely misguided to hope that anything decent will come from a tragic and horrible death, drawing such a lesson might at least salvage some small scrap of good from Shepard's murder.

In December, I traveled to Laramie to cover the arraignment of Matthew Shepard's accused killers for The Triangle, a Texas-based gay newspaper. I was particularly curious to learn how the horrible crime and subsequent media frenzy affected Wyoming residents, including former classmates and lifelong friends The lonely epicenter of the nation's Empty Quarter, Wyoming is seldom, if ever, on the national media's radar screen. There are exceptions - for example, when the president or another celebrity visits Jackson Hole or when Yellowstone National Park threatens to burn - but no one I talked to in Laramie could recall any event that generated anything close to the coverage of Shepard's homicide. As a local physician wrote in a column for a medical journal, "It was strange and disorienting for those of us in Laramie to be the focus of intense national publicity. For a while, we eclipsed the president and Kosovo as the top news story. News trucks were rolling down the streets, looking for people to interview. A friend from New York called to say that my wife was on national television; a crew had recorded the church service where she had sung. Tom Brokaw in the [hospital] emergency department, reporters in Burger King."

By the time I arrived, members of the national "media circus," as bemused and annoyed locals were calling it, had only recently folded up their tents and returned to their bicoastal media centers. Friends in Laramie expressed nothing but outrage over the Shepard murder. They said everyone in the local community and the whole state had been devastated by the killing. They were also outraged by other, equally savage murders that had shocked the community in the past year. In November 1997, the nude body of a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found in the foothills east of Laramie with 17 stab wounds; her 38-year-old lover, apparently angered by her refusal to seek an abortion, had left her to bleed to death. In the summer, an 8-year-old Laramie girl, visiting family in northern Wyoming, was abducted, raped, and murdered, her body later found in a garbage dump. A man with a history of heterosexual pedophilia was arrested and pleaded guilty. Though widely publicized within the state, these crimes garnered little to no coverage elsewhere, leaving my friends puzzled and disturbed. Why was the Shepard murder alone given such widespread, sensational coverage? Was it only because he was gay and, as a result, fit into a larger news narrative?

Those concerns were echoed by everyone I talked with on the subject, from the staff of the Laramie Daily Boomerang to Albany County law enforcement officials, from University of Wyoming faculty and students to waiters and other service workers. The Boomerang allotted considerable space to long letters to the editor expressing various degrees of disappointment and outrage at the national coverage of the Shepard murder. Many were bothered by the implication that the murder of a gay man was more horrific than other recent local homicides.

"Please," one representative letter from a woman in Douglas began, "the murder or death of anyone is tragic, but listening to all the media coverage of Matthew and then [to] have [other local murders] go virtually unmentioned, I felt a taste of bitterness and anger over this whole situation. Now I am hearing all the rhetoric for legislation to make penalties for hate crimes [harsher] than others are. I have difficulty understanding this mentality. Aren't all murders born of hate?" The Boomerang also ran stories on local critiques of national news coverage, including a public forum called "Hostility Bites" sponsored by the University of Wyoming Housing and Residential Life Office 11 days after Shepard's death.

Four major points emerged from the community-wide debate and discussion: The media were intrusive; they projected an unsubstantiated and unfair portrait of Wyoming as a "hate state"; they relentlessly linked Shepard's murder to the fact that Wyoming had no hate crime law; and they overtly promoted hate crime legislation as a necessary response to the death.

The "Hate State" Story

The national media's "hate state" narrative began in earnest three days after the attack on Shepard and two days before his death, with an October 10 dispatch by the Associated Press' E.M. Smith: "Alicia Alexander thinks she knows why a gay classmate at the University of Wyoming who begged for his life was savagely beaten and left tied to a wooden ranch fence to die in the cold. 'That has to do with the fact that this is a cowboy place. People aren't exposed to it [homosexuality]. They're too close-minded.'"

That same day, the NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw ran its segment outside Wild Willie's Cowboy Bar complete with a patron saying, "Gays get what they deserve".

According to Tiffany Edwards, the Boomerang reporter who wrote a detailed report of local residents' reactions to national media coverage of the Shepard homicide, NBC's Roger O'Neil interviewed a variety of bar employees and patrons but selected only the "negative" comments. Such pointed use of interviews and quotes by the television networks was a common complaint at the "Hostility Bites" forum. Matt Galloway, a student who spoke at the forum, had been interviewed by ABC's 20/20 because he had attended high school with Shepard and was a bartender at The Fireside Lounge when Shepard met his alleged murderers there. "The national media," Galloway explained, "will get 100 interviews and, if they get one like 'gays get what they deserve', they will use it."

The "gays get what they deserve" quote caused a local uproar, thoroughly covered by reporter Edwards and discussed in letters to the editor. Witnesses to the NBC interview in Wild Willies dispute its interpretation of the bar patron's somewhat inarticulate and rambling comments. "Honestly," one witness, a bar employee, said, "the customer, although not eloquently stated, was taken out of context. His opinion was that in any state, any town...open gayness is a very touchy subject."

A co-manager of the bar even confronted O'Neil while he was still on assignment in Laramie. As reported in the Boomerang, O'Neil explained that not only had he not conducted the interview himself, he had not actually seen or heard the footage. Instead, he was "briefed" on it by his producers who had already transmitted the video segment to NBC's studio in Burbank, California, for editing. According to the co-manager's account, O'Neil admitted that he based his lead-in to the story on what he had been told at the briefing.

Faced with a possible misinterpretation, the newsman allegedly became defensive. According to the co-manager, O'Neil "said 'I won't waste my time trying to clean up this town's mess ... for five years in a row hate crime legislation has been declined by the state. I don't think Wyoming deserves a positive picture.'" In an interview for this story, O'Neil did not deny making those statements, but explained that the controversial comment by the bar patron was selected over the other interviews because it was "higher quality" on technical grounds (i.e., had better sound, lighting, and the like) than the other interviews.

Media Trend-Spotting

Reporters' explicit linkage between the killing and the need for legislation immediately transformed Shepard's murder from a routine crime rarely reported beyond a particular community to an emblem of a national trend. The hate crime news formula turns a murder into a marker - and a market - for a broader, more important, and more dramatic issue that is typically cast in the most black-and-white moral terms possible. Hence, the day after Shepard's death James Brooke reported in The New York Times that it had "fanned outrage and debate" throughout the nation. "Gay leaders hope Mr. Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation to broaden existing laws," continued the piece, which included a supporting quote from Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay lobby organization. "There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence," said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Rebecca Isaacs, referring to the details of Shepard's murder. "People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion."

Brooke's front-page story included a reference to conservatives, "particularly Christian conservatives" who "generally oppose such [hate crime] laws, saying they extend to minorities special rights." Steven Schwalm of the right-wing Family Research Council said hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and "everything to do with silencing political opposition" and that such laws "would criminalize pro-family beliefs."

Rigidly dualistic, the hate crime news formula simply does not accommodate less polarized or more moderate views, such as those from openly gay authors and activists such as Richard E. Sincere Jr., Paul Varnell, Jonathan Rauch, Andrew Sullivan, and others associated with the Independent Gay Forum, which advocates elimination of government-sponsored discrimination against gays while opposing "liberationist" political strategies rooted in identity politics. In the hate crime formula, you are on one side or the other of all the issues. There is no sense, for instance, that a person might be gay, oppose the Christian right, and criticize preferential legal treatment for homosexuals.

The media's methods both reflect and reinforce those of advocacy groups, who similarly cast certain crimes as broadly representative. Less than a month after Shepard's death, for instance, the NGLTF mailed at least two appeals for money drawing heavily on his memory. One appeal sought money for a group in Fort Collins, Colorado, that was promoting a city anti-discrimination measure that would include sexual orientation. A second mailing sought money for the NGLTF itself.

Other gay groups, in places such as Los Angeles and Michigan, followed suit. Like the mainstream national media, they implicitly linked the murder both to a lack of hate crime laws and to a Neanderthal Wyoming culture. "Your donation becomes our tool, our weapon," one appeal read, "against ignorance and intolerance, the forces which killed Matthew Shepard." In an interview with The Advocate, the nation's biggest gay newsmagazine, Dianne Hardy-Garcia of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas approved of these efforts, particularly if the money is earmarked for the passage of hate crime legislation. She said there is "nothing more basic" than the need to pass hate crime bills. "We need to be frank with the [gay] community that we need more resources."

At least one aspect of the gay community's "outrage and debate" failed to interest the national media: The same Advocate story that quoted Hardy-Garcia cited a number of activists, most speaking anonymously, who condemned the use of Shepard's name so soon after his death. Some did go on the record: Terri Ford, a member of a Los Angeles-based political action group formed in reaction to Shepard's murder, said the NGLTF money raising efforts were "disgusting." A spokesperson for the NGLTF defended the fund raising efforts by saying, "We have often used tragedy to teach, and we will continue to do so."

A Socially Constructed "Epidemic"

The lessons that the NGLTF, along with other advocacy groups and national media sources, want the Shepard case to teach are clearly drawn: There is an "epidemic" of anti-gay crime in America, particularly in unsophisticated backwaters such as Wyoming; hate crime legislation is the only remedy; opponents of such laws are themselves allied with the forces of darkness.

Those are, at best, debatable notions; at worst, clear misrepresentations. In Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity Politics (1998), legal scholars James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter analyze what they call the "social construction of a national hate crimes epidemic." Contrary to media and advocacy-group pronouncements, Jacobs and Potter found no substantiation of a hate crime "epidemic" against gays or any other group, "despite a consensus to the contrary among journalists, politicians, and academics." Their own analysis concluded that "in contemporary American society there is less prejudice-motivated violence against minority groups than in many earlier periods of American history." Violence against minorities "is not new and is not on the rise." They point to other "epidemics inflated by those committed to mobilizing public reaction," such as child kidnapping, drunk driving, and homelessness. The "uncritical acceptance" of the "socially constructed epidemic" is potentially damaging, argue Jacobs and Potter. "This pessimistic and alarmist portrayal of a fractured warring community is likely to exacerbate societal divisions and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It distorts the discourse about crime in America, turning a social problem that used to unite Americans into one that divides us."

While one would expect this relatively good news to be heralded as evidence of social gains and a greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles, the authors uncovered a very different dynamic at work. Lack of evidence hardly deters promoters of hate crime legislation. Indeed, even when the NGLTF's own 1993 survey reflected a 14 percent decrease in hate crimes against gays and lesbians from previous surveys in six major cities, a spokesperson announced, "All the anecdotal evidence tells us this is still an out-of-control problem." Using the survey as her supporting evidence, an NGLTF representative told a congressional committee that "anti-gay violence clearly remains at epidemic proportions." Another NGLTF spokesperson characterized the study as proving that the gay community was "under siege -- fighting an epidemic of violence."

Jacobs and Potter contend that in a political environment dominated by identity politics, advocacy groups seek "to call attention to their members' victimization, subordinate status, and need for special governmental assistance...[They] have good reasons for claiming that we are in the throes of an epidemic...[Such] demands [require] attention, remedial actions, resources, and reparations. The ... media also have an incentive. ... Crime sells; so does racism, sexism, and homophobia. Garden variety crime has become mundane. The law and order drama has to be revitalized if it is to command attention."

Given these forces, the "epidemic" theory has been widely accepted, even with no solid evidence or, indeed, evidence to the contrary. The formula is designed so that it can only be verified, never refuted. Such predispositions made it almost inevitable that the murder of Matthew Shepard - who was, by all accounts, singled out partly because of his sexual orientation - would be discussed in terms of the "hate crime epidemic" and the "urgent" need for hate crime laws. (That Shepard died just as pre-planned National Coming Out Day activities were beginning provided another ready news hook.)

Political Placebos

In addition to the question of whether a hate crime epidemic actually exists is the issue of whether hate crime legislation would do anything about the situation. While the media uncritically articulated such an assumption, it's no more proven than the existence of the epidemic in the first place. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Jacobs said he was certain that the alleged perpetrators in Wyoming, like those who a few months before had murdered James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, were not "invited to their crimes" because of their states' criminal codes. In fact, all face capital murder charges and the death penalty (which has already been ordered against the first defendant in the Byrd case). "Yet well-meaning and misguided politicians and gay activists say the tragedy demonstrates a need for more state and federal `hate crime' laws," he wrote. "It is hard to see the current outcry as anything more than another chance for politicians to go out on a limb and declare themselves against hate and prejudice."

One could argue that hate crime laws have far more pernicious effects than simply allowing politicians to display false courage. Andrew Sullivan in Virtually Normal (1995) contends that hate crime laws are not only generally ineffective, they function as political decoys or placebos, actually maintaining the status quo of gay inequality. Fundamental, government-enforced discrimination against gays - including prohibitions against military service and same-sex marriage - is obscured by such laws, he argues.

Drawing a page from some death penalty advocates, supporters of hate crime laws typically contend that such legislation, whether or not it affects crime, sends the "message" that society won't stand for certain types of behavior. But individuals interpret messages differently; often they do so in ways unintended by the sender. While to some a hate crime law is a marker of a tolerant, enlightened community, to others it establishes grotesque hierarchies of victims. Such a move is inherently divisive, as it implicitly places more value on some lives; it also provides ammunition to anti-gay activists who accuse gays of seeking "special rights."

Such concerns were clearly at work in Wyoming residents' outrage regarding the disparity between the coverage of Matthew Shepard's murders and similarly ugly crimes. They were in no way rationalizing or minimizing Shepard's murder. Rather, they were expressing discomfort with the idea that one life is inherently more valuable than another. In fact, after Shepard's death, when the Laramie City Council was considering a hate crime ordinance, the mother of the 8-year-old girl who had been murdered earlier in the year opposed it, claiming it would create an "emotional split" among relatives of crime victims.

What? No Gay Bars?

With its lack of interest in local knowledge, the national media misinterpreted such reactions as further evidence of regional homophobia, a conclusion perhaps buttressed by the superficial sameness of Wyoming's population: According to official census numbers, it's 92 percent white, 5.7 percent Hispanic, less than 1 percent each African American, Asian American, and Native American. Journalists ominously reported that "Wyoming has no gay bars," a fact that becomes less compelling when one realizes that the state has no decent shopping malls, either: The paucity of both reflects economic realities, not political or cultural judgments.

If anything, a live-and-let-live culture has emerged from "high altitudes and low multitudes," to quote Wyoming politicians' favorite cliché. For instance, gays and straights alike frequent The Fireside Inn, the bar at which Shepard met his alleged killers. For a small population (453,388 in 1990, lower than any other state's) that occupies a space larger than the United Kingdom and averages fewer than five persons per square mile, the distances are too great, the people too few and interdependent, the economy too underdeveloped, and the sense of community too strong to accommodate the separatism that identity politics demands. In such a land of pragmatic tolerance, distinctions like that always will be unpopular.

That is particularly true when such distinctions are created and enforced by the government. Skepticism and resentment about government is widespread in a state in which 45 percent of open space is still owned by the feds and managed - arbitrarily, it is frequently charged - by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Dissatisfaction with land use policies is one reason why Wyoming has for years been an enthusiastic participant in the "sagebrush rebellion," the populist intermountain state initiative to curb the Bureau of Land Management's power over public lands within their states.

But skepticism about government does not equal intolerance, as Wyoming's trail-blazing history on women's rights and other social issues suggests. If anything, it equals an embrace of quirky individualism. Wyoming's quintessential and highly popular politician is former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who wrote in his 1997 autobiography, Right in the Old Gazoo, "I have flunked damn near every litmus test that was ever administered in politics. I am a conservative -- but not as far as the Christian Coalition is concerned, because I am pro-choice [and gay friendly]. I think of myself as an environmentalist, because I worked hard on conservation issues. And yet I am a true believer in the multiple use of the public lands, something the real tree huggers will never support."

In 1998, the Wyoming Republican Party--which dominates the state politically--put out a 50-point platform that contained none of the usual Christian Coalition boilerplate anti-gay initiatives inserted in many state GOP platforms. In fact, only one of the party's 79 less-important resolutions commented on homosexuality, affirming that gays, lesbians, "and those engaged in alternate lifestyles have the basic rights and protections of American citizens...but...no special rights or privileges [should] be granted to them."

While the rhetoric about "special rights" is vintage Christian Coalition, it is buried in a cluttered menu of mostly trivial resolutions, a faint echo of the usual fire-and-brimstone fare. That is as about intolerant as even Republicans get in Wyoming.

The Road from Laramie

So what does Wyoming's live-and-let-live culture actually look like? On the last day of my December visit, I drove 40 miles east to Cheyenne to meet and interview Joe Corrigan, an officer of the United Gays and Lesbians of Wyoming. According to its Web site, the group formed in 1987 because gays "were sick of having nothing to do other than go down to Colorado for a little fun." It now hosts an annual August "rendezvous" in the Laramie Mountain range that attracts more than 300 mostly gay campers from throughout the region. It also has a Thanksgiving pot-luck dinner and a major winter casino event called "Lovers and Gamblers."

I arrived early at Corrigan's house in a pleasant northwest Cheyenne neighborhood, across the street from an elementary school where my mother had taught in the 1950s. Jeff Lowe, Corrigan's lover, greeted me at the door. He apologized on behalf of Corrigan, who was working late. Jeff said he would try to answer my questions.

As he played a video game with one of his three children, we traded coming-out stories that reflected similar complex experiences of denial, marriage, children, "coming to terms," and divorce. He told me the divorce court granted him custody of his children. After he met Corrigan, Jeff said, they bought the house to settle down and raise the children in Cheyenne. I asked him how neighbors, school officials, and people in general were treating him and his family.

"I love this town and this state and I'm happy being openly gay," he said. "I wouldn't live anywhere else. It's my home. I went to school here. The neighbor kids sleep over here and our kids sleep over there. There are no problems."

I asked him if Wyoming needed a hate crime law. He said the whole world knew the answer to that question, because reporters "from New York to New Zealand" had interviewed him and Corrigan. Corrigan's quotes on the topic had been widely circulated. Later, in a telephone conversation, Corrigan told me that he strongly advocated a hate crime law "because every nation writes laws to reflect their values and Wyoming needs to have the value of tolerance written into law." Jeff is less enthusiastic about that solution; his quotes on the subject didn't seem to make it into the papers.

"Did the reporters ask you about your neighbors and how life is in Wyoming?" I asked.

"Yes, they did. As far as we can tell, the press didn't use any of that. You never know what they'll use." Jeff shrugged.

When I asked Corrigan the same question, he agreed and added: "We resent the way the reporters came into this state with their minds already made up. If we didn't give them the right answers, they just ignored us. Their questions were always like, 'Don't you feel unsafe here?' and we'd tell them no, that we were very happy here."

One might have thought that such reactions would have made it into stories about what it means to be gay in Wyoming. But of course, given the hate crime news formula, those comments can only be found buried in reporters' notebooks and on cutting room floors in Burbank and Manhattan.