IGF CultureWatch

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.

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.