IGF CultureWatch

If Log Cabin Republicans are the moral equivalent of Jewish Nazis, what does that make the Stonewall Democrats?

For years, gay Republicans have taken it on the chin from their homo brethren for allegedly contributing to their own oppression, for too easily accepting crumbs from the GOP table, and for failing to get the hint that they're not even welcome in the kitchen.

And ever since President Bush threw his weight behind amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage, the knives have been out and sharpened for any and all gays who ever dared to affiliate with the GOP.

The sad irony is that all this vicious criticism is undeserved. When it comes to political courage, the Log Cabin track record this election season easily outstrips that of its Democratic counterparts, and actually outperforms the allegedly non-partisan gay rights groups.

From the day the president announced his support for an amendment, Log Cabin's leaders have thrown almost all their energy into thwarting the leader of their own party and even working against his re-election.

Under the direction of Patrick Guerriero, a former Massachusetts legislator, Log Cabin launched a national ad campaign against the amendment effort, protested outside the Republican convention, and accepted dozens of invitations to appear on national television criticizing the president and the GOP leadership in Congress.

Guerriero penned a column that argued against Bush's re-election, and then Log Cabin broadened the battlefield, announcing it would file suit challenging the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" restrictions on gays in the military.

If you shrug all that off as exactly what a gay rights group ought to be doing, then your inclination is right even if your conclusion isn't.

In fact, Log Cabin is the only national gay rights group in this critical election year that has consistently taken issue with its own friends and allies in defense of our civil rights.

It's almost unfair to compare Log Cabin with the Stonewall Democrats, its supposed partisan counterpart. Judging by their respective behavior, they're not even in the same category.

Log Cabin has proven its mettle this year as a gay rights group that lobbies the Republican Party. The Stonewall Democrats, on the other hand, have acted more like a Democratic group that lobbies (and recruits) gays.

When John Kerry came out in support of an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution that would overturn marriage equality in the one state where it exists, the Stonewall Dems were stone cold silent.

When 20 percent of the Democrats in the U.S. House voted in favor of the federal marriage amendment, the Stonewall Dems were stone cold silent.

Instead, the Stonewall Democrats criticized House Republicans - a justified slam but hardly courageous. What about the 36 Democrats who voted against our most basic freedoms?

Where was the arm-twisting from the Democratic leadership? Dick Gephardt, the top House Democrat, has a gay daughter, but it was his counterpart, Tom DeLay of Texas, who was out front on marriage equality, albeit on the other side.

There's no excuse for Stonewall's silence. The party's platform is committed to gay rights and opposes the marriage amendment. Gays are a critically important fund-raising and voting bloc.

Stonewall ought to call non-supportive Democrats to task for failing to support their platform and betraying an important constituency.

The supposedly non-partisan national gay groups are no better. Like Log Cabin, the Human Rights Campaign has a former Massachusetts legislator as its new leader. But Cheryl Jacques still acts like she takes her orders from the Democratic whip.

For example, when Dick Cheney ducked a question during the vice presidential debate about rising HIV infection rates among African-American women, Jacques issued a statement calling his ignorance on the topic "inexcusable." And it was.

But what Jacques failed to see, through her partisan-colored glasses, was that John Edwards was every bit as neglectful in his response, spending his entire answer talking about unrelated issues and health care in general.

It used to be that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force could at least be counted on to take both parties to task on our behalf. Matt Foreman, its leader, vowed to the New York Times that gay groups would never back a candidate who supports writing anti-gay discrimination into a constitution state or federal.

When John Kerry did exactly that, the Task Force to its credit did release a statement taking him to task. But less than four months later, the Task Force was lauding the Democratic nominees as "the most gay-supportive presidential ticket in American history."

The gay rights movement is easily the most compliant political lobby in this country. Our opponents readily criticize their own allies when they cross their interests or don't push their agenda.

Gay groups smile and say, "We understand. Of course supporting our rights is too unpopular to justify politically."

Perhaps if John Kerry is elected, and like Bill Clinton betrays his pro-gay rhetoric, these groups will understand the lesson that Log Cabin has learned in the last four years.

There will always be an excuse why now is not the time to fulfill our promise of equality. It will never be politically expedient.

And politicians will never do what they have not been lobbied to do.

First published August 15, 2004, in The New York Times.

What happened to Governor McGreevey - that is, James E. McGreevey, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, who announced his resignation on Aug. 12 because he was secretly gay and had "shamefully" conducted an extramarital affair - was strange, to say the least. Pundits wondered whether there would be broader ramifications for gay civil rights, same-sex marriage or American politics. I doubt it. A rich and seemingly unique concatenation of homosexuality, adultery, suspicions of political featherbedding, and rumors of extortion and sexual harassment made the McGreevey scandal look like an aberration.

What happened to Mr. McGreevey - the man, not the governor - was not strange at all. It was familiar to almost every gay American of Mr. McGreevey's generation. Marriage, not homosexuality, lies at the heart of it.

Mr. McGreevey is 47. I am 44. We have in common being among the early members of the post-Stonewall generation. We came of age in the 1970's, when overt expressions of anti-gay animus were becoming unacceptable in polite company. The worst of official repression was past. Vice-squad raids and scandalous arrests and federal witch hunts were not central fears in our lives. There was still plenty of unofficial discrimination and ugly and ignorant rhetoric, and we all feared the low-grade terrorism known as gay-bashing. But on the whole we were free, as no previous generation had been, to get on with our lives.

There was one thing, however, we knew we could never aspire to do, at least not as homosexuals. We could not marry.

By that I mean not just that gay couples could not marry. Self-acknowledged gay people - coupled or single, adult or adolescent, open or closeted - also could not hope to marry. The very concept of same-sex marriage had yet to surface in public debate. We grew up taking for granted that to be homosexual was to be alienated and isolated, not just for now but for life, from the culture of marriage and all the blessings it brings.

Social-science research has established beyond reasonable doubt that marriage, on average, makes people healthier, happier and financially better off. More than that, however, the prospect of marriage shapes our lives from the first crush, the first date, the first kiss. Even for people who do not eventually choose to marry, the prospect of marriage provides a destination for love and the expectation of a stable home in a welcoming community.

The gay-marriage debate is often conducted as if the whole issue were providing spousal health insurance and Social Security survivors' benefits for existing same-sex couples. All of that matters, but more important, and often overlooked, is the way in which alienation from marriage twists and damages gay souls. In my own case, I did not understand and acknowledge my homosexuality until well into adulthood, but I somehow understood even as a young boy that I would probably never marry. (Children understand marriage long before they understand sex or sexuality.) I coped by struggling for years to suppress every sexual and romantic urge. I convinced myself that I could never love anybody, until the strain of denial became too much to bear.

Others coped differently. Some threw themselves into rebellion against marriage and the bourgeois norms it seemed to represent. Some, to their credit, built firmly coupled gay lives without the social support and investment that marriage brings. And some, determined to lead "normal" lives (meaning, largely, married lives), married.

At what point Mr. McGreevey realized and acknowledged he was gay I don't know. I do know that many gay husbands begin by denying and end by deceiving. Perhaps that was so in his case.

Opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes insist that gays can marry. Marriage, they say, isn't all about sex. It can be about an abstinent, selfless love. Well, as Benjamin Franklin said, where there is marriage without love there will be love without marriage. I'm always startled when some of the same people who say that gays are too promiscuous and irresponsible to marry turn around and urge us into marriages that practically beg to end in adultery and recklessness.

For most human beings, the urge to find and marry one's other half is elemental. It is central to what most people regard as the good life. Gay people's lives are damaged when that aspiration is quashed, of course. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to that. But so are the lives of spouses, of children. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to that, too.

The country is still making up its mind about same-sex marriage. Massachusetts has it. Most states have pre-emptively banned it. On Aug. 12, the California Supreme Court invalidated about 4,000 same-sex marriages performed by the city of San Francisco, but gay-marriage advocates hope that this is a temporary setback. Through litigation now working its way through the system, California's highest court may yet overturn the state's gay-marriage ban.

The McGreevey debacle suggests why all Americans, gay and straight alike, have a stake in universalizing marriage. The greatest promise of same-sex marriage is not the tangible improvement it may bring to today's committed gay couples, but its potential to reinforce the message that marriage is the gold standard for human relationships: that adults and children and gays and straights and society and souls all flourish best when love, sex and marriage go together. Nothing will ever make the discovery of homosexual longings easy for a young person. But homosexuality need not mean growing up, as Jim McGreevey and I and many others did, torn between marriage and love.

First published on June 23, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.

Over the 35 years since the Stonewall events gave a welcome boost to earlier gay activism, we have seen a number of innovations in activist techniques, visibility models and message communication.

In the early years, there were "zaps" of homophobic politicians, media outlets and anti-gay businesses. The AIDS epidemic brought ACT-UP demonstrations with their careful attention to maximizing media exposure, catchy slogans and innovative physical actions like "die ins." Gay marriage brought lines of gay and lesbian couples dressed up and waiting in line for a marriage license, all the more effective a demonstration for not being intended as one.

All during this time there have been annual gay parades under their various names. But have the parades managed any real innovations? Not noticeably. They are larger - huge in some cities - more politicians attend and more businesses participate. But the point seems to have disappeared.

In the early years, parades emphasized coming out. Then there was an emphasis on civil rights laws or AIDS. But the parades don't seem to have a message any more unless it is "We're on display and isn't that fun?" It is just a gay visibility parade. It's the one day in the year the media pay attention to our lives and our movement, and we utterly fail to use it.

The international pride parade group InterPride suggestions for 2004 ran the gamut from bland to witless. The primary theme is "Vive La Difference" with alternate themes of "Stand Out, Stand Proud" or "Living the Rainbow." Who are the drooling idiots who came up with those?

We are threatened by a constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage but all InterPride can suggest is "Vive La Difference"? What difference? That heterosexuals can marry and gays cannot? Most states do not have gay civil rights laws but InterPride suggests "Living the Rainbow"? Well, you had better do it in the closet or you might get fired. "Stand up, Stand Proud"? Well, you had better not in the U.S. military.

To be sure, InterPride picks themes that will fit everywhere in the world. But that is exactly the problem. Gay movements in various states and countries are at different stages of development and have different priorities. A theme that fits everywhere sends no pointed message anywhere. Local pride organizers should choose, as smart ones already do, locally relevant themes that parade contingents can use in floats and signs - themes like "Marriage Now" or "Fight the Federal Marriage Amendment."

Then think about the political and health activist groups who carry signs along the parade route so spectators see them. But spectators probably already know their goals and agree with them. It is the politicians and government officials attending the parade who should see the signs. But if they are in the parade, too, they don't see them.

It would be more useful for the spectators to hold up signs as the politicians and political candidates drive past: "Gay Marriage," "Support Gay Civil Rights," "Military Access Now." Let the politicians know what you as gay and lesbian spectators want them to do. You are their boss. Never forget that.

It is also time to stop being nice to politicians who claim to be pro-gay but do little on our behalf. For instance, Illinois Democrats long promised that when they controlled the governor's office and the legislature they would pass a gay civil rights bill. Well, they do now and they didn't. And none of them has breathed a word about repealing the state's gay marriage ban.

So it is time to stop cheering politicians for merely turning up at our parade - that is a 1970s mentality - and start booing them for playing us for fools. If we cheer them, it only makes them believe they can keep on getting away with merely verbal support. Remember: they have an incentive not to pass pro-gay laws, because once they do, then they have nothing left to keep promising us to get our votes.

But what if some ostensibly pro-gay but non-producing politician - such as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich - fails to turn up at the parade and take their lumps like adults? We can do what political candidates do when opponents don't attend a debate. They set out an empty chair with his name on it. So someone should be ready to chauffeur an otherwise empty convertible with a sign on it reading "Where Is ____?" to draw attention to his absence. It is time to play hardball with these knaves.

And last, since we have all seen too many unadorned beer trucks and company vans in the parade, would it be too much for our unimaginative parade committees to make a rule that parade entries have to have some gay content or theme or decoration in order to participate?

And, oh yes, if you are thinking of cheering the inevitable contingent of "Kerry for President" enthusiasts, remember that Sen. Kerry supports a Massachusetts state constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage. I just thought I'd mention it.

Have a happy Pride.

The movement for gay equality in America has come in four basic stages. Each of these stages made a distinct contribution. Each was marked by its own missteps. Each provoked stiff resistance. Each suffered stinging defeats. But each ultimately advanced the cause and prepared the way for the next stage. With the recognition of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts - the first time a state has done so - we have entered the final stage of the gay rights movement.

Stage 1: Emergence

The first stage of the movement covered roughly the middle of the twentieth century up to the time of the Stonewall riot in New York in June, 1969. We might call this stage "Emergence," since it's when homosexuals began to emerge from the closet and to organize politically for the first time.

The atmosphere in the country during the Emergence period was harshly repressive. Homosexuality was considered not just sinful, but a mental disorder. All 50 states had sodomy laws directed and enforced primarily against gay sex. Raids on gay bars were common. Known homosexuals were forbidden in many states to obtain professional and business licenses. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable.

In the face of repression, a few extraordinarily courageous individuals declared that homosexuals were perfectly normal. They formed the first gay political and educational groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. It was during this period that the American Law Institute recommended eliminating sodomy laws, and Illinois became the first state to do so, in 1961.

Stage 2: Liberation

Stonewall marked a new and more radical stage in the gay rights movement. We might call this stage "Liberation," since the gay movement appropriated the rhetoric and methods of other "liberation" movements for women and racial minorities. Liberation is also an appropriate moniker for this second stage because the movement emphasized separation from mainstream American society and institutions through unbridled sexual freedom and revolutionary critiques of existing customs and ways of living. For many activists of this period, fighting for marriage would have seemed like a surrender to heterosexual norms.

During the Liberation period, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders, many more states eliminated their sodomy laws, gay publications and organizations mushroomed, the first openly gay officials were elected, and a few localities banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Yet this second stage engendered a ferocious backlash, led by a newly self-conscious movement of social conservatives now known as the religious right. Anita Bryant infamously led successful drives to repeal gay rights ordinances in places like Miami and St. Paul.

Stage 3: Tolerance

The heady and optimistic second stage of the gay rights movement ended with the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. AIDS soon sapped almost the entire energy of the movement. Gay advocates shifted from emphasizing freedom and separation to emphasizing caring, responsibility, community, and commitment - the preconditions for the development of a marriage ethic. At the same time, the brutal process of dying from a disease identified almost entirely with gay men brought many homosexuals out of the closet for the first time. The protest group ACT-UP, whose antics were sometimes childish and counter-productive, transformed the American medical establishment to be more responsive to patients' needs for care and life-saving drugs.

While some Americans responded to AIDS by calling for quarantines, the predominant reaction was one of sympathy and support. We could call the third stage of the gay-rights movement "Tolerance," since Americans now opposed many forms of discrimination yet a majority remained convinced that homosexuality was morally wrong.

During the Tolerance period, many more civil rights laws were passed, corporate America led the way to the equal treatment of gay couples, and sodomy laws were finally vanquished. Gay couples began to demand benefits, leading to the creation of private and public domestic partnerships and, toward the end of the third stage, civil unions in Vermont. Still, there were reverses, including the codification of the military's gay ban and a federal ban on recognizing gay marriages.

Stage 4: Acceptance?

On May 17, 2004, the day Massachusetts began recognizing same-sex marriages, we entered what I expect will be the end stage of the gay rights movement.

As in each stage of the gay rights movement before this one, gay advocates will be guilty of excesses and will suffer serious setbacks. Beginning this November, we are going to be plastered in a series of anti-gay-marriage initiatives on state ballots around the country. Gay marriage will temporarily win a battle here and there in a few courts, but will overwhelmingly lose. For a time, legislatures will bottle-up or defeat gay marriage bills even in gay-friendly states, like California.

Gay marriage may even lose its toehold in Massachusetts come November 2006, when citizens there may vote on a state constitutional amendment. But I doubt it, and even if we lose in Massachusetts gay marriage will resurface somewhere before long. Having seen that gay marriage causes no harm and brings much joy, Americans will allow it, by fits and starts, to sweep the country.

By the time that happens, perhaps 30 years from now, the need for an organized gay rights movement in this country will be gone. There will still be bigotry and ignorance to fight, in America and around the world, but the heavy political and legal lifting will have been done.

History can't be written before it happens, and there is nothing inevitable about progress. But, if it turns out as I expect, this final phase should be called "Acceptance," since it will end in gays' full inclusion in the nation's legal and social life.

First published on May 26, 2004, in Liberty Education Forum.

We are crossing a major demarcation line in the history of the gay rights movement. After May 17, 2004, gay marriages in America are a legal reality (if only in Massachusetts at first), not just a private commitment or an act of civil disobedience. To be sure, the fight will continue in courts and legislatures for many years, but that does not diminish the magnitude of this moment. The long struggle between gay liberation and integration has essentially been decided, and integration has won.

The conservative nature of this development has not been lost on the liberationists. Their anti-assimilationism is rapidly becoming obsolete, as gay couples across the country demand full inclusion in the central institution of our society.

As with all Lost Causes, some diehards resist recognizing their defeat. In an August 2003 article for The Boston Phoenix decrying the "marriage rights mania," Michael Bronski dismisses marriage rights as "crumbs." The social benefits of marriage aside, few would regard the 1,138 rights and privileges associated with marriage under federal law, or the additional hundreds under state laws, as mere crumbs.

Bronski treats marriage as if it hasn't changed in 50 years. In fact, legalized contraception and abortion, no-fault divorce, and the rise of marriage as an equal partnership have left the institution far different from the oppressive patriarchal tool he portrays. His grim portrait, including his unsubstantiated claim of an "ongoing epidemic of domestic violence among straight and gay couples," reads more like Peter Pan appealing to Wendy to stay in Never Never Land than a serious discussion of real families.

To hear some gay radicals tell it, this wedding season sounds more like a funeral. By adopting the strictures of marriage, so their thinking goes, our community will give up its freedom and lose its fabulousness. Many such qualms are reported by Michael Powell in a March 31, 2004 article in The Washington Post.

These lamentations remind me of the Lena Wertmuller film Swept Away…, in which a desert island is the only place where love can flower for the socially mismatched protagonists. Once they are rescued, their love is doomed. While I honor our movement's pioneers, I do not share this romantic view of our historic social isolation. Just as with the demise of the old Chitlin Circuit, which nurtured many great black performers before mainstream venues were desegregated four decades ago, few will reject the new freedom because it brings challenges along with opportunities.

For years, when faced with gay opponents of marriage, I have argued that their personal aversion was one thing, and opposing my right to choose for myself was quite another. Ten years ago, when I tried to persuade a gay-friendly D.C. mayoral candidate to endorse equal marriage rights, she pointed out that the gay community itself was divided on the issue. Indeed, Evan Wolfson, one of the earliest and staunchest gay marriage advocates, was often subjected to blistering verbal abuse by gay people who resented his rocking the boat for something they didn't even want.

The climate has now irrevocably changed. There is no longer any serious division in our community on the question of civil marriage rights. From coast to coast and across the political spectrum, we were thrilled by the rush of city hall weddings set off by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in February. The allure of alienation is melting away amid the joyous nuptials; the politics of victimhood is losing its grip even amid the anti-gay backlash; and gay families are adjusting their expectations upward. There is a growing recognition that, while the victory is far from won, the tide of history is with us.

It is only natural that such a change would take some adjusting. I can understand the nostalgia that some feel for the early years after Stonewall, when life at the margins of society brought with it a certain freedom. During the gay community's first "out" years, the lack of institutional signposts provided endless opportunities for creativity. But that was the freedom of people roaming uncharted territory. Thirty years ago, the bar scene was one of the few social options. There were no gay choruses, no gay film festivals, no gay chambers of commerce. The idea of openly gay politicians was outlandish even in the most liberal cities. Other than a few classical allusions, gay literature mostly consisted of lurid paperbacks and a magazine that was kept behind the counter at the newsstand.

Today, the number and variety of gay organizations and services is vastly greater. Whatever your interest or need, you're a quick Google search away from finding someone to share it or fill it. The truth is that we are infinitely more free than we were in the "good old days," simply by having more choices.

Twenty years ago, playwright Harvey Fierstein talked about the "perpetual adolescence" of the urban gay milieu, in which sowing one's wild oats became for many a lifetime occupation. The tragedy of AIDS forced our community to grow up, leaving us stronger and more responsible. Marriage is the next step - not just for particular couples as a legal option, but for our community as a social norm and aspiration.

Marriage isn't for everyone, of course. This is as true for gay people as for heterosexuals. But simply by becoming a realistic goal and part of the social landscape in which gay children grow up, it will give them the freedom to color with all the crayons in the box, as gay children before them never could. Imagine being a child again, and being able to blurt out your foolish dreams unselfconsciously, the same as your siblings and playmates. Imagine receiving encouragement for those dreams, and taking that encouragement for granted. Imagine the wondrous ways a child may grow if properly nurtured. That's a radical enough vision for me, and making it come true will be pretty fabulous.

Originally published July 4, 2003, in The Washington Blade.

Inevitably, somebody had to rain on our victory parade, in the middle of Stonewall Sunday. I refer not to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who endorsed the Let's Blame Gays for Our Marital Problems Amendment, but to John Rechy, author of the landmark gay novel "City of Night."

In a commentary in the Los Angeles Times, Rechy praises the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, but then immediately launches into a litany of all the discrimination and indignities and violence endured by gay people during the past thirty years. Refusing to celebrate our monumental victory without griping, he drags gloom and doom into the room like Snoopy sitting on the television set imitating a vulture.

"Without in any way belittling the decency of the justices in their brave opinion," Rechy says as he does it anyway, "some might view the decision as a vastly imperfect apology for the many lives devastated by cruel laws that made possible the myriad humiliations of gay people, the verbal assaults and screams of 'faggot!' - the muggings, the suicides, the murders...." Well, happy Pride to you, too!

Pardon me, Mr. Rechy, but the news on June 26 was so bad for right wing bigots that Strom Thurmond finally keeled over. As Paddy Chayefsky said to Vanessa Redgrave the night she ranted against "Zionist hoodlums" in accepting an Oscar, "a simple 'thank you' would have sufficed."

Rechy is not the only one among us who won't take yes for an answer. Earlier in June, at a State of the Movement confab in Washington, Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force talked as if we were about to be overrun by the radical right. He even discounted the anticipated victory on sodomy laws, saying that the mere removal of a negative was no big deal. Considering that people have lost their jobs and children over it, it's a very big deal, indeed.

As to the increasing apoplexy of the far right, black lesbian activist Mandy Carter got it exactly right when she replied to Foreman that the reason they are so upset is that they know we are winning. Maybe we'll get lucky when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issues its upcoming marriage ruling, and all the nutty fundamentalists will have a collective Rapture and be sucked into the void.

Pardon my irreverence, but I just got an email from Focus on the Family trying to sell me two videos challenging Darwin's theory of evolution, and I am thinking, Bush is afraid these guys will bolt the party? He should worry that they'll stay. It is hardly in his interest to have the culture war take center stage in his re-election effort.

It is high time that we acknowledge we are winning. This is not to say we have won, despite conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg having so declared. Of course our fight is not over. But as veteran gay activist Frank Kameny says, the tide of history is with us. At last the Supreme Court has upheld our right to liberty and to respect for our relationships. The implications are profound, which is precisely why the right-wing scapegoaters are up in arms.

In San Francisco on the day of the Lawrence ruling, members of a gay American Legion post took down the huge rainbow flag that flies over the Castro District and raised the Stars and Stripes. The only other time this was done was after 9/11, when Mark Bingham died among the heroes of Flight 93. We already knew that the flag flew for us too, but Justice Kennedy and his colleagues have made it official.

There may be no such intersection, but symbolically gay people are turning in growing numbers from Christopher Street onto Main Street. This does not mean that we are abandoning our gay identities, but simply that we are shedding our outsider status. Those who cherish the film noir appeal of cruising windowless bars in warehouse districts are free to indulge themselves. The rest of us can enjoy the sunshine.

As to the so-called "crime against Nature," given that the theocrats are impervious to the evidence and logic refuting this old slander, I can only quote the late Kate Hepburn in "The African Queen": "Nature, Mr. Alnutt, is what we are put in this world to rise above."

First published January 15, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

THE SUPREME COURT indicated late last year that it would hear the case of "Lawrence and Garner v Texas" (hereafter "Lawrence"), the appeal by two Texas men arrested, briefly jailed and fined for violating a Texas law forbidding homosexual, but not heterosexual, sodomy.

In granting the hearing, the court seemed to be signaling that it was willing to reconsider its widely deplored 1986 "Bowers v Hardwick" decision upholding Georgia's more comprehensive sodomy law. Had the court wished to let Hardwick stand, it would simply have refused to hear Lawrence and Garner's appeal.

Since it takes votes from at least four justices to grant a hearing, that probably means at least four liberal justices (perhaps Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer) think Hardwick was wrongly decided and are reasonably confident they can pick up one or more centrist votes (Kennedy or O'Connor) to overturn it.

A less optimistic view: The justices are well aware that two, possibly three of the oldest justices--including liberal John Paul Stevens and centrist Sandra Day O'Connor--may resign during the Bush presidency and are likely to be replaced by fairly conservative judges. So the liberals may feel that even if their chances of overturning Hardwick are far from certain, this term will be the last chance for many years.

So, will the court overturn Hardwick? The court can do almost anything the majority has a will to do and find ways to interpret precedents to support the decision. So the question might be: Does the court have a will to overturn Hardwick? But that may be the wrong question. The right question may be: Does a majority have a will to uphold Hardwick? It may not.

The Hardwick decision attracts little support. It has been vigorously criticized by many conservative and libertarian as well as liberal legal theorists. Harvard law professor Charles Fried, solicitor general during part of the Reagan administration (1985-89) wrote of Justice White's "stunningly harsh and dismissive opinion."

University of Chicago libertarian law professor (and Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals) Richard Posner wrote that there was "a gratuitousness, an egregiousness, a cruelty, and a meanness" about the Georgia statute itself and argued its unconstitutionality.

And it is well-known that Justice Powell himself, who first voted to overturn Georgia's sodomy law then changed his mind and voted to uphold it, four years later admitted publicly, "I think I probably made a mistake in that one."

The Court hates to reverse earlier decisions, but it is fairly willing to change its mind. Its preferred method is to make some distinction between the older case and the newer one. With Lawrence the materials are available. Hardwick was argued on sexual privacy grounds. Since the Texas law applies only to gays, Lawrence can and will be argued largely on equal protection grounds: Texas denies gays as a class equal treatment under the law.

But more than that, the nation has changed since Hardwick. In 2003 we are now exactly as far beyond Hardwick as Hardwick was beyond Stonewall. Since 1986 the nation's understanding and acceptance of gays--and gay relationships--has greatly increased.

By 2003, far more gays and lesbians are openly gay--two, three, even four times as many as in 1986--and believe it is their moral right to be so. As a result, hardly any reasonably alert person can say, as the elderly Justice Powell claimed in 1986, that they have never known a homosexual. (Powell had had more than a half-dozen gay clerks but none was open with Powell.)

Nor are members of the court immune to a growing understanding and acceptance of gays. Greater exposure to gays may not force the justices to overturn Hardwick but it certainly can dilute the sort of ignorance and hostility that underlay White's decision and Burger's snide concurring opinion. And It may prompt justices to look harder for ways to overturn Hardwick.

Nor, of course, can the justices afford to be completely insensitive to shifts in public opinion if they are to retain respect for the Court and its decisions.

In 2003, the great majority of U.S. adults think sodomy laws should be abolished. While White's decision could note with satisfaction that sodomy laws were part of the American tradition and 24 states retained them in 1986, by 2003, only 13 states have sodomy laws. So sodomy laws are a rapidly waning part of the American tradition.

It is not without significance that in 1986 fears about AIDS had boosted support for sodomy laws to its highest point since the mid-1970s. But as AIDS became better understood and treatments became available, support for sodomy laws plummeted. In 1986, 53 percent of college freshmen favored sodomy laws, but by 2001 support fell to less than one-fourth (24.9).

Hardwick was widely viewed unfavorably in 1986. If the court rules similarly in 2003, the hostile reaction will be far more intense, widespread and sustained. It is hard to believe the Court would issue a decision that would find favor only among droolers.

Originally appeared Nov. 29, 2002, in Gay Life (Baltimore).

Richard Goldstein, an executive editor of the Village Voice, has opened a new front in the gay cultural wars with his new book, The Attack Queers, in which he argues that an alliance between the liberal media and the gay right (whom he calls "attack queers" "homocons" and "neocons") is threatening the soul of the gay movement. Gay conservatism, he charges, strays from the tradition of "queer humanism" which is the ideological bedrock of our movement, and that makes it betrayal and disloyalty, pure and simple. "The gay right exists, just as Jews for Jesus do, but it stands apart from the sensibility that marks us as a people." Radicals, the only authentic queers, must expose and defeat this evil "before it's too late." Most prominent on Goldstein's enemies list are Andrew Sullivan, a conservative; Norah Vincent, a libertarian; and Camille Paglia, a Ralph Nader liberal; but he claims to see through their "superficial" differences to the underlying, frightening reality - that all of them are soldiers in a unified campaign of backlash and reaction.

This book is not serious political analysis. You won't learn anything about actual gay conservatives by reading it because Goldstein has no real interest in, or knowledge of, their political views. Instead, he goes to battle with familiar, cartoon-like stereotypes of the right - accusing his enemies of fearing differences, supporting male domination, advocating rigid gender conformity, and so on. No one familiar with the published positions of the writers listed above (such as Paglia's spirited defense of drag queens and identification with the transgendered) will recognize their actual ideas in his deliberate caricatures of them. There's also something disconcerting about a gay writer who takes other gay writers to task, not on the merits of their ideas, but because they "deviate" from a presumed orthodoxy.

What is interesting about this book is that it throws into sharp relief how much we as a culture have changed socially and psychologically in the last three decades. Goldstein is a member of the Stonewall generation (as I am), but there's something of the '70s dinosaur about him. He seems locked into the emotional atmosphere of that tumultuous time.

We often felt, then, a profound sense of alienation from American culture and political life. It wasn't clear that this country could or would make room for us, and many of us believed that only a revolutionary restructuring of America would guarantee our liberation. Despite our enthusiasm, many of us were deeply fearful, because emerging from the closet exposed us to the real dangers of arrests, beatings, firings, ostracism and ridicule. We were excited by the gains we were making, but suspicious about how long the country would tolerate our movement before crushing it in a brutal backlash.

Goldstein remembers marching in a gay contingent in a New York St. Patrick's Day Parade. "We strode past a million people shrieking epithets. It was a terrifying spectacle, but utterly exhilarating. By facing stigma in all its fury, I was finally able to see the system it created, and how crucial my suffering was to its cohesion. I was the sexual other against which masculinity could be defined...." This was "gay identity" - grim and militant, angry and hypervigilant, formed in defiant confrontation with oppression and brutality.

I, too, remember participating in such demonstrations, but the last gay march I attended was a local Pride parade this year, a day of balloons and children, corn dogs and beer, bands and floats. I was prepared, as always, for the "exhilaration" of a confrontation with the hostile masculine other against which I could exercise my authentic gay identity; but, alas, no one was shrieking any epithets, so I had to settle instead for a less dramatic afternoon of dancing and cruising.

The social environment has changed enormously in the past thirty years, and our movement, like all successful minority movements, has largely evolved from the stage of street confrontation to that of dialogue and negotiation. We're all aware that there are many challenges still ahead, and we don't have to be reminded that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. But reading Goldstein is like trying to have a conversation with a paranoiac who thinks that everyone who doesn't share his delusion that the Gestapo is running America is "naive." It isn't, and we aren't.

By every measure, the vast majority of gays and lesbians are left of center politically, so there's no need to believe the movement is about to be swamped by the right. But I think there is also little doubt that the profound sense of alienation from the larger society that formed the atmosphere we breathed decades ago has greatly diminished. Our movement has been a test of the commitment of western civilization to its professed values of liberty, diversity and tolerance. We made our case - we used the courts, the media, and the political systems - and our civilization responded. It's response remains unfinished and imperfect, a work in progress; nevertheless, we now enjoy in Europe and the United States a level of safety and freedom undreamed of almost everywhere else in the world. It turns out that we didn't have to overthrow the government or remake the economic system to move forward. Alienation has hardly disappeared, but fewer and fewer of us experience ourselves as strangers in a strange land anymore, and since 9/11 some are even bold enough to admit that they love their country. Our trust in the guiding values of western civilization has not been in vain; our loyalty to it's basic institutions has not proved to be the loyalty of fools. If these are the attitudes that worry Goldstein when he speaks of "homocons" then millions of gays and lesbians are homocons, and his cause was lost long ago.

There's a siege mentality in Goldstein's dread of the gay right, a sense that if we don't all hang together ideologically, then we'll all hang separately. He's willing to tolerate any kind of diversity except the political kind, but for those of us with more faith in the strength and vitality of our movement, ghettoes - physical or ideological - are increasingly anachronistic. We need lose no sleep if someone in the neighborhood is a Log Cabin Republican, and we can see diversity in gay political thinking as a sign of our increasing maturity, not as a betrayal of the One Truth. Let us always be skeptical of apostles of "inclusiveness" who work to create new outsiders, or any program for "liberation" which begins by fingering heretics.

The great irony of this book is that Goldstein, who imagines that he's a progressive, has written a book arguing for a return to "traditional values." As I read The Attack Queers, I sensed in its author the same deep dread that always powers such campaigns - the lurking fear that history has left him behind. Well, call me an optimist, but I believe it has.