IGF CultureWatch

"Smackdown" Smacked. Some e-mailers have written to say they found the "we"re not gay, it was just a put on" conclusion to World Wrestling Entertainment's "Smackdown" gay wedding to have been quite gay-negative, and ditto the crowd's reactions. What can I say, I based my item on the Washington Post's coverage. Does this mean you can't believe everything you read in the papers"?

Prime-Time Quotas? The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation reports that:

The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters appearing this fall on primetime network television has declined by almost two-thirds compared to the 2001-02 television season". The Fall 2002 season includes only seven lesbian and gay characters in primetime -- all of whom are white. There are no bisexual or transgender characters. Last year, 20 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters regularly appeared on network television.

Proclaims GLAAD's Scott Seomin:

"The diversity of the gay community cannot be conveyed through seven characters, especially when all of those characters are white. This is not merely about the decreasing number of gay and lesbian characters on TV. It is about the total lack of people of color, bisexual and transgender portrayals on network television."

Now, I"m all for more gay characters on the tube. But there's something about GLAAD's rhetoric that's unsettling. For one thing, there's no recognition on GLAAD's part that TV programming decisions are driven by ratings, not by a central planning committee made up of homophobic whte male racists. In the wake of the success of "Will & Grace," there was a big jump in the number of gays on TV. It was TV's typical copycat phenomenon. But many of the new shows bombed in the ratings -- not because they had gay characters, but because they weren't very good.

Should GLAAD be encouraging more gay stories on prime-time television? Absolutely. But failing to understand what caused the gay surge and subsequent decline, playing the race card at a time when there are more black characters than ever, and righteously declaring the need for transgenders of color all comes off as just more stale activist rhetoric.
--Stephen H. Miller

A Sham, but Not All Bad. A bit belatedly, here's last week's Washington Post take on World Wrestling Entertainment's "gay wedding" storyline between pro-wrestlers Billy and Chuck. Yes, it turned out to be as phony baloney as everything else in pro wrestling. But as reporter Hank Stuever points out, the absence of anti-gay invective, or overt audience hostility, says more about gay progress in the American heartland (those "red state" folks) than the decision by the elite New York Times to include same-sex commitment ceremonies among its Weddings announcement.

Remember Stalin? Zimbabwe's President (via rigged elections) Robert Mugabe has put in place a terror-driven land expropriation policy that has spread famine across his country, formerly a food exporter. He has also, notoriously, declared homosexuals "lower than dogs and pigs" and recently launched a campaign against "sexual perverts," avowing that gays have no rights at all. AllAfrica.com reports (via the Zimbabwe Standard) that "Mugabe has, in the past few years, openly paraded his deeply entrenched hatred for homosexuals, attacking them relentlessly"" So, why were members of the New York City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus giving him such a warm reception last week? "I"m honored to host him," said Councilman Charles Barron, as quoted in Newsday. Can you imagine the outcry if it had been conservative council members who had hosted a rightwing, rather than leftwing, dictator with such a murderous and homophobic record?

Autopilot Activism. The Commercial Closet site has a good piece on the refusal of some die-hard lesbigay activists to give up their boycott against Coors Brewing Company. Coors has just launched a new print campaign to once again highlight its gay-positive policies:

Titled "Real History," the ad features a triangle with a list of the company's gay rights accomplishments including: adopting an inclusive non-discrimination policy in 1978, adding same-sex partner health benefits in 1995 and other milestones. Another ad to appear in January will feature six openly gay employees.

As the article notes, the roots of the trouble go back to a broader union boycott in the early 1970s. But while the union boycott ended long ago, and coalitions have been formed with Hispanic and African-American groups, Coors remains dogged by gay activists who, once having sunk their teeth into the company's skin, refuse to ever let go. Their main beef is that some Coors family members give money to conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation. But from what I can see, these are center-right conservative groups, and not the hard-core homo-haters of the religious right. Rather, it's as if the activists simply are unable to rationally revisit any stance once taken. That's one reason I tend to characterize them as "reactionaries," even though they like to call themselves "progressives."

I should note that not all activists are still in the anti-Coors camp; even the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign have accepted funding from Coors in recent years -- and been denounced for it by those even further to the left.
--Stephen H. Miller

Fiendish Floridians? According to a press release from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

"In 2000, African Americans in southern Florida were denied the right to vote and to have their votes counted. In 2002, the gay and Jewish communities are facing the same inexcusable fate," said Lorri L. Jean [NGLTF's executive director].

While irregularities have been reported in precincts countywide, Miami's Jewish and gay communities have been disproportionately hit by voter machine malfunction and other irregularities. -- "How many times must historically oppressed communities be denied the right to participate in elections under the watch of Jeb and George W. Bush?" demanded Jean.

Years ago, there used to be a joke about a hypothetical headline in the old (and, at the time, left-leaning) New York Post: "New York Destroyed; Blacks, Jews Suffer Most." The penchant to claim the mantle of victimhood seems to know no bounds on the left. In fact, the well-reported voting problems in Florida's Dade and Broward counties (that's Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, respectively) have been attributed to the county officials in charge of elections, and these officials are, as it turns out, DEMOCRATS.

Think, for a minute, about NGLTF's suggestion that the brothers Bush managed to pinpoint the precincts with a majority of gay or Jewish votes, and then to arrange for election workers in those exact precincts to be slovenly or ill-trained, and for the expensive, new electronic voting machines to be improperly hooked up -- all in order to undermine the traditionally liberal vote. I mean, just how efficiently fascistic do they really think the Republicans are?

NGLTF's concern was stoked by a ballot initiative from the religious right, which sought to overturn Dade County's gay rights ordinance. Says the NGLTF release:

"In some precincts, there was no ability to vote on any initiatives. In others, voters have complained that when they voted NO on the anti-gay ballot measure, YES votes appear to have registered instead."

Can you spell P-A-R-A-N-O-I-A?

As it turned out, the repeal effort failed 53% to 47%, despite the great GOP conspiracy, and the gay rights measure will stay on the books. As reported by the Miami Herald, racially speaking, the strongest support for keeping the gay rights measure, by far, came from non-Latin, non-black voters (in other words, the white electorate), which voted 73.7% to 26.3% against repeal. Among black voters, the vote was just barely against repeal, 55.5% to 44.5%. And finally, among the heavily Cuban Hispanic voters, the majority favored repealing the gay rights law, 63.2% to 36.8%. Guess that's why NGLTF wasn't concerned about voting foul-ups affecting that minority group.
--Stephen H. Miller

"Anniversary" Reading.This week, you might want to read, or re-read, Bruce Bawer's Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe, in Partisan Review. Bawer touches on a range of issue posed by fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe, including its virulent homophobia:

many Muslim youngsters in the Netherlands attend private Islamic academies (many of which receive subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from the governments of one or more Islamic countries). These schools reinforce the Koran-based sexual morality learned at home"one that allows polygamy (for men), that prescribes severe penalties for female adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that (in the fundamentalist reading, anyway) demands that homosexuals be put to death. If fundamentalist Muslims in Europe do not carry out these punishments, it is not because they"ve advanced beyond such thinking, but because they don't have the power. Like Christian Reconstructionists, a small U.S. sect that wishes to make harsh Old Testament punishments the law of the land, fundamentalist Muslims"whose numbers are, of course, many times larger"believe firmly in the implementation of scriptural penalties.

Another example of how Muslim leaders "have been less and less shy about advertising" their anti-gay views:

In 1999, for example, the Guardian described a student conference on "Islamophobia" at King's College, London, at which a speaker began by announcing politely, "I am a gay Muslim." That effectively ended his presentation: "For members of the majority Muslim audience, the expression was enough to ignite the most passionate opposition. Some people began to shout, while others came raging down to confront the speaker. Security was called and the conference came to a premature end."

Then, in October 1999, the Shari"ah Court of the U.K. declared a fatwa against Terence McNally, who in his play Corpus Christi had depicted Jesus Christ as gay. (In Islam, Jesus is counted among the prophets.) Signing the death order, judge Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed emphasized the concept of honor, charging that the Church of England, by failing to take action against McNally, had "neglected the honour of the Virgin Mary and Jesus." The Daily Telegraph reported that according to the sheikh, "Islamic law states that Mr. McNally can only escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. . . . If he simply repents he would still be executed, but his family would be cared for by the Islamic state carrying out the sentence and he could be buried in a Muslim graveyard."

Writing of a dinner with Dutch friends, however, Bawer recounts:

Criticizing any kind of Islam at all, I gathered, felt too much to them like voicing racial or ethnic prejudice. While freely condemning Protestant fundamentalism"which hardly exists nowadays in that once strictly Calvinist country"they couldn't bring themselves to breathe a negative word about Islamic fundamentalism. There was no logic in this; but the Dutch were clearly still at a point where it seemed possible, and easier, simply to avoid such uncomfortable issues.

His conclusion:

As for those who, after a period in the West, make it obvious that they are unwilling or unable to adapt, they must be sent home and replaced by deserving individuals who can adapt. This may appear extreme, but there is no reasonable alternative. For at stake in all this, ultimately, are the basic freedoms of all Westerners -- not only women and homosexuals, but everyone, including Muslims and former Muslims who wish to live in a place where they can be themselves. At stake, indeed, is Western civilization.

Explaining Myself. A reader shares the following:

I find your columns on the Independent Gay Forum smart and refreshing. However, the jabs at what you call "the gay left" are just divisive and unnecessary. We shouldn't lower ourselves to that level -- even if our adversaries do.

Here's how I responded (after thanking him for his positive comments):

While I understand your point, I can't say I concur. Politically speaking, there is a gay left, which dominates gay political discourse. While most gays are moderate liberals, in the political center, or on the center-right, it is the gay left that has become situated as our institutional voice.

In the marketplace of ideas, vigorous debate is a good thing. And part of debating ideas is to identify the viewpoints being represented. I happen to believe that gay leftists, while they may call themselves "progressives," are actually quite reactionary -- politically speaking, it's a perspective that supports backward-focused socialist economics and, frankly, illiberal policies (speech codes, group-based quotas, etc.). To challenge it, one must call it what it is. I don't mean to be confrontational for the sake of being confrontational. But neither should forthright debate be curtailed.

Another letter commented on a posting about Bill Simon's race for California governor, in which I mentioned the poor record on gay issues of another conservative from the Golden State, Ronald Reagan. I had written, "Can you imagine Ronald Reagan supporting gay adoptions or any kind of domestic partnerships?" The reader berated me for ignoring Reagan's opposition to a voter initiative that sought to ban gays from teaching in the state's public schools. The reader wrote:

It seems peculiar for you to say this without noting that Reagan played a key role in defeating the anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978. Comparable? Perhaps not. But Reagan was a man of his time, and during his years there was no serious discussion of gay adoptions or partnership rights.

I replied:

Of course you're right. It had slipped my mind about Reagan's opposition to the Briggs initiative. I was, however, mindful of Reagan's silence on AIDS, and his alliance building with the religious right. As president, he chose to ignore the gay political movement that was becoming a major political force, as if it simply didn't exist.

It's fascinating to me that so many conservative Republicans just don't understand that being perceived as "anti-gay" now has a significant downside. Bob Dole, while running against Bill Clinton, seemed totally taken aback by the brouhaha when he returned a check from the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and it cost him moderate support by making him look like a bigot. While campaigning in the primaries, George W. Bush was apparently unprepared to answer a straight-forward question on whether he'd meet with gay Republicans, saying no during a live interview (when his campaign had indicated yes), and then seeing controversy develop. And hapless Bill Simon thinks he can say one thing to LCR, and another to Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, and that no one is going to notice.

They are simply mystified that the political ground has shifted. It reminds me of the movie "Spartacus," when a shaken Roman general sputters to Laurence Olivier, when reporting his defeat to the rebel forces, "But they were just...slaves."

--Stephen H. Miller

The Worm Turns. As for my earlier, moderately encouraging posting about California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon, I can only say one thing: Never mind. After reports that Simon had made some positive responses to a Log Cabin Republicans questionnaire, the candidate has run scared. Seeking the good graces of the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the fiercely anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition, Simon disavowed the LCR questionnaire, which he now claims he never saw.

As the AP reports, on the questionnaire Simon (or someone authorized to respond on his behalf) had pledged to declare a Gay Pride Day if elected, said he supported "domestic partnership" laws if they're not based on sexual orientation, and promised to uphold a variety of gay-friendly laws and regulations. He also supported adoptions by gay couples.

But reportedly "under intense pressure from the religious right," he caved. In a letter from Simon that's posted on the Traditional Values Coalition website, the candidate seems to oppose gay adoptions, is against a pride proclamation, and otherwise takes pains to let the religious right know he's one of them.

Now, to be fair, the letter is not full of hateful rhetoric, and in some ways seems deliberately vague. Simon believes:

"the best family environment for a child is a home with a mother and father".We know that there is a good supply of such homes waiting for children"Also, I oppose legislation imposing sexual orientation training guidelines for foster parents."

But, of course, there are children that remain unwanted, unloved, and unadopted (most of those upstanding heterosexual couples Simon reveres only seem to want healthy white newborns). Would Simon seek to outlaw gay adoptions -- he doesn't exactly say so.

And as for gay marriage, Bill Clinton was against that, too. And while I think annual pride proclamations by government officials can promote inclusion and respect, equal treatment under the law should be a far higher priority than symbolic esteem-boosters.

Simon's letter also said he'd "hire the most qualified," presumably regardless of sexual orientation, and that he had no objection to private companies having partnerships.

However, I"m not letting Simon off the hook. Kowtowing to Lou Sheldon is just as bad as a liberal kowtowing to Al Sharpton. Simon had a chance to be a leader, to show that a believer in less expansive government, and an opponent of excessive regulation and taxation, could also be progressive on gay issues (and, by the way, I consider all those views to be progressive, in that they emphasis individual liberty and personal choice). Instead, Simon is seeking to placate the most reactionary forces in the party. He has, so it seems, chosen to embrace the past at the expense of the future.
--Stephen H. Miller

Invitation Rescinded. A follow-up to the item below on Bill Simon's mismanaged attempt to placate religious conservatives. The AP also reports that Simon was axed from a list of planned speakers at a gay GOP fund-raiser scheduled for later this week. The Republican Unity Coalition event starring Mary Cheney -- the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney -- is expected to raise $1 million for "Big Tent" Republican candidates for the House and Senate who are viewed as supportive of gay inclusion. Said an RUC statement:

It is hugely disappointing to us to see Bill Simon bow under the pressure of a small fringe group who evidently yanked his chain hard the first time he reached out to us and to all voters in the middle, where elections are won.

I don't know the details, or if Simon signaled an unwillingness to personally attend. If the RUC folks gave him the boot (as the press accounts seem to suggest), they may have felt that a strong response, with some political pain, is the only way to ensure that conservative candidates don't think the religious right is the only constituency they need be concerned about. But in general, making Simon stand up and defend his positions in front of a gay-friendly audience, if he were willing to do so, would otherwise seem like a good thing.
--Stephen H. Miller

Non-Spousal Rights (or, Brotherly Love). The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, in responding to a Log Cabin Republican questionnaire, Bill Simon, the GOP's candidate for California governor, came out in favor of domestic partnerships, gay adoption, and the executive order protecting state employees. He's against gay marriage. And even on partnerships, he"d prefer that they not be defined specifically to recognize same-sex relationships. Here's how he put it:

"Let's not premise this thing on having the government go in your bedroom," Simon told a caller on the Ronn Owens KGO radio show. "What happens if my brother and I . . . why couldn't we be domestic partners, if we both lost our wives?" Asked by Ownes if he was proposing such laws for incestuous relationships, Simon said definitively he was not -- but for "any people who want to have a special relationship and set it forth in a contract, I'd look at that."

That's weak, or course. At best, domestic partnerships should be a stop gap that provides an avenue for same-sex couples to obtain something approaching spousal rights, while denied full equality to enter into marriages. As IGF contributor Jonathan Rauch and others have noted, opening up DPs to relationships that don't aspire to be spousal is to weaken the concept that spouses deserve special recognition and reinforcement. "Roommate rights," or recognizing a son and his widowed mother, or two siblings, as somehow "spousal," is nothing less than a frontal assault on the idea of spousal uniqueness -- all in order NOT to recognize gay partners as deserving the dignity of spouses.

Having said this, however, I"d argue it is still progress that Simon, as a candidate of the GOP rightwing, has come as far as he has. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan supporting gay adoptions, or any kind of partnership rights?

Better Off Dead? Harvard Law School, threatened with losing the millions of dollars in government funding that Harvard University as a whole receives, has agreed to finally allow the U.S. military to recruit on its campus. Originally banned in the Vietnam era, the military was kept away more recently to show the law school's opposition to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. True, "lie and hide" is unjustified and odious, but at a time when we are fighting against a worldwide terrorist network that wants to murder as many of us as it can, is it too much to expect the eggheads get their priorities, well, straight? Yes, keep up the lobbying against "don't ask." But keeping the military from recruiting the best and the brightest (that is, working to weaken the military) was politically perverse. That Harvard had to be financially blackmailed into letting the military recruit says volumes about the myopia of the liberal-left elite.

Community, Heal Thyself. There's a scathing attack on gay life, not from the religious right, but from a gay talk-show host and writer named Charles Karel Bouley II, in The Advocate:

It's 2002 and gay men are still drugging themselves silly, having unsafe sex, and turning themselves into living Billy dolls. If the religious right has a preconceived notion of who and what gay people are, maybe it's because we have fed it to them.

I can't say I agree with all of his rant. If the gay left revels in its antipathy to middle-class normality, Bouley goes to the other extreme and apparently sees no shadow whatsoever in suburban conformism. But he does score some points, especially about drug use and unsafe sex 20 years(!) into the age of AIDS. In any event, it's refreshing to see someone insist that we take responsibility for how we're perceived, rather than simply blaming the "bigots" for every negative image of gay folks that still lingers in the heartland.

Right-wing Wrath. You know you"re winning the culture wars when the anti-gay right starts criticizing Bill O"Reilly, conservative host of Fox TV's high-rated "O"Reilly Factor," for being too accommodating to gays. Here's a rant titled Even Bill O'Reilly Is Part of the Media's "Gay Spin Zone", from the right-wing Culture and Family Institute. Writes the CFI's Stephen Bennett:

O"Reilly has even said that he's "on the side of the angels" in opposing bans on homosexual adoption. (This was in regard to the state law in Florida that lesbian comedian Rosie O"Donnell and her friends in the liberal media have targeted for elimination.) Sad to say, one by one, even conservative stalwarts in the media are caving in to the homosexuals" grand, sinister plan.

Don't tell the gay left, though. They think things are only getting worse!

Another Sign of Progress. A serious contender for the Los Angeles Police Department's top job, David Kalish, is gay, and that's no big deal, reports the San Francisco Chronicle story. According to the report, Kalish, now a deputy chief,

seems to be one of the few among the dozens of candidates for the $240,000-a-year job who appears to be not only well-liked both inside and outside the department, but to have made no major enemies along the way. "He's commanded thousands and thousands of officers, and he's always been successful," says [L.A. City Council member Jack] Weiss, a staunch supporter. "Kalish is known for having a strong relationship with everybody. His orientation just is not an issue."

I don't know if Kalish will be named chief, and given the competition he probably won"t. But being seriously considered is a far cry from what a gay candidate could have expected just a few short years ago. (And it's a happier case of our new inclusion than, say, Michael Kopper being accepted by the top execs of Enron as part of their inner cabal.)

--Stephen H. Miller

Let the Light Shine Forth. Last Sunday's Washington Post, in Church's Growing Flock Changes Heart of Texas, gave an inspiring look at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, described as "the largest predominantly gay church in the United States, and possibly the world," with more than 3,500 members, "about half of whom attend services on a typical Sunday morning." In what may be the ultimate story of gay and lesbian assimilation,

It's a scene straight from Middle America: There is laughter all around and hugs and kisses, too, and after the offertory and communion and much greeting and good cheer, the faithful file happily out of church -- men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women.

But there's always shadow in the presence of light, and so, wouldn't you just know it,

The Christian right and anti-gay groups have trained their ire on the church, picketing outside and occasionally infiltrating the sanctuary to shout slogans. "I'd call it a synagogue of Satan," said John Reyes, head of the Dallas office of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America. "It's a monstrosity."

Nevertheless,

as the church has tripled and quadrupled in size, the critics have been able to muster only a dozen or 20 protesters sporadically. The Cathedral of Hope, its services protected by a pair of uniformed police and a sprinkling of officers in plain clothes, has shrugged and moved on.

Funny that when gay activists disrupt the church services of denominations viewed as homophobic, conservative pundits are quick to condemn (and usually rightfully so, although some acts of "bearing witness" by gays who are actual members of these churches may be a different matter). But when religious right activists, enraged by hate and zeal, disrupt gay church services, where's the conservatives" outrage?
--Stephen H. Miller