IGF CultureWatch

Most everybody who's at all interested in gay rights has an opinion about Dr. George Rekers' recent vacation. The Miami New Times did some good journalism in discovering the noted anti-gay doctor's weeklong trip to Europe with a sexy, young male companion/rentboy/prostitute/sex worker.

Rekers presents himself as a scientific authority on homosexuality, and Florida's Attorney General, Bill McCollum (who is now running for Governor, and from Rekers) bought the pitch and paid him $87,000 as one of only two witnesses to defend Florida's gay adoption ban. Rekers testified under oath that lesbians and gay men are mentally unstable and thus unsuitable to be adoptive parents.

I have no idea why Rekers, a 61 year old married man, was taking a vacation in Europe with a 20 year old male; perhaps his wife knows. His explanations covered a lot of territory in their various incarnations: He needed someone to "lift his luggage" because of a recent surgery; He was just evangelizing a sinner (and paying a few thousand dollars for the opportunity, perhaps from the money earned from McCollum and the Florida taxpayers); He had no idea the young man advertised on the explicit Rentboy.com, touting his endowment and willingness to please customers; He was "never involved in any illegal or sexual behavior with his travel assistant."

It may not have been illegal, but if the "travel assistant" is to be believed, reasonable people could conclude that nude body massages involving "the long stroke" across Rekers' penis, thigh and anus is "sexual behavior." I guess it depends on what the meaning of "penis" is.

But as the right once again curdles in embarrassment, and the left piles on, I'd like to offer this observation: If the glaringly obvious conclusion is true, that Rekers is, in fact, a frustrated homosexual who won't allow himself to actually have sex with another man, then he has created for himself, exactly the hell he and his colleagues believe homosexuals are headed for or deserve. I can't imagine what it must be like to share a room - naked - with an attractive young man I've paid a lot of money to, and not have sex with him. Whether that's hell or not, it's certainly got all the earmarks of earthly torture.

And that's really the point. This is the torture closeted lesbians and gay men were forced to negotiate in the days when any disclosure of their sexual orientation could land them in jail, or worse. Even the most private moments could result in exposure, prosecution or blackmail, and the fear of going too far distorted the most intimate relationships. That was daily life for a person of homosexual orientation.

And this is the way the anti-gay side continues to believe the world ought to be. Rekers is, in fact, living in that world, the one so many of the rest of us have left behind as we've claimed our self-respect. His world - his hell - is now inhabited only by those who want it, or believe it is their fate.

That's the small, mean justice of this story.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sent Congress a letter stating that that ending the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy before the military conducts a thorough review (translation: not this year) "would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter." After all, those serving in the military expect to make political policy and dislike taking orders, right?

A release from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network states:

Gay rights advocates are furious after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking for the Administration in a letter to the Hill, effectively killed the chances of a vote on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before the Midterms. And if the Democrats lose the House, repeal-a firm Obama campaign promise-may be deferred indefinitely.

Uh, oh, guess who's been thrown under the bus.

Not surprisingly, the Obama fundraisers at the Human Rights Campaign are spinning the Gates letter as if the Defense Secretary had operated independently, like some sort of loose cannon (reminds me of how in Russia during the '30s Gulag prisoners used to lament, "if only Stalin knew!"). States an HRC release:

Today's letter from Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton flies in the face of the President's commitment in the State of the Union address to work with Congress to repeal the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law this year.... It is inconceivable that the Secretary of Defense would so blatantly undermine the Commander-in-Chief's policy commitment.

But as scholars at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out in a release titled Experts: Obama Administration Defers "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Repeal Two Years:

Christopher Neff, Deputy Executive Director of the Palm Center, believes that Secretary Gates' letter is a signal from the White House, not just the Pentagon. "Today's letter represents a public effort by the Obama Administration to put a stop to Congressional repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' in 2010. Clearly, the Department of Defense is not its own branch of government. The Secretary of Defense serves the President."

Somebody tell the Human Rights Campaign.

A diatribe at The Clyde Fitch Report blogsite tears into Kelsey Grammer, formerly of "Frasier" fame and currently co-starring in a Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles. Grammer, a Republican who supported Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008, is promoting the soon-to-be-launched RightNetwork with a video riffing on big government, more taxes, and trillion dollar deficits. For this, the Fitch Report howls that Grammer is "a radical right-winger...putting his reactionary maw behind the RightNetwork, a new multiplatform venture that presumably aims to hurl the LGBT community all the back to the closet, stripped of whatever rights they may have won, and, for all we know, marked with ass tattoos just the way that William F. Buckley, Jr., wanted."

Nothing on the site, or in Grammer's video, warrants that assessment or suggests that the new "network" will be anti-gay. But like those who make up racist slurs to attack everyone who joins Tea Party protests against gargantuan government, truth has very little to do with it.

Everything we know about Grammer suggests he's gay-supportive (this Wall Street Journal profile calls him an "outspoken Republican" and "a supporter of same-sex marriage"). But I suspect the left's biggest fear is a limited government movement that is not socially reactionary.

Yet if only the intolerant get involved in the GOP, the Tea Parties, and conservative politics in general, it's clear that the right will stay predominantly intolerant forever, giving many on the left what they seem to want-a boogeyman party to fundraise against. That may be in their partisan interest, but it's not a strategy that bodes well for the expansion of our rights, especially given likely Republican gains in Congress come November.

Isn't it about time someone did a little shout-out for lesbian triumphalism in journalism? Over the last year or so, I've found myself relying on Kerry Eleveld's coverage of goings-on in the nation's capitol, and Karen Ocamb's excellent attention to the important stories in California and the West. Eleveld is getting increasing national attention, and is a well-recognized part of the Washington press corps. And while Ocamb is handicapped by not suffocating herself in the politically incestuous world of DC, her site is invaluable for anyone who acknowledges that there is life - including political life - in the far away lands beyond the beltway.

Both women are accomplished, aggressive and smart. Ocamb has worked long and hard to get where she is, and it shows in her work. Her piece on the passing of former LA Police Chief Daryl Gates demonstrated the depth of her experience and understanding of the gay rights movement in Los Angeles. Eleveld is newer to journalism, but clearly has the natural skills to thrive in Washington's hothouse.

The only news in this observation is that there's no news. Two women who happen to be lesbians, one on each coast, developed their journalistic talents and are now flourishing. And we're all better off for it.

Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn pens a column (for WSJ subscribers only) on the Supreme Court case involving whether a conservative Christian student group at Hastings College can be treated equally with other student groups regarding university recognition and funding, when the university itself receives taxpayer funding, and still exclude non-believers and gays from its membership and leadership.

McGurn notes that with bigger and bigger government spreading taxpayers' money more widely in all directions, it becomes harder for any institution to not receive public funding. That leads to contortions such as this:

The dean is Leo Martinez of the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Here he is defending the school policy at issue, which requires the Christian Legal Society (CLS) to admit non-Christians and gays if it wants to be an official student group:

Question: "Would a student chapter of, say, B'nai B'rith, a Jewish Anti-Defamation League, have to admit Muslims?"
Mr. Martinez: "The short answer is 'yes.'"
Question: "A black group would have to admit white supremacists?"
Mr. Martinez: "It would."
Question: "Even if it means a black student organization is going to have to admit members of the Ku Klux Klan?"
Mr. Martinez: "Yes."
Question: "You can see where that might cause some consternation?"

LGBT activists and much of the gay community are opposing the Christian Legal Society, but as McGurn further writes:

That's a much more serious proposition than a simple disagreement with some private organization. That public/private distinction helps explain why CLS has also found allies in the libertarian Cato Institute and Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty. In their own brief, this latter group stresses that it was the ability of gay Americans to form gay associations-whose membership rules they defined for themselves-that gave them a collective voice in the face of an often hostile majority.

Presumably Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty do not share the CLS view of human sexuality. But they understand exactly where Dean Martinez's logic is taking us.

Update. And expect to see more of this:

"Three bisexual men are suing a national gay-athletic organization, saying they were discriminated against during the Gay Softball World Series held in the Seattle area two years ago. The three Bay Area men say the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance in essence deemed them not gay enough to participate in the series.

An alliance attorney says the group is a private organization and, as such, can determine its membership based on its goals. Good luck with that!

Update. The San Diego Gay & Lesbian News reports:

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) last week filed suit against NAGAAA for enforcing its policy of no more than two heterosexual players for each team competing in the GSWS against three players who now purport to be bisexual. Melanie Rowen, the NCLR attorney representing the plaintiffs, told SDGLN the orientation of five players from the San Francisco-based team "D2" was protested by an opposing team at the GSWS in Seattle two years ago. The protesting team claimed D2 had perhaps as many as five straight players. NAGAAA's tournament rules allow for no more than two per team.

According to Rowen, after being asked what their sexual preferences were, one said he was gay, two refused to answer and two more said they enjoyed both men and women and one of those was married to a woman.

Apparently, the National Center for Lesbian Rights has nothing better to do than sue gay organizations for trying to maintain a gay identity. Of course, when it comes to defending the rights of women to mantaining "safe" and "affirming" women-only spaces, that's apparenlty an entirely different matter.

Columnist and IGF contributing author Jennifer Vanasco recently wrote in the Seattle Gay News a piece titled "A Lesbian on the Supreme Court?," stating:

Suddenly, it seems possible that the next Supreme Court pick might be a lesbian.... Solicitor General Elena Kagan is not openly gay at the moment-which, of course, may mean she's not gay at all. But persistent rumors, an absence of denial, and some assurances from people I trust make me think that, yeah, she probably is. And she's right now on the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on his retirement this summer.

Fair enough. So why have the Obama administration and it's lefty-liberal blogger-henchmen, not to mention its Human Rights Campaign fundraising lapdog, gone ballistic over speculation about Kagan's personal life and relationships? Here's Sam Stein blogging at the Huffington Post:

Leading gay rights group are accusing Republicans of trying to rile up their conservative base by launching a whisper campaign against potential Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan-suggesting the current Solicitor General is a closeted lesbian even though she's not. In its first entree into the upcoming Supreme Court nomination process, the group Human Rights Campaign blasted the increasingly public discussion of Kagan's sexuality, calling it a play "straight out the right-wing playbook....

The comments come a day after CBS published a blog by Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, in which he asserted that choosing Kagan would help Obama "please" much of his base, because she would be the "first openly gay justice."

Here's Domenech in his own words. Doesn't seem too different from what Vanasco wrote, but it got Domenech labeled "a lying scumbag" by blogger "digby." Domenech later explained that he wrongly assumed Kagan was out of the closet, triggering further lefty attacks against him.

And it's not just crazy leftwing bloggers. As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported:

CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: "The fact that they've chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010." She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger "with a history of plagiarism" who was "applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers." The network deleted the posting....

As William A Jacobson blogs at Legal Insurrection

"it is curious that those objecting to the Kagan rumor seem to treat an accusation of being gay as a slur.... I don't know if I would support Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. I'll wait to learn more about her. If she's gay, so be it, but I will not treat that fact or rumor as a slur. And I'll hold her to the same level of disclosure of personal relationships that we would expect of any other nominee."

Finally, IGF contributing author David Boaz blogs at the Politico:

a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said he complained to CBS because the column "made false charges." I would have hoped that in 2010, in a liberal White House, the statement that someone is gay would not be considered a "charge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines "charge" as "a claim of wrongdoing; an accusation." For many decades it was indeed a "charge," and a career-ending one, to be identified as gay. I would hope that's no longer true, and I'm disappointed in the White House's language.

Let's just add it to the list of our disappointments.

The rigid conventions of mainstream press reporting are nowhere more agonizingly evident than in the reports of President Obama's presidential memorandum on hospital visitation. You can watch the pseudostory deconstruct before your eyes in the LA Times report, which starts out by saying the directive gave same-sex couples a "victory" without having to pick a fight, then accurately but inconsistently reports that it grants no one any new rights or benefits, and goes on to state the truthful fact that even the Catholic Health Association "applauded the move."

This is all there is to the story: The President told hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid dollars from the federal government (pretty much all of them) that they have to (1) follow existing federal rules that allow patients to designate visitors; and (2) comply with existing regulations that require hospitals to obey state laws about a patient's advance directives and any other legally binding documents the patient might have signed concerning health care matters. In addition, the memorandum (3) solicits "additional recommendations" about what the Department of Health and Human Services can do to respect the rights of gay and lesbian patients and their families. There's no need here to do any more than shoo you over to William Dyer's blog, which does a brilliant job of diagramming the play, doing everything but showing it to you on slow-motion film.

The only thing I'd disagree with Dyer about is his description of the President as a charlatan. Certainly this little saga shows how lazy and credulous the press is - no surprise to any of us who watch Jon Stewart. And it also shows how little it takes to constitute a "victory" for gay rights at the national level.

Nevertheless, there is something here, however minuscule. In fact, there have been cases where hospitals have ignored the legally binding documents that same-sex couples have entered into. I don't imagine this happens a lot any more, but every time it does, it is the most sickening, tangible kind of bigotry.

In a hospital, heterosexual relationships can be, and usually are taken on faith. In an emergency room, the statement, "I am her husband," will not require much, if any, proof. In less extreme settings, the relationship will almost certainly be part of the patient's ordinary medical records. A glance at the computer is all the confirmation anyone needs.

But while heterosexual couples can opt-in to the legal netherworld of the unmarried, same-sex couples get that as their default. The modern movement to allow a non-spouse legally binding power of medical decisionmaking disproportionately helps same-sex couples, but only to the extent they (a) have taken the appropriate steps, and (b) find themselves in a setting where someone will bother to acknowledge that legal power. None of this would be necessary if they were simply allowed the right any other couple has to get married in the first place.

The President's memorandum says that, yes, the federal government does mean it when it says that hospitals accepting government money must obey the law, both state and federal - and that includes giving proper effect to legal documents. That is one of the things a President can do. Among the hundreds of thousands, or millions of laws on the books that go unenforced or even unnoticed every blessed day, a President can focus in on a few that he views as significant in their invisibility.

The President's memorandum doesn't do much more than that. But it says a great deal that such a routine and bloodless action warrants headlines.

James Kirchick writes in The Advocate:

It's not just gays on the right who should want to find a comfortable space in the conservative movement-gay liberals had better hope there's room for gays there too. That's because we continue to live in a center-right country, and with a Republican takeover of Congress in November becoming more likely with each passing day, the importance of achieving bipartisan support for gay rights legislation becomes all the more clear.

Meanwhile, the past year and a half of legislative stalling-all while the Democrats had the White House and supermajorities in Congress-ought to put a dent in the claim that gays have no choice but to invest all of their political energies in the Democratic Party. If liberal gays truly value legal equality over political partisanship, they will wish groups like the Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud tactical success in changing the GOP from within.

But how would that advance the careers of LGBT activists in the Democratic party?

To nobody's surprise, the main group trying to repeal Prop 8 this year in California has announced that it failed to gather the almost 700,000 signatures of registered voters needed to get the issue on this fall's ballot.

While that's disappointing for those who worked hard to get the signatures, and for those who believed it might be possible to win this year, it's good news for the movement. It was never a good idea to try for a repeal in this electoral and economic climate. Without the support of the main gay-rights groups, and without the support of major donors, the 2010 effort has mercifully expired.

Now the focus will turn to a possible repeal in 2012. There are at least two big unknown factors at work.

First, would a repeal in 2012 be successful? A recent poll showing that a bare majority of Californians now support gay marriage is as unpersuasive on this score as were the early polls telling us we would win the Prop 8 battle by fifteen percentage points.

Second, would a 2012 repeal effort be affected by the ongoing litigation over Prop 8 launched by David Boies and Ted Olson? It's now in a San Francisco trial court awaiting closing arguments and a decision. But the inevitable appeals will take at least a couple of years, and probably more.

In the fall of 2011, when money for a signature drive would have to be raised, and in the spring of 2012, when signatures would have to be gathered, it's likely the Prop 8 litigation will still be alive. In the summer and fall of 2012, when more money would have to be raised and volunteers would be needed to execute a campaign, it's quite possible the litigation will be at or nearing the Supreme Court.

The danger is that the very existence of the litigation will sap energy from a repeal effort. Some donors and volunteers will figure that the matter will be resolved by the Court, so why bother working for a repeal? The Supreme Court will do that for us.

The phenomenon of litigation draining energy from political work has precedent. Many abortion-rights activists believe, for example, that Roe v. Wade actually stunted the political movement for abortion rights. The same was true of the many legislative challenges to Connecticut's anti-contraceptives law in the decades before the Supreme Court struck it down. Several ongoing lawsuits over a period of thirty years made the drudgery of legislative work seem even less attractive, and unnecessary.

But at least in the case of abortion and contraception, the movements behind those efforts got what they wanted from the Supreme Court. In 2012, we may be in the unenviable position of getting nothing from the Supreme Court but a depressed and dependant political base.

Sometimes we don't notice our victories until long after a battle has been won. Over the last couple of years, gay marriage has secured territory most people didn't even realize was contested, and its loss will be far more devastating to gay marriage opponents than their victories in all the court cases and all the elections in the world.

I'm talking about sweetness.

Our opponents demonize us -- sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly, but viciously and relentlessly. Their chief weapon is sex - ours, not theirs -- overlaid with a self-righteous piety that is funny when Dana Carvey does it, and wrongheaded no matter whose pursed lips it leaks out of. But while everyone from the Pope on down has been focused on the inherent disorders and immorality of homosexual sex, another front in the gay rights battle opened up: Gay teenagers in love.

This year saw a slate of prom stories across the south in Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina, and while the outcomes varied, the facts were the same: lesbian and gay students wanted to take a date to the prom, a date consistent with their sexual orientation.

It's pretty unlikely any of these kids will show up in recruiting materials circulated by the National Organization for Marriage. Take a look at the pictures of these kids, and try to figure out how you'd attack them - or why you'd want to. If you want the ugly side of this debate, you have to go to the adults opposing them, ganging up against Constance McMillen and calling her selfish for daring to think she should be able to go to the prom and dance with her date just like her friends.

It is victory enough that teenagers in the South are now claiming their proms. But they're also claiming time on network television. Here are two gay teens kissing on "As The World Turns." And here is a sequence of scenes where Justin comes out on "Ugly Betty," after a four-year story arc.

Neither show is a cultural landmark. But in a way, that's the point. This kind of thing is well within the worldview of people now, barely worth commenting on.

"Ugly Betty," in particular, gave us a couple of things that are inevitable precursors to gay marriage. First, young Justin has a very openly gay mentor, Mark. The irresponsibility and selfishness of Mark's life melts away as he gently and understandingly leads Justin through the conflicts and torments of adolescence in a way that his straight family - though completely, even overly, sympathetic - can't. (And I don't pretend to any neutrality here - I'm a fan of the show; but even if I were less biased, I think the point holds). Helping Justin makes Mark a better man. Where has that story been hiding all these years? The last American generation of gay and lesbian kids who couldn't imagine having an older relative/friend/teacher who could understand them has passed into history.

Justin also has a supportive family. This is now fully within the imagination of gay teens, even those whose family is not. When Derrick Martin was kicked out of the house by his parents in Georgia after media attention over wanting to take his boyfriend to the prom, he got outside support that had no equivalent when many of us were his age. The idea that his parents might be the ones acting wrongly is available to him, and kids like him. That does not ease the emotional pain or harm his parents are inflicting on their son, but it is a safety net we have been able to provide to cushion his fall. More kids will have supportive families as time goes on, but even those who don't will be able to know that they are right to be honest with themselves, even if their families cannot handle the truth. These are kids who might even be able to be patient with their parents, and be able to repair the relationship over time.

And that brings me to the sweetness that pervades all this. When Justin finally comes out on "Ugly Betty," it is not by making any announcement, or saying anything at all. He simply holds his hand out to his boyfriend as an invitation to dance - to dance with everyone else at his family at his mother's wedding.

There was no clear and unambiguous image like that for those who grew up in earlier decades, and I can't imagine how valuable it will be in the years to come. It will, of course (along with many other positive images), be a foundation for kids who are coming to identify as homosexual. But more important, it will be there for all the heterosexual kids, with no fear in it, and no evil, nothing to worry about and nothing to oppose.

The lack of that sweetness is what has most afflicted the public perception of homosexuality throughout history. It comes from the failure to view homosexuals as people who love one another. Imagine what it must be like to envision a group of people who don't have love in their lives, just sex.

If I were Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown or Martin Ssempa or Pope Benedict, I can't think of anything that would scare me more than the gentle joy of two high school girls holding hands, swaying to the music at their prom, or two boys dancing and laughing with the family at a wedding. After a centuries long fight, we've got those images fixed now, real ones and fictional, and they won't ever be going away.