John Corvino

Tag: ethics

  • ‘Safe’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Shut Up’

    First published at 365gay.com on August 21, 2009

    A friend writes, “I’m coordinating a safe-space training at [an urban public university]. One participant stated that she felt she was a strong ally, but her religious beliefs dictate that homosexuality is a sin. What should I do? Can I deny her a safe-space sticker, or ask her not to advise students on religious issues?”

    This is a hard question.

    It’s hard partly because of its legal implications. Georgia Tech, another state school, recently lost a lawsuit because its safe-space program distributed literature uniformly criticizing traditional interpretations of the Bible. Not surprisingly, a federal judge ruled that this practice violated the First Amendment by favoring particular religious viewpoints. (Georgia Tech has kept its safe-space program but dropped the religious literature.)

    Legal matters aside, the question raises difficult policy issues. What counts as “safe”?

    Safe-space programs generally involve a school-sponsored diversity training focusing on LGBT issues. Upon completing it, participants receive a sticker to display on their office doors announcing their “ally” status.

    Given how often religion is used as a weapon, I can understand why many LGBT students would not feel “safe” while being judged as sinners. We should never underestimate the potential damage done by telling youth, at a delicate stage in identity formation, that acting on their deep longings could lead to eternal separation from God.

    In contemplating my friend’s question, I mainly thought of those vulnerable students, and how best to protect them. I also thought of my friend John.

    John is a faculty member at a small private liberal arts college. He is an evangelical Christian who believes that homosexual conduct conflicts with God’s plan as revealed in the bible. And yet John defies easy stereotypes. He supports civil marriage equality, decries the various ways religion is used to harm LGBT people, and avoids “heteronormative language” (his words) in his classroom.

    While he believes that homosexual conduct (not to mention plenty of heterosexual and non-sexual conduct) is sinful, he also believes that all humans–himself included–have an imperfect grasp of God’s will, and that we should generally strive to respect other people’s life choices and give them wide latitude in forging their own paths. John and his wife have welcomed me in their home, and during grace before the meal, his wife asked for God’s blessing on me, my partner Mark, and our relationship. (For the record, I did not take the latter to imply approval for every aspect of our relationship.)

    In light of all I know about John and his loving treatment of LGBT persons, I can think of few spaces “safer” than his office. Any program that would disqualify him draws the circle of “safe spaces” too narrowly.

    Moreover, there are good strategic reasons for wanting to make the circle of self-proclaimed allies as inclusive as possible, consistent with the well-being of LGBT students. We need people like John to make their presence known.

    Yet I am not suggesting that we draw the circle so broadly as to rob “safe space” of any real meaning. Any student in any campus office–stickered or not–should expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. Presumably, the safe-space sticker denotes venues that substantially exceed that bare minimum (as John’s office would).

    So how does one draw the circle broadly enough to include John and other conservative religious allies while excluding those who might rant about gays burning in hell?

    As with any policy question involving human beings, there’s no perfect formula here (just as there are no perfect people). To some extent, the desired group will be somewhat self-selecting. Those interested in condemning LGBT people to hell generally don’t attend voluntary pro-gay diversity trainings.

    Yet there are also steps one can take to tailor the circle. My recommendation would be to include, among various other elements of a pledge taken by safe-space training participants, something along the following lines:

    “I understand that my own values and beliefs may differ from those of students who seek me out for a ‘safe space,’ and will refer students to appropriate resources given their particular values, beliefs, interests and desires.”

    The idea here is that students who wish to retreat to a “narrower” circle will be assisted in doing so. Note that religious people offer such assistance all the time. Think, for example, of the Christian who helpfully directs a student to the Buddhist Student Center, despite her personal conviction that eternal salvation is through Christ alone.

    On this approach, students who want pro-gay religious literature can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. At the same time, those who want the advice of fellow conservative evangelicals, for example, or fellow Orthodox Jews, can receive it and evaluate it for themselves.

    Admittedly, my recommendation would allow conservative religious students to request and receive–in a designated “safe space”–literature of a sort that’s often deeply damaging to LGBT people. But the approach is preferable to the alternatives: a public university’s (illegally) favoring particular religious viewpoints, on the one hand, or its becoming silent on religious issues–the Georgia Tech solution–on the other.

    Universities are places for free exchange of ideas. As long as that’s done in a compassionate manner that respects student autonomy, it should never be considered “unsafe.”

  • The Right’s Immoral Take on Gay Marriage

    First published at 365gay.com on August 14, 2009

    Anyone who knows Jonathan Rauch will tell you he’s not a sappy, emotional sort of guy. Rauch, a senior writer for National Journal magazine and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, is known for his measured, logical (and occasionally quite witty) prose; those of us fortunate enough to know him personally can attest that the prose matches the person.

    Which is why it’s all the more impressive that his recent National Journal article on gay marriage [http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/st_20090808_9125.php], “A Moral Crossroads for Conservatives,” is one of the most moving things I’ve read on the subject in a long time. If you haven’t read it yet, skip the rest of this column and read that instead. Seriously.

    Opening with an account of a medical emergency and closing with a marriage-proposal scene, the article weaves together a very personal case for marriage equality with deft analysis of conservatives’ moral failure vis-à-vis gays and lesbians. Faced with the reality of gay and lesbian lives–of our love and commitment, our sacrifices, our joys and hardships–the right wing offers…silence. In Rauch’s words,

    “If gay couples can’t be allowed to marry, what should they be able to do? Asked this question, cultural conservatives say, in the words of Tom Lehrer’s song about the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, “That’s not my department.”

    Via a moving account of his cousin Bill’s sudden hospitalization and Bill’s partner Mike’s bedside ordeal, Rauch underscores how the “Not my department” response is not merely lazy; it’s morally unconscionable. I’ll quote here at length:

    “[W]hat happened in that hospital in Philadelphia for those six weeks was not just Mike and Bill’s business, a fact that is self-evident to any reasonable human being who hears the story. ‘Mike was making a medical decision at least once a day that would have serious consequences,’ Bill told me. Who but a life partner would or could have done that? Who but a life partner will drop everything to provide constant care? Bill’s mother told me that if not for Mike, her son would have died. Faced with this reality, what kind of person, morally, simply turns away and offers silence?”

    Rauch concludes: “Not the sort of person who populates the United States of America. If Republicans wonder why they find themselves culturally marginalized, particularly by younger Americans, they might consider the fact that when the party looks at couples like Mike and Bill it sees, in effect, nothing.”

    Optimistic? Perhaps. But virtually undeniable by anyone with both a brain and a heart. (Factor in the shameful lack of moral courage, and perhaps a trip to the Wizard is in order.)

    Another valuable aspect of Rauch’s piece is that it shows why powers-of-attorney (which are extremely important for couples who live and travel in states without marriage equality) are no substitute for marriage.

    Contrast Rauch’s account with Robert George’s recent Wall Street Journal piece [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204619004574322084279548434.html] on the same subject. George writes,

    “If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union–and thus to procreation–will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play.”

    To George, Mike and Bill’s union appears essentially no different from that of a couple of frat buddies who occasionally get off together. “Adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play?” Only through willful blindness can one sustain such distortion.

    It is stories like Mike and Bill’s that we must keep in mind–and keep telling–as we head into this fall’s election. In November Maine voters, like California voters last year, will decide whether to repeal marriage equality in that state.

    Now is a good time to go to http://mainefreedomtomarry.com/ and make a financial contribution. Maine is one of six states that embrace marriage equality (not counting California, which recognizes the roughly 18,000 same-sex marriages performed before Prop. 8 passed, and Washington D.C., which recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions). If you want that number to grow, not shrink, then get behind the Maine fight early.

    But don’t just give money; give witness. Reach out to the skeptics and let them know why marriage matters. One thing we learned from the California Prop. 8 campaign is that abstract platitudes about discrimination won’t cut it. We need to make the importance of marriage rights concrete. Stories like Mike and Bill’s do that, powerfully.

  • Robert George’s Reality

    First published at 365gay.com on August 7, 2009

    Robert George’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts,” [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204619004574322084279548434.html] contains both sense and nonsense—but more of the latter.

    George, a Princeton professor of jurisprudence and founder of the American Principles Project, is a preeminent conservative scholar. In the op-ed, he considers the federal lawsuit challenging California’s Proposition 8 and claims that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality would be “disastrous,” constituting a “judicial usurpation” of popular authority and inflaming the culture wars beyond repair.

    First, the good points: George is quite right to insist that the Court’s role is to interpret the Constitution, not to make policy. He’s also right to argue that marriage law has been, and should be, tied closely to the needs of children. And he exhibits a refreshing “don’t panic” attitude, asserting that “democracy is working”—although by democracy, he seems to mean only voter referenda, and not our more complex representative system, with its various checks and balances. On the latter, broader understanding, I’d agree that “democracy is working:” in the last year, five additional states have embraced marriage equality.

    But the misunderstandings in George’s piece are legion.

    (1) George provides a lengthy analogy with the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which recognized abortion rights. But while this analogy may be relevant to the culture-war angle, it says absolutely nothing about the legal merits—since rather different issues were at stake in Roe.

    What’s more, it’s not even clear how relevant it is to the culture-war angle. Most abortion opponents believe that abortion involves large-scale killing of innocent babies. Compare that to Adam and Steve setting up house in the suburbs. Whatever your view of homosexuality, there’s no comparison in terms of moral urgency.

    (2) George also considers—and summarily rejects—an analogy with the 1967 Loving v. Virginia. He writes,

    “The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.”

    Seriously? Perhaps “everyone agreed” that they were marriages in some sense—as one could say equally about same-sex marriages—but they certainly didn’t agree that they were valid marriages. When the Loving trial court judge declared, “The fact that [God] separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix,” he expressed the widespread view that interracial marriage violated a divinely ordained natural order.

    George’s reference to the “evil regime of white supremacy” is also telling. In order to undermine any analogy between racial prejudice and homophobia, right-wingers often paint all those who opposed interracial-marriage as angry KKK types. But most opponents of miscegenation sincerely believed that the Bible condemns it, that it’s unnatural, and that it’s bad for children. In other words, they cited the same “respectable” reasons as modern-day marriage-equality opponents.

    That these two groups cite the same reasons doesn’t show that their arguments are equally bad or their motives equally flawed. It does show, however, that religious conviction doesn’t secure a free pass for discrimination, and that friendly, well-intentioned folks can nevertheless be guilty of bigotry.

    (3) George, a noted natural-law theorist, asserts that marriage “takes its distinctive character” from bodily unions of the procreative kind. By “procreative kind,” George doesn’t mean that procreation must be intended, or even possible—oddly, sterile heterosexuals can have sex “of the procreative kind” on George’s view. He means penis-in-vagina. According to George,

    “This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages.”

    “Historically” is the key word here—as in “not any more.” There’s a reason consummation laws have been almost universally discarded (and were seldom invoked when present). Such laws reflected, not the law’s majestic correspondence with Catholic natural-law doctrine, but an outdated mixture of concerns about male lineage and female purity.

    (4) Finally, George asserts the standard false dilemma: Either accept the traditional natural-law understanding of marriage, or else have no principled basis for any marriage regulation:

    “If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy.”

    No principled basis? How about the fact that polygamy—which historically is far more common than monogamy—is highly correlated with a variety of social ills? Or that the stability provided by long-term romantic pair-bonding is good for individuals and society—far more profoundly than typical “friendships”? Or that the state legally regulates important contracts of all sorts, and the commitment to “for better or worse, ‘til death do us part” is a pretty important contract? Here as elsewhere, George seems incapable of recognizing any principles beyond those prescribed by a narrow natural-law theory.

    Ultimately, the trouble with George is that his theory—which is supposed to be rooted in “nature”—is in fact divorced from reality. The reality is that gay people exist, fall in love, pair off, settle down, and build lives together—sometimes with children, often without. When we do, we seek the same legal protection for our relationships that other Americans take for granted. If the denial of such protections is not an appropriate subject for judicial scrutiny, I’m not sure what is.

  • Luxury vs. Charity

    First published at Between the Lines News on July 9, 2009

    Some years ago I attended a seminar on charitable giving in the GLBT community. The event was aimed toward affluent donors, and judging by the cars in the parking lot, it hit its target. (I drove an old Nissan at the time, and was invited strictly because of my connection with one of the charities.)

    One of the speakers exhorted the crowd to forgo certain luxuries in order to make a greater charitable impact. “An inexpensive car will get you from point A to point B just as well as a BMW will,” she said, “and with the savings you can make a real difference in another person’s life.” Most attendees were nodding politely, when a mouthy acquaintance of mine stood up.

    “Look,” he began, “most of us had a really hard time growing up gay. We were taunted by our peers, and many of us felt alone and miserable. So now we’re enjoying some creature comforts. I worked hard to get where I am, and I’m not about to start driving a Chevy.”

    I was sitting next to said mouthy acquaintance, and I sank in my chair. True, few people expected the attendees to follow the speaker’s suggestion. But it seemed obnoxious to point that out at the time.

    But why? Is it selfish to want luxuries while others are in need, or merely unseemly to say so?

    Luxury is a relative term, of course. If you have a car with crank windows, then power windows—which are standard equipment on most cars sold in the U.S.—may seem like a luxury. If you have to take the bus to work, having a car at all may seem like a luxury. If you live in a developing nation, buses may seem like a luxury. And so on.

    Conversely, as we grow more accustomed to certain “luxuries,” they start to feel like necessities. My first car had vinyl seats—but hey, I had a car! The next one had plush fabric seats, which I thought were cool. Then I graduated to leather seats, which I thought were even cooler. Today I have HEATED leather seats, and I doubt I’m ever going back.

    “But you NEED heated seats in Detroit,” my mother told me when I fretted over whether they were an extravagance. Funny, but I spent nine years here without them and managed to get around all the same.

    I don’t think gays are any more prone to these tendencies than anyone else. To the extent that we fit this stereotype, it is largely because most of us don’t have children, which means that, on average, (a) we have more “disposable” income than those who do and (b) we can worry more about whether the sofa looks good, for example, than whether it will resist jam stains.

    Of course, the fact that we can spend our money on things like fancy cars and fabulous sofas doesn’t mean that we should. Given the current desperate situation of many charitable organizations, the moral implications of luxury are worth pondering.

    I’ll use myself as an example, just to show that I’m not trying to wag my finger at anyone else.

    My partner and I recently put a new kitchen in our house. We do a lot of entertaining—including fundraising events—and most of our friends thought it was an excellent investment. I do too. I love it every day.

    But meals from the old kitchen were just as nutritious and tasty.

    And the old kitchen was, despite being ugly, cheap, and poorly installed, only eight years old. (It was put in by the prior owner, who “flipped” the house. It is now installed in the basement, where we use it as a backup kitchen for parties.)

    And the thousands of dollars we spent on the new one could have helped people who lack not merely kitchens, but food itself.

    So if I’m going to bristle at my mouthy acquaintance’s “I’m not going to drive a Chevy” comment, I had better be able to explain why I’m no longer cooking in a cheap—but perfectly serviceable—kitchen.

    Ultimately, it’s because I don’t believe that moral values always trump aesthetic ones. A moral calculus would be undesirable and unsustainable if it condemned any action that could be replaced by one more virtuous.

    Consider the alternative: any money you spend on an ice cream cone could go to Oxfam—so no more ice cream cones. Ditto for art, music, and dance, the absence of which is tragic but not life-threatening. That money you plan to spend on movie tickets could save a life someday.

    It’s not just money at stake, but time. Every minute you spend watching TV, playing games, reading novels—or for that matter, reading this column—could be spent volunteering at the local soup kitchen.

    And what about sex? Gays are hardly the only ones to engage in non-procreative sex, an activity for which we—though generally not others—get labeled as “indulgent.” But sexual intimacy, like many of these other things, is surely an ingredient of a well-lived life.

    I don’t pretend to know how to strike the perfect balance—if there is one. (If you want someone that has all the answers, don’t read my column. Try Dr. Laura.)

    I do know that most of us—me included—could and should give more to charity, and the arts, and other important causes. I admire those who live simply for the sake of helping others. But—I freely admit—I also admire nice cars, clothes, and kitchens.

  • Coming Out Skeptical

    First published at 365gay.com on June 19, 2009

    I’m a big proponent of being out, not just about being gay, but about any personally significant trait whose revelation subverts problematic assumptions. For me, that includes being out as an atheist.

    “Atheist or agnostic?” I’m often asked.

    For practical purposes, I’m not sure that there’s much of a difference. Do I believe that it’s POSSIBLE that there’s a deity of some sort? Sure. I also believe that it’s possible that there’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. (It’s a pretty damn big universe.) But I don’t have good evidence for either, don’t believe in either, and don’t make life decisions on the basis of the vague possibility of either.

    I wasn’t always an atheist. Indeed, during college I joined a religious order and had planned to enter the priesthood. This fact surprises people, though it shouldn’t. Taking religion seriously enough to subject it to scrutiny is one common path to religious skepticism. As Thomas Hobbes wrote in the seventeenth century,

    “For it is with the mysteries of our religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole have the virtue to cure, but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.”

    I pretty much chewed on the pill until it dissolved.

    “But how do you explain the existence of the universe?” I’m sometimes asked.

    I don’t. The universe is mysterious to me. But I don’t see the point of trying to explain one mystery by invoking another.

    Being out as an atheist is often more difficult than being out as a gay person. I was reminded of that last week, when I was attending a gay pride dinner event at which I was the keynote speaker. A middle-aged woman approached me in the buffet line and claimed to be one of my biggest fans. She was gushing about my DVD when the conversation turned to religion. I mentioned in passing that I’m a non-believer.

    She stopped abruptly, and seemed to turn pale. “Non-believer as in…?”

    “As in, I don’t believe in God.”

    (Long, awkward pause, during which she stared at me with an expression one might direct toward someone who has suddenly been covered in dogshit.)

    “Well,” she finally said unconvincingly, “I still like your columns.”

    I can understand why some believers would be disappointed to learn that I’m an atheist. If you like someone, and if you believe that his eternal salvation depends on his accepting a certain religious perspective, then you’ll be sorry to learn that he won’t be joining you in Paradise.

    But this particular encounter was striking for two reasons. First, the woman in question was Jewish—a religious tradition that, unlike Christianity, doesn’t dwell on eternal salvation and doesn’t usually proselytize. Second, it seemed that her enjoyment of my columns somehow hinged on whether or not I shared her theistic worldview—despite the fact that I seldom write about religion.

    I suppose what bugs me most is the double standard. Religious believers can make the most outrageous claims (God is three persons in one? His mother on earth is a virgin? Amy Grant can sing?) and yet meet with a polite reception. But if atheists boldly state their views, they’re accused of being arrogant.

    There’s nothing arrogant about acknowledging what one DOESN’T know. Even the blunt claim “There is no God,” when uttered as a sincere assessment of the evidence (or lack thereof) strikes me as humble, not arrogant. To deny God is not to place oneself above God, but rather to acknowledge the fallible human state we all share. It should go without saying, but belief in an infallible God doesn’t render one infallible, even when discussing religion.

    For the record, my departure from theism had nothing to do with being wounded by organized religion. On the contrary, I had a very positive experience of the church during my coming-out process.

    And please don’t tell me that I’ve been burned by our opponents’ selective use of the Bible. Our opponents are selective, sure—but so are our allies. To put it in technical theological terms, the Bible contains some crazy shit (alongside lots of beautiful stuff, too). The difference between our religious opponents and our religious allies is not that one is selective and the other not, but that they select different parts.

    I remain grateful for those religious allies. Their heart is in the right place, and as a strategic matter, I think we need them. But I also think we need a healthy dose of religious skepticism.

  • Why it Matters that Adam Lambert Came Out

    First published at 365gay.com on June 12, 2009

    So, Adam Lambert comes out in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and you’re thinking, “What’s next? Rolling Stone announces ‘Water is wet’”?

    I get where you’re coming from. But there are deeper lessons to be gleaned.

    First, notice how Lambert comes out—in a music magazine, with his sexuality occupying a relatively minor portion of the article. And he does so with the candid yet indirect phrasing “I don’t think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I’m gay.” The gayness is almost taken for granted—embedded in a sentence about public reaction, rather than placed front and center.

    That approach reflects a larger trend in how society—and in particular, younger generations—view gayness: as a simple matter-of-fact, not something to be belabored. The contrast with Clay Aiken’s “Yes, I’m Gay” People Magazine cover is subtle but important.

    And yet, second, there’s an ambivalence in the article that captures the national tone on the issue. Lambert says, “It shouldn’t matter. Except it does. It’s really confusing.”

    He’s right on all three counts.

    “It shouldn’t matter.” American Idol is a singing competition, and Lambert wanted to—and should—be judged on his vocal performance. His decision to wait until after Idol to answer the gay question, he claims, stemmed from his desire that his sexuality not overshadow his singing. (It may also have stemmed from a desire for votes, and I couldn’t blame him for that. It’s not as if he lied about being gay or took great pains to hide it.)

    “Except it does [matter].” As Lambert himself put it in the interview, “There’s the old industry idea that you should just make sexuality a non-issue, just say your private life’s your private life, and not talk about it. But that’s bullshit, because private lives don’t exist anymore for celebrities: they just don’t.”

    The music industry doesn’t just sell songs; it sells images. For better or worse, personal backstory is part of that (especially on Idol).

    What’s more, gay celebrities give hope to closeted gay kids, who need to know that they’re not alone and who sometimes don’t have gay role models in their everyday lives. That’s not to say that Adam Lambert is any more representative of gay life than any other gay person. It’s just to say that his representation, such as it is, will reach more people.

    “It’s really confusing.” Yes indeed. We live in a nation where, for some people, much of the time, gayness is a non-issue, and for others, virtually constantly, it’s huge. American Idol is one of those “common denominator” phenomena (say that three times fast!) where these different groups interact with each other. Often they can do so while avoiding the issue of sexuality. But not always.

    And the tension here is not just between groups; it’s also internal. When Lambert says, “I’m proud of my sexuality. I embrace it. It’s just another part of me,” he unwittingly raises a question—one that opponents often hurl at us: “Why be ‘proud’ of something that’s ‘just another part’ of you?” Why take pride in a trait that you didn’t choose and is supposed to be no big deal?

    Answer: because it is a big deal. It does matter. Maybe in an ideal world it wouldn’t, but we are still far from that world.

    Ironically, it’s a big deal precisely because our opponents insist on making it a big deal. Thanks to them, Adam Lambert (like every gay person) has to negotiate the issue of revealing his sexuality in a way that straight people never do. I think he’s handled it admirably.

    Lambert told Rolling Stone that “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.” Fair enough. But it’s also fair to note that civil-rights change doesn’t only come from civil-rights leaders. It also comes from countless small acts of revelation by ordinary and not-so-ordinary people, including Adam Lambert.

  • That’s How I Was Raised

    First published at Between the Lines News on June 11, 2009

    A recent New York Times Magazine article spotlighted a shocking vestige of our nation’s racism: segregated proms. It focused on one school in Georgia’s Montgomery County, though the practice is common across the rural South.

    I say “shocking” even though I personally wasn’t surprised. One of my best friends is from rural Tennessee. His alma mater still segregates superlatives: White Most Likely to Succeed, Black Most Likely to Succeed; Funniest White, Funniest Black, and so on.

    The white students quoted in the Times article expressed some reservations about the practice, but generally concluded with “It’s how it’s always been…It’s just a tradition.” In the words of Harley Boone, a platinum blond girl with beauty-queen looks who co-chaired last year’s white prom, “It doesn’t seem like a big deal around here. It’s just what we know and what our parents have done for so many years.”

    “It’s just what we know.” Miss Boone reminded me of another beauty queen, in both her appearance and her comment: Miss California USA Carrie Prejean.

    Miss Prejean, you’ll recall, when asked her beliefs about marriage equality, responded (in part), “I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

    How I was raised. Tradition. What our parents have done. This is not, in itself, a bad reason for doing something. It explains why I set the table the way I do, for instance, or why I always put an extra unlit candle on a birthday cake (“good luck for the next year,” my mom always told me). It explains, too, more substantial practices—how we gather, celebrate milestones, express joy, or mourn loss. No generation does, or should, invent everything from scratch.

    And yet, sometimes “what we know”—or thought we knew—stops working, or never worked very well in the first place.

    I used to load the dishwasher with the forks tines down—because that’s how my parents did and still do it—until I realized they get cleaner tines up (in my dishwasher, anyway, and please don’t send me irate e-mails if yours is different).

    Spotty forks are one thing. Racial and sexual inequalities are quite another. When traditions cause palpable harm to people, it’s time to change. At that point, rethinking tradition is not merely optional, as in the dishwasher case—it’s morally mandatory.

    And that’s why Prejean’s “how I was raised” comment struck so many of us as a dumb answer. No educated person can justifiably claim ignorance of the challenges gay individuals and couples face. We gays are deprived of a fundamental social institution, treated unequally in the eyes of the law, and told that our deep, committed, loving relationships are inferior, counterfeit, or depraved. In the face of such injustice, “that’s how I was raised” sounds hollow and cowardly.

    There are those who bristle at any analogy between homophobia and racial injustice. Indeed, a favorite new right-wing strategy is to claim that liberals unfairly label as “bigots” anyone who opposes same-sex marriage, even on the basis of sincere moral and religious convictions.

    But that’s one reason why the analogy is so powerful, and so revealing. It shows that citing “sincere moral and religious convictions” doesn’t get one a free pass for maintaining unjust institutions.

    No analogy compares two things that are exactly the same. (That would not be an analogy, but an identity.) Analogies compare two or more things that are similar in some relevant respect(s). The similarities can be instructive.

    The white citizens of Montgomery County, Georgia, seem like a nice enough bunch. They don’t carry pitchforks or wear hooded robes. I doubt that Miss Boone ever uses the n-word, although her grandparents probably do. (Mine did, too, until we grandchildren protested loudly enough.) They are otherwise decent folk misled by powerful tradition.

    I’m sure that, pressed for further explanation, many of these folks could make the right noises about doing what’s best for their children and eventual grandchildren. And much like “that’s just what we know,” that response would sound familiar. Opponents of marriage equality use it constantly.

    But don’t marriage-equality opponents have social-science data backing them up? They don’t. Yes, they have data about how children fare in fatherless households, for example, and then they extrapolate from that data to draw conclusions about lesbian households. The problem is that there are too many confounding variables. So then they fall back on their “vast untested social experiment” argument: we just don’t know how this is going to turn out. Which, again, is precisely the sort of thing we might expect the Montgomery parents to say to justify their “tradition.”

    From the fact that two groups of people use the same forms of argument, it doesn’t follow that their conclusions are equally good or bad. It depends on the truth of their premises.

    Still, the tendency of both segregationists and marriage-equality opponents to hide behind “that’s how I was raised” provides a powerful analogy—in moral laziness.

  • Gay Marriage and The Bigot Card

    First published at 365gay.com on May 1, 2009

    Maggie Gallagher at the National Organization for Marriage—producers of the unintentionally hilarious “Gathering Storm” ad—has been mentioning “footnote 26” of the Iowa marriage decision quite a bit lately.

    For example, she tells conservative blogger Rod Dreher that same-sex marriage requires “the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm—or probably even as a respectable opinion. That’s become very clear for people who have the eyes to see it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision).”

    Elsewhere she describes the footnote as “the most heartbreaking sentence” of the decision.

    What is this ominous, heartbreaking footnote? The offending bit is here:

    “The research appears to strongly support the conclusion that same-sex couples
    foster the same wholesome environment as opposite-sex couples and suggests that the
    traditional notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into healthy, well adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than anything else.”

    So says the Iowa Supreme Court in a unanimous decision.

    So too says the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Psychological Association—in fact, every major health and welfare organization that has examined the issue. The Iowa Supreme Court has mainstream professional opinion solidly on its side.

    But to say that the opposing view is based on “stereotype” attacks our opponents’ last remotely plausible-sounding secular argument. No wonder they’re getting defensive.

    The use of the word “stereotype” is a large part of what irks them. Those who rely more on stereotype than evidence are being unreasonable. And in the extreme, those who cling to unreasonable views are bigots. Elsewhere in the Dreher interview Gallagher states,

    “Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: ‘there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree.’”

    Indeed, Gallagher uses the term “bigot” and its cognates no fewer than five times in the short interview.

    A bigot if you disagree? Neither the Iowa Supreme Court nor most marriage-equality advocates make any such sweeping statement. On the contrary, footnote 26 is attached the following:

    “On the other hand, we acknowledge the existence of reasoned opinions that
    dual-gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. These opinions, while thoughtful and sincere, were largely unsupported by reliable scientific studies.”

    “Reasoned opinions” which are “thoughtful and sincere.” That’s about as far from “you’re a bigot if you disagree” as one can get.

    Marriage-equality opponents are increasingly complaining that we’re calling them bigots. This leads to a kind of double-counting of our arguments: For any argument X that we offer, opponents complain both that we’re saying X and that we’re saying that anyone who disagrees with X is a bigot.

    Then, instead of responding to X—that is, debating the issue on the merits—they focus on the alleged bigotry charge and grumble about being called names.

    I don’t deny that some of us do call them names (sometimes deserved, sometimes not). Yet even those who call them “bigots”—such as Frank Rich in his New York Times op-ed “The Bigots’ Last Hurrah”—often engage the substance as well. Increasingly, our opponents ignore the substance in favor of touting their alleged persecution.

    Personally, I think the term “bigot” should be used sparingly. Many of those who oppose marriage equality are otherwise decent people who can and sometimes do respond to reasoned dialogue.

    To call such persons bigots is not merely inaccurate; it’s a conversation-stopper. It says, “your views are beyond the pale, and I won’t dignify them with discussion.”

    But let’s not pretend that any one side in this debate has a corner on conversation-stoppers. There are plenty of people on Gallagher’s side who consider us “deviants” or “perverts,” and those terms don’t exactly welcome dialogue either. Neither does Gallagher’s calling us “liars”—as in, “same-sex marriage is based on a lie about human nature.”

    There’s a more general problem here, and it’s hardly unique to the gay-rights debate. Suppose you’ve reflected on some controversial issue and adopted a particular position. Presumably, you’ve decided that it’s the most reasonable position to hold. How, then, do you explain the fact that seemingly reasonable people deny it?

    There are several possibilities, most of them not very flattering. Perhaps your opponents are inattentive, or not very bright, or have logical blind spots, or are swayed by superstition.

    Or perhaps they’re just being bigots. It happens.

    (Interestingly, some philosophers have suggested on this basis that there’s no such thing as a “reasonable disagreement,” strictly speaking. If you accept P but think that denying P is “reasonable,” then you should either switch to not-P or become agnostic about the issue.)

    I don’t pretend to understand why seemingly reasonable and decent people adopt what strikes me as an obviously wrongheaded position on marriage equality. I think the reasons are various and complex, though they typically involve a distortion of rationality caused by other commitments, such as religious bias.

    But I also recognize that my opponents do, or should, wonder the same thing about me—and the ever-growing number of reasonable and decent Americans who support marriage equality.

    Which leaves us with a few choices.

    (1) We can call each other crazy and stupid, or bigots, or deviants. This is generally not helpful.

    (2) We can pretend that we’re above all that, but complain that the other side is doing it. This, I fear, is what Gallagher is doing, and it strikes me as equally unhelpful. It would be akin to my saying that Gallagher’s position is that you should oppose same-sex marriage, and if you don’t, you’re a liar (or a heathen or a pervert or whatever).

    (3) We can actually engage the substance of each other’s positions.

    I can understand why those with poorly supported positions would want to avoid (3). That doesn’t necessarily make them bigots, but it doesn’t reflect very well on them, either.

  • Miss California’s country

    First published at Between the Lines News on April 30, 2009

    So a contestant for what is in large measure a popularity contest says something unpopular and doesn’t win. Why am I having a hard time getting worked up over this?

    I’m talking about Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA, who when asked by Miss USA judge and gay celebrity blogger Perez Hilton whether she supports same-sex marriage, cheerfully and politely said no (or something like it—her answer wasn’t terribly clear). Specifically, she said,

    “Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”

    Not the most articulate answer (what’s “opposite marriage”?), nor the most original (“that’s how I was raised”). But I give her credit for grace under pressure, and for owning up to her convictions knowing that they might cost her the crown.

    That doesn’t mean that her answer was in any way acceptable. Her answer was wrong—badly, painfully wrong.

    But disagreeing with her answer doesn’t prevent me from acknowledging and admiring her integrity. Generally speaking, I prefer people saying what they believe—even if I disagree sharply—rather than merely what they think others want to hear. It’s a trait desirable in both friends and foes.

    No one knows for sure whether she would have won with a different answer. But her 15 minutes of fame are stretching into 45 (at least) thanks to the predictable backlash.

    Perez Hilton, demonstrating the gravitas, nobility, and calm judicial temperament that doubtless explains his selection as a pageant judge, promptly thereafter called her a “dumb bitch.”

    This in turn prompted right-wing cries of victimhood. Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage (which released the laughable “Gathering Storm” ad) described Hilton as “the new face for gay marriage in this country.” Gary Schneeberger, vice president of Focus on the Family, wrote in the New York Times,

    “What has happened to Miss Prejean over the past few days is nothing short of religious persecution. No, it is not violent persecution — but that does not minimize its existence or its danger.”

    Religious persecution? Because Perez Hilton is calling her nasty names? Oh, gag me with a tiara.

    Perez Hilton is a gossip blogger known mainly for posting celebrity pictures and then adding juvenile scribbles to them. (His favorite embellishment seems to be ejaculate dripping from people’s mouths.) It’s not for nothing that his nom de plume resembles that of someone else who is famous just for being famous. Being obnoxious is what he does for a living.

    So it’s no surprise that the religious right latched on to him. They’ve got nothing plausible to say in response to the serious marriage-equality advocates, so they make Hilton the face for the movement and then complain about what a nasty movement it is. Their intellectual dishonesty in doing so eclipses whatever integrity I admired in Miss Prejean.

    Why, for example, didn’t they cite the letter to Prejean from Geoff Kors at Equality California, a letter which seeks “open, honest dialogue”? Let me guess: it’s because gracious letters from true movement leaders don’t support their victim narrative.

    Even Gallagher concedes, “I don’t believe the response—hatred, ridicule, name-calling—by Perez Hilton is supported by most gay people or by most gay marriage supporters.”

    But then she backtracks by adding, “But, sadly, it is increasingly the visceral and public response of the gay marriage movement to anyone who disagrees with its views.”

    Sorry, but Perez Hilton’s blog is not the gay marriage movement. By Gallagher’s own admission, it is not even representative of the gay marriage movement. It’s a straw man, which is about the best that they can hope to knock down anymore.

  • Gathering Storm

    First published at Between the Lines News on April 23, 2009

    Leave it to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) to try to rain on our parade.

    I’m talking about NOM’s “Gathering Storm” ad [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI] , in which various characters warn that recent gay-rights victories are threatening their fundamental liberties: “There’s a storm gathering. The clouds are dark, and the winds are strong. And I am afraid…”

    The ad, in turn, prompted a number of YouTube responses, ranging from hilarious parodies (“There’s a bullshit storm gathering”), to serious fact-checking [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0dKMhYSX20], to exposure of the audition tapes.

    The latter was embarrassing for NOM, since it highlighted that these frightened folks were actually actors reading lines. (Either that, or every single one of them is both a California doctor AND a Massachusetts parent—and what are the odds of that?)

    Personally, I don’t find it overly troubling that the characters are all actors. The ad contained a small-print caption stating as much, and besides, their forced emotion was about as realistic as the lightning in the background.

    No, it’s not the use of actors that’s troubling. It’s the fact that virtually everything they say is misleading or false.

    The central claim of the ad is that same-sex marriage threatens heterosexuals’ freedoms: “My freedom will be taken away….I will have no choice.”

    One would think that Iowa and Vermont had just declared same-sex marriage mandatory.

    But of course, they did no such thing. They simply acknowledged that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same legal rights and responsibilities as their straight counterparts.

    How does this threaten anyone’s freedom? The ad mentions three cases—presumably the best examples they have—to illustrate the alleged danger:

    (1) “I’m a California doctor who must choose between my faith and my job.”

    Not exactly. California doctors can practice whatever faith they like—as long as it doesn’t interfere with patient care. The case in question involves a doctor who declined to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple, thus violating California anti-discrimination law.

    I can appreciate the argument that a liberal society protects religious freedom, and that we should thus allow doctors in non-emergency cases to refer patients to their colleagues for procedures which violate their consciences.

    But what are the limits of such exemptions? What if a doctor opposed divorce, and thus refused to perform insemination for a heterosexual woman in her second marriage? What if she opposed interfaith marriage, and refused to perform insemination for a Christian married to a Jew, or even for a Catholic married to a Methodist?

    Or what if a doctor refused to perform insemination for anyone except Muslims, on the grounds that children ought only to be raised in Muslim households? These are questions our opponents never bother to consider when they play the religious-conscience card.

    (2) “I’m part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can’t support same-sex marriage.”

    No, you’re (an actor playing) part of a New Jersey church group that operates Ocean Grove Camp. Ocean Grove Camp received a property-tax exemption by promising to make its grounds open to the public; it also received substantial tax dollars to support the facility’s maintenance. It then chose to exclude some of those taxpayers—in this case, a lesbian couple wishing to use the camp’s allegedly “public” pavilion for their civil union ceremony. So naturally, New Jersey revoked the pavilion’s (though not the whole camp’s) property-tax exemption.

    (3) “I am a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that gay marriage is OK.”

    Massachusetts parents—like any other parents—can teach their children what they wish at home. What they cannot do is dictate public school curriculum so that it reflects only the families they like.

    What these complaints make abundantly clear is that by “freedom,” our opponents mean the freedom to live in a world where they never have to confront the fact that others choose to exercise their freedom differently.

    In other words, they intend the very opposite of a free society.

    According to the NOM ad, in seeking marriage equality, gay-rights advocates “want to change the way I live.”

    There is a tiny grain of truth in this latter claim. Marriage is a public institution. If you enter the public sphere, you may think or feel or say whatever you like about someone’s marriage, but you nevertheless must respect its legal boundaries.

    Even so, I think our opponents have incredible chutzpah to frame this issue as being about personal liberty. Freedom means freedom to differ, not to obliterate difference.

    Or as Wanda Sykes aptly put it, capturing the irony of the freedom complaint:

    “If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage…then don’t marry somebody of the same sex.”