John Corvino

Tag: politics

  • Un-Scaring California

    First published at 365gay.com on October 17, 2008

    If the election were held tomorrow, it’s quite likely that gays would lose marriage in California.

    That’s California, our most populous state, home of San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi and the liberal Hollywood elite. What progressive California giveth, progressive California may taketh away.

    It surprises (and frankly, depresses) me how few gay people know or care what’s happening. Here’s the quick version: in May, the California Supreme Court declared the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Prior to the decision, California had domestic partnership legislation granting nearly all of the statewide legal incidents of marriage. But the Court held that denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples deprived them of a fundamental right and constituted wrongful discrimination.

    Gays began legally marrying in June, making California the second state (after Massachusetts) to support marriage equality.

    Meanwhile, opponents collected enough signatures for a November ballot initiative to amend the constitution so that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” (The amendment would leave domestic partnerships intact, but it would make it impossible for California to recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts or elsewhere.)

    For several months we seemed poised to win. That changed in the last few weeks, with recent polls showing us losing 47-42%.

    Why the shift? One reason is that we’re being out-fundraised and outspent, and the opposition’s advertising is effective. Recent figures posted by the Los Angeles Times show our opponents raising $26.1 million to our $21.8. A substantial chunk of the opposition’s money has come from out of state, 40% of it from Mormons.

    You read that last line correctly: 40% of the financial support for one-man-one-woman marriage in California is coming from members of a church that little over a century ago was pro-polygamy (and still has many polygamist offshoots). 40% of the support is coming from a religious denomination that makes up less than 2% of the U.S. population.

    What’s even more shocking are some of the individual reports about donors. The Sacramento Bee tells the story of Pam and Rick Patterson, who live with their five children in a modest three-bedroom home in Folsom. They withdrew $50,000 from their savings and donated it to Yes on 8. Pam says that it wasn’t an easy decision, “But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children.”

    Or consider David Nielson, a retired insurance executive from Auburn. He and his wife Susan donated $35,000. They plan to forgo vacations for the next several years and make other sacrifices to cover their donation, “because some causes are worth fighting for.”

    If I didn’t know better, I would think that California had just made same-sex marriage mandatory.

    And this is what’s both baffling and frustrating. We gays have a direct and palpable stake in the outcome of this referendum. Yet few of us (myself included) are willing to make the kinds of sacrifices made by the Nielsons and the Pattersons—people whose marriage was, is, and will remain heterosexual regardless of what happens. They are free to choose so-called “traditional marriage” if it suits them. So what are they so afraid of?

    I think the gay-rights movement’s failure to grapple with this question is another important reason why we may lose. We frame our arguments in terms of rights and liberty, forgetting that some people want the liberty to live without exposure to certain ways of life. They want a world where no one sees marriage for gays as an option—not their government, not their neighbors, and definitely not their children.

    They want that world badly, badly enough to sacrifice for it.

    In a democratic society, they are free to want that simpler world, and to spend money to get it, and to vote in favor of it. We are free to fight back. But that fight must include thoughtful responses to their concerns. It is not enough to assert our rights, especially when the documents embodying those rights can be amended by popular vote.

    We need to make a positive moral case to our opponents. We need to show them that our lives are good, that our relationships are healthy, that our happiness is compatible with theirs. We need to show them that marriage is good for gays, and that what’s good for gays is good for society.

    We need to tell them the story of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same-sex couple to marry in California, a couple who were together for 56 years until Del Martin’s death in August at the age of 87. We need to tell them: these are the kind of people you are trying to take marriage away from.

    I wouldn’t put my money on winning over the Pattersons and the Nielsons. But there are undecided voters who share their concerns—concerns about the world their children will inherit. We need to make the case to them. We need to raise money to communicate that case. And we need to do it fast.

  • ‘Saturday Night’ Gets it Right

    First published at 365gay.com on October 10, 2008

    In the last few weeks I’ve become seriously convinced that Saturday Night Live could help sway this presidential election. For one thing, it has crystallized Sarah Palin’s foreign-policy experience in a simple phrase:

    “I can see Russia from my house.”

    She didn’t quite say that, of course, but it’s close enough—not to mention funny, and memorable.

    Thus I was counting on SNL to neatly sum up the vice-presidential debate between Palin and Joe Biden. They didn’t disappoint.

    Sure, there were the expected shots at Palin: her non-answers, her lack of experience, her winks. But SNL is an equal-opportunity parodist, and one of my favorite moments poked fun at Biden.

    Queen Latifah/ Ifill: “Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?”

    Sudeikis/Biden: “I do. In an Obama-Biden administration same-sex couples would be guaranteed the same property rights, rights to insurance, and rights of ownership as heterosexual couples. There will be no distinction. I repeat: NO DISTINCTION.”

    Latifah/Ifill: “So to clarify, do you support gay marriage, Senator Biden?”

    Sudeikis/Biden: (deadpan) “Absolutely not.”

    Then, in case anyone missed the contrast, he follows up:

    Sudeikis/Biden: “But I do think they should be allowed to visit one another in the hospital and in a lot of ways, that’s just as good, if not better.”

    Again, this is not quite what the actual Biden said—but it’s close enough, not to mention funny, and memorable.

    We’ve seen this before in the Democrats: on the one hand, trying to support full legal equality for same-sex couples, and other the other hand, trying to avoid the m-word at all costs. The result is an incoherent mess—one that gets messier when they try to explain the incoherence.

    Consider, for instance, the actual Biden’s explanation of his and Obama’s opposition to full marriage equality. They don’t support same-sex marriage, Biden said, because that’s a decision “to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths [to determine] what you call it.”

    No, it isn’t. Because the question was not about religious marriage, it was about civil marriage—which in a free society is a matter for government, not religion.

    I don’t mean to pick on the Democrats here. The only reason that the Republicans avoid getting into the same logical pretzel is that they don’t even try to make the argument for full equality under the law.

    And while it’s true that both Obama and McCain oppose same-sex marriage at the federal level, Obama remains far ahead on gay issues: in supporting federal civil unions, in opposing “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell,” in opposing key portions of the “Defense of Marriage Act,” and in the kinds of federal judges and Supreme Court justices he is likely to appoint. Obama also opposes anti-gay state marriage amendments that McCain supports.

    The question is how long we can politely pretend that his stance of “full legal equality but not marriage” makes sense, because it doesn’t. It didn’t when John Kerry used it in the last election, it didn’t when Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson used it during the primaries, and it doesn’t now.

    It doesn’t make logical sense, although I can see why some think it makes political sense.

    Personally, I’m a political incrementalist. I believe in fighting for a half a loaf today and then regrouping to fight for the rest tomorrow, if the full loaf is genuinely not yet possible. That doesn’t mean I don’t find legal inequality demeaning: it just means that securing certain rights is more important to me than being an “all or nothing” purist.

    So I’m willing to support the “half a loaf” politicians. I’m just not willing to pretend that they’re offering the full loaf, or to rest content when I get it. I’m not willing to settle for “separate but equal”—another oxymoron in this debate.

    History teaches us what “separate but equal” does. It demeans one group by suggesting that they must be kept apart from others. But it also embodies a bigger problem: “separate but equal” never turns out really to be “equal.”

    That was true during segregation, and it’s true now for civil unions—a newfangled status that, in practice, simply doesn’t grant full legal equality. We’ve learned this in case after case, as civil-union couples face legal issues with entities that don’t even understand their legal status, much less recognize it.

    That’s why we need to keep fighting for full equality. Because in the end, there’s nothing funny about unequal treatment under the law.

  • Palin, Pregnancy, and Principles

    First published at 365gay.com on September 5, 2008

    I admit it: I was fascinated by the announcement that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

    It’s no surprise that teenagers have sex—even evangelical Christian teenagers, and especially very good looking ones, in Alaska, where there’s not much to do but hunting and fishing and…well, you know.

    And it’s certainly no surprise that sex makes babies.

    But when a conservative politician who advocates abstinence education has a very public failure of abstinence in her own family, revealed just a few days after she’s announced as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, it’s bound to get people talking.

    If nothing else, the social and political contours are interesting. Right-wingers admire Palin’s principles, but some wish she would put aside her political ambitions to tend to her family. Left-wingers reject this idea as anti-feminist, but they also reject Palin’s politics.

    Let me make two things very clear.

    First, Bristol Palin is not running for office; Sarah Palin is. Bristol Palin, like all expectant mothers, should be wished well—especially since she finds herself pregnant during the frenzy and scrutiny of her mother’s vice-presidential campaign. She deserves our compassion, as does her new fiancé.

    Second, Sarah Palin is no hypocrite—as some uncharitable commentators have suggested—for embracing her yet-unwed pregnant daughter.

    There’s no inconsistency in believing both that we should teach abstinence until marriage and that we should support those children who become pregnant anyway. There’s no hypocrisy in striving for an ideal that you and your loved ones occasionally fall short of. You don’t stop endorsing speed limits just because you (or your kids) sometimes lose track of the speedometer.

    The fact is, Sarah Palin’s rejection of comprehensive sex education deserves criticism on its own merits. Her family’s behavior has nothing to do with it, aside from adding anecdotes to the statistics suggesting that “abstinence only” doesn’t achieve what its proponents hope and claim.

    For example, abstinence advocates are fond of citing studies by Yale’s Hannah Brückner and Columbia’s Peter Bearman, who show that adolescents who take abstinence pledges generally delay sex about eighteen months longer than those who don’t. What the advocates don’t mention is the researchers’ finding that only 12% of these adolescents keep their pledges, and that when they do have sex, they are far less likely to use protection.

    In other words, the failure rate of condoms pales by comparison to the failure rate of abstinence pledges—88%, if you believe Brückner and Bearman.

    But it’s not Sarah Palin’s rejection of comprehensive sex education that’s bugging me here. What’s bugging me is the right-wing reaction, which for the most part boils down to “Nobody’s perfect, life happens, but you love and support your children and grandchildren.”

    That, of course, is the proper reaction.

    But it stands in sharp contrast to their usual reaction to gay kids, their rhetoric about “Love in Action” and “Love Win[ning] Out” notwithstanding.

    For example, contrast the right-wing reaction to Palin’s grandchild with their reaction to Dick Cheney’s grandchild Samuel—son of his lesbian daughter Mary. At the time, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America announced that Mary’s pregnancy “repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation.” She was hardly alone in such denunciations.

    Now here’s the same Crouse on Palin: “We are confident that she and her family will handle this unexpected situation with grace and love. We appreciate the fact that the Palins…are providing loving support to the teenager and her boyfriend.”

    There are differences in the two cases to be sure. Bristol plans to marry the father, and thus will provide the baby with a “traditional” family (in one sense); Mary won’t. Bristol’s pregnancy was probably accidental, whereas Mary’s was certainly deliberate.

    On the other hand, Mary’s child arrives in the home of a mature and stable couple; Bristol’s in the home of a young and hastily formed one.

    But the sharpest difference in the cases is the contrast in right-wingers’ compassion. It’s the difference in empathy, a trait that’s at the core of the Golden Rule.

    They tell heterosexuals: abstinence until marriage—and if you fail, we forgive you. For gays, it’s abstinence forever—and if you fail, we denounce you.

    For heterosexuals, “Nobody’s perfect, life happens, but you love and support your children and grandchildren.”

    For gays, not so much.

  • McCain’s Adoption Contradiction

    First published at 365gay.com on July 21, 2008

    Here’s the latest for the “politicians trying to have it both ways” file: John McCain on gay adoption.

    Asked about the subject by the New York Times, McCain made clear that he opposes it. Here’s the relevant portion of the interview in full:

    Q: “President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?”

    McCain: “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.”

    Q: “Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents?”

    McCain: “I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children; I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.”

    Q: “But your concern would be that the couple should be a traditional couple?”

    McCain: “Yes.”

    A few days later, after considerable criticism, McCain’s director of communications issued the following “clarification.”

    “McCain expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.”

    Let’s start by making something clear: nobody gives a flying wallenda what McCain’s (or any other candidate’s) “personal preferences” are. My personal preference is that children be raised by parents who dress them in tasteful Ralph Lauren sweater sets, but I’m not about to translate that into public policy.

    Second, the follow-up question in the initial interview could not have been clearer — “Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage?” — and, at best, McCain punted on that question. Given the thousands of children in need of good homes — often due to heterosexual irresponsibility — and the number of gay couples selflessly stepping up to the plate to provide for them, McCain’s response was nothing short of shameful.

    McCain’s “clarification” just added insult to injury. Through an aide, he went out on a major limb and said — are you ready? — that having “caring parental figures” is better for children than abandonment. Now there’s some bold leadership for you. (Notice that the campaign couldn’t even bring itself to mention gay parents— just “caring parental figures.”)

    Everyone knows what’s really going on here. McCain is trying to impress the religious right by being against gay stuff. But in the year 2008, insulting gay parents isn’t cool in the eyes of moderate voters. So he flip-flopped — but in a vague enough way that he can pretend he didn’t.

    Let’s suppose one believes, as McCain apparently does, that all else being equal it is better for children to be raised by both a mother and a father. I think this is a defensible position, although the best available research on gay parents suggests that their children turn out just as well as those of straight parents. But let’s grant the premise for the sake of argument.

    What follows with respect to gay adoption? In practice, virtually nothing. That’s because even if — all else being equal, which it seldom is — straight couples make better parents, gay couples clearly make very good parents, and adoption is one arena where we cannot afford to make the best the enemy of the good.

    Indeed, parenting in general is such an arena. Otherwise no one would be fit to have children.

    In general, children do better with more-educated parents than with less educated ones, but we don’t conclude that all prospective parents must have college degrees. In general, children do better with comfortable financial resources than with meager ones, but we don’t insist that prospective parents must have higher-than-average incomes. In general, children do better with grandparents around, but we don’t tell orphans that they themselves should never become parents. And so on.

    Here’s another thing that research and common sense tell us: in general, children who are planned do better than children who are “accidental.” And unlike straight couples, gay couples never say “Oops, we’re pregnant.” So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that children of gay parents do as well as they do.

    I’m not suggesting that children of gay parents don’t face unique challenges. But the main one happens to be other people’s ignorance. When such ignorance comes from an adoptive father, it’s surprising. When it comes from a potential president, it’s downright unacceptable.

  • Obama’s California Contortion

    First published at 365gay.com on July 7, 2008

    Barack Obama believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Yet he opposes the California ballot initiative that would write that view into the state constitution, calling it “divisive and discriminatory.” What gives?

    Obama’s not alone in this apparent contradiction: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s Republican governor, holds a similar juxtaposition of beliefs: that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that the state’s supreme court did the right thing by declaring California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. (Thanks to the court’s decision, California began marrying same-sex couples on June 16—an activity the ballot initiative aims to stop.)

    Meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain disapproves of the court’s decision and supports the initiative to overturn it. Yet McCain, Schwarzenegger and Obama all agree that decisions about marriage should be left to the states.

    Confused yet?

    For simplicity’s sake, let’s focus on Obama, and let’s start with the last issue first: marriage should be left to the states. There’s no contradiction in holding that states (as opposed to the federal government) should set marriage policy, while also holding an opinion about which policy they ought to favor.

    But that still leaves the question: according to Obama, which policy should they favor? Heterosexual-only marriage, or marriage equality?

    The answer depends upon what Obama means by “I personally believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Does he mean it as a matter of personal preference, as when I say, “I personally believe that martinis should be made with gin (but by all means, have a vodka martini if you want one)”? Or does he mean it as a matter of public policy?

    At first glance, Obama seems to be skating the line between the two. His endorsement of robust federal civil unions—but not marriage—for same-sex couples suggests a public-policy stance against full marriage equality. (By “full marriage equality,” I mean extending marriage to gays, not creating a “separate but equal” institution under a different name.) By contrast, his remarks on California suggest a mere personal preference that he doesn’t feel compelled to write into law.

    There’s a third option as well. Perhaps Obama’s belief that “marriage is between a man and a woman” is stronger than personal preference (as in my gin martini example) but still not something he wants to codify legally. Perhaps he holds a religious or moral objection to same-sex marriage—not merely in the sense of “I don’t want this for myself” but in the sense of “No one ought morally to choose this.” Would he then be inconsistent for supporting the California decision?

    Not necessarily. In a pluralistic free society, not every moral conviction can be—or should be—enshrined in law.

    That’s not just because doing so would be unwieldy and impractical. And it’s not just because some laws have unintended and undesirable consequences. As important as those reasons are, they miss the key point.

    That point is that securing our freedom sometimes requires giving others the freedom to behave in ways of which we disapprove. As former New York Governor Mario Cuomo once put it, discussing the relationship between his Catholic faith and his policy positions:

    “The Catholic public official lives the political truth … that to assure our freedom we must allow others the same freedom, even if occasionally it produces conduct by them which we would hold to be sinful…. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us.”

    I’m not suggesting that Obama thinks same-sex marriage is sinful—I frankly doubt that he does. I am suggesting that there’s a way to believe, consistently, that marriage should be heterosexual and that it would be a mistake to stand in the way of those who hold otherwise.

    Obama might also—quite reasonably—worry that the amendment would do more than stop same-sex marriage. It could also strip away domestic partnership benefits, including health care, as amendments in other states have done. That might help explain his “divisive and discriminatory” charge.

    Of course, to say that these reasons would render Obama’s positions consistent is not to say that they’re motivating him. More likely, his positions are motivated by political reality. He can’t afford to alienate gay-supportive Democrats by opposing same-sex marriage, and he can’t afford to alienate mainstream voters by endorsing it. So he does both, and neither.

    Obama isn’t unique in trying to have it both ways. It’s not about logic—it’s about politics.

  • Defending Drag Queens

    First published at 365gay.com on June 9, 2008

    June brings pride parades, which brings out drag queens in bright sunlight.

    I don’t envy anyone wearing pancake makeup, a wig, heels and pantyhose in 90-degree weather. I particularly don’t envy drag queens, who—like other gender non-conformists in our society—suffer more than their share of unfair criticism.

    A reader named Clyde writes, “I think drag is comparable to blackface minstrelsy. Whether it’s men performing as women, or whites performing in blackface, caricaturing and making fun of groups of people perpetuates stereotypes.”

    There are at least two critical claims here. One is that drag caricatures—and thus makes fun of—groups of people, and the other is that drag perpetuates stereotypes. Let’s consider each in turn.

    While it’s possible for a drag performance to make fun of women, misogyny is not essential to, or even typical of, drag. True, drag often involves exaggerated personas, but the point doesn’t seem to be to mock women, but rather to revel in a particular kind of feminine glamour. For that reason, the analogy to minstrelsy falls short.

    But what about the “bitchy” personalities adopted by some drag queens? Again, intentions and context matter. If the point is cruelty, then it’s wrong. But mockery, and even bitchiness, can have its place in entertainment. Unless one objects to Joan Rivers-type humor altogether, it’s difficult to make the case for objecting to it in drag performances.

    The other part of Clyde’s objection is related: it’s that drag perpetuates stereotypes. There are multiple potential stereotypes at work here: that gay men are effeminate, that gay men want to be women, that gay men are bitchy, that gay men are excessively concerned about their appearance, that women are bitchy, that women are excessively concerned about their appearance, or that gay and transgender are the same thing.

    A stereotype is an overgeneralization about a group. It may be negative, but it needn’t be (consider “All Asians are good at math.”)

    I don’t doubt that drag contributes to stereotypes. But I don’t think the appropriate response to the problem is to reject drag queens. They’re not responsible for others’ ignorance, and in particular, for others’ tendency to generalize from a sample of drag queens to most gay men (or most women).

    Certainly, it’s important to portray our community—indeed, our overlapping communities—accurately and fairly. And historically, the majority of media images portraying the GLBT community have focused on an unrepresentative minority of that community.

    As someone who came out in the late 1980’s, growing up in a rather straitlaced suburb, I’m especially sensitive to that problem. At the time, there were few if any images of the GLBT community that I could relate to, and so I convinced myself that I wasn’t one of “them.”

    But the way to combat this distortion is not to silence the divas among us. The way to combat it is for the rest of us “plain” homosexuals to make our presence known.

    As for drag queens: if someone wants to don a sequined gown and lip-synch to “Over the Rainbow,” far be it from me to stand in her way. (I use the feminine pronoun deliberately.) If other people think that her behavior says something about me or about gays in general, it’s my job (not hers) to correct them. And I will correct those people, not because there’s something wrong with the drag queen, but because she’s who she is and I’m who I am. She speaks for herself, and I for myself.

    If I were a drag queen, I might break into a La Cage aux Folles number right now. Instead, I want to conclude on a note of gratitude—to a particular drag queen whose name I’ve long forgotten.

    I was quite young when I ventured into my first gay bar. I was clearly out of my element. Noticing my nervousness as I stood alone against the wall, a drag queen approached me. “How old are you, honey?”

    “Nineteen,” I replied sheepishly.

    “Honey, there are hairpieces in this bar that are older than that!” she quipped back.

    She made me laugh, and so I began to relax. Then she introduced me to several other patrons—including other young nervous preppy boys like me. I’m sure she realized I could relate to them more easily than to her. It was a simple act of kindness, and I recall it warmly.

    Ironically, it was a drag diva who helped this “plain” homosexual find his voice. Wherever you are, thanks.

  • Sally Kern’s Free Speech

    First published at 365gay.com on March 17, 2008

    When Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern gave her now-infamous homophobic rant before a group of fellow Republicans, she remarked that “The very fact that I’m talking to you like this here today puts me in jeopardy.” It may have been the truest thing she said that day.

    Normally, I would dismiss this particular remark as a pathetic religious-right sympathy ploy. It’s hard to take seriously the persecution complex of a group that wields so much power, especially in places like Kern’s home state. In jeopardy for making homophobic comments in front of Oklahoma Republicans? Please.

    Thanks to the marvel of YouTube, however, Kern’s rant received a much wider audience than she anticipated. Listeners all over the country heard Kern claim that “the homosexual agenda is destroying this nation,” that gays are indoctrinating our children, and that homosexuality poses a bigger threat to America “than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat.”

    Kern later claimed, rather implausibly, that her comments were taken out of context, and that she was talking about gays around the country who were contributing money to pro-gay candidates in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

    I look forward to joining that group of gays. More precisely, I look forward to sending a big fat check to whatever decent candidate aims to unseat Kern in the next election cycle. I’m sure I’m not alone in that plan. So Kern’s remark about her speech putting her in jeopardy may have been surprisingly prescient. One can hope.

    Unfortunately, Kern’s speech offered little else in the way of insight, unless we’re talking about insight into the fears, lies and stereotypes that dominate the religious right’s thinking about gays. Kern claimed that “studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades.”

    I don’t know what “studies” Kern is referring to, but the claim is nonsense on its face. Can you name a now-extinct society that “totally embraced” homosexuality? Me neither. (While there have been societies in history that permitted particular homosexual practices, those practices were narrowly circumscribed.)

    Kern added that “This stuff is deadly and it’s spreading and it will destroy our young people; it will destroy this nation.”

    I share Kern’s concern for our young people, which is one reason I’m eager to unseat her. I remember what it was like to hear such stereotypes as a teenager and to think, “No, no, no—that can’t be me.” I remember how ugly myths about homosexuality exacerbated my coming-out struggle. I don’t want other youths to suffer that.

    Kern also claimed that homosexuality “has deadly consequences for those people involved in it; they have more suicides, they’re more discouraged, there’s more illness [and] their lifespans are shorter.”

    Again we have unsubstantiated myths and outright falsehoods, this time mixed with a grain of truth. Who wouldn’t be “discouraged” in the face of attacks like Kern’s? Should anyone be surprised that in Kern’s world, gay people—and especially, gay youth—find that their lives are more difficult than others’?

    In this respect, Kern behaves like a bully who punches a kid on the playground and then justifies his attack by saying that he’s troubled by his victim’s bleeding. Yes, Rep. Kern, gay youth are at a higher risk for suicide. But their problem is not homosexuality. Their problem is people like you.

    I realize that such accusations of “bloody hands” don’t do much to promote dialogue. I have no doubt that Sally Kern is sincere in her beliefs. What’s more, some of those beliefs may even stem from virtuous motives—respect for tradition, concern for future generations, love of country and so on. But virtuous motives don’t make such beliefs any less false, ugly, or dangerous.

    I’m particularly irritated—though by no means surprised—by Kern’s attempt to cloak her homophobia in religion. At one point in her original screed she opines that “Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal—just like not all religions are equal.” She’s right about that, too. I’d say that any religion that permits spreading lies or demonizing people because of whom they love is scarcely worthy of respect.

    In the wake of this fiasco, Kern has complained that her critics want to deny her free speech. “Obviously, you have the right as an American to choose that lifestyle,” she said, “but I also have the right to express my views.”

    Yes, Rep. Kern, you do. But free speech doesn’t give anyone a free pass to say stupid things without repercussions.

  • The Phelpses’ Logic (and Ours)

    First published at 365gay.com on February 4, 2008

    No one was surprised when the Phelpses announced plans to protest Heath Ledger’s memorial services. Known for their “God Hates Fags” message and their obnoxious funeral pickets—they now demonstrate against fallen American soldiers for defending our “doomed, fag-loving nation”—the Phelpses are nothing if not attention whores. What’s surprising is how much the Phelpses can tell us about ourselves.

    Let’s admit it: deranged people, like car wrecks, are fascinating to watch. While everyone would be better off ignoring the Phelpses, doing so is hard sometimes. (I feel the same way about Britney, Paris, and Lindsay—my willpower against media “junk food” is only so strong.) So it was that I recently found myself listening to Shirley Phelps-Roper—daughter of Fred, who founded the infamous Westboro Baptist Church—when she appeared on a Washington D.C. radio station.

    Phelps-Roper condemned Ledger for Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays a cowboy who falls in love with another man. Ledger is in hell because he mocked God’s law, she claimed, and “if you follow his example, you will go to hell with him.”

    Predictably, the show’s callers attacked Phelps-Roper; sadly, they often made little sense. One insisted that, according to the bible, God doesn’t judge anyone. Say what? Phelps-Roper’s reading of the bible may be selective, but apparently, so is everyone else’s: it doesn’t take much searching to find a judgmental, even wrathful God in the bible.

    The show’s host then attacked Phelps-Roper for her picket signs, which often thank God for disasters: “Thank God for 9/11.” “Thank God for maimed soldiers.” “Thank God for Hurricane Katrina.” and so on. Phelps-Roper had a ready comeback:

    “Exactly. You better thank him for all of his judgments because the scripture says that God is known by the judgment that he executes in this Earth, so you thank him for everything.”

    This answer is interesting, and not as bizarre as it might first appear. Theologians have long pondered the problem of evil—if God is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful, why does he allow evil in the world?—and some quite respectable ones have concluded that evil doesn’t really exist. From our limited human perspective, things may look bad, but that’s just because our minds are too feeble to comprehend God’s design: ultimately, everything is just as God planned it.

    The problem is that, pushed to its limits, this position quickly yields practical contradictions. By this logic, we ought to thank God for Heath Ledger’s death; but by the same logic, we ought to thank God for Brokeback Mountain’s box-office success. We ought to thank God for Hurricane Katrina; yet we ought also to thank him for sparing the (delightfully debaucherous) French Quarter. We ought to thank God for AIDS, yet also for protease inhibitors. If God should be thanked for everything, then God should be thanked for EVERYTHING.

    Yet somehow I don’t expect to see the Phelpses with signs thanking God for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, or the passage of ENDA, or the increasing acceptance of GLBT people. If I were on a radio program with Shirley Phelps-Roper, I’d want to ask her “Why not?” If all of God’s judgments are “perfect,” why not these?

    My guess is that she’d answer that these events result from human free will rather than divine will. But then how do we distinguish them from 9/11? Was it God’s will for Islamic extremists to fly planes into buildings? If so, do they escape hell, since they were only doing God’s will? If not, then why are we thanking God, rather than blaming the extremists?

    I wouldn’t expect a satisfying answer to these questions, but that’s not because Phelps-Roper is deranged (which she is) or stupid (which she isn’t, as far as I can tell). It’s because centuries of philosophical theology have failed to produce satisfying answers to the problem of evil. Instead, we pick and choose: even though God is supposed to be responsible for everything, we thank him for the things we like and call the rest a mystery. In this respect Phelps-Roper resembles most biblical believers: she just happens to “like” rather different things than sane folks do.

    A talented and likable actor dies in his prime. The Phelpses thank God, while mainstream believers declare God’s will a mystery. Had the paramedics saved him, mainstream believers would thank God while the Phelpses declared God’s will a mystery. In either case, divine providence remains unquestioned. Heads, God wins. Tails, God wins.

    If there’s a mystery here, it’s why believers seem to have lower expectations of God than they do of local weather forecasters. That, and why a loving God lets the Phelpses continue to spew hate in his name.

  • Are Our Opponents Like Segregationists?

    First published at Between the Lines News on January 15, 2008

    In terms of gay-rights progress, brace yourself for a difficult year.

    This is not because things are getting worse for gay and lesbian people. It’s because the national conversation on gay-rights issues is getting harder.

    One reason is that, as cliché as it sounds, we are more polarized than ever. Gone are the days when House Speaker Tip O’ Neill could sharply criticize President Reagan by day and play cards with him after 6 p.m.

    And even if Obama changes the tone in Washington, it will take a long time for that to trickle down. It has become too easy to surround oneself solely with like-minded people. (The internet is one key factor.)

    The result is a bunch of echo chambers, outside of which opponents seem not just wrong, but borderline-insane.

    The second reason is that the gay community’s specific goals have shifted somewhat. We are no longer asking merely to be left alone, as when we were fighting sodomy laws and police harassment. Our central political goal, for better or for worse, has become marriage.

    Marriage is not merely a private contract between two individuals. It is also an agreement between those individuals and the larger community. It requires, both legally and socially, that community’s support. And so the old “leave me alone” script no longer really works.

    The third and most important reason why the conversation is getting harder is that the gay community is at a crossroads regarding how we treat our opponents.

    On the one hand we talk about reaching out, promoting dialogue, emphasizing common ground.

    On the other hand we are quick to label our opponents as hate-filled bigots.

    This combination obviously won’t work. A bigot is someone whose views, virtually by definition, are beyond the pale of polite discussion.

    One sees this contrast in the fracas over Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

    Compared to most evangelical pastors, Warren is a moderate, who focuses on common-ground issues such as poverty and AIDS over the usual culture-war stuff.

    But Warren supported Prop. 8, the California initiative that stripped marriage rights from gays and lesbians. (He has since suggested some possible support for civil unions.)

    Obama’s camp is taking the “big tent” approach, acknowledging differences with Warren but emphasizing shared values. In a similar vein, Melissa Etheridge has opened a dialogue with Warren.

    Most gay-rights leaders, by contrast, have decried Obama’s choice of Warren as a slap in the face. As one friend put it, “it’s like inviting a segregationist to lead the invocation—I don’t care what other good things the guy has done.”

    And there’s the rub: Warren does indeed espouse a “separate but equal” legal status for gays and lesbians (at best). Should we treat him the way we treat segregationists?

    Before answering, remember that the majority of Californians, and a larger majority of the rest of the country, hold the same position as Warren on marriage. So does Obama himself (though he did oppose Prop. 8).

    So in asking whether inviting Warren to lead the invocation is akin to inviting a segregationist to do so, we are also asking whether the vast majority of Americans are akin to segregationists.

    It’s a painful question to confront. And the only fair answer is “yes and no.”

    On the merits, yes. For practical purposes, no.

    From where I stand, the arguments against marriage equality look about as bad as the arguments for segregation. They commit the same fallacies; they hide behind the same (selective reading of) scripture; they are often motivated by the same fears.

    But I’m mindful of the fact that “from where I stand” includes decades of hindsight regarding segregation.

    Today, it shocks us to read things like the following:

    “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

    The segregationist who wrote that? Abraham Lincoln.

    It is easy now to paint all segregationists as hatemongers, waving pitchforks and frothing at the mouth. Easy, but quite wrong.

    The fact is that most segregationists were people not unlike, say, my grandmothers, both of whom were wonderful, loving, decent human beings, and both of whom—much to my embarrassment—opposed interracial marriage.

    Their reasons had to do with tradition and the well-being of children. Sound familiar?

    My grandmothers were not hatemongers. They were products of their time. So was Lincoln, so is Rick Warren, and so are you and I, more or less.

    I don’t mean for a moment to let Rick Warren off the hook. He ought to know better. Maybe someday he will.

    For now, labeling him and the majority of Americans as “bigots” won’t make that day come any faster.

    In the meantime, brace yourself for a bumpy ride.

  • The Diversity Fallacy

    First published at 365gay.com on December 10, 2007.

    I won’t have any transgender people at my Christmas party this year.

    Actually, I won’t have any non-transgender people either: I’m not hosting a party this Christmas. But in years past I’ve hosted many, and I’ve never had any transgender people attending, unless you count one former women’s studies student who identified as transgender “for political reasons.”

    I have nothing against transgender people; I just don’t know many. Nor do I have anything against diversity—indeed, my parties have been quite diverse: young and old, gay and straight, nerdy academics and slick business types (not to mention slick academics and nerdy business types).

    On the other hand, they’ve been populated by mostly white, mostly educated, mostly professional folks—the kind of people my partner and I typically encounter in our daily lives. Our parties have had relatively few lesbians and surprisingly few blacks, given that we live in a majority-black neighborhood in an overwhelmingly black city (Detroit). They would not impress most college diversity offices.

    And I don’t really care.

    Please understand: I’m a proponent of diversity. I’ve written in support of affirmative action, and I vocally opposed the initiative that ultimately banned it in Michigan public institutions. But imposing it on our social gatherings is just foolishness—which is not to say that people don’t try.

    A few years ago some friends of mine observed that Detroit’s lack of a “gayborhood” meant that gay city dwellers often felt socially disconnected. So we started brainstorming about ways to draw them together—an online community, a series of house parties, that sort of thing—and we formed a group. Then one of the local GLBT organizations got involved. Every time we tried to sponsor an event, they’d interrupt: “Wait; you don’t have enough lesbians on board.” So we brought more lesbians on board. “Wait; you don’t have enough African-Americans on board.” So we brought more African-Americans on board. “Wait; you don’t have enough working-class people on board.” And so on.

    Now we have no one on board. The group never got off the ground, having collapsed under the weight of the artificial diversity imposed on it. What began as a band of like-minded gay Detroiters was forced—on purpose—into a hodgepodge of individuals with relatively little in common. Not surprisingly, those individuals very quickly decided they had other more pressing interests.

    When “birds of a feather flock together,” why fight it? It’s one thing if those groups are hoarding resources that others are entitled to; it’s quite another if they just want to hang out.

    Ironically, the insistence on diversity sometimes results in a rather opposite problem, stemming from what I call the Diversity Fallacy. It would seem that, for any minority group X, having more members of X creates more diversity. But that’s true only up to a point, after which the group is no longer underrepresented and the principle becomes fallacious. So, for example, adding another African-American to the Detroit City Council (eight of whose nine members are black) would not make it more diverse: it would make it less so, all else being equal. This is true despite the fact that, even in Detroit, African-Americans are thought to “count” toward diversity in a way that whites do not.

    Obviously, this problem is not unique to the GLBT community. It arises anywhere cultural identity and diversity attempt to coexist. But the GLBT community has been revisiting it of late, mainly because of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

    ENDA passed the House in a version that includes sexual orientation but not gender identity. As a result, the GLB community has been accused (largely from within its own ranks) of throwing transgenders under the bus. Critics have recalled the women’s movement of the early ’70s, many of whose leaders denounced lesbians as a hindrance to the movement’s goals.

    The analogy is clumsy at best. Every lesbian is a woman; not every transgender person is gay. Sexual orientation and gender identity (unlike womanhood and lesbianism) vary independently, even granting that they have important affinities.

    What the ENDA debate reminds us is that the GLBT “community” comprises diverse sub-communities, which overlap in various and sometimes awkward ways. No G’s and L’s are B’s; some G’s, L’s, and B’s are T’s; all T’s are either straight or GLB. Every one of us has both a sexual orientation and a gender identity, though one or the other of those traits may dominate our individual political agendas.

    But the debate also reminds us that communities are at least partly a matter of choice: choices about which alliances to form, when to form them, when to honor them and when to break them. Choices that are easy to make when sending Christmas-party invitations become far more difficult when people’s livelihoods are at stake.