The White Peril 白禍

I think that a lot of what Joe Kort says in his latest post at Ex-Gay Watch makes sense. I'm not so sure about this segment, though:

I believe that most people involved with ex-gay organizations and choose to deny their own homosexuality are turtles [that is, people who duck for cover and minimize themselves when they feel insecure].

Really? The average ex-gay autobiography I've read tends to go something like this: "One morning, after years of drinking, taking drugs, and alternately working as a hustler and being dumped by my latest exploitative boyfriend, I woke up for the hundredth time in a pool of my own vomit and realized my problem was that...homosexuality is sinful!" I'm not the first to notice this, but it's hard not to read prominent ex-gays' detailed accounts of their past lives without sensing a kind of thrill and reverse-braggadocio underneath: "I was such a bad mo-fo it took God to straighten me out!" It allows those with loudmouth tendencies to stay loudmouthed in the role of Getting the Message out. (That doesn't mean I don't think they're sincere, by the way.)

And at the same time, it seems only fair to mention the flip side: I think a lot of the more militant gays haven't worked through their God issues. By this I mean that they avoid the process of confronting the possibility that the anti-gay religious folks are correct, which would lead to practicing homosexuality only once they were secure in the examined belief that it was the right path for them. Normally, I try not to speculate about what's going on inside people's heads, but I can think of no other explanation for the weird touchiness and reflexive dismissiveness of a lot of gays when the subject of religion or transcendence comes up. I wish people (on either side) didn't feel the need to make themselves feel better about their own choices by deriding those who make the opposite ones, but that problem is probably as old as civilization and doesn't seem to show any signs of abating.

I've done enough ragging on John Kerry that it's only fair to point out that I was mostly impressed with what he said in this interview with The Washington Blade. His response to this question strikes me as sounding genuine rather than evasive:

Blade: OK, last question. I�m curious: If you had been born gay [SRK rolls eyes], how different do you think your life would be?

Kerry: I can�t tell you the answer to that question because I don�t know what my � you know, I just can�t tell you how I would have responded to it. Would I have been at the forefront of the crusade in the 1960s or would I still be, as some people are, living a double life or something, I don�t know.

And his last word on the marriage debate is also one of the clearest statements I've heard from him yet about anything:

I think, you know, and I�ve said this before, I think marriage raises a different issue in the minds of a lot of people because of its deep religious foundations and institutional structure as the oldest institution in the world.

It is the oldest institution in the world � older than country, older than our form of government, older than most forms of government. And people view it differently.

What�s important to me is not the terminology or the status; what�s important to me are the rights. The rights. That you shouldn�t be discriminated against in your right to visit a partner in the hospital. You shouldn�t be discriminated against in your right to leave property to somebody, if that�s what you want. You shouldn�t be discriminated against if you have a civil union relationship that affords you the same rights.

Now I think that�s a huge step. There�s never been a candidate for president who has stood up and said I think we should fight for those things. And you�ve got to progress. Even that, I take huge hits for.

And you know, I stood up on the floor of the Senate and voted against DOMA because I thought it was gay bashing on the floor of the United States Senate. I was one of 14 votes. The only person running for reelection who did that.

If only he addressed every issue, including how he plans to keep terrorists from incinerating us all, as clearly.

Dale Carpenter's most recent article makes, as usual, a lot of good points. His discussion of the continuum of attitudes among gays in the Log Cabin Republicans is one of those things that are puzzling at first but sound obvious once explained to you.

Something he doesn't really address, though, is why "Republican-first gays" would join an organization with "gay-first Republicans" agenda. You don't need a formal group to be able to socialize and exchange ideas, right? And if you seriously believe that Republican principles are universally correct and thus more important than gay advocacy, wouldn't you be driving that point home most effectively by being just an active party member whose homosexuality only comes out organically, in the course of interacting with people?

Maybe that's one of the reasons that, despite my disaffection with the Democratic Party and frequent votes for GOP candidates, my encounters with gay Republicans have not moved me to change my registration. I understand what people are trying to get across when they say things like, "We should be Americans first and gays second," but to me that involves falsely isolating gay issues from everything else in life--less shrilly than leftist queer activists do, to be sure, but just as perniciously.

All real-life political decisions involve prioritizing, and gay issues are just like everything else in that we sometimes have to put other values ahead of them. I don't see why we deserve congratulations for doing so like everyone else. Well, okay, that's a bit harsh. I empathize completely with gestures of the I'm-queer-but-I-still-love-America type, and I've been tempted to make them myself. But I think that in the end, they just encourage people to believe that our sexuality is something that everything we believe is somehow oriented by. In that sense, if LCR is going to be useful, it's probably better for it to focus on frankly evaluating candidates and platforms through the single-issue lens of gay advocacy, leaving it to be understood that other, potentially more important reference points exist but are outside its ken.

With all the bad news about how the deeply unwise push for gay marriage now is faring, it's nice to see evidence of the slow, steady, organic progress that means real gay equality. I'm not sure that I trust the HRC's criteria for how nice companies are to gay employees to be those I'd use, but I can only imagine they're pretty exacting:

The number of companies receiving the top grade rose to 56 in 2004, from 28 in 2003 and just 13 in 2002.

Ford previously scored 85 percent, but by adding gender identity to its non discrimination policy, which already included gays and lesbians, the score took a considerable jump.

I do think, however, that I need this explained to me:

Ford [the CEO of Ford Motor Co.] pointed to the need for the automotive industry to help nurture minorities, especially minority owned suppliers.

"In order to keep Michigan competitive in a global economy, we must continue to focus on the importance diversity plays in growing our economy," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said. "Promoting diversity makes good business sense and will help position Michigan as an economic powerhouse in the 21st century."

It's that part about "nurturing," in connection with the adults who are responsible for making car parts that won't fail when I swerve to avoid a deer, that worries me. If "promoting diversity" means reminding automakers that blacks are just as capable as whites of making top-quality windshield wiper blades, great. If it means persuading a skittish foreman that someone he's pretty sure is gay can do assembly line work, also great. But the point should be to give people the tools they need to evaluate performance without letting superfluous personal characteristics get in the way, and to let all employees and suppliers know they'll be on equal footing. I'm not sure where the nurturing comes in.

*******

Speaking of queers and cars, Atsushi and I spent several hours driving around Kyushu in his new ride this weekend. It's kitted out with an electronic map and GPS navigation--I assume most new cars in the States are, too? Very sophisticated, very useful, and very annoying.

I got over the fact that our whereabouts were being tracked by satellite pretty quickly--it's not as if the government had implanted a secret chip somewhere in the thing. But of course, every three seconds, that soothingly impersonal female voice was saying, "You will continue without turning for at least the next five miles" and "You are now entering Miyazaki Prefecture" and "You will make a left turn in approximately 700 meters...You will make a left turn in approximately 300 meters...You will make a left turn here."

AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Atsushi twinkled with easy-going amusement as always: "Darling, would you rather have me shoving a map at you and asking whether we're near the turnoff yet? Or pulling over every twenty kilometers? If the CD's started repeating, why don't you put in something else you'd like to listen to." Yeah, okay, you're right. I'm calm, really. Court and Spark. Gorges full of rocks and grass. The occasional spiraling bird. We're good. In fact, once we got into the mountains, I settled into watching the digital map twist around as we took each hairpin turn--and ended up making myself good and carsick. But it was a good weekend.

Tomorrow I leave for Kyushu for the three-day weekend. Looking forward to it; it's the first time I'll be seeing Atsushi's new place. The weather also seems to have cleared some after the typhoon-hammering they've had there this summer. Still like an oven, though, apparently. But that's okay. Atsushi bought a new car when he moved, and this'll be the first time I'm seeing it, too. I mean, I don't expect to be surprised at what it looks like. He's the kind who likes what he likes, so he basically bought this year's model of his old car, in an even more conservative color. But that's one of his charms. Another is that he's big-time sexy when he's driving.

Unfortunately, one of the things Kyushu is famous for is tarako, or cod eggs. Friends have asked for it as an　お土産 (o-miyage, a gift consisting of a local specialty that you bring from home to friends abroad or bring back for the homefolks when you go on vacation). I like regular old fins-and-scales fish, but (possibly as a vestige of having been brought up following the Levitical health laws) I don't share the Japanese belief about seafood that the more it looks like a sci-fi movie monster, the more of a delicacy it is. However, I will be flying back from Kyushu with vacuum-packed cod roe in my luggage because...well, my friends refuse to be content with the usual tasteless cream-filled pastry that seems to be the "specialty" of most other places in Japan. One of these days, I'll tell you about the time I bought and airmailed 50 jars of farm-made apple butter from my hometown as an o-miyage. After that experience, I decided I don't love my friends quite that much.

Anyway, hope everyone who's been in the direct line of a giant storm is okay, and hope everyone else has a great weekend.

Glenn Reynolds has decided to take a break from posting about contentious things like the election and tackle gay marriage. It's an uncharacteristically long post, and I agreed with most of it. I especially liked this passage:

Now, of course, any question beginning "what is John Kerry's position. . ." is a tough one. But — correct me if I'm wrong here — the only real difference between Kerry and Bush is that Bush has offered vague support to the certain-to-fail Federal Marriage Amendment. But it's, er, certain to fail. Now that's a difference, I guess. But it's not a huge one, and to me it doesn't seem to be a big enough difference to justify the vitriol. (Kerry's been, maybe, more supportive on civil unions, but I wouldn't take that to the bank.)

I support gay marriage, of course, though I'd be lying if I said it was as important to me as it is to, say, Andrew Sullivan. But if you look at the polls, it's opposed about 2-1 by voters. What that means is that you're not likely to see much difference between the parties until somebody thinks they can pick up enough votes to make a difference.

I think that gay marriage is good for everyone. Marriage is a good thing, and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be just as good a thing for gay people as for straight people. Judging from the gay couples I know, it would be a good thing — and I'm entirely at a loss to understand why people think gay marriage somehow undermines straight marriage. But to get there, you need to make that case, not just accuse opponents of being closedminded-biblethumping-bigotsoftheredneckreligiousright. (Andrew Sullivan made some of these positive arguments quite well in Virtually Normal, but I don't think the tone on his blog has been as constructive of late.)

That last sentence is tact of the most delicate. Somehow over the last few years, gay marriage went from being something to work toward, as current gay life recovered from its origins in the social upheavals of the '60's and '70's, to being something that the government has to provide right now if we're to stop being "second-class citizens." And, of course, it's not just Andrew Sullivan.

Stephen Miller has posted his own non-endorsement of Bush on the IGF Culture Watch blog:

I wish I could support Bush, since I'm in his camp on a wide range of issues (the War on Terror, entitlement and tort reform, pro-investment tax cuts). But I can't. He's sold my vote to the religious right.

Yet I won't be voting for Kerry, with whom I disagree on most foreign and domestic policies, not to mention his wishy-washy position on topic G (he opposes gay marriage and supports state amendments to ban 'em, but claims he also opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment � just not enough to vote against it).

That's nice, but who does it leave? Lyndon LaRouche? Also, as Reynolds pointed out, the fact that the FMA looks pretty certain not to pass should be factored in, but few people do so. Whether it changes the character of Bush's election-year endorsement of the amendment is an open question, but a question that has to be given due consideration. (Many gays, of course, twist themselves Tantric trying to excuse Kerry's endorsement of the Massachusetts amendment and failure to vote on bringing the FMA to the table.)

And then there's the fact that the religious right is not the only constituency that opposes gay marriage. I know a number of married people who have personally, and in public, treated Atsushi and me as a perfectly "legitimate" couple but don't believe all the implications of gay marriage have been thrashed out sufficiently.

If I keep going, I'm in danger of producing yet another anagram of my usual gay marriage rant. That would be a dull old thing for everyone, so I'll cut it out and just hope once more that people can stop talking past each other sooner rather than later.

[pause]

Well, okay, I would like to point out just one more tangentially related thing that's been bothering me lately. Last week, I left a rather intemperate comment on this post at Classical Values, and immediately thought I'd been out of line and kind of panicked. Rereading it, I suppose it fortunately wasn't as belligerent as I was feeling. But the issue (of anonymity, not of outing) came back this afternoon when I received an e-mail from Janis Gore pointing out this story, which mentions short-fused lawyer John Rawls in connection with the proposed SSM ban in Louisiana. There's a picture of a gay couple in their living room, addressing envelopes for a drive to oppose the ban.

You know, when I see people from little regional cities--and I want to make it clear that I'm not tarring the South here; there's just as much busybodying in the Mid-Atlantic--who are willing to have their names and faces put in the paper in relation to gay issues, I think of these anonymous website commenters who bitch about gay marriage and the ineptitude of the HRC and hostile politicians and the meanies on the religious right and blah blah blah, and I want to backhand them.

There are plenty of honorable reasons not to use your full name on-line--from fear of identity theft to the trade-offs you might be making to work in an environment that's not gay-friendly. The fact remains, though, that our gains are mostly made by people who are willing to be unsecretive and take whatever sacrifices go along with that.* It's they who are going to make things better for the gays of the future, assuming our pushy activists don't spoil it all by issuing straight folk a new ultimatum every five minutes. For that matter, even the activists, tiresome as they can be, are putting themselves out there for what they believe, using their real identities. I don't think there's any ethical obligation for people posting under a pseudonym to absent themselves from discussions of gay issues. I do wish they'd show some respect and stop griping that other people aren't doing enough to make their lives easier.

* Especially if they aren't among those of us who live in super-big cities where there's already a lot of pressure on people to appear hip and gay-positive, which is why I say "they" rather than "we"

9 September is the anniversary of the opening day of the bar where Atsushi and I met. This year, for the first time in three years, I went to the anniversary party alone; Atsushi sent a congratulatory e-mail to the bar's message board. The guy who runs the place, who along with his partner of 17 years has become one of my best friends, responded that he's glad we're still together (despite Atsushi's being transferred to a distant city) and that we've become "like a pair of mandarin ducks."

This is a Japanese expression, though I suppose it might be a borrowing from Chinese. It's usually used as 鴛鴦夫婦 (oshidori fuufu, "Mr. and Mrs. Mandarin Duck"), to describe a couple that's settled and obviously devoted to each other. So I was touched. I was also amused enough to start my next message to Atsushi with ガーガー (gaa gaa: "Quack quack!") under the assumption that he'd seen our friend's post. (He had.)

And I idly looked up mandarin ducks on Google and found this page, which made me smile. Like a lot of male birds, mandarin drakes have colorful plumage to attract mates (they shed it outside the mating season and look like the females then, says one of the sites I read, which I think is also not unusual).

What was funny about it was that it really is what people tell us we look like as a couple. I mean, where one is decked out and the other plain. I'm not particularly high-maquillage, but I like intense colors and work in a casual enough office that I can wear them on weekdays. Atsushi works at a bank and has to dress conservatively, but--I can say this with confidence after three years with the man--he also really, seriously prefers black, white, navy, and charcoal grey. Only. He has a single (very dark) maroon T-shirt, a single (very dark) hunter green T-shirt, and a single (very dark) cocoa-brown cardigan. Otherwise, everything in his closet is a wintry neutral.

That's not a complaint--he has that Asian coloring that's just heart-stoppingly beautiful in black and white--but it's funny to go shopping and see him make a beeline for the grey clothes. Like, that's what catches his eye. I, on the other hand, was once asked by a friend who was going through my closet for a shirt to borrow, "Do you have anything in here that's not orange or purple? Oh, my bad! I guess this counts as magenta." Atsushi laughingly pointed out that that's why I have to wear khakis all the time; my shirts and sweaters don't go with anything else except jeans.

Anyway, I thought the picture was cute, even if we could always be snazzier if we tried. It also, being from the Meiji Shrine right here in Tokyo, reminds me that I'll get to see Atsushi this weekend. I'm flying down Saturday morning, and we're going to a hot spring. (No lewd jets-of-foam jokes, please; our friends have amply attended to those already. I have to say, I don't mind that everybody's a comedian nowadays. I just wish they didn't all have to be the same commedian.) Just five days to waddle through first.

I am seriously going to go bonkers if I hear this locution out of some fag'n'dyke activist's trap one more time before Election Day:

"I don't think any self-respecting gay individual can vote for George W. Bush and I think that Republican leaders like Washington DC council member David Catania have made it clear that Bush has given the LGBT community no reason to reelect him this fall," Stonewall Democrats' Marble told 365Gay.com.

You know, I can see someone making the case that public opinion will not allow Kerry to skedaddle out of Iraq and soften up on the WOT even if he wants to, and that therefore it's okay not to be a single-issue war voter, and that therefore gays should vote Kerry-Edwards because (despite their no-show on the vote to bring it to the floor) they don't support the FMA. I'd be hard to convince, but it's an argument that could be made respectably. Or you could talk about the Bush administration's inconsistent approach to securing our borders and entry points. And on and on. However, to say that we all vote, or should vote, solely on the basis of whose policies are gay-friendly--to say this less than a week before the 9/11 anniversary--what the hell are these people thinking?

And for one homo to inform others what constitutes their self-respect as gay people is just...I mean, excuse me, Marianne? I didn't let my parents, my pastor, my gym teacher, or the Book of Leviticus define my self-respect for me, and now I'm supposed to let you do it? And that would be because...you look hot in Brooks Brothers, maybe? I have no problem with lobbyists' saying they think a vote for so-and-so will be damaging to the rights of gays in the long-term, or what have you. That's presumably what their job is, or part of it. Say that a lot of LGBT voters aren't thinking analytically enough about the issues--fine. Argue. Make your case contentiously. Make it passionately if you're fired up about it. Push the handful of issues your organization works on. But don't play the self-respect card every time someone in the Family weighs making a trade-off you don't understand. All that does is reinforce the idea that some ideological laundry list goes along with being out, which has to be one of the very most pernicious ideas floating around gay activism (and the competition is fierce). And yes, I know it's the Stonewall Democrats, and no, I don't expect anything more. It'd be nice to be able to, is all.

Land o' Goshen, isn't it November yet?

So. The question clearly is: Are Republicans willing to let gays contribute to the American economy for a few overtaxed years of working life before herding us into death camps, or will they have us all exterminated the very moment after a reelected Bush is sworn in? At least, that's the clear question to some people I've talked to. If you're interested in other possibilities, Rex Wockner seems to have about the best summary I've seen of what happened during convention week. We already know that the platform backed up Bush�s endorsement of the FMA and specified that homosexuality is �incompatible with military service.� And we know that the speakers (Giuliani and Schwartzenegger are almost always named together to demonstrate this, sometimes with Pataki and McCain) put a more moderate face on the convention regarding social issues.

The most cynical interpretation of last week's events is that the platform was calculated to get the hard-right vote, the speakers were trotted out to get the centrist vote, and one of the two is a scam. (Which one depends, naturally, on your own ideology.) I don't have the energy I'd need to get into my views of the gay marriage controversy yet again.* Suffice it to say that if its proponents wanted a showdown, they basically got it, with the predictable result that the minority that constitutes less than 5% of the population had less leverage than everyone else.

Don't misunderstand--I ache for the Log Cabin Republicans people. They have a whole set of problems that are not their own fault and are not specific to this election year. The noisiest gay liberals--using the word colloquially--have spent the last three decades hammering home the messages that (1) gayness and leftism/Democratic party affiliation go together like bacon and eggs, (2) gays demand to be loved for what we are, and (3) no one must ever be allowed to speak a word against gay people without getting hell for it. In that context, it's hard to blame some conservatives for believing that gay advocacy stands for nothing but entitlements, special protections, and intrusive public school programs. And it's correspondingly hard to imagine that LCR people don't get sick of constantly having to go out of their way to be the nice gays that everyone can do business with. I know that would drive me nuts. I was not impressed by the content of the ad that everyone got so heated up by last week, and I'm not LCR myself, but I made a donation just for the sake of moral support. They're our guys and gals, and they're working for us in the way they think best, and they felt kicked in the teeth.

I do have to ask, though, do people still think making marriage the focal point of gay advocacy is a good idea at this point? There is nothing close to a consensus among gay activists on why we need it--some talk about equal protection, some talk about inheritance and hospital visitation and taxation, some talk about the health benefits of long-term relationships, and some talk about the taking of one's place in adult society (in a sort of anthropological sense). That's not a criticism, BTW. I think debate is good. But the fact remains that it is still a debate. In the wider society, marriage and childrearing have gone through all kinds of destabilization in the last 40 years or so. We shouldn't be suckered by those conservatives who say that with the WOT and current state of society, "Now is not the time" to be discussing gay marriage, in the clear hope that we'll just go away and forget about it. On the other hand, if we get pushy and really cause a backlash, we could succeed in making life suck for those who come out several decades from now. Is that what we want?

I have no affection for the Republican Party. But my sense is that many of its members are genuine live-and-let-live types. They may not be pro-gay, exactly, but they recognize that part of being an American is the ability to choose your own happiness, and they can't look at two people who clearly nurture and sustain each other and tell them that society should stand in the way of their relationship. They may be immovable on marriage but open to persuasion on, say, hospital visitation and social security transfers.

Whose voices were loudest during the drafting of the RNC platform, I don't know. But it's possible that some who supported the FMA clause and the part about "the accompanying benefits afforded couples" were willing to do so because they were aware that they're unlikely to come to anything. That is to say, perhaps the message sincerely was to back off this particular issue right now, not that you can't be gay and Republican. For those who adhere to the denying-gays-marriage-rights-keeps-us-second-class-citizens line, I realize that that's a non-distinction. But we and those who come after us have plenty to lose if we try to change people's minds by fiat. Much as it offends my crabby loner sensibilities to say so, we need to choose our battles and capitalize on goodwill where we can find it; persuasion takes longer to accomplish, but its effects last longer, too.

* Sorry for the flurry of self-linking. Got started and couldn't stop.

Added on 7 September: And the link to the 365gay.com page is fixed. (Thanks for letting me know, Mike.) Confounded smart quotes! I could've sworn I'd un-selected them....