The White Peril 白禍

I was disappointed by Jonathan Rauch's book Gay Marriage, which I thought made uncharacteristically spotty arguments. (Uncharacteristically for him, I mean--not, more's the pity, for gay marriage advocates.) Being a sensible person, he knows how to confront reality, though; and with his new op-ed, he ends the year much better than he began it. Well, you have to roll yours eyes and move quickly past the loan shark analogy near the beginning. Part of his main point is this:

The consensus has shifted rapidly, meanwhile, toward civil unions. The 2004 exit polls showed 35% of voters supporting them (and another 25% for same-sex marriage). Particularly after the Nov. 2 debacle, civil unions look to many gay-rights advocates like the more attainable goal. It is not lost on them that Vermont's civil-unions law and California's partnership program have proved surprisingly uncontroversial. For their part, social conservatives increasingly, if grudgingly, accept civil unions as deflecting what they regard as an attack on marriage. John Kerry endorsed civil unions, and in October Mr. Bush accepted them, saying, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."

This year may be remembered as the time when civil unions established themselves as the compromise of choice. For an indicator, watch whether there is an outcry if state courts narrow the scope of the new amendments to allow civil unions and other partner programs. My guess is that few people will fuss.

It's been put to me that even civil unions wouldn't be possible if activists hadn't first gone the whole way and demanded "marriage rights" and then fallen back to what would then look like a more reasonable position. Maybe. It's not possible to know. I myself think the collateral damage, as it were, has to be factored in: the fixing in the minds of Americans of an image of gay public figures as, yet again, screechy single-issue activists who think of nothing but themselves. It's not fair to lay an equal share of the blame on moderate thinkers such as Rauch, but neither is it unfair to acknowledge that his influence was not always as salutary as it might have been. He's still one of the best advocates we have, especially with Andrew Sullivan still off in Cloud-Cuckoo Land, and it's a holiday treat (no one's going to jump down my throat for not explicitly calling it "Christmas" now that it's 28 December, yeah?) to see him coming around.

(Via IGF)

I'd prefer to keep my plans for self-improvement in the New Year private, but I'm perfectly happy to share the things I'd like you all to resolve to do for me. Since I like people with interesting vices, I'm not going to tell you to stop overeating, drinking, or smoking. What I would like everyone to stop over-indulging in are words--just three little ones that have rapidly become a public menace through their overuse by gays and our sympathizers.

hate (used as n.) Oh, children, when your dotty gay Uncle Sean was in college ten years ago, we had many, many ways to accuse people of being intolerant. You could call someone "misogynist" or "sexist" if you thought he was keeping women down, "racist" if he questioned affirmative action, or "heterosexist" if he expressed any discomfort with homosexuality. If you wanted to imply that he was not only intolerant but pathological, you could call him "homophobic." These pronouncements were shrieky and sententious, but rotating through the different charges at least preserved some variety of phrasing and subject matter.

But, being busy people, we've dispensed with all that. Now hate is the word that slices, dices, peels, juliennes, and transforms ordinary radishes into professional-looking rose garnishes at the touch of a button. Just designate someone as "motivated by hate" and move on. The problem, of course, is that calling moral opposition (however misplaced we believe it is) an emotional reaction doesn't make it one; Right Side of the Rainbow explained this beautifully.

Fascinatingly, the venerable noun hatred is not abused this way. When you see someone mention "hatred of gays" or "hatred of women" or the like, you can normally trust him to confine his characterizations to people who really do want to infringe on our rights to self-determination without giving rational reasons. It's a rare instance of more syllables = less airy pretension.

second-class citizen (compound n., usually plu.) My objection to this one is less fundamental than my objections to the other two, so I have less to say about it. If second-class citizens were actually used in the process of making a thorough argument that marriage to the partner of one's choosing is a basic human right, I wouldn't mind so much; and occasionally, very occasionally, it is. Most of the time, though, it comes off as shorthand for, "Why don't you love me?" It also tends to accompany coarse, overarching comparisons to the Civil Rights movement that, in my opinion, only hold up in very limited ways. The term has mutated into a buzzword rather than a concept useful for explicating one's logic.

self-respecting (adj., used esp. in negative construction "no self-respecting gay could possibly...") I used to think I'd be overjoyed when the locution self-loathing dropped out of the queer public discourse. What a naif I was. The wording is gone, but it's been replaced by a longer, more convoluted construction that is, if anything, more annoying. If I had a nickel for every time I read or heard the sentence, "No self-respecting gay could possibly vote for George Bush this year," I'd be retired to a château with guys in loincloths dropping peeled, seeded grapes into my mouth by now.

It was always obnoxious for one gay to call another "self-loathing" for deviating from the activist-approved list of political positions and life choices, but it was almost touching, in a weird way, in its suggestion that the addressee was just stuck in that denial stage on the way through coming out and it was making him behave like a jerk. Accusing someone of not being "self-respecting" goes the whole way and asserts that he's a willful, reasoned-out jerk--in addition to implying that his sense of dignity is properly arbitrated by others.

If I wanted to dwell on things that annoy me, I have no doubt that I could lengthen the above list without much exertion. If our commentators can start avoiding these terms, however--or at least being certain they're using them to build and not substitute for argumentation--it will be a good thing for gay issues and for civility in general, neither of which has benefited from many of this year's installments in the public discourse.

Happy New Year.

I was going to wait to post the picture at left until after the year changed, but since I sent out my New Year's cards today, I figured I may as well do it now. This is the same rooster Atsushi bought for my parents) when I went home last month. I mean, it's the same design, only this one is ours. While I'm not addressing my parents here, I figure I may as well still call it the Year of the Rooster, since heaven knows it's always the year of that other thing around here.

To those who are traveling home for the holidays, stay safe.

There's an expression in Japanese--have I maybe discussed it before?--that combines two first-year words into an exponentially more complex and useful idea: ありがた迷惑. Those who remember Styx know ありがとう (arigato, usually rendered "thank you" but more literally a classical form of an adjective that means "it is a thing to be grateful for"). 迷惑 (meiwaku, "pain in the ass," "annoyance") is a word you use a lot in a country of such frictive crowding. An arigata-meiwaku is what you get when someone meddles out of a sincere desire to be helpful but ends up making things worse. The sister role played by Laurie Metcalf on Roseanne is a good example.

So is France's new hate crimes law:

The French Senate Wednesday night gave final approval to legislation making it a criminal offense to speak or publish homophobia.

The bill adds sexuality to an existing law banning hate speech against other minorities.

Under the legislation, anyone who provokes hatred or violence on the basis of sex or sexual orientation could be fined up to $60,000 and be subject to one year in jail.

The bill was fought by the Roman Catholic church which claimed it could be used against priests who speak out against homosexuality or to censor the Bible. [Enh...never happen!--SRK]

Despite the concerns of the Church, the legislation had little difficulty in the conservative dominated Senate.

The bill which had been pushed by President Jacques Chirac gives France the toughest hate-crime law in the European Union.

French gay rights group Inter-LGBT hailed the vote as as a decisive step to combat growing homophobia.

The government drafted the law after a young gay man was brutally attacked. After he was beaten his assailants poured gasoline on him and set him on fire leaving him severely burned.

Stories like that make me want to punch a hole in the wall. Once that feeling subsides, though, we're left with all the usual questions about hate crimes legislation. They've been articulated before, but since these bills keep passing, it's obvious that we need to keep repeating them: For one thing, isn't dousing someone with gasoline and torching him already punishable under French law, or has everyone been busy making sure the produce meets EU shape and color specifications? For another, is it really possible that people still harbor the delusion that forcing people not to talk about deeply-held beliefs will simply make their potential ill-effects vanish? Do those who sympathize with gays really think we need the deck stacked for us this way? If they don't think we can meet the opposition with persuasive arguments in our own favor, why do they themselves side with us in the first place?

And the issue that saddens me most to contemplate: Are there really gays who think we can only function well in society if we're subjected to nothing but compliments and Nerf-ball questions? If they're that lacking in conviction about their own moral choices, why don't they, indeed, just convert to Christianity and off-load the responsibility onto someone else?

This flood of rhetorical questions is going to start sounding hysterical, so I'll knock it off. I can only marvel anew that the most basic life lesson--(1) not everyone is going to love you + (2) there's nothing you can do about it, so deal--is being so ineptly handed down to so many people.

Added on 24 December: Amritas is a dear as always to link me, especially with the compliment that I've acquitted myself well at the sociology-by-way-of-linguistics posts he specializes in. I have to say, though, that if I were really as good at that sort of thing as he is, I'd have given you the words for "thanks but no thanks" in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, with due explanation of which parts were native and which borrowings.

Since he has another post up related to the perceived religion-evasion of holiday greetings, this is as good a time as any to clarify something I discussed here. That is, I think that forcing a greeting such as "Happy holidays" on people is ridiculous. So is forcing Nativity scenes and such out of the public square.

I just don't think that "Happy holidays" is in and of itself a denatured substitute. A lot of people do use it that way, yes, but to me it's a nicely economical way of conveying, "I hope you had a good Thanksgiving" + "Merry Christmas" + "Happy Hanukkah, if you're Jewish" + "Happy Kwanzaa...uh, if that's how you pronounce it and even though I'm not entirely sure what it is" + "Happy New Year!"

Contrast this with, for example, "Have a nice day!" Blech. "Goodbye" is perfectly adequate, and "Have a nice day!" adds nothing to it. It takes the goodwill conveyed and, if anything, makes it less intense. Not being one to reject polite gestures, I've never drawn myself up to full height and replied, "Actually, I plan to fill the remaining time before midnight with wickedly scrumptious indelicacies, but thank you all the same." Been tempted, though.

Good post at XGW about the way coming out is like a delayed-but-compressed adolescence. The numerical framework seems a bit 12-steppy, but the point that a lot of us spend our twenties going through the roiling-hormone stage normally associated with high school is an important one. One part I take exception to, however, is this:

If you find that you are a �gay teen� but your chronological age is 30+, or even later�rest assured that this time, you get to pass through adolescence without all that acne!

Go take a flying leap, honey. When I was a teenager with acne, everyone said, "Don't worry--it'll be over by your twenties." Well, my age has doubled since then, and while I've gotten over the awkward stages of coming out, I still have skin so oily it shines and have to use the full complement of salicylic acid products and the like to keep the blemishes down. Maybe I shouldn't mind so much, since my dermatologist says it may be a sign of high levels of androgens. But I swear, if one more person says, "You're so lucky! You'll never get wrinkles!" I will not be responsible for my behavior.

In the shuffle of being at home and then returning to non-vacation life here, I forgot about this on the exact day, but....

Last year, AgendaBender posted a post called "A Day without Bill," which is one of my two or three favorite posts ever by anyone. (I was going to fix all the redundant uses of post in that last sentence, but since Tom's story is about a very tall man, maybe they're kind of fitting.) It's a good read for this time of year, and I'm glad I remembered about it again while we're still in the zone between World AIDS Day and Christmas.

Steve Miller at IGF links to this new piece Rich Tafel has in NRO about Bush-voting gays:

The one statistic confounding pundits in this election is the number of gays who voted for George W. Bush. Polls show that the president received anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million gay votes, up from 1 million votes in 2000 and double the number of gay votes for Bob Dole in 1996. This dramatic increase comes despite the fact that no gay organization endorsed him, no gay journalist editorialized on his behalf, and no gay leader supported him.

The post-election conventional wisdom fueled by gay leaders and the media is that President Bush won because he gay bashed. This notion serves all of their purposes: Gays can maintain their image of themselves as hated victims and liberal sections of the media can salve their wounds by admitting that because of their own tolerance they failed to appeal to America's intolerance.

Tafel, former head of Log Cabin Republicans and a knowing political operator (I don't mean that as a dig in this case), doesn't put it as bluntly as he might have--for instance, "Gay activists and journalists seem to be standing around and asking, 'Why the hell didn't you guys do what you were told?'"

This is funny in light of an encounter I had the other night (in the same place, actually, where I was granted my first taste of this holiday turkey). I was sitting--one of the reasons I usually don't post about these things is that it's hard not to give away other people's personal information, so I'll limit it to this--between a Muslim who has US citizenship but was brought up in one of the more Westernized countries in the Middle East, on the one hand, and an East Asian guy who's lived since childhood in various big cities in California's San-San population belt, on the other. The Muslim man was in his late 40's, at a guess, and the East Asian was maybe 21.

The conversation was lively, and at some point, someone brought up the election. Each of us was pleasantly surprised to hear that the other two had voted for Bush, and we spent quite an interval talking about the arguments we'd had with friends and the campaign messages that had and hadn't reached us. It was fascinating, because here you had a Muslim who divides his time between America and Asia--you know, very cosmopolitan and stuff--and a kid from coastal California who works in the entertainment industry, and both of them just seemed to want to know, What was it that Kerry planned to do? How was it going to be better than an imperfect but predictable Bush? And why was it assumed that they were going to be pulling the lever for the Democrat out of some sort of homo predisposition? Tafel nails the more specific issues, too:

Gays who voted for President Bush had a simple logic. They recognized that both candidates opposed gay marriage for political purposes. Their primary concern was the war on terror. They believed that we are engaged in a war for the future of our country and our way of life. They believed that the rise of militant Islam is a real and deadly threat. They believed that our country, with all its faults, is a force for good in the world. They believed that our enemy cannot be reasoned with. They believed that we needed a leader who understood the world in terms of moral values, and they didn't scoff when the president used the words "good" and "evil" to describe the battle against terror. They realized we've made mistakes, but also realized that the only thing worse than making mistakes is not even trying. Many gays understood all of this and voted for President Bush, showing that they are people as well as gay people and that they have concerns beside their group interests. They wanted someone who in the difficult months ahead would stand firm in his beliefs.

I doubt every gay voter who went for Bush agreed with every single one of these, but the overall characterization strikes me as sound. The problem isn't that reflexive-lefty gays haven't brought their own beliefs in line with ours since the election. It's that they still don't seem to be able to fathom our reasoning at all.

A decade ago, I was in college in the same city as Camille Paglia was teaching in, and her highly-publicized rants about loony-leftism really made me feel better about coming out. You know, the LGBA (which doubtless has a few more letters in its name by now) was full of JCrew types bleating about oppression. I went to one meeting and never went back, but it didn't rattle me too much. Paglia and her media followers really looked as if they might generate enough force to break queer activists out of their calcified ways of thinking.

It didn't turn out that way. She certainly had her effect--along with others--but it was to peel off the closet moderates and make them more comfortable returning to the common-sense middle. The wacko leaders who are the real problem haven't moved at all. It's a shame.

When I'm back here in the States, people are always asking me this unanswerable question: "So...what's it like to be gay in Japan?" I never really know what to say. I can describe my gay life there just fine, obviously. But I'm a foreigner, of course, so I don't have anything like the experience my Japanese friends do. Sometimes, the way people put the question is, "How easy is it to be gay in Japan?" That's even harder to answer.

Japan, as you've no doubt heard in various contexts, is a shame culture rather than a guilt culture. I love our American forthrightness and sincerity, but (partially on ethical grounds and partially because of plain old temperament) I always feel a sense of release when I'm boarding a plane back to Narita. It comes from the knowledge that I'm returning to a place where every last little turn of phrase or arch of eyebrow isn't mirthlessly prodded for complex psychological motivations, where you can expect people to be polite and considerate in public, and where no one cares about your private life as long as you don't force people to reckon with it.

Of course, not everyone marks private off from public the same way. I would like to be able to establish Atsushi publicly as the person who would speak for my interests if I were incapacitated and with whom I've formed a household. I personally have no interest in discussing my sex life with anyone. If people insist on imagining it, anyway, I don't see how I can stop them; but I also feel no responsibility for preserving their complacencies by pretending not to be gay.

That sort of balance has not been struck by gay activism in America, but even approaching it would be unthinkable in Japan at this point. Forced arranged marriages are now unconstitutional in Japan, but marriage is still much more a social and economic contract than a meeting of the minds, to an extent that I think would give even the most biological essentialist, far-right American pause. And despite the dramatic rise in the median marriage age for both sexes, you're a weirdo if you're not married by your mid-30's.

Still and all, there are benefits to Japan's tradition-mindedness that I think a lot of gays in America have been too willing to cast off. The lack of gay ghettos means that it's pretty much impossible to wall yourself into a queer-positive echo chamber and start seeing rank-and-file straight people as an enemy arrayed against you. It also means that very few people see their homosexuality as their entire identity, with anti-gayness blamed for every disappointment, setback, depressive episode, and failed relationship. You never hear Japanese gays getting into princessy snits about not being approved of or officially sanctioned exactly like straight people in every last finicking little detail. At ordinary gay bars, you meet brittle, desperate guys who are obviously using a constant stream of sex partners to avoid dealing with their issues much, much less frequently than you do here in the States. (Even here, they're a minority, of course; their attention-whoring just makes them disproportionately noticeable. But the Japanese in general don't put the burden of self-definition on sex to the point that we do in the US.)

The bad side, obviously, is that it can be hard for people coming out to find resources, and that people have to keep their most meaningful relationships hidden. It's not uncommon for employees at the stodgier companies to be informed that they will not be promoted up the usual management-track escalator until they marry and start producing future contributors to the Social Insurance kitty. So many guys use pseudonyms in their gay lives that I only know the real first and last names of, I'd say, my ten or so closest friends. Japan's shame culture puts pressure on vulnerable gay kids as much as our guilt culture--there's no finessing that, and it sucks--but most adults who have come out to themselves seem pretty content.

So if you're willing to make the available trade-offs, being gay in Japan doesn't strike me as all that hard. (I guess I should point out that I live in what's probably the most gay-friendly part of the whole country, the Shibuya-Shinjuku axis of western Tokyo, though I now live a little outside Shibuya, rather than in the shadow of the 109 Building the way I did until March. Anyway, the point is, I'm talking about urban gay life and not about the provinces, but I don't think Japan is much different from other developed countries in those terms.) And if, like me, you're a foreigner and not subject to the full litany of rules Japanese people are, it's even easier. It's just an additional weird thing that makes you a typical gaijin. But as I say, my Japanese friends themselves are mindful of the social rules, but I don't get the sense that they live in fear.

2 December 09:38 EST