The White Peril 白禍

Apparently, someone is a hypocritical bitch who needs to stop criticizing others for slamming people without substantiation. I just which I could figure out whether it's Wynken, Blynken, or Nod. Since Michael's a friend and we haven't gotten into a good argument lately, I will say that he'd make a better case for himself if he produced at least one example of Gay Patriot's coming down on the side of spinmeistering and partisanship rather than principle.

The issue beneath the sniping is an interesting one. What brought it all on was the announcement that Patrick Guerriero is leaving Log Cabin Republicans. I've often wondered just what LCR's priorities are in practice, as opposed to on its mission statement; and I've disagreed with choices it's made. (Not that it should be laboring to satisfy a non-member such as me.) But prioritizing among principles when real life requires compromise isn't an easy thing, and I don't know that harshing on people who make a good-faith effort but don't get it right is always the best response.

I don't think it's unfair to ask the guys at Gay Patriot, "Look, just how far would you be willing to go in sacrificing gay issues for the sake of party loyalty?" I go to Gay Patriot infrequently, but I generally read up on everything posted since my last visit, and I don't think I've really seen that addressed. It's not an unreasonable question, especially since the blog's original proprietor was only too happy to use the novelty of his gayness + conservatism to seek attention when he started out.

I've met plenty of gays who style themselves independents but are, on principles and issues, pretty much conservative down the line. They fear that, despite the "big tent" rhetoric, being a Republican in practical terms means buying into a culture of Red State reverse-snobbery and constantly conceding that now is not the time--close election coming up, social fabric still recovering from the 60s, more important to deal with Social Security, et c.--to push for explicitly gay-friendly policy. The war made the last presidential election a no-brainer for most of them, but there are plenty of future elections to worry about. (When I left New York for Tokyo, I re-registered at my parents' address in Pennsylvania, so I'll be able to join in the Santorum-Casey fun this year.) LCR made serious misjudgments two years ago in the run-up to the election. If its new leadership proves to be more savvy and consistent, who knows? It might get existing gay Republicans interested again and help reassure those who've balked at joining up until now.

Ross of Romeo Mike's Gumption says this after an extensive explanation of why he doesn't support same-sex marriage:

It's because of these kinds of people who shout the loudest for gay marriage that I'm so suspicious of it. They demand that they deserve "equal" respect, but look at them. Apparently for some, respect's not earned, just demanded through vile, childish narcissism.

He's not speaking in the abstract: There's a link to comments on the blog of a gay Catholic Australian blogger after he appeared on a television show to discuss his position against SSM. If you're at all familiar with these types of, uh, discussions, you probably don't need to click through to know what you'll find there.

Anyway, I know I've banged this gong plenty already, but I will never, ever get used to this stuff. When will people get it through their heads that you can't coerce people into approving of you? You can, possibly, coerce them into postures of approval, temporarily, through political machinations. But the current climate indicates that--and can you blame them?--they're not going to sit still for it for long.

From my perspective as a resident of Japan, one of the saddest things about idiot gay-lefty rhetoric is the way its campus proponents manage to infect foreign students with it. Then they bring it back here and are thrown off balance when it doesn't square with reality, often on more basic levels than that of the SSM debate. A close American friend recently described how a rather clingy Japanese employee, having been essentially disowned by his father after coming out, asked him for advice about how to fix things. My friend is a patient, gentlemanly guy and responded on the order of, "Well, I can tell you what I would do, but I'm from a different culture, and the way I see my choices is different."

I wish I were more patient and gentlemanly myself. When asked similar questions, I've generally responded along the lines of "Why didn't you think about this before coming out to him?" Western-style individualism doesn't, after all, guarantee that you'll get everything you want; it just allows you to prioritize things for yourself--as opposed to having them prioritized for you by the clan, village, or state--and go after what's at the top of your list without impediment. I can empathize with the belief that candidly coming out to your parents is preferable to a lifetime of question-dodging and waffling, but if you decide to do so without preparing mentally to deal with the worst-case scenario, you're asking for trouble. I'm not defending parents who disown their children for being gay, only making what should be the common-sense point that you can't control other people's behavior, let alone their feelings. Having the backbone to follow through on your beliefs even if you're despised for them is part of being a free citizen.

And likewise with relationships themselves. Positions of the "if you don't respect us as mature, centered adults, we'll hold our breath until we turn blue" variety are incoherent. They're also counter-productive. In external terms, whininess is a PR disaster. In internal terms, signalling to young gay people just getting their lives in order that it's okay to blame all their problems on the failure of straight society to confer "dignity" on them stunts their growth. Adult resilience is attained by confronting obstacles and testing your own strength in the course of overcoming them. Until SSM advocates learn to focus on practical obstacles to keeping relationships together and learn to keep a lid on the self-pity, they're not helping anyone except anti-gays on the far right.

There were a bunch of books I'd wanted to pick up in the City--yes, you can order on Amazon, and I do, but it's not the same as the delicious feeling of wandering through a bookstore with loads of shelves of books you can touch--but the books got crowded out by bookish conversations with the college crew. Not that that was a bad thing. I enjoyed it. But it meant that I confronted the airport with very little to read on the plane and was looking for something heftier to supplement the magazines I'd picked up.

Well, airport newsstands being what they are, there was nothing remotely interesting but Mary Cheney's new memoir Now It's My Turn. So I picked it up and figured that for once I'd read the book everyone's talking about while everyone's talking about it.

One thing that's struck me as weird: Am I the only one who's noticed the similarity in title with Nancy Reagan's My Turn? Maybe I really have just missed it, but I've been waiting and waiting for people interviewing Cheney to ask her, "So, when you were writing your memoir of being a member of an executive branch Republican's immediate family who had to undergo a lot of public speculation you thought crossed a line or two, you chose a title that echoed that of Nancy Reagan's book. Was that intentional?" Isn't that an obvious question, especially considering the implied vengefulness of the phrasing?

Cheney, of course, doesn't have fun, gossipy stuff like borrowed couture, scheduling by astrological counseling, and chilly parent-child relationships to talk about (or to give readers the wicked fun of watching her carefully avoid). Her strength is that she comes across as genuine, thoughtful, unassuming, and centered. Her book is a good corrective to the image of gays--especially lesbians--as grim, humorless, squallingly resentful of parents, and inclined toward groupthink.

Gay Patriot West thinks It's My Turn may be the most important book addressing a gay topic in the last few years. I think he may be right--though he doesn't put it this way--in the sense that Cheney focuses not really on policy points (I found her a bit squishy in the way she presented her reasoning on the issues myself) but on the ways contact with reasonable gay people can affect people's thinking. And, to a lesser extent, on the ways gay political figures work out the compromises they have to make when competing issues come into play. (Instapundit's newest podcast features an interview with Cheney, BTW.)

The weakest aspect of the book, in my view, was the depiction of the nuts and bolts of political campaigning. Politics junkies have heard most of it before. And if you have any queeny friends who work in event planning, they probably had more amusing venue-related emergencies over the last weekend than Cheney dredges up over two national campaigns lasting months each. That's a credit to her in the sense that it may simply mean the campaign staff knew what it was doing, but as reading it gets kind of samey.

Then again, this is the sort of book that was probably targeted at conservatives who want an insider look at household life with Lynne and Dick Cheney and may be curious about Mary's lesbianism. In that sense, the mild tone, PG-rated expression, and family-oriented subject matter were probably a wise choice in addition to probably being the way she genuinely experienced the campaigns.

So that remark by John Stossel in the last week or so has drawn the predictable response (via the Washington Blade):

Promoting his new book "Myths, Lies & Downright Stupidity," Mr. Stossel said: "There are these groups like Exodus International that says, 'We can fix you. If you just pray, if you turn your life over to Jesus, we can make you straight.' And I've talked to lots of people who supposedly were cured, and they were not."

"John Stossel's assertion that homosexuals cannot change is an affront to the thousands of individuals, like me, who have experienced it," said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International.

Mr. Chambers, who describes himself as a former homosexual, called Mr. Stossel's remarks a "mischaracterization of our views and oversimplification of this issue."

Well, there are plenty of affronts to go around, there, Mr. Chambers. Plenty of us gays aren't too happy about having it implied that our lives are about promiscuity, addiction, and bitchy exploitation.

At Ex-Gay Watch, Mike Airhart has a fuller transcript of Stossel's remarks, which are more carefully qualified than the soundbyte above would make them appear. Also at XGW, Daniel Gonzales has a post that indicates why it's so difficult to take ex-gay advocates at their word on the efficacy of their programs. Melissa Fryear, who apparently spoke at a Love Won Out conference, defended her assertion that thousands of men and women have overcome homosexuality as follows [excerpted, of course]:

One, organizations like Exodus International have been in existence for several decades. Currently, for example, there are over 125 member ministries throughout the world. Each of these individual ministries have participants ranging in number of a dozen to hundreds. Given the longevity of Exodus and its breadth of referral ministries, again, thousands of men and women have participated and overcome their struggle with homosexuality.

...

In addition to Christian organizations, secular organizations and secular therapists such as Masters and Johnson and the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) have also been working for decades with thousands of men and women seeking to overcome their same-sex attraction. The therapists and clinicians associated with NARTH alone, for example, have seen over 1,000 clients since its inception.

...

Finally, while you and/or your readers may not hold to a biblical worldview, as Christians our biblical witness of former homosexuals dates back to the first century. 1 Corinthians 6:11 states, "And such were some of you..." referencing men and women who once lived homosexually. Needless to say, in the millennia following, many have followed in those same footsteps.

An XGW commenter named Joe Brummer responds with a point that should be obvious to anyone with so much as a modicum of understanding of statistics (about halfway down the thread): "She states in her email how she came up with the numbers, but then explains only how people have signed on to the programs. While millions of people sign on to weight watchers, a much smaller number stick with the program and actually succeed. I see this as the same." Exactly. Plenty of organizations exist long-term without being able to offer strong evidence, let alone proof, that they're helping people to achieve their aims. Zen Buddhism has been trying to help people attain enlightenment for far longer than Exodus has been around, but I'm guessing that Fryear would not take that as an indication that it's actually doing so (even if its adherents claim to be satisfied with the results).

And that last paragraph has to be one of the most astonishing displays of disingenuous PR-maneuvering I've ever seen...and remember, darlings, I follow Japanese politics. Who on Earth would listen to a statement that "thousands of people have made that decision [to leave the practice of homosexuality]" and assume that it included everyone in the last two millennia? There is simply no way to take that as a good-faith statement made in the expectation that its auditors would understand what was being omitted. If we're going to be consistent in our math and it's just a few thousand people since AD 1 we're talking about, that's a handful a year worldwide. Not exactly encouraging (assuming your idea of "encouraging" is the possibility that you can leave homosexuality behind).

And yes, I know: Gay activists massage statistics all the time, too. It's just as wrong when they do it. My point is that this quackery is bad no matter who does it, and it frustrates the search for the truth. As things stand now, no one appears to have reliable data. The figures that are offered always rely on testimonials, which are notoriously unreliable when used by themselves.

To judge from the commentators whose tone suggests the lowest level of axe-grinding, it's at least possible for a tiny percentage of highly-motivated people to change their behavior long-term. Whether that's just a behavioral adaptation or an actual change in sexual orientation as experienced by the subject is probably impossible to prove. And perhaps it doesn't matter much to those who succeed in learning to function as heterosexuals if their goal is getting behavior that they consider sinful or sick under control. But it matters if "reparative" therapists and ex-gay support programs are going to make flat statements of the "Change is possible" variety. I'm not much moved by arguments predicated on the idea that selling people false hope is okay if it's for a worthy cause.

The Washington Blade has an op-ed by an American who's living in the Netherlands with his Dutch partner:

I'd like to come home to live in America. No, let me be clearer. I'd like to be able to live in America. But I cannot.

Even though I am a native-born U.S. citizen who lived in America until I was 42 years old, I have been exiled by U.S. law. I am a "love exile." Because I am gay, I am a second-class U.S. citizen, lacking the basic right to live in America together with my non-U.S. partner.

The use of "second-class citizen" in the context of the gay marriage debate makes me curl up at the edges. I do think it's more apt in this case.

The problem is two-fold: (a) We who are abroad are politically invisible, and (b) a lot of Americans simply do not believe that it is difficult to bring someone to live in America. Even my well-informed friends in the U.S. will say to me, "But you can marry in Massachusetts!"

That is irrelevant, because immigration is a federal issue. Or, "Surely Rik can get a green card!" or "There are so many foreigners here, I’m sure you can find a way for Rik." But we can’t.

Moreover, current U.S. policy is causing a massive brain drain. Thousands of our best-educated and experienced professional people are leaving the U.S. as love exiles, and we are taking our U.S. earned qualifications with us.

"Massive" may be an overstatement, but the number of gays taking their credentials and productivity abroad to be with their partners is certainly considerable. (People really do seem to be blown away by how difficult it is for a highly-qualified foreigner to get a green card.) In East Asia, the issues are somewhat different from in Europe; here, what makes things easier is just that there are a lot of jobs for foreigners. It's certainly not the presence of partnership rights. But if the pull factors are often different, the results are often the same.

Of course, immigration is a complex issue (something you could easily forget listening to people bellow past each other over the last several weeks). If nothing else, Robert Bragar's story (website for his advocacy group here) is a good corrective to the idea that gay unions are all "transient." You don't leave a comfortable life and career trajectory to spend the rest of your days in an unknown country for someone who just happens to be a good lay.

Go Fug Yourself is too funny for this world...yet again. Of course, Jessica Simpson's an easy target. But still, it's worth reading and guffawing through to the very end.

I realize that trying to decide which of the music videos of the last few years has been the absolute nadir of stomach-churning, un-provocative sluttiness is pretty futile; but I did think there was something egregiously demeaning about that "These Boots Are Made for Walking" clip, right about the point at which Simpson was shaking her moneymaker in that orange bikini and whooping, "Can I get a 'Sooooweeeee!'?" Sheesh. I'll take Veruca Salt any day.

Speaking of exposure of dubitable shock or aesthetic value, if you're the last person on Earth who hasn't ever seen Madonna's boobies, she's decided to take 'em out again, this time for W (via Beautiful Atrocities). Is she afraid we've forgotten what they look like?

I don't see why a middle-aged woman can't pose for nude photographs. Madonna has a naturally luscious figure--to my mind at peak attractiveness in the "Open Your Heart" video, when she was sculpted through martial self-discipline at the gym but still had a flirty softness to her. Madge is very shrewd about her plastic surgery, and to judge from the Confessions on a Dance Floor videos, she hasn't made the mistake of getting clearly fake Mariah-style inflata-dugs, if she's had work done there at all.

But sexiness is as much about attitude as about skin, and the attitude Madonna's been projecting lately is desperation. The woman may have the single most well-tended body on the entire planet, but she seems to know less and less what to do with it. But then, that applies to her work in general.

A few Sundays ago, I was walking toward Shinjuku for a drink or two with friends. Atsushi had just flown back to Kyushu, so while it had been a good weekend, I was in a somewhat melancholy mood. It was cloudy and a little chilly. Perfect for Madonna ballads.

Remember when she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of gorgeous, somber slow songs? There are the famous ones like "Crazy for You" and "Live to Tell" and "This Used to Be My Playground" and "Frozen," but there are plenty of not-so-famous ones, too. She collaborated with Massive Attack on an unexpectedly wonderful version of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" ten years ago. "Look of Love," from the Who's That Girl? soundtrack, doesn't deserve to be forgotten and should, in my view, have been on her ballad retrospective Something to Remember. On her slow songs, she played the role of a self-controlled diva risking herself to extend an offer of love or reveal sentiment. It was a stately but emotive persona that would have been perfect to mature into through her forties.

It's not that she should never sing uptempo pop or disco again, but the frantic look-how-fast-I-can-still-dance vibe shuddering through her new songs and videos does not bode well. And I'm sure it's distorting her work in other media, too. I find it very difficult to believe that she approached the W photo shoot was as a relaxed matron who still knows how to enjoy being playfully naughty...as opposed to an aging party girl who feels the need to prove she still has sex appeal. That sort of thing always seeps into the final product.

Our reputation for bitchiness notwithstanding, I'm always touched by the way homos make a welcoming, nurturing, non-judgmental safe space for anyone who's taking the difficult step of coming out. Ball's in your court, Nick. ;)

It's the end of the Golden Week holiday today. Atsushi's birthday is this week, and he won't be home for it, so I made dinner for him today. He wanted (can you guess?) broiled chicken with pan gravy. My man is nothing if not reliable. But then, a quiet afternoon at home was almost an exotic undertaking after the last week.

In addition to the usual getting together with friends, we finally went to see the Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo exhibit. Like a lot of exhibits here, it was pretty well edited (though the continuity was sometimes a little sketchy) but wretchedly designed. When are Japanese curators going to start getting lighting design from people who know what they're doing? As things are, they may as well hang flashlights from bell wire and be done with it. The effect would be the same. How is it that institutions in New York, London, and Vienna can figure out how to display old, fragile works so that they're being preserved while you can actually see them well enough to drink them in...but every artwork on display in Tokyo is either begloomed to the point of near- pitch dark or cursed at by light bright enough to perform surgery by? It's a real shame. So is the omnipresence of little appliances--humidity sensors and the like--plunked openly in corners right under the artworks. Does a lot, don't you know, to enhance your ability to wrap yourself completely in the world depicted by the pieces on display.

We also had a wedding present or two to pick up--nothing makes you feel more in touch with your fag self than casting a critical eye over everything in the housewares department. And Atsushi got his birthday iPod early. I'm not sure how much music he'll be throwing on it, but he's been looking pretty hungrily at the various news-site podcasts.

It's kind of windy and rainy here, so I'm hoping his flight doesn't get thrown around too badly. I'm figuring I'll get his "I'm back in Kyushu" e-mail in a half-hour or so. Then it's back to the usual. Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

Michael explains his support for the Fair Tax. (I kind of understand why that choice of name is shrewd, though it seems to me that the old designation National Sales Tax was more transparent and not all that scary. Reason solicited a bunch of opinions about whether the Fair Tax or the Flat Tax was a better replacement for the current Income Tax a decade or so ago. It's still worth reading.)

You won't be surprised to see libertarian me endorse the idea. You also won't be surprised to see Japan-resident me wonder whether it's realistic to expect to be able to extirpate a deep-rooted bureaucracy that's used to exercising a great deal of arbitrary power over citizens' money and privacy and knows how to play the system (largely because in a significant way it is the system). In that Reason piece, the Cato Institute's Edward R. Crane articulates the chief worry:

Critics of a federal retail sales tax who point to the danger of politicians simply adopting the retail sales tax on top of reduced rates for the present system have a very legitimate concern. The last thing we should want would be a sales tax in addition to the taxes we already have. The movement for the sales tax must reject any deal that allows the income tax to survive even at one-half of 1 percent.

The danger of a monstrous hybrid "reform" is very real, in my opinion. People bitch about income taxes, and everyone hates the IRS, but we're used to them. A lot of Americans who don't understand much about math and money could probably be pretty easily scared away by warnings that they'll end up poorer under the new system. A lot of Americans who are affluent and keep track of their money have a stake in keeping their own constellations of deductions just as they are...and finding ways to get others to pay in more. A lot of tax lawyers and accountants (not exactly groups that lack connections) would not quietly resign themselves to being forced to look for a new line of work.

Of course, defeatism isn't part of the American mindset, and as Michael says, gays in particular have reason to bestir ourselves over the income tax issue:

Much of the discussion surrounding the marriage equality debate has been focused on the more than 1000 tax benefits married couples receive that gay people cannot. And that's a big point. Not to diminish the debate over marriage equality, but when it comes right down to it, the difference between a married couple and a gay unmarried couple comes largely down to money.

Those of us with partners who are foreign nationals have issues that come into play a bit before the money part, but Michael's essentially right.

Speaking of the federal government and money, am I the only one who LAUGHED OUT LOUD at that proposal to give citizens a $100 rebate for gas money? I mean, people have been saying it's stupid, but it was so...rube-ish. The legislative branch of the US government looks forward to serving you ($100 that you yourself earned, anyway) again!!!! Sheesh.

Ghost of a Flea is, naturally, the source of this article about a new Kylie monument to be erected in her hometown of Melbourne. Apparently, her antipodean assets will be fittingly framed with her famous "Spinning Around" lamé hotpants. I haven't seen anything really recent, but word seems to be that her recovery from cancer treatment is going well.