Gay
in the USA
The Guardian,
July 15, 2003
119 Farringdon Rd., London EC1 3ER England
Fax: +44/171/837-2114
Email: letters@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,998479,00.html
Gay sex is now legal in Texas, in Massachusetts they are considering
single-sex marriages, and in New Hampshire they’ve even got a gay bishop.
Could it be that America is waking up to homosexuality, asks Suzanne
Goldenberg
The supreme court ruled last month that sex in private between two
consenting male adults is not actually a crime. It is perhaps a signifier for
gay rights in the US that this should be seen as a revolutionary act, but
times are changing. Last month, an openly gay man was elected Episcopalian
bishop of New Hampshire by his parishioners. A few days after the US supreme
court swept aside an antediluvian Texas statute that made gay sex a crime,
America’s biggest retail chain became an equal-opportunity employer.
Wal-Mart, so anxious not to lose the custom of middle America that it puts
dust jackets on some women’s magazines, barred discrimination on the basis
of sexual orientation in recruitment, training and promotion. Not long after,
a cable network sacked one of its shock jocks for an on-air rant in which he
told a caller he was a “sodomite” who deserved to die of Aids. And,
yesterday, a court in Massachusetts asked for more time to decide whether to
grant marriage licences to same-sex couples.
America still has far to go before it catches up with western Europe and
Canada, which legalised gay marriage last month, and banned discrimination
against gays and lesbians in the workplace years ago. With Christian
conservatives on the ascendancy in public life, the US is nowhere near
abandoning all prejudice. A large swathe of Americans—43%—still believe
that being gay is immoral, including the dissenting judge at the supreme
court, Antonin Scalia, who suggested his more liberal colleagues were in
thrall to what he called a homosexual agenda. “Many Americans do not want
persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business,
as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools,
or as boarders in their homes,” he wrote.
But, despite clinging to such private reservations, the majority does not
believe any longer that legal discrimination against lesbians and gays is
fair. “People may not agree with the gay movement, but they will say they
don’t think they should be fired or thrown out of their houses,” says
Michelangelo Signorile, a leading writer on gay issues. “I’ll be damned if
Wal-Mart is going to put a gay product in their store, but they probably
looked at it at a corporate level, and saw that people were going to go to
work at places where they can get benefits for their partner and are not going
to be fired.”
Even before last month’s supreme court verdict, it was becoming untenable
for states such as Texas to criminalise gays. A majority of Americans were
outraged that the state had fined and briefly sent two men to jail in 1998 for
having sex in their home. Although the supreme court’s decision arrived as a
shock to Scalia, for most Americans it was long overdue.
Last month, a Gallup poll revealed that 59% of Americans believe that gay
sex between consenting adults should be legal—compared with 33% in the
1980s. Another poll by Harris Interactive, conducted before the supreme court
ruling, found broader support, with 82% opposed to denial of health benefits
to same-sex couples, and 74% opposed to barring gays from certain jobs, such
as teaching.
For those generations below the age of 40, who latched on to Will &
Grace and will soon tune in to a men-only version of What Not to Wear, called
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, old prejudices are dying. Eight million people
watched on television the long, slow kiss between Scott Wittman and Marc
Shaiman when they picked up an award at the Tony awards last month. Only 10
phoned in to the network to complain.
“I am now convinced that the average American has discovered over time
that he isn’t homophobic—just that he was supposed to be,” says Barney
Frank, America’s first openly gay Congressman. “Americans understand that
they don’t have to be homophobic.”
The supreme court verdict appears to have broken down a crucial last
frontier. Gay advocates, galvanised by its decision, are poised to take down
the other barriers to full equality with heterosexuals: adoption rights, job
protection, hate-crimes legislation, and same-sex marriage. Activists are on
the verge of launching a legal challenge against the US military’s
“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a legacy of the Clinton presidency
which allows gays in the army so long as they remain in the closet. Last week
they took on the school district of Lubbock, Texas, which had barred students
from having a club that would foster tolerance of lesbian and gay teenagers.
This pursuit of equality all but assures that gay rights will emerge as a
crucial issue in the 2004 presidential elections. Frank argues that all nine
Democratic hopefuls will scramble to demonstrate their support for them, going
against the conventional wisdom that they will do their utmost to duck the
entire question of gay rights for fear of being tagged as “liberals”.
Although all the Democratic contenders support gay rights, none are about
to come out in support of same-sex marriage, not even Howard Dean, who
legalised civil unions as governor of Vermont. The Democrats are also
operating in the shadow of Clinton’s stance on gay rights, expressed in his
defence of marriage act in 1996, which banned same-sex unions, and encouraged
more than 30 US states to enact similar legislation.
But such hesitation will be deliberately overlooked by the Christian right,
whose members are President Bush’s most ardent supporters. Taking their cue
from Scalia’s outburst, who warned that a world that did not criminalise
gays would soon countenance the legalisation of bigamy, incest, bestiality
and, bizarrely, masturbation, the right is drawing up its battle lines in the
expectation that gay-bashing could ultimately hurt the Democrats.
“We can fully expect fundamentalists and our opponents to oppose us every
step of the way. It is much like in the area of reproductive choice, with the
initial decision of the supreme court on Roe versus Wade (which upheld a
woman’s right to abortion) and 30-odd years of our opponents trying to chip
away at women’s right to choose,” says Anthony Romero, the director of the
American Civil Liberties Union, who is gay. “We should fully expect
opponents of gay and lesbian equality to also endeavour to chip away at the
supreme court victory, to try to circumscribe its scope and minimise its
application.”
The backlash is already under way, with the Republican senate majority
leader, Bill Frist, calling for an amendment to the constitution to define
marriage strictly as a union between a man and a woman. Meanwhile, Rick
Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, has gone unchastened for
a diatribe last April in which he said legalising gay sex was like giving
licence to bigamy and incest. “I think the Christian right is just furious.
They are infuriated and they are flexing every bit of muscle they can,” says
Signorile.
Bush, so far, has done his utmost to stay out of the fracas, wary of
getting ensnarled in the gay-rights debate in the run-up to the elections.
“Bush is now trying to appear moderate while still trying to assuage the
religious right in a variety of ways,” says Signorile. “He is doing very
symbolic small things for gays while doing very big things for the Christian
right, often under the radar.”
However, the rightwing fulminations against the supreme court verdict sit
uneasily with the Republicans’ efforts to promote an image of a new, more
inclusive party as it gears up for 2004. Although Christian radicals have been
frothing for action on a constitutional ban on gay unions, Bush has ventured
only that, while he believes marriage remains a heterosexual preserve, he is
not about to intervene.
Amid such pressures, gay Republicans insist that they can hold the radical
right in check, arguing that Bush would be loath to alienate suburban and
women voters, who are uncomfortable with outright bigotry. If they are right,
then the changes wrought over the past few decades are even more sweeping than
they appear, and the day may come when homophobia will be unacceptable, even
within the ranks of the Republican party.
“There is a huge battle and it may be the most explosive battle in
American politics today between the radical right and mainstream
Republicans,” says Patrick Guerriero, director of the Log Cabin Republicans,
a gay advocacy group. “If the far right is determined to be on a collision
course, there could be a civil war within the party.”
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