Suzanne GoldenbergTuesday July 15, 2003
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."
