Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 15:26:05 -0500
From: mohr richard d <r-mohr@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>

                 Auld Lang Syne?  Gay Politics 1993, 1994


by Richard D. Mohr
(December 1993)


     Gays did not fare well by democratic processes in 1993, and
the prospects for 1994 look at least as bleak.  Might we learn
something from '93 that will help us in '94.

     In November we saw the first ever piece of Presidentially-
signed legislation mandating discrimination against gay
individuals, the gay military ban, which passed Congress by
lpsided votes in both House and Senate.  By equally wide margins
gays lost every anti-gay referendum initiative right across the
country from Oregon counties to Cincinnati, Lewiston, and
Portsmouth.  The last was a particularly gratuitous slam, for the
referendum was merely an advisory vote covering governmental, not
private sector, employment.  Clearly these votes have nothing to
do with the specifics of civil rights protections; they are
simply thumbs cast up or down on gay existence.  The year saw
only two legislative successes.  In April, Minnesota passed a
state wide gay rights bill; and in June, Nevada eliminated its
unenforced sodomy law, though at the same stroke it turned its
much prosecuted crime of public indecency into a felony offense
bearing a six-year sentence -- not clearly progress.

     The chief site of democratic processes for gays in 1994 will
be referenda, like Colorado's Amendment 2, which bar a state and
its divisions from passing gay civil rights protections. 
Conservative and religious groups already have in place the
machinery to put such initiatives on November ballots in asmany
as twelve states, including Florida, Idaho, Maine, Michigan,
Missouri, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. 

     Past record suggests that whatever efforts gays sink into
these initiatives, we will lose the vast majority -- possibly all
-- of them.  I suggest that we simply write these efforts off, or
at least not treat them as a major focus of gay political work --
for two reasons.

     First, work on such initiatives is overly intense and
narrow.  They generate huge amounts of instant gay activity and
energy, but this bustle and thrill is the political equivalent of
a sugar high.  The day after the vote, the energy, money, and
heady vibes are gone.  People are burnt out, frequently
devastated, and no lasting institutions have been established,
since the focus of the effort was on just one day. 

     Second, in referendum initiatives our opponents control the
agenda.  Gays are from the start always placed on the defensive,
haplessly trying to explain why we aren't the way our opponents
paint us -- as civilization-destroying, child-molesting plague-
bearers.  Our opponents have instant access to the culture's
repository of anti-gay stereotypes, and so can code and disperse
their emotion-targeted message with telegraphic speed and
precision.  Direct democracy is sound-bite, platitude, and
sentiment, not fact, idea, and argument.  Strategically we simply
can't compete in these forums.

     After a defeat, however crushing, gay leaders usually have a
last hurrah and claim "we 'really' did win, because this was a
chance to educate society about gay people."  But if one examines
the gay tactics actually used, it is clear that this is a lie. 
However large and mass produced, a placard saying only "No on 2:
Stand Up Against Discrimination" does no educating about gay
people.  Notice that gayness literally goes unmentioned -- just
the way our opponents want us. 

     The other common tactic is to claim, "We are just like you." 
This claim is rhetorically self-defeating, since it leaves the
determination of its truth to those who in fact never have
occasion to say they are like us.  This recognition is the kernel
of truth in Quinton Crisp's witticism that "people who are normal
never go around saying they are normal."  Yet in consequence of
such self-defeating accomodation, our distinctive values and
virtues, with their educative power, never even get represented
in the "debate."

     Gay politicians and thinkers of quick accommodation, writers
like Bruce Bawer and Hunter Madsen, fail to remember the classic
anti-gay joke that "a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just
left the room."  In the voting booth, the gentleman has left the
room and the bigot is left to his own feelings.

     Progress will be made only when we change those feelings. 
And that will occur not by accommodating them, but by changing
the culture that bears and nurtures them.  Gays now have creative
access to the machinery of cultural change -- the media, the
arts, books, magazines, education, talk shows, movies, plays,
private persuasion, op-ed pages, conferences, pop music, computer
networks, even religious study groups.  Our hope for a better
future lies in these vectors of transformation rather than in
posterpaint and cardboard.    

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