Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 14:54:39 -0700 (PDT) From: "David J. Edmondson" THE QUILL Queer Individual Liberty Letter, Vol. 2, No. 4, August, 1994 A publication of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty A CONSERVATIVE'S APPROACH TO INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES Bill Boushka D-Day, we are now taught, was the one day 50 years ago when civilization proved that democracy and the notion of liberty could work. Hitler had assumed that young soldiers and workers disciplined by allegiance to the State would prevail over those "softened" by personal freedom. He was wrong. Motivation to serve family, faith and country, and only then to self, turned out to be exceed blind nationalism, mysticism, hero-worship, and blind obedience. Yet, freedom has always been balanced by the needs of immedi ate others and of the community welfare, and with limits on personal creativity and independence. Fifty years ago, we had a society where fidelity to "gender roles" was perceived as basic to community survival. Men were expected to make themselves fungible, to offer themselves in war or even in dangerous occupa tions; women risked childbirth and then later dedicated them selves to taming otherwise reckless men. For all kinds of reasons, including the Cold War, Viet Nam (including the contro versy over conscription and deferments), and a rising standard of living made possible in part by technology originally envisioned for common defense, men and women gradually began to realize they could live their lives for their own purposes, and achieve communal welfare through Ayn Rand's "enlightened self-interest." But this transformation varied greatly among different groups. Stonewall was not simply a rebellion for "gay rights"; it was a turning point, a divide where a formal tension had to be recog nized, between those motivated by their own inner selves, and those motivated by fulfilling more conventional roles in raising families. Social policies had seemed automatic when everyone's identity was circumscribed by common notions of male preroga tives, intercourse, and resulting family kinships, with little credibility given to personal autonomy. But years after Stone wall, the privileges of heterosexual marriage now come across as "special rights" derived from the State. Today, the "Radical Right" maintains a poorly articulated position which bears a certain parallel to Hitler's. That is, a man is deserving of full per-sonhood (and adult freedom) only if he has first dedicated himself to procreation and to raising a family; a woman is to be respected only if she will limit herself to domesticating men (and then remaining wife and mother). Monogamous heterosexual marriage is held to build "new selves" which are supposed prerequisites to any kind of success in life. Obviously, gay men and lesbians contradict this view more than any other group of people, and are in some sense in danger of becoming the modern era's equivalent to the Jews of the 1930's (much more than that of the slaves in the 19th Century). Gay men, in particular, are depicted by the Right as locked into a juve nile narcissism, a parasitic burden and health hazard to "normal" people who are willing to complete their rites of passage. Clearly, politicians and demagogues often maintain this facile position for no other motive than personal self-aggrandizement. But why do people still believe it? Part of it is habit; another reason is that most middle-class people raising children are so overwhelmed that they just don't have the luxury of creative or critical thinking. Another reason is male vulnerability; as we know from Senator Sam Nunn's rhetoric, many heterosexual men feel that their ability to perform "like men" may be undermined if they are forced to even acknowledge positively the homosexuality of some of their peers. In the long run, gay rights should be seen in view of individ ual rights and responsibilities, and not by trying to cast gays as another "oppressed group" similar to blacks. The "suspect class" ideology is an unfortunate artifact of the way our consti tutional law and social history (with certain periods of collec tivism) have evolved. The end point of a gay rights movement ought to be that society legally recognizes the *right of any adult to intimate association with a chosen, consenting, adult "significant other."* Politically, this may not be unlike recognizing a basic right to practice one's own religion. To win these rights, we will have to work through society's hangups over gender roles and personal identity, and, especially, the growing conflict between those responsible for raising children and those not. This task will require unprecedented intellectual honesty, in a society used to the politics of collective compromise, coalition, and solidarity. The job will be easier if, by taking further advantage of the "free market," we can make the economy more prosperous and stable for everyone; this means accepting a more entrepreneurial, decentralized workplace and concomitant benefit structures, health care, and employee ownership opportunities. Within a proper economic framework, the other major work we must do is, ten years into the age of AIDS, is to set the best possible examples individually with our own performance and behavior. The examples of gay men and lesbians serving in the military show our potentials pub licly, as do many people I have met myself who are obvious role models in other areas. A healthy independent identity is still tied to meeting the needs of others, and to faithfulness to principle. RUN DOWN BY THE HEALTH SECURITY EXPRESS Dave Edmondson Those who herald Clintoncare as "empowering" lesbians and gay men should consider recent events in Florida. The principle behind those events, if applied to socialized medicine, would empower the federal government to oppress us on an unprecedented scale. Acting under Florida's recently passed Medicaid Third Party Recovery Act, the state government is preparing to sue tobacco companies for expenses in treating smoking-related illnesses under Medicaid. Gov. Lawton Chiles, as quoted in the August/September issue of _Reason_, gave the following rationale for the statute: "The state does not buy that package of to bacco, so we don't read the warning on the side. We just pay for the carnage." If you don't see the connection between tobacco-related ill nesses and our freedom, "family-oriented" politicians will. Even now, the collectivist right appeals to "public health" to deprive us of our rights. With national health care in place, it will be hard to imagine a future Jesse Helms not saying the following slightly modified version of Gov. Chiles's words: "Congress does get under the covers with that homosexual couple, so we don't assess the risks of various sexual practices. We just pay for the plague." Thus, well-meaning progressives will have handed the anti-freedom right the unholy grail of a nationwide sodomy law. So much for empowerment. PROPERTY AS A GAY RIGHT Dave Edmondson One of the most important unspoken postulates of common polit ical thought, the dichotomy between economic rights and personal rights, holds that "economic" rights such as property ownership are at best irrelevant to "personal" rights such as living one's life as a gay or lesbian person. Indeed, many proponents of personal rights regard advocates of economic rights as presump tive enemies. Nonetheless, full personal rights, both for lesbians and gay men in general, depend on economic rights. By now most of my readers will have heard of Camp Sister Spirit, the project of Brenda and Wanda Henson in Ovett, Miss. The Hensons own the 120 acres occupied by Camp Sister Spirit, having received a $12,000 grant from a non-government organiza tion for the down payment. Hostile locals, having failed to persuade the Hensons to sell the land, have now decided to sue for violation of zoning laws. Given the virtually unlimited power to regulate economic interests that underlies the modern liberal utopia, Jones County could easily rid itself of the Hensons. The county could invoke zoning and other land-use laws and declare Camp Sister Spirit a non-conforming use. If that attempt failed, the county could impose onerous licensing requirements that the Hensons could not possibly meet. In the most extreme case, the county could simply invoke its power of eminent domain to force the Hensons to sell, although it would more likely deprive the Hensons of most of the value of their land by the first two steps. By contrast, in a system that fully recognized property owner ship as an individual right, the locals would have much more limited options. The locals could sue for private nuisance, but they would have the burden of showing that Camp Sister Spirit impaired their use and enjoyment of their own land. If, as would be most likely, they could not bear this burden, they would have to figure out how to mind their own business. Camp Sister Spirit does not provide the only example in which our rights are linked to property rights. Our opponents have appealed to "progressive" zoning laws to try to prevent the opening of an AIDS hospice in Richmond, an MCC here in Washing ton, and gay business establishments in many communities. Those who promote restrictions on property rights to further their favored ends should consider such situations before trying to distinguish "good" freedoms from "bad" ones. WHAT IS GLIL? _The Quill: Queer Individual Liberty Letter_ is the bimonthly newsletter of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), an organization of classical liberals, market liberals, limited- government libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and objectivists. GLIL publishes _The Quill_ to promote the political philosophy of individual liberty, both generally and as it affects lesbians, gay men, and bisexual persons. In addition to this newsletter, GLIL sponsors a happy hour on the first Tuesday of every month at Trumpets, 17th and Q streets, N.W., from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. We also host speakers and debates on issues of concern to our community; as events are scheduled, they will be announced both in _The Quill_ and in _The Washington Blade_. For more information, please contact GLIL as follows: Mail: PO Box 65743, Washington Square Station, Washington DC 20035-5743 Telephone: 703-920-4023 Facsimile: 703-519-0034 Internet: ghoti@netcom.com We welcome articles and letters to the editor. You may send submissions for the next issue through September 15. We shall also be happy to add you to our mailing list; while we do not currently charge for _The Quill_, we should appreciate a contri bution to help cover the costs of printing and mailing. You may also call for advertising rates. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dave Edmondson ghoti@netcom.com, 72020.600@compuserve.com, dave.edmondson@glib.org "Exalted Master, you told us that the world would end yesterday." "My child, it did end yesterday, but you're too sinful to notice."