Guest Post: The Freedoms at Stake in the Gay Wedding Cake Case

by Marian L. Tupy

On December 5, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission. It’s a case that raises important questions about freedom of speech and of association that even the most fervent supporters of equality for gay people ought to take to heart.

In July 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, a same-sex couple, visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver to order a custom wedding cake to celebrate their nuptials. Jack Phillips, the shop’s owner and a practicing Christian, was happy to sell the couple any of the goods in the store, but he refused to create a bespoke cake for a gay wedding, arguing that it would contravene his religious beliefs.

Craig and Mullins bought their wedding cake from a different bakery and went ahead with their happy event. The couple also filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that oversees the enforcement of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act – a law prohibiting businesses open to the public from discriminating against their customers on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

A lower court ruling decided in favor of the plaintiffs. The bakery was ordered to provide cakes for same-sex marriages and to “change its company policies, provide ‘comprehensive staff training’ regarding public accommodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers”.

The Cato Institute, where I work, has been at the forefront of the fight for gay equality, submitting amici curiae briefs in favor of the gay community in such ground-breaking cases as Lawrence v Texas, which decriminalized sodomy in the United States in 2003, and Obergefell v Hodges, which legalised gay marriage throughout the country in 2015. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, we have taken Phillips’s side.

There is no inconsistency here. Just as we would support a gay baker’s right to decline to convey a homophobic message, we support this Christian baker’s right to decline to celebrate a same-sex wedding. That is because Masterpiece isn’t really about religious liberty – apart from claims that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission itself treats the religious and nonreligious differently, something that concerned the swing Justice Anthony Kennedy at oral argument – but about freedom of speech.

As my learned colleagues wrote, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held “that what the First Amendment protects is a ‘freedom of the individual mind’, which the government violates whenever it tells a person what she must or must not say. Forcing a baker to create a unique piece of art violates that freedom of mind…

“Although making cakes may not initially appear to be speech to some, it is a form of artistic expression and therefore constitutionally protected… Indeed, the Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment protects artistic as well as verbal expression, and that protection should likewise extend to this sort of baking – even if it’s not ideological and even if done to make money.”

No matter which side wins, the final decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission is likely to reverberate for many years to come. That’s because the case does not deal with government discrimination, which everyone abhors, but with private discrimination, which is, in some fashion, unavoidable. Each day, all of us discriminate against things (which car to buy), actions (where to eat) and people (who to go out with).

The law says that private discrimination is fine so long as it does not involve a business, which ought to be open to everyone. That’s a perfectly fine legal distinction, but not a logical or moral one. Consider the following scenario:

Suppose that you operate a private dining club – such as the one described by Dana Bate in her superb 2013 book Girls’ Guide to Love and Supper Clubs. You rent a space where you can indulge your passion for cooking and choose from a list of paying gourmands in accordance with your preference for, exempli gratia, straight people. Is that discrimination? No court has ruled so. Yet, Bate’s supper club is basically a business, except for incorporation. Were you to incorporate, you would be guilty of discrimination. Without it, you are free to do as you please.

So, private discrimination is not cut and dried. As one of the pioneers of gay marriage, the British-born writer Andrew Sullivan, noted, advocates of gay equality ought to acquire some perspective. “I think it was a prudential mistake to sue the baker,” he wrote. “Live and let live would have been a far better response.” That’s where Cato stands as well.

Reprinted from CapX.

Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Marriage equality and freedom of thought are not incompatible

Affirming their “unwavering commitment to civic and legal equality, including marriage equality,” a diverse group of activists, advocates, lawyers, writers, and others issued a statement today that also affirms their “our unwavering commitment to the values of the open society and to vigorous public debate—the values that have brought us to the brink of victory.“

The statement – prompted in part by the resignation of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after his contribution to support the 2008 Proposition 8 campaign in California became controversial, and reactions that followed – was published today on the RealClearPolitics web site under the title “Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent: Why We Must Have Both.”

Among the 58 individuals who signed the statement are University of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter, Wayne State University philosophy professor John Corvino, University of Wisconsin political scientist Donald Downs, NYU law professor Richard Epstein, former Arizona superintendent of public instruction Lisa Graham Keegan, former Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona), Eli Lehrer of the R Street Institute, former national GOP chairman Ken Mehlman, Minnesota state senator Branden Petersen, Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution, U.S. Senate candidate Robert Sarvis, former Georgia Supreme Court justice Leah Ward Sears, Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute, author and blogger Andrew Sullivan, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and myself.

The signatories – both gay and non-gay, spanning a spectrum of conservative, liberal, libertarian, and progressive worldviews – argue that “sustaining a liberal society demands a culture that respects and welcomes robust debate, vigorous political advocacy, and a decent respect for differing opinions. People must be allowed to be wrong in order to continually test what is right. We should criticize opposing views, not punish or suppress them.”

In support of that proposition, they note that a “culture of free speech created the social space for us to criticize and demolish the arguments against gay marriage and LGBT equality. For us and our advocates to turn against that culture now would be a betrayal of the movement’s deepest and most humane values.”

In addition to RealClearPolitics, the statement is also posted to iPetition, where any individual may affix his or her signature in support of it.

Although "Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent" was only released about two hours ago, commentary on the statement has already appeared on the Independent Gay Forum and the Volokh Conspiracy.  Expect more reactions over the next day or so.

UPDATES: Box Turtle Bulletin also has a post on this.
Somewhat related, the Williams Institute has issued a report that concludes legalizing marriage equality will add $60 million to Virginia economy over its first three years. Scott Shackford offers this at Reason.com. At the Business Law Prof Blog, Joshua Fershee comments from the perspective of, naturally, a business law professor. The Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz has posted a commentary at RealClearPolitics. There is also a discussion thread about the statement on DebatePolitics.

UPDATES 2 (April 23): Rod Dreher comments at The American Conservative.  Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) at The Huffington Post.  Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic calls us "the liberal wing of the gay equality movement."  Bryan Preston at the PJ Tatler says the statement is a "nice sentiment" but it's also "unrealistic" (and then criticizes the statement for what it didn't criticize).  Joshua Riddle at Young Conservatives calls the statement "AMAZING" and reprints it in full.

At IGF Culture Watch, David Link explains "Why I Signed."  Someone with the pen name "Buckeye" calls the statement "good news on the free speech front" on the Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board.  Andrew Sullivan says "I'm not much of a joiner, but..."  Michael Polemra at National Review Online's "The Corner" says the "signers of this document ought to be really proud of what they have done." Joe Jervis at Joe.My.God says the statement comes from "a coalition of homocons and others."

Justin Snow reports on the statement for Metro Weekly.  News has apparently reached New Zealand, too.  Ilya Somin explains why he chose not to sign.  Zack Ford at ThinkProgress argues that the "pledge" -- his word, not the signers' -- justifies anti-gay activism.

Reactions are still coming in more than 36 hours after the statement was released. "BlackTsunami" comments at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters. John M. Becker calls the statement "repugnant" at the Bilerico Project.

UPDATES 3 (April 24):  Jonathan Rauch replies to critics on The Daily Beast with "Opposing Gay Marriage Doesn’t Make You a Crypto-Racist." Eric Schulzke comments in the Daily Oklahoman and Deseret News. Jennifer Rubin mentions the statement on her Washington Post blog. William D. Lindsey comments critically at Bilgrimage. Signatory Jonathan Rowe links. Viktor Kerney includes an excerpt as well as a link. Even the white supremacists at VDare have their say.

UPDATES 4 (April 25): Peter Wehner calls the statement "an impressive stand on behalf of liberal ideals" in Commentary. The American Spectator's Bill Zeiser mentions the statement at the end of an article about signatory Charles Murray. Jonah Goldberg offers backhanded approval at NRO and Jeremy Hooper replies to Goldberg at Good As You. Will Shetterly agrees with the statement, too.

Doug Gibson compares the statement to a recent speech by LDS leader Dallin H. Oaks at the Standard-Examiner. Nelson Garcia alleges some of the signatories once "decided to throw me under the bus." Gina Dalfonzo expresses skepticism over the statement's optimism at Breakpoint. Rob Tisinai admits "Yep, I Signed It" at Waking Up Now. Marvin Olasky cites the statement in an article called "Christians and gay-rights advocates can agree on freedom to dissent" at World.

UPDATES 5 (April 26): Signatory Richard Epstein "sort of" explains his position on same-sex marriage at Ricochet. The blogger at Pink-Briefcase names the statement one of "Five [Awesome] Things" she read this week.

UPDATE 6 (April 27): Carl F. Cannon, Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics, writes "On Gay Marriage, Intolerance Cuts Both Ways."

UPDATES 7 (April 28):  Jillian Page offers a Canadian perspective on The Montreal Gazette.  In USA Today, Glenn Harlan Reynolds draws a comparison to the case of a libertarian science fiction writer coming under fire.

UPDATES 8 (April 29):  "Michael-in-Norfolk" says the statement "Is Wrong and Justifies Anti-Gay Activism." Morgan Lee reports about the controversy on The Christian Post.

UPDATES 9 (April 30):  Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill comments on "coercion dolled up as civil rights."  At The Colu.mn, Andy Birkey reports that "Minnesotans sign on to controversial 'Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent.'"

Is There a Place for Gay Conservatives ... Anywhere?

The Cato Institute today hosted an intriguing forum on the topic, "Is There a Place for Gay People in Conservatism and Conservative Politics?," which almost turned into a discussion of "Who is a conservative?" and, more specifically, whether one of the panelists had the right to call himself a conservative.

The opening remarks were given by Nick Herbert, MP, the British Conservative Party's Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, who was, he pointed out toward the end of the discussion, once identified in the caption of a newspaper photography as a "gay Eurosceptic."

Responses were provided by Andrew Sullivan, author of Virtually Normal and other books, who blogs for The Atlantic and whose conservative credentials were questioned more than once by both the moderator and members of the audience, and Maggie Gallagher, known best for her strident campaign against the rights of gay men and lesbians to marry and form families as president of a group with the Orwellian name, "National Organization for Marriage" (Orwellian because the group works actively against, not for, marriage).

The audience looked to be made up of mostly libertarians -- it was a Cato Institute event, after all -- and gay people.  I saw so many people I knew that, during the lunch that followed, I remarked to my friend Nigel Ashford of the Institute for Humane Studies that it "looked like one of [his] parties," which bring together libertarians and conservatives of all stripes.  The demographics of the audience became clear in their reactions to Maggie Gallagher, who pleaded over and over again that her anti-marriage activities were not meant to be an attack on gay people, a plea met with much skepticism.  (It's hard to judge whether the audience was more skeptical than she is naively self-deluded, or the other way around.)

Cato's executive vice president, David Boaz, opened the discussion by noting that "for the past 70 years or so, conservatives have opposed demands for equal rights from Jews, blacks, and gay people," only later -- once those folks eventually achieved equal treatment under the law --  to deny that they were ever against them in the first place, and then to "wonder why they don't get votes from those people."

Since blacks and Jews are no longer unwelcome by conservatives, Boaz pondered, will conservative attitudes "change once gay people have civil rights?"

In this question, he continued, British conservatives are ahead of us, and evidence of that included today's guest speaker, Nick Herbert, who was elected as an openly-gay Tory Member of Parliament in 2005 after he had led a successful campaign to keep Britain out of the Euro zone.  (A decision, Boaz wryly remarked, that must be looking better and better today.)

I will try not to repeat here much of what Herbert said in his formal remarks, since they are available in full on the Conservative Party web site (here for the news story, and here for the text of the speech).  Let me just excerpt his closing sentences and then go on to Sullivan's and Gallagher's responses:

So let us be clear about the kind of society we want to build.

One where a child can go to school without being bullied because of his or her sexuality.

Where people can be honest with their friends and families and employers, and not live a lie.

Where the terraces at football games do not ring with homophobic abuse.

Where a public declaration of lifelong commitment to another person can be made by anyone.

Where communities are safe and no-one is fearful because of who they are.

Where anyone can serve their country without being asked who it is they love.

Where no-one is held back and opportunity is available to all.

And where the Prime Minister of the UK or the President of the United States could just as easily be gay as black.

Andrew Sullivan began his remarks -- he spoke without notes, in a heartfelt and emotional manner -- by saying:

My breath is still taken away by Nick's speech. It feels like water in the desert. It feels like the truth.

The struggle for gay equality in this country has been difficult and emotional, Sullivan said, noting that the United States was ahead of the United Kingdom 20 years ago, though at that time gay conservatives were attacked by the gay left. "We were called 'homocons,'" he said, and "we were smeared."

Sullivan offered some distinctions between himself and Nick Herbert, placing himself "slightly to the right" and describing himself as a more of a Thatcherite than a "One Nation Tory." He noted, for example, that he is "an implacable foe of hate crime laws" because they are a threat to freedom of expression and freedom of thought.

He agreed, however, that there is no necessary connection between being gay and any particular set of political viewpoints. (This was a consensus among all three panelists.) Specifically, he said, "I see no connection between sexual orientation and a belief in limited government or a belief in a socialist state," adding that "I became a conservative because I grew up in a socialist country" and that he defined himself as a "Tory, not a Republican; an Oakeshottian, not a Straussian."

Sullivan went on to criticize the Republican party for accelerating its "campaign of fear" against gay people and said the GOP "is no longer a political party; it is a religious party [whose members] owe absolute obedience to the President." The Republican Party's "soul has been corrupted," Sullivan said solemnly.

Glancing over at Maggie Gallagher, Sullivan said that his arguments in favor of gay marriage -- which date to at least 1989, before the issue was on virtually anyone's radar screen -- "were never meant as an attack on the family." He spoke of the "psychic wound" that results from gay children growing up knowing that they would never be able to have the same kind of bonds as their parents or their brothers and sisters. This wound, he said, "distorts the psyche and warps the soul."

Sullivan did speak fondly and proudly of the way his own family -- his birth family and his in-laws -- participated in his and his husband's marriage ceremony, and how both of them have been accepted into each other's familial ambit, and how the joining of two families is an important social bond.

Summing up, Sullivan said, "We have struggled against the gay left and now the far Republican right, which is now the Republican party."

Introducing the next speaker, David Boaz quipped: "And now for something completely different," and that is indeed what we got in Maggie Gallagher's remarks.

She began by making the incredible, preposterous, and unsubstantiated claim that "there are openly gay people who work for my organization," the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage. She said she did not want to name them, however, and later -- when challenged by Sullivan -- she refused to name a single openly gay person who opposed equal marriage rights for gay men and lesbians. "You can't out an openly gay person," Sullivan said with exasperation during their later exchange.

Referring to Nick Herbert's opening description of how the political and legal landscape for gay people has changed in the United Kingdom, Gallagher said:

I don't know of many American conservatives who look at Great Britain and say "that is what we should look like."

In an acknowledgment of reality, Gallagher stated that "there have always been gay people in the conservative movement," and she noted that "a political movement is not a church, and there are no purity tests."

Yet, the question must be asked, she added: "How do we reconcile gay rights with large chunks of social conservatives" within the larger movement?

As she went on, Gallagher made an interesting distinction that, were she not so transparently unaware of what she was actually saying, would have been to her credit.

She said that "if gay rights are understood as liberty interests, they are compatible" with conservative values and the conservative movement. If they are understood as "equality interests," however, requiring aggressive government intervention to assure equality of results, they are not compatible.

What Gallagher misses, of course, is the fact that gay people should have the freedom to marry not just as a matter of equality, but as part of the liberty of association, the liberty of contract, the liberty to be left alone ... I could go on. Freedom to marry does not impinge on anyone else's rights -- no more than my right to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy does not affect someone else's right to watch Project Runway.

But I digress.

Gallagher added that "people are waking up to hear their core moral principles are the moral equivalent of racism" and, as a result, "people are scared."

She ended with a reiteration of her suggestion that "gay rights should be about liberty," and then Boaz opened up the floor for questions, first exercising his prerogative as moderator to pose one of his own.

Explaining that he had received "dozens" of emails making essentially the same point, Boaz asked Sullivan: "Can you be either a conservative or a classical liberal and still support President Obama's vast expansion of government?"

Miffed, Sullivan said "I refuse to answer that question as irrelevant to this topic... It's preposterous."

Since the full program may soon be available as a podcast, and is likely as well to be broadcast on C-SPAN, I will breeze through some of the next few exchanges.

There were questions about gay adoption and hate crime laws, then Jamie Kirchick of The New Republic asked, based on polling data that at least one-third of self-identified gay voters cast their ballots for McCain-Palin in 2008, should they fight for a place in the movement?

Sullivan replied: "I do not believe the conservative movement today has a place for a conservative like me."

The next question was posed by Jason Kuznicki, who has blogged about it himself earlier today:

There’s a built-in liberalness to gay politics, if not necessarily to gay people. Even conservative gay politics, in this sense, is liberal. Because all we have is the future. It’s the future, or nothing.

That “nothing” was on full display this afternoon, when I got to ask Maggie Gallagher the question I’ve always wanted to ask her: What do you think that am I supposed to do with my life?

Suppose I found myself in agreement with her. Suppose I concluded that same-sex marriage was corrosive to society. Do I leave my husband? Do I send my adopted daughter back to the state? Enter ex-gay therapy, which isn’t likely to work? Tell my whole family that I’m single now, and that Scott shouldn’t be welcome at family events? Live my whole life alone, and loveless? Hide? Where is the life I’m supposed to live?

I probably wasn’t so articulate at the Cato event, but I do recall Gallagher’s very simple answer: “I don’t know.”

The final question was about whether there is room for transgendered people in the conservative movement -- the "T" in "LGBT" or "GLBT" -- to which Gallagher replied, yes, as long as they are against gay marriage, and to which Sullivan replied, no, because conservatives think of transgendered individuals as engaging in "self-mutilation."

Nick Herbert was given the chance to offer a few closing words, replying to the last question by saying, "yes, the same principles apply" to transgendered people as to gay and lesbian people.

Herbert said "I look forward to the day when we're not having this debate but rather [having one] about the larger issues forced on Andrew" (I think he means issues like the definition of conservative, the proper role of government, the proper size and scope of government, etc.).  The issues before the panel today, he said, "should be beyond debate," adding that what people say about ourselves as political parties and as politicians, and the manner in which we can push people way casually is important.  What is most important, however, is that "we need to mount an appeal that is generous and optimistic and inclusive."

(I will be adding photographs from the event later tonight; I'm not at my own computer and this one lacks a port for my camera's memory card.)

Update:  Photos from above and left to right:  (1) Andrew Sullivan, David Boaz, Nick Herbert; (2) David Boaz, Andrew Sullivan, Nick Herbert; (3) Maggie Gallagher; and (4) Nick Herbert, MP.



Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter!

Ron Paul on DADT

Last night, during the Republican presidential debate at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire, the candidates were asked what they thought about the current, Clinton-era policy of excluding openly gay and lesbian people from the U.S. military, the policy known as "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (a phrase that has gained wide currency in this and other contexts) or "DADT."

While I think his direct response to the question was wrong -- if, as it appears, he means that he agrees with the current policy that excludes people on the basis of identity rather than behavior -- Congressman Ron Paul's explanation about the difference between group rights and individual rights deserves wide readership.

Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the debate as published by today's New York Times. The question was posed by Scott Spradling of WMUR-TV in Manchester:

MR. SPRADLING: Congressman Paul, a question for you.

Most of our closest allies, including Great Britain and Israel, allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. Is it time to end “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military?

REP. PAUL: I think the current policy is a decent policy. And the problem that we have with dealing with this subject is we see people as groups, as they belong to certain groups and that they derive their rights as belonging to groups. We don’t get our rights because we’re gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way.

So if there is homosexual behavior in the military that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. But if there’s heterosexual sexual behavior that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. So it isn’t the issue of homosexuality, it’s the concept and the understanding of individual rights. If we understood that, we would not be dealing with this very important problem.

The point he is making is twofold:

First, human rights inhere in us as individuals, not by dint of our membership in certain groups.

Second, the policy is only legitimate insofar as it addresses behavior that is disruptive. Gay identity is not, in itself, disruptive.

The ten Republican candidates' general refusal to oppose DADT is at odds with public opinion. As USA Today reported in February:

Polls indicate growing acceptance of gay troops. A Harris Poll this month found that 55% supported allowing gays to serve openly, up from 48% in 2000.

A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 60% favored gays serving openly, up from 52% in 1994. Support ran 3-to-1 among those younger than 30. In contrast, Pew found that 39% favored same-sex marriage.

Moreover, the policy undermines military effectiveness. That same USA Today article, written by Andrea Stone, noted

A Government Accountability Office report in February 2005 found that at least 800 dismissed gay servicemembers had skills deemed "mission critical" by the Pentagon. Among them: 54 Arabic-language specialists.

Even the most gay-friendly of the candidates, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, seemed unwilling to address this specific problem stemming from DADT. From the transcript:

MR. BLITZER: Mayor Giuliani, recently we’ve learned that several talented, trained linguists — Arabic speakers, Farsi speakers, Urdu speakers trained by the U.S. government to learn those languages to help us in the war on terrorism — were dismissed from the military because they announced they were gays or lesbians. Is that, in your mind, appropriate?

MR. GIULIANI: This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this. Back in 1994 we went through this and it created a tremendous amount of disruption. Colin Powell, I think, was still the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before he left at the beginning of the Clinton administration. He came to the view that this was a good policy. And I think in time of war, in a time where we’re trying to deal with this transition to a new kind of warfare that we have to be fighting — and we haven’t gotten all the way there yet, we need a hybrid army, we need to look at nation-building as part of what we have to teach our military — I don’t think this would be the right time to raise these issues.

Andrew Sullivan, as one might expect, has a few choice comments on the candidates' response to this question:

Then there's Romney, who once again has flip-flopped. His defense of the Clinton policy which he once opposed is that "it's working." I know of no one who once opposed the policy who now supports it, because "it's working". And I simply don't believe Romney means what he says. He's an opportunist and a liar. And, of course, as the question showed, the policy is throwing out critical servicembers in a time of war. McCain and Giuliani: they know better. The lack of any real argument in defense of the Republican candidates' position combined with the blanket refusal to revisit it is a sign of only one thing: contempt for the many servicemembers who are gay. The truth is: Giuliani and McCain do not support the troops. They want to persecute and stigmatize a minority of them. These old men are out of date and out of touch.

The debate was sponsored by CNN, WMUR, and the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Blogs Attract Gay Readers

A survey by Harris Interactive shows that gay and lesbian Internet users visit blogs more often than their straight counterparts by a ratio of about 3 to 1. The same demographic niche seems to be more inclined to use social networking sites like MySpace.

According to a report from The Advocate,

More than one in three LGBT Web users, 36 percent, report visiting their favorite personal blogs daily, compared with 19 percent of straight people, according to a national survey by Harris Interactive.

LGBT online users also visit networking Web sites like Myspace and Friendster more than their straight counterparts, according to the Harris survey.

Twenty-seven percent of LGBT adults in the country who are online said they visit the video-sharing site YouTube.com, compared with 22 percent of heterosexuals. Twenty percent were more likely to visit Craigslist.org, compared with 13 percent of heterosexuals.

The national survey of 2,451 adults over 18 in the United States, conducted Nov. 13-20, 2006, showed that gays spend more overall time online than straight people.

There certainly are a lot of popular blogs that have appeal for gay and lesbian readers. One thinks of Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip blog, Andrew Sullivan's pioneering blog on social and political issues (which, under its title "The Daily Dish," was early on excerpted weekly in The Washington Times), the sometimes controversial Gay Patriot, the alternative views found at the Independent Gay Forum, the arts criticism of Tim Hulsey, and even, for amusement, Black Velvet Bruce Li. There are many more, of course, and I don't wish to discourage visits to other blogs of interest. (Law professor Dale Carpenter listed a number of gay conservative and libertarian blogs in his syndicated column about a year ago.)

In commenting on the Harris Interactive findings, Bob Witeck -- whose consulting firm does research on consumer trends in the gay and lesbian market -- noted:

"Gays and lesbians have shown their need to build and maintain an early and major presence on the Web that translates directly into significant market opportunities. Social networks also appear to be second nature for the gay and lesbian consumer."

It may be worth speculating whether, because of the "outsider" status of most gay men and lesbians -- a part of, but always apart from, the larger society -- they are "early adopters" of new communications technology. I know that I was using AOL as early as 1993 and quickly adapted to the rapidly growing opportunities of the web, at least as a research tool and as a way of keeping in touch with friends and colleagues through email. The Internet has also been a vital element in the capacity of gay youth to overcome the sense of isolation that earlier generations felt. It has been, in many instances, a genuine lifeline for gay and lesbian adolescents, especially those who live far from urban centers and the vibrant gay communities found there.

As with other fashions and fads -- not to say either the Internet or blogging are fads -- and social trends that are initiated in gay enclaves, it will not be long before straight people catch up. By that time, the LGBT folks will be on to something new.

But I'm a Carnivore!

An article from WorldNetDaily that asserts soy-based food products cause homosexuality -- tofu in particular -- is taking a beating in the blogosphere. When I sent a copy of the article to a group of friends, the first response I got was: "This has got to be satire."

Sadly, it's not.

Still, one might get the impression from its headline that the article originates from The Onion: "A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals." I should say, from the original headline when it was first posted on line. The editors at WND must have caught wind of what a laughingstock the piece is and they have since changed the headline to read "Soy is making kids 'gay'." Not much better, but somewhat less diabolical.

Written not by a physician or nutritionist or any sort of scientist, but rather by James Rutz, a self-appointed minister at "Megashift Ministries" (which sounds like the name of a 1970s-era gay bar), the opinion piece makes some astounding claims:

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally....

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Rutz ends on a somewhat hopeful note, for those of us who frequent Asian restaurants:

Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.

I do avoid tofu, not because it's "feminizing," but because it's unappetizing.

Real scientists have already debunked Rutz's ridiculous ramblings. Vivian Paige points to a rebuttal (if I can call it that -- a rebuttal should be reserved to reply to an authentic argument) at Science Blogs that says, in reference to Rutz's assertions about delayed menarche in girls and puberty in boys, that

I searched PubMed, and there's nothing on soy and menarche or menstruation; I found a few articles on soy and puberty, and they say things like "The literature offers no evidence of endocrine effects in humans from infant consumption of modern soy-based formulas" and "To date, no adverse effects of short- or long-term use of soy proteins have been observed in humans and exposure to soy-based infant formulas does not appear to lead to different reproductive outcomes than exposure to cow milk formulas" and "Available evidence from adult human and infant populations indicates that dietary isoflavones in soy infant formulas do not adversely affect human growth, development, or reproduction." There are many more papers on its putative effects on breast cancer and the symptoms of menopause, and even there it's a study in ambiguity: some reports of slight positive effects, many more stating that there isn't a detectable effect.

There doesn't seem to be any strong evidence that eating tofu will turn your sons into girlie-boys, I'm afraid; there are better grounds to be concerned about known endocrine disruptors like atrazine and PCBs.

Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, goes back to Alfred Kinsey himself to knock down Rutz's assertion that homosexual men have small genitalia. Quoting a 2004 article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior ("The Relation between Sexual Orientation and Penile Size") that examined a Kinsey survey of the 1940s, he says:

The relation between sexual orientation and penile dimensions in a large sample of men was studied. Subjects were 5,122 men interviewed by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction from 1938 to 1963. They were dichotomously classified as either homosexual (n = 935) or heterosexual (n = 4187). Penile dimensions were assessed using five measures of penile length and circumference from Kinsey's original protocol. On all five measures, homosexual men reported larger penises than did heterosexual men. Explanations for these differences are discussed, including the possibility that these findings provide additional evidence that variations in prenatal hormonal levels (or other biological mechanisms affecting reproductive structures) affect sexual orientation development.

(I know I'm now going to be inundated with visits derived from Google hits for "penile size," "larger penises," "penile length," and "penile circumference." Those will be high on the list, along with "Jeremy Sumpter nude," "creationists circumcision," "granddad sex movies," and "Alex Trebek shirtless." I hope those readers stick around to read some more, but I digress ...)

Waldo Jaquith also got a nice discussion going on this topic, in which he makes the equally plausible claim that evangelical megachurches cause homosexuality (at least in their pastors).

Just when you think you've seen it all, now the third-graders will have a new name to tag their less-than-butch friends with: "tofu-eater!" (And when I say "third-graders," you know who I mean. And him, too.)

Wow! Thanks, Andrew!

I was a guest on Coy Barefoot's radio program from 5:30 to 6:00 this evening. I was preceded by fellow Virginia bloggers Chad Dotson and Kenton Ngo. (A podcast of the program will be available soon at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.) We discussed the Virginia Senate race, the integrity of electronic voting systems, and the so-called marriage amendment -- it was a very fast half-hour.

After the show, I ran some errands and grabbed some dinner. When I got home, I decided to check my traffic reports to see if an appearance on Charlottesville ... Right Now might bring in any new visitors. (The last time I did a radio program wearing my blogger's hat, two or three people visited during the course of the show. I figured that Coy's afternoon drive-time listenership might bring in more than that.)

Boy, was I surprised! I had to give my computer screen a double-take. (If I had been drinking, the screen would have been drenched by a spit-take.) The numbers had gone through the roof:



Thanks to a link from Andrew Sullivan, this blog has received more visitors in the past five hours than it usually receives in a month.

Apparently, Andrew's readers are particularly interested in the statement by nearly 300 Virginia religious leaders who have announced their principled opposition to the Marshall/Newman amendment.

Welcome, new readers -- I hope you'll come back for more! And don't forget to patronize our advertisers or leave a gratuity in the tip jar.

Update: Sean Tubbs has posted my interview segment from "Charlottesville .... Right Now" right here. Coy's interview with Kenton is here, and his interview with Chad is here. This is how he summarizes my half-hour on the program:

Coy Barefoot continues his series on Virginia bloggers with a conversation with Rick Sincere, a libertarian blogger from Charlottesville. Sincere wonders why the Republicans in government have strayed so far away from their core values while in power.

“When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, there was a lot of hope they would roll back the federal monstrosity,” says Sincere. “It hasn’t happened.”

Sincere also says dire predictions about electronic voting machines are not warranted. He also explains why he’s voting no on the Marshall-Newman amendment.

Thanks, Sean! And thanks, Coy, too!

Teenage Angst

Social conservatives have responded to last week's Time magazine cover story on gay teenagers, "The Battle Over Gay Teens" (chronicled here just a few days ago).

The compilers of a collection of quotations and paraphrases from the Time article, Robert Knight and Benjamin Frichtl, use their platform to evoke the incendiary image of "recruitment" as the purpose of organizations like GLSEN, an organization of gay and gay-friendly teachers, and the Point Foundation, a charity that offers scholarships to high-achieving gay and lesbian college students. They end their "report" with this sentence, no doubt intended to bring out the torches and pitchforks:

Clearly, the homosexual movement's effort to recruit children has never been stronger than it is now.

They also mischaracterize what was reported in Time. For instance, Knight and Frichtl say (note the placement of quotation marks), attributed to the Time article:

The average age of kids “coming out” as homosexual has “dropped to 10 for gays and 12 for lesbians,” according to the chair of Cornell University’s human-development program.

This is what correspondent John Cloud actually wrote in Time magazine:

The average gay person now comes out just before or after graduating high school, according to The New Gay Teenager, a book Harvard University Press published this summer.

This is followed a few paragraphs later by:

In the 1960s, gay men recalled first desiring other males at an average age of 14; it was 17 for lesbians. By the '90s, the average had dropped to 10 for gays and 12 for lesbians, according to more than a dozen studies reviewed by the author of The New Gay Teenager, Ritch Savin-Williams, who chairs Cornell's human-development department.

There is a big, big difference with beginning to get an inkling that you might be gay and actually admitting it to yourself and to others, that is, "coming out." Knight and Frichtl either don't know the difference or are purposefully misrepresenting what was reported in Time in order to arouse prurient emotions in their readers. Anyone who goes through the process of coming out knows that it takes years from that first inkling coming to the surface and the moment that one has the courage to say to another person, "Yep, I'm gay."

Knight and Frichtl also note:

At a youth retreat, the Point Foundation gave out gift bags to students containing, among other things, “a DVD of the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, in which a teenage boy is masturbated by an adult” and “the Aug. 16 issue of the gay magazine The Advocate, whose cover featured a shirtless man and blared, SUMMER SEX ISSUE.”

Set aside for a moment that they exaggerate the explicitness of that scene in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (I've seen the play, but not the movie, and while the play is suggestive, it is not pornographic by any definition), or that The Advocate is no more provocative than People or Entertainment Weekly -- and mostly far milder and, pardon me, more boring. By using the phrase "youth retreat" in the context of talking about an article about gay teenagers, Knight and Frichtl may mislead their readers to believe that the DVD and magazine were given to high school students or younger teens. In fact, the "retreat" was for college students -- all legal adults -- who had received the prestigious and highly-competitive academic scholarships from the Point Foundation.

Knight and Frichtl go on, after mentioning how the Time report includes information about the discredited ex-gay movement:

But the overall impact of the article helps validate the idea of “gay kids,” and will undoubtedly induce some to act out their sexual curiosity since so many others appear to be doing so. The constant focus on homosexuality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, much as TIME’s frequent articles during the 1960s and 1970s about the “growing phenomenon” of illicit drug use helped spur some kids to try marijuana and LSD.

I would be curious to see the evidence that articles in a news magazine like Time contributed to the drug culture of the 1960s and '70s. I find it highly unlikely that such evidence exists.

Even if it did, the idea that Time could, with a single article, "induce" kids to become gay is laughable. It is as laughable as the idea that someone can be "recruited into homosexuality."

The teenagers described in Time are already gay; they were gay long before any reporter found them to interview; and whether they were born that way or not, being homosexual is an immutable characteristic. One cannot be persuaded to be gay or straight.

Social conservatives have a real fear that gay kids -- and gay adults, for that matter -- are being treated with the dignity and respect that all people deserve, rather than, as in years past, treated with derision and violence. They may vent about articles like that in Time last week, but they are just whistling past the graveyard.

Andrew Sullivan writes about "The End of Gay Culture" in the current issue of The New Republic, saying in part:

The new anti-gay fervor is a response to the growing probability that the world will one day treat gay and straight as interchangeable humans and citizens rather than as estranged others. It is the end of gay culture--not its endurance--that threatens the old order. It is the fact that, across the state of Massachusetts, "gay marriage" has just been abolished. The marriage licenses gay couples receive are indistinguishable from those given to straight couples. On paper, the difference is now history. In the real world, the consequences of that are still unfolding.

Since people like Knight and Frichtl are obsessed with sex, they fail to see the richness of the lives of individual gay men and lesbians, and of the communities they have built in the face of what was until recently unremitting hostility (coming from the likes of Knight and Frichtl, only they were far more numerous and vocal). Near the conclusion of his article, Sullivan writes:

Rick Sincere & Andrew Sullivan

And, when you see the internalized defensiveness of gays still living in the shadow of social hostility, any nostalgia one might feel for the loss of gay culture dissipates. Some still echo critic Philip Larkin's jest that he worried about the American civil rights movement because it was ruining jazz. But the flipness of that remark is the point, and the mood today is less genuine regret--let alone a desire to return to those days--than a kind of wistfulness for a past that was probably less glamorous or unified than it now appears. It is indeed hard not to feel some sadness at the end of a rich, distinct culture built by pioneers who braved greater ostracism than today's generation will ever fully understand. But, if there is a real choice between a culture built on oppression and a culture built on freedom, the decision is an easy one. Gay culture was once primarily about pain and tragedy, because that is what heterosexuals imposed on gay people, and that was, in part, what gay people experienced. Gay culture was once primarily about sex, because that was how heterosexuals defined gay lives. But gay life, like straight life, is now and always has been about happiness as well as pain; it is about triumph as well as tragedy; it is about love and family as well as sex. It took generations to find the self-worth to move toward achieving this reality in all its forms--and an epidemiological catastrophe to accelerate it. If the end of gay culture means that we have a new complexity to grapple with and a new, less cramped humanity to embrace, then regret seems almost a rebuke to those countless generations who could only dream of the liberty so many now enjoy.

John Cloud's article in Time illustrates the "end of gay culture" that matters so much to Sullivan. Cloud writes:

Because he routinely sees young gays on MTV or even at school, a 14-year-old may now feel comfortable telling friends that he likes other boys, but that doesn't mean he is ready to enfold himself in a gay identity. "Today so many kids who are gay, they don't like Cher. They aren't part of the whole subculture," says Michael Glatze, 30, editor in chief of YGA Magazine. "They feel like they belong in their faith, in their families."
"Increasingly, these kids are like straight kids," says Savin-Williams. "Straight kids don't define themselves by sexuality, even though sexuality is a huge part of who they are. Of course they want to have sex, but they don't say, 'It is what I am.'" He believes young gays are moving toward a "postgay" identity. "Just because they're gay, they don't have to march in a parade. Part of it is political. Part is personal, developmental."
The political part is what worries Glatze. "I don't think the gay movement understands the extent to which the next generation just wants to be normal kids. The people who are getting that are the Christian right," he says.

The idea of "post-gay" may be what is most fearsome to social conservatives -- the idea that everyone be treated equally, with no substantial social significance to the terms "gay" or "straight." Instead, we'll all just be Americans. No more "other" -- just "us."