Beware the Straight Backlash

By Andrew Sullivan

Can someone please tell me which country I'm living in? Last week I sat down and watched a popular new television phenomenon. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy turned out to be a hilarious reality show in which five New York City homosexuals fix a hapless straight guy's home, hair, clothes and culture in order to win the heart of his female love interest. Here was a wonderful example of straight men and gay men communicating, laughing and getting along. And the gay guys were all about affirming the straight guy's relationship. At one point, the straight guy actually choked up in gratitude. It was poignant and affirming--for both gays and straights.

The same day the Republican leadership of the Senate put out a report decrying the terrible possibility that gay people might actually one day have the right to marry the person they love. So alarmed were the Senators that some states might grant marriage rights to gays that they proposed amending the very Constitution of the United States to forbid gay marriage (or any legal gay relationship) anywhere, anytime, anyhow. The next day, in a press conference, President Bush came close to endorsing the move. If the high courts in Massachusetts or New Jersey decide that their state constitutions demand equality in marriage (something that most observers believe could happen very soon), the reactionary movement for an anti-gay constitutional amendment could acquire an awful momentum.

How to describe this emotional whiplash? Every day, if you're a gay person, you see amazing advances and terrifying setbacks. Wal-Mart set rules last month to protect its gay employees from discrimination--about as mainstream an endorsement as you can get. Canada just legalized gay marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court just struck down sodomy laws across the land, legitimizing the fact that homosexual is something you are, not something you do. Polls in Massachusetts and New Jersey show majorities in favor of equal marriage rights.

And now the Vatican comes out and announces that granting legal recognition to gay spouses will destroy the family and society. The church argues that gay love is not even "remotely analogous" to heterosexual love. The Anglican Church asks a celibate, newly elected bishop in England to give up his post simply because he is gay. Even the leading Democratic candidates refuse to support equality in marriage. Senator John Kerry, who has no biological children with his current (second) wife, says marriage should be reserved for procreation, and, with few exceptions, the others toe that line too. And a new poll shows a drop in support for gay rights in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision against sodomy laws. Another cyclical backlash against gays--with echoes of the Anita Bryant campaign in the 1970s--looks quite possible.

If, like me, you're gay and politically conservative, the whipsaw is even more intense. As a Catholic, I love my church. But I must come to terms with its hierarchy's hatred of the very core of my being. I admire this President deeply, but I have to acknowledge that he believes my relationship is a threat to his. In the coming weeks, it will be hard not to dread the prospect of this second-class status becoming enshrined in the Constitution. Whatever bridges gays and straights have built between them could be burned in a conflagration of bitterness and anger. This year could be for gays what 1968 was for African Americans: the moment hope turns into rage.

Many say they are not hostile toward gay people; they just don't think gays should be regarded as equal to heterosexuals under the law or that gay love is as valid as straight. How am I or any homosexual supposed to respond to that? How much more personal an issue can you get?

It seems as if heterosexuals are willing to tolerate homosexuals, but only from a position of power. They have few qualms about providing legal protections, decrying hate crimes, watching gay TV shows, even having a relative bring her female spouse to Thanksgiving dinner. Yet arguing that the lesbian couple is legally or morally indistinguishable from a straight couple is where many draw the line. That's why marriage is such a fundamental issue. Allowing gay marriage is not saying, We Will Tolerate You. It's saying, We Are You. This, it seems, we have a hard time doing.

I'll know we've changed when we see a show called Straight Eye for the Gay Guy. In it a group of heterosexual men prep a gay man for the night he asks his boyfriend to marry him. When the boyfriend says yes, the straight guys cheer, and the gay guy chokes up. That will be the day gay people are no longer ornaments or accessories or objects of either derision or compassion. That will be the day gay people will finally have the description we have been seeking for so long: human beings.