When it comes to the morality of being gay, you just can’t get a straight answer these days.
The sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calls homosexuality immoral, and the first and toughest one to call him out is a gray-haired, red-state senator from Virginia who used to be secretary of the Navy and now heads the powerful, hidebound Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, it’s Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, alleged champions of all things diverse and politically correct, who can’t get their heads out of their press releases and make a clear denunciation of Gen. Peter Pace.
When former NBA star Tim Hardaway said on radio that he hates gays, it was the allegedly Neanderthal world of male sports that immediately attacked Hardaway as a pariah, a sad and lonely loser.
Then a couple of Boulder punks tried to make their own statement against gays last weekend, starting a fight with two men walking arm in arm. Their response didn’t come from the ACLU, GLAAD or the United Nations – you can read the official answer in the black eye and bloody nose sported by the manly heterosexual attackers in their police mug shots. They got pummeled by one of the guys they picked on.
Sure, violence of any kind is to be condemned, and all that. But come on – yee-hah! That black eye was a real eye-opener, wasn’t it?
And then there’s the response to discredited Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard’s attempts to shed his homosexual tendencies in scared-straight rehab. Fifteen years ago, when Colorado was immersed in the debate over anti-gay-rights Amendment 2 and a national wave of anti-gay laws, the public took a pious view of gay-reversal therapy.
Now the reaction to anyone declaring themselves free from the clutches of Judy Garland is a more sarcastic “Good luck with that.” Call us when you get those show tunes out of your head. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy a world where gay bashing, whether verbal or physical, is increasingly unacceptable.
What’s surprising after this latest spate of incidents is how often traditional gay-rights advocates still flinch and play victim rather than realize they’ve already won. Maybe it’s a smart media strategy to hang back and let the Sen. John Warners and Gen. Shalikashvilis take the first shots against homophobia.
But if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama truly want to lead the nation rather than follow the lowest-common-denominator polls, they should step up. Things have changed.
Many Americans still believe homosexuality is some kind of sin. But a lot fewer believe that now than 20 years ago. In 1973, the number of people who answered that homosexuality is always wrong, in the widely accepted General Social Survey from the University of Chicago, was 72.5 percent. By 2006, that number had dropped to 56.2 percent.
The world has changed. Military generals are ridiculing “don’t ask, don’t tell” from above, while Congress remains silent. Gay men with a good right cross are fighting back rather than filing lawsuits.
Now that open minds are winning, those who hesitate could find themselves lost on election day.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or at mbooth@denverpost.com.
