Warning: This is one long mutha.
It's been an administration of riches as far as the Anti-Gay Industry is concerned. While they've failed to get the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) passed--yet--many of the actions taken by this administration have given them reason to cheer. Below, I'm going to lay out the systematic ways this administration has been attacking gay America. Contrary to what some folks say, Bush's gay bashing isn't pandering to the Right. He's been carrying their water for years.
It's easy to be outraged by this or that incident from the Right. What seems to often be lacking, though, is an awareness of how these individual incidents are part of a larger programmatic assault on queer folks. Below, I'm going to try to sketch together some disparate events and policies to paint a broader, but still skeletal, portrait of this anti-gay administration.
Won't someone please think of the children!
The entire Bush Republican machine seems to be filled with Mrs. Lovejoys. Everything is done for the sake of "the children." As Susie Bright wrote after the 1992 Hatefest in Houston, "The Children is us." Let's look at the kiddies.
Everyone by now is familiar with Margaret Spellings's attack on Buster. PBS was threatened by the Department of Education, the "Sugar Time" episode was distributed by the producers and not PBS, and the Secretary of Education had this to say:
This week, Spellings said that gay issues are not appropriate topics for schools.
"On lifestyle issues, I think it's appropriate for parents to deal with those and address those as they see fit, in their own way and in their own time," Spellings said.
"I believe that as a mother, and I believe that as a policy-maker. For the Department of Education or public broadcasting to get into things that are, you know, in a grayer area, is just not something we need to do."'
Spellings said the education department would not get into issues such as whether gays and lesbians should be prevented from teaching, but, she said, it would get involved when federal tax dollars are being used.
Gay issues should not be in the schools. Got that? So, what might the implications of such a stance be? Well, we can see that homosexuals themselves will not be found in Department of Education materials according to such a policy. But that's only partially right. Let's move on to the issue of sex education.
Everyone knows by now that Bush's Republicans are in love with abstinence-only education, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that it's based in lies and doesn't work. A report (pdf) done at the request of Henry Waxman's office provides evidence of this.
OK, so the programs lie; old news. How does this affect gays? First of all, there's no room for gay people in the "abstinence til marriage" approach. We shouldn't be allowed to marry, and we shouldn't be having sex. Don't take my word for it, though. Here's what Advocates For Youth found:
Programs that focus on abstinence-only-until-marriage are detrimental to GLBT youth, those questioning their sexual orientation, the children of GLBT parents, and GLBT teachers and administrators in the nation's schools. These programs largely ignore homosexuality except as a context for HIV transmission, but some programs implicitly and explicitly stigmatize homosexuality. For example, Sex Respect teaches that, "[R]esearch and common sense tell us the best ways to avoid AIDS are: Remain a virgin until marriage ...Avoid homosexual behavior." When homosexual sexual practices are noted, Sex Respect portrays them as "unnatural behavior." As mandated by the Personal Responsibility Act, abstinence-only-until-marriage education teaches that marriage is the only appropriate context for sexual relations. WAIT Training explicitly seeks to "reframe the act of sexual intercourse as best and most appropriate between two committed married people who love each other." FACTS presents homosexuality as beyond the realm of common sense: "it only makes sense that marriage is the only place for sexual activity to be enjoyed free from negative consequences." Clue 2000 says: "Sexual love, also called conjugal love, is the love between a man and a woman in marriage." At least two abstinence-only curricula are overtly hostile to gay men and lesbians. Clue 2000 engages in the standard, right-wing tactic of conflating homosexuality with pedophilia and incest. Facing Reality assures teachers and parents that presenting homosexuality as intrinsically dangerous is actually in the best interests of students and is not homophobic. It also repeats the outdated notion of AIDS as a gay disease:
[M]any homosexual activists are frustrated and desperate over their own situation and those of loved ones. Many are dying, in part, due to ignorance. Educators who struggle to overcome ignorance and instill self-mastery in their students will inevitably lead them to recognize that some people with AIDS are now suffering because of the choices they made. ...Teachers, in order to preserve an atmosphere of intellectual freedom, should feel confident that when examining health issues and moral implications of homosexual behaviors, they are not engaging in an assault on a particular person or group.
Children are to be taught that homosexuality is immoral and in itself a risk factor for HIV.
Many of them will also go so far as to say that homosexuality is a risk factor for depression and suicide, turning the effects of their warped little world back onto us. Indeed, when specific programs for dealing with suicide risks for queer kids is to happen, the Feds step in:
The Bush administration has told a federally funded conference on LGBT suicide to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from its material.
The conference will be held Feb. 28 in Portland, Ore., and was organized by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center of Newton, Mass with funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
It was originally titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."
But the SAMHSA balked at the name according to the Washington Post. The request to change the name came from SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun who suggested the organizers use "sexual orientation" the Post reports.
[note: The administration did back down here]
Here is the administration's attitude toward queers in education: we shouldn't exist. The only way homosexuality should figure into curricula in these folks' world is this: We're a health problem.
These attacks do have an effect: Queer kids are made to feel more isolated. They don't receive information that could keep them safe sexually. They are stigmatized by the curricula. Anti-queer bullying can't even be addressed.
Diseased Queers
I've already mentioned that we are perceived as a health threat, just by our very being. This was reinforced with the FDA barring any gay man who's had sex in the past five years from being anonymous sperm donors. I want to focus more specifically on HIV, here, though. I've already discussed how my being places me at risk for HIV in BushWorld, the FDA has reinforced it, so I want to take a look at how the relationship gets handled by Bush's Republicans. It ain't pretty.
I'll start with prevention, since that would seem to flow best out of the previous sex ed discussion. Well, the Bush Republicans aren't particularly fond of prevention messages geared toward queer folks:
In the latest example of the increasing politicization of HIV/AIDS prevention efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating San Francisco's STOP AIDS Project--for the second time in two years--to try to determine whether the group is using federal funds appropriately in its prevention outreach to gay and bisexual men.
The inquiry, initiated by newly appointed CDC Director Julie Gerberding, focuses on allegations that the group uses federal money to support HIV/AIDS awareness programs--such as its "Booty Call" and "Great Sex" workshops--that encourage sexual activity and violate federal obscenity standards. In November 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) conducted a similar investigation of STOP AIDS Project's programs and determined that its federal funding could not be revoked because it did not violate San Francisco's community obscenity standards.
The audit of the STOP AIDS Project was not isolated. Several programs have been targeted to ensure that funds aren't used to, well, talk about sex. Those targeted toward men who have sex with men are popular targets. It's happening at the state level, too. Members of Congress have also attacked research funded by the NIH that deals with sexuality issues, and it's become common knowledge in research communities that if you want any federal funding, you'd better not have any of those "queer words" in your project title.
Here are some of the people Bush has appointed to ensure the disaster:
Tom "rampant lesbianism in Oklahoma high schools" Coburn was appointed as chair of the Presidential Council on HIV/AIDS
Jerry Thacker, whose resigned over controversy surrounding his statements that homosexuality is a "deathstyle," that AIDS was a "plague," and that "Christ can rescue the homosexual."
Anita Smith, who tried to keep gay men off PACHA and has said, "What we have here, frankly, is a power struggle between homosexual white men who have used all the government AIDS programs fundamentally to fund their subculture and political activities, versus the other dominate demographic group who's suffering from AIDS, - namely, black women."
A host of abstinence-only advocates associated with CWA and FRC
The abstinence-only approach the Republicans have to sex education is also their attitude toward HIV prevention. They have taken Uganda's highly successful ABC prevention program and effectively dropped the C(ondoms). At the same time, low income PWAs are losing access to drugs. Death is the wage earned by departing from the monogamous heterosexual way in these folks' world.
Fighting off Queer Infection
The Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) has been the most prominent, if least successful, part of the anti-gay assault. Bush has been calling for such an amendment since the Supreme Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas. Rove and the Republicans used same-sex marriage as a wedge issue during the campaign.
Many people greeted Bush's campaign statement, saying basically that he could live with Civil Unions (note, folks: he never endorsed them), as an indication of his tolerance for gay people. They fail to remember that this is the same man who as Governor of Texas supported the retention of Texas's "Homosexual Sodomy Law" and worked behind the scenes to kill a hate crimes law because it included sexual orientation. His "support" for Civil Unions was a politically craven move, trying to shore up support from the middle, and not some indication of tolerance. Any look at his tenure should put the idea to bed that this many has a bone of political tolerance.
There are other areas, though, where the Bushies have been pushing, though. They've been working in other ways to keep homosexuality from infecting the healthy American body.
For instance, there are media efforts. Two of the people implicated in the pay-for-propaganda scandals earlier this year--Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus--were paid specifically to work on marriage initiatives, which of course included the exclusion of gay folks. The issue of the administration's media efforts become easier to see when we remember the Margaret Spellings/Buster incident from above.
Attacks on PBS are nothing new. Indeed, queer issues often become central to the conflicts over PBS. There was the incident earlier this year where a North Carolina representative wanted to ban that state's public broadcasting network from showing queer-themed programming. There was Bob Dole's attack on the program, "In the Life." Does anyone think that the new management at PBS will do anything but purge positive gay images and programming? You'd be a fool to believe it.
Homosexual infection is also being fought within the administration. Let's take Bush's appointment to head the Office of the Special Counsel, Scott Bloch:
Their allegations run the gamut. They claim Bloch has denied help to gay workers who assert sexual-orientation discrimination; dismissed hundreds of whistleblower and discrimination complaints without any investigation; issued illegal gag orders and reassigned or fired employees he suspects of leaking information about him; and left critical staff vacancies open, while hiring numerous unqualified friends at high salaries for unnecessary administrative positions. Worse, they allege that he has politicized what should be a nonpartisan office by squashing investigation into whether Condoleezza Rice had broken campaign law, but speedily pursuing allegations against John Kerry; and vigorously pursuing petty complaints against Democrats and Green Party candidates, while burying complaints against Republicans.
That's quite an abrupt change from the previous OSC special counsel, Clinton appointee Elaine Kaplan -- a union-friendly, open lesbian. It's not surprising that many of the staffers who liked Kaplan don't like Bloch. What is amazing is that the current and former OSC employees who bring these allegations fear retaliation from the very office established to protect federal employees from such retaliation. "I really do think he'll take reprisal action" against subordinates for speaking to the Phoenix, says one current employee, who asked that his name not be used. "Folks are really quite terrified."
THE OSC is known mostly for helping whistleblowers who have suffered retaliation, but it also investigates discrimination -- in fact, it has long been the one and only place for most federal employees to get help in cases of alleged discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission does not redress sexual-orientation discrimination.)
Now, thanks to Bloch, victims of sexual-orientation discrimination have no recourse -- people like Michael Levine, a gay, 32-year Forest Service employee in California. Levine says he was harassed and suspended after co-filing a complaint against a fellow employee's personal use of office resources. According to a witness, the personnel officer who came after Levine said during the process, "Don't you just hate these fucking faggots?"
Levine filled out an OSC complaint form in November 2003, including a letter from the witness. A year later, without any investigation, the case was judged to have no merit and closed.
"That was appalling," says one former OSC investigator who has seen both the Levine complaint and the OSC's response. "That is a no-brainer, that should be investigated."
Not, apparently, according to Bloch, who has publicly indicated that he believes the OSC's statute covers discrimination based on off-duty sexual conduct, not on sexual orientation per se. In other words, according to Bloch, discrimination against an employee for having same-sex relationships can be investigated by the OSC, but discrimination against an employee simply for being homosexual cannot, because that is not conduct. This tortured reading of the statute is contrary to White House and OSC interpretation dating to the Reagan administration.
During Bloch's confirmation process in the fall of 2003, senators suspicious of his beliefs asked him directly about his interpretation. Bloch's answers were vague. Senator Daniel Akaka submitted a series of written follow-up questions to get Bloch to clarify. His four-page response to Akaka talked around the question. For instance, asked directly whether he agrees that the statute covers sexual orientation, Bloch wrote: "I will not fail to enforce if a claim of sexual orientation discrimination comes to my office that shows through the evidence that the statute has been violated." Faced with this mumbo-jumbo, Senator Carl Levin submitted yet another follow-up, which Bloch again managed to answer without answering.
Bloch was playing possum to get confirmed. In February 2004, a month after taking office, he began a "legal review" to determine whether the statute covers sexual-orientation discrimination. At the same time, Bloch ordered all references to sexual-orientation discrimination scrubbed from the OSC Web site, including materials designed to educate employers and employees about the law.
His actions got leaked, embarrassing the White House, which announced in March that the Bush administration believes that the OSC covers sexual orientation. The day after that declaration, Bloch announced via press release that his legal-review project was complete, and that sexual-orientation discrimination cases would be pursued.
But not really. One year later, none of the material taken down from the Web site has been put back. Even the office's official complaint form, newly revised as of February, does not mention sexual orientation. More importantly, not one sexual-orientation-discrimination case has been acted upon under Bloch's tenure.
A de jure ban on gay employment hasn't been put back into place, but the administration is trying to ensure that an environment hostile to gay employees is protected.
We could go even further, and look at the Judges Bush has nominated, or another number of policies and politics the administration has pursued. This feels like it's long enough, though.
What I hoped to show here is that contrary to folks who say the right is "finally overreaching" the administration has been anti-gay since Day 1. The discrete incidents add up to a pattern of attack. These attacks have disastrous consequences.
So, from now on, please remember this: Bush isn't pandering to the Right when he does anti-gay things, he's pandering to the middle when he backs off. The pattern is clear. This is an intensely anti-Gay administration, and they'll go further if allowed to.