HYPOCRISY OVER GAYS
Scripps Howard News Service (distributed 12/17/99)
Comment

By STEVE SANDERS
Scripps Howard News Service

The University of Pittsburgh recently got its state lawmakers to quickly
and quietly approve a classic back-room fix. The purpose? To protect the
university's ability to discriminate against its gay and lesbian
employees. 

Coincidentally, Pitt is currently advertising for an assistant dean whose
title and portfolio include serving as watchdog over "academic integrity." 

What a wonderful irony.

The Pitt controversy began when a former instructor, Deborah Henson, filed
a complaint with the city's human relations commission. She argued that
the university's failure to provide domestic partner benefits violated the
city's non-discrimination law. The commission agreed.

Domestic partner benefits make things like health insurance available to
the partners of gay employees on the same terms they're available to the
spouses of heterosexuals. Nearly 3,000 employers nationwide _ including
more than 70 Fortune 500 concerns _ already offer them.  

It would be nice to think all these employers recognize an issue of
economic fairness. The reality is that it's more like enlightened
self-interest. 

Companies, universities, and city governments increasingly realize they
must offer equal compensation packages to everyone if they're going to
attract the best employees. A committed couple is a committed couple:  why
should one get perks the other doesn't? 

But Pitt has never seen it that way. For more than two years the
University has behaved like a bully, threatening to subpoena city council
members who voted for gay rights, and using its considerable muscle to
fight Henson and the city every step of the way. 

Last month, out of nowhere, both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature
held unscheduled votes to rush through a bill shielding the university
from complaints like Henson's. (As one observer noted, "These guys trip
over themselves to vote against gays and lesbians.") 

Gov. Tom Ridge signed on enthusiastically, and the law took effect
immediately. Everyone connected with the process knows the university's
fingerprints are all over it. 

Was there rational, considered debate? A fair and open process?  We're
talking about a university, after all, and universities value such things. 
Of course there wasn't. "Academic integrity," indeed. 

I've come to believe that the most powerful human trait necessary to
maintain second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians is not hatred, and
certainly not "morality." It is hypocrisy: 

* The hypocrisy of a university -- supposedly an enlightened place, whose
official publications no doubt include paeans to diversity, integrity,
humanistic values, and all that -- lobbying to change state law and crush
a complaint by a former employee on a matter of social and economic
justice.

* The hypocrisy of powerful religious leaders who twist scripture out of
context, and appeal to ignorance and misunderstanding.

* The hypocrisy of a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,
now revealed to have been keeping a mistress (yes, we're talking about
Newt Gingrich), rushing passage three years ago of the so-called "defense
of marriage act." DOMA, which flew through both Republican-controlled
houses of Congress, was the product of phony election-year hysteria about
the imminent possibility of legalized gay marriage.

As attorney general of Georgia, Michael Bowers went all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court to defend the state's sodomy law, thereby preserving
the threat that gays could be arrested and prosecuted for having sex in
the privacy of their homes. When Bowers ran for governor last year, he had
to admit he had been having a long-running extramarital affair. 

Nothing, though, tops what happened last year in Anderson, Ind. A
51-year-old bus driver named Butch Kimmerling was outraged that a male
couple wanted to adopt his 8-year-old foster child. Right-wing politicians
rallied to Kimmerling and proposed a state law to ban all homosexuals from
adopting on the grounds they make unfit parents. 

Six months later, Kimmerling was charged with child molesting. Police say
he confessed to having had sexual contact with the same little girl he had
fought so hard to keep two gay men from adopting into a loving and
permanent home. 

Congressman Barney Frank, the tart-tongued Massachusetts Democrat, likes
to say it's a sign of progress for gay people that their adversaries have
run out of credible arguments, and must resort to hypocrisy and lies in
attempts to indict gay people's character and deny them legal rights. 

Frank is right. It's just a shame this means we have to endure such rank
behavior from leaders and institutions we're supposed to respect. It's a
shame that so many injustices need to be perpetuated, and that so many
people have to suffer along the way.  

(Steve Sanders writes and teaches about gay and lesbian politics at
Indiana University.)