Baltimore Sun
Sunday, October 18, 1998

HATE SPEECH CAN STIR UP HATEFUL ACTS
Some claim rhetoric of gay-bashers led to man's death in Wyo.

By Steve Sanders

     Maybe Trent Lott didn't even mean it.

     When the Senate majority leader went on a conservative radio show
last summer and compared gay people to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, gay
and lesbian leaders took it not so much as a personal insult but as a sop
to the Republican Party's restive right-wing base. 

     As if on cue, full-page ads appeared in major newspapers, touting the
ability of "ex-gay ministries" to convert gays to heterosexuality.  And
the religious right's top echelon, led by putative presidential candidate
Gary Bauer, fanned out on the TV circuit, calmly explaining how
homosexuality is immoral, a danger to children and a threat to the
nation's values. 

     This week, as talk radio and the internet exploded with questions and
outrage over the murder of a gay college student in Wyoming, Lott, Bauer,
and the ex-gay charlatans found themselves accused by some as accessories
to a hate crime.  Thousands of homosexuals suffer harassment and violence
each year.  But in a season of extraordinary anti-gay acrimony and
backlash, Matthew Shepard -- pistol-whipped, lashed to a rail fence and
left to die -- became, for many, the first martyr.

     At a candlelight vigil on the campus of Eastern Michigan University
Wednesday night, Paul Heaton, a gay leader in Ypsilanti, Mich., said
"Matthew Shepard's death means, despite our phenomenal progress in
educating and enlightening people, our work is really just beginning. 

     "We have to tell our friends and neighbors what the true message is
behind all of the anti- gay rhetoric: these people would just as soon have
us go away.  Some, obviously, would prefer us dead." 
     
     Like all martyrdoms, Shepard's death has taken on profound emotional
and symbolic significance.  But reactions throughout the week, from the
White House to the Christian Coalition, seemed to underscore how deeply
conflicted our political culture remains, and how ambivalent most
Americans still feel, over gay rights and visibility. 

     Initial messages of sympathy from President Clinton and Vice
President Gore skirted the fact Shepard was gay.  Christian Coalition
leader Randy Tate issued a statement deploring the "barbaric attack," but
denied it had anything to do with the young man's sexual orientation. 
"All murder," Tate said, "is a hate crime." 

     Though it seems ironic to say so in the wake of the Shepard tragedy,
America has seen a gradual but undeniable shift in attitudes -- reflected
in public opinion, popular culture, and the law -- toward more acceptance
and support for gay people and issues.  But the progress is rarely
unambiguous or without setbacks. 

     Ellen Degeneres made history as TV's first lesbian lead, and got
yanked a year later amid gripes she was "too gay."  The Supreme Court in
1996 swept away an anti-gay Colorado ballot initiative, finding it
motivated by little more than dislike of an unpopular minority, yet this
week the Court let stand a similar measure in Cincinnati. 

     Polls show two-thirds of Americans oppose civil marriage for gay
couples, yet three- quarters agree they're no less fit than straight
people as parents.  Fifty-six percent still view sex between two
same-gender adults as "always wrong" (down from 74 percent 10 years ago),
yet more than 80 percent agree gays should have equal job rights. 
     
     This fall openly lesbian candidates are running for Congress in
California, Washington and Wisconsin.  Voters in Hawaii and Alaska will
consider ballot initiatives that may determine the fate of equal marriage
rights for same-sex couples.  And the media are devoting greater (and less
sensationalized) attention to issues like employment discrimination and
the mysteries behind sexual preference and behavior. 

     Such signs of progress help explain why right-wing leaders like
Bauer, televangelist Pat Robertson and Focus on the Family's James Dobson
-- for whose political and media empires homosexuality has been both an
effective wedge issue and a powerful fund raising mantra -- this summer
decided to escalate the war of words.

     Whether in expensive ads in the New York Times or syndicated
diatribes on low-watt radio stations, the well-worn assertions are mostly
the same. 

     Gays "choose" a "lifestyle" of which the Bible and most Americans
disapprove.  Society should never legally recognize a relationship between
two men or two women because to do so would undermine family and morality. 
Efforts to include gays in the same legal protections that cover racial
and ethnic minorities, religious belief, women and the disabled are sneaky
attempts by "militant homosexuals" to win unfair advantages.

     More sophisticated leaders like Bauer and Tate bristle at the charge
they're fomenting hate, and the ex-gay ads profess sympathy and "hope" for
homosexuals.  But farther from Washington, the rhetoric gets more crude. 
What's disturbing about these messages -- spread through church
newsletters, campaign spots, and letters to the editor -- is their
propensity to employ fabricated statistics, or simply tell willful and
knowing lies, and to do so as many times, and with as much conviction and
tenacity, as possible.

     Republican congressional candidates tar their opponents for
supporting "special rights"  legislation that would create quotas and
"force churches and schools to hire homosexuals."  (The proposed federal
anti-discrimination bill actually exempts churches and prohibits
affirmative action.)  An Indiana state lawmaker named Woody Burton (who
happens to be the brother of adulterous absentee father and U.S. Rep. Dan
Burton) promotes a law that would end gays' ability to adopt, invoking the
vicious myth that they are more likely to molest children. 

     The web site of the American Family Association, based in Tupelo,
Miss., propagates such "facts" as the statistics (attributed only to "two
homosexual researchers") that 17 percent of gay males "report eating
and/or rubbing themselves with the feces of their partners," and 15
percent report sex with animals.
     
     Between quotations from Scripture, callers on late night talk radio
assert the gay male life expectancy is a mere 43 years (a figure arrived
at, it turns out, when a defrocked psychologist averaged the ages of some
men whose deaths from AIDS had been reported in gay newspapers). In the
face of mounting research to the contrary -- not to mention common sense
and the personal experiences cited by most gay people -- shills for ex-gay
ministries insist homosexuality is a chosen, curable behavior. The
corollary is that any harm gays suffer is their own fault.  And anyone who
says otherwise, they assure you, is lying. 

     Some of this rhetoric has been on the airwaves around Fort Collins,
Colo. -- an hour from where Matthew Shepard's skull was crushed -- as
voters there prepare to decide November 3 whether the city will adopt its
own gay rights ordinance. 

     When a network of heavily funded "pro-family" groups, joined by
prominent national politicians, goes to such extraordinary lengths to
poison debate, sow misunderstanding, and villify a minority group for
subverting values and social institutions, it becomes less shocking that
two high school dropouts somewhere in rural America would take matters in
their own hands by robbing and torturing a slightly built gay college
student who happened to cross their path.

     Would tougher state or federal hate-crime laws -- laws that would
include gays, as most now don't -- prevent such tragedies?  Perhaps not.
It's worth noting, though, that the same right- wing panjandrums who
quibble over whether Shepard's lynching was a hate crime just finished
lobbying Congress for enhanced punishments against people who burn flags. 
They recognize that laws are important not only for their practical
effect, but because they make statements about society's values. 

     So long as bigots and hypocrites dominate the nation's conversation
about gay issues, the world will be a safer place for anti-gay rhetoric
and politicians. 

     And a more dangerous place for people like Matthew Shepard.

____________________


     Steve Sanders writes and teaches about gay/lesbian politics at
Indiana University, and chairs the Bloomington (Ind.) Human Rights
Commission.