Shades of Gay

(Newsweek)

Shades of Gay: With AIDS no longer an all-consuming crisis, the battle

for tolerance has moved to schools, churches, offices and the frontiers

of family life.

By John Leland With Debra Rosenberg, Nadine Joseph, Victoria Scanlan

Stefanakos and Michael CroninEdition: U.S. Edition

Section: Special Report

In their small town in central Pennsylvania, Gary and Greg, both in

their late 30s, are known to neighbors simply as "the guys." The town

is fairly conservative, and the two men thought twice before buying

a house there. But Greg grew up nearby and trusted the people. In

two years they've had few bad experiences. They call each other "honey"

in the grocery store, and the children of their straight friends

call them "uncle" and "uncle." At Gary's office, his straight co-workers

tend to be more up on gay issues than he is, not to mention the plot

lines from "Will & Grace." "They realize we have the same worries

they do," says Gary. "Now in tax season, they'll say, 'That sucks

that you can't put Greg on your return'." Yet within this cocoon of

small-town bonhomie, the two men and their friends straddle the paradox

of gay life in 2000: with every increment of progress in politics,

Hollywood and the workplace, there arise new nodes of friction.

No longer bracketed by the AIDS crisis or the daily thrum of overt

bigotry, gays and straights are engaging in each other's lives in

more intimate ways than ever before, with a contradictory mixture

of progress and resistance. In the following pages, NEWSWEEK explores

the often-disorienting frontiers of a struggle no longer easily defined

by protests or rabid rhetoric: the thorny play between gays and straights

in the family, the schools, the military and the church.

Across the country, men and women like Gary and Greg negotiate lives

that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago. Open homosexuals

cut an unprecedented profile in politics, on television and movies,

and in the mundane vicissitudes of even small-town America. With

role models like rock star Melissa Etheridge and her partner, Julie

Cypher, more couples are having or adopting children, and so engaging

in the civic life of schools, day-care centers and sports leagues.

Employers are increasingly extending health benefits to same-sex partners.

For gay teens, whose experience has often been one of dark isolation,

about 700 high schools now have gay-straight alliances. And the Internet

has become a boundless mecca for gay social life. Even Republicans

are taking at least cautious note of the rising political bloc. After

some awkward sputtering, George W. Bush last week agreed to consider

meeting with the gay Log Cabin Republicans, a tentative but landmark

step for a party and candidate that actively court constituencies

opposed to gay rights. "The anti-gay vote," says Democratic Rep. Barney

Frank, who is openly gay, "is shrinking."

But this tide of good news describes only one half of the paradox.

Last week California passed Proposition 22, becoming the 31st state

to pass a new law banning same-sex marriages (Colorado will soon become

the 32d). These are key losses in what has become one of the most

contentious fronts of the gay-rights movement. Against the protest

of gay groups, Paramount TV announced an upcoming show of Dr. Laura

Schlessinger, whose radio broadcasts reach 20 million listeners, and

who has called homosexuality a "biological error" and gay sex "deviant."

Hate crimes like the murder of Matthew Shepard and Pfc. Barry Winchell,

beaten to death in his bunk at Fort Campbell, Ky., last July, shatter

the most deeply cherished notions of security. Gay people of color,

in particular, often find themselves buffeted by competing biases.

"Holding hands walking down the street?" asks Kevin McGruder, executive

director of Gay Men of African Descent in New York. "That's not something

I'd do in Harlem." For the first time, more gay and bisexual black

and Latino men than whites were diagnosed with AIDS in 1998. For gays

and lesbians, as well as their families and friends, this push-pull

between progress and resistance cuts directly through their lives-

-how to live in a culture that loves Rupert Everett but kills Barry

Winchell?

This ambivalence plays out in two new NEWSWEEK Polls--one of the general

public, the other of gays, lesbians and bisexuals--that draw strikingly

different lines of perceived acceptance and discrimination. About

two thirds of the general public say they have contact with openly

gay people. This familiarity has brought a level of comfort. Fewer

(46 percent, down from 54 percent in 1998) say they believe homosexuality

is a sin, while a high percentage think gays should have equal rights

in employment (83 percent) and housing (78 percent), and that gay

spouses should get benefits from health insurance (58 percent) and

Social Security (54 percent). A small majority of gays, lesbians and

bisexuals (56 percent) say straight people are becoming more tolerant.

Only 9 percent say straights are less tolerant. (Polling gays is notoriously

tricky, and this sample, provided by a marketing company, is likely

to be more upscale and openly gay than the larger gay and lesbian

population.)

On more intimate questions, though, straight people are not always

so comfortable. For all their expressed good will toward homosexuals,

57 percent are opposed to gay marriage; 50 percent say gays should

not adopt; 35 percent oppose gays serving openly in the military;

36 percent say gays should not teach elementary school. Six in 10

gay men and women perceive "a lot" of discrimination against homosexuals.

"Gays and lesbians as a group are still among the most despised minorities,

" says Columbia University researcher Alan Yang, who has analyzed

a wide array of nonpartisan polls. For all the progress of recent

years, he says, the public still ranks gays on a par with undocumented

immigrants.

In her home in conservative Orange County, Calif., last week, Denise

Penn, 40, felt the bitter sting of this contradiction. Penn, who is

bisexual, has always felt comfortable in her community. "In my home

life," she says, "I'm a mom and people I meet just treat me that way.

When some dykey-looking women come over to my house, my neighbors

just casually wave hi." But the battle over Proposition 22, the ban

on gay marriage, shook her. Neighbors displayed a sea of blue and

yellow signs reading protect marriage. She wanted to put up a red

sign opposing the initiative, but her 15-year-old son worried. "He'

s afraid people will hurt me," she says.

The courts and the political arena reflect the conflicted instincts

of the nation at large. As California and Colorado were moving to

ban gay marriage, Vermont's House Judiciary Committee earlier this

month approved a bill that would recognize same-sex "civil unions"

(the bill must still go before the whole House and Senate). The state'

s auditor, Ed Flanagan, is now running to become the first openly

gay man elected to the U.S. Senate. His eight-year career in office,

he maintains, has been neither helped nor hurt by his sexual orientation.

"The most significant thing about coming out [in 1995]," he says,

"was that there really was no change."

On a Sunday afternoon in Pennsylvania, Gary and Greg and their friends

grapple with their mixed fortunes. Instead of rhetorical fury, they

alternate between casual ease and an edge of nuanced grievance. They

mention a mutual friend--goodhearted, straight, liberal. "But he doesn'

t think gay people should adopt," says Barbie Sunderlin, 37, a courier

for Federal Express. "Ed," a dentist, says his brother and sister

accept him, but don't want their kids to know he's gay. "I guess there

must be something wrong with what I am," he says. Peggy Lichty, 41,

who runs a small business, complains that her local Blue Cross/Blue

Shield underwriter doesn't offer a plan that would enable her to cover

her employees' domestic partners. Even acceptance, says Sunderlin,

echoing a lament from the civil-rights movement, has come at the

cost of self-censorship. "We make our inroads in society because we

purposely make ourselves mainstream. Not that you deny your individuality

or your sexuality. But you don't automatically say what you think."

These are the subtle conflicts that shape life in the diminuendo of

the AIDS crisis. Until very recently, the framework for such struggles

didn't even exist. Just six years ago, says Beatrice Dohrn, legal

director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, "the gay-

marriage project... was considered on the loony fringes of the movement.

Judges would say children shouldn't be in the custody of gay couples

and that's it. Now, having children is a serious option. It's a sea

change." Such are the growing pains of a maturing movement. Three

decades after the Stonewall Riots in New York's Greenwich Village,

it's these intimate battles, the home fires, that have become the

fire this time.

ILLUSTRATIONS/PHOTOS: Out and About: Left to right, from previous

page: Judge Michael Sonberg, police officer Gale Griffiths, filmmaker

Catherine Gund and poet Melanie Hope with twins Kofi and Rio and daughter

Sadie Rain (seated), opthalmic technician Nancie March, Vermont state

auditor Ed Flanagan, internal physician Michael Donatelli and Tim

Tutt, third-grade teacher. Everybody's experience is different. Flanagan,

who is running for U.S. Senate, says coming out changed nothing politically

for him. Judge Sonberg says: "It's very strange to be part of the

establishment and yet know you're part of a despised minority. But

you learn to live with it."Out and About: Left to right, from previous