Gay Goes Mainstream

If there was any doubt left that a potential war with Iraq is what's on everyone's mind, it was erased with the opening joke of a recent episode of "Will and Grace." After Karen flirts outrageously with the handsome owner of the restaurant in which they are eating, Grace asks, "Are you trying to get a date with that man?" Karen answers with her best baby-doll voice: "Oh, honey. I haven't had a date since Bush was president and we were about to invade Iraq."

The line captured perfectly the intersection of foreign policy and camp sensibility (bet you didn't know about that intersection). That such a joke could be made on television's only queer sit-com is part of an interesting phenomenon: Many pockets of the organized queer community are taking policy stands on the potential war. This didn't happen in 1991 during Gulf War I, and has happened only rarely since. (Two years ago, for instance, a number of gay groups took stances against the death penalty.) Ironically, it marks not only the maturation of the gay movement, but also a return to its origins in a politics of broad social change.

Consider how the community responded to the first President Bush's war against Iraq. Back then, the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) issued a strong statement against the war. It declared the war an international social-justice issue that demanded NGLTF's attention, given the organization's mandate to deal with gay-and-lesbian issues. From NGLTF's point of view, the Persian Gulf War would adversely affect not just the lives of those lesbians and gay men in the armed forces, but also vital domestic-spending programs on health care and research for AIDS.

NGLTF was the only national gay group to take such a stand, and it was excoriated by the gay press and public for having strayed beyond the narrowly drawn definition of a "gay issue." It's true that there were a few local grassroots groups, such as independently organized chapters of ACT UP, that did the same. But for the most part, NGLTF stood alone in its stance against the war. The group took substantial hits in its fundraising for having involved itself in issues that were not "gay."

Fast-forward to the second President Bush and, presumably, the second war in the Persian Gulf. NGLTF has again taken a stance on the war. But so, too, have the Log Cabin Republicans, the Metropolitan Community Church, the Lavender Green Caucus (which advocates on behalf of gay-and-lesbian issues within the Green Party), and the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network (CABN), a queer grassroots advocacy group that has published a series of advertisements in both of Chicago's gay papers publicizing its stance. These groups have been joined by a host of openly queer celebrities, including R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray, Ani DiFranco, and Lily Tomlin, all of whom have come out publicly against a potential war with Iraq.

Clearly, a lot has changed.

Consider the language and tone of these antiwar statements. Here's CABN's Dec. 15 statement against the war: "A new U.S. war will indirectly kill people in our community here at home by diverting necessary funds away from already scaled-back social service programs. For example, programs that prevent HIV+ people from losing their homes and provide other life-saving services are already facing severe cutbacks during the current recession as a bloated military budget is given precedence over everything else. Just this year we've seen huge cutbacks at Horizons Community Services and the Howard Brown Health Center, while three AIDS service agencies collapsed into one in order to save money, and the entire $2.5 million state of Illinois budget for AIDS minority outreach was wiped out."

The statement was signed by many of Illinois's most prominent queer activists, including Larry McKeon, the state's out gay state representative; Miranda Stevens-Miller, a noted transgender activist; and the Reverends Alma Crawford and Karen Hutt, co-pastors of Church of the Open Door, the city's black GLBT congregation. Additionally, many activists with Equality Illinois, the most vocal GLBT lobbying group in the state, signed on as individuals.