A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society.

A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, by Bruce Bawer (Poseidon, 268 pp., $21)

HERE, one is invited to believe, is a book that we have been waiting for. The author, who has written cultural criticism for conservative journals such as The New Criterion and The American Spectator, proposes a civil and reasonable discussion about the place of homosexuality and homosexuals in American life. His title is from President Clinton's expressed hope for "an American home where everyone has a place at the table." Mr. Bawer contends that inviting homosexuals to the table need not disrupt, and can greatly enhance, our life together. The public debate about homosexuality to date, he says, has been conducted mostly by "belligerent extremists" on all sides. It is time to get civilized about the subject.

He wants his readers to embrace "my hope in the ultimate triumph of reason over irrationality, acceptance over estrangement, love over loathing." More specifically, he wants to persuade his fellow homosexuals that "there's no inherent conflict between homosexuality and decency." (The book is about male homosexuality. Lesbianism, he says, is entangled with the issues of feminism, "which is another ballgame entirely.") In responding to social prejudices, Mr. Bawer sets himself firmly against the self-declared "queers" who "return rancor for rancor," and almost as firmly against "completely closeted gays" who, he says, live a life of fear and dissimulation. He describes himself as a "monogamous, churchgoing  Christian" and assures us that society's full acceptance of him and his kind will not frighten the horses and should not frighten any fair-minded citizen.

Mr. Bawer knows that, in offering this apologia, he is likely to come in for severe criticism from what is euphemistically called the gay community. The first half of the book--his analysis of the widespread "homophobia" that allegedly makes homosexuality a "problem" for society--betrays considerable nervousness about being perceived as the gay equivalent of an Uncle Tom. He repeatedly protects himself by explaining that even the most outrageous behavior of the "belligerent .extremists" on the homosexual side is an understandable reaction to society's oppression. Yet other homosexuals, he says, will criticize him for being so uncool as to be bothered by what other people think.

"In such circles, writing a book like the present one is the most unsophisticated thing that anybody could do. It's bad form; it reveals that people's attitudes about homosexuality matter to you. Among such homosexuals, the approved attitude toward bigots is one of condescension  .... The bigots, after all, are morons, servants, proles; they're the ones who deliver your groceries, repair your car, take your ticket at the theater or the movies or the ballet. Who cares what they think? The philosophy of such homosexuals can be summed up in one sentence: 'How can you possibly insult me when I hold you in no esteem whatsoever?'" Bruce Bawer cares very much what other people think. His care is poignant; it is sometimes tinged by desperation. He wants to be accepted; he wants his "marriage" with Chris Davenport to be approved; he wants to help spare boys the anguish that attends growing up gay in America.

There is no denying that public debates over homosexuality in the last decade and more have often been fevered, confused, uncivil, and downright nasty. It is frequently forgotten that agitations about homosexuality are part of a great cultural commotion about sexuality itself. The homosexual insurgency did not come out of nowhere. It is the logical extension of the doctrine, which has now assumed dogmatic status in this "therapeutic society," that there is no higher morality than self-realization through self-expression. Some heterosexuals who oppose the insurgency, including some calling themselves conservatives, do not have the nerve or the wit to challenge the dogma that gave it birth. They wink at fornication and adultery, and take in stride the serial polygamy that is the current practice of divorce. They are in a doubtful moral position to censure homosexuals, who, in Joseph Campbell's feather-brained phrase, also want to "follow their bliss." Such heterosexuals are, as Mr. Bawer might say, hypocrites.

One big problem with A Place at the Table is that Mr. Bawer throws around words like hypocrite rather indiscriminately. For someone who wants to foster civil conversation, he has the bad habit of bringing more fuel to overheated disputes. Or perhaps it is more than a habit. Perhaps the author, unable to explain why people disagree with him, has no choice but to indulge in unbridled polemic that frequently verges on vituperation. Repeatedly, we are told that those who do not approve of homosexuality are sexually insecure. Mr. Bawer is even-handed, however. The "queer" militants who disagree with him are also sexually insecure. Now in fact one expects that most people, sexual turbulence being as it is, are sexually insecure, more or less, at some times more than others. Certainly Mr. Bawer in his more vituperative moments does not evince the tranquillity that he claims for himself.

It is an annoying conceit in the literature of homosexual advocacy to assert that heterosexuals disapprove of homosexuality because they envy what they perceive as the sexual fun and freedom that gays have. It seems altogether probable that some straight men do. It is also more than possible that some men with strong homosexual desires hate themselves for feeling as they do, and vent that hatred in hostility to homosexuals.

But to attempt to explain, meaning to explain away, those who disagree with you by reference to fear and envy is no way to conduct a civil argument. It is especially unbecoming in an author who could not be more explicit in confessing his envy of the domestic security and social acceptance enjoyed by heterosexuals. In addition, such sexual insecurity and envy does nothing to explain why women are as disapproving of homosexuality as men. Feminism may be "another ballgame entirely" for Mr. Bawer, but he should not have to be reminded that women constitute more than half of this putatively homophobic society.

The author just knows that those who disagree with him, both gay and straight, are "operating out of fear, or ignorance, or both." Those who opposed opening the military to gays produced "a disgraceful spectacle." The role of heterosexuals is "to listen and learn," while homosexuals are qualified to be teachers because they know both the gay and the straight worlds. Mr. Bawer is not asking for tolerance. He despises tolerance. Tolerance, as distinct from acceptance, is the result of "sheer ignorance." People, such as William Buckley, who disapprove of homosexuality while they have homosexual friends are guilty of "moral cowardice," "inconsistency," and "brutality." They are "simply hypocrites." So much for civility. The author's controlling presupposition, as distinct from argument, is that "disapproval of homosexuality--as distinguished from disapproval of certain aspects of the gay subculture, or of the 'lifestyle' choices of certain gay individuals--is not a morally legitimate option."

Now it seems obvious that the great majority of people for various reasons and in varying degrees--disapprove of homosexuality. This is true also by Mr. Bawer's own account of our allegedly homophobic culture. Since such disapproval is "not a morally legitimate option," it would appear that most people are beyond the pale of the reasonable discussion for which the author calls. Put differently, approval (not mere toleration) of homosexuality is the ticket to the discussion. The discussion is not about whether homosexuality should be approved or disapproved, but only about how approval is to be secured in social practice and policy. That is a rather narrow discussion, and, since this reviewer does not hold a ticket, anything we might say here will presumably be dismissed as irrelevant by Mr. Bawer. Nonetheless, we soldier on in the hope of advancing the conversation that, despite all, the author seems to want.

In engaging Mr. Bawer's arguments one engages the chief contentions of the gay-advocacy genre of which this book is part. For example, he addresses the obvious question of just how many gays or homosexuals (he uses the terms interchangeably) there are. The old Kinsey figure, claiming that 10 per cent of the male population is homosexual, has now been thoroughly discredited. Current research indicates that in the United States, as in other developed societies, somewhat over 1 per cent of the population is exclusively homosexual. Mr. Bawer is not buying. He notes that the new figure cannot be trusted because in a homophobic society some men are reluctant to tell interviewers that they are homosexual. He does not note that the Kinsey "finding" rested upon extremely dubious methodology, including data gathered from an unrepresentatively large number of men in prison. Mr. Bawer offers no scientific research that might challenge the now accepted figure of 1 per cent. But he does have his impressions. "My own experience, not only in New York City but in cities and towns around the United States and elsewhere, suggests to me that the 10 per cent figure is about right."

This is less than persuasive. One sees what one wants to see, and Mr. Bawer leaves no doubt that he wants to see the pervasiveness of homosexuality in American society. In addition, he has the tedious habit of assuming that every man who pays attention to him is interested in going to bed with him. For but one instance, he and his friend Chris pass on the street a young man walking arm in arm with his wife and pushing a baby carriage. young husband's eyes will suddenly meet mine or Chris's in a fleeting, painful, haunted stare, and all at once we'll both realize that the picture is a lie, a forgery, and that this family's home is built on quicksand." Not necessarily so. The fellow's stare may reflect his thought that there are too many strange people on the streets of New York and it's time to take the family and move up to Westchester. We don't know what that husband was thinking. We do know that homosexual advocates have a propensity for, and an interest in, believing that the straight world is a hypocritical facade behind which men writhe in sexual envy of gays.

Whether homosexuals are 1 per cent or 10 per cent of the male population may be a matter of indifference in determining whether homosexuality should be approved. But it obviously is a matter of great concern to both gay advocates and their opponents, and understandably so. Statistically, it bears on the question of how deviant or marginal homosexuality may be. That, in turn, bears on the question of how much society should bend to accommodate gay demands, and on the political clout behind those demands. Also, the dispute over numbers is, however implicitly and intuitively, a dispute over morality. Both friends and foes of the gay movement sense that there may be some connection between the normal and the normative. And once that is allowed, it is but a short step to the consideration of the natural and unnatural. After that step, the danger is that people might make connections with the moral and immoral; they might even invoke venerable concepts such as natural law. Recognizing the danger, gay advocates are eager to block this line of thinking before it starts. Hence the insistence that 10 per cent--or, as some gays contend, much more than 10 per cent--of the male population is homosexual. Not for nothing is one of the favored slogans of the movement "We Are Everywhere!"

A related dogma in gay advocacy is that, when it comes to being homosexual or not, there is no choice, no ambiguity, and no gradation. Especially no choice. Some gays dissent from this dogma, claiming that being gay is their choice (as in "sexual preference"), but Mr. Bawer is not among them. Whether one is homosexual "is certainly fixed by early childhood (if not by birth)." It is to be embraced as one's "fate" or "destiny"; free will has nothing to do with it. And there are no ambiguities. "A man who is more tempted by homosexuality than heterosexuality is a homosexual." And a boy of, say, 14 years? Bawer does not say directly, but every example he gives suggests that those who waver in their sexual orientation are in fact homosexual. "Either you're gay or you're not," he writes. And if you are in doubt, you are gay. If you are more homosexually than heterosexually tempted at some time or in some circumstances, you are gay.

But surely that cannot be right. Human beings, and maybe males more than females, have an almost infinite capacity for sexual fantasy and temptation. There are people who say that they have never given a thought to fornication or adultery, never mind homogenital sex, pedophilia, or incest. And if they ever did have such a thought, it was immediately repelled with deep and automatic revulsion. Good for them. The rest of us should try to believe them, while acknowledging that their experience is not ours. Like Mr. Bawer, they live in a world untouched by sexual ambiguity. Those who know the shadowed sides of sexual desire, however, do not usually believe that their vagrant temptations define who they are.

We do not think, for example, that a man who is, at some point, more strongly attracted to another woman than to his wife is in fact an adulterer. (Except in the sense that, as Jimmy Carter quoted Jesus, he may have committed adultery in his heart.) Rather, we say he is a husband who is sorely tried. Contra Bawer, the capacity to behave in a certain way, even when joined to an intense and repeated desire to behave in a certain way, does not require that a person behave in that way in order to be "true to himself." There are ways of behaving that, no matter how attractive, we know to be false to ourselves. For those whom Mr. Bawer defines as homosexual, not to act upon desire is to lead "a tortured, empty, loveless life." To love the good and resist evil, one might counter, is the most basic rule for human flourishing. Contemporary gay advocacy does return us to such fundamentals of Ethics 101.

Put simply, most of us live in a world of right and wrong. Apart from the wrong of those who disagree with him, Mr. Bawer lives in a world of right and right. There is a right way "for me" and a right way "for you." Biology is fate, and fate determines whether you are gay or straight. The rest is simply a matter of "doing what comes naturally." Thus is the authority of the natural, even the moral imperative of the natural, invoked for the doing of the unnatural. This deterministic reading of human behavior is crucially important to the purposes of the gay movement. Chastity is not virtue but a form of self-crippling. Moreover, nothing can be done to "cure" homosexuals or to help them develop their heterosexual potential. Psychological programs and Christian ministries aimed at helping people toward heterosexuality are a fraud. There is no such thing as an ex-gay, according to Mr. Bawer. There are only fulfilled gays and frustrated gays. This view, he says, is supported by "reputable psychologists," ignoring the fact that reputable psychologists and a great deal of human experience can be mustered on the other side of the question.

The relentless assault on the idea that there may be an element of choice or decision and the polemic against the effort to help the sexually conflicted toward a heterosexual resolution are understandable. That idea and that effort challenge the deterministic foundation of the gay ideology by suggesting that, despite the impulses and desires by which we are racked, people are moral agents possessed of free will and are responsible for the lives they lead. There are many influences over which we have slight control, but we are never simply "fated" or "destined." While Bawer's is not a work of philosophy, underlying the advocacy is an unexamined philosophical anthropology that is at odds with any possible philosophy of human freedom. Again, this way of thinking is not unique to gay advocacy. Our culture is largely dominated by the imperative of being "free to be me"--with "me" being defined by our strongest libidinal urgencies. There is no honest way of countering the gay argument without recognizing that it is part and parcel of assumptions to which many, if not most, heterosexuals also subscribe.

How to Raise Gay Sons

AT a practical level, the gay argument for determinism means that nothing should be done to dissuade a youngster from acting on his homosexual desires. "Above all," writes Mr. Bawer, "what parents must be helped to understand is that they cannot reduce this 'risk' [of a boy being homosexual]. What they can reduce dramatically, however, by raising their children not to draw oppressive 'distinctions' between straight and gay, is the risk that those children, if they do discover themselves to be gay, will despise the idea so much as to be incapable of facing it honestly and living with it responsibly." He proposes that society develop "rituals of courtship" for gay boys, and encourage them to aspire toward forming a lasting and committed relationship in homosexual "marriage."

Interestingly, Mr. Bawer says he did not discover that he is homosexual until he was in college. It came upon him "instantaneously, with the force of a thunderclap." He admits that "it may sound incredible that it could have taken me as long as it did to realize I was gay," and in fact it is incredible since elsewhere he describes his earlier and uneasy erotic relationships with boys. More important, he says that he now views his late recognition as "a blessing, a manifestation of a valuable defense mechanism that protects young people from the truth about themselves until they're ready to accept it."

His own account makes it clear that an awareness of social opprobrium discouraged him from an earlier identification of himself as homosexual. Was society's "homophobia" in his case, then, a blessing? And would not rituals of courtship and other positive reinforcements for quicker boys who have their thunderclap experience at, say, age 12 deprive them of the waiting period for which Mr. Bawer is grateful in his own case? But the story of his epiphany is convenient for his argument that "you are or you aren't." In making that argument, he typically speaks about adult males, even if only of college age. However, most heterosexual adults, and parents in particular, are anxious about homosexuality as it pertains to the sexual development of younger boys.

On the one hand, Mr. Bawer says to the sexually uncertain boy: If you think you are, you are. And he calls upon parents to be "accepting" of that "discovery" and show that they approve it. On the other hand, he says it is a good thing that, at least in his case, he was protected from the recognition of his homosexuality until he was prepared to handle it responsibly. As the author likely knows, current disputes over homosexuality are largely driven by concern about what happens to little boys. That has probably always been the case. Mr. Bawer and others may be right when they say that the North American ManBoy Love Association is on the kooky fringe of the homosexual subculture. There is no secret, however, about the significant role that boys play in the actual and fantasy world of homosexuality. Nor, one assumes, would Mr. Bawer attempt to deny that all adult male homosexuals were once boys who were, at some time at least, more or less uncertain about their sexual orientation and "identity."

It is beside the point, and more than a little disingenuous, to contend that most sexual abuse of young people happens in the non-gay world. Given that. 90 to 99 per cent of the population is not homosexual, most of everything happens in the non-gay world. Whether or not the relative incidence of such abuse is higher among homosexuals (and it is highly counter-intuitive to suggest that it is not), many gays are entirely straightforward about their goal of recruiting boys to the homosexual subculture. Mr. Bawer knows that and he disapproves of it, as he disapproves of so much in the subculture. (He disapproves but, despite his "mainstream monogamy," he indicates that he regularly "visits" that subculture on the side.) To be sure, gays have no monopoly on sexual abuse. But gay sexual abuse is different in that it is the seduction of the young into a long-term, perhaps life-long, "alternative lifestyle." Moreover, much gay ideology denies the appropriateness of terms such as abuse and seduction. It is, according to this way of thinking, simply a matter of helping boys to accept and enjoy what they already are, namely, gay. If it happens that a boy is not gay, he will view the encounter as a kinky experience that he puts behind him as he moves on to take his place in the straight world.

The dogma, then, is that all homosexuals were "fated" to be homosexual, and anything anybody might try to do to change their sexual orientation is futile and cruel. To which some of us will want to respond, as calmly and respectfully as possible, that such claims are not supported by our knowledge of human behavior based upon careful reflection and our own experience--personal, pastoral, and clinical. This disagreement cannot be resolved "scientifically' by, for example, the finding of a gene that disposes a person to homosexual desire. Whether the behavior in question is homosexuality, alcoholism, or violence, a finding of biological disposition does not require or justify acting on that disposition.

And, no matter how deterministic we are in theory, we all live as if we and others are moral agents possessed of free will. As numerous philosophers of determinism have put it with ironic resignation, we have no choice but to act as if we are free. The dogma of homosexual determinism, it becomes evident, is in the service of a prior decision. The determinative reality is that Mr. Bawer, along with the gay movement, approves of homosexual behavior and condemns those who do not approve. When all the contentions about scientific findings and social oppression are cleared away, we are faced with what is inescapably and irreducibly a moral judgment.

In truth, most Americans do not get very agitated about what the beautiful young men, and the not so beautiful middle-aged men, are doing in the local equivalent of Greenwich Village. Homosexuality becomes the subject of public controversy when it touches on the vulnerabilities of young people. That was the case in the battle over the "Rainbow Curriculum" in New York City public schools, and is the case in similar battles around the country. People oppose quota systems for gays, the blessing of gay unions, and other steps aimed at creating the impression of "moral equivalency" between homosexuality and heterosexuality because they want their children to grow up heterosexual. Exactly why parents so passionately want their children not to be homosexuals is a question insufficiently explored by gay advocates such as Mr. Bawer. The passion is airily derided as homophobia. Maybe phobia, if we allow that some phobias may be rational, is the right word. But of what are people afraid?

Fear is the flip side of hope. For most people, marriage and family is the most important and demanding project of their lives. For this great good they have made sacrifices beyond numbering, and they fervently hope that their children will embrace and continue the project. They want grandchildren. Moreover, they know that, without the discipline of a woman in marriage, men are inclined to promiscuous behavior that is destructive for them and others. In sum, they want the best for their children, including the morally best. If they believe that a homosexual way of life is immoral or, at most, a sorry substitute for the best, they will not want their children to be homosexuals. Mr. Bawer must try to persuade such parents that they are wrong. But here he and others of like mind are in something of a bind.

In support of the argument that the homosexual life is not a choice, Mr. Bawer contends that no rational person would choose it. The homosexual life, both "mainstream" and "subcultural," is depicted in grim terms. Homosexuals are the victims of social contempt and persecution. The gay world is anything but gay; it is inhabited by an inordinate number of the neurotic, the self-absorbed, the lonely, the alcoholic, the sexually compulsive, and the suicidal. And all of it shrouded by the specter of deadly communicable disease. Of course the sad reality of the gay world is, according to Mr. Bawer, the consequence of the society's homophobia. But his point is that, since no rational person would choose to be part of such a world, homosexuality is not a choice.

One might well agree that it is not a rational choice, while knowing that people-especially young people, and especially in the sphere of the sexual-do not always, do not typically, behave according to calculations of rational choice. Moreover, the stark way in which Mr. Bawer and others depict the homosexual life can only reinforce the prejudices that they blame for their unhappiness. It can only strengthen the desire of parents that their children be spared the miseries of that life, and thereby, according to Mr. Bawer's argument, only increase the miseries of those in that life and those headed for that life. All homosexuals have suffered for being homosexual, says Mr. Bawer; all are victims, including "mainstream" homosexuals like himself who, he claims, have achieved a modicum of happiness. It follows--although this is the opposite of what he wants to suggest that parents have every reason to hope that their children will not be homosexuals. The argument ends up in an impossible muddle, and gay ideology offers no way out of it.

Abandon All Hope?

IT COMES back to the dogma of determinism. Mr. Bawer cannot bring himself to say: "My living the way that I do is significantly, if not determinatively, contingent upon my decision, and I am prepared to make a moral case for my decision." According to his account, being gay is something, and finally an unfortunate something, that just happened to him. How he lives is ordained by that fate. Most non-homosexual Americans, on the other hand, cannot bring themselves to abandon their own life experience that sexual desire is a realm of ambiguity, confusion, gradation, temptation, and decision. It is also a realm of moral possibility. Certainly most parents are not prepared to accept that, with respect to sexuality or anything else, they can have no positive influence on what their children will become. That, they rightly sense, would be to abandon hope and resign the office of parenthood. And so it would seem that, between Mr. Bawer's movement and this homophobic society, that is where the argument stands. Stalemate.

A Place at the Table is a book very much worth reading. For all its incivilities, it is as civil an expression of gay ideology as we are likely to get. Mr. Bawer discusses, often with lucidity and literary grace, the goals of the movement, conflicts within the movement, the importance of approval by the churches, the negative aspects of quota systems for gays, and why conservatives should support gay unions as a simulacrum of marriage. Each of these discussions warrants an essay in itself, but for that there is neither time nor space. I would not end, however, without responding to the poignant plea with which the book concludes. It has to do with Mr. Bawer and his friend Chris Davenport, and the home they have made for themselves. He asks us to "recognize this relationship as a blessing, as something touched by grace." In the final line of the book, he asks us, he almost begs us, to look at them and say, "What they feel for each other is a good thing. Let us rejoice in it."

How might we respond to his plea? Lovingly and truthfully, one hopes; with a love that dare not deceive and a truth that does not want to wound. Much of what they presumably feel for each other--the comforts of companionship, the mutual bearing of burdens, their shared devotion as Christians--is undoubtedly a good thing. We can and should rejoice in it. And nobody is beyond a blessing, nor is anything human untouched by grace. But there is an awful sadness. Those who understand homosexuality as an objective disorder and homogenital sex as intrinsically wrong cannot in good conscience offer their moral approval of the way of life chosen by Mr. Bawer and Mr. Davenport. They may think it a lesser evil than ways chosen by some other gays in the bleak subculture described in this book. They can offer their understanding, their compassion, their prayers, their friendship, and the promise of forgiveness and new life. Of course none of these is what Mr. Bawer is asking for. He leaves no doubt that he despises and rejects what can be offered. We must morally approve or else be counted as the enemy. One is sorry, truly sorry, that Mr. Bawer and so many others think that that is the way it has to be. But that is their choice. One hopes that they will reconsider.

Father Neuhaus is editor-in-chief of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life.