Are gays really rich?

The catalog shows a well-heeled gay male couple from the city visiting a pair of lesbians at their rustic but posh cabin in the woods. Everybody wears the vendor's upscale clothes, drives $30,000 sport-utility vehicles, and relaxes for an outdoorsy weekend of giggles, intimacy, and playing fetch with a purebred puppy.

It's an image of luxury, of economic and social contentment, of health and leisure. And, some gay activists contend, it's a mostly false perspective on gay and lesbian life that is fast becoming the most potent weapon in the religious right's antigay arsenal. "This is a totally distorted picture of the economic status of gays and lesbians," says Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts and director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies. "It keeps popping up in all sorts of destructive ways."

Indeed, archconservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia implied that gays are well-off in his dissent of the court's landmark 1996 ruling striking down Colorado's antigay Amendment 2. "Those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in disproportionate numbers in certain communities ... have high disposable income ... and of course care about homosexual-rights issues much more ardently than the public at large," the justice wrote. As such, Scalia implied, gay men and lesbians use this alleged wealth and power to bully hetero America into "not merely a grudging social toleration, but full social acceptance, of homosexuality."

Yet this image was created not by enemies of gays but by those wishing to convince corporate America that gays are a viable target market for cars, travel packages, and a host of other goods. Two marketing agencies, Simmons Market Research Bureau in New York and Overlooked Opinions in Chicago, have insisted for years that gay men and lesbians are a lucrative, untapped market of childless, well-educated adults with lots of money and leisure time. These studies polled only openly gay and lesbian people who hold credit cards, donate to political causes, and subscribe to gay magazines. Yet the mainstream media have reported the results as if they reflect a cross section of gay America.

Other studies paint a more average picture of the financial health of gays, including one by Badgett to be published in a book tentatively titled The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men. Badgett, alarmed that the image of wealth may cover up widespread discrimination problems, culled data from six smaller, nonmarketing surveys of gay men and lesbians. She concludes that gay men tend to earn about $2,000 less per year than straight men, with estimates of the incomes of gay males generally falling in the $20,000 to $27,000 range. Lesbians tend to earn about the same as heterosexual women -- between $13,000 and $18,000, depending on the study.

Activists say such information can be used to lobby Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which fails to garner a majority year after year. "This would imply economic discrimination," says Badgett. "The fact is, when people face discrimination, they earn less, not more."

But that's a story some marketers like Dave Mulryan, president of New York City-based Mulryan/Nash Advertising, fail to see the point of telling. A 1996 study of the gay and lesbian market, conducted by Simmons in conjunction with Mulryan/Nash, showed 21% of respondents making more than $100,000 per year and 22% holding graduate degrees. Mulryan acknowledges the survey does not represent a cross section of gay Americans, but he insists that encouraging marketers to pay attention to this community is a stepping-stone to winning civil rights.

Badgett and others are "missing the point by running around saying we're poor," says Mulryan, whose work includes gay-directed ads for Subaru and Home Access Health. "For us to fall into the idea that we are victims ... that is wrong. We're not victims. We're American citizens, and we deserve the same rights as fellow citizens." The image of wealth can help, Mulryan says, because "we live in a capitalist society where people who are perceived to be economically powerful are, in fact, those who have power."

Still, others contend, if gay affluence is largely fiction, it will harm the civil rights movement. Prime Access ad agency CEO Howard Buford, whose clients have included AT&T and American Express, says the Mulryan-Simmons survey paints an inaccurate picture that could contribute to further marginalization of gay men and lesbians. It's easier to attack gays if they are perceived as some distant "other," he says. "This really creates an environment for class baiting and gay bashing," adds Buford, noting that a similar strategy has been used for decades by anti-Semites to stir up envy and hatred of Jews.

Neither Badgett nor Mulryan claims to know the whole picture because the gay population is so elusive. Urvashi Vaid, director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says Mulryan's approach is problematic because it paints a picture of gays as an "unburdened, single, happy-go-lucky, charge-everything-on-the-credit-card kind of people. The gay person who is 21 and lives in a rural area is not getting studied." Vaid says gays with children also are excluded.

Mulryan dismisses those who say his survey is damaging the gay movement, noting that his success in persuading mainstream advertisers to focus on gays helps to keep the gay media in business to circulate pro-gay ideas. Says Mulryan of antigay forces that are perpetuating the idea of "rich and gay": "If it wasn't this issue, the religious right would find something else. They always do."