The good some bad straights do.

There wouldn't even be gay people in the modern sense if it weren't for the efforts of our foes.

Since this issue of The Advocate is devoted to our favorite straights (and since you've made it to the last page), here's a pop quiz: Which straight people did the most for the lesbian and gay movement over the last several decades? If you were to answer politicians who support us on important issues, or kindly PFLAGers, or brave clergy who risk their pulpits by marrying lesbian and gay couples, or other undoubted friends like that, you'd be well-meaning and sweet and generous--and you'd be wrong.

By any measure, the heterosexuals who have been our best friends have been our worst enemies. There wouldn't even be gay people in the modern sense, much less a vast and powerful movement, if it weren't for the efforts of our foes.

Crazy, you say? Just consider my Heterosexual Hall of Fame.

For starters there's the slimy marquess of Queensbury in the 1890s, who prompted the Oscar Wilde trial by calling Wilde a "somdomite." (Wilde sued the marquess, lost, and was then convicted of sodomy.) The sensational trial did more than a thousand academic papers to disseminate the novel idea that gay people exist. Because of it, the love that dare not speak its name was suddenly the subject of blaring headlines about "homosexuals," and a million closeted queers looked tip from the newspaper and said, "Aha, that's what I am--and there are more like me!" It's almost impossible to imagine our subsequent progress without that trial, sad as it was for Oscar. So I say, marquess of Queensbury, bully for you.

Fast-forward to World War II, when a phalanx of creepy military psychologists diligently hunted down and discharged thousands of "perverts." Many historians now argue that this horrible persecution prompted thousands of radicalized gays to flock to cities where they could breathe free after the war. San Francisco would never be the same.

Next came the witch-hunters of the late 1940s and '50s led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who campaigned against both Communists and queers. Gays like Harry Hay (both a Communist and a queer) were prompted to fight back by establishing the Mattachine Society, the grandparent of all modern gay rights groups. Without McCarthy there might not be a GLAAD or a Lambda or an HRC. Way to go, Joe.

And where would we be without the cops who busted Stonewall in 1969? If they had sat around the station playing poker instead of dragging gays into the pokey, we wouldn't have all those fabulous marches every June. They don't call them New York's finest for nothing.

A few years after Stonewall, the gay movement had lapsed into a disco haze, and activism was on a fast track to Nowheresville. But into the breach charged perhaps the greatest straight heroine in gay history--Anita Bryant. Her Save Our Children campaign in the late '70s prompted thousands of complacent homosexuals to roar out of their closets and pour into the streets, setting the stage for our remarkable response to AIDS a few years later. Trying to imagine a modern lesbian and gay movement without Anita is like--well, it's like imagining a day without sunshine.

Oh, the list of my favorite straights goes on and on. Where would gay religious groups be without Cardinal John O'Connor or Fred Phelps? Where would local and state movements be without the 'phobes who initiated all those antigay state initiatives? Heck, where would Robert Mapplethorpe be without Jesse Helms? We shouldn't vilify these people; we should pay them to do our PR.

It's an old truism: Movements need enemies to rile up the faithful--and the nastier the better. European activists constantly complain that without conspicuous enemies, European lesbians and gay men remain complacent, and their leaders have no one to lead.

But we Americans manage to produce an endless supply of unwitting het heroes who keep us on our toes by loudly enunciating the hate that more sensible people keep to themselves. Each time they do, we dust off those marching shoes, dash off another check, and the result is progress.

A painful road to progress, you say? I guess. But as any gym bunny can tell you, No pain, no gain.