The great divide.

Recently, when a fellow member of an on-line gay politics discussion group raised the topic of relations between gay men and lesbians, the results surprised me. The writers, academics, and activists in the group have batted around almost every conceivable issue, but rarely had the temperature risen so high so fast. Before I knew it, accusations of gender prejudice were flying back and forth. Someone even insisted that lesbians and gay men are "two entirely different cultures."

The rancor shouldn't have come as a surprise. Tensions between men and women are the dirty little secret of the gay rights movement. Some lesbians, complaining that all men are pigs who think with their penises, depict gay men as an integral part of their problem--which in their view is not antigay bigotry but male patriarchy. Lesbians have suffered more than gay men, they say, because they are the object of prejudice both as homosexuals and as women.

Some gay men, in turn, complain that while men provide most of the funds for gay rights organizations, lesbians (though fewer in number) have taken over those groups, have dragged feminist issues onto the movement's agenda, and have (in certain cases) instituted antimale quotas for leadership positions. Moreover, while lesbians routinely bar men from dyke marches and women's music festivals, they condemn male-only events as sexist and exclusionary.

Such charges and countercharges may indeed make us wonder: Are we two different cultures, bound together only by political necessity? As the gay movement becomes more successful and as gay America grows more secure, will we split into two separate communities with different cultures, two distinct movements with different agendas? Since we don't need each other for sex, what's to keep us together when our social and political interests no longer mesh?

And what of biology? Research now suggests that sexual orientation may be a very different phenomenon in males than in females. Virtually all men are either gay or straight and stay that way; by contrast, more than a few women appear to drift in and out of lesbianism or to be genuinely bisexual. Some women even describe their gayness as a political choice whose sexual aspects are only secondary. I've never heard a gay man make such a claim.

A refreshing diversity is one thing; a house divided against itself at its foundations is another. And in fact the gay movement can seem increasingly to be speaking with two discordant voices--one baritone, one alto. And there's no easy way to bring them into harmony. Can gay men reasonably expect lesbians not to be consumed by rage over millennia of male domination? Can lesbians reasonably expect gay men--who are continually told by society that their orientation makes them something less than real men--not to affirm and celebrate theft maleness? If the men and women in our coed movement are sending out divergent messages, wouldn't splitting the movement in two be better for everyone?

Yet something in me repudiates these arguments. Neither gay men nor lesbians, after all, are monolithic. Gender, like sexual orientation, is only one facet of personal identity. Besides, as someone who came out to a lesbian friend, I know that a gay man and woman can forge a special kind of alliance: They're not potential lovers, but both know what it's like to love against the grain.

Yes, some gay men and lesbians harbor legitimate gripes against specific members of the opposite sex. But I like to think that most of us are able to view--and valuer--one another as individuals. Let's recognize that our enemy is not each other--any more than our enemy is America or religion or democratic capitalism. Rather, our enemies are ignorance, fear, selfishness, resentment, irresponsibility, and ideological rigidity.

A few months ago I preached at an Atlanta church. I didn't talk about being gay, but one elderly lesbian (who obviously had never heard of me) had her gaydar on. After the service she approached me, smiled, and asked, "Are you family?"--and when I nodded, she glowed with pleasure, threw her arms around me, and held me tight. If it's not about that, folks, it's not about nothin'.