Why So Timid?

How come Democratic presidential candidates hesitate to say homosexuality isn't immoral:

Kenneth Sherrill, who teaches courses on gay politics at the City University of New York, said Obama and Clinton seemed "afraid to say homosexuality is not immoral." He added, "They are afraid of backlash. If you look at the polling data, you find a fairly large percentage of Americans think homosexuality is wrong even though they support equal rights."

It should also be said that in my experience pro-gay liberals, especially younger ones, tend to just assume that Democratic politicians' personal views on these issues are much more progressive than they're prepared to publicly admit. For all we know, however, Clinton and Obama actually are people with ambivalent (at best) views on the moral propriety of gay sex acts despite their support for equal rights. This is a very common view, especially among people who are somewhat older.

Comments

It is difficult to publicly express a moral viewpoint that contradicts that of your professed religious group. Thus, John Kerry has to say he personally apposes abortion, but thinks that as a nation we should be pro-choice. If he had been asked whether abortion is immoral, I bet he would have hemmed and hawed just as this year's crop did on the issue of homosexuality.

Whether or not one agrees with each and every tenet of one's religion, publicly differing from its stated moral beliefs opens up many more questions, as even the holier than thou Sean Hannity found out recently.

Posted by tomboy | March 18, 2007 1:26 PM

Please keep in mind that the conventional wisdom for previous generations is that homosexuality is immoral, chosen, and comdemned by the Bible. Be thankful that your cohort correctly sees the matter differently.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | March 18, 2007 1:43 PM

I actually think discomfort with homosexuality is probably a natural response, in the same way that discomfort with incest comes naturally, without ever being taught that it is bad. So, it takes time and intellectualizing, to a certain extent, to get over the natural discomfort. I also think the biological basis to "homophobia" explains why it is so strong and violent among men in particular.

This is not to say that I think its wrong. I don't. But, I also don't think peoples reactions to it are purely a result of socialization or ideology.

Posted by Jim W | March 18, 2007 1:44 PM

Also, Politicians should not express their moral view on everything. If it doesn't influence their political stances, it's really unclear what benefit there is to their moralizing at everyone. They are not Oprah or Dr. Phil or Hannity. They have to lead the entire Country. They can do that, but they cannot be a moral voice for every challenge the Country faces. That's one reason we keep our politicians and priests separate. Politicians discuss the moral floor the Country as a whole will meet. Priests tell us our moral ceiling - what we have to shoot for.

Posted by MDtoMN | March 18, 2007 1:47 PM

Oh yeah, and to connect those last dots:

Politicians set the moral floors that the entire country is going to have to live with - and you can't opt out. So, it has to be pretty low, so that we can remain united as a Country.

Priests set the moral ceilings, but each person has freedom to opt in or opt out - so it can be as narrow as one individual's vision.

Posted by MDtoMN | March 18, 2007 1:49 PM

"...teaches courses on gay politics at the City University of New York..."

OK, I can imagine -a- course in gay politics. But more than one??

Posted by Grumpy | March 18, 2007 1:57 PM

That's very interesting.

Posted by Matt Stoller | March 18, 2007 2:27 PM

George Will, of all people, came out in favor of gays in the military this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Rather surprising although occasionally, Will goes against the grain.

Posted by SLC | March 18, 2007 2:37 PM

Why should they not hesitate? Homosexuality is immoral. Just read your Bible. Dormire cum viro alio vitium est.

Posted by Sir Anthony Walters III | March 18, 2007 2:54 PM

Good lord, so the consensus seems to be something along the lines of "let sleeping dogs lie, lest we scare away our precious homophobe vote", even if that implies not being able to publicly refute the claim that simply being homosexual is immoral. I'm sure there are also a lot of potential democrat voters who think that blacks are dumb and lazy...

Posted by novakant | March 18, 2007 2:59 PM

My guess is that Clinton and Obama are more fearful of appearing to criticize the military than of being associated with a pro-gay position (it was the remarks of General Pace that elicited the nuanced remarks from the two candidates).

Posted by kth | March 18, 2007 2:59 PM

As a guy who is a little older than Obama, I don't buy the age cohort theory. People of our generation, with the kind of educational background Obama has, are generally petty comfortable with gay people, usually travel in circles in which people are out of the closet, and don't think twice about them being immoral. I'm sorry, but Obama and Hillary both need to grow a set (metaphorically speaking) and stop trying to calculate and calibrate every goddamned thing they say.

Leadership consists in part of moving the debate and I don't think in 2007 saying that homosexual sex is not immoral is all that daring. It is this kind of craven calcualtion that turns people off to the Dems.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | March 18, 2007 3:19 PM

I think the correct response was something like: I'm tired of the media playing gotcha on matters that aren't national priorities. This country's brave young men and women are in the crosshairs of a sectarian civil war in Iraq that could engulf a region of vital strategic significance in coming years. We need to be talking about energy independence, a better deal for the middle class, and a cleaner government for everyone. Some of you reporters need to get a life.

Posted by Linus | March 18, 2007 3:21 PM

Both campaigns eventually stopped hesitating and said that homosexuality is not immoral. That's good. If anyone refuses to say that, THEY are the ones who are behaving immorally and I'm not going to support them. Homophobes should have to live in the same closet that racists have been forced into.

Posted by Consumatopia | March 18, 2007 3:40 PM

Linus,

Normally I would agree with your statement. But in the case that you give, it is dodging the question, and will probably get a more negative reaction than a simple yes or no answer.

Anyway, I'm inclined to think that anyone who really believes that homosexuality is immoral is not going to vote Democrat anyway. I think that Democrat politicians should realize that there are a number of people in the United States who just do not like them, and will never vote for them. And, like it or not, fair or not, these people will always associate the Democratic party with gay rights. So Democrat politicians can hem and haw on whether or not homosexuality is immoral, and still be seen as "pro gay rights" by these people simply because they do not vilify homosexuals (and this is even though the Democrats' record on gay rights is spotty, at best).

Posted by adlsad | March 18, 2007 3:50 PM

This is a very common view, especially among people who are somewhat older.

Posted by moron | March 18, 2007 4:04 PM

This is a very common view, especially among people who are somewhat older.

Very common, but utterly contemptible -- and in my view, disqualifying for public office.

Posted by moron | March 18, 2007 4:05 PM

Maybe I'm just, you know, really old at 46 but Obama certainlydoesn't seem to me to be old enough to have ingrained anti gay prejudice. And in response to Jim W. no, there probably is no "biological basis" for homophobia--the animal kingdom and human society is and always has been absolutely full of homosexual behavior and it hasn't always been condemened. In fact, its been encouraged for both males and females for some part of their lives in many societies even if it is sometimes discouraged for other parts of people's lives. The fact that the three abrahamic religions all share homophobia doesn't mean much other than that they share cultural and scriptural values in common. All are reacting against other local societies in which homosexuality was very much accepted. That's precisly why they are so virulently opposed. Unless you are going to argue that some of those cultures were somehow less bioligically sound than others your biological argument doesn't hold up.

aimai

Posted by aimai | March 18, 2007 4:11 PM

I'm tired of the media playing gotcha on matters that aren't national priorities.

Interesting dodge:

Cease all discussion of sociocultural matters until the middle east is pacified, energy independence is achieved, the middle class is happy and there is no more corruption in government - i.e. forever.

Posted by novakant | March 18, 2007 4:12 PM

By accepting that a political discussion of homosexuality's immorality (or not) is desirable or needed or relevant then progressives have lost the battle before it begins.
Questions about its "morality", being totally subjective and beyond reason, belong in church and should have no bearing on the legal controls and limits placed upon homosexual lives.
Debates on morality, as opposed to say ethics, simply have no place in the public square.
I f'n don't care if you are a homophobe or racist; the purpose of law is, or should be, to prevent your acting out your ignorant prejudice upon my life. That is the important point.
As to the idea that many things, such as incest, are naturally "immoral", well how does one argue with such, ahem, carelessness? Try even a cursory survey of human societies and history please.
For myself I find most American heterosexual marriages highly immoral and deeply offensive; I should hope that your answer would be "so what?"

Posted by Willy | March 18, 2007 4:15 PM

To build off of Aimai's comment, I believe anthropologists have observed that the acceptance and normality of homosexual activity is generally higher in more "pre-modern" and especially pre-agricultural societies. Jim is quite wrong.

Posted by djw | March 18, 2007 4:40 PM

I f'n don't care if you are a homophobe or racist; the purpose of law is, or should be, to prevent your acting out your ignorant prejudice upon my life.

The question is not who can be trusted to live under such a regime, the question is who can be trusted to implement it. I would not trust someone who is particularly ignorant and prejudiced to prevent other people from acting on ignorant prejudice.

Progressive doesn't mean amoral. Conceivably in some strict European sense "liberal" could mean that, but not progressive. The problem with homophobia is not that it's a morality, the problem is that it's the wrong morality.

For myself I find most American heterosexual marriages highly immoral and deeply offensive; I should hope that your answer would be "so what?"

I should hope you understand that there is no way in hell I'm gonna vote for you. I'm not going to put you in jail. But I'm not going to give you any power.

Posted by Consumatopia | March 18, 2007 4:42 PM

I'm sure there has always been, and will always be, a snickering contingent of homophobes. But in my personal experience, almost nobody has ever really cared, unless there was money at stake.

I mean, really, you would have to have been totally clueless not to see that J.Edgar and his inseparable sidekick were gay. In the 50s, as now, there were gay people, and the main thing that made it an issue was the passage of laws that made it possible for the police to blackmail people. At the very top of the economic foodchain simple exposure of gayness might end a career, in a situation where the economic stakes were very high and the players totally unscrupled. For ordinary people, though, simple exposure wouldn't have been enough to force them to pay blackmail- you had to add the threat of jail time and a criminal record to extort money from people.

The fact is, unless you look like you're going to harm them, most people don't care what you do if they're not whipped into a frenzy by people who think they should care what you do. Believe it, your neighbor may watch you take a series of children into your house with no alarm, but start digging new holes for a fence and he'll be out there with a tape measure.

It's like mixed-race marriages- liberals agonized over whether they'd 'work', while the lower classes just bred like rabbits. Nobody really cares if there isn't any money involved.

Posted by serial catowner | March 18, 2007 5:00 PM

Okay, I know that this may be a result of my distance, but what's wrong with saying, "According to the belief system that works for me, homosexuality isn't particularly moral, but hey -- that's the whole point of living in a free country; people can live in ways that work for them and not for me, and our great tradition of tolerance means that neither of us has to worry about what the other thinks. It isn't the government's job to step into every moral decision; we're all human here, and a little humility is healthy."?

Posted by Kimmitt | March 18, 2007 5:23 PM

I seriously doubt that anyone who believed that "homosexuality isn't particularly moral" would vote for an active homosexual as president. Therefore, they shouldn't be surprised when people like me, who think "bigotry isn't particularly moral" refuse to vote for them. And if they're Democrats, that will probably be a problem.

The government should stay out of morality, but that doesn't mean that morality should stay out of government. And bigotry is immoral.

Posted by Consumatopia | March 18, 2007 6:13 PM

Klein is certainly right that every statement seems to be calibrated to gain a few votes, or at least not lose any. A moral code that ranks deniability as the greatest virtue.

Hillary has been firmly wavering for a couple years on almost every issue or topic. Obama I haven't followed. And many of both parties seem to have no principle except election and no compass except polls.

Just say you will support measure x but oppose y and z. And the voter must take you as you are.

Posted by K | March 18, 2007 6:14 PM

Its true that acceptance of homosexuality varies among different cultures, but that doesn't mean there is no biological basis to the discomfort that homosexuality causes.

If our feelings were solely due to socialization, then why do men usually find female homosexuality titillating, but male homosexuality repulsive?

My point is that these natural feelings resonate with ideologies that conemn homosexuality. To accept homosexuality as being ok takes a little extra work.

My analogy with incest was that there is a well-known biological basis, such that boys and girls who are raised together are not sexually attracted to each other when they grow up, regardless of what they are taught about incest.

Posted by Jim W | March 18, 2007 7:07 PM

adlsad:

I'm inclined to think that anyone who really believes that homosexuality is immoral is not going to vote Democrat anyway.

I think that shoe is on the other foot. People who take offense at the assertion that gay sex is immoral aren't likely to vote Republican. Explicitly declaring that it is moral may alienate some of the socially conservative, economically liberal voters that used to be called 'Reagan Democrats'.

Posted by David Tomlin | March 18, 2007 8:58 PM

I assume that Clinton and Obama are calculating. Here's the reason: look at Bill Clinton's advocacy of gay rights. It was entirely sub silentio after the gays in the military thing. He ran ads on Christian radio in 1996 touting his support for discrimination against gays! (You can look that up, it's true.) And when he spoke in the Democratic convention, he listed a bunch of groups whom he said were equal, i.e., black and white, men and women, etc. When he got to "straight or gay", he WHISPERED it so it could be heard in the hall but not on TV.

These guys have consultants who tell them they need the votes of bigots. So they pose as bigots. It's sickening, especially considering that neither of these two could even RUN if it weren't for the people before them who OPENLY stood up against discrimination.

Posted by Dilan Esper | March 18, 2007 9:27 PM

Most national polls show a little under 50% of the population beleives homosexuality immoral. Most of the online polls I have seen recently are split about 55/45 that it is not immoral. There is a nontrivial percentage of the Democratic party (African-Americans, Hispanics, Catholics) who view homosexuality as immoral.

I frankly don't care what people believe in private, only what they advocate or act on in the public sphere. Also, posters above are using bigotry too loosely in this regard.

Posted by stoic | March 18, 2007 11:30 PM

In many cases, perhaps it's as simplistic as the immorality factor comes in because they can't marry? Multiple partners, ya know, lots of people still think that's immoral. There's that catch-22 thing, gays in Western civilization know all about it. Just sayin'.

Plus you don't hear much yammering about heterosexual marital sodomy being immoral these days.

I just think our society is in the process of fast changing attitudes and confusion on the topic-this makes it hard for a politician to talk about. Gay culture has changed a lot, too, in my humble opinion (myself, I miss the old gay culture! had a lot of friends in it and a lot of fun as a "fag hag.")

P.S. I recall reading a Larry Kramer essay or lecture from the last couple years that sounded like the work of a preacher pushing fidelity and love over unbridled lust.

Posted by artappraiser | March 19, 2007 2:19 AM

Note that Jim's point is not that brothers and sisters or fathers and daughters are not attracted to each other, it is their being raised together that matters. And I'd argue that familiarity breeds contempt. Novelty in all its glory is way powerful stuff. And just now Germany is considering changing its incest laws because the modern family provides so many more cases of biological relatives, who were not known as such, falling in love.
As to males "usually" finding male homosexuality "repulsive" I doubt that you can prove that point that broadly.
First of course is simply the very large number of males who have engaged in some type of homosexual/bisexual activity. More than once.
But no, I'd not be surprised that most strictly heterosexual males would find male on male sex involving themselves to be unappealing. Then again there is the fact that all males are obsessed by other men's packages.
300 is sooooo f'n gay!
As to straight men's interest in watching lesbian action well you have me there. But then again the standard hetero male is so intrinsically perverse that nothing about them really surprises me. Luckily that perversity most often constitutes the bulk of their persional charm.

Posted by Willy | March 19, 2007 6:47 AM

Most national polls show a little under 50% of the population beleives homosexuality immoral. Most of the online polls I have seen recently are split about 55/45 that it is not immoral. There is a nontrivial percentage of the Democratic party (African-Americans, Hispanics, Catholics) who view homosexuality as immoral.

But I suspect there's a sizeable chunk of that 55% that would never admit to it in public--at worst, they would hesitate similar to Clinton and Obama. I support whole heartedly this growing trend of forcing bigotry into the closet.

I frankly don't care what people believe in private, only what they advocate or act on in the public sphere.

I agree. I don't care if you're a bigot in your heart, just don't be a bigot with your words. The public sphere isn't just political, it's also social. And even if there is a technical political neutrality between all points of view (not that we've even achieved that level yet), there's no reason for a social neutrality.

Also, posters above are using bigotry too loosely in this regard.

If someone says they don't think miscegenation is moral, even if they don't want to implement their thinking in law, then they're a bigot no more and no less than someone thinking homosexuality is immoral.

Ultimately, bigotry against homosexuality, whatever it's formalized rationalizations, is premised on some vague sense of "unnaturalness". That's completely subjective, though, which is why it's important for people to stand up and call that the bullshit that it is. Vague senses of disapproval tend to have a social origin, which requires a social solution.

Posted by Consumatopia | March 19, 2007 9:10 AM

"If our feelings were solely due to socialization, then why do men usually find female homosexuality titillating, but male homosexuality repulsive?"

Er, why does that indicate any biological basis to homophobia? Evolutionarily speaking, female homosexuality should be even more abhorrent to heterosexual men than male sexuality - it's two fewer potential genome spreaders, after all. If anything, and I'm not really making a positive claim here, the fact that men find female homosexuality arousing suggests to me that our biological impulse to be aroused by women overpowers any social conditioning. It certainly doesn't argue the other way.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | March 19, 2007 12:45 PM

Ginger Yellow,

If aversion to homosexuality per se was what we acquired through evolution, then you would have a point.

I'm not arguing that we have a biologically based aversion to homosexuality per se, but rather to manifestations of it. That is, we have an aversion to the thought of doing homosexual acts, ourselves.
There's a difference. I think its a pattern recognition issue. Men and women are very similar, in terms of how they look, smell, etc. So, there was a powerful motivation in evolution for people to be able to discriminate between them, and to develop strong sexual attractions to one category and a counterbalancing aversion to the other category, to avoid confusion.

Its similar to the fact that, even though rotting meat is chemically very similar to good meat, you have a much stronger aversion to eating it than you do to eating something neutral, like a piece of plastic.

Posted by Jim W | March 19, 2007 1:12 PM

"It should also be said that in my experience pro-gay liberals, especially younger ones, tend to just assume that Democratic politicians' personal views on these issues are much more progressive than they're prepared to publicly admit."

I think this is a large part of the answer. I hear older Democrats (and Republicans, but the assumption is that Republicans have more problems with race) say shockingly racist things fairly often. If that is true of race, where the national consensus is much more settled, I assume it is at least as true about sexuality.

Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw | March 19, 2007 1:55 PM