The War as a Gay Issue

March 2007

Often, presidential bellicosity and mendacity go unchecked. Both Congress and the American public all-too-dutifully fall in line behind their commander-in-chief when sabers are rattled and the supposed atrocities of "the enemy" trumpeted. Banking on this deference to the executive, the Bush/Cheney administration launched the Iraq War, the centerpiece of their "perpetual" war on terror, with an orchestrated barrage of deceitful propaganda calculated to inflame the populace. Aided by a domestic press both complacent and complicit, Americans were fed a litany of concocted excuses as to why people needed to die and a trillion dollars be wasted. And fear was cultivated in order to justify suspension of civil liberties and smear critics. For a while, it worked.

But the Iraq War has dragged on long enough to expose both the Administration's ongoing incompetence and the lies on which this needless war was predicated. At long last, the American people have joined the rest of the world in recognizing that the Bush/Cheney first-strike doctrine has made the world more dangerous and the United States ultimately weaker.

While it is a relief that, finally, voices raised in opposition to the war are being heard, our recovery from this debacle will be enhanced with a clearer understanding of how and why the Iraq War is an important gay issue. Many gay groups have been reluctant to devote resources to the anti-war effort, but thoughtful consideration suggests anyone committed to gay liberation must necessarily be committed to stopping the Iraq War and the "war on terror" mindset.

Central to gay liberation is the notion of privacy– that some parts of our lives are "off limits" to the government. But the Bush/Cheney endless war claims the right to spy on every e-mail you send and every phone call you make. All your internet transactions are to be stored away on government computers, available for scrutiny should government agents choose. No meaningful notion of privacy is compatible with a government that spies on all citizens all the time.

Gay liberation has embraced the rainbow as a symbol that homosexual expression is universal, that people of every color and ethnicity have an interest in freedom from destructive anti-gay attitudes. But this war has led to crass racial profiling whereby some dark-skinned citizens are de facto "suspects," to be harassed at the border, stopped on the street, and forever eyed warily. How can anyone treated thusly ever enjoy true gay freedom? When airport and train station loudspeakers constantly exhort listeners to report any "suspicious looking" person, how can our brown-skinned or differently-dressed brothers and sisters go about their lives without feeling conspicuously alien? The racism and xenophobia generated by the war undermine our commitment to civic equality.

The gay movement has wrapped itself in the mantle of "human rights," the notion that by virtue of being human, each of us– no matter our sexuality or other attributes– has a basic dignity and autonomy that civilized governments respect. But the Bush/Cheney war asserts the right to kidnap, imprison, and torture whomever they choose. Any government that claims the right to lock prisoners in freezers for hours, to prod their genitals with electroshock devices, to tie them naked to boards and dunk them in tanks of ice water so as to provoke fear of drowning, to threaten them with snarling dobermans, to pose and photograph them in humiliating sexual positions, to choke them into unconsciousness, and to bind them for long periods in excruciating "stress positions" is a government diametrically opposed to furthering the cause of human rights.

And finally, gay liberation is about learning to celebrate life, to replace indoctrinated fear with transcendent love. War– inevitably bringing brutality, fanaticism, and death– is, thus, antithetical to gay liberation and, indeed, to life itself.

Gay freedom cannot flourish in a culture devoted to über-surveillance, fear-mongering, torture, and death. That's why thoughtful gay people know that the Bush/Cheney "perpetual" war must be stopped.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=A9A3B732-2301-47D3-B98FC558E18D7549 >