Kinder, gentler homophobia

When it comes to the state of things today in the LGBT community, most of us would be inclined to think the glass half-empty rather than half-full. The “religious” right continues to fulminate, and bans against same-sex marriage are working their way though sundry states with varying results.

Yet the public as a whole, according to the latest polls, doesn’t find the subject a rallying point. And as more of us live our lives openly and freely, forming families complete with children, the facts of LGBT life have been faced in courts throughout the land, no matter what “moral” opinion any heterosexual jurist might harbor.

And then there’s Brokeback Mountain.

So it’s with some surprise that we watched the venerable 60 Minutes’ March 12 segment “The Science of Sexual Orientation,” replete with the sort of clichés about gay men and effeminacy that haven’t been seen in a network news context since the 1967 CBS broadcast The Homosexuals, narrated by the now-just-about-to-retire Mike Wallace.

Leslie Stahl—lower lip quivering and eyes trying desperately to focus as always—did the honors on the 60 Minutes piece, which featured a set of 9-year-old fraternal twins, one effeminate, the other interested in toy trucks. “Science,” we were solemnly informed, had verified that the two boys were respectively gay and straight even prior to puberty. The main deliverer of this news was J. Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., described by the program as “a leading figure in the field of sexual orientation.”

What 60 Minutes failed to note is that Bailey resigned as chairman of the university’s psychology department in October 2004 after being investigated in 2003 for his research practices when formal complaints were filed against him by several transgender women who declared they were his unwitting subjects. Part of that research was disseminated in Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen—which became something of a scandal in and of itself when its nomination for a 2003 Lambda Literary Award in transgender studies was withdrawn.

“We decided we would just look into what the science was showing and report on that, and let people react to what was out there however they will,” 60 Minutes segment producer Shari Finkelstein said. That meant not including what Finkelstein called “people more associated with the cultural debate, such as those who argue that homosexuality is a choice, a position most scientists reject. We just did not want to get into that controversy, because it was not about the science.”

Many would argue that what Bailey has confected isn’t science either. But when proffered a list of authorities on the subject, including gender researcher Judith Butler, historian Jonathan Ned Katz, journalist Michael Bronski, and world-famous bisexual Gore Vidal, Finkelstein replied, “The 60 Minutes story ‘Gay or Straight’ is a fair and accurate report on the state of scientific research into the origins of sexual orientation and conforms completely to CBS News standards.”

CBS News “standards” being what they are, I sought out Professor Bailey myself. While he’s far from an acolyte of NARTH (the rabidly antigay and antiscience National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality), Bailey’s insistence on his authority in defining what does and doesn’t qualify as gay and his dedication to discovering a “cause” for gayness is only temperamentally different from those who insist on finding a “cure.”