The 'Comfort' in Discomfort

Last month in the Adams Upper Common Room, the Harvard College Democrats and the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters’ Alliance (BGLTSA) held a dinner discussion entitled “Beyond Gay Marriage.” “How can Democrats help the BGLSTA community?” the e-mail flyer asked. “How do we frame the issues?”

And over the course of the genteel discussion, in which the Dems questioned how they could better serve the BGLTSA community—perhaps the Dems’ cubicle in Hilles has a blue phone to Nancy Pelosi’s office?—a consensus emerged: Gay marriage has gained unstoppable momentum. America is coming around, it seemed. A majority of the country doesn’t even believe that gay marriage should be constitutionally banned, one student reported. Democrats, as the title of the event foreshadowed, should move beyond gay marriage to improving hate crime legislation and familiarizing themselves with the transgender community.

Although the sentiment did not faze many (if any) people in the room, the agreement shocked me. What about the 43 states that currently have some sort of legislative ban on gay marriage? What about the key battleground states—including Tennessee and Virginia, whose Senate races can tip the balance of Congress—which will likely pass constitutional bans against gay marriage next week? What about Alabama, where 80 percent of voters chose to ban gay marriage through a constitutional amendment this summer?

In Cambridge, it’s easy to forget these facts. Students live in the one state in the country in which gay marriage is legal; two women holding hands in Harvard Yard with a baby in tow is almost as common as a senior-citizen tour group.

But to most of the 300 million people in this country, both that sight and the idea of promoting it through legislation are unacceptable. Since the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling last week that gay people are constitutionally guaranteed equal benefits to married heterosexual couples, President Bush has had a renewed spring in his step. As ABC News’ The Note reported, if Republicans manage to hold Congress on November 7, the “best supporting actors/actresses” will be “liberal, activist, gay loving judges.”

Although I would like to believe it, Republicans—especially Republican pollsters—are not delusional when they get excited over this kind of news. They know that this issue energizes the Republican base. Countless articles, ranging from The New York Times to Republican blogs, have speculated that this court decision could change the momentum of Democratic Senate candidates Jim Webb in Virginia and Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, as well as House candidates throughout the contested Midwest.

Notably, Webb, Ford, and many Midwestern Democrats do not even support gay marriage; Ford has said that he will vote for Tennessee’s constitutional ban on Tuesday, and Webb has said that he is content with the status quo. I have no idea what these men actually believe, but I do know that they—a black Democrat in Tennessee and a white Democrat in Virginia—are close to milestone victories because they please their constituents. And part of these candidates’ appeal to many voters is the fact that neither waves a rainbow flag.

Yet back at Harvard, the gay marriage train moves ahead at full speed. For what reason, I am not sure, but my guess is that the Dems/BGLSTA team—like so many organizations and people at Harvard—do not engage in serious debate that questions their “comfort zones.”

An example should clarify: two weeks ago, with 200 eager students in attendance, two BGLSTA representatives debated two writers from The Harvard Salient, the campus’s conservative newspaper, on the subject of gay marriage. Unfortunately, the promising debate degenerated into a fruitless back-and-forth over the innate parental abilities of two same-sex individuals versus those of heterosexual couples.

And, to the disappointment of many attendees, no one addressed the big pink elephant in the room: is it OK for homosexuals to act on their desires? It’s a question that neither side wanted to tackle because of the obviously awkward and potentially destructive nature of such a debate.

But all I wanted was for Christopher B. Lacaria ’09, who is also a Crimson editorial editor, and Justin S. Murray ’07 to reveal the sentiment that lies behind a statement like, “Gays are free to marry anyone, as long as that person is of the opposite sex” (one of Lacaria’s gems). And, likewise, for Eva Z. Lam ’10 and Katherine E. Smith ’10 to stop citing studies about two males’ rearing prowess and argue why those two men’s relationship is morally equivalent to that of a man and woman.

This hesistance is not exclusive to Harvard; it’s a disease that plagues American discourse. Especially in the realm of politics, verbal acumen (e.g., Republicans’ “death tax”) obscures the debate. But in the wake of former University President Summers’ “women in science” debacle—no! we can’t debate that! I’ll faint!—Harvard’s lack of discomforting, yet potentially illuminating, discourse should be on all students’ minds.

Because in the end, the question of gay marriage is not about kids, but about how our country sees gay relationships. Will they be stigmatized like incest or polygamy, or will a cultural change occur far outside the walls of Harvard Yard? Likewise, the abortion question is not about women’s choice or supporting “life,” but whether the termination of a fetus is equivalent to terminating a human outside of the womb.

And we won’t be able to get past these seemingly immutable differences if we are not discussing the issues at hand. Although there is a near-consensus on campus on both of these issues, engaging with both sides of these debates is an important first step in preparing for life outside the Harvard bubble. It might not be as comfortable as reminiscing with friends in the Adams Upper Common Room, but maybe then we will have an actual reason to pat each other on the back.

Andrew D. Fine ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House.