R: PHX, S: 1IN10, D: 07/01/1997, B: Michael Bronski,

Send it back

by Michael Bronski

Every culture has laws and customs by which it wants to be measured, and right now the United States seems to want to be measured by adultery. Or rather, its injunctions against adultery. Sure, the Ninth Commandment has forbidden immoral sexual cavorting for the past 3000 years, but can anyone remember a time when Americans cared as much about adultery as they do now? A recent New York Times survey indicated that 92 percent of Americans believe adultery hurts "family, children and society." Everyone, it seems, is willing to drag that tired old embroidered scarlet letter out of mothballs to play Pin the "A" on Adulterers. And while it is always cheering to see straight people bending under the weight of their own archaic sex laws, think again if you believe this has no impact on gay men and lesbians.

This groundswell of anti-adultery sentiment was engendered by a recent rash of armed-forces scandals. It is in the military, apparently, where adultery is taken most seriously and where -- according to recent newspaper accounts -- it is as common as creamed chipped beef on Thursdays. It should be no surprise, however, that the new adultery hysteria should surface in a law-and-order-type environment such as the Army: strict, patriarchal structures have always been obsessed with controlling sexual activity. Also, it's no surprise that the current wave of scarlet-lettering began with the prosecution of a woman. Kelly Flinn, a star bomber pilot in the Air Force, slept with the wrong guy (a married civilian) and, when confronted about it, panicked, lied, and resigned after narrowly escaping a court-martial.

This evangelical fever to (re-)enforce fidelity and monogamy is not simply a new wave of moralizing. The enforcement of adultery laws is -- at least in contemporary society -- a measure of a culture's hypocrisy about sexuality, a mark of how eager it is to mandate social control over what those in power view as undesirable, dangerous sexual behavior.

Take a look at the two most prominent adultery cases this past month. Though the Air Force had no qualms about prosecuting Kelly Flinn, there was enormous support for the nomination of Joseph Ralston to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, despite the fact that he was an admitted adulterer. It was only after sustained pressure from feminists and their supporters that the unfairness of this double standard was acknowledged, and Ralston was nudged -- well, humiliated -- into withdrawing from the nomination process. Clearly, it was female sexuality -- as well as Flinn's excellence in the traditional male role of a bomber pilot (talk about clichéd Freudian sexual symbolism) -- that set this witch-hunt in motion.

But the hypocrisy of l'affaire Flinn is nothing compared to the case of Michael Bowers. Bowers, you may remember, is the attorney general of Georgia who, in 1986, prosecuted Michael Hardwick under that state's sodomy law for having consensual sex with another man in the privacy of his own bedroom. Hardwick appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which ruled that there was no constitutional right to privacy for homosexual sexual activity. And in 1991, Bowers refused to hire an attorney, Robin Sharar, because she was about to participate in a commitment ceremony with her female lover; Bowers claimed that to hire her would "give tacit approval to homosexual marriage, which is not recognized under Georgia state law."

Bowers is now running for governor of Georgia. Yet he recently resigned his commission with the Air National Guard, where he held the rank of major general and served as the assistant to the chief of the National Guard Bureau -- gubernatorial résumé plums if ever there were any. Why did he leave the Guard? Because the media was about to break the story that had been an open secret before, during, and after his prosecution of Michael Hardwick: for more than a decade, Bowers had been involved in an adulterous affair with a co-worker. Adultery, in the state of Georgia, is as illegal as sodomy. Welcome to America.

Though Bowers has apologized to the citizens of Georgia for the adultery, he has stood by both his anti-gay decisions as legally correct. (And, truth be told, he was backed up by the Supreme Court on the first, and by a Federal Appeals court on the second.) The sheer hypocrisy of Bowers's own actions is matched only by the media's hypocrisy for suppressing what is clearly newsworthy, and legally pertinent, information about the attorney general's personal life. Bowers's adultery was finally exposed -- ironically, thanks to the onslaught of military morals policing that began with the Flinn case. Bowers's apology notwithstanding, Michael Hardwick is still a criminal, and Robin Sharar is still the victim of anti-gay discrimination.

The reality is that moral and legal prohibitions on adultery are far more likely to reveal the gap between people's actions and their "higher" standards than to make them act according to those standards. No one wants to admit that they don't live by those standards, so they simply lie about their lives. Sanctions against adultery lead to -- encourage, even -- widespread, socially approved dishonesty and hypocrisy. To make matters worse, the hypocrisy bred by this situation is most often turned against those on the sexual outside: sexually adventurous women, gay men, and lesbians.

It is ironic, then, that in the debate within our community over gay marriage, adultery is seldom mentioned. Presumably, most gay men and lesbians who are fighting for the legal right to wed are intending that gay marriage will be -- like all legal marriages -- monogamous. And when a partner strays from this ideal -- as many heterosexuals do now, and as many homosexuals undoubtedly will once we have gay marriage -- we will have the reality of gay adultery. In fact, right now there are 25 states that still have adultery laws on the books, and only 20 that have sodomy laws. So, in theory, it is statistically more possible for a gay person to be charged with adultery than with sodomy.

But the point here isn't that legal same-sex marriage will put gay men and lesbians at a higher risk for lawbreaking. The real issue is: do we want to hold ourselves up to the same "higher" standard as heterosexuals do and then find ourselves falling short of it? Andrew Sullivan, one of the most eloquent proponents of gay marriage -- and an avowed conservative -- has suggested in his book Virtually Normal that gay people might invent a new idea of marriage, one that factors in more sexual freedom and experimentation than marriage has traditionally allowed. This, he argues, is what gay people have always been good at -- pioneering new visions for human relationships. Great thought. But the minute Sullivan found himself face to face with the likes of William Bennett and George Will on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, he backed down from his more generous and reasonable suggestion. Gay marriage, he now claims, will be as monogamous and as sealed-shut as traditional marriage.

Do we really want to set up the same conditions that lead to the dishonesty and hypocrisy that we see with heterosexual marriage? Or do we want to have a more honest discussion about our sexual and emotional needs and desires? Such a discussion will allow us to live our lives more openly and happily than those who are now caught in the mire of being unable to live up to ideals that, however sincerely held, are simply out of reach.

Michael Bronski is the editor of the recently released Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture, and Sex (Richard Kasak Books). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com.

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