Gay People

WASHINGTON -- It's a little known fact that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't really lead the March on Washington. What actually happened is that the marchers, a quarter-million strong, grew impatient waiting for the event to begin and stepped off the curb ahead of schedule. When they found out what had happened, Dr. King and other march "leaders" had to scramble to catch up. Freedom was in the air and the marchers saw no need to wait for permission to move. Forty-one years later, that vignette from another era offers an irresistible analogy to frame what has been happening these last few days in San Francisco.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found widespread support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. It also found unease about homosexual relations in general, making the issue a potentially divisive one for the Democrats and an opportunity for the Republicans in the 2004 election. Support for a constitutional amendment extends across a wide swath of the public and includes a majority of people traditionally viewed as supportive of gay rights, including Democrats, women and people who live on the East Coast.

Martha Horn and Barbara White are ready. If a Massachusetts court legalizes gay marriage soon, the lesbian couple from Laurel plan to head north and be among the first to apply for a license. The women, who have been together for 13 years, aren't out to prove a point about gay rights, they say. They just want the legal benefits of marriage. Specifically, they want health insurance for Horn, who suffers from diabetes but doesn't qualify as a spouse under the policy that White's employer provides.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court issued a sweeping declaration of constitutional liberty for gay men and lesbians yesterday, overruling a Texas sodomy law in the broadest possible terms and effectively apologizing for a contrary 1986 decision that the majority said "demeans the lives of homosexual persons." The vote was 6-3. Gay people are "entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said for the court. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

WASHINGTON -- One of the most shocking sights from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks was not a building crumbling, a crowd fleeing or a woman caked in dust. Rather, it was a headline crawling across the bottom of the screen on an all-news channel. In the face of a coming war against Middle Eastern terrorist groups, it said, the U.S. government was looking to hire Arabic speakers. Even measured against the unremitting fear of those days, that headline was like a splash of cold water.

For decades, the Roman Catholic Church has quietly tolerated closeted gay priests. But recent comments by Vatican officials indicate that they connect the scandal over sexual abuse of minors with a high number of homosexual priests because the victims are overwhelmingly male and adolescent. Experts say there is no proven connection between homosexuality and child abuse, and gay priests and lay Catholics worry that they are being targeted as scapegoats. Some fear a Vatican ban on admitting gay candidates to seminaries.

Nacen o se hacen? Are gay people "born or made"? That's a typical night's Chat on the recently launched Spanish-language Mun2 cable television network, seen throughout the United States and Latin America. Chat is a live talk show from Telemundo studios in Hialeah, Fla., with five young Latin Americans as hosts. Their mission: to attract 18- to 34-year-old Latino viewers who can call or e-mail the show in real time. Topics include religion, nationality and sex. During an episode about AIDS, the hosts (three men and two women)

Little logic attends Kane's criticism of gay rights statute I am dismayed by the unvarnished bigotry expressed by Gregory Kane in his column "Gay rights law opponent says logic, not hate, is issue" (Aug. 8). Having served on the Governor's Commission to Study Sexual Orientation Discrimination, I learned of the extent of discrimination based on sexual orientation throughout our state. Mr. Kane's presumption that all gay people have high-paying jobs and fabulous lives is wrong. Gay and lesbian people come from all walks of life and struggle with the same problems as everyone else.

CAN HOMOSEXUAL men and women change? A recent study by a Columbia University psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Spitzer, purports to show that some highly motivated individuals can change from homosexual to heterosexual. However politically and culturally objectionable Dr. Spitzer's claim may be, it stands as the latest in a long evolution of changing ideas about homosexuality. During the last 200 years, homosexuality has gone from being a behavior to a condition to an encompassing identity. People have always recognized homosexual behavior, but it was Sigmund Freud and others in the mid-19th century who moved beyond behavior and introduced the word "homosexual" to define the condition of having same-sex attractions.

MIAMI -- It is, at the very least, a lead that gets your attention. "For the past year and a half," it says, "I have been having an affair with a pro baseball player from a major-league East Coast franchise, not his team's biggest star but a very recognizable media figure all the same." Brendan Lemon wrote those words. He's the editor of Out, one of the nation's most widely read gay-interest magazines, and that's how he begins his column in the May issue. Mr. Lemon's unidentified friend is apparently so deep in the closet he sleeps on a hanger.