Mar 25, 2005  |  By: EARTHA MELZE  | COMMENTS     

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton felt the need to publicize her chocolate chip cookie recipe. One gay rights group claims she was trying to counteract sexuality baiting.

The story of the former First Lady and current New York senator is among the examples offered in a recently released report by the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. It is titled, “Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women’s Organizing.”

Clinton commented in a 1992 interview that she had chosen to practice law rather than “stay home and have teas.” She was immediately criticized by some in the media for not being a proper female role model and persuaded to go into damage control mode — suddenly ‘Hillary Clinton’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe’ appeared in papers across the country.

The 193-page report, which is being distributed in academic settings, to activist groups and on the Web, explores how “baiting” or the use of sexual orientation-based smears, is a tactic leveled universally against politically active women and organizations that advocate on women’s issues and sexual rights issues.

“Written Out” describes a high-profile instance of baiting from 2003 in which Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women, was dismissed as director of the Young Women’s Christian Association after a public campaign by the Traditional Values Coalition urged the YWCA to fire Ireland to protect girls from Ireland’s “radical, bisexual, cross-dressing, and pro-abortion agenda.”

This sort of name-calling is cheap, and with the Internet ever-easier, and according to “Written Out” is being used to silence rights advocates and divide coalitions.

“We get caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the IGLHRC. “As a lesbian and a lesbian activist, one of the most devastating aspects of this is that it frightens off straight allies.

“We hope that this report will offer a way for women to understand this dynamic,” Ettelbrick said. “It is not pure and simple homophobia. There are reasons why women are afraid.”

In some situations being called a lesbian cannot only hinder human rights organizing, it can have economic and security ramifications, the report notes.

The policy that bans gay men and lesbians from serving in the U.S. military, for example, makes all women in the military vulnerable to lesbian baiting.

“Written Out” quotes the Secretary of the Army’s Senior Review Panel Report on Sexual Harassment:

“Female soldiers who refuse the sexual advances of male soldiers may be accused of being lesbians and subject to investigation for homosexual conduct. … Women accused of lesbianism believe that that the mere allegation harms their careers and reputations irreparably.”

“Written Out” reviews the situation in the military. In 2003, females represented 15 percent of U.S. service members but 33 percent of people discharged because of their sexual orientation.

Baiting is also used against non-governmental organizations — advocating for sexual rights by providing, for example, condoms or sexual education is characterized by governments as “threatening to political order.”

“The mere threat [of being classified as a terrorist group] has been enough to make some people back up, make people afraid to stand up for what they know is right,” Ettelbrick said.

This report describes battles going on over sexual rights in a sphere that remains invisible to most Americans — the U.N. and international law.

The report claims that when groups meet to advance agreements recognizing sexual rights in international law, U.S. based conservative groups have filled meeting rooms with loudly praying friars, hijacked video displays with images of dead fetuses, and conspicuously copied attendance sheets at lesbian caucuses, threatening to out people.

Spokespeople for the Concerned Women of America, one of the groups accused of such tactics, were reached seeking comment. They said they wanted time to study the report and would offer their comments later, but did not do so by press time.

The rise of fundamentalism around the world is also identified by the report as a factor in the rise in sexuality based attacks. In meetings at the U.N., the report said, “alliances by the Bush administration and conservative and extremist governments within the Organization of the Islamic Conference have had a deleterious effect on sexual rights advocate capacity to advance from agreements made in ...