Dec 08, 2006  |  By: JULIE ENSZNE  | COMMENTS     

LAST MONTH’S ELECTION results were filled with victories large and small for gay rights supporters, but those results were achieved in part by using sex panic, a political strategy that always damages our community.

One of the keys to the Democratic victory was the exposure of former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) inappropriate messages to congressional pages.

The Foley incident was a contemporary sex panic, similar to the controversy that surrounded Gerry Studds, the late Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.

Certainly 20-plus years altered the rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans, as both feared being labeled homophobic, but sex panic still works, and it still works in hackneyed and hurtful ways. In Foley’s case, the sex panic unfolded like this: a closeted Republican’s homosexuality is exposed in conjunction with lurid references to his potential as a child abuser. The Republican Party is shamed by a homosexual in its midst, termed, at best, abusive of his power, or, at worst, a child-molesting pervert. The silence of the Democrats and the gay and lesbian leadership allowed the issue to linger, leading to victory for the Democrats. It’s a reliable formula: link someone to homosexuality, perverse sex, extend it to their associates and watch them fall.

IT’S NEITHER INNOVATIVE nor new, and it’s fundamentally a lie about sexuality. Clearly, Foley’s behavior was inappropriate and wrong. It was sexual harassment. But, in the absence of anyone else’s public honesty, I recognized Foley’s behavior as common in our community. That is not to say that it wasn’t wrong or that it was right. While we’re being honest, let’s acknowledge that sexuality is more complex than black and white.

To me, Foley’s behavior, if divorced from his position of power as a member of the House of Representatives, is in a complicated grey area of sexuality. Despite our legal structure, which dictates that people only become sexual beings at age 18, the reality is that young people experience sexuality and sexual development earlier than that. They look to adults to help them understand and interpret it. Adults are often ill-equipped to do this as a group and as individuals, in part because of the societal stigmas about sex, particularly homosexuality. When young people look to us with questions about sexuality, questions that may not be phrased as such but may be unspoken in brief interactions or electronic exchanges, we confront our own history of sexual development and its concomitant homophobia.

The result of all of this spoken and unspoken stigma, anxiety and concern is a teenage sexuality morass that leads to further silence and alienation. When young gays look to adults to help them understand sexuality, some adults are helpful; some are exploitive; some are flirtatious; some are silent. Some molest teenagers and sexually exploit them; some help teens understand sexuality in positive and healthy ways. We don’t really know where Foley lies on this continuum.

THE SECOND SEX panic center was with Rev. Ted Haggard in Colorado. Accused by a gay man of using crystal meth and paying for sex, Haggard was forced through the usual public shaming activities. The new twist was that the exposure came from a gay man with a political agenda. The formula is still the same, however.

Here’s the problem: sex, even gay sex, isn’t shameful. And as long as this paradigm of sex panic remains functional, it will be used against gays. When a child molester becomes the metonymy for all gay men, we object loudly, correctly and righteously. We must do the same when gay sex becomes a metonymy for hypocrisy among Republicans.

Participating in the creation of sex panics for our own (perceived) political gain only works to strengthen the future sex panics against us.

Sex panic is always going to work against us in the long run. It works only because we embrace lies and half-truths about sexuality. We are wisest when we work to build a movement and a national dialogue about sexual liberation.