J. Matt Barber, board member of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, has no problem with being gay. Being “gay,” on the other hand, is a serious cause for concern.

In a media alert released yesterday, Barber warned Christians about the impending threat of homosexual terrorism. As he described the activists at the heart of the anti-Christian movement, Barber repeatedly couched the term “gay” in scare quotes. Why go “gay”?

Parents of Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is in the business of downplaying the immutability of sexual orientation—their whole shtick is that gays can turn themselves straight, and so placing “gay” in quotes helps to devalue the identity as real.

But Barber says that’s not the effect he was going for. “Gay used to mean happy, carefree—the original definition of gay,” explains Barber. “Now, homosexuals are trying to put a more positive face on their lifestyle. In an interesting and clever twist of semantics, homosexuals have co-opted the term. Gay is supposed to be something happy, something good.”

One section of the AP Stylebook seems to back up Barber’s usage. According to the Stylebook, it is acceptable to place real, actual words—like gay—in quotation marks in order to signify that the words are being “used in an ironical sense.” According to Barber, being “gay” is ironic indeed, as the homosexual lifestyle is far from gay. “Based on CDC statistics, there’s nothing gay about being ‘gay,’” Barber says.

Some people believe that every human being has the right to a full and healthy life. Others believe that every human being has a right to a full and healthy life—as long as they aren’t gay, addicted to drugs, or a prostitute.

And then, there are those who believe that only pre-born babies are innocent enough to deserve a full and healthy life. These people are the reason that the campaign against AIDS has to focus on infected pregnant women—instead of infected pregnant women, infected drug users, infected prostitutes, and infected gay men.

AIDS activist Elizabeth Pisani drove this point home in a recent interview with VICE Magazine. Pisani is a crusader against both AIDS and the bullshit which prevents health organizations from fighting it. There are a lot of insights in this long interview with Pisani. Most interesting to me is the way the fight against AIDS has been shaped by branding issues.

The face of AIDS, Pisani argues, has been focused so exclusively on the “innocents”—like pregnant women, their unborn children, and recipients of blood transfusions—that the epidemic has been left to thrive in the most at-risk populations—like gay men, drug users, and sex workers. The problem, of course, resolves itself in the most macabre way: The epidemic eventually spreads from “the wicked” to the “innocents,” who are not as isolated as the judgmental types would like to believe.

Says Pisani:

Yes, gay men, drug injectors, and people who sell and buy sex, the three groups which are more likely to get HIV, are the so-called “wicked” people. At UNAIDS we had to find a way to turn it from a “disease of the wicked” into a “disease of the innocent”. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to do that, we turned attention from the groups who most needed it to the whole population. So what we were essentially trying to saying was, “If you don’t invest in prevention for these high risk groups now, then you will have a bigger epidemic—i.e. innocent women and kids—later on.” What the politicians heard, however, was, “HIV prevention blah blah blah blah innocent women and children.” It’s like talking to a dog who recognizes only its name and the name of the food. Can you recollect a precise moment for this shift in perception? It was when the African epidemic really hit people’s radars. In Africa all of our data came from pregnant women, and you can’t have a more touchy-feely innocent group than pregnant women and their unborn babies. That was the thing that really made people think it wasn’t just a disease of ‘the wicked’.

The whole interview is worth a read, including Pisani’s explanation for why democracies have been less proactive at fighting the epidemic: “Democracy isn’t all that good at protecting the rights of minority groups who don’t vote. . . . when I say public health is a fascist discipline, I mean it.” Hey, maybe that finally explains President Bush’s initiatives to fund AIDS work in Africa?

Photo by bryan88

Indians are intensely divided over the issue, and both supporters and detractors have flooded Internet message boards with their thoughts on the ruling. It seems absurd that anyone would object to erasing a law that would punish a private sex act between consenting adults. Yet as One Yahoo! India message board on the issue reveals, many of the conversations occurring in New Delhi today look pretty similar to U.S. debates over legalizing gay marriage.

Argument: A double-whammy: If homosexuality is legalized, then humans will become extinct. Also, it’s a slippery slope leading to incest and bestiality.

I dont think it as a sin, but it doesn’t deserve to be legalised. If it gets legalised then we have to legalise incest relations and other such non-sense. Just imagine a day where everybody turns into gay or lesbians. Then how long the mankind will sustain? 70 to 80 years maximum. Then.. there it ends, the mankind. This is why it is so unnatural.

Argument: Gay people are gross.

Hi Guys!! (Oops Gays)
It is nothing but perversion and un-natural. I can’t imagine fecal matter sticking to your organ or the back oozing sperm (Yuck!!!) God save you gays!!!

Argument: Gay people are gross. But, down with the British! (Okay, maybe not the last part).

On one hand it is breaking away from the mental slavery of British rules, which should have been long back, on the other hand it is openning up a pandora box of social upheavel. . . . Do we allow opposiite sex to display behaviour and overtism in public space like those shown by these perverts called Gays? Then why and what for is the freedome requred by them-?? to show dirty and pervert things in public, to annoy ordinary folks and to provoke them?? These are silly things.

Argument: Homosexuality is a disease, and more people will catch it now.

Though the honorable court have upheld the article 21 which states that every citizen has equal opportunity of life and is equal before law….but this decision will help this disease (homosexuality) spread to all sections/quarters or the society!! Neither criminalization nor legalization are the options… but the public debate is required. India is a religious culture and every religion bars “unnatural sex” … and no doubt “homosexuality” is “unnatural sex”!

Argument: God.

I completely abhore it. All religions probhit it. Remember about the tribe of Lot, mentioned both in the Bible and the Quran? They were totally destroyed. God alone knows how he will deal with such people. All kinds of diseases will spread, which will anhiliate humanity.

Argument: You people are fucking morons.

this is for you Rock Princ first of all come out od that orthodox thinking you are saying how long the manking will sustain c’mon man this is something which is inherited it develops itseld if it is legalise it doesn’t mean you and I will change into gay so no worries manking will be there have a great day

Yesterday, Jezebel pointed to a recent study which argued that Disney films were guilty of “elevating heterosexuality” with their butterfly-laden, musical-accompanied girl-meets-boy match-ups:

“Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, balloons, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing and elaborate dinners,” the researchers observed. “Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind and the beauty and power of nature often provide the setting for-and a link to the naturalness of-hetero-romantic love.”

The hetero-romanticism, Jezebel reasoned, could help teach young viewers that “heterosexuality is normal, and homosexuality is abnormal, unusual and unexpected.” But as any grown-up fan of the Disney canon knows, these heterosexual love stories are often accompanied by an obvious undercurrent of homoeroticism. Disney has written its fair share of gay characters into its animated and live-action history—it just has yet to write them out of the closet.

Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for the Disney Channel, hedged the gay question last year. “There have been characters on Disney Channel who I think people have thought were gay,” he said. “That’s for the audience to interpret. . . . What we’re about is telling a great story, a relevant story, a story that addresses the needs, concerns, dreams, and aspirations and hopes of much of our audience.”

To me, Marsh’s “gay is in the eye of the beholder” argument is an acknowledgment of Disney’s willingness to slip homosexual characters into its casts—while leaving out any actual homosexuality. Defining gay characters by their mannerisms, wardrobes, and after-school interests instead of by the people that they love is extremely problematic, of course—characters end up either being straight, or caricatures of gayness. Viewers are left searching for gay stereotypes—and lack of overt heterosexuality—to hone in on any could-be gays in the House of Mouse.

A slew of Disney characters have been plagued by rumors of closeted homosexuality over the years. Beauty and the Beast’s fussy clock-man Cogsworth has been ridiculed for his notable disinterest in Belle and strange loyalty to the Beast. The tortured bromance between Toy Story’s Woody and Buzz has inspired some raised eyebrows–and Brokeback Mountain comparisons. The close quarters shared by the Seven Dwarfs is a bit suspicious, no? And Aladdin villain Jafar gives off enough of a gay vibe to inspire the following Aladdin-Jaffar fantasy spoof:

Even characters who don’t immediately register on an adult viewer’s gaydar have often been recast to satisfy gay male fantasy:

And some characters, like the lisping manicurist manatee who dotes on Sally Field’s sea queen in The Little Mermaid III, appear to just be very stereotypically out—if only direct-to-DVD.

And then, there is High School Musical. The gay rumors swirling around Disney’s live-action monster franchise have often centered on Ryan (Lucas Gabreel), a musical theater performer with a love of audacious hats,  jazz hands, and—other boys? Ryan is stuck with a pseudo-heterosexual plotline in the third film, when he is pressured into asking a girl to prom. Still, nobody is really buying it. (In the Disney stage adaptation of the popular films, it should be noted, Ryan is really, truly, out-of-the-closet gay).

But the controversy over the sexual orientation of the Ryan character only serves to obscure the homosexual undertones that weave throughout the entirity of High School Musical. Open your eyes, people: Every character in this movie is gay.

High School Musical is the story of basketball player Troy (Zac Efron) and academic decathelete Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), who must overcome the social pressures of their peer groups to—you guessed it—”come out” as who they truly are. In this homosexual allegory, Troy and Gabriella don’t yearn to come out as homosexuals—just as strangely natural musical theater performers. Yes, even the film’s stand-in for homosexuality is an after-school activity long associated with homosexuality.

Troy and Gabriella aren’t the only students with hidden interests just yearning to break free of societal pressures. One of Troy’s teammates, for example, eventually reveals himself as a cooking enthusiast with a specialty in crème brûlée. By the time the mini crème brûlée dishes get pulled out of the athletic bag, Disney is really piling on the homosexual coding.

Then, there are the students in the film who don’t claim to have a hidden other-life they desperately wish to share with the world. These students are the most oppressed of all. Although these characters castize Troy and Gabriella for attempting to follow their hearts—they also appear to have some deep-seeded secrets of their own.

Take, oh, High School Musical’s entire basketball team, for instance, which repeatedly mocks Troy for his interest in musical theater. In this scene, Troy chides himself to “get his head in the game” and refocus his energy on basketball, not singing and dancing.

Roll the tape:

As you can see, the same high school basketball team that ridicules Troy for singing and dancing does not actually play basketball at all. Rather, they appear to believe they are playing basketball while they are, in fact, singing and dancing. When Troy bursts out of the (musical theater) closet, these boys are so deeply repressed, so far back in the closet themselves, that they can’t realize they’ve been gay musical theater aficionados all along.

I’m not sure what sort of message Disney is trying to send with this one. The film encourages teens to “come out” as their true selves, and is is packed with clear homosexual undertones. However, it repeatedly attempts to deny actually showing the most difficult—and obvious—teen “coming out” scenario: coming out as gay.

Maybe Disney wants to recognize how difficult it can be to be a gay teenager, but in a format that its religious-conservative base can still stomach. Maybe Disney wants to recognize homosexuality while still discouraging homosexual behavior. Or Maybe Disney itself needs to do a little soul-searching. It’s possible that Disney doesn’t just realize how gay its movies can be.

“For example, male fruit flies may court other males because they are lacking a gene that enables them to discriminate between the sexes,” Bailey said. “But that is very different from male bottlenose dolphins, who engage in same-sex interactions to facilitate group bonding, or female Laysan Albatross that can remain pair-bonded for life and cooperatively rear young.”

So, fruit flies don’t know they’re gay, bottlenose dolphins are socially gay, the Laysan Albatross are lifelong gays, and human homosexuals are demonized as “unnatural.” These findings probably won’t change the minds of homophobes who delight in comparing homosexuality to bestiality, but it may do something to fight the argument that gay sex somehow defies nature.

West Point graduate Lt. Dan Choi appeared on the Rachel Maddow show in March, announced he was gay, had his audio swiftly cut off, reappeared on the show the next day, then received a letter announcing he was out for “telling.”

This is the letter the military sends you when you admit you’re gay:

This is to inform you that sufficient basis exists to initiate action for withdrawal of Federal Recognition in the Army National Guard for moral or professional dereliction. Specifically, you admitted publicly that you are a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct. Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard.

Choi reiterates that he’s only one of the 12,500 soldiers who have been kicked out of the army in the 15 years of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It’s a shame that Choi was dismissed, but I think it’s a good sign when officers start telling, publicly, just to reveal the utter ridiculousness of the rule. Here’s to hoping he’s the last, President Obama.

This week, I wrote a cover story for the paper on the sex life at the Catholic University of America, the official U.S. university of the Catholic Church. The Washington, D.C. school bans all behavior that is “inconsistent with the teaching and moral values of the Catholic Church”—including premarital sex, condom use, masturbation, and sexual assault.

Every year, Catholic’s coeds manage to successfully compromise the university policies—and their own chastity—within the school’s residence halls (and, according to one student, in the student center). The difficulty, for students and administrators, is acknowledging that sex happens. Consistent with Catholic tradition, sex isn’t sex at the Catholic University of America if nobody knows about it.

You can pick up the story on newsstands tomorrow.

Illustration by Doug Boehm

Is Haggard taking a progressive stance here in asserting that dividing the spectrum of sexuality into two opposing camps (heterosexual; homosexual) serves only to condemn those members we deem to be “deviant,” and repress all others into sexual conformity? Or does he just not want to admit that he might be gay?