THE BELL CURVE -- joseph n. bell

I watched the six Republican candidates for president “debate” in New

Hampshire the other day. I was moved by curiosity and a patch of guilt

insisting that I should form impressions from direct knowledge and not

just bias. But mostly I watched because Sen. John McCain interests me and

I wanted a closer look at him.

I strongly recommend that every voter watch at least one of these

performances of both parties. It may leave you deeply depressed, but

that’s the risk we take every four years.

One item that came up in the session I watched -- and has also been

kicked around by Gore and Bradley -- was the treatment of gays in the

military and the candidates’ feelings about welcoming gay people to jobs

in their administration.

Their replies -- ranging from rage at the idea by Alan Keyes to the

equivocations of Bush and McCain -- sent me to my files for an essay by

Barry Goldwater that, thank God, I had saved.

Several of the candidates strongly asserted that only ejection of gays

could be true to conservative ideals and any candidate who was waffling

had better shape up. So what did the most-admired guru of conservatism in

my lifetime, Barry Goldwater, have to say on this issue?

This is Goldwater speaking on the commentary

page of the Los Angeles Times during the hassle early in the first

Clinton administration that resulted in the “don’t ask, don’t tell”

policy for gays in the military:

“After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed

to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in

the military isn’t exactly nothing, but it’s pretty damned close.

“Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at

least the time of Julius Caesar. They’ll still be serving long after

we’re all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone. It’s no great

secret that military studies have proved again and again that there’s no

valid reason for keeping the ban on gays.

“When the facts lead to one conclusion, I say it’s time to act, not to

hide. We have wasted enough precious time, money and talent trying to

persecute and pretend. The conservative movement, to which I subscribe,

has as one of its basic tenets the belief that government should stay out

of people’s private lives ... But legislating someone’s version of

morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against

gays.”

Over the holidays, Pastor Gary Barmore of Fairview Community Church wrote

a letter to the Pilot expressing embarrassment that “the most vocal

opposition to gay-straight alliance clubs comes from self-identified

Christian voices” and pointing out that “to focus in the name of Jesus on

something Jesus said nothing about reveals homophobia, no matter how much

it is disavowed.”

Predictably, he took all kinds of heat from outraged local citizens who

mostly used a tiny collection of familiar Bible references to attack his

position. But Pastor Barmore is hardly an isolated religious voice.

Consider, for example, this quote from a pastoral letter of the president

of the United Church of Christ: “We have had to reexamine long held

assumptions about those few passages of Scripture that appear to speak

about homosexuality in the light of transforming interpretations from

widely respected Bible scholars and teachers, and we have begun to

recognize how our fears of those who are different and our society’s

deeply entrenched bias against homosexual persons has often distorted and

early silenced the Bible’s liberating and inclusive voice.

“All this has helped us discover that our church’s concern for the rights

and dignity of gay, lesbian and bisexual people is not a break from our

past or a departure from Scripture, but is informed by our moments of

greatest fidelity to the prophetic voice if the Bible and Gospel’s

embrace for those who, with Christ, have been despised.”

So here we have the nation’s most respected conservative -- who was also

an Air Force general -- and the leader of a mainline Christian church

speaking out firmly and without reservation against the homophobic

treatment of our gay citizens. And yet it continues and seems to grow

more virulent, thus offering a rationale for violence to the unstable in

our society.

Why? What is it we fear? Why do we need to seek biblical authority to

change people to conform to our needs and desires rather than recognizing

and accepting their differences -- and allowing them to contribute fully

to our society?

Oscar Hammerstein wrote this lyric in “South Pacific”:

o7 We’ve got to be taught to be afraidOf people whose eyes are oddly

made

And people whose skin is a different shade,

We’ve got to be carefully taught.f7

We also have to be taught to fear gay people. Maybe it’s time to start

unteaching homophobia.

Maybe we could start with the people running for president.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a Santa Ana Heights resident. His column runs

Thursdays.