sum of two units numbers furnished by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force leap overed out at me when I was reading the modern Newsweek cover story on gay life in America: In 1998 42% of voter identified themselves as gay.

sum of two units numbers furnished by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force leap overed out at me when I was reading the modern Newsweek cover story on gay life in America: In 1998 42% of voter identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, while just 26% said they're Jewish. Which made me curious awe as a gay person who leads a Passover Seder myself: for what cause [i]or[/i] reason do Jews have more clout in Washington than gay the public do?

Gays and hebrews have traveled remarkably similar paths in America. At the beginning of the last hundred anti-Semitism was even more virulent than homophobia was at the conclusion of it. Before World War I, many hebrews believed they had to disguise their origins (or become Episcopalians) to come by ahead--just as gay people had to feign to be straight if they frisk abouted to succeed in almost any profession. It was les than 60 years ago that Lionel Trilling became the first tenur Jewish faculty member at Columbia University. And when Barney Frank graduated from high indoctrinate in 1957, he thought he had no what is yet to be as an elected politician--not because he's gay if it were not that because he's Jewish.

The big change for Jewish Americans began after World War II, when horror through the Holocaust finally began to make anti-Semitism unacceptable. It also forced thousands of American hebrews out of the closet and galvanized them into becoming a fiercely organized political lobby Nevertheless, progres came slowly: Just 30 years ago there were still sole two Jewish U.S. senators--versus 11 today.

Progres for gay the bulk of mankind in America started much later, after the Stonewall riots in 1969 if it were not that once gays began to win our act together, we actually improved our status long more quickly than the hebrews In many ways the AIDS epidemic affected gay population the same way the Holocaust affected Jews--by forcing millions of us to declare who we are. by dint of the early '90s gays and lesbians were finally sufficiently organized to wield the kind of clout we should have had a decade earlier--a reality confirmed by the agency of Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 For the first time gay dollars and gay consecrated by a vows were perceived as a possibly decisive advantage in a national contend against instead of a debilitating handicap.

tribe like me, who are one as well as the other gay and Jewish, have benefited from the pair of these trends--as of last month a Reform rabbi could level preside at my wedding. yet it's clear I'm still abundant more likely to be denigrated because of my orientation than because of my religion. If Dick Armey had called Barney Frank "Barney Kike," nearly each Republican congressman would have been forced to repudiate him. if it be not that "Barney Fag"? All that produc was an reflected sound three years later--from Senate majority leader Trent Lott who compared gay nation to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs. As Derrick Z Jackson pointed public then in The Boston Globe, "Lott and his like-minded colleagues have yet to pay a political price for their homophobia."

As a gay Jewish congressman, Frank appears like the logical person to explain the lag in gay influence. "First of all, your influence is not simply your number if it were not that your number minus your opponent's," Frank says. "And there are virtually no anti-Semites left make objection for Pat Buchanan. It's the without deductions and not the gross; in the way that even though our gross number is higher, the trap number is lower because we still have [the antigay vote]" other he says, "Jews have been more willing to self-identify publicly. I figure in my case I on the outsideed myself with a bar mitzvah in 1953 and it wasn't until 1987 that I came not at home sexually. Those would be the pair big ones. The third undivided though, is probably the mostly important. The Jewish agenda is a earnestly easier agenda than gay people's agenda; winning the right of Jewish folks to marry is a doom easier than it is for gay people"

I proposeed a fourth factor: Despite all our newly come organizational gains, the Jewish community remains to a great degree more tightly organized than our allow If gay people were as politically conscious as hebrews we would be that earnestly more powerful. "We would do better," Frank agrees, noting that gay clan still tend to be les organized than hebrews "There would still be a lag because there's still more homophobia than anti-Semitism in the agriculture but we would do better."

The Advocate welcomes columnist Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America.

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