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The Changing Shape of Tolerance: The Politics of Homosexuality
| Article
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11061 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1993 |
4,018 Words |
| Author
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David Gress
David Gress is professor of classics at Aarhus University,
Denmark, and fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute
in Philadelphia. He is the author of works on European history
and contemporary international relations, among them A History
of West Germany 1945-1991 (with Dennis Bark, 1993) and From
Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (1998).
His most recent book is The Flickering Lamp: History,
Education, and American Culture in the New Century. |
A couple of years ago, the leading liberal newspaper in Denmark--similar to the New York Times or the Washington Post--launched an ad campaign. Part of this campaign was a commercial that was shown in movie theaters across the country, along with other commercials, before the main feature. (Denmark has little private television.) In the ad are two men, who seem to be in their thirties, in a well-appointed kitchen, with lots of copper pots and high-quality cutlery. One is chopping vegetables and cooking; the other is standing, sipping a glass of wine and looking lustfully at his companion. He moves closer. The camera shows the two touching, they embrace, the glass falls to the floor, they go into a clinch on the chopping board. Number two says: "You forgot. . . you forgot. . ." Heavy pause. "You forgot to put in the thyme!" Camera pulls back, showing the newspaper's Sunday recipe supplement open on the kitchen table. Slogan: "Subscribe to a lively newspaper!
"Liberal or not, I think the Washington Post may wait a few years before saturating American living rooms with an ad like that.
Let us stay in my native country for a few more moments.
In 1992, the conservative-led government of Denmark took a step long desired by homosexual activists: It made homosexual "marriage" legal. Two men or two women could henceforth march into the local mayor's or county registrar's office and be married. There were few objections. The state-supported Lutheran Church certainly had none; several of its (male and female) pastors had conducted religious "marriage" ceremonies for homosexuals for several years--ceremonies that, until the change in the law, had not granted their participants the full civil rights of married people. The main practical effect of the new law was to grant survivors of same-sex partnerships the right to survivor benefits and the right to inherit the deceased partner's pension.
Was this new law an example of tolerance or decadence? Where should the mainstream liberal defenders of democratic order, who want neither radical chaos nor right-wing traditionalism, draw the line between the tolerable and the intolerable? Or is it already too late to ask that question?
The most striking thing about both the ad and the new marriage law was that nobody cared; in fact, almost nobody, apart from a few Christian traditionalists, even noticed. The law was ten to twenty years behind cultural changes that had already taken place. But just as
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