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Lesbian and gays have a new arrow in our quivers in our fight for human rights. Will our leaders be man and dyke enough to shoot it?

Recent months and weeks have established a new rule in international relations: countries that violate their citizens' human rights, or do other bad things, can, in the name of humanity, be bombed into the Stone Age. The bombing continues until the abusers start or stop doing what the bombing nation(s) demand(s).

Blowing up bridges, oil refineries, government ministries, TV stations, and the stray, collateral apartment building or refugee convoy­ have become part of the ordinary diplomatic dressings-down and "degrading" that nations regularly do with one another. Don't think "war." Certainly don't think "ground troops." These attacks are merely a geopolitical variation on the hateful name-calling of domestic spats, gay or straight.

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Some critics, mired in yesterday, say that the now-routine bombing violates fusty notions of national integrity and the rule of law. Where, they ask, is the US Congress's okay of the nigh-daily bombings of Iraq, which, accompanied by trade sanctions, have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Where is the UN Security council stamp of approval on NATO's war against Yugoslava, in the absence of which the bombing violates, almost all experts maintain, settled international law? What about, these nitpickers tediously continue, the American missile attack last summer on a Sudanese "chemical weapons plant" that turned out to be really just a pharmaceutical factory?

Lesbian and gay political groups and theoreticians rarely miss the opportunity to be responsive to those in power­ that's what moral leadership is all about. But from this new lesson in realpolitik, they've failed to take their cue.

When a state fails to pass hate crimes laws or approve gay marriage registries, it violates, as lesbian and gay activists have said time and again, the human rights of queer citizens. In North America, these are the human rights of people who are largely light-skinned: an important if indelicate point, as there is no precedent for unleashing Western arms to protect of the human rights of Rwandans, Cambodians, East Timorese, Angolans or others of brown or yellow persuasions. The conclusion is clear: when states and municipalities abuse lesbian and gay human rights, we must degrade their power to do so ever again through massive armed attack.

Apt targets will be just sitting there, easy to find. Part of the impudence with which legislators reject hate-crimes laws or gay marriage legislation stems from the robust support they get from local business interests, who are then party to the abuses committed. Do you think Hawaii state reps will feel the same hostility to gay marriage after Sheraton upon Holiday Inn upon Hyatt Beach Resort is reduced to rubble? Will Massachusetts lawmakers maintain their archaic statutes against unnatural acts when Lavender Alliance "cruise" missiles are primed to take out Bay State cod-processing plants and bio-tech labs? When precision-aimed at specific legislators, these missiles could prove especially effective in winning votes for human rights. Merely the threat of their use could bring results where another press release faxed from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force might not.

Freedom through killing

In light of these considerations, the failure of gay pork magnate James Hormel to win for homosexuals the US ambassadorship to Luxembourg takes on even greater gravity. Luxembourg may be small as a nation, but as an arms maker, international weapons dealer, and chocolatier, Luxembourg stands tall. Openly gay Hormel could have secretly channeled vital materiel to our community for the skirmishes that lie ahead. One can almost taste the sweet logistical bon bons that just slipped our grasp.

Admittedly for now, only the US and its allies are capable of producing these super-precise weapons. But the chips and software to calculate within an inch an object's position on earth will show up shortly in toys and consumer goods. Soon you will never lose your keys again­ especially important when they might unlock your own private Tomahawk. Even starving North Korea has launched ballistic missiles that land within an order of magnitude or two of their intended targets. Market forces being what they are, we can expect soon a gay marriage at the international arms bazaar between the intercontinental missile's flamboyant gesture and Global Positioning's mincing precision.

Soon, the many will enjoy the ability to launch missiles from anywhere that land precisely on their targets­ or that don't, enhancing the mystique of uncertainty always vital to power's effective exercise.

These abilities will fall not just within the ken of Western allies, but also run-of-the-mill special-interest groups, Task Forces, Alliances Against Defamation, and Campaign Funds. That bright day will soon dawn­ you'll know it from the queer glow in the sky before sunrise. But unless our lesbian and gay rights groups take the lead, homosexuals will be caught off-guard: still mailing missives to our elected representatives to make points we can bring home eloquently only by shooting missiles.

"Make love, not war!" chanted the drug-addled activists of the 1960s. Their slogan rested on a moralizing judgment, a false hierarchy, an oppressive dichotomy. The 90s teach us to be inclusive, not exclusionary, to reject negativism, and embrace diversity. "Make love and war!" is the cry of the moment. Bombs away for lesbian and gay rights! **