Did Homophobia Corrupt John Walker?

Just when you thought the story of John Walker's path from Marin County to Mazar-e-Sharif couldn't get any more complicated comes this much-ignored (so far) report from the San Francisco Examiner: Walker's father, Frank Lindh, left his wife for another man in 1997, an event that was apparently difficult for the teenage Walker.

Columnist P.J. Corkery noted two weeks ago that Lindh said his son was influenced by The Autobiography of Malcolm X. "But," Corkery claimed, "something else then going on in the family's life may have been just as pertinent... When Frank Lindh left his family in 1997, it was to move in with a male companion... Sources close to the family say the father's turn of life from married man to modern gay man startled and flustered the 16-year-old."

Rob Morse, a liberal and often pro-gay columnist for the rival San Francisco Chronicle, soon thereafter accused the Examiner of "taking attacks on [Walker's] family to a new and disgusting level." A couple of letter writers to Jim Romenesko's popular Medianews website, which had linked to the columns, also criticized Corkery, one of them accusing him of "outing" Lindh.

That was odd, because if it's true that Lindh is gay or bisexual?and he has not issued any sort of denial so far?it would seem that he has been rather public about it. If family friends knew all about his leaving his wife for a man, and if his son knew enough about it to be upset by it, that doesn't exactly qualify Lindh as being deeply closeted. Apparently some liberals still see being gay as something so shameful that it is "disgusting" to report on it unless the individual has actually screamed his or her sexual orientation from the rooftops. (Reporting on someone's undeclared heterosexuality, meanwhile, is not seen as an "attack," much less an "outing.")

It's not as if Frank Lindh has been running from the media spotlight either?at least that wasn't the case initially. He was all over television, defending his son and trying to humanize him. Only in the past couple of weeks has Lindh become less visible. It's been suggested that a high-profile attorney Lindh and his former wife hired for Walker?James Brosnahan, who is said to be planning a Patty Hearst-style brainwashing defense?told the parents that they should now elude the media because their tolerant, Northern California background wasn't playing well. Some conservatives in the media had blamed the liberalism that marked Walker's Marin County upbringing for making him so free-thinking that he'd turned to religious fanaticism. (The irony of this ridiculous argument?to which these conservatives seem profoundly blind?is that Walker actually rejected liberalism for a variation of the same fundamentalism that many of these conservatives and their Bible-thumping legions espouse.)

Even the so-called liberal media has been pushing this simplistic and sleazy angle. On a recent CNN "People in the News"?a show the network produces in cooperation with its gossipy and sensational Time Warner sibling, People magazine?we were told that Walker's "liberal parents encouraged him to take his own path," while words and terms like "permissive," "free-expression" and "independent-thinking" were used in a pejorative manner. (The report even suggested "a path from hiphop to Islam," I kid you not!)

In such a climate, Lindh's being gay would only further complicate matters for Walker. In the culture wars, right-wing religious zealots would have a field day with this information as well, using it to advance their specious argument that gays should not be allowed to adopt and raise children. Just as they blamed the parents' liberal background, they will blame the father's homosexuality for creating a monster that turned on America.

That said, Corkery was right to report on this (and I predict many other news organizations will properly do the same by the time any trial occurs). The moment Lindh went on television to defend his captured son he became a public figure. From a legal standpoint, he ceased to retain much privacy after that. So the question is not one of legality but of ethics: is it relevant and newsworthy? If what Corkery says is true, that events surrounding the breakup of the marriage affected John Walker, then it is absolutely relevant to the story of Walker's journey and his actions. Every influence and episode in Walker's life in recent years should be and will be studied and dissected by the courts and by the media. If Lindh had left his wife for another woman and his son were traumatized, it would certainly be discussed in the media. So if Lindh did leave his wife for a man and it affected Walker, it should similarly be reported on. That would be treating homosexuality and heterosexuality equally, rather than relegating one to the level of a dirty little secret.

But it does not mean?as Jerry Falwell and his pack of wolves are likely to charge?that gays and lesbians are unfit parents, or that a parent's homosexuality causes such confusion for a child that he or she is ultimately driven to rebel against his or her own country. Of the thousands upon thousands of gay and lesbian parents in the U.S., I've not heard about any whose child became a traitor or a dangerous religious fanatic?though I do personally know a few who produced some fine doctors, artists, businesspeople and educators. And as far as we know, traitors in American history, going back to the Revolutionary War right up through the Cold War, appear to have been raised largely by heterosexuals. So, if we're going to use sexual orientation as a marker, it would seem that straights are doing far worse when it comes to raising children who turn out to court treason. (Or are conservatives now going to argue that Benedict Arnold was raised by a coven of lesbians and Robert Hanssen was brought up by a cabal of sex-crazed homosexual men?)

The sexual orientation of John Walker's parents, like their liberal politics and their tolerant attitude toward child-rearing, did not cause Walker to join the Taliban. If anything, it's the other way around: The ingrained, religion-based hatred of homosexuality in American society may have caused John Walker to have a visceral reaction upon learning of his father's supposed involvement with a man (despite even his own parents' perhaps tolerant views on the subject), and that societal hatred may have been among the contributing factors that led him to embrace a rigid, homophobic religious philosophy and regime. Other confused young Americans, many of them even gay themselves and filled with self-hate, have embraced fundamentalist Christianity, often with harmful results. They have often joined bogus, church-run "ex-gay" ministries as a way to supposedly "cure" themselves, only to realize after much self-torment?and after they have actively worked against other gays?that it's all a sham. If Walker's father is gay, and if the knowledge of that did have an affect on Walker, it would be society's homophobia?not his father's homosexuality?that contributed to Walker taking a path that will now result in grave consequences for himself and his family.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).