Yesterday's Investors Business Daily reports on the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, a group with trains and pays stipends to community organizers and other youthful volunteers. According to IBD, "Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993." IBD also describes the diversity training in Chicago; it is not clear from the article whether this particular training took place while either Obama was involved in the group. IBD states that in the Chicago training, "heterosexism" is explained as "a negative byproduct of 'capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male-dominated privilege.'"

Here is my bleg: do VC readers know of any serious research about a link between heterosexism and capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male-dominated privilege? My initial impression is the cause and effect theory of heterosexism is quite wrong. Communist dictatorships, for example, are often quite hostile to homosexuals; yet Communist states are not capitalist, generally have legal equality of men and women, and (outside Europe) are run by non-whites. Conversely, ancient Greece was relatively tolerant of some forms of homosexuality, and yet was patriarchal, dominated by whites, and had a primitive free market.

So, is there a serious intellectual argument for the Public Allies theory of the causes of heterosexism?