Tom Keane

Not just for the witless

Yes, anonymous comments can be coarse. But they can also expose truth.

PERHAPS SICK of being the poster boy for Godwin’s Law, the Huffington Post plans to ban anonymous commenting. Beginning next month, users will have to register their identities before they comment, declares founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, ending a long tradition (in Internet time, that means eight years) of unfettered reader participation.

It’s not an unexpected decision, but it comes with much cost. Discussions will be less robust, some information that should be made public will remain hidden, and the enemies of free speech will be handed an easy victory by those who should be its defenders.

Godwin’s Law is the only half-facetious observation of Internet guru Mike Godwin that, “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Whether it’s Nazis or something else, the broader point is that commentary in any online forum seems to veer towards the vicious or extreme. (Indeed, a contemporary equivalent of the two-decades-old Godwin’s Law might focus on Obama: No matter what the topic, sooner or later someone blames the president). Sometimes, it appears, there is no room for moderation on the Internet.

One can understand the position the Huffington Post finds itself in. It wants to offer users a rich and engaging environment, but instead discussions deteriorate into such vitriol that the tone actually inhibits participation by more civil commenters. Requiring commenters to register their real identities before attaching a screen name to their comments, runs the thinking, is one way to weed out the abusive posters or “trolls,” as they are called. BostonGlobe.com has a similar system, as newspaper subscribers have to log in before they can comment.

It’s not necessarily the only way, however. Many websites use systems of “likes” and “dislikes” to promote the more thoughtful comments toward the top of the forum, leaving the ravings of the trolls down below.

The Huffington Post is, of course, allowed to make its own rules, and users will still have some privacy. What is worrisome, however, is the rationale that Arianna Huffington offers for the change. “Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity,” she says.

That’s a dangerous and decidedly illiberal position, one at odds with the First Amendment and the history of free expression in this country.

The Internet did not invent anonymous commentary. The Federalist Papers, for example, were originally published under the pseudonym of “Publius.” Would Huffington have denied their authors — founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison — the right to make their arguments? One hopes not, and for good reason. Anonymity helps expose truth. It also gives some measure of power to the weak and the marginalized.

It is those who are on the inside of something, be it government, a corporation, or an institution, who are best positioned to know about wrongdoing. But many are reluctant or unable to bear the personal consequences of that exposure — retribution, humiliation, legal threats, job losses — and so they tell their stories without revealing their names. Reporters realize there are risks to this, including a heightened possibility a source may be lying. But still, some of the biggest stories in journalism were broken using anonymous sources. Remember Watergate and Deep Throat?

And even when it comes to everyday commentary, requiring registration means that fewer will participate and that those who do will guard their words. A victim of rape might want to describe her own experiences in response to a story on sexual harassment but, knowing that somewhere her personal information is attached to her comment, she’ll demur.

Free speech is a difficult proposition and the Internet, a grand experiment in communication, represents both its greatest opportunity and its greatest challenge. The trolls really are a problem, a creepy minority out to ruin things for everyone else. But Huffington’s response has the potential to be harmful as well.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 27, 2013.

Outsiders have a stake in city election, too

A lot of outsiders care about Boston’s mayoral election, but the candidates themselves profess not to want their involvement — especially if that involvement provides ammunition for another candidate. The issue, bubbling quietly over the summer, exploded last week when Stand for Children, an education reform group, said it would spend $500,000 promoting councilor John Connolly’s candidacy. In the context of this race, where the top-tier candidates have a million or so available to spend, that’s a breathtaking amount.

Rob Consalvo, another one of the 12 vying for the mayor’s job, strongly objected. He reiterated his call for a local version of the people’s pledge (the agreement Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown signed to tamp down outside expenditures). In fact, he dwells on this theme. “This campaign should be a conversation between the candidates and the people of Boston,” Consalvo says in a recent ad. “Our city needs a mayor who will answer only to the people,” he wrote to another outside group.

It sounds like a nice, principled stand. It isn’t though — indeed, the principle arguably cuts the other way. It does make for good politicking however.

The notion that city residents alone should be involved in choosing the next mayor is one the candidates themselves flout regularly. If Consalvo really believed that outsiders should have no say, then why does he seek and accept money from people living in the likes of Lynnfield (10 contributions totaling $1,850), Braintree (41 contributions, $8,669), or Newton (95 contributions, $23,466) — or, for that matter, Maryland (42 contributions, $8,735)?

I’m not cherry-picking here, either. According to the most recent filings at the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance, almost 45 percent of the $862,352 Consalvo has raised comes from outside of Boston.

Nor is Consalvo alone. Dan Conley has 11 contributions ($4,350) from Connecticut, Marty Walsh has 26 ($11,800) from Florida, Mike Ross has 170 ($44,938) from New York, and Felix Arroyo has 338 ($80,629) from Puerto Rico. In fact, all of the mayoral candidates except one have received money from outside of Boston. (The exception: David James Wyatt. He’s reported raising nothing.)

Outraged? Don’t be. It’s good and right that people and organizations from outside get involved in the city’s election. Boston matters to far more than just those who live in it. The way we run elections may limit the vote to just residents. But the consequences of those votes matter to many more people.

Each weekday the city’s population nearly doubles as commuters, tourists, and others make their way in to work and visit. They care about Boston’s future. An array of businesses, from health care to education to high-tech to real estate, call the city home — even if their owners or stockholders live elsewhere. They too care. The Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics care as well; they want Boston to be a place fans are eager to frequent.

Boston is the region’s economic, cultural, and intellectual center. Anyone who lives in New England, anyone with a stake in its success, is deeply interested in the outcome of the mayor’s race. The wrong person can easily undo all of the good created over the last 20 years. An increase in crime, a rise in racial tensions, more gridlock on the streets, a downgrade to the city’s debt rating — all of these and more have repercussions beyond Boston’s borders.

Then, too, Boston has national prominence, which is what attracted the attention of Stand for Children. Meaningful school reform in Boston could spark school reform across the nation. One can understand why Stand for Children wanted to get involved.

But it did so clumsily, with too much money and drawing too much attention to itself. That backfired on Connolly, the intended recipient of its largess, who took hits from his opponents until — the political heat intolerable — he asked Stand for Children to back off.

All of which underscores the delicate balancing act facing the mayoral candidates. They have to appeal to Boston voters, professing that their interests alone matter, while at the same time recognizing that the position they seek has a far greater constituency. And those from outside the city who seek influence have to understand that pushing too hard gets them nowhere at all.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on August 25, 2013.

High cost of political exclusion

The controversy over Dan Wolf – the state senator from Cape Cod whose planned run for governor has been upended by the ethics commission — is less about the misapplication of the law and more, as Charles Dickens once put it, because “the law is an ass.” Existing ethics rules help create a political class unrepresentative of the public, they undermine the idea of the citizen-legislator, and they rob our politics of needed real-world insights. Yes, Wolf deserves to run — not as a special exception legislators might make for a colleague, but under a new set of rules that opens up elected office to all comers.

Earlier this month, the State Ethics Commission determined that Wolf, founder of Cape Air, should divest himself of the airline if he wanted to run for governor. In fact, it concluded, Wolf shouldn’t even be a senator. The reason? Cape Air flies in and out of state-owned Logan Airport, administered by the Massachusetts Port Authority. The law says politicians can’t do business with state agencies. Ergo, Wolf is violating the law.

There’s a slippery slope to this way of thinking. Cape Air pays a fee for the use of a gate, the same as any other competing airline. If this puts Wolf on the wrong side of the law, then barred as well are a host of others: Truckers traveling along the state-owned Massachusetts Turnpike, restaurateurs required to have permits to open their doors, health care professionals receiving payments from Medicare or Medicaid. Government, after all, is intertwined in almost everything. Is everyone who somehow does business with it so conflicted they must be barred from public office? So it would seem. The only way out for aspiring pols would be to quit their jobs.

Some would argue they should quit. Politics is a serious obligation, after all. If you want to hold office you should be willing to make a sacrifice. Few can afford to do so, of course, meaning that the logical end point of this argument is to abandon the cherished notion of the citizen-legislator in favor of the professional politician. Ideally, politics should be something easily engaged in by the ordinary citizen. Instead, the rules burdening candidates make it too difficult for most. The field of possible candidates becomes remarkably un-diverse.

I don’t mean that in the sense of race, ethnicity, or gender (although politicians lack diversity in those respects, too) but rather in terms of wealth and occupation. Here in Massachusetts, legislators are paid about $61,000 annually — a decent but hardly princely sum. That salary, for example, would support a mortgage for a home costing $245,000. But with the median home price in metro Boston at $330,000, it’s hard to live decently — and in addition put the kids through college. The money has to come from somewhere else, and it does. With 58 percent of Bay State legislators saying their only job is being a legislator, it’s a reasonable bet that most of them have a well-paid spouse, a trust fund, or some other source of wealth. For those who don’t, a second income is needed — the most common of which (23 percent) is law. Lawyers, interestingly enough, seem largely exempt from the ethics rules that tripped up Wolf (clever lawyers: they wrote the laws, after all).

I’ve got nothing against lawyers or the rich (I’m one of the former and wish I were one of the latter), but having a political class dominated by these two groups is a problem. We should welcome the experiences of someone like a Dan Wolf, who’s seen firsthand the working of quasi-independent state agencies such as Massport. The same goes for those in any manner of professions.

The solution isn’t to abandon ethics rules, but rather to refocus them on three broad goals: disclosure, recusal, and jail. Don’t prohibit people with possible conflicts from holding office. Rather, enforce transparency. Make them disclose everything. If there is an issue that poses a conflict, they should note it and bow out. And if they don’t follow the first two sets of rules, then in comes the third: prosecution and tough penalties.

Voters deserve a broad and diverse field of candidates. Change the rules and give everyone a chance to make their case.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 20, 2013.

Sharks!

Tourists are flocking to the Cape for more than the beaches and clams

The frightened folks on Amity Island — the fictional location of the film “Jaws” — desperately tried to deny the existence of the great white shark in their midst. “You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July,” worried the town’s mayor. He was wrong. This is Shark Summer on Cape Cod, and rather than fleeing, the crowds are flocking.

Chatham, the quaint village beset each winter by storms that constantly remake its coastline, is ground zero for the big fish. Sightings are up this year. The warmer waters (for most, another sign of global climate change; for a few, just another incredible coincidence!) are attracting seals, and seals attract sharks. Who, after all, can resist an all-you-can-eat buffet?

The Cape depends upon summer. Each year roughly 4 million people visit the sandy peninsula (now, thanks to the canal spanned by the Sagamore and Bourne Bridges, technically an island). Half of those come during June, July, and August, says Wendy Northcross, head of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. A few weeks of rain or a cold spell can put them off, ruining a business owner’s year. A string of hot days, on the other hand, and the cash comes pouring in.

Not surprisingly, 2009 — the year of the Great Recession — was a nadir. The Cape is a vacation place and while, as the slogan goes, it’s “a short trip to far away” it’s still a trip and the newly unemployed and financially shell-shocked weren’t inclined to go anywhere — and even if they did, they weren’t spending much.

Last year marked a big comeback, with economic activity bouncing up to pre-crash levels. While Northcross doesn’t have solid data yet — those don’t come until after the year is over and, of course, the high season still has more than two weeks left — there is a feeling among those she talks to that this summer could be better still. Retail is down, she says, for reasons that are unclear. But other sectors of the Cape’s economy are booming. Restaurants are crowded, hotels and inns are full — and there’s no need to offer discounted pricing.

The summer didn’t start well; June’s showers seemed a gloomy harbinger. But July turned brutally hot and the timing of Independence Day (it fell on a Thursday) meant that lots of people took long weekends. One visible sign: the epic traffic jam on Sunday, the 7th, which stretched 25 miles down Route 6 and lasted for hours. A mini-version was replicated the next morning, as those who couldn’t make it out on Sunday made another effort.

“Only in my world is a bridge backup a good thing,” says Northcross, and I understand her point. During the worst of the financial collapse, commuters in cities across America were suddenly aware that jams were smaller and their rides were shorter. The unemployed have no reason to be commuting. The same logic follows for the Cape. If it’s easy to get on and off, that’s because no one is trying to get on and off.

Northcross rhapsodizes on about the new Boston-Hyannis train service, the Cape’s hundreds of miles of beaches, and the charm of its variegated topography, but in truth, I really just want to talk sharks. “They’re here, they’re a fact of life, and they’re not going away,” she acknowledges. Cape officials are trying to be sure that everyone knows where the sharks are and are closing beaches when needed to keep people safe. How very much unlike the response of Amity Island, I think. Indeed, Northcross points out, Chatham is “turning lemons into lemonade,” creating a number of tourist events around the sightings.

All of which means that this summer the Cape has effectively undermined the premise of a movie that the American Film Institute ranks in its top 100. It turns out that the right response to something new in our midst is not to cower in fear, cover it up, and try to kill it. Rather, we celebrate it — indulge our curiosity, marvel at the mysteries of nature, perhaps even pay some reverence. Sand, ice cream, lighthouses . . . and now sharks. Instead of a reason to stay away, the predators off the shore are another of the Cape’s many attractions.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on August 18, 2013.

The tech tax squeeze

If those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then a number of legislators should be looking over their shoulders, wondering whether their time in office is near an end. That’s what happened in 1990, when the state expanded the sales tax to cover all manner of services — from lawyering to dog-walking — and voters erupted in anger, ousting Democratic incumbents and propelling a Republican to the governorship. The same may happen in 2014.

Free-spending politicians are revenue-hungry, constantly seeking new and uncomplaining sources of revenue. And so one can imagine the chortles of delight that must have greeted the idea of extending the sales tax to cover computer services. After all, tech was doing well — rapidly growing and highly profitable. Surely they wouldn’t mind a paltry 6.25 percent. Even better, the industry had a reputation for being politically naive. The mistake of 1990, the argument would have gone, was in going after lawyers. Law firms are key funders for political campaigns; soaking them for more proved a problem. Techies, on the other hand, are generally disengaged from politics. Heck, many of them don’t even have real offices. They might squawk, but they could be safely ignored.

At first that calculus seemed right. Earlier this year, Governor Deval Patrick proposed a host of new taxes, including expanding the sales tax, as part of his plan to spend $1.9 billion on transportation and education. The Legislature pushed back. Unlike Patrick — in his last term and worried about a legacy, not a reelection — lawmakers were wary of asking for too much. Much to Patrick’s dismay (and over his veto), they cut down the package. Still, the sales tax on computer services remained. At the beginning of August, it took effect.

And people are getting upset.

The law itself is a confusingly written mess. If I create a new piece of code for your computer, that’s taxable. But if I re-write your Windows registry because it was corrupted by a virus, apparently that’s not. (As one blogger intimated, expect, as a result, to see a sudden spurt of malware-related issues.) Then, too, the idea of going after tech to improve our roads and bridges is odd. If there’s one group of folks that don’t make much use of transportation, it’s software writers. Their products don’t ship by truck, a number work from home, and when they do travel many would sooner don spandex and a bike helmet than take a car.

Poorly crafted laws can be fixed, however. The problem with this tax is that it threatens to undermine the Bay State’s economy. Only three other states tax high-tech services the way Massachusetts now does (Hawaii, New Mexico, and South Dakota — none of them tech powerhouses) and the new tax now puts us at a competitive disadvantage to everyone else. Moreover, high tech is — of all businesses — one of the most easily mobile. Relocating out of the state to a friendlier clime is simple, and already states such as Florida, seeing an opening from this latest effort to revive the Taxachusetts label, are making appeals.

The Massachusetts High Technology Council and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation have now joined forces to push for repeal. Their plan is to put a referendum on next year’s ballot, and — to prove how serious they are — they’ve engaged heavyweight lobbying firm Rasky Baerlein to manage the process. My guess is that early polls will show repeal has a lot of popular support, particularly as voters start to figure that this new tax is just the nose under the camel’s tent — first comes high tech, but pretty soon, greedy political eyes will alight on everyone else. One can easily see this become a defining issue of next year’s campaign.

In the interim, perhaps cooler heads will prevail. The mere threat of a ballot question has been used before to force action. A 2012 ballot push to change how teachers are evaluated pressured unions to agree to a legislative solution. The “right to repair” question, also in 2012, caused both sides to come up with a compromise. That may happen this time around.

It’s either that or watch as 1990 plays out once again.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 13, 2013.

What’s at play in a fluid mayoral race

There are just over six weeks — 44 days — until Boston voters choose the candidates who will face off against each other in the November final for mayor. It’s an extraordinary winnowing of the field, going from 12 to two, and made even more extraordinary because the real campaign — that is, the time when voters start to pay attention — won’t begin until the summer doldrums are over and Labor Day has passed. In that short sprint, from Sept. 3 to 24, the race will likely be made and remade several times. Things are fluid, and predicting the outcome is foolhardy.

The fluidity of this race is partly from the size of the field itself and the unique nature of a preliminary election. To make it to the final, two candidates only need to get more votes than all the others. Thus, in theory, 10 of the twelve candidates could each get 8.2 percent, but would lose to two who got 9 percent each.

A recent poll, conducted in mid-July by Suffolk University and the Boston Herald, underscored the point. In first place was John Connolly, the city councilor who was running even before incumbent Tom Menino said he’d forgo a sixth term. First place sounds impressive, but that only means Connolly has 12 percent. In sixth place was Charlotte Golar Richie, once head of the city’s department of neighborhood development. She got 5 percent — a difference between her and Connolly of only 7. With a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points and a strikingly high 40 percent of all voters saying they are undecided, that difference is essentially meaningless.

Complicating things further is the somewhat old-school assumption that voters make decisions based on factors such as neighborhood allegiance, ethnicity, race, or gender. That assumption itself is open to dispute, but, if true, it matters who shows up at the polls. Boston has changed enormously since the last open mayoral election in 1993, and trying to forecast turnout based on 20-year-old data is difficult. There are certain stereotypes — some neighborhoods vote more faithfully than others, Irish- and Italian-Americans vote more heavily than African-Americans or those under age 30 — but no one knows how valid any of these are. The Suffolk-Herald poll, for example, projected that 64 percent of the electorate would be white. Given that Boston’s population is only 47 percent white, that assumes far less turnout by the city’s minorities, thereby hurting nonwhite candidates. Maybe. Maybe not.

Moreover, the entire point of the ground campaigns the candidates are putting together is to identify voters sympathetic to them and get them to the polls. Such get-out-the-vote efforts are generally thought to be able to move results by a few percentage points. In a crowded field, that might be enough.

All of which is why one can construct credible cases for nine of the 12 candidates making it to the final. (I exclude the underfunded or moribund campaigns of radio station operator Charles Clemons, largely unknown Republican David Wyatt, and city councilor Charles Yancey). Right now, state Representative Marty Walsh is garnering the most attention. He represents voter-rich Dorchester and, as onetime head of the Building Trades council, has won a string of labor endorsements. Moreover, Walsh — a recovering alcoholic — has an inspiring personal story and his politics are not easy to pigeonhole. Many in the gay community are solidly in his camp, for instance.

After Walsh, two other candidates loom large: Dan Conley, the district attorney who has been running television ads nonstop, and Connolly, who has made education reform his mantra. Strong arguments can be made too for Golar Richie, the only woman in the race, and Rob Consalvo, the city councilor from Menino’s home neighborhood of Hyde Park. And city councilors Felix Arroyo and Michael Ross are running good campaigns, as are activist John Barros and businessman Bill Walczak.

The fortunes of any of these nine will likely rise and fall in the weeks ahead, meaning the race is wide open. That’s a welcome change of pace. After a number of lifeless elections with few choices (such as the recent Markey-Gomez Senate race), it’s refreshing to see democracy back in action.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on August 11, 2013.

Tax break is no holiday for Mass.

There are certain things our elected officials do that make easy pickings for a columnist, and right at the top of the list is the Bay State’s annual sales tax holiday. (Make that mostly annual; we skipped 2009). As July waned, the Legislature passed a bill declaring one for Aug. 10 and 11. Governor Deval Patrick quickly signed it and so now, a few days hence, we all know where we’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday: at the mall.

 

Sales tax holidays are a gimmick, a fake gift from politicians to constituents. Retailers believe they are a cure for summer shopping blues, a way to boost overall sales. For the most part, that doesn’t happen. Shoppers think they are an opportunity to save money. In fact they often don’t. There’s a third knock on the holidays, too: They cost state government money — last year, Massachusetts lost an estimated $23 million. The better solution, if pols really cared about helping retailers and shoppers, would be to cut the sales tax rate across the board.

 

We’re hardly alone in this foolishness. The first sales tax holiday was in 1997, courtesy of New York. Massachusetts followed suit in 2004. This year, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators, 17 other states are expected to offer up their own version. Most are held in the summer. Some, like Massachusetts, are only two days. The majority are three and a few — Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia — gave their citizens a full week.

 

I first wrote about the holidays in 2006, calling them “meaningless anti-tax showpieces.” (You see just how much influence I have. . . ) Since then, the academic arguments against the holidays have grown ever louder. In 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago raised doubts, finding some increase in the sales of children’s apparel during the holidays but little effect otherwise; they are “not a panacea,” the authors concluded. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in 2012 called them a “boondoggle.” And just last month, the Tax Foundation ripped into the holidays, saying they “represent a real cost for businesses without providing substantial benefits.”

 

All of this seems counterintuitive. How is it that saving money on taxes wouldn’t be good for consumers? And given the crowds we’ll doubtless see this weekend, how is it that anyone could credibly claim they don’t help business?

 

Part of the answer is found in the first sentence of Globe reporter Michael Levenson’s news story on this year’s holiday: “Wait. Don’t buy that television just yet.” The holidays don’t really encourage more spending. They just encourage people to delay their spending until the holiday occurs (or accelerate the purchase of something they had planned to buy later). Yes, business will be booming this weekend. But that comes at a cost of somewhat less business the other 51 weekends of the year.

 

On the flip side, consumers don’t benefit that much either. Most studies find retailers in effect use the tax breaks as a substitute for cutting their prices. For example, as soon as the holiday was announced, major furniture retailers such as Jordan’s started promoting a “double sales tax” discount of 12.5 percent up until the day of the holiday. Then on the holiday, the double discount ends. Consumers won’t notice, since the state is paying the difference, but in truth, from one weekend to the next, prices are actually rising 6.25 percent.

 

All of this might not matter much except that — even though they benefit neither retailers nor consumers all that much — the holidays do hit state coffers hard. Eventually, that needs to be made up, perhaps through budget cuts or (this being Massachusetts) through a tax increase. Consider the absurdity of Massachusetts raising its sale tax from 5.0 to 6.25 percent in 2009, and then the next year offering a holiday that reduces revenue from that hike.

 

“If a state must offer a ‘holiday’ from its tax system, it is a sign that the state’s tax system is uncompetitive,” argues the Tax Foundation. Since we compete against other states, it would make much more sense to cut the rate year-round. A sales tax holiday is like a torturer offering his victim a moment of respite. Better to simply stop the torture altogether.

 

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on August 6, 2013.

Is the Pope Catholic?

For gay Catholics, those words do matter

Jorge Bergoglio, now better known as Pope Francis, holds an impromptu press conference as he flies from Brazil to Rome and, in response to a question about gays in the priesthood, disarmingly asks, “Who am I to judge?”

In some quarters, that latest remark is greeted with a rolling of eyes and a deepening concern, especially about this particular man (one who would dare wash the feet of women), a concern that brings to mind the old line: Is the Pope Catholic? In other quarters, especially those of the more liberal, cafeteria bent (which, in Massachusetts, one of the most Catholic states in the nation, means — let’s face it — most adherents), there is near euphoria. Holy Pope John XXIII! The windows are open and the wind is blowing. Vatican III, here we come!

The former worry too much; the latter are overly optimistic. Granted, there’s a difference in tone from Pope Benedict to Francis, and that shouldn’t be surprising: They are quite different men. Reticent and solitary, Benedict was awkward when it came to the political side of his job. Francis is outgoing, a glad-hander who connects readily with people. He’s easier to like but still, church doctrine hasn’t changed. Homosexuality remains “intrinsically disordered.” Homosexual relations are grave sins. And, the arguments of some theologians notwithstanding, the prospects of priests officiating at same-sex weddings are decidedly dim.

Yet differences of tone matter, and there is a chance here that gay Catholics may at least no longer feel like pariahs in their own faith.

The church draws a bright line between what you are and what you do, which was the point Francis was making on his plane ride. It’s not someone’s fault if he or she feels a sexual attraction to the same sex. But acting on that impulse is a problem. The church’s position on sexual relations is quite clear: “The sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage;” it is intended to be “procreative and unitive.” Hence, no masturbation, no non-marital sex, no living together, no birth control, and no same-sex relationships.

For a lot of heterosexual Catholics, there’s a way around the dilemma created by these rules. Ignore them. And so they do. A 2012 Gallup survey found that 82 percent of Catholics think birth control is OK. Only 14 percent of Catholics regard non-marital sex as wrong, according to a 2008 report from the General Social Survey. Yet even while disagreeing with it, these people remain part of the church: attending Mass, receiving communion, and going to confession.

Perhaps they stay because, while the church may disapprove of what they do, the disapproval isn’t loudly voiced. Everyone knows — do you think the priests at weddings believe the couple before them are virgins? — but the ceremony proceeds nonetheless. Sinners, perhaps, but of the more venial variety.

Gay Catholics haven’t been so lucky. Particularly under Benedict, the attitude toward them felt deeply hostile. There are some, treating religion as a club, who say good riddance: If you can’t abide by the rules, then you shouldn’t be a member. But most religions, including Catholicism, are about saving souls. Driving away an entire category of humans — those who feel same-sex attractions — is contrary to their mission.

Which is why, even though doctrine hasn’t changed, Francis’ words matter. Perhaps, one hopes, the pope’s language signals that the denunciations won’t be as strong, that, somewhat like the attitude toward birth control and pre-marital relations, there will be disapproval, but of a mild variety. If so, that would mirror the attitudes of the faithful in the United States. A June 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of Catholics thought homosexual relations acceptable; only 33 percent felt them a sin.

Yet there remains a critical difference. Heterosexual Catholics know that, whatever sins they may commit along the way, the ultimate expression of their relationship, marriage, is welcomed by the church. Not so gay Americans. Even as civil society moves toward recognizing their relationships — today, 13 states and Washington, D.C., permit same-sex marriage — the church does not and gives no signal it will change. Catholic doctrine speaks of homosexuality as a “trial.” For many gays, that trial is imposed on them by the faith they otherwise love.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on August 4, 2013.