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    I know what boys like

    Ten minutes ago, I was in a great mood, I swear.



    I know I need to stop sniping at Andrew Sullivan. An obscure person who keeps ragging in public on a prominent person is inviting accusations of envy. He wouldn’t know me if he fell over me in the street. I’m being petty. I suck.



    Having acknowledged that, I will humbly receive the permission of my dozen readers to say, I don’t think I can keep reading him much longer. I really don’t. One of his posts from today (your time over there…as in, it’s tomorrow here, but still today for you…oh, whatever) contains this one-two punch of ninnyism that made me want to scream:


    HE SAID IT! The Washington Blade has found a reference by the president to the word “gay.” He said the phrase “gay marriage” in Pennsylvania, referring to someone else’s question. He knows that gay people exist! Now if he could only apply to adjective to actual human beings. But it’s a start. And don’t give me the pablum abhout not treating people as members of a group. Today, at the Urban League, Bush asked: “Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party? Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American people?” That’s the difference between a group of people you respect and want to win over and a group of people you marginalize for political gain.



    EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Your blog links to an inaccurate statement in a Fox report which claims that wives should be subservient to their husbands, when the word Judge Holmes used was subordinate. Subservient implies obsequiousness or servility while subordinate implies submitting to the authority of another (which can arguably be considered a sign of strength). You use the incorrect word in your blog.” The strength to be subordinate! And this comes from a religious tradition that began with a man who defied almost every social convention of his time and treated women – even single women – as his equals; who never married and broke up the families and marriages of his disciples; who told his own parents as a teenager that they had no final control over him; and whose best friends were a single woman and a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus’ breast in an act of profound intimacy. How you get the subordination of women and the persecution of homosexuals from all that is beyond me.





    This is what one of our most literate, urbane, even-handed, generous-minded advocates is reduced to? Wagging his tail at the mention of the word gay, once, by the President? I mean, all right, to an extent I get it. Bush probably is dodging the issue as much as he can, and of course he’s probably doing so for the sake of political expediency. We are not–no surprise here–the constituency he needs to court most urgently.



    If the President really thinks homosexuals should be as free to live our private lives and make private contracts as everyone else, but that marriage shouldn’t be redefined just to make us happy, and that as a Christian he can’t approve of that aspect of our lives, I wish he’d just flat-out say it. I know all the reasons it’s not a good idea for him as a politician up for election, but I, for one, would be grateful. Yeah, he’d give some people on both sides of the argument fits of apoplexy, but they’d be well-earned fits of apoplexy.



    In fact, Andrew Sullivan, 2004 version, would be having the biggest fit of all, because apparently the US government is the arbiter of our dignity as citizens (yes, I’m going off on this again–feel free to go read Instapundit if you’re sick of hearing about it), and anything but approval, using the g word, with concrete examples, affronts it. You have to wonder what exactly would satisfy people who think like this. We’re 3% of the population, so does that mean we need to be mentioned in 3% of Bush’s speeches? Or should we constitute 3% of the individuals he refers to by name? Does “relationships between people of the same gender” count for, say, 0.375 times as many points as the actual use of “gay”? And how is anyone supposed to live a full, rich, satisfying life but still have time to obsess over these things?



    I doubt President Bush cares any more than Andrew Sullivan what Sean Kinsell, actual gay human being and voter, thinks. But for the record, there are two important entities I think he should consider while on the job:



    (1) The United States, in which I include its citizens, infrastructure, territory, and interests

    (2) Well-connected industries that are getting clobbered by the competition, and the identity-politicking PAC’s that imitate them in the seeking of entitlements



    President Bush, it’s your sworn duty to do everything you can to protect one of the above. But only one. Do it, already.



    NO, THE OTHER ONE!



    *******



    As for the second entry, Andrew Sullivan is entitled to reconcile his Christian faith with his sexuality however he likes…in his own life. If in public he’s going to make cockamamie-ass equivalences between “a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus’ breast in an act of profound intimacy” and homosexuality, he needs to be answered, lest people think all of us open homosexuals are that obtuse.



    I have no idea what happens chez Sullivan, but I can assure you that in this household, sex involves more than the resting of one partner’s head on the other’s chest, honeychile. Conversely, I have friends from college who, when we’re all gathered for someone’s wedding and catching up or talking politics, think nothing of leaning on me while I play absently with their hair; but I know they’d be confused and repelled if I ever actually came on to them. For that matter, straight men in most places outside America are permitted more physical contact with each other, but that doesn’t make them homosexual, or even gay-friendly.



    All of this is my characteristically roundabout way of saying, any dope knows that matey intimacy (however the local culture defines it) is different from having sex. And while Andrew Sullivan’s not a dope, he’s an incredibly smart person with an increasingly bad case of tunnel vision. He’s been so honest about his sexuality and his HIV status, given the political circles he moves in, that I still haven’t reached the point at which I can just write him off. But lately, for the first time, I’ve felt as if I’m getting there. And there’s no other commentator who’s as all-around good, in the sense of being an advocate for gays without excluding other political and social issues, as he used to be. It’s sad.



    [Added at 16:00: Spoons wonders whether Sullivan is implying that he thinks Jesus was a homosexual. I don’t think that was the point, actually. He seems to be more saying that Jesus hung out in a merry, tolerant bunch of bohemians that included independent women and companionable piles of male buddies, and that therefore we can deduce that he was, you know, mellow about alternative lifestyles and stuff. It’s still malarkey.]



    *******



    On a not-entirely-unrelated note: Agenda Bender’s been up for two years. Tom’s one of those people who can post two lines of tossed-off pervy humor and make me giggle for the rest of the day; though he hasn’t written many lately, he can also do those rants that look as if they’re about to careen out of control any second but never do (a talent I manifestly lack; see this site, passim). And he’s been just incredibly kind to me. I have no idea whether he checks in here, but just in case: Happy 2nd…well, I won’t use the word and spoil your Google joy, but the entire staff of the former East Asia office sends regards.

    6 Responses to “I know what boys like”

    1. Nathan says:

      See…I think you should probably replace Sullivan as the Thoughtful, Insightful spokesperson for conservative homosexuals. And it isn’t that you and I agree on some things, because there’s quite a number of things we disagree on. But I respect you, and the consistency of your views, and the way you try (and succeed!) in understanding differing points of view. I never enjoyed reading Sullivan because his attitude seemed to be: “I’m so smart and insightful and tolerant and homosexual, so of course you agree with me.” Blah.

    2. Why You Should Stop Reading Andrew Sullivan

      Sean Kinsell….

    3. Who You Should Read Instead of Andrew Sullivan

      Sean Kinsell. Whaddya know…? The link for both posts is the same because one thing that strikes me about Sean is that he is a whole person. He has interests, passions, ideas, and whole aspects of his life that aren’t…

    4. Sean Kinsell says:

      Thanks, Nathan. But I don’t think the problem is that Sullivan’s going off the deep end leaves an absence of sane gay commentators. Jonathan Rauch, Dale Carpenter, Bruce Bawer, and Walter Olson (among others, especially at IGF) are all out there making good arguments, too. The problem is that Sullivan is still the only non-leftist gay advocate that most people are likely to know of.
      Also, as I’ve said over and over, given the crap he’s taken for us over the years, it’s hard to give up on him, you know? It’s one thing to point out that a man who was infected with HIV through consensual sex in 1991 or so was knowingly taking a risk; it’s quite another to look forward to the day he becomes symptomatic and starts dying. He’s never given in under that kind of fire, so I hope, still, that he’s just kind of wigging out right now over developments that have disappointed him and that he’ll get back on course when he calms down.

    5. Very interesting about Sullivan. I have a lot of thought about this whole thing. But, anyway…
      Excellent advice for the President. I love the way you put that. Terrific.

    6. Sean Kinsell says:

      Thanks. The problem is, it was such a perfect formulation that I had the nagging feeling I’d seen it on someone else’s blog. Nothing turned up on Google, but….