Gays as ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’

Catching up, this was an interesting Washington Post column by Anne Applebaum. For Putin’s Russia and its anti-Western allies, gays have replaced Jews as the hated avatars of modernity, openness and tolerance. We see this worldwide, in places where, as Applebaum writes:

xenophobic, anti-European and, nowadays, anti-homosexual rhetoric [sometimes] becomes an argument in favor of local oligarchs or economic clans and against foreign investment or rules that would create an even playing field. It always focuses on Western decadence, economic or sexual, and welcomes any sign of Western hesitancy.

Achieving legal equality for gay people in such places will be a long, arduous struggle. Timidity with regard to defending enlightenment-rooted values—and open debate in particular—as was exhibited last week by Brandeis University and is, sadly, part of a much broader trend, makes those who hate us bolder.

25 Comments for “Gays as ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’”

  1. posted by Houndentenor on

    I’d like to tie the stories involving Brandeis and Mozilla to another one that probably hasn’t gotten as much national attention.

    https://www.sfcv.org/article/the-discreet-charm-of-stephen-jay-carlton

    All three stories involve boards not doing their homework then being caught off guard by the events that followed. There is nothing about Ayaan Hirsi Ali or her statements that aren’t easily discovered by googling her name. If those statements were so offensive, she shouldn’t have been offered the honorary degree in the first place. And if the board really thought she was worthy of that honor they should have stuck by her during the backlash. Ms Ali, by the way, is none the worse over all this. An honorary degree is just a worthless piece of paper. The free publicity from the controversy is probably selling a lot of books. People who disagree with things she has said should do so. The debate needs to be had over the issues she raises.

    As for the rootlessness of gays, in my experience it’s the gay child who bears the most responsibility for taking care of family matters involving their aging parents over their straight siblings. That is hardly rootlessness. Not that bigots bother to meet and get to know any actual gay people before throwing out epithets. Sadly, their propaganda often influences the know-nothing segment of their society (in whatever country).

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      Right now, one of my best friends is dealing with the deaths of both of his parents. They died within a month of one another, and it came out of the blue for him, because for thirty years he has been “dead” to them.

      But guess who’s been placed in charge of handling all the funeral arrangements for both of them? While he tries to process the emotional overload of becoming an orphan for real, after having been orphaned for years because of his parents’ abandonment, he must also take on the responsibilities straight family members — who’ve been part of these people’s lives all through those lost years — are happy to dump on him.

      I’m sure this sort of thing is happening all over the country. Probably all over the world. Whatever sense can be made of it, I don’t think “rootless cosmopolitan” works very well.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Whatever sense can be made of it, I don’t think “rootless cosmopolitan” works very well.

        “Rootless cosmopolitan” is a Russian phrase used to revile Jewish intellectuals, accused of pro-Western feelings and lack of patriotism, during a brief period in Russian history. The “rootless” part of the phrase no doubt alludes to the post-Christian diaspora, historically a consequence of deicide. It is an odd allusion to come from the officially anti-religious government of the period.

        • posted by Houndentenor on

          So far we have focused on the treatment of gays in the Russian Federation. It’s good that we are doing that but we need to see this and talk about this in context of a bigger problem of abuse and prejudice against a wide array of minority groups there.

        • posted by MR Bill on

          I always thought (and seem to remember from a World History class over 30 years ago) that the “rootless” part was about the lack of connection to the communal whole of the People…

          • posted by Tom Scharbach on

            I always thought (and seem to remember from a World History class over 30 years ago) that the “rootless” part was about the lack of connection to the communal whole of the People …

            That would make a lot more sense than a reference to the post-Christian diaspora, given the anti-religious tendencies of Russian Communism.

  2. posted by Jorge on

    Hmm…..

    The Op-Ed in that campus newspaper, if true, and especially if Tom is correct that the information is easily verifiable, is near fatal.

    And it persuasively argues a point I lean toward with great uncertainty.

    There are some really sick things that go on in so-called traditional societies. I cannot name the vicious murders of gays in Iraq during the US occupation after even the moderate Ayotollah al-Sistani issued a death sentence on gays to be anything but evil.

    But changing that means having faith in the rightness of one’s judgment, faith that it is possible to make things better from within. I remember in one of the stories, what happened was that some families were telling their gay children to flee Iraq. The chances that these are families that accepted homosexuality, much less believed in what you term legal equality, are remote.

    Here’s the quandry. Moderates are more persuasive, but also more patient and slower to act. They have a way of weighing the best interests of both the community and the individual. They are strong against conservatives but weak against militants. This is because conservatives will work with them, but militants will kill them. There’s an opposite with with radicals or almost any other type of non-moderate willing to put themselves at risk. Their rashness may push the conservatives to join the militants, but the speed and vigor with which they can act is the only thing that can stop a determined tyrant or militant.

    In most traditional societies the answer is a no-brainer. But Islam has a militant side that is very active.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Excuse me, I mean Houndentenor (eep!)

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      I certainly don’t have any answers. In Holland there is a very serious problem of Muslim youths attacking women and gay people. Their society is ill-equipped to deal with this because they are so non-violent and they have lived through a not so distant past of angry rhetoric against a religious minority. (Sorry trying to avoid Godwin’s Law here, but this is part of the history and why they are so meek about addressing the problems with their Islamic minority head on.) At the same time there are plenty of Muslims who aren’t violent, don’t espouse violent and aren’t nearly as misogynistic as many in their culture. The solution isn’t going to be easy but we aren’t going to get to one without having uncomfortable conversations. Lobbing out angry rhetoric into the feeding frenzy of extremist media and websites is certainly not any kind of answer. Brandeis erred, in my opinion, for not embracing the controversy and welcoming Ms Ali’s critics to ask her the difficult questions (and conversely for her to ask equally difficult questions of her critics). That might have been productive.

      • posted by Jorge on

        You know, I wish I were in college again, because there’s some sort of issue brewing there (Vassar). I keep getting email-letters from its president about how the campus is handling differences of opinion over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

        Apparently the campus Jewish club left an international association of Jewish or Israeli student groups over its policy of that its groups are not to permit expressions of anti-Israeli sentiment. The local club felt it was too restrictive on their own members who had various points of view on Israel and the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and inconsistent with campus policy/climate. Sounds like a lot of nothing to me.

        Now I get a very long email from the college president reiterating same general nothings, and saying:

        “There is no way to make the challenges or the frustrations surrounding these issues just go away, nor do we want to do that. What I believe we in the Vassar community can contribute to these discussions and any other set of complicated and contentious issues is a way to talk about them with intellectual discipline and mutual respect, even in the face of heated disagreements.” And then she goes into some detail defending this position.

        When I was a freshman, a brief argument started between two students when they realized one was Palestinian and one was Israeli (the argument was on the merits). We were on our way back to the college from a field trip. It ended very quickly when another student said, “Not in the car. There’s certain things you don’t do when someone’s driving. Like coming out to your parents.” We all laughed.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          Apparently the campus Jewish club left an international association of Jewish or Israeli student groups over its policy of that its groups are not to permit expressions of anti-Israeli sentiment. The local club felt it was too restrictive on their own members who had various points of view on Israel and the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and inconsistent with campus policy/climate. Sounds like a lot of nothing to me.

          It probably is. There is a wide diversity of opinion about Israeli-Palestinian issues, and specifically the Occupied Territories, among American Jews. The problem with students is that they are young, and often bring more passion to an issue than common sense.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    For Putin’s Russia and its anti-Western allies, gays have replaced Jews as the hated avatars of modernism, openness and tolerance.

    If “gays are the new Jews” in Russia, it not because Russian anti-Semitism has lessened so much as it is because there are few Jews left in Russia. Jews left Russia in droves for Israel when emigration became possible. About 2 million Jews fled Russia; less than 200,000 Jews remain.

    Xenophobia has been a constant in Russian history, and xenophobia will always find a threat to target. Not enough Jews? No problem. Target gays.

    What strikes me about Russian anti-gay rhetoric is how closely it mirrors American anti-gay rhetoric of recent history. Putin’s script might have been written by the anti-gay Americans (Anita Bryant onward) who targeted gays in this country as twisted, diseased, dangers to children and family, anti-Christian, a threat to American values and democracy, and the like. You know the script, and if you cannot hear the echoes, you are deaf. The similiarities are not surprising given the extent to which the American anti-gay movement aided and abetting the Russians in developing its current anti-gay campaigns, and the chorus of praise Russia and Putin have received of late from anti-gay Americans is disgusting.

    To step onto dangerous ground, I suspect that the rhetoric of the anti-gay movement in our country rang familiar to the ears of Jews. Anti-gay rhetoric strikes a chord of memory for American Jews.

    The rhetoric of the anti-gay movement bears marked similarity to the rhetoric of historic anti-Semitism.

    I suspect that similarity contributes to the strong support American Jews give “equal means equal” in the United States. In the most recent Pew polling, 83% of Jewish Americans favored marriage equality – even more than secular, non-religious Americans (at 73% the next most supportive group).

    The current attack on gays and lesbians has moved beyond the crude “diseased pedophiles” language the movement used 1970-2010. Now few believe that rhetoric any more, the attack has shifted ground. At this point, the trope is that “the radical homosexual activist community” are “thugs”, “brown shirts”, “bullies”, “haters”, “intolerant” and “thought police” with a “totalitarian worldview”, guilty of “totalitarian aggression”, “sheer intolerance and bigotry”, “unconscionable behavior and deplorable tactics” and “intolerance and uncivil behavior”, who “bully and threaten Christians”, who “push Christians and others completely out of the public square” and “poison democratic discourse and fray the bonds on which democracy itself ultimately depends”, and who are carrying out “a McCarthyesque witch hunt”, “attack”, “assault”, “organized reprisals”, a “freedom-hating campaign” and “a scorched-earth policy.” (I am not making up the quoted phrases, by the way; all are taken directly from recent NOM mailers.) We are compared to Robspierre, the Communist Party and Nazi socialists, and Matt Barber has gone so far as to insist that gays and lesbians want Christians “dead”. Ugly, ugly words all around.

    Putin, it would seem, is not alone in portraying gays and lesbians as “the hated avatars of modernism, openness and tolerance“.

    It is the language of fear and xenophobia, borne on the wings of a paranoid conviction that gays and lesbians, like Jews in the minds of anti-Semites, wield unseen power, manipulating society to undermine the majority and diminish Christian “moral values” as the underpinning of our society.

    So to me, the extreme and increasingly virulent rhetoric that characterizes the anti-gay movement in the United States has a very familiar sound to it. I don’t suggest that anti-gay rhetoric and anti-Semitic rhetoric are equivalent, but I think that both have a common denominator — xenophobia — and are ideological cousins. Scratch an anti-gay social conservative like Pat Buchanan, and you’ll often open up a pool of resentment against Jews.

    Vilification of gays and lesbians, carrying such echoes as it does for many of us, matters because, as Rabbi Abraham Herschel observed, “Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.”

    Rav Herschel was speaking in a different context, of course, the context of historic European vilification of Jews and its consequences. Nonetheless, the point is well made, and we would be better off if we took heed of his words.

    The current level of villification of gays and lesbians coming from the anti-gay right is mind-numbing. It will have consequences, just as the fear and loathing political campaign of a decade ago, using equally vile rhetoric, had consequences. I don’t expect the equivalent of Shoah, or anything even close. But I do not dismiss the power of ugly words to justify ugly actions. As Houndentenor observed: “Sadly, their propaganda often influences the know-nothing segment of their society (in whatever country).”.

    In the United States, it is just possible that the inevitable consequences of vilification may turn, for once, on the vilifiers rather than the vilified.

    Little by slowly social conservatives are coming out from behind the mask of reasonableness, showing their true colors, building for us an incontrovertible record of the anti-gay animus that many of us knew motivated the anti-equality industry, a record that can now be presented in court to counter the chimera that the anti-equality movement is about “preserving traditional marriage” and “protecting children”.

    With respect to Brandeis, I can’t get too excited about it. While I agree with Houndentenor that it would have been better for Brandeis to honor the invitation having extended it, it doesn’t seem to me that the Enlightenment is much threatened by the mistep.

    Keep in mind that the Enlightenment was dedicated to the reform of society using reason, to challenging ideas grounded in religious tradition, and to advancing knowledge through the scientific method. If you are looking for an enemy of “enlightenment-rooted values” in our culture, you need not look too far. Find the nearest proponent of “Creation Science”. Or the nearest proponent of the idea that religion-based “moral values”, rather than reason, are the only legitimate foundation of civil law for the rest of us. You don’t even have to dig. Just look.

    It seems odd that I wrote this last night, the day of my grandson’s bris, a time of celebration and joy, only to read this morning that yesterday was also the day of a murderous attack on a Jewish community center in Kansas. On the eve of Passover, the attack was both a sorrow and a reminder.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      A formatting note: The quote “Sadly, their propaganda often influences the know-nothing segment of their society (in whatever country).” is Lori’s. The remainder of the comment (starting with “In the United States, it is just possible …” are my words, not Lori’s.

    • posted by Mike in Houston on

      “the radical homosexual activist community” are “thugs”, “brown shirts”, “bullies”, “haters”, “intolerant” and “thought police” with a “totalitarian worldview”, guilty of “totalitarian aggression”, “sheer intolerance and bigotry”, “unconscionable behavior and deplorable tactics” and “intolerance and uncivil behavior”, who “bully and threaten Christians”, who “push Christians and others completely out of the public square” and “poison democratic discourse and fray the bonds on which democracy itself ultimately depends”, and who are carrying out “a McCarthyesque witch hunt”, “attack”, “assault”, “organized reprisals”, a “freedom-hating campaign” and “a scorched-earth policy.”

      Glad you clarified that these came from NOM… not one of Stephen’s posts.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Glad you clarified that these came from NOM… not one of Stephen’s posts.

        I’m more aware of NOM than some of the others because I’ve somehow ended up on their solicitation list.

        But Tony Perkins has been saying pretty much the same thing (e.g. “They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful.“) and comparing us to terrorists (e.g. “[T]errorism is a strike against the general populace simply to spread fear and intimidation so that they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That’s what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system.“) and all the rest of the dreck that NOM spouts.

        It is pretty much the same messaging wherever you look these days — AFA, FRC, Million Moms, NOM, WND and so on. What one group dreams up, the others echo. Matt Barber’s recent column at WND, for example, is titled “How the ‘gay’ jihad normalized a filthy practice“, and gets worse from there. “Gays are the new Al Qaeda?” Really?

        I wish that it were just noise. But speech has consequences.

        • posted by Jorge on

          Ugh! That WND article’s first sentence is pure filth. And it gets worse. DudeSir, if you live in a splinterhouse, don’t throw wooden beam boomerangs! THIS is what Ann Coulter was exiled from while she was ranting about fisting.

          “In short, these sexually confused and spiritually lost souls, particularly males caught-up in this lifestyle, can only “consummate” a counterfeit “gay marriage” through the squalid, unnatural and feculent misuse and abuse of both the reproductive and digestive systems.

          Yuck.”

          Yuck is right. It takes a special sort of rheumy hairy *cough*hussy*cough* (apologies, but as a gay male my idea of most repulsive insults is a little skewed) to take something as innocuous as “•Make “gays” look good. •Make dissenters look bad.” and turn it into something like totalitarianism. I have one of those nuts in my neighborhood. They can be a real pain. Here’s #5:

          Prove points #1 through 4. Not only must dissenters look bad, but you must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do not care about their fellow human beings and will not serve the best interests of humanity in good faith. If you cannot prove that, then move on to the next opponent. Not only must gays “look” good and appear to be victims, but you must demonstrate that

          Regnerus is an academic whore!

          because there are no socially undesirable outcomes for gay families. This has been established at trial! Good grief, I can’t stand your success rate sometimes, Tom.

          • posted by Tom Scharbach on

            Not only must gays “look” good and appear to be victims, but you must demonstrate that Regnerus is an academic whore! because there are no socially undesirable outcomes for gay families.

            That’s not why Regnerus is an academic whore. The reason that he is an academic whore is that he accepted funding from an anti-equality group wanting a particular outcome to a study (as evidenced by the e-mail chain produced in cross-examination), produced the desired study and outcome, and then, under oath, admitted that the outcome was not credible in light of the study.

          • posted by Jorge on

            My point is that evidence in our factor should be brought to light, while the false pretenses of the opposition must be exposed.

            As I shamelessly subscribe to the controversial view that LGBTs need to demonstrate the respect in merit that we demand in treatment, I favor aggressively going after such low-hanging fruit as human rights, opposing bigotry, and any clear evidence of merit that is in our favor.

    • posted by AG on

      If you’re upset that people think you’re intolerant, perhaps you can try being, you know, tolerant.

      From Cathy Young’s article “Gay Rights, Intolerance, and Racial Parallels”:
      “And, in countries where gays still face an uphill battle for basic freedom of expression and advocacy, the perception that gay equality leads to censorship and suppression toward conservative sexual values is almost certain to make resistance to gay rights far more entrenched. (On Russian Internet forums, critics of the Kremlin’s odious recent ban on “homosexual propaganda” are often dismissed with, “Well, try criticizing gay marriage in America!”)”

  4. posted by Aubrey Haltom on

    Andrew Sullivan wrote on the Brandeis/Ali issue – describing it as yet another case of the “hard left” thwarting free speech. (This followed his rant re: Mozilla and Eich).

    In reading editorials and opinion pieces re: this matter, the comments on these sites all accuse “the left” of squelching speech.

    But reviewing the sequence of events re: this honorary degree (not) – it became apparent that there was no “hard left” involved at all.

    A Muslim student posted a petition to have Brandeis rescind the honor. It was quickly signed by a significant number of students (Brandeis is a smaller school, a ‘significant number’ does not necessarily equate to a ‘large number’.)

    Then the CAIR (Council of American-Islam Relations) got involved, asking its members to sign the petition as well.

    Which, apparently, is when Brandeis decided to finally read about who they were honoring. (snark)

    But this meme – the left is behind Mozilla, behind Ali, behind… is bizarre to me. If anything, these 2 issues (Mozilla, Ali) were examples of small numbers of people actively expressing their own views.

    It wasn’t a clampdown on free speech – it was an exercise of free speech by all involved.

    And the responsibility for the decisions in each case – Eich’s resignation, Brandeis rescinding Ali’s honorary degree – lies not with some nebulous “left”, but with the individuals and institutions involved.

    btw – I visited the CAIR website and read some interesting trivia. The American Muslim community in 2000 voted for Bush by 72%.
    By 2008, Obama received 89% of the American Muslim vote.

    While, at the same time, CAIR polling shows that American Muslims oppose abortion and marriage equality by much higher percentages than the general population.

    Last useless fact – CAIR mentions on their website how LGBT organizations have reached out to the American Muslim community post-9/11. And American Muslim political orgs have responded positively. According to CAIR – the lgbt orgs were one of the few that didn’t vilify Muslims in general post 9/11.

    Perhaps all of this is not really pertinent to the post. But it does serve to show how useless these directional labels (left/right) can be at times.

    • posted by Tom Jefferson III on

      I would suspect that most American Muslim voters are at least as socially conservative as the standard American Christian right voter when it comes to reproductive rights, gender issues and LGBT equality.

      Again, their are some enlightened thinking Muslims and Christians. They just do not always get as much attention and notice.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Last useless fact – CAIR mentions on their website how LGBT organizations have reached out to the American Muslim community post-9/11.

      Before the time when I could claim credit 🙂

      A lot of people cannot understand why Muslims both nationally and internationlly turned against a President who bent over backwards to accomodate them and make them look good in the wake of the September 11th attacks. It would be irrelevant–those of us who do understand were willing to pay the price anyway. However I think the Muslim communities’ decision has an impact on what occurs with Islamic extremism.

      In this country it does not concern me so much because they seem to have an agenda that is as American as NIMBY. They never complain about the NYPD counterterrorism operations for longer than a news cycle.

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    As a hopeful sign for the future that I hope Stephen will notice and perhaps mention, the Republican Party in Nevada dropped opposition to abortion and marriage equality from the party’s 2014 platform.

  6. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    I am not sure it is all together that original to comment that homophobia and anti-Semitism have a similar sort of language (not just in Russia, not certainly in Russia/Eastern Europe).

    Heck, I myself commented on the similarities. The more relevant question is what can actually be done about it?

    Not too long ago — an Afghanistan man (living in exile) wrote probably one of the first on growing up gay in Afghanistan. The book is basically banned in the nation and his parents disowned him. If he did not live abroad, he would have probably been jailed or executed (or both).

  7. posted by Kosh III on

    The Orthodox Church in Russia is also a strong promoter of anti-gay sentiment; helped in large part by American theocrats who export their hate:

    “In May 2011, Hilarion Alfeyev, the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Christians share the same positions on “such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage” and desires “vigorous grassroots engagement” between the two Christian communions on such issues.”

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