So There. The New Republic has published my letter taking to task their recent anti-Log Cabin "one party's enough for us" screed.
Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge. An interesting Cathy
Young op-ed in the Boston Globe, "The
Bias Against Male Victims," argues that too little is being
made about the psychological harm inflicted on adolescent boys who
are seduced by older women. I can't really buy that all, or even
most, of these "Tea & Sympathy" / "Summer of "42" type cases
necessarily constitute "abuse" (much depends on the age of the
"boy" and his eagerness), but Young does score a few points on the
equal treatment front when she notes:
In 1993 in Virginia, a male teacher who had sex with three teenage female students was sentenced to 26 years in prison -- while the next day, a female swimming coach who had an "affair" with an 11-year-old boy and sexual encounters with two others got 30 days.
To many men's rights advocates, this double standard reflects an egregious form of political correctness: the refusal to take seriously the victimization of a male by a female perpetrator. (Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is seen very differently.)
Your FBI at Work. A Washington Post report on how the FBI devoted major resources to keeping a New Orleans (hetero) brothel under surveillance is well worth pondering. Using wire taps, "month after month, 10 agents recorded the men's demands, the brothel keepers' deals and the prostitutes' complaints." No mob ties were found, but federal prosecution is being applied because the prostitutes flew in and out of New Orleans and were part of a "national prostitution ring," according to the local U.S. attorney. Oh, and by the way, the FBI was listening on Sept. 11, in the days before and in the days after. Good to know that federal law enforcement has its priorities straight.
He Could Use a Hug. The AP reports on
an unusual encounter between troubled former heavyweight champ
Mike Tyson and a gay rights demonstrator, who apparently was
protesting anti-gay language on Tyson's part:
Mike Tyson hugged a demonstrator Sunday who shouted 'stop homophobia' at him. Tyson, in town to fight heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis next Saturday night, got out of a sport utility vehicle outside a fitness center and walked over to nearby gay rights activists. "I was shouting stop homophobia and holding up my sign, and then he just came up and hugged me and said he wasn't homophobic," said Jim Maynard, vice-chair of Equality Tennessee and one of three demonstrators. "I was totally shocked," Maynard told The Commercial Appeal. "I didn't really know what to do. So I just posed with him and smiled for the cameras."
Odd, but kinda touching.
Subverting from Within. The Log Cabin Republicans sent out a link to an intriguing column by Steve Sebelius at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, about Nevada's Chuck Muth, newly appointed head of the Washington-based American Conservative Union. Muth, a conservative/libertarian, is being attacked by the hard right. Sebelius writes that the anti-gay crowd is upset because, for instance, "as the Clark County [Nevada] Republican Party put the anti-gay marriage Question 2 at the top of its agenda, Muth wondered in vain if any candidate would swear off taxes instead."
One local anti-gay blowhard declared that "The big worry about Muth taking that position is that (the ACU) is going to start abandoning their pro-family positions"He is entrenched within the gay agenda ... he sympathizes with that agenda." But Muth, columnist Sebelius notes, has not come out in favor of gay marriage, "he simply has said there are plenty more important issues that should top the conservative agenda. And, contrary to the good Rev. Jerry Falwell, Muth has scoffed at the notion that the nation was left vulnerable to terrorism because two gay gentlemen tied the knot in Vermont." Concludes Sebelius, with tongue in cheek, "Clearly, Muth is a subversive. But the addled folks at the ACU don't seem to see it; Muth still has his job. (Maybe the entire ACU has been infiltrated by gay-friendly fifth columnists?)"
All told, Muth's ascendancy at the ACU is one more small but undeniably positive development.