The Left Strikes Back, in Typical Fashion. I"m
all for full and rigorous debate among gays and lesbians from all
points on the political spectrum, but the debate should be honest.
Unfortunately, Village Voice columnist Richard Goldstein presents a
vastly deranged portrait of those he terms "homocons," or gay
conservatives, in his new book "The Attack Queers: Liberal Society
and the Gay Right," and in a related article he penned for the
current issue of The Nation, titled "Fighting
the Gay Right." Goldstein feels a particular animus toward
Andrew Sullivan, the highly successful gay pundit (and IGF
contributor) who blogs away at andrewsullivan.com. But while a
full airing of their differing opinions on the gay movement might
have been interesting, Goldstein instead grossly distorts
Sullivan's views in a way obvious to anyone who has actually read
Sullivan's writings. Here's what I mean. Goldstein, in his Nation
article, portrays Sullivan as some sort of anti-promiscuity
crusader, stating:
"Marriage, Sullivan has written, is the only alternative to "a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation." "
But here's Sullivan's actual quote from his book "Love
Undetectable," in which (as Sullivan points out in a response to
Goldstein on his website), the context is the destructive effects
of homophobia -- particularly in the guise of religion. Writes
Sullivan:
"If you teach people that something as deep inside them as their very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets."
See what I mean -- Sullivan was clearly paraphrasing what homophobes say, and showing how such teachings have a harmful effect on gays. Goldstein's distortion makes it appear that the arguments Sullivan is explicitly criticizing are, in fact, Sullivan's views.
Here's another example. Goldstein writes (again, in his Nation article) of "homocons," saying that "they push a single, morally correct way to be gay," and adds, "The gay right is ready to lead a charge on behalf of what it calls "gender patriotism"."
In fact, the only actual use of this phrase is in a bit of
drollery titled "Gender
Patriots" by IGF's own Dale Carpenter, which is a sarcastic
look at queer "gender rebels" who think gays must take up arms
against gender differentiation. Carpenter writes:
"Poor souls, our rebels must try to enlist us in a war against gender that few of us believe in, and indeed, one in which most of us appear to be fierce partisans for the other side. It seems that someone, whether from the far right or the far left, is always trying to tell us how to live. But the gender rebels are entitled to their idiosyncratic strategy for achieving equality. I will leave them to the care of Karl Ulrichs, the "third sex" theory, the mythical urnings, and the other anti-gay stereotypes they hold so dear. We gender patriots have work to do."
Looking askew at militant gender rebels is hardly a call to
enforce rigid gender roles. And, in fact, it is Goldstein and the
gay left who more accurately could be charged with holding out only
one correct way to be gay -- the left's way. They, in truth, are
the real "attack queers."