What's fascinating and disturbing about Florida GOP congressman (and senate hopeful) Mark Foley's attempt to avoid discussing "topic G" is the way that, at least for now, anti-gay colleagues like Tom Delay are backing him up. Memo to Mark: Something's got to give, one way or the other -- it's 2003, not 1953 (or even 1993)!
At Least Someone's Having a Good Time.
Popular blogger Eugene Volokh, who teaches at UCLA Law School
and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, presents
some interesting findings on what he terms "the
myth of the median hyper-promiscuous gay male." Volokh
writes:
the claim that the median American gay male (not just a minority of gays) is hyper-promiscuous (not just a bit more promiscuous than heterosexuals) appears to be false -- and politically quite important. --
" claims that, say, the median gay man has over 250 sexual partners in a lifetime makes gays seem in a way freakish and deviant, and makes it much harder for people to see gay sexual relationships as emotionally comparable to straight sexual relationships. --
All the data I've seen supporting the hyper-promiscuous median gay male claim has been junk science. It often refers to real studies -- but to studies of groups that we have no reason to think are representative of the median gay male.
In other words, a small minority of the gay male minority is skewing the results for the rest of us -- quell surprise!
Conservatives vs. Religious Right,
Round 2.
Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at the conservative National
Review, had this to say at
National Review Online about threats being made by religious
right leaders that their minions might bolt the GOP if President
Bush doesn't toe their anti-gay line:
Social-conservative leaders have the bad habits of not setting priorities and of threatening more than they can deliver. The average social conservative likes President Bush. -- If the administration continues its current course -- and does not nominate a squish to the Supreme Court -- are social conservatives really going to stay home because Marc Racicot [head of the Republican National Committee] met with gay groups and the president didn't support Rick Santorum more forcefully?
To which Ken Connor, the head of the Family Research Council,
replied.
And to which Ponnuru then replied
back (scroll down past the tax-cut story).
--Stephen H. Miller