Mickey Kaus of Slate's Kausfiles argues
that advocates of gay marriage are mistaken if they think that
Brokeback Mountain's playing well in blue enclaves within red
states heralds some sort of cultural shift, as some claim. It's a
long piece with a fair measure of Kaus's queasiness toward gays but
a caution worth considering, when Kaus warns:
If you think the visceral straight male reaction against male homosexual sex has effectively disappeared-look at Plano, etc. -you won't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the possible deep-seated, even innate, sources of resistance to liberalization, and you'll tend to be surprised and baffled by their persistence. At worst, you'll pass them off as sheer redneck bigotry-a proven way to lose the red states for good.
Andrew Sullivan responds
that:
[A]ssuming a huge, overnight shift in sentiment toward gay men is foolhardy. At the same time, the pace of change these past couple of decades is astonishing. And can I really be blamed for being heartened by the way in which so many people, including many straight men, now seem able to deal with the idea of gay love?
Sullivan also scores a well-placed point about "putting love at the core of gay identity, rather than merely sex (while not being anti-sex at the same time)." I'd argue that while social conservatives may be focused on gay sex, gay activists have misstepped by single-mindedly focusing on "rights talk," either in the sense of access to government benefits or as an abstract call for "equality" (as Dale Carpenter explains so well here).
Love, however, is something much more comprehensible to those
not typically predisposed to the liberal line. And that's
my thought for this Valentine's Day.