Lesson Learned? Don’t Bet on It

GLAAD, Feb. 14:

“Jussie Smollett was victimized first in a hate-motivated and violent attack in Chicago and has since been doubly victimized as the subject of speculation by the media industry and broader culture,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, said in a statement. … “GLAAD joined with Color of Change to condemn the racism and homophobia that fueled the physical violence against Jussie and today we double down on that stance, while also calling out a culture where LGBTQ people of color are too often the last to be believed.”

Jonah Goldberg, Feb. 22:

A host of liberals are bleating about conservative “gloating” over the Smollett debunking. What they seem to sincerely not understand is that their instant acceptance of the story and their instant condemnation of anyone who voiced skepticism over it was an act of oppression. “You must care!” “You must believe!” There is no safe harbor. No right to skepticism or even reflection.

Related: A list of hoax hate crimes in the Trump era.

More.

P.C. vs. Art

Bret Easton Ellis writes:
“Homosexuality and disease and the closet isn’t the point, suffering and victimhood is not at their center, and ideology is pushed back in favor of simple storytelling. These are films in which a character’s sexuality doesn’t become the whole pathetic reason for the movie to exist. This is, remarkably, in American movies, a new thing.”

If Trump Is for It, the LGBTQ Left Is Against It

Martina’s Thought Crime

More. Andrew Sullivan writes (second item):

If you take this argument seriously — that biology is entirely a function of gender identity — then the whole notion of separate male and female sports events is in doubt. A trans woman should, in my view, be treated exactly as a woman — unless, as in this case, it clashes with biological reality. There aren’t many contexts in which this really counts, but sports is one of them. Yes, it sucks. But denying reality is stupid, can easily backfire, and will alienate countless otherwise sympathetic people. And note that if the Equality Act were to pass — a priority for Nancy Pelosi — it would be illegal to bar a trans woman from competing against biological females, as it is already in many states.

It is even transphobic, I am now informed, for a gay man not to want to sleep with a trans man who has a vagina. In response to my recent column on the subject, I was told by Sue Hyde, a woman who is at the very heart of the LGBTQIA++ movement, to, yes, give it a try: “Maybe Sullivan … would give [a handsome trans man with a vagina who uses a dildo as a penis] a toss in the hay and next day, be singing a different tune about category woman/girl >>> category man/boy persons’ capacities to uphold and expand the experiences and meanings of homosex.” Maybe. Or maybe I’ll sleep with whomever I want — you know, something we used to call sexual freedom.

But this is how deep the ideology runs. It wants to control not only the public discourse, and language, and rig sports contests, but also insinuate itself into the most intimate areas of an individual’s sex life. Once upon a time, the religious right would tell me that I should sleep with women because I might find the right one and finally be happy. Now the intersectional left is telling me something almost exactly the same. What has happened to this movement? Where on earth has it gone?

Jussie Smollett: Truth vs. Narrative

Not long after the media misreported and progressive politicos, celebs and pundits stoked a false narrative about the Covington kids, the same players did about the same thing over the Jussie Smollett alleged hate crime, which now appears to be what many thought it obviously was likely to be—a hoax.

The Washington Blade seems to be doing the same.

Another Extremist

Openly gay South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg was supposed to be “a moderate” alternative. Not quite, it seems:

Mr. Buttigieg argued the deal would actually boost the economy, including the industrial Midwest. For instance, his county recently increased the number of union jobs in the auto industry through electric-car manufacturing.
“I think a Green New Deal would support that,” he said.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/10/pete-buttigieg-endorses-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s/

Democrats struggled Sunday to defend the Green New Deal after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s botched roll-out threatened to turn the sweeping climate plan into a national punchline.
Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat running for the 2020 presidential nomination, called it “the right beginning” and “right direction”…
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/10/democrats-stumble-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-green-n/

More. If he ever was a moderate, he isn’t one now. From the Washington Post:

“His message for 2020 will be centered on a clean, sharp break with the Lite Republicanism that Democrats embraced in the 1990s. While older voters still tell pollsters they favor keeping taxes low and ambitions modest, millennials overwhelmingly support Medicare-for-all, free college, heavy spending to tackle poverty and climate change, and major infrastructure investments — social democracy, in a nutshell.”

The Cory Booker Spectacle

Chaser:

Meanwhile, Democrats torpedoed the nomination of Patrick Bumatay, an openly gay man, for the 9th Circuit.

“Rent:Live,” or Where Have All the Drag Queens Gone?

Last week’s live performance of the early ‘90s musical “Rent” on Fox TV made some changes to the original stage script by the late Jonathan Larson. Foremost among these, the character “Angel,” who Larson had written as a drag queen, was changed to a transwoman, which New York magazine’s Vulture site confirms.

In the original, Angel’s lover, Collins, referred to Angel as “he” in several pivotal scenes, including after Angel’s death, although in the original characters did use “she” when referring to Angel in drag.

As Vulture reports:

Again in an effort to fully establish Angel as a female-identifying character, Collins interrupted the bickering of “Goodbye Love” last night to express his sorrow: “I can’t believe she’s gone; I can’t believe you’re going,” he says, turning to Roger. In the original, he says of Angel, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

There’s nothing wrong with having a transwoman as a character, but that’s not who Angel was. Collins, Angel’s lover, identifies himself a gay man who likes guys even if they like to cross dress.

A few years ago, a Fox TV version of “The Rocky Horror Show” cast a transwoman, Laverne Cox, as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, another character who was famously a drag queen transvestite and not, in fact, a transwoman. Which raises the issue of whether it is now too politically incorrect to allow presentations of gay men who are drag queens, even if that’s who they were originally meant to be.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote recently, “Contemporary transgender ideology is not a complement to gay rights; in some ways it is in active opposition to them.”