IGF CultureWatch

I don’t know or care a lot about whether this actor from “Empire” is gay or not.  His non-reaction to a general sense that he is gay seems like a replay of what we went through with Sean Hayes back in the day.

But I have to say I think I can understand the reluctance of some young actors to be publicly and irrevocably identified as homosexual.

It’s not because of the closet — at least not these days.  Whether or not we’ve reached critical mass on gay acceptance, it is clear to most people in Hollywood that it is not only possible to be openly homosexual and have a successful career, it can even get you some favorable press.  In any event, we are long past the days of Rock Hudson.

The bigger challenge for a gay celebrity these days in coming out is the fear of being commandeered by the gay political establishment as the Latest Model.

For the last half century or so, lesbians and gay men have had to live in an artificially politicized world for the simple reason that the laws that were so harmful to us needed to be challenged by someone, and it pretty much had to be us.  Very few heterosexuals worried about having sodomy laws used to blackmail them, and it took a generation of constant effort to get people to see that the lack of legal recognition for our relationships was, in fact, a problem for us.  Those efforts have paid off in record time.

But here’s a fact that a lot of politically active people don’t always understand.  Many people didn’t want to be political, or didn’t have the inclination in that direction.  All those years of yelling, “Out of the bars and into the streets!” were a recognition of that fact.  At lot of people did get out of the bars and into the streets, but it was only because they were persuaded how vitally important that was.

Once established, political activism can become just another bureaucracy fighting for its own continued existence.  That’s perfectly fine for those who live for controversy and grievance.

But what if that’s not your thing?  In a world where sexual orientation is far better understood (though there are notable exceptions), lawyers and postal workers and bakers and nurses have the luxury of leading lives as private as they choose.  For actors or others in the orbit of celebrityhood, though, a certain amount of publicity is their oxygen.  It’s also the oxygen of the activists, who tend to resent the closet because they have to respect it.  Outing has always been controversial because it violated that necessary respect in a context where being openly gay would have the most value.

But we have a more than adequate supply of good, great and even superlative role models who are openly homosexual now.  The almost unbelievable progress we have made in both improving the law and opening the culture has broken through the silence that equalled death and a multitude of other gruesome, painful and noxious consequences.

Which is why I’m willing to give celebrities who want to avoid being coopted by the gay political establishment a break. There are actual gay politicians now, the professionals in this sport.  And there are enough high-profile homosexual celebrities that we don’t need every actor out there to publicly declare and risk conscription.

Count me as someone who would like to see The Dish continue after Andrew Sullivan’s retirement.  I have been reading Andrew for as long as he’s been published, and have been a happy Dish Head since its first day.  I don’t pay directly for much on the Internet, but his site has been well worth my time and money.

Andrew is a hard and deep thinker, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than reading something of his that I am inclined to disagree with to see if he can change my mind.  Sometimes he has (the Clintons’ lust for power), sometimes not (NFL concussions), and sometimes I’m left suspended in mid-air (Trig Palin).

But there’s a less discussed aspect to The Dish that I would like to see survive him.  Over the years, it has developed into what would have been called, in an earlier time, a salon.  A great deal of Dishness happens when Andrew steps aside and just serves as the host for a vivacious discussion among well-informed and highly interesting voices.

My guess is that this is not something he is able to achieve on his own.  The staff at The Dish has developed a keen judgment about what things are worth my time.  And that includes not only thoughtful and sometimes dyspeptic argument, but also the invaluable Mental Health Breaks, the cream of dog and cat videos, and the Sunday Sermons that are better than anything I remember from any Catholic priest I ever had to listen to.

Even without Andrew, I think that sensibility can continue.  I know it is something I rely on, and possibly am addicted to.  The Dish filters out much of the Internet’s toxicity.  We are all going to need sites with that kind of judgment in the years to come.  I’m ready to continue supporting the people who are doing that job so well right now, if they are willing.

This strikes me as very foolish.  A gay and lesbian crowdsourcing group called All Out has pressured Google Translate to remove any words that “gay” could be translated as which are offensive.  If I’m understanding this correctly, lesbians and gay men who encounter speakers of another language and rely on Google Translate will only receive politically acceptable words and phrases.

There are times, I admit, when it would be nice to live in the bubble of wonderfulness these folks envision.  But if someone from Saudi Arabia, say, is calling me a faggot, I’d like to know that.  It’s possible he would offer up other cues that would make the point, but all the same language matters, and sometimes it matters most when it is offensive.

R. R. Reno, who edits First Things, a journal for very serious religious conservatives, proposes separating religious marriages from government-sanctioned civil marriage, as a protest against state recognition of same-sex marriage. The government would do its thing, and ordained ministers would do their thing, but ministers would no longer operate as agents of the state when it comes to performing marriages.

Some libertarians have long supported “privatizing” marriage, which would remove government from the marriage-sanctioning business altogether, making civil marriage a contract agreed to between the parties (the enforcement of which, if disputed, would fall to government to adjudicate, as with other contracts)—a somewhat different and more radical idea.

Although Reno’s First Things argument is based on animus toward equality for gay people under the law, I don’t know that it’s a terrible notion in and of itself. Religion is always stronger when it is freest from government’s command.

This New York Post op-ed on gays and the Clintons is a few weeks old, but it’s solid:

As author and academic Nathaniel Frank explains, “Clinton will go down in history as the only president who signed … federal laws mandating discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans.” Yet this Saturday in Washington, DC, the same Bill Clinton will be welcomed as keynote speaker at the 18th annual national dinner of the Human Rights Campaign—America’s largest LGBT rights group.

Calling him a “transformational leader for our nation and the world,” HRC president Chad Griffin has said he’s “thrilled” Clinton will once again appear at the sold-out black-tie event.

Griffin and HRC take hackery to new levels. And please, spare us all the “yeah, well Republicans are worse” meme that some commenters think is just oh so clever, as if that were an all-purpose redemption card for vile Democrats.

An Interesting account in the New York Times discussing how the very liberal, very Democratic New York Times of the 1980s set a national press agenda of nonattention to AIDS. David Dunlap writes:

The Times was “setting the tone for noncoverage nationally,” Randy Shilts wrote in “And the Band Played On” (1987). “There was only one reason for the lack of media interest, and everybody in the [Centers for Disease Control] task force knew it: The victims were homosexuals.”

Oh, sorry, I forget – it was all Reagan’s fault.

The anti-gay, marriage-restricting activists at the National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council Action, and CitizenLink “will mount a concerted effort to urge voters to refuse to cast ballots” for Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio in California and Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby in Oregon, reports Buzzfeed, citing a letter sent to Republican congressional and campaign leaders last week.

As someonet tweeted me, these groups are now in effect campaigning for Democrats to win in these races.

Like some “progressive” LGBT activists, their worst nightmare is gay and pro-gay Republicans being elected.