Never Extreme Enough for Some.

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If you haven't read Paul Varnell's newly posted review of the book Queer Wars by Stanford "queer theorist" Paul Robinson, take a look. I love that Robinson attacks columnist Michelangelo Signorile for being a "gay conservative" when Signorile writes one of the most scathingly leftwing columns around (for instance, see his recent effort, "Log Cabin's Drug Money: Shilling for Big Pharma on social security privatization"). But I guess the game for those on both the hard left and on the hard right is that you can never, ever be extreme enough that somebody won't try to make their reputation by calling you a sellout.

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The Ten Best Gay Non-Fiction Books

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First published March 30, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.

Back in 1999 a group called the Publishing Triangle issued a list of what they considered the best 100 books of gay and lesbian fiction. Some of the choices were eccentric, many were second rate and the list seemed too politically correct, but if it prompted people to read some gay fiction it had some value.

Then last June they issued an equally eccentric list of the 100 best gay non-fiction books. Always eager to be helpful, just as I offered a gratifyingly shorter list of the 10 best gay fiction back then, I belatedly offer my own list of the 10 best non-fiction books relevant to homosexuality.

Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and its female sequel (1953) seem to be classics no one reads. But the long chapters in each book on homosexuality as well as the rest of the books are valuable reading for what Kinsey actually said as opposed to what people think he said. And Kinsey shows a deeply humane concern for the meaning of sex in people's lives and all varieties of sexual expression.

Stephen O. Murray's American Gay (1996) offers a comprehensive sociological analysis of the reasons for the development of group awareness by gays and the subsequent growth and diversification of the gay community as "a quasi-ethnic group." Murray also explores the issues of sexual promiscuity, the community response to AIDS, the formation of same-sex couples and ethnic gay communities.

Of the many books on gay history, Louis Crompton's magisterial Homosexuality and Civilization (2003) is clearly the best and most exhaustive. Beautifully written and illustrated, the book traces the oppression and resilience of gays and lesbians from the ancient Jews and Greeks, through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, up to modern times, correcting the accounts of John Boswell and Michel Foucault among others.

C.A. Tripp's The Homosexual Matrix (1975, enlarged 1987) remains the most insightful book on the psychological origin and expression of homosexual orientation and desire. Like his mentor Kinsey, Tripp harshly dismisses Freud and clearly explains the futility of all change therapy - since there is no "illness" to "cure" and desire is resistant to change. He also discusses the psychology of gay relationships, sexual interaction and effeminacy, laying waste to a host of stereotypes in the process.

With a title taken from President Clinton, Bruce Bawer's A Place at the Table (1993) stakes out a gay-assertive middle ground between the religious right and the deconstructionist left, insisting on the full acceptance of gays in the American community. Bawer does not argue for an identity-sacrificing "assimilation" but for a welcoming social "inclusion" in which gay people can contribute their own perspectives.

Stephen Murray's Homosexualities (2000) is the anthropological counterpart to his sociological American Gay, a wide-ranging survey of just about everything currently known about same-sex relationships in scores of other cultures and societies. Murray develops a useful typology of the predominant gay relationships in different societies - in which partners are differentiated by age or by gender roles or are egalitarian.

Because homosexuality cannot be understood without understanding sexuality itself - and most heterosexuals don't, and too many don't want to, which is part of our problem - there are a few books on sexuality generally that must be included in the gay top 10.

Murray S. Davis's cheekily titled Smut (1983) is the most fascinating book on sex you'll ever read. Rejecting the idea of sexual desire as instinctive, Davis explores the conceptual and experiential sources of desire. He examines the effect of sex on people's perceptions of the self and partner as well as the different sexual ideologies of religious conservatives, "naturalists," and liberationists - explaining, among much else, conservative fears of contamination by other people's sexual behavior (e.g., homophobia). A great book, unaccountably obscure.

Richard Posner's Sex and Reason (1992) uses an economic, rational choice model to stress the volitional elements that influence sexual behavior and social policy on topics such as sexual regulations, homosexuality, marriage, pornography, reproduction and the sexual revolution. The approach produces surprising insights and gay-supportive conclusions.

Paul Robinson's The Modernization of Sex (1976) is an insightful reading of Havelock Ellis, Alfred C. Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson to bring to light their fundamental premises and contribution to modern ideas about sex. Robinson omits Freud, but best critique of Freud's obsolete, tangled myth-making is Ernest Gellner's patient demolition, The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985, revised 1993).

That's nine books. For the 10th choose any one from eight runner-ups: Jonathan Rauch's Gay Marriage, Ronald Bayer's Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance, Richard Mohr's Gays/Justice, John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming, and Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal.

[Editor's note: You can help support IGF by ordering available books through our links to Amazon.com.]

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Censoring Free Speech (the Usual Suspects).

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The story of how "progressive" pro-outing activist Mike Rogers silenced popular gay-conservative blogger Gay Patriot is revealed by Christian Grantham of Outlet Radio. Essentially, GP had posted an item likening Rogers and his partner-in-crime John Aravosis to terrorists. Rogers then reportedly called GP's boss and secretary to complain about/harass him, and contacted the police as well, presumably to allege that GP was inciting violence against him. Since GP has a real job in the real (non-activist) world, he felt compelled at that point to give up blogging (the blog itself will continue under GP's associate, Gay Patriot West).

I admit that the description of GP's item sounds over the top (but then, so is Rogers' own BlogActive site, and The Raw Story, with which he's affiliated). And, to some extent, anonymous bloggers make themselves vulnerable. But the alleged calls to GP's employer and to the police seem typical of the pro-outing, take-no-prisoners, slash-and-burn mentality. Many commentors on the left cheered the attempted personal destruction of conservative journalist Jeff Gannon, and they'll no doubt cheer the harassment and silencing of Gay Patriot. That pretty much tells you what they're all about.
--Stephen H. Miller

[note: blogging on the run; some typos (censure/censor) corrected subsequently]

Update: From PoliPundit:

imagine the outcry if GayPatriot had been a liberal, and his antagonist a conservative.

There'd be protestors in the streets, organized by HRC, NGLTF and the ACLU.

Blogger Dirty Harry weighs in:

Brace yourself bloggers. This is just the beginning. Lawsuits and criminal charges are on the way. Facts, free expression, and merits be damned. These folks play dirty. An art they've perfected.

But hey, when your side is "progressve" then nothing is out of bounds as long as it advances the path to the bright, shining day that lies ahead.

Update: Another blog is silenced.
--Stephen H. Miller

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Just an Observation.

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Columnist Larry Elder notes that, at a recent White House press conference, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller posed a question in which she called deputy defense secretary (and Bush's nominee for World Bank president) Paul Wolfowitz "a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history." With minimal research, Elder shows that this is, factually, far from the truth (the Iraq War has a much highly support level than many other U.S. incursions), thus revealing Bumiller's query as "another editorial masquerading as a question."

Might I add that if she had phrased her inquiry as biased in favor of the president rather than against, some of our liberal friends would now be cheerfully investigating her sex life for dirt.

More Recent Postings
3/20/05 - 3/27/05

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Making Libertarians Relevant.

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Writing at TechCentralStation, Pejman Yousefzadeh questions whether the existence of a separate Libertarian Party has diminished the influence libertarians might otherwise have on both Republicans and Democratic. He acknowledges that "when it comes to elections, the Libertarian Party is at best a marginal contender," but given how evenly divided the electorate is, a possible strategy might be:

to augment the influence of libertarians in public policy; invite Democrats and Republicans to bid for libertarian support with policy concessions to libertarians in exchange for libertarian votes. That way, libertarians could influence policy and serve as kingmakers for whichever party did the best job of attracting libertarian support on substantive policy issues.

It has long seemed to me that the religious right became a major player precisely bcause it didn't form its own party and run candidates sure to lose. Of course, the "kingmaker" strategy assumes there are enough libertarian-leaners to make a difference, but I suspect a lot of voters are "small 'l'" libertarians (or at least "neolibertarians") without labeling themselves - favoring government limited as much as is practically possible to its core mission of defending life, liberty and property (in Locke's phrase) and relying on freely made transactions within a dynamic civil society to provide the rest.

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Harkin: Congress Was Right.

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Okay, I looked around and there really isn't much gay news happening that's worth writing about- although I did find this Advocate story about a lesbian who fled the U.S. for Canada but is now returning (she'd "rather remain a disgruntled American queer. Free to be oppressed, free to be maligned, and free to be trampled upon, all in the name of political expediency," but is "ready to take up the mantle for positive change-not just for gays and lesbians but for all Americans") to be the perfect embodiment of the Advocate-gay worldview. It appears in the same online issue along with the expected knee-jerk vilification of Jeff Gannon.

So, I'll follow up again with Terri Schiavo, now being starved to death in Florida. Many of our commentors are enraged by my stance. Too bad. To paraphrase Lillian Hellman, I won't cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. And when there's doubt, I won't hesitate to err on the side of life. But like the abortion battle, nothing can convince those who disagree; it's a gut issue. And my gut tells me that Michael Schiavo should no more get away with murder than O.J. Simpson or Robert Blake or, oh, never mind.

I will say that to those of our readers on the left who are enraged that I could possibly support any position that Tom DeLay might support (no need to think, just conclude that whatever they favor must be opposed), I note that not all Democrats are with you, either. As this piece in Slate reports:

In the Senate, a key supporter of a federal remedy was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a progressive Democrat and longtime friend of labor and civil rights, including disability rights. Harkin told reporters, "There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disability, and many times there is no one to speak for them, and it is hard to determine what their wishes really are or were. So I think there ought to be a broader type of a proceeding that would apply to people in similar circumstances who are incapacitated."

I don't agree with Harkin on most issues, but I do think this makes the point that it's not only members of the great right-wing conspiracy who oppose starving Terri Schavio to death. Of course, some will still, I'm sure, conclude that both Harkin and I are tools of Tom DeLay!

Update: Chuck Muth writes, perceptively:

This intellectual and constitutional battle over the Schiavo matter is taking place almost exclusively among those on the right, with bona-fide card-carrying limited-government types finding themselves on opposite sides of the issue.

I'd agree with that. Some who oppose the congressional action paint it as a simple matter of federal encroachment on the states; it's not (simple, that is), if you believe the central responsiblity of government is, above all else, defending life and liberty.

Intemperate Update: On the death watch: Wouldn't it be more humane - and certainly more honest - to administer a lethal injection? But somehow starving her allows those responsible to obscure causality regarding their actions.

Is the Village Voice a Tom DeLay mouthpiece? Nat Hentoff has some eye-openers about Michael Schavio's behavior.

Final update: Cruel to the end, Michael Schiavo denies her parents' request to be with Terri as she died.
--Stephen H. Miller.

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‘Queer Wars’ Distorts History

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First published March 23, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.

Every few years someone on the far reaches of the political and cultural left peeks out at the country and is dismayed to discover that most gays and lesbians are "embracing the values and routines of the American mainstream" and failing to carry out the supposed transformative mandate of the original "gay liberation."

Never mind that the idea of openly gay and lesbian people leading contented, ordinary lives amid their neighbors and co-workers would seem pretty transformed to most of the early leaders of gay liberation who lived in more repressive times.

This scandalizes the radical critics who then write books trying to explain for others on the far left what went wrong and whom to blame. The latest entry is Stanford University Prof. Paul Robinson's brief Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics.

Robinson thinks "the emergence of gay conservatism as a political and intellectual force is arguably the most important new development in the gay world." Further, "the new conservatives have exercised an influence on the gay movement far in excess of the number of their actual converts." For Robinson this is something to be explained and, if possible, countered.

Queer Wars examines books by four writers Robinson alleges represent "the gay right" - blogger Andrew Sullivan, critic Bruce Bawer, broadcaster/columnist Michelangelo Signorile and former OutWeek publisher Gabriel Rotello - focusing on three issues and equating the failure to simultaneously embrace all three with "conservatism": the gay movement's supposed affiliation with the political left, the liberation of gender variance and liberated sexuality.

Then the book begins to fall apart.

Signorile and Rotello both turn out to be on the political left. Bawer, a New Deal Democrat when writing A Place at the Table, said virtually nothing about politics. Even Sullivan is described as a "classical liberal" à la John Stuart Mill - so not very conservative. For that matter, most gays you talk with are not on the far left but prefer fiscally prudent Democrats or socially liberal Republicans.

As for liberating gender variance, that seems to be a romantic fiction early gay leftists tried to sell. None of Robinson's writers endorse it, but then neither have most gay men, then or now. The gay clone style of the 1970s - and leather even more - was a clear rejection of the idea of gender deviance. Gay personal ads almost always insist on masculine partners. So if most gay men are "conservative" about gender, how are these writers discernibly different?

On the third issue of liberated sexuality, political leftists Signorile and Rotello turn out to be more conservative than the "conservative" Sullivan. For them, as for many other gays, the AIDS epidemic seems to have recommended a more cautious view. But likely even without AIDS, as gays and the gay movement matured, more gay men would have settled down anyway.

So Robinson offers supposed exemplars of "gay conservatism" who don't exemplify his definition, and supposedly defining issues that do not reliably differentiate "conservatives" from most gays. What Robinson really seems to object to are mainstream gay attitudes and writers who articulate those attitudes. But if Robinson thinks most gays are actually "conservative," then he must think anyone who is not a radical leftist is a conservative.

Just as Robinson's thesis falls apart, so does his mode of explication. He says he intends to "identify the tensions, even contradictions in their thinking." But contrary to Robinson, for instance, Sullivan's sexual liberalism hardly contradicts his mildly libertarian politics: they are parallel. Nor is it contradictory for Bawer to note that sexual orientation is all that gays have in common while opposing the idea that gay people are nothing but their sexuality.

Worse yet, while failing to find contradictions in his opponents, Robinson commits some whoppers of his own. First he says Sullivan and Bawer are less interested in enlightening right-wingers than in correcting leftists. Then he admits Bawer's book "is as much an attack on conservative homophobes as on gay radicals" and that Sullivan's book attempts to persuade conservatives to "amend their views of homosexuality."

Likewise, first he says Larry Kramer is an ancestor of the gay conservatives but later says he represents "the whole tradition of gay radicalism." First he says the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is "mainstream" but later admits it is part of "the institutional gay left." So was he not candid earlier?

Robinson clearly dislikes these writers. Writing a book about them was "a challenge to my tolerance." He finds some of their views "downright repugnant." He accuses them of being "grubby advocates for their own material interest." He asserts that they feel shame about homosexuality, feel "self-disgust and anxiety," are prudish, dislike sex or have low sex drives. And so forth.

The war over the word "queer" is over, Robinson says. "Queer" lost. So did the concept. All Robinson can do now is draw a mean-spirited caricature of the victors and make cheap personal attacks. Ultimately, this is a badly confused and dishonest polemic and no credit to the author - or the University of Chicago Press.

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Changing Places.

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House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, no friend of gay equality, was quoted in the Washington Times on congressional action to save Terri Schiavo from forced starvation at the hands of her husband:

"The sanctity of life overshadows the sanctity of marriage," Mr. DeLay said. He said that unless Mrs. Schiavo had previous written instructions, "I don't care what her husband said."

This led blogger Paul at "Right Side of the Rainbow," who opposes saving the life of Terri Schiavo, to write:

Is the manner in which [Delay] dismisses Mrs. Schiavo's husband distinguishable from the manner in which he would dismiss a gay man's partner? I doubt gay relationships have risen in Rep. DeLay's estimation; rather, the significance of heterosexual ones have fallen.

Blogger Paul comes out in favor of "the traditional right of spouses" and accuses the Republicans of attempting "to substitute their own judgment for that of Mrs. Schiavo's legal husband."

But as James Taranto writes in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

Supporters of Michael Schiavo's effort to end his wife's life have asked how conservatives, who claim to believe in the sanctity of marriage, can fail to respect his husbandly authority. The most obvious answer is that a man's authority as a husband does not supersede his wife's rights as a human being - a principle we never thought we'd see liberals question.

On one hand, you'd think there'd be pleasure in the fact that conservative Republicans are placing some value (i.e., saving a woman's life at the pleading request of her frantic parents) above "the sanctity of marriage," while gay activists - and even some gay Republicans - suddenly are in support of the full rights of traditional marriage and patriarchy, reducing a woman to the disposable property of her spouse.

Addendum - the anti-federalist contention. While in most respects I find arguments against increasing federal encroachment to be persuasive, sometimes rigid adherence to principle must give way to simple decency. And I remain unmoved by liberals who are eager to offer up Terri Schiavo as a human sacrifice in honor of their newly feigned fealty to state judicial autonomy.

More Recent Postings
3/20/05 - 3/26/05

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On Terri Schiavo.

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A letter in our mailbag supports Terri Schiavo's right to life. As widely reported, Terri has been in a vegetative state and kept alive by a feeding tube, now removed at her husband's insistence, backed by a court order. Terri's parents consider this murder by starvation, and Congress has stepped in.

Gay couples have often been in a situation where, after a terrible accident or illness leaves one partner incapacitated, the healthy partner and the victim's parents disagree about care. But this, it seems to me, is different - a husband wants to terminate the life of his spouse when there is no clear indication that this is what Terri Schiavo herself would have wanted. In such a situation, I'm not opposed to the state stepping in to protect the life of someone who can't speak for herself.

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Left vs. Right and No In-Between?

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IGF's Dale Carpenter points to a statement in the Washington Post by new Human Rights Campaign honcho Joe Solmonese, who opines:

"This struggle that we're in in this country right now is not just for GLBT Americans but for all progressives," [Solmonese] said. "All of us are redirecting our energy and adapting to a considerable shift in the political landscape, not just in the GLBT world."

I agree with Dale that this takes the lid off what Solmonese sees as his prime objective: to advance the liberal-left political agenda, of which "GLBT" issues are just one aspect.

The same Post story reported:

Just weeks ago, the NGLTF [National Gay & Lesbian Task Force], while stressing that it was not treading on the HRC's lobbying turf, announced that it was forming a committee to lobby Congress for GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) issues.

NGLTF, from its beginnings, has been politically even further to the left than HRC. So along with Solmonese's appointment, the Task Force's new Washington effort means that in the nation's capital the dominant gay strategy will be to hunker down with the Democrats' liberal wing rather than pursuing any kind of bipartisan effort.

As I wrote in response to a letter posted in our mailbag saying that gay groups should reflect most gay voters' left-leaning views:

It's fine to be insular within the liberal cocoon, just don't expect any pragmatic political victories. All 11 anti-gay state ballot initiatives passed on Nov. 2, while HRC focused on defeating George W. Bush in concert with its liberal allies rather than on addressing Americans' fears about gay marriage.

Former Log Cabin Republican head Rich Tafel on his blog offers this take:

[W]ith NGLTF on the scene HRC has to worry again about its left flank. That might explain why as a group the highly partisan HRC decided to move left, not to the middle, with its latest hire. It is all about fundraising and market share. It has nothing to do with the mission of the group, which was to make progress in the halls of Congress and the corridors of the White House for gay people. But as long as wealthy gay Democrats keep feeding this beast, we can expect more of the same.

So it's partisanship triumphant. And of course, that pretty much sums up American political culture at the moment. New York Times columnist David Brooks writes of "the ever-increasing polarization of the political class," and predicts:

At the same time, Americans will grow even more disenchanted with the political status quo. Not only will there be a general distaste for the hyperpartisan style, but people will also begin to see how partisan brawling threatens the nation's prosperity.... I wouldn't be surprised if some anti-politician emerged - of the Schwarzenegger or Perot varieties - to crash through the current alignments and bust heads.

One thing is for sure, a body politic with no center could be in for some wild swings. Be prepared.

More Recent Postings
3/13/05 - 3/19/05

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