IGF CultureWatch

Writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal (online for WSJ subscribers only), cultural critic Bret Stephens links together both the legacy of crypto-lesbian Susan Sontag and C.A. Tripp's outing of Lincoln. Well, someone had to do it, right?

Referencing Sontag's (in)famous "Notes on Camp," Stephens calls it:

...basically a manifesto, masquerading as an analysis, of one type of homosexual sensibility. Camp, she wrote, was disengaged, apolitical, ironic, lighthearted, extravagant, a "solvent of morality," the antithesis of tragedy. "The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious," wrote Ms. Sontag. "One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious." In other words, gay.

Then, turning to Tripp, Stephens writes:

Mr. Tripp's book treads a well-worn path of various social and political movements in America that have claimed Lincoln as one of their own: Christian evangelicals, temperance societies, progressives, socialists. The historical claims made on Lincoln were almost always false, but the spirit animating them was usually decent. By contrast, the worst political movements in America have been the ones that rejected Lincoln's legacy, such as Southern segregationists and the Black Power movement, and the trends that ignored his legacy altogether - like Camp.

Which brings me back to Ms. Sontag. Though she presented herself as the consummate voice of intellectual seriousness, she was, in fact, a popularizer of her generation's worst ideas, a champion of all its wrong impulses. And these ideas and impulses were ones that, sadly, characterized much of the gay movement for almost 40 years. Mr. Tripp is wrong to insist that Lincoln was gay. But gays are right to insist that Lincoln belongs to them as much as to anyone else.

Now some may find Stephens' critique of camp a slap against gays, but I've come round to a similar view of this particular aspect of gay culture. For what set me off most recently, see below.

Will & Graceless.

The apotheosis of mass media campiness has got to be NBC's "Will & Grace." Take last Thursday's episode, in which Will's police officer boyfriend recounts how he got fired. The "hilarious" setup: a Saks clerk was shot during a robbery because the cop/boyfriend, sent to disarm the thief, on entering the store spots a pair of fancy gloves and just has to stop and try them on (we never learn if the clerk survived or not, the matter of his life or death being wholly irrelevant). Camp as the "solvent of morality," indeed!

[corrected 1/13]
Rick Sincere's blog draws attention to a new group in the old dominion called the Virginia Family Values PAC. But hold on, it's actually a group that's fighting against elected officials who support anti-gay legislation, among other things. But this PAC is using the language of small-government conservatism to do so. As Rick puts it:

Dated January 9, the group's initial press release uses buzzwords that are sure to catch the attention of Goldwater Republicans like myself:

Virginians from across the commonwealth today announced the formation of a non-partisan political action committee to strengthen family values and families' political influence in Richmond and in the November elections....

Virginia Family Values has named four of the candidates that they'll be targeting for removal from office for their anti-family votes ... All four candidates have consistently voted against family and parental rights, and have introduced bills that would increase the size of government while decreasing family freedoms and privacy.

"The family is the foundation of our society," explained PAC founder Waldo Jaquith. "Every time that these legislators have been given the choice between family values and bigger government, they've chosen wrong. They're way out of touch with Virginia values, and we intend to show them the door."

Rick comments further:

It's rare to see a group made up of Democratic and liberal activists ... using terms like "RINO" to describe Republicans...for whom "RINO" is more accurate than they would be willing to admit. What a pleasure it would be if more Democrats wanted to rid our legislatures of RINOs and replace them with authentic, small-government, Goldwater conservatives.

Jon Henke, who describes himself as a "neo-libertarian," picked up on this too, noting that "some groups are taking what seems to me to be very effective grassroots action.... They've co-opted the language of the religious right and turned it on them. That's pretty clever."

This is an interesting strategy, and although the Virginia Family Values PAC is not a gay group (I originally misreported that, as Rick informs me), I hope local gay groups will be inspired to likewise think outside the liberal-left box. But don't expect the large inside-the-beltway crowd to follow along, given the Human Rights Campaign's smackdown for even considering support for personally owned Social Security accounts that gay partners could bequeath to one another.

The long-awaited publication of the final work by the late psychologist/Kinsey associate C.A. Tripp, claiming that Abe Lincoln was gay (based on an analysis of circumstantial evidence), has, expectedly, drawn some critical reaction. Richard Brookhiser, an historian and senior editor at the conservative National Review, but writing in the New York Times, offers one of the more balanced perspectives, finding:

Tripp can lay out a case, but his discussion of its implications is so erratic that the reader is often left on his own. One wonders: What does it mean to be homosexual?" ...

Tripp argues that a cultural innocence - the word "homosexual" had not yet been coined - allowed acts of physical closeness between men that had no deeper meaning, as well as acts that did but could escape scrutiny. We know more than our ancestors, and our reward is that, in some ways, we may do less. In any case, on the evidence before us, Lincoln loved men, at least some of whom loved him back. Their words tell us more than their sleeping arrangements.

On the other hand, disgruntled former Tripp associate Philip Nobile, writing in the conservative Weekly Standard, labels the work "a hoax and a fraud: a historical hoax, because the inaccurate parts are all shaded toward a predetermined conclusion, and a literary fraud, because significant portions of the accurate parts are plagiarized..." (from Nobile's own work, that is). And he adds a tale of this encounter with gay firebrand Larry Kramer:

"If you don't stop making a stink about Tripp's book, I'm going to expose you as an enormous homophobe," Larry Kramer telephoned me to say last October. "For the sake of humanity, please, gays need a role model." I replied that the book was so bad, it would backfire on the homosexual movement when reviewers and readers caught on to the fabrications, contradictions, and general nuttiness of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

Still, even Nobile admits:

The Gay Lincoln Theory, for all its jagged edges, may be a more satisfying explanation for the president's weird inner life than the Utterly Straight Lincoln Theory. "I have heard [Lincoln] say over and over again about sexual contact: 'It is a harp of a thousand strings,' Henry Whitney told William Herndon in 1865. Leaving aside Tripp's bad faith, it is not utterly beyond imagining that Lincoln may have played a few extra strings on that harp.

Yet perhaps more telling about the conservative response is the Weekly Standard's cover, featuring a limp-wristed, erring-wearing Lincoln and the text "The First Log Cabin Republican?" That mocking response captures how most social conservatives are going to react to the "gay Lincoln" claims.

Updates: Andrew Sullivan argues it's Nobile who is guilty of fraud, not Tripp. And Tim Hulsey compares the Weekly Standard's Lincoln cover with another offensive Lincoln representation, this time over at liberal Salon.com. Writes Tim, "Judging from these two publications, it's disturbingly easy for heterosexual Americans - regardless of ideology - to make light of silly fairies, especially if we dare to claim Honest Abe as one of our own."

Rich Tafel explains why he's not offended by the Weekly Standard cover.

Warning: the following viewpoints are controversial and may offend. Please don't write and try to get me fired (actually, I'm not employed by IGF, so that really won't work anyhow).

The above jest is prompted by this: A recent alert from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took socially conservative columnist Thomas Sowell to task for recently writing, among other things, that "Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have," and "Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football" - statements that GLAAD dismisses as "so silly that, despite their underlying offensiveness, it is difficult to take them seriously."

Sowell also went further into offensiveness, writing "What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS."

That's an ugly comment that should be responded to and exposed for its mendacity. But GLAAD's alert does something else - it also calls on people to write Sowell's distributor, Creators Syndicate, and complain about its distributing "Thomas Sowell's repugnant, bigoted attack on gay and lesbian Americans."

As emotionally satisfying as that might make people feel, it's a questionable tactic. Sowell is very popular, and Creators Syndicate won't drop him because of letters prompted by a gay organization when those letters are clearly from folks who aren't part of Sowell's conservative readership base. Worse, it's a tactic that mirrors what religious conservative groups like the American Family Association do - try to get things banned, or taken off the air, because they don't approve.

Creators Syndicate also distributes lesbian columnist Deb Price. GLAAD's response, "Please write Creators and ask why the presence of one inclusive columnist excuses the publication of anti-gay bigotry from another." But many social conservatives find Price's views deeply offensive to their fundamentalist sensibilities, too.

My experience is that GLAAD doesn't much like to debate; it doesn't seek out opportunities to intellectually engage opponents on the social and religious right. For GLAAD, if it's not hobnobbing with the Hollywood set, it's unleashing angry broadsides. Or trying to get TV/radio personalities off the air (or, in this case, mau-mauing a syndicate over a columnist). Again, this is just what the American Family Association does with authors/personalities/shows it doesn't like.

When we adopt our enemy's tactics, we become what they are. Liberty is based on the active engagement of ideas, and through that engagement convincing the public that your principles are truer and more virtuous than your opponents'. In the words of an old political slogan of the left, "To be attacked by your enemy is a good thing," as it gives you an opportunity to engage the battle (and, in this case, the battle of ideas). We shouldn't be afraid of stepping up to that challenge.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal to Florida's law banning gays from adopting children, leading social conservatives to pledge more such laws.

But opponents of the Florida law say they are ready to combat efforts to duplicate it - and will continue to encourage Florida lawmakers to repeal the ban. And even Florida's attorney in this matter, Casey Walker, told the Supreme Court that "Even though some may disagree with it as a policy matter, the place to change it is the Legislature and not the courts."

I believe courts do have a fundamental role in protecting basic equality under the law, even in the face of the "tyranny of the majority." But we also have to face facts, and in the current political climate even when courts do rule for equal treatment for gays, their decisions can be overturned by state ballot initiatives (or even a U.S. constitutional amendment). There is simply no getting around the need to engage the public (i.e., the voters who either elect judges, or elect those who appoint judges) and win them over.

Today's LA Times story on anti-gay violence in Jamaica puts into perspective the rights and freedoms we enjoy as Americans and Europeans (that is, as non-Third-Worlders). But Jamaica does seem to be a hate-infested hell in a league of its own. As the Times reports:

When gay rights activist Brian Williamson was stabbed to death in June and jubilant crowds danced around his mutilated body, police said he was a robbery victim. When Jamaican reggae dancehall musicians were bumped from U.S. and British concert appearances last year over lyrics encouraging the killing of gays, people here called the censure a failure to respect free speech.

When Human Rights Watch issued a withering condemnation of homophobia in Jamaica in November and accused police and politicians of condoning anti-gay violence and harassment, government spokesmen rejected the report as "lies" and "nonsense," and a senior police official called for sedition charges to be brought against its authors.

The Times also notes that celebrated dancehall singer Beenie Man swoons, "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica - come to execute all the gays." Similar lines in songs by dancehall artist Sizzla prompted British authorities to deny him a visa for five concerts late last year. Another popular singer, Buju Banton, took part in the beating of six gay men in June, as a crowd cheered on the attackers.

Just a sad reminder of how benighted much of the world truly is.

Update: Columnist Mark Steyn thrashes the U.K.'s leftwing Guardian newspaper for trying to to blame Jamaican gay-bashing on the island's colonial heritage.

More Recent Postings
1/02/05 - 1/08/05

As the inauguration approaches, Bay Windows takes a look at splits between gay conservatives who support President Bush and Log Cabin leaders who opposed Bush (hat tip: Gay Patriot).

No official Log Cabin events are scheduled for the inauguration, but LCR will have to deal with the fact that "This year's election saw 23 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual voters cast ballots for Bush according to exit polls, down just two percent from 2000, indicating that conservative gay and lesbian people generally remained faithful to the president."

So, what do you do when your membership (or pool of prospective members) are heading in one direction and you're going the other way?

OK, just a few final words on Sontag, then I'll shut up. Michael Bronski writes in Bay Windows:

The more interesting question concerns Sontag herself. Given that we know Sontag was a woman who enjoyed sexually intimate relationships with other women (indeed, Sontag's friend Doug Ireland recalls in a blog post published the day Sontag died that, "We often talked about sexuality - she was quite amusing in recounting her own amorous adventures with women,") what does it mean that Sontag, given her feminism, her progressive politics, and her commitment to human rights - would not publicly identify herself as a lesbian?

One possible, even obvious, answer is that Sontag's career benefited by her remaining closeted.

That's the conclusion many are now reaching. And what it reveals is something interesting about the left - that the very identity politics it promotes can be so limiting that an intellectual of the left would actively dissuade public reporting of her being gay, so as not to be reduced to a "lesbian intellectual."

That might have served Sontag's career, but it unfortunately reinforced some very negative cultural attitudes (not just, of course, on the left) that must be confronted by those of us who are openly gay and don't want that to be viewed as limiting whatever else we may choose to accomplish in public life.

Today's L.A. Times contains a commentary titled "Susan Sontag and a Case of Curious Silence," which notes:

It seems that editors at what are, arguably, the nation's most respected (and liberal) newspapers believe that one personal detail cannot be mentioned in even the most complete biographies - being a lesbian....

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times found ample room to discuss Sontag's cancer and subsequent mastectomy, which were not seen as lurid details but as necessary information in understanding the work of the author of "Illness as Metaphor." ... However, her relationships with women and how they shaped her thoughts on gay culture and the larger world of outsiders and outlaws (a Sontag fascination) were omitted.

Meanwhile, the conservative Frontpagemagzine.com characterizes Sontag as "a doyenne of radical chic." Yet as a leading light of the intellectual left, her decision to remain closeted raises questions in need of answers.

And aside from Sontag's own motives, why would the liberal media choose to aid in her cover-up? Among the commentators (and tormentors) on yesterday's blog item, "Pillar" offers this:

If a public figure such as Sontag (as opposed to a nebbish congressional staffer who is not a public figure) wanted the liberal media to keep quiet about her being a lesbian, that's worth noting and asking why she didn't want to be identified as gay. Did she think it would have impeded here being taken seriously as a leading anti-American polemicist? If so, doesn't that tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged homophobia (just as quotas tell us something about the left and its unacknowledged racism)?

That's about as good a guess as any I can come up with right now.

Update: Andrew Sullivan weighs in on the brouhaha, writing:

Sontag understood that her lesbianism might limit her appeal in a homophobic culture - even on the extreme left, where she comfortably lived for decades. That was her prerogative. But that's no reason for the media to perpetuate untruths after her death.

Occasionally forthcoming about her relationships, Sontag would then retreat into denial. But in covering public figures in this day and age, the media shouldn't treat being gay as something so "sensitive" it can only be mentioned with the figure's expressed authorization (which is moot, in any event, when that figure is deceased).
--Stephen H. Miller

A brouhaha is brewing over the fact that such liberal bastions as the New York Times, the L.A. Times and Washington Post failed to mention that recently departed author and "public intellectual" Susan Sontag had lived for many years in a lesbian relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz that was not, shall we say, kept secret. According to an item in the N.Y. Daily News:

Don't look for gay ladies in the Gray Lady. The New York Times paid tribute to the late Susan Sontag yesterday with a beautifully written obituary, plus a moving tribute by Charles McGrath, totaling almost 4,000 words. But apparently that wasn't enough space to mention that she was the partner of celebrity portraitist Annie Leibovitz for 20 years.

Writes reporter Steve Koval on the Houston Voice's blog:

Whatever Sontag's reasons for remaining coy about her sexual orientation, why is it that in 2004, the obituary of a famous gay (or bisexual) social critic gets de-gayed?

He then quotes gay firebrand Larry Kramer defending Sontag's public silence on the subject; in Kramer's words:

"Susan is...beyond being a lesbian. I know I'm probably saying something very politically incorrect, but, except for the fact that she has affairs with women, she doesn't really fit into that category.... What she is more than anything else is an 'Intellectual,' with a capital 'I.'

Says Koval, "With all due respect to Larry Kramer, I don't know what 'beyond being a lesbian' means. Apparently, the New York Times and other straight publications do."

The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune, by the way, were among a number of newspapers that did refer to Leibovitz as Sontag's "longtime companion."

For those unfamiliar with Sontag, according to ABC News:

Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history." Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers.

But when it came to gay equality, she kept mostly silent. Even her famous essay on gay men and "camp" sensibility, Paul Varnell notes, was full of caustic observations:

"Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense," she wrote. "Camp is the solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation. ..." A decade later Sontag viciously attacked Camp and its aesthetic sensibility because it was corrupting and "the ethical and cultural issues it raises have become serious, even dangerous." But for those who read carefully, that was her view from the beginning.

So what does this all add up to? I'm not sure. I don't believe in outing, but if a very public person is living openly in a same-sex relationship that's widely recognized within her social circle, then keeping that fact out of her obituary seems, to me, unacceptable. Yet apparently many on the liberal left are quite willing to play "let's pretend" when it comes to one of their own.