Andrew Sullivan - openly gay thor, edor and blogger |

Contents:

• THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS UNDOG ITS BT WORK
• INTERVIEW: ANDREW SULLIVAN ON BEG OPENLY GAY AND CATHOLIC
• THE GAY CHURCH
• THE CORPTN OF THE VATIN’S GAY ELE HAS BEEN EXPOSED
• ANDREW SULLIVAN: IMPOSG ‘CRIL GENR THEORY,’ ERASG BOYS AND GIRLS POS RISK TO GAY MUNY

THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT IS UNDOG ITS BT WORK

The story simmered on gay Inter bullet boards before breakg last week the pag of LGNY an article wrten by Michelangelo Signorile, the gay lumnist who me to fame durg the whole “outg” ntroversy a ago and who has recently lled upon health officials to shut down gay bath ho to rce unsafe sex.

” As the self-appoted champn of gay marriage, fily and “normal” homosexuals, Sullivan has railed agast the “sexual pathologi that plague homosexuals, ” lambasted the “rtoonish, buffoonish siary” of gay male bodi ma “manic mcle factori” and analogized unprotected oral sex wh murr. In his books Love Untectable and Virtually Normal, he displays a remarkable clatn to nsir his own experienc, or those of gay men jt like him, as reprentative of gay culture at large (or, alternatively, as the mol that all gay people should follow). The most famo and adly example of Sullivan’s narcissism is his aforementned Tim story on AIDS, which nclud that bee wealthy, whe gay men such as himself now had accs to val, life-extendg anti-retroviral meditns, we have arrived at the “end of the plague.

INTERVIEW: ANDREW SULLIVAN ON BEG OPENLY GAY AND CATHOLIC

” As we approach the twentieth “anniversary” of AIDS, as the Centers for Disease Control reports that fifteen of every 100 Amerin gay black men ntract HIV each year, and as the ath toll Ai ris to genocidal heights while Wtern pharmactil pani whhold dg patents, we might wonr jt how good a reprentative Sullivan is for gay people or people wh AIDS. The are favore tactics of Signorile, and although may appear as if he and Sullivan are polil opponents, we would do well to remember Michael Warner’s diagnosis The Natn a few years ago (“A New Gay Stone Wall, ” June 14, 1997)–that the spectm of gay polil thought, of which Signorile and Sullivan are major figur, “the ias promoted range om right to far right. He has suggted that, once gays w the legalizatn of same-sex marriage, along wh a few other thgs (prumably cludg the right to serve openly the ary), “we should have a party and close down the gay rights movement for good.

Anyone who falls outsi such boundari, anyone who might be further margalized by their race, class, genr or sexual tast, is not only nied the right to speak om wh gay culture but is held rponsible for s polil failur, diseas and aths.

Here’s one of the grave ironi of the Sullivan cint: Bee queer publics have been subject to state crackdowns, moralizg mpaigns and health sr of the sort gay nservativ have supported, the Inter has bee the facto se for gay cisg–but as a virtual, privatized space, ’s much ls open to the kds of ank, public nversatns about pleasure and safety that we so sperately need to be havg. He’s a proud member of the ele, and his se for marriage was partly nservative — that would be, as he told me, a “civilizg” fluence on gay men who he believed had been emotnally damaged by discrimatn. While the percentage of people who support equaly for gays, lbians, and transgenr people remas at a high of 79 percent, more people are exprsg some disfort: “In 2014, for example, 27 percent of non-LGBT Amerins said they would be ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ unfortable lookg at a weddg picture on an LGBT -worker’s sk.

THE GAY CHURCH

The gay-rights movement achieved s biggt gas when we worked agast polarizatn, reached out across the spectm, emphasized the human rather than the polil, and did the key, hard tnal work our fai, schools, church, and neighborhoods. If the gay-rights movement cis to throw wh this new leftism, and abandon the moratn and tegratnism of the recent past, they risk turng gay equaly om beg about a w-w procs for gays and straights to a war between “LGBT” people and the rt. Gays are not the only beneficiari; heterosexual “live-togethers” also ’s an argument, of urse, that the current legal advantag extend to married people unfairly discrimate agast people who’ve shaped their liv ls nventnal arrangements.

THE CORPTN OF THE VATIN’S GAY ELE HAS BEEN EXPOSED

One of the worst products of the New Right’s “fay valu” mpaign is that s extremism and hatred of diversy has disguised this more measured and more nvcg se for the importance of the maral ncept of domtic partnership ignor the ncerns, ed directly attacks them, this is a py, sce one of s most important objectiv—providg some civil regnn for gay relatnships—is a noble e and one pletely patible wh the fense of the fay. And unlike domtic partnership, harns to an already tablished social nventn the yearngs for stabily and acceptance among a fast-maturg gay marriage also plac more rponsibili upon gays: It says for the first time that gay relatnships are not better or worse than straight relatnships, and that the same is expected of them.

Legalizg gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same al society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantag exchange for a eper and harr-to-extract-yourself om mment to another human beg. As has bee more acceptable for gay people to acknowledge their lov publicly, more and more have mted themselv to one another for life full view of their fai and their iends, A law stutnalizg gay marriage would merely rerce a healthy social trend. The only possible effect of this sort would be to persua gay men and women who force themselv to heterosexual marriage (often at appallg st to themselv and their fai) to fd a foc for their fay stcts a more personally posive environment.

It’s hard to overstate his importance layg the tellectual and philosophil foundatn for the polil, philosophil and legal mpaign that culmated not jt the Supreme Court’s Obergefell cisn, but also the cultural acceptance of gay marriage that reigns ’s Sullivan’s journey and out of the Amerin right, where he went om one of the Iraq war’s most eloquent champns to one of s most feroc crics. Marriage equaly and the loss of his iends were several topics Sullivan discsed durg a vis to Cal State Northridge’s USU Grand Salon on Thursday, as he shared wh guts how he beme a lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer (LGBTQ) activist.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: IMPOSG ‘CRIL GENR THEORY,’ ERASG BOYS AND GIRLS POS RISK TO GAY MUNY

Sullivan—who is openly gay and a practicg Catholic—had published the first major article the Uned Stat to advote for the legalizatn of gay marriage (“Here Com The Groom, ” The New Republic, 8/28/1989), an argument he extend two later books, Virtually Normal (1995) and Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con (1997). J., executive edor of are both Catholic and gay and open about both, and would be helpful to others the church to know how you brg those two parts of your life together, view of official church teachg on homosexualy and also view of your evint rpect for the Catholic, part of what I’ve found tratg is the notn that I’ve ma some public announcement that I was the two thgs—which is not te. ” And of urse I was forced to say I don’t believe, at some level, I really do not believe that the love of one person for another and the mment of one person to another, the emotnal nstct which homosexualy dictat to —I know my heart of hearts that nnot be wrong.

We are born wh origal s, but that is self sful—an voluntary ndn, but is analogy might be thought to be disabily, but at the re of what disabled human begs n be—which means their spirual and emotnal life—the church not only affirms the equal digny of disabled people that regard but enurag to see [that digny] and to take away the prejudice of not believg a disabled person n lead a full and tegrated human life even though they nnot walk or they experience some other the disabily that we are asked to believe that [homosexuals] are about [sic] is fundamental to our tegry as emotnal begs, as I unrstand .

I thk that’s how will get rolved society general, bee homosexualy—when you actually look at people whom you need and love—is a very different issue om when ’s some abstract mo of beg or some closeted, reprsed mo of beg, which is equally abstract. I thk there uld have been a far clearer statement om the Cardal that gay human begs are human begs and that the church fights for the digny of every human beg and fights for the digny of every homosexual human beg. He uld have ma that statement and distguished —however herently, but he uld have distguished —om an endorsement of a particular polil platform that approv somethg the church still believ is a, I remember, I was downtown late on a Sunday afternoon, and I wanted to go to Mass, and I was wearg a gay T-shirt.

The way that the Cardal Archbishop of New York behaved, I thk, failed to make that important distctn—which, given the existence of bigotry, was an extremely unnervg Sullivan: “What the church is askg gay people to do is not to be holy, but actually to be warped. But of urse the church is there fg gay people by a sexual act a way never f heterosexual people, and this, the church is weird agreement wh extremist gay activists who also want to fe homosexualy terms of s purely sexual ntent.

I mean, if the church were sayg to gay people, “You are special to , and your celibacy is orr for you to have this role and that role and this fal end, ” or if the church had a doctre of an alternative fal end for gay people, then might make more sense. It would be sayg God ma gay people for this, not for marriage or for children or for procreatn or for emotnal pairg, but He ma gay people orr to—let’s say—build betiful thedrals or be wns to the world some other way. You see, that would be a herent posn at some level—that, for some myster reason, God ma certa people wh full sexual and emotnal pabily and required them to sublimate that pabily to other areas of you don’t really accept the analogy of homosexualy to a handip?

In that sense, the love of one man for another man, or the love of one woman for another woman, that njugal bond, teach exactly the same is also enormo pacy, I thk, for gay peopie to adopt children. But we do believe that gay men and women are human begs, that they have digny, that they are to be protected, that bigotry agast them is to be risted, that vlence agast them is to be opposed at all levels.