Contents:
- BUCKLEY AND THE GAYS
- CONSERVATIVE WILLIAM BUCKLEY SAYS TATTOO GAY MEN ON THEIR BUTTOCKS
- THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985
BUCKLEY AND THE GAYS
’s civil tone on matters of homosexualy, pecially as ntrasted wh other nservativ of his era, but laments that “Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necsary moral and social junctn agast gay love, marriage and sex. GayPatrt‘s B. Daniel Blatt is more charable, notg that, “When I was iendly wh Marv Liebman the mid-1990s, he remembered his iend fondly, notg how their iendship did not change when Liebman me out as gay to Buckley.
” But, as Sully observ, “Liebman was ed a brother bat, one of the great gay fo of totalarianism, up there wh Whtaker Chambers and Alan Turg. But he was always remd that his gayns would bar him om full cln as an equal the nservative movement. E., homosexualy], and his art the sirabily of , is not to be nfed wh the man who bears his sorrow quietly.
CONSERVATIVE WILLIAM BUCKLEY SAYS TATTOO GAY MEN ON THEIR BUTTOCKS
Buckley’s ontologil ethics on the subject of gay issu sometim manifted self rather amg ways. Several of the remembranc I’ve seen sce his passg yterday have mentned his suggtn that, “Everyone tected wh AIDS should be tattooed the upper forearm to prevent mon needle ers, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimizatn of homosexuals. It wasn’t as bad as “faggot, ” but rried a dose of ntempt as strong or stronger than most of the other risive ephets for those whom, back then, only gay people lled gay.
The ldly clil term “homosexual, ” which some now fd to be as dub as “Negro, ” was seldom seen as herently rogatory. “Gay” is too male, “gay and lbian” sufficiently clive, L. )Though Vidal never “intified” as gay—he never “me out”— was hardly a secret that the thor of “The Cy and the Pillar” was, to e his own favored term, a homosexualist.
Buckley was a reactnary, arguably a racist, and arguably a homophobe. In an famo 1986 op-ed piece The New York Tim, Buckley stated was a “fact” that the AIDS epimic is “the special curse of the homosexual.
THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985
The echo of Achwz were loud and clear when Buckley clared that “everyone tected wh AIDS should be tattooed the upper forearm, to protect mon-needle ers, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimizatn of other homosexuals. He published Marv Liebman and David Bdnoy - and his day, Natnal Review was not as uniformly homophobic - or virtually Homore - as now is.
But Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necsary moral and social junctn agast gay love, marriage and sex. ) Gay men were allowed sex, as a functn of a civilized society's benevolence, but only allowed. Homosexual sodomy was always subjected to more scty and disparagement than heterosexual sodomy, even when sodomy beme - as did the 1960s wh the advent of the pill - the overwhelmg sexual practice of the straight.
And so gay sex liv were subject to the kd of thought experiment - tattoog our buttocks the HIV epimic - that simply would never have been applied to heterosexuals. He echoed Charl Kaiser's belief that gay sexual eedom and privacy uld not apply to the HIV-posive, who were to be regard as threats and enemi.