Andrew Sullivan: Don't Marginalize Me By Refusing to Hate Me

If there's one annoying thing about Andy -- and, you know, there are really like six or seven annoying things about him -- it's not only his personal obsession with his putative right to get hitched to a man, it's his shrill stridency that you ought to share in that obsession:

If one half of a gay couple cannot visit her spouse in hospital minutes away from where Jonah lives, he's not interested enough to worry about it. And I repeat: Jonah is the best of them. Conservative opinion on gays ranges from boredom to outright hostility and animus. There are times when I prefer the animus. Hating someone at least takes that person seriously. Not being able to be bothered while a minority is persecuted (and that's the only interpretation of the Virginia law) is the moment when inactivism becomes indistinguishable from moral abdication.

So much of the agitation on the gay-"liberation" side of things isn't about politics or public policy so much as it is a somewhat poignant insistence on private, personal affirmation.

Obviously, the gay agenda ought to be at the top of everyone's "thinky" list; gay marriage is certainly more important than the economy, Iraq, terrorism, racial quoats, and the broader culture war agenda. Since we don't wish to be tagged as "homophobic" or whatnot, we are asking Mr. Sullivan to please provide us a list of subjects we must care as passionately about as he, ranked in order of priority.

Once we know exactly what it is we're supposed to be so concerned about, we will immediately abandon our own political priorities in favor of his.

We imagine that clocking in at number 7 will be Mr. Sullivan's beloved beagle, which is just jake with us, because we like beagles as a general matter, and we're sure the particular specimen owned by Mr. Sullivan is an oustanding exemplar of his breed.

posted by Ace at 08:10 PM

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