Andrew Sullivan Silent on Signorile

It's absolutely incredible to me that Andrew Sullivan-- who is forever having minor conniptions over the outing of personal sexual information -- has nothing to say about Signorile's outing of Mikulski.

Of course, this outing is in aid of Sullivan's top objective-- gay marriage. Is it possible he's decided that perhaps sexual privacy can give a little in the interests of gays getting hitched?

Seems like an awful lot of Sullivan's former passions are yielding to the interests of promoting gay marriage.

Some might say, But maybe he hasn't read the piece yet. It seems flat-out impossible to me that Sullivan doesn't know about this article. If I know about, he knows about. He's got 100x the email traffic; someone sent him this story. And look-- he's a homosexual. A gay blade of grass does not bend beneath a straight foot without the gay grapevine whispering into Sullivan's ear.

I almost posted something saying "Sullivan had better condemn this, if he doesn't want to be exposed, yet again, as a Machivellian hypocrite." But I didn't, because frankly, I expected him to condemn Signorile's outing. I didn't even think that Sullivan could at this point simply "forget" his previous positions on sexual privacy. So it seemed like a gratuitious admonotion.

Seemed, I says.

Contra me: Right Side of the Rainbow disagrees that sexual orientation is or should be private information. He argues that some things about a politician should be known by the voters, as such information is indicative as to their likely stances and biases.

I'm unconvinced. Without doubt, sexual orientation has some usefulness as a position proxy. But so do a lot of things. Whether or not a man engages in sodomy with his wife might be indicative of his positions on sodomy and sexual permissiveness generally. But I think the connection is so attenuated that the privacy interest greatly outweigh's the public's purported right to know.

posted by Ace at 02:20 PM

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