Andrew Sullivan: Church Is Gay (No, Really: Gay In That Way)

NTTAWWT.

I've often wondered how many straight Catholics fully appreciate how gay their church has always been. Especially in the old days. High Mass was, in its heyday, more elaborate and choreographed than a very melodramatic Broadway musical. Do people really believe that gay priests and religious had nothing to do with it? They had everything to do with it.

The first time I walked into a gay disco, with all those lights, music, ritual and smoke, my immediate thought was: church! Madonna gets this, whatever Jonah says. Because she's a born-and-bred Catholic, which Jonah isn't. It's theater, sweetie, theater. And the Church once understood that - which was part of its beautiful Catholicity. Gone, now, alas. But Benedict is helping nudge it back. And although I tease him about it, it's a wonderful thing. More incense, please. And lace.

There's nothing sadder than an aging homosexualist.

Is there now any difference at all between the "conservative" Andrew Sullivan and the various queer-magazine provocateurs of the left? For precisely how long will the media insist on calling a pro-tax-raising, pro-abortion, pro-gun-law, anti-war, anti-american, pro-drug, gay-marriage-above-all-else gay leftie a "conservative"?

Yes, he does agitate for a smaller government. But generally one contrarian position is not enough to define someone as a "conservative." There are pro-death-penalty liberals, too; that single policy stance doesn't make them non-liberal. It just makes them liberals with one contrarian position.

And his agitation for "small government" is chiefly about gay marriage, too. His idea of "small government" is only secondarily animated by a desire to have the government spend less; what he really wants is a government that "stays out of the gay marriage issue," i.e., allows the courts (another branch of government, although an undemocratic one) to decide the issue.

I have a few positions that don't really fit the conservative orthodoxy. Does that make me a liberal, I wonder?

Thanks to Slublog.

posted by Ace at 05:59 PM

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