Dishonorable. Huh. I've been trying to wrap my brain around that one.

I read Sullivan, sadly enough. He's about as conservative as gay bloggers tend to get, so I keep tabs on him, and what appears to be his increasing schizophrenia on a variety of issues. I'm for gay marriage, generally, and against the FMA. But I also have a healthy respect for the Constitution and know that such a thing should never come at the point of a judicial bayonet. If an Amendment were proposed that explicitly granted the power to decide the issue to the state legislatures, I'd be supportive.

That aside, gay marriage is Sullivan's white whale. He will support just about anything to see it through, and articles he writes to the contrary are disingenuous enough to sever a few optical nerves from all the eye-rolling reading them entails. His exchanges with Stanley Kurtz are just painful (though Kurtz bears about half the responsibility here with his "I write Very Important Articles!" shit). There is nothing dishonorable in being gay and supporting the amendment. Some people believe in the rule of law and the principles the Constitution was founded on, *even if it contradicts their own self-interest*. That's what Sullivan can never quite get through his noggin. Just because *he* thinks gay marriage is the Greatest Thing Ever, doesn't mean other gay people shouldn't work within the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. These people feel there are more important issues facing the country. What is so difficult about this concept?

Being closeted is a mark of dishonor and lack of self-respect? Since when? For some people, it's just plain *easier* to stay closeted. When they ask, I tell my gay friends with very conservative Christian parents to put a lid on it. Yes, every homosexual would like the After-School Special experience where they come out, get warm, supportive hugs, and everyone lives happily ever after. The reality is often ostracism, college funds drying up, and suddenly no place to live. If that's the reality of your situation, by all means, stay in the closet. I certainly won't think less of you for it. That's the understanding and compassionate way. That's tolerance for someone's choice. This "You must out yourself, or else you suck!" attitude of Sullivan's is anything but tolerant of other homosexuals. He wants every gay person to live up to his ideal of how their lives should be.

And he's lecturing people on authoritarianism? Pffft. WTFever.

Blah. This latest offering of mealy-mouthed jack-assery from him might be the final straw. Surely there must be decent conservative gay blogs out there to read. I'll have to find them. Hell, maybe I'll make one.

Rob,

Have you checked out classicalvalues.com?

I'm reminded of observations made about the uselessness of appeasement in foreign affairs.

I'm reminded of my favorite line in "Dr. Zhivago" when Larisa tells Yuri that it is only in mediocre novels that people are divided cleanly along party lines and have nothing to do with one another otherwise. It's not just politics that make strange bed-fellows (no pun intended, but that's funny right there. I don't care who you are. That's funny.) it's LIFE. Why does being gay have to trump everything else a person believes in? I know gay people who are just as conservative as I am politically. Being a Republican doesn't necessarily mean that someone supports the ammendment does it?

On the gay marriage issue, it seems that Sully and the Dems are taking that position of defender of rights- their rights. Like the ad that says "why are we opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them here," the position of many gay rights advocates is "let's advance our rights and screw the rights of gays throughout the world."

The democraticaztion and liberalization advocated by PGB is inherently a pro-pluralistic one. In most Islamic countires, homosexual practices are reviled and punishable by torture and death. I wonder when the left will extend its bleeding heart to these brothers and sisters in the struggle? When will they demand that a person can out himself without the penalty of death? When will their concern for equality reach across the border? Or are they so self-centered, narrowly focused, and isolationist that their personal concerns for ever more rights outweigh their concerns for those who have none?

An attack on the citizenship of homosexuals? Huh? I must have missed the memo on the secret plan to deport them.

And just to correct a misconception: homosexuality is only reviled *officially* in the Mideast. Unofficially, it's widespread. A great number of young boys (girls too, but we're correcting a misconception about homosexuality here) are raped by older family members. It's an absolute epidemic over there.

When I use the term homosexuality, I refer to a consensual relationship between adults.

In the ME, the high level of intra-family rape and child abuse is a different issue of equal rights and freedom from fear, and not one equal to the oppression by the state of homosexual rights IMO.

Well, I'm glad Sullivan's cleared the air, I was beginning to take his silence for tacit support. (Notice that no one's mentioned the Mikulski outing to him yet.) At least he helpfully suggests gay staffers quit their jobs to save face.

But wait, after months of hysterical posts, the FMA is stalling. How does Sullivan spin it? "Could Bush have wrecked what reputation he has left as a uniter rather than divider for ... nothing?"

Substitute Sullivan for Bush in that sentence.

I have to agree with the rest of the posters here; Sullivan appears to be hypocritical on this issue.

I can understand why he feels the way he does. People who identify themselves as/with a minority group often feel that solidarity of ideas within that group is required. On the other hand, he's shown he's capable of honest self-analysis in the past. I wonder why it failed him this time.

Tangentially, I am getting depressed by the lefts constant use of "civil rights" as a legal weapon to enforce whatever point of view they happen to care about.

I read an article recently where the author made a great argument regarding how the biggest threat to the civil rights today was civil rights "defenders". Basically his case was that civil rights arguments happening today weren't defending someone's freedoms so much as they were forcing other people to stop exercising theirs (ACLU and Christianity, for example). Wish I still had that link.

Jeff commented, '"Could Bush have wrecked what reputation he has left as a uniter rather than divider for ... nothing?" Substitute Sullivan for Bush in that sentence.'

Jeff and I are sharply divided on the value of unity and I have in mind to do nothing to conceal the rift. For stultified unity, nothing beats absolute kingship. In republics, where, thankfully, there is "more life, greater hate," we argue vigorously, always have, and always will, for as long as we manage to maintain republican liberties. The unity that I value most is the agreement of intelligent people on the best available interpretation; the unity that I value next is the agreement of fools to what they need to be led to think. Shutting one's own mouth merely in order to avoid publicly acknowledging a rift with outspoken partisans who already speak from the Bully Pulpit and who desire to speak even from the pages of the Constitution is a sort of unity that Jeff can keep on his side of the line.

Rob said, 'The reality is often ostracism, college funds drying up, and suddenly no place to live. ...This "You must out yourself, or else you suck!" attitude of Sullivan's is anything but tolerant of other homosexuals.'

Checking in and playing at being a one-man "WTF?" squad for Sullivan is kindof fun; if I could get paid for it, I'd quit my day job.

Here, I just want to ask Rob to cite some text in which Sullivan says kids with a dangerous home situation must come out without regard for their security. It should be obvious, but may not be, that some passage in which Sullivan merely praises someone as having been brave for having come out in dangerous circumstances isn't "authoritarian" enough to qualify.

Unless Rob can satisfy us on the point, I think we're on much safer ground if we stick to the original plan of dunning Sullivan whenever he harps too much on gay issue A and whenever he doesn't harp enough on gay issue B. I think it's going to be a lot harder to pin "hates closeted kids" on Sullivan than to tag him with "doesn't have enough indignation to go around" or "remains stubbornly insubordinate to 'Ace'."

If you want a truly conservative blogger who's gay, try http://www.rightrainbow.com or http://www.sebastianholsclaw.com

Both are bloggers who put the war and their conservative beliefs above the FMA. I may be wrong, but I think both believe that 'gay marriage' is totally unnecessary at this point in time, and Paul at Right Side of the Rainbow, while not supporting the current FMA, has said that he would support an amendment that kept the courts from redefining marriage. He thinks the FMA violates federalism's spirit not in that it's an amendment, but in that it takes away the right of the States to legislatively choose for themselves in the future.