The White Peril 白禍

Eric doesn't like being labeled, and not for the usual tiresome I'm-too-free-spirited-to-be-defined reasons:

While I can say what I think about most things, experience shows that adopting any label invites conformity to it. (Especially criticism from those who claim it.)

Once you say what you are, some a**hole will come along and say that you're not, because he is.

Similarly, once you say what you aren't, some a**hole will come along and say that you are, because he isn't.

It's convenient that (small-l) "libertarian" suits me fine, because it tends not to set people off. I like "classical liberal," but (today's left) liberals often seem to think you're trying to dress up as one of them while being a closet fascist. ("Yeah, you're a liberal in the sense that, like, Mill would have meant it," someone sneered at me once.) And while my positions on many issues align with what we now consider "conservatism," I'm not fundamentally a conservative. (Well, I am when some gross guy is hitting on me. Then I identify myself as a "conservative" in a clear, forceful tone and mention that I'm a registered Republican. You movement conservatives don't mind the fib, do you? It's to the end of preventing casual homosexual intercourse, after all. And I really am a registered Republican.)

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

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My buddy grabbed my arm the other night and asked whether I'd seen Julie Burchill's inevitable column about the new Madonna album yet. He summarized it as "If I spent four hours a day at the gym, I'd look better than that bitch!" Not too far wide of the mark:

Madonna is everywhere, reigning over the just and the unjust, friend and foe alike; loving her or hating her is as futile as loving or hating the rain, wind or snow - it'll happen anyway.

...

If Madonna didn't devote her life to harassing us, what would she do with herself all day? Remember, this is a woman with so much time on her hands that she can spend four hours a day working out. I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile veiny hands, that sad stringy neck - yuck!

Madonna has the sort of body that tends toward the plump/luscious side; you can see it in her early videos. Endomorphs like that who diet and exercise themselves into having no body fat often end up with skin that has a weird stretched look.

The rest of the column is the exact same thing Burchill writes whenever a Madonna record comes out, and it's as funny (and bawdy) as usual.

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Surprise! Hillary Clinton once said something nasty behind closed doors about white, working-class Southerners (via Ann Althouse):

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

And since some things never change, Clinton's spokesman responds with contempt when asked about the authenticity of the quotation:

A spokesperson for Clinton said the quote was taken out of context and did not reflect her true political philosophy. "This quote differs from the recollection of others who were in the room at the time this comment was allegedly made," said Jay Carson. "To be clear, that's not how she felt then and it's not how she feels now, and the proof is in how she has lived her life, the work she has done and the policies she has pushed and pursued over the last 35 years."

Asked to produce a witness who would say that Clinton had been misquoted, Carson wrote: "So, you've got two guys we've barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?... Sounds totally and completely reliable."

Remember the Clinton administration, when we were subjected to that kind of smear-and-spin routine almost daily when something or other threatened to blow up in the happy couple's faces? We could be mere months from going back to it!

Eric also noticed this story. (He didn't say much about it, but, then, he had to go to New Jersey, so he had plenty of pain to contend with already.)

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I don't think this post has enough parentheses.

Does anyone out there know where my evening shirt is?

Well, what good are you?

I thought I always kept it inside the dinner jacket on the same hanger, but unless it's invisible, it's not there. I hope I didn't leave it in Atsushi's closet when I moved out.

*******

How is it possible for one man to have so many vases? If there were ever any doubt that I'm gay, it's been dispelled by the four boxes of decorative housewares I've just packed. Mind you, they don't include anything you could eat off or store something in.

*******

It's time for me to break a pair of sunglasses. Or maybe lose them. I can feel it. The weather keeps going from sunny to cloudy, so you need them sometimes and then not others. They end up in a pocket or dangling by one slender arm from my bag. I seem to have a thing for dropping them in cabs or putting them down on tables and putting something heavy on them. I school myself resolutely to keep them in their little crush-proof cases, but it never works.

*******

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have The Descent in the DVD player, and I'm finding it oddly comforting to have it playing while I'm packing. Given the increasing claustrophic-cave-like-ness of my apartment, you'd think it would make me afraid of confronting a throat-biting humanoid in the bathroom or something, but I actually find it rather cozy. And I used to be of those people who were completely unable to handle horror movies. (When I was growing up, all the talk of demons waiting to getcha we got in church affected my over-active imagination a good deal.)

BTW, if you like suspense and have a strong stomach, The Descent is a great little movie. It's bloody and seriously scary at times, but you don't leave it feeling cynically worked over. It's thoughtful and raises interesting questions without being pretentious, and the cave scenes are very persuasive even though they were all shot on a soundstage. I love hypertrophied old Hollywood glamour-orgy productions as much as the next gay man, but there's a lot to be said for a movie made by people who relied on ingenuity, skill, and conviction rather than piles of money.

Stephen Miller at IGF posts about an Advocate column responding to the murder at school of a cross-dressing fifteen-year-old who lived in a facility for troubled youth.

Of course, it's partially Bush's fault. No, really. Here's part of Neal Broverman's Advocate piece:

"Part of the role of a school is to teach young people how to function in a democracy," says Kevin Jennings, a former teacher and the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, a national organization working to ensure safe schools for LGBT students. "In a democracy we protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Where are they going to get that lesson? They've got to learn it in school." [Note unassailable logic of preceding sentences--SRK]

But they don't. At least not in the way they did before the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted by Congress in 2002 at the Bush administration's urging.

"There's been a real retrenchment of antibullying and diversity programs since No Child Left Behind," says Jennings. "What that's done is establish standardized testing as the only measure of good schools. In the late '90s there was a lot of momentum around multiculturalism and diversity. That was really reversed by this imposition of standardized testing. A lot of educators are frustrated because they understand the importance of addressing some of these larger [social] efforts, but when they try to they're told, 'You've just got to get the math scores up.'"

Is standardized testing the only measure of school performance that's currently given weight? I'm no education expert, but my understanding is that schools are still rated according to their safety standards; it's hard to believe that a pattern of violent bullying that goes unpunished wouldn't be factored in there--assuming the reporting administrators are being honest. Keeping schools from finding ways to cook the numbers to make themselves look better has been a major issue since the program was first implemented. Still, that doesn't mean the shift from trying to teach kids huggy multiculturalism to trying to teach them math is in and of itself a bad one.

There was a violence prevention program in place at the school that attempted to teach kids how to manage their emotions and empathize with others. Would a gay-straight alliance or more explicit attention to tolerance of gay kids have helped? Possibly.

Broverman delivers the usual coarse generalities about "violence as a solution to conflict" (bad, very bad), but he raises the common-sense point that maybe King's elders should have taught him a bit more caution when it came to wearing heels and eye makeup and adopting a flippant, teasing persona in a school full of teenagers. Miller reports that a cadre of social welfare busybodies naturally flipped out:

Braverman [sic--his name is Broverman according to the by-line] raised serious issues that are certainly worth discussing. But his piece provoked strong criticism from certain activist quarters, as in this Open Letter to The Advocate from "lawyers, advocates, and child welfare professionals" who declare "hiding fuels hatred" and that "We cannot keep children safe by hiding them. Succumbing to fear creates an environment in which hatred thrives. Invisibility is just another, more insidious, killer." [A dumbfounding thing to say in connection with a child whose flamboyance just got him shot--SRK]

That sounds a awful lot like the kind of sloganeering that is meant to stifle open discussion rather than foster it. Gay adults know that, if they choose, they can walk hand in hand down a street of a non-gay neighborhood--and they know that in a great many neighborhoods they will risk getting beaten (or worse) for it. That's a choice adults can make.

I think Miller shows impressive restraint. What kind of moron do you have to be to go around telling children that they can just go around expressing themselves however they like and expect the world to love them for it? Or even to expect those who do love them for it to be able to bail them out every time they land themselves in trouble? I daresay that most people go through junior high school hiding what they are to some extent; that's how you get along. Teenagers learn through trial and error, as their personalities are gelling, how much they're willing to hold back in order to avoid making waves and how much they're not. This is not just a gay issue.

In a free society, the authorities aren't policing everywhere you go and everything you do. You can go about your business as a law-abiding citizen without being watched all the time, but the trade-off is that you can get yourself into dangerous situations when no one is in a position to help you. It only takes minutes to get beaten up, and less than that to get stabbed or shot. (In this particular case, one of the issues is how McInerney managed to get a gun onto school property undetected; but then, if he was that much bigger and stronger than King, he could probably have broken his neck or banged his head hard enough to kill him without a weapon.) Eliminating the real dangers gays face is not going to be achieved by griping that they shouldn't exist and teaching young people to pretend they don't.

Added on 2 April: I originally characterized the junior high school in the story as being for troubled youth because, for some reason, I read the article that way. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for pointing out that it appears actually to have been a regular old junior high school with some kind of anger management program. I've excised the two misleading sentences above, and while I hate to be told I've made a stupid mistake, I'm actually kind of glad to learn that particular information about the school. I was originally utterly baffled that counselors would tell a fifteen-year-old that a school for troubled kids was a good place for him to start cross-dressing. I still think they were irresponsible, but I guess I'm a bit less baffled now.

Speaking of fags making civic-minded gestures of dubitable effectiveness, one of the higher-ups in the Stonewall Democrats chapter at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has decided that the logo for a new burger joint in town is offensive (via Advice Goddess). You've probably narrowed the reason down to just a handful of possibilities. Read the quotation below to see whether you guessed the correct PC transgression!

LSA senior Kolby Roberts, a member of the Stonewall Democrats who has led the effort, said he finds the logo's message inappropriate and offensive.

"I have a problem that you take a women riding a hamburger and you put it next to the word 'quickie,'" he said. "It just seems like it's not putting a good message out there for the objectification of women."

Please. No gay man on Earth is in any position to be complaining about others' sexually objectifying anyone. Sorry. Just, no. You can complain that it's inappropriate in a given context, but that would require more precise thinking. It would also require thinking about manners and the evolution of beneficial social mores and stuff, and you might end up saying something judgmental.

Anyway, the reason this story caught my eye, besides Amy Alkon's funny commentary, was the lameness of the complainers' reasoning:

Roberts said he believed the image was distasteful, regardless of the person.

"Basically, what it has is a provocatively dressed woman straddling a hamburger, and she's very busty and its kind of really horrible," he said.

"Kind of really horrible"? Good thing you're an engineering major, darlin', 'cause you're not doing our famed gay skill at delivering pithy witticisms any justice.

How things have degraded. Back in my college days, when dinosaurs and Massive Attack roamed free, the affronted leaders of feminist and gay student groups would at least have had some pseudo-philosophical hoodoo to make their pique sound deeply meaningful. Where's the mention of the "male gaze"? Where's the invocation of the "hostile intellectual environment"? And it's Michigan--shouldn't we be bringing Catharine MacKinnon into the act? What are they teaching kids these days?

Added on 29 March: Eric is in Ann Arbor at the moment and has checked the place out.

The story's a good week old, but considering what old news it is anyway, I don't feel all that dumb linking to it now. R.E.M. has a new album out soon, and the hype-o-rator has been on full-blast for weeks. Who knows? Maybe it really is the band's best album in over a decade, and old fans should be getting all spazzy with anticipation. (Personally, I dropped away after Automatic for the People, which to me is about as melodious and ear-pleasing as the reaction of a cat when you throw a bucket of ice water over it. I'm clearly in the minority on that one, though.)

Anyway, there's a usual flurry of interviews and photo shoots and magazine covers. GayNews reports that Michael Stipe has finally just cut the crap and identified himself as gay:

This week he told Spin magazine, "I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there."

Although Stipe has never felt the need to discuss his sexuality before, he informed the magazine that he now felt that it was important to be open and honest in order to provide understanding and hope for the younger generation.

"It was super complicated for me in the '80s. I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious."

Stipe stated that in the past he didn't see that being out could be so important for others. "I didn't always see that. But I see now, of course that's the case, of course that's needed."

Considering how fervently Stipe embraced everything else on the leftist checklist, it's kind of funny that he didn't see coming out of the closet, of all things, as being important. But I see no reason not to take him at his word. He did, after all, make a point of being uncategorizable and enigmatic about his private life--and why not?--and he's been open about being bisexual for years. If he's decided he is, in fact, gay, then sure, no reason he shouldn't be up-front about it with the public if he likes.

I'm not sure the announcement will have the effect of "helping some kid out there," though. Gay kids already know that it's possible to be an open homosexual if, like Stipe, you're constantly going to be pushing what a "transgressive" weirdo you are. Especially if you've also already made a pile and aren't risking much in the way of money and career trajectory. I'm not faulting Stipe for waiting until he was ready to reveal this or that about himself; I'm only saying that it's a bit late to be all public-spirited about it in the way he seems to want to be.

BTW, before anyone tries to call me on it: Yes, the joke of the post title is that "Superman" was neither written by R.E.M. nor sung by Michael Stipe.

Cab drivers in Taipei don't like taking you to an intersection. Ask for "Zhongxiao East Road where it crosses Dunhua South Road," and you frequently get a blank look. "Which section?" the driver asks. (As in, "Do you mean the 300 block, or the 400 block, or what?") Once I didn't remember, and since I can write Chinese street names but can't speak Chinese, I drew a little diagram: See? These two streets. They cross here. Take me to the intersection...any old corner will do by this point. I stabbed conclusively with the pen. No reaction. Finally, I remembered I wanted Section 4. Scrawled it down. The driver beamed. Oh, okay. Zhongxiao East Road Section 4. Why didn't you just say so? Well, I gave you the intersecting street. We're not talking about Moebius Avenue and Tesseract Boulevard--they're two major arteries, and they only cross in one place!

Another time I was in a speeding cab with a few guys who do, in fact, speak Chinese. They asked for the intersection of Something and Something. "Which section?" An exchange of looks among the passengers--did anyone remember? "Section 2!" the guy next to me said, in clear confident tones. Then he turned to the rest of us. "It probably isn't Section 2, so when we get there, we'll just ask him to keep going to the next section until we get to the right intersection."

I've lived in Japan for twelve years and am used to being baffled by cultural differences. I have to say, though, I'm stumped by this one. Maybe it's because the cities I'm used to are New York (where the address numbers can't be divined from the street numbers) and Tokyo (where half the streets don't even have names), but most of the cabs I've been in in my lifetime refuse to move for you unless you pinpoint the intersection you're going to. No one has been able to explain to me how Taipei ended up developing the other way, though I can see why passengers would use addresses more often, since the address-numbering system here is very intuitive.

*******

You can be openly gay and get the benefits (nothing to hide), or you can be closeted and get the benefits (acceptance into the mainstream at all levels). You cannot do both. Those who want to be vociferously gay and simultaneously demand that people accept and adore them for it are insufferable, but it's people with the opposite problem who've been inflicting themselves on me lately, so they're the ones I'm going to grouse about.

You want to get married and have children? Good for you. It's none of my business. Whether you really feel affection for your wife or just want your family elders to get off your case or think you'll look more socially stable when it's promotion time at work, I don't care. However, sweetie, if you're going to sit in a gay bar (run by someone who's not afraid to show his face to the licensers and beer distributors and everyone else as the manager of a known gay bar), drinking whisky (served by guys who are not afraid to work at a known gay bar), talking to me (gay, for those who haven't noticed), then do not expect sympathy when you launch into a monologue about how hard it is to lead a double life, how you hate sneaking around, how you feel lonely all the time, and how you're really scared you'll run into a colleague in the wrong place someday. What exactly is the reaction you're expecting? We all make our trade-offs, and by definition, that means we're not going to get some things we want. News flash: If you hide what you are, you're going to feel like you're hiding all the time. Part of taking grown-up responsibility for your own choices is accepting that and not taking every opportunity to whine about it. Sheesh.

Occasionally, the thought flits through my head that maybe Go Fug Yourself isn't quite as funny as I think it is. Then I start guffawing again and forget all about it. This is Heather's riff on one of the photo-op photos from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions last night:

MADONNA: And the arms, they work, right? Young people have great arms. Justin probably has awesome arms. He's kind of my inspiration, actually. God, I just want to use my fearsome guns to tear off his young flesh and eat it.

JUSTIN: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly afraid that Madonna is going to use her fearsome guns to tear off my young flesh and eat it.

IGGY: I wonder what it'd taste like if I used Madonna's fearsome guns to tear off that kid's young flesh and eat it.

I'm still not sure how much of Madonna's strangeness of appearance is due to getting work done; a lot of it could be all the dieting and working out. No question, though, that she's bringing the same determination to staying "youthful" that she did to becoming a star. And (to bring up Taylor Dayne for the second time in a week) M. at least is working with her facial structure rather than against it.

To see Madonna's continued ability to polarize people in action, refer to this comment thread at Ann Althouse's.

The staff at my office here in Taipei have given me two different nicknames. I was designated "Evil Pink Guy" (by one of the fags, naturally--we're such bitches) the day I showed up in a lavender T-shirt and sat behind my desk with the lights off, apparently looking malign. The girls up front, on the other hand, have decided I'm 型男. No clue how to pronounce that in Chinese, but apparently it means "well-dressed man."

I'm honestly not sure which one I prefer. Being known as the Evil Pink Guy could, it seems to me, have its advantages.

*******

Hokkaido Diet member Muneo Suzuki, an uncommonly proficient glad-hander even by Japanese standards, has had one of his sentences upheld:

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday upheld a two-year prison sentence against Lower House member Muneo Suzuki, a once-powerful politician convicted of accepting 11 million yen in bribes and other crimes.

...

Although prosecutors can incarcerate Suzuki, his lawyers have requested his release on bail, meaning the lawmaker will likely be able to continue his political activities.

Under the Diet Law, lawmakers accused of bribery while in office lose their seats only when a guilty verdict is finalized.

Suzuki, a former member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, once wielded enormous influence over the Foreign Ministry, particularly on Russian affairs, and publicly clashed with then Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka during the Junichiro Koizumi administration.

But his power eroded after he became embroiled in a series of money scandals.

The lawmaker was found guilty of collecting 6 million yen from Shimada Kensetsu Co., a contractor based in Abashiri, Hokkaido, for his influence in gaining the company preferential treatment for a contract in a large-scale port construction project.

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A town in Saga Prefecture has a different (ahem) incentive plan in mind:

The Karatsu Municipal Government will from April start providing special bonuses to any citizens 75 or over who have not needed medical treatment or special health care over the previous 12 months.

Healthy elderly Karatsu citizens will be able to receive a special 10,000 yen payment provided they are on the list the city draws up for entitled recipients and they decide to apply for it themselves.

Karatsu's move to reward healthy older citizens is the first such step for a Japanese municipality.

Karatsu is hoping the idea will catch on and encourage older people to look after their health to cut potential rises in medical costs as the city's population ages.

The original Japanese for the program is ご長寿健康手当 (go-chouju kenkou teate: "payment for health in [exalted] longevity"), but it sounds to me more patronizing than respectful. Those who are already over 75 (or will be hitting 75 in the foreseeable future) are at a point at which there's not a whole lot they're likely to be able to do to affect which ailments they're prone to. They can be extra careful not to fall and break fragile bones, I suppose, but their range of choices is going to be kind of limited.

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The new Janet is okay. By which I mean the album. The new Janet herself appears to have gone further toward Michael/LaToya-fying her nose. Kind of spooky.

The blog at IGF has a post with an interesting comment thread--interesting because it addresses a serious sore spot of an issue without devolving into snarky one-liners. The issue (which is only part of what the original post is about) is the extent to which our gay civic duty, as it were, compels us to identify with people we don't really have much in common with besides homosexuality.

While everyone else is debating whether there are gays in Iran, this fag (note unapologetic hegemonic-Western assertion of identity--BUTCH, huh?) is wondering anew at how beyond sexy Hugh Jackman is, even if the hair needs a trim (just the hair on his head, obviously).

Speaking of body hair, I'm normally pretty persnickety about this sort of thing--don't get me started on visible clip-on bow ties at black tie parties--but I'm not sure I can fall in line with this post (via Ann Althouse). I can see arguing that grown men shouldn't wear shorts because it violates adult etiquette. I can see pointing out that shorts flatter well-shaped legs and don't flatter dumpy ones. Hell, attractiveness isn't even always the issue. I've been fighting with friends who tell me I should show more chest hair when we go out for years. My relatively smooth buddies can have three buttons open, and you don't even notice. I have three buttons open, and I look as if I should have a sign around my neck that says, "Ask about my low all-night rates!"

But looking decent and looking comely are two different, if related, considerations that it's not good to slush together. (Is it proposed that we go the whole way and ask people who lost the genetic lottery on bone structure and complexion to wear paper bags over their heads?) Noisome breath and body odor or noisy chewing--that sort of thing is inescapable to people around you, so it's flat-out inconsiderate to inflict it on them. I have a hard time equating that with covering up your legs lest someone deem them too hairy.

Gay Patriot West takes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to task for claiming that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Well, he's more taking gay and liberal groups to task for not calling BS:

Yesterday, we had a lesbian claiming she had a little crush on this man who, even she acknowledged, would "probably have [her] killed" because he was so forthright in "calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration." [Yeah, you know, if there's anything it's hard to find on the world stage, it's a head of state who's willing to score cheap political points off President Bush.--SRK]

As bad as those on the gay left claim this Administration to be, it doesn't execute gay people. Yes, we should fault the president and his team for failing to repeal the pernicious Don't Ask/Don't Tell Policy preventing gays from serving openly in the military and should take the president to task for endorsing the Federal Marriage Amendment. But, there is a world of difference between opposing gay marriage and open service of gays in the military and murdering gay citizens as matter of state policy.

It's amazing that some people on the gay left are so caught up with their hatred of Bush, that they refuse (or, are otherwise slow) to condemn the leader of a nation whose government does just that — murder its own gay and lesbian citizens.

A good rule of thumb is that anyone from anywhere at all who says his country doesn't have homosexuals doesn't know what he's talking about. Since I've been living in Tokyo, I've met guys from Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, and Nigeria out at the bars--all just as up on Britney's new single and this season's Prada as any fag in the Castro. One of the most annoying skeeves my friends and I currently run into is from--I'm not making this up--Papua freakin' New Guinea. And as for Iran...ha! I can't count the number of Iranian guys who've hit on me since I've been living in Tokyo.

Now, yes, we can get into the usual tiresome identity-politics discussion of what exactly constitutes a homosexual. (And I might note that when I first arrived in Japan, people told me they didn't have gays here, either, which has to be just about the most clueless thing I've ever heard.) But the men I've met from developing countries have mostly said something on the order of, "Well, sure, I'm married and have children. I have to be. My country is not America. Don't get me wrong--I respect my wife, and I love my kids--but you don't know how lucky you are to be able to have a partner."

BTW, I know it's pointless to get exercised over this sort of thing, but why do people insist on being so idiotic?

Protesters also assembled at Columbia. Dozens stood near the lecture hall where Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak, linking arms and singing traditional Jewish folk songs about peace and brotherhood, while nearby a two-person band played "You Are My Sunshine."

"You Are My Sunshine"? An allusion to Silverlake Life, maybe? But surely that would be way to esoteric for even a gay-friendly lefty audience to pick up on, especially when most of them were probably in second grade back then? Odd.

Added later: I should have known Eric would have posted about this already:

I'm not holding my breath either. Feminists who once condemned the veil now allow that it might be "liberating," and gay activists in Berkeley dismissivly compared the systematic murder and torture of Palestinian gays to what "happens in every western society, including in San Francisco." And what about the treatment of the murdered Pim Fortuyn?

Maybe because I'm friends with a lot of Brits and Europeans, I still hear Fortuyn referred to pretty frequently. But Eric's right that the gay left sure as hell hasn't seized on the opportunity to hold him up as an example of how tragically gays can be persecuted.

Added on 26 September: Naturally, one of Columbia's gay groups has gotten into the act (via Eric). Andrew Sullivan reports:

"We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

Ahmadinejad was right, you see? There are no gays in Iran. Just ask the Queer Studies Department.

Having spent my entire adult life toggling (not always successfully) back and forth between American English and Japanese, I'll certainly agree that you have to be exceedingly careful when using words from one language and culture to describe abstractions in another.

It's the tone that's grating: We Westerners, with our inadequate terminology and our resistance to examining deep "issues" unless a thugocrat shows up to give a lecture, just can't understand how complex all those people from other cultures are. But if that's the case, where does the CQA get off calling anyone in Iran its "peer"? The relationship between their sexual identity and their "same-sex practices" isn't like ours, after all.

Added on 1 October: Eric has still more reaction to the subject-changing debate that's resulted from Ahmadinejad's remarks:

I'm sure that a good defense of the author's thesis could be made too. In theory, I might be willing to venture such a defense, but I'm not about to take my cue from a murdering tyrant who believes in executing homosexuals — whether "homosexuals like in your country" or homosexuals like in his country.

...

It's a legitimate topic, but I think it's rather unsettling to have to parse a murderer's words and judge their theoretical meaning according to the trends of the latest Post Modernist jargon.

Yeah, at least when the post-structuralist brigade was lining up to explain away Paul de Man's pro-Nazi writings, it wasn't discussing someone who'd actually presided over a murderous government.

I very rarely take exception to something Eric says, but I think part of this post is misleading...or maybe just reductive:

In the context of boys into men, an especially stubborn category consists of something that's risky to write about, but what I'll call the "Born That Way High IQ Gay Men" for lack of a better term. Whether anyone likes it or not, society (and I include gay culture, which is very bigoted towards this type of person) really has no comfortable niche for young men who share the following two characteristics:

• obviously gay (and thus incapable of the "closet" option)
  
• extremely high IQ

I think it's a tragedy, and that's because I hate waste. And I hate seeing potential Einsteins frittering away their lives because of early emotional reactions to stuff that really ought not matter. There's an old Japanese saying that the crooked nail gets hammered down. With these people, all attempts at hammering them down are doomed to fail, because there simply is no place for them.

Lots of people get hung up on stuff that really ought not to matter and end up feeling isolated because of it. I'm not sure what "society" could do better to prevent that. Some isolated mavericks may be geniuses manqués, but I suspect that a lot of them just aren't willing to learn how to get along with people better, which involves risking rejection, giving of yourself, and making compromises. It's best to be taught such things by adult mentors and role models in childhood, I agree, but it's possible to pick them up in adulthood if you're willing to learn from experience. A free, mobile society doesn't preclude people's being cruel in enforcing conformity, but it does allow you to move away from them and try different communities until you find a niche in which you can flourish. Those who decide to stay put where they're unloved so they can keep indulging in drama-queen hysterics about how put-upon they are are hard to sympathize with.

James Kirchick on IGF:

Yet there’s a common, unattractive feature that many conservative gay men share: a serious chip on their shoulder. Being part of a community that is so intolerant of their views, gay conservatives can be embittered, patronizing, and castigatory of their gay brothers. It’s not a particularly attractive attitude. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I have not started cruising Log Cabin Republican meetings for dates.

Yes, yes--a thousand times, yes. The more annoying gay leftists are worse (as the rest of Kirchick's piece discusses), to be sure. Their worldview is mostly inaccurate. They assume that gatherings of gay guys are safe spaces not only for letting loose and being gay but also for slamming Bush, Israel, and capitalism without opposition. And they insist on pushing forward with political discussions even when it's become clear that the only result will be more acrimony. For sheer obnoxiousness, they can be pretty tough to top.

Still, there are gay conservatives who seem to be doing their best, conveying a smug sense of election and an ostentatious look-how-suffering-has-sanctified-me fortitude that even Hillary Clinton would surely regard as overdoing it. Cool don't advertise, gentlemen.

Personally, I don't think I've met anyone I would describe as embittered, exactly. But I've encountered more than one conservative gay guy who's seemed almost affronted when he discovered that I agreed with him on policy—as if the existence of another right-ish gay man somehow diluted his distinctiveness or something. Of course, that's just my interpretation, based only on people I myself have met. I just can't think of another plausible reason one would act annoyed at being agreed with.

*******

On a related note, Connie has this to say (my emphasis):

I love feedback. I love comments. I love discussion. But if I say I like the taste of apple sauce, I really don’t care if you think I’m an idiot for liking it. It is perfectly OK to have unexpressed thoughts. I have millions of them.

Good grief, yes. You are not duty-bound to loose upon the world everything that floats through your head. Really.

*******

On another related note, a friend has written to whether my post the other day stemmed the flow of hate mail so completely that I'm starting to miss it, in which case he gallantly offers to befoul my inbox with rants and insults of my choosing. Thanks for thinking of me, but I'm fine. Really.

He also sends this link, which I'll pass along just in case you haven't already encountered it through Instapundit or The Corner:

Here's a story you don't see every day - "Gay Nicaraguan Man Goes Into Hiding After Refugee Bid Denied":

His case made headlines in Canada and Nicaragua in February when the Immigration and Refugee Board denied him asylum saying they didn't believe he was gay.

Is that what Canadian immigration officials do all day? "Funny. You don't look gay. Walk across to the men's room again and this time put a bit of life into it."

I appreciate their concerns. Being gay isn't exactly one of those jobs Canadians won't do. Let a lot of squaresville straights stand muscling in on the gay immigrant fast-track, and there goes the neighborhood. But contrast the exacting entry qualifications for the gay refugee line with those for the terrorist refugee line. Ahmed Ressam, the famous "Millennium Bomber" arrested at the British Columbia/Washington State border en route to blow up LAX, was admitted to Canada because he told them he was a convicted Algerian terrorist.

That's right: As Mme Shouldice of the immigration service explained, being a terrorist was a legitimate criterion for admission, on the grounds that you had a reasonable fear of being ill-treated if you returned to the country where you were trying to blow people up. And, unlike gay refugees, terrorist refugees weren't asked to prove it: "Go on, then. If you're such a bigtime terrorist, blow someone up. Try the laughably obvious heterosexual at the payphone frantically trying to order up a Judy Garland boxed set."

Steyn wrote about Ressam in 1999 here.

Steve Miller at IGF posts about a conservative answer to Wikipedia called (natch) Conservapedia, started by one of Phyllis Schlafly's sons. The entries on topics such as evolution and homosexuality have some critics up in arms, and Andy Schlafly's own comments give reason for concern. The following paragraph almost gave me a heart attack:

"We have certain principles that we adhere to, and we are up-front about them," Schlafly writes in his mission statement. "Beyond that we welcome the facts."

I liked this gem, too:

But consider the entry on Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (b. 1947). She "may suffer from a psychological condition that would raise questions about her fitness for office" — namely, "clinical narcissism," Conservapedia asserts. Evidence of her instability includes her "ever-changing opinion of the Iraq war." Though Schlafly demands that entries be rigorously footnoted, these sentences are not.

Schlafly calls the armchair psychology "borderline in acceptability" for his site, but he defends the Clinton article on balance as "an objective, bias-free piece from a conservative perspective."

Beyond that we welcome the facts? Good grief. My understanding, both from my own super-conservative Christian upbringing and from commentators, was always that the faithful regarded some beliefs as not susceptible to empirical testing by science--not that certain principles were to be declared off limits to inquiry, with observable reality a secondary consideration. Yes, I'm talking about just one sentence, but Schlafly is a grown-up from a very media-savvy family. I have no doubt that he knows how to choose his words.

As far as the entry on Clinton goes, it certainly sounds more fun to read than what you're likely to see on Wikipedia, but I thought conservatives were against the practice of repairing to "psychological conditions" as an explanation for venal behavior? Is it proposed that we start accusing all waffling politicians of being mentally unstable?

Whatever. No proprietors of websites are obligated to champion the disinterested pursuit of truth, though a little more self-awareness might be seemly for those who don't. Predictably, there are some gays who are up in arms over Conservapedia's entries about sexuality, and their solution is to infiltrate the place:

In recent months, Conservapedia's articles have been hit frequently by interlopers from RationalWiki and elsewhere. The vandals have inserted errors, pornographic photos and satire... The vandalism aims "to cause people to say, 'That Conservapedia is just wacko,'" said Brian Macdonald, 45, a Navy veteran in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who puts in several hours a day on the site fending off malicious editing.

Miller's take is the right one:

The cost of living in a free society is to suffer being offended—without trying to silence those you find offensive (another example: campus "progressives" who steal conservative student newspapers from their distribution sites and destroy them). Conservatives have a right to their media; and the answer to arguments we find appalling is to criticize them. After all, it's not as if gay-supportive information isn't also easily available online.

One thing he doesn't mention is how stupid the RationalWiki people are being in tactical terms. I happen to think the jabber about a "war on Christianity" is overheated and, in many cases, disingenuous. Nevertheless, a lot of well-meaning, ordinary Americans have a sense that anyone who agitates for "gay rights" is trying to impinge on their ability to practice their religion and rear their children as they see fit. Gay advocacy has a few decades of ACT-UP-style demonstrations and public shenanigans at pride parades to counteract, and new rounds of guerrila warfare are hardly helpful.

Added on 24 June: Thanks to Andrea Harris for the link. She appears to believe it's wrong for men to think conservative commentators get a bad rap because the women among them are so shrewish. Fortunately, Andrea, is that Conservapedia is here to set you straight!

Femininity builds a woman's esteem by enhancing her own interpersonal relationships rather than building confidence through the task-orientation of masculinity. Traditionally feminine traits include being emotional, demure, affectionate, sympathetic, sensitive, soft-spoken, warm, tender, childlike, gentle, pretty, willowy, submissive, understanding and compassionate.

Clearly, Ann Coulter's problem is she's not willowy enough.

Some friends just sent me this link with the observation that the story seems to be right up my alley. The article sure as hell looks like a parody to me--and given the number of typos, a parody by non-native speakers of English--but I can't find anything to indicate that it isn't legitimate. Given that the timestamp is five days ago, I'm going to assume that every other gay blogger has covered this already, but if you haven't seen it....

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably [sic] attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant [sic, iterum] in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders [sic! For the love of Pete, when discussing the gays, can you at least show a token respect for our noted punctiliousness? Sheesh!--SRK]would become gay," explained Hammond.

Morons. Haven't you been listening to James Dobson? Unless you're looking at a unit full of soldiers who bonded incompletely with their same-sex parent and thus had the direction of their sex drive distorted, you're pretty much out of luck.

Besides, it's perfectly possible for a gay guy to be in a confined space with a few dozen other homos in butch attire and not be attracted to any of them. This is an experience I have almost weekly, though I'm usually holding a drink rather than a weapon.

If there are any managers of housewares departments reading, may I ask you a favor? When hiring men, please make sure they're queens.

Straight men are great--my very own father is a straight man, and I just love and respect him to pieces--and there are plenty of roles they can fulfill in society that constitute a real contribution. Just not when they're supposed to be selling you vases, endtables, or curtains.

I thought I was going to end up making this guy cry yesterday by asking whether he could measure the depth of a vase for me. You know, I wanted to buy flowers for it on the way home, and I needed to know how long the stems had to be without unpacking it right there at the flower shop. (You can eyeball these things sometimes, but it can be tough to gauge how thick the bottom of something is.) If the flowers are too short, they have to be entirely defoliated and end up looking as if they were being garroted, which isn't a pleasing decorative effect unless you happen to live in a dungeon, and maybe not even then. The more I tried to explain this, the more traumatized he looked. By the time the ordeal was over (the first vase got marred when they tried to scrape off the brand label for me, so they had to bring a second one out of the stockroom--yet more agitated activity for one of these foreigners with their strange requests), I was feeling traumatized myself.

*******

Luckily, one of my friends was back from a week home in Australia, so we went out for a restorative drink and catch-up. Less luckily, just as the vase encounter had blissfully slipped from the memory, I was beset by two guys who had been talking and flirting with my buddy.

It was the usual round of questions: How long have you been here? Where are you from? Oh, and where did you grow up? Oh, where on the East Coast? Pennsylvania? Where in Pennsylvania? Oh. Well, then, where on the Philadelphia end of the state?

At this point, I know I'm in for it. Long draught of vodka. Sigh. "From just outside Allentown."

One beat. Two beats.

Oh! You mean like the Billy Joel song?

Now, that everyone I will ever meet in my entire life will respond to the mention of Allentown with that exact sentence is a harsh reality to which I have long been inured. That everyone seems to think he's the first to think of it also doesn't bother me--we're all less original than we like to imagine we are.

But rarely do two people utter it at the same time.

And then start singing the song at me in stereo.

My buddy, who's seen this conversation and my wearied reaction many times before, stifled an uncharitable chuckle and excused himself to go to the toilet. (Bitch. I'll remember that.) Fortunately for me, another friend, one who actually understands the meaning of loyalty, was on my other side. At the first opportunity, he commandeered my empty glass and waved one of the bar guys over. "Oh, darling--not just the Allentown comment, but impromptu karaoke as well? I saw your fist clenching and unclenching--just be glad it's over now and relax and drink this."

*******

And while I'm mewling, why do delivery services find it necessary to play head games with you? Tokyu Hands originally told me my latest acquisitions could be delivered between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., but that I'd be called with a more exact time this morning. Fine. I get a call at 8:30: "I'll be arriving at your place between 11:00 and 13:00." Okay. At least that's a reasonably narrow range.

At 10:30 I'm getting ready to get in the shower so I can be out, dressed, and maquillage-èd by the time the guy comes. (Just because I want to be able to leave for work right after receiving my delivery, not for the other reason that may occur to the image-conscious gay mind. Japan must be the only country on Earth without hot delivery men and construction workers.) My keitai rings. "Hi! It's XX from Tokyu Hands. I'm at your building in less than five minutes." Granted that being early is better than making you wait around endlessly, I was just lucky I hadn't decided to go out and run some errands under the assumption that it would be okay to be back at my apartment by 10:55 or so. (I've done so before with unpleasant results.)

On the bright side, the apartment is nearing completion.

Wendy Kaminer has a column in Opinion Journal about the ACLU's increasing political slant, visible more through omission than through commission. The shift is bad enough simply because it's a corruption of the organization's supposed mission, but it has the nasty side-effect of playing into the sort of condescending gays-are-emotionally-frail-and-need-to-be-shielded-from-hostility malarkey that's a real impediment to progress:

[I]n 2004, when Tyler Chase Harper was disciplined for wearing a T-shirt declaring his religious objections to homosexuality, civil libertarians might have expected the ACLU to protest loudly. Mr. Harper was barred from attending classes when he wore the antigay T-shirt to school on an official "Day of Silence," when gay students taped their mouths to symbolize the silencing effect of intolerance. Represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, he sued the school district. That same year, the ACLU initiated the first of two actions against a Missouri school that punished students for wearing "gay supportive T-shirts," eventually securing a promise from the school to "stop censoring," the ACLU Web site boasts. Mr. Harper, however, was unsuccessful in his quest to stop school censorship. In a patronizing, antilibertarian decision in which Judge Stephen Reinhardt stressed the imagined feelings of gay students, the Ninth Circuit rejected Mr. Harper's First Amendment claims. (There was a sharp dissent from Judge Alex Kozinski.)

Perhaps the ACLU was observing its own prolonged Day of Silence, because, while it pays close attention to federal appellate court decisions on civil liberties, it effectively ignored this terrible precedent, even when Mr. Harper appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court dismissed the case as moot because Mr. Harper had graduated but took the unusual step of vacating the decision so that it no longer exists as precedent (no thanks to the ACLU).

Yeah, I'm focusing on the gay thing because it's a pet peeve of mine, but Kaminer has more on the Muhammed cartoons and counseling related to abortion. None of it's really news, but it's disturbing to see it all laid out together and coherently.

In better news, Kaminer is one of the bloggers at thefreeforall.net. Good reading if you were won over by the likes of I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional.

While we're on the subject of blame-shifting losers, I may as well point out that James Kirchick at IGF has a very good piece on why James McGreevey should be excommunicated from gay community life. Yes, the point has been made already, but gay leaders keep feting the guy, so it bears repeating:

There are millions of gay people in this country. Most of us are not as politically powerful and connected as Jim McGreevey once was. We work hard, pay our taxes, put up with discrimination, and, I'd like to think, if we ever get caught doing something wrong, do not rashly blame our fate on an inability to deal with sexual orientation. But Jim McGreevey was too much of a coward to admit that what he did was just plain wrong and that he was entirely to blame for his misfortune.

The world is unfair to gay people and the higher rates of suicide, depression and personally destructive behavior amongst gays, especially gay men, has a great deal to do with external homophobia. But let there be no mistake: McGreevey was forced to resign because he was a corrupt politician who shared more in common with the men in his administration now serving time in jail than he would care to believe.

Rather than own up to his abuse of office, McGreevey conflated his political corruption with his own struggles as a gay man. In so doing, he lent credence to the ignorant meme peddled by conservatives that gays are emotionally unstable and shifty people who cannot be trusted as individuals, never mind as public servants.

America loves a redemption story; ace image manipulators like McGreevey and Stephen Glass know that. Unfortunately for them, there's a fly in the ointment: To pitch yourself as shriven and reborn, you have to be able to admit to wrongdoing. For some people, that's an unbearable prospect. So they end up twisting themselves into moral-ethical pretzels along the lines of, "Oh, my, yes...I totally betrayed the trust of people close to me, people who counted on me to fulfill my responsibilities. I'm just sick with guilt. But, you see, I wasn't quite myself at the time...it was all the pressure...the pressure...so, uh, you do love me again, right?"

I consider his support of hate crimes one of Michael's quirks. (I do agree with the push to prevent "gay panic" defenses from succeeding at scoring reduced sentences, but that doesn't happen all that often.) He's clearly given it a lot of thought, but I still think his conclusions are wrong.

So when someone says, "All crimes are hate crimes" a lot of us accept it without thinking about it.

All crimes are not hate crimes. And all dangerous criminals are not equally dangerous.

People argue that we shouldn't tack on extra time for what a person "thinks." But we already do that. An obvious example is murder. The sentencing for First degree murder is largely based on pre-meditation, or what the perpetrator was thinking at the time of the murder. Second-degree murder has a shorter sentence because, basically, less thought was put into the crime. Manslaughter gets a lesser sentence because a person acted "out of passion." The sentencing for each of these varying degrees of homicide is based in large part on what the murderer was thinking at the time of the act.

I happen to think "all crimes are hate crimes" is a stupid, slushy formulation, but I think Michael's being equally slushy about types of "thought." What matters to society in distinguishing degrees of murder isn't just how long and intensely the perpetrator had it in for his victim; it's whether he's likely to do it again. All other things being equal, the sort of person who's capable of coolly and rationally planning to whack someone is more of a danger than the sort of person who just cracked when pushed too far.

One could imagine similar degrees of hate crimes. You could have first degree (has been denouncing queers publicly since elementary school and is on record as looking for the opportunity to whack one), second degree (suddenly realized when he saw that dyke crossing the street what a menace to the social order she was and flipped out), and third degree (uh...I guess that's feeling free to be more reckless in a gay neighborhood out of an unarticulated feeling that we're expendable?). But that's not the way proponents of hate crimes legislation usually talk about "thought."

To my knowledge, the laws that have actually been enacted provide for penalty enhancement: if you commit an existing crime, you can get added punishment if you were found to be motivated by bias against a particular pre-approved group. The idea is that you've done harm that extends beyond the person or persons you directly victimized; you've by extension done harm to the whole category. The courts--I think in every case, though I could be wrong--have ruled that such laws don't violate equal protection or due process.

So what's the problem? For one thing, the concept of group harm is tricky to negotiate. For another thing, it's difficult to know what someone's thinking. Michael gives a hypothetical example:

In order to understand a hate crime, you have to get inside the mind of the characters. Joe hates blacks. Joe hates faggots. Joe hates Latinos. When the guy at the bar has dealt with the man who spilled his drink, he will probably be finished with it. He’ll get a fine or a short jail term. Most likely, he’ll consider how stupid it was the next time someone touches his drink.

...

Is a simple fine or a night in jail going to make Joe think about how stupid this hatred is and how much trouble acting on it can get him into? Doubtful. Joe will sit in jail and stew about how some queer got him locked up. When Joe gets out, who is going to pay for his time in jail? Is it going to be the same black guy, or gay man, or Latino that he beat up in the first place? This is where the difference is. To Joe, it doesn’t matter. To him, one fag is as good as another.

Sounds good while you're reading through it, but is it corroborated by real life? It's possible to imagine someone who got into an out-of-character barfight being all contrite and realizing that, hell, he doesn't really have anything against the drink-spillers of the world, and going away and never doing anything like that again. But it seems equally plausible to figure that the sort of guy who would deck someone for spilling his drink would also get into other dustups--someone took "his" parking space at the supermarket, or complained that his music was too loud, or whatever--because he has little self-control and deals with problems that way. America has no shortage of hotheads who are the despair of their local police, after all. Perhaps there's research to indicate that the degree of viciousness or the recidivism rate for bias-motivated criminals is higher than that for garden-variety troublemakers, but if so, I've never seen it publicized.

Of course, the theory also is that hate crimes hurt the whole group. Here's the Anti-Defamation League:

Hate crimes demand a priority response because of their special emotional and psychological impact on the victim and the victim's community. The damage done by hate crimes cannot be measured solely in terms of physical injury or dollars and cents. Hate crimes may effectively intimidate other members of the victim's community, leaving them feeling isolated, vulnerable and unprotected by the law. By making members of minority communities fearful, angry and suspicious of other groups — and of the power structure that is supposed to protect them — these incidents can damage the fabric of our society and fragment communities.

Thinking just in terms of pragmatics, do gays really think it's wise to buy into this? That you can intimidate the whole lot of us by beating up a single gay man on the way home from the clubs? That we see ourselves as outside mainstream social and legal institutions (a.k.a. "the power structure")? And wouldn't the tacking on of gay-specific jail time or fines be likely to make Joe even more resentful of homosexuals than he would if he were just charged with assault?

If the police are responding listlessly to crimes in gay neighborhoods, then residents should be angry; but that doesn't mean that hate crimes provisions are the only possible response. There are neighborhood crime watches, there's the Pink Pistols. Anger can galvanize you into action, not send you into a spiral of fear.

...and the whitewashing of James McGreevey's coming out story is apparently complete. This is from The Washington Blade:

Former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, who resigned after revealing that he was gay, says culture is outpacing politics in the acceptance of homosexuality.

McGreevey, who was in Santa Fe this past weekend to speak at a fundraiser for the Human Rights Alliance, called his decision to come out "one of the most painful but honest decisions of my life."

Even though the revelation of being gay can hurt family and friends, McGreevey said Friday that people must learn at an early age to be open about their sexuality.

"Hopefully, this generation will be the last generation of American youth that has to choose between their heart and their career, between love and acceptance," he said.

Hmm..."resigned after revealing he was gay" certainly gets the temporal order of the two events correct--give the reporter that. But the whole "amid allegations that he'd used his position to give an unqualified but hot foreign national a key counter-terrorism post" isn't part of the story anymore, I guess?

I don't think the entire distasteful saga needs to be recounted in detail every time McGreevey's name is mentioned in the media, but is it too much to ask that the gay press not uncritically let pass remarks about how his "decision" to come out was all "honest"? Coming out doesn't cancel out corruption.

Added later: It's perfectly obvious from the dateline on the article, but just in case the citation above is misleading, the Blade was reprinting an AP story. I did notice that initially but apparently forgot--this'll teach you to post at midnight--in the process of typing and magically converted the AP into the "gay press." (It's rare to see addenda given on wire service stories.)

Come to think of it, maybe it's even more disturbing that the non-gay press is buying the line that McGreevey's resignation was a gay issue.

So--apparently, there's this guy, right? And over the last ten years or so, he's changed some of his social and political positions. He's trying to persuade his fellow citizens, through argumentation, that his new positions are better.

Where does he think he is--America or something?

As usual when it comes to these things, Eric says most of what needs to be said. I will only add that I think my parents did me a disservice by teaching me a niggling, narrow little definition of hypocrisy. They gave me to understand--those fuddy-duddies--that in order to be a hypocrite, you had to act in ways that were inconsistent with beliefs you purported to hold right now.

But if we expand that definition, we can have all sorts of self-righteous fun by pointing out that the way someone lives now conflicts with the way he lived years ago. After all, no one ever sincerely changes his mind about important issues as he ages. Especially not in a free society where we all have access to lots of information and are taught to think for ourselves.

I suppose it might be just possible to accuse Matt Sanchez of being hypocritical if it were proved that, say, he was still earning income from movies he made despite being down on the adult film industry. Even that's tenuous, though; the guy's not a vociferous anti-porn crusader, to my knowledge. He just thinks it's an exploitative business, and he's glad his time in it's behind him. It would be lame of him to be mewling about invasions of his privacy, considering the nature of the work he did, but he doesn't seem to be doing that, either. What exactly do these people in hysterics think he would need to do to reclaim his integrity--contribute a few hundred grand to Ken Ryker's retirement fund?

Way to underscore the point that gays are reasonable adults, guys.

For the first time in a dozen years, I woke up this morning wondering whether I was a faggot.

See, Eric is trying to figure out what Ann Coulter's explanation of her remark at CPAP would mean if applied consistently:

At any event, it would seem that Ann Coulter is urging upon us the following, very novel definition of "faggot."

• Correct usage: a) a schoolboy who is considered by another schoolboy to be "weak or timid" and b) pretty much every Democratic politician — male or female, specifically including Hillary Clinton. (Um, does Bubba know?)
  
• Incorrect usage: any homosexual.

While I guess I should be glad that Ann Coulter has taken it upon herself to unburden homosexuals from the yoke of this rather unpleasant word (as well as change the word's gender), there's that stubborn common-sense part of me that just doesn't quite understand.

...

There was a time not that long ago when calling a heterosexual man a faggot was the worst insult you could bestow on him. It was considerably worse than calling him a "wuss," and that's because not all wusses are homosexuals. According to the popular stereotype prevalent at the time, however, all homosexuals were wusses. So, if you called someone a faggot, it carried extra weight.

Now we are told it no longer does, because the word "faggot" does not carry the imputation of homosexuality. It only means "wuss" — and the "wuss" factor is completely detached from the gay factor.

Hmm. Maybe I'm not the best judge, but I don't think I mince or flounce or anything. And I think I'm good at facing problems squarely and doing what needs to be done about them. Does that mean I'm a homosexual non-faggot? I'm pretty sure that fantasizing about Bobby Cannavale makes me a homo; could the specific things I fantasize about doing with Bobby Cannavale push me back over the line into faggotry? Will I become a faggot again if I wear purple three days in a row (no difficult feat given my closet)? Does it matter whether it's plum or lilac?

This is all very disorienting, so to speak. Next thing you know, someone's going to tell me I'm not actually a bitch.

I never figured Coulter was anti-gay*. I have friends who've seen her out having drinks or dinner with prominent artfags, for one thing. And for another...well, generally speaking, a lot of loudmouthed, high-strung, unmarried urban professional women are fag hags. I'm pretty sure she's against gay marriage and abolishing the DADT policy in the military, but those are specific policy positions, not overarching attitudes. Not that I gave it much thought.

Now, of course, it's suddenly become impossible to open a browser without encountering a solemn discussion of what exactly Coulter meant when she mentioned John Edwards and the word faggot in close proximity to each other. Her explanation strikes me as sincere. "You can't understand the joke I was trying to make without bearing in mind that I operate at the developmental level of a second-grader" sounds about right, doesn't it?

So while I think she's wrong about the way the word is used in contemporary American English by adults, I wasn't particularly offended. I agree with Connie that fetishizing words is a bad idea, and I think it's especially bad in this case. The last thing we need as gays is to look yet again as if we were easily-bruised creatures who need to be protected from hurt by big, strong, kind-hearted straight people. (See, for example, that letter a bunch of conservatives wrote in protest, as posted by Michael: "Coulter’s vicious word choice tells the world she care little about the feelings of a large group that often feels marginalized and despised." Even conservatives are bleating about marginalization now? Ick. And people wonder why I cling to the designation "small-l libertarian"!)

* We're still allowed to use gay to mean "homosexual," right? Or are we now to be treated to a revival of the pseudo-Mencken mewling that it's some kind of crime against English expression that you have to find other ways to talk about the gamesome and happy-go-lucky nowadays?

Oh, dear. Michael links to commentary about this disturbing article:

Buying a greeting card for someone's birthday, anniversary or if they're feeling under the weather is pretty straightforward. But what if they're undergoing chemotherapy or struggling with depression? "Get Well Soon" probably won't cut it.

Likewise, most cards lining the store shelves don't work on occasions as someone leaving an abusive spouse, undergoing drug rehab or declaring their sexual orientation.

...

For illness: "Cancer is a villain who doesn't play fair ... but it can't dim your spirit, and it can't silence prayer."

For eating disorders: "All I want is for you to be healthy - healthy and happy with yourself. Please take it one day at a time until you are."

For depression: "When the world gets heavy, remember, I'm here to help carry it with you."

Leaving aside my overall dislike of pre-printed cards in place of handwritten notes, I still have to wonder why "Get well soon" won't cut it in such cases. Do people with depression or bulimia or abusive spouses really prefer cards in which their friends spell out all the finicking details of their medical conditions or marital problems? "I am aware of EXACTLY how screwed up your life is" is not, it seems to me, an improvement on "Thinking of you in your time of trouble."

And of course I had to see whether there was more about the gay part. There was, with the bonus of a truly awful usage-related solecism (in addition to the faulty parallel construction in the very first sentence of the article):

No topics were off-limits, said company spokeswoman Rachel Bolton, noting two cards that could be sent to gay people who have disclosed their sexuality. The cards don't directly refer to homosexuality, only extolling the person to "Be You" or "This is who I am" or featuring a rainbow, a symbol of gay pride.

Mr. Malaprop, honey? The word you want is exhorting. You might want to tell your copy editor, too.

Need I say that anyone who had responded to my coming out with a card printed with a rainbow and "This is who I am" would have found himself living a Sean-free life from then on? (I do, however, like the way it's said that no topic was "off-limits" in one sentence and then that no cards directly address homosexuality in the next.)

There used to be books--the Japanese still use them--that gave templates and models for writing particular kinds of letters. They strike me as useful. There are plenty of things that are necessary, or at least beneficial, to express that are nonetheless tricky to put across well. I'm not sure off-the-rack doggerel is a good modern equivalent, though.

Added after more coffee: While I'm on the topic of excessive cuteness, I may as well post these pictures of the 'rents' cats, which I promised to do. Like all Siamese cats, these two are drunk on their own fabulousness.



The guy on the left is Ludwig, who had the aesthetic sense to pose in an environment that picked up the browns in his fur and the blue of his eyes. He and I get along just fine. The one on the right is Romeo; if you're detecting a bit of animosity in that stare of his, you're right. Neither of them likes giving up their room to me when I visit, but Romeo pretty clearly dislikes me for reasons that are unrelated to mere sleeping arrangements. He was apparently abused by an owner when he was a kitten, so he takes a while to warm up to men he doesn't know. I never see him for more than a week at a time, which means that I'm a perpetual stranger. His antipathy does not, however, stop him from seeking out my most expensive sweaters and nestling into them as if they were pet beds.

Added after dinner: Just to round out the theme of Quadripeds Who Fail to Love Me, here are my old roommate and his wife's chihuahuas:



The blond guy is Captain; his swarthier brother is Chance. These dogs HATE me. Whenever I come back to New York and stay with M. and J., the dogs yap at me incessantly. When they do cease yapping, they register their displeasure by growling. Right now they're being quiet, possibly because they think I may have food to offer them between now and when I take off for JFK tomorrow morning.

Via Bruce Bawer (13 February 2007 post), who really needs someone to show him how permalinks work, this priceless exchange on CNN. Glenn Beck is the CNN interviewer; Irshad Manji is a lesbian Muslim who lives in Canada:

BECK: OK. Real quickly, we have about a minute. What — who is standing with you as a woman's organization? Who — what National Organization of Women is coming up and saying I'm with you?

MANJI: You know there isn't one.

BECK: Why?

MANJI: Fear. Fear of offending. So many people today in America come up to me to say, "Irshad, I wish I could support your call to reconcile Islam with human rights, but if I do, you know I'll be called a racist for sticking my nose in somebody else's business."

Bawer's comment: "Against people who are willing to die in the cause of destroying freedom, people who are unwilling to stand up for freedom for fear of being called a name don't stand much chance of victory."

Beck and Manji focused on women's groups, but of course the gay organizations are mostly just as bad. And a lot of rank-and-file gays, too. Plenty of gay men and women who "don't care what people think" when they're having a noisy good time at brunch--or giving conservative relatives a heart attack with their views about social policy--will turn into the most craven protocol-followers alive when it's time to venture, even gingerly, the opinion that maybe there are strains of thinking in non-Western cultures that are incompatible with human rights and are not the fault of Western imperialism. Or that gay advocacy groups often choose cheap partisan expediency over gay interests.

Something Bawer and Pieter Dorsman, whom he cites, didn't quote, gives a little bit of perspective:

BECK: And everybody is crying out, where are those Muslim voices? You and people like you are in so much danger. How much — how much does fear play a role in silencing the voices of Islam?

MANJI: Huge. And fear of many things. Fear not just of being ostracized in your community, but obviously fear of violence, as well.

You know, Glenn, I speak at university campuses right across not just North America, but around the world. And invariably, young Muslims come up to me afterwards to whisper thank you in my ear. And when I ask them, why are you whispering? They say to me, "Irshad, you know, you have the luxury of being able to walk away from this campus two hours from now. I don't, and I don't want to be stalked for supporting your views." And if they're women, a lot of them say, "I don't want to be raped for supporting your views."

So this is happening in America, and I don't want to suggest, Glenn. Let me just be clear. I don't want to suggest that every Muslim feels this kind of fear. But every Muslim does know that, if you take on the most mangled aspects of our faith today, you will be subject to such a vitriolic smear campaign that it will bring shame and dishonor upon your family. So there is huge pressure to say nothing.

It isn't just from women's groups dominated by non-Muslims that Manji isn't getting support. Moderate Muslims who think Islam needs reform are going to have to speak out eventually, or it's not going to happen. As Manji herself said a few years ago, "Society needs people who offend, otherwise there will be no progress." (She's also addressed gay activists' problems with Islam and Israel.)

I'd bet I was the last gay man with an Internet connection to be turned on to this set of videos on You Tube. Part 1 is a better crack high if you want fast-burning fuel for queeny comments: though it's hard to blame her for recommending silhouettes that plenty of other people thought were hot back then, you get the feeling that she's not even aware matte-finished fabric exists.

But Part 2 is, to me, more deeply and genuinely horrifying. First of all, the way the woman handles a slotted spoon and unceremoniously plunks that banana into the blender makes it abundantly clear that she couldn