Daniel Mendelsohn reflects on the way being gay, with its frequent “knowingness and irony and the sense of access to special codes and secret knowledge,” has impacted his sensibility as a critic: I was doing an event with James Wood a couple of years ago when my first collection came out and somebody asked me, “Do you … Continue reading The Gay Bullshit Detector
J. Bryan Lowder feels that anti-homophobic "glitter bombing does not speak the same language as a march, occupation or even a petition—it’s just an angry tweet in comparsion to those actions’ grand manifesto": [W]hat does glitter mean, exactly? When animal rights operatives throw fake blood on fur coats, the symbolism is clear: this life-giving fluid was … Continue reading The Profound Lameness Of Glitter Bombing
The caption from the above YouTube reads, "A surreal expression of male bonding, troubling yet comforting in the almost innocent charm that shines through." A reader writes:
I used to subscribe to a news group about male locker room nudity that spilled a lot of ink on this subject. One of its recurring themes, echoed in the comments to Trevor Macomber's post, was that there is something neurotic about the younger generation's relationship with their bodies and being naked among other men and that younger men have no sense of male bonding and camaraderie through nudity. Most of the posts in that group were by men who had grown up with male locker room nudity as the norm, but were also gay. What I considered to be intellectually dishonest about most of the posts in that news group, as well as Macomber's commenters, is that no one seemed to acknowledge the most obvious change between the previous era and today that would account for the younger generation's different attitude: an awareness that there are gay men in the locker room deriving sexual pleasure from seeing their fellow locker room occupants naked.
by Zoë Pollock That's how talent scout Henry Willson found and named Rock Hudson, among others. Anne Helen Petersen recounts why Rock appealed to every housewife in America: In [Pillow Talk and two quasi-sequels], Hudson and Doris Day play the most flirtatious asexuals in the world: They talk about around the fact of sex, meaning … Continue reading Cruising Gay Bars For “Straight” Stars
Dan Savage shares an insight from the IGB project:
When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg [Indiana], gay or straight, the default assumption is gay. Because my job requires me to be in constant communication with people all over the country who are writing in to "Savage Love," calling the podcast, I think I’m a little more conscious of what’s going on out there in the boonies — but even I didn’t see that. And that’s a bitter pill for those of us my age to swallow. Us out there leading our lives and being successful have actually kind of made it worse for 14-year-old gay kids in Greensburg, Ind.
But what is the alternative? That's my question. Jim Burroway fleshes out Dan's point:
[T]here is something of a divide within the gay community between those living in gay meccas and the rest of us living elsewere.
Lindsey Graham's opposition to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell is not very surprising. Not asking and not telling about sexual orientation is, after all, as central pillar of his own public identity as it is for Elena Kagan. But his smug dismissiveness toward a profound social and civil rights issue is illuminating: "This is a … Continue reading Butters vs Gays
DiA entertains a depressing thought: I'm trying, and failing, to think of an instance where voters on any side have been persuaded by a reasoned opposition on any issue. It might happen with individual voters on particular issues, largely of the technical variety—if someone sits down to figure out whether they support a bond issue, … Continue reading “Do Intelligent Arguments Make A Difference?”
A full accounting of the man’s crusade against any recognition in law or even public culture of the dignity and equality of homosexuals has yet to appear in the various obits. But Neuhaus was central to redefining Republicanism as Christianism, to seeing religion as indistinguishable from politics, and to cementing the marginalization and disdain of … Continue reading Neuhaus And Gays
Two major Clinton hacks are among the transition team – Fred Hochberg, perhaps the central pillar of the Human Rights Campaign and Clintonite dead-ender, and Roberta Achtenberg, formerly at HUD. The legacy of these people was DOMA, a doubling of the rate of discharges of gay servicemembers, and the perpetuation of the irrelevant Human Rights … Continue reading Obama Follows Clinton On Gay Rights?
Jeremiah Wright is now the moral equivalent of David Duke? The latest Clintonite ratchets up the Wright issue still further. However dim a view you take of some of Wright’s rhetorical excesses, and I’m not defending them, to compare a man whose church has such a long history of social work, black self-help, outreach to … Continue reading It Takes A Pillage
