MORE EBERSTADT LIES

My friend Paul Varnell, another contributor to the Independent Gay Forum, a group of non-leftist gay writers and thinkers, points out a couple of factual distortions (among many) in Eberstadt’s piece. (Yes, I know I’ve gone completely overboard on this subject, but skip to the next item if you’re bored. Damn, the next item’s about Eberstadt.) Item: Eberstadt’s assertion that ‘[Gay teen magazine] XY is now, according to its founder and publisher Peter Ian Cummings, the ‘third largest gay magazine in the U.S., selling over 60,000 copies per year…’ This is silly. XY is a bimonthly. That means it sells some 10,000 copies per issue (if you believe the hype of its publisher). Almost any gay paper in a major urban center sells more than that per week. And remember: XY is not officially a pedophile magazine. It’s a gay mag for teens with dirty old men looking over their shoulders. If you were to include gay porn magazines, 10,000 copies is pathetic. (Somehow Eberstadt hasn’t heard of one of the fastest growing gay magazines, Hero, dedicated to gay couples and relationships. Nor is she aware of the growing trend among gay men of celebrating mature masculinity as a sexual object, rather than youth). Then there’s this whopper: ‘positive portrayals of ‘inter-generational sex,’ which are extremely rare in the rest of the culture, are not rare in gay literature and journalism.’ Paul notes that such references are, in his experience, not just rare but almost wholly absent. I’d concur. I’ve been openly gay for almost two decades and have met with thousands of gay men and read thousands of gay magazines. I can honestly say that I have never come across a reference to pedophilia without its being condemned. Am I completely out of the mainstream loop? I doubt it. There probably are underground pedophile gay groups, just as there are among straights, but they have no more legitimacy among gay men than they do among straight men, possibly less. Okay, I’m done now. I hope it’s clear I’m in no way condoning any gay pedophilia that there might be. It’s evil. But it’s a tiny phenomenon compared to straight pedophilia, and has been used by a legitimate publication to smear gay men and women with one of the oldest and ugliest libels known to man. Eberstadt is at best ignorant; at worst, malevolent. The Weekly Standard, which knows better, is both.