CHARLIE’S DEMONS

It’s a given among a certain coterie of Washington journalists that, whatever else you do, you must never criticize Charlie Peters, editor-in-chief and founder of the Washington Monthly. (Another rule of thumb among these types, most of whom are Monthly alums, is that you must never criticize another Monthly alum. A prize to anyone who can cite a criticism by one Monthly alum of another, which isn’t wrapped in an encomium. They make the Freemasons seem open.) That said, I found Charlie Peters’ recent comments on gay scoutmasters to be odd. Peters’ position is that gays and straights should be allowed to be scoutmasters, but only after screening for pedophiliac tendencies. He frames this in equal opportunity terms, and is careful not to accuse gays as such of being pedophiles or tolerant of pedophilia. He’s not Bill Kristol. But then he goes on: “I have to acknowledge that I have known a number of open gays whom I wouldn’t have wanted anywhere near my 12-year-old son. The same, of course, is true, of a number of my heterosexual friends, if I had had a daughter, which I didn’t.” To put this bluntly, I think he’s fibbing. I don’t think it would ever have occurred to him to have restricted his imaginary 12-year-old daughter from access to any of his grown-up straight friends. Can one really be friends with people you think might abuse your child if left alone with her? Similarly, I think the same is true of his openly gay friends. (By the way, who are his openly gay friends who he thinks might have molested his 12-year-old son? I’m sure they’d be interested to hear their names.) All this is simply to say that certain habits of thought – the automatic association of homosexuality with child-abuse – are deeply ingrained even among alleged liberals, however hard they try to dance around it. And I point this out simply because no-one else in Washington will.