I get countless emails from mostly conservatives arguing that the only reason that I have become disanchanted with Bush is that I’m gay, obsessed with gay marriage, and nothing else matters to me. They even accuse me of betraying the war because of it. On the left, some agree. These kinds of charges, because they are really about my motives and integrity as a writer, are impossible to disprove, and so I have largely ignored them. They’re an unanswerable smear. To say that, for example, my opposition to Bush’s spending profligacy only began after his decision to back the FMA is both factually wrong (I criticized this long before he endorsed the FMA) and also ignores my long record of being a fiscal conservative, which led to my only real criticism of Reagan. Ditto Iraq. Some are saying that my anger at the administration’s incompetence and arrogance in Iraq is somehow related to the FMA. In fact, it’s related to my enthusiasm and belief in the Iraq war and its importance in the war on terror. It’s precisely because I am so pro-war that I am so enraged that this administration went into Iraq on a wing and a prayer, when so much was at stake. I’m not alone in this among many neoconservatives; I’m just alone in being so vocal about it. I still hope we win; and I will support any president, including this one, who is serious about fighting it. But, unlike others, I cannot ignore the evidence of incompetence in front of me for short-term political reasons.
FREEDOM MATTERS: I also have a strong libertarian streak, and so the gradual accretion of socially conservative meddling under this administration has disappointed me in ways far more manifold than the gay issue. I’m for legal pot, see nothing wrong with porn, and am reluctantly pro-choice. You think I need to be gay to worry about John Ashcroft? My dislike of the brutal campaigning methods of Rove was also something I wrote about four years ago. Remember: I wanted McCain in 2000. I’d add one more thing. I endorsed Bush in 2000 knowing full well his position on marriage rights for gays and his anti-gay past. I am happy to live with people who disagree with me on this, even to the point of supporting them in elections. And if anyone thinks it was easy for a very public gay man to endorse Bush four years ago and support him on so many issues, then they should think again. To accuse someone like me of caving in to peer pressure, when I have the scars of bucking such peer pressure for years, and have been targeted by the gay left for as long as I have been writing, is preposterous. But Bush’s support for the appalling FMA – with nary an attempt to explain it to gay people, reach out to them, or even listen to them – was a kind of kick in the gut to all of us who went out so far on a limb to support him. You think you’d feel the same way about a president after that? But feelings are not the same as arguments. And the broader arguments I have made against this president’s policies – on fiscal matters, war-management, entitlement expansion, protectionism, social intolerance, the blurring of church-state distinctions – are absolutely consistent with views I have held for years and years. I might add that reducing someone’s political philosophy to the crude template of sexual orientation is itself a form of subtle prejudice. I expect this, sadly, from some (but not all) on the right; but it is also present on the left.
A LETTER TO YGLESIAS: I was prompted to write this self-defense because someone actually did it better. Here’s an email from a reader to Matt Yglesias:
If you go back into Sullivan’s archives and read his writings about Bush prior to September 11, or even once the post-Sept 11 national devotion to Bush had died down, you will see that he is wary of Bush’s profligate spending and Bush’s dismissal of the concept of deficit from the very beginning, even when he was a fervent supporter of Bush in most other areas. And the disagreements that many of us have with the religious agenda of this administration are not limited to the question of homosexuals. There are Ashcroft’s occasional wars on free speech, or the whole concept of the government supporting religious organizations. That Andrew Card “we need to treat the American people like a bunch of ten year olds” line was telling. And as far as the war goes, some of us found Abu Ghraib a bit embarrassing and found the president’s seeming lack of embarrassment a problem. And aren’t those of us who supported the war from the beginning and agonize at this administration’s colossal hubris-directed incompetence possibly upset with Bush for reasons unconnected to homosexual rights? And perhaps, isn’t the mud slinging by Swift Boat Veterans allowed to offend some of us even if we believe in lower taxes? I turned on Bush earlier than Sullivan did, I honestly never really liked him to begin with because of what he did to McCain in South Carolina. But please, as an open-minded guy (and one of the few bloggers I’m still reading regularly now that the football season has taken over my life) step back and reconsider this “Sullivan only turned on Bush because he’s gay” thing. Many of us agree with Andrew in our reasons for believing that Bush is a bad president and essentially unconservative, and the fact that Andrew sleeps with a dude is not the reason that we feel this way. It may be one of the reason he does, but it isn’t the only one, so don’t just simplify him to “the gay guy.”
Thanks for that.
The Dish 