Year: 2005

With less regular postings, many of you have asked me to add an RSS feature to let you know of new posts when they occur. Your wish is, er, Robert’s command. You can click on the RSS link at the bottom of the page. The feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/andrewsullivan/rApM. You just put this into your RSS reader application.

You will recall how Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote recently of an “apparent upsurge” of HIV infections among gay men. He was seconded in this by one Charles Kaiser who cited his own anecdotal evidence of rising numbers of gay men contracting HIV in New York City. As it happens, we do have some hard data on this now because since 2002, New York City has required all new HIV diagnoses to be reported. Michael Petrelis lays out the latest data on his blog today. It’s quite striking. New diagnoses of HIV have declined each year. The most comprehensive data is for first quarters of each year (they haven’t gotten past reporting the first quarter of 2004 yet). So look at this: in the first quarter of 2002, we have 1403 new diagnoses; in Q1 2003, we have 1288; in Q1 2004, we have 908. So we have a 35 percent decrease in HIV diagnoses in New York City in three years. That’s not AIDS diagnoses (although they’re down too). This is HIV infection data. When the infections are broken down into subcategories, the numbers in the first quarters of 2002, 2003 and 2004 of HIV infections among men who have sex with men declines from 327 in 2002 to 344 in 2003 to 277 in 2004: an annual decline from 2003 to 2004 of almost 20 percent. Maybe the “apparent upsurge” has taken place since the beginning of 2004. But I see no reason why this big decline would suddenly reverse itself. More importantly, Cohen has no and had no evidence to write what he did, and using it to, in his words, “condemn” gay men in New York City whom he holds responsible for a new epidemic. Cohen needs to write a correction and an apology for non-existent reporting. Petrelis also sends an email to the NYT suggesting they run a story on this great news – especially since their science writer, Lawrence Altman has been writing scare stories for five years. If the NYT can run five consecutive scare stories on a not-new strain of HIV, they can surely run some actual facts about the subject.

SCHIAVO EMAILS: Here are three diverse ones making different points:

Why not consider the current debate within conservatism on the Shavio case as an indication of vitality rather than imminent demise? Conservatism has been “cracking up” for years now, along the libertarian/conservative divide, along the paleo/neo divide, along the religious/secular divide. Look at The Corner: reasoned arguments on either side of a topic that I think we can all admit is at least morally difficult. Do you see the same thing going on at DU? Or at The Nation?

I consider this a strength of American conservatism: we tend to be much more accommodating of ideological differences than the left. I know that statement will draw scoffs from many of your readers, and possibly from you. But consider: abortion. Who has a more diverse spectrum of opinions? Similarly Affirmative Action. Immigration? As counter-intuitive as it seems, I think conservatives in America can claim to be more accepting of diversity of opinions on each of these topics. Hell, even gay marriage. Some are for, some are against. It’s all a glorious mess, and hopefully we’ll muddle through and do some good along the way.

I take the point, and I do think the right is far more intellectually alive than what’s left of the left. But the strains are getting intense. As this reader indicates:

For over 30 years I have been a conservative on fiscal issues and a bit of a moderate on social ones. So Republicans were my party of choice. This episode with the Schiavo case has left me in despair for the party. If this continues, it may have the same effect that Radical Republicans had on the South after the Civil War, only this time it will be the urban areas that will resent this attack. For the past few years I thought that I could live with the religious right. No more. Who ever is closest to the center will get my vote.

That’s what happened to me at the last election. Take national security away, and I’m much closer to moderate Democrats than 90 percent of the big spending, moralizing Republicans. One more:

“We are looking directly at the real face of contemporary Republicanism. Sane, moderate, thoughtful people are watching this circus and will not soon forget it.” I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m what one might call a moderate “swing voter.” I came of age politically as a Democrat in the 90’s, very supportive of Clinton’s centrist policies and somewhat hardened as a partisan by what I regarded as the outrageous excesses of Republicans during the impeachment and preceding investigations. Having said that, I’ve always been a hawk on defense and have some fundamentally libertarian sensibilities that guide my views on domestic policy. I regard the traditional “liberal” worldview as one that can manifest itself in malignantly foolish ways at home and dangerously naive ways abroad.

After 9-11 I came to vigorously support the administration in the war against Islamist terrorism and supported the Iraq war as well. These two issues led me to seriously consider voting for President Bush. Particularly in the run-up to the Iraq war, my hostility to the far left element of the Democratic party and its apparently increasing prominence (see Michael Moore and his ilk) led me to really wonder whether someone like myself would be a better fit in the Republican party. As Howard Dean’s campaign took off I came to view myself as a likely Bush voter. Ultimately, two things happened to change that vote. First, as evidence of the administration’s inexcusable incompetence in carrying out regime change in Iraq mounted, I came to the conclusion that President Bush didn’t deserve reelection as a matter of fundamental accountability. Second, the Democrats (for the 4th cycle in a row) wound up nominating an essentially moderate candidate. After concluding that Kerry was an acceptable alternative to Bush–specifically that a Kerry administration could be trusted with national security–I voted for him.

While I didn’t regret my vote, in the months after the election my continuing aversion to some tenets of contemporary liberal thought (see the Larry Summers “controversy”) led me to occasionally flirt with the idea of switching my allegiance, such as it is, to the Republican party. The Terri Schiavo fiasco has put an end to all that. This disgraceful episode has crystallized for me why I am much more a Democrat then a Republican. The reality simply is that moderates like me have much more influence in and, accordingly, are more at home in, the Democratic party. The Leftists couldn’t even muster a majority of congressional Democrats to oppose the Iraq war–all but one Representative voted for the Afghan war. Yet the Theocons of the Republican right are able to call the Congress into a special session, pass an emergency bill and wake the President up in the middle of the night to sign it–all in the name of exalting an extremist religious belief over traditionally Republican principles of federalism, governmental restraint and family rights. All of this with only five, count them, five Republicans voting “No.”

As a centrist Democrat friend of mine once said, “the extremists in my party make me laugh, the extremists in the Republican party make me cry.”

I think they have jumped the shark. But we’ll see.

The bigoted decision to deny a gay bar owner Catholic funeral rites has been revoked. Sanity prevails. Good for the Archbishop.

From one of my favorite conservative-libertarians, Neal Boortz. His is the Christian position I hold. There are worse things for a Christian than death. Let Terri go. She has suffered and been used enough.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Republican party will soon oppose the whole concept of an independent judiciary. Just read William Bennett’s screed in National Review. It contains the sentence: “It is a mistake to believe that the courts have the ultimate say as to what a constitution means.” Bennett and his co-author argue that Jeb Bush should send in state troops to reinsert the feeding tube and break the law if necessary. Screw the science. Screw the court system. Screw the law. I disagree with Jonah that this is a minor spat with no long-term consequences. We are looking directly at the real face of contemporary Republicanism. Sane, moderate, thoughtful people are watching this circus and will not soon forget it.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT VERSUS MARRIAGE: Dahlia Lithwick highlights yet another conservative inconsistency in the Schiavo case. What this case comes down to is the right of a spouse to determine his or her incapacitated spouse’s fate in the absence of a living will. Civil marriage is indeed a unique and special legal bond. The social right believes this. But they only believe it when it suits them. If it can be used to marginalize and stigmatize gay couples, they are insistent. If it is an obstacle to their absolutist views on feeding tubes for human beings who have ceased to be able to feel, think or emote, then they discard it. Here’s a Tom DeLay quote that says it all:

“I don’t know what transpired between Terri and her husband. All I know is Terri is alive. … Unless she has specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature, I don’t care what her husband says.”

So much for the “sanctity of marriage.” With each passing month, the cynicism and power-lust of these people become clearer and clearer. Here’s a principle: the government should stay out of living rooms, bedrooms and marital bonds. That used to be called conservatism.

Wonkette, moi, Shafer, Jodi Allen, E.J. Dionne and Ellen Ratner talk about blogdom. Transcript available here.

THE THEOCON OVER-REACH: Glenn Reynolds seconds my worries about the conservative crack-up. But the point about the religious zealots who run the GOP is that they are immune to calls to restraint or moderation or limits on power. God is on their side.

“Here’s the question I ask of these right-to-lifers, including Vatican bishops: as we enter into Holy Week and we proclaim that death is not triumphant and that with the power of resurrection and the glory of Easter we have the triumph of Christ over death, what are they talking about by presenting death as an unmitigated evil? It doesn’t fit Christian context. Richard McCormick, who was the great Catholic moral theologian of the last 25 years, wrote a brilliant article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1974 called “To Save or Let Die.” He said there are two great heresies in our age (and heresy is a strong word in theology – these are false doctrines). One is that life is an absolute good and the other is that death is an absolute evil. We believe that life was created and is a good, but a limited good. Therefore the obligation to sustain it is a limited one. The parameters that mark off those limits are your capacities to function as a human.” – Jesuit theologian Rev John J. Paris, on how the religious right is deploying heresy in its absolutism in the Terri Schiavo case. I couldn’t agree more. What some of these people are about is not respect for life, but its fetishization.

Another calm and decent column from William F. Buckley Jr. When you read him – an unimpeachable source for what was once the conservative movement – you begin to realize what a crew of zealots and charlatans now occupy the conservative pedestal. But they will fall soon enough. And the hysteria they are now creating will only accelerate their collapse.

I just heard Terri Schiavo’s brother say on CNN that his sister is speaking to him. What did she say? Or is he lying?

The anti-American bigotry still manages to shock.