Category: Old Dish

I’ve been wrestling with the issue of stem cell research for the past week, trying to figure out how to write a column about it. The difficult question for me is the ethical issue of embryos which/who can be created for the defensible purpose of fertility but which/who are inevitably accompanied by other ‘unnecessary’ embryos as an ineluctable part of the process. It’s a kind of collateral damage argument. These extra embryos will die anyway: why not put them to good use? It makes me queasy, I have to say, but that’s not an argument. So it helped to read the story in today’s New York Times, in which scientists have actually created human embryos entirely for research purposes. Is that less defensible than the collateral damage approach? Most seem to think it is. I’m not so sure. It seems to me that if you believe that such embryos are not human in any meaningful sense, and that they can therefore be used for research purposes with no ethical conflict, does it really matter what the motives are in creating them? Moreover, if it’s true that designer embryos might be more suitable for research purposes, why should we prefer the inferior ones that are left over from fertility attempts? On the other hand, if these embryos actually are human life, then surely using them for research is unethical, whatever the reason for their existence, or the quality of research they offer. (And why, by the way, is making someone pregnant a better or more ethical goal than saving someone’s life through better research?) If anything, the purer approach of manufacturing micro-humans to experiment on them has at least the quality of honesty. As well as the ability to run a chill down your spine.

FAITH-BASED U-TURN: Thank Heaven the Bush administration has backed down from using government money to discriminate against gays. It still reflects badly on the Bushies, though. Either they were deliberately trying to do this behind Congress’s back; or they have been caught in another p.r. screw-up (like the leaked arsenic regulations) that casts a harsh light on their competence. We don’t need a spin room. But we sure could use someone who can head off policy leaks as obviously damaging as this one.

The problem with the government’s funding of religious organizations to do social work has always been the difficulty of clearly separating church and state. I’m a strong believer that religious groups should be exempt from regular non-discrimination laws in the private sector if such laws offend their calling. Some groups won’t hire women or gays or masturbators or non-believers. Fair enough. But when those groups seek to get public money, that distinction goes out of the window. If Dana Milbank’s report in the Washington Post is correct, and the Bush administration is seeking to waive anti-discrimination laws for groups that support its ‘faith-based’ policies, then we are truly into dangerous territory.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think the Salvation Army is a fantastic organization. I think they do more good than most public agencies. In fact, when I was editor of The New Republic, we ran a cover-story saying just that. But if they take tax-payers’ money, they need to act as a public and not a private entity. Discriminating against gay citizens is against the law in many states and cities. It applies to all public entities. If the SA wants our money, they need to play by our rules. And if the Bush administration thinks it can push this assault on Church-state separation without fierce resistance, they’re wrong. Drop it now, guys. It’s unconstitutional, divisive, and dumb for all involved, including the Salvation Army. This goes, by the way, for all faith based government programs. Religion can only do what it does best when unshackled from government interference. And government can only win legitimacy if it represents all the people (including gays), rather than imposing religious orthodoxy on all of us with our own tax-payers’ money. I grew up in a country where the government explicitly supported a particular religion and subtly denigrated my own. One reason I love America is that it couldn’t happen here. Or could it? Would I have backed Bush at the last election if I’d known about this in advance? Probably. Does it make me and many other non-religious conservatives and moderates queasy? More than I can express.

OFF THE EDGE: The latest Condit press grotesquerie came on Fox News’ The Edge with Paula Zahn. Not content with broadcasting completely irrelevant details of Condit’s alleged affairs with others, Zahn coaxed this quote out of attorney Jim Robinson:

“ZAHN: Can you elaborate for us when you say
she discovered things of a sexual nature that
made her nervous? What do you mean by that?

ROBINSON: Apparently there were ties –
neckties tied together, tied underneath the
bed – as if someone had been tied up in bed.
And that had never happened to my client
before. And, apparently, Mr. Condit made a
joke about it, just brushed it off. And
[Smith] told me that she was very afraid for
her life at that point.”

So now it’s relevant what kind of sex Condit had? What’s next? How often he slept with his wife?

PHRMA SPONSORSHIP: The usual suspects from the far left have emailed me outraged that this website has accepted a small sponsorship from PHRMA, the umbrella group that represents the drug companies. Since we haven’t actually received any money yet, and haven’t added a sponsorship ad, I haven’t written about it yet – waiting for the appropriate moment. But seeing as this sponsorship was published in the New York Times, it behooves me to say I see absolutely no problems with it. In fact, I am extremely proud to get some support from a great industry that has saved my and countless other people’s lives, despite a massive attempt to penalize them for their work. They approached me initially. I was happy to respond, although I recused myself from any direct negotiation. They advertise in dozens of magazines, including The New Republic and the New York Times Magazine and many gay magazines, including POZ. The sponsorship is pretty minor. We hope to attract others. If people believe that my convictions on this matter over several years were designed to elicit a small donation to this site in the distant future, they’re welcome to believe it. But it’s paranoid hooey. In part, of course, the real worry of those who want to attack the free market in pharmaceuticals is that I might have been a teensy bit effective in my arguments – and that these arguments might even have some merit. The usual suspects want to silence opposition. They won’t. And this little donation will help keep debate alive.

WHAT’S NOT A DISABILITY: A legal reader sends in the following information from the Americans with Disability Act about what is not a disability under federal law: “Under this chapter, term ‘disability’ shall not include–
1) transvestism, transsexuals, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders; or
2) compulsive gambling, kleptomania, or pyromania; or
3) psychoactive substance use disorders resulting from current illegal use of drugs.
(42 U.S.C. sec 12211(b).)
So the Congress that passed this bill equates transgendered or transsexual people with pedophiles. Mary Eberstadt must be deliriously happy.

Interesting story from Fox News about a New Jersey court ruling that being a transsexual can be deemed a disability under state law. The case involves a man who became a woman and who was fired, during his/her transition process, for inappropriate attire. My emotional sympathies lie with the transsexual. I’m a strong supporter of the notion that those individuals who feel that they are internally a different gender from their physical self should be able to change genders if they so wish. Firing someone on those grounds strikes me as cruel and wrong (whether it should be illegal is another matter). At the same time, I’m queasy at the thought of gender conflict being regarded as a ‘disability’ because it robs transsexuals of their dignity, and reduces their human identity to an illness. It also adds yet another layer of litigation to an already overlawyered world. What really interests me about this story, however, is why some conservatives are upset about the precedent. The deep internal problem with the religious right’s view of gender conflict and homosexuality is that they want to view homosexuality as a sickness, yet not treat it as a sickness. I’d have far more respect for some on the far right who view homosexuality as a ‘biological error’ or an ‘objective disorder’ if they actually followed the logic of their own argument. If homosexuality is an illness, then it surely should be regarded as blameless and be protected as a disability under American law. Since even fundamentalists concede that it is difficult to cure, those who remain ‘sick’ should therefore be accorded the same social and legal status as others who have incurable diseases. If, for example, it is illegal to discriminate against people with HIV, why should it be legal to discriminate against those afflicted with the ‘illness’ of homosexuality? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe this for a moment. But shouldn’t the religious right? Their current position is that homosexuality is an illness – and that being sick is good justification for discriminating against people, in public and private life. It doesn’t make any sense. It certainly makes no Christian sense. It’s cruel and incoherent, which is about as good a description of prejudice as any I know.

HOIST PETARD WATCH – ON THE LEFT: The whole contemporary apparatus of anti-discrimination law, on the other hand, is just as incoherent. It started out as a legitimate attempt to protect a genuinely persecuted and marginalized group – African-Americans – after decades of slavery and then segregation. It then metastasized into a general principle that no-one should be discriminated against for any arbitrary reason. My own controversial view is that only blacks should be protected in this fashion, because their history of discrimination – especially at the hands of their own government – is uniquely awful. But if you’re going to extend the principle, I fail to see where you finally draw the line. Steven Landsburg has a terrific piece in Slate looking at evidence for discrimination against the ugly. There’s no question that ugly people have a far rougher time of it than good-looking types – and, in fact, that the discrimination they face is often more severe than many other groups now protected. Now, if you’re going to have an anti-discrimination law that protects those who can hide their identity (e.g. Catholics, Mormons), on what grounds do you not have an anti-discrimination law that protects those who have no option but to turn up at the office looking a fright? Beats me. So far the dividing line has simply been decided by whose political lobby is the strongest. Women are protected; religious groups are protected; gays still, for the most part, are not (another idiotic exception). I guess you could pass a generic law saying no-one should be hired or fired for any irrelevant, involuntary characteristics – but can you imagine the litigious hell that would open up? Still the current state of the law makes no sense – which is why I favor abolishing all protections except for blacks. But on what grounds do liberals defend the status quo? On about as logical a ground as conservatives who want to keep discriminating against people they regard as suffering from an illness.

South Africa’s ruling party still refuses to remove value added tax from HIV medications, a tax that helps put such medicines out of reach of those few in South Africa who have adequate private medical care. So Pretoria now won’t provide the drugs publicly; and it taxes the drugs if they are provided privately. Thanks, Mbeki. As opposition Democratic Alliance spokesman, Kobus Gous, said last week, “Removing VAT from AIDS drugs in the private sector is the least this government could do, given its refusal to make them available in the public sphere.” Not a squeak from the usual suspects in America who spent many months demonizing the pharmaceutical companies for letting Africans die. Why isn’t ACT-UP protesting the South African government? Why hasn’t Bob Herbert weighed in? Can you imagine what they would be saying if white people were enforcing these policies?

THE DEFENSE OF COWARDS: “”This story has gained so much momentum that it seemed foolish to avoid it,” said Andy Buncombe, a Washington-based foreign correspondent who penned a 1,200-word account of the saga for the London Independent. “It’s one thing, pure and simple: the relationship between an intern and a congressman who seems to be less than wholly forthcoming.”” – from a disturbing piece about the Condit affair in the Fresno Bee. Notice the story is no longer about finding a missing person or tracking down a potential murderer. It’s about a possible sex scandal. And the justification for pursuing it as a story is simply that others are already doing it. (Hence the ‘news’ of Condit’s alleged affair with a flight attendant). Some readers have emailed to say that Condit’s refusal to be forthcoming to the cops about his relationship with Levy renders the story legitimate. But the incursion into Condit’s private life began long before such a detail was known. If you can justify any incursion into privacy on the grounds that sometimes your hunch can turn out to be right – then you have basically ended privacy altogether. Even if it turns out that Condit has something to do with Levy’s disappearance, it still doesn’t justify this fishing expedition. The ends do not justify these means.

CORRECTION: Provincetown and Truro are not part of the Upper Cape, even though they are to the north of the rest of it. They are part of the Lower Cape. Apparently, these sections were named according to where the English landed first – not where they tried to vacation several centuries later. Sorry.

“[President Bush] has selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics… He has appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing. And he has chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection … Race remains the central fact of life for every nonwhite American. It eclipses income, position, gender, education – race trumps them all.” – Julian Bond, Board Chairman of the NAACP, July 8.

SELF-PROMOTION DEPT.: Check out Alex Kuczinski’s piece on me-zines in today’s New York Times. Nice plug for the site, although Mickey Kaus rightly takes center-stage (he started this). My only quibble is that Kuczinski doesn’t quite get what this means for journalism as a whole – the independence movement for writers. But, heck, it’s just a short piece. We’ve also been named the web-site of the month by the conservative website, EnterStageRight. They call us “always enjoyable and a must-read for those who follow current events.”

I cannot be the only one to have been nauseated by the sight of the two Bushes, pere and fils, careening about on a golf-cart wearing matching baseball caps, emblazoned with the numbers “41” and “43”. That picture must have appeared in countless papers across the country, as well as television. Did Howell Raines coordinate the shoot? Nothing could be better used to depict the Bushes as smug, aristocratic, out of touch, and callow. The self-congratulation of it all is the first truly irritating moment of this presidency. And some Bushies wonder why their man seems to growing numbers of Americans as ‘out of touch’ with their lives. Gee, I wonder why.

HE’S BACK!: Tan, rested, and ready. Well, tan anyway. Thanks for giving us our biggest daily readership ever last Monday. Sorry I was on the beach. Back now for the duration.

MORE GOOD NEWS ON AIDS?: Fascinating story in the New York Times on HIV in prison. I’ve long felt that this is one of the most crucial areas for intervention. Because unprotected male sex is relatively common in prisons, because no-one will admit this, and because prisons also hold disproportionately more black and underclass people than the population in general, prisons have the potential to be the bath-houses of the next decade for HIV transmission. So it’s a surprise to me that deaths from AIDS have been plummeting in prison as well. Deaths were over 1000 in 1995 and in 1999 were down to 242. More significant is the number of people with HIV. Despite an increase of close to 20 percent in the prison population in the last four years, HIV rates have only increased by 6 percent. What the story doesn’t say is whether HIV testing is routine for all prisoners. If it is, these numbers are reassuring. If not, they mean not so much. The only thing certain is that the AIDS lobby will be furiously denying any such progress.

THE CONDIT CONUNDRUM: I haven’t mentioned the grotesque invasion of Gary Condit’s privacy by the media hounds for an obvious reason. Anything I write merely piles it on. Yes, I know his friend, Chandra Levy, is missing, presumed dead. And obviously in a matter of a very serious possible crime, chasing every possible lead is important. But the relevance of Condit’s relationship with Levy is still entirely questionable. Until Condit is charged, or even named as a suspect in Levy’s disappearance, his relationship with this young woman is entirely his business. She didn’t work for him; she was a grown woman when they met; Condit has cooperated with the police about what he may or may not know about her whereabouts. Yes, it’s suspicious in some ways – and if he’s named a suspect, all bets are off. But suspicion without evidence shouldn’t be a means to simply trample through this man’s marriage, privacy and sex life. A D.C. reporter even told me a few weeks ago that, “Trust me; her head is in his freezer.” Proof? Evidence? Never mind. This is the twenty-first century; and this is what we now call journalism.

HATHOS ALERT: “What does the Fourth mean to you, Mr. President?” was the hardball question thrown at George W. Bush this week, as he visited the Jefferson Memorial in search of ordinary citizens and a photo op. The answer: “Well, it’s an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country.” Or, as Mel Brooks might put it (and has): “It’s good to be the king.” Mr. Bush’s response was a perfect summation of the man we’ve seen in office so far: The Second Boomer President, a narcissist who can’t see past himself.” – Frank Rich, New York Times, Saturday. Huh? Just how does an expression of feeling honored to be president count as a summation of narcissism? The questioner even asked the president what the holiday meant to him. Is Frank Rich, a boomer who just wrote a book about his own childhod, trying to compare Bush to Clinton on the narcissism scale? Keep digging, Frank.

THIS BUD’S FOR THE BRITS: Odd that it should start in Britain. But in the last few weeks, you can feel a turning point coming in the West’s response to marijuana. Last year, calls by Tory spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe to toughen up prosecution of pot use was greeted with derision by many of her fellow Tories. Several former cabinet ministers said they had used the drug. Last week, a key senior conservative, Peter Lilley, said that pot should be made legal, period. Now, the Guardian reports that the Blair government has essentially instructed the police to stop searches and seizures of pot to concentrate on more hard-core drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Is sanity breaking out? Someone should alert John Walters.

NOT IN MY BACK-DUNE: A scourge is affecting the Upper Cape. People on remote dunes and beaches are pulling the Full Monty. Imagine. In Provincetown, long a haven for artists, painters, writers, hedonists, bohemians, and freaks (God bless them all), some punters have been known to be bathing nude. Two days ago, I observed two uniformed cops patrolling the furthest dunes on Herring Cove beach for any signs of nudity. This is quite an effort. It was a warm day, there are no footpaths, it can take over an hour on foot to some of the furthest beaches. But there the cops were, spending my money to chase down harmless skinny-dippers and dune-canoodlers. Meanwhile, the local morals police have delivered several “Cease and Desist” orders to a cabaret show called, “Naked Boys Singing.” This export from off-off-Broadway is at the Crown and Anchor in Ptown. The prohibition attempt was prompted by some patrons who were shocked upon entering a show called “Naked Boys Singing” when they saw naked boys singing. (Attention Mary Eberstadt: they were all well over 21.) Then on the front-page of the Cape Cod Times is yet another skirmish, waged by a couple who own a sweet little dune shack that happens to be perched near a beach recently designated okay for nude bathing. My favorite quote is from the couple’s lawyer fighting the new law: “I am a ’60s liberal. There is nothing wrong with nude sunbathing. But you don’t have to be nude in my face.” In my face? The dune shack is a whole dune away from the beach; the intervening dune is off-limits to the public for piping plover nesting; it takes two hours hiking through the National Sea Shore (all roads are closed to protect the piping plovers) to make it to the sandy den of vice. I would think a ’60s liberal might actually give any nudie who’d walked a couple of hours in the sun to get to a beach a lemonade and a joint. But what do I know? I’m just a ’90’s conservative.

“The toughest, most uncompromising words I’ve read anywhere lately are in the spring issue of Dissent. In an issue devoted to strategies for dealing with the coming four years of Dubya rule, Philip Green confesses to having no appetite for such strategies. “What attitude,” he asks, “should the inhabitants of a conquered province have toward their conquerors? In Vichy France, for example, I doubt that the left cared in the slightest about Marshal Pétain’s views on old-age pensions, labor unions, soil erosion in the Dordogne, the rights of Algerian immigrants or any similar issues of ‘public policy’ that might have existed at the time.”” – Charles Taylor, on Marshal Bush in Vichy America, Salon.

I REPRINT, YOU DECIDE: Two emails taking different approaches to the deeper issue of global warming. What do we do when we don’t know exactly what the causes of such a phenomenon are but nevertheless feel compelled to act to avert a potential (but not proven) disaster? Take your pick: “I feel compelled to add my two cents about the NYTimes piece you mentioned in Tuesday’s Dish. My background: Up until two months ago I worked for NASA designing and building satellite sensors to monitor climate and atmospheric chemistry from space (I now do much the same thing in the private sector). In my job, I interact regularly with scientists who develop and run the climate models mentioned in the Times article. Most of the scientists I’ve met are absolutely a-political on global warming – they want to know the facts. Looking at the facts, the vast majority of these scientists have concluded that global warming is occurring. There are, however, vast disagreements over the magnitude of global warming and its cause, whether it’s origin is a natural phenomenon or anthropogenic (human-induced) – probably some combination of the two. And this is related to the uncertainty in the climate models that the Times discusses. The basic premise of the article was absolutely correct – we’re not sure how severe global warming will be because the models have large uncertainties. That’s why I think continued research (necessarily government-funded) into climate change is vital (besides keeping me employed). Because of that uncertainty, isn’t it wiser to assume the worst case scenario (a CONSERVATIVE approach) and take steps to mitigate the effects of global warming?”

On the other hand:

“I am reminded of an anecdote I read once regarding the London Plague. It seems that some astute soul had noticed that wherever there were a lot of cats, there was a greater intensity of the plague. They therefore decided to eradicate the cats. Of course the observation was a valid one, its just that the conclusion was erroneous and in fact eliminating the cats increased the plague. The cats were of course attracted to the rats which were in fact the real vector of the disease. The conversation cast in modern terms might have gone like this. Look, we know that wherever there are cats there is more plague. The people know this as well since we have told them so. They WANT us to eradicate the cats, and every day we waste means more people will die. If we wait, there is no telling how many people will die needlessly. Since we know cats play a role, we must start now. We don’t need to know what exactly the role is, we already know enough, and besides cats are a problem anyway, what harm could it do?”

“So even as the evidence grows that earth’s climate is warming and that people are responsible for at least part of the change, the toughness of the modeling problem is often cited by those who oppose international action to cut the emissions of heat-trapping gases.” – from a story on the science of global warming in today’s New York Times. Has it occurred to the Times that this sentence (which reads like it was plopped in by some meddlesome uber-editor) has it backwards? Perhaps some scientists are actually scientists, i.e. they simply don’t accept something as proven until it has been proved. The ‘toughness of the modeling problem’ requires no political agenda to cast doubt on the science of global warming – but the Times has to discredit such skepticism as fueled by politics. Later on in the (actually very helpful) piece, we find out that “a small change in the way droplets form could have a large impact on the climate, said Dr. Jenkins, in Britain. He said that Dr. Anthony Slingo, another scientist there, found a decade ago that in theory, a decrease or an increase in the size of water droplets of just 10 or 20 percent “could either halve or double the amount of climate change you’d get.”” Wow. That’s a huge variation – of which we now know nothing. The only thing here that’s really fueled by politics is the Times’ editing.

THE TIMES RATCHETS UP ITS BIAS II: “Though the Bush administration has now agreed to reopen talks with North Korea, it has set demands far broader than those pressed by President Bill Clinton, raising the prospect of protracted negotiations while Pyongyang continues to sell missiles around the world.” – from the Times today. How’s that for both sides of the issue?

BIG GAY AL IS NOT A LEFTIST: A great sign of the declining power of the gay activist left is that their ungainly rhetoric and authoritarian politics isn’t cutting it any more with most homosexuals, especially those who actually have lives and a sense of humor. Exhibit A is South Park, a truly genius comic creation on Comedy Central, and a recent movie that was easily the funniest and most shocking for a decade (in one scene it had Satan flying a Rainbow Flag hang-glider). Now South Park does the Boy Scouts and Big Gay Al, the homosexual character, comes out swinging in defense of the First Amendment. Although Big Gay Al is thrown out of the Scouts (replaced by a heterosexual pedophile), and even though the kids sue to get him reinstated, BGA declines the honor. Here’s his speech, every word of which rings true to me: “”Look, I appreciate what you kids did. I really do. But this isn’t what I wanted. I’m proud to be gay. And I’m proud to be in a country where I’m free to express myself. But freedom is a two-way street. If I’m free to express myself, then the scouts have to be free to express themselves too. I know these [scout leaders]. They are good men. They are kind men. They do what they think is best for the kids. No matter how wrong we think they might be, it isn’t right for us to force them to think our way. It’s up to us to persuade and help them see the light, not extort them to… I will continue to persuade them to change their minds, but this is the wrong way to do it. So, I am hereby dropping my case and allowing the scouts their right to not allow gays into their private club.”” Can Big Gay Al please take over the Human Rights Campaign?

“You got to think about O.J.’s situation: $25,000 a month [in alimony], another man driving around in his car, f**king his wife, in a house he’s still paying the mortgage on! Now, I’m not saying he should have killed her. But I understand.” – Chris Rock on O.J.’s plight, posted by Mickey Kaus, who has an excellent column today on Quindlenism (although he disagrees in some measure with yours truly – not exactly a rarety).

GONE FISHING: Latest stats for this site: 180,000 unique visitors last month. Another record. Just you wait till the redesign – courtesy of your donation dollars. Thanks again. Now, I really must get to the beach…

ADDENDUM ON MILITARY GAYS: A left-over thought from recent debates we’ve been having. On gays in the military: if unit-cohesion is so important, why is the gay ban suspended in wartime? It’s the oddest paradox. The policy to keep gays hidden or dishonest in the military is routinely abandoned in wartime. No-one was discharged during Desert Storm. Plenty of gay soldiers who served in the Gulf, however, were thrown out on their return. Charming, huh? Whatever the rationale for this – some argue that it’s more important to keep the military ‘cohesive’ in peace time than in war – it certainly belies the notion that admitting gays openly would put our military capacity at risk. In the only test that matters – war – the military tells us what it really thinks: that gay men can be great soldiers and we need them badly.

I REPRINT, YOU DECIDE: Three emails presenting completely different views on gays in the military. Self-explanatory. But they add some new dimensions to the debate:

“Sorry but I do think unit cohesion would be negatively affected by openly gay men and women in the military. In your military, I would be forced out because I just couldn’t stomach having a Christopher Lowell/Will&Grace type person as a co-pilot on a long mission. It would affect my flying and my professional mission accomplishment abilities. I couldn’t get past the nauseating thoughts I would have knowing the guy lets other guys have anal sex with him, not to mention the annoying voice. I’m just funny that way, and yep it is my problem that would be detrimental to mission accomplishment, so out I would have to go. Yep, I’m just a damn homophobe and I know a whole lot more homophobes like me who wouldn’t be able to get past it either. We would then be the one’s in the closet, if we wanted to keep serving our country, trying all the time not to think about the kinds of things we really do not like, do not approve of, and do not want to put up with. In addition, we don’t want a 27 year old Harvard PhD teaching us at annual, mandatory Diversity Training classes how to be tolerant of such behavior when us homophobes think that it’s wrong and not a “richness in differences.” And, because of deeply entrenched homophobia and right wing Christian Coalition extremist hate, we will never think it is anything other than wrong, even when it’s shoved down our throats, no pun intended.”

“I am a West Point graduate (Class of ’89), former Infantry Captain (with all the requisite Ranger and Airborne training) and I am a heterosexual. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to keep gay soldiers out of the military. We had soldiers that were gay in our Battalion in the 24th ID and they ranged from one of the worst soldiers that I have worked with to one of the best. It did however, make a difference (at least in the Infantry) if that soldier acted effeminate. But that is no different from society at large. Just one man’s thoughts, keep up the good conservative work.”

“In between watching Premier League and Series A soccer and various rugby games, I fell behind in reading the Daily Dish. I think there’s another vantage point from which to consider when debating gays in the military – those who, because of the Pentagon’s policy decided not to enter the armed forces. In an admittedly egotistical vein, I offer myself as an example. In high school, I participated in Junior ROTC and was very successful. The staff could not understand my reluctance to enter ROTC in college or to even apply for admission to one of the service academies. For someone of working class origins, the financial advantages of simply continuing in ROTC in college were significant. Fortunately, at the tender age of 17, I knew I was gay and I also knew that “gay” and “military” did not mix very well. I made it through college and even through law school. One of my professors had been in Army JAG and was then in the Reserves and had numerous contacts. My high school experience was duplicated; during my last year, he urged me several times to go into the JAG corps, and he could not understand my reluctance to do so (especially because he thought I would be very successful). In retrospect, I don’t regret having remained a civilian, and I managed to become more than successful (but not wealthy) in my line of work. But every time I hear about gays in the military, I still wonder …”

Went to see the new Spielberg-Kubrick movie last night. Found it enthralling. It’s rare to see a contemporary movie which is almost all metaphor – deeply affecting, primal metaphor. And is there anything more primal than maternal love and the attempt to replicate it elsewhere in our lives? The movie was clearly Kubrick’s in this respect. In its fathomless skepticism about the purity of human love, its dark exploration of the most banal but deepest cruelty – which is only possible, of course, within the family – and in its ambivalent view of redemption which is at the same time a kind of death, it clearly reflected Kubric’s late gloom. It was only slightly marred by a little too much Spielbergian treacle; but the Kaminski cinematography – those amazing underwater scenes of spiritual struggle – made up for any minor sentimentalism. The kid does even better than he did in the wonderful “Sixth Sense,” which is saying something. He is both uplifting and creepy, which is a perfect adjunct to the story of Pinocchio, on which the movie is clearly based and which remains a leitmotif throughout. I guess I always saw Pinocchio as a gay fable: the story of young boy who is told he is not a real boy, and who rebels in search of normality. How much gayer can you get? The Disney version was imbued with hostility to such difference. In an almost comic piece of Freudianism, the symbol of Pinocchio’s deformity is his growing nose. He joins the circus-theater to escape; he ends up in Boys’ Town, where no females are allowed, and which is almost a gay fantasy island. All of it ends in tears, of course, as Disney’s deep Puritanism won the day. But A.I. is more ambivalent. It is saying that perhaps whether the boy is real or not is not as relevant as whether he struggles to achieve his dreams. That struggle is the ultimate realness. And the content of the boy’s dream is straight from Freud: the return to mother. Even if she is not his ‘real’ mother; and even if he has to lose himself in order to find her.

THEY ALSO SERVED III: Another fascinating email, which largely speaks for itself: “I’m a gay veteran – I served in the US army for seven years, mostly as an infantry NCO. My service straddled the critical year of 1993. Ironically, that was the year I was selected as the Soldier of the Year for the First Armored Division and shortly thereafter I went to work for the division’s commanding general as his driver/bodyguard. While I imagine some people guessed that I was gay, I had no problems and was honorably discharged in 95. From my perspective you are right on except for one thing: Your comment that the unit cohesion is the one non-prejudicial argument. There is prejudice there, as well as a large measure of elitism. The argument assumes that the dumb people at the bottom (the enlisted ranks) are so hopelessly bigoted that they would not be able to get along in the same way as college kids and the upper ranks who often find themselves working among openly gay civilians do. Being similarly elitist, the media seems to have fallen for this, but my experience is that it’s backwards. The more junior personnel tend to be younger, but because they are junior, their voices are never heard. Instead, Congress and the media listened, and continues to listen to senior officers and NCOs and especially to retirees who are out of touch with the bulk of the enlisted force who have grown up with different attitudes not dissimilar from other Americans of their generation. I’m not saying dropping the ban would have no problems. Nor am I saying there is no prejudice in the ranks – the death of PFC Winchell shows there is. I am saying, however, that the openly expressed bias of senior leaders fuels this. This elitist abrogation of the duty to lead and to set a positive example is a major contributor to the climate that exists. And their projection of this bias onto others is the major hurdle to overcome.”

HAPPY FOURTH: I’m sorry to say I’m taking the rest of this week off. I need a vacation. I haven’t had a week off since last October, when we started this crazy project. I won’t promise not to write a thing – I may well get too ticked off for that. But the Dish will be very low-calorie till next week. Our redesign is also imminent – and we’ll use the week off to put on the finishing touches.