Category: Old Dish

Interesting remarks from Scott Evertz, the new director of the White House AIDS office. “I can absolutely, positively, categorically confirm that, in President Bush, we have a friend and we have a decent human being,” Evertz told a black-tie dinner May 5, according to the Washington Blade. “And by the way, he asked very good questions about HIV/AIDS,” Evertz added. “So lest anyone think that he’s a man of few words and a man who doesn’t get it – he gets it. He really gets it.” According to the Blade, “Evertz said that, to his amazement, Bush switched gears briefly during the Oval Office meeting to talk about how he did among Gay voters in the 2000 presidential election. “He said, ‘I did pretty well in the Gay community, didn’t I?’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. President, you got a million votes, 25 percent of the Gay vote.’ And he said, ‘Yea.’ He had that look on his face and that glee in his eyes.”” That sound you hear is the sound of a taboo cracking.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE EVIL DRUG COMPANIES: Stirring news about an anti-cancer miracle drug, Gleevec, that doesn’t only seem to be highly effective against leukemia but also against intestinal tumors. According to the Times, “Gleevec, formerly known as STI- 571, is made by Novartis. It is a new kind of drug that acts like a guided missile, killing only cancerous cells while generally sparing healthy ones. That any drug can have such striking benefits against two seemingly different cancers has surprised even the most optimistic researchers who have long been hailing the potential for what are called molecularly targeted drugs.” Guess what? It’s expensive. Up to $2400 a month. So I guess we can wait a couple of days before the Times editorializes against the evil capitalism that actually asks for a reward for its miracles.

FRANCE, ITALY, BRITAIN?: Striking, isn’t it, that neo-populist conservative parties have been gaining ground in Europe recently. Silvio Berlusconi’s victory in Italy clearly marks a trend, after the conservative sweep in France’s recent municipal elections. Berlusconi campaigned on a tax-cut, on some restrictions on immigration, and against the perceived arrogance of left-wing rulers. The Washington Post quotes this old Italian on her reasons for moving rightward: “”This election is all about change. I voted for the left in 1996 and I was very disappointed,” said Berlusconi supporter Anna Maria Bucci, 71, as she cast her ballot in Rome’s working-class Testaccio neighborhood. “I don’t like the way they decided everything for themselves and left out the views of the people.”” Meanwhile, in Britain, my old friend William Hague has, by all accounts, got off to a flying start in the election campaign. Vowing to cut taxes, crack down on illegal asylum seekers, keep the pound, and resist liberal elites, Hague is widely predicted to lose terribly. Why am I not so sure?

The Timothy McVeigh news could surely be a pivotal moment in our consideration of the death penalty. Here we have the highest profile case imaginable, federal authorities running the show, rather than some local sheriff, a smart, white defendant, good lawyers … and they still screw it up! What chance a poor black guy with a state defender? I’ve always opposed the death penalty on moral grounds. But it seems to me the prudential grounds are getting overwhelming as well. To my mind, it would be a wonderful irony if this hideous and evil crime eventually turned into something good: an end to capital punishment in America.

HATE MAIL: Here’s a good one: “Mr. Sullivan, I wish you all the best and hope for your continued good health. I must tell you – you all too often come across as a WHITE BOY- a smug white boy at that. Wait – smug white boy – that’s redundant.” Do you think the writer of that email has even considered that this might be an example of simple racism? The guy’s a liberal from the rest of his email. It seems to me to be increasingly common that anti-racism has now become almost indistinguishable from racism itself. And therein lies a lot of liberalism’s current dilemma.

THE TIMES SCRAPES A BARREL: You’ve got to hand it to the op-ed page of the New York Times. They’ve now run almost a piece a day since January against any kind of tax-cut, and now they’ve run a piece saying it will actually increase traffic jams! No, I’m not kidding. Check out Robert Frank’s op-ed today. It has some interesting points about income inequality and traffic but the tax cut twist is almost self-parody.

EUWWWW: You thought China was a problem? Check out what Gerhard Schroeder is planning for a European federal state. My take is posted opposite – in the new TRB.

NOSTRADAMUS AWARD: “Ah, but the details. The Krugmans and the Chaits will shortly have a cow, if not a whole herd of them.” – TRB, The New Republic, last week.
“The Bush Tax Cut Is A Lie – Part I” – by Paul Krugman, The New Republic, this week.
“The Bush Tax Cut Is A Lie – Part II” – by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, same issue.
Honest, I had no idea when I wrote my piece.

I’m going to argue against the pharmaceutical companies. Yes, I know that overall, I think they’re way too demonized. But I have to say I see a lot of sense in the proposal featured in today’s Washington Post that would take three big allergy drugs off the prescription list. That would make them available over the counter and force consumers, rather than insurance companies or HMOs, to pay for them entirely. Presto! The insurance companies save a whole lot of money. And we all get to stop sneezing. In England, you can get Claritin over the counter as I found in a major nasal explosion last June. Some FDA types worry about long-term use and say that we still don’t know whether these drugs can do real damage. So put a big ol’ warning label on them. There are probably many other drugs that are just as harmless and useful that could be taken off the prescription list – for headaches, diarrhea, ulcers, and so on. Why not set up a commission to study which ones? Taking doctors out of menial treatments for common woes helps free them for the more sophisticated work they’re better at anyway. So lets liberalize the system some, treat people more like grown-ups, and make drug costs more susceptible to genuine market forces. A deal?

SATURDAY NIGHT TAPED: This Saturday on C-SPAN, they’ll be broadcasting a talk I gave recently at Stanford University on “The Politics of Homosexuality.” It’ll be on at 8 pm Eastern and again at 11.30pm Eastern. Check it out. A lively question and answer session as well.

THE NANNY-STATE VERSUS AIDS RESEARCH: Interesting piece in the Times today about advertising for HIV drugs. Not only do drug companies now have to remove any images of healthy, active people from their ads, they are advised to tell consumers that the drugs are no cure. The revealing statement, however, is buried in the piece. It’s from a gay marketing executive, Todd Evans, who places some of these ads in gay publications and elsewhere. “Since the warning letters were sent, Mr. Evans said, he was told by executives at one maker of AIDS drugs that they “are going to sit it out for a couple of months” and stop advertising “to see where this goes.” “I’m concerned as a gay person that if you take the profitability from H.I.V. drugs, the companies will go on to larger markets with greater profits,” he added.” Hey, Todd. You’re not the only one.

NMD MOVES FORWARD: Revealing column in the left-wing Guardian today. It’s by Hugo Young, a generally Europhile man of the left whose skepticism of all things American can be taken as given. He dropped by the first attempt by the Bush team to soft-sell National Missile Defense in Europe. His judgment? It’s working: “[O]ne part of [Europe’s] scepticism has begun to evaporate. Countries that were scornful of the rogue-state threat now acknowledge that there could be a threat, even though they’re not persuaded how best to deal with it. Jacques Chirac periodically spits at Washington, but even official France does not always demur. One of the most lucid recent studies of NMD, stating that “the hypotheses of US policy-makers cannot be easily dismissed”, was written by an official at the French defence ministry.” The lesson for Bush? If you lead and if you make sense, they will follow. Even, God help us, the French.

What are we to make of the latest study from Dr Robert Spitzer that some highly motivated gay Christians can, with intense therapy and support, eventually function as heterosexuals? The answer, I think, is: not much. Plenty of studies have “found” this before. This study is, in fact, one of the weakest empirically on the table. All the evidence about the change comes from the subjective statements of the people themselves, who were all recruited from ex-gay ministries or psychiatrists, and who have an obvious reason to engage in wishful thinking. They were all interviewed on the telephone, which makes such thinking easier. There’s no clear definition in the study of what is meant by “gay” and what is meant by “straight.” Plenty of the subjects could have been bi-leaning gay or bi to start with and plenty acknowledge that they have gay thoughts and feelings to this day. Moreover, the “success” stories mean: “being in a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year, getting enough satisfaction from the emotional relationship with their partner to rate at least seven on a 10-point scale, having satisfying heterosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely thinking of somebody of the same sex during heterosexual sex.” Sex once a month with your partner, while often thinking about members of the same sex, is not what I would call a “cure.” It’s what many gays have done for centuries. It is obviously possible to train or force yourself into such a context, especially if you’re deeply uncomfortable with your sexual orientation. (Likewise, if equal pressure were put on some straight guys, in an all-male context, they might be able to function sexually as homosexuals as well. Prisons and aircraft carriers have pioneered many experiments of this kind.) But I think it’s churlish to dismiss “ex-gay” people’s stories, to call them liars, and so on. If this is the difficult path they have chosen, and that is how they want to live their lives, it’s their choice. Their integrity and sincerity should not be questioned or ridiculed. But by the same token, it’s only fair not to extrapolate from this study that all gays can change this way, or that there’s any conceivable reason that they should. Tolerance surely means accepting “ex-gays” at their word, and accepting “gays” at theirs’. The difference is that gays are quite happy to support the rights of ex-gays to marry, have kids, serve in the military and so on. But the ex-gays have no desire to return the compliment.

EX-GAYS, EX-STRAIGHTS II: Shameless plug. The second chapter of my book, Love Undetectable, is a long and detailed essay on psychoanalytic theories of homosexuality, from Freud to today, and examines, I hope fairly, the literature of the ex-gay movement. If you want to read further, please check it out.

Am I the only one savoring the racial ironies of this morning’s papers? In one story, black and Hispanic lawmakers are thinking of joining forces with white conservative Republicans in opposing campaign finance reform – for very different reasons, to be sure. In another, a Republican president is proposing conservative-minded judges for Senate approval, a majority of whom are either racial minorities or women. Some Democrats may well be voting against minority candidates for judicial appointments on ideological grounds. Whatever the merits of each case, it’s surely wonderful that we’re muddying the racial waters here. It’s a positively good thing that some members of racial minority groups aren’t automatically assumed to be loyal Democrats or Republicans. Eventually, with any luck, we’ll begin to use the word diversity again in its original sense – a diversity of view, regardless of race or gender or background. Both parties deserve some credit for this. I’m impressed that Bush seems to be walking the walk on racial outreach. And I’d be truly depressed if the Dems voted for some judicial nominees on racial grounds alone.

JUDGES AND PARTIES: No, this isn’t about drugs. It’s just that I think that some conservatives are going overboard in their hostility to Democratic vetting of Bush’s judicial selections. Paul Gigot has a cow this morning about the temporary withdrawal of Chris Cox from consideration, under pressure from Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But the Senate’s role in advising and consenting on the judicial branch is a real and important one. I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on cabinet selections, as I think the president deserves to pick his own administration. But the courts are different. For the last several years, Congressional Republicans have waged a scorched earth campaign against many of Bill Clinton’s court picks, even though most were perfectly respectable and qualified. The Congress is very evenly balanced. I think Bush is right to play this more moderately. And I think Republican and conservative wails are largely misplaced.

Some readers have told me that the banning of Mother’s Day in a private New York school isn’t really about gays. It’s also about straights. The school spokesperson suggests it’s about unconventional families of all kinds. Fair enough. I hope I didn’t fall for homophobic spin. But motherhood and fatherhood can obviously be celebrated even by those without either parent. A more salient point, perhaps, is why these Hallmark-inspired events are in the curriculum in the first place.

Ewwww. Our favorite nutball writes about … beating the bottoms of little boys with canes. It’s a classic. I’ve decided to drop my attempt to shame him into not writing about socialist blacks and disgusting gays and just sit back and enjoy him. It doesn’t get much better than this.

MOTHER’S DAY BANNED: All I can say is that this is the kind of thing that makes me want to crawl into a little ball and give up. When will these gay activists and their well-meaning but clueless sympathizers get a grip? They are to the argument for gay equality and inclusion what Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps is to the other side. Man, I’m embarrassed.

“First I’m against the death penalty, second I’m against Timothy McVeigh blowing up people in Oklahoma City, but I’m even more against Attorney General Janet Reno,” – Gore Vidal, on ABC News this morning. Now, I’m no Janet Reno fan. But she’s worse than someone who kills hundreds of innocent civilians in cold blood? Keep digging, Gore. It’s only getting deeper.

37-year-old Eugene Scalia, Nino’s son, gets the top legal job at the Labor Department. Maybe 37-year-old Michael Powell, Colin’s son at the FCC, can throw a party for him.

A neutral study of the soaring costs of prescription drugs finds that … the problem is not price-gouging. The report from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, reported in the New York Times, said “that 42 percent [of the rise in costs] was attributable to an increase in the number of prescriptions written by doctors and filled by pharmacies. At the same time, it said, a shift toward the use of more expensive drugs accounted for 36 percent of the overall increase in spending, while price increases accounted for the remaining 22 percent.” Simply put, this means that most of the cost pressure comes from demand for the newest and best treatments available, which inevitably cost more than older, generic or post-patent medications. The lesson of the study? If we fund a prescription drug benefit for seniors under Medicare, we may as well kiss our fiscal future goodbye. The Bush administration is trying to handle this simply by under-funding this new entitlement. That won’t work. What we need is a full-scale political effort to derail the entitlement altogether. Link the biggest generation in history with the fastest rising cost in our society right now – and you’ve got a fiscal calamity waiting to happen.

THE POST CREAMS THE TIMES: Wanna read a smart, balanced, serious editorial on the U.N. Human Rights Commission mess? Try the Washington Post, increasingly leaving the tired boilerplate of the New York Times’ editorials in the dust.