Category: The Dish

A reader tells me there is an exhibit currently in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery devoted to Whitman. The website is here – and is quite a work of art in its own right. You can even listen to Whitman read "America." Why, I wonder, is Whitman not central to gay studies in American universities? Why are young gay students not being taught about their extraordinary cultural inheritance? Why do straight students not know that one of America’s greatest poets, one of this country’s great patriots, was proudly, openly gay well over a century ago? It would do a great deal to dispel the ignorance, philistinism and stupidity that lies behind the homophobia of so many.

And we must listen. Just not on crosswalks.

Even drug gangs revere Sunday mornings, and the crowns that many African-American women proudly wear to worship God. It’s called the Sunday Truce. Here’s a pertinent clip from the ground-breaking TV show, "The Wire":

A reader recalls a similar moment of trans-cultural respect:

It took place around 1984 in Washington DC. One beautiful Sunday was Gay Pride Day complete with its march. The parade kicked off from Meridian Hill Park in Adams Morgan. All the young gay men in the city collected up and down the street waiting for the parade to begin.

About 30 of us were standing in front of a church, which let out as we were waiting for the parade to begin. A single African-American matron walked out of the church, saw the crowd in the street, and ambled down to get a better look. She was a large grandmotherly woman, wearing a beautiful fuchsia dress and a huge hat matching the color of the dress. As she approached the curb, the men noticed her. The crowd fell quiet.

She peered into the street and saw all the young (mostly) white men, mostly in shorts and t-shirts – 1980s clones. The men stared back at her. Very slowly, a quiet applause could be heard rising from the ranks of the men.

As the applause continued, no words were spoken. No one laughed. It was really a sincere appreciation of her style. The woman must have realized what was going on. A small smile traced her mouth. She slowly turned and walked back into the church as the applause continued. The parade started to move, and the men walked off.

Now that’s a rainbow.

A nasty election flyer makes the rounds.

His defense of individual freedom is anathema to them. It’s important to understand that the current Republican definition of conservatism is about religion, not politics. Terry Jeffrey puts it very candidly:

Giuliani’s positions on abortion and marriage disqualify him as a conservative because they annihilate the link between the natural law and man-made laws. Indeed, they use man-made law to promote and protect acts that violate the natural law.

If you want to know what he means by "natural law," check out Chapter Three in "The Conservative Soul," "The Theoconservative Project." For the theocons, natural law certainly trumps individual liberty:

The late Russell Kirk argued in The Conservative Mind that the first canon of conservatism is "[b]elief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems … True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls."

Other Christianists are much blunter about Giuliani’s heretically secular instincts. Here’s Tony Perkins, a major figure in the Republican base:

"He’s the front runner but it’s kind of like here in DC, you drive over the Potomac at night and it looks beautiful but if you get down near it you certainly wouldn’t want to take anything out of it and eat it. It’s polluted it’s got problems."

I couldn’t disagree more. And that is the core divide in contemporary conservatism: between fundamentalism and freedom, between a politics based on divine revelation and Thomist law-making and a politics based on man-made law and individual liberty. Giuliani is running as a secular, modern conservative to run what has become a religious, theological party. His fate is going to be a fascinating insight into what American conservatism can now mean. And the Christianists are not going to put up with secular, inclusive, reality-based conservatism.

(Photo: Jeff Fusco/Getty.)

Another obit from the right.

"My guess is that history will say that the forces that we liberated by invading Iraq were so powerful and so uncontrollable that virtually nothing the United States might have done, except to impose its own repressive state with half a million troops, which might have had to last ten years or more, nothing we could have done would have effectively prevented this disintegration that is now occurring," – John Burns, talking to Tim Russert.

I was dumb enough to think back in 2002 that we were actually going to send half a million troops for ten years. I thought 9/11 merited such a response. Of course, the president disagreed, never took the war seriously, and ran a bad invasion on the cheap and on the fly. But Burns is fundamentally right, it seems to me. He was right about Saddam and has been largely right about the aftermath. If someone actualy believes we are going to solve this by sending 17,500 troops into Baghdad now, they’re clinical. Which means to say: either the president is clinical or cynical with young lives.

(Photo: US Army soldiers from the 5-20 Infantry Division walk in formation as they search house to house during the launch of Operation Arrowhead Strike Six in the Shaab neighbourhood of northern Baghdad, 06 February 2007. DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images.)

Meth addicts get organized.

A reader writes:

With all due respect to the author whose work you quoted on the "Studying Bears" piece, Professor Kaye is incorrect in stating that the Los Angeles Satyr’s "gay organization" is defunct. It isn’t. It’s a gay motorcycle club, the oldest of its genre still in existence. They have a full calendar of events scheduled for 2007. They are far from defunct, though the average age of the members is, pardon me, Mame, somewhere between forty and death. I’m in that same age range, so no offense to my good friends in the Satyr’s MC.

I met my partner of 16 years at a Satyr’s event in 1990. The event, called the Badger Flat Run, is the longest running and largest gay biker camping-in-the-woods event in the world. Imagine 300-500 burly bikers, leather muscle men and various other rugged types standing around two high altitude, deep woods campfire pits at midnight. Each firepit is 30-40 feet in diameter. Whole burning logs send flames 15 feet into the cold night sky. Sparks mix with the stars as they rise on the river of heat within the circles of men around the fire. Magic happens and, men being men….well, Andrew, you can do the math on that one.

Sounds like an Ang Lee movie to me. The LA Times piece also referred to me as a "social conservative." If that means a general respect for tradition, fine. But I’m much more likely to be deemed a libertarian on social matters.

A confession: I’m a Doctor Who fan. As a kid in England, I was obsessed. I only stopped having Doctor Who dreams in my thirties. As longtime readers know, I’m a Monty Python fan as well. One of the techies at the Atlantic found this for me – a fabulous YouTube mash-up of the two very English productions. It’s probably the best combination of everything a decent Englishman loathes most: a Dalek and a Frenchman. If you don’t know what a Dalek is, here’s some info. Meanwhile, enjoy: