Sullivan's "Sunday Times" column sums my feelings about Coulter.
Just read it on his website. I'm interested in Sullivan's take on the gay marriage issue, the general right wing antipathy to it, and Sullivan's identification with the right. So I find myself checking out his weblog.
Just read his review of Derbyshire's piece in the National Review.
Anti-Semitism and Homophobia
Fisking John Derbyshire
andrewsullivan.com
I'm usually sanguine when it comes to some liberal hyper-ventilation about bigots on the right. Yes, they exist. But no, they do not define conservatism and, even if they did, are best countered by argument not insult or marginalization. And then there's the case of National Review's John Derbyshire, a writer with a real following among civilized conservatives and published with regularity in the most popular conservative website, National Review Online.
So what to say about his latest offering? Its philosophical premise is actually one shared by many on the left: that individuals are sometimes best not judged by their own capabilities or merits but by their membership in a group. Here's a section of this argument:
"There is no reason why an individual homosexual might not be a good and honorable person, any more than there is any reason why an individual heterosexual might not be a liar and a thief. In matters social and organizational, though, the sum is often greater than the parts, and it is not the one we should focus on, but the many. This, unfortunately, is a very difficult thing to get people to do in a highly individualistic culture like ours. "What about Joe? He's homosexual, but a finer human being you could never wish to meet." Sure, we all know Joe; but his case tells us nothing about the probable behavior of an organization whose higher levels are 30, or 50, or 60 percent homosexual."
So gay individuals can be okay. But give them any power or prominence in any institution, and all hell will break out. The inference from this is that gay men and women should simply not be appointed to prominent positions in our society; they should be barred - if they are "frank and open" - from positions of authority. They cannot be trusted. They have destroyed the Catholic Church. Pedophiles and pederasts are just other words for homosexuals in Derbyshire's world: "Please don't send me e-mails arguing that pederasty has nothing whatever to do with homosexuality. I don't believe it." They will destroy the Episcopalian church. They will, in fact, destroy any institution in which they are given a leading role: "Any organization that admits frank and open homosexuals into its higher levels will sooner or later abandon its original purpose and give itself over to propagating and celebrating the homosexualist ethos, and to excluding heterosexuals and denigrating heterosexuality."
This last pitch is a truly worrying one. The religious right, having failed to convince society that the law should simply reflect their views because they believe them, have recently begun to argue that equality for gays is indistinguishable from oppression of straights. It's completely zero-sum for them. Some of them even seem to believe that their own churches will be persecuted; that they will be denied the rights inherent in the First Amendment; and that compulsory sodomy is around the corner. They are - especially given the imminence of gay marriage and legalization of sodomy - afraid.
So they exaggerate and hyper-ventilate. Here's Derbyshire on Jeffrey John, a new assistant bishop in the Church of England, openly gay but now celibate: "So now the Episcopal church has an "openly gay" (i.e. proselytizing homosexual) bishop." Huh? The man is not only not proselytizing for gay sex; he's given it up himself! His proseltizing consists entirely in his honesty about his sexual orientation. Yet Derbyshire would have him break one of the Ten Commandments and bear false witness about himself. Notice further that a simple statement of fact is now interpreted as something aggressive, imposing, threatening. That is unhinged. I've been openly gay for a long time but I have absolutely no interest in whether anyone else is; I have never tried to persuade some straight guy to have sex with me or fall in love with me. I dare say I know a few more homos than Derb and very few of them see it as their mission to "proselytize" anyone. All they're doing in being honest about their orientation is being honest about their orientation. It carries no more implications than someone telling me they have a wife or husband or kids; or that they're Mormon or Italian.
But Derb's belief that there is some more sinister motive at work is a direct result of some kind of fear. It's very close to the kind of fear many used to have about Jews. Their very openness was a threat, even though they threatened absolutely no one. Even though most had no intention of proeslytizing anyone, their very existence suggested proselytizing aggression to the majority. And when you read more of Derbyshire you find the same classic rhetorical tropes that once fueled fanatical anti-Semitism, i.e. that there were a few good individual Jews but, en masse, they threaten "good Christian families." Put the term "Jew" in the place of gay, and you can see where Derbyshire is coming from:
"The point is that open Jewishness is ‹ not necessarily, but all too often ‹ an infiltrating, exclusivist, corruptive, and destructive force." "Any organization that admits frank and open Jews into its higher levels will sooner or later abandon its original purpose and give itself over to propagating and celebrating the Jewish ethos, and to excluding Christians and denigrating Christianity." "There is no reason why an individual Jew might not be a good and honorable person, any more than there is any reason why an individual Christian might not be a liar and a thief. In matters social and organizational, though, the sum is often greater than the parts, and it is not the one we should focus on, but the many. This, unfortunately, is a very difficult thing to get people to do in a highly individualistic culture like ours. "What about Joe? He's Jewish, but a finer human being you could never wish to meet." Sure, we all know Joe; but his case tells us nothing about the probable behavior of an organization whose higher levels are 30, or 50, or 60 percent Jewish."
Is there an obvious distinction between Judaism and homosexuality? Of course there is. But in the context Derbyshire uses, the distinction is irrelevant. He's not talking about private sexual acts. He's discussing one gay bishop who has sworn himself to celibacy but is still suspect merely for his honesty about his orientation. Further, Derbyshire is talking about a group that seems to violate religious tradition. He's talking about the closet, the offensiveness of proselytizing, the presence of minorities in power and throughout the culture - all the themes once used by rabid anti-Semites.
In fact, every single argument being used by people like Derbyshire against gays were once used against Jews: that they cannot co-exist with others without trying to subvert them; that they represent an anti-social violation of religious orthodoxy (held by the Catholic Church until the 1960s); that they would be better to keep their Jewishness under wraps for fear of provoking backlash; that they infiltrate organizations and pervert them to their own ends; that they protect and advance their own; that they are out to discriminate against non-members of the tribe; and on and on.
This isn't a surprise. The trope of anti-Semitism is very, very close to homophobia: both gays and Jews are hated not because they are powerless but because of their perceived power, secrecy and subversiveness. (I think this shared experience is why Jews tend to be the most receptive to gay eqaulity of all ethnic groups.) The final twist in such a trope is that the minority is actually believed to be poised to destroy the majority: and that they have the power to do so. So you have to fight back hard! Cue Paul Weyrich. Eventually, you can come to believe that tiny minorities are such a threat that it is necessary to segregate or destroy them to save society from the enemy within.
We're not there yet, and no conservative I know of is proposing anthing of the kind. But they do want to amend the very constitution of the country to bar gays from marriage in any state anywhere. And the pedigree of this kind of reasoning is clear and ugly. Such paranoia about gays and Jews is, of course, without basis in fact. But that doesn't stop paranoia. And it draws social force purely from the pleasure and self-assurance that all majorities get in describing and demonizing "the other" and the fear and insecurity such minorities provoke. One day, National Review will feel deeply ashamed to have published such prejudices disguised as arguments. One day.
July 1, 2003, Salon.
copyright © 2003, 2003 Andrew Sullivan |
