Tonight’s highlights (lowlights?) at the GOP convention:
- Bishop Keith Butler, Southfield, Mich. Outspoken opponent of marriage and civil unions for gay people (Google search)
- Ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin. Previous XGW coverage
- Christian singer Michael W. Smith, whose admirable talent is tarnished by dirty GOP politics
- Three retired Olympic athletes and a retired football player
In other news…
Hurricane Frances barrels toward the Exodus office in Orlando, Fla. Exodus prays for its allies; XGW prays for all Floridians.
Illinois Republicans criticize Senate candidate and apparent Zell Miller wannabe Alan Keyes “after he labeled homosexuality ‘selfish hedonism’ and said Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter is a sinner. ‘You don’t attack other people’s children,’ said the state party chairwoman.”
The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Kansas Supreme Court to reduce the sentence of Matthew Limon, a young man who is serving 16 years more in prison than he would if he were heterosexual because of Kansas’s so-called “Romeo and Juliet” law. The law makes sexual relations with a minor a lesser crime if both people are teens, but only applies to opposite-sex relations. (Previous XGW coverage of Limon. Exodus and Focus on the Family support Limon’s long prison sentence.)
Check out Andrew Sullivan’s coverage of the GOP convention (www.AndrewSullivan.com). He’s a Republican, but a sharp thinker and will criticize intellectual dishonesty and incoherent positions. (Note his remarks especially on Alan Keyes, Mary Cheney, and the Focus on the Family distribution of fortune cookies.)
ck, Sullivan is an idiot. I suggest you go to sullywatch.
“Sullivan is an idiot.”
I always appreciate the depth of your political analysis, raj.
Sullivan is one of the best political thinkers out there. He is willing to rethink positions, weigh opposing options, not fall in with the rank and order. People constantly attack Sullivan, but I admire him and think he is one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. Nevertheless, he suffers the slings and arrows of those who believe he is an evil, sick sodomite, but he takes it with humor and sticks to his beliefs.
You’re all right. Sully is a sharp and intelligent thinker, but he is not above “intellectual dishonesty and incoherent positions” especially when it concerns the politics of his sexuality.
Marty,
Some examples, please? (I don’t agree 100% with Sullivan, but I find his writing at least thought provoking and insightful beyond repeating stock positions.)
I stand by my abrupt dismissal of Andrew Sullivan.
I used to read him quite often, and in the early days of his blog would go to it almost daily. I even engaged in a few email discussions with him about a few topics that appeared on his blog. (He doesn’t allow for comments, which, on a blog, is unfortunate.
However, after a while I pretty much stopped going there. Why?
One reason was his rather apparent–and, to anyone paying attention, naive–notion that modern Republican “conservatism” has anything to do with limited government. That should be apparent to anyone who was scentient during the Reagan administration. Reagan preached so-called “conservative” small government rhetoric, while all the while expanding government. And he did so while his party had control of one house of Congress–the Senate–for the first six years of his presidency. AND, with the Reagan administration’s tax rate cuts, the issue went from “tax and spend” (as the Republicans charge the Democrats with doing), to borrow and spend. Borrowing, of course, only saddles the future generations with the burden of paying the borrowing off–which, strikes me a bit odd from a party that purports to be interested in “family values.”
BTW, Bush I largely continued Reagan’s fiscal policies. And Bush II has continued them with a vengance. But, since my husband and I don’t have children who might have to pay off the increases in the national debt incurred by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, we don’t particularly care. (BTW, lest anyone wonder, this paragraph is intended as sarcasm.)
A second reason was his rather silly support for Bush’s drumbeat for the war on Iraq and his rather silly diatribes about–not “directed to,” but about–those who opposed Bush’s war. Why? Let’s get something straight. I opposed Bush’s war on Iraq. For a number of reasons. I opposed Bush’s war on Iraq, in large part because the US was then engaged in a war in Afghanistan, which it had not seen to completion. Some of us who actually follow what is going on in the world know that Afghanistan is now a mess, possibly (but who knows?) because of US inattention to what’s going on in Afghanistan because of the Bush administration’s interest in pursuing the war on Iraq. I suppose that, if the Bush II Republicans had paid more attention to Iraq, Afghanistan might be in a better condition today. On the other hand, the same might be said of the Republicans’ inattention to Afghanistan after the US-backed rebellion there chased out the USSR backed government there in the late 1980s. As far as I’m concerned, the current inattention to the situation in Afghanistan is nothing more than a continuation of the Republican inattention there in the 1980s. Why go to war in Iraq when they hadn’t completed the mission in Afghanistan? I have my theories. But, from an international security standpoint, the situation in Iraq was clearly manageable in the near term (i.e., the UN weapons inspections, while perhaps not perfect, would clearly cause a problem if Iraq really was pursuing WMDs), and so there was no particular reason for the US not trying to rebuild Afghanistan before going after Iraq. As far as I’m concerned, Sullivan’s “rah-rah-ing” of Bush’s war on Iraq was idiotic in the extreme. As was his denigrating of those of us who opposed Bush’s war on Iraq at that point in time and under those circumstances. And that ignores the subsequent developments, in which it should be clear to anyone paying attention that the war has been badly mishandled. The word “incompetent” comes to mind regarding the Bush II administration’s handling of international relations.
A third reason that I largely dismiss Sullivan is how he responds to the idiotic attacks on same-sex marriage that come from right-wing wackos like John Derbyshire and Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online (NRO). Instead of ridiculing the attacks and the attackers–as they should be and as I have done on various fora–his responses have largely been what I would characterize as whining. I won’t go into detail about Sullivan’s responses, but the fact is that Derbyshire’s only claim to fame is that he has appeared on the History Channel as a purported “expert” on ancient history. Query what that has to do with same-sex marriage today. And Kurtz is supported by a bunch of wacky right wing foundations such as the Scaife foundation, the Olin foundation and the Bradley foundation. Instead of whining about them, Sullivan should have dismissed their rants against same sex marriage out of hand. He should have ridiculed them–the arguments and the attackers. One of the arguments that Kurtz on NRO used against gay marriage was that gays shouldn’t be able to marry because straight boys don’t want to watch out gay actors as leading men in movies. That argument is stupid. And Kurtz’s latest rant based on purported statistics from Scandinavia has been show to be a lie. Query why Sullivan doesn’t ridicule them and dismiss them out of hand, instead of whining as he does.
In large part because of the above, I dismiss Sullivan pretty much out of hand. Sullywatch has more.
Thanks, Raj. I was always astonished that Sullivan continued to support the war in Iraq. I guess, however, I read him for the same reason I read Jonathan Rauch or David Brooks (who of course isn’t gay but supports gay marriage). Curiosity. I still consider myself a moderate for political reasons I won’t go into here, both social and fiscal, and so I’m constantly searching for voices that resonate with what I value.
I did check out Sullywatch and found its tone a little bit disappointing–very biting, which I personally find distasteful. But I am definitely going to continue looking at both blogs.
Thanks for your explanation, Raj.
What I have always found annoying about AS is his unwillingness to learn about US life before going off on people or subjects. His response to Zell Miller’s rant at the Rethuglican Convention was one of astonishment. He said something along the lines of: wow I understand what Americans have been saying about the South now. After 20 years in the US. AS is not real sharp on the uptake.
Another thing I find repulsive about AS is his tendancy to speak from his position as someone who moves in high political circles, has a comfortable income, meets little outright hostility because of who and where he is, and uses this to generalize about all gays. AS has said repeatedly that his experience is that homophobia is over. That there is no need for anti-discrimination laws because nobody he knows is discriminated against. He sounds like the antiFDR types who argued that there could not be massive unemployment since they had trouble hiring competant servants. AS’s aristocratic pretensions and his inability to understand or care how most gays live is really annoying.
AS has made quite a fuss about ‘identity’ politics. IE the idea that being gay should not have much to do with one’s political outlook.
It does seem that his having been effectively ousted from the Roman church, and now from the right wing, have made an itsy bitsy teensy weensy dent in his denial. But not much.
Anyway, these are some of the reasons I think AS is a totally insensitive fool.
>I did check out Sullywatch and found its tone a little bit disappointing–very biting, which I personally find distasteful.
I rather enjoy biting commentary. Actually, more than a bit of Sullywatch’s commentary isn’t so much biting, as presenting Sullivan’s unexplained flip-flops in positions he has taken on various issues. I have no problem with a commentator–or a politician, for that matter–changing their positions on issues, provided they explain the reasons for the changes. It should be a very simple thing to do.