3 little bears

March 18, 2012 12:17 PM

Blogger-writer Andrew Sullivan proudly attended Obama's latest state dinner for Cameron with his husband, in an open display of growing acceptance of same-sex marriage possibly by the powers-to-be. Michael Shaw's always-insightful BagNews (but not MS himself in this post) notes that there were 3 bearded men in the photograph.
posted by growabrain (60 comments total)

Handsome couple. Do state banquets do boy-girl-boy-girl seating? If so, is there an established etiquette for handling boy-boy/girl-girl couples? Enquiring minds want to know!
posted by alasdair at 12:20 PM on March 18, 2012 [5 favorites]

That's a step forward, but what would be even better is if the White House ever welcomes a same-sex couple who had opposed its wars.
posted by steinsaltz at 12:25 PM on March 18, 2012 [15 favorites]

bearded

Mary Todd, amirite?
posted by Sys Rq at 12:26 PM on March 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

Next up: same sex couple is invited to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.
posted by beagle at 12:27 PM on March 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't actually see this as a big deal. I have an older friend who was close with the Reagan Administration, and she recalls numerous times that openly gay couples (friends of the Reagans) were guests at White House events. This also includes overnight stays. She also mentions that the Reagans never tried to hide it, the Press just didn't mention it. In my opinion, thats the ONLY good thing the Reagans ever did.
posted by karathrace at 12:36 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

dinner for Cameron with his husband

Did anybody read this snippet out of context and exclaim "David Cameron is gay?"
posted by jonp72 at 12:39 PM on March 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

"If we follow closely enough, the infamous question of Lincoln’s own homosexuality comes into play, and we might reasonably wonder if Sullivan and Tone thus manage to doubly represent Lincoln in the White House"

P... pardon?
posted by subbes at 12:40 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

Dear me, but those are some dreadful dinner suits and shoes. It's not difficult: one button on the jacket, peaked lapels, pleats on the pants trousers facing outward. Square-toed shoes: definitely not. Not only that, Mr Sullivan's shirt looks to be approximately ten seconds from untucked. Good heavens, if I were wearing pearls I'd be clutching them in horror. It's the White House, gentlemen, not a Midwestern prom circa 1991.

Still, one step at a time, I suppose.
posted by urschrei at 12:42 PM on March 18, 2012 [29 favorites]

Update: I have just rent a carnation in twain. There.
posted by urschrei at 12:43 PM on March 18, 2012 [17 favorites]

Dinner for Cameron?
posted by timsteil at 12:44 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I would just like right now to point out that Aaron Tone is freakishly tall, but has a good eye for a handsome man.
posted by hippybear at 12:44 PM on March 18, 2012

We tall people find it offensive to be referred to as freaks.
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:50 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

I don't.
posted by sciurus at 12:51 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well, I mean, I'm tall by most standards... but at 6'1", there are very few men I've held against me that I could entirely tuck under my chin like Aaron can do with Andrew.

Wasn't referring to tall men as freaks... just referring to this one man's height as being truly an outlier to an extreme end of the spectrum.
posted by hippybear at 12:53 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

(It could also be that Sullivan is pocket-sized, but I'm pretty sure he's not.)
posted by hippybear at 12:54 PM on March 18, 2012

That's a step forward, but what would be even better is if the White House ever welcomes a same-sex couple who had opposed its wars.

Do gay people who work in the White House and have opposed the wars not count?
posted by rtha at 12:56 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

(Hrm. Okay, Andrew admits to being 5'9" and says Aaron is 6'4". So that's not all that tall or short, really...)

And despite what that particular link says, I have a bias toward short men, not against them.

/derail
posted by hippybear at 12:57 PM on March 18, 2012

Hopefully Obama will soon publicly be willing to say their marriage should be legal.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:02 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

Hey now, his views are "evolving"
posted by delmoi at 1:22 PM on March 18, 2012

Dear me, but those are some dreadful dinner suits and shoes.

No, actually they look fine. Even so, I'm glad someone here is brave enough to speak up about the completely superficial aspects of this event!
posted by hermitosis at 1:23 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

I remember a time not too long ago when the lede of this story would be less that he was gay, and more that he was a blogger.
posted by crunchland at 1:27 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wait, can we please go back to that 2nd to last sentence in the story? Was that a thing?
posted by jadayne at 1:31 PM on March 18, 2012

I'm glad someone here is brave enough to speak up about the completely superficial aspects of this event!

Well, it's not like they're Real Men™, so therefore we must discuss what they are wearing.
posted by dhartung at 1:41 PM on March 18, 2012

I am reminded of Roy Cohn in Angels in America: "I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand."
posted by sevenyearlurk at 1:58 PM on March 18, 2012 [9 favorites]

subbes: P... pardon?

jadayne: Wait, can we please go back to that 2nd to last sentence in the story? Was that a thing?

Yes, it was, and still is. It's is why the Log Cabin Republicans are called The Log Cabin Republicans--the whole "Lincoln was born in a log cabin" thing.
posted by tzikeh at 2:06 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well, I mean, I'm tall by most standards... but at 6'1", there are very few men I've held against me that I could entirely tuck under my chin like Aaron can do with Andrew.

I am generally indifferent to my shortness (5'6"), but yeah, I like that I do fit neatly under my boyfriend's chin.

I don't actually see this as a big deal. I have an older friend who was close with the Reagan Administration, and she recalls numerous times that openly gay couples (friends of the Reagans) were guests at White House events. This also includes overnight stays. She also mentions that the Reagans never tried to hide it, the Press just didn't mention it. In my opinion, thats the ONLY good thing the Reagans ever did.

1. I wonder what possessed them to be friends? I've always just kind of assumed that when bigots such as Bachmann mention their "gay friends" they're lying, but maybe not?
2. I suppose it's nice that the press are mentioning this then? Even if it's because the press mentioning it are the ones that attended. Hm.
posted by kavasa at 2:24 PM on March 18, 2012

there were 3 bearded men in the photograph.

I was expecting a picture of a state dinner in full swing, where we would try to pick out the three gay men attending with wives or female dates.
posted by longsleeves at 2:30 PM on March 18, 2012 [23 favorites]

I was expecting a picture of a state dinner in full swing, where we would try to pick out the three gay men attending with wives or female dates.

I actually thought it was going to be the two of them with Obama, and this was the beginning of the new Republican strategy to claim he's a closeted gay man. No, really. I thought that.
posted by dixiecupdrinking at 2:37 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

there were 3 bearded men in the photograph.

Me too. Expecting a pic with just two bearded men, a few apparently hetero couples and a guess-who-they're-outing puzzle. Would have been fun.
posted by memebake at 2:55 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

And we'll lightly gloss over the time that Sullivan called every liberal in America a traitor, or that time he thought the Bell Curve has something going for it, or that other time he thought the Bell Curve had something going for it, or...

It's nice to see gay men being accepted at White House state dinners, but really, couldn't they have invited a less loathsome individual?
posted by MartinWisse at 3:07 PM on March 18, 2012 [10 favorites]

It's nice to see gay men being accepted at White House state dinners, but really, couldn't they have invited a less loathsome individual?

In a cynical way, this seems just about par for the course.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:35 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Im dveloping this tic where whenever i see someone who supported thr war i just want to ...trip them. Not like off a cliff, but definately a good face plant into mud.
posted by The Whelk at 3:40 PM on March 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

1. I wonder what possessed them to be friends? I've always just kind of assumed that when bigots such as Bachmann mention their "gay friends" they're lying, but maybe not?

I didn't pay attention to politics in the 1980s (being a small child and all) but my impression was that Reagan was never really anti-gay the way today's republicans are. It probably just wasn't nearly as much of an issue, where you would be expected to give your opinion. And he was the president of the Screen Actors guild.
posted by delmoi at 3:50 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

And we'll lightly gloss over the time that Sullivan called every liberal in America a traitor, or that time he thought the Bell Curve has something going for it, or that other time he thought the Bell Curve had something going for it, or...

Or perhaps you will gloss over the idea that people grow and change over time and that Sullivan is one of those, and that he's done so in a very public way which you could actually follow his progress as a person away from "loathsome" if you so chose, which apparently you haven't.
posted by hippybear at 3:53 PM on March 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

Those really are bad tuxes, like rental bad.

Also, this is great. And Sullivan is a dick.

But those guys are really very poorly dressed.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 3:54 PM on March 18, 2012

demoi, exactly. He might not have known that Rock Hudson was gay, but he certain knew, worked with, and socialized with a lot of gay men and lesbians when he was a working actor and active professionally.
posted by djfiander at 3:57 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I still want to know who scammed Sullivan into peddling that Palin's son is really her grandson bullshit. Where the hell were Sullivan's fact checkers?
posted by bukvich at 3:57 PM on March 18, 2012

In my opinion, thats the ONLY good thing the Reagans ever did.

karathrace, from that comment I must assume you opposed nuclear disarmament. (eponysterical)
posted by IAmBroom at 4:28 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Glad to know Andrew Sullivan had a nice night out.

Was there something else I missed?
posted by munchingzombie at 5:02 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I didn't pay attention to politics in the 1980s (being a small child and all) but my impression was that Reagan was never really anti-gay the way today's republicans are.

I was a small child, too. My impression is that Reagan is seen as having dropped the ball on HIV/AIDS, to put it charitably. But I don't think that was a political issue.
posted by hoyland at 5:08 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I didn't pay attention to politics in the 1980s (being a small child and all) but my impression was that Reagan was never really anti-gay the way today's republicans are.

Yeah, the AIDS crisis unfolded on his watch, and he was at best inattentive. That's the charitable view:

Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve.' "

posted by Devils Rancher at 5:14 PM on March 18, 2012 [8 favorites]

hippybear: He's grown so much since 21 Nov 2011 02:16 PM which is the last time he waded into the I.Q. debate.
posted by Grimgrin at 5:28 PM on March 18, 2012

Well, considering what he (and the article he links) are saying is that data from over 40 years ago brought up trends which people found difficult in the context, and that the (wrong) response which happened was to cease looking at that segment of research rather than working to examine it more closely... I'm not sure what your point is there other than you didn't read carefully what was actually said by either Sullivan or the linked article.

But it's okay, I get it. You don't like the man. That's fine. I find him somewhat problematic too.
posted by hippybear at 5:42 PM on March 18, 2012

Yeah. Sullivan's interest in the Bell Curve has been pretty constant; he hasn't bothered to do any actual work or research and just continues to dreg it up with the cliched phrase "We should have a discussion/debate about it", despite the fact that all the issues with the "study" were addressed years ago. He has some issues with black people, but it's never put into the spotlight because of his status as a symbol of his community. Ta-Neishi Coates should get an award for having to deal with him for all those years.

He reminds me a lot of Hitchens in that he's got a predatorial/opportunistic streak to him.
posted by Redgrendel2001 at 5:47 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

He has some issues with black people

I was unaware of that, do go on.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:12 PM on March 18, 2012

Sullivan's interest in the Bell Curve has been pretty constant; he hasn't bothered to do any actual work or research and just continues to dreg it up with the cliched phrase "We should have a discussion/debate about it", despite the fact that all the issues with the "study" were addressed years ago.

Well, in this particular case, he's cross-posting and making his comment based on an article by Anneli Rufus. I have no idea what her credentials are for writing about these things other than being a journalist and author of some travel books.
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM on March 18, 2012

I was unaware of that, do go on.

If I had to make a wild guess, it's that he starts from premise that affirmative action is wrong and should be abolished, and then works his way back to whatever spurious "research" — such as IQ measurements — that supports the conclusion he had heretofore already reached. Here's Sullivan demonstrating his version of turning over a new leaf, as far back as 2011.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:53 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just when you thought Sullivan's ego couldn't get any more bloated. . . .
posted by bardic at 9:18 PM on March 18, 2012

It's true that Reagan was never explicitly anti-gay crazy the way the GOP has gone now, but it's also true that he courted the support of forces on the far right who were always that explicitly anti-gay (e.g., the Moral Majority which was neither moral nor a majority; discuss). That's pretty much because notwithstanding any personal tolerance for gay people that either Ronnie or Nancy may have had in their private lives due to actors they'd known back in their Hollywood days, the Reagan administration (during which I was a tween and a teen) basically refused to acknowledge the existence of gay people, much less that those gay people had either civil rights in general, or were being disproportionately impacted by an epidemic.

Make no mistake, this was a (slightly) kinder, gentler homophobia, but it was homophobia all the same, and as the article Devils Rancher links to makes clear, it was very much part of what inspired the SILENCE = DEATH slogan.
posted by scody at 10:39 PM on March 18, 2012 [5 favorites]

Or perhaps you will gloss over the idea that people grow and change over time and that Sullivan is one of those

As others have pointed out, that growth must've come since late last year then. Even without this I don't trust Sullivan's supposed personal growth; it always looked more like political expedience to me, rather than a true conversion. He certainly hasn't changed the way he operates.

Furthermore, I don't think that anybody who in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was so keen to call people like me traitors (and the turd cherry on that particular shit cake being that Sully himself wasn't even an US citizen) deserves to get the benefit of the doubt from me now, when it's not clear to me any apology he has made was meant. Compared to other ex-wingnuts (John Cole from Balloon Juice, even Charles Johnson off off LGF) Sullivan doesn't seem to have learned anything from it, he's just sucking up to different people now.

(I do sometimes wonder how much slack Sullivan gets is due to his being out and out homosexual, in the same sense that somebody like Ayaan Hirsi Ali due to her background could get away with Islamophobic remarks much more easier than some of her fellow travellers.)
posted by MartinWisse at 2:03 AM on March 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Dear me, but those are some dreadful dinner suits and shoes.

Those are his best pajamas.
posted by srboisvert at 4:33 AM on March 19, 2012

It's true that Reagan was never explicitly anti-gay crazy the way the GOP has gone now, but it's also true that he courted the support of forces on the far right who were always that explicitly anti-gay (e.g., the Moral Majority which was neither moral nor a majority; discuss).

Harvey Milk was my City Supervisor. The documentary The Times of Harvey Milk goes into the whole Moral Majority stuff, and does a pretty good job of presenting Reagan's anti-gay attitudes and policies, at least as governor.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:45 AM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

It really chaps my cheese to see people are still trying to figure out if Lincoln was gay. It doesn't matter. He dead long time, what would it prove to establish he had teh gay?

Also, Sullivan is an annoying hypocrite and while I'm happy for his success, I wish he had less of a voice.
posted by disclaimer at 7:15 AM on March 19, 2012

Sullivan can sometimes piss me off, and I agree he has blind spots on a few things, a major one being his naive acceptance of anything marked as "science" as untinged by ideology (what lies behind his uncritical readings of sociobiological and reductionist neurobehavioral and evpsych, to which he is attracted like a baby to "Pat the Bunny" books) arguments and hence his sometimes retrograde comments on race. He is a bit too fond of the idea that he is singularly able to tell us Unpleasant Truths, even those that are fed to him by ideologues with calculators or sexy graphs, and I do wish he was a bit more critically able to parse quantitative and biological explanations, which he treats too much as equivalents to faith-based ones). I also find his increasing religiosity frustrating, even as he is a strong, strong voice against Christianism and the gross reductionism and moral hypocrisy hidden in the "religion" of public moralists on the right.

But I keep coming back to his blog, every day, whether I'm mad at him or not. He is a real intellectual. He changes his mind in response to good arguments. He is constantly exploring new ideas in serious ways. And boy, does he read. He respects intelligent, honest debate and (with the possible exception of Sarah Palin, who makes him see red, but I sympathize) uniquely able to avoid ad hominem (feminam?) arguments. With a classical British Jesuit education, passed through the Harvard filter, he is rather unusually literate in the classic sense for someone who has achieved such a popular status in the media. (How many mainstream bloggers are as casually multilingual, in fact?)

Above all, in a word, he is pretty damn honest.

And in four more, that motherfucker can write. He is a superb prose stylist, whether you agree with him or not. He can argue and even polemicize with elegance, making his points both clear and vivid without making them blunt and obtuse most of the time. That's just not that common in contemporary opinion journalism, and it's no surprise he and Hitchens were such good pals. I love also that he doesn't allow comments on his blog, but publishes a wide range of smart email responses that disagree with his earlier posts. He follows through on topics and allows critical arguments to breathe even when they challenge his own views.

Just yesterday, as I was reading his take on Fulford's review of Bruckner's *The Paradox of Love,* I actually said to my friend (who was wondering how I could be so excited about this) that I couldn't think of another mainstream blog where I'd be kept up to date on both viral videos and the latest arguments among French intellectuals (and actually, fairly interesting ones at that, not silly stuff), as I put it, "even Metafilter." I honestly get as much of my "best of the web" input from Sullivan as I do here, and that is saying something. There are days I think the balance tips in favor of Sullivan, actually.

Even his obsessions are entertaining and sometimes feel truthful and not hysterical. His take on Palin is mine too. She's not a fool. She's a dangerous person. He has been quite alone in sticking to this point (although he trips, still, over the question of what I call Palin birtherism, because who cares and it looks crazy?). He speaks about as forcefully to issues around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as anyone could while still retaining a mass readership, and that is important because that mass readership is otherwise never going to read Juan Cole (while Sullivan does, and cites him frequently -- another Sully trait I like is the fierce commitment to citing his sources and engaging with them in civil debate too). His obsession with religious faith, meh, not so interesting to me and I think he's posing a bit with all that theological stuff, but he's the anti-Bill Maher on this, and it makes sense to me that a gay public intellectual who has made gay civil rights a signature issue -- with no greater example than his completely public refusal to be stigmatized for being HIV+ -- would attempt to court reasonable allies in the faith community (I just don't think there are enough of them to matter, and that a fierce commitment to the truth would require more entertainment of the materialist position's rational force if rationality is at the core of your worldview; but he was educated by Jesuits, so it's a recognizable trope in his writing, easy enough to quarantine for me given his otherwise strong, albeit naive, commitment to science.)

About the same could be said of his continued engagement with what is left of rational conservatism, his expression of betrayal as a conservative has been a rather eloquent exception in an era of extreme ideological polemic in public culture. He has been both a strong (and I think important) supporter of President Obama, from the beginning, and an ardent and forceful critic of the administration as well, and most importantly to me, he has been steadfast and absolute on the issue of torture and war crimes committed under both Bush and Obama administrations. I cannot think of one other person of his visibility in the public sphere who has persisted as forcefully in making this case. Greenwald has not been able to keep his cool and has lost mainstream acknowledgment in the process. Who else routinely calls for prosecuting former Bush officials and denounces the continuing spread of the national security state apparatus under Obama and gets millions of hits, regular TV appearances, and even writes occasional NY Times and Times of London magazine cover stories?

Ditto, though it's less important, for his stances on many other issues (marijuana especially), and his general awareness of the gender politics of public debate is an overlooked bonus. He's not perfect on that either, but I find him one of the least sexist major league male bloggers.

Long comment, sorry, but I've been reading Sullivan religiously (ha ha) for a few years now. It's the second stop of my procrastination cycle after Metafilter, and one where I often linger just as long. For that, I felt he needed a strong defense in this thread, especially if his blind spots are going to be equated with bigotry.

I also love how mean he is to David Brooks, who is to the idea of a civil, rational, moral political "centrism" that Sullivan tries to model and explore about what Joel Osteen is to "Christianity."

De gustibus non est disputandum, and all that, but I think he's one of the best regular reads out there, even, and even especially, when I think he's full of shit.
posted by spitbull at 7:36 AM on March 19, 2012 [10 favorites]

I will also add that I have been kept better informed on the Syrian uprising (and before that the Iranian green revolution) by Sullivan than by CNN. Given that most of his readership won't be watching Al Jazeera regularly any time soon, that's also important.
posted by spitbull at 7:41 AM on March 19, 2012

Great comment ^ spitbull!
posted by growabrain at 1:01 PM on March 19, 2012

Thanks growabrain. In fact I was consciously trying to write a little in the style of Sullivan, for the fun of it.
posted by spitbull at 2:43 PM on March 19, 2012

It really chaps my cheese to see people are still trying to figure out if Lincoln was gay. It doesn't matter. He dead long time, what would it prove to establish he had teh gay?

A great deal of history over the past 200 (300? 500? 1000?) or so years has effectively had homosexuals erased from it. Either by direct action or because the stigma attached to homosexuality has been great enough that individuals who were gay chose to hide it from society at large.

Add to that the demonization of homosexuals which historically have resulted in them becoming the butt of jokes or otherwise having their accomplishments diminished in the pages of history.

Ultimately, it's about setting the record straight (heh) about the contributions this marginalized minority have made throughout time, and establishing that homosexuals are contributing members of society who have made their contributions across the ages toward the betterment of mankind. They aren't some boogeyman who is going to brainwash children and lead them into a life of sin and debauchery. They are, rather, rather ordinary people who have had extraordinary effects through their actions both big and small.

I personally don't know much about the evidence for Lincoln's homosexuality, but I do know that it's important for both the GLBTQ community and society at large that there is a clear record of the role homosexuals and other queerfolk have played in the development of mankind. It's the only way that we as a species will be truly honest with ourselves about this particular class of people and the contributions they have made, despite the prevailing historical attitude toward them being one that has until recently been entirely negative and sought to erase them from existence.
posted by hippybear at 6:12 PM on March 19, 2012

I do know that it's important for both the GLBTQ community and society at large that there is a clear record of the role homosexuals and other queerfolk have played in the development of mankind

If only there were homosexuals and queerfolk throughout history that require setting the record straight. Maybe Lincoln liked fucking dudes. Maybe he didn't. But Lincoln was not gay. Gay people did not exist. Oh sure, plenty of men has sex with other men and women had sex with women. But gay is an identity and an identity that had yet to be defined. There is no shortage of historic and other academic writing on the invention of homosexuality and the subsequent invention of heterosexuality.

The occasional bit of pop-history that comes up about Lincoln, Hitler or name your easily recognized historical figure is someone trying to sell books.
posted by munchingzombie at 6:29 PM on March 19, 2012

Hilarious that you provide links to an online book store to provide a counterpoint that anyone who might be exploring the sexual interests of historical figures is just trying to sell books....

But anyway you're missing my point. The concept of men having sex with men and women having sex with women has been long considered horrible and evil and worthy of extinguishing from the history books. If someone like Lincoln did like to have sex with men, it was in the midst of a social context which didn't allow that to be made public. It doesn't matter whether the modern concepts of homosexual or heterosexual had been established as we consider them today. What does matter is what the social milieu did to drive men who have sex with men into the underground of consciousness and out of the history books, or at least the record of them having sex with men out of history.

Granted that any evidence for most of any examination of the sexual interests of historical figures is largely fragmented and circumstantial, we're reaching a point in our social development where it is no longer a matter of shame and requires erasing from the public record. If we do have evidence that figures from the past who have been revered for whatever reason may have participated in same-sex fucking or same-sex partnerships of whatever form such things took in their time, it only serves to make the record more clear if we allow that evidence to be brought into awareness rather than allowing it to continue to remain a matter of shame and shadows.
posted by hippybear at 6:56 PM on March 19, 2012