Andrew Sullivan on drag queens; R.R. Reno on gay marriage; Matt Shapiro on a classic CDC blooper; Hanania's book reviewed; Dalibor Rohac on Ukraine and Israel
‘As I recall, the gay marriage movement was marketed in a way to appeal to conservatives, by putting the emphasis on marriage. They made it sound like legal gay marriage was an end point.
Instead, it turned out to be a launching pad. ’
The UK situation is instructive. Conservatives did not like the association with marriage for same sex couples. Homosexuals argued that marriage would give them equivalent legal and social status as opposite sex couples - such as pension rights, inheritance, funeral arrangements, etc.
In 2004 UK Parliament did its job and found the middle way to take into account the interests and views of all parties, and passed the Civil Partnership Act for same sex couples which was marriage in all but name.
“The Civil Partnership Act brings more than just the opportunity to register relationships. The British legislation is among the most comprehensive in the world in giving equality to same-sex relationships. Civil partners are treated equivalently to married couples in almost every respect.”
So issue resolved, matter closed? Of course not! After a few years, copying what was happening in the USA, Gay marriage once again became an issue in the UK. It had to be ‘marriage’. It had nothing to do with equal Rights, it was about spite and triumphing over conservatives and religious views and deciding what normal was.
In reality, only a tiny percentage of same sex couples used the Civil Partnership Act or Marriage Act because enduring partnerships between same sex couples are a rarity. So a tiny minority of a small minority overturned the majority will and defined the new normal.
A launchpad? Yes - for a gobby group of activists and political opportunists for ever more and more demands to overturn normality and accept any freakish fashion in its place.
And of course there is no ‘Right’ to marriage for anyone and never has been.
Rohac is spinning a narrative when he writes: "The Balts, the Poles, and the Czechs understand well that Putin’s ambitions do not stop in Ukraine and their countries are next on the list."
Putin is doing what he said he would do if Ukraine allied with the West. It is the same thing Russia did when Georgia (the country) got friendly with NATO. Western pundits and politicians are indignant that Putin supports the Russian form of "The Monroe Doctrine".
Putin did not become aggressive until certain triggers were pulled by Western, in particular US, leaders. Those triggers are very precise. Putin said what they were.
The proper narrative is Russia has made public it's basis for aggression against its neighbors. It has acted true to what it said. You think Russia is wrong? Well, how do you think the USA would respond if China started building a naval base in South America?
Furthermore, the USA ventures to the other side of the world to have mitary conflict to defend what it says are its interests. Russia is fighting with a neighboring country. And yet the narrative is Russia is an imperialist aggressor. Fine then. Let's use that standard from now on to label all military intervention!
Bottom line is the longer the Ukraine war goes on the worse it will be for the Ukrainians. That the West is pushing eternal war shows the immorality of Western culture. Please let us follow the wisdom of Vizzini and not get involved in a land war in Asia. Unfortunately, that error has already been made and the West seems determined to double down on it, at an American cost of over $50 billion a month
RE: Matt Shapiro's points on the slide: It might well be a mistake to assume that slide was created in error. Misrepresenting data has been the standard procedure since the beginning of this mess, to put it lightly. The only big change is that the woman wasn't banned from Twitter for pointing out the lies in the slide. Progress!
I think California did have the right idea on gay marriage; civil unions for everyone. If you want to get married, find an officiant willing to perform the ceremony. Or, just jump over a broomstick together. The two were separate things.
Unfortunately, later on, people who fetishized government got a separate marriage law passed for straights.
I take exception to your glorification of a lifestyle that leads to being a grandparent. I write this as a 60 year old who has been married for 37 years, has three adult children and is expecting his first grandchild later this year.
There are many paths to happiness,. Your view that being a grandparent is equal to "victory in life" is hopelessly narrow and actually cruel to those who might not be able to be grandparents.
Long ago I used to be in favor of gay marriage. I couldn't be further to the other side of the issue now.
Sullivan makes his home in Provincetown, MA, which is a gaytown USA. I had never heard about it until there was a Delta variant outbreak that was used as justification to re-impose mask mandates.
Reading about it from the people there it seemed something like this:
"I was high on drugs for Bear Week having bareback orgies with random strangers I met, then I got COVID."
I also remember Sullivan saying that "masks were the new condoms" as if something that covers your face to stop you from breathing all day and sticking a rubber on for a few minutes so you don't spread AIDS are the same thing. Then again, Sullivan has STDs from his own behavior.
Sullivan says he made the conservative case for gay marriage, but I'm not sure that was ever true. He doesn't believe in monogamy, even in marriage. A non-monogamous marriage...isn't a marriage. By definition.
Beyond that he is against any kind of sexual restraint or public propriety. He calls even the tamest attempts to protect the innocence of children "puritanical".
I don't see how people who defend Bear Week and people who want family values can share a movement. We want entirely different societies.
The US would be much more effective enforcing the Order if it did not itself violate it so often.
I sort of wish we DID fear China just enough to eliminates some of the obstacles to a more prosperous and faster growing economy -- restrictions on skilled immigration, NIMBYism about infrastructure and residential-commercial development in urban areas, trade restrictions, and the structural deficit.
Having drag queen read books to kinds IS fun if you idea a fun is to "own the Cons." (And boy did it work! :)) To be really harmless though it could have been a drag queen whose day job IS fire fighter or test pilot.
I wonder if we might be seeing female reproductive suppression here. Note that many of the proponents of alternative lifestyles practice and promote very much more conservative lifestyles for their own families.
I'm not at all convinced drag shows aren't just fetishistic behavior on the part of (some) gay men. Also, to the extent that Sullivan is correct about "drag was for a long time ubiquitous in US military shows," I think part of the entertainment value in having a bunch of masculine, macho military guys put on dresses and caricature various female mannerisms was in the contrast in appearance vs behavior. An effeminate gay man with three pounds of makeup on doing a fairly convincing Lady Gaga or whatever just isn't the same thing.
Interested in your thoughts on free trade. Have you looked at Matt Klein and Michael Pettis’s Trade Wars are Class Wars. My understanding of the thesis is that trade surplus countries suppress wages to recycle trade gains into US assets keeping their currency from adjusting and making their exports less competitive. This benefits the owners of the exporting companies and Wall St and Americans with financial assets. They believe we should rebalance trade by taxing those financial inflows but leave trade itself unrestricted. Thoughts?
While he softens his language quite a bit, it is pretty clear that Sullivan, as well as a few other gay/lesbian iconoclasts, recognize that the root of transgenderism is remaking homophobia into a socially acceptable form. You can try to normalize same-sex coupling all you want but in the end the prospect of getting grandkids wins, as you like to point out.
I like the Zeihan snark of 'bribing up an alliance'. We kept the Cold War from warming up too much because we primarily fought it on economic terms (remember that the point of Reagan's 'Star Wars' anti-ICBM program was forcing the Soviets to unsustainably expand their missile forces). He has pointed out a couple of times, in his prior books especially, that trade for the US was always a defense strategy not an economic one. In percentage terms we were one of the least involved nations in international trade.
I would agree that Zeihan definitely would like to see The Order rebooted on some firmer footing than opposing whatever boogeyman is handy. He has suggested a couple of times that we might be entering a period like the 1880s or 1920s where American businesses did more outreach than the government. How sustainable that will be is an open question since that was done under the protection of the British Empire before it crashed after WWII.
‘As I recall, the gay marriage movement was marketed in a way to appeal to conservatives, by putting the emphasis on marriage. They made it sound like legal gay marriage was an end point.
Instead, it turned out to be a launching pad. ’
The UK situation is instructive. Conservatives did not like the association with marriage for same sex couples. Homosexuals argued that marriage would give them equivalent legal and social status as opposite sex couples - such as pension rights, inheritance, funeral arrangements, etc.
In 2004 UK Parliament did its job and found the middle way to take into account the interests and views of all parties, and passed the Civil Partnership Act for same sex couples which was marriage in all but name.
“The Civil Partnership Act brings more than just the opportunity to register relationships. The British legislation is among the most comprehensive in the world in giving equality to same-sex relationships. Civil partners are treated equivalently to married couples in almost every respect.”
So issue resolved, matter closed? Of course not! After a few years, copying what was happening in the USA, Gay marriage once again became an issue in the UK. It had to be ‘marriage’. It had nothing to do with equal Rights, it was about spite and triumphing over conservatives and religious views and deciding what normal was.
In reality, only a tiny percentage of same sex couples used the Civil Partnership Act or Marriage Act because enduring partnerships between same sex couples are a rarity. So a tiny minority of a small minority overturned the majority will and defined the new normal.
A launchpad? Yes - for a gobby group of activists and political opportunists for ever more and more demands to overturn normality and accept any freakish fashion in its place.
And of course there is no ‘Right’ to marriage for anyone and never has been.
Rohac is spinning a narrative when he writes: "The Balts, the Poles, and the Czechs understand well that Putin’s ambitions do not stop in Ukraine and their countries are next on the list."
Putin is doing what he said he would do if Ukraine allied with the West. It is the same thing Russia did when Georgia (the country) got friendly with NATO. Western pundits and politicians are indignant that Putin supports the Russian form of "The Monroe Doctrine".
Putin did not become aggressive until certain triggers were pulled by Western, in particular US, leaders. Those triggers are very precise. Putin said what they were.
The proper narrative is Russia has made public it's basis for aggression against its neighbors. It has acted true to what it said. You think Russia is wrong? Well, how do you think the USA would respond if China started building a naval base in South America?
Furthermore, the USA ventures to the other side of the world to have mitary conflict to defend what it says are its interests. Russia is fighting with a neighboring country. And yet the narrative is Russia is an imperialist aggressor. Fine then. Let's use that standard from now on to label all military intervention!
Bottom line is the longer the Ukraine war goes on the worse it will be for the Ukrainians. That the West is pushing eternal war shows the immorality of Western culture. Please let us follow the wisdom of Vizzini and not get involved in a land war in Asia. Unfortunately, that error has already been made and the West seems determined to double down on it, at an American cost of over $50 billion a month
RE: Matt Shapiro's points on the slide: It might well be a mistake to assume that slide was created in error. Misrepresenting data has been the standard procedure since the beginning of this mess, to put it lightly. The only big change is that the woman wasn't banned from Twitter for pointing out the lies in the slide. Progress!
I think California did have the right idea on gay marriage; civil unions for everyone. If you want to get married, find an officiant willing to perform the ceremony. Or, just jump over a broomstick together. The two were separate things.
Unfortunately, later on, people who fetishized government got a separate marriage law passed for straights.
I take exception to your glorification of a lifestyle that leads to being a grandparent. I write this as a 60 year old who has been married for 37 years, has three adult children and is expecting his first grandchild later this year.
There are many paths to happiness,. Your view that being a grandparent is equal to "victory in life" is hopelessly narrow and actually cruel to those who might not be able to be grandparents.
Long ago I used to be in favor of gay marriage. I couldn't be further to the other side of the issue now.
Sullivan makes his home in Provincetown, MA, which is a gaytown USA. I had never heard about it until there was a Delta variant outbreak that was used as justification to re-impose mask mandates.
Reading about it from the people there it seemed something like this:
"I was high on drugs for Bear Week having bareback orgies with random strangers I met, then I got COVID."
I also remember Sullivan saying that "masks were the new condoms" as if something that covers your face to stop you from breathing all day and sticking a rubber on for a few minutes so you don't spread AIDS are the same thing. Then again, Sullivan has STDs from his own behavior.
Sullivan says he made the conservative case for gay marriage, but I'm not sure that was ever true. He doesn't believe in monogamy, even in marriage. A non-monogamous marriage...isn't a marriage. By definition.
Beyond that he is against any kind of sexual restraint or public propriety. He calls even the tamest attempts to protect the innocence of children "puritanical".
I don't see how people who defend Bear Week and people who want family values can share a movement. We want entirely different societies.
Israel need not stop fighting the Palestinians, just stop allowing settlers in the Occupied Territories.
The US would be much more effective enforcing the Order if it did not itself violate it so often.
I sort of wish we DID fear China just enough to eliminates some of the obstacles to a more prosperous and faster growing economy -- restrictions on skilled immigration, NIMBYism about infrastructure and residential-commercial development in urban areas, trade restrictions, and the structural deficit.
Reno did not tell us what the "price" of the post gay marriage "cake and dancing" is. ??
Having drag queen read books to kinds IS fun if you idea a fun is to "own the Cons." (And boy did it work! :)) To be really harmless though it could have been a drag queen whose day job IS fire fighter or test pilot.
I wonder if we might be seeing female reproductive suppression here. Note that many of the proponents of alternative lifestyles practice and promote very much more conservative lifestyles for their own families.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rspb.2018.1332
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33871603/
>>I’m in favor of glorifying the lifestyle that gets you grandchildren.
Aren't you forgetting adoption?
I'm not at all convinced drag shows aren't just fetishistic behavior on the part of (some) gay men. Also, to the extent that Sullivan is correct about "drag was for a long time ubiquitous in US military shows," I think part of the entertainment value in having a bunch of masculine, macho military guys put on dresses and caricature various female mannerisms was in the contrast in appearance vs behavior. An effeminate gay man with three pounds of makeup on doing a fairly convincing Lady Gaga or whatever just isn't the same thing.
Interested in your thoughts on free trade. Have you looked at Matt Klein and Michael Pettis’s Trade Wars are Class Wars. My understanding of the thesis is that trade surplus countries suppress wages to recycle trade gains into US assets keeping their currency from adjusting and making their exports less competitive. This benefits the owners of the exporting companies and Wall St and Americans with financial assets. They believe we should rebalance trade by taxing those financial inflows but leave trade itself unrestricted. Thoughts?
While he softens his language quite a bit, it is pretty clear that Sullivan, as well as a few other gay/lesbian iconoclasts, recognize that the root of transgenderism is remaking homophobia into a socially acceptable form. You can try to normalize same-sex coupling all you want but in the end the prospect of getting grandkids wins, as you like to point out.
I like the Zeihan snark of 'bribing up an alliance'. We kept the Cold War from warming up too much because we primarily fought it on economic terms (remember that the point of Reagan's 'Star Wars' anti-ICBM program was forcing the Soviets to unsustainably expand their missile forces). He has pointed out a couple of times, in his prior books especially, that trade for the US was always a defense strategy not an economic one. In percentage terms we were one of the least involved nations in international trade.
I would agree that Zeihan definitely would like to see The Order rebooted on some firmer footing than opposing whatever boogeyman is handy. He has suggested a couple of times that we might be entering a period like the 1880s or 1920s where American businesses did more outreach than the government. How sustainable that will be is an open question since that was done under the protection of the British Empire before it crashed after WWII.