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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Andrew Sullivan's Sex Life
But I also found something evasive and disingenuous about Andrew's response. Andrew is now feeling the lash of the same whip used by conservatives against Bill Clinton and others in recent history; and it's the same tactics his conservative pals have used against gays for--well, whenever we got uppity and dared to challenge them publicly. And now, NOW, Andrew talks of "Sexual McCarthyism?" (Actually, I believe this term was used during Lewinsky by Alan Dershowitz on the GERALDO show. But I didn't tape it, so I can't verify this.) Has it really taken this personal hit to wake Andrew up to the mad collusion between political hacks grinding axes and publishers and editors craving dirt? If so, why? Will it make Andrew reevaluate his own actions in attacking other people he doesn't know, and in his own comments on Clinton? Will he now revise his positions on Sex Panic! and the importance of marriage and monogamy? Will he apologize to those who have argued for a place for sexual cruising and multiple partners in a more assimilated gay world? Will he address the aspect of sexual shame demanded of gays who are "caught" by the straight world having sex? (Would a straight writer being found out cruising the web for sex partners be spotlighted so scandalously? I really don't think so; at least some would say "Good going, buddy!") (Similarly, Mickey has certainly sounded off on the terrible tactics used by Republicans, but in fact Mickey's outing days helped make such prying possible. I have always felt there was a strong element of revenge in his outings methods and targets--and, when his first outing columns were appearing in OUTWEEK, said so--but his own shenanigans have been outdone by conservatives with such staggering success their endeavors make Signorile's print-harassment of David Geffen and Jodie Foster seem minuscule by comparison.) A few other points raised by Andrew's response: Multiple seroconversion is not some fringe theory. I recently interviewed several doctors and researchers and AIDS workers for a 20th-anniversary special feature on AIDS for the July INTERVIEW (it's out in about another week), and I heard over and over from them the importance of everyone, EVERYONE, practicing condom fucking unless they are 100% certain of the HIVnegative status of their partner(s). These guys stressed this was just as true for PWAs as for the HIV-negative. I am sorry if Andrew's doctor and he disagree, but both men have been crowing about the success of protease inhibitors, when in fact these are no longer working for some people and have had long-term, disastrous effects. Twenty years ago, I counted about 40 men as my close gay friends. The last, the very last of those men, died two weeks ago; we had his funeral last night. (It was after this funeral, at the reception for the mourners, that I heard of this Signorile-Sullivan story.) Like several of those who died in the last few years, he had been on protease inhibitors, in his case for a year and a half. Then he radically sickened, and no combinations of cocktails would do a goddamned thing. He wound up at 100 lbs., riddled with KS, unable to eat or drink without throat and stomach pain, and miserable; before we could get him into a hospice, he committed suicide. Over and over again I heard people at Tom's funeral saying "But he was on PROTEASE INHIBITORS!" I heard this so many times before the service I felt compelled at the end of my eulogy to add a plea to the gay men there to understand that AIDS is not a chronic illness manageable with medication: those with AIDS will almost certainly perish from it, and those endangering themselves to HIV exposure are playing the same game of Russian roulette the knowingly careless have been playing for two decades. I hope everyone with HIV uses condoms in sex with others with HIV. (Frankly, I found Andrew's disdain for this aspect of safer sex more upsetting than any other aspect of this story. He and I are hardly friends or even congenial, but I have seen too many people die terrible HIV-related deaths to wish it on another person. And considering the virulence of HIV, I think even if the best research confirmed only a slight possibility of multiple seroconversion, the best precautions should still be taken.) I should add something else, about Andrew lumping his critics into one term: "activists." At this postmortem for Tom last night, I met a wide spectrum of gays--lawyers, dancers, writers, trainers, gym bunnies, opera queens, ACT UP alums and Wall Street conservatives. But almost everyone was very critical of Andrew (not on this specific matter). I was surprised at the across-the-board condemnation expressed for his championing of Bush, his denouncing of Matthew Shepard, and any number of other issues. (Even that recent, appalling Dirkhiser column was mentioned.) Go back to those questions I ended my first paragraph with: they are not mine, but actual questions raised by people at this reception.
Signorile has acted with typical self-indulgent hysteria, and an equally typical inability to think through the ramifications of his actions (an imaginary example: Could I, if I found out about rumors he had sex with preteens, say, and got somebody to say without direct attribution: "That's true," rush into print or online with the story? How fast would that story spread? What could Signorile do to rightfully regain his reputation? Would people believe his denials? And so on) but the animus he exhibits toward Andrew is not just held by "activists"--and this is something Andrew and his supporters badly need to hear and think very hard about. I think a sub-theme of this discussion is worries about its implications for the rest of us. Many of us are public people: we all do things in our private lives that are nobody else's damned business; but we now know that the hunger for scandal and vengeance in the political culture is such that any of us could be made vulnerable by a reporter or lobbyist or operative with an agenda and clever keys applied to the Internet. But it's not a problem restricted to "left-wing activists": this is the way political war has been waged in this country for…well, whenever. (Thomas Jefferson was first linked with Sally Hemings in press reports during his own lifetime; Republicans tried hard to smear Kennedy(s) with sexual rumors; Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker bills evoked fire and brimstone in the middle of the Civil War; and so on.) The recent efforts to unseat Clinton (whether merely a bizarrely synchronous series of efforts or a bigger, scarier conspiracy) have legitimized these approaches, made them widespread, almost ordinary. That's why I think a great Andrew response to this mess would be to write a piece saying "This is a lousy way to treat human beings you disagree with or are competitive with--it shouldn't have been done to me, OR Bill Clinton, OR Hillary Clinton, OR John Ashcroft . . ." etc. (Although an argument expressed by others is that since Andrew has written so much about gays and sexual behavior, then his own gay behavior IS germane to his public work, and thus an appropriate matter for discussion. I don't really agree with this argument--it assumes a congruence between public speech and private action I cannot believe anyone can still buy into, and a disregard of the full concept of "privacy" which I thought we as gay people were supposed to be uniquely attuned to [especially after "Hardwick"]--but I am surprised at how often, in the last two days, I have heard it, and not only from people critical of Andrew.) Another subtheme of this matter is the most troubling: the gay community's abandonment of AIDS and AIDS prevention, and of people with AIDS. My friend who just died had been a beautiful man, much desired by other men and women (250 people attended his funeral, and a healthy percentage of them clearly fancied Tom's looks); but as he lost his looks and became visibly sick (lesions, weight loss, limping) he was shocked at how gay men recoiled from him, ignored him, treated him badly, the way straight people used to not long ago. (His sister, who brought him on a pleasure trip to Miami a few months ago to get him away from NY's cold, scolded a group of gay men seated near them in a restaurant who kept glaring at Tom, as if wishing he would leave.) Tom remembered a time when gays did not recoil from the sick in their midst, when in fact they went out of their way to be demonstrative to them, as if to let them know they were still very much a part of us. I shared his sorrow and anger at this change. One memory from those years that still moves me to tears is: I was waiting for a bus home from GMHC, which is in Chelsea. A few other gay men also waited for it. Then another gay man limped up, using an aluminum cane. It was a blustery day; it had gotten quite cold and cloudy, suddenly; the guy with the cane, who was awfully thin, shivered visibly in the cold. A gay man, a stranger to the PWA but standing next to him, took off his own zip-up jacket and put it around the sick man's shoulders, saying "I don't see a bus coming, so here. Put this on." The man thanked him, and when the bus came we helped the sick guy on and into a seat. You used to regularly witness (or perform) behavior like that in the gay community: it was as if the ravagement of AIDS had finally made us look beyond our own pettiness, our own vanity, our own loneliness and fear of ourselves and each other, and realized we had to learn how to care for each other in better ways at least some of the time. That attitude has vanished, and our success in lowering rates of seroconversion is going with it. The most intelligent response to this Sullivan scandal has come to me from, not a political columnist or lobbyist or activist, but a guy named Will Clark. Will Clark is a porn star, mostly a leather bottom (at least onscreen--perhaps HIS private sex life differs from his public one, too--just like yours and mine). I came to know Will through my dead friend, who met him on Fire Island at a fundraiser, earning my instant envy, because I had seen several of Will's performances and liked them a lot. When Will is not acting in videos or doing leather acts or sex shows, he spends much of his time throwing benefits and other events related to AIDS fundraising and AIDS education. (His annual "pool party," where civilians can dance and swim and get autographs from sundry porn stars for a donation, has become quite a hit on the coast, I am told.) Will also had little to say about Sullivan and the webcruising. What bothered him was that he was seeing and hearing more upset about this matter than the far graver one of AIDS activism being put down by the gay community, and the concommitant results: the delusion that it is now a chronic illness controlled by pills and diet and clean living; the lapsing of educational efforts; the growing seroconversion rates. Haven't we suffered enough? Will asked me. Why aren't we taking care of ourselves, and each other? This is what we need to be talking about, and I hope we start before it's too late. Patrick Giles Union Organizers at the Washington Blade The acquisition of the Washington Blade by Window Media, LLC, represents an important milestone for the gay press. With the Blade a part of its chain of gay newspapers, Window Media has become one of the nation's largest gay media companies. Window Media's growth - and the Blade's growth over the past 30 years--highlights the transformation of many gay papers from fledgling, volunteer-run publications to professionally run newspapers operated as thriving businesses.
We welcome these changes, and we welcome Window Media's quest to become the nation's largest and most successful publisher of gay newspapers. Similar to employees at other news organizations, we have chosen to join the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild to enable us to better meet the challenges of a changing workplace environment through a more professional, business-oriented framework. Thus we view our decision to become a part of the internationally respected Newspaper Guild as a groundbreaking development in the evolution of the gay press. Our aim is to help the Blade grow and prosper and continue in its role as the gay community's newspaper of record. We have been loyal, committed employees prior to our decision to embark on this path, and we will continue to be loyal, committed employees after the process of Guild recognition is completed. Our decision to unionize should not be viewed as a vote of "no confidence" in the new owners. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship.
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild Members Argentina: Transgender Action Alert
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Exposed: The sexual practices of Andrew Sullivan
have been made the subject of public debates 
On the Attack: Michelangelo Signorile has been critical of his fellow columnist 