by Shannon Togawa Mercer
Andrew Sullivan, prominent author, journalist, blogger for The Atlantic and former editor of The New Republic, delivered a speech in McCosh 50,Thursday of last week, on the “The Politics of Homosexuality”. His corresponding article of the same name, written in 1993, is a fascinating read.
In analyzing attitudes toward homosexuality Sullivan separates schools of thought into four categories: the conservative politics of sexuality, radical politics of sexuality, moderate politics of sexuality and the liberal politics of sexuality. His speech last week presented these in their more modern incarnations (given that a lot has changed between 1993 and 2010) but the force of his argument was the same: modern normative assertions against homosexuality are not based in solid logic.
His speech was a systematic debunking of a set of anti-homosexual arguments, but it wasn’t devoid of emotion. He ended his address with misty eyes as he expressed his desire for a world where homosexual individuals are foremost “human beings”, and sexual orientation is merely a secondary, and immaterial, classification.
If you didn’t attend the lecture but you’re still interested in getting a feel for Sullivan, check out his blog: The Daily Dish. He posts constantly, and frankly, he puts us amateur college bloggers to shame.
Sulking over her blog related inadequacy,
Shannon
Image from Stuck in Customs‘ flickr.
Although I realize it’s a bit late to comment on this post, I think none of Andrew Sullivan’s ideas should be taken at face value and I’m surprised to see a piece on Equal Writes that doesn’t question him. It’s also not true that Sullivan’s point is that “modern normative assertions against homosexuality are not based in solid logic”–part of his talk addressed this, but he also argued against hate crime laws and other protections of gay rights. Jill Dolan does a pretty good job of explaining how Sullivan distorts each of those “four schools of thought,” and of what is wrong with his opinion:
http://feministspectator.blogspot.com/2010/02/andrew-sullivan.html