Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________ I'LL TAKE RELIGION OVER GAY CULTURE BY CAMILLE PAGLIA (06/23/98)

What a relief to finally hear some common sense being spoken about the sad state of "gay politics." Of course it comes as no surprise that these words emanate from the mouth of your columnist, Camille Paglia.
With the current worldwide rise in conservative, right-wing politics, many a gay activist is in for a rude awakening. Paglia is correct when she observes that "conservatives are not stupid." However, many gay activists have proven themselves to be juvenile and complacent to a dangerous degree. As conservative politics continues its inevitable ascendancy, both in America and Australia (where I write from), we will see just how short-lived the gay house of cards is and, like decadent Rome, what shaky foundations it is built on.
I am surprised, however, by Paglia's failure to separate homosexuality from gayness. I have lived in a homosexual relationship for 12 years, but I wouldn't identify as gay in a mad fit. Homosexuality is one option, as old as the mountains, available on the human sexual spectrum. Gayness is a sneeze-in-the-breeze, shallow political movement, with its own rigid dogma, "life-style" and philosophy founded by small-minded boys and girls with a fundamental and never examined grudge as big as Godzilla's instep. Furthermore, if they continue on their current path, they must accept responsibility for endangering the lives of the next wave of homosexuals.
What the future needs now from homosexually oriented men and women is intelligent debate and truth-speaking, free of cant and dogma, to deal with the conservative uprising. Apart from Paglia, I don't see anyone equipped to handle the task.
-- Dmetri Kakmi
Camille is so good on the obscure and erudite that the obvious usually gets lost, and this article is a great example. What should be obvious is the double standard she applies to Trent Lott's position and that of unnamed "gay activists." Gay activists are "whining," but Lott is "exercising his First Amendment rights." The difference, she explains, is that Lott's position is consistent with his religion, which offers a worldview of purportedly great depth.
And here, Camille is behaving like a classic anti-PC crusader, even more rigid and superficial than her intended target. In order to keep fresh her cachet as the scourge of PC cant, it's always a good idea to defend religion; "Wow," readers are supposed to think, "she's an academic, unafraid of sex -- even an atheist! -- but she defends religion. That's deep." But this can only happen because she doesn't take religious ideas at all seriously, either as an outsider capable of viewing them as a threat or as an insider who sees them as a tradition worth saving. Personally, I would think an atheist would find Lott's position alarming. If Camille finds Trent the defender of an honorable tradition, it is probably because she hasn't spent much time defending her local school board from zealots, trying to keep content in textbooks safe from the bloviating Gary Bauer or creationism out of schools.
The point of Lott's attacks is not to enter an intellectual debate. It's to energize the grass roots of the conservative coalition, to help them feel justified in organizing for political action on this point. From Lott's point of view, this will reassure the religious right, otherwise disappointed by the legislative haul from the most recent Congress; from the point of view of gays (and people who don't really like censorship in schools very much), it's an unwelcome invitation to potential crusaders who were feeling like maybe their crusade to rule America was coming a cropper. Either way, bad. I don't care how old Lott's ideas are or how consistent they are. I care what they are.
-- Theodore Liazos
New Haven, Conn.
Camille Paglia's statement that "gayness is certainly not innate" is not the first she has made about the origin of homosexuality in her bimonthly exercises in self-promotional bombast. But repeating her opinion does not further its validity. Though she decries the nihilistic destruction of science by her bogeymen the evil post-structuralists, she engages in the same tactics in pooh-poohing scientific research into the origins of homosexuality. Attacking such research on its merits would be one thing, but she dismisses any such information with a flick of her rhetorical wrist. Maybe she's tracing her oft-flaunted Italian roots back to the Inquisitors who condemned Galileo, rather than to Sr. Galilei himself.
It has been asserted that lesbianism may not have as strong a genetic component as male homosexuality, so maybe Ms. Paglia's beliefs about the innateness of homosexuality are deeply ingrained in her own person. No one knows the answer to the question of the origin of homosexuality, but I'll put my bets on science to sort that out in good time, not on opportunistic fundamentalist politicians, and certainly not on an Amazon with a Freudian ax to grind.
-- John Kirk
St. Louis
As a self-respecting gay man, I can no longer in good conscience read your publication. Camille Paglia's latest attack on gay men was so despicable and filled with her no-longer-concealed contempt for me that to continue to read your publication would be an abrogation of the responsibility I have to myself to not expose my person needlessly to rantings that do not enlighten me any more than reading the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
At one time I was one of the biggest fans of Paglia's take-no-prisoners style, even when I did not agree with her. But she has crossed the line from being contentious into being simply bigoted, parroting the worst stereotypes about homosexuality in general and gay men in particular. Yes, some gay men are decadent. But far more of them -- being editor at a large gay newspaper for 10 years has taught me something about the topic -- are also completely pedestrian and boring. That neither makes the decadent ones bad nor the boring ones more moral, but it does suggest that Paglia hasn't the faintest idea of what she is talking about.
-- Jeff Epperly
Boston
As a model for the brattish, anarchic, mean-spirited, in-your-face posturing that passes for intellectualism among so many right-wingers these days, Camille Paglia is unsurpassed. Her buckshot blast directed against gay men is a scattering of unsupportable assertions and conveniently selected facts.
She mistakenly asserts, for example, that homosexuality "is indeed condemned by the Bible, despite the tortuous casuistry of so many self-interested parties, including clerics." Her assertion is an insult to the integrity of innumerable scriptural and historical scholars who have done their homework and found otherwise. Why are those academics and clerics "self-interested," but not the sectarian leaders of the religious right whose demagogic appeals to resentment of gays guarantee donations of huge amounts of money for their organizations?
She also notes that 19th century evangelicals helped end slavery in the U.S. But, conveniently, she does not note the part that other religionists, particularly Southern Baptists, and their use of the Bible played in supporting slavery and, later, segregation. For it's an ugly fact that the Bible does indeed support slavery, as the abolitionists discovered when they went up against Bible-thumping slave owners. If we no longer tolerate slavery, which is clearly supported by the Bible, why should we tolerate condemnation of homosexuality, which is not clearly supported?
Paglia further errs when she compares the Civil Rights Movement to today's religious right, some of whose leaders, like Falwell and Robertson, used to support segregation. In doing so, Paglia confuses those who fought for civil rights with those who fought against them. How could she ignore the recent apology from the Southern Baptists for their past support of slavery and segregation? I expect that in 100 years they will make the same apology to gays.
Finally, while Paglia gleefully predicts a backlash against gay activists for their 20 years of "insulting disrespect" of religion, she ignores the fact that the past 20 years of backlash from the religious right haven't been successful. In fact, increasing numbers of churches are now supporting gay rights in varying degrees, and polls show that an increasingly religious public is simultaneously showing increased support for gay rights. If there is a coming backlash, I suggest that it will be against the religious right.
-- Dennis L. Trunk
_______________ MONICA VS. MAUREEN BY CAROL LLOYD (06/18/98)

Kudos to Ms. Lloyd! The New York Times photo of Ms. Lewinsky -- truly a "soft core" but very sexualized image -- was unbelievable. As for Ms. Dowd, the less said the better. There's not enough space to analyze this image and the thought processes that went into its selection. Thanks, Salon, for actually noticing and commenting. You all are the only consistently sane and intelligent voice about this whole affair.
-- James A. Bauman
In response to Carol Lloyd's essay "Monica vs. Maureen," perhaps Salon should be a little more self-conscious about its own magnificent obsessions. While readers have been tremendously informed by Salon's coverage of the link between Kenneth Starr and Richard Mellon Scaife's money, Salon has treated us to other tidbits about Starr -- say, for instance, Todd Pitock's piece of May 19, which implies that Ken Starr keeps his inquisition going because he enjoys his newfound sex appeal -- that reflect the same spirit the Gray Lady displays.
In the meantime, there are greater threats to democracy than those posed by this petit Cromwell (Starr) or that virtual Anne Boleyn (Lewinsky). Why, for example, hasn't Salon (or the rest of the media, for that matter) been analyzing the tobacco lobby, whose successful multimillion-dollar commercial campaign has all the logical force and all the bluster of a Klan rally -- but with much deeper pockets? It's been left to "raging liberals" like Kessler and Koop to point out that it's a bit disingenuous for Big Tobacco to be on the side of lowering "taxes" of the little guy when Big Tobacco has been helping kill the little guy and lying about it for decades. Now that the pious post-mortems for the tobacco bill are being conceived in newsrooms across the country, one can answer Lloyd's final question by saying that, indeed, there are better things to get riled up about.
-- Scot Danforth
SALON | June 30, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| HEARSAY RULES BY DAVID CORN

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_______________ I'LL TAKE RELIGION OVER GAY CULTURE BY CAMILLE PAGLIA (06/23/98)
	What a relief to finally hear some common sense being spoken about the sad state of "gay politics." Of course it comes as no surprise that these words emanate from the mouth of your columnist, Camille Paglia. With the current worldwide rise in conservative, right-wing politics, many a gay activist is in for a rude awakening. Paglia is correct when she observes that "conservatives are not stupid." However, many gay activists have proven themselves to be juvenile and complacent to a dangerous degree. As conservative politics continues its inevitable ascendancy, both in America and Australia (where I write from), we will see just how short-lived the gay house of cards is and, like decadent Rome, what shaky foundations it is built on. I am surprised, however, by Paglia's failure to separate homosexuality from gayness. I have lived in a homosexual relationship for 12 years, but I wouldn't identify as gay in a mad fit. Homosexuality is one option, as old as the mountains, available on the human sexual spectrum. Gayness is a sneeze-in-the-breeze, shallow political movement, with its own rigid dogma, "life-style" and philosophy founded by small-minded boys and girls with a fundamental and never examined grudge as big as Godzilla's instep. Furthermore, if they continue on their current path, they must accept responsibility for endangering the lives of the next wave of homosexuals. What the future needs now from homosexually oriented men and women is intelligent debate and truth-speaking, free of cant and dogma, to deal with the conservative uprising. Apart from Paglia, I don't see anyone equipped to handle the task. -- Dmetri Kakmi Camille is so good on the obscure and erudite that the obvious usually gets lost, and this article is a great example. What should be obvious is the double standard she applies to Trent Lott's position and that of unnamed "gay activists." Gay activists are "whining," but Lott is "exercising his First Amendment rights." The difference, she explains, is that Lott's position is consistent with his religion, which offers a worldview of purportedly great depth. And here, Camille is behaving like a classic anti-PC crusader, even more rigid and superficial than her intended target. In order to keep fresh her cachet as the scourge of PC cant, it's always a good idea to defend religion; "Wow," readers are supposed to think, "she's an academic, unafraid of sex -- even an atheist! -- but she defends religion. That's deep." But this can only happen because she doesn't take religious ideas at all seriously, either as an outsider capable of viewing them as a threat or as an insider who sees them as a tradition worth saving. Personally, I would think an atheist would find Lott's position alarming. If Camille finds Trent the defender of an honorable tradition, it is probably because she hasn't spent much time defending her local school board from zealots, trying to keep content in textbooks safe from the bloviating Gary Bauer or creationism out of schools. The point of Lott's attacks is not to enter an intellectual debate. It's to energize the grass roots of the conservative coalition, to help them feel justified in organizing for political action on this point. From Lott's point of view, this will reassure the religious right, otherwise disappointed by the legislative haul from the most recent Congress; from the point of view of gays (and people who don't really like censorship in schools very much), it's an unwelcome invitation to potential crusaders who were feeling like maybe their crusade to rule America was coming a cropper. Either way, bad. I don't care how old Lott's ideas are or how consistent they are. I care what they are. -- Theodore Liazos New Haven, Conn. Camille Paglia's statement that "gayness is certainly not innate" is not the first she has made about the origin of homosexuality in her bimonthly exercises in self-promotional bombast. But repeating her opinion does not further its validity. Though she decries the nihilistic destruction of science by her bogeymen the evil post-structuralists, she engages in the same tactics in pooh-poohing scientific research into the origins of homosexuality. Attacking such research on its merits would be one thing, but she dismisses any such information with a flick of her rhetorical wrist. Maybe she's tracing her oft-flaunted Italian roots back to the Inquisitors who condemned Galileo, rather than to Sr. Galilei himself. It has been asserted that lesbianism may not have as strong a genetic component as male homosexuality, so maybe Ms. Paglia's beliefs about the innateness of homosexuality are deeply ingrained in her own person. No one knows the answer to the question of the origin of homosexuality, but I'll put my bets on science to sort that out in good time, not on opportunistic fundamentalist politicians, and certainly not on an Amazon with a Freudian ax to grind. -- John Kirk St. Louis As a self-respecting gay man, I can no longer in good conscience read your publication. Camille Paglia's latest attack on gay men was so despicable and filled with her no-longer-concealed contempt for me that to continue to read your publication would be an abrogation of the responsibility I have to myself to not expose my person needlessly to rantings that do not enlighten me any more than reading the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. At one time I was one of the biggest fans of Paglia's take-no-prisoners style, even when I did not agree with her. But she has crossed the line from being contentious into being simply bigoted, parroting the worst stereotypes about homosexuality in general and gay men in particular. Yes, some gay men are decadent. But far more of them -- being editor at a large gay newspaper for 10 years has taught me something about the topic -- are also completely pedestrian and boring. That neither makes the decadent ones bad nor the boring ones more moral, but it does suggest that Paglia hasn't the faintest idea of what she is talking about. -- Jeff Epperly Boston As a model for the brattish, anarchic, mean-spirited, in-your-face posturing that passes for intellectualism among so many right-wingers these days, Camille Paglia is unsurpassed. Her buckshot blast directed against gay men is a scattering of unsupportable assertions and conveniently selected facts. She mistakenly asserts, for example, that homosexuality "is indeed condemned by the Bible, despite the tortuous casuistry of so many self-interested parties, including clerics." Her assertion is an insult to the integrity of innumerable scriptural and historical scholars who have done their homework and found otherwise. Why are those academics and clerics "self-interested," but not the sectarian leaders of the religious right whose demagogic appeals to resentment of gays guarantee donations of huge amounts of money for their organizations? She also notes that 19th century evangelicals helped end slavery in the U.S. But, conveniently, she does not note the part that other religionists, particularly Southern Baptists, and their use of the Bible played in supporting slavery and, later, segregation. For it's an ugly fact that the Bible does indeed support slavery, as the abolitionists discovered when they went up against Bible-thumping slave owners. If we no longer tolerate slavery, which is clearly supported by the Bible, why should we tolerate condemnation of homosexuality, which is not clearly supported? Paglia further errs when she compares the Civil Rights Movement to today's religious right, some of whose leaders, like Falwell and Robertson, used to support segregation. In doing so, Paglia confuses those who fought for civil rights with those who fought against them. How could she ignore the recent apology from the Southern Baptists for their past support of slavery and segregation? I expect that in 100 years they will make the same apology to gays. Finally, while Paglia gleefully predicts a backlash against gay activists for their 20 years of "insulting disrespect" of religion, she ignores the fact that the past 20 years of backlash from the religious right haven't been successful. In fact, increasing numbers of churches are now supporting gay rights in varying degrees, and polls show that an increasingly religious public is simultaneously showing increased support for gay rights. If there is a coming backlash, I suggest that it will be against the religious right. -- Dennis L. Trunk
_______________ MONICA VS. MAUREEN BY CAROL LLOYD (06/18/98)
	Kudos to Ms. Lloyd! The New York Times photo of Ms. Lewinsky -- truly a "soft core" but very sexualized image -- was unbelievable. As for Ms. Dowd, the less said the better. There's not enough space to analyze this image and the thought processes that went into its selection. Thanks, Salon, for actually noticing and commenting. You all are the only consistently sane and intelligent voice about this whole affair. -- James A. Bauman In response to Carol Lloyd's essay "Monica vs. Maureen," perhaps Salon should be a little more self-conscious about its own magnificent obsessions. While readers have been tremendously informed by Salon's coverage of the link between Kenneth Starr and Richard Mellon Scaife's money, Salon has treated us to other tidbits about Starr -- say, for instance, Todd Pitock's piece of May 19, which implies that Ken Starr keeps his inquisition going because he enjoys his newfound sex appeal -- that reflect the same spirit the Gray Lady displays. In the meantime, there are greater threats to democracy than those posed by this petit Cromwell (Starr) or that virtual Anne Boleyn (Lewinsky). Why, for example, hasn't Salon (or the rest of the media, for that matter) been analyzing the tobacco lobby, whose successful multimillion-dollar commercial campaign has all the logical force and all the bluster of a Klan rally -- but with much deeper pockets? It's been left to "raging liberals" like Kessler and Koop to point out that it's a bit disingenuous for Big Tobacco to be on the side of lowering "taxes" of the little guy when Big Tobacco has been helping kill the little guy and lying about it for decades. Now that the pious post-mortems for the tobacco bill are being conceived in newsrooms across the country, one can answer Lloyd's final question by saying that, indeed, there are better things to get riled up about. -- Scot Danforth SALON \| June 30, 1998