_______________UNCLE ANDREW'S CABIN BY PETER KURTH (11/30/98)

Have Salon's editorial standards sunk so low? Peter Kurth's "Uncle Andrew's Cabin" is an encyclopedia of petty and personal insults to a fine author, factually insupportable assertions, "ideas" that have long since been retired or discredited and all this in a tone that is unbecoming any serious writer. I will give only one example of how faulty Kurth's thinking is. He rises to a rage because Sullivan says that, in light of the new treatments, HIV no longer signifies death, it merely signifies illness. Kurth is infuriated that anyone would even suggest such a thing in light of the millions of infected people who, unlike Sullivan, do not have access to those treatments. To restate the obvious (which Sullivan, among countless others, has done many times), there is a world of difference between saying the disease is now manageable over a lifetime, and saying that there are some political and economic systems or factors that make the ability to manage it difficult or impossible. Kurth's fury is obviously against the very real problems that prevent so many people from getting treatment. But Sullivan has never said, suggested or implied that all people have access to all treatments all the time. Consequently, Kurth's fulmination is a non sequitur, and puts on public display once more the sad state that the extreme gay left has come to. If Sullivan is now widely accepted as representing gay thought, maybe it's because the alternative to his thinking is this impoverished. -- David Link Sacramento, Calif. Thank you, Peter Kurth, for lambasting Andrew "Aquinas" Sullivan. After reading Sullivan's response, I really have to wonder if Sullivan ever reads his own work. He calls Kurth "dumb" -- after accusing him of "demonizing" him instead of addressing his arguments. He claims, incredibly, that he's not a moralist and then terms (undefined) "promiscuity" a "failed search for intimacy." I suppose in Sullivan's world, like the world of the new Christian right, it is not moralizing if you reduce a behavioral style to pathology. Gays aren't just sinners, they're sick and unhappy, say the Christians. The promiscuous aren't immoral, they're suffering a disorder related to poor intimacy skills, says Sullivan. Both call for "compassion." Yeah, right. Sullivan argues he can't be a moralist because he is confessional and even feels ashamed. Hello! Self-judgment can't be moralistic? I'd like to know why the interviewer didn't call him on that embarrassing bit of self-delusion. I truly resent Salon's use of the word "intellectual" to describe Sullivan. I haven't read a single original thought from him -- nor an interesting synthesis. He seems to me much more clearly the kind of person who sets his sails according to the winds of popular opinion and wishful thinking. His notorious declaration of the end of AIDS is the most obnoxiously ignorant piece of journalistic wish fulfillment I have ever read, demonstrating too that the range of his "compassion" and experience of the epidemic extends little farther than the reach of his own (temporarily) saved skin. His demand for Clinton's resignation didn't come until the Lewinsky sexual scandal had conferred a full measure of righteous indignation on all the moralists among us -- even though there was plenty of reason to question Clinton early on. (Clinton should resign for lying about Monica but not for the inaction in Bosnia that Sullivan has repeatedly criticized?) Sullivan's recent screed on the right's use of morals as a political issue is blind projection (he needs to read more Freud). His reduction of the gay civil rights movement to marriage and military service is outrageously out of touch with the struggles of ordinary gay people (witness Matt Shepard) and, again, represents the preoccupation of his own privileged class. Both may be worthy goals but to declare their attainment as the end of the gay rights movement, as Sullivan has, is like saying the right to vote should have ended the feminist movement or that the Civil Rights Act should have ended the plight of black Americans. I think there is plenty of room for criticism of the gay left and we may all need to examine our sexual choices, our spiritual identities and the way we try to fashion queer masculinity. But, for god's sake, Andrew Sullivan's ranting is just a queer reprise of the same stuff every civil rights movement's apologists have produced. Kurth wonders why Sullivan has become "our spokesman." Surely the media pundits tacitly answer that question with their finger-shaking moralistic hooey at Clinton. Sullivan is completely at home among them -- and as far from the sentiment of those he claims to represent as are the other pundits from the rest of America. -- Cliff Bostock Atlanta Peter Kurth's truly hateful polemic against Andrew Sullivan is one of the more unpleasant articles I've read in Salon. It is littered throughout with very strong -- but unsupported -- assertions such as "marriage is the most repressive of all social institutions." (Really? I take it then, that Kurth is an apologist for slavery?) So Kurth hates Sullivan. This expression of his hatred is more personal than political -- and much less is it journalistic. As folks often say on the Usenet: "Take it to e-mail." -- Keith M Ellis Peter Kurth represents to me the bitter sect of the gay population who seeks to protect an ambiguous "collective" values by attacking any dissenting opinions from other gay men. I found his criticisms of Andrew Sullivan closed-minded and dripping with misplaced outrage, as if Kurth's whole life and his perceived reality of gay existence have just been labeled invalid. I may not agree with all of Sullivan's points, but I embrace his individuality and welcome his contribution to the debate table. Venomous attacks from a person who thinks that an infection from HIV gives him the right to speak for the rest of us is as insulting as his views of marriage as the "most repressive of all social institutions." Mr. Kurth has my pity if he thinks that religion and any tool of (personal) salvation is the antichrist of a "pure" gay freedom. He is definitely not speaking for the body of our diverse gay community. -- Dan Santos N E X T+P A G E+| "Jonathan Pollard rightly belongs in jail"