Worse than the Worst
Christopher Orr
TNR
Readers who missed Isaac's post over the weekend really should have a look at the Weekly Standard piece he cited, "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage," as it is, if anything, even more ridiculous than his characterization.
Still, it's worth noting the rapid evolution of the Standard's grasping-at-straws arguments against gay rights. Though he opposes gay marriage, the author of the piece in question, Sam Schulman, does at least allow that "It is a scandal that homosexual intercourse should ever have been illegal." Indeed, his argument is less an explicitly anti-gay one than the marriage-sucks-but-we-straight-men-have-no-choice model. "[W]ithout social disapproval of unmarried sex--what kind of madman would seek marriage?" opines the thrice-married Schulman at one point. "Many of us feel that licit sexuality [i.e., sex after marriage] loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph," he bemoans at another. One almost feels sorry for the guy.
It was not that long ago that the Standard's line on gay rights was that they were tantamount to an endorsement of pedophilia. In 1996 and 2001 the magazine published, respectively, "Pedophilia Chic" and "Pedophilia Chic, Reconsidered," two of the most obtuse, disingenuous essays it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. The case both made--the first, provisionally, the second, with greater assurance--was that, thanks to the gay rights movement, there had been a surge in acceptance of the sexualization of boys (by gay men) but there existed no comparable sexualization of girls in American culture. The most charitable possible reading of the pieces was that their author, Mary Eberstadt, had never turned on a television, attended a motion picture, entered a record store, or waited in a checkout line.
(More here.)
TNR
Readers who missed Isaac's post over the weekend really should have a look at the Weekly Standard piece he cited, "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage," as it is, if anything, even more ridiculous than his characterization.
Still, it's worth noting the rapid evolution of the Standard's grasping-at-straws arguments against gay rights. Though he opposes gay marriage, the author of the piece in question, Sam Schulman, does at least allow that "It is a scandal that homosexual intercourse should ever have been illegal." Indeed, his argument is less an explicitly anti-gay one than the marriage-sucks-but-we-straight-men-have-no-choice model. "[W]ithout social disapproval of unmarried sex--what kind of madman would seek marriage?" opines the thrice-married Schulman at one point. "Many of us feel that licit sexuality [i.e., sex after marriage] loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph," he bemoans at another. One almost feels sorry for the guy.
It was not that long ago that the Standard's line on gay rights was that they were tantamount to an endorsement of pedophilia. In 1996 and 2001 the magazine published, respectively, "Pedophilia Chic" and "Pedophilia Chic, Reconsidered," two of the most obtuse, disingenuous essays it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. The case both made--the first, provisionally, the second, with greater assurance--was that, thanks to the gay rights movement, there had been a surge in acceptance of the sexualization of boys (by gay men) but there existed no comparable sexualization of girls in American culture. The most charitable possible reading of the pieces was that their author, Mary Eberstadt, had never turned on a television, attended a motion picture, entered a record store, or waited in a checkout line.
(More here.)
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