Beyond Hypocrisy

A nice point from Steve Clemons on social conservatives and anonymous gay sex that moves a bit beyond a basic hypocrisy claim: "Andrew Sullivan has much better dexterity with this subject than I do -- but it is disgusting that while so many are now cringing at the thought of gay man having tearoom sex that they are at the same time so obsessive about trying to stop same sex marriage between committed individuals."

Right. There's a real eliminationist strain of thinking in conservative thinking about homosexuality. They want gays in the closet, but they deplore the practices of the closet and the consequences it lead to. What they really want is for gay people to just go away. But they know they can't do that, either. So they whine and they fume. As Ross says, for a long time this was an 80-20 issue for Republican politicians so they had an interest in not thinking too closely about whether or not they were really making sense. But that's increasingly not the case. A reasonable politics of "family values" needs to contain some penalties for heterosexuals with anti-family behavior (see, e.g., Dick Vitter, Rudy Giuliani) and support for gays with pro-family behavior. What they have right now is just loathing of gay people masquerading as defense of the traditional family.

Comments

What they really want is for gay people to just go away. But they know they can't do that, either.

Are you sure about that? I think there's a consistent strain in conservative thought of tolerating the existence of "negative" phenomena, so long as they can be successfully stigmatized. I think, for example, of conservative attitudes towards rising obesity ("people need to exercise willpower") or drug use ("just say no"). The fact that neither of these approaches is doing anything to actually reduce drug use or obesity (the whole point about rising obesity is that it's, you know, rising) doesn't seem to matter very much to them. The point isn't to actually do something about the stigmatized behaviors; the point is to successfully lay blame on the people engaging in them.

This is actually pretty clear in conservative attitudes towards sex education/STD counseling and towards poverty, as well. And, indeed, Iraq. The point isn't actually to accomplish something; the point is to successfully blame the terrorists/the Iranians/the Evil Ones -- someone else.

Posted by brooksfoe | August 30, 2007 9:02 AM

A reasonable politics of "family values" needs to contain some penalties for heterosexuals with anti-family behavior (see, e.g., Dick Vitter, Rudy Giuliani) and support for gays with pro-family behavior.

but since there's nothing that requires anyone to follow "reasonable politics", there's no reason for anyone to spend more than 5 seconds thinking about this.

Posted by cleek | August 30, 2007 9:04 AM

To make it more clear: it just seems to me that conservatives may not necessarily want or need to have anything concrete happen with regard to gay people. What they want is to be able to continue stigmatizing them. That seems to me to be the goal, in and of itself.

Posted by brooksfoe | August 30, 2007 9:05 AM

brooksfoe nails it.

Posted by Captain Goto | August 30, 2007 9:06 AM

I find the numerous and loud condemnations from prez candidates and elected officials illuminating. There is such a rush to prove to the rabid homophobes (i.e."the base") that a "moral" manly man is needed in '08 they're willing to further alienate the middle. Is gay baiting still the electoral draw it used to be? Wouldn't the 35-40% of the electorate firmly in the homophobe/misogynist/xenophobe/bigot/Christianist camp vote Republican anyway without Larry Craig getting strung up in the town square? It says a lot about the Right when hysterical foaming at the mouth gives you an edge over opponents choosing to keep their powder relatively dry.

Posted by steve duncan | August 30, 2007 9:13 AM

Well, the conservatives who get political benefits or psychological benefits out of stigmatizing them may want to simply continue doing so. But I think the average homophobe simply wants to not be aware of homosexuality of all. In the words of my husband's grandmother, "They can be gay if they want, but I don't want to see them hold hands or anything. I don't want to hear about weddings. Let them keep it to themselves." They just wish it would go away 'cause it makes them feel all icky inside.

Posted by 14All | August 30, 2007 9:20 AM

I think what brooksfoe says goes for many conservative politicians, but I really do think the average anti-gay conservative wants gays gone by hook or by crook. Just like their support for Iraq is more about killing Muslims in vengeance rather than any real justice for those who actually committed and helped bring about the atrocity, they don't care about whether some gays have 'pro-family' values that are in line with their own, they want biblical certainties and conformation of their beliefs and gays will always be outside the norm in 'civilized' society.

Posted by Ricky | August 30, 2007 9:20 AM

It says a lot about the Right when hysterical foaming at the mouth gives you an edge over opponents choosing to keep their powder relatively dry.

It says a lot about the mental state of the US voting public (stressed-out, tired of media blithering, and beyond cycnical) that this fact hasn't sent them recoiling in horror, en masse, from the very idea of letting another Republican near elected office.

Posted by Captain Goto | August 30, 2007 9:21 AM

I don't agree with the conservative positions regarding gay marriage or gay rights. However, their positions are in no way hypocritical, although you may argue that they are not sufficiently consequentialist.

One analogy is illegal drugs. Conservatives support heroin being illegal, even though this leads to the unsafe practice of people doing it illicitly, sharing needles, committing crimes to support their habit, etc. I don't think that these bad outcomes mean its hypocritical to be against legalizing heroin. If you think the prospect of a lot of people using heroin legally is bad enough, then it becomes worth it to be in favor of making it illegal, even though this results in a much smaller number of people using it illegally, and this smaller number being worse off on average than each of the legal heroin users would have been.

Posted by Jim W | August 30, 2007 9:22 AM

Sorry Matt, no sale. Lots of those people looking for anonymous sex in stall #3 are openly gay. Lots of people in the closet who don't go trawling public bathrooms for anonymous sex. There are a number of alternatives between "closet" and "anonymous sex in a public bathroom" that you just skip right over. There is no direct causality.

Posted by Dan | August 30, 2007 9:26 AM

Jim W:
What happened during prohibition? More people used it because it was illegal. When something is illegal, it has a certain aura to it. Just look at Larry Craig.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | August 30, 2007 9:28 AM

I'm sure there's plenty of evidence on this score. Is drug use lower or higher in countries where its legalized? Similarly for gay sex, although it might be hard to get the numbers.

Based on common sense, I'd say that in most cases, making an activity illegal dramatically reduces its prevalence.

With respect to Larry Craig and the bathroom business, I'm sure that the kinky, illicit nature of what he was doing was one of its allures.

Posted by Jim W | August 30, 2007 9:35 AM

Ricky, I agree with you that "they want biblical certainties and confirmation of their beliefs." But I think, in fact, that in a sense that's the only concrete thing conservatives demand. I don't think, for example, that they will ever hold any conservative politician responsible for whether the number of self-described gays in the US goes up or down. They're not going to vote anyone out of office for not doing anything to actually get rid of gay people. But they will vote people out of office for signaling that they think gay people are okay. The actual measurable real-world results, the facts, don't matter so much to them, because they don't live in a world of results and facts. They live in a world of values and symbols.

Jim W: do you actually think most conservatives have a reasoned view that stigmatizing homosexuality leads to reduced, if more harmful, gay sexual activity, and have compared the costs and benefits of this approach? I just don't think that conservative politics works in such a rational fashion -- and certainly not the politics of homophobia.

Posted by brooksfoe | August 30, 2007 9:36 AM

brooksfoe,

That's why I stated that you could argue conservatives are not sufficiently consequentialist. I think their reasoning goes this far: homosexuality is wrong, therefore it should not be legitimized by making gay marriage legal, etc.

If they really wanted to reduce male homosexuality, one easy way would be to prevent women with sons from having more children:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_sexual_orientation

Posted by Jim W | August 30, 2007 9:44 AM

I really do think the average anti-gay conservative wants gays gone by hook or by crook

I'm not so sure that's true, given the amount of time many spend pondering the specifics of gay sex, in what might be called loving detail. It's been years since I really wanted to consider exactly what others, gay or straight, are doing in bed, especially if I knew them personally, but the anti-gay crowd reeeaaallly likes dwelling on what they call 'perversion' IME. Every once in a while I point out that straight couples can (and do, more than we probably suspect) do pretty much anything gays or lesbians can-- albeit with more limitations on who does what to whom, which brings up another dimension of the debate-- but that doesn't seem to matter.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 9:45 AM

There really is a lack of a bigger moral/ethical framework among the conservative movement regarding these social issues. Things such as homosexuality kind of float on their own, without obvious links to other moral principles. The reason I think is that these social issues are more about the struggle than they are any sort of policy proposal itself, and I think that's what is being discussed here.

Posted by Karmakin | August 30, 2007 9:49 AM

David Vitter, unless you're editorializing.

Posted by Anonymous | August 30, 2007 10:06 AM

A more interesting track to go off on in my opinion, is why have so many gays started to want to opt-in or assimilate into the 1950's Family Values over the last decade or so, and in doing so rejecting what I think is a rich cosmopolitan subculture of centuries in the west.

Sullivan's The End of Gay Culture is always worth a re-read, even though he thinks that on the balance it's good and I don't. It's really too bad that before Betty Friedan died she had to see so many gays promoting a wedding cake & gown blessing by rabbi, priest & government, followed by a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, a dog, a station wagon, vacations at Disney World and protection of community "family values" "for the children."

Posted by artappraiser | August 30, 2007 10:09 AM

there's nothing that requires anyone to follow "reasonable politics" cleek

You mean voters don't necessarily make rational choices? Voters who are also consumers? I.e. consumers don't always make rational choices?

Econ 101 and the Friedmans have lied to me!

Posted by DAS | August 30, 2007 10:13 AM

is why have so many gays started to want to opt-in or assimilate into the 1950's Family Values over the last decade or so, and in doing so rejecting what I think is a rich cosmopolitan subculture of centuries in the west.

Leaving aside the claim that "married == 1950s family value", this is much like asking why artists might favor democracy and freedom for their governments, rejecting what before had been a very vibrant underground subversive-arts movement that sprung up in more opressive times.

Posted by Tyro | August 30, 2007 10:21 AM

Republican is the name. Cult of Grievance is the game.

Which is why the Supreme Court didn't immediately overturn Roe V. Wade. (You think they're waiting for a 6-3 majority?)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 30, 2007 10:31 AM

Every once in a while I point out that straight couples can (and do, more than we probably suspect) do pretty much anything gays or lesbians can-- albeit with more limitations on who does what to whom, which brings up another dimension of the debate-- but that doesn't seem to matter.

That's ridiculous to claim that straight couples can do anything gay couples can. I've never, for example, seen a straight couple that can quickly throw together a simple yet elegant impromptu dinner party for twelve the way that a gay couple can....

Posted by Stefan | August 30, 2007 10:45 AM

"It's really too bad that before Betty Friedan died she had to see so many gays promoting a wedding cake & gown blessing by rabbi, priest & government, followed by a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, a dog, a station wagon, vacations at Disney World and protection of community "family values" "for the children."

It's too bad for whom? Certainly the people who choose that lifestyle don't think it's bad. If it didn't meet Betty Friedan's approval, too effing bad for her.

Posted by too many steves | August 30, 2007 11:16 AM

I've never, for example, seen a straight couple that can quickly throw together a simple yet elegant impromptu dinner party for twelve the way that a gay couple can...

LOL... point taken.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 11:44 AM

Re: Lots of those people looking for anonymous sex in stall #3 are openly gay.

I have never known any openly gay person who does this. Yes, there are promiscuous gay certainly, but they have ample resources available to them for cruising: bars, bathhouses and of course the Internet. The bathroom sex thing is almost exclusively a "resource" of the severely closeted and/or in severe denial set who do not even trust to the anonymity of a chat room to make their hook-ups.

Re: Based on common sense, I'd say that in most cases, making an activity illegal dramatically reduces its prevalence.

Except where the activity is inherently private and/or the laws rarely enforced so that no one is concerned with the issue of illegality. There are, after all, all sorts of old blue laws still in the books which are routinely violated with impunity by great masses of people. Laws regulating sex in private spaces (note: not restroom sex!) tends to fall in this category. Most sodomy laws for example criminalized sodomy even for married couples, but I doubt the incidence of such sex acts was much reduced, if at all, by those prohibitions.

Posted by JonF | August 30, 2007 12:14 PM

I have never known any openly gay person who does this.

I have a good friend who is every bit as thoroughly "out" as I am, but he does cruise public restrooms (or at least used to) just for kicks. I don't think that really contradicts your overall point that "The bathroom sex thing is almost exclusively a "resource" of the severely closeted and/or in severe denial set," but I do think there's a non-negligible number of out gay men out there who get off on the illicitness of tearoom trade.

Posted by Uncle Kvetch | August 30, 2007 1:26 PM

Well, it takes all kinds I guess, but I have never known a single gay guy (and being one myself I do know quite a few) who did that. Parks, bars, bath-houses, chat rooms, malls, even parking lots-- yes. But pretty much everyone I know finds the restroom thing tacky and annoying (after all we too use those facilities and might not appreciate being hassled at such times).

Posted by JonF | August 30, 2007 1:45 PM

The stigmatization actually does reinforce a potential conservative society, though. Without objects to stigmatize, what's the point of having stigmatization? The "rules", say, in this potential conservative society being irrational is a positive, not a negative. If the "rules" were rational, they would be more easy to obey, and harder for elites to manipulate. Making the "rules" harder to obey and difficult to understand allows the elite to more easily exercise power, makes it easier to ostracize those not intimately familiar with the "rules", etc. A difficult to understand set of "rules" also makes it easy to selectively punish individuals.

Example: Extramarital affairs in Edwardian England. For the elites who know the rules, they have a pretty wide field of action. But the rules are still there, and violations, particularly by new or marginal members of the elite, are occasionally severly punished. That that punishment is more or less random is a plus! It keeps the marginal or new members of the elite stressed and uncertain, while not really threatening any established elite members.

Meanwhile, the middle class is not generally permitted extramarital affairs - which keeps them desiring to enter the elite, and effectively keeps them under greater control and under a great deal of stress (so, the rich can have lots of sex, and I can't because I don't have the money. I'll work like crazy to get that money).

Then, the working classes are allowed to have extramarital affairs, but more as an example to the middle class showing how "non-human" the working classes are - they can't even keep their pants zipped! (well, neither can the elite, but that's somehow "different")

Posted by burritoboy | August 30, 2007 2:05 PM

You're forgetting the men's rooms in gay bars.

Posted by Herschel | August 30, 2007 2:09 PM

"Andrew Sullivan has much better dexterity with this subject than I do"

I bet he does ...

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 2:17 PM

Matt writes:

"They want gays in the closet, but they deplore the practices of the closet and the consequences it lead to."

C'mon, Matt, I know you don't remember much before Monica Lewinsky, but the history is that homosexuality was destigmatized in a few big cities -- NY, SF, LA in particular. For example, the Lindsay Administration stopped sending undercover cops into gay bars in 1967. And, as gays came out of the closet, that was followed by a massive outbreak of homosexual monogamy.

Oh, wait, no it was actually followed by years of debauch, followed by the AIDS epidemic, which emerged out of precisely those cities where homosexuality was most tolerated.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 2:28 PM

I have often wondered to what extent homosexuality is intertwined with a desire for the fellowship of belonging in a 'besieged' group and a certain adolescent sort of rebelliousness against societal norms. It's odd that public mens rooms are still used as pick-up spots by gay men when they have so many safer and more comfortable options, e.g., the steam rooms at one of the urban gay gyms, etc.

Posted by Fred | August 30, 2007 2:45 PM

It's called "transgressiveness." It's easy for gays to get jaded with sex, because so much is available to them, so it puts a spark back into it to keep upping the ante.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:01 PM

@ Jim W.:

But yor analogy proves Matt's point. I think any conservative (and most liberals) would say that using heroin is in and of itself a bad thing, and the world would be better off if no one used it. That's precisely what social-values conservatives aren't willing to say about gay people (at least, not in public).

The hypocrisy isn't that they want the behavior stigmatized even though they don't think that'll eliminate it, it's that they want to eliminate it but aren't willing to say so publicly. So they continue acting like homosexuality will just go away if they keep pushing, without ever admitting that's the objective.

A comparison could actually be made to how many of them feel about Islam, actually...

Posted by That Fuzzy Bastard | August 30, 2007 3:39 PM

This is a good example of how reality-resistant American public discourse is: when AIDS emerged in the most gay-liberated cities in America in the early 1980s, it was immediately obvious that the chief cause of the vast epidemic among American gays was the gay liberation of the late 1960s and 1970s. But, since America's enlightened elites had decided that liberation is good and stigmatization is bad, and that pointing out trade-offs would just succor the unenlightened in their prejudices, this fact was barely mentioned. Indeed, it was far more often alleged in the public press in the 1980s that the cause of the AIDS epidemic among gays had to be -- it just _had_ to be -- discrimination against gays!

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:41 PM

It's easy for gays to get jaded with sex, because so much is available to them, so it puts a spark back into it to keep upping the ante.

Or one can just be a closeted gay conservative, so the most pathetic, furtive encounters seem like more of a thrill.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 3:44 PM

Here's what liberated gay New York was like in the late 1970s, just before the worst of the many sexually transmitted epidemics struck:

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/02/aids_and_immune.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:47 PM

Steve Sailer shows that vile racism needs to be followed by vile hatred of gays. Completely degenerate, Steve Sailer, purveying hatred forever.

Posted by Jennifer | August 30, 2007 3:55 PM

Ever notice how absolutely brimming with hate are the people on this site who denounce me as being a hater?

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:57 PM

Fred is follwing Steve Sailer in sick hatred, and vying for the hatred lead. Hate on, Fred, you bastard. Same to you, Bastard Steve.

Posted by Jennifer | August 30, 2007 3:58 PM

Great timing, Jennifer! Thanks for confirming my observation.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:59 PM

I think it's important to distinguish between hatred and mere smug contemptibility, actually.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 4:01 PM

Now, as we've seen right here, we have a major problem with the quality of intellectual discourse in modern America, as exemplified by the fact that when one of the most important social events of the last four decades -- that gay liberation led to the vast AIDS epidemic among American gays -- can't even be _mentioned_ on an intellectually elite website without eliciting furious ad hominem attacks.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 4:05 PM

Wouldn't an "important social event" have actual facts to back it up, as opposed to anecdotes?

In other words, Sailer might get fewer accusations of being a hater if he could offer actual proof that gay liberation led directly to AIDS, as opposed to the gut feeling that if gay men were still miserable AIDS would never have happened.

It's a bit like Sailer's gut-feeling posts about race, which tend to boil down to "white men drive like this, but black men drive like that." Stand-up comedy ain't science.

Posted by M.A. | August 30, 2007 4:16 PM

For starters, see:

Sexual Ecology: The Birth of AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men (Hardcover)
by Gabriel Rotello

http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Ecology-Birth-AIDS-Destiny/dp/0525941649

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 4:23 PM

gay liberation led to the vast AIDS epidemic among American gays

That would be a much more solid assertion if there was any evidence that AIDS (or the HIV virus) actually existed before 'gay liberation.' As they say, correlation does not equal causation, and I'm pretty sure that primate-eating African tribes in the seventies neither knew nor cared much about San Francisco bathhouses, etc.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 4:31 PM

"NIH researcher June Osborne notes that the NIH was repeatedly forced to redefine "multiple sex partners" for big-city gay males during the 1970's -- from 10-20 a year in 1975 to 50 a year in 1976 to 100 a year in 1978, and finally to an astounding 500 a year in 1980. "I am duly in awe," she said (quoted, Rotello, 1997, pp. 62-63).

"Here, much more than with the heterosexual population, was a population which really had come close to abandoning self-restraint, seriously taken up a variant of the Playboy Philosophy, and produced a true behavioral revolution of "sex-positive" behavior with scores or hundreds of short-term couplings, but very few long-term ones. Tragically, the behavioral revolution was followed by a clinical revolution of mass diffusion of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, not all of which could be stopped with pharmaceutical silver bullets. The social-harassment costs of risky, unrestrained behavior plummeted in the 1960's; but health costs skyrocketed in the 1970's and since. (Gabriel Rotello (1997, Ch. 3) lists a number of perceived post-Stonewall behavioral changes among gay males contributing to the STD epidemics: choosing "versatile" anal sex over oral sex or receptive-only anal sex with straight partners; choosing multiple, concurrent contacts over single or serial monogamy; and creating cores of sexual hyperactivity with many bridges to people outside the core. Together, he argues in effect, these multiplied transmission risk by many orders of magnitude and converted many diseases from trivial-to-minor health problems to mass, gay-centered urban epidemics, one of which seems to have come close to destroying half the gay populations of the biggest cities. Among these behavior-multiplied diseases were hepatitis B, syphilis, giardiasis, shigellosis, amoebiasis, gonorrhea, and HIV. HIV incidence skyrocketed in big-city gay populations -- New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco -- from next to zero in the mid-1970's to 40-73% by 1985. Other STD's followed similar, but much less fatal trajectories. According to CDC interviews, the first several hundred gay AIDS patients averaged 1,100 sexual contacts apiece (Rotello, 1997, p. 62)."

http://govt.mckenna.edu/welliott/Sexrevns.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 4:31 PM

M.A.,

It's common knowledge among anyone who lives in or near a city with a large, liberated gay population that sexual promiscuity, and, to a lesser extent, unsafe sex, have long been rampant in these communities. Few honest gays would even dispute this.

Steve Sailer,

It's worth remembering two groups that suffered a lot of collateral damage from the AIDs epidemic: first Haitians (as a result of sex tourism by American gays) and later, black women, as a result of sex with black men on "the DL".

Posted by Fred | August 30, 2007 4:33 PM

Fuzzy Bastard,

I don't think what I said proves Matt's point.

My basic point is, if conservatives believe that:
1. stigmatizing gay sex will reduce its incidence (even a little), and
2. gay sex is really really bad,
then deciding that its ok to stigmatize gay sex is not hypocritical, even if one of the side effects is that many gays will end up having to pursue sex furtively, and therefore suffer a bit.

Posted by Jim W | August 30, 2007 4:37 PM

What we can see here in the comments is a classic example of how people who submit to political correctness makes themselves more ignorant and hate-filled than they would be if they were honest.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 4:37 PM

Watch Fred and Steve Sailer vying for who can be more vilely hateful. Hate forever is what these bastards are about.

Posted by Jennifer | August 30, 2007 4:40 PM

I think that when we talk about promiscuity among gay men, the fault lies not with the fact that they are gay, but with the fact that they are men.

I'm sure there are lots of heterosexual men out there who would be equally promiscuous if only heterosexual women "thought like men".

Posted by Jim W | August 30, 2007 4:41 PM

Right, there are no women involved to restrain gay men when pursuing promiscuous sex.

Lesbians are vastly less promiscuous on average than gay men.

Posted by Steve Sailers | August 30, 2007 4:43 PM

If there are any members of "the reality-oriented community" out there, you might find interesting my 1994 article "Why Lesbians Aren't Gay" that lists three dozen traits on which gay men and lesbians tend to differ:

http://www.isteve.com/lesvsgay.htm

Jennifer, of course, should avoid learning anything because she might have an aneurysm.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 4:52 PM

The overarching point is: It's just a lot more fun going through life not being intentionally oblivious to the obvious. If you have a brain, it's more enjoyable to use it to understand how the world works than it is to abuse it making up politically correct lies, wishful thinking, and obfuscation.

Sure, you have to put up with a lot of ignorant hatred and it might cost you a lot of money in the long run, but thinking for yourself is _fun_.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 5:06 PM

Right, there are no women involved to restrain gay men when pursuing promiscuous sex. Lesbians are vastly less promiscuous on average than gay men.

Well, that sort of undermines the point that there's any sort of tie between homosexuality and promiscuity per se. What it shows isn't that gay men are more promiscuous -- it just means that men are, period. It's their maleness, not their homosexuality, that makes them more likely to have multiple sexual partners.

If straight women were as openly promiscuous as straight men then you'd see straight men engaging in the same sorts of behaviors. (Consider, for example, the vast numbers of straight men who seek out female prostitutes for casual and anonymous sex).

Posted by Stefan | August 30, 2007 5:15 PM

Sailer-
You're beating up straw men here. A.I.D.S was a largely unforeseeable consequence of sexual liberation.

The basic premise you attacked was that conservatives are partially responsible for gay promiscuity because they can’t bring themselves to advocate gay monogamous relationships as a good thing. Say the kind of thing that a prominent politician could be involved in.

The editorial review of the book you linked to said:
“Monogamy was identified with "straight" culture and therefore something to be resisted.”
This is similar to what I was taught when I studied gay culture in college. Conservatives rejected gays, gays rejected conservatism. You haven’t said anything that undermines that thesis.

Sure San Francisco made it easier to be gay, and more people got A.I.D.S. there then in other places. Liberals let people make mistakes, so what.

P.S.

"Ever notice how absolutely brimming with hate are the people on this site who denounce me as being a hater?"

"Jennifer, of course, should avoid learning anything because she might have an aneurysm."

Either you want us to feel sorry for you about all the abuse you get in comment threads or you want to sling insults back and further. Pick one

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | August 30, 2007 5:15 PM

"I think that when we talk about promiscuity among gay men, the fault lies not with the fact that they are gay, but with the fact that they are men."

Jim W, that's a fair point, and one that was made in the gay-produced Shotime series "Queer as Folk".

Jennifer,

Your comments sound like they were written by a non-precocious 12 year old boy.

Steve Sailer,

Sure, you have to put up with a lot of ignorant hatred and it might cost you a lot of money in the long run, but thinking for yourself is _fun_.

Might an empirical study find less political correctness among commentators who live in places with lower costs of living (you might be an outlyer here living in expensive SoCal)?

Posted by Fred | August 30, 2007 5:19 PM

Stefan writes:

"Well, that sort of undermines the point that there's any sort of tie between homosexuality and promiscuity per se. What it shows isn't that gay men are more promiscuous ..."

All true, except that gay men _are_ on average more promiscuous.

Christopher C. writes:

"A.I.D.S was a largely unforeseeable consequence of sexual liberation."

Except that gay liberation caused six other sexually transmitted disease epidemics among urban gays: "Among these behavior-multiplied diseases were hepatitis B, syphilis, giardiasis, shigellosis, amoebiasis, gonorrhea, and HIV."

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 5:36 PM

All true, except that gay men _are_ on average more promiscuous.

Again, because they're men, not because they're gay. They're more promiscuous as compared to straight men -- why? Because gay men only have to convince other men to sleep with them, whereas straight men have to convince straight women. If women said "yes" to casual, random, anonymous sex as much as men do, then straight men would easily be as promiscuous as their gay brethren.

If there were some magic link between promiscuity and homosexuality you would also expect to find lesbians to be more promiscuous than straight women, and that is generally not the case (indeed, it is more often the reverse, see, e.g., the well-known phenomenom of "lesbian bed death").

Posted by Stefan | August 30, 2007 5:51 PM

I notice that in addition to heralding his own intellectual prowess and open-mindedness as unsubtly as a gifted teenager who just read his first Ayn Rand novel, Sailer continues to engage in some of the most juvenile argumentation ever seen on the internet.

"...it was immediately obvious..."
It's just a lot more fun going through life not being intentionally oblivious to the obvious.

Not to mention the smug, self-certainty that everyone else engages in "politically correct lies, wishful thinking, and obfuscation" whereas his own ideological filter is cleansed of all preconceptions. And the classic Freshman-level certainty that a social phenomenon must have a single, readily identifiable cause.

I don't think there's any real doubt that there was an explosion in promiscuous gay behavior in the 1970s in certain cities, nor any doubt that this is connected to how rapidly HIV spread in the gay community.

Of course, there also isn't any doubt that the Reagan Administration had no interest in funding public health research on "the gay plague" and refused to dispense any accurate information on its transmission until C. Everett Koop risked his job to do the right thing.

And naturally, one would think that an assessment of gay rights ought to include both the short-term increase in promiscuity when gay hangouts were decriminalized but still marginalized, but also the long-term changes that created a more family-oriented gay and lesbian culture after gay couples actually began to receive public and legal acceptance. Since, you know, historical events sometimes affect more than one variable.

But no, Sailer's own clear, cool intellect, and his deep knowledge of gay culture have enabled him to show us the truth that only the pure of heart can see. It's all so clear now! Thanks for the enlightenment, Steve.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 30, 2007 5:54 PM

All truths connect to other truths, whereas politically correct obfuscations are dead ends for thought. They don't lead anywhere, they don't help you understand other things. In fact, they actively make you stupider.

Flushing this vast piece of social history -- how gay liberation led to AIDS -- down the old memory hole makes you less capable of coming up with intelligent thoughts on subsequent issues, like gay marriage.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 5:54 PM

As I wrote on National Review Online in 2000 (please not I use "gay" to refer only to "gay male," not "lesbian"):

"Although many gays do stick to one partner, on average they tend to be far more promiscuous than straights or lesbians. Leaving aside the symbolic and insurance issues, the main practical question for the rest of society is whether legalizing gay marriage would cause gay men to have sex less randomly, and therefore suffer and spread fewer venereal diseases like AIDS.

"The first blow for gay liberation was struck the evening following Judy Garland's funeral in 1969, when distraught drag queens violently resisted an NYPD raid on their Stonewall bar. Within a few years, they were free at last from the police harassment that had kept them from having sex with as many strangers per night as they wished. The result was the AIDS epidemic. (Early AIDS victims averaged 1,100 sex partners apiece.)

Some gay spokesmen, like former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan, argue that legalizing homosexual marriage would, "in the wake of AIDS, qualify as a genuine public health measure. . . . My own guess is that most gays would embrace such a goal with as much (if not more) commitment as straights."

"But could it be, instead, that fewer gay men want to _be_ married than to _get_ married? Does gay marriage appeal more because sexual fidelity offers a role for a lifetime, or because a wedding provides the role of a lifetime? As one gay comic puts it, "Gay marriage is the hot political issue because you get all these great benefits: insurance, adoption, and a really fabulous veil." ,,,

"Why do gay men have so much trouble staying faithful? A gay man, to paraphrase Rick's description of Captain Renault in Casablanca, is a man like any other man, only more so. Straight men aren't innately better at resisting temptation. They just have far less placed in their paths. And when they yield to it, their wives often punish them severely for it. Thus, it's not marriage per se that discourages promiscuity; it's the intense sexual jealousy that arises between a man and a woman. Husbands demand their wives' sexual fidelity because, as the old saying goes, "Wife's baby, husband's maybe." Men dread having to pay to raise another man's child. Wives, in turn, insist upon a husband's emotional fidelity so they can be sure he'll support their children. For two gay men sharing an apartment, however, these primal motivations toward sexual envy are moot.

"Further, sexual boredom generally sets in faster for two gays living together than for a husband and wife. That's because very few people are narcissists. Everybody lusts for somebody different. This poses a problem for gays, since, as Dr. Michael Bailey's research shows, the majority of gays were effeminate boys who grew up to yearn for manly men. However, there are nowhere near enough innately masculine homosexuals to meet the demand. So, naturally effeminate gays play-act at machismo by pumping iron, getting crew cuts like the one Johnny Unitas wore when he quarterbacked the 1958 Colts, dressing up like the Village People, and so forth. These charades work fine in the bars and bathhouses, but few gays can keep up the he-man acts after they start shopping for spice racks together. Thus, the thrill is gone sooner for gays than for straights, on average.

"So legalizing single-sex marriage isn't likely to prevent the next gay venereal epidemic. Yet, will gay weddings destroy society? Overall, I'm not terribly worried. Still, the fervor with which some gay grooms will pursue the perfect wedding will make straight men even less enthusiastic about enduring their own weddings. The opportunities for gays to turn weddings into high-camp farces are endless. For example, if two drag queens get married, who gets to wear white?

"And anything that discourages straight men from marrying would be widely harmful. While most straight guys eventually decide that being married is fine, the vast majority find getting married a baffling and punitive process. (You may have noticed that while Modern Bride magazine is now over 1,000 pages long, there is no Eager Groom magazine.) About the only comment a straight man can make in favor of his role is that at least it's a guy thing -- not a gay thing. But for how much longer?

http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/culture/culture-sailer070100.shtml

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 6:12 PM

So let's see, we've gone from generalization from anecdote and fallacious speculation to immodestly quoting your own PUBLISHED generalization from anecdote and fallacious speculation... with an expert pull-quote. I suppose that's progress.

Steve, have you ever performed a multivariable calculation? Can you wrap your high IQ around the notion that gay men might be more likely on average to be promiscuous than straight men, and yet gay men who have the legal and socially-accepted option of marriage and free association are less likely to cruise airport restrooms for anonymous sex than closeted, deeply conflicted gay men who marry women to keep up appearances?

I suppose that readers of conservative magazines would not find this point as funny as your frat-house routine about drag queen weddings. And perhaps it's just my politically correct false consciousness leading me astray. But this point strikes me as, well, fairly obvious.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 30, 2007 6:30 PM

Steve Sailer and Fred give being degenerate a new definition. These are true monsters, beyond all self-control. Every line filled with hatred. Monsters of monsters.

Posted by Jennifer | August 30, 2007 6:30 PM

Racism gives way to insane homephobia. Carry on Steve and Fred. Show us who you disgustoids are.

Posted by Jennifer | August 30, 2007 6:33 PM

What LaFollette Progressive said, and I reiterate that there's no point in claiming someone is hateful-- implying insecurity, resentment, fear, etc.-- when evidence indicates that he's merely a self-important asshole. They're two very different character deficiencies, social & political alliances notwithstanding.

Posted by latts | August 30, 2007 6:39 PM

@Jim W:

RIght, but the point being made is that (mainstream) conservatives don't have the nerve to say your point #2, that homosexuality is very bad. Instead they fret about the "lifestyle" or praise "family values", even as they freak out any time gays threaten to adopt a family values-oriented lifestyle.

If conservatives would say "We oppose gay marriage and anti-discrimination laws because we want there to be as little homosexuality as possible", then the discussion could continue: the next question would be "What's wrong with homosexuality?", Steve Sailer would say "It causes promiscuity", others would say "Maybe not", and so on.

But because conservatives prefer to use nudge-nudge rhetoric about family (lest they be exposed as basically bigoted), they can't have an honest discussion of the subject. If every gay man on earth declared tomorrow that they wanted to have a monogamous relationship forever after, conservatives' heads would explode, because their shell game depends on pretending that gayness is the antonym of family-oriented, while ignoring everything they do (preventing marriage or adoption, say) that keeps that the case.

Posted by That Fuzzy Bastard | August 30, 2007 7:46 PM

I am shocked! I just assumed an Intellectual Eminence of the stature of Steve Sailer would never stoop to trolling cyberspace to engage in liberal-baiting. How naive of poor little gay moi. I must say, rather than coming off as a high-minded thinker, he reminds me of a nerdy, petulant college freshman I once new who seemed to think he deserved a Nobel prize for mastering the basics of linear regression. He always tried to prove the most dubious hypothesis based on a single bivariate correlation. Sadly, he never was able to grasp the concept of spurious correlation. After tinkering for a few hours with SPSS, he would come to these mind-blowing conclusions, like increasing rates of radio ownership in Egypt caused rising pollution in the Nile. He kind of got the idea of what social science is all about, well, on second thought, not really. You cut a sad figure, Steve Sailer. No one takes your pseudoscience seriously. Reflect on your direction, my friend.

Posted by Sapere Aude | August 30, 2007 9:16 PM

I'm not clear what Sailer's comments even have to do with Matt's comment.

If someone is opposed to promiscuity due to health risks (which is theoretically a semi-plausible argument), Vitter's repeated use of prositutes should be as problematic as homosexual promiscuity. Having a national party led by people on their third or fourth marriages could also harmful to the reduction of promiscuity.

Predictions that gay marriage will not reduce promiscuity are somewhat beside the point - if we want to reduce promiscuity due to health concerns, making at least some reward for monogamous homosexual relationships is a reasonable policy - even if it reduces homosexual promiscuity only slightly, that slightly is a positive result.

After all, our government does actively encourage heterosexual marriage (partially in hopes of reducing heterosexual promiscuity), besides the romantic and sentimental considerations, by offering positive financial / legal benefits to marriage. If heterosexual people are partially encouraged to marry by such benefits, why wouldn't (at least some) homosexuals respond to those incentives as well?

Posted by burritoboy | August 30, 2007 10:14 PM

"A.I.D.S was a largely unforeseeable consequence of sexual liberation."
Except that gay liberation caused six other sexually transmitted disease epidemics among urban gays: "Among these behavior-multiplied diseases were hepatitis B, syphilis, giardiasis, shigellosis, amoebiasis, gonorrhea, and HIV."

Nothing about that speaks whether A.I.D.S. was a foreseeable consequence of gay sexual liberation. Did you publish some article in 1975 saying gay sexual liberation will kill millions? Regardless liberals only let people make decisions for themselves and have nothing to be sorry for.

Many liberals, thanks I believe to Andrew Sullivan, have come to the conculsion some conservative beliefs (monogamy over promiscuity) are valid or social useful. What's so complicated or objectionable about the idea that the world would be a better place if conservatives would admit that gay monogamy is what they want to happen instead of pretending that gays can just stop being gay?

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | August 30, 2007 10:18 PM

Let's concede, for the sake of argument, that gay liberation led to the AIDS epidemic. Does it follow that gays should have stopped fighting their stigmatization and accepted being invisible second-class citizens? Aren't there alternative strategies towards reducing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases (education, condom distrubution, encouraging more careful sexual behavior) than keeping gays in the closet?

Posted by Peter H | August 30, 2007 10:33 PM

Here's this gigantic fact about the social history of the United States over the last 40 years -- that gay liberation, more than anything else, led to the AIDS epidemic -- and it's just not something a respectable person is supposed to mention in public. It's just not done.

How exactly can you expect to make reasonable guesses about the future if you don't allow yourself to learn about the past?

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 10:58 PM

"How exactly can you expect to make reasonable guesses about the future if you don't allow yourself to learn about the past?"

Per my previous comment, "Many liberals, thanks I believe to Andrew Sullivan, have come to the conculsion some conservative beliefs (monogamy over promiscuity) are valid or social useful."

I'm not sure where you get the idea that nobody is learning from the past. Matt's original comments were a reflective of fairly new set of liberal ideas.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | August 30, 2007 11:24 PM

"Here's this gigantic fact about the social history of the United States over the last 40 years -- that gay liberation, more than anything else, led to the AIDS epidemic -- and it's just not something a respectable person is supposed to mention in public. It's just not done." -- Steve Sailer

It is only natural that in an enlightened, progressive society (I use the term in the broadest sense, to mean a society that evolves over time) attitudes and beliefs are frowned upon, and perhaps even held up to ridicule, if they fail consistently to withstand any reasonably rigorous critique of their validity. We live in a society that is heir to the Enlightenment tradition. That tradition -- rooted in deep respect for human experience, and in the use of rational analysis to dispel centuries-old superstitions -- has yielded tremendous successes in the field rational inquiry. Simply stated, a serious analysis of your contention does not hold any water, and reasonable people in our society know this. Knowledgeable researchers using sophisticated analytical tools will easily falsify your assertion, however it is not necessary to go so far. Your preposterous assertion that gay liberation "more than anything else" is responsible for the epidemic is patently flawed. Remember introductory logic? Gay liberation may have been a necessary cause for the AIDS epidemic among gay men, but not a sufficient one. You seem to be forgetting a little ball of RNA called HIV. "More than anything" else implies that gay liberation preceded the emergence of the HIV virus in the causal chain, or that it was the most important cause. This is clearly not the case. In Africa, the disease from the beginning has been most devastating among heterosexual adults and children of infected mothers. Using your defective reasoning skills would lead one to conclude that in Africa, "heterosexual liberation" or "childhood liberation" are responsible "more than anything else" for the AIDS epidemic. Ah, yes; those pesky spurious correlations again!

So either your reasoning skills are faulty, or you are quite aware that your statement is pure ideology, motivated by prejudice and anti-gay superstition, in which case you you are not intellectually challenged, but rather intellectually dishonest. I am not sure which is worse.

Posted by Sapere Aude | August 30, 2007 11:44 PM

LaFollette Progressive writes:

I don't think there's any real doubt that there was an explosion in promiscuous gay behavior in the 1970s in certain cities, nor any doubt that this is connected to how rapidly HIV spread in the gay community.

And then:

Of course, there also isn't any doubt that the Reagan Administration had no interest in funding public health research on "the gay plague" and refused to dispense any accurate information on its transmission until C. Everett Koop risked his job to do the right thing.

And then he asks Sailer:

Steve, have you ever performed a multivariable calculation?

My question for LaFollette:

Which do you think was the main cause of the spread of AIDS, the "explosion in promiscuous gay behavior" you refer to, or "misinformation" from the Reagan Administration? Do you need to perform a multivariable calculation to answer this? Occam's Razor suggests one answer here; Kushner's Razor might suggest another.

You try to bait Sailer with snide ad hominem comments, and claim he isn't rigorous enough, when he has offered more data and citations to back up his comments than anyone else on this thread.

Posted by Fred | August 30, 2007 11:47 PM

"Ever notice how absolutely brimming with hate are the people on this site who denounce me as being a hater?

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 30, 2007 3:57 PM "

I also hate David Duke, but I guess that makes me shrill.

As a side note, I have noticed that among my friends, gay men are the ones who look down the most and have the most moral objections to people not using condoms while straight men complain about condoms the most. I doubt Fred really has that many gay friends.

Posted by Reality Man | August 31, 2007 12:05 AM

"You try to bait Sailer with snide ad hominem comments, and claim he isn't rigorous enough, when he has offered more data and citations to back up his comments than anyone else on this thread. -- "Fred"

Anecdotes and isolated facts, however craftily woven together, will never support any serious scientific hypothesis. Any well constructed multivariate model will demonstrate that, across all global populations, inoculation with the HIV virus has the biggest independent Beta (i.e. it is the best predictor variable) for who will develop AIDS, compared with **any** social, demographic, political, or psychological variable such as Gay liberation.

Posted by Sapere Aude | August 31, 2007 12:06 AM

Now, looking at the social variables, it is a valid question to look at how those impact the likelihood of being inoculated with HIV in the first place, but clearly there is no unitary causal pathway, and the causal chain might look very different in India or Russia, say, compared with the United States, which indicates that there is a high degree of contingency in the social factors.

Posted by Sapere Aude | August 31, 2007 12:11 AM

Re: That would be a much more solid assertion if there was any evidence that AIDS (or the HIV virus) actually existed before 'gay liberation.

The virus has been in existence in more or less its current form since the 1930s, possibly since the 1890s (at least that's what the science suggests). There are tissue sample dating from the 1950s (preserved because of the mysterious nature of the patient's death) with HIV in them. This is not to support the previous poster's position, which is absurd (gay rights did not begin to progress in any meaningful way until the 1990s when the epidemic was already old news) but HIV did not simply descend out of the blue in 1981. It was around for a long time, infecting mariginalized populations whose deaths were seldom questioned or researched, and thus avoided detection.

Re: NIH researcher June Osborne notes that the NIH was repeatedly forced to redefine "multiple sex partners" for big-city gay males during the 1970's -- from 10-20 a year in 1975 to 50 a year in 1976 to 100 a year in 1978, and finally to an astounding 500 a year in 1980.

I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a swamp in Florida to sell anyone who believes such figures. Men (and not just gay men) are notorious for exaggerating their conquests.

Re: first Haitians (as a result of sex tourism by American gays)

????
Major HUH?

Haiti was never a tourist destination for anyone, gay, straight, American or foreign, and certainly not for sex. It isn't exactly Thailand, you know. It's a very poor, violent and unhygienic Third World country that few people want to visit. And if you're looking for prostitutes, of any persuasion, they are more easily found in your own community. Not to mention the fact that most people do have a preferrence for their own race in the boudoir and the majority race of Haiti and the majority race of the US are not the same.

Re: Except that gay liberation caused six other sexually transmitted disease epidemics among urban gays

Odd, I thought these diseases were caused by microbes of various sorts. If you can prove this assertion, that political opinions can cause infectious disease, you could win the Noble Prize for medicine! In fact, you could win it for physics too since you are claiming reverse causation by claiming that future events can exert causal influence on the past.

Posted by JonF | August 31, 2007 12:36 PM

JonF,

In the last paragraph, I think you're taking literalism to an extreme. Yes, diseases are caused by microbes. But, granted that the microbes already exist and are out there, isn't it fair to say that a disease epidemic can be caused by behaviors or living conditions that allow the microbe to spread?

As for the AIDS epidemic, I don't know much about it, but it sounds plausible that the "sexual revolution" of the 60's and 70's provided an environment that allowed HIV to break out. That is, allowed it to spread rapidly enough to become a full fledged epidemic.

Posted by Jim W | August 31, 2007 12:49 PM

Which do you think was the main cause of the spread of AIDS, the "explosion in promiscuous gay behavior" you refer to, or "misinformation" from the Reagan Administration?

I never said either one was the "main cause," now did I? Sailer sneered at the notion that bigotry had anything to do with the spread of AIDS, and I'm calling him out on it.

I'm not running around making claims of causality. Sailer is. He's presenting data about gay promiscuity in the 1970s and psychobabble about homosexual relationships, and presenting this as "evidence" against Matt's point:

A reasonable politics of "family values" needs to contain some penalties for heterosexuals with anti-family behavior (see, e.g., Dick Vitter, Rudy Giuliani) and support for gays with pro-family behavior."

Further still, he's claiming this is "obvious."

This is what Sailer does. He dredges up irrelevant data and colorful anecdotes and uses them to make sweeping claims about how his biases are valid and how conventional wisdom is wrong. He has provided more data and citations than anyone else, but the data and citations don't support his claims or discredit anyone else's. Not exactly what I'd call "rigor." But maybe you're easily impressed.

There is a substantial body of evidence, referenced by Sullivan and others, to suggest that gay culture has become substantially less promiscuous and more family-oriented in the past decade or so as it has become more socially accepted by the mainstream. Data about gay male behavior in the 1970s, when it was still a marginalized subculture, do not detract at all from the above thesis.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 31, 2007 1:13 PM

JonF:

Haiti was never a tourist destination for anyone, gay, straight, American or foreign, and certainly not for sex.

From a 1983 article in the New York Times ( FOR HAITI'S TOURISM, THE STIGMA OF AIDS IS FATAL):

-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Two years ago, many of Haiti's low-paid workers were still building and staffing new luxury hotels and nightclubs, evidence of the widening circle of Americans drawn by the conviviality, art and grace of the people of this preindustrial Caribbean land.

But since the summer of 1982, when American health authorities linked Haiti and the so-far incurable disorder known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, this country's tourist industry has collapsed. They said the largest group of AIDS victims consisted of male homosexuals, and the second largest group of victims consisted of Haitians...

In a precarious economy where tourism was the second largest source of foreign income and supported some 25,000 direct and indirect jobs, this setback has brought widespread hardship and despair. The collapse has also provoked angry Government charges that American health officials have been racist in singling out Haiti and that AIDS was introduced here by American homosexuals...

While the geographical origin of AIDS is unknown, some Haitian, American and other foreign doctors and health workers dealing with AIDS here insist that an infectious agent was brought to Haiti by American homosexuals, who passed it to the many male prostitutes operating here.

Posted by Fred | August 31, 2007 1:20 PM

If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny how many politically correctoids cling to the myth that AIDS was Ronald Reagan's fault! Talk about a non-reality based community!

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 1, 2007 5:27 AM