/lit/ - Literature

>>20984624
Andrew Sullivan has some goofy opinions about politics but writes about homosexuality and the political and social issues related to that from a perspective informed by Catholic conservatism which is an interesting thing. I'm pretty far left but "Virtually Normal" had an influence on me when I was younger, written in the 90s, and it's a critique of different philosophical viewpoints and arguments from the prohibitionist right to the liberationist left. His basic argument is: don't force anybody to love gay people, just don't force gay people to live a life of imposed secrecy. I'm gay and basically agree with that. Does this work? I dunno. Is it well argued? Kinda.

A review:

>I was skeptical about Andrew Sullivan's political argument. His thoughts in the introduction were, at best, mediocre, but then Sullivan fleshed out a rich understanding of the socio-political underpinnings of the conservative/liberal divide in mid-1990s America. To be sure, his survey scratches the surface of political problems shared between homosexual communities and the heterosexual majority; nevertheless, Sullivan's work was likely very insightful for gay men and women at this time (it was published in 1995), and his insistence upon gay marriage and the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (DADT) is foundational to the current political moment. I was particularly struck by the following passage from the epilog:

>'The sublimation of sexual longing can create a particular form of alienated person: a more ferocious perfectionist, a cranky individual, an extremely brittle emotionalist, an ideological fanatic. This may lead to some brilliant lives: witty, urbane, subtle, passionate. But it also leads to some devastating loneliness. The abandonment of intimacy and the rejection of one's emotional core are, I have come to believe, alloyed evils. All too often, they preserve the persona at the expense of the person' (p.189).

>Indeed, in a post-AIDS, post-gay marriage, post-DADT moment, the sublimation of emotion comes at the expense of normativity. But then, what is a battle if not surrounded on many sides by many (differing) issues? It's clear that Sullivan is a gay conservative (he would laugh should anyone ever call him queer). As objective as we can view his text, he makes an interesting addition to the political field of the mid-1990s: particularly at a time when much of the focus was turned to HIV/AIDS, disease technologies, and ultimately finding a cure.