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To my readers
Introduction
My first day in journalism was my last day of college. My dad picked me up in Oxford on a Sunday morning and my summer internship at the Daily Telegraph began that afternoon. In 1984, still just twenty years old, I entered the dark and vast building on the original Fleet Street, the place Evelyn Waugh had made eternal in his satirical novel about journalism, Scoop. My boss was Bill Deedes, a man widely deemed to be the model for the character, William Boot, at the center of Waugh’s work. But the acting editor that afternoon was a man called T. E. Utley, a renowned high Tory intellectual, who was completely blind, chain-smoked, and wore a patch over one eye, like a pirate.
I’d expected some sort of orientation, filling out some forms, settling into a desk, you know, first-day bureaucracy. Instead, I was instructed to write the third of three editorials, anonymously, which gave me some relief, but quickly, which didn’t. It was midafternoon, I had until 7 p.m. to finish, and I had no subject matter. It happened to be the day of an annual festival commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of early union organizers in 1834, who had been convicted of organizing a fraternity to resist a wage cut (and subsequently pardoned). The paper needed around six hundred words on a subject I had absolutely no knowledge of.
“Good luck, dear boy,” Utley declared. “You can research it in the cuttings.” And so I rushed into a room full of filing cabinets in which every Telegraph story had been cut out and catalogued under various subjects. Sure enough, a few articles about the history of the Tolpuddle heroes were there, and, using all the skills my Oxford training in extemporaneous bullshitting had given me, I hacked out a piece, comparing the noble objectives of early unions with the excesses of the late-twentieth-century kind. I typed it out on three pages on an electric typewriter, with blue carbon paper between them. Around 6:30 p.m., I read the editorial to Utley, who was pacing in his office, a cigarette lingering in his hands. He walked slowly from one wall until he met the other side, and then turned around and did the same again. There was a gray line of ash about three feet above the floor, permanently marking where his cigarette had grazed the wall over the years.
“Fine, dear boy,” he pronounced as I finished. “Let’s have a drink!”
Over three decades later, I write for my own Substack newsletter, The Weekly Dish. I do it in silence at home on a laptop that can instantly convey my words to anyone with an internet connection in the entire world. I broadcast my own interviews; I have no editors; I can publish instantly within seconds of a news event, and have been pumping out digital journalism for two decades. Almost every aspect of my profession has been technologically revolutionized since that first day in a lost era; editors endure but with far less leverage to guide the discourse; readers respond instantly, and often venomously; countless papers have folded; a few behemoths remain; the web has become a place of riotous, ubiquitous, deafeningly democratic media. The entire world has shifted; politics and ideology have moved on; characters and personalities have died and arrived; and I, weeks after that first internship, left for America, where I have lived ever since.
The essays, reviews, columns, articles, and blog posts that appear in these pages reflect the technological, cultural, and political transformations that have taken place in the post–Cold War world—and, of course, chart my own evolution as a writer and thinker. They are arranged in chronological order because they form, in retrospect, a kind of political and social history, seen through the imperfect and provisional eyes of one writer. My criteria for inclusion were pieces that still might have something vivid and memorable to say, essays that captured a particular moment in time, a wide diversity of topics, and a record that helps explain the consistency of my own philosophical small-c conservatism that has guided me all this time.
I have been criticized for abandoning the right, and for criticizing the left. I have also been assailed as a defender of the right and a hater of the left. Among the political figures I have supported and voted for these past forty years: Thatcher, Major, Blair, Cameron, and Johnson in Britain; Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Dole, Bush, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, and Biden. Among the causes I have passionately supported: marriage equality, legalization of recreational drugs, the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, welfare reform, the candidacy and presidency of Barack Obama, and a very expansive concept of free speech. Among those causes I have furiously opposed: the US adoption of torture in the war on terror, the Iraq War, religious fundamentalism in politics, both the Republican and Democratic parties, mass immigration, deficit spending, tribalism, critical theory, and Trump.
They all reflect a singular form of conservatism that emerges from the thought of Michael Oakeshott responding to the contingent facts of unfolding history. My models for thought and writing run from Burke to Orwell. And my greatest failure of judgment, my shamefully excessive defense of the Iraq War, was, in retrospect, a moment when I abandoned that conservatism under the torrent of emotion and trauma in the wake of 9/11. I haven’t included that excess, of which I remain ashamed, but I have included one of many essays in which I held myself to account for the misjudgment. The one substantive change I will readily concede in my thought was a distinctive move away from American military interventionism after the Iraq debacle.
There is also a kind of history here of the biggest civil-rights shift of the last three decades—gay equality. From my first essay in defense of marriage equality, through the terrors of the AIDS epidemic, toward a new conception of the politics of homosexuality, and the end of gay culture, I’ve included many of the pieces that helped shape the debate, and won the argument. There is, too, an autobiography of sorts of my Catholic faith, my attempt to reconcile it with my sexual orientation, and of an evolving and dying Christianity in the West, from the certainties of John Paul II to the mercy of Pope Francis. There is equally a story of what happened to conservatism and the right in these decades—a brutal tale of decline, decadence, and then implosion. There is a consistent and impassioned defense of liberalism and limited government against identity politics and illiberal government in all its forms.
Some of these essays caused a commotion. My early writing on gay rights inflamed conservatives, and my opposition to critical queer theory and outing incensed my fellow gays. My publishing a symposium on Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s book on IQ and society, The Bell Curve, in 1994 in The New Republic is still deployed to stigmatize my work—and so I include an essay defending the airing of sometimes-painful topics, as long as they are motivated by good faith and backed by evidence and data. My refusal to defend the state of Israel in its policy of settling occupied territory with many of its own fanatical citizens led to my being called an anti-Semite.
I have never tried to be popular. I defended Monica Lewinsky against Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton against Kenneth Starr. An essay insisting on the biological roots of masculinity enraged some feminists; my opposition to “hate crime” legislation maddened my fellow gays; my account of the moment AIDS in America no longer qualified as a plague was denounced; my ferocious attack on the Bush administration’s endorsement of torture caused me to be canceled on the right in 2003. Similarly, my refusal to bow to critical race and gender theory last year—and my horror at the riots in America in 2020—caused me to be fired b
y my own magazine, New York.
I hope it’s not self-aggrandizing to say that some of these essays also helped change America. My construction of the central arguments for marriage equality and for openly gay service members in the 1990s played a real role in bringing about lasting reform. My early support for Barack Obama, especially my cover essay making the case for his candidacy in October 2007, played a part in rebooting Obama’s fundraising and credibility in his long shot for the presidency.
My essays and blog posts on torture helped rip the veil off the euphemisms of “enhanced interrogation” and made the case for a thorough investigation. My early grasp of the unique threat Donald Trump posed to liberal democracy helped define the looming era of crisis and chaos. My innovation of online journalism, especially blogging, shifted how some writers engaged the internet—and helped forge what is now widely regarded as a golden era for online writing. Along the way, I’ve included some lesser topics: on the arrival of “bears” in the gay subculture; on the appeal of Princess Diana; the death of my first dog.
The forms vary: from reports on the ground to longer essays to blog posts and diaries. They come from The New Republic, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Time, The New York Times, The Sunday Times (of London), Salon, New York magazine, and also my own blog, and now newsletter, The Weekly Dish. But the goal has always been the same: to look at the world, to make sense of it as best I can, and to tell the truth. And my ideal reader has always been the same as well: happy to read arguments with which they strongly disagree, tolerant of my misfires, and open to any argument from anyone, regardless of identity or ideology. Writing online is much more a dialogue than writing on paper, and I’m proud to say my readers have alternately educated and engaged me, driven me nuts, and provided solace.
I used to call this the general reader. Online, those dedicated to my blog, The Weekly Dish, came to call themselves Dishheads. None of them agreed with me about everything; most disagreed vehemently from time to time, and let me know; still others changed my mind, or opened their hearts and souls to me, as they, too, tried to make sense of the world.
Those devoted, querulous readers, loyally disloyal, never dull, were always helping me to understand something better. These readers have made my life possible, and have been with me every step of the way. Which is why this book is devoted to them.
—ANDREW SULLIVAN
February 20, 2021
Here Comes the Groom
A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage
August 27, 1989 | THE NEW REPUBLIC
Last month in New York, a court ruled that a gay lover had the right to stay in his deceased partner’s rent-controlled apartment because the lover qualified as a member of the deceased’s family. The ruling deftly annoyed almost everybody. Conservatives saw judicial activism in favor of gay rent control: three reasons to be appalled. Chastened liberals (such as the New York Times editorial page), while endorsing the recognition of gay relationships, also worried about the abuse of already-stretched entitlements that the ruling threatened. What neither side quite contemplated is that they both might be right, and that the way to tackle the issue of unconventional relationships in conventional society is to try something both more radical and more conservative than putting courts in the business of deciding what is and is not a family. That alternative is the legalization of civil gay marriage.
The New York rent-control case did not go anywhere near that far, which is the problem. The rent-control regulations merely stipulated that a “family” member had the right to remain in the apartment. The judge ruled that to all intents and purposes a gay lover is part of his lover’s family, inasmuch as a “family” merely means an interwoven social life, emotional commitment, and some level of financial interdependence.
It’s a principle now well established around the country. Several cities have “domestic partnership” laws, which allow relationships that do not fit into the category of heterosexual marriage to be registered with the city and qualify for benefits that up till now have been reserved for straight married couples. San Francisco, Berkeley, Madison, and Los Angeles all have legislation, as does the politically correct Washington, D.C., suburb, Takoma Park. In these cities, a variety of interpersonal arrangements qualify for health insurance, bereavement leave, insurance, annuity and pension rights, housing rights (such as rent-controlled apartments), adoption and inheritance rights. Eventually, according to gay lobby groups, the aim is to include federal income tax and veterans’ benefits as well. A recent case even involved the right to use a family member’s accumulated frequent-flier points. Gays are not the only beneficiaries; heterosexual “live-togethers” also qualify.
There’s an argument, of course, that the current legal advantages extended to married people unfairly discriminate against people who’ve shaped their lives in less conventional arrangements. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that enshrining in the law a vague principle like “domestic partnership” is an invitation to qualify at little personal cost for a vast array of entitlements otherwise kept crudely under control.
To be sure, potential DPs have to prove financial interdependence, shared living arrangements, and a commitment to mutual caring. But they don’t need to have a sexual relationship or even closely mirror old-style marriage. In principle, an elderly woman and her live-in nurse could qualify. A couple of uneuphemistically confirmed bachelors could be DPs. So could two close college students, a pair of seminarians, or a couple of frat buddies. Left as it is, the concept of domestic partnership could open a Pandora’s box of litigation and subjective judicial decision-making about who qualifies. You either are or are not married; it’s not a complex question. Whether you are in a “domestic partnership” is not so clear. More important, the concept of domestic partnership chips away at the prestige of traditional relationships and undermines the priority we give them. This priority is not necessarily a product of heterosexism.
Consider heterosexual couples. Society has good reason to extend legal advantages to heterosexuals who choose the formal sanction of marriage over simply living together. They make a deeper commitment to one another and to society; in exchange, society extends certain benefits to them. Marriage provides an anchor, if an arbitrary and weak one, in the chaos of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security, and the healthy rearing of the next generation. We rig the law in its favor not because we disparage all forms of relationship other than the nuclear family, but because we recognize that not to promote marriage would be to ask too much of human virtue. In the context of the weakened family’s effect upon the poor, it might also invite social disintegration. One of the worst products of the New Right’s “family values” campaign is that its extremism and hatred of diversity has disguised this more measured and more convincing case for the importance of the marital bond.
The concept of domestic partnership ignores these concerns, indeed directly attacks them; this is a pity, since one of its most important objectives—providing some civil recognition for gay relationships—is a noble cause and one completely compatible with the defense of the family. But the way to go about it is not to undermine straight marriage; it is to legalize old-style marriage for gays.
The gay movement has ducked this issue primarily out of fear of division. Much of the gay leadership clings to notions of gay life as essentially outsider, antibourgeois, radical. Marriage, for them, is co-optation into straight society. For the Stonewall generation, it is hard to see how this vision of conflict will ever fundamentally change. But for many other gays—my guess, a majority—while they don’t deny the importance of rebellion twenty years ago and are grateful for what was done, there’s now the sense of a new opportunity. A need to rebel has quietly ceded to a desire to belong. To be gay and to be bourgeois no longer seems such an absurd proposition. Certainly since AIDS, to be gay and to be responsible has become a necessity.
Gay marriage squares several circles at the
heart of the domestic partnership debate. Unlike domestic partnership, it allows for recognition of gay relationships, while casting no aspersions on traditional marriage. It merely asks that gays be allowed to join in. Unlike domestic partnership, it doesn’t open up avenues for heterosexuals to get benefits without the responsibilities of marriage, or a nightmare of definitional litigation. And unlike domestic partnership, it harnesses to an already-established social convention the yearnings for stability and acceptance among a fast-maturing gay community.
Gay marriage also places more responsibilities upon gays: it says for the first time that gay relationships are not better or worse than straight relationships, and that the same is expected of them. And it’s clear and dignified. There’s a legal benefit to a clear, common symbol of commitment. There’s also a personal benefit. One of the ironies of domestic partnership is that it’s not only more complicated than marriage; it’s more demanding, requiring an elaborate statement of intent to qualify. It amounts to a substantial invasion of privacy. Why, after all, should gays be required to prove commitment before they get married in a way we would never dream of asking of straights?
Legalizing gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same deal society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extract-yourself-from commitment to another human being. Like straight marriage, it would foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence. Since there’s no reason gays should not be allowed to adopt or be foster parents, it could also help nurture children. And its introduction would not be some sort of radical break with social custom. As it has become more acceptable for gay people to acknowledge their loves publicly, more and more have committed themselves to one another for life in full view of their families and their friends. A law institutionalizing gay marriage would merely reinforce a healthy social trend. It would also, in the wake of AIDS, qualify as a genuine public-health measure. Those conservatives who deplore promiscuity among some homosexuals should be among the first to support it. Burke could have written a powerful case for it.
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