Sexual McCarthyism applies to invoking or prying into AS' personal habits because you don't like his politics. Maybe some people have done that, but not everybody.
The real issue, such as it is, is the apparent contradiction between what AS prescribes to the world, and how he talks about other people, and his own alleged behavior. Any such contradictions speak to the character of the person involved, and to the tenability of his or her pronouncements. In other words, on the latter count, if you make a pastime out of promoting temperance and are a roaring drunk in private, that says something about the practicality of temperance.
At the end of the day, however, such contradictions are not central to any important political debate, unless the person in question happens to be some major political figure. We can all appreciate having some sense of what is good for everybody, even though we can be personally weak in observance of any such views. Sufficient pressure or temptation can overwhelm any ethical principle. That doesn't detract from the merits of the principle, though as above it says something about its feasibility in practice.
So AS' own behavior really has no relevance to the merits of his prescriptions for the behavior of others.
mbs
-----Original Message----- From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of kelley Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 5:25 AM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com; lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: populist.org column on Sullivan and Judicial Nominations
At 11:47 PM 6/6/01 -0400, Nathan Newman wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "kelley" <kelley at interpactinc.com>
> >it was gratuitous use of the issue. not once did you even take up the
> >complicated issues involved and couldn't be bothered to get much of it
> >right. furthermore, i'm not debating personal lives in the least. this
> >isn't about gossip but about the rhetorical use of naturalized sex and
> >sexuality and it was, when i raised the barebacking issue, an attempt to
> >have an adult conversation about sex panic politics and safer sex
> >campaigns. there was no attempt to talk about some one person's private
> >life, nathan.
>
>Sure it was an attempt to talk about Sullivan's private life. You could
>have done posts at any time about sex panic politics, but you
>"gratuitously" used discussion of Sullivan to make your points. That's
>exactly the element of sexual McCarthyism- using the attack on one
>person's personal life to score political points.
nathan, it came up in the context of sullivan's response. i didn't even read LBNY til yesterday. i had no idea what he'd actually done except for what he'd said he'd done. der. and there's no reason not to, just as there's no reason not to point out with clinton for ex, that plenty of young girls think like he does about oral sex as not really sex and so they have a lot of anal sex and consider themselves virgins!
this offends your sensibilities?
>As for "getting it right", unless you are a mind reader and can prove
>Sullivan's intentions are different than those stated in his response,
>there is no proof of what was really going on - which is the problem with
>debating personal lives. Proof is rarely clear at all where subjectivity
>dominates and intentions are rarely clear, even to many of the
participants.
uh, i'm talking about calling signorele a civil libertarian and failing to recognize that there is a difference between "prefering" someone with HIV and only considering partners with HIV. the groups sex/bi sex was an added bonus for ya! :)
> I didn't talk about the "complicated issues" because to do so would have
> been exactly the personal gossip involved. Yep, launch a personal
> invasion, then demand a full debate on the details.
they closed down the bathhouses be/c of sex panic politics. what would be gratuitous about discussing--possibly the failures and successes of the safer sex campaigns? what would be gratuitous about discussing the need to take into consideration that sex/HIV/AIDs education might want to look at how to incorporate honest discussions of the difficulties of absolute adherence to 100% protected sex, etc. oh and then there is the CDC study indicating alarmingly high rates of HIV infection reasserting themselves just came out. etc. how exactly should we deal with that? what about the log cabin republicans and judicial appointments, eh? you could have at least made a gesture in that direction.
> >now, could you explain to me why you 1. seem to think that signorelle is
a
> >civil libertarian and 2. where he expressed glee? or, do you frequently
> >write opinion pieces full of fabricated claims?
>
>I wasn't talking about Signorelle.. I was talking about those who passed
>on the story, including the media and those on LBO who took so much
>pleasure in exposing Sullivan's behavior.
you might want to make that clear. anyone not on lbo would assume that you meant signorele since he has a history of outting people. this is what i mean, as well, about indicating complete ignorance about the issues!
the only person who passed on the story was doug. feel free to show me where doug expressed glee? additionally, feel free to provide some evidence of _anyone_ expressing glee. as for the media, where was glee expressed on the part of the "media" and a content analysis of this supposed "glee" and are they civil libertarians?