Doug Henwood wrote:
> [I have the full text of this, which I can't find on the LGNY website
> <http://www.lgny.com>. I'll email it to anyone who'd like it - ask me
> offlist, please.]
>
> LGNY, May 26, 2001
> New York's Lesbian and Gay Newspaper
>
> Virtually Reckless
> The Contradictory Faces of Andrew Sullivan
> By Michelangelo Signorile
>
> [...]
>
> Given everything I've witnessed about the rise of barebacking in the
> past several years, I could not help but be taken aback by a story I became
> privy to that has lit up the Internet over the past several weeks. The same
> was apparently true for many others, because it was the hot topic of
> discussion on message boards, from the gossipy gay site Datalounge.com to
> the gay conservative site Independent Gay Forum, from the often liberal
> Salon.com to the rabidly right-wing FreeRepublic.com. The HIV-positive gay
> writer and pundit Andrew Sullivan, the information contended, had an assumed
> screen name on America Online with a profile that advertised for "bareback"
> sex and which linked to two Web pages where he posted headless photos and
> his sexual tastes, one of which was on BarebackCity.com.
> Beyond the sensationalism of the "bareback" sex revelation, what was
> most jarring to people who'd received this information was the sheer
> incongruity between the public persona that many rightly or wrongly perceive
> as Sullivan's -- conservative, moral, devoutly Catholic, marriage-minded,
> judgmental toward the sexual behavior of politicians and other public
> figures, and arrogant toward the ghettoized gay scene --and the person
> depicted on the sites, a gay stereotype more extreme than any of the Village
> People, someone very much in the gay sexual fast lane, all pumped up and
> describing his "power glutes," ravenously eager to hook up but letting
> prospective partners know that "no fats, no fems" need apply.
> The information about the sites was easy enough for any journalist to
> confirm early on. I did, eventually speaking with two men to whom Sullivan
> had identified himself through the screen name, one of whom met with him.
> I'd actually been informed about the sites days before the information had
> been posted on the Internet message boards; the information came from a
> source I've known and trusted for many years, a health care professional.
> The screen name and the Web sites were shut down soon after the story was
> posted on the Internet.
> According to several individuals at The New York Times, Sullivan
> acknowledged the existence of the sites and their exposure to at least one
> of his editors as soon as the information broke on the Internet (though he
> apparently kept out the major detail: that it was "bareback" sex that he was
> seeking.) Rather than deny the story outright if indeed it were a false,
> vicious rumor, Sullivan, who normally gives a comment to any reporter who
> calls him -- and who has chided other public figures for not coming forward
> with the truth in such matters -- has refused to respond to inquiries from a
> great many reporters, myself included. Silence has been golden in that
> regard: Except for a squib on Datalounge.com, commentary from Gaybc.com
> radio host John McMullen, and an item by Village Voice columnist Michael
> Musto, no mainstream or gay media have dared to go near this story.
> And yet, it is a story that will not die.
>
> [...]