>Andrew has made himself a public figure, and has made his presumed sexual behavior part of that public persona and part of his arguments in favor of various stands. Sometimes, indeed, his self-report is just about the ONLY evidence he puts forward: he takes testosterone and uses his one-man sample to make all sorts of ridiculous assertions about innate male-female differences.
And so you need knowledge of his sexual life to make these views look ridiculous? Or they look more ridiculous once you know about it?
>If, for instance, Doug or I--or, for that matter, Philip Roth or Anne Tyler -- had been discovered advertising for sex partners on the Internet few would care. But because Andrew has publicly attacked free-floating sex, and ridiculed gay culture in a fairly spectacular way, while cozying up to cultural conservatives from Pat Robertson to the Pope, it is indeed newsworthy that his own personal life resembles the lives he disapproves of so deeply.
Funny that you say it's newsworthy. Below you say it's just gossip.
>But the supposed sexual harrassment of paula jones does not mean everyone had to pile on bill and monica as they did. for example, andrew could have written a thousand columns SYMPATHIZING with pres clinton's sexual drivenness,which he shares, or wondering why it is so hard for people, gay and straight, to stay faithful. it would have been a good moment for him to wonder whether gay marriage was going to achieve the transofrmation of gay sexuality he had
argued it would. ETC. But instead it was all attacking and bemoaning -- because Andrew wanted the republicans to win. That's all it was.
It would have been a good moment to wonder about gay marriage, but why you need to have gossip about Sullivan's sexual life in order to make that point clearer? Moreover, what has "drivenness" got to do with this? I suspect, that in addition to wanting the Republicans to win, Sullivan may have been turned off not by Bill's drivenness, but by his affecting the persona of someone in _Porky's_: as if he'd never had sex before and wanted to check and see if his dick worked.
>As for the 'right to privacy' -- rights have to do with laws, not gossip. That's all this is. You might just as well argue that because abortion is covered under the right to privacy I don't have the right to talk about anti-choice pundits who've paid for their girl friends abortions.
You're kidding, right? Talk about affecting the stance of the victim. When did anyone deny you the right to say something? I just said that Andrew Sullivan's hypocrisy (if it is that) is not a good defense of a woman's right-to-choose. You think it is? I'd like to know more about that.
Christian