Another (!) brilliant article in the New York Times - How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way

Yeah, that's him - his politics are not mine at all, but sometimes he comes up with a telling phrase.

Sorry to resurrect this, but I'd been wondering which YouTuber this was, and came across Academic Agent's Substack today - it seems to be him?

Indeed.

Very much agree with @GallantKumquat and it's really important to have Sullivan give this argument, because it's the NYT and because everyone knows he's the man who did more than anyone else to achieve gay marriage.

But it's very much a gay man's perspective. The arguments around women's spaces, sports etc are things that Sully can see in a second-hand way, but they'll never affect him, and I suspect won't affect many people he's close to. That's the dimension he's missing.

But he's got an extra dimension that women often don't have, which is a deep knowledge of how weirdos and extremists held the gay movement back. All the progress LGB people made was contingent on those people being marginalised, but as soon as all the key LGB demands had been won, back they came to undermine all that social acceptance. It's the difference between having an Andrew Sullivan as your public face and having a Chase Strangio as your public face.

There's a right wing YouTuber who coined the phrase "back to Fresh Prince" as a well-meaning but possibly naive impulse in US racial politics - let's get back to a Bill Clinton type culture where racial problems weren't solved exactly but they were diminishing and there was optimism that they were on the way to being solved. I think I see a similar impulse with Sully - let's get back to when we were equal and accepted, before the Q+ started to ruin it all. I think he believes the Q+ has to be thrown overboard, and he's genuinely conflicted about the T (because of people he knows in the T category who have a genuine affinity with the LGB)

Can I just ask : I don't get why modern Mormon polygamy is illegal? I don't agree w it, but if the man only legally married 1 woman & marries the others only in a Mormon ceremony, what law have they broken? Wouldn't it only be illegal if they were legally married to multiple women?

Ok, as far as I know with the main polygamist group, the AUB, the first marriage is legally registered but subsequent marriages are only religious ceremonies and are not reported to the authorities. Which itself creates problems because (a) the Utah police are wise to these tactics and (b) if the husband goes to prison that causes obvious problems in terms of support for the plural wives and their children who aren't legally recognised.

The hardcore fundamentalist groups, I mean the bad groups, mostly congregate in remote rural areas and try to stay under the radar. They aren't interested in following the laws of the heathen United States.

You might enjoy this podcast episode:

https://overcast.fm/+AA_aa9OlwlQ

You should write more, v interesting! The article made it sound like Dorothy didn't notice any discord between wives as a kid, tho obvs there could have been behind closed doors

. I'm glad the ones who do this now mostly try to be ethical. I'm sure some people want to practice it ethically, and some can be happy, but like any multiple partner arrangement, I don't think it would work for the majority of people. (Plus the inherent sexism of allowing polygamy but not polyandry) I'm interested in why people opt for these kind of strict fundamentalist lives, will definitely read.

Can I just ask : I don't get why modern Mormon polygamy is illegal? I don't agree w it, but if the man only legally married 1 woman & marries the others only in a Mormon ceremony, what law have they broken? Wouldn't it only be illegal if they were legally married to multiple women?

Sorry. This strayed rather from the thread but it's v interesting to me.

The expert on all this is Dorothy Allred Solomon. Her memoir Daughter of the Saints is a great read, but for something shorter try this: polygamy in america - polygamy today - mormon polygamy | Marie Claire

Ah right, thanks. I was aware that a few did it from TV programs that implied it was a rare fringe. That's unlucky it's still around... I suppose such men are only legally married to one of the wives?
Yes, articles I've read gave the impression that discussing Smith's polygamy would raise too many questions about his character & general claims, so it was until recently barely discussed in the mainstream.

It's very illegal, and probably the easiest way to get kicked out of the mainstream LDS church, but it never really went away, especially in the rural areas.

The history and theology behind it is... complicated, and church leadership prefer to treat it as an embarrassing bit of history that they'd rather not talk about.

Utah still allows polygamy?? I've been reading about Mormonism recently & a lot of deconverts say that they began having serious doubts when they realised that Joseph Smith did practice polygamy (in fact he had 34 wives, some who were already married to others, & one who was only 14🤢) . Apparently there's been a lot of denial among leaders that he had multiple wives. Do the mainstream Mormons see the down-low polygamists as not following the faith correctly?

Sorry that's a bit off-topic...

I have sometimes thought that maybe it should be. I've become sceptical about how well the things they teach are actually taken up by the kids, but more than that, I just don't feel that the content is great. Some teachers are great, but a fair number are kind of idiots, and I don't think idiots can teach topics like that well no matter what kind of resources they have.

It would be interesting to see measurable outcomes from RSE, but I don't know how anyone would get really accurate ones.

I think schools should be able to teach facts : some people are gay, & where applicable to history of laws including gay marriage if applicable. They don't need to & shouldn't praise either hetero or homosexuality, stick to pure factual info, but also stress the universal value of commitment in relationships: unless you thunk RSE should be scrapped altogether?

Yes, I do actually find it frustrating that people on here often say queer was never used until recently, or only in academic circles. There was the Queercore movement in music, w good punk-style bands like Team Dresch (lots of overlap w Riot Grrl) and groups like Queer Nation & others were using the term. Some novels I've read from the 80s-90s use queer in a reclaimed way. But I agree that it was mainly US & more say, books & music, probs, than in everyday life. Abd ofc it's always been a difficult issue bc many who had it used as a slur esp in violent contexts, do NOT want it to be reclaimed & rightly feel they were left out of consideration.

I hope we are not any longer in a place where people getting killed, or anything else horrible, is part of the picture.

However, I am really uncomfortable with the assumption we find among a lot of teachers that their ideas about sexuality are self evidently correct and even neutral, and therefor they should be allowed to inform the values of other people's children.

It's certainly true there are people whose sexual attraction is directed toward the same sex, though we don't really know why, but there is still imo a fair bit of room around what people believe are the consequences of that, or the right thing to do about it. I think Catholic families for example should be free as to teach that sexual ethics are meant to be bound by procreative intent and purpose, just like another family can teach that free love is the right approach.

I just can't see how schools can play both sides.

I am sorry to hear you were beaten up for being gay. There are some really unpleasant people around

I think there's a big difference between an era when people were killed for being lesbian or gay - which they still are in parts of the world, let it not be forgotten, and lesbians subjected to 'corrective rape - and children were punished and disowned by their families because they were 'that way'.

Many lesbian and gay people had an idea from a very early age that they were not seeing the opposite sex in the same way as their peers - I was never, ever even vaguely interested in boys in any way apart from good pals to play with, and later to drive around with in old cars we had worked on.
I never did any teenage mooning over boys, any going to dances to get off with boys, any dressing up and going to the debs dance with boys..

There's a difference between telling children like I was that it's OK to think like you think and feel like you feel - self-acceptance and body positivity are good lessons for all children - and telling children that they were born in the wrong body and offering them damaging pharmaceutical and surgical ways of 'correcting' what is wrong with them.

There is a difference between telling children that a percentage of human beings have a different sexual orientation, which is a verifiable fact, and telling them that humans can change sex, which is factually inaccurate.

'The' gay movement was always more diverse, amorphous (am I part of it, for instance?)and less powerful than the very targeted trans rights movement, which has 'captured' the media, education, the law etc in a dizzyingly short space of time, unlike either the women's movement or the lesbian and gay movement which had to hack their way through centuries of discrimination and hatred to get something approaching equality.

‘But I don't think marriage is mainly about legal benefits to individuals, I think it's about the power of the idea as a social institution to shape male behaviour. In a way it's aspirational, and also about creating a sense of failure when people miss the mark, and about creating social expectations that help people do the right thing.’

This is a rather Eurocentric ( Christian) view of marriage , though. The Church for all its un feminist ( not a word but it expresses what I mean) did attempt to make marriage a protection for women ; it tried to enforce the idea of consent at the ceremony, it established the indissoluble bond which meant that a wife could not just be cast off or replaced, that women had financial as well as social rights within marriage (‘with my worldly goods I thee endow’) . I don’t think that other religions’ or cultures’ marriages were or are as favourable to women.

I know someone gay adopters. When adoption was extended to gay people, it was seen as a breakthrough in that they could be parents too. They often make excellent parents for children who have been removed from birth mum a there is no mother figure.

But adoption can be very hard (I'm an adopter btw) and surrogacy means getting a new born baby that is biologically yours. And affluent gay couples can afford it. They often have 2 surrogates at once, so they can each have a bio child (i think this is what Adam Kay and partner did - their surrogate children are a few months apart in age), or they get a surrogate to have twins, with one embryo from each man .

But there are no checks. Adoption approval process is strictly and it would be hard to hide a hedonistic lifestyle. But with surrogacy, no one needs to change at all. There is no requirement to reflect, to open up about your vulnerabilities etc. You just pay the money and bring your child home.

We will see how this pans out.