HOW THE SCRAPBOOK wishes it had never heard about the latest controversy involving Andrew Sullivan. But, alas, he made it impossible to ignore -- starting the whole damn thing himself, after all. And right there in the New York Times.
Sullivan, of course, is the universally denominated "gay Tory Catholic intellectual" who has spent much of the 1990s unburdening himself on those public issues directly related to his identity. At least the gay part of it. In 1991, for example, he took an eloquent stance against a guerrilla tactic then popular among the fringiest of gay activists: the involuntary "outing" of other -- but still closeted -- homosexuals. The practice is "authoritarian," Sullivan wrote. It is an assault on "the ability to choose who one is and how one is presented, to control the moment of self-disclosure and its content." What's more, he argued, outing is cruel. Because the unwanted question "Are you gay?" is "terrifying." And must therefore not be asked.
That was then. Now, though, in the Dec. 12 magazine section of the Sunday Times, Sullivan has gone ahead and asked precisely that terrifying question of seven more-or-less prominent Americans whose "coyness" about their sexual orientation evidently annoys him no end. Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, he writes, has made herself "ridiculous" by remaining mum about whether she's a lesbian. Ditto for Clinton cabinet secretaries Donna Shalala and Janet Reno, who "equivocate" on the subject, shrouding their sex lives "in deep ambiguity." Ditto, too, for former New York mayor Ed Koch and TV personality Rosie O'Donnell and teen-pop schlockmeister Ricky Martin and -- stand and be counted, damn you! -- fitness-video goofball Richard Simmons.
Are they gay? Suddenly, to Andrew Sullivan, this is an "obvious and legitimate" (and, impliedly, no longer terrifying) question. And why is that? Sullivan offers two reasons. First, these people's "studied avoidance" of public discussion about whom they sleep with is "insulting to homosexuals, who know better." (Apparently, they can just tell, you see.) And, second, such circumspection about sex is "condescending to heterosexuals, who deserve better."
Thanks but no thanks, Andrew. THE SCRAPBOOK -- which hereby outs itself as a magazine feature of the heterosexual persuasion -- rejects the notion that it "deserves" to know what Richard Simmons does in bed. Truth is, THE SCRAPBOOK would rather not know. Some things are best kept private.
On Dec. 15, incidentally, Sullivan, responding to unrelated criticism in the online journal Salon, denied that his past support for a gay right to marriage was based on any moral preference for monogamy. He has always "defended the beauty and mystery and spirituality of . . . anonymous sex," he wrote. And "on a personal level, I have never been in a long-term romantic relationship, and am perfectly happy without one."
Oh, dear. THE SCRAPBOOK would rather have not know about that, either.