Re "Liberals and Their Invisible Homophobia" | Issue Letters

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Re "Liberals and Their Invisible Homophobia"

It’s annoying to have to take time to respond to someone like Jamie Kirchick, whose obsessive attacks on yours truly have become minor masterpieces of deliberate deception and obfuscation. But since The Advocate, like The New Republic and Commentary has lent its pages and pixels to the transmission of said obsession, I’d like to clarify a few points for your readers:

1) Kirchick does not mention that he is the personal assistant to ex–New Republic owner and editor in chief Martin Peretz, about whom I have written critically for over a decade and a half, beginning with a chapter in my first book, Sound & Fury, published in 1992, along with a long, critical analysis of Peretz’s near destruction of that once venerable, once-liberal magazine published in The American Prospect last year. Kirchick’s unhinged attacks on me almost always follow on these articles and blog items, and a recent attack on me that appeared on TNR’s website ran first under Peretz’s name and was then changed to reflect Kirchick’s alleged authorship (and will now turn up on Internet searches under both). He is, in other words, paid to write these attacks, and your readers deserve to know this.

2) Kirchick calls me a “liberal homophobe” and adds, “Two years ago he challenged gay, HIV-positive journalist Andrew Sullivan to prove a claim Sullivan had made about Alterman regarding military action in Afghanistan, offering to pay '$10,000 to the AIDS charity of Sullivan’s choice.'” He mocked Sullivan, “who is HIV-positive and likes to discuss this fact with reporters,” for his “remodeled bathroom in P-town.” Alterman regularly refers to Sullivan as “little Roy,” after Roy Cohn, the gay aide to Sen. Joe McCarthy who died of AIDS complications.

Forgive me for the length necessary to unpack this web of purposeful deceit but here goes: Back when Andrew Sullivan was attacking the loyalty, patriotism and sanity of everyone who held the positions that were actually considerably less rhetorically hostile to Bush and company than Sullivan is today, he famously suggested that “decadent left enclaves on the coasts [that] may well mount a fifth column on behalf of Islamic terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001." He added that I specifically had announced that I would not support the United States in an attack against Al Qaida, adding that I was allegedly “more concerned with what [I] see as the evil of American power than the evil of terrorism,” and that my “first response was to blame America." I have consistently asked Sullivan to support this false claim, because had I said or written such a thing, I think I’d be aware of it. In fact I said the opposite, frequently and publicly, and supported the war in Afghanistan. Given that Sullivan did not have the good grace either to apologize or attempt to support his slanderous lie, I attempted to smoke him out by challenging him to a $10,000 bet with the proceeds to be given to a cause I presumed we both would support: that of AIDS research. Kirchick seems to think that this is somehow reflective of homophobia but it is merely reflective of Sullivan’s dishonesty and lack of personal or professional responsibility. (That Sullivan does discuss his medical condition with reporters and likes to keep readers abreast of the doings inside his bathroom in Provincetown is simply a matter of fact. The context of my mentioning of these facts has everything to do with his egomania and nothing whatever to do with his sexuality.)

3) The “Roy Cohn” references reflect my belief that Sullivan, like Cohn, is a gay man who frequently employed McCarthyite tactics in the service of right-wingers who are themselves dedicated to undermining the rights -- indeed the humanity -- of gay people. This too would strike me as unarguable fact, given the nature of the Bush administration’s political base and Sullivan’s once whole-hearted support of it. It is hardly, I need add, a slur on gay people who do not employ such tactics.

4) Most ridiculously, Kirchick writes, “Following Ann Coulter’s labeling Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a 'faggot' in 2007, Alterman said, 'Look, the word 'faggot' ... is a word one hears in private conversation quite frequently; she just said it in public.' Makes one wonder what sort of company Alterman keeps.” This is pure guilt by association of a Roy Cohn/Andrew Sullivan/Jamie Kirchick style, but it is also perhaps the most self-evidently stupid thing contained in his article. I live in Manhattan after all. One hears a great many things with which one disagrees.

Finally, I shouldn’t have to say this, given the tawdriness of the accusation, but if you open a copy of my recent book, Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America (Viking, 2008), you will find a strong argument for liberals to embrace gay marriage and equal rights for gays as both a political and pragmatic matter. If being the subject of Kirchick’s (and Sullivan’s) lies and standing up strongly for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, somehow constitutes “homophobia,” well, I suppose I am guilty as charged. Otherwise, I think The Advocate owes me an apology for allowing itself to be used in this fashion.

Eric Alterman
New York, N.Y.

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