Gore Vidal Answers an Impertinent Question
From a New York Times reporter eager to enlist him in a crusade in which he wants no part:
You live in California , where last month the State Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriage . As someone who lived with a male companion for 50-plus years, do you see this as a victory for equality?
People would ask, How could you live with someone for so long without any problems of any kind? I said, There was no sex.Were you chaste during those years?
Chased by whom?Are you a supporter of gay marriage?
I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.
Who does Deborah Solomon think she’s interviewing, Andrew Sullivan? She doesn’t ask her subject anything about the real politics — war, taxation, public corruption. That must not be considered news that’s fit to print, unlike Vidal’s ancient feud with Bill Buckley and the sex lives (chased or not) of literary lions.
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June 16th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I get the feeling that really only a small percentage of the gay community is even remotely interested in ‘gay marriage’. The people pushing it, whether gay or not, are basically are expressing their own animus towards mainstream culture. In their view ‘live and let live’ or a solid defense of personal privacy and the mutual respect of mutual non-interference is “mere tolerance”, not “acceptance”. Why should anyone have to accept what they find personally revolting? Do we force everyone to eat Brussel Sprouts? Are not people entitled to their own ‘yuck’ factor?
To the left cultural imperialists their definition of ‘acceptance’ is always a one way street. They do not ‘accept’ gun owners, smokers, rednecks or those who think recycling is errant nonsense. They want to impose their opinions and attitudes on their fellows. They do not recognise that it is their self righteous cultural intolerance that has motivated and fuelled the ‘backlash’ from the so-called (and misnamed) “Christian Right”. In that movement the cultural imperialists have reaped what they have sown. They deserve it. That ‘reactionary’ movement however misguided and misled rallies from a perceived need for mutual cultural self defense. Neither cultural imperialists or “Christian Rightists’ (actually they espouse a form of quasi-Christian state socialism) have learned the lesson that good fences make for good neighbors.