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Sullivan asks why Bush never says “gay”
Andrew Sullivan wrote at his website:
THE TORIES’ MESSAGE: “Rich or poor, straight or gay, black or white. Whatever you are, wherever you’re from, the Conservative party is for you,”—the British Conservative Party chairwoman, Theresa May, earlier today at the Conservative Party Conference. Why can’t a leading Republican say the same thing? Why has president Bush not been able even to say the word “gay” in three years in office? The excuses are wearing thin.In reply to which, I sent Sullivan the following e-mail:
The answer to your question is simple. “Gay” is a word coming from the homosexual community itself, denoting, not just tolerance of homosexuality, but approval. And—as hard as this is for you to accept—all civilizations and religions throughout history and a significant number of people today do not approve of homosexuality and do not believe in publicly expressing approval of it. I don’t know that Bush himself is one of those people, but he may not want to alienate them either. Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2003 04:44 PM | Send Comments
Also, not that this would occur to President Bush, who appears to care far more about expressing himself in Spanish than in English (he does neither well, alas), gay is a perfectly good English word, with a meaning we should not want to lose to the homosexualists. The same is true of queer. Joseph Sobran had an amusing column about this recently. I was sorry to see the quote from Theresa May. My former secretary in London, a devout and intelligent young Catholic Englishwoman, left me to be May’s parliamentary assistant in 1998. At the time she thought May was a politician of integrity. Obviously, May has been co-opted, like the Tories generally. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on October 7, 2003 9:53 AM |