Gay Today: World

Andrew Sullivan
Gets Bounced from The Advocate

Andrew Sullivan

By Jack Nichols

Washington, D.C.—Neo-conservative Clinton-basher Andrew Sullivan, a gay Roman Catholic author and former editor of The New Republic, has, according to his own admission, found himself to be an unwelcome presence in the pages of The Advocate.

Judy Wieder, the editor of the nation's oldest lesbian and gay newsmagazine, has, says Sullivan, dis-invited his writings. The English-born political pundit, reflecting on what he believes is the state of today's gay press, says “it's a pleasure to have formally confirmed what we all know informally. The gay press in general has about the same openness and diversity of views of Pravda, circa 1974.”

Casting himself as the target of a left-wing assault, Sullivan believes his dis-inviation happened because he'd announced on his Web site that his fellow writer, the Advocate's Washington, D.C. Correspondent, Chis Bull, had been too kind while interviewing President Clinton and that Bull had, in fact, given “a tongue-bath of Bill Clinton's shoes”.

Randolfe Wicker, the first gay journalist in the early 1960s to appear openly on radio and TV, told GayToday how he'd once liked what he'd seen of Andrew Sullivan's work, but insists that now he believes Sullivan has “lost touch altogether with the gay community.”

“I must say that I am thoroughly disgusted with Andrew Sullivan. How could I have ever been a 'fan' of his?” wondered Wicker, “He is simply disgusting!”

Among Sullivan's major complaints about Clinton involves the President's failed attempt to end the military ban in 1993. He does not buy, he writes, " Clinton's preposterous argument that he did everything he could to 'fight' for it."

Sullivan's complaint about the Advocate interviewer arose because of his own much-hyped gay liberation strategy, calling for the legalization of same-sex marriages. He lambastes the newsmagazine's interviewer, saying he "all but apologizes (to the President) for the gay movement's pursuit of marriage rights," a pursuit for which politicians were not prepared and which ended in the Defense of Marriage Act.

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Sullivan, in an earlier controversial statement, had once said that after the successful legalization of gay marriages, there would be no further need for a gay movement.

Referring to his expulsion from the Advocate, Sullivan mused: “Somehow, I think I'll survive.”

He now writes somewhat regularly for The New York Times Magazine, where, in a neo-conservative screed, he recently linked surges of male violence to testosterone, thus touting a Freudian anti-feminist perspective which insists that “biology is destiny.”