December 23, 2006

GayPatriot: 1,000,000 served

Posted by: Chris

The guys over at GayPatriot, "blogcasting from the worldwide headquarters of the not-so-vast right wing conspiracy," this week celebrated their 1,000,000th visitor since Bruce Carroll first launched the blog back in September 2004. 

Back then, GayPatriot was Carroll's response to efforts by Mike Rogers at Blogactive to "out" gay Republican staffers working on Capitol Hill.  But since then, Carroll and co-blogger Daniel Platt have established a welcome niche on the Net for gay conservatives.  They deserve congratulations for pressing conservative views within the gay community and gay-rights views among conservatives — a doubly thankless and unpopular task, to be sure.

I first came into contact with Bruce back in April 2004, when as editor of the Washington Blade I published an op-ed he submitted about the backlash over gay marriage that election year.  I didn't agree with Carroll's view then, and I've often disagreed with him and Platt both, but I've always found their perspectives to be fresh and interesting and thought-provoking.

I, too, come from a conservative background, but my politics have been more changed by my sexual orientation.  I found the takeover of the Republican Party by social conservatives during the 1990s too much to stomach and ended my affiliation with the GOP in December 1998 — the day the House impeached Bill Clinton.  I actually wrote an editorial about it for Southern Voice, Atlanta's gay and lesbian newspaper, and I'll try to dig it up for old time's sake.

These days, I feel more independent than ever, free to air my views without worrying about how it will reflect on anyone but me.  But I find it difficult to embrace the "conservative" label, even without attaching it to the Republican Party.  I am reading and enjoying Andrew Sullivan's latest book, "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back," and I highly recommend it wherever you fall on the political spectrum.  Sullivan does a painstaking and devastating  job of demonstrating how social conservatives, whether Islamists or Christianists, are not really "conservatives" at all. What's unclear to me, as I wind up the book's last section, is whether Sullivan can successfully reclaim the name from the ashes of what was (a question that could be asked about the Republican Party as well). 

In this respect, "The Conservative Soul" reminds me of the classic work by another gay conservative, Harvard University pastor Peter Gomes' classic "The Good Book," which puzzled through the most challenging biblical passages used to justify slavery, repression of women and of gays.  Gomes was an unabashed apologist for the Bible, just as Sullivan is for what he calls true conservativism. Once I've finished "The Conservative Soul," I'll offer my own two cents.  In the meantime, here's to GayPatriots — the blog and gay patriots generally — fighting the good fight to reconcile "traditional values" with non-traditional lives.

Tags: Andrew Sullivan, GayPatriot, Peter Gomes