Jonah Goldberg has responded to my post on hypocrisy. First, and most egregiously, Jonah conflates "anonymous" with "public" sex. The two are very different, but it makes sense for him to confuse readers this way for his argumentative purposes. Meeting a person in a public place (whether it be a bar or a restroom) and then taking said person to a private place for sex is hardly limited to gay men. You're not going to find very many gays (and no gay groups) that will defend sex in a restroom. But Jonah thinks otherwise. He writes that "Maybe I'm a product of my times, having grown up in New York City in the 1980s, but gay cruising in random places, specifically bathrooms, most certainly was part of the gay rights agenda." Considering that we're now in 2007, I'm not sure how Jonah's purely anecdotal argument here is relevant. But also notice that Jonah writes of "gay cruising in random places." Well, was it just "cruising" that this nebulous "gay rights agenda" was pushing, or actual sex in public? Jonah doesn't say, but a reader writes:

In any case, it's intriguing that Goldberg's history of the gay-rights movement dovetails so neatly with radical lamentations for the liberationist politics of yesteryear; Goldberg seems to believe that the queer radicals of yore represent the authentic voice of GLBT equality (and GLBT people), while people like Sullivan (or the rest of us) are to be dismissed out of hand as inauthentic wannabes.

As for current "left" or "liberal" support for gay sex in public places, all Jonah can come up with is a one-page guide issued by Lambda Legal informing gay men of their rights should they be caught in a sting operation, and a decade-old column by Richard Goldstein. The former example is a legitimate thing for a gay legal organization to publish, and the latter happens to be a shrill radical fading (thankfully, mercifully) into obscurity. Jonah also bizarrely groups Andrew Sullivan, whom, last time I checked was neither a "liberal" nor a "leftist," among these left-wing gay figures, which is odd considering that Goldstein published a screed denouncing Sullivan and other heterodox homosexuals not that long ago. As for the issue of hypocrisy, Craig thinks gays--like himself--are second class citizens, as evidenced by his support of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Federal Marriage Amendment and Don't Ask, Don't Tell as well as opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. A closeted gay man in a position of power who uses that power to enforce a system of second class-citizenship upon gays, while simultaneously trying to secretly enjoy gay sex, is by definition very much a hypocrite. Finally, I'm glad to hear that Jonah is "not suggesting that being gay is immoral." He should tell that to some of his fellow writers at NRO. --James Kirchick