Friday, June 22, 2001

Gays in The Wall Street Journal

It's Pride Week this week, that time of year when opinion-formers' minds turn to the status of gays in society. And helpfully, the Wall Street Journal editorial page is here to give them a little pastoral guidance.

[The narrowness of the Senate vote to withhold federal funding from school districts who prevent Boy Scouts from meeting on their premises] underscores the sharp cultural divisions that were revealed in the last election. But in particular it shows the power of the gay-lesbian lobby in modern liberal politics. Far from being besieged in American life, homosexuals now have the clout nearly to defeat a group that has historically done as much as any other to turn unruly boys into responsible men.

Well, the gay-lesbian lobby can't be that powerful if it lost the vote. But what I'm interested here is the way that the Journal's editorial page has moved from a kind of beefed-up Economist-style libertarianism to supporting anti-gay Jesse Helms amendments. How many people on Wall Street (the Journal's self-declared constituency), or indeed in America, would find it shocking, surprising, or even noteworthy that gays and lesbians in America might have as much power as the Boy Scouts?

In fact, the more one reads that paragraph's last sentence, the less it makes sense. Is there some a priori lemma that anybody with nearly as much clout as the Boy Scouts cannot be besieged in American life? Wonder what the African-American community would make of that. And what's the other side of the implied distinction? If Boy Scouts turn unruly boys into responsible men, what does the gay-lesbian lobby do? Surely the Journal can't be implying that it takes responsible men from the heartland of America and turns them into unruly boys displaying their pierced nipples during the Gay Pride Parade?

Posted by Felix at 1:43 EST