I cannot. You mentioned the Palestinians in the OP, and I jumped to a wrong conclusion. I apologize.
Win Without War includes in its coalition the Arab-American Anti-discrimination Committee, which is pro-PA. However, that doesn’t mean that the NGLTF is pro-PA. I was wrong to assume that they were.
I guess I just don’t get it. This is what I see:
In the first article, Sullivan says it’s not the business of a (single-issue) pressure group to go around alienating potential support by taking unnecessary positions (as with its anti-war stance). Put another way, they shouldn’t adopt political postures outside their mandate.
In the second article, Sullivan emphasises the humanitarian angle and encourages gays - as individuals within the wider society – to support military action on the basis of the current regime’s hostility to gays.
On that reading, his position doesn’t sound unreasonable. What did I get wrong ?
Quite apart from this being nothing to do with the OP, it is also false. We have not “found out” this at all. Rather, we have been told by a newspaper that they have proof that would suggest it. The issue is hotly disputed, in the midst of legal action, and if found to be true would come as a great surprise to most who know Galloway, and that includes his opponents. It’s easy to disagree with Galloway’s opinions, but most would agree in his sincerity.
Nor is he an “anti-war leader”, whatever that is.
Not just one newspaper. The Christian Science Monitor found separate documentary evidence that he received something like $10 million.
I saw a newspaper photo of him speaking at an anti-war rally.
First, thank you for your aplogy and retraction.
Now, where do you get the idea that speaking at a rally makes one a “leader” in the movement behind the rally? I’m not saying this guy is or isn’t a “leader” in the anti-war movement; just that claiming he is based on one photo of him spekaing at a rally is ridiculous.
FWIW, I once spoke at an anti-globalization rally. Over a megaphone, no less. That doesn’t make me a leader of the anti-globalization movement.
manhattan, a fact that makes you uncomfortable is, nevertheless, still a fact. It’s called “reality”. Look it up sometime.
Now, why a moderator* would be using this board to oppose the fight against ignorance is beyond me. Can you explain yourself?
Re: OP Title:
Why can’t he be both?
Oh, wait. “Just” delusional, as in ‘only’.
Never mind.
Nevertheless: couldn’t he be beneath contempt and delusional?
If Sullivan is implying that the oppression of gays was the slightest factor in this, he is guilty of gross misrepresentation. In Iraq, homosexual sex is legal as of the age of eighteen – I’m not positive, but it’s the only predominantly Muslim nation in the region in which this is true.
Furthermore, it means the laws in Iraq under Saddam for gays and lesbians are more liberal than in Texas, Dubya’s former fiefdom, where a sodomy law is still enforced. The level of hypocrisy here is insulting – as Voltaire put it, “We have to tend our own garden.”
I did find another mostly-Muslim country where homosexuality is legal – Turkey. Here’s a site with sodomy laws around the world.
I worry about the situation out there. Dubya is a conservative, evangelical Christian whose government is not friendly to queer issues. And there are plenty of fundamentalists of a different kind out there who are equally uncomfortable with this civil rights issue. The best we can hope for, I think, is the status quo, but like everything about this invasion, it has the potential to go very, very badly.
I joined the Black Brigade, but only because the outfits are so slimming.
Nothing. This is exactly my reading as well from the two articles and one that shows there are no contradictory messages here.
I am a member of a professional organization. Recently, there was some discussion on whether said organization should make some kind of statement against the war, even though it is completely unrelated to anything that directly applies to our formal mission statement. It was decided that because of the diversity of opinion on the matter, it was inappropriate for the organization to take a specific position on the war since it didn’t have anything to do with what our organization is about.
However, this did not stop us (individual members) from taking positions on specific policy issues re: the war that did have some (tangential) relationship to the responsibility we assumed as members of our profession. This is not hypocritical–it is simply an understanding of how individual/personal advocacy is different than formal position-taking by organizations whose members have a diversity of opinion.
Nowhere do I see that Sullivan says that homosexual oppression was a motivation behind the war. The likely lifting of that oppression, however, is a result of the war (or rather, a reason for supporting it). The first article also lists a number of other reasons why he believes the NGLTF has lost perspective on its mission, instead taking positions that seem to situate it politically in the “appropriately” liberal camp, even though the issues themselves are not directly related at all to the advocacy or promotion of gay rights, etc.
I was a student at UC Berkeley and I remember our student union spent an inordinate amount of time taking policy positions on the West Bank and global warming and the first Gulf War when none of these things had any relationship to improving student life on campus. This posturing wasted valuable time and resources, and all to make a statement that one could not even consider a consensus of the students enrolled.
I think his “excuses” are rather persuasive:
Sorry, ArchiveGuy, Sullivan’s excuses for barebacking are not persuasive. Even if he and his prospective partners are all HIV+, they still should not have sex without condoms because they can infect each other with different strains of the bug, rendering current treatments ineffective and creating drug-resistant superinfections.
People should only bareback if both partners are in a monogamous relationship, and they have both tested HIV- in two tests taken 6 months apart. Otherwise, no glove, no love.
Bullshit.
A. The scientific evidence shows that superinfections are possible.
B. Nobody has the right to pass on a disease or a new strain of a disease to another person. This is not a privacy issue, as Sullivan claims, but a public health issue. I don;t care if the other guyis on all fours begging to be infected, it is immoral, nay evil, to comply with that request.
Given that the article linked was written two years ago, I don’t suppose there’s the remotest possibility that at the time, the evidence in spring 2001 may have been far less conclusive? And does possible mean likely or theoretical, and shouldn’t that make some difference?
From thebody.com
In the possiblity of re-infecting others with HIV, the decent thing is to lessen the possiblity, not increase it. People who pass on their disease with no concern for the welfare of others are no better than common murderers.
Otto – I see you’ve replied in the thread after I posted my interpretation of the articles. Now Archive Guy shares my view, can you help us out; change of heart in relation to the OP or do you disagree with our views ?
So, case studies but “only a little data currently exists”, which means that in 2001, there was probably even less information for him to go off of.
And how exactly does one have “no evidence of harmlessness” if there’s so little data to go off of? What’s the standard of evidence for something like that?
I guess consulting with your doctors and your partners and applying meagre (but hardly conclusive) scientific evidence to a decision that’s mutually decided-upon falls under this “no concern” umbrella in your book. I don’t agree.