On the politics of homosexuality
Scott Stephens discusses the recent scandal over an Australian politician who was seen at a gay sex club:
As Andrew Sullivan noted [in his essay, "The Politics of Homosexuality"], while the "liberal politics of homosexuality" has proven the most "durable", it is ultimately just as deficient as the others because it can only see the issue "through the prism of the civil rights movement". In its noble quest to extend legal protections to all minorities and to ensure non-discrimination against homosexuals, liberalism necessarily "restricts itself to law – not culture – in addressing social problems"....
In much the same way as Noel Pearson rejects the liberal politics of Indigenous victimisation, Sullivan rejected the liberal politics of homosexuality because it is incapable of doing anything but to "extend to homosexuals the same protections they have granted to other minorities".
In other words, liberalism is based on the assumption that "the full equality of homosexuals can be accomplished by designating gay people as victims". And this, he insisted, is not just morally crippling; it demeans us all.
As the David Campbell affair demonstrates, the liberal politics of homosexuality – with its fetishising of victimhood – so prevalent in Australia has yielded precisely the results that Sullivan anticipated.
