Was Nixon Gay?
01/29/2012
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Are we talking about Richard M. Nixon or Cynthia Nixon? Or both?

A new book says Dick Nixon was once seen clutching the hand of Presidential Buddy Bebe Rebozo for a minute. Proof!

As for actress Cynthia Nixon, formerly of Sex and the City, she is in the dog house for saying she wasn't born a lesbian, she chose to be one. This is "controversial," even insensitive, since everybody knows that the behavior of all minority groups is controlled wholly by their genes; nobody should be allowed to doubt genetic determinism like Nixon is doing, at least not in public. Think of the children! Is she some sort of hater? (Personally, I pointed out to my wife back in the late 1990s that Nixon and/or the character she played on that show was an obvious angry repressed lesbian, but Nixon didn't seem to notice that herself until several years later.)

Frank Bruni in the NYT punditizes "Genetic or Not, Gay Won't Go Away." Of course, it never seems to dawn on Bruni and most other commentators that there might be significant statistical differences between gay males and lesbians, as I pointed out 18 years ago in Why Lesbians Aren't Gay, one of which is that gay men tend to be more enthusiastic about the born-that-way theory than are lesbians. You just aren't supposed to notice stuff. Noticing things is the cause of all the trouble in the world.

Seriously, what has changed over the last 18 years? The big difference I've noticed is that in the 1990s male homosexuals, qua homosexuals, tended to be more apolitical, with more humor, art, and fashion to occupy themselves, while lesbians tended to be the Shock Workers of the long march through the institutions, the truest true believers in the social conditioning theories dominant in 1990s academia.

Since then, gay men have become more politicized. Back in 1994, few cared about Gay Marriage, but it's one of those issues that can easily be turned into a test of whether or not "You like me! You really like me!" Politicization over Gay Marriage meant that gays' traditional snarky comments about lesbians were bad for the coalition, so the concept that lesbians aren't gay has become much more politically unpopular over the years.

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