Queer as Volk:
The Jeff Gannon Affair

Well, you can get the long (and NC-17-rated) version of the Jeff Gannon saga here at Americablog.

I barely read blogs anymore, but my guess is that this story has been analyzed to death already. But that the Bush administration is dishonest, prone to propagandize, and getting significant assistance from phoney and semi-phoney right-wing "news" organizations comes as no surprise. So this sordid little episode doesn't seem to me to tell us much more about them than we already knew.

I'm sorta more interested in the few things I've seen in the leftosphere, most of which made a big deal about Mr. Gannon's sexual preferences. Is it--and if so, why is it--permissible to make an issue of who Mr. Gannon chooses to have sex with? If the tables were turned, I expect that most of us on this side of the fence would be rather upset if the rightosphere were focusing on the sexuality of the person concerned.

Even if he is, in fact, some kind of male prostitute it isn't clear that it's sporting to make a big deal out of this. I, for instance, have no in-principle objection to prostitution. So, as long as no one is being oppressed or exploited I don't see that I have any grounds for complaint. And I take it that a white male American who chooses to be a prostitute is probably in a better position to make an autonomous choice than, say, a thirteen-year-old Thai girl.

If Mr. Gannon were a murderer or a liar or a plagiarist that would be one thing. But those of us who don't have any moral objections to the kinds of choices he has made in his personal life should, I think, refrain from trying to make an issue of those choices in the case at hand.

Some complain that this is proof of the administration's hypocrisy given their promotion of anti-homosexual policies. This criticism strikes me as being weak and perhaps even a bit disingenuous. Politics makes strange bedfellows (as it were) and even someone who is genuinely and strongly anti-homosexual need not eschew all dealings with everyone who is gay. I would, in fact, be somewhat happier upon discovering that the administration's anti-homosexual stance was, in fact, merely a pose--a pose struck in order to appear fetching to the radical right. Bad as that would be, it would be better than real bigotry. At any rate, I am not suggesting that there is nothing to the charge of hypocrisy, but it's not really grabbing me at this point.

None of this is to say that there aren't real questions surrounding this matter. Just that I don't think that Mr. Gannon's sexuality is among them.