Gay Conservatives and the Internet

Via GayPatriotWest, I learned that this blog is listed among many gay libertarian and gay conservative blogs identified by syndicated columnist/law professor Dale Carpenter in his latest piece on gay politics (written from his own conservative perspective).

Professor Carpenter begins his piece by noting:

Perhaps more than any invention since the printing press, the Internet has decentralized information and opinion. The marketplace of ideas, including ideas about the appropriate tactics and even direction of the gay-rights cause, is more robust than ever. Gay-conservative bloggers and Web sites, of which there are now dozens, are major competitors in this marketplace.

He presents his own personal "top eight list" of gay conservative blogs and informational web sites. You'll notice that several of them are already listed on my blogroll (see sidebar to your right) and others deserve to be:

(1) Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.org): This ought to be the first stop for anyone interested in gay conservative and libertarian views. It features columns from more than 40 different writers (including me) on just about every gay-related topic. It also features a terrific blog called CultureWatch, written by Steve Miller, who has something trenchant to say about everything.

(2) Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.com): Sullivan is the granddaddy of all bloggers, and easily the most widely read gay blogger in the country, getting 70,000 to 80,000 visits a day. Passionate, perceptive, and wickedly smart, he's interesting and challenging even when he's wrong. Cruise him daily.

(3) Jonathan Rauch (www.jonathanrauch.com): Rauch is one of the most influential and finest gay authors on the planet. He writes for respected mainstream publications, like The Atlantic and National Journal , on a wide range of issues. His recent book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, is the best and most concise argument for gay marriage I've ever read. While his Web site is not a blog, it will quickly get you to his irreplaceable work.

(4) Bruce Bawer (www.brucebawer.com): Bawer wrote the most important book of the 1990s on gay issues, A Place at the Table . It awakened a generation of gay Americans to the possibility of an alternative to gay-left orthodoxy. Now he's defending classical liberal values against Muslim extremism. Also not a blog, this site will give you entree to Bawer's best stuff.

(5) Beth Elliott (www.thebethzone.com): Elliott, who has been active on gay issues since the 1970s, calls herself "a girl-kissing California girl with a Southern heritage and a Jesuit education." Her irreverent blog effectively takes on lesbian-feminist shibboleths from a libertarian perspective.

(6) Gay Patriot (www.gaypatriot.net): Two skillful and informed pundits take turns whacking at Democrats and the gay left on this blog. It's probably the most reliably conservative gay blog on the Internet.

(7) Tim Hulsey (mystupiddog.blogspot.com): Hulsey, a "gay, conservative grad student and former writing teacher," ruminates articulately on culture and politics. When I want a thoughtful analysis of a movie I'm thinking about seeing, I go to Hulsey's blog.

(8) Jon Rowe (jonrowe.blogspot.com): Rowe is a libertarian college professor with a law degree. His blog covers everything from constitutional theory to sex to religion, all the things one shouldn't talk about in polite company. It is intelligent, refined, and measured – qualities badly lacking in much of the blogosphere.

Carpenter then goes on to say there "are many more good ones," some of which (I am sad to say) I have not previously encountered:

ricksincerethoughts.blogspot.com, bovinestare.typepad.com, lloydletta.blogspot.com, boifromtroy.com, anothergayrepublican.blogspot.com, queer-conservative.blogspot.com, dyneslines.blogspot.com, blogcabinca.org, republicofm.com, rightrainbow.com, homocon.com, gayandright.blogspot.com, northdallasthirty.blogspot.com, thatgayconservative.wordpress.com, bigapplegop.blogspot.com, gayorbit.net, malcontent.typepad.com, averagegayjoe.blogspot.com, cakeordeath.wordpress.com

I am impressed, if by nothing else, by the diversity and creativity of the names that people give their blogs. Some of them are quite clever and pungent.

GayPatriotWest comments:

Because of the growing media marketplace, especially the Internet, gay people no longer have to rely upon left-of-center news and opinion sources for information and commentary on issues of concern to us. Those in the gay media (and at some gay organizations) who wish to suppress our ideas, suggesting that their views reflect that of the gay community can no longer get away with the claim that they speak for all gay people. With the growing number of gay conservative bloggers, there are now gay voices publicly standing up to left-leaning gay organizations and gay media. And we’re reaching an ever-increasing audience.

We live in a different age. Anyone who suggests that the Internet has not transformed politics, the press, and social life is ignoring the obvious