Andrew Sullivan to Leave Blogging After 15 Years

The husband and me with Andrew Sullivan at a fundraiser

Out gay blogger Andrew Sullivan - who I have had the privilege of meeting - has announced that he will be leaving blogging in due course.  Some days Andrew outrages me, especially with his refusal to face the reality that the Roman Catholic Church is systemically flawed and his opposition to hate crimes laws, but other times he amazingly sums up a situation in prose that I can only wish I could author.  In a post today, he summarizes the reasons behind his decision.  Here are excerpts:

Why? Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.

The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. . . . . I want to write a book. 

I want to spend some real time with my parents, while I still have them, with my husband, who is too often a ‘blog-widow’, my sister and brother, my niece and nephews, and rekindle the friendships that I have simply had to let wither because I’m always tied to the blog. And I want to stay healthy. I’ve had increasing health challenges these past few years. They’re not HIV-related; my doctor tells me they’re simply a result of fifteen years of daily, hourly, always-on-deadline stress. These past few weeks were particularly rough – and finally forced me to get real.

I can completely understand the burn out aspect Andrew describes.  Likewise, my husband can understand the "blog-widow" statement since, even though I blog at nowhere the level of Andrew, each day, more or less 365 days per year, I spend numerous hours scanning the news and stories and then writing posts.  Oh, and the hunt for daily "male beauties" likewise can be time consuming since I strive to never disappoint. 

Will I follow Andrew's example and end the blog?  I really don't know.  It is hard to describe, but over the last almost seven years of daily blogging, I have made amazing connections with people literally from all over the world including Europe, Australia, across the USA and most recently a reader in Ghana.  The other aspect of blogging is that it can be a great way to vent as some of my truly long time readers can recall from the dark days of my coming out, suicide attempts and an unpleasant divorce.  If and when I decide to stop blogging, I will let readers know.  The other option is to take on some co-contributors, as

summing anyone would be interested.

When The Dish ends, it will join another former favorite, Pam's House Blend, which ended when blogger friend Pam Spaulding finally burned out. I wish Andrew the best and I hope he can finally come to terms with his inability to walk away from the Catholic Church.

The Pentagon Says LGBT Sites Are Blocked For "Operational Security Reasons"

As readers may recall, it recently was shown that the Pentagon has been blocking LGBT sites on government and military computers even thought far right wing political sites are freely accessible as are other less than main stream sites.  Now, the Pentagon is trying to claim that LGBT sites and blogs have been banned for "operational security reasons."  Apparently, Tea Party and quasi-Nazi and near white supremacist sites are fine.  Obviously, the storyline doesn't add up.  Think Progress looks at the Pentagon's ludicrous explanation.  Here are excerpts:

AMERICAblog has been raising awareness over the past week about a problematic Internet filtering problem at the Pentagon, and rightfully so. Apparently, a preponderance of LGBT news sites have been blocked by the DOD, including AMERICAblog, Towleroad, Good As You, The Bilerico Project, Pam’s House Blend, The Advocate, and the Human Rights Campaign’s blog.

 Though the filtering itself is a problem, the Pentagon’s response has been that much more troubling.
On Friday, the DOD released a statement on its Facebook page completely obfuscating the situation:

We’ve received some questions/comment recently about DOD’s web access policies, and wanted to provide this statement:

The Department of Defense does not block LGBT websites. The pages referenced in several recent articles were denied access based on web filters blocking the “Blog/Personal Pages” category, not the specific sites themselves. While individuals on a DoD system may visit portions of the main websites (i.e., www.towleroad.com, www.AMERICAblog.com), certain additional links/pages – to include personal blogs – are blocked. Personal pages and blogs are blocked in accordance with DoD policy allowing military commanders the option to restrict access to personal pages for operational security reasons.

As AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis points out, this statement does not withstand scrutiny on multiple counts. First of all, the filtration software specifically identifies the sites as “LGBT” as a reason for being blocked. Secondly, this doesn’t explain why plenty of anti-gay conservative blogs and personal pages are not blocked, including RedState, Breitbart, the Family Research Council’s blog, the National Organization for Marriage’s blog, and Ann Coulter’s and Glenn Beck’s personal sites. There is also no explanation how LGBT content could threaten national security, .  .  .  .

It also seems that there is little consistency throughout the system, with different divisions being controlled differently. Aravosis has identified that the DOD uses a filtration software known as Blue Coat, the same software used by a number of oppressive regimes and LGBT-unfriendly countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. Blue Coat has also problematically blocked LGBT sites in many school districts, including anti-bullying and anti-suicide resources like The Trevor Project.

It remains unclear then why the software includes a filter for LGBT content at all, except for use by those who are anti-LGBT.

Over the weekend, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little issued another statement that improves a bit over the first, promising to investigate the claims of censorship:

Recent reports have suggested that the Pentagon is blocking access to LGBT related websites. The Department of Defense does not block websites based on LGBT content. [...]   No filter is perfect and some sites may have unnecessarily been blocked. The Department Chief Information Officer will work with relevant components to address these situations.

Still, neither statement addresses the way progressive LGBT content is uniquely blocked when conservative anti-gay content is not, nor explains the validity — past or present — for such filtering. If the only answers ever offered are suggestions that LGBT content threatens national security, then the only conclusion left will be that the Pentagon is itself anti-LGBT. 

 

Lets be candid.  Many in the senior ranks of the Pentagon ARE anti-gay.  There is no other legitimate reason for the targeting of LGBT blogs and sites is occurring.  Especially given the fact that incendiary far right blogs and sites are not filtered.

More DADT Protests at The White House

I am a little behind the curve on this story since we had dinner with friends from the Netherlands this evening who have been stuck in the USA due to the airline flight cancellations in Europe because of the ash cloud from the volcanic eruption in Iceland. That said, this afternoon proved newsworthy as six (6) LGBT activists - Lt. Dan Choi, Capt. Jim Pietrangelo II, Petty Officer Larry Whitt, Petty Officer Autumn Sandeen, Cadet Mara Boyd, and Airman Victor Price - chained themselves to the White House gates in protest over Barack Obama's do nothing approach to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell which codifies religious based discrimination against gay service members. Among those who chained themselves were Dan Choi who I had the pleasure to speak with last year as well as Autumn Sandeen who writes for Pam's House Blend and who attended the LGBT Blogger Summit in 2008 with me in Washington, D.C. Today's action followed up activists heckling Obama as he spoke at a fundraiser last night for Senator Barbara Box. The White House reaction to the protests have been troubling for several. The first is Obama's pretense as to why he cannot understand why the LGBT community is not happy with him. Andrew Sullivan summed it up well on his blog this morning:
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Because, Mr President, it is not enough to be "supportive" of ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." When you have the presidency and your party controls both Houses of Congress, it's a matter of having the political will to end it. Not all gay people are HRC-fundraisers. Some are even risking their lives every day for this country, in uniform, only to be treated like second class human beings and citizens by their own government. Their own government? That means you, Mr President and Senator Boxer.
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More troubling is the fact that the Obama White House closed Lafayette Park in an apparent effort to keep the news media from reporting on what is obviously an embarrassing protests that calls out Obama for lying about his "support" for LGBT equality. I continue to believe that for all of the GOP's nastiness and dysfunctional aspects, Obama runs the risk of leading the Democrats to a debacle in November if the Democrat base is apathetic and stays home on election day. Virginia's 2009 elections ought to be a loud alarm bell to Congressional Democrats, but they and Obama act as if they are all stone deaf. Here are highlights from Pam's House Blend:
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In a move that suggests the White House is feeling the heat on its slow-motion approach toward repealing DADT, it's now resorted to trying to stop press coverage of direct actions. As Ben Smith of The Politico notes in his post "Most transparent White House ever...", closing Lafayette Park to the public during a demonstration is almost unheard of. Until now, when LGBT military veterans, including barista Autumn Sandeen, chained themselves to the White House fence today.
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Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." People who have covered the White House for years tell me that's an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.
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Personally, I am about over Obama's constant games and failures to deliver on his campaign promises. At some point it is difficult not to feel that his whole campaign - especially as pitched to the LGBT community - was not much more than a calculated lie. Dan Choi summed it up as follows:
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“We are handcuffing ourselves to the White House gates once again to demand that President Obama show leadership on repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ If the President were serious about keeping his promise to repeal this year, he would put the repeal language in his Defense Authorization budget. The President gave us an order at the Human Rights Campaign dinner to keep pressure on him and we will continue to return to the White House, in larger numbers, until the President keeps his promise to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year."

Is Don'T Ask, Don't Give Working?

An opinion piece by a gay conservative on AOLNews suggests that those in the LGBT blogosphere and the "don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign endorsed by an number of big time blogs - as well as this blog - may well be doing more to get things moving on LGBT issues than all of the "make-nice: efforts of our self-anointed leaders at HRC. The sad reality is that most politicians will not do something merely because it is the right thing to do. Instead they act either to secure continued support/votes or to stop efforts that will be potentially harmful to their political careers. And since money is the mother's milk of politics, threats to stop the flow of money is often taken far more seriously than HRC statements condemning various policies. Here are some column highlights:
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While President Barack Obama's decision to move forward with the elimination of the military's much hated "don't ask, Don't tell" policy has attracted widespread coverage, the reason behind the sudden push hasn't. So, what exactly got the White House wheels in motion on DADT?
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It certainly wasn't the Human Rights Campaign, which has been playing a game of make-nice with Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration. Its leader, Joe Solmonese, ever quick to criticize Republicans when they fall short on gay issues, has been tepid in his criticism of the president when Obama failed to keep campaign promises to the gay community.
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It may instead have been an effort by a coterie of liberal bloggers and activists calling "for a temporary moratorium on DNC donations" who made the administration realize there was a price for its inaction.
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The fledgling movement, which adopted the motto "Don't Ask, Don't Give" and has attracted the likes of legendary gay rights activist David Mixner, aimed at discouraging donations to the party until the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the repeal of both "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Mostly left-of-center bloggers at such sites as Pam's House Blend, Queerty and AmericaBlogGay pressed their readers to boycott the Democratic Party.
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Their actions generated a lot of heat in the community, culminating in a cover story in the Advocate, a monthly gay newsmagazine. And threatened with this loss of revenue from some of their most reliable (and affluent) supporters, the Obama administration surely realized it needed to act quickly on one of those issues, lest it lose a significant chunk of its financial support and alienate some of the party's most enthusiastic backers.
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So, this gay conservative blogger's hat is off to his fellows on the other side of the political aisle. Unlike the heads of the establishment gay organizations, they didn't kowtow to the leaders of the political party they prefer and refused to accept their promises of action on some undefined date in the future. They told the administration there would be consequences for its failure to act. And it acted.

Political Ponderings

The other day after the Obama rally in Virginia Beach, I posted a diary over on Pam’s House Blend which seems to have apparently greatly upset some of Hillary's supporters a number of whom have pummeled me in their comments. Therefore, I felt it best to further restate my argument that caused such a gnashing of teeth on the part of some. I also want to comment to remarks I heard on MSNBC this morning where some commentators – and Hillary’s campaign – are trying to compare Obama followers to a cult. My first comments are a statement of what I said on Pam Spaulding’s blog when critics tried to minimize Obama’s win in Virginia:

First, Virginia's population ranks 12th nationally in terms of population, so how a candidate performs here is not as insignificant as some would pretend. Moreover, the population is an interesting mix ranging from the liberal Washington, D.C., suburbs to reactionary Southwest Virginia, to the large military population in Tidewater Virginia.

Second, the primary results are in and the margin for Obama was staggering: locally, Obama carried the Hampton Roads area by percentages ranging from 65% in conservative Virginia Beach to 79% in Hampton. Norfolk went for Obama with him receiving 71% of the votes. Even in reactionary Chesapeake where Huckabee beat McCain 48% to 44%, Obama got 71% of the vote. Statewide, Obama received 30% more votes that ALL of the votes cast in the GOP primary. Hillary only received votes equaling 72% of the total GOP vote.

Third, an interesting phenomenon occurred: the number of Republicans voting in the Democrat primary - for Hillary. I witnessed it myself at my precinct as did a number of friends (some GOP friends even confessed that they did it). Why did they do it? They wanted Hillary to win because they see her as more easily defeated in November. Without such voters, Hillary would have been even more resoundingly beaten by Obama.

Fourth, as readers know, I am a former GOP activist (I left the party when the Christianists took control) and I come from a family that historically has generally voted for and/or contributed to the GOP. In addition, I have worked on quite a few campaigns. In this primary, ALL in my family voted for Obama and will vote for him in November. By the same token, most of them will vote for McCain if Hillary is the Democrat nominee. I would further add that many of the members of the GOP that I still am in contact with likewise will NEVER vote for Hillary, although they would vote for Obama. Hillary supporters may want to suppress this reality, but it is a reality.

As for the cult allegation, I think it comes from a couple of sources, the first of which is the jaded nature of political commentators and political insiders who do NOT want a change in the way politics are conducted in this country. Should Obama be elected and make good on some of his goals, many political insiders would find their secure little world turned upside down. God forbid that they lose their insider connections and/or influence.

I believe that the other reason Obama is turning out such crowds is that many in this country are disillusioned and desperately want a change in direction. Younger people want to put the misbegotten Bush/Cheney years behind them and to have a sense of hope. Many commentators do not consider how badly Bush’s re-election impacted young voters. My own son for instance called me the day after the election and was all set to move to Canada. Likewise many working class and middle class families have been “playing by the rules” and find themselves increasingly worse off financially – even with both spouses working. More of the same politics under either Hillary or McCain will not provide them with a chance for a better life. They see the system as being broken and Obama is the only candidate talking about systemic change. Perhaps Obama will not be able to deliver if elected, but he at least offers hope to a disillusioned citizenry. Hope is an important element in allowing one to soldier on.

Mike Huckabee Extremism

The more I hear and read about Mike Huckabee, the more I believe his run for the White House needs to be derailed and soon. It looks like he could make the Chimperator look down right rational when it comes to being obsessed with religion. In addition, he appears to be corrupt notwithstanding all his Christianist platitudes. Pam Spaulding has a story that looks at some of the nutty and/or corrupt things Huckabee has done that can be found here (http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3953). I recommend you read Pam's full posts. Here's a listing of 20 whacked out things this Christianist has done and/or said:

1. Huckabee Calls for the Quarantine of AIDS Victims
2. Huckabee Enables the Politically-Motivated Parole of Repeat Rapist/Murderer
3. Huckabee Offers Faith-Based Pardons
4. Huckabee Undermines the Teaching of Evolution
5. Huckabee Speaks for God
6. Huckabee Speaks to God
7. Huckabee Claims God Behind His Rise in the Polls
8. Huckabee Proclaims His Theology Degree a Unique Qualification to Fight Terrorism
9. Huckabee Flip-Flops, Calls for Federal Abortion Ban
10. Huckabee Calls for Consumption Tax, Abolition of the IRS
11. Huckabee Vows to Take Nation Back for Christ
12. Huckabee Declares Culture War in 1998 Book
13. Huckabee Declares Women Should Graciously Submit to Their Husbands
14. Huckabee Predicts Victory over Islam at the End of Times
15. Huckabee Boasts About Theology Degree He Doesn't Have
16. Huckabee Destroys His State Computer Records - and Church Sermons
17. Huckabee Offers State Appointments in Exchange for Gifts
18. Huckabee Uses Wedding Registries to Furnish New Home
19. Huckabee Offers Clemency to Repeat DWI Offender (and GOP Donor)
20. Huckabee Intervenes to Save Dog-Killing Son from Legal Jeopardy