Inexplicable

It is to Halley Suitt's credit that she doesn't get the fact that Andrew Sullivan gets hate mail because he writes about gay issues. She's right, it's a sad commentary on American prejudices, and too few people are willing to denounce this kind of bigotry. However, it is not surprising in a nation where the President is pushing an initiative to amend the Constitution in order to deny gays equal protection of the laws.

On a related note, I am almost finished with John Boswell's fascinating account of how general tolerance for gay sexuality in Classical times and during the Renaissance of the Twelfh Century gave way to vicious repression of gays -- and Jews, Muslims and religious dissenters -- in the thirteenth century, leaving Europe (and European culture) with a legacy of hate that persists to this day. Boswell admits that the question has been so little studied (and so misrepresented by modern scholars reluctant to come to grips with references to gays in Classical and Medieval literature) that any conclusions are tentative. Nevertheless, he hypothesizes that the growing repression in the thirteenth century was linked to the rise of absolutist monarchical states unwilling to tolerate any deviation from prevailing orthodoxies.