Episode Summary
In public opinion surveys, people who are gay and lesbian tend to overwhelmingly back the Democratic party. According to Gallup, 83 percent of both groups identify or lean toward Democrats. This seems like such an obvious preference given the Republican alternative, but the extremely lopsided support that Democrats get from gays and lesbians is actually a relatively recent development.
Although the contemporary Republican Party is known as an identity group for straight White Christians, long before Stonewall, more than a few gay politicos thought that shrinking government generally was a way to keep it out of the bedroom as well.
That viewpoint very clearly does not belong in today’s Republican party of Donald Trump and JD Vance with its hateful obsessions over imaginary pedophiles and trans athletes, but it’s still important to learn about the gay Republican experience, not just because it gives us a fuller picture of the past, but also because it may give some guidance as to where the far-right is headed in the future.
I’ll be talking about all of this with my guest in today’s episode, his name is Neil J. Young, and he’s written a very interesting book called Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, which is now available.
The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.
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Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
03:20 — The closet was a bipartisan thing in the beginning
05:51 — Libertarianism and gay Republicans
09:51 — Anti-communism and the closet
14:23 — Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited government
27:10 — Ronald Reagan's more libertarian term as California governor
34:15 — Terry Dolan and the gay DC Republican subculture
The chapters below are for paid subscribers only
41:02 — How concerns about a possible “gay gene” motivated some activists against abortion rights
43:38 — Arthur Finkelstein, influential gay Republican activist and fundraiser
46:21 — How mainstream media became the only real place for gay conservatives
52:01 — LGBTQ media's response to the Christian Right takeover of the Republican party
56:26 — The bipartisan spirit of early LGBTQ political organizations
58:54 — Did bipartisanship make same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination laws easier and more secure?
01:04:07 — The precarious position of right-wing drag queens
01:10:54 — Today's gay Republicans are much more extreme than their predecessors
01:15:00 — How hyper-masculine gay reactionaries are reaching out to fundamentalists and incels
01:32:20 — Conclusion and further resources
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So this is a book that I think is long overdue because gay and lesbian people in the Republican party have always been some of the highest and most influential operatives and activists.
And yet most people are not aware of that. Like if you live in DC and you work in politics there, you know that, but most people outside of that very limited world are not aware of any of these stories or any of these people. Or at least the, their personal lives, we'll say they, they might know them from their professional achievement, shall we say?
But your book starts off with the concept of the double life, which would seem inevitable, for somebody working in a reactionary political movement who is not heterosexual.
NEIL J. YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the big themes of this book is the ongoing presence of the closet. And I think people who follow the news probably can think of some recent examples of that. I mean, it's a, it's a fairly, I think regular feature of political news in this country that, Republicans get outed as gay where it's Larry Craig or Aaron Schock after the fact, or there's some sort of more recent ones.
But I was impressed to discover how much that was the case, even more so than I expected. And one of the things I realized if the history of the closet was going to be such a huge [00:04:00] part of this story, that it actually made sense to begin in the era of the closet and sort of mid century America.
Where everyone was closeted for the most part, and that being closeted wasn't a condition of one's politics as much as it was just the state of life at the time in the 1950s and 60s. So, I thought this book was going to begin in the late 70s, and that's in fact where my book proposal started, but as I really delved more into the history, And realized again, the importance of the closet as this ongoing aspect.
I want to just start in the air of the closet when one, no matter if you're a Republican or if you're a Democrat your life is really closeted because I think there's just this conception people have that like Republicans. Not gay, anti gay, and therefore anyone who's associated with it had to be closeted, and there's a very different history for the Democratic Party.
And so I wanted to start in a period of time in which that, that difference wasn't the case and what does it mean for Republican men? in the 1950s to have been homosexuals.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and it's true. I mean, in, in essence, in a lot of ways, this was the same starting point for both left wing and right wing gays, basically.
That's right. Exactly.
Libertarianism and gay Republicans
SHEFFIELD: Um, and, and, and in some sense because in, in some sense, because the in the mid 20th century, there was, the development of, of libertarianism as, kind of a, a right wing form of liberalism. And that some of the earliest the earliest libertarians were in fact atheists.
And so in some sense, like there. For some people, they may actually have started, had a little bit easier freedom of movement to be gay, if not, to the public, at least have it be known, within the movement that they operated in. Do you, would you agree with that?
YOUNG: [00:06:00] Yeah, I think a lot of gay men in the fifties and the sixties who are sort of right of center, they found libertarianism particularly.
Useful for sort of, I think, understanding their life and as a sort of model for what they hope the nation would pursue politically, because their sort of sense of, especially at the time, the 1950s, I mean, this is the Cold War era, right? So huge federal, governmental repression and criminalization of gay people.
And of course this was happening in a bipartisan effort. Democrats and Republicans alike were joined in creating, what historians have called the lavender scare this cold war repressive state that sought to, especially in DC and in, in the, in the in the, within the federal government to root out and find homosexuals and to fire them from their jobs and really to ruin their lives.
But that wasn't just the case in D. C. It was the case all across the country. I mean, law enforcement everywhere was targeting homosexuals. And so you have a good number of people who I was really surprised to discover how many there were of gay men who said, okay, the path to freedom here is through Curtailing government power through restricting the powers of the government and that sort of libertarian vision of how the government should operate was one in which they imagined freedom for the, for themselves which is, of course, different than the sort of rights based civil rights connected.
Notion of freedom and equality that's developing on the left for gay persons.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. And and this, this moment in time, also the, the mid 20th century was kind of when there was the, the bifurcation of liberalism into progressivism and Libertarianism, right? And and it's, it's interesting because I think even today, a lot of people who [00:08:00] identify well, who, who very obviously have right wing libertarian views like Joe Rogan people in his orbit, they actually think that they're, On the left, it's kind of incredible, but, but, but you can see the starting point, like, for instance, in the, the whole in the hippie movement and some of these, kind of, I mean, like the phrase, if it feels good, do it.
That was both that was a ended up being more about. Personal liberation in the views of some people and less about political liberation,
YOUNG: right? Right, right. Yeah. These different sort of notions of freedom that could operate in this period that aren't necessarily tied to one partisan position or another, but like serve as sort of an imaginative, an imaginative theory of the world.
And also as a really I think useful discourse but like tweaked in different directions depending on sort of the larger political commitments.
Anti-communism and the closet
SHEFFIELD: so obviously on the right, while there was this kind of burgeoning libertarian tradition, there was Joe McCarthy, who was really the biggest perpetrator of the lavender scare. And, among other things, he made it very clear that he, not only was he trying to root out. Supposed communist in the government.
He was also going after homosexual men. And so, and then of course he had a gay man on his own staff. Let's maybe talk about Roy Cohn in that context. We'll have, we'll come back to him later. I don't want to talk all the way about it yet. But he's certainly an interesting character and very emblematic to this story.
YOUNG: Yeah. And I don't really write about Conan the book because he's been covered so much. But he's obviously relevant to this history here. And I actually focus on some. Some characters who are less well known to most readers but the, who do have connections to McCarthy some of them directly, some of them just are sort of aligned with him politically.
And it took me a really long time to even figure out what [00:10:00] is this about? Because I think. You have someone like Cone, who's like a complicated psychological figure, right? Like, there's, and, and, a lot of people have sort of wrestled with him and his psychology and what that means for his period of history.
But for some of these other folks who, are not as well known and who I didn't necessarily have access to, their personal papers as much as to really delve into like, what is their inner psychology of this? But I wanted to make sense of like, why would they be aligned with someone like McCarthy?
Why would they, why are they not also libertarians? Like, why do they have what is seen as more of sort of hard edge conservatism in this period? And one of the things that I, I sort of discovered and and that I make an argument of this section of the book is that a lot of these guys. found that sort of fierce anti communism as a way that they actually maintain the closet for themselves.
And so in some ways that seems a little bit contradictory. You would think, why would you want to be aligned or close to a person like this? Because wouldn't you be worried that you would be exposed, right? But I found that a lot of these figures their way of sort of maintaining their position and even their idea of how they might gain power and in Washington, D.
C. was to assist this anti communist fervor, even as it had a sort of anti homosexual focus, at the forefront. as a way that they themselves passed. And I think, does that make them hypocrites? Does that make them sellouts? Like, yes, probably. But I don't think that's necessarily even the most interesting thing that we can understand about these folks.
Although it's certainly relevant, but I think sort of understanding how. In a period of heavy repression and heavy fear that some, a lot of folks actually used this anti communist fervor and sort of the ugly [00:12:00] dimensions of this politics as their own way of building as their way of building their particular closets.
SHEFFIELD: Well, and also I think to some extent. It seems like they also thought that they could steer things in a more, as you were saying earlier that a more limited government direction. So, because like, I mean, originally, for instance, when you look at William F. Buckley's, God and Man.
At Yale book, that book is extremely, right wing Christian, social conservative book including it calling out, people for, if I forget how many people specifically he called out as gay, but there were a couple that he did and said that that was nefarious. But, like, and then he wanted people to be fired for saying Jesus didn't rise from the dead and various things like that.
So, but, but eventually he, he fell in with William Rusher, who is one of the, one of these people that you're talking about as kind of a post McCarthy figure him and along with Marvin Liebman.
Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited government
SHEFFIELD: Um, so, For these, both of these guys are not very widely known now. So why don't you tell us a little, for those, for tell us who they are and what they, what they did.
YOUNG: Yeah, so Marvin Liebman is a huge character of my book. He's a really important figure. He was born in Brooklyn. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, from Eastern Europe, who'd come to the U. S. in the early 20th century. And he grew up in Brooklyn, and in a very sort of immigrant area of Italians and Poles and a large Jewish community.
And he As many people in his community did in this period of time in the 1920s and 30s, he became very active in the Communist Party, USA, first through an organization and his high school, and then ultimately he was very active in the Manhattan chapter of the Communist Party, USA, and he went off to war.
He served in World War Two. He [00:14:00] was outed and discharged because one of his commanding officers read some letters that he was writing to another day soldier. And he came back home and in the 1940s he was involved in fundraising efforts on the left, but he slowly moved to the right. And especially as, and I think a lot of, as, as most people who know this history know, a lot of people broke with the communist party.
USA in the late 1940s because of the stuff they were learning about the atrocities of Stalin and Stalinism that were coming out of the Soviet Union in the time. And so by the late 1940s, he's sort of moved to a right of center position and becomes increasingly anti communist in the 1950s. And through that development of his politics, he becomes connected to William F.
Buckley and Buckley, he meets with Buckley when Buckley has this idea to launch the National Review and Liebman doesn't think that the National Review is going to work because it's You know, he thinks there's not really a conservative movement in the country and this at the time, and like, who would read this magazine but he's, he's committed to helping Buckley, and so he provides a lot of the early fundraising that keeps the National Review afloat in those early years, and, a lot of people have said that if it hadn't been for Liebman's fundraising prowess the National Review would have never made it through those early years. He ultimately helps Buckley and he considers William F. Buckley his best friend. So he's very close to Buckley and his wife. He helps Buckley found the American Conservative Union and the Young Americans for Freedom organizations that are developing in the 1960s that are really foundational institutions for the rise of modern conservatism.
And he's closeted, he's a closeted homosexual this whole time and mostly [00:16:00] living in New York. And so in New York, he's able to have a little bit more personal freedom than a lot of the folks I'm writing about who lived in D. C. and, and had to guard their sort of personal lives a lot more closely but he's a fascinating figure and, and he, he continues through the book and we can talk more about sort of where his life heads in the 1980s, but that's sort of the period we're talking about here with, with his close association with Buckley in the 1950s.
And then William Rusher is, is who Buckley hires to be the publisher of the National Review and did that job for a very long time. Rusher is someone we don't necessarily know. is definitively gay, but someone who other historians have speculated was probably gay. And I did a really close reading of his correspondence.
And especially, I mean, there's thousands and thousands of letters of his at the Library of Congress. And I knew the sort of speculations about him and even the stuff from his own personal biography. He never married. When he eventually retires from his job as the publisher of the National Review, he moves to San Francisco, and he had said that this was a lifelong ambition to move out there.
And I was even, I didn't put this in the book, but I was even able to find in public records that he lived in San Francisco with another man for A very, very long time. And that man was one of only a handful of people that was at his burial when he died. But I do a sort of close reading of his correspondence and again, of his biographical details to, to say that I think there's a, there's a strong reason to believe that he was also a, a closeted gay man.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And, and, and I mean, it was obviously. Something he felt was a need to guard that as a secret, whatever the answer was. I mean, never, he never denied it or said affirmatively in any, in any way.
YOUNG: Yeah. And I think a lot of these guys sort of have this [00:18:00] personal philosophy of like, this is my private business.
And it doesn't really bear upon my public life. And of course, that's a sort of conservative worldview, right? That aligns with a larger conservative politics. But certainly I think was, and that again is a position that a lot of gay men had regardless of their politics for much of the 20th century.
It's just one that had, I think, Had less and less purchase on a lot of gay people's lives as we move into like the 70s and the 80s. But for these right of center conservative folks, I think it aligned with sort of traditional or conservative notions about like public versus private.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. And.
Yeah. And you don't talk too much about this or maybe at all. I guess you don't, I don't think in the book, but like the part of the, perhaps part of the, the turn against communism or leftism on the part of Liebman and some of these other guys might have been the fact that Joseph Stalin criminalized homosexuality.
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, Conducted a pretty extensive persecution of gays within the Soviet Union as well, including putting them in concentration camps.
YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, that certainly wasn't what they were publicly arguing as a chief reason to oppose communism, right? But I do think it actually, shaped a lot of their thoughts.
And someone like Liebman, who actually was, a member of the Communist Party USA, he says in his memoir that that was sort of his one objection to communism when he was, a full fledged member of the party was its, opposition to homosexuality. And often when he was a teenager and he was coming in to the city and to Manhattan from his Brooklyn home to, Purportedly go to these communist party meetings in midtown Manhattan.
He actually wouldn't go to the meetings. He would instead go to, like, the department store bathrooms at Macy's and other places where he knew, homosexual men met up. And [00:20:00] so, He was sort of already leading this, I think it's just worth remembering that, people were living all sorts of divided lives and it wasn't because they were Republican.
It was because they lived in a time in which homosexuality, no matter what sort of community or what sort of politics you were associated with was, frowned upon or, or worse. And so, so that was definitely the case for Liebman. And I think in the example of some of the other folks they're anti communism.
Part of what they thought was they had to defeat this threat to freedom. And if they did that, then maybe eventually things in the U. S. would be different as well, including around questions of sexuality. Yeah,
SHEFFIELD: yeah. And, and it is interesting, those social conservative views that were prevalent in the Soviet Union during so and so.
Mm hmm. They're kind of, they, they're echoing in the present day now, actually, when you look at some people who call themselves tankies, quote, unquote, that they have in many cases, some of the spillover that happens and, people have this idea of horseshoe theory and whatnot. So whether that's true or not, but it is.
The case that for several of these people who have flip flopped from, identify calling themselves communist or whatever, and then now saying that they're pro Trump and they love fascism. The one thing that a lot of them have in common is that they hate LGBTQ. Um, And this same idea of, degeneracy, quote unquote, it never fully went away on the, on the extreme left, because, everything has to be about economics and the class struggle. And so, talking about sexual liberation or the freedom to live your personal life, that's a distraction. It's wrong.
YOUNG: Right. Yeah, I think especially when sexual, sexuality and sexual identity is tied to notions of personal freedom, the politics of that become pretty complex, or at least that we can see sort of a far right and a far [00:22:00] left having having sort of objections to that, or having a politics that sort of brings them in alignment even if they can't see, even if like they wouldn't see themselves as allies in any way.
I mean, one of the like wonderful challenges of this book was, and I didn't anticipate this when I started it, was there were too many people for me to write about and so, I mean, there's lots of like out gay Republicans and out gay conservatives that I just didn't get to include in this book because you have to, make some decisions there.
And so, that was the case for again, people who are publicly out. And then there were lots of folks who were in the closet, or I assumed were in the closet. And I could only selectively write about some of them. But it was a good problem to have. And certainly when I was starting out for this project and worried about the opposite situation.
I'm not having enough to enough to write about. That, that was definitely not the case.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. No, there, there is just a lot. And one of the other kind of in these earlier years before the, the rise of the evangelical, right. There, there, I think there was more of a, A freedom of movement.
Paradoxically, even though society as a whole was much more repressive toward homosexuality, the Republican party was not run by, basically confederate Christians. And so, so now it's much more difficult to be a gay Republican nowadays, I think in some ways. And we'll, we can get into that later, but I mean, just keep it to the current The older period.
I'm sorry.
YOUNG: No, but I think again, that's why I wanted to start the book as early as I did in the 1950s because, really a question that I was sort of writing against or this sort of overwhelming assumption that I knew is out there and that I had to tackle is, is this question of like, why would any gay person belong to the Republican party?
And I think, anyone sitting here [00:24:00] today, like, That's an understandable question and understandable assumption given, the last couple of decades of history, but I, and in order to, to really confront that question, again, I wanted to start at a time and place when it didn't make any more sense to be a gay Republican than it made sense to be a gay Democrat, that both parties were inhospitable to the homosexual.
And so that one wasn't, Aligned with either party because of their sexual identity, but in spite of it and to start at that point, so then you can see how history is evolving within both parties, how things are changing and how that sort of decision in that calculation really changes over time.
Ronald Reagan's more libertarian term as California governor
YOUNG: But one of the things that I found really interesting was in writing in the 1970s which is when in the late 1970s is when the first gay Republican organizations Begin these early grassroots groups that ultimately in 1990 coalesce into the national organization known as log cabin Republicans, which is the oldest and largest gay Republican organization in the country.
But that starts from all these grassroots groups that start springing up in California in 1977, 1978, in response to a ballot initiative on in the state that would have made it illegal for any gay person to work in the public school system. And all these gay people and the Republican Party in California start organizing these grassroots groups to fight back against the Briggs Initiative.
That's what the, the, the Bell Initiative was called, Proposition 6, and also to ensure that the Republican Party continue to be the party that they believed in, that they believed was the sort of it's historic commitment to issue to things like freedom, equality, liberty and it was fascinating to look at this organization moment of these groups and the things that they were saying in their meetings where they were basically like, who are these Bible beaters that are trying to come into our political party and take it over?
And as someone who wrote my first book about the [00:26:00] rise of the religious, right. It's, I think it's often hard to imagine and to remember a Republican party that isn't controlled by white evangelicals, even as a historian who spent a lot of time, writing a book project to show that that wasn't an inevitable development.
So to, to be in the 1970s and to see these guys saying like, This is our political party. This is our, we are the best embodiment of conservatism and republicanism, right? Who better than us who wants the government out of our life in every form, out of our wallet, out of our bedroom. We are the true embodiment of a libertarian, freedom oriented entrepreneurial spirit like Republican Republican politics and these Bible beaters who want to moralize and to bring their, their ideas about morality into the public square.
They aren't conservatives. They aren't Republicans. And I love seeing that at work, in their minds and in their organizational strategy, strategies in the late seventies and also knowing. What else, what, what more is going to happen and how history is going to shift so much in the coming years.
It was sort of fascinating just to, to observe and to think about the Republican party through the vantage point of these gay Republicans.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's, and that struggle is one that really did continue from that moment, in, into the present and I mean, and it, but it, and it's something that distinction you're making there, it is one that I think a lot of people don't get that these Bible thumping evangelicals who came in and took over the party, they weren't conservative.
In fact, they were. Reactionaries, like reactionaries, conservative is somebody who wants to, keep things the same basically. And a reactionary wants to roll them back and to some halcyon day of your whatever that might happen to be [00:28:00] is different. But yeah,
YOUNG: and also to use the federal government for expansive purposes.
I mean, this is one of the arguments gay Republicans make. In the late seventies about the Briggs initiative. And this is how they actually bring Ronald Reagan over to stating his opposition to the Briggs initiative. In 1978, Reagan obviously was the former governor of California. Everyone knows he's about to run for president in 1980.
This huge figure, both in California and in national politics and gay Republicans make this argument and they're sort of public campaigning against the Briggs initiative and also. They make it this argument to Reagan and Reagan echo, voices this in an editorial that's huge, has a huge impact on on the Briggs initiative being defeated at the ballot box that year, but their argument is if something like this is created, if the Briggs initiative passes, This will create an enormous federal bureaucracy whose job will be to surveil its citizens to determine whether or not they are homosexual and to, root them out of their jobs.
And that's a huge expansion of government power. That's an abuse of and a bureaucratic use of government. And also it's going to. Take people out of their professions and we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be harming people's professional careers as Republicans. And so there were all sorts of ways they made these conservative arguments against the social conservative model of how.
The religious right wanted government to be used that again, had a lot of effectiveness in these early years. Ultimately they, they don't win because they don't have the numbers. I mean, religious conservatives take over the party because there's, there's more of them. But it was interesting and fascinating to watch the gay Republicans making these conservative arguments against the religious right types who they saw as reactionary and as not conservative in terms of how they anticipated and plan to use government power.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [00:30:00] yeah, no, exactly. And I mean, and this is unfortunately one of many stories, though, in which the more moderate Republicans became overwhelmed by the reaction. I mean, that, that is the story of the Republican party beginning in the mid 20th century that happens every few years, uh, into all of them.
And. But, but they, they never seem to learn, they don't know their own history and so that the more moderate ones never band together or, try to create some sort of alternative media. I mean, like that's, that is the thing is that in the Republican party, all of the media is on the far right.
There isn't, any sort of gravitational center pole. And so these conversations just are never had anymore. Like they were in the, in that 20th century or let's say let's say maybe 1970s up until the nineties. Like, everything kind of ended maybe at least in terms of the philosophical debates.
Yeah. And then, think other things were details. All right. Well, so yeah, and you mentioned Reagan.
Terry Dolan and the gay DC Republican subculture
SHEFFIELD: So, I mean, yeah, Reagan is interesting, I think, because as a governor, he. And not just on, on that issue, but also on abortion there were some, he, he did start off as more libertarian oriented compared to where he ended up obviously flip flopped on abortion as well once he became the president yeah, and so, but, he also did know, he, he, his rise was also related or somebody who was, who was Involved very heavily in that from also fundraising standpoint was Terry Dolan.
Yeah, let's talk about him if we can.
YOUNG: Yeah. So Terry Dolan was enormously important figure especially on the far right, and grassroots organizing and a closeted homosexual also his brother, Tony Dolan worked in Reagan's White House as a speech writer, but in the 1970s Terry Dolan helped found one of the most important organizations of the conservative movement [00:32:00] NCPAC the National Conservative Political Action Conference and in partnership with Jesse Helms and other figures on the far right.
And this was really about, in the 1970s, sort of bringing together a national network of grassroots conservatives. And Really mostly on social issues. Things like anti busing pro school prayer anti abortion was really taking shape in the 1970s as a sort of, as a, as a politics. And certainly something that was organizing grassroots conservatives across the country.
And Dolan Along with other, conservative figures in this period, really masterminded direct mail as a way of mobilizing millions and millions of Americans into conservative activism and into supporting the Republican party. And ultimately also in supporting Reagan's rise to the nomination in 1980, Dolan as a closeted homosexual, didn't want his organization to, you really do much about, I mean, he really tried to keep the organization away from, from talking too much about homosexuality.
But it was, it was in the, the sort of group of issues that was important to this organization and important to mobilizing social conservatives in this period. And So he, he's, he's a huge figure and the rise of a far right conservatism in the seventies and the 1980s.
And he contracts HIV, AIDS and, and dies I believe in 1990, so somewhere around the late eighties or 1990. And some of his friends out him once he's and the Washington Post does as well. There's reports about him being having been a homosexual when he does die and that he dies of HIV A's and his family gets especially his brother, Tony Dolan has a lot to say about that because they say, well, They never really officially recognized that that's what he died of, and they even go on to say that he may have been homosexual, but he had renounced that on his deathbed.
But anyway, he's [00:34:00] a he's a really fascinating figure. One that I think gives us another example of a closeted person who's hugely influential on the right. And who unlike a lot of the other people who I'm writing about who are trying to sort of push the Republican Party in a more moderate direction, he very much is about pulling the Republican Party in a much more far right direction through this period.
SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Yeah. And I mean, and what's your take on whether, how he, Reconcile that with his homosexuality.
YOUNG: Well, he was an interesting figure because he was someone who would spend all day in his office sending out these, direct mailers about, the, the threat of abortion on the nation and then go to a gay bar that night.
And and it was sort of known within Washington gay circles that. He was gay. And again, I think in the 70s and even into the 80s, a lot of people were living these sorts of lives where what they did during the day didn't necessarily connect to or, didn't have caused them the question of what they were doing at night or vice versa.
I'm not sure exactly how he reconciled it other than I think he lived a really bifurcated life and his and that was true and sort of how he conducted his life. And I think it might have been true and how he sort of thought about it in his mind. Like I said, he didn't want the organization to focus on.
Anti gay efforts. And there had only been like one mailer that his organization sent out that was ever, about the homosexual threat to the nation. And I, he said that he didn't even realize that that mailer had been developed. I don't think there's any way. That as the head of this organization, and it was a pretty small organization at the time in terms of its office, that he would have been unaware.
But I interpreted that more as sort of an obligatory nod he gave to the anti or excuse me, the anti gay politics of the era to sort of like cover [00:36:00] his bases and probably also to, ward off suspicion about who he was. But he certainly didn't want the organization or, or the conservative movement to to focus on anti gay politics.
And I think it's one of those really interesting things in this period where you have a lot of gay Republicans who are really involved in, or at least supportive of the anti abortion politics that are taking shape in this period, and also sort of privately saying to themselves, Well, the government or the, the conservative movement shouldn't be developing an anti gay politics because really we should have bodily autonomy and personal freedom and the way that they could, say that about abortion or, or, or have that view and not have it.
Change their thoughts about, the abortion issue, even as they thought about what it meant for their own lives. I think it speaks to the way a lot of these guys compartmentalize both themselves and their politics throughout this period.
How concerns about a possible "gay gene" motivated some activists against abortion rights
SHEFFIELD: I'm glad you mentioned the abortion question for a lot of these gay Republicans, especially in this time period. And, even now I hear it sometimes in the things that they say, like with the.
One of their favorite arguments to make is that if there is a gay gene and abortion is legal, then gay people will be aborted. That is an argument that I have heard a lot from them, and so that's why they agree. For some of them, that is why they think abortions should be illegal.
YOUNG: And actually, that was really prominent in the 1990s.
I don't write about this in the book because this is another thing that I just didn't have the room to include. And maybe I'll do a standalone piece about it at some point because it was a fascinating history to uncover. In the 1990s, there was all this sort of speculation that science was about to reveal the gay gene.
I mean, this is like the cover of every magazine, news magazine for a long period for, a couple of years in the 19 [00:38:00] nineties, this huge idea that, there's about to be the scientific breakthrough and gay, especially a lot of gay conservatives then start connecting that to like their own lives and saying, like you just said, if this is identified, if people are able to, like, find the marker for this, then people will get elective abortions because they don't want to, have a gay they don't want to have a gay or lesbian child.
And there was a anti gay Or excuse me, an anti abortion gay organization that has developed it is like, this is what they're emphasizing over and over in the 90s. Even as that science never was like confirmed, I do think that that is a thought that has continued for a lot of these folks on the right.
That sort of association between these two issues is connected in their mind.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and, and it is. Based on their experience. I mean, if you did come from a very extreme, fundamentalist Christian family you, you probably know that those parents might abort a child that they believe to be LGBTQ.
So it's not entirely unfounded, even though it, is probably not logical in other ways. But yeah, certainly it's within the, the general ambit of self interest as as you're talking about here.
Arthur Finkelstein, gay Republican activist and fundraiser
SHEFFIELD: so just going back to Dolan though I mean, one of the other things that's notable about his career also is that he was, was, was he and his own mentor, Arthur Finkelstein they were instrumental in trying to build out a network of, of Of closeted gay Republican operatives.
And that's something that really it's something that exists even now to this day. Most of them maybe now are not as closeted but some of them still are but like creating a, a, a gay culture within the Republican party inside of DC you want to talk about that?
YOUNG: Yeah. So Finkelstein is a hugely important figure [00:40:00] here.
He was sort of Dolan's mentor. And in fact, Finkelstein had a bunch of. closeted gay men or, people who are not all that out around him. And they were referred to as Arthur's boys. And they were, like you say, they were sort of young up and upcoming conservative stars in the 1970s and, and really into the 1980s, sort of part of the Reagan revolution of developing out this network of, of gay conservatives, through this period.
And a lot of them worked in the Reagan White House. It's sort of amazing how many gay men were in the Reagan administration and also in the George H. W. Bush administration. And Finkelstein was really fascinating because he was someone who was very closely associated with Jesse Helms.
Finkelstein is also a very far right in his politics. The whole time that he is, turning Jesse Helms into a national conservative, Figure and hero. And also, helping the Reagan revolution in the 80s. He is a, closeted homosexual who's married to a man. And has I think 2 daughters and living this completely secret life.
And the way that I think was also, a lot easier for people to do in this, in this obviously very pre social media moment, but in a different age in which people could have that sort of like private life, professional life. But Finkelstein is yet another figure and an important one in terms of just developing this vast network of gay Republicans, again, almost all of whom are closeted that's building through the eighties and into the nineties and is, fundamental to Republican party operations in this period.
How mainstream media became the only real place for gay conservatives
SHEFFIELD: And one of those people who further as time moved along was kind of part of that network, but had his problems with it is Andrew Sullivan who I think is, is an example of kind of this sort of The eventual bifurcation of libertarianism in a lot of ways that he for, I mean, yeah, eventually he started off, [00:42:00] he was able to kind of straddle both left and right for a long time.
And, but you know, I, I guess he still tries to do it now, but I don't think that it works as well for him nowadays.
YOUNG: Yeah. I think that's absolutely true in terms of like his, his Career and that's sort of the way he's straddled a lot of those lines. I think as you say, it's it's I I think he thinks of himself as such to even today but of course given how partisan our politics and culture is these days.
I think that's a that's a that's Increasingly hard if not impossible to do so in our current, political terrain but in a lot of ways, I think sullivan just based on his own biography was perfectly It makes sense how he was able to sort of do that throughout much of his life. I mean, he's not American, he's, British.
He's not Republican as he, continually says throughout his career. He's never, he's always registered as an independent. I think for a good chunk of his career, he doesn't even, self identify as a conservative. He would sometimes call himself a classical liberal. Other times he just, really wouldn't even sort of, Characterize his his politics or his ideology.
And so and also is like a thinker and a writer. He's not a party strategist. He's not a conservative activist in one of these grassroots organization. He's a public essayist and a common commentator. But one that's obviously. Really shaping, I think right of center ideas. And certainly a, a big intellectual figure to conservatives through this period, especially in the nineties.
And also he's advocating, he's one of the first people to advocate for same-sex marriage. At the same time that he's taking on the sort of 1990s culture wars topics of feminism and multiculturalism and, and really sort of developing a conservative arguments about those things. He's also advocating for.
same sex marriage before almost anyone else's. And so he is a fascinating [00:44:00] figure on his own. But I also think he speaks to sort of a complexity of the politics in this period that maybe isn't so much of the case these days when things are so sort of like bifurcated and, and partisan.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and I guess the, the thing though about him is as his career is that I think it is the perfect illustration that, as I was to just circle back to what I was saying earlier that, the, these intra right debates that once took place in, right wing media, they stopped taking place.
And if you were trying to advocate for, something that might be a little bit different or a little bit more centrist or whatever it was, you're not allowed to do that anymore. And, so now it's the case that. Basically everyone who is a conservative, like Andrew Sullivan, they basically are not allowed to exist in right wing media.
The only place they can exist is in centrist media. Like, they, they just don't exist anywhere and they're not allowed to. And and it's, it's why the Republican party in part has become so much more radicalized that, there is so, so, I mean, they, they're constantly talking about how, the, the left.
Has cancel culture, but in fact, these guys have, have created a complete echo chamber. And I mean, and Trump is always trying to enforce it. How Fox, how dare Fox News air a Kamala Harris rally or how dare they put on this, anti, anti Trump pundit or whatever. And it just, it complete cancellation of it.
And yet at the same time, these sort of expelled conservatives. Never talk about this conformity culture that exists within the right, even as they are constantly telling the left to make space for them, right?
YOUNG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's like all these litmus, litmus tests for orthodoxy that are constant on the right.
[00:46:00] And and yeah, I think you're right to point to a period in time in which there was like, yeah, Such a spectrum of ideas. On the right, although, it's also a period in which the Republican Party is sort of more and more. It's not just like conservative media. Obviously, these things are interrelated and overlapping, but like the conservative.
or excuse me, the Republican Party is also sort of consolidating around increasingly uniform identity, right? Pushing out the Rockefeller Republicans, the progressive tradition, even like starting to push out or make, the lives very difficult of those who have libertarian politics in this period.
But, one of the things I'll just add to that and say, like, It's not just within conservative media spaces.
LGBTQ media's response to the Christian Right takeover of the Republican party
YOUNG: This is happening too, because it's also happening within LGBTQ media. And this is something that, like, was really fascinating to look at in like the 80s and the 90s in publications like the advocate, which is probably like the largest.
I don't know. It's the largest, but certainly one of the most, one of the oldest and most prominent gay magazines or LGBTQ media spaces. Yeah. In the 1980s and the 90s, even the advocate was debating issues from all sorts of sides. I mean, they would have people write about, write essays in support of same sex marriage.
And they'd also have like another essay saying, why marriage equality was, wasn't something that gay and lesbians should be, should be interested in. So there was like, there were like lots of issues that were. Debated, they even allow Marvin Liebman, who we talked about a couple of minutes ago when he, when he sort of officially leaves the Republican party in the late eighties, he still identifies as a Republican and a conservative.
And, but, but he calls himself a sort of independent Republican and he has this column for the advocate for several years in the In the early 90s called, I think it was called conservatively speaking or something like that. But he had this, monthly column where he was articulating a conservative positions as a gay person and so.
I think as much [00:48:00] as, we've, it's right to focus on this consolidation and really the collapse of the Republican party into an increasingly uniform. And now we would say like just Trumpist, um, Trumpist politics. I think you also see things happening like within the LGBTQ community, or at least within the LGBTQ media sphere that's taken on A sort of uniform position on, on issues in a way that like, wasn't the case when we look back not that long ago.
And of course, gay Republicans love to point that out, right? Like this is part of their critique of the LGBTQ movement and the LGBTQ community and its media is like the gay left, the gay left. Right. And then they call it, yeah, absolutely. And it's become this, instead of becoming like a diverse and rich community of all sorts of different people, it's become.
Yet another political constituency for the Democratic Party. And I don't agree with that either, but it's, I think it is worth observing the way in which a lot of these things happen. Yeah, exactly.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, and, and there was good reasons that it did happen, which is that, as the Republican party became controlled by, evangelicals who wanted to, I mean, to do as much negative as they could to LGBTQ people, of course.
Right. That makes sense that this happened, and that is, as, as time goes on, As there is an overt and, power center of politics of people who are donating explicitly to, groups like GLAAD and, and other organizations like that that there does become a, a more of a, there is a much bigger tension between this idea of that.
Well, what does it mean? To be gay or lesbian in America. And what does that mean from a political standpoint? Can it be the case that, there is a real meaning to the idea that the parties do actually are actually [00:50:00] different between each other for LGBTQ Americans, right?
YOUNG: Exactly. Yeah. And that becomes an increasingly clear, clear fact. And I think that that shapes a ton of both people's own politics, but also like the response of these organizations and these media outlets to sort of the political context of the time they're in.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also the idea that making. Alliances with a party means you're also empowering people on in other ways that perhaps you would not want to.
The bipartisan spirit of early LGBTQ political organizations
YOUNG: Right. Yeah. One of the interesting, I mean, that's such a great point. And one of the really interesting things that sort of was a surprise to me, but then made a lot of sense to discover of this history was there was such a bipartisan spirit.
And a lot of the early decades that I was looking at where when the first gay Republic, especially in the 1970s. As these gay, the gay Democrat or gay Democratic organizations began first in the early 1970s, a couple of them are created again, mostly in California. Then a couple of years later, when the gay Republican organizations start developing at the time, those organizations.
looked at each other very admiringly, even as they disagreed about politics. They really admired one another, supported one another and often coordinated together. Because their whole sense was, and again, we're talking about the 1970s here where not a ton of people are out. A lot of, not a lot of people are out in order to shape politics.
Right. And so the idea of both gay Democrats and gay Republicans was We need to exist so that both political parties understand that gay and lesbians are part of their, are part of their parties. And so that gay issues and gay rights are a bipartisan or ideally a nonpartisan issue. They, they really thought that this was the pathway.
Towards advancement, like we'll work within both, it's a two party system, we'll [00:52:00] work within both parties, and we'll move gay rights forward. And that makes sense, again, in the 1970s, and even into the 80s, but as one party becomes, a Republican party becomes increasingly associated with an overt, anti gay politics in order to stir up the base for political gain, that sort of bipartisan spirit really falls away, right?
Gay Democrats are then saying like, what in the world are you doing? In that party, you must be a hypocrite. I'm in a self loathing one in order to belong to it. And so that bipartisan spirit falls away. And what it's replaced by, I think, is a increasingly antagonistic attitude towards each other that becomes, just all the more heightened once you get into, I think, the social media, context of the last two decades.
Did bipartisanship make same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination laws easier and more secure?
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And, and this, this bipartisan broach that did kind of exist earlier. It's interesting. And you talk about the, the, the advocacy for same sex marriage quite a bit in the book. And I've always found it interesting that, when you look at, for instance, now the, the advocacy for trans rights that since LGBT advocacy as a non partisan thing became impossible.
That is perhaps why it has been more difficult for trans rights to to have, have become, to, to advance. And I, and, and I don't know how you resolve that, but I think it is the case that. Part of the reason why, you know, even as radical and extreme as Donald Trump's policies are, he's not talking about repealing same sex marriage because the Republican party has accepted that.
And so, I mean, it's, it's tricky. It's a, it's, I'm not going to, there isn't, I don't know how you resolve that, but I, it's important to notice that this [00:54:00] happened and. And what that would mean for trans advocacy.
YOUNG: I think it is really tricky. I found this to be the most, probably one of the most difficult things about writing this book was tackling the trans issue which, the last chapter or two of my book takes up it's tricky in large part because it's the issue of the moment right now.
Right. And so, as a historian, ideally I'd love to have like 20 years of 20 years on something so I can really. Analyze it from a distance as opposed to right within it. And also it was tricky because like as I was wrapping up my book, you're, you're finishing a book a good year plus before it actually comes out.
And I knew that story was unfolding so quickly that there was going to be things that happened that were really significant after I, sent the book off to press. But I think it's also tricky because Gay Republicans haven't really figured out their position on this issue. And in some ways, I think that just speaks to something that I really wanted to show throughout my book, which is that actually when I'm talking about gay Republicans or the LGBTQ right, I'm not talking about a monolithic political constituency.
Like a big focus of my book is showing constantly through all these different decades. I'm looking at that. There's. always these internal divisions and debates within gay Republican organizations and within the larger LGBTQ right of center kind of community over all sorts of issues and politics and just like ideology in general.
So it's not surprising that, The issue of right now, the trans issue has so many different, there's so many different positions the gay Republicans and, and LGBTQ conservatives have over this issue, you have some gay Republicans who I think are really using the trans issue and sort of an anti trans position in order to secure their own place within.
The conservative movement, and especially within conservative media. I mean, it is [00:56:00] a very regular feature of places like Fox News and Breitbart to feature a gay white man coming on to advocate an anti trans politics. Like that is a, a recurring feature of conservative media these days. And I think they're doing, I think they're sort of throwing trans people and trans Issues under the bus in order for them to maintain their, what I would say, fairly precarious position within the Republican party, conservative media.
But you also have like a lot of gay Republicans who are, who are advocating for trans rights who have associated themselves with trans Republican candidates for, for, for political office. Caitlyn Jenner is, is out there too. I think maybe the through line of it all, if you had to sort of find a commonality on the right on within sort of gay, gay, the gay, the LGBTQ, right, and among gay, gay conservatives, they really distinguish.
between what they call trans, what they believe are trans rights for adults, right? This idea that like adults should be able to live their lives any way they say, see fit. And so we support, employment protections and, and, and other things for trans adults and what they call as the radical gender ideology being forced on the nation's children.
And that for them is a clear delineation, a clear distinction that I think tracks with a lot of polling about Americans in general of how they. Don't necessarily how they've sort of separated out issues that often get sort of, glommed together in the, in the sort of general rubric of trans rights these days.
The precarious position of right-wing drag queens
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then related to that is also the idea of the right wing drag queens and, and those exist as well. And I, I, I mean, I, I think. That's, reflects kind of this precarity that you're talking about here. I think, the, the person who I, I think identify or [00:58:00] sort of is the best exemplar of that is, is Lady Maga.
Talk about the gentleman behind that personality.
YOUNG: Yeah. Lady Maga is this. Has been a pretty prominent figure especially online. And I think people should know how prominent a lot of these internet provocateurs are on places like Twitter or X or whatever we're calling these days and other social media space spaces in the Trump era that these figures have like Lady Maga and broke back Patriot and a handful of others have, huge followings.
But someone like Lady Maga has been this real internet provocateur and also not just on social media really complicated figure from Utah. And has these hard right politics very Trump Trumpist. And is this really interesting figure from the standpoint that it's like, A drag queen but is like constantly talking about groomers.
And and I think in sort of recent months, a lot of this stuff has become a lot more complicated for Lady Mag and for some of these other intro internet provocateurs who've realized that a lot of what they've been involved in has sort of come back to, to bite them. Because of course they've, they've helped set in motion some pretty ugly politics that ultimately.
Has put a lot of them in the crosshairs in a way that I feel like they should have anticipated. But it's been, but these, these figures are really out there. They're very prominent. In a lot of ways, I think Milo Yiannopoulos, who was so important in the 2016 campaign who was, the political writer for Breitbart, who was really one of the Advocates of Trump.
And I think, it was part of, was, was central to Breitbart's work in moving Trump from sort of a fringe candidate into the mainstream of, of, of Republican politics in the 2016 race, Milo [01:00:00] Yiannopoulos really prefigures a lot of the folks who come about in the Trump era, like Lady Maga and Brokeback Patriot and, and others who have used this sort of outlandish, outrageous politics of.
Confrontation and of camp also in order to prop up a Trump Trumpist conservatism in our moment. And there, there's some pretty fascinating folks that I write about near the end of the book.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I mean, like with the, with Lady Magga, as, as somebody who, I, we used to be a Republican operative in DC.
I think Lady Maga is somebody who, so the Republican political class, if you will, like the people who actually run, run things or, or, write, write the things that they consume, they. And I, I had this viewpoint myself. I can say that, they have this idea that they're more relevant to the party than they really are.
Yes. And like, that's, that's a huge delusion that persists even now that, so like Lady Maga and other current, current active LGBTQ Republicans, they, in the spaces in which they exist, like Caitlyn Jenner and other ones People are not telling them to go away or to kill themselves or, whatever it is like in, at the higher level, they do exist in with relative personal freedom in their lives.
And, but they don't understand that the, the people who actually run the things outside of DC, at the lower levels. Hate them. And there's this constant sort of tension, like even now with people that I know that, are, are within Republican politics, like a lot of them don't like talking to me because I, I point that out to them that, you were, you think that you're, you're living in a [01:02:00] fantasy world.
Like the Republicans who agree with you or like you are, have no power at all in the party.
YOUNG: Yeah. And I think that even their prominence in conservative media distorts their perception of, of their actual place, because they've gotten such huge, they've really gotten a big foothold within conservative media, but it's like, to what end, like, what is the purpose of their prominence there?
It's not, what do you get
SHEFFIELD: from it? Yeah.
YOUNG: Yeah. It's not to change Republican attitudes about these issues. It's to prop up conservative grievance. I mean, so much of what they, and to, to bolster. A conservative agenda that in a lot of ways, again, has them and the, the things I would assume they care about in the crosshairs, but some oftentimes, like, they go on there to, like, one of the hugest, like, one of the biggest talking points of the last decade among those who these, these again, it's mostly gay white men who go on to like Fox News and Breitbart is to, to, to repeat this This mantra of it was harder for me to come out as a Republican than as a gay person.
And that is a discourse that's meant to do what? Not to like make. A conservative viewing audience sympathetic to or empathetic towards their, gay Republicans, but to let white Christian heterosexuals watching at home that like they actually are the most aggrieved identity in the nation right now, it's to to, to sort of accommodate conservatives, politics of victimhood and not at all to advance any sort of sense of LGBTQ rights on the right.
Today's gay Republicans are much more extreme than their predecessors
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it also kind of reflects this complete, so after, basically let's say I would guess like the end of the Bush 43 administration kind of marked kind of the definitive it, from my standpoint, marks the definitive end of any sort of. [01:04:00] Somewhat moderate Republican going, the Tea Party, the politicians who came in with the Tea Party ever since that point, are far right uniformly in almost every way.
And Yiannopoulos is, is emblematic of that also, I think, because, he started off trying to kind of. Be even like an exaggerated version of some of these earlier, Republican gay groups many mouths, all the right phrases of, in terms of hating Islam, hating feminism things like that, hating taxes, but it just didn't work for him.
And he was, cast out of the, of the movement and fired from Breitbart and other places. I don't know, obviously some of his. Seemingly pro pedophilia remarks played a big role in that. But I don't, but that was just the proximate cause. I think it wasn't going to work in the long run. I don't think.
And now he's, saying that he's a, he's an ex gay, right. And he's a far right Catholic. I mean, that's, I, I, he is very illustrative of, Of what's going to happen. It seems like to anybody who's trying to do this. I think.
YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I mean, I also think he's still married to his husband.
So, there's a lot going on. Yeah, I'm not saying I believe him, but, I think that the thing that I would also say is the sort of extremism that you're talking about on the right and within the Republican Party in the, in the era of Trump, that gay Republicans Are included in that, and I think that that is a historical development that isn't that is very significant.
So 1 of the things I really show through the course of my book is that for the bulk of this 70 year period I'm writing about. Gay Republicans, and especially the organization Log Cabin Republicans, that's the focus of so much of this book, they operate and they exist really in order to be a thorn in the side of the Republican party, right?
Their purpose, one of their chief purposes is to hold the Republican party's [01:06:00] feet to feet to the fire, right? To call out the Republican party on any of its homophobic issues. Agenda items to defeat far right Republican candidates at the ballot box and to replace them with moderate Republicans.
Like that's the history of what this movement and these organizations have existed to do. That has gone away in the era of Trump, just as every other, pretty much every other Republican organization has gone away. Conservative group has collapsed into Trumpism. So too has log cabin Republicans. And that has, occasioned a lot of gay Republicans leaving that organization, no longer identifying with the Republican party.
It should be known, but for those who remain and especially for log cabin Republicans, they have become full blown Trumpist organizations, like every other thing, every other group on the Republican right. And so that is. Significant. That these folks are no longer sort of like working. I mean, I think they are working from the margins, but they no longer see themselves as such.
And what remains to be seen is if there is a second Trump administration, will they recognize that? Well, they realize really what the ends of all this is, which is not their ongoing inclusion. I don't think, but rather I think a political agenda that will put a lot of the things they care about front and center to target.
How hypermasculine gay reactionaries are reaching out to fundamentalists and incels
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and one, one kind of related to that though, with this sort of transition or transformation of, of, Of I mean, it is, we're overwhelmingly talking about gay men, as you're saying, not lesbians is that with some of these more current figures, extreme figures I'm, I'm going to just bring back Roy Cohn here, because I think in some ways that this is a.
They're, they're repeating his worldview in a lot of ways. So like for instance Roger Stone, the, who is has [01:08:00] an under his own admission, is sort of omnisexual. I, he calls himself a tri sexual Roger Stone does. And because he'll try anything is what he says. That's why he calls himself that.
And he was asked about Roy Cohn and he said that Roy Cohn he wasn't he wasn't homosexual. He was just a man who had sex with men. And, and he, he wasn't gay because gays are gross and effeminate and terrible and weak. And you do see that in a lot of these current Trumpy. Gay man is this sort of, it's, it's almost kind of a like a Spartan homoeroticism that they've developed.
Do you want to talk about that?
YOUNG: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a fascinating sort of demographic. One that I think has become particularly visible again in social media in the last decade or so, but I actually write about a couple of folks, one of whom is this man named Jack Donovan who is a far right white nationalist gay man, although he would not say he doesn't call himself a gay man.
He says, Similar to what you just said. He's someone who likes to have sex with men. And he calls himself an Andrew Andrew file. And he's closely associated with Richard Spencer and a lot of these white nationalist organizations. He's been prominently featured in their publications, https: otter.
ai
Incredibly racist and misogynist set of texts that he's published and books that are, beloved on the white nationalist far right, fringe and, one of the things he argues is basically for a world in which men predominate in every realm and that women are, are completely marginalized.
And that's a view that he makes sense of also in sort of sexual ways. So he says that, most of you are going to want to have sex with women, and that's what their chief [01:10:00] surface purposes. And a few of us, some of us are just going to want to have sex with each other, but what we're connected by is our, our sense and our, and our, and our Commitment to a world in which men dominate everything and in which we will spend, men will spend the bulk of their time together.
And they, a lot of this is like you said, they hold up like sort of these, their notions of antiquity, right? As like these, just as back in the day, exactly. Um, you know, These men spent most of their time together, all fit war and, Things happen between them because that's just men being men.
And so that's sort of in the. Alt right white nationalist space. And then you're seeing it really being mainstreamed increasingly on social media. In a way that I think it's just, I didn't get to write about it. Cause I wrote about Jack Donovan and that stuff, but like the thing I think I'm, the things I'm seeing taking shape on online and the last couple of years of this LGB not T hashtag gay, not queer.
Drop the T. And a lot of that is like, oh, LGBTQ is a political identity. I'm gay. And that was sort of the first iteration of this. But what I think I've seen more recently is an increasing amount of people online who have this profile of like, I'm not gay. I just have sex with men. And I don't totally know where that's going and all that that represents, but it is absolutely a phenomenon that's increasing.
I'm sort of watching it to sort of make sense of but I think, it's, it's a, it's a while. It feels like such a throwback to a, decades ago. And one, I think that's also like, makes sense in a, in a, in a In a, in a historical context in which identity, has come to mean so much that a lot of these folks want to reject any sort of markers of identity, and they see that as, as a revolutionary and a radical act, I think is, is wild to watch.[01:12:00]
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And I, one example would be, the guy who goes by the, the pen name, bronze age pervert like who is constantly posting pictures of naked men all over his social media uh, mostly naked men. And he says he's not gay, but, he doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about women.
But, but, but it is kind of like this sort of reactionary post christian homoeroticism. It intersects very well with the incel ideology as well. And like, and Jack Donovan and some of these other people they have enabled themselves to. Exist in some very tenuous, bizarre way with, you know, incels.
And, and because the one thing they have in common is that they hate women and they want to keep them down. Yeah.
YOUNG: Yeah. And absolute male supremacy. It just has different forms. Right. And, and complete male domination and, and just, virulent misogyny.
SHEFFIELD: Now, one person you don't talk about in here is Nick Fuentes, a far right white nationalist who has been accused a number of times of being gay.
And there have been some instances where he appears to have had friendships with most infamously for him a, a a person who loves dressing up as a cat boy and did you have you heard about that one?
YOUNG: I hadn't heard about the cowboy part. I mean, I've heard a lot of different stories about Nick Fuentes.
Can't keep up with all of them, but I had the cowboy.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So what's I mean, would you classify him in this, in this meal, that we're talking about?
YOUNG: Yeah, I think so. Although it seems like, whatever the, the, the truth is when it comes to, to Nick Frentis. I mean, he definitely doesn't have, like, he doesn't have the sort of stuff we're talking about with these online folks who are actually like saying that, like, They have sex with men, right?
And that and are fetishizing the male body, right? Like his seems much more in the shadows or, or, or secretive. And I [01:14:00] think from what I know, it's just been speculation and rumors about him. And if anything, I mean, having their sort of accusations against him that he's, Denied, right?
SHEFFIELD: Well, there is one thing that, which he has explicitly said a few times, which is having sex with a woman is gay.
Yeah. So that's a, an interesting way of trying to thread, but it, but it, but it goes into this, this incel kind of, incel homo eroticism. But I mean, it's an interesting thing to think about because in one sense I think that it is the case that a lot of, like, for instance the, the right wing commentator, Steven Crowder, I believe last year it was admitted that he was bisexual and that he has, fantasies about having sex with men and has done it.
Like a lot of these figures do seem to be, bisexual or homosexual in one way or another. And. In some sense, this sort of throwback and like Peter Thiel is another example of this. Recently in the news, he came out and said that, he thought Christianity was problematic because it, it was, it was, it was discouraging people from, from true liberation, which, is like a very right wing Nietzschean interpretation of Christianity.
Yeah. But it is again, I like a throwback to, I mean, because I'm the original sexual revolution was heterosexuality, societal heterosexuality, like that was not a thing in, in, in most of the ancient world that meant mandatory heterosexuality. And so. In some ways, I mean, it's, I don't know how this will end up as you, as you were saying, but, it's possible that in some ways this may make it easier for people who are LGBT, at least, or LGB, we'll say to, to exist overtly in right wing, in far right spaces.
I mean, what do you think? [01:16:00]
YOUNG: Well, it's such a different model of like the bulk of the figures that I'm writing about in this book. Right. So this sort of whether we're talking about these You know, bisexual men are these men who, say they're not gay, but they have sex with men or they fetishize the male body.
I mean, that's a real contrast from a lot of the folks I'm writing about through these decades who were, who came out of the closet in order to present themselves to the Republican party and to American politics as gay men and did so in a lot of what I would say is sort of small C conservative, traditional ways, like, they were very heteronormative in so many ways.
So they had this like, I I'm, I'm going to be partnered. I'm going to look a lot like, my Republican colleagues in terms of. my personal life and my public presentation. And there was a, a chasteness to that. I guess that's what I'm getting at. There's a way in which I think a lot of gay Republicans through the history I'm writing about, they really desexualized themselves in their public image and certainly in their, the way they sort of, presented themselves to the Republican Party.
And so this sort of, over sexualized examples that we have of, of these, like, online figures that's, like, also tied to this, like, overt misogyny. I think that's, that's a very different public image and public representation than we have with the sort of, like, Brooks, Brooks Brothers suit wearing gay Republican of the 1990s who just wanted to get married.
And if these folks are accepted, if the sort of, Bronze Age pervert and, the like, are, are sort of brought into the mainstream of conservative politics. Again, I think the question is to what end? It's not necessarily, I wouldn't think it's to, the conservative movement [01:18:00] taking on a much more libertarian notion of people's, like, Personal freedom and the way they can connect their lives.
They reject that. Yeah, they reject that. And also the point of those folks is to prop up a virulent anti Semitism and misogyny. Like, that's the ultimate message that's being adopted from, or that's being appreciated from them in terms of how they've been received by conservative media and conservative.
And kind of the conservative universe in general.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, that's I definitely agree that it's not moderating. In almost any other way, except for that, it might make it more permissible for people, because I mean, you know, when you look at sexual arousal studies and by, psychologists I mean, there's just a variety of them that show that the percentage of men who are aroused by homosexual pornography versus heterosexual pornography, like it's, it's, it is a higher number than the percentage who identify as gay.
And so in some sense, it may actually make it, a safer, in other words, overtly sexualized. Gay men with reactionary viewpoints actually may make it more permissible in some sense in that one limited area for men to be Openly bisexual or openly homosexual.
YOUNG: Yeah, I mean and so maybe it's more There's a cultural influence here than a political one because I think that it's very likely that these same figures could become some of the Spokespersons for a anti LGBTQ agenda that includes things like rolling back same sex marriage rights. I mean, you can imagine some of these folks being like, No, I don't want to get married.
Marriage is a, is a heterosexual institution or even like, gay, it's for weaklings. Yeah. It's for, it's what women need. And so, I just, I think that there's like sort of an anti institutionalism for a lot of these [01:20:00] folks that can easily develop into being spokespersons for an anti LGBTQ political agenda that's predicated, or that's, that's sort of articulated through a I just want to have sex with men.
I should be free to do whatever I want with my body. But like gay marriage, that's, that doesn't make any sense, you know, so we'll see where this goes, but I don't think it, I think if anything, there's like cultural, there's probably more likely cultural implications of this. Well, there's also political implications, but like the culture there, there should, there could be sort of a culturally progressive consequence of this and, and a politically regressive one at the same time.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's paradoxical because yeah, nothing like this has existed. Militantly reactionary homosexual men, right. You know, Like we haven't seen this since ancient Greece cause I mean, like when you, if you look at, the old, at the dialogues of Plato, I mean, there, there is that, that viewpoint did exist in ancient Greece, right.
As but you know, well that I want to have sex with men, but, I know I have to have a society, so I will have a wife and children, but I'm just doing it because I have to. And that that's, in some, it's, it's weird because like, yeah, like it's, I think that that is probably going to become a more common male Republican attitude is that.
That's, that's where I think this is going. Yeah. Even as they, want to stamp out drag queens or, and be against trans rights and things like that. It's, it's, it's certainly, at least it's
YOUNG: interesting. We can
SHEFFIELD: say that.
YOUNG: I would think the other aspect of this is that, like, the examples and the models here are, like, highly masculine.
I mean, Jack Donovan, for example, is this, like, like, total muscle god that's tatted out, and and, and the figures like him [01:22:00] are, Are also they look like that or like that's the image of their masculinity that they hold up. So, this isn't so. And I think that's sort of the gender conforming hyper masculinist aspect of this is fundamental to this moment in which sort of gender fluidity and gender itself is being questioned so much by like society and culture and and the left.
Right? And as they argue. So I think, Yes, you're right that we may see a much like a development. This is sort of like a sexual freedom. Politics emerging among Republican men. But one that I imagine will be highly masculinized. And and we'll have increasingly increasing vitriol towards any sort of gender deviance.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right.
Conclusion and further resources
SHEFFIELD: Well, this has been a great conversation, Neil. I, I encourage everybody to check this book out. It's, I think it's, it's an important one to understand where all, all this stuff came from and how all these conflicts, they never are going to go away, I don't think.
YOUNG: No, I don't think so. Definitely not. Thanks for having me. This is a great conversation.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, for people who want to check out some other stuff from you what, what's your recommendations for them?
YOUNG: Well, I have a podcast that I've ran for eight plus years. It's currently on hiatus past present, but we have over 400 episodes.
You can find wherever you listen to podcasts. It's fun to listen to. And I don't know. I also have another book about the history of the religious right that came out now almost a decade ago called we gather together and I write for all sorts of different publications. So Google me and you'll, you'll see uh, You'll see my stuff.
Follow me on Twitter or X or whatever it's called these days, NeilJYoung17.
SHEFFIELD: Okay, great. Well, I encourage everybody to do that. Thanks for being here.
All right. So that does it for this program. I appreciate you joining us for the discussion. And if you want to get more, [01:24:00] just go to theoryofchange.show, where you can get the video, audio, and transcript of every episode, And if you're a paid subscribing member, you get a few bonuses as well.
And I thank you very much for your support. Please do leave a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you may be listening. And if you're listening on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe buttons. Thanks very much. And I will see you next time.
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