So are we.

andrew sullivan should be hit by a bus:

Issue Number 942 | Still here, so sorry | Advocate.com

Signorile's reaction:

Dear Bareback Andy, June 11, 2005

I pray that Harvey Fierstein prints a response.

When trying to explain to Mason a while back who Sully was, I told him that he was our (the gay community's) tom friedman (Mason is a Middle Eastern studies scholar): smug, self-important, commentator who is often published in prominent mainsteam media sources (like the NYTimes) and often treated by people with little personal dealings with gay issues as a voice of our community.

Which invariably makes me want to puke, much in the same way Mason does whenever someone invokes tom friedman in a discussion of the middle east.

They parade around and pretend to be moderates while in truth they are demogogic jerks who glibly comment on serious issues and denigrate those who treat said issues with more concern.

Although I have had the unfortunate experience of having well-meaning straight people attempt to show solidarity be telling me about "this article that I read in the NYT's written by this gay guy," I have yet to find anyone in the gay community who likes him. Early in my stumbling around in my gay adult identity, a friend recommended reading the first chapter of _virtually normal_ because of sullivan's descriptions of struggling with being gay. He never read past that little bit of the book, happy just finding someone else able to describe their experience. I, sitting in the library at U of A during some break read further, skipped around and basically walked away with a feeling of something akin to pity or embarassment. The self-centered whining and desperate want to be recognized as just as 'normal' as all the straight people struck me even then, as a not quite out kid, as pathetic and contemptable.

andrew sullivan is the epitome of everything that is self-centered and visionless about the leadership of the gay community. He is the embodiment of the best-little-boy-in-the-world approach to gay rights, if we just act good enough, straight enough, normal enough then the bullies would leave us alone. An understandable approach in a child, a ridiculous one for an adult.

He does not speak for me; he does not speak for my community. He speaks for the only person he cares about: himself. If only he would just shut up.