January 07, 2005, 8:43 a.m.
One Man’s Marriage Trap
The ever-shifting, deeply conflicted Andrew Sullivan.

By Justin Katz

When Andrew Sullivan was seven or eight, the visceral yet distancing medium of television sparked a feeling about which many men will have corresponding stories. A shirtless actor elicited "such an intense longing" that young Andrew "determined to become a doctor" so he could "render the man unconscious and lie on top of him when no one else was in the room." Its furtive nature may distinguish this from the similar memories of others, but the bewildering indication of inchoate sexuality is familiar.

Years later, Sullivan volunteered to assist a stranger through the final months of life with AIDS. The scene presents an eerie echo: "I remember one day lying down on top of him to restrain him as his brittle, burning body shook uncontrollably with the convulsions of fever."

If Sullivan noticed the parallel between these moments — described in his books Virtually Normal and Love Undetectable, respectively — he hasn't said so, but their implications could fill another book. They portray a child's undefined desire for closeness, and the solitude of a man's deterioration; the vision of exploiting a doctor's power, and the reality of a nurse's powerlessness; an awakening to sexuality, and to solidarity.

Different people will derive conflicting lessons from these anecdotes, but this is often the case with Sullivan. He is unapologetically homosexual and has been, until recently, devoutly Catholic. His social sympathies are liberal, but he considers himself a conservative. He has written often for the New York Times, but he is a leading figure in a blogosphere that sees the Times as the establishment it opposes. Taken together, these qualities attract an interesting audience, and conservatives' criticism of Sullivan's opinions often begins with confessions of fandom or friendship. In particular, conservatives have generally appreciated his steadfast advocacy of a vigorous War on Terror. The niche that he has claimed, however, has made Sullivan an especially influential advocate of a cause with which many of them do not agree: same-sex marriage. In his various expositions of the case for same-sex marriage over the years, Sullivan has trapped himself in a series of opportunistic contradictions — which may tell us something about the contradiction at the heart of his cause...

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