Friday, April 04, 2014

The unreliable Andrew Sullivan

It seems to me that Andrew Sullivan gets paid less attention now than he used to, but a comment at Slate about the Mozilla "you must support gay marriage or leave" story led me to check his views.

It turns out that he is pretty appalled by the Mozilla story:
This is a repugnantly illiberal sentiment. It is also unbelievably stupid for the gay rights movement. You want to squander the real gains we have made by argument and engagement by becoming just as intolerant of others’ views as the Christianists? You’ve just found a great way to do this. It’s a bad, self-inflicted blow. And all of us will come to regret it.
So, good call.

But just above that, he weighs in on the Mayo Clinic pro circumcision paper, and it turns out to be pretty much an anti circ nutter:
The question is whether the slight and contested medical benefits of circumcision outweigh the mutilation’s effects, and whether permanently dulling a man’s sexual sensitivity is something we have a right to impose on boys and men without their consent.
The "loss of sensitivity" angle of this movement has always struck me as crazy, given the perfectly happy sensations God knows how many billion men have had after the operation. 

So, just goes to show - it's hard to find a pundit who always makes sense.

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