Know Your Enemy
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The Gay Men Who Built the Conservative Movement (w/ Neil J. Young)
🕑 Added 2024-06-17 17:41:43 +0000 UTCIn this special Pride Month episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam talk to historian Neil J. Young about his new book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. His absorbing account picks up in after World War II, when neither party made for a good political home for gay people, which helped make a libertarian approach to sexual politics—getting the government out of their private lives—compelling, a feature that would mark the gay right for years to come. The conversation then turns to some of the gay, often closeted architects of the postwar conservative movement, the hopeful years between Stonewall and AIDS, Ronald Reagan's embrace of the religious right and the growing partisan divide on LGBTQ rights, and goes on through the very campy Trump years—and more!
Sources:
Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (2024)
Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (2015)
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, (1996)
James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, (2022)
Marvin Leibman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography, (1992)
Comments
Chad Bailey
Thanks so much for this episode! I’m a straight Catholic with gay friends and family and I am doing my best to support them during this political onslaught.
Blackford Oakes
Hot Air and Its Metaphors
DC
Omg of COURSE it's a guy named "Baron" that gets Trump on stage at CPAC.
Sam Timme
Because of the contrast between Brooks Brothers suits and leather gear, I must say that fancy suits are also effective fetishes. Happy Pride, KYE!
Adam Lewis
If anyone could eke 10,000 words for the NYRB out of the words "ghost" and "lurking," she could have.
Roflmaocopter
Just commenting on the mention of Coulter toward the end - I've always viewed her as gay. "Engaged umpteen times (to politically advantageous people) but never married". Huh.
Blackford Oakes
The ghost of Susan Sontag ever lurking in the background of this podcast!
Nicholas Laughlin
Terrific episode. I go to congressional cemetery frequently with my dog and have been struck before by the Leonard Marlovich gravestone without knowing his story. It’s in the same row as Hoover (and Tolson) which I have to imagine was intentional. I’m so glad to have this broader context now
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
annnnd another banger from your favorite podcast team, folks! ❤️ [puts down hugh kenner essays and golf claps]
