Andrew Sullivan
From Philosopedia
Andrew Sullivan (10 August 1963 - )
Sullivan was born in South Godstone, Surrey, England. His Irish parents were Roman Catholics, and he earned his B.A. in modern history at Oxford University (Magdalen College), being elected president of the Oxford Union during his second year. After a master's degree in public administration, he received a Ph. D. in government at Harvard University. His dissertation was on conservative British philosopher Michael Oakeshott.
Sullivan, when editor of The New Republic, spoke on “The Gay Catholic Paradox” at Notre Dame University in 1995. Asked how he can be openly gay and Catholic, he responded, “I am openly gay because I am Catholic.” His church, he explained, had taught him to witness to the truth and to love one another. What he has trouble understanding is why his church insists on the dignity of the homosexual person and the blamelessness of homosexuality in itself but teaches that “if this blameless condition was acted upon, it would be always and everywhere evil.”
Meanwhile, an unresolved debate at Notre Dame continued as to whether the Catholic institution should give official status to the organization of gay and lesbian students which had arranged his visit. In Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1995), Sullivan tackles the Biblical condemnation by St. Paul of those who “change the natural use into that which is against nature.” This Sullivan reads as meaning that homosexuals do not “change the natural use” in their sexual act—thus, it is not they who are being condemned. “What Paul is describing here is heterosexuals engaging, against their own nature, in homosexual behavior,” Peter Steinfels wrote of Sullivan.
In 2008, Sullivan's The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, and How to Get It Back details his views, which were influenced heavily by Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990), the English political philosopher of note. Oakeshott abominated Rationalism (with the R capitalized). Sullivan, now a libertarian conservative who is HIV-positive and gay, has a blog in which he comments about a variety of subjects.
{Peter Steinfels, The New York Times, 18 February 1995}
