Signorile has a great article about the American Right's bizarre reaction to Fortuyn.
Many good parts, but here's one:
I mean, really–suddenly, the hyperconservative Wall Street
Journal editorial page is holding up someone who, as the
editors describe him, wanted "to preserve Holland’s liberal
traditions"? The Wall Street Journal editorial page is
lauding a gay man who took on religious extremists? Gee,
quite a few gay men, pundits and politicians alike, have
been doing just that for quite some time when it comes to
Christian fundamentalists, but they’ve curiously not been
lauded by the WSJ editorial page. In fact, the editors have
often given their pages over to the religious extremists
themselves to do their bashing.
In the Netherlands, meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists
don’t have even one iota of the political power that
Christian fundamentalists have in America. Fortuyn
appears to have been using his own homosexuality and
gay rights in general to scapegoat a growing immigrant
group that many Dutch have been fearful about, and it was
playing quite well. But it is not a group that, within the
political machine, seems anywhere near as close to
effecting gay rights in the Netherlands as the Christian right
is to preventing the implementation of rights for gays in
America (and to turning back women’s rights). In the
reports I’ve read none spoke of a slew of other politicians
championing the Islamic fundamentalists’ positions and
calling for taking away gays’ and women’s rights. In this
country, however, the President himself has stated that he
supports the Christian fundamentalists’ positions,
advocating an end to abortion rights and supporting
sodomy laws against homosexuals and barring them from
marrying and from adopting children.
Why haven’t we heard the Wall Street Journal editorial
page or National Review’s Rod Dreher standing up to
antigay religious extremism here in the way they’re so
concerned about it across the Atlantic? And if religious
fundamentalism poses such a demographic threat to a
nation’s well-being when it comes to immigration, are the
conservative pundits now ready to call for an end to
immigration by Christian fundamentalists to America?
The more questions you ask, the more suspect the
conservative pundits’ canonization of Pim Fortuyn
becomes.
