Andrew Sullivan was editor of The New Republic from 1991 to 1996, and has been a pioneer in more than one sense. He was one of the first writers to start blogging, launching The Daily Dish in 2000 and becoming one of the most widely read and influential bloggers in the country. And of course, Sullivan wrote the first major article in an American magazine — in 1989 in the New Republic — advocating for gay marriage, and was one of the most important figures to make the case — controversial at the time among both mainstream culture and in the gay community — for marriage equality. But he has also angered some in the gay community by arguing against hate crime laws, defending the right of religious conservatives to express their belief that homosexuality is a sin, and by saying things like, "the gay rights movement needs to just pack up and go home. I think we're done,” as he did in this conversation.
Sullivan wrote for New York Magazine last month about the loss of faith in our politics system, a problem that continues to grow. And we talk about that and touch on what’s going on right now in Wisconsin, where the Republican Party is retrofitting the results of the fall elections by passing laws to take power away from Democrats set to take the governor’s and attorney general’s positions in January.
But Sullivan also feels that free speech, and his ability to provoke and debate and speak his mind, is under attack from identity politics.
We start out talking about Sullivan's most recent New York column, where he talked about the ways that the collapse of Christianity in America has created a religious right that is folded into a cult of personality around President Trump, and a social justice left that seeks to imbue politics with the same sort of higher meaning that religion has traditionally provided. "Both cults really do minimize the importance of the individual in favor of either the oppressed group or the leader," he wrote.
Outro music: "Cherub Rock," by The Smashing Pumpkins
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Andrew Sullivan on Christianity's Collapse, the Wisconsin GOP & Identity Politics