{"id":1630,"date":"2005-01-05T23:00:57","date_gmt":"2005-01-06T03:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/01\/05\/gay-west-wing\/"},"modified":"2005-01-05T23:00:57","modified_gmt":"2005-01-06T03:00:57","slug":"gay-west-wing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/01\/05\/gay-west-wing\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay West Wing"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the significant plots of last night’s West Wing dealt with
\nrumors
\nof C.J. possibly being gay.  She spends the whole day portrayed in
\nthe episode dealing with shame, being second-guessed, watching people
\nspeculate about her most interior and essential life in public, and
\nmaking excuses where none needed to be made.  And then she gets to
\ntell the press that her sexuality is none of their business.<\/p>\n

A nice thought, but like another set of details last night, untrue. The
\npeople who are most vociferous in their protestations that sexuality
\nshould be a private matter also clamor the loudest for such knowledge
\n“when it’s relevant.”  The information should stay private when it
\ndoes not have any use, but it should become public when it has a use to
\nsomeone, seems to be the line of argument that’s really at work
\nhere.  It’s disingenuous to say the least.  And for those of
\nus who actually don’t think that a person’s sexual orientation (at
\nleast in the situation presented here) has bearing, there’s still
\nprurient curiosity (and all sorts of covering justifications) to
\novercome our principles.<\/p>\n

Part of me wants to believe that if more people could have the
\nexperience like C.J. had, to face the potential for being
\nsecond-guessed, questioned, ostracism, and spoken about in false
\nsecrecy, perhaps there’d be more potential understanding of gay people
\nand other sorts of people who suffer at the hands of power.<\/p>\n

But I am not optimistic, for I see how other sorts of minorities, who
\nface similar bigotry, treat sexual minorities — in exactly the way
\nthey wish not to be treated themselves.<\/p>\n

C.J. may have learned, but I am not so sure the other members of the West Wing<\/span> universe have.  And I am pretty sure the people of our non-imaginary world have not.<\/p>\n

On another note from the episode, the cowardice that the president
\nshowed in the face of a fundamentalist senator with a literalist
\ninterpretation of the Bible was stunning.  The president got in a
\ncouple of lines about trying to be Christlike on love; and that perhaps
\nthe literalism was not the only way to read the Bible, that the Bible
\nmay be literally true but that we can’t know enough to know that we
\nhave it correct.  And he tries to convince the senator that an
\nanti-gay rider amendment to the budget bill has nothing to do with his
\noath. “When I raised my right hand, I swore an oath to uphold the
\nConstitution, not to put everything I might believe into it.” 
\n“But, Mr. President, when you did that, where was your left
\nhand?”  And then the scene ends, as if to say that no more can be
\nsaid, that the senator’s simplistic understanding of the marvelous
\ncomplexity of the world proved the true view, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the significant plots of last night’s West Wing dealt with rumors of C.J. possibly being gay.  She spends the whole day portrayed in the episode dealing with shame, being second-guessed, watching people speculate about her most interior and essential life in public, and making excuses where none needed to be made.  And then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-qi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}