Looking at the two highlighted sentences, "colored this" seems to be the critical phrase. What is "this"? Sullivan's support of Bush's warmaking ability, or Sullivan's overall support of the president as a candidate in 2004? It seems to me that one could argue either way.

I respect Andrew very much but think his hatred of Bush is probably based upon his worldview of gay rights.

He seems to be a fan of Chenny though as one can tell by his quote at the top of the page.

Cutting to the chase, you set these two as potentially equally motivated, at the same levels of ethical importance.:

Whether President Bush's advocacy for FMA

1) colored Sullivan's opposition to the war, and to use your own ridiculous scare quotes, to "torture."

2) colored Sullivan's endorsement of Senator Kerry for President.

Because the second of these occurred, by Sullivan's own admission, it follows, you say, that his denial of the first is not to be accorded any respect.

I assume it's beyond you to see that they aren't even in the same solar system when it comes to the moral importance of these two decisions.

Talk about your moral relativism, Joshua.

I have to agree with Chuck, you're taking Sullivan's words out of context. The first part of the first paragraph you cite is about fiscal responsibility, not the war, and the context is a response to an email about big government conservatism. When the second paragraph says that the FMA has colored his view of this, he is clearly talking not about the war specifically but about the general question of whether to support President Bush or not. At the very least, it's an uncharitable reading and it does not provide a solid basis for not accepting his assurance that his loss of support for the war began with the administration's bungling of it.

Darnell wrote:

I respect Andrew very much but think his hatred of Bush is probably based upon his worldview of gay rights.

I really think the word "worldview" is a vastly overused word to begin with, but in this context it's entirely out of place. Belief in gay rights is not a "worldview" (nor is evolution, in another annoying and all too common use of the word). It's an issue, a single issue among a vast number of other issues on which one's thinking about gay rights has no bearing whatsoever. Some who favor gay rights are liberals, some are libertarians, some are even conservatives. Gay rights doesn't constitute even a general political philosophy, much less a "worldview" (which would at least require not only a coherent political philosophy but an epistemological philosophy, a moral philosophy and probably a natural one as well.

Nash:

Whether President Bush's advocacy for FMA

1) colored Sullivan's opposition to the war, ...

Opposition to the war? He's supported the war from the start, and continues to support it. He only opposed the way it's been run.

Drat, it looked good in preview. Who wrote this software anyway?

It seems pretty clear he's talking about his endorsement of Kerry over Bush, not criticism of Bush's record overall. Sullivan has been consistently against torture, yet hawkish on terror.

Darnell:

He seems to be a fan of Chenny though as one can tell by his quote at the top of the page.

He's actually not a Cheney supporter, especially recently with the torture thing and a number of other issues with which the VP has been associated. Here's one example, and there's more but I can't find 'em because the archives on Andrew's site are crap. Honestly, I don't know why he keeps that Cheney quote up there, since he's basically said that Cheney stands for precisely not that.

Anyways, I've been reading Andrew's site for years. His statement is true: he was for the war (I was anti, partly because of questions about the basis for the war, partly because of questions about our ability to pull it off, and primarily because I didn't believe there was a big rush and we hadn't finished in Afghanistan) and has remained so. His ardor for the Bush Administration cooled as the evidence of incompetency and manipulation of evidence in the run-up to and prosecution of the war became undeniable. Mine cooled, oh, about the time Bush announced for Prez :)

Andrew's blog was the first one that I would go to regularly. I always found his comments worth pondering even when I didn't agree. In the Spring of 2004, President Bush gave a speech in which he expressed support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Almost over night the tone of Andrew's blog changed from general support and sensible criticism of President Bush to almost relentless negative criticism often expressed in derisive language. When this is pointed out, Andrew says that he always criticized the President on spending, for example, or whatever, and he still does. But what really changed is the tone more than the content. The man who was so good at exposing 'Bush Derangement Syndrome' in others developed a case of it himself. And now we can add 'Benedict Derangement Syndrome' to Andrew's problems. When it comes to both Bush and Benedict, he is simply unhinged (to use Michelle Malkin's term). I really think any honest review of Andrew's blog will find this change occurred pretty much at the moment Bush gave his speech on gay marriage.

Al Farabi --

What would you make, then, of Sullivan's 2000 endorsement? He supported Bush back then, even while Bush favored upholding the Texas sodomy law.

It's worth pointing out that the latter was a real law with real consequences. But barring some strange turn of events, everyone knows the FMA is a merely cosmetic measure that's almost certainly never going to pass.

In other words, Sullivan supported Bush even when Bush, as candidate (and therefore vulnerable) supported a real law that did actual harm to gays and lesbians. To think that he only turned against Bush because of the FMA, a proposed law that will probably never pass, seems pretty farfetched to me.

As to my own admitted distaste for the president's policies, I consider his record on civil liberties and detainee issues to be infinitely more damning than his support for the FMA. And I say this as perhaps ITA's most high-profile openly gay commentor.

It's already quite clear that the FMA is headed the way of the flag-burning amendment: Both offer the GOP plenty of grandstanding, free from any apparent legislative consequence. (As they are the heirs to a movement whose rallying slogan was "Ideas have consequences," I think perhaps they should reconsider. But I digress.)

Our founders were wise indeed to forsee this sort of thing and provide an outlet for our political immaturity. And, in fairness, the Democrats do plenty of this sort of grandstanding as well.

On the other hand, thought, tarnishing our international record on human rights, directly subverting the Constitution, and calling into doubt the very rule of law itself -- that's something I think we'll regret for generations.

Does Sullivan overplay the FMA? Certainly. But I think he's 100% correct about the civil liberties issues -- and that it is far too dismissive to say that the one is merely a consequence of the other.

Sullivan could support Bush despite the Texas sodomy statute precisely because it was a TEXAS sodomy statute. Sullivan is generally (if at times inconsistently) a supporter of federalism. He supports gay marriage initiatives that come from the states, and by the same token, to be consistent, he can't criticize too harshly state initiatives that seek to ban gay marriage. The point is, that this is a state not a federal issue, and I think he thinks that in time more and more states will authorize gay marriage and a national consensus will emerge in support of it. Bush's opposition in Texas will not matter in the long run. But when Bush came out in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage thus superceding all state initiatives, he lost Andrew for good. It is, as you say, extremely unlikely to ever be ratified, but I don't think that matters to Sullivan. It would be interesting to go back and see why Andrew supported Bush in the first place. It seems inconceivable now. But I think this is really an empirical question. I'm serious -- look at Andrew's posts about President Bush in the three months prior to his speech in support of the FMA, and then look at posts in the three (or however many months) after. I think any honest person will see a dramatic change in tone. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it's hard not see Bush's support of the FMA as being somehow decisive -- the final straw, as it were.