Melissa Joskow / Media Matters
After Dr. Christine Blasey Ford reported that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school in the presence of Kavanaugh’s classmate Mark Judge, Senate Republicans want to rush a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter allowing only Kavanaugh and Ford to testify. Despite calls from Ford and committee Democrats to allow more time for a non-partisan investigation to take place, committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) rejected the proposal, claiming, “It would be a disservice to Dr. Ford, Judge Kavanaugh, this Committee, and the American people to delay this hearing any further.” Echoing the calls to allow more time before the hearing, Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) pointed out the need to include Judge in the hearing, suggesting that “the Judiciary Committee should subpoena him if he refuses to testify”:
We need to take the time to gather all of the facts around these allegations. That means we need to also hear from Mark Judge. The Judiciary Committee should subpoena him if he refuses to testify. https://t.co/vvHNuOpPRL
— Doug Jones (@DougJones) September 19, 2018
Judge is a prolific writer for right-wing media outlets -- he wrote about attending Kavanaugh’s wedding -- and a deep dive into his wide-ranging online portfolio reveals his disturbing views about women and other topics that might explain the GOP’s reservations to compel his testimony. As The Washington Post’s Avi Selk pointed out, Judge is “the type of person that are sometimes referred to … as men’s rights activists.”
Judge is a self-admitted peeping Tom who demeans women and minimizes sexual misconduct
Judge has called for men to “act like animals, and exclude women”
Judge has pined for the days of Jim Crow
Judge refers to “gay people” as “perverts” and describes being trans as a “gender identity whim”
Judge called conspiracy theories funny and wanted people with diseases to stop trying to find cures
Judge is a self-admitted peeping Tom who demeans women and minimizes sexual misconduct
Judge bragged that he had been a peeping Tom as a teenager, climbing a tree to spy on an unsuspecting girl in order to “have an orgasm.” Judge wrote that when he was 15, he climbed a tree to “peek into the bedroom of a hot girl named Stacey” in an attempt to “orgasm.” He related this story in order to push the debunked bathroom predator myth:
In a recently posted essay on Teen Vogue, transgender person Eli Erlick asks the following question: “Why would someone go through the trouble of dressing up as a woman—for long periods of time—just to violate someone else?”
The answer, of course, is the orgasm. Men, especially young men, would be more than willing to dress up as women if it meant they could have an orgasm. The orgasm is why men work out, fight, travel great distances and even go to war. The orgasm is why when I was 15 I climbed a pine tree that was about three stories tall to get a peek into the bedroom of a hot girl named Stacey.
It’s why allowing men dressed as women into women’s locker rooms is a bad idea.
…
When I was growing up in Maryland I had girls living on either side of me. In one house was Lori, a pretty blonde. On the other were two cute brunette twins, Pam and Leslie. There were nights when my desire for them was so swamping that I literally felt dizzy. I’d either seek relief in the age-old way, or try to exhaust myself with exercise. One time I jogged five miles to a buddy’s house and, without breaking stride, fell into his pool.
Then there was Stacey, Lori’s cousin from Seattle. She came to visit for a week one summer. Stacey looked like Phoebe Cates. Her window was on the top floor of the house, and one night a buddy and I climbed some pine trees adjacent to the house to get a better look. Unfortunately she saw us first, and I was marched to the front door for a lecture from Lori’s mom.
Had a dress been the ticket to seeing Stacey nude, my closet would have looked like Helen Gurley Brown’s. [Splice Today, 5/24/16, archived]
Judge wrote that men are unable to control sexual urges for teenagers while arguing that some cases of sexual abuse of students should be expected as the normal outcome of teacher-student interactions. Writing about attending high school at Georgetown Preparatory School, Judge argued: “When young men at the peak of their physical attractiveness and power are surrounded by that many gay men, it can be a charged atmosphere. For some priests, it’s just too much to resist”:
There were a lot of gay priests around in the 1980s, indeed a majority of brothers and administrators when I was a student at Georgetown Prep. When young men at the peak of their physical attractiveness and power are surrounded by that many gay men, it can be a charged atmosphere. For some priests, it’s just too much to resist. To use the converse as an example, imagine a group of young, strong, healthy, and celibate males in their 20s and 30s dispatched to run an all-girls high school. Would anyone be surprised if a sex scandal or two erupted? [Splice Today, 9/19/17, archived]
Judge’s ex-girlfriend disputes his claim there was no sexual misconduct at Georgetown Preparatory School, says he told her a disturbing story about him and his friends taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Elizabeth Rasor, who met Judge in college and dated him for three years, disputed Judge’s claim there was “no horseplay” at Georgetown Prep, telling The New Yorker about a disturbing incident Judge described to her:
Ford’s allegation has made Judge a potentially pivotal witness for Kavanaugh. Judge told The New Yorker that he had “no recollection” of such an incident. Judge, who is a conservative writer, later gave an interview to The Weekly Standard in which he called Ford’s allegation “just absolutely nuts,” adding, “I never saw Brett act that way.” Asked by the interviewer whether he could remember any “sort of rough-housing with a female student back in high school” that might have been “interpreted differently by parties involved,” Judge told the publication, “I can’t. I can recall a lot of rough-housing with guys.” He added, ”I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls."
After seeing Judge’s denial, Elizabeth Rasor, who met Judge at Catholic University and was in a relationship with him for about three years, said that she felt morally obligated to challenge his account that “ ‘no horseplay’ took place at Georgetown Prep with women.” Rasor stressed that “under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t reveal information that was told in confidence,” but, she said, “I can’t stand by and watch him lie.” In an interview with The New Yorker, she said, “Mark told me a very different story.” Rasor recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard it as fully consensual. She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge’s protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep. (Barbara Van Gelder, an attorney for Judge, said that he “categorically denies” the account related by Rasor. Van Gelder said that Judge had no further comment.) [The New Yorker, 9/23/18]
Judge wrote about acting sexually aggressive towards an uninterested woman while he was blacked out from drinking. In his memoir Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk, Judge wrote about blacking out at a wedding rehearsal dinner and then asking his friend the next day if he had hurt a woman, according to a copy of the book obtained by The Intercept:
Not long after Mark Judge graduated from Catholic University, he attended the rehearsal dinner for a close friend’s wedding in Washington, D.C. The dinner was in a private room above an Irish bar, and as soon as Judge arrived, he downed a shot of bourbon — and another and another.
The next thing he knew, it was the morning and he was in a friend’s house. He woke up in his disheveled suit from the night before. His head ached, and he could barely open his eyes.
“I had blacked out again,” Judge recalled in a memoir about his troubled youth. “I didn’t remember anything after doing the shots.”
He asked his friend, Denny, what had happened.
“You put on quite a show,” Denny said. “After doing all those shots, you tried to get up on the table and started taking your clothes off, but Shane and I pulled you down. You also tried to make it with one of the bridesmaids.”
Judge was surprised.
“I tried to make it with a bridesmaid?” he said. “Please tell me I didn’t hurt her.”
Denny reassured Judge that he hadn’t harmed the bridesmaid, though he had made a “serious lunge” at her and started kissing her toes. His friends had pulled him off and got him out of the bar and took him to Denny’s home a few blocks away. [The Intercept, 9/22/18]
Relating another blackout incident, Judge wrote that he feared he was capable of murder in his highly inebriated state:
Judge also wrote that about a week before the wedding, he went to his favorite bar, ordered a shot and a beer, and struck up a conversation with a woman who was there. “We bought each other several rounds of drinks, and when I looked at the clock it was after midnight,” he wrote. “Then, in what seemed like an instant, it was suddenly the next morning. … I couldn’t remember a thing after I had looked at the clock. I had blacked out.”
When he came to, he was back in his apartment, still dressed in the clothes he wore at the bar. “I started to panic, terrified of what I could have done during the blackout,” Judge wrote. “I could have done anything and not know it — I could have murdered somebody.” [The Intercept, 9/22/18]
After drinking at a bar, Judge called his ex-girlfriend to call her a bitch. In the memoir, Judge related how he reacted after learning his ex-girlfriend was engaged:
During the Christmas break of his fourth year at college, he went to his favorite bar to drink with friends. One of them informed Judge that his high school girlfriend had gotten engaged. Even though Judge and the woman were no longer going out — they were attending different colleges —he wrote in his book that he viewed her engagement as “the most egregious betrayal imaginable.” He went to a pay phone in the bar and called her.
“Mary, what are you trying to do to me?” he asked.
“What?” she replied.
“I thought we were going to get married,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re drunk. Are you at O’Rourke’s?”
She told him to go home and go to sleep. They could talk when he sobered up. But Judge wouldn’t have it; she was betraying him. His anger took over.
“Goddammit you bitch, fuck you and your fucking husband,” he snarled. [The Intercept, 9/22/18]
Judge mischaracterized President Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape: “Trump boasted about women allowing him to kiss and grab them because of his fame.” Writing for Media Research Center’s online platform about disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Judge claimed that Trump described consensual encounters on the Access Hollywood tape, even though he clearly didn’t. ” [MRCTV, 10/8/17, archived]
Judge criticized the “liberal media” for criticizing Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama who reportedly assaulted a 14-year-old, but praising a fictional film about the consensual relationship between a 24-year-old and a 17-year-old. [MRCTV, 11/28/17, archived]
Judge went after the victims of “Gamergate.” Judge attacked Anita Sarkeesian, founder of the website Feminist Frequency, which hosts analyses of how women are portrayed in pop culture. Sarkeesian was one of the female journalists whose criticisms of misogyny in video games unleashed “Gamergate,” an unprecedented online and offline targeted harassment of women who criticized sexism in the gaming industry.
Social justice warriors like Sarkeesian usually win by following a pattern: raise an issue, shame critics by appealing to emotion, bully, express a lot of rage and personal hurt, guilt opponents into acquiescence, then move on to the next target. But gamers’ cogent counterarguments have made Anita Sarkeesian and non-profit organization] Feminist Frequency irrelevant. [Acculturated, 7/23/15, archived]
Judge minimized Woody Allen’s reported sexual abuse as “questionable decisions in his personal life.”. [Acculturated, 4/19/17, archived]
Judge suggested that Harvey Weinstein could be rehabilitated if he teamed up with actor-cum-evangelical Kirk Cameron. Judge wrote, “Harvey needs Kirk, after The New York Times published an investigation that found at least eight settlements paid over several decades to women who said Weinstein sexually harassed them. … Jetting in Cameron to consult and help rehabilitate the Weinstein Company would be a genius move. The Weinstein Group would instantly gain creditably with conservatives.” [Splice Today, 10/10/17, archived]
Judge downplayed sexual abuse of minors by adults by noting that minors also get a lot of “opportunities” that abuse can provide and by claiming “the world may have been different” back then. Judge defended actor Dustin Hoffman over a report he groped a 17-year-old in 1985 on a movie set, writing, “When examined coolly, Hoffman’s defense, while not entirely defensible, does make some sense.” He went on to criticize late night show host John Oliver for confronting Hoffman at an event, writing “Oliver, who often displays Swiss-knife precision breaking down the details of culture and politics in his HBO sermons, can’t comprehend that the world may have been different in 1985.” Judge went on to argue that sexual abuse by adults is just a part of growing up:
In the generations before the snowflake Millennials, kids grew up a lot faster. They went into the fields or into war, or had to work as teenagers to support the family. The dark side of this was abuse, sexual and otherwise. But there were also opportunities for young people to live the dream of arriving in the adult world of their heroes. Veteran disc jokey Don Geronimo got his first radio job at 13, thanks to an older man who never abused him.
…
Those of us with good memories who are less judgmental than Grand Inquisitor John Oliver can even remember the more porous world between adults and kids. To view a movie like 1976’s The Bad News Bears is to witness a country where 12-year-olds smoke, drink, gamble, have adult conversations, and use language that is now banned on right-thinking college campuses. I was 12 when The Bad News Bears came out, and remember how it stunned friends and me—not for its scandalous scenes and language, but because it was so accurate. It was us. [Splice Today, 12/8/17, archived]
Judge has called for men to “act like animals, and exclude women”
Judge claimed men should “go out as a group, act like animals, and exclude women from the fun.” Judge also seemed to suggest that men couldn’t have “frank talk about women and sex” in front of women.
I went to an all-boys high school, and it’s noticeable how physical our friendships still are, even decades after we graduated. At reunions we tend to fall back on the age-old male expression of affection—light punches on the shoulder, a bear hug, even playful wrestling after a few beers. Last year a few of us met at our school’s homecoming game and the subject of that year’s reunion came up. We were sorting out the details—a trip to the beach—when one of the guys asked: What about wives and girlfriends? Should they be invited?
The decision was instant and near unanimous: No. All it took to make the right call was a reminder of last year’s monkeyshines: the drinking, pick-up games, late night skinny dipping in the ocean, frank talk about women and sex. We needed to pick the insects and fleas off of each other, and that was best done without girls. [Acculturated, 2/5/16, archived]
Judge argued society should allow the “darker aspects of [men’s] personalities” to play a more prominent role because it makes us a “stronger and more self-assured people.” In a column about Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) being charged with a misdemeanor when he was 18 years old for being in a park after it closed, Judge claimed feminism is trying to make “male shadow,” or male misbehavior, unacceptable. He then wrote that in the past, when society was “less healthy, less sensitive, and tolerated some awful behavior,” people were stronger and more self-assured:
The Rubio “story” in the Post reveals how our culture has become uncomfortable with male behavior. On one hand there are the liberals who seem to celebrate any kind of sexual expression except heterosexual manhood, which they aim to deride and ultimately destroy. On the right are religious conservatives that grow uncomfortable when a man shows his darker side by having too much to drink or talking about female sexuality. There are also the “lad” conservatives who fetishize body humor and the female body without any wit or poetry.
…
In our age of supposedly liberal enlightenment and third (or is it fourth?) wave feminism, the male shadow is not acceptable. Liberals won’t tolerate it and conservatives aren’t quite sure how to handle it. And so Marco Rubio finds himself making news because he was once in a park after hours when he was eighteen. Rubio’s satirical response was fine, but it would have been better if he had embraced his shadow, freely admitting that as a young man he felt lust, the thirst for danger, anger, and even depression. Many of our greatest leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy, revealed their shadow sides. Today, we have political candidates trading insults about each other’s shoes.
Yes, in earlier eras we were less healthy, less sensitive, and tolerated some awful behavior. But we were also a stronger and more self-assured people. [Acculturated, 1/26/16, archived]
Judge’s declared that “social justice warriors” want people to forget that “white bros, even handsome and athletic ones, are people too.” In a fawning movie review for Richard Linklater’s film Everybody Wants Some!!, Judge praised the film for its “brave” portrayal of “jocks” and concluded
Everybody Wants Some!! reminds us what the social justice warriors want us to forget: white bros, even handsome and athletic ones, are people too. [Acculturated, 4/8/16, archived]
Judge penned an article in “defense of the ‘sexist’ celebrity profile.” In critizing a Vox column that slammed male journalists for sexualizing the female subjects in their profiles, Judge declared that “avoid[ing] the obvious beauty in front of them” would be “misguided social justice advocacy”:
One of the things that make a good celebrity profile interesting is that, more than any other kind of reporting, the journalist feels free to dispense with objectivity. Some musicians, actors, and comedians are beautiful people. In some cases, it’s what enabled their careers to flourish. To strive for platonic objectivity when faced with the charismatic, the sexy, or the beautiful is social justice warrior social engineering that goes against instinct and common sense.
Describing how a how subject looks, and their aura and charisma, is simply the stuff of interesting journalism.
...
Sky Ferreira and many other female performers are incredibly attractive women. To avoid mentioning that fact isn’t a triumph for feminism but an attempt to force journalists to avoid the obvious beauty in front of them in service of misguided social justice advocacy. [Acculturated, 7/19/17, archived]
Judge wrote that feminists need to support white males in order for white males to support feminists. Judge responded to a column in the The New York Times by feminist writer Lindy West. In her column, West asked men to have her back when it came to gender equality, and Judge responded by asking if feminists would have the backs of white males, claiming, “These days the cool kids are as often as not the transgenders and radicals, not the white men”:
As West writes, “Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye-rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism—coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian.”
It is indeed. But these days the cool kids are as often as not the transgenders and radicals, not the white men whose aid West solicits. She might be surprised to learn that a lot of us have had struggles just like her. Sadly, we have an entire population of the aggrieved and angry, looking for any reason to attack the other side.
So, yes, as West suggests: Enough with the insults. But that honorable behavior should flow both ways. I say to West: I’m a white male and I’ve got your back. Do you have mine? [Acculturated, 7/13/17, archived]
While advocating for more male teachers, Judge suggested men could teach male students about violence against women in ways female teachers or “feminist theory” couldn’t. Judge claimed that he could teach young men “something that a semester of feminist theory never would have” by telling them not to hit women:
When I was teaching a high school class a few years ago, the topic of violence against women came up. The kids touched on sociology, sexism, psychology, and the role of drugs and alcohol in creating dangerous situations for women, and they began to theorize on what the government could do to help. I told them what had helped me: When I was a teenager my father said if I ever hit a woman I could say hello to the wall, because I was about to go through it. As I said this, I noticed a student sitting in the back, a jock who usually didn’t pay attention, suddenly look up. Our eyes met, and he nodded. In five minutes I had taught him something that a semester of feminist theory never would have. [Acculturated, 2/9/16, archived]
Judge claimed “shaving like a man” meant shaving with a safety razor. In a piece praising safety razors over disposable razors, Judge criticized “generations of girly-men” who shave with disposable razors, equating masculinity to a preference for his shaving method:
Yet like a black labrador puppy’s instinct to swim, it came easily, like a vestigial organ kicking back to life. And yes, the first few times I did cut myself — but not as badly I had feared. Indeed, I had damaged my face much worse in the past using cheap disposables. But soon I got the hang of it. I was shaving. I was shaving like a man. Suddenly the last 40 years faded away — the flower boys of the 1960s, the sensitive men of the 1970s, the androgynous pouters of the 1980s, the soft grungers of the 1990s — and the crude, pseudo-masculine Maxim “lads” of today. This wasn’t about the metrosexual goops and lotions of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, nor was it about the dumb, crude and sloppy man culture celebrated in beer — and razor — ads. It was about being a man, and a gentleman. It was about using the right tool for the job at hand. It was about those things that American manufacturers of everything from cars to clothes need to learn again: quality and excellence. [The American Spectator, 2/15/06, archived]
Judge called comedian Amy Schumer “big-boned Barbie” and said she was “getting pounded by critics” over her movie Snatched. [MRCTV, 5/10/17, archived]
Judge: Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren is a “motormouth ballbuster” who gives “culture war rub ‘n’ tugs.” Judge wrote that Lahren is “the young blonde spitfire on Fox who provides culture war rub ’n’ tugs to the Ted Nugent demographic,” in an article pontificating about whether she or Bill Kristol offered worse punditry. [Splice Today, 1/30/18, archived]
Judge complained that “women are allowed to dress however they like, but men are ordered to have no reaction.” In an op-ed criticizing modern feminism, Judge expressed his view that society is harder on men than women because of feminism:
Today, it’s clear the [late editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan] Helen Gurley Brown version of feminism has won, although today’s feminism is also plagued by misandry and social justice warrior rage. [Feminist author Betty] Friedan’s original text is largely forgotten, altered in the mid-1960s when Friedan became convinced by a man named Larry Lader to include more concessions to the culture wars.
Today’s feminism is equal parts of Helen Gurley Brown’s sexual adventurousness and Gloria Steinem’s anger (unsurprisingly, Friedan was critical of Steinem). Women are allowed to dress however they like, but men are ordered to have no reaction. Women have a special way of communicating and solving problems, yet at work they are to be treated no differently than men. They are magical and fantastic creators of life, but we are ordered to cheer when they recover their workout bodies three days after giving birth. The media celebrates single mothers and ignores traditional families, the same families once honored by Friedan. [Acculturated, 8/2/16, archived]
Judge wrote that CBS anchor and journalist Norah O’Donnell “is a piece of ass” and “owes her position to the face and body she sees in the mirror every morning.” Judge argued that female television journalists only have their jobs because of their appearances. [Splice Today, 7/11/17, archived]
Judge has pined for the days of Jim Crow
Judge claimed that white celebrities try to gain legitimacy in pop culture by acting “ghetto” or “imitate the worst black urban culture,” i.e. “crime, illiteracy, misogyny.” In a column for Political Mavens, Judge cited a Norman Mailer essay titled “The White Negro” to criticize celebrities like Justin Timberlake for hiring “a black producer” for legitimacy and claimed “Pimps are now considered heroes”:
Yet while hip has come to mean more than the black street hustler, there is still a powerful draw that whites have to criminal black culture as a way to transform themselves into cool.
...
In the end, many of today’s white Negroes find that encouraging the psycho in themselves is a dead end, resulting either in yawns from the American masses who have seen it all before (a rapper shot someone? What else is on tv?) or in an actual, terrifying encounter with the fruits of that lifestyle. [Political Mavens, 9/7/06, archived]
Judge yearned for the days when African-American elites were “well dressed” and “well mannered.” Judge wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “There once existed in America a very powerful black elite who make today's conservative culture warriors look like editors from The Nation. They were well dressed, well mannered and forcefully pro-values. They would have been speechless at ‘gangsta’ rap and demagoguery of Al Sharpton.” [The Wall Street Journal, 8/2/00, via Factiva]
Judge asked whether police brutality against Black people and other issues raised by Black Lives Matter are “not even really problems.” While criticizing Beyoncé’s 2016 Super Bowl performance, Judge dismissed police brutality as “not even really” a problem:
Beyoncé’s “Formation” is a celebration of black pride and defense of Black Lives Matter. In the video, the singer is shown drowning in a police car, along with images of police officers in riot gear and graffiti reading, “Stop Shooting Us.” At her Super Bowl show, Beyoncé was joined by a group of dancers dressed like Black Panthers. The message was clear: This is a crisis. Something needs to be done, now.
It has become an accepted tenet of our politics – from Black Lives Matter to the presidential election – that our leaders are required to spring into action and immediately fix our problems. But what if the problems the media hyperventilate about are not that pressing, or not even really problems? [Acculturated, 2/15/16, archived]
Judge waxed nostalgic about Jim Crow, World War II, and the Great Depression because Black culture had great artists. In a blog hyping swing dancer Frankie Manning, Judge wrote:
It’s interesting to ponder: during a depression, Jim Crow, and a World War, black pop culture gave us Duke Eillington, Ella, and Frankie Manning. Today, with unprecedented opportunity, wealth, and freedom, we get…Jay-Z, P. Diddy and Al Sharpton. [Political Mavens, 10/14/06, archived]
Judge called Michelle Obama a “resentful, plotting African-American Artemisia” and said Barack Obama rose to power by “heeding the militant advice of an angry woman.” Judge made the claim while making a racially-charged analogy in which Obama was Persian King Xerxes and Donald Trump was Spartan King Leonidas. [Splice Today, 7/5/16, archived]
Judge wrote that riots in Washington, D.C., after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination were caused by “black revolutionaries combined with broken homes and juvenile delinquency.” In a 2002 column for The American Conservative, Judge wrote:
To the inner city poor, [journalist Joe] Klein wrote, the “voluptuous festival of American excess [that] materialized in the living rooms of slums each night” caused jobs that once provided stability—jobs as janitors and bus drivers—to be ‘suddenly derided as ‘dead end’ [by those] who found it profitable to cultivate the alienation of others.” Klein was roundly savaged for offering such an observation—despite the fact that a careful examination of the 1968 riot reveals that he was right.
Such things are simply not said anymore, no matter how much truth they contain—and for those of us who have honestly researched the 1968 riots that devastated Shaw, they do indeed contain the truth. Every careful blow-by-blow reveals not a group of adults blind with rage over the death of their leader, Dr. King, but packs of roving kids looking to steal and being encouraged by left-wing black radicals. (One black militant told a reporter that they had been planning something since the February before King was killed and that they often instigated rioting in parts of the city where there had been none.) [The American Conservative, 11/4/02, archived]
Judge is a homophobe who views “gay people” as “perverts” and describes being trans as a “gender identity whim”
Judge wondered in a column titled “Gay Sex,” “Are gay people perverts?” Judge claimed people ignore the question of whether gay people are perverts because of a “PC shield [that] goes up” in their consciousness, asking “Why are they still getting AIDS” and claiming gay people have an “insatiable obsession with sex.” Judge purported to explain that “with the genetic or hormonal hardwiring that makes someone gay comes a level of pathological compulsiveness. It’s there waiting to explode the way alcoholism is, and requires a constant struggle to tamp down.” He criticized a gay journalist as biased for covering homosexuality without disclosing his “advocacy.” [Political Mavens, 10/5/06, archived]
In a blog criticizing former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), who resigned from Congress after sexually harassing underage boys, Judge conflated homosexuality with molestation. Judge suggested that homosexuality causes “sexual perversion,” and was angry that Foley blamed his behavior on alcoholism. [Political Mavens, 10/3/06, archived]
Judge criticized Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, called transgender people the “new cult of mutable sexuality,” and compared Jenner’s transition to the girl possessed by a demon in The Exorcist. Judge explained that he would not be referring to Caitlyn Jenner as a woman, because he would “not bow to the Cult of Caitlyn. Because Caitlyn Jenner is not a god. He is a man.”
What is new is the reaction of the onlookers. As with the witnesses in The Exorcist, we are judging ourselves, and being judged by others, depending on our reaction to the transformation we are witnessing—in this case the transformation of a former Olympic gold medal athlete into a sixty-five year-old woman in a corset. Either we celebrate the new female Jenner—ambivalence is not acceptable, one must praise—or we reject that this man is now a woman, and thus cast ourselves out of polite society, making ourselves unworthy of the love of the modern religion of narcissistic liberalism. Liberalism, particularly liberalism of the sexual revolution variety, is a religion, and the Jenner event is the equivalent of an apparition in the Catholic Church. Either we see and believe and are holy ourselves, or we are doubters, skeptics, heretics outside the circle of divine love.
This religious aspect is what makes the disciples of Caitlyn Jenner and the new cult of mutable sexuality so obnoxious—and dangerous.
…
I will not be calling Caitlyn Jenner a woman. Not because I don’t sympathize with Jenner’s struggle or think he’s not a nice guy—in fact, he seems much less bullying than his supporters. I will look on him as the priests looked upon Regan, the poor possessed girl in The Exorcist. No matter what the demonic legion in the media says about it, or demands that I say about it, I will not bow to the Cult of Caitlyn. Because Caitlyn Jenner is not a god. He is a man. [Acculturated, 6/3/15, archived]
Judge wrote a transphobic rant targeting an MMA transgender fighter named Fallon Fox. Judge described one of Fox’s fights as a man assaulting a woman and complained that her being transgender meant her “gender identity whims must be catered to.”
This man is free to assault again, because this man is Fallon Fox. Fallon Fox is a transgendered professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter. Last week, it took Fox, who was born a man yet now lives as a woman, about two minutes to destroy his opponent, Tamikka Brents. Brents is an actual, real-life woman, and as a result of the fight suffered a broken orbital bone, a concussion, and seven staples in her head.
If this were the NFL, Fallon Fox would be sitting in jail right now.
But because this is modern America, Fallon Fox’s gender identity whims must be catered to. He must be called a “she”, and be allowed to beat up women. We are no longer allowed to simply tolerate people with unusual sexual predilections; they must be cheered, praised, given parades. And when an attempt is made to cite nature—the difference in muscle structure between men and women—or just common sense, the would-be hater must be shamed, trolled, sent to intellectual Siberia for reeducation. [Acculturated, 9/26/14, archived]
Judge claimed conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan had “a resentment so deep or a sex-obsessed acitivism (sic) so shrill that it has lapsed into dementia.” [Political Mavens, 10/26/06, archived]
Judge criticized a play on Broadway claiming it “features a lecture from transgenders,” and suggested there aren’t any straight white playwrights. Aggregating reviews for MRCTV about the play Straight White Men, Judge described it as containing “two transgender people hector the paying crowd about white privilege.” He went on to state it’s “liberal sermonizing” and added, “One can only imagine the fallout if a straight white playwright (are there any?) had written a play about, say, ‘mall Gay Asians’ and blasted Pat Boone songs to annoy the audience.” [MRCTV, 7/24/18, archived]
Judge positively reviewed a book he said argued that “the modern transgender phenomenon and its defenders share a similar mentality to that which produced Nazi Germany.” According to Judge:
After his death it was revealed that [academic Paul] de Man wrote anti-Semitic articles for a pro-Nazi Belgian newspaper during the Second World War. Himmlefard argues that de Man’s belief that there is no absolute truth made it easy for him to support “the abyss of the Holocaust.”
Himmlefarb then compares the deconstruction of language de Man championed to the abuse of language, and literal deconstruction of the body, evident in transgenderism - and specifically “the Caitlyn Jenner affair.” [MRCTV, 5/9/17, archived]
Judge called conspiracy theories funny and wanted people with diseases to stop trying to find cures
Judge minimized the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory as “funny” and “ridiculous” but suggested it could be turned into “an amazing horror movie.” In a Splice Today article that included a picture of Washington, D.C., pizzeria Comet Ping Pong, Judge wrote, “Treated as fact, Pizzagate is funny, and scary, for its EC Comics brazenness. Treated as fiction, it could be the building block for an amazing horror movie.” A man was inspired by the conspiracy theory that Democratic politicians and powerful celebrities were running a child trafficking ring in the non-existing basement of the Washington, D.C., pizza parlor, and he went to the restaurant in 2016, opening fire inside the premises. He later claiming he went there to “self-investigate.” [Splice Today, 12/21/17, archived]
In a piece hailing “conservative metrosexuals,” Judge complained that snobbery is frowned upon. He doubled down in a second article after he received backlash for the first one. Judge criticized conservatives who like NASCAR and shop at Walmart, praising those who prefer Brooks Brothers. He also bemoaned that “in America being a metrocon is just too close to being a snob. Here snobbery is considered about one notch above child molester.” In a subsequent column, Judge doubled down on his defense of snobbery, addressing the backlash he got for the first one, claiming respecting “objective standards of beauty” equate to respecting God. In a bizarre argument, he claimed that Christ “was the most physically beautiful human that ever lived” and that he “can be found more in Mozart than in rap.” [The American Spectator, 1/4/06, 2/9/06, archived]
Judge bizarrely advocated for celebrities with diseases to stop their activism to find cures and “just shut up and suffer” so they could “accept death and the will and wisdom of God.” Writing for The Daily Caller, Judge claimed, “It would be nice if Carrie Ann Inaba, Michael Fox, and even non celebrities like myself … spend more time in that space, and less time marching for cures”:
I have nothing against Carrie Ann Inaba, one of the stars of Dancing with the Stars. Honestly. She’s smart, and a knockout. But sometimes I wish when celebrities got diagnosed with a disease they would just shut up and suffer. Not a lot. Just a little. In the rush from diagnosis to launching the Official Foot and Mouth Disease Foundation, they forget some of the things that suffering can teach us. Yes, suffering sucks. But in a strange and powerful paradox that the West has forgotten, it can also draw us into intimacy with God. It can be, to quote a man whom I will describe below, “a seal of our divine commission.”
…
The truth is, a serious illness changes us. It can make us temperamental, exhausted, depressed and morbid. Yet it can also help us accept death and the will and wisdom of God. It would be nice if Carrie Ann Inaba, Michael Fox, and even non celebrities like myself who have suffered from illness spend more time in that space, and less time marching for cures. [The Daily Caller, 9/16/13, archived]
Judge conflated all Muslims with Islamic extremists, writing, “Islamic nutbag is a redundancy.” Judge added that “Islam is, strictly speaking, a heresy. It’s Catholicism for dummies” and “Islam didn’t give the world a thing except a weak, kindegarten (sic), and violent form of half-Catholicism.” [Political Mavens, 9/25/06, archived]
Judge wrote “it’s time to bring back hate,” in reference to Muslims. In an article for the New York Press, Judge wrote “it’s time to bring back hate” and accused progressives of trying “to muffle Americans’ hatred for radical Islam by equating it with racial profiling” after the September 11 terror attacks. [New York Press, 2003, archived]
Judge praised conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s questioning of the 9/11 widows and criticized them. In a column for The American Spectator, Judge criticized the 9/11 widows for describing “the death of a loved one in such detail” and wondered, “Why did the Jersey Girls describe the deaths of their husbands with such startling precision?” He claimed that doing so was “the province of the propagandist or social activist.” [The American Spectator, 6/9/06, archived]
Judge criticized a writer who said the Ariana Grande concert bombing was “gender-based violence” by saying the writer “would be one of the first put against the wall in a country run by jihadis.” [MRCTV, 5/23/17, archived]
Judge wrote that though violence against journalists is “wrong and dangerous,” it’s also understandable when it happens. From a column on Splice Today:
Anyone who wants to be honest about Ben Jacobs, the reporter who was allegedly body-slammed by Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican House candidate, needs to hold two ideas simultaneously in their head.
The first is that it’s wrong and dangerous to physically assault a reporter. This is a foundation truth of a democracy and human decency. Journalists provide a vital fact-finding service and should feel safe to do their jobs.
The second is that a lot of people felt a frisson of pleasure that a member of the media was beaten down. I think that the reason for that glee, or at least the most understandable reason, is not right-wing bloodlust. It’s that many people have personal experiences of journalists misrepresenting them and even ruining their lives.
…
From all appearances, Ben Jacobs is an innocent reporter who got assaulted. But if journalists are interested in learning from this incident, they will finally examine some of their own dishonorable behavior. [Splice Today, 5/26/17, archived]
Media Matters’ previous reporting on Judge’s commentary:
Judge, a self-described alcoholic, wrote a memoir saying he often drank to the point of blacking out during high school
Mother Jones: “The alleged witness in the Kavanaugh case wrote a memoir about his own schoolboy days as blackout drunk.” Mother Jones noted that the extreme drinking and substance abuse described by Judge in his memoir “might suggest his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable”:
In his 2005 book, God and Man at Georgetown Prep, which is now out of print, Judge apparently paints the school as overrun with gay priests who promote a form of liberalism that wrecks Catholic education. He also describes an institution where alcoholism was rampant, a theme he detailed in his 1997 addiction memoir, Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk.
That book chronicles Judge’s time as a teenage alcoholic. Like many works of the genre, it devotes a lot of ink to the kinds of debauchery that leads to Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery. While there’s nothing in the book that resembles the incident reportedly described in the private letter given to the FBI, Judge says his own blackout drinking while he and Kavanaugh were Georgetown Prep students “reached the point where once I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated.”
He describes, for instance, what happened after a night of heavy drinking with friends at a Georgetown bar. “The next thing I knew, I was lying on a bathroom floor. I was curled up in the fetal position with saliva running out of the side of my mouth,” Judge writes, explaining that he had inexplicably woken up inside a nearby Four Seasons Hotel. He writes that he called his mom for help getting home. “I must have come over here and passed out,” he tells her.
The amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking might suggest his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable. [Mother Jones, 9/15/18]
Judge wrote that he was “thankful that there was no social media to capture” he and his friends’ antics in high school. Relating a get-together he had with friends from high school, Judge wrote, “When my high school buddies and I got together and exchanged memories of that time, we found ourselves genuinely shocked at the stuff we got away with.” [Acculturated, archived, 9/17/18]
Judge frequently uses his media platforms to offer degrading and abusive commentary about women
Judge’s views on masculinity are based on domination. In a 2013 column for conservative website The Daily Caller, Judge criticized how then-President Barack Obama interacted with Michelle Obama by writing that President George W. Bush “gave his wife Laura a loving but firm pat on the backside in public. The man knew who was boss.”
Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's high school friend who was in the room when Christine Ford says she was assaulted has some pretty telling views on masculinity https://t.co/gqjWCwdCC3 pic.twitter.com/vyMAOXnOrt
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) September 17, 2018
[Twitter, 9/16/18, The Daily Caller, archived, 8/20/13]
Judge wrote that while there “is never any excuse to rape someone,” nonetheless “what women wear and their body language also send signals about their sexuality” and “women who dress like prostitutes are also sending out signals”:
Another one from Mark Judge where twice in one paragraph he writes that women shouldn’t be raped, BUT... https://t.co/djV22uwXcM pic.twitter.com/T8n1lydfin
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) September 17, 2018
[Twitter, 9/16/18, Acculturated, archived, 9/17/18]
Judge wrote that when men aren’t sure women are interested in sex, men should “allow” themselves to “feel the awesome power, the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion”:
Damaging to Kavanaugh.
His alleged accomplice and character witness, Mark Judge, wrote the following in a review.
See for yourself how Judge describes “the wonderful beauty, of uncontrollable male passion,” how “every man who’s fit to live has his own stories about the time.” pic.twitter.com/vEVqHs0iec— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 16, 2018
[Twitter, 9/16/18, Splice Today, archived, 9/17/18]
Judge’s high school yearbook quote: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.”
One year after alleged sexual assault, Kavanaugh’s friend and alleged accomplice (Mark Judge) thought it great to associate himself with this quote in their high school yearbook 1983:
“Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs”
(h/t: @riotwomennn) pic.twitter.com/xmHHK0H7AI— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 17, 2018
[Twitter, 9/16/18]
Judge: Women need to learn how to be more polite when rejecting romantic advances from men. Judge wrote that “younger women seem to have lost the ability to graciously turn down a man who politely and non-aggressively shows an interest in them” in a September 2014 column:
Younger women seem to have lost the ability to graciously turn down a man who politely and non-aggressively shows an interest in them.
We’ve all seen it—at bars, in clubs, at parties. A dude screws up the nerve to take that long walk across the room and ask a woman for her number or out for a date. For classy and polite ladies, the reply is a simple no-thank-you. Something like: “Thank you, I appreciate the interest, but I’m seeing someone right now.” Or: “I’m flattered, but I have some other things I’m focusing on now.” Yet for too many women, raised like the boorish catcallers, without the verbal social skills that allow for pleasant interaction, graciousness is just too much to ask for.
The results can be brutal to observe. Women giggle derisively, or hide behind a more punitive friend who dishes get-the-hell-out-of-here abuse at the man, or the girls-night-out group-laugh right in the guy’s face. [Acculturated, archived, 9/9/14]
Splinter: Judge uploaded “sexualized videos of young women” on YouTube. A Splinter investigation into Judge’s social media postings, many of which have been deleted, cited “internet sleuths” who “found a YouTube channel that appeared to belong to Judge onto which he uploaded bizarre videos that intercut innocuous visuals of books and cityscapes with sexualized videos of young women”:
Though Judge quickly deleted his social media profiles as attention focused on him in the wake of the allegations, much of it was documented by internet sleuths. They found a YouTube channel that appeared to belong to Judge onto which he uploaded bizarre videos that intercut innocuous visuals of books and cityscapes with sexualized videos of young women. Twitter user TheDiscomfiture screenshotted many of the videos (some of them have been re-uploaded here). A deleted Flickr account users also linked to Judge featured similar images. Other photos that allegedly originated on Judge’s deleted Facebook page featured young girls in bikinis at a resort. [Splinter, 9/17/18]
Judge writes sexual fiction about high school age girls. In August 2018, Judge published a work of “fiction” about high school students from Maryland preparatory schools participating in “beach week.” On social media, Judge wrote that the piece was “based on a true story.” The story, written in first person, contains observations about characters from local all-girls preparatory schools, including descriptions like “beautiful tight ass,” “great tits,” and, “I saw love in all the girls from [Trinity] & [St. Anne’s] with large breasts and/or great asses.” [Raw Story, 9/16/18, Liberty Island, archived, 8/15/18]
Judge: “The rage of the Jezebels is indicative of a serious cultural problem that is potentially fatal for the United States.” Judge wrote a negative review of The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things in which he repeatedly characterized feminists as irrationally angry:
When you say feminists are angry, they respond that you are a “Frat Bro” or a right-winger, and the conversation stops. And a deeper analysis of feminist apoplexy is important because the rage of the Jezebels is indicative of a serious cultural problem that is potentially fatal for the United States, which has become a very, very angry country.
...
Thus the malevolence towards “dead white males” and the liberal obsession with feelings and personal grievance. The bogus “war on women” is really nothing but liberal women acting out against bad fathers. The frightening thing about this rage is that it is insatiable even as it demands resolution through politics.
...
Or the infamous 1979 town hall debate between Norman Mailer and Germain Greer and other feminists. Here were feminists faced with Norman Mailer, a Cro-Magnon brawler who had stabbed his own wife, and they (mostly) debated with humor and intelligence, delving deeply into complex psychological and cultural ideas. As the writer James Reich recently put it, in the town hall “the conflicts or navigations of the sexes are articulated with élan, wit, and through both good- and bad-natured mauling.”
More than thirty years later, and judging by The Book of Jezebel, feminists are so angry that debate with them is no longer possible. To them the only solution to their rage is through politics. There is a steady undercurrent of animus towards conservatives and Republicans in The Book of Jezebel, which is to be expected. But what is revealing is the intensity of the antipathy and its obsessive-compulsive quality (there’s also the heavy juvenile snark which is Jezebel’s calling card).
...
The writers at Jezebel are angry women. Their pain is beyond the reach of politics to solve. To be fair, there are many funny entries in The Book of Jezebel, like the one for Hipster: “Identifier claimed by no one but freely subjected on any person more Navajo-printed, leather-jacketed, asymmetrically-hairstyled, unshowered, ironically racist, Pitchfork-reading, warehouse-dwelling, amateur-mandolin-playing, or neon than you.” But the jokes can’t mask the rage. This is why that even as America has progressed and the treatment of women has vastly improved, the anger of the feminists has grown more acute. Nothing short of a matriarchal utopia will suffice. It’s easier than admitting what really ails you. [The Daily Caller, archived, 10/21/13]
Judge praised Hugh Hefner and his magazine Playboy for their “ridicule of feminism”:
Say what you will about Hefner, and yes he’s always been kind of cheesy, but the man had a philosophy. Unlike today’s publishers, who go out of their way to avoid offending advertisers and the public, or journalists, who push their agenda then hide behind claims of “objectivity.” Hefner had balls. In 1955 Esquire magazine rejected “The Crooked Man,” a story by science fiction writer Charles Beaumont. It told the story of a man who lived in a homosexual society and was persecuted for being straight. Hefner published it. Hefner is also a known jazz fan, and the early Playboy ridiculed rock and roll as “noise.” It also made fun of beatniks and hippies. And, of course there was Playboy’s ridicule of feminism. Here’s Playboy’s call-out accompanying a 1970 article about the feminist movement: “militant man-haters do their level worst to distort the distinctions between make (sic) and female and the discredit the legitimate grievances of American women.” Such a piece might appear today in the American Spectator.
...
Hefner also felt that a well employed young bachelor was good for the American economy because of his disposable income. People forget because these days Hefner resembles a viagra-chomping Crypt Keeper, but in the early days Playboy advocated not the destruction of marriage, but rather letting a man have a period of exploration between college and marriage. Hefner had married his first wife Mildred right out of college; the marriage didn’t last, leading Hefner to not unreasonably conclude that having a period of bachelorhood between school and starting a family might be good for men, women, and the economy. Of course, that period for Hefner has now lasted about 107 years. But the Playboy founder’s original feeling was sound: men should have a time to be men and be able to buy stuff and date a lot of girls before taking the gas pipe and getting married. [The Daily Caller, archived, 9/30/13]
Judge wondered “why are modern women angry” and blamed a “culture of self-affirmation and abundance” for women “feeling unsatisfied.” From a 2016 op-ed at Acculturated:
By contrast, many modern women seem quick to express anger about their lives. Living in a world of unlimited choices and constant affirmation, they nonetheless seem resentful. Even celebrities aren’t immune: Pop star Madonna is richer than many small countries and is absolutely free to do, say, and wear (or not wear) anything she wants to. Yet when fans have the audacity to be upset that she’s an hour late for a show, as she was recently, she launches into a tirade. American women live in the freest, most open-minded country on earth, yet seem bitter and disappointed.
...
As today’s generation of self-styled feminist women suggests, limitless freedom has not brought the happiness they assumed it would, and as they confront life’s realities, anger is replacing hope. [Acculturated, archived, 6/27/16]
Judge has published racist writings about Black people, including a piece in which he claimed that Black teenagers in the Washington D.C. area have “absolutely no impulse control”
Judge wrote a widely derided racist column about his assumption that a Black person stole his bike. [New York magazine, 4/9/12, Gawker, 4/9/12, The Daily Caller, archived, 4/9/12]
Judge complained about “swarms” of “cacophonously loud” Black teenagers causing problems in the upscale D.C. neighborhood Georgetown on Halloween. Writing for The Daily Caller, Judge shared observations from visiting Georgetown on Halloween 2011, arguing that “we just don’t have the guts to speak honestly about the issue of unsupervised black teenagers from broken homes and the havoc they can cause”:
At 9:42 on Halloween night, I sent myself an email. It read: “Halloween shooting.” I had just walked a few blocks from Wisconsin and M Streets in the heart of Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone got shot, most likely a black teenager. It was so obvious what was going to happen that I wanted to just email myself a note. There was simply no way, after what I had just seen, that someone was not going to get killed; I think I wanted to predict it just out of sheer frustration. We all know what the problem is. But we just don’t have the guts to speak honestly about the issue of unsupervised black teenagers from broken homes and the havoc they can cause — to themselves and others.
Just before 11:00 p.m., 90 minutes after my email, a black teenager was shot on 28th and M Streets in Georgetown. He is in critical condition.
…
There were swarms of loud — and I mean cacophonously loud — teenagers drifting through downtown Georgetown. I was standing at Wisconsin and M Streets when a mass of about 50 of them poured across the street, ignoring the orders of a police officer who told them to stay behind the barriers set up for pedestrian safety. The kids were absolutely charged with energy; it was the kind of crackling atmosphere that happens before a fight. They spilled into the parking lot of the Riggs Bank. I followed them. On the other side of the parking lot was another group of black kids, mostly males. They were intently telling one of their friends to “not get involved.” “Those guys have guns!” one of them shouted. It was 8:30. On a Monday night. The PC police will have me over the spit, of course, but liberalism has cost so many lives that I don’t care anymore. The fact is, there were not hordes of white teens and preteens roaming through Georgetown on Halloween.
…
In all of that, no one would have the guts to tell the truth. It was not Asians or whites or Indians who were wilding in Georgetown. It was black teenagers. Illegitimacy and fatherlessness in black urban areas like Washington, D.C. has created an entire class of youth who have been weaned on gangster culture and have absolutely no impulse control. [The Daily Caller, archived, 11/1/11]
Judge wrote that Obama was “clearly unqualified” to be president but got the job because of affirmative action. In a 2013 Daily Caller column, Judge wrote, “Obama is a poster child for affirmative action. Rather than relying on his own wit or intelligence, he gamed the system, getting into schools and getting jobs — including the one he has now — that he is clearly unqualified for.” [The Daily Caller, archived, 8/20/13]
Judge published an anti-gay column at The Daily Caller
Defending Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s homophobia, Judge compared marriage equality to incest and polygamy and said promiscuity by gay men “led to AIDS.” From a December 2013 opinion piece:
Liberals keep telling us that all that matters is love, but then can’t answer the question of why a father couldn’t then marry his daughter, or why two brothers can’t marry each other. Or why six people can’t get married. They have officially moved to fantasyland, and are trying to drag the rest of us there also.
...
We simply are not allowed to talk about certain things at the risk of our jobs and reputations. One is human anatomy, another is the problem of promiscuity in the gay community. I saw this firsthand when I worked at a record store in a predominantly gay part of Washington, D.C. in the 1980s. The store was right next to a gay bar, and the bizarre and dangerous behavior I would see spilling out from that bar to the street filled me with pity and sadness. There were transvestites, drug addicts, public sex, men I saw each week with a different partner. This kind of recklessness was documented in the film “Gay Sex in the 70s.” I didn’t think that any intellectually honest person would deny that this was a problem in the gay communities, and led to AIDS. It would be like denying that in late 19th century New York there was a crime, alcohol and hygiene problem amongst the immigrant Irish — my people. There was. Pretending there wasn’t didn’t make it so. [The Daily Caller, archived, 12/26/13]