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One of my acquaintances worked with Halperin for some years.
Halperin is an activist of the extreme sort. He is unassailable in his academic field for having written some or much of the eminent "theory" of gay identity and gay literature in the 70s and 80s. It's heavily based on the French postmodernist intellectual fashion, Foucault and Irigaray and such. He took along the politics- "subvert the dominant paradigm" "the personal is the political"- which is bluntly immoralist. And used more to further egos and careers than gay causes in the real world.
To those who know him any course that Halperin teaches these days is expected to be largely another pushing of boundaries with the mainstream and flagrant insult of the conservative, and selfserving. This "course" sure looks like largely a gay hookup opportunity, during its meetings the participants can revel in gay expression/culture/whatever you want to call it in any way Halperin approves of, and at the end of the semester they write a paper on whatever they feel like about being gay. Thus getting academic credit and a grade for, well, being actively gay in whatever fashions the student feels like and/or can get drawn into. In course descriptions in previous years, iirc, there was even a part clearly asserting that 'traditionally' older gay men needed to teach the newbies everything about being adequate homosexuals. Take a guess at what that really means for the student. Let's just say that prior to his job at UM there was pretty good evidence that he had sexual relationships with his students- none of whom would admit anything or ever comment on the evidence.
What I have heard about Halperin's personal and professional life from this aquaintance and others is all pretty sordid and abusive, sheer scandal generally covered up by administration (think Condi Rice) and a verification of the worst Right winger stereotypes, full of violations of other people in all kinds of often terrifically injurious ways. (These acquaintances think it's all projected selfhatred at bottom.)
He's, to my thinking, an extreme of something that e.g. Matt Drudge is also. Their solution to the abuse the world has subjected them to for being gay is to strike back, to renounce morality and accept nihilism, then to grasp at power and try to strike out at anyone who has any true moral compass as a potential danger. Nixon, though not gay but a hater of all elites, taught a whole generation of hatred-filled people how to play that game of ruling via destruction. I imagine the Log Cabin Republicans are on the whole by far not as extreme nor covertly even close to as sociopathic, but that's the sort of road that takes some extraordinarily cynical gay men into the ranks of the radical Right. Yep, I mean you, Lindsey Graham.
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