Roy Edroso has an articulate critique of ambivalent young conservatives on Alicublog today. These "AmbiCons" basically want the gay marriage issue to go away, so they don't have to commit to one side of the issue or the other, and so they can have a comfort level without being faced with shiny queer married people:
It's evidently easy to get young, ambitious conservatives to endorse the bombing of Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts, but it is hard to get them to mount up with the queer-crushin' brigades, at least in public....
Is it any wonder that these striplings, who are used to having it all -- conservativism and cred with their peeps -- balk at having to don, even momentarily, the white hood? What will Joe AmbiCon's gay friends say? Worse, what will his girlfriend say the next time he tries to fuck her in the ass?
AmbiConservatism is, alas, the best they can do.
It's silly and conflicted, and maybe suggestive of veiled queer longings within the ambiconservative's own psyche. But it's also encouraging to me, from the other side of the aisle, because it means the young metropolitan conservatives aren't exactly following the party line 100%. That gives me hope: the fewer militant fagbashers the right can muster, the better. If some percentage adopts wishy-washy rhetoric, the very flimsiness of their arguments will help discredit the entire antigay agenda -- even if stuff like this doesn't do the trick.