Perhaps Sullivan’s most glaring contradiction is that for all of the Oakeshottian texture and nuance he displays regarding L.G.B.T.Q. Out on a Limb manifests all the contradictory qualities that have made Sullivan occasionally frustrating but invariably worth reading. And how does it challenge market-based assumptions about economic justice in a world with disastrous wealth disparity? One wonders how that noninterventionist, epistemological humility regarding change translates among African Americans, Native Americans and others whose patience for justice has been measured in centuries. Sullivan’s conservatism is grounded in the thinking of the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901–90), who argued for a “politics of skepticism” that is nonideological and decidedly not utopian, generally preferring decentralized governments and minimal intervention. His fond recollections of that era sound at times like uncritical exercises in political fantasy, fueled by overheated Cold War fears and simplistic assumptions about the virtues of free market capitalism. Sullivan laments the devolution of conservatism during the 1990s and 2000s but seems not to question the underlying principles of the Reagan/Thatcher axis that gave birth to that next generation.
He can also be frustratingly blind to his own contradictions. Bush’s invasion of Iraq as his “greatest failure of judgment.”
Looking back, Sullivan now sees his “shamefully excessive defense” of George W. His arguments are intelligent and well constructed even when they have been misguided. Sullivan’s ability to be flexible in his thinking is disarming and rare among the pundit class. If Andrew Sullivan is not sufficiently Catholic, it isn’t because of doctrine or orientation the fault is in our impoverished imaginations. A darling of the right in the 80s, he was later disavowed by Republicans for criticizing the G.O.P.’s fearmongering and intellectual dishonesty. Out on a Limb documents a man thinking out loud and manifests all the contradictory qualities that have made Sullivan occasionally frustrating but invariably worth reading for years. Is he a gay writer? A conservative writer? A conservative apostate? All we know for sure is that, according to Google, he’s not a Catholic writer. Sullivan has a clear comfort with contradiction that makes it difficult for readers to know where to place him. activists believed the idea was a pathetic capitulation to heterosexual norms. In 1989, Sullivan wrote a landmark essay making the case for the legalization of same-sex marriage back when many L.G.B.T.Q. He was an openly gay neocon Reaganite when that administration would not even mention the word AIDS. He has spent his entire career as an outsider. If he is not sufficiently Catholic, it isn’t because of doctrine or orientation the fault is in our impoverished imaginations. Sullivan has written with such depth and insight about the experience of sexuality and faith for so long that it is difficult not to see his journey as taking place on holy ground. But if that is disqualifying, the loss is clearly ours. Sullivan has unapologetically identified as both gay and Catholic for decades (he married his husband in 2007).