Andrew Sullivan: evaluation

Transcript context

…Taking a hetero person such as myself, if I want more of this element at the margin that you have with your gay friends, what’s the needed input to produce that? I think it’s going to places you wouldn’t otherwise go, meeting people who are new, finding a way outside your own circle of friends, your own socioeconomic status. One thing that I was talking to Charles Murray about, actually, was how he does his poker game that he plays with just regular folks in a casino. It’s a regular thing that he does. None of them are from his way of life. But it’s a great way to get in touch with how people genuinely feel outside of the chattering classes. And I think that’s the gain. I’m not helping you very much here, am I, with the — I don’t want to give the impression gay people are somehow more fun, or — I’m just saying you’re more likely to randomly come across someone who’s not part of your scene or your class or your race, for that matter, as a gay person, simply because as a gay man, especially, the sexual and social dynamics are utterly independent of professional, intellectual, or ideological dynamics. And so, essentially, you become friends with someone because you’ve seen them a lot at a gym or a bar or at a restaurant, and it just becomes that; it doesn’t become, What did you do? What do you do? How do you make a living? And so on and so forth. You mentioned before mushrooms. How do you think that self-medication — whether it be mushrooms, marijuana, testosterone, something else — influences the actual content of your ideas?…

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