Gore Vidal

The BDS (Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions) Movement’s current, partly successful efforts in the UK, the U.S., and Canada to coopt LGBT activists to undermine tolerant Israel’s right to exist while casting a blind eye to the oppression of gays in the Arab and Muslim world does not come out of thin air. Gore Vidal, who died almost a year ago, laid the groundwork for it.

First, to give Vidal his due as a controversialist. Though denying that “there is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person,” Vidal is likely to remembered as a trenchant critic of anti-gay prejudice despite his rejecting the term “gay.”

Unfortunately, Vidal coupled his advocacy of gay rights with a hatred of Judaism and the Jewish state.

Although unwilling fully to admit the anti-Semitic implications of his views, Vidal was more honest about what he believed—and whom he hated—than his eulogists who protested too much that Vidal was not an anti-Semite.

There can be few things more painful than being autopsied while still alive. This was the fate of Vidal, whose relationship with Jews and Judaism was dissected over two decades before his death by Edward Alexander whom I update. (more…)