My Second Blogiversary

Today marks my second blogiversary. It was sometime in September 2004 where I discovered Bruce’s post telling Log Cabin to stick it for failing to endorse President Bush in that year’s election. I e-mailed him, telling him of my background in that ostensibly Republican organization and agreeing with his criticism. We started corresponding with one another, engaged in a number of IM chats about politics and soon he asked me to join him on the blog.

In my first post I quoted one of my favorite essays, Albert Camus’s, “The Century of Fear,” written just over a year after the end of World War II, and do so again today:

Something in us has been destroyed by the spectacle of the years just past. And this something is the eternal confidence of man, which has always made him believe that one could draw human reactions from another man by speaking to him in the language of humanity. We have seen lying, debasing, killing, deportations, torture, and each time it was not possible to persuade those who were doing it not to do it, because they were so sure of themselves and because one cannot persuade an abstraction, that is to say, the representative of an ideology.

The long conversation of mankind has just ended. And, of course, a man whom one cannot persuade is a man who frightens us….

We live in terror because persuasion is no longer possible, because man has been delivered entirely to history and because he can no longer turn to that part of himself, as true as the historical part, which he discovers in front of the beauty of the world and of faces…

Here is another translation of that essay.

When I posted those words, I had little idea how much Camus’s words would apply to some of our critics. I regret that too many of our critics won’t even open themselves up to our ideas, even to understand them. They remain content to bash their idea of what we said, not the actual ideas we expressed.

That said, I have appreciated the controversy our posts have generated, the chance they have afforded to engage with people with whom we disagree, those willing to listen to our ideas. I’m honored to have been able to help provide a forum for other gay conservatives, individuals who don’t often find outlets for their views. And I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to meet a number of our readers from across the country.

As I begin yet another year blogging, I want especially to thank my friend Bruce, THE GayPatriot, for inviting me to join him here on this blog. It has been a tremendous opportunity from which I am only beginning to realize the benefits.

-B. Daniel Blatt (AKA GayPatriotWest)