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Regular readers of mine know that I have had a love-hate relationship with Andrew Sullivan that has, in many ways, been one of the longest non-familial connections I’ve had with another person in my adult life. I both respect Sullivan for his mind, and he drives me to distraction when that mind seems be stuck in neutral on some issues. Such as his remembrance of Dame Maggie Thatcher:

Dame Maggie, the daft, heartless former British PM.

I was a teenage Thatcherite, an uber-politics nerd who loved her for her utter lack of apology for who she was. I sensed in her, as others did, a final rebuke to the collectivist, egalitarian oppression of the individual produced by socialism and the stultifying privileges and caste identities of the class system. And part of that identity – the part no one ever truly gave her credit for – was her gender. She came from a small grocer’s shop in a northern town and went on to educate herself in chemistry at Oxford, and then law. To put it mildly, those were not traditional decisions for a young woman with few means in the 1950s. She married a smart businessman, reared two children and forged a political career from scratch in the most male-dominated institution imaginable: the Tory party.

She relished this individualist feminism and wielded it – coining a new and very transitive verb, handbagging, to describe her evisceration of ill-prepared ministers or clueless interviewers. Perhaps in Toynbee’s defense, Thatcher was not a feminist in the left-liberal sense: she never truly reflected on her pioneering role as a female leader; she never appointed a single other woman to her cabinet over eleven years; she was contemptuous toward identity politics; and the only tears she ever deployed (unlike Hillary Clinton) were as she departed from office, ousted by an internal coup, undefeated in any election she had ever run in as party leader.

Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir preceded her; but Thatcher’s three election victories, the longest prime ministership since the 1820s, her alliance with the US in defeating the Soviet Union, and her liberation of the British economy place her above their achievements. What inspires me still is the thought of a young woman in a chemistry lab at Oxford daring to believe that she could one day be prime minister – and not just any prime minister, but the defining public figure in British post-war political history.

Once a fanboy, always a fanboy.

In some ways his hagiography makes sense. He made his political fame by being an “openly gay conservative Tory” with a love for all things Thatcher. To turn his back on her now would mean, in some ways, negating the very things which catapulted Sullivan into the public eye. It would almost be to admit, finally, that much of that which originally made him famous was a farce. Which it was.

Which is not to say Andrew has not grown and become a better person. He has. And we are all better off for it.

But notice in the piece excerpted above that nowhere does Sullivan mention Section 28, the heinous piece of British legislation championed by Thatcher that stated “the government shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”

That legislation, which the government later repealed and issued an apology about, made gay and lesbian Brits political strangers in their own country in many ways — part of Britain, but still left outside legally.

I have a theory: Thatcher was the first powerful figure to tell Sullivan that he was a nasty, naughty gay boy in need of severe discipline. On some level that ill treatment resonated with him then, as it has ever since.

As with all masochists, Sullivan had a soft spot for his tormentors. I’ve always said there are three ways to get Andrew on your side: 1) Find a argument with which he agrees, 2) Butter him up with respect for his place in the journalistic celebrity firmament, 3) Mistreat him until he can’t get enough.

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