"Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold"
About this Quote
Sullivan’s line is a confession dressed up as media strategy: not a culture-war “both sides” dodge, but an admission that public moralizing tends to curdle into hypocrisy. The syntax does the work. He doesn’t claim neutrality; he catalogs two deliberate absences - he wouldn’t defend, and he wouldn’t attack - then explains the evasion as a kind of ethical self-preservation. In a pundit economy that rewards hot takes and clean positions, he’s describing the opposite: restraint born of self-knowledge.
The subtext is religious, even when it’s not explicitly theological. “Ideals I really hold” signals a private moral framework with enough seriousness to make failure feel consequential. Yet he refuses to convert that framework into a cudgel. The move is almost Augustinian: I believe in a standard; I also know I’m not consistently capable of it; therefore I’m wary of turning my beliefs into public indictment. It’s a rare bit of intellectual hygiene.
Context matters because Sullivan has long written at the intersection of sex, politics, and Catholic-inflected conscience, especially amid late-20th-century and post-AIDS debates where promiscuity could be framed as liberation, pathology, or market choice. His refusal to “attack” reads as compassion for real human messiness; his refusal to “defend” reads as resistance to branding every impulse as virtue.
What makes it land is its quiet rebuke of the commentator’s primary vice: pretending personal life never leaks into public certainty. Sullivan admits the leak - and chooses, at least here, not to weaponize it.
The subtext is religious, even when it’s not explicitly theological. “Ideals I really hold” signals a private moral framework with enough seriousness to make failure feel consequential. Yet he refuses to convert that framework into a cudgel. The move is almost Augustinian: I believe in a standard; I also know I’m not consistently capable of it; therefore I’m wary of turning my beliefs into public indictment. It’s a rare bit of intellectual hygiene.
Context matters because Sullivan has long written at the intersection of sex, politics, and Catholic-inflected conscience, especially amid late-20th-century and post-AIDS debates where promiscuity could be framed as liberation, pathology, or market choice. His refusal to “attack” reads as compassion for real human messiness; his refusal to “defend” reads as resistance to branding every impulse as virtue.
What makes it land is its quiet rebuke of the commentator’s primary vice: pretending personal life never leaks into public certainty. Sullivan admits the leak - and chooses, at least here, not to weaponize it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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