On Tuesday, former Washington Post pundit (and Prospect alum) Ezra Klein sent a shockwave through the gay community by announcing he had hired gay anti-gay apologist Brandon Ambrosino to join him at Vox Media, the much-hyped digital venture aiming to remake journalism for the Internet age. Liberal watchdog group Media Matters was the first to sound the alarm, but within a day, gay-rights supporters-from Mark Stern at Slate to John Aravosis at AmericaBlog-has joined the chorus of voices asking: What were you thinking?
The problem with hiring the Ambrosino is not that Klein isn’t entitled to bring someone on board whose views the gay community finds distasteful. With $70 million behind Vox, the Beltway’s boy wonder is just as free to hire Jenny McCarthy as a science fellow and Sarah Palin to comment on feminist issues. But Ambrosino’s quick rise to notoriety-and now, his ticket aboard the profession’s hottest new upstart-is an object lesson in the way new media equates click-bait contrarianism with serious thought, and gives hacks a platform in the name of ideological balance.
A 23-year-old graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, Ambrosino has earned his name as a journalist-and his coveted spot at Vox Media-by being the gay writer who comes to the defense of gay-rights antagonists. He most recently stirred up a storm by proclaiming, atThe New Republic, that homosexuality is a choice and that he has chosen to be gay. Time magazine gave him space to call gays the real bigots for piling on Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson, who had equated homosexuality with bestiality and said gays weren’t going to heaven (still, Ambrosino says he wouldn’t mind going fishing with the guy. At The Atlantic, Ambrosino threw his hat in the ring for the founder of his alma mater, who blamed September 11 on gays and accused them of trying to “recruit” children; Ambrosino says liberals like Bill Maher have slandered the Moral Majority Founder and says, in Falwell’s defense, that the guy with the “big fat smile” probably wouldn’t have had him stoned to death if he’s known about Ambrosino’s sexuality. Ambrosino also defends the views of ex-gay therapists and same-sex marriage opponents, whom he says aren’t motivated by bigotry. In the Baltimore Sun, Ambrosino went after the guys in “butt-less chaps and high-heels” at gay pride marches who earn society’s prejudice with their “hypersexual antics”: “I think there is a subversive power in living out my gay life in a way that seeks to emphasize the common ground I share with straight communities,” he writes. “I don’t want to participate in an event that seeks to highlight how countercultural I am.” Unsurprisingly, the religious right has been thrilled to find an acolyte among the fallen.
Gay intellectuals like Andrew Sullivan or Jonathan Rauch may occasionally ruffle gay folks’ feathers for going against the grain when it comes to hate-crime laws, say, or the right of for-profit businesses to turn away gay customers. But Ambrosino should not be thought of in this mold. Whereas Sullivan or Rauch’s positions are thoughtfully staked out and stem from nuanced views about the role of government, Ambrosino’s iconoclasm amounts to heedless self-promotion. His gross distortions of mainstream gay views and stunning lack of fluency in the basic language of gay equality reveals him to be little but a feckless provocateur. His mischaracterization of 20th-century philosopher Michel Foucault-Ambrosino warps the philosopher’s idea that sexuality is a “social construct” to justify his view that gays choose their sexuality-has gotten him called out by academics. But his use of nonsensical phrases like “intersexed crossdressers” (intersexuality, a medical condition, has nothing to do with crossdressing) and penchant for referring to transsexualism as a “sexual choice” show that his lack of familiarity with his subject matter runs even deeper.
So the big question: Why has a string of editors, culminating with Klein, given this guy a platform? In an interview on Wednesday evening, Klein told me he hadn’t read the pieces that had kicked up so much dust before bringing Ambrosino on, but did so once he began facing criticism for the hire.
“I don’t want to pretend that I have the context and the background to perfectly or authoritatively judge this debate,” Klein said. “But when I read his pieces, I didn’t come away with the impression that he holds an iota of homophobia.”
“Homophobia”-which activists too often use as shorthand to describe anti-gay views that don’t necessarily stem from fear-may be the wrong word for it. But even a cursory read through Ambrosino’s writings should raise red flags. Klein, though, seems mystified by the blowback, and acknowledges he is new to the process of hiring a staff. “I gotta be honest,” he said. “With a lot of this stuff, I’m trying to figure out what success means.”
It’s unclear what role Ambrosino will play in Vox’s coverage of gay issues; Klein stressed that he hired Ambrosino as a writing fellow, part of a training program for young journalists. But the fact that the hiring process failed to raise any questions about Ambrosino’s journalism raises questions about the kind of oversight he’ll get at Vox. Plus, as a gay-rights advocate and friend of mine remarked, only half in jest, “After that he’ll have a star-studded resume and free reign to antagonize us for years!”
Klein has come under fire for the lack of racial and gender diversity among Vox’s announced hires, and his decision to hire Ambrosino shows how much he has to learn about genuine diversity. Klein told me he found Ambrosino’s background as a gay Christian compelling and is trying to cultivate “ideological diversity” as well as gender and racial diversity at Vox. While he has a number of female hires in the pipeline and says he is struggling to find racial minorities for the venture, Klein said, “I also want to say, other kinds of diversity are important-ideological diversity.” I asked Klein what he meant by ideological diversity. “It’s not that I have a quota that I need Republicans,” he said, but Klein doesn’t want a staff where “everybody thinks the same way.” This is a noble impulse, and varying viewpoints do enliven intellectual debate. But Ambosino’s views aren’t different; they’re ill-informed and dishonest. The grand irony here is that Klein himself has made a career out of being a centrist wonk who’s careful with facts.
Vox’s decision to hire Ambrosino shows why it’s so important to have diversity not just among writers, but also among the management at journalistic institutions. As Klein admits, he’s not the best judge of journalism on LBGT issues. Which is sort of the point: Not having a gay person in Vox’s leadership-someone who is familiar with the fault lines and sensitivities of the debate-leaves editors vulnerable to making tone-deaf decisions. If Klein wanted a smart young voice on gay rights, he had scores of brilliant, journalistically sound, responsible queer journalists to choose from-Slate‘s Mark Stern comes immediately to mind, as does Metro Weekly‘s Justin Snow. Perhaps Klein didn’t know where to look, but given the promise and resources of Vox, it’s incumbent on leaders like him to do more than post jobs online-if you want diversity, you have to work at it. Cheap traffic, on the other hand, is low-hanging fruit.
Ambrosino fits a mold the bright new media loves: He’s a nerdy white kid whose contrarian views stir the pot. There is no question, especially given the sketchy quality of Ambrosino’s work, that the allure of having someone gay parrot anti-gay views has led editors at the prominent publications giving Ambrosino a megaphone to look at him and think, “interesting.” His formula is tired, if effective: He throws bombs into the gay community and his editors call the explosion a debate. It’s disappointing, to say the least, that a journalism venture that promised to be different is relying so heavily on old tricks.