Scott Bidstrup

I recently picked up my Ashland essays, this group a set of responses to Andrew Sullivan's "Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," and I was surprised when the same Internet source kept appearing. Four of thirteen essays referred to to a web article by Scott Bidstrup, "Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives." I've got some experience in the whole discussion, and I've got to admit that his name was new to me. I knew Sullivan, Bruce Bawer, Tony Campolo, Mel White, and the Gay Christian Network, but this is a new name, so I decided to follow it up. One third of my students read Bidstrup? Is it some sort of assignment? Is there a sale on his stuff at the bookstore?

Turns out that the explanation is much simpler. Type "gay marriage" into Google, and Bidstrup is the first item to come up. Since he's a webmaster who owns a server hosting over 7000 websites, I'd assume he knows how to optimize a site to get it to the top of the Google heap. It's a matter of getting the right words into the hidden meta keword headers, putting the right stuff in boldface and italics, wisely using header labels, and getting lots more people to link to a site (from "good" websites) than you have links outbound. All easy material for someone who is fluent in HTML, but not necessarily the kind of thing that determines whether a site is a good source for academic discussion.

Turns out that Bidstrup is quite good on this topic, though my students didn't often delve very deeply. He's apparently:

• Gay and not too effeminate about it either
• Politically liberal and convinced that George W. Bush is one of the worst things to happen to America
• Not at all in sympathy with right-wing Christian religion, especially the form that tries to take control of the government to impose its standards on everyone else
• Living in self-imposed exile in Colombia because he's convinced that Bush's Patriot Act surveillance endangers everyone who has a contrary opinion to the official government line

He looks like a good project for Internet reliability and bias study!