Talk:John Hospers/Archive 1

Presidential bid is significant
Since running for president as the first Libertarian presidential candidate was Hospers's most well-known accomplishment, I moved that to the opening sentence; it had previously been buried near to the bottom of the article. Runt (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing about "Meaning and Free Will"?? --Christofurio (talk) 03:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The presidential run is notable in that he received an electoral vote.--Libertyguy (talk) 00:24, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Homosexuality?
I don't see any mention of him being the first openly gay candidate to receive an electoral vote for the presidency. I think that's pretty significant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:3406:F7F0:A14B:D67D:9B97:9FA5 (talk) 22:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I have removed this statement. His family has flatly stated that he was not gay, and even sources which state that he was have acknowledged that he was not "openly gay" by today's standards. See Brian Doherty's Reason magazine blog post which mentions Hospers' sexual orientation. That ticket was truly groundbreaking, as it was headed by a (possibly) gay man, and the vice-presidential candidate was a Jewish woman. Gay, female, Jewish--all three were firsts for Electoral college votes.  Horologium  (talk) 18:49, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

In John Hospers' obituary for Reason, Jesse Walker states: "He leaned left on many environmental issues and, as an openly gay man at a time when that entailed greater risks than now, he was certainly no social conservative." RL0919, deleted the sentence and the Reason source on the grounds that, "source does not say he was openly gay at the time" when it literally says, "openly gay man at a time when that entailed greater risks." — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChrisG nyc (talk • contribs) 19:17, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The phrase "at a time when that entailed greater risks" does not necessarily mean in 1972 (when he got the electoral vote). It could be any time up to the 90s. If it is even true: In a more recent piece for Reason, Brian Doherty says Hospers "was gay, though not openly so in a modern sense". An obituary from The Guardian says, "Many contempories considered him to be the first openly gay candidate for President but since his death his family have strenuously denied that he was gay." He makes no mention of it in his autobiographical essay in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (published in 2010), a surprising omission if he was in fact out to the public before that. A 1975 essay about libertarian support for gay rights mentions his engagement with the issue in his campaign, but but not anything about him being gay. Actually I haven't found any published mention of him being gay from prior to his death. So the sources are not exactly unanimous or unambiguous about him being openly gay in 1972. At most they seem to support a statement that some people say he was the first openly gay candidate to get an electoral vote, not a plain statement (in "Wikipedia's voice" so to speak) that he definitely was. --RL0919 (talk) 20:56, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

The blog is not a reliable source, per WP:RS, so I've removed that content. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:57, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that the blog is generally unreliable -- it is an outlet of Reason, a reputable magazine. Typically that type of blog is accepted as a reliable source (with all the usual caveats about bias, technical information, etc.). But in the specific case, different articles have contradicted one another on this point, so we shouldn't simply represent one as the unqualified truth. --RL0919 (talk) 17:31, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The blog posting under discussion is this one. I question why anyone would want to use it as a source at this article. The claim that Hospers was an "openly gay man" is made briefly in one sentence and the author gives absolutely no explanation of how he knows it to be true. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:26, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Hospers' 1972 Presidential bid
Editormichaelmorrison has three times now altered a sentence reading, "The Libertarian Party was poorly organized, and Hospers and Nathan managed to get on the ballot in only two states (Washington and Colorado), receiving 3,674 popular votes". The change is visible here, where he alters the phrase "poorly organized" to "newly organized", with the edit summary, "added necessary comma and some corrective phrasing". Editormichaelmorrison's "corrective phrasing" is incorrect. The source used, E. J. Dionne's Why Americans Hate Politics, explicitly states that the Libertarian Party was "poorly organized". Changing that to "newly organized" contradicts the cited source. In this edit Editormichaelmorrison changes "poorly organized" to "still small", without explanation. Most recently, he changed "poorly organized" to "newly organized" here, with the deceptive edit summary "added a photo", which fails to explain why he altered the article's content in a way that contradicts the source cited. Editormichaelmorrison, could you please stop making this incorrect change? A reliable source states that the Libertarian Party was poorly organized in 1972. There is no valid reason for removing that information from the article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 07:07, 25 November 2017 (UTC)