No, Cathy Young isn't conservative or right wing. She's a left libertarian of characteristic of the sort who writes in Reason magazine these days.
One of her main focuses has been to attack conservatives from the left who are too effective, i.e. too big for their britches, whether its Tammy Bruce for seeing her conservatism as better serving the principles she held as a feminist than her feminism did (how dare she!),
http://www.reason.com/0308/co.cy.tammy.shtml , Michelle Malkin for defending profiling
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/08/23/the_profiling_puzzle/ , Michael Fumento for being a supposed corporate tool
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/20/cleaning_house_on_opinions_for_hire/, or Ann Coulter for... Well, you get the idea.
Each time, her accusations echo some typical leftist accusation of conservatives, and each time, her accusations have been shown to be spurious (Fumento in particular exposes he claims as smears and proceeds to demolish them. This is just one representative example of how shallow the basis of her claims inevitably turn out to be, from Amber Pawlik's rebuttal of smears against Tammy Bruce:
Some charge against her, like Cathy Young did in her article, “Tammy Bruce’s Journey,” that Tammy had some pretty feminist beliefs. Yes, she did, and I disagree with many. But, guess what. She still has those beliefs today. Cathy complains Tammy "lambasted" against a judge who would not let firefighters have nudie magazines at their job. This was taken as proof that Tammy used to be a feminist, but now is not. But Tammy will tell you the same thing regarding the firefighters today. There was no conversion. One only has to browse her articles at frontpagemag.com to realize Tammy is still a feminist (although some seem to be too intellectually sloppy to do that).
Cathy Young wrote that Tammy was a hypocrite because she started a very public boycott against the book American Psycho, but also criticized the gay establishment for trying to ruin Dr. Laura's career. Let us look at the content of these two events.
At first, I also personally thought Tammy was being a radical feminist for boycotting American Psycho, until I read what was in the book (which was not the same as the movie). The book describes a man who sends rats up women's vaginas and electrocutes women. It had promise of being a bestseller. Do you consider this something only a radical feminist could be offended by?
Tammy started a one-year boycott of retailers who sold the book. She did not get the government involved. Many people, radical feminist or not, appreciated her crusade. Like I’ve said, I always found her work respectable, when she was with NOW or not.
Now let us look at the campaign against Dr. Laura. I won't even mention the fact that their tactics did not just involve a boycott of a store, but death threats to her house. I'll just focus on the dishonesty. Everyone was led to believe Dr. Laura said homosexuality is deviant. Here is what she actually said, in reference to a letter a person sent to her show.
I read the entire report from the Catholic Church, and that’s exactly what is said: that people with a homosexual orientation are to be loved, nurtured, helped, protected, not hurt in thought, word or deed. I’m paraphrasing, but they say that it is quite possible to believe that a sexual behavior is deviant and disordered and not wish to have any harm come to that person; moreover, to have spiritual and psychiatric help come to that person. But the radical activists do not allow that; they just jump on the bigotry word. And that is so offensive.
Commanding love, nurturing, help and protection for homosexuals while reminding people what the Catholic Church believes, how dare Dr. Laura! Dr. Laura also made another reference to homosexuality being a biological error, but she it was in reference to the sexual orientation, not homosexual themselves.
It is obvious the gay establishment went after Dr. Laura not over one statement, but because they hate her ideological message. The thugs of the left do not want you to hear opposing ideological viewpoints. As Tammy calls them, they are thought police.
How a person cannot see the difference between pressuring a smutty book, which glorified the murder of women (of which Cathy Young was too intellectually dishonest to mention in her smears), out of existence versus ruining a woman's career because of her ideological views is beyond me. Giving only half accounts of the two events, however, seems to aid in that.
I'm proud of Tammy's work in boycotting American Psycho. I don't approve of that smut being in our culture. They have a right to print it; we have a right to criticize it. Taking a moral position is not going to threaten civil liberties, like so many seem to believe. Tammy is a true and enduring voice against the intellectual and moral swampland our culture has become. You could argue that this activism of Tammy's, back when she was a supposed radical feminist, was actually a conservative move.
As someone who writes for major opinion outlets, Cathy Young is worth keeping track of (sometimes she even writes useful and true stuff, though you wouldn't know it from the above)--- but it should always be remembered that she is a left-libertarian given to attacking and smearing conservatives, NOT a conservative herself, despite the fact that she often writes in National Review.