NDT, please check your e-mal.

Regards,
Peter H.

Put bluntly, James, the conservative side is not the one cutting the cables and setting dynamite at the pilings.

This is also why more gays like myself are starting to question why we want a bridge in the first place.

To me, much of the “bridge-building” rhetoric is coming from groups and people that, several years ago, spat on our advice and disdainfully said they didn’t need help from our kind. HRC, for example, never uttered a kind word for a gay Republican — and in fact, had staffers working on Aravosis’s and Rogers’s harassment and threats campaigns against Republicans — until they blew tens of millions of dollars, endorsements, and their credibility in 2004 on a cadre of losing candidates who, by their definition, were hateful bigoted homophobes.

In short, they ditched and dissed us because they had moonbats — and are now crying for our help because their moonbats a) aren’t controllable, b) are making complete fools out of them, and c) driving away their other supporters and donors.

Meanwhile, we’ve managed to do quite nicely ourselves over here, with many out Republican gays holding high positions in government and in corporate America, and slowly but surely getting protections, such as the new pension bill that allows you to leave retirement funds without severe tax consequences to unrelated individuals, passed.

I say we let them dynamite the bridge and leave them running around, their moonbats swooping down and pecking out their eyes, like a re-imagining of “The Birds”.

To summarize, GPW is not destroying the bridge; he’s simply pointing out the enormous amount of effort that the gay left is putting into demolishing it.

The quote was accurate but also included a generalization. Generalizations are rarely good. How is a bridge to be built between both parties within the community if there is no support to hold the bridge up?

Yes, gay activists can be and are intolerant, but we’re not all intolerant. If one espouses personal accountability, one can control one’s own (re)actions, but not those of another person.

I don’t think you should apologize or clarify. I completely agree with the quote as it was published!

Set up Google Alerts for yourself under both names. I have and it’s interesting what comes up. I found my full name and location on a site where it should not have been (I didn’t put it there), contacted the site and they promptly removed it.

If only, then, the GOP was actually governed by what you describe as conservatives. It really hasn’t been during the course of my adult life, though in the mid-1990s I mistakenly thought it was.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think there’s that much difference between my political values and those on here who describe themselves as conservatives. The difference is that I don’t think the GOP today embodies those values in any respect. Neither establishment party really respects (tolerates) each person’s right to self-determination. Thus, my disillusionment with establishment politics in general.

Conservatives appraise you for WHO you are.
Liberals appraise you for WHAT you are.

Regards,
Peter H.

Ted B: I don’t think it’s intolerant (in any negative sense of the words) to dislike or strongly criticize — or, in extreme cases, even hate — public figures whose values are inimical to your own. That is, in fact, the case for me, with almost all politicians the early-21st-century two-party establishment. I don’t think there’s much integrity to be found there, or anyone sticking up for the values I cherish.

Another example: there’s very little tolerance from many people on this blog of people on the gay left. But, in a sense, there’s nothing wrong with that: it comes from the fact that those condeming the gay left do it because the gay left fights for values that they despise. It’s not the same kind of “intolerance” as those who disdain people because of skin color, sexual orientation, or things like that.

Regards,
Peter H.

You just did…no problem…