More familiar with the current situation in Europe than I and more knowledgeable of the state of the media in the Holland, Bruce Bawer observes that the Dutch gay-bashing story we reported last week “had not appeared in major newspapers in the Netherlands” Just as the attack went unnoticed in American media,

apparently it also went unnoticed in the Netherlands, except by the gay community. Did the mainstream media even hear about this? Is it their attitude that such things are only of interest or importance to gay people?

In an update to his initial post, linking a blog report on media coverage of the beating, Bruce notes the most media reports on the attack “are from marginal publications; none are from top-level national media.” Sounds like the Dutch MSM is not much different from our own.

It wasn’t just the media, Finding “no indication in the Dutch articles that there was” any resistance, Bruce observes:

that’s the scariest part of all this, the sheer passivity. It’s like when Anna Lindh was murdered in Stockholm. People just stood there, waiting for somebody else to do something. Somebody whose job it was. Hayek was right: the capacity for resistance — the capacity of even conceiving of resistance — is bred out of people in social democracies. And it’s not as if gays in Amsterdam can say they were taken by surprise. In the last decade, conditions for gay people in that city have been heading steadily south. It was just about time for something like this to happen. Amsterdam gays should have been prepared.

Sounds like they need to set up an Amsterdam chapter of Pink Pistols, but I doubt European gun laws would allow such an outfit.

Read the whole thing. Since I couldn’t find a post-specific link, you’ll have to scroll down to do so.

Related: Bruce’s essay in Pajamas: First They Came for the Gays.

UPDATE: Bruce writes this morning alerting me to an update on his blog. It turns out that the assault was covered in NRC Handelsblad, a major newspaper–although that story did not appear on the paper’s website.

While checking pinknews, a European gay news service, I chanced upon a story exposing the Orwellian nature of some Hate Crimes legislation. Just like in Canada, it seems that all it takes for a crime to take place in the United Kingdom is for some person to be offended by someone else’s remarks. In this case, to be sure, the remarks were offensive:

The Police Service of Northern Ireland will investigate whether the wife of the province’s First Minister is guilty of a hate crime after she called homosexuality disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile.

Andrew Muir, the vice chair of Gay and Lesbian across Down, visited Bangor Police Station yesterday evening to report Mrs Iris Robinson MP for stirring up hatred and arousing fear as a result of her comments earlier that day on BBC Radio Ulster.

Couldn’t Mr. Muir have better spent his time requesting time on BBC Radio to take issue with Mrs. Robinson’s ignorant and intemperate remarks? But, to accuse her of a crime? Give me a break.

Commenting on a recent attack on Stephen Scott, a gay man, Mrs. Robinson “suggested that he should consider therapy to ‘cure’ him of his homosexuality.” Sounds like somebody’s trying to blame the victim for his assault. She even recommended a psychiatrist who could helped effect that “cure.” (The BBC has more on the Scott assault (via TowleRoad).

We don’t need any investigation to show that her comments are boorish, ignorant and narrow-minded. Hateful ignorance alone does not (or at least shouldn’t) amount to a hate crime. In this case, sensible people should castigate rather than have police investigate.

After all, wouldn’t it be a better use of the police’s time to investigate a real crime, that perpetrated against Stephen Scott, a man who suffered real injuries? If they’re investigating the narrow-minded wife of a politician, they would have fewer resources to devote to the investigation of this crime.

And while the police are investigating the violent crime, their real job, gay activists like Mr. Muir can do their job and stand up for gay people, particularly after such a prominent figure publicly misrepresented us.

It seems the police in Northern Ireland are doing more to investigate the ignorant remarks made by a politician’s wife than the Dutch police are doing to investigate the brutal beating of a gay man by a gang of Muslim thugs.

ADDENDUM: Mrs. Robinson’s husband, the First Minister of the Six Counties, “has said that he is committed to his legal obligations to fight discrimination.”

UPDATE: Over the Corner, a report on a the action of a “human rights’ tribunal” in Canada’s Alberta province where the Rev. Stephen Boissoin has been fined because he “wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper in Alberta condemning the “‘homosexual agenda.’” He has now been enjoined from making “disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”

Amazing. I disagree with what this guy has to say, but will defend his right to say it. How else can we counter such attitudes unless we know what anti-gay people are saying?

With Hillary Clinton’s decision to cease campaigning for the 2008 presidential nomination, I have mapped out a series of posts on her loss, a kind of postmortem on her campaign.

I’ll begin with commenting on the one thing that has always puzzled me — her appeal. First, I had thought that Democrats were merely flocking to her bandwagon out of affection for her husband, the most successful Democratic president in three generations — and the most popular Democrat (until recently) in the past two.

As she began to fall behind Senator Obama, I had assumed she would lose some of her luster as party faithful realized she wasn’t her invincible husband. That didn’t happen. She still enjoyed large and enthusiastic crowds and continued fundraising at an impressive pace (even if not as impressive as that of her party’s then-frontrunner). She won a clear majority of the popular vote in states casting ballots after most pundits declared she had no chance of winning the nomination (about the time of the Wisconsin primary).

To be sure, I grew to admire her tenacity and resilience, that she kept at it when even after those pundits had written her off while leftist bloggers and commentators had castigated her in terms which made the Republican attacks of the 1990s seem tame (or banal) by comparison.

What accounted for her appeal? That she was an outspoken woman married to a successful Democratic politician?

Granted she is a very smart woman with a good understanding of public policy, but so are a number of female politicians who have won election in their own right (that is, not running on their husbands’ successes) and who have greater accomplishments to their credit.

I mean, what exactly has she done in the thirty-five years of experience she claimed? Has she authored and/or otherwise helped pass any landmark legislation? Administered a program successfully and under great odds? Responded to a catastrophe or crisis with calm and determination? Consistently advocated a set or principles over a period of time while convincing others of their merit?

I ask the last question because we’ve see her shift her political positions frequently in order to better tack to the prevailing political winds. It’s that opportunism which makes it difficult for me to respect her even as I have grown to admire her tenacity in face of adversity on the hustings.

So, I wonder, what is the source of Hillary Clinton’s appeal. I encourage her supporters to weigh in with their thoughts in the comment thread. As soon as I post this, I will even be e-mailng a few such supporters, bloggers, readers of this blog and friends, asking them to chime in. With their permission, I will print their responses as updates to this post.

Click on “more” for the first of those responses: (more…)

That’s what John O’Sullivan contends:

Her campaign’s excuse for defeat – that sexism trumped racism – implicitly accuses all Democrat voters of being bigots. It leaves behind a poisonous atmosphere of internecine identity politics on the Left. None of this augurs well for her post-2008 presidential prospects – whoever wins in November.

(Via The Corner) The Democrats have tried for years to win by appealing to identity politics to win, but they now seem to be dividing the party.

Those who read my marriage posts carefully will note that I, who love to use the George Eliotan “we” in my writing, don’t use that term as readily when discussing this institution. That is due, in large part, to my ambivalence on the issue.

While I favor some sort of state recognition of same-sex relationships, I’m not sure marriage is the right term to define them. As I have noted previously, the essence of this institution is establishing a lifelong bond between two individuals of different genders. Let me rephrase this and repeat the idea for emphasis, gender difference has long been a defining aspect of the marital bond.

At the same time, I have opposed all state referenda and initiatives so defining the institution. I believe such policies are gratuitous. I’ve always opposed unnecessary legislation such as this. Not just that, they make it more difficult for the various states to recognize same-sex partnerships.

Eight years ago when we Californians last voted on gay marriage, one could have voted against such a ballot proposition and opposed gay marriage.

With the initiative slated for this fall’s Golden State ballot, however, the situation has changed. This proposal would amend the state constitution to include the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and so overturn the state Supreme Court’s presumptuous decision.

A “no” vote (how I intend to mark my ballot) would serve to uphold that decision, giving us gay marriage in the Golden State. Thus, I will be effectively be voting for gay marriage. It is thus the first time when any state is really voting on gay marriage. “No” votes in other states would not have mandated gay marriage. The citizens of Arizona so voted and they don’t have gay marriage.

As I noted at the outset of this piece, when I have blogged on gay marriage, I have refrained from using the first person plural, thus not including myself among those advocating gay marriage and have defined its proponents as such (in the third person plural). But, in voting against this proposal, I am voting for gay marriage.  Have I thus become an advocate of a new definition for this ancient institution?