All gay and lesbian conservatives seem to have one experience in common, that of facing the hostile prejudice of our liberal peers.  Some (but fortunately not all) of our ideological adversaries ever so quick to deem any opposition to their agenda as “hateful” seem to harbor themselves a lot of hatred toward individuals who do not share their political predilections.

And although we read much in our culture about the animus social conservatives have for homosexuals, we see little coverage of the animus some gay leftists feel for gay conservatives.  In the seven years (and three months) I have been blogging, I have received nearly twenty times as much hate mail from liberals than I have received from social conservatives.  Why do these people hate so much?

One gay conservative addressed this hatred in a rant that has gotten some attention in the gay media.  Now, we may find his tone and rhetoric a bit overblown, but we do share some of his sentiments, having experienced the same intolerance from our supposedly very tolerant peers.  And a certain point, you become immune to their taunts and amused by their absence of imagination.  Just finding a different means of expressing the trite expression, “Jewish Nazi,” doesn’t make you original.

As GOProud Board Member Lisa De Pasquale detailed the other day in the Daily Caller:

Dan Savage, the “It Gets Better” project’s co-founder, has been just as vicious toward gay conservatives as schoolyard bullies have been toward their gay classmates. In an MSNBC interview, Savage referred to the members of GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives, as “gay Quislings and useful idiots.” He said they were just “window dressing” for bigoted Republicans. Like a schoolyard bully, Savage ridicules people who are different from him.

And Savage is not alone.

Fortunately, he is not representative of all of his ideological confreres.  Many of us have strong friendships with gay left-wingers, some of whom respect us as individuals despite our philosophical and political differences, others who delight in needling us for our differences — as we needle them for theirs. (more…)

Yesterday on Facebook, a friend posted this:

Newt Gingrich has an issue with hypothetical Muslim candidates who would not respect other religions and push Shariah agendas yet Republicans do just that with fundamentalist Christianity and their religious agendas.

Emphasis added.  She’s not the first intelligent individual to have made such an observation.  Relating my experience having been “welcomed in various Republican circles as both a gay man and a Jew”, I asked her to specify and she civilly replied, asking why I was a Republican.  I offered a succinct expression of my support for the GOP:

I’m a Republican because I favor small government and individual freedom and it is the better of the two parties on that score. Better though not perfect.

All too many people, like my friend, have this image of the GOP as the party of fundamentalist Christians.  And to be sure, as my friend noted, “the fundamentalist Christian movements in this country find a home under the Republican umbrella.”  Perhaps it’s their presence in the GOP which causes some to define the party by their agenda.  Or the way our media dwell on that presence.

As small government ideas find increasing favor among the American electorate, the GOP needs to do a better job defining itself as the better of less federal regulation and more personal (and economic) liberty.  Over at the National Review, Cato’s Michael Tanner suggests that Republicans would be wise to “to take some of [Ron Paul's] ideas seriously“, you know those domestic policy issues he talks about on the campaign trail not those he published in his newsletter.

At least since the 2004 the then-state Senator delivered his paean to national unity at the Democratic National Convention, there have been two Barack Obamas, the inspiring orator aspiring to transcend partisan politics and the bare-knuckled Chicago politician seeking to advance his own partisan interests.

On the one hand, the Democrat claims he’s “trying to break [that] pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”  On the other, he’s always looking for someone to blame for his failures.  It’s as if George W. Bush were still pulling the political strings and Democrats had not had overwhelming majorities in the 111st Congress–Barack Obama’s first two years in the White House.

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blamed Republicans for the increase in demand for food stamps since Obama’s inauguration:

Carney turned Newt Gingrich’s description of President Obama as the “food stamp president” around on Republicans, whom Carney blamed for the increased need for food stamps. ”The economic policies that helped create [the recession],” Carney said about Gingrich, “are the kinds of policies that he advocates to this day.”

Now, he’s blaming the GOP for his decision to reject the Keystone Pipeline:

Obama said he was not acting on the merits of TransCanada Corp.’s plan, but instead was forced to make the decision based on the “arbitrary” deadline mandated by GOP provisions in December’s payroll tax cut extension deal.

Oh, and, one more thing: James Taranto offers some interesting statistics:

In the three-year period CBS ascribes to Obama, the food-stamp rolls have increased by 18 million people, or 6 million a year. In the seven years attributed to Bush, the increase was 10.9 million, or 1.6 million a year. Almost four times as many Americans have gone on food stamps every year during the Obama years than during the Bush years, and the percentages are not increasing as quickly precisely because the numbers are.

I’m pretty sure that’s Bush’s fault.

Earlier today, I finished Walter Isaacson’s most excellent biography of Steve Jobs.  And highly recommend it, despite some glaring flaws.  At time, the book seems slapdash (which makes sense given how quickly the book was published after the death of the entrepreneur).  And he seems to treat Jobs’s wife with kid gloves — as if she were some kind of saint (which makes sense given how cooperative she was in Isaacson’s research–and that she’s still alive and grieving).

There is much to say about jobs, his prickly personality, his luck in finding peers and mentors who could help him find his way professionally and personally.  His ability to achieve his great success without federal funding or government encouragement.  His appreciation of design and attention to detail.  His charisma. His supportive stepfather.

When I was still reading the book a friend asked me what one thing stood out about the book (and by extension the man), I replied his persistence, his determination, his belief that he could achieve a certain project even when others told him it was impossible.  How he grappled with what one of his colleagues called the “reality distortion field.”

Toward the end of the book, Isaacson compares Jobs to such pioneers as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. I see his point, but don’t buy his argument.  As I was reading the biography, I kept thinking of another pioneer of the last century, Walt Disney.  Soon after finishing Isaacson’s book, I picked up — and started reading — Neal Gabler’s biography of the cartoon tycoon.