Sound familiar?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to two cities where unrest has occurred and again condemned his detractors as “a handful of looters” and vandals.

In the southern city of Adana, where pro- and anti-government protesters clashed Saturday night, Erdogan greeted supporters from the top of a bus before lashing out at his opponents in the highly polarized country

If he wanted to defuse the situation, he might do well to acknowledge the protestor’s grievances rather than insult them.

Another nation’s leader said that Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, “is one of the few foreign leaders with whom he has developed “’friendships and the bonds of trust.’”

I don’t often check the comments, so have to come to rely on readers’ e-mails to learn what is going on in this or that thread.  While I do occasionally hear of a substantive (or otherwise interesting) exchange, more often than not, I learn of one commenter responding to another not with arguments but with insults.

If another’s argument is ludicrous, there is no need to engage in innuendo, just tear it apart point by point, without addressing the motivations of the commenter or making allegations about his (or her) personal life.  Just last night, a concerned reader (with a political philosophy pretty close to my own) alerted me about some particularly nasty threads.  With permission, I quote from this individual’s e-mail:

Social-issue threads are sometimes a hundred or more comments long.  This is not because substantive debate is going on, but because they’re being hijacked by one or two loons.  They tend to be laced with profanity and crude sexual innuendo.  I can only imagine what straight conservatives who check out GP think.  If we don’t want them to think gay conservatives have filthy minds, they’ll nonetheless get that notion if they read those threads. . . .

Nobody with any sense is going to keep commenting on a blog when they’re treated that way. I have better things to do with my time, and as many former commenters have simply gone away, it’s evident that they do, too. GP has become an important source of information for many people. I hate to see this happen.

Look, I know that life is not easy.  And we each face our own challenges.  Sometimes in the face of frustration as we struggle with setbacks, we need, well, we feel that we need to vent.  A lot of people seem to do that in the political sphere, projecting their personal demons onto their ideological adversaries. (more…)

That title, as the eagle-eyed will notice, is the GayPatriot blog’s tagline.

In my years of participating in GP threads, I’ve noticed that some who are opposed to the blog or its usual viewpoint, may be excessively fond of the “consistency game”, demanding that anyone who would criticize them must first meet some standard of consistency that has been issued by themselves.

It’s a cute game. They declare the standards and they appoint themselves the judges – which means they can’t be criticized in the thread, because they will never judge their critic as having been consistent enough, and will always change the subject back to their critic’s alleged inconsistency.

I called it “cute”, because little kids do it to their parents (or try to). But the game’s effects, and likely its intent, are destructive.

What I’m really talking about here is Alinsky Rule 4, as heliotrope and NDT have pointed out to me before. Played skillfully enough, it can strangle a thread, destroying any useful process of conversation. (more…)

“Pick any issue currently being advanced by progressives“, writes Doug Manwaring today in the American Thinker:

. . . same-sex marriage, state-mandated free contraception, abortion, man-made global warming and strict gun control, to name a few. Publicly question or resist any of these and be prepared to be judged as an anti-science, homophobic, misogynist, racist, xenophobic, Neanderthal.

As with little Anthony, to attempt to enter into legitimate discussion or debate on these issues is out of the question, and met with severe consequences. Your have only two options: Start thinking “happy thoughts,” or brace yourself for the cornfield.

Read the whole thing.  H/t: reader Heliotrope. Manwaring cites an episode of the Twilight Zone where little Anthony Freeman with his special powers will banish you to the cornfield if you don’t think “happy thoughts” or “say happy things.”

Even if we don’t agree with Manwaring on gay marriage (he’s gay, but believes “ the definition of Marriage is immutable”), we can at least recognize that instead of addressing the arguments of their critics, all too many gay marriage advocates resort to name-calling and ostracism of individuals who oppose their cause.

How often do they accuse such opponents of hatred?  (More on this topic as time allows.)

In a thoughtful piece yesterday in the New York Times, Ross Douthat contended that the view Andrew Sullivan offered on gay marriage in the 1990s “has carried the day almost completely.”

That argument, much different from the one the one-time New Republic editor has offered in the current century, held that “far from being radical, gay marriage was more likely to be stabilizing, ‘sending a message about matrimonial responsibility and mutual caring’ to gays and straights alike.”

Let us hope that message emerges from the current debates on state recognition of same-sex marriage.  Indeed, many same-sex couples who have elected marriage (and even many who have not) have lived that message, forsaking all others looking after their spouses in sickness and in health.  They provide examples of mature relationships between adults of the same sex and evidence that gay man and women are capable of the same kind of commitment our straight counterparts have shown.

Douthat, however, laments that as gay marriage advocates seem to be winning the argument, they aren’t conceding any points to defenders of traditional marriage:

A more honest, less triumphalist case for gay marriage would be willing to concede that, yes, there might be some social costs to redefining marriage. It would simply argue that those costs are too diffuse and hard to quantify to outweigh the immediate benefits of recognizing gay couples’ love and commitment.

Such honesty would make social liberals more magnanimous in what looks increasingly like victory, and less likely to hound and harass religious institutions that still want to elevate and defend the older marital ideal.

But whether people think they’re on the side of God or of History, magnanimity has rarely been a feature of the culture war.

Read the whole thing.  The debate on gay marriage is not entirely pathetic.

Would be nice if partisans on both sides of the debate could acknowledge the points their adversaries make.

A post (and the ensuing comment thread) my friend David Boaz linked today on Facebook reminded me why I have been so reluctant in recent days to re-enter the gay marriage fray.

For many years, particularly when I was in college and law school and working in Washington, D.C.’s public policy sector, I read widely about a great variety of issues, including social issues like marriage and child-rearing.  Conservative organizations presented much solid research on the social benefits of traditional marriage and the damaging effects of divorce.

I had always wondered why so few advocates of gay marriage looked at that research on traditional marriage in order to suggest that it could be applied to same-sex unions as well.  I am only aware of one group which has done so and blogged about it here.

In the current debate, instead of acknowledging the social conservatives’ broader point, all too many advocates merely repeat their slogans about “fairness” and “equality” while badmouthing anyone who would dare disagree with them, calling them “haters” –even going so far as to label hateful those who, like James Taranto, believe the Supreme Court should uphold “Proposition 8 and leave . . . the matter for the states to decide.”

And whereas the gay left have engaged in name-calling (if you don’t believe me, just check your Facebook feed), the social conservative opponents of gay marriage have been little better.  Which brings me to David’s link, leading to his own post where he takes aim at “Jim DeMint, former senator and future president of the Heritage Foundation” for attempting in a USA Today op-ed to link “family breakdown” and “welfare spending” to state recognition of gay marriage.

Yes, there is considerable evidence that welfare spending undermines the family unit  – and is bad for children.  And there is also considerable evidence that divorce is bad for children.  But, Mr. DeMint, like many social conservatives making similar arguments, fails to show how state recognition of gay marriage is bad for children.  Or for society.  The former Senator, as David puts it, just makes his case “with a sleight of hand.” (more…)

The title is from Ted Van Dyk’s recent column. He’s a lifelong Democrat. As a former Democrat myself, who left in the early Naughties[1], I was intrigued. Read the whole thing, of course. A few highlights:

Mr. Obama was elected in 2008 on the basis of his persona and his pledge to end political and ideological polarization…On taking office, however, the president adopted a my-way-or-the-highway style of governance. He pursued his stimulus and health-care proposals on a congressional-Democrats-only basis. He rejected proposals of his own bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, which would have provided long-term deficit reduction…He opted instead to demonize Republicans…

No serious attempt—for instance, by offering tort reform or allowing the sale of health-insurance products across state lines—was made to enlist GOP congressional support for the health bill…

Faced with a…GOP House takeover [in 1995], President Bill Clinton shifted to bipartisan governance. Mr. Obama [in 2011] did not...

…I couldn’t have imagined any one of the Democratic presidents or presidential candidates I served from 1960-92 using such down-on-all-fours tactics [as Obama did in 2012]. The unifier of 2008 became the calculated divider of 2012. Yes, it worked, but only narrowly, as the president’s vote total fell off sharply from 2008…

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson had Democratic congressional majorities sufficient to pass any legislation he wanted. But he sought and received GOP congressional support for Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights, education and other Great Society legislation. He knew that in order to last, these initiatives needed consensus support…

…former Democratic presidents would…know today that no Democratic or liberal agenda can go forward…if presidential and Democratic Party rhetoric consistently portrays loyal-opposition leaders as having devious or extremist motives….

Nice to see a Democrat who can admit it; a Democrat who remembers the party we used to know.

[1]As the party went insane over Gore-Bush, Iraq and more.

UPDATE: Even David Brooks, the New York Times’ notion of “conservative” who was so impressed by the crease in Obama’s pants in 2008, is starting to get it.

The progressive [Democrat] budget in the House seems to have been written by people hermetically sealed in the house of government. They work in government. They represent public-sector workers. They seem to have had little contact with private-sector job creators… while Republicans may embarrass on a daily basis, many progressives have lost touch with what actually produces growth and prosperity.

Jeff’s post the other day about the questionable workshop at Brown University came to mind recently when I saw a very far-left Facebook friend link to this article by a professor named Warren Blumenfeld who had just retired from a position as a professor of education at Iowa State University.  The article contains the professor’s reflections and gives voice to both his lamentations and his indignity about those students who took his class who were not won over to his worldview and who had the temerity to announce that fact in their final papers.

The course was entitled “Multicultural Foundations in Schools and Society,” and Blumenfeld describes it in the following terms:

I base the course on a number of key concepts and assumptions, including how issues of power, privilege, and domination within the United States center on inequitable social divisions regarding race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, religion, nationality, linguistic background, physical and mental ability/disability, and age. I address how issues around social identities impact generally on life outcomes, and specifically on educational outcomes. Virtually all students registered for this course, which is mandatory for students registered in the Teacher Education program, are pre-service teachers.

In other words, this is a required course in “multicultural studies” indoctrination.  If the course were voluntary, it would be a slightly different situation, but as a required course, it amounts to an example of the sort of thing that conservatives can easily point to as illustrating the left-wing biases of academia.

Professor Blumenfeld is particularly alarmed by the case of two female students who tell him quite boldly that the course has not changed their socially conservative Christian worldview:

On a final course paper, one student wrote that, while she enjoyed the course, and she felt that both myself and my graduate assistant — who had come out to the class earlier as lesbian — were very knowledgeable and good professors with great senses of humor, nonetheless, she felt obliged to inform us that we are still going to Hell for being so-called “practicing homosexuals.” Another student two years later wrote on her course paper that homosexuality and transgenderism are sins in the same category as stealing and murder. This student not only reiterated that I will travel to Hell if I continued to act on my same-sex desires, but she went further in amplifying the first student’s proclamations by self-righteously insisting that I will not receive an invitation to enter Heaven if I do not accept Jesus as my personal savior since I am a Jew, regardless of my sexual behavior. Anyone who doubts this, she concluded, “Only death will tell!”

Now while we might question the wisdom of both students in advertising the heresy represented by their beliefs so boldly in a graded assignment,  I think we might also be heartened by their courage in being true to their faith, even if we do not agree with all of the particulars of their worldview.

The professor, however, is shocked and appalled, and the rest of the essay is his attempt to reconcile–through reference to one leftist theory and tract after another–what he calls “our campus environment, one that emboldens some students to notify their professor and graduate assistant that their final destination will be the depths of Hell.”  Notice his word choice, there.  The problem is with the “campus environment” which “emboldens some students.”  It seems like a foreign idea to this professor to think that a university could be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas, especially those ideas that are unpopular.  I trust we will not find him quoting Voltaire or Jefferson anytime soon.

No, instead what we get is a description of and a reflection on a course that sounds like it could have been lifted straight from  the pages of Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, albeit with a more contemporary reading list.  While the professor uses the (more…)

First, let me apologize for not getting to this earlier.  The New York Times reported the story on Tuesday.  And Stephen Miller drew my attention to it that very day. I had meant to blog about it on Wednesday, but a friend from out of town invited me to join him at Disneyland that afternoon.  The following day (yesterday), I was preoccupied with determining the reasons for the dragon’s attack on Nah-nathas.  (And for the better part of today, I was tweaking the now-presentable Chapter Six to better set up that attack.)

Okay, now the issue.  One-time gay marriage opponent David Blankenhorn is spearheading a new coalition which, as the Times reports,

. . . plans to issue “A Call for a New Conversation on Marriage,” a tract renouncing the culture war that he was once part of, in favor of a different pro-marriage agenda. The proposed conversation will try to bring together gay men and lesbians who want to strengthen marriage with heterosexuals who want to do the same.

Miller links the group’s mission statement indicating that the group wants to begin a

. . . conversation that brings together gays and lesbians who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. The new conversation does not presuppose or require agreement on gay marriage, but it does ask a new question. The current question is, Should gays marry? The new question is, Who among us, gay or straight, wants to strengthen marriage?

Emphasis added. It’s about time.  It seems that many advocates of gay marriage focus on what they deem the “right to marry” (but mean the privilege of state recognition) instead of the meaning of the institution.  By proposing to strengthen marriage, those in this new coalition understand that the institution is worthy of preservation and in need of strengthening.

Too often, gay marriage advocates tell us that marriage is declining, so why not include gays?  They should instead, as Jonathan Rauch has done, use their movement to secure state recognition of marriage to remind us of the institution’s importance.

Given the group’s roster, it seems pretty clear that its leaders want to have a conversation about the importance of marriage.  A welcome move.

Let us hope this group comes to dominate the debate.

Glenn linked something yesterday which really gets at the advantage the legacy media accord to Democrats.  When some fringe figure at a Republican rally hurls an angry epithet, prominent Democrats call for party leaders to “differentiate themselves” from the lone nut-bag lest he come to define the party.  And folks in the legacy media often pick up on the story, portraying the isolated voice as representative of the GOP.

But, when an angry leftist hoists a mean-spirited sign at a liberal rally, that’s just one angry liberal and not a representative of the party.  Heck, if a prominent Democrat says something stupid, well, it’s just not news.  And when a liberal columnist uses harsh language to describe Republican, there’s no need for any differentiation–because the Republicans really are that bad.

Democrats, Stephen Kruiser writes

. . . will forever be aided by the MSM lap dogs who do their bidding when it comes to false narrative writing. This one is basically parroting the president. That doesn’t mean it is impossible to counter. But it will take leadership who is willing shout “Oh, HELL no!” every time they’re painted as evil or violent.

Read the whole thing.

Iowa Lib Calls For Killing Gun Owners & Dragging Boehner & McConnell Behind Chevy Truck

In the Des Moines Register, liberal columnist Donald Kaul wrote:

I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Can you imagine a major daily even publishing a column where a conservative called for the dragging death of Democratic leaders?  Can you imagine a conservative pundit making that kind of call?

Do wonder if Democrats, particularly from the Hawkeye State, will, to borrow an expression, differentiate themselves from this mean-spirited man.  Shouldn’t they be saying the simple truth, that no responsible newspaper should run a column with such language?

. . .  he needs not merely meet with his erstwhile opponent for the White House and negotiate in good faith with Republican legislators, he also needs acknowledge the sincerity ofRepublican concerns and appreciate that over 49% of Americans who voted in the presidential contest had legitimate reasons for voting against him.

And by acknowledge of Republican concerns, he needs express his understanding of why Republicans fear tax hikes, even if just on the “wealthy,” might dampen the sluggish recovery.  And if he is going to insist on this tax hike, he needs counter their argument in civil terms.

Four years after Hope and Change™, we are, as a county, more divided than ever.  A liberal friend posted on my Facebook page that Mitt Romney makes her sick.  How did she come to gain that opinion of a good, decent and compassionate man?

Other friends have called him a “vulture capitalist” or repeated slurs about his faith.  Where do these slurs get started?  Have top Democrats differentiated themselves from such rhetoric?  Has Obama himself asked his supporters to tone it down and to focus on the issues?

No, instead, he tells them that “voting is the best revenge.”  For that Democrat, as Ed Morrissey puts it, Spite and revenge is the new hope and change:

. . . Obama’s “revenge” remarks are at least as revealing about this campaign, and of Obama’s approach to both this election and to public policy, as were Romney’s 47 percent statements. The president, in both his campaign and his administration, has gone fully populist, attempting to divide the country along class lines as a distraction from his record in his term in office. In fact, the best description of Obama’s politics since September 2011 is “the politics of revenge.”

Read the whole thing.  (Via Instapundit.)

ADDENDUM:  If you have friends on both sides of the political aisle, just take a gander at your Facebook feed, you’ll often wonder what happened to civil discourse.  Our side abandons civility too sometimes.  But, at least the GOP presidential nominee is not encouraging such rhetoric.

I assiduously avoid posting political items on my Facebook Wall, seeing the forum as a means to connect/communicate with friends across the ideological spectrum.  And I try (not always successfully) to avoid commenting on liberal friends’ political posts.  All too few of them (alas) wish to engage my arguments.  I’d rather focus on what we have in common.

Sunday evening, left-wing blogress Pam Spaulding reminded me yet again that you can share a passion with a political adversary when she posted on about a YouTube gem she found.  When she found the 1965 CBS production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (featuring Lesley Ann Warren in the title role), she recalled watching it “as a child almost every year it aired (when did they stop airing it?).”  I know I’ve seen that one, but do have a preference for the Julie Andrews version (okay it’s black and white, but, it’s Julie).

It was a nice reminder how certain stories we heard or movies and TV shows we watched as children retain a certain sweetness when we encounter them again as an adult.  It’s not just the story they recall, but the impression it made upon us.

This past weekend, a liberal blogress reminded me of that simple truth.  Bear that in mind when you prepare to respond to a critic of one of our posts.  Or, if you disagree with our posts, bear that in mind as you prepare to express your disagreement.

These folks aren’t just their politics.

Disagreeing with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins’ contention that “the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] had given [the FRC shooter] ‘a license to shoot’“, saying the comment “goes too far”, the National Review’s Rich Lowry reminds conservatives that

Nothing the SPLC does sanctions violence, and [the shooter]’s alleged crime is his responsibility and his alone. But the SPLC’s designation of the Family Research Council is intolerant all the same, a bullying attempt to short-circuit free debate.

It’s not as if the SPLC considers the Family Research Council mildly offensive, or barely hateful. Asked if someone addressing a Family Research Council meeting was as guilty as someone addressing an Aryan Nation rally, the SPLC’s research director said “yes.”

I agree with Lowry that the SPLC goes too far in labeling the Family Research Council a “hate group.”  They may put out some pretty strange and generally inaccurate statements/opinions on gay people, but, like many groups with strange opinions, including the SPLC, they don’t advocate violence against the individuals or groups they criticize.  Rich laments that it’s fortunate the outfit . . .

. . . can’t tell the difference between people who hate blacks and people who support the traditional definition of marriage. . . .

The SPLC calls the Family Research Council a “hate group.” This puts it in the same league as the True Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, the Supreme White Alliance, the Old Glory Skinheads and, of course, the American Nazi Party.

As they ask in kindergarten, which of these things isn’t like all the others?

Via Instapundit.  Read the whole thing  Lowry goes on to call the SPLC’s categorizing “profoundly illiberal” and suggest is purpose is to shut down discourse on gay marriage.

They’re not the only group who wants to shut down debate on this topic.  If gay marriage advocates believe they have a strong case to make for state recognition of same-sex marriage, they should welcome criticism as it will afford them a better opportunity to make their case, which (they believe) is the stronger argument (than the case for traditional marriage).

Gay left claims notwithstanding, David Blankenhorn has not come out in favor of “marriage equality.”  That said, perhaps the most thoughtful opponent of gay marriage has now changed his views:

IN my 2007 book, “The Future of Marriage,” and in my 2010 courttestimony concerning Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I took a stand against gay marriage. But as a marriage advocate, the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.

As with anything Blankenhorn writes, just read the whole thing.  Even as he has changed his view, he does not believe

. . . that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over.

Unlike all too many gay marriage activists, Blankenthorn understands both the reality of sex difference and the meaning of the ancient institution.  He doesn’t just favor gay marriage as a sop to a vocal interest group, but as part of a process to strengthen the institution: (more…)

As I consider measures to promote civility on this blog, let me relate some thoughts about a friend of mine, a left-wing lesbian who often offers tart political commentary on Facebook, including links lambasting Republicans in general and the party’s leading figures in particular.  (Some are based on outdated ideas and inaccurate reports.)

Had I just seen her political Facebook posts  – without knowing her personally — I wouldn’t consider her worthy of my time.  Fortunately, I’ve known her almost as long as I’ve been in LA.  She has a great story to tell and is a good person to know.  She is more than her politics.  And she’s a good friend.

To our conservative readers, bear that in mind when you read a liberal critique of one of my posts — that there is more to these readers than their liberal commentary.  And to our liberal readers, bear that in mind when you read my posts — and those of our defenders.  There is more to us than our politics — and we tend our views with the same conviction you do, not out of any animus for our adversaries, but because of our confidence in their efficacity.

We are all of us, well, most of us at least, more than our politics.  There is many a good person, bigger than his politics, concealed beneath a political persona.

My most recent post on the Grenell matter should have been an occasion for our readers to consider yet again the most unreported story in the gay media  – and indeed a social phenomenon that only receives passing notice even in the conservative press, that of the of strong intolerance among certain liberals toward people like us, gay conservatives.

Indeed, there are liberal hate sites whose bitter, negative bloggers devote the better part of their time to leveling personal attacks on conservatives, reserving a particular venom for right-of-center gays who do not toe the “equality” party line.

Given how regularly these sites misrepresented my arguments, I haven’t checked them since George W. Bush was president.

Unfortunately, it seems that some of our readers, on both side of the political aisle, have stooped to the level of the hate bloggers in leveling personal attacks on others who have chimed in, offering opposing points of view.  In recent days, I have been checking the comments section less and less frequently.  And when I do, it often feels foreign to me as if it’s part of the blog entirely independent of its bloggers.

So, once again, I ask, readers, please keep the comments civil.  You diminish the quality of your own arguments, making your case far less compelling, when you make assumptions about or level ad hominem attacks against your ideological adversaries.

And all this in a post about the hateful, mean-spirited attacks a prominent gay conservative received.  Those on the left help make my point while those on the right diminish theirs.

Surveying the returns on North Carolina’s Amendment One, William Kristol finds that the measure was soundly defeated in two counties with large universities by margins of “5 to 1 and 5 to 2, respectively”, yet passed by margins of 2 to 1 in neighboring “counties like Alamance, Person, and Granville”.

This causes him to “bet there’s more tolerance in Alamance, Person and Granville for those who are proponents of gay marriage than there is at Duke or UNC-Chapel Hill for the opponents.”

I’d made the same wager.  Here’s one piece of evidence that suggests the odds on this wager are better than even.

During the day yesterday, I guessed (before checking our incoming traffic) that we had been linked on at least one liberal blog given the number of hate commentscaught in the spam filter.  The filter caught smart comments as well,including fair critiques of my post; perhaps we can attribute those to Glenn Reynolds’s link.  (And at least one clever quip.)

Since I took the day off from blogging, I read more comments than I normally do and chose to rescue nearly every comment, no matter how mean, no matter how jaundiced a view of gay conservatives they offered.

Mike Jackson wondered, for example, if our blog had announced ”an internal poll showing approx 22 of 24 writers were voting for John Kerry against Bush over the same sex marriage issue“.  I would not be blogging here if I had not e-mailed Bruce thanking him for his post telling Log Cabin to shove it for failing to endorse W. Although we criticized W for supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), we still supported his reelection.

On the other side of the spectrum, Frank compared Republicans to Nazis:

The Republican party in Louisiana has forcibly filled a building with children, nailed the doors and windows shut, and set it on fire. The analogy to the Shoah is deliberate.

Another dressed up the standard cliche:  ”To be gay and conservative, to be black and conservative, to be poor and conservative, is a contradiction in terms.”  Frog in a pot offered said cliche, “To be a gay conservative is the equivalant of a black belonging to the KKK.”  A very unoriginal amphibian he.

These comments showed the worst — and the best — of the blogosphere, the worst those who respond with attacks rather than arguments, the best, those addressing the actual substance of the argument and even teasing out its flaws.

Do hope those who offered the thoughtful comments keep coming back and keep commenting.  And do hope the others learn from their manner of discourse.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  alanstorm questions a left-wing cliche about gay conservatives: (more…)