Reading my letter to the editor (full text included below) of the San Francisco Chronicle correcting an misrepresentation of my research on monogamy and gay groups which appeared in an Op-ed that paper published last Thursday reminded me yet again how few gay advocates of gay marriage understand the institution they’re advocating.

They not only repeatedly misrepresent the meaning of marriage, but they also fail to represent the expectations of nearly all lesbians pursuing marriage — and those of a great majority of gay men. They really don’t get the social meaning of the institution. They just see marriage as just another in the panoply of “rights” they believe the government should provide.

To be sure, this has been a theme of many of my posts on marriage, particularly this one. Yes, I understand their goal is getting state recognition. But, if they really want that recognition, shouldn’t they make clear what it is they want recognized?

Indeed, their reluctance to discuss the meaning of marriage makes it more difficult for them to convince skeptical citizens of the social benefits of extending the government protections of this ancient institution to same-sex couples.

At the same time, they offer treacly definitions of marriage and refuse to promote monogamy (as a defining aspect of marriage as it has been for at least the last twenty-five centuries), many gay people, who seek the benefits of state-recognized marriage, do recognize its obligations. When he studied a group of gay and lesbian couples for his book, Together Forever: Gay and Lesbian Marriage, Eric Marcus found the overwhelming majority elected monogamy.

As I wrote, in reviewing his book:

He was struck at the “seemingly one-sided numbers,” that most of the couples had chosen monogamous relationships. All twenty female couples were in monogamous relationships and only three (out of twenty) of the male couples were nonmonogamous. (Three of the other male couples had, at one point, been nonmonogamous.)

In an e-mail exchange following about my monogamy post, a reader (in a monogamous same-sex relationship himself) wrote of an “advanced search” he and his partner did on meetgaycouples.com. He found that 55% of nearly 1,600 couples identified as monogamous. (The number may actually be higher as over 10% declined to state.) And as this site may attract gay couples looking to play, the real world percentage of monogamous gay couples could be higher still.

And we haven’t even discussed lesbians who account for over 60% of same-sex couples applying for marriage licenses in one California county.

Why is it, I wonder, when it appears a majority of same-sex couples choose monogamy that our gay leaders are so unwilling to even discuss the issue? Is it that they don’t seem the benefits of sexual exclusivity? Or that they want to rip marriage away from all of its religious moorings?

The leading advocates of gay marriage may seek to do that, but it does seem that a great majority of gay people only want to change the gender-difference aspect of marriage, but otherwise want keep the institution as it is–and has long been defined.  They understand the meaning of marriage.

While gay people understand its meaning, those who claim to represent us in public seem more afraid of offending the sexual liberationists who once dominated the gay movement than in convincing mainstream Americans who will, in the end, decide this issue.

My Letter appears below the jump: (more…)

In response to my quoting Jonathan Rauch’s observation that that honest advocacy of same-sex marriage “requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change.” in a post last week, commenter ILoveCapitalism (hereinafter ILC) wrote, “WHAT social change(s)?”

ILC’s not the first person to question whether gay marriage represents a significant social change. Others, in a similar vein, have claimed that gay marriage does not alter the definition of marriage. Both are wrong.

Just because they’re wrong, however, doesn’t mean gay marriage is. Over time, we’ve seen a great variety of social changes, many good and some not so good and some downright bad.

There has, for example, been a huge social change in the attitude toward gays over the past twenty years. That has been, on the whole, a good thing.

Now that gay marriage has come to the forefront of the national debate as well as that in our own community, when discussing it was all but taboo as recently as the early 1990s, advocates should embrace rather than belittle this notion of social change. Less than twenty years ago, many of our gay peers (particularly the men) dismissed marriage as a heterosexual institution, with some calling it a relic of a patriarchal era.

It’s not just that we are talking about adopting this ancient social institution as a means of defining our relationships, it’s also that representatives of many non-gay institutions, social, political, religious are considering recognizing them as such. That represents a huge change in the definition of marriage given that sexual difference has long been a defining aspect of the relationship.

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I don’t consider myself a supporter of gay marriage (even though I will effectively be voting for gay marriage this fall) largely because that institution has long served to bring together two people of different genders in a lifelong sexually exclusive union. I have mentioned this notion in numerous blog posts and devoted these two pieces to the topic.

I base my understanding on the institution on my studies of mythology, psychology, anthropology and history. Up until the end of the last century, all organic cultural marriage rituals involved each spouse performing different gender-specific acts. When cultures which defined same-sex unions as marriage, they required one of the union’s partners to live in the guise of the opposite sex and among that gender-defined community, prohibiting him (or her) from performing the roles of his biological gender. (Or otherwise they called it something other than marriage.)

Yesterday, my friend David Benkof (with whom I disagree on many issues related to the marriage debate) comes forward with research that language itself supports this notion of gender difference. He writes that, “Dr. Jay Jasanoff, the chairman of the linguistics department at Harvard [has] never encountered any language without a specific word for mother and a separate word for father.” David has collected further observations from linguistics professors who agree with Dr. Jasanoff, all languages have a gender-specific word for each parent. I encourage you to check out his post.

While David would have us Californians vote in favor of the proposed fall initiative on marriage, I would rather remind you of what Jonathan Rauch’s comment (which I referenced yesterday) that honest advocacy of same-sex marriage “requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change.“

If we’re going to debate gay marriage, let’s do so honestly (as Jonathan does). Gay marriage does represent a significant social change and a redefinition of marriage, or perhaps it might be better to say an expansion of the traditional definition. Whereas once it was limited to different-sex couples, now we’re considering whether to include same-sex couples as well.

And should we do so, we must bear in mind the responsibilities which inhere in this ancient institution.

Shortly after I first discovered Andrew Sullivan’s writing in the New Republic in 1989, i started reading his work with great alacrity. As I was then struggling with coming out, I appreciated his unique perspective on the gay world. He did not subscribe to the orthodoxy which was making it difficult for me to believe I had anything in common with other outspoken men with whom I shared an attraction to our own gender.

When I started law school in 1991, I found it difficult to keep up with outside reading, such that I didn’t read Andrew’s stuff as regularly as I would have liked. When I had more time after I graduated in 1994, I found he had lost some of the acuity he had had when I first discovered him. He seemed to be trying to appeal to the gay ideology which in so eloquently and effectively opposing, he had helped secure his own standing in the world of political punditry.

Tired of the increasing mushiness of his writing, I stopped reading his stuff, only to resume again in 1998 when I picked up his book Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival in a Washington, D.C-bookstore and started reading. Unable to put it down, I bought it. That very month, I read his piece Sex, lies, and … us - criticism of gay and lesbian support for Bill Clinton in the Advocate, delighted to discover a gay writer taking issue with the prevailing gay political orthodoxy in our nation’s capital, that the then-incubment president was a hero to our community.

I would read Andrew regularly for the next five-and-one-half years, even donating to his blog when it became, in 2003, the first I checked daily. But, by the 2004 campaign, he had become so emotional when discussing the president, I no longer paid him much heed, only reading his posts when other bloggers linked him, usually to mock him for his hyperventilations.

Perhaps, he still had some sensible things to say. I just didn’t see them all that regularly, for, as with Glenn Greenwald, I tended only to see his blog in those moments of excess. On Friday, when searching his blog as part of the research for my post on gay marriage advocates and monogamy, I chanced upon two posts which showed he had retained some sense. In one, he acknowledged he was wrong when he predicted the failure of the surge. In another, he expressed concerns about the “soak-the-successful” aspect of Obama’s tax proposals.” He he has normally been an overenthusiastic cheerleader for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

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Those who read this blog know how regularly I have taken issue with gay marriage advocates for failing to offer strong arguments for the cause they so fervently espouse. For as long as I have been critiquing the great majority of those who speak out on this important topic, I have praised Jonathan Rauch for putting forward serious arguments in defense of gay marriage.

I have repeatedly cited the chapter, “What is Marriage For” in his book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America as getting at the meaning of marriage.

On Saturday in a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan once again made a strong argument for gay marriage. As with anything by Jonathan, just read the whole thing.

As did San Francisco Mayor Newsom last week, Rauch begins with the wedding of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. He contends that institutionalized gay marriage will encourage gay people to pursue relationships instead of settling for a life of random hookups. Unlike all too many advocates of gay marriage, Jonathan makes clear that he believes marriage is good thing as it “makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier.” Some advocates say that since the institution is flawed or falling apart, it makes no sense to exclude gays.

And Jonathan recognizes the landmark nature of our society’s recognition of same-sex marriage: “Honest advocacy requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change and, as such, is not risk-free. I believe the risks are modest, manageable, and likely to be outweighed by the benefits.”

I have a quibble with a few of the points Jonathan makes and a couple of the arguments he offers. I regret that he doesn’t consider the issue of monogamy in his piece (perhaps due to its length). All that said, it is a thoughtful essay and merits your attention. If more people articulated the case for gay marriage as does Jonathan Rauch, then there would be little doubt as to the result of the initiative on the Golden State ballot this fall.

While I had become interested in War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism when I read reviews of this new book written by the Bush Administration’s former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on Powerline (here and here), I didn’t resolve to buy it until I caught this Corner post where Rich Lowry observed:

I’m told that the Washington Post won’t be reviewing Doug Feith’s book. And the New York Times hasn’t reviewed it yet either. I know as conservatives we always complain about MSM outfits not reviewing our books, but this is truly outrageous. Apparently it’s OK to heap every failure in Iraq on Feith’s head, but then to turn around and pretend he’s a figure of no consequence when he writes a book.

If they wanted to criticize the decision to go to war and the execution of that decision, it would be helpful to hear what a chief figure in setting the Administration’s war policy had to say, particularly when that figure includes numerous documents related to that policy. But, I guess their interest wasn’t in presenting an honest portrayal of Administration policy-making.  If the MSM was going to try to bury such a book, I would buy it to prevent them from doing so and to learn what this former official had to say.

Upon learning that Feith would speaking at the Santa Barbara Retreat of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, I bought my copy there so I could get his signature. So impressed was I when he spoke that evening, I asked if he would send me a copy of his remarks so I could excerpt them in a post promoting his book.

I wish more Administration officials had spoken as lucidly–and in fora more public than a gathering of conservative intellectuals and policy wonks.

Feith began by addressing the questions Horowitz had asked him:

Why did the President decide to go to war in Iraq –despite Saddam’s not having been a co-conspirator in the 9/11 attack? And the second is why did I write my book War and Decision?

He answered by pointing out that Bush “‘inherited the problem of Iraq and had two choices either “overthrow the regime” or “try to contain the danger.”  Neither choice was free from peril.

What struck me the most about Feith’s remarks was not his thoughts about the choice the president would make, but a choice he made in writing about it, not to denigrate those with whom he disagreed: (more…)

I have often noticed how big things happen when I’m out of town, or at least, things of significance to the scope of this blog.

I recently learned that Deborah Kerr, one of my favorite actresses, died while I was driving cross country last fall. Some of my friends from graduate school picked SuperDuper Tuesday as the night to see a modern theatrical representation of the Arthur myth/Grail Legend in Vegas.

Well, while I was away with some of those same friends socializing and doing research for my dissertation, we received confirmation that California would be voting on amending the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, thus overturning the recent California Supreme Court decision.

As you can imagine, I have much to say on this topic, primarily noting how that decision impacts this fall’s vote. I had long believed the proponents of this amendment would gather enough signatures to place their initiative on the Golden State ballot. Before the unfortunate ruling, the issue would have been simple: does such language belong in the state constitution? I believe it doesn’t. At the time, I thought the amendment had a good chance of being defeated.

Now, the issue has changed. A vote against the amendment now becomes a vote to keep that decision in place and hence in favor of gay marriage. Back in 2000, when we Californians voted on Proposition 22, many people opposed to gay marriage joined those in favor and ambivalent on the issue to vote against the Proposition because they believed it superfluous, given state statutes already defining the institution as the union of one man and one woman.

As the debate now moves from the court room to the public square, gay marriage advocates need retool their strategies. In the past, they have tailored their arguments to sway judges eager to issue landmark rulings, so earning themselves a place in history books while winning accolades from the media. Now, the task is to convince a populace less concerned with impressing liberal opinion makers, but familiar with the reality of this ancient institution.

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Last March, I pointed out why I don’t use the word, “homophobia,” a term which many gay people and even those in the media use to describe anti-gay attitudes:

Simply put, I don’t like the word. I understand that it means an aversion to homosexuality and gay people, but as a lover of words, I also know that it is derived from Greek words meaning same (”homo”) and phobia (”fear”) so it really means fear of sameness whereas I believe that most people described as “homophobic” are really afraid — or incapable — of understanding, appreciating and/or accepting difference.

Reading Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It , I learned that he also has difficulty with the word:

“Homophobia” was always absurd: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phony-baloney “phobia” was a way of casting opposition to the gay political agenda as a kind of mental illness: don’t worry, you’re not really against same-sex marriage; with a bit of treatment and some medication, you’ll soon be feeling okay.

While I do believe there are people who harbor a fear of gay people, I think Steyn is onto something. I’ve been amazed to discover the number of people who cast those who favor the traditional definition of marriage as “homophobic” or “anti-gay.”

It seems that all too many use the term “homophobia” to dismiss the opponents of same-sex marriage. If they were serious about gay marriage, instead of bandying about this term, they would make an effort to understand their adversaries’ arguments and then take the time to rebut them.

As I noted in a previous post, yesterday was an exciting, but strange day for me. Part of it was the number of items on my plate, having the chance to write for a larger audience than this blog about an issue to which I have devoted much thought over these past few years and getting to participate in a conference call with my party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Mixed within the excitement, I also had a kind of a “bad feeling,” as if I were Han Solo approaching the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. It wasn’t until later in the day, after I had finished and edited my Pajamas piece that I got a handle on this.

I recalled why it was when I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a screenwriter, I went in to the closet politically, concealing my Republican inclinations. Sometimes, I then felt, it’s not worth the effort to speak out and offer an opinion different from those around you, given that many gay people (and others in the creative professions) tend to define conservatives by our politics and oftentimes to dismiss us because of them.

I didn’t want to criticize something (in this case, the California Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage) that so many around me (including many people I love and respect) were celebrating. But, given my position as a blogger who has written much on gay marriage, particularly criticizing courts for deciding an issue which, I believe, should be left to the legislatures and the people, I had to say something. And as one seeking a larger audience for my work, I thought it would be folly to turn down Pajamas’ invitation to write a piece for them on the decision.

Given my emotional state yesterday, I’m delighted that so many found so much to praise in that piece, even some who disagreed with my conclusions. And I was heartened this morning when a reader linked me to Jonathan Rauch’s piece on the Independent Gay Forum, warning gay marriage advocates to “Hold the Champagne:“

I wish I could be as overjoyed by the California Supreme Court’s ruling for same-sex marriage as the rest of the gay world is. Politically, the ruling merely tees up an initiative battle, to be decided by simple majority vote. Backlash against the Court may make that battle harder to win. Affirmation of the Court’s decision by plebescite would be tremendous, but it’s too early to celebrate.

Not only is Jonathan, like yours truly, fearful of the backlash, but he also had some problems with the majority opinion, calling it “an example of judicial overreach.” (As with anything Jonathan writes on marriage, just read the whole thing.)

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about yesterday’s decision, if only to be more like those around me, but cannot in good conscience. I find the opinion flawed on a number of levels and fear a backlash which could extend beyond the Golden State. And fear that those who would like to prevent that backlash would rather attack opponents of state recognition of gay marriage than defend the merits of extending the benefits of this institution to gay people.

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Sometime this week (or was it last?), I sorted through the clutter of notes on my desk and made a list of posts I’d like to write on marriage. With yesterday’s California Supreme Court decision, the clutter has grown as I’ve been scribbling down myriad ideas for new posts to add to that list.

As soon as today, I hope to start fleshing out the ideas on that list and posting here on marriage. I do hope to promote a conversation more serious than we have generally seen on both sides of the issue where proponents of gay marriage accuse their adversaries of wanting to write “bigotry and hatred . . . into the California Constitution” and proponents of the traditional marriage accuse their adversaries of wanting to destroy the institution.

Let us hope (I fear this is a vain hope) that those coming forward to debate the issue are like Jonathan Rauch (for gay marriage) and David Blankenhorn (for the traditional definition), individuals who value the importance of the institution and understand (and oftentimes even respect) their ideological adversaries.

I hope to contribute to the debate in the manner that these two individuals have. Yesterday, I didn’t like having to write my Pajamas piece in haste because I wanted to take the time to think seriously about the issue.

Sometimes when we blog, we rush to get an idea out there because the nature of this medium is such that we need get these ideas out there as quickly as possible. People want to hear our ideas right away! But, with a potential social change of this magnitude, we need a more prolonged conversation.

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Some objected to my suggestion that London’s new Tory Mayor Boris Johnson might be a hero to gay conservatives because he saw accepting gay marriage akin to consecrating unions “between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.”

I grant the Mayor’s analogy is a little over the top, but it seems he’s mocking the notion of redefining marriage from its traditional understanding as a union of one man and one woman to a bond of love between two individuals. If we depart from the traditional understanding of the insitution as a union of two individual of differing genders, where, then, he (as well as many others) asks, do we draw the line?

Sensible gay marriage advocates would say we draw the line at the union of two consenting adults in a monogamous bond. But, other advocates don’t want to set such strictures on the institution, in fact they don’t see it as an institution. They would rather redefine it.

No matter how much we dress up our arguments, we can’t change the historical and sociological meaning of marriage. While, various cultures accepted polygamy (mostly polygyny, one man to more than one wife, but also rarely polyandry where a woman has more than one husband), that tended to be limited to the upper classes. Even then, the man was married to each of his wives; the women were not married to each other. Gender difference still defined the institution.

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When I drove cross country last fall, I often turned off my CD player so as to better let my thoughts wander. A number of ideas came to me, some of which I have addressed on this blog. One of the first notions which which popped into my head, somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico on the first day of the journey, was to wonder if my ambivalence on gay marriage was related to how many gay advocates approached the issue.

As I read David Blankenhorn’s book this past week, his description of some of these advocates reminded me of my own encounters. They saw marriage as just a relationship between two people, nothing more than a “right.” They scorned monogamy and delighted in the institution’s decline.

Few saw the conversation on gay marriage as part of a means to strengthen the institution. Indeed, some expressly sought to weaken it.

I found it difficult to take seriously advocates whose understanding of marriage as a right defined by the Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 decision Loving v. Virginia, banning “miscegenation” laws, as if the concept originated in jurisprudence and its social and ritual aspects irrelevant.

That all changed when I started reading Jonathan Rauch’s Gay Marriage: Why It is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, particularly the chapter, “What Marriage is For” (which I have praised numerous times on this blog). He got at the meaning of this institution.

As fate would have it, at the same time I was reading the book, Jonathan was in LA. I went to hear him speak at A Different Light bookstore where he offered two anecdotes which showed that like Blankenhorn, he understood the debate on gay marriage involved the issue of marriage itself.

First, he mentioned a straight couple who came up to him after his talk and thanked him for reminding them what marriage was all about it; his words thus served to strengthen their marital bond. Then, he mentioned how when he presents the very same issues to gay activists, many who had a similar positive reaction, while his words caused others to question their own support for gay marriage. If marriage involves retreating from sexual liberation, they didn’t want it.

Given what that institution entails and some of the mores of our community, a real conversation on marriage is likely to trouble many gay people who favor a more libertine approach to sexuality.

If we really want gay marriage, we need to address that attitude.

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Had it not been for all the myriad little things I have needed to do these past few days, I might have found the time to sit down and read Senator Obama’s much heralded speech on race and so write the post I want to write about why, in my mind, the speech dodges the real issue and raises serious questions about the charismatic presidential candidate’s leadership abilities.

In the world of instant communication, sometimes, when you have (what you believe to be) a great thought, the likelihood is that someone else has it as well. So, if you delay in posting on this topic, someone else will. And in this case, someone else did. In a piece on National Review on Friday, Stephen Sprueill pretty much echoed my thoughts when he wrote:

What bothers me is that we don’t have any evidence — either an old letter or a statement from the campaign — that Obama ever confronted his friend and tried to change his mind. Such confrontations can grate on friendships, if they happen frequently enough, and especially if they concern trivial matters. But here we have a situation where a friend of Obama’s was spreading poisonous beliefs to a congregation that included Obama’s own daughters. Obama was in a unique position to lead by asking his friend to reconsider some of his hateful and paranoid ideas.

Given those hateful and paranoid ideas, I had a brief thought which I wanted to whip off before I set out for an event I’m coordinating this evening. This weekend, reading a post on Instapundit about the speech and a “conversation on race,” I realized that if we need to have that conversation, we begin with the greatest speech on race in American history, indeed, one of the greatest speeches in all American history, so I did a brief post linking Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

If we have a conversation on race, we should have an idea of the goals of that conversation. And Dr. King verbalized them:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
. . . .
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Contrast that hopeful vision with the Reverend Wright’s angry rhetoric and you see the true greatness of Dr. King. Dr. King, born 14 years before Wright, saw the same kind of prejudice which, in Senator Obama’s view, justified his pastor’s rage. Yet, Dr. King did not give into despair.

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I was delighted that my Friday post, Booing & Shouting: Standard Liberal Discourse? inspired such a spirited discussion though sometimes I wish that those who defended my points would use less colorful language in taking on those who disagreed with me.  More often than not, they make some very sound arguments whose points are sometimes obscured by their occasional vitriol.

While our critics did, from time to time, make some good points, they never succeeded in bringing cases apposite to the discussion.  I blogged about university students booing and/or shouting down speakers who offer perspectives at odds with the prevailing left-wing worldview.

One reader claimed that conservatives did this too, linking a story about students booing a liberal Congressman delivering an anti-war speech.

And indeed, conservatives did boo Congressman William “Lacy” Clay when he addressed the University of Missouri-St. Louis on May 13, 2006.  But, what distinguishes this situation from those referred to in the post is that that liberal Democrat delivered a Bush-bashing anti-war speech as a commencement ceremony.

Why did he see fit to inflict his opinions on students celebrating their graduation?  Shouldn’t a commencement speaker off remarks, reflecting the occasion, the commencement (beginning) of their adult lives and offer them sage advice and words of inspiration for the journey ahead.

Instead, he chose to politicize what should have been a non-partisan event where students of all political stripes sit together and celebrate the achievement of completing a stage of their education.  The stories I referenced involved lectures that, while open to the public, were not mandatory events.  If the students didn’t like the speakers, they didn’t have to attend.  If they disagreed with their (the speakers’) ideas, they could ask questions after the talk.

Why is it that so many liberals (and yes, a number on the right) wish to politicize everything, turning what should be a speech about the future to an angry harangue about a president and policy they don’t like?  Perhaps, it was boorish for Missouri students to boo their commencement speaker.  But, it was certainly disrespectful of the Congressman to deliver at angry, partisan address at a non-partisan celebratory forum.

Since there has been much chatter in the blogosphere about a conversation on race (e.g., here), I thought I’d link to an essential primer on this topic.

In her comment to my post on Michael Lucas, Leah noted that, according to her son at Stanford, when the iconoclastic porn star “spoke at Stanford earlier this year, [he] as booed and shouted down.”

Such behavior, booing and shouting down, seems pretty standard behavior for some left-of-center students when speakers come to their campuses (campi?) presenting ideas that these high-minded intellectuals don’t like.

A year before its Administration invited the malicious and murderous president of a theocracy to speak at Columbia, students “booed and shouted” during an event featuring “Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.” They later stormed the stage when that opponent of illegal immigration rose to speak. They didn’t even given him a chance to express his opinion.

Despite attending a prestigious university which supposedly only admits very smart people, they didn’t have the patience to listen to his arguments and ask him tough questions. If his ideas were so bad and they were so smart, then couldn’t they better show the superiority of their ideas by posing questions which would stump him? Why did they choose to shout him down instead of challenging his views?

Perhaps they hought they didn’t need listen to his remarks because they, being so smart, already “knew” what he stood for. And being so smart, they deemed that his ideas being inferior to theirs, they shouldn’t be aired.

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