Just caught this on Breitbart via Instapundit:

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton wrote this evening to condemn the actions of Dan Savage:

UGH ….

Savage later called the walk-out “pansy-a**ed” which, from someone who helms an anti-bullying campaign, is obviously a very negative thing to say ….

Can’t we just be good and kind to each other? Isn’t faith in love and honesty and kindness all any of us really need?

Kudos, Perez. And good question:  why can’t we treat our ideological adversaries with respect?

Wonder if any other prominent gays will condemn Mr. Savage.

FROM THE COMMENTS: V the K‘s quip, “Except for Carrie Prejean, I guess” reminds us that Mr. Lavandeira hasn’t always been committed to civil discourse.

Nine months ago, when writing about “conversion therapy,” I expressed my doubts about the effectiveness of this treatment, designed to “cure” people like us of our longings for same-sex intimacy and affection.

Despite those doubts, I believe, as I then wrote that, in a free society, “Christian groups have every right to set up . . . companies [offering such therapy, provided they do not coerce anyone to enter treatment.”  Even though in a subsequent post, I expressed the intention to address the issue of “coercion“, I have yet to do so.  Given that  many of those “coerced” to enter such treatment are minors, the issue is not as simple as it might first appear; should the state intervene to prevent this coercion, it would then be acting in loco parentis.

As a reader said when we were discussing the issue on Facebook, “It does get hairy for minors.”  On the one hand, I very much want to prevent any teen from experiencing some of the extreme treatments in such programs.  On the other, I fear the slippery slope created by any legislation removing parents’ rights to raise their own children.  Will the state then try to prevent parents from home-schooling their children or learning to hunt?

At the LA Weekly, Patrick McDonald writes about a bill pending before the California legislature to allow teens to opt out of therapies their parents choose;

Written by California State Senator Ted Lieu and sponsored by the gay rights group Equality California, Senate Bill 1172 would force psychotherapists to tell gay patients about the mental and physical harms of undertaking any so-called “gay therapies.” Therapists would also need the consent of a patient before moving forward with their dangerous work.

Most importantly, the bill seeks to stop all gay therapies of minors, regardless of the wishes of his or her parents. So you have to be at least 18 years old and sign off on treatment before a whacked-out therapist can do anything to you.

He goes on to detail some of the treatments to which young people have been subject.  The text of the legislation is here.   (more…)

(H/t: Our webmaster Dr. Froyd, Sean Froyd)

I understand that the commentary in the thread of a recent post (The smallness of the haters on the left) has become pretty acrimonious.  I have not followed the thread nor do I intend to, but have heard from readers on both sides of the political aisle (some of my acquaintance) about the supposed quality of the discourse there.

I don’t write to allocate blame, but merely to make another plea for civil discourse — as I have seen both our defenders and our critics say some things about their ideological adversaries which have no basis in reality.

I just returned from a pleasant evening with the entertainment group of my alma mater’s alumni association and had a spirited debate with a wavering Obama supporter.  He criticized conservatives; I found fault with his assumptions and arguments.  I may not have changed his mind, but I did make him more open to the possibility of opposing Obama seven months (and a few weeks) hence.  (The prospect of Rick Santorum not being the nominee makes my task a lot easier.)

Please, my friends, adopt the same goal as I have adopted — to change the minds of those who are now your ideological adversaries — and make them your allies in the struggle for freedom and prosperity.

Don’t engage in name-calling.  Don’t use the comments to make assumptions about the private lives of those who criticize our arguments.  Take issue with their points.  You often compromise your own strong arguments when you stoop to the level of the Bill Maher wing of the Democratic Party.

And to our critics, know that we put forward our ideas in good faith.  When you act in the manner of Mr. Maher you make it a heck of a lot easier for us to make our points.

* (more…)

Just caught this from David Axelrod:

Everyone should have stood up and said this was inappropriate as apparently many of Maher’s supporters now have said it was inappropriate.

I was kind of shocked, Anderson, when President Obama, all he had — all he had to say about the thing was, well, that isn’t language I would have used. What about the spirit of what was said? I thought that was a cowardly answer and it was a test of leadership and one that he failed.

. . . .

So I don’t excuse any of it. Now I will say this. There are very few entertainers who are as outspoken in attacking Republicans as Bill Maher does so regularly on his shown. I think one of the reasons why President Obama and others were so timid in speaking out is because Maher is the de facto spokesman for the Democratic Party, so to take him on would be to risk your own standing within the party’s left-wing base. And so that separates him from the others.

Oh, wait, sorry, I just substituted Maher for Rush, President Obama for Governor Romney and Democrat for Republican (with a few other minor changes to improve the flow).

Meanwhile, Axelrod still keeps making excuses for Maher who has yet to apologize for his “inappropriate” language–as Rush has done.  The president couldn’t even bring himself to criticize Maher as Romney criticized Rush, not even in allegedly anodyne language Axelrod called cowardly.

If Romney’s response were cowardly, then Obama’s was more so (by Axelrod’s standard).

Indeed, in his news conference, the Democrat dodged the question on double standards. He would have been wise, Athena writes, to discuss the coarsening of our discourse: (more…)

Writing about the backlash to the Democratic obsession with Rush Limbaugh, John Hinderaker quips that “This civility thing could be tough on the Democrats.”  Indeed, the unhappy Barney Frank should be going into overdrive “differentiating” himself from all the nasty slurs liberal pundits and entertainers have leveled against conservative women just to make clear that such potty-mouthed folks don’t speak for him or his caucus.

Wonder if he’s made up for the silence of his colleagues, two of whom failed to, as Barney might put it, “differentiate themselves” from a former funnyman’s misogynistic commentary.  Nor has Mr. Obama — even as his top campaign strategist books an appearance on said misogynist’s show.

The Democrat, Hinderaker observes,

has had nothing to say about the far worse invective that his own supporters have directed against Republican women. As I noted yesterday, he was asked a question about the double standard in his press conference yesterday, and ducked it. Bill Maher, who has contributed $1 million to re-elect Obama, called Sarah Palin a “c***” and a “dumb t***.” (Hey, when Rush rips a Democratic Party activist, at least you can print what he said on a family web site.) Obama has never criticized Maher or any of his many other supporters and minions who have kept up a steady drumbeat of hate for years.

Maybe civility is only for Republicans and their allies in the media.

Just shy of two years ago, the then-Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, insisted that his Republican colleagues needed “to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours.”

Nearly a year later, even after learning that the man who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had ties neither to the Tea Party nor the GOP, the editors of the New York Times told us that it was

. . . legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

When some on the left learned of the death of Andrew Breitbart, they reacted in the manner the Old Gray Lady attributed to virulent Republican supporters with a gale of anger and expressions of hatred, demonizing a man who dared challenge their most cherished shibboleths.

Michelle Malkin reported that one leftie had tweeted, “It is very hard to have sympathy for an evil person like Andrew Breitbart!”  The Tatler collected more Tweets, including this particularly telling one, “Andrew Breitbart died? Is it wrong that I’m happier about that than when they got bin Laden and Saddam?”  At the Washington Examiner, Charlie Spiering reports that one liberal call Breitbart, “a vile excuse for a human being” and yet another alleged he “was a racist, sexist, homophobe.”

Always the same litany, lefties?  Guess they just assume that if someone is conservative, he must fit their narrow view of what a right-winger must be, someone who hates people who differ from the white male norm. (more…)

No, Obama doesn’t want to wreck the economy; he’s just clueless about how to fix it.  He — and many of his supporters — really do believe Keynesian theory.

And, no, Republicans don’t want to “wreck the economy” in order to hurt Obama’s reelection prospects.  We just don’t think big government schemes will work to effect a sustained and robust recovery.  And have evidence to back up our contention.  Large public sectors really do reduce economic growth.

I have had enough.

Dan has a lot more stomach for insulting comments on our blog, but I do not.  I appreciate his attempt to politely suggest that the conversation around here has been degrading and trying to rein it in.  It didn’t work.

So, I’m stepping in.

This policy is STILL in effect:

Commenting and trackback/pingback capability is provided to encourage thoughtful discussion of the ideas posted on this site. We welcome open debate and viewpoints that differ from those of the post authors. That said, we wish to keep the conversation civil and the following policies, subject to change without notice, apply:

• Remember that the people under discussion are human beings. Comments that contain personal attacks about the post author or other commenters will be deleted. Repeated violators will be banned. Challenge the ideas of those with whom you disagree, not their patriotism, decency, or integrity.
• The use of profanity stronger than that normally permitted on network television is prohibited. A substantial number of people read this site from an office or in a family environment.

Each individual author is responsible for monitoring the comments to their posts, and ultimately determines which comments merit deletion. Each individual commenter is also responsible for maintaining the civil discourse at GayPatriot.

I will now be editing or deleting comments that violate this policy that have been posted over the past week. No warning, no second chances.

Just stop it.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I have wondered sometimes if the number of people commenting has taper off in recent years because the exchanges in our threads can become, well, heated.  I know this phenomenon is not unique to our blog.  Perhaps, it has become more acute of late because Bruce and I tend not to edit the comments (I have always believed that sunlight is the best disinfectant).

Those who engage in ad hominem attacks on readers compromise their own strong arguments.

I have not been reading the comments as regularly as I once did; it often seems the comment threads are entirely different from the blog itself.  Oftentimes the commentary has little to do with the points Bruce and I make in the post themselves.

In the past few days, in e-mails from and other communication with readers, I have heard rumor that the attacks are getting out of hand.  Because I was spending time with my family (and just now returning to LA), I have not had time to investigate those claims.

Please, readers, be civil.  Make your point.  Take issue with our arguments.  Challenge our defenders.  Criticize our critics.  But, don’t make it personal.  If you met some of the people (whom you disparage online), you might find they are good folks.  Indeed, I have met most of those who have contacted me in recent days.  I don’t always agree with what they say (indeed, one of them has criticized my points more often than not).  But, they are all good people.

In conclusion, let me offer this suggestion.  Each time you find fault with someone’s argument, as your prepare to take him (or her) on, imagine that you are going to have to sit down next to him at dinner the next day.  Or work with him in a professional manner.

[UPDATE:  I've closed the comments on this thread.  It degraded quickly. 
I guess many of you didn't actually READ what Dan had to say. 
-Bruce]

So, Republicans who oppose President Obama’s high-cost “Jobs Bill” are guilty of economic sabotage or pace the New York Times, “economic vandalism.”

Now once again, as Sonicfrog reports, some folks on the left are taking to calling conservatives “dumb”:

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this silliness.   I’ve also seen the same applied to Victor Davis Hanson, and to Freeman Dyson.  Why are they “dumb“? Because they have differing opinions on issues than liberals do, such as Hanson’s views on immigration and Dyson’s refusal to march lock-step with the sky-is-falling global warming crowd.

Note to the smug liberal crowd  -  Just because someone has differing views than you do, that doesn’t mean they are dumb! You simply have differing views on things.  Period.

Emphasis added.  You know, they’ve been doing this at least since the 1950s.  It does seem that in order to spare themselves the difficulty of answering conservative challenges or intellectual rigor of addressing conservative ideas, they just label conservatives dumb so they can have done with it.

Wonder if this attitude comes from the paucity of conservatives on the faculties of our nation’s leading colleges and universities.

Given reports I have read on how the soon-to-be released biopic on perhaps the greatest woman of the Twentieth Century, I doubt I will see Meryl Streep’s The Iron Lady, but that great actress did make a good point about that great lady:

I still don’t agree with a lot of [Margaret Thatcher's] policies. But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn’t a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times.

Via Powerline.  It would be nice if the president could say as much about his conservative critics, instead of dispatching his minions to scold them for sabotaging the economy* in order to doom the Democrat’s electoral prospects.  Or hinting that the “very core of what this country stands for is on the line” in the coming presidential election as he hints that his Republican adversaries don’t believe in opportunity for individuals of different backgrounds.

—-

*UPDATE:  the argument Democrats and their media minions make about Republican obstruction of the president’s jobs bill is really just an example of partisan demagoguery and/or intellectual laziness.  They can’t (or refuse to) accept that we might oppose the bill for legitimate reasons.  In saying that Mrs. Thatcher’s beliefs came from “honest conviction,” Streep acknowledges the sincerity of that great Briton’s opposition to big government policies.  Would it that Obama Democrats could do the same.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Sometimes our defenders dispatch our critics in such a thorough manner that we don’t even need respond.  So does Naamloos address the first criticism to this post:

Levi, I think Dan’s point is that Obama attacks Republicans in an unpresidential manner and doesn’t address the substance of their opposition to his policies. In other words, rather than attempt to logically demonstrate why enacting his policies would solve problems, he simply dismisses the Republicans’ opposition to his policies as threatening the “very core of what this country stands for” (which is behaviour that should be below that of the president).

Furthermore, I don’t construe Dan’s post necessarily as a complaint, but rather as simply pointing out Obama’s actions. And that is warranted whenever one of Obama’s actions is worth pointing out, especially if it demonstrates a pattern (and particularly if that pattern is hypocritical, such as Obama’s tendency to impugn the motives of Republicans after his promise to be “post-partisan”).

Well said, very well said.

I’m back at my alma mater, once again named America’s top liberal arts college. I had come out here for the fall meeting of the executive committee of our Society of Alumni to which I was elected last year, and stayed for a few days in order to address the club I founded when I was an undergraduate, the Garfield Republican Club.

If you’re in western Massachusetts, please feel to stop by tonight at 8:30 PM in Williams College’s Griffin Hall Room 6 to hear me address the question, “Was the Bush Administration the Golden Age for Gays in America?”

As I visit the campus, talking to professors and students, preparing my remarks, I recall so many things, but notably the conversations I had here, not just with my philosophical confrères, but also with my ideological adversaries.  I recall the respect that most showed for my ideas, how we each strove to respect the other’s arguments.  My favorite political science professor here was a Marxist who taught a course in conservative  political theory.  It remains to this day the best class I ever had where I perhaps worked the hardest and certainly learned the most.

And I recall how after Phyllis Schlafly spoke, students asked her tough questions, then engaged each other in thoughtful, though sometimes, heated exchanges about the arguments she made and the conclusions she reached.  My fellow Ephs offered a civil response to a controversial speaker.

I believe my concern for civil discourse begun here, beneath the peaceful shadows of these purple mountains.  As I recall the conversations that took place — and apparently still take place here — I wonder if this medium (blogging) sometimes compromises our ability to comment in a civil manner.  I note how my own tone has become snarkier since I first started blogging.

Now, to be sure, some of our critics, do respond to our points, but all too often they merely attack us not for what we say, but for what they believe conservatives would say.  And, alas, some of our defenders respond in kind.

Perhaps, the difference is that at Williams College, we looked our interlocutors in the eye when we took issue with their points, but in this medium, we don’t see the faces of those with whose arguments we take issue. (more…)

It is perhaps serendipitous that shortly after completing Joseph J. Ellis‘s American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, I started Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America.  Let me just say I recommend both books, the latter more than the former.  Each book considers the defining words of our nation’s founding document:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our Creator has endowed us with the rights to life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness, that is, they come from the hand of God and not that of man.

Governments do not grant us freedom, but they can (and unfortunately do) limit its exercise.

Wherever I read of activists agitating for the freedom to marry (heck, there’s an organization with that very name), I wonder if they’re familiar with the meaning of the Declaration and of the very idea of freedom itself.

Today, the debate on gay marriage is not about granting individuals the freedom to marry an individual of their same sex, but about whether the state should recognize such unions.  When gay couples marry in states (or countries) which grant licenses for such unions and return to states which do not, they do not suffer the fate the Lovings did in the 1960s.  The authorities do not threaten them with arrest, request that they leave the jurisdiction or demand that they live apart.

They merely fail to grant them the privileges they extend to different-sex couples who have secured a marriage license.  Let us bear this in mind as we debate this most important issue.

Let us not turn to the government as the source of our liberty lest we become dependent on state action to take care of those things we can effect on our own — without their intervention, but be ever vigilant against its encroachments on our liberty.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Grizzly Glenn gets my point and build on it:

Perhaps somebody can explain to me how something that is considered a basic human right, requires a license from State. I don’t have a State issued license for life, liberty, or the pursuit happiness. I have a State issued driver’s license because I have met the requirements to receive one. (more…)

The president’s chief political advisor keeps giving us a foretaste of the 2012 campaign, attack Republicans.  This time, David Axelrod is going after presumptive Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney:

“Having ducked and dodged and dithered throughout the debt-ceiling debate, and then dropping in on the final day and opposing the compromise, it’s pathetic that Mitt Romney was the first out of the gate with a press release blaming the president after S&P issued its report,” Mr. Axelrod, who is advising Mr. Obama’s campaign, said in an interview.

Ducked and dodged during the debt-ceiling debate?   Hmmm. . . . sounds like the behavior of another man running for the White House in 2012.  Only that guy is the only announced Democratic candidate.  The good news is that Axelrod doesn’t think that kind of politics will play:

“I don’t think the American people are going to reward that kind of politics,” he said. “People are looking for constructive ideas about how we build a better future. The president is offering those.”

He is, Mr. Axelrod?  Then, please do tell us what’s his plan for the FY 2012 budget and proposal to reform entitlements.

Oh, whoops, I read that wrong.  You said “constructive ideas” not plans.  Guess that’s how Obama governs.

(H/t Politico)

Last year, during “the healthcare debate’s final hours”, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) insisted that “his GOP colleagues need to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed” by a handful of Tea Party protesters.

Now, instead of a few fringe members of the Tea Party making untoward comments about their ideological adversaries, we have members of the leadership of Mr. Frank’s party engaging in mean-spirited name-calling. According to Politico,

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

And he wasn’t alone.  Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi “pulled out a Star Wars reference on the House floor, saying that Speaker John Boehner chose to go to the dark side’ and court the most conservative members of his conference, rather than work on a bipartisan compromise.”   The New York Times called the better part of the debt deal “a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.”

Sources in the paragraph above via James Taranto who reports today that the vice president’s office claims the Delaware Democrat did not use the term, but that members of Mr. Frank’s caucus did.  He also provides numerous examples of some very uncivil discourse on the left.  And over at the Sundries Shack, Jimmie offers a snapshot of some of the civil Democratic discourse during the debt debate. (Via Instapundit.)

Do hope Mr. Frank and his Democratic colleagues do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from mean-spirited discourse.

Yeah, this is a great strategy to show that gay people are emotionally balanced:

A horde of glitter-wielding gay “barbarians” on Thursday paid a visit to a clinic owned by GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus. . . .

Once the horde was notified that Marcus, a strategist for his wife’s presidential campaign, was not at the clinic, their leader told the group, “All right, folks, Marcus isn’t coming out so we’re gonna have to act like barbarians.”

With that, the smiling group of about 10 showered the waiting room with glitter while chanting, “You can’t pray away the gay, baby I was born this way.”

Fortunately, these juveniles in need of venting their rage in the public square and drawing attention to themselves are not representative of the gay community.  Let’s hope that gay leaders denounce their childish antics.

This is not to deny these folks the opportunity to criticize Mr. Bachmann and the practices at his clinic, but to criticize their manner of taking issue with him.  Indeed, we should take him to task for his comments on the “sinful nature” of homosexual behavior, but in a civil manner, likely to win favor for our arguments, not gain sympathy for the man under attack.

Taking issue with these clowns, Sister Toldjah contrasts their actions with GOProud’s attempts to meet with Mrs. Bachmann:

Whatever you feel about “gay rights” issues, you have to respect [GOProud Chairman Chris] Barron’s position. It’s amazing what happens once you take liberal narcissism out of the equation, isn’t it? Gay conservatives want answers about Bachmann’s various policy positions, including issues of interest to the gay community – and, unlike HRC and the like, Chris Barron is going to get them. (more…)

First of all, while I can understand why Representative Alan West (R-Fla) was upset by his Sunshine State colleague’s cowardly criticism of his vote for budget restraint, I believe he overacted in his intemperate e-mail response.  To be sure, he was right to criticize, but he was wrong to use such harsh language.

Ever dutiful to the party of big government, the media have played up his intemperate remarks as they ignore what Tina Korbe called Wasserman-Schultz’s “benign-for-her-but-still-inaccurate floor speech“.  Although the Democrat lambasted Mr. West for voting for a reform bill, she, by her own admission, is “not prepared to commit to any specific proposal“.

Why aren’t we hearing anything about the Democrats’ policy of attacking Republican policies rather than offering alternatives of their own? (more…)

I had not expected my last blog post to be as long as it was.  I had merely planned to conclude with the anecdote of the lesbian mother I saw at Traintown, but then, well, as I wrote about her, other thoughts came to mind.

I had intended that post to focus on the debate on gay marriage, how, as I wrote the day after the New York legislature voted to recognize same-sex marriages, “the rhetoric [was] regularly exaggerated,” with the debate lacking “the type of civil discussion of the importance and meaning of marriage that would have helped strengthen the institution“.

Echoing my point “about the lack of meaningful/useful/informative discourse in the public square over the past two weeks” our reader Richard Bell confessed, in the comments section that he’s “still reeling from the hyperbole and hate of both sides.”  I found the debate so annoying with hyperbole on each side that I simply stopped following it.

What Richard saw as “hate,” I saw as hyperventilating;  advocates of the bill assured us that opponents hated gay people and wanted to deprive them of their “rights” while opponents warned of the imminent demise of traditional marriage (if the bill passed).

Give me a break.  Marriage has survived as an institution for as long as human beings have recorded the details of our lives.  It has survived challenges throughout history, most recently the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Despite those challenges and active efforts to undermine it, marriage remains a defining cultural institution.  Individuals who once rejected it in their youth, embrace it in early middle age and celebrate it in their golden years.

Traditional marriage will survive state recognition of same-sex marriage — and may even emerge stronger than it was when the debate over gay relationships began. (more…)

Five years ago, when the highest court in New York State refused to mandate state recognition of same-sex marriage, I disagreed with gay activists who criticized the decision, writing, “It is the job of courts to interpret the law, not set social policy“, adding

Despite the unfortunate rhetoric of the releases of HRC and NGLTF, I am delighted to see that their leaders are now looking to these legislators to make that case. Let’s hope this defeat convinces them to spend more time promoting gay marriage in legislatures and other popular fora rather than in courts of law.

Now that they have done so; they have finally achieved the result they wanted.  Elected state legislatures, I have always contended, are the appropriate fora to decide such issues.

The process was often messy, the rhetoric regularly exaggerated, the understanding of marriage generally at odds with the history of the institution, but at least those who made the final decision were elected by the people of the various jurisdictions of the Empire State and thus answerable to them at the ballot box.

We may not have had (and indeed did not have) the type of civil discussion of the importance and meaning of marriage that would have helped strengthen the institution (and not just in New York), but the branch of government responsible for deciding whether the state should privilege same-sex unions as it has long privileged different-sex monogamous unions resolved the issue.

It’s amazing the speed with which our elected legislatures have moved to consider state recognition of our (gay) relationships.  Just six years ago, the Connecticut legislature voted to recognize civil unions, without a court mandating it to do so.  (more…)