If they play CNN at your gym and you do cardio for more than 5 minutes, you will be subject to various stories and diatribes on the problem of gun violence and the imperative for increased firearms egulation.  And then, take a gander at the image AOL/Huffington Post used to illustrate and article on the NRA:

Seems the editors agree with the protestors who hoisted this banner.

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).

As we’ve noted on more than one occasion, all too many on the gay left — as well as some of their straight allies — are ever ready to call opposition to gay marriage as hate speech. Their reaction to prominent defenders of traditional marriage, like Chick-fil-A’s president Dan Cathy, resembles that of their reaction to certain prominent Republicans, from Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to Newt Gingrich in the 1990s to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin in the 2000s, to the Koch Brothers in the current decade.

Some have developed quite a habit of using harsh language to decry what they describe as “hate”.  Indeed, more often than not, their language seems far more hateful than that of the supposed haters.  Like the loyal citizens of George Orwell’s Oceania, they seem to delight in venting their negative emotions upon those deemed enemies of the party.  Yet, their venting does seem to last longer than two minutes.

Mr. Cathy’s unapologetic advocacy of traditional marriage made him — and his chicken chain — an appropriate target to which certain leftists could direct their venom.  This whole hullabaloo seemed more about the need of some to vent than about the merits (or lack thereof) of the target’s arguments.

No wonder that Glenn Reynolds, like a good number of social moderates and libertarians, doesn’t think the response to this venting, AKA Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day . . .

can be interpreted as opposition to gay marriage, so much as a response to bullying. But I do think that the bullying has probably tainted the gay-marriage brand, which is too bad. The gay-marriage argument is already winning — there’s no need to engage in Rahm Emanuel-style attacks, and doing so merely invites pushback. And, frankly, I’m happy to live in a country where people’s response to bullying is to push back.

It is those very “Rahm Emanuel-style attacks” that served as the tipping point for many social libertarians (including yours truly).  As blogging law professor William A. Jacobsen put it:

The threat to free speech represented by the actions of the liberal political leaderships in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia should be the ultimate wake up call. (more…)

Since I was driving to Denver yesterday, I was unable to participate in the “Kiss-in” at the Hollywood Chick-fil-A.  Had I been in town, I may well have joined in, having fun by finding a fetching fellow to kiss in front of the franchise, then walking into the restaurant and buying him a nice chicken meal, while ordering a nice cup of their most refreshing lemonade for myself.

Given some of the photos (via Instapundit) I saw from the “Kiss-In”, it seems that most protesters were more interested in expressing themselves than in presenting a positive image of same-sex affection. Yeah, a three-person kiss and signs like “Eat More Carpet” will go a long way to changing social conservative attitudes toward gays.

Now, these folks were surely having fun.  One thing that’s great about America is that they are free to express so flamboyantly their opposition to the views of the chicken chain’s president.

But, just as such flamboyant displays of disagreement likely will make it more challenging to change minds, so too is labeling opposition to gay marriage as “hate” little likely to foster dialogue.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the Rev. Sarah Halverson of Fairview Community Church did just that, saying she

 . . . respects [Chick-fil-A President Dan] Cathy’s right to free speech, she said, but also exercised her own right to speak out against what she considers hate speech.

“We have the right to stand in disagreement with another’s speech,” she said.

At a Chick-fil-A in Torrance where vandals painted the words “Tastes Like Hate” on the side of the restaurant Thursday night, the “National Same-Sex Kiss Day” was off to a slow start.

She’s does have the right to stand in disagreement.  That said, we should also consider whether the way we stand causes those with whom we disagree to reconsider their views.  Calling those views “hate speech” is not likely to effect such reconsideration.  If anything, it may cause them to double down in disagreement.

NB:  Tweaked the conclusion to improve its flow.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Just Me finds it to be a shame that some utilize the confrontational tactics, “because I think gays would get much further by engaging in legitimate debate than the in your face, deliberately provocative displays that don’t pay any respect to the other opinion or with any attempt to find common ground.”

As a lemonade lover, I find it relatively easy to order a lemonade at restaurants, but rarely, alas do I chance upon a good cup of my preferred summer drink.  Most establishments serve a processed version of that refreshing beverage.

Last night at the Hollywood Chick-fil-A, I enjoyed a deliciously tart cup of lemonade.  Had it not been for politically correct politicians  attempting to keep the chicken chain out of their cities, I likely wouldn’t have visited the local franchise.

Their demagoguery coupled with Mike Huckabee’s decision to create Chick Fil-A Appreciation Day served as promotion for the chicken chain.  Now that I know how tasty their lemonade is, I’ll likely return when I’m craving a cup.

Mayor Menino and his politically correct cohorts may have been trying to deny Chick-fil-A business because of its owners politically incorrect views, but he instead succeeded in making me aware of the restaurant’s wonderful lemonade.  How many other people yesterday discovered the quality of the chicken chain’s products and intend to return to try them again?

A week ago today, in response to a reader’s e-mail, I had begun a post on the Chick-fil-A hullabaloo.  I agreed with Mark Hemingway that the media had invented the story that Chick-fil-A’s president had condemned gay marriage. That said, I wasn’t comfortable with what that president had said about traditional marriage:

Dan Cathy, the president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, said in a radio interview this week that same-sex marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”

Appearing on “The Ken Coleman Show,” Cathy spoke of his company’s pride in its socially conservative character, but then offered an assessment of same-sex marriage that might lose the popular fast food chain a few customers.

“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’” said Cathy.

I decided to scotch the planned post.  I wouldn’t join my fellow conservatives in castigating the chicken chain’s critics nor would I join my fellow gays in branding the Christian businessman a bigot.  I would simply refrain from buying chicken there.  The story would soon fade.  It is not a matter of pressing national interest.

One thing John Hinderaker has “never figured out is why, if the Republicans represent only an ‘extremist fringe,’” as claims a certain Mr. A. Arnold Gore, Jr., in a fundraising letter for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), “there is such a grave danger that they will win a majority of the votes in this year’s presidential election.

Does seem some folks on the left are beholden to the notion of the Republican Party as run by a cabal of extremists.  And wonder if their prejudiced read on the GOP compromises its ability to reach out to people dissatisfied with the Democrats.

And compromising that ability is certainly part of the reason folks like Mr. Gore call the GOP extreme.

Remember all the handwringing in the media about Mitt Romney’s continued association with Donald Trump even as the presumptive Republican nominee made clear he disagreed with the celebrity entrepreneur’s continuing commentary on the president’s birth certificate?  Yahoo! even included a headline (in its top news) about Romney’s refusal to tell Trump to dial it down.

Aaron Sorkin speculates what would happen if Romney told anti-gay activists to “drop dead.”  Others faulted the Republican candidates for not repudiating a solitary boor who booed a gay service member.

Now, with gay left activists taking pictures of themselves flipping off former presidents while in the White House at the incumbent’s invitation, will those very voices in our legacy media call on the president to (borrowing and paraphrasing an expression) differentiate himself from the boorish behavior of his guests, individuals he invited to the White House?

What would the media reaction be if social conservatives had photographed themselves flipping off pictures of Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter while visiting the White House?  (Well, don’t think social conservatives would conduct themselves in such a manner.)

Gay groups should join us in condemning these antics.  These people do not provide an image of gay people that should gain currency in the media.  Such juvenile behavior should not be representative of our community.  We should look instead to people as Mary Cheney as Heather Poe as role models.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Haven’t had time to review all the comments.  Shortly after posting this, I headed up to take my nephew to some sites, including, of all places, the Reagan Library (where I honored the Gipper and renewed my membership).  midwest mama does get at the implications of these juvenile antics.

I am a middle-aged straight woman from Kansas. If it weren’t for my gay relatives, whom I love to pieces, the only picture I would have of the gay community is the “in your face” people who seem to not be able to get over their sexuality and insist that if I don’t absolutely embrace every possible permutation of the gay lifestyle, I am somehow a hater. I am willing to live and let live, but it seems to me that a lot of people in the gay community are not. I appreciate knowing there are gay conservatives out there.

If the folks at HRC, GLAAD et al are truly concerned about improving the image of gay Americans, they will denounce these antics and call on the president to repudiate them as well.

UPDATE:  The White House has criticized these antics:

“While the White House does not control the conduct of guests at receptions, we certainly expect that all attendees conduct themselves in a respectful manner. Most all do,” Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman, said. “These individuals clearly did not. Behavior like this doesn’t belong anywhere, least of all in the White House.”

Et tu, HRC?  Et tu, NGLTF?

“What Happens,” asks Victor Fiorello of the Philly Post, “When You Let Gay Philly Activists Into the White House”?

They pose for pics giving Ronald Reagan’s portait the finger.

Guess they forgot about the ads that good man cut to oppose the anti-gay Briggs Amendment.

What a great way to create an image of gay people as responsible adults.  Via Weekly Standard via Drudge.

Even after some Democrats lose an election, they want to keep fighting as one of critics demonstrated in the comments on Scott Walker’s victory Tuesday night:

Walker’s Koch money won the day. But if that’s a victory . . . .ok. Now let’s just wait and see if he survives the criminal investigation against him.

If it’s not democracy when one candidate outspends the other to secure a 7-point victory than, well, we’d better discount the results for a certain electoral contest decided in November 2008.  And if we’re going to bring it the Koch Brothers’ money (about $1 million in the Wisconsin race), let’s not forget the unions’ largesse; they spent twenty times the amount those unfairly maligned siblings doled out.

Fascinating how Democrats obsess over money when Republicans outspend them, but not when they outspend the Republicans.  Their spending advantage somehow makes Democratic victories legitimate, but a Republican advantages calls his success into question.

But, then for Democrats, almost anything calls a Republican’s victory into question.  Democracy, to them, is not what the people want, how they express their opinions in free and fair elections, but what they want.  As former* U.S Senator Russ Feingold said, “This game is not over until we win.”  (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

No wonder our reader is hoping a criminal investigation will accomplish what an election could not.

* (more…)

Barely three days before the gubernatorial recall election in the Badger State, an outfit called
the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op breaks a story about a(n illegitimate) love child Scott Walker father and left behind.  The next day the Daily Kos (the Daily Kos!) reports that the woman in question denied that the Wisconsin governor fathered her baby.

“The Democrats”, quips John Hinderaker, blogging about the news at Powerline, “are looking down the barrel of a humiliating defeat in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday, so today they played their last card“.  Meanwhile Democrats are talking about some kind of investigation into Governor Scott Walker, leading that good man to say, “The Democrats are desperate. . . . They’ve got nothing else. We’ve answered this question a million different times, and they don’t want to talk about what this recall is really about.”

University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse says that notions that legal cloud supposedly gathering over Walker “less of a cloud of law than a swarm of Democrats“, adding

Desperate Democrats. Embarrassing. You just had a former President appear on behalf of your candidate. Why not a little grace and dignity as you approach the end?

Indeed.

If it’s this bad right now heading into  the Wisconsin recall, can you imagine how it will be come November nationally, particularly if Obama, like the Democrat in the Badger State, is lagging in the polls in the run-up to balloting?

Due to the bigoted, bullying, anti-Christian tirade of the Obama Administration’s partner in “anti-bullying”….

…this blog has had its highest traffic in 2 years.

BWAHAHAHA.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I just noticed this quote from Savage’s wild-eyed bullying tirade…

“There is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding nights if they’re not virgins — at least not yet,” Savage said. “We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.”

“People are dying because people can’t clear this one last hurdle,” he said. “They can’t get past this one last thing in the Bible — about homosexuality.

If I didn’t know better, I would think he was criticizing Islamic governments around the world that routinely stone women & hang gays NOW. I don’t recall an American government official doing anything of the sort in at least 50 years. And back then, it would have most likely been a Democrat.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

So, if a man working in the “news” industry (who happens to be gay) concedes a conservative’s point about the president’s whining he is betraying gay people?

Earlier today, Bruce e-mailed me, alerting me to Ed Morrisey’s post where that one-time CPAC blogger of the year reports:

On Sunday evening, CNN’s Don Lemon told viewers that “people like Sarah Palin have a point” when they say that Barack Obama needs to stop blaming everyone else for the shortcomings in his own performance, including the economy.

Read the whole thing.  Note that the telegenic CNN anchor was not conceding a conservative’s point on a gay-specific issue. Still, as Morrissey reports, several bloggers to reference his sexuality in attacking him for his concession:

@donlemoncnn If you think the Right will make you their Pet Gay, they won’t. Obama is standing up 4 U & don’t forget who you are.—
Kees Valderol (@keesvalderol) April 24, 2012

@theosmelek @Lezlie61 @DonLemonCNN He’s a black gay man and a RW tool for a buck. His boyfriend is a CNN higher up too.—
Annie Lawton (@CurlynDoris) April 23, 2012

@donlemoncnn Little Gay kids are committing suicide because of the Right Wing. You could make an impact. You’re a wimp.—
Fritz Alverez (@FritzAlverez) April 24, 2012

Guess to these folks when you acknowledge a conservative critique of Obama you are somehow betraying gay people.  We gay conservatives have heard such notions before.  Seems that’s what happens when you have so politicized your sexuality — that any departure from left-wing ideology must needs make a gay man a “tool.”

Caught this poster on the electrical post at the corner of Melrose and Highland in Los Angeles:

Seems some folks just don’t want to move on from this story.

. . . is a battle being waged exclusively in the minds of individuals who hate Republicans.

There comes a moment in the lives of most gay conservative when the outrage we feel at intolerant attitudes toward and mean-spirted reaction to our politics becomes amusement at the narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of our left-of-center gay peers unable to understand the ideas of their ideological adversaries.  I receive reports on a near daily basis from gay Republican peers about Facebook “friends” “defriending” them for daring to disagree with their opinions of the president — or registering their own as Republicans.

Not to mention the nasty response we often hear when we offer opinions at odd with gay orthodoxy.  And sometimes we don’t even need identify ourselves as gay Republicans to experience the hatred some gay liberals feel for gay conservatives.  Just yesterday, I quipped that we “must always be suspicious of anyone who spends his life defining himself by what he is not — or making much of those he dislikes” in response to a liberal friend’s link to a blog post about an “ex-gay” video.

Shortly after my comment, a gay liberal chimed in, “self loathing gay men [Log Cabin?] are a bit strange!”  Another would offer (all caps in original, “REPUBLICAN –GAY = OXYMORON…OR IS IT JUST MORON? I FORGET.”

Do wonder why these guys hate so much.  And wonder as well if some of them have joined campaigns against H8, i.e., those opposing state recognition of same-sex marriage.

You look at these people, smile in amusement at their smallness, shake your head and feel sorry for them — for lacking the capacity to realize that someone can have different opinions from their own for sound reasons — and without harboring sinister motives.

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…)

In his interview with Bill Maher posted this morning, ABC News’ senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper offering a bit of commentary in posing his first question to the former funny man:

So with all the criticism of Rush Limbaugh for his comments about the Georgetown Law student, conservatives claim that there’s a double standard, with President Obama, Democrats and the media far more tolerant of offensive language when wielded by liberal or progressive media figures against conservative women. Is that a fair comparison? You have certainly used offensive words to describe some politicians you don’t like.

A leading journalist (and a good one) in the legacy media addresses an issue long reserved to right-of-center editorial pages and conservative blogs.  Bill Maher, perhaps for the first time, has been been forced to defend his mean-spirited anti-Republican rhetoric — for more than just one news cycle.  Instead of acknowledging that he may have overstepped the line or apologized (as Rush did) for an error of judgment, he whines that he’s just a comedian, trying to score a few laughs

Hugh Hewitt finds that Maher’s conclusion where the HBO host claims he had defended Rush’s “right to stay on the air” reeks of “self-importance” and “smashes Maher’s ‘comedian’ defense if it had any substance for anyone to begin with.  Simple comedians don’t take to the ramparts to defend anything.  They tell jokes.”

In playing defense, however, Maher reveals the hypocrisy of his position.   (more…)