GUEST POST from GP Commenter V the K:

Matthew Shepard was a gay 21 year old college student, who was beaten to death in a terrible hate crime because… homophobia.

Status: False.

Stephen Jiminez – not a right-wing Christian apologist, but a gay investigative journalist who values the truth above ‘The Narrative’ – has published a book: The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.

Shepard’s tragic and untimely demise may not have been fueled by his sexual orientation, but by drugs. For Shepard had likely agreed to trade methamphetamines for sex. And it killed him.

And for daring to undercut the narrative with inconvenient little things called “facts,” Jiminez has been vilified by those who profit from promoting a narrative of imaginary hate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog recently accused Jimenez of serving as a lapdog of “right-wing pundits, radio hosts and bloggers.” In Washington, DC, gay activists pestered bookstores to cancel Jimenez’s appearances.

In a world with a properly functioning moral compass, Matt Shepard’s story would be a cautionary tale with the moral: “Don’t leave a bar with strangers to have sex and do drugs.”

But in the twisted world where only ‘The Narrative’ matters, Shepard was a complete innocent whose death is useful in villainizing people who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

If you know a lot of leftists, as I do, chances are you’ve encountered a link to this interview of Reza Aslan by Lauren Green at some point in the past two days or so.  They see the interview as an example of the evil of Fox News.  They claim it illustrates the bias of the network, and that it illustrates how “smart” the author is and how he “totally pwns the interviewer’s assumptions.”

I watched the interview, and I encourage you to do the same, but my main reaction to their claims about it is to think:  Excuse me?  Did we even watch the same interview?  I believe neither the interviewer nor the guest came off particularly well in this exchange.

Lauren Green comes across as someone who likely hasn’t read the book, but who has read many reviews of the book, and is trying to provoke a response from the author. Reza Aslan, though, comes across as the ultimate disingenuous academic who says, “I am just a historian, I have no agenda whatsoever.”  He keeps reiterating that he is an academic with a PhD, as though that is an adequate defense against bias.  Green could have done a more skillful job challenging his assumptions or his arguments; her questions only serve to make him defensive, and so the interview doesn’t appear to accomplish much for either party.

Nevertheless, I didn’t view the interview as a complete failure for Fox News.  Quite to the contrary, I thought it illustrated that there is more journalistic spirit alive at Fox News than at most of the mainstream press outlets who have interviewed the author or reported on the book.  Why do I say that?  Because, the other morning I had to endure this NPR interview with the same author of the same book, and I heard a lot of claims by Aslan about his book, and his beliefs, but no one challenged those claims or tried to interrogate Aslan’s motivations for writing the book that he wrote.  The NPR interview was so concerned with helping him make his points, that it could have just as easily come from the public relations office of his publisher.

Not surprisingly, the other day NPR’s website featured this story entitled “Reza Aslan Hearts NPR”: “Author and religious scholar Reza Aslan is one of those people who’s at NPR West so often that he blurs the line between guest and employee. We always joke with our regulars that they should have a punch card, and when it’s full, they get their own cubicle.”  Even less surprisingly, today NPR has this sympathetic story about the reaction on the left to the Fox News  interview.

When you compare NPR’s very sympathetic pieces helping Aslan promote both his book and his talking points, with Lauren Green’s somewhat awkward attempt to interrogate him, though, it’s pretty clear to me which “news” outlet is more interested in informing its viewers and letting them decide for themselves.   Green’s interview told us much more about Aslan than NPR’s pieces: it showed us something of his character, it introduced us to some of the controversies surrounding the book, and it raised the question of his worldview and its influence on his writing.

And as it turns out, there is a lot of reason for controversy, as Pamela Geller Robert Spencer points out in her his own detailed post about the controversy (hat tip: Pamela Geller).   Geller Spencer writes:

I don’t care about his scholarly credentials. Even if everything he had said about his degrees had been true, it would confer on his book no presumption of accuracy or truth. I am constantly assailed for lacking scholarly credentials, but as it happens, when it comes to writing about religion I have exactly the same credentials as Aslan, a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. in Religious Studies. His other two degrees are in other fields.

But anyway, it doesn’t matter: there are plenty of fools with degrees, and plenty of geniuses without them. My work, and Aslan’s, stands or falls on its merits, not on the number of degrees we have. Aslan’s pulling rank on Lauren Green and starting to reel off (inaccurately) his degrees was a sign of insecurity: it implied that he didn’t think his book could stand on its merits, and had to be accepted because he had a lot of degrees. And indeed, his book doesn’t stand on its merits.

I encourage you to be sure to read Geller’s Spencer’s whole post.

To my mind, the reaction on the left tells us more about their fondness for credentials and their disdain for Fox News than anything else;  that the same people who view this interview as an instance of intolerable bias think nothing of the swill served up regularly by NPR and MSNBC should tell us all we need to know.

Recent-ish, and I found them worthwhile:

• Shelby Steele on The Decline of the Civil Rights Establishment. “The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power…based on the presumption that [blacks] are still…victimized…This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a ‘poetic truth.’ Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth…[listeners] say, ‘Yes, of course,’ lest we seem to be racist…this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth…One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family?” – Read the whole thing.

• A good piece from Cathy Young reviewing the depth of the Established media’s malpractice in this case, and one from Bill Whittle expressing his outrage over that malpractice.

• Now old, but: Video of the jury reading the Not Guilty verdict. (Just to see the moment. And sorry, but there is no honest way to force Zimmerman into a ‘white’ identity; by conventional standards, he seems clearly a Latino / person of color.)

BONUS (from Kurt in the comments): Bryan Preston critiques how Obama has cast his lot with the race-baiters. “In Florida, blacks benefit from ‘stand your ground’ laws more often than whites do…[and] the president went on to acknowledge that…’stand your ground’ was not invoked in Zimmerman’s defense, [but said] we should re-examine such laws anyway. Logically, why?”

UPDATE: Zimmerman helps people, despite the nasty death threats that Trayvon Martin supporters have inflicted not only on him, but even on strangers who (say) happen to have a phone number similar to his.

Well, well, well.

Last night Trayvon Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel gave CNN her first interview since testifying in the George Zimmerman murder trial.

Jeantel opened up and let loose on the murder case that gripped that nation.

She explained to CNN’s Piers Morgan how she warned her childhood friend that Zimmerman –  could be a gay rapist!

MORGAN: You felt that there was no doubt in your mind from what Trayvon was telling you on the phone about the creepy ass cracka and so on, that he absolutely believed that George Zimmerman, this man, you didn’t know who he was at the time, but this man, was pursuing him?

JEANTEL: Yes.

MORGAN: And he was freaked out by it?

JEANTEL: Yes. Definitely after I say may be a rapist, for every boy, for every man, every — who’s not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creep out?

So according to #RachelJeantel … #Trayvon attacked a guy HE had profiled as being gay. Isn’t that an interesting turn of events. #tcot

— Bruce Carroll (@GayPatriot) July 16, 2013

Ironically that makes much more sense. stoned out of his gourd, wanting to avoid being cruised he attacked. @AppFlyer @GayPatriot

— Kurtis Marsh (D) (@kurtismarsh) July 16, 2013

@GayPatriot .sounds like TM was afraid of gays… And that by definition is homophobia. TM throw 1st punch at "gay" Zimmerman. Hate crime?

— Kristin Byron (@ksbyron) July 16, 2013

-Bruce @GayPatriot

In the comments for my last post on Obamacare commenter Ignatius began his discussion of the legislation’s undesirable albeit unstated aims with the observation: “I believe that political discussions would be much easier if those on the right jettisoned this quaint idea that leftists have good intentions.”  I highlighted that sentence in a subsequent comment, and other commenters took up the theme, as well.

Commenter Eddie Swaim observed:

While reading the comments about “the left,” it suddenly occurred to me that after listening to Rush Limbaugh for 25 years, he has always been careful to separate “the left” politicians in D.C. from “the left” common everyday folk. I always agreed with him but now I’m not so sure. Most of the gay male liberals that I know fall right in line with the D.C. politicians. Anything and everything is o.k. if it hurts [conservatism] or wins them a battle against the right, whether or not their action is legal or ethical. The ends always justify the means.

Likewise, commenter Steve linked to this video of Ann Coulter discussing the tendency of liberals and the lamestream media to fall back on “racial demagoguery” to advance their agenda in cases like the Zimmerman trial.

I thought of all three comments when I came across another link to an article by John Hawkins dated March 27, 2012.  Hawkins’ article is entitled “5 Uncomfortable Truths About Liberals,” and I encourage everyone to read the whole thing.  For the moment, though, I’ve summarized his five points below.  Hawkins writes that:

1) Most liberals are hateful people.

2) Liberals do more than any other group to encourage race-based hatred.

3) Most liberals are less moral than other people.

4) Most liberals don’t care if the policies they advocate work or not.

5) Most liberals are extremely intolerant.

Now while the language in those observations is strong enough that Hawkins could be accused of engaging in hyperbole, I think a certain amount of strong language is necessary for describing leftist rhetoric and means of argumentation.  There’s no need to take my word for it, though, read the whole thing and decide for yourself.

I would say, though, that in both the Zimmerman case and in the debates (and protests) over late-term abortion restrictions in Texas, we’ve seen many of the traits Hawkins describes displayed quite openly by many leftists.

Likewise, consider this article in The Advocate which a Facebook acquaintance brought to my attention.  The article focuses on the “mighty change of heart” which many Mormons have undergone on the issues of gay rights and gay marriage.  True to what both Hawkins and our commenters noted, most gay leftists will have none of it, as is very evident from their comments on the Advocate article.  Rather than welcome the changes underway in the LDS church, they are expressing their hatred and intolerance for the Mormons in very hostile language.  Read the comments there and see for yourself.

Now while I know a number of our readers might believe that the Mormons brought the hatred on themselves through the church’s advocacy against Proposition 8 in California in 2008, I’d point out a few things that the left never will, namely: 1). Despite what the HRC and its allies would have us believe, opposition to gay marriage isn’t necessarily motivated by hate, however easy or convenient it may be to believe that, and 2). Individuals are and should be defined by more than their affiliation with some group or collective.  The gay left is always up in arms about what this group or that group said or did about some gay issue, but they never have qualms about denouncing or smearing or insulting members of that group in a similar manner.

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…)

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.”

“Occasionally,” writes Tina Korbe, a woman who feels Howard Dean’s party patronizes those of her sex

. . . Democrats give me the distinct impression that their positions on, say, gay marriage or immigration are based more on the desire to win votes than cohesive principles. It’s suspicious, for example, that the president’s official position is against gay marriage but “evolving.” It’s almost as though he’s just waiting for an overwhelming majority of Americans to be in favor of gay marriage before he switches his position. Reducing gays, Muslims, Latinos, immigrants and women to their concerns over gay-specific, Muslim-specific, Latino-specific, immigrant-specific and women-specific positions reduces them to something less than a whole, entire, complex person. But no person is reducible to the tiniest sliver of himself — his sexuality, his religion, his ethnicity, his immigrant status, his gender. We all care — broadly — about human flourishing. That’s what Republicans want — a prosperous, flourishing, fully human society.

She says this in response to former chair of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean who, in his latest rant, accused the GOP of engaging in “Gay-bashing, Muslim-bashing, Latino-bashing, immigrant-bashing, women-bashing every day”. Sounds like he got his information from the left-wing blogs which supported his 2004 bid for the White Rather rather than from actual interaction with actual Republicans.

Korbe acknowledges she “cannot speak for gays, Muslims, Latinos or immigrants”, but she contends that as a woman, she has

. . . found the Democratic Party’s approach to my vote far less loving and far more insulting than the Republican Party’s approach to that vote. While Democrats reduce me to nothing more than my sexuality and assume that I cannot even pay for my own birth control, Republicans appeal to me as a whole person, to my ability to take personal responsibility for myself, to work hard, to reap the benefits of my labors and to voluntarily share those benefits with whose who truly aren’t able to be responsible for themselves.

Well, Tina, you speak for me.  And, I would dare say, for a good number of our blog readers.   (more…)

The media narrative notwithstanding, many conservatives would be willing to support a gay or lesbian candidate for public office if he or she advocated sensible policies.  Note for example the California Republican Party’s recent endorsement of Brad Torgan.  You can join me in supporting his bid to represent the citizens of California’s 50th Assembly district by donating to his campaign.

Scanning the blogs before bed last night, I chanced upon Seth Mandel’s piece in Commentary Contentions about the upcoming (next year) contest for Mayor of New York.  He reported that frontrunner City Council Speaker Christine Quinn whom he described as “openly gay, and planning to marry her partner this year” supports a police policy (controversial in some liberal circles) that has helped reduce crime in the Big Apple.

With identity politics often placing “New York’s Finest, the NYPD, at the center of attention”. Mandel writes, the “police department’s stop-and-frisk policy has come under fire from minority advocates claiming racial profiling”.  As other candidates favor firing the popular police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, Quinn offers a different approach:

While [former city comptroller Bill] Thompson [also running for Mayor] responded to the stop-and-frisk policy by threatening to fire Kelly, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is also likely running for the Democratic nomination, lashed out at both the possible profiling element and the efficacy of the policy, Quinn took a more thoughtful tack. She suggested some changes to the policy in a letter to Kelly, but did not advocate scrapping it. She also included some praise for the policy: “We understand the vast majority of the lives saved were men of color and that part of the NYPD’s policing strategy that led to this decline is based on stop, question and frisk.”

Mandel believes that Quinn’s respect for the city’s police force has put her at the “front of the pack” in the race for Rudy Giuiliani’s old job.  Sounds like the kind of gal around whom his supporters could rally.

Now nearly fifty years ago, in one of the greatest speeches any American has ever delivered, Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed his vision of how to treat people who differ from ourselves, “I have a dream that my four 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.”

It’s not the color of their skin which defines them, but the quality of their character.  So too should it be with sexual orientation.

It seems, alas, that we’ve gone for the vision of a society where we evaluate each individual according to his qualities of character to one where his difference becomes paramount.  Two weeks ago, I blogged about a proposal being floated in the University of California system to ask “incoming freshmen to identify their sexual orientation, a move that might cement such declarations as an emerging topic in the college admissions process.”

That story is getting more legs, with an LA Times report yesterday on the matter:

California’s state colleges and universities are laying plans to ask students about their sexual orientation next year on application or enrollment forms, becoming the largest group of schools in the country to do so. The move has raised the hopes of gay activists for recognition but the concerns of others about privacy.

“The negatives of this,” writes, Tina Korbe,

. . . vastly outweigh the potential benefits. Not only could the information be improperly used — say to either discriminate against or give preference to LGBT students — but it also suggests sexual orientation is somehow relevant to education. The college admissions process should aim to determine what students would be able to meet the rigorous academic requirements of a university experience.

Read the whole thing.  Knowledge of an individual’s sexual orientation won’t help determine whether or not he has that ability.   (more…)

Many of us, including yours truly, often challenge our liberal friends’ comments and links on Facebook, generally engaging in intelligent exchanges, but sometimes in exchanges of insults.  In a handful of cases, we suddenly find a partisan adversary has silently “de-friended” us, other times we finds ourselves subject to a barrage of insults accusing us of narrow-mindedness, self-hatred or even racism.

The other day, a gay conservative lamented on Facebook that it had . . .

Been a rough year with politics! Lost friends of 20 years and more because of Obama. Went from everybody liked being around me to the outcast with very few gay friends. Attacks have been very personal. Kinda blue here.

And he’s not the only one — as indicated by the comment thread. One man reported that a friend had told him he “deserved [his] heart attack for opposing Obamacare.” Another wrote that at a gay and lesbian film festival (not in LA), he and his partner sponsor:

People will be openly hostile to me and my partner (we’re both conservative). Very few are what I would even call tolerant. I continue to be a sponsor of the film festival because it is my last remaining tie to the gay commnunity. Without it, I have ZERO contact with the gay “community” – and my circle of gay friends is only a few. When I was a lib I had literally dozens of gay friends and was quite known in the gay community at the time.

Interesting that with a few notable exceptions, I have had almost the exact opposite experience at Outfest, the gay and lesbian film festival here in LA.  Most folk there continue to treat me with respect even after learning of my political leanings.

Another participant in the thread had not been so fortunate.  Three “so-called good friends” of another gay man told him “they could not be friends [because of his] dislike of B.O.”  From their attitude, he gleaned “they were not true friends, because all of my true friends, while we do not agree politically, we accept it, and move on” — which is what most of us experience. (more…)

What is old is new again!  The alleged “gay Republican organization” known as Log Cabin has once again decided it is more important to tear down our candidates rather than defeat President Obama’s America-destroying agenda.

Log Cabin – a fully bought-off affliliate of the Radical Gay Left’s Tim Gill – attacked Cain after the GOP candidate appeared this morning on “The View”.

“It is unfortunate that Mr. Cain chose to divert attention away from a solid platform of greater liberty and smaller government by indulging in anti-gay rhetoric. Log Cabin Republicans sincerely hope that Herman Cain is open to hearing the evidence and changing his mind on these issues.”

Chris Barron has an awesome, and gosh…. FACTUAL…. response to this Cain smear campaign by The Professional Gays.

 Cain specifically says on The View that he hasn’t seen enough scientific evidence to prove that homosexuality isn’t a choice and he admits that others have drawn different conclusions.

Finally, far from attacking gay people, Mr. Cain has made it clear that he is willing to be a President for all Americans – including gay people.  Mr. Cain does not support a federal marriage amendment, will not reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, supports policies like the Fair Tax, free market healthcare reform and social security personal savings accounts – all of which would benefit gay and lesbian Americans.

Back in June I wrote about the left, and in particular the gay left’s reaction to Cain:

For the gay left none of this will matter.  All that matters is the group hug.  For the gay left, it isn’t important whether the policies pursued by a candidate or a party actually improve the lives of gay people, all that matters is that they get the pat on the head – the assurance that they are ok.  I don’t need the group hug, nor do I need affirmation from the government that I am ok.  What I need is a President and a Congress that will pursue policies that will make life better for me and my family.

It is time the gay community put real policy before emotional theater, and that is exactly why gay people should be willing to listen to and consider the candidacy of Herman Cain.

The Gay Left, including their paid-off Log Cabin affiliate, are too invested in the Obama Democrats to have a rational response to the Cain candidacy.  Too bad.  But their hatred of conservatives is too blatant to ignore these days.  So at least there is that.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Blogress diva Ann Althouse has a smart post on U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s “likely” run for Joe McCarthy’s seat in the United States Senate.  The Madison-based law professor wonders at her Congressman’s fund-raising appeal where said Democrat chided those “cynical voices” who doubted her “from the very beginning”, dismissing her as an outspoken lesbian:

I think the problem is that she’s too liberal. But I understand the strategy of disparaging those terrible voters by calling them homophobic and sexist instead of facing the reality that they aren’t as far left as she is. Speaking of “cynical voices.”

Does seem Ms. Baldwin is aping the strategy of all too many gay Democrats.  It’s all about her sexuality, not her policies.  Note, she’s the one bringing up her sexuality.

We don’t need another big-spender in the U.S. Senate, another politician enamored with Obama’s big-government policies.  We need someone committed to cutting the size and limiting the scope of the federal government.  And that individual is not the Obama loyalist from Madison.

To be sure, it would be great to have a lesbian in the Senate.  So, let’s draft Cynthia Yockey to take on Ben Cardin and Tammy Bruce to take on Dianne Feinstein.  Both women would be vast improvements on the incumbents.

Following the gay marriage debate in New York, Stephen H. Miller observes:

What’s going on in the New York marriage struggle shows why winning over Republicans (even just a few!) matters greatly. But those who run our leading LGBT political lobbies still seems to be firmly committed to a one-party strategy. Their identity politics is all bound up in being Democrats.

Indeed.

(Emphasis added.)

With Steve’s words in mind, I was wondering how HRC’s leadership thinks they can influence members of the majority caucus (you know those who set the agenda, chair the committees) in the U.S. House of Representatives now that the group has endorsed Barack Obama for reelection before the first ballots have even been cast in the contest for the GOP nomination.

I mean, isn’t part of their work lobbying our federal legislators?  And showing just how eager you are to back one party’s standard bearer is not likely to endear your organization to the opposing party’s leadership.  Just sayin’, ya know?

On Friday, a friend posted an icon on Facebook asking, “I was born gay, were you born hateful?”

What struck me was the assumption inherent in this question — and how it parallels the attitude of many in the gay community to those offering views at odds with their own.  Advocates of California’s Proposition 8, they claimed, did not favor traditional marriage because they saw the institution as defining a union between individuals of different sexes, but because they hated (or, h8ed) gay people.

Disagreement, one of her friends wrote, “does not equate to hate in any of the studies that I have looked at lately.”  Liking his comment, I told my friend, a wise a kind lesbian that I agreed with this friend of hers:

Having spent a good part of my adulthood as an openly gay men among conservatives and Republicans, I have found much disagreement on gay issues and even some (oftentimes crazy) criticism of what some deem the “homosexual lifestyle,” but very little actual hatred. I’ve found more hatred, far more hateful attitudes, among left-of-center associates, including, indeed, especially among gay and lesbian left-wingers.

I wonder (and not for the first time) why those who use such venom in their criticism of conservatives and Christians, must themselves label their critics as haters and their arguments as hateful.

UPDATE:  As the friend who posted the icon has since commented, I wanted to make clear that in the first ¶, it is the icon which asks.   Here’s a screenshot of that icon:   

When reader V the K e-mailed a link reporting that “75 percent of religious persecution being carried out against Christians,” I sent back a hasty response, edited for clarity:

Shhh. . . don’t tell the left.  It’ll upset their narrative.  Remember, white male Christians are responsible for the most persecution in the world.

One day, someone will have to examine why so many on the left have decided that the only oppression that matters is that done by white Christians or Jews.  Why do so many in the West, those with a European Jude0-Christian background, assume the victim always be the “other”?

Well, it seems one of our readers has.  Writing on his blog, he looks at how these Westerners have turned out society’s tradition of self-correction against itself:

Part of the trouble with this noble self-criticism, based as it is on the multiculty prescript that one may critique one’s one people but not another’s (especially if brown), is that the other groups are not doing this. While Westerners flagellate themselves in this ongoing and interminable White Lent, the other tribes are flexing their muscles, singing their virtues and heartily agreeing with us that we do not deserve to live. This is a part of why Obama’s repentance and apology tours provoke me so much.

A lot of liberal behavior reminds me of two particularly female psychopathologies: bulemia and self-cutting.   Liberals, especially the comfortable classes, alternately gobble up the pleasures of the West and then, guilt ridden, vomit them out. And it seems that they are happiest when they are cutting up their own bodies.

Read the whole thing.

RELATED:  DOJ to white male bullying victims: Tough luck

*or Jews.

It seems for some gay activists, everything is political.  Mark, one of our readers, alerted me to a story about which he, while regularly disagreeing with yours truly, offers commentary that I find spot-on:  ”stunts like this make gay people look like idiots”.  Well, fortunately, most Americans (or so we hope) won’t judge all gay people by the juvenile antics of this one man who wallows in his (perceived) victimhood:

A gay man was excused from jury duty in New York last week because he said that discrimination against gays makes him a second-class citizen and therefore he couldn’t be impartial.

Jonathan D. Lovitz, an actor, model, and singer who will be on Logo’s upcoming show Setup Squad, wrote on his Facebook page, “I raised my hand and said, ‘Since I can’t get married or adopt a child in the state of New York, I can’t possibly be an impartial judge of a citizen when I am considered a second class citizen in the eyes of the justice system.’”

And instead of criticizing the man for this self-righteous stunt, the Advocate reports that some activists are encouraging “others to use the strategy”.   Such individuals have so internalized the victim mentality that they define themselves as second-class citizens.  Wonder why they need convince themselves of such status.

This is not to say that things are perfect for gay Americans, but the notion that we’re second-class citizens suggests we lack the fundamental rights and privileges associated with citizens, many denied African-Americans in certain states until federal legislation in the mid-1960s overturned discriminatory laws and practices. (more…)

Reader Peter Hughes alerted me to Ann Coulter’s latest column, one of the simultaneously funniest and most insightful commentaries on current events I’ve read all year.  Currently finishing her next book and is thus

. . . only able to catch bits and pieces of the news this month, but, based on what I’ve heard from the mainstream media, I’m pretty sure the conservative movement is now being led either by Jared Loughner or GOProud’s president, Chris Barron.

Pretty  much sums up their coverage of the first six weeks of this year.   A deranged Tea Party member shot up a rally featuring a Democratic Congresswoman while CPAC is all about GOProud.  Then, she joins Sarah Palin, albeit in a much different tone, in welcoming gay conservatives into the movement:

No, we don’t generally care for identity politics of any sort, much less hearing about people’s sex lives, even Nino Scalia’s. (And judging by the number of children he has, it’s pretty active.) Conservatives believe in individual rights, low tax rates, fighting terrorism and punishing criminals — so do gays! They also happen to believe Judy Garland was the most underappreciated and misunderstood person in the history of show business. I don’t think most gays care about gay marriage; they like going to the gay marriage meeting because it’s a good way to meet other gays.

Read the whole thing.

Comes interesting news this week that an internal Democratic poll shows strong support for President Obama among gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. Of note, this poll was done before the repeal of DADT last month.

Some serious concerns about the interpretation of this poll. First of all, the poll was released only to the Huffington Post blog and only “on the condition that the full survey not be published.” Whenever a) the internals of a poll are not released and b) the results are sent only to a partisan publication for dissemination, it’s clear an agenda is being advanced by the numbers, that might not be borne out by the actual findings.

What’s more, in such an instance, plenty of questions arise: 64% either “approved” or “strongly approved”. So was that 10% “strongly” and 54% simply approving? Perhaps that’s splitting hairs, but it’s still significant. That the original results aren’t released suggests the depth of support might not be as impressive as its breadth. Another question: Where are these folks? There are no comparable approve/disapprove numbers from the same poll to indicate this demographic is any more supportive of Obama than the population (from which the respondents were separated as being “LGBT”) overall. Point being, poll gays and lesbians in San Francisco, you’ll likely find the same level of overwhelming support for Teh One as you would from that city’s overall population. Bottom line, this poll leaves many more questions than answers, if you’re willing to ask them.

But one great thing it does is offer up once again the opportunity to discuss the following thesis:

As more “gay” issues are settled by democratic means (as opposed to court mandates and decrees), and are therefore taken off the table, do you suppose gays and lesbians will begin to concern themselves with more important issues like the economy and national defense when it comes to picking their representatives? When HRC, Equality Matters and the slew of other left-wing advocacy groups don’t have things like DADT, ENDA, and marriage to flail about, do you think gays and lesbians will start to vote on more universal issues, and therefore gravitate more toward those who share American values of small government, low taxes, individual liberty, and a strong national defense?

To expand on the point to which Dan alludes directly below, the caricature of conservatives being ogres who simply hate gays and want to keep us all down and “would send us all to an island if they had their way” may be useful in this (and previous) day and age when some are still so animated about certain “rights”. But take away those “struggles”, and who would you vote for?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

One of the best arguments I’ve heard against the repeal of DADT (which, as we say in the business is now OBE) is that it will lead to a new level of mamby-pambyness vis-a-vis gay troops demanding they be treated “fairly”. Often as we’ve noticed, when any “rights” group is looking for “fairness” it’s often simply code for “special rights”.

For the majority (based on my experience) of gay troops, our lives will likely not change much on a day-to-day basis. I, for one, am not planning to “come out” to anybody save a few close friends where I work. I’m expecting, in fact, that they likely know about me anyway. (After all, such a devilishly handsome man with so much going for him my age not married? He must be gay! Har har, but anyway…) Inasmuch, I don’t expect most gay troops will be demanding anything much more than simply not getting kicked out if we forget to use the gender-neutral pronouns when speaking of our dates.

This is not to say there won’t be a few (which will likely seem like much more than a few) flamboyantly unprofessional troops whose conduct will surely be seen as unbecoming and hopefully will be counseled right away. That will be a touchy subject I’ll save for another post.

For now let’s talk about “special rights”.

Many have argued this is a stepping-stone to a larger “gay rights” agenda. I’ve never seen it as such, and I regret that there will definitely be many gay “rights” champions who will misuse this to further their own agenda (much as those opposed to gay “rights” will also use it to further their agenda). They have no concern necessarily about the defense of the Nation nor about the military. We are a tool for them to use and they should be ashamed, if they knew any such thing as shame in the first place.

There’s another thing that I think might come of this which would be a good sign. Check out this quote from the DoD’s report on the repeal of DADT:

We do not recommend that sexual orientation be placed alongside race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, as a class eligible for various diversity programs, tracking initiatives, and complaint resolution processes under the Military Equal Opportunity Program. We believe that doing so could produce a sense, rightly or wrongly, that gay men and lesbians are being elevated to a special status as a “protected class” and will receive special treatment. In a new environment in which gay and lesbian Service members can be open about their sexual orientation, we believe they will be accepted more readily if the military community understands that they are simply being permitted equal footing with everyone else.

(emphasis added)

This is a sentiment I (as most libertarian conservatives) have long espoused: Equal treatment, not special treatment. Which leads to the next logical question: Why should “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin” be the basis for special treatment either? If gays and lesbians “will be accepted more readily” if not treated differently, wouldn’t that also be the same for members of these other groups? What an interesting outcome of this whole episode if the entire concept of “special” categories of troops went by the way-side?

For all the talk (and legitimate, I might add) of “unintended consequences” surrounding the repeal of DADT, what a happy accident it would be if, by virtue of this new policy change, we had to rethink how we treated everybody. Because if there’s no good reason to treat gays and lesbians as “diversity programs” (and there isn’t), then why do we need them in the first place? This could be a whole new chapter in respecting each other as individuals and as part of a larger team rather than the social balkanization the Left so often loves to use to drive us apart.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)