I can no longer remember the first time someone called me, “self-hating” for being a gay Republican. Such language has become a ready response of many of our critics.  While using the comment section of our posts to offer this standard left-wing view of gay conservatives, they rarely address the arguments actual gay conservatives have made.

In a post yesterday, Michelle Malkin reminds us that it’s not just gay Republicans who are so labeled. She finds that some liberals trot out the slur on a regular basis when describing minority conservatives:

Minority conservatives hold a special place of gutter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person of color rejecting identity politics.

The haters have it bass-ackwards. In fact, “self-loathing” minorities love themselves, their families, and their liberty too much to succumb lazily to Big Nanny, race-card ideology.

One-time comedienne Janeane Garofalo used the “self-loathing” slur most recently to describe Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.  So narrow-minded are these people that they assume that an individual’s skin color, ethnic background or sexual orientation means he or she has to hold a particular point of view.

That’s a pretty prejudiced attitude toward minorities as it assumes individual members of those groups can’t think for themselves.

Once again, I wonder why it is that so many on the left so readily label those holding different points of view rather than respond to (or even recognize) their arguments.  Garofalo thinks there’s “something wrong” with people who “follow” the GOP.  That attitude is not too far removed from that of Soviet Communists who would submit those who disagreed with the regime to psychiatric treatment.

Let me repeat:  why do such liberals choose to insult their ideological adversaries rather than consider our ideas?

One of the Gipper’s favorite jokes involves a father who took his two young sons to see a psychiatrist because he was concerned about their contrasting personalities, one had become an extreme pessimist, the other an extreme optimist:

First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. . . . the little boy burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baffled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?” “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”

Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his out look, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. . . . [The boy] clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. “What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked . . . . “With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

I’d always interpreted that joke to mean that optimism and pessimism are innate qualities.  We are either one or the other.  Now, I’m not sure I believe that, but watching the Barack Obama these past few months (at least since his election) I’m beginning to wonder if he’s like the boy who burst into tears at the sight of a pile of brand-new toys.

Just watching him speak, I don’t get how he fills so many people with rapture.  His smiles seem forced and rarely linger on his face.  When he pauses for effect or to wait for applause to die down, his face rests in this very earnest look of determination.

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Sometimes the most amusing thing about reading the comments is noting how readily so many of our critics ignore the points we make (frequently misrepresenting them if they address them at all) to wonder why we don’t blog on this or that subject.

It’s as if we have all the time in the world and unlimited resources at our disposal.  They’d rather bait us for what we don’t say than engage us for what we do.

I do grant that, in the past week, they were right to wonder about our silence on one issue, RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s recent comments on same-sex civil unions.  It is something that we should take up–and if it were not for the press of other obligations this week, I would have done so sooner.

On Michael Gallagher’s radio talk show earlier this week,

Mr Steele was asked if “Republicans ought to consider some sort of alternative to redefining marriage and maybe in the road, down the road to civil unions.”

“No, no no,” he told talk show host Mike Gallagher.

“What would we do that for? What are you, crazy?

“No. Why would we backslide on a core, founding value of this country?

“I mean this isn’t something that you just kind of like, ‘Oh well, today I feel, you know, loosey-goosey on marriage.’”

I don’t expect the Republican chairman to come out in favor of gay marriage.  After all, the Democratic president opposes it as well.  But, I think it’s incredibly short-sighted of him to rule out same-sex civil unions.  While he must know he risks earning the ire of social conservatives if he himself comes out for civil unions, he makes them such conservatives seem the dominating faction in the party on such issues if he rules them out civil unions altogether.

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Those who follow the serious debate on gay marriage know that Jonathan Rauch and David Blankenhorn have become the two most responsible voices on their respective sides of the issue.  Last week, these two adversaries teamed up to offer A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage in the New York Times.  And for once, the Old Gray Lady serves the role she would like to serve, as a source of intelligent discussion on controversial subjects.

While Rauch and Blankenhorn disagree “on the merits of gay marriage,” they do “agree on two facts:”

First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon

They recognize the “parade of horribles” about which proponents of Proposition 8 warned us in their successful campaign last fall to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage in the California constitution. Both men want to ensure that religious organizations are not required to recognize unions at odds with their doctrines.

Thus they favor federal recognition of same-sex civil unions with “with robust religious-conscience exceptions:”

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Just two days ago, I blogged how the Obama Administration, in striving to “fit in” to the planning sesssion for the United Nations Durban II conference on racism, preferred “being liked” to standing up against the conference’s labeling Israel as the primary source of racism in the world.

Well, there’s some good news today.  The Administration has reversed course and is pulling out of the conference:

White House aides told Jewish leaders on a conference call today that the United States will boycott the United Nations’ World Conference on Racism over hostility to Israel in draft documents prepared for the April conference.

The aides, including an advisor to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Jennifer Simon, and longtime Obama advisor Samantha Power, said the administration will not participate in further negotiations on the current text or participate in a conference based on the text, sources on the call said.

(Emphasis added. Via The Weekly Standard.)  Kudos to the Administration for acknolwedging the hostility to Israel expressed in these documents as the reason for their withdrawal.

Ed Morrissey believes Stephen Harper stands to benefit the most; the Canadian Prime Minister “took a lot of heat” for refusing to participate at the outset.  He knew that it would be a repeat of the Israel-bashing which defined the initial conference eight years ago:

The conference reprises the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa that devolved into an anti-Jewish free-for-all. Canada and Israel have opted not to attend the conference, and some U.S. Jewish groups had been pressing the United States to do the same.

Preparations for a draft document so far have seen Iran leading a coterie of nations blocking inclusion of anything that might guarantee Jewish protections — including mention of the Holocaust — while inserting draconian language guarding Islam against “insult.”

I’m delighted to see the United States joining Canada and Israel in boycotting a conference where a rogue nation like Iran would have so much influence.  It’s nice to be able to praise the president and his team on a job well done.

I would have posted more pictures from the “Tea Party” on Santa Monica Pier right after the event, but was not getting good reception from my wireless card at the Cafe where I went after the rally with some great people I met there.

I had a great time; everyone was friendly. We were all impressed with the crowd, maybe as many as 200, given the short notice and the fact that in far-flung LA it was at one of the fringes of the metropolis. And it was a work day for most.

Oh, and to our constant critics, I regularly identified myself as a blogger at GayPatriot and, guess what, no one had a problem with my sexuality. In fact, one of the organizers said if he had known I was there, he would have invited me to speak.

The crowd as as ethnically diverse as the region and its politics ran the gamut from socially liberal Republican fiscal hawks to social conservatives to disciples of renegade Republicant Ron Paul. There were some cute guys as well as attractive women as some of the pictures below show:

This one I chose just for one of our most devoted readers, known to those who peruse the comments section as ILoveCapitalism.

I think some of our readers would say, “Yes,” to this guy:

And one for the ladies:

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One of the reasons Michael Barone has long been one of my favorite columnists is his long study of American history and deep understanding of our political and social traditions.  In his blog post, Obama’s Threat to Charities and Universities: His Budget and Taxes, he quotes Tocqueville to show how far back goes the American tradition of voluntarism.

Barone fears that by reducing the value of the charitable deduction, Obama’s budget threatens volunary associations:

This is an attempt to channel money away from voluntary associations and direct it to the state. Some of that money, in turn, would be directed to public employee unions, and much if not most of that would be directed to the Democratic Party. It would be interesting to know what White House counselor and former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers thinks of this.

It seems the president wants to centralize power in Washington and siphon some of the fruits of that control to various interest groups which support the Democratic Party. This is part and parcel of the liberal (in the current understanding of the term) vision of government as the solution to all too many of our problems.

That vision, however, is at odds with the American tradition. As Barone so wisely note, “One of the strengths of American society is that we do not rely solely on the government to address social problems.“

If it’s by Barone, it goes without saying: read the whole thing.

I’m now at a Santa Monica café with some of the cool people I met at the LA Tea Party for Freedom on Santa Monica Pier. We’re commenting on how friendly everyone. There was almost no name-calling and vitriolic attacks.  [GP comment:  Why would there be, no liberals were there. Too easy.]

I took a lot of pictures and here are some of the best. More to come.  And here are some more.

These colonial ladies are holding my sign:

UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): Sen. Tom Coburn wrote on Twitter today, “new debt proposed by Administration’s budget is larger than the total amount of debt accumulated by the government from 1789 to today.”  Unfathomable, yet true.

***GAYPATRIOT EXCLUSIVE***

In the wake of the Washington Blade story yesterday suggesting strong ties between Log Cabin Republicans and left-wing liberal activist Tim Gill, I was contacted by a long-time Log Cabin insider.  He is aware of my long-time hunt to connect the money trail between Gill & the “gay Republican” organization. 

This individual has been a source for many of my Log Cabin-related postings since 2004 and continues to have unprecedented access to the affairs, both past and present, of the national gay Republican organization.  I shall refer to my source as “Lance”, in order to protect his identity.

Lance confirmed the Log Cabin financial dependency on Tim Gill raised in the Washington Blade story.  He personally witnessed money being exchanged between Log Cabin’s National Office and Tim Gill’s political organization in Colorado:

I can tell you that [in early 2004],  I personally saw transfers and checks for $350,000 from Gill Action to LCR.  

Lance also confirms suspicions that I have made repeatedly here at GP.org, that the anti-Bush TV ads in 2004 run by Log Cabin were significantly financed by Tim Gill’s money.

Some was sent in and went directly out to the TV stations the other money went to pay the bills and staff. 

(Yeah, I feel like saying “I told you so”… but I won’t.)  Sometimes you do live long enough to see yourself vindicated!

Lance also raises questions about the past financial dealings at Log Cabin in 2004-05:

Bill Davenport [another donor] was in for about another $100k (now he won’t give anything) but other monies were sent to a “new” account opened in Virginia — there was at least one of those.  Craig Engle, the counsel for Log Cabin at the time, was determined to hide the flow and never knew I had been aware [of the other account]. 

I am sure well over HALF the LCR budget came from Gill that year (2004) and the next.  Including many, many more funds that went to Liberty Education Forum [a Log Cabin affiliated group]. 

The troubles at Log Cabin have only just begun, according to Lance.  And they involve former LCR President Patrick Guerriero’s expenses, which I questioned last year:

The melt down over the board is another hurricane brewing.  Someone, not sure who, finally looked at the Patrick Guerriero expense logs and it is a real goat f**k.  Including billing Log Cabin for a trip to Iowa that he (PG) submitted identical billing to the school that invited him to speak!

WHEW.  I appreciate Lance’s candor and courage.  Shouldn’t someone — besides those trying to cover each other’s asses on the Log Cabin board – investigate these allegations since LCR is a membership-driven organization.

Oh, did I mention that Log Cabin Republicans and the Gill Action Fund are both 501(c)(4), non-profit, tax-exempt organizations under the IRS code?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Imagine that a small newspaper uncovered this scoop: a rich conservative philanthropist, say Richard Mellon Scaife, directly and through his Foundation, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Democratic group to run ads targeting leading Democratic politicians.  Reporters from all the leading dailies, the three major networks as well as CNN, MSNBC and even FoxNews would be beating down the paper’s doors, trying to get access to their sources.

The story would lead their web-pages and dominate evening newscasts.

Scaife has already taken enough grief just for funding major conservative think tanks and periodicals, but here he’d have been caught playing the kind of dirty tricks that helped Richard Nixon earn the enmity of the news media.

So, what did my google news search yield when I typed in the name of a liberal philanthropist, Tim Gill and Log Cabin, an ostensibly Republican organization, to which said philanthropist had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, in large part, to run ads targeting leading Republicans?

I got two hits–and only one to an article referencing the matter–and here’s all it said, “TIm Gill rules the world, and, apparently, the Log Cabin Republicans.“  To be sure, Politico’s blogger Ben Smith also picked up the story, but rather than highlight that Democrat’s dirty tricks suggested the philanthropist’s largesse was a sign the GOP was unwelcoming to gays.

Like Bruce, I did not see Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to the president’s address to Congress on Tuesday night, so won’t comment on it, save to note that the reviews I have read have been mostly bad.  What amuses me in reading some of those reviews is how many have branded him a failure merely because he did not come across well.  As if poor presentation for one speech scuttles any chance he had of success on the national stage.

As if that matters more than his very real accomplishments.  But, the again, critics of conservatives will use anything to fault an up-and-coming Republican leader.  As Mary Katharine Ham put it, “Liberals who thought Sarah Palin’s brilliant RNC speech performance meant absolutely nothing are sure that Jindal’s off night means everything.“

To such liberals, it seems, a polished performance (save those by charismatic women) matters more than accomplishment, more than substance.  Look how quickly they flocked to Barack Obama when all the man had done was show that he could wow audiences with his formidable presence and elevating oratory.  (If Palin’s RNC speech mean nothing, how come Obama’s DNC speech four years previously meant everything?)

At this point in his career, Governor Jindal has accomplished far more that had then-Senator Obama when he made his debut on the national stage.  So, now we know that for Obama fans, presence is all, substance doesn’t matter.

And they accuse us of being shallow.

UPDATE: In a similar vein, Jim Treacher tried to watch Jindal’s speech “but it was too awkward. He seems to be the inverse of Obama, in that he’s much better at speaking extemporaneously than reading from a teleprompter. Which seems like a good thing, to me anyway.“

A reader alerts us to a piece in the American Spectator where Aaron Goldstein reminds us how significant Ronald Reagan’s opposition to Prop 6, the 1978 Golden State ballot initiative which would have banned gays from teaching in public schools, was to it the defeat of that pernicious proposal:

There is little doubt Milk’s yeoman efforts against Proposition 6 were significant. Yet if it were not for the intervention of Ronald Reagan the initiative would have almost certainly passed. Milk, to its credit, notes Reagan’s opposition to Proposition 6. However, its acknowledgement doesn’t properly do justice to how significant Reagan’s contribution was to this divisive debate.

(Emphasis added.) Goldstein notes that even David Mixner, a Friend of Bill (Clinton), commended the Gipper for his efforts:

There is no doubt in my mind that the man who put us over the top was California Governor Ronald Reagan. His opposition to Proposition 6 killed it for sure.

Senator Briggs, the author of the initiative, agreed.  When “asked by reporters who was to blame for its ignominious defeat, . . . he simply replied: ‘Ronald Reagan.’” Make sure to read Goldstein’s piece as he provides more detail on Reagan’s opposition to Prop 6, giving a window into the mind of this great man.

Let’s hope more gay people become aware of his involvement.  And heck, it just give them some ideas on defeating future such ballot initiatives and encourage them to enlist Republicans in their campaigns against them. (I mean, you know, like, why didn’t the leaders of “No on 8″ enlist Ward Connerly in their campaign?)

Given the role for which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had just honored him this past Sunday, Sean Penn, since he was determined to politicize his speech, should have at least given a shout-out to one noble politician whose voice clearly helped nix a pernicious anti-gay ballot initiative: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The Washington Blade today wonders if Log Cabin is under Democratic control:

The amount of money that the Gill Action Fund has contributed to the Log Cabin Republicans — about one-third of its total budget in some years — is raising questions about Democratic influence over the GOP organization and its search for a new president.

Tim Gill, founder and chair of Gill Action, is widely known for funding the campaigns of pro-gay politicians, many of them Democrats. He’s a wealthy entrepreneur and founder of Quark who has donated tens of thousands of dollars to various Democratic causes and candidates, including to the campaigns of Sens. John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd, as well as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Gill is viewed as publicity shy, but made a rare public appearance at last year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver where he lives.

Now we’ve taken our hits for criticizing the organization.  But, our criticism has been largely muted since Patrick Sammon has taken over.  That outgoing Log Cabin President has shown an understanding for conservatives ideas, a commitment to Republican candidates and respect for right-of-center gay bloggers.

Now, we’ve got what is quite possibly the most responsible gay news source in the country looking into Log Cabin’s Democratic ties.

More on this as we learn more.

UPDATE:  If this following is true, it is truly damning:

The sources also said a controversial TV commercial that Log Cabin aired targeting anti-gay former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2007 before the Iowa caucuses was written and funded by Gill Action, but executed through Log Cabin to ensure the GOP organization’s name was attached to it.

That would mean an organization run by Democrats used an ostensibly Republican organization to attack a Republican presidential candidate. Talk about political dirty tricks!

As you may remember, I took Log Cabin to task for running those ads:

Log Cabin Launches Another TV Ad Campaign Attacking a Republican

Log Cabin & Romney: Media Success, but Political Failure

Romney’s Withdrawal/Log Cabin’s Absence of Class

UP-UPDATE: Ben Smith at Politico has an interesting take on this story saying it’s a “sign of how hard it is for gay Republicans to survive in the” GOP. I disagree. If Patrick Guerriero’s Log Cabin had not so readily trashed the party during the Bush era, the organization might more readily have found funding forthcoming from gay and other Republicans.

Smith needs to recall how before Sammon took over, Log Cabin bent over backwards to please the left-leaning gay groups, often at the cost of alienating even their own rank-and-file.

I haven’t read The Corner at National Review Online all week.

K-Lo…. please get The Corner on Twitter!

PS — Patrick Ruffini declared Tuesday was the day that Twitter “jumped the shark”.   Ironically it was the same day I figured it all out.   That is pretty much par for the course with Internet & techy stuff for me.   Dan (GPW) is 6 months behind me. 

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

First of all, I did not watch President Obama or Gov. Jindal on Tuesday night.   But the reviews of Jindal have been terrible.  Which is too bad, cuz he is one of the smartest people I have ever known in public service.   I mean super-scary smart.

So, if any one in Baton Rouge reads us, I have some FREE advice:  HAVE JINDAL GO ON THE TONIGHT SHOW IN THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS.

Laughing at yourself is good.  Reagan was good at it, and the Tonight Show gig did wonders for Clinton after his long and boring convention speech in 1992 (or whenever the hell that was…. my distant past).

So there you go.  All free.  [Full disclosure:  I worked on a project with Jindal when he worked at HHS.  I've donated to his campaigns in the past. I'm a fan.  He wouldn't know me if he tripped over me while walking down a long hallway.]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

PS – Are you following me at Twitter?  I’m an addict now that I’ve figured what it is all about (took me 6 months!)  It is like crack for a blogger.  And I’m great with keeping it under 150 characters.   Oh, and there is a Twitter app for the iPhone.  What could be more awesome for a techno-stupid writer/reader of politics??

When addressing the recent revelations about how Bill Moyers, when in the Johnson White House, requested the FBI investigate the private sexual lives of his professional colleagues and political adversaries, liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald echoed some of our critics in pointing out that those things happened “45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration.“

In my Pajamas piece, I acknowledged, “Greenwald’s got a point that this happened 45 years ago. But doesn’t it bother Greenwald that Moyers never publicly acknowledged what he did, much less apologized for it?“  Well, in his response to Jack Shafer’s pieces in Slate on this matter, the one-time Democratic White House aide and current host of a program on a government-subsidized television network, fails to do just that.  He didn’t acknowledge his mistakes, indeed, responded as if he had done nothing wrong.

Instead he blames Goldwater (Johnson’s 1964 rival for the White House) and his allies for trying to politicize the arrest of Walter Jenkins, a Johnson Administration official who was caught having sex in a public restroom.  He goes on to praise the Johnson’s campaign for not leaking a supposed “tip” from then-FBI head J. Edgar Hoover that Goldwater operatives set Jenkins up!  (“What!?!?” was how I reacted when I read that.)

Only tangentially* does Moyers address the recently revealed memo detailing his requests that the FBI investigate administration officials suspected of having homosexual tendencies.   HIs letter is as Shafer describes it a “nondenial denial.”

This isn’t the first time when caught making a mistake, Moyers lashes out at a political rival. (This time, he even goes on to praise his own team!)  If he were a Republican, he’d be called paranoid.

The least Moyers could do is say that when he served in the Johnson White House, he did some things which, with the passage of time, he now realizes (has long since realized) were wrong.  He made mistakes and regrets them.  Instead, he refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing, refuses to admit making any mistakes, doesn’t says he’s sorry, refuses to apologize.

I did page searches for the words, “sorry,” “mistake,” “apology” “apologize” and “regret” and came up empty.

Recall how back during the Bush Administration, the media were so eager for the then-president to acknowledge his mistakes?  I wonder if Moyers was among their number.

For now he has shown himself even less capable than that Republican to admit wrongdoing (less capable even than Richard Nixon).  No wonder Shafer calls the Democrat’s smugness intolerable.

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While I have long been a fan of Barry Goldwater’s outspoken nature and commitment to conservative principles, my regard for the man increased when nearly twenty years ago, in the summer of 1989, I learned how he handled the arrest, at the height of the 1964 presidential campaign, of Walter Jenkins, the closest aide to his rival for the White House, then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson.  Jenkins had been arrested for having sex with a man in the men’s room at Washington, D.C. YMCA.

The then-GOP standard bearer refused to make political hay of the matter at a time when one could make political hay out of such things.  That refusal defined the decency of the then-Arizona Senator and future conservative icon.  He was a principled politician a gay man could admire.

In responding to Jack Shafer’s pieces in Slate, The Intolerable Smugness of Bill Moyers and More on Moyers, the longtime Johnson aide defines an attitude toward conservatives as identical to that of his ideological allies who believe their “ideological enemies” treat gays with scorn, “Sen. Goldwater and his allies in the press seized on Walter’s arrest as a sign of Washington’s ‘moral degeneration.’“  Wrong, Mr. Moyers, at least about Goldwater.  The historical record confirms what Goldwater wrote in his memoir:

Meantime, the White House anxiously awaited what we were going to say about the matter. It drove them crazy when I refused comment. Here was the cowboy who shot from the hip, the Scrooge who would put the penniless on the street, with no Social Security, the maniac who would blow our little children into the next kingdom in a nuclear Armageddon. If he would kill a million men and women, wouldn’t he destroy one individual? Why was the extremist pursuing moderation?

When the media clamor over the case had climbed to a fever pitch, I said the only matter which concerned the campaign was the national security aspect. We never spoke of it except to repeat the security factor in response to questions and pressure from the media. Our reply was always the same: The FBI was the competent agency to answer such questions.

(Emphasis added.)

I guess Bill Moyers was right, “his memory is unclear after so many years.”  Funny how that memory keeps a Republican in a bad light.  I guess he’s conditioned it to fit his imagination.

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Looks like LA is joining the ranks of cities hosting tea parties to protest the Obama Administration’s fiscal recklessness.

I got my sunglasses ready:

Looks like I’ll be heading out to the Santa Monica Pier on Friday morning February 27 from 9 to 10 AM. For more information, check the party’s facebook page.

Nick Gillespie anticipated my next post, so since he blogged about it first, I gotta give him credit (so read the whole thing)–and thank Glenn for linking the Reason editor’s observation:

If Obama is serious about restoring trust and confidence in the government’s ability to live within its gargantuan means (and he should be), he should start by rewriting the $410 billion Omnibus Spending Bill that the Democrats have just dropped like a big, wet, steaming, stinking pile of…pork barbecue.

I was going to say that at minimum, the president should threaten to veto the bill unless Congress eliminates its 8,570 earmarks. Then, if Congress sends it to him with the earmarks included, he should follow through on that threat.

Then, it will be up to congressional Republicans to sustain his veto by uniting against any attempt to override it.

It would be a chance for both the President and the GOP to show their mettle.

When I read that expression, “professionally offended,” in David Harsanyi’s column, I first thought he would be writing about those gay marriage advocates who readily dismiss supporters of traditional marriage as “haters.”  But, he was actually commenting on a recent cartoon in the New York Post:

It’s a discredit to our national confidence that each time some impolite thought — perceived or otherwise — is uttered, sketched or typed, a faction of professionally offended Americans engage in a collective hyper-sensitivity meltdown.

It has been a long-standing custom for opponents to shut down debate by tagging an adversary with some dreadful label. No one wants to be called a racist, a commie or a neocon.

Or a hater.

It seems that’s the strategy of gay marriage advocates, particularly given Sean Penn’s harangue at the Oscars.  They want to shame people into supporting gay marriage, not necessarily because it’s a good thing, but because they believe anyone who doesn’t favor “full equality” (whatever that means) for gay people must necessarily be a bad person.

Perhaps, I’m just comparing the two because my friend Dale Carpenter (one of the most thoughtful advocates of gay marriage) just e-mailed the link to a column of his that I had recently read in draft form.  And his wise words were in my mind when I followed Glenn’s link to Harsanyi’s column.

More sympathetic to the “No on 8″ campaign than most have been, Dale observes that those trying to defeat the ballot initiative, “were trying to overcome deeply embedded views about something Americans think is the foundation of responsible family life.“

That line really hit home to me.  It gets at at the essence of the opposition to same-sex marriage.  And it is important that advocates of same-sex marriage, like Dale, acknowledge that simple truth rather than let themselves become easily offended by opposition to the social change they favor.

Most advocates of traditional marriage have strongly held views about the meaning of that institution.  It’s not that they hate gay people.  It’s that they see gender difference at the heart of marriage.  And those who disagree with that interpretation should not let themselves be so readily offended by a heart-felt difference of opinion.