Follow-up to my post about the gay rights movement (as distinct from gay rights)

Obama First Gay PresidentMy post the other day about the gay rights movement didn’t touch upon the movement’s merits. Instead, I posited that the movement grates on me because the Democrats are using it as an avoidance technique to distract people’s attention from the administration’s myriad failures in every area within the executive’s scope. The comments I got from all of you were amazing.

Eidolon’s comment resonated especially strongly with me since it touches up the intellectual dishonesty, bullying, and Alinsky-ite targeting behind the whole “homophobia” movement. I therefore took the liberty of re-printing that comment here:

One thing that really gets to me about all the “gay rights” stuff is the insanity of insisting that anyone who doesn’t change their beliefs as facilely as the most hardcore advocates do is evil. Holding the view that Obama had when he was elected in 2008 is now hateful and bigoted.

I can’t understand the thinking here. There is no new factual information; there’s been no “gay gene” discovered (not that I see how that would matter either, but at least it would be something new), there’s no definitive fact that changes the nature of the situation. It’s not as though something has changed which invalidates the positions of nearly all people throughout all of history on the subject. It’s not as though it has been clearly proven that the Earth is not flat, in which case I can understand feeling that those who cling to the old view without evidence are backwards.

Besides, do they think that people like Hillary, who in the 90’s gave an impassioned speech that amounted to “how dare anyone suggest that I’m any less dedicated to marriage being between one man and one woman than anyone else,” hated gays then but suddenly stopped hating them recently? Did Obama hate gays until a couple of years ago? Or do you have to change your views constantly in order to not hate gays? It’s amazing that if you were an advocate for civil unions 10 years ago and are still one today then you went from loving to hating gays while standing still.

MLK argued successfully that racial discrimination and segregation were not consistent with the moral foundation of the United States, nor with the Christian faith. He understood that not all people who opposed him were evil, and continued making his case to them. He said that one must love others if one is to change their minds. The gay rights advocates, apparently know better; one must constantly accuse, belittle, lie to, and sue those with whom one disagrees. One should not acknowledge any evil done in the name of one’s cause, and should proudly trumpet any lies that might be useful to the cause. One need not acknowledge this his opponents are human beings, and should freely call them bigoted monsters while giving no new evidence or argument as to why he should change his view. Leaving others alone with whom one disagrees is not enough to not be evil, one must enthusiastically endorse the correct views.

Do they not see how dangerous this is? How this exact mechanism, bullying demands of acceptance without making a remotely convincing case, dismissal of all disagreement of any kind as bigotry, and rejection of the accumulated knowledge of the generations, could be used for anything at all? You could certainly use this mechanism to convince people to practice any number of awful things. This would be an excellent way to implement eugenics, population control, or other evil policies that can be made to sound nice when you don’t think about them.

I know they control the culture, so they think that would never happen. But apparently they’ve forgotten that liberals once passed Jim Crow laws and endorsed eugenics (not to mention socialism and communism). Cultural inertia meant that these practices didn’t catch on as much as they could have in America, and eventually their evil was exposed and they were discarded. Terrible, terrible damage could be done if we rush to judgement and force the views of a small elite on the general populace in this way.