The 2% In Charge

The 2% In Charge

My friend Stacy McCain (the other McCain) quotes something recently by Andrew Sullivan, who went from gay conservative to gay lunatic in 2004 over the gay marriage issue, as complaining that the persecution of homosexuals by refusing to recognize same-sex marriage is akin to anti-Semitism. McCain points out that there's another way to look at this that Sullivan and other members of the sexual elite refuse to admit:

The accustomed habits of a society are not to be cast away willy-nilly merely because some radicals conspire to convince us that innocent people are victimized by our traditions. As to the 2% versue the 98% of which Sullivan speaks, should the tail wag the dog? Ought one of our most fundamental institutions be redefined on behalf of the minority of gays who seek legal recognition for their couplings?

Sully and his friends insult conservatives by supposing us to be cowards. If we disagree on what is, at heart, a question of policy, we are accused of vicious hatefulness. Indeed, we are said to be suffering from a psychological disorder, homophobia.

...

He does not argue in good faith. We have on our side ancient tradition and religious orthodoxy. He has on his side the prestige of the intellectual elite. Ergo, we are ignorant rabble, and he is so infinitely superior to us that he can insult us with impunity, and we dare not even take notice of the insult.

There was a time when you only had to call someone a racist, and the debate was over. It was the unforgiveable sin--and it didn't even matter if it was true. The accusation was so disgusting that you could never recover in a debate. The same was true with respect to homosexuality, once upon a time. Hitler accused one of the Wehrmacht generals who was a leader of the resistance to Naziification of homosexuality, not because it was true, but because it was an accusation so horrible that no one would defend him from accusations of disloyalty, once accused of homosexuality.

Now, calling someone a racist isn't an immediate intellectual death sentence, because it has been used so often, against people who weren't at all racists. And homophobia as an accusation is beginning to lose that same debate stopping power. But not soon enough.