Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Matt,

Thank you for the advice to my movement and people who agree with me. If you don't mind, I have some suggestions for you, since this is an issue that is on your mind a lot and which you want to talk about.

It's hard to talk about this when you avoid the real issues and talk about superficial stuff. I think you should be up-front about how much you despise activists as a class. Talk about how you hate them for moaning and whining about discrimination, how they make you want to tear your hair out, how fiercely ANNOYING they are to you and why can't they just get over it. It's obvious you feel that way, you've said so in the past, and it's dishonest to pretend you ever don't feel that way when you hear someone complaining about some civil rights issue.

There's no shame in that! Most Americans hate activists. I'm not stupid. It's a real problem for anyone who wants to change things, and it's why diplomacy and tact are so important.

There is shame, however, in pretending that every new incident from a random protester or potentially illogical comparison from a writer is making you consider your commitment to gay rights anew and that anyone else should care about it. Whatever. If you want to hulk out about people who annoy you, you should go ahead and do it, but stop with this "gentle advice to people who may lose me as an advocate" bullshit. Either you support gay rights, or you don't, but this constant threat to withdraw your tolerance based on people's inability to not annoy you is as ridiculous as your reference to this being society's reaction and not your own is transparent.

And your behavior is not as "reflexively obvious" as you may think--there are plenty of conservative barometers of gay rights backlash out there, I read them all, and you're a heck of an outlier. You have a strong aversion to a) activists and b) people who disagree with you in ways you find illogical. Since you don't easily give the benefit of the doubt to a), you put people in b) even when it's not deserved. Any one characteristic draws annoyance, the two combined invoke rage. b) is evident in the way you write about Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, and even Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds when they disagree with you. Didn't it raise any red flags with you that you go from attacking people who dislike Glenn Reynolds to suddenly seeing why everyone finds him annoying--once he disagrees with you?

Certainly lots of people fall in the a) category, but they don't generally pretend to support the causes that a) is working for, and they don't comb the internet looking for reasons to attack their own putative allies. If gay rights are a principle for you, then you wouldn't be so obsessed with looking for logical flaws and bringing down the wrath of your sanctimony. If they aren't a principle for you, be honest about it. If you're embarrassed to oppose gay rights in principle, then look to the roots of the embarrassment instead of blaming gay people for making you oppose the people you're ideologically more at home with.

But make up your mind already. If you decide I'm your enemy, at least do it for sound reasons and not this fake process bullshit.

P.S. look up "public accommodations" for why it's the government's business.

RTFA, bitch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100523.html

The Republican Governor of Maryland vetoed a bill that would have allowed gay couples the right of hospital visitation and a few other medical decision-making rights. He said it undermined the sanctity of marriage.

This is what Andrew Sullivan was referring to, but which you apparently didn't.

You were the one who jerked his knee to attack without knowing what he was talking about. By your standards, you're now officially too stupid to talk to yourself.

I blame the standards, not you.

Ehrlich is in the wrong on this one. There's no good reason to have vetoed this bill. It doesn't appear to be an obvious step on the road to same-sex marriage.

Sullivan is being dishonest when he blames this on "The Republicans". A handful of R's voted for it, a handful of D's voted against it. It seems, in fact, that only Gov. Ehrlich is to blame. So why the hell didn't he just say that? MS, care to answer?

Sullivan is being dishonest when he says that they aren't able to "visit each other in hospital" -- unless only spouses can visit each other in hospital. Is that how it is in MD? I'm not even going to bother to check.

I find it perfectly reasonable that Matt is upset by the needless cheap shot by Sullivan. There were plenty of ways for AS to write that to persuade. He just wrote it to enflame. Whatever guff he gets on this one is richly deserved.