The Rainbow Dagger

Mark Hemingway writes, “As recently as the ā€™90s, even liberal comedians understood that there was something un-American about the overweening pressure to virtue signal. “

GLAAD Asks for More Censorship

As an early GLAAD board member in the 80s, I can say there were always two impulses within the organization: to educate the media about the importance of full, fair and inclusive portrayals of gay and lesbian lives, and to protest, boycott or even try to shut down offensive and defamatory representations. When those favoring a hard shift to focusing on identity politics within the organization and advocating the left’s political agenda took over under a “progressive” executive director and her staff, I was pushed out.

Since then, there have been many different executive leaders and the mission has varied depending on whether liberals or progressives were running the show. Currently, it looks like those favoring the silencing of speech they deem “unsafe,” which now primarily means any post questioning the new gender orthodoxy, are in command.

LGBT Queer Left Still Attacking Mayor Pete

Update: The “New Republic” pulls the article and apologizes. But really, what we’re they thinking.

The full article is archived, as least as of this writing, here. Another eye-popping passage:

Mary Pete is a neoliberal and a Jeffersonian meritocrat, which is to say heā€™s just another unrepentant or at least unexamined beneficiary of white male privilege…. Like Kirsten Gillibrand, he believes in ā€œhealthy capitalism,ā€ which is a bit like saying you believe in ā€œhealthy cancerā€: Yeah, you can (usually) treat it, but wouldnā€™t you rather be cured?

The Covington Kids, Part 2

The homophobic taunts shouted at the Convington boys received scant coverage. Andrew Sullivan writes:
Once the [Black Hebrew] Israelites figured out the kids were Catholic, they offered this about what appeared to be a picture of the Pope: ā€œThis is a faggot child-molester.ā€ And this about Donald Trump: ā€œHeā€™s a product of sodomy and heā€™s proud. Your president is a homosexual. ā€¦ It says on the back of the dollar bill that ā€˜In God We Trust,ā€™ and you give faggots rights.ā€ At that homophobic outburst, the kids from the Catholic school spontaneously booed [ā€¦]

To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about ā€œmicro-aggressionsā€ for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots ā€¦ and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face.
The press failure on this and other “advance the narrative” stories has been monumental and driven by political bias:

Kevin Hart and Apology Politics

Comedian Kevin Hart is out as ABC’s Oscar host due to homophobic tweets made in 2009 and 2011. Hart refused to apologize as a condition for perhaps being allowed to host the annual Hollywood self-celebration, and then posted what seems like a semi-apology. One of the controversial tweets from 2011 read: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ā€˜stop that’s gay’.” As E Online reported:
In a 2015 profile for Rolling Stone, he once said one of his “biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.”

“Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic…ā€‰Be happy. Do what you want to do. But me, as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,” he previously explained.
Also:
Another Twitter user went to the great lengths of searching every time Kevin used the words “Fag,” “homo” or “gay.” They realized the comedian “seems to have basically stopped tweeting those words after 2011 ā€” i.e. the year his first stand-up movie became a hit.”
As CNN reported, after withdrawing from the Oscars, Hart posted an Instagram video in which he said:
“Guys, I’m almost 40 years old. … If you don’t believe people change, grow, evolve as they get older, I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to hold people in a position where they always have to justify or explain their past then do you. I’m the wrong guy, man.”
Hart’s statement unleashed further controversy over whether this met the demands of a ritual apology, and the consensus was that it did not. The tweets from years past were homophobic and hateful, but Hollywood seems to offer a pass for past homophobia to those who are otherwise active social justice warriors and Democrats in good standing. Also, the issue of homophobia being more acute in the African-American community, perhaps especially among black men, is one about which honest discussion is not allowed (in 2008, when the anti-gay-marriage Prop 8 passed in California, those who pointed out that African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama and for Prop. 8 where denounced for their racism). More. Another day, another black guy who has to apologize: Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray apologizes for anti-gay tweets. Is this helping or hurting black support for lesbian and gay equality and inclusion?

A Heroine

Sen. Susan Collins has stood up to the mob and our republic will be the better for it. From her speech on the Senate floor:

Some argue that, because this is a lifetime appointment to our highest courts, public interest requires that doubts be resolved against the nominee. Others see the public interest as abiding to our longest tradition of affording to those accused of misconduct a presumption of innocence. In cases in which the facts are unclear, they would argue that the question should be resolved in favor of the nominee. Mr. President, I understand both viewpoints. This debate is complicated further by the fact that the Senate confirmation process is not a trial. But certain fundamental legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence and fairness do bear on my thinking and I cannot abandon them. In evaluating any given claim of misconduct, we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy. The presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record.


The Human Rights Campaign, which believes women (except for Juanita Broaddrick…ā€ŽPaula Jones…ā€ŽKathleen Willey…et al) responded predictably.

And here:

And the Women’s March weighed in:


Versus:


More, you say:


Let’s remember what’s driving the hysteria. Other than reflexive Trump hatred, it’s the demand for a Supreme Court that will oppose state restrictions on abortion, including limits on late-term abortion on demand, preferably done at taxpayer expense. (I agree with more-knowledgeable court-watchers that the likelihood of a whole-scale overturning of Roe by the conservatives on the court, especially under an incrementalist like Chief Justice Roberts, is virtually none.)
I know, I am not entitled to an opinion about terminating the lives of unborn babies.


Flashback
I wrote in September 2011 about Collins’ pivotal actions in overturning the military ban against openly gay service members:

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, it should be noted, never pushed for repeal or any other pro-gay equality legislation, but his role with ā€œdonā€™t ask, donā€™t tellā€ was particularly egregious. In late 2010, he insisted that the repeal bill be combined with an appropriations measure that the GOP was determined to block, and did with its filibuster. Reid then declared it was the GOPā€™s fault that the repeal failed. An incensed Sen. Collins and Sen. Lieberman demanded that a separate, stand-alone ā€œdonā€™t askā€ repeal bill be brought forward, and the media glare [they generated] forced Sen. Reid to capitulate. The stand-alone repeal was brought up for a vote and easily passed with the support of many senators, including Sen. Brown, who had voted against the combined appropriations/repeal bill. …

…Sen. Collins shared that she simply couldnā€™t, at first, believe what Sen. Reid was doing (and then charged to the podium to protest the maneuver and its foregone conclusionā€”to no avail).

Keeping “don’t ask, don’t tell” in place as a campaign and fundraising issue while blaming the GOP for blocking repeal was the strategy all along. For the same reasons, when Democrats had a big majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate majority for nearly two years (2009-10), and with a “progressive” president in the White House, they choose not to pass comprehensive immigration reform (or vote on a federal LGBT anti-discrimination measure, for that matter).

Sorrow and Pity

Andrew Sullivan writes:

And it is the distinguishing mark of specifically totalitarian societies that this safety is eradicated altogether by design. ā€¦ You are, in fact, always guilty before being proven innocent. You always have to prove a negative. ā€¦
Perhaps gay people are particularly sensitive to this danger, because our private lives have long been the target of moral absolutists, and we have learned to be vigilant about moral or sex panics. For much of history, a mere accusation could destroy a gay personā€™s life or career, and this power to expose private behavior for political purposes is immense.
Iā€™m not equating an accusation of attempted rape in the distant past with sodomy. I am noting a more general accusatory dynamic that surrounded Fordā€™s specific allegation. This is particularly dangerous when there are no editors or gatekeepers in the media to prevent any accusation about someoneā€™s private life being aired, when economic incentives online favor outrageous charges, and when journalists have begun to see themselves as vanguards of a cultural revolution, rather than skeptics of everything.

The New McCarthyism


Walter Olson blogged:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) took a quote in which Brett Kavanaugh summarized the positions taken by litigants in a lawsuit, snipped off his “But they said” language introducing the summary, and represented the remainder as Kavanaugh’s own position. News organizations like CNN, along with many persons in my timeline, ran with her version as a story.

I’ve been warning about Sen. Harris since back when she was California Attorney General and kept ignoring the ethical rules in high-profile cases. Among those cases: the Moonlight Fire litigation (judge, ordering state to pay $32 million to its opponent, said he could recall ā€œno instance in experience over 47 years as an advocate and a judge, in which the conduct of the Attorney General so thoroughly departed from the high standard it representsā€) and the Backpage prosecution (courts reject her theory of criminal liability over online sex ads, she orders execs raided and arrested anyway).