Warning: the following viewpoints are controversial and may offend. Please don't write and try to get me fired (actually, I'm not employed by IGF, so that really won't work anyhow).
The above jest is prompted by this: A recent alert from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took socially conservative columnist Thomas Sowell to task for recently writing, among other things, that "Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have," and "Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football" - statements that GLAAD dismisses as "so silly that, despite their underlying offensiveness, it is difficult to take them seriously."
Sowell also went further into offensiveness, writing "What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS."
That's an ugly comment that should be responded to and exposed for its mendacity. But GLAAD's alert does something else - it also calls on people to write Sowell's distributor, Creators Syndicate, and complain about its distributing "Thomas Sowell's repugnant, bigoted attack on gay and lesbian Americans."
As emotionally satisfying as that might make people feel, it's a questionable tactic. Sowell is very popular, and Creators Syndicate won't drop him because of letters prompted by a gay organization when those letters are clearly from folks who aren't part of Sowell's conservative readership base. Worse, it's a tactic that mirrors what religious conservative groups like the American Family Association do - try to get things banned, or taken off the air, because they don't approve.
Creators Syndicate also distributes lesbian columnist Deb Price. GLAAD's response, "Please write Creators and ask why the presence of one inclusive columnist excuses the publication of anti-gay bigotry from another." But many social conservatives find Price's views deeply offensive to their fundamentalist sensibilities, too.
My experience is that GLAAD doesn't much like to debate; it doesn't seek out opportunities to intellectually engage opponents on the social and religious right. For GLAAD, if it's not hobnobbing with the Hollywood set, it's unleashing angry broadsides. Or trying to get TV/radio personalities off the air (or, in this case, mau-mauing a syndicate over a columnist). Again, this is just what the American Family Association does with authors/personalities/shows it doesn't like.
When we adopt our enemy's tactics, we become what they are.
Liberty is based on the active engagement of ideas, and through
that engagement convincing the public that your principles are
truer and more virtuous than your opponents'. In the words of an
old political slogan of the left, "To be attacked by your enemy is
a good thing," as it gives you an opportunity to engage the battle
(and, in this case, the battle of ideas). We shouldn't be afraid of
stepping up to that challenge.