Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist A. Barton Hinkle opines:
Although the positions look hypocritical, they have a certain convenient logic: Gay-rights groups will support whatever they deem good for the cause of gay rights, and religious conservatives will oppose the same, and each will take whatever position on any other issue best serves that end at any given moment. There’s a lot of that going around.
Not sure his analogy quite works in this instance, but it’s true that double standards are frequently evident among many activists groups, on both sides of the spectrum. Just one example: feminist groups that sue all-male associations but have no problem with women-only entities (including health clubs, for instance).
3 Comments for “Good for Me but Not for Thee?”
posted by Doug on
This comes as a shock to who? This is reality, nothing new here, move on.
posted by Houndentenor on
Advocacy groups almost always have to pick candidates that are pretty good on their issues rather than candidates who are perfect. That isn’t hypocrisy; it’s pragmatism.
posted by Hunter on
“Just one example: feminist groups that sue all-male associations but have no problem with women-only entities (including health clubs, for instance.”
That’s a nice, history-free comment. It’s more valuable, I think, to examine the reasons why feminists might support women-only entities — like maybe decades of discrimination and exclusion from professional and social associations at a time when the “all-male” was just an assumption. And maybe feminists think that women-only equivalents will give women the chance to establish their own networks, since they’ve been excluded from the existing ones, while at the same time they try to break down the barriers to their participation in those existing associations. Somehow, I can’t see this as evidence of hypocrisy.