“Of course you have the right to support whatever candidate you choose…as long as you can handle THE CONSEQUENCES, you disgusting traitors!”
Ah, another month, another example of vengeful gay activists setting out to destroy anyone who dares to disagree with them. Last month it was the gay fashion designers who dared to express a non-conforming view about same sex adoptions. The April victims are gay men who have the audacity to be conservative Republicans.
The nasty and undemocratic boycott tactics of gay activists are going to deeply wound free speech and societal comity unless they are stopped. I am trying to think of a peaceful, fair, ethical way to stop them. As usual, the first step is declaring how wrong they are.
The latest victims are Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, two gay New York City real estate developers who own nearly three-quarters of the real estate in Fire Island Pines and LGBT-oriented hotel, The OUT NYC. They committed the crime, in the eyes of the intolerant and rigid LGBY community, of hosting a fundraiser for arch conservative and Tea Party darling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Maybe they did it because they don’t like Obamacare. Maybe they did it because they admire Cruz’s guts and dedication to Constitutional principles (other than equal justice under the law, but never mind). Maybe they did it because this is a free country and they have a right to support any damn candidate they choose, even a <gasp!> Republican.
But because Cruz is a gay marriage opponent as well as hostile to gay rights generally, the LGBT community has marked Reisner and Mati Weiderpass for destruction as traitors. After all, gays should have equal rights, just not the equal rights to support whatever candidate they choose to like every straight American. How ironic! The vindictive, coercive boycotts have already started, with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus both cancelling their annual even at a Weiderpass and Reisner property.
The two men are issuing grovelling apologies that do not make them look very good, “good” meaning honest, responsible and brave, calling the fundraising dinner “a terrible mistake,” and claiming that they didn’t know about Cruz’s controversial positions on the only issues, apparently, that gay Americans are allowed to care about. Neither of them? Who believes that? Who holds a fundraiser for a politician, especially one who talks as incessantly as Cruz does, without knowing his positions on key issues?
They could have taken a stand for political diversity within groups that demand lockstep conformity, like women, blacks and gays. They could have pointed out that while gay rights are important, there are more important things that citizens of the United States should be worrying about, and that in their opinion, Ted Cruz was the best candidate to address those. They could and should have used the opportunity to condemn boycotts as a bully tactic of political advocacy, since it substitutes fear for openness and chills dissent. They might have even pointed out that those who call for full disclosure of political contributions undercut their own case when they make it clear that those supporting unpopular causes will find themselves marked for ruin.
Personally, I don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would want a guy like Senator Cruz for President now, when putting someone like him in the White House would be like throwing a lit match into a full gas tank. Nevertheless, I will defend to the death Ted Cruz’s supporters or anyone else who chooses to exercise their rights as citizens under this democracy without facing physical or financial intimidation. Apparently a lot of LGBT community members don’t respect those rights as much as I do.
This raises the question of why they are so shocked that some people don’t respect theirs…or them.
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Pointer: Fred
Source: Salon
Ethics Alarms 
The ‘soft-Left’, as it may be called, has historical and ideological links to the ‘hard-Left’ (as it is called) which is responsible for some pretty damaging and outrageous activities in the 20th Century.
In my read of society and politics, as our own ‘soft-Left’ has gained some political power (though it has been said that it had and has a great deal of ideological power, in institutions and in the academy, and thus a tremendous ideological influence in all sectors of society) one notices a strident authoritarian streak which is troubling.
When one associates oneself, rather literally, with the ‘power of the good’ and as the good’s ontological agent in our world, one’s politics and policies, and one’s sense of one’s ethics, are understood as being underpinned nearly by divine right. And those who oppose you are perceived as emissaries of ontological malevolence. I suggest this is a real and a considerable metaphysic that underpins some of the hotter and more contested politically correct issues, and when I encounter examples as this one, I wonder if I am seeing my theory in practice.
If we do not have the skill to examine the ‘metaphysical underpinning’ of our ideas, our moods, and all that just SEEMS right to us, and if we do not examine our assumptions at a nuts-and-bolts level, the things we create and the things we will allow will, I suggest, have the ‘mood’ of this resentment-filled attack.
Your observations in your third paragraph seem pretty accurate to me, although you aren’t the first to note it. The following quote demonstrates a related idea, although not quite the same. It’s one of my favorites.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis
Apparently, they thought they could get away with profiting from a conservative political event and get away with it because they were open homosexuals. If so, they learned a sad lesson in reality. The promotion of deviancy is an important part of the left’s agenda and has been listed as such for quite some time. Within those ranks, no divergence can be tolerated that is not a calculated move to either deceive or infiltrate the opposition. This wasn’t. It may have been a sound business move on a personal level, but the business of the Left isn’t “business”. It’s unbridled political power. Those two will have to “redeem” themselves with a lot more public penance, mainly by crawling and other forms of virtual self-flagellation.
There’s an offensive little practice by the left involved in shaming people for voting the “wrong way”. I see it a lot when conservative women are accused of voting against their own interests.
Who gave anyone the right to tell me what’s in my own interests?
Or Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass what’s in theirs?
Sometimes the best thing you can do is throw a match in the gas tank. You probably haven’t heard of Sad Puppies unless you’re a diehard sci-fi/fantasy reader, but it’s a case in point. The entirety of that little corner of the literary world is in flames, and the Social Justice Warriors are busy pouring more gasoline on the fire by the day.
It’s all going exactly the way Larry Correia (the match-thrower) said it would. Heck, he didn’t even throw a match, he just showed the Social Justice Warriors in his field that he had one — in their eagerness to prove he was a Bad Person, they took it from him and lit the fire themselves.
Maybe the best thing we can do is give these people a chance to be themselves in full public view.
I’m neither combative nor significant enough to light it myself, but I’d be willing to deal with a dumpster fire if the flames show the bystanders in the general public what a load of toxic garbage the “social justice” ideology really is.
I like sci-fi and fantasy to some degree, didn’t hear about this but just got done reading about it. Crazy.
At what point do we admit that the campaign for “diversity” was never real and always a cynical lie for political gain? It has become so absurd that I can’t even tell if this is real, from The Onion or a Monty Python skit.
“Excluding whites and men from diversity event at British university elicits anger”
http://tinyurl.com/la7r86v
Honestly, its one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Why would any sane society take these people seriously?
Hell- why would any self-respecting British man want to attend in the first place? Events like that are just set up to bash him and those like him.
Nice, succinct, on point, humorous comment.
“Honestly, its one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Why would any sane society take these people seriously?”
This question, to my ears, would seem to discount the seriousness of a general ‘spirit of attack’ against things (‘something’) that is difficult to name. One could attempt by saying ‘the Occident’ or ‘Occidental values’ but each attempt at definition seems to fail. Ressentiment in the Nietzschean sense tends to act overtly and yet the attempt to locate it psychologically is futile. It becomes a guessing-game and hinges into ad hominem. But ressentiment is anything but inactive.
Again, when one examines the ‘soft-Left’ we all generally speaking see it out of context with the hard-Left. Yet we note—do we or do we not?—that with each stride forward the soft-Left shows another, and a dangerous, face.
There is no aspect of this that is ‘funny’ or that can be ridiculed as silly or impotent. (Bold statement to follow:) The trends that we note here have extraordinary ramifications, and extraordinarily destructive ones. Ideas have consequences.
The effects of Ideas that we now see emerging more strongly, and with more overt authoritarian power, have their root in systems of ideas that have been TAUGHT. To operate against what has been taught is to teach a different and a countervailing and competing set of ideas. This is somewhat futile if only because the ideas that need to be taught (inculcated) are harder and more demanding idea-sets and ‘the present’ rejects them.
If the subject is ‘ethics’ then the background topic is: Upon what have general and present ethics been constructed? And what construct and predicates, and what ethical proposals, with moral corollary, can countervail? To enter fully into this question is to enter not into something funny and amusing, but something terribly serious. Essentially, it leads to remodel-of-self.
Yet as Saul Alinsky, among others, correctly pointed out, ridicule is often a devastating weapon. Liberals use it much better, because the conservative genetic code appears to be hostile to artistic expression generally. But some jokes are easy.
Ideas have consequences, and when ideas are twisted so that they are absurdly self-contradictory, they become extremely vulnerable to attack. The Democrats are banking on a defense of “you can’t ridicule a woman!” being invulnerable armor for Hillary, who almost compels parody. They are oh so wrong. “We destroyed the village in order to save it” led the way to satire that unhinged support for the Vietnam war. “War is Peace” was pure satire, and provided slow acting poison to the carefully constructed lies of the Soviet Union.
Non-diverse diversity advocates ARE ridiculous and ARE funny (and tragic too), and pointing that out is identifying their Achilles heel.
Diversity advocates are incredibly homogeneous. It all hinges on what you mean by ‘diverse’. Diversity advocates insist on a world where everyone thinks exactly the same. This is why they protest against ‘hate speech’ and why they demand that contrary opinions cannot be expressed. Their idea of diversity is a surface-level diversity of different skin colors. They don’t believe in equal rights, they have a tiered-rights system that depends on skin color and how much your personal values deviate from social norms. If you doubt it, look at what happens when a black man comes into conflict with a hispanic man, the hispanic man gets described as ‘white’ (such as Rafael Ramos). Look what happens if a man dares try to criticize Hillary Clinton or a white man or woman tries to criticize President Obama.
So, this is what ‘liberal’ and ‘diverse’ ideology is in this country. It is a hierarchical system based on thought control that puts the self-appointed civil-rights crusader in charge. We can see the resulting paradises of this ideology in Detroit, Chicago, Newark, etc. The danger is that, far from admitting these policies in places like Detroit failed because they are wrong, the supporters claim they failed because they weren’t embraced and taken far enough. The gay-rights movement is no different. Dissent must be severely punished, betrayal, by crucifixion.
The liberal elites like to say that they can’t be accused of a “War on Christianity” or a “War on White Men” because minorities (like the LGBT agenda) don’t have any power. Seeing two incredibly wealthy men like Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass grovel over this shows the lie in this assertion. If Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass had any brains, they would have claimed that they were trying to sabotage the Republican ticked by getting Ted Cruz on it.
Chicago, Detroit, Newark… and Baltimore.
“The trends that we note here have extraordinary ramifications, and extraordinarily destructive ones. Ideas have consequences.”
Very true. We now have extreme leftist radicals as President of the United States, Mayor of New York and, drum roll please, Pope.
But there is a great deal to be said for having a sense of humor. It helps us take important things seriously. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said something like, “always turn to the joke.” We can’t deal with serious threats if we’re driven insane by inanity.
But we don’t need radicals in those positions. We need competence, and the Venn Diagram between competence and liberal radical seems to be two non-intersecting circles. This is how you end up with a major state that is in a historic drought, whose very survival as habitable area is in question, and whose government (until a few weeks ago) was most concerned with making sure its citizens can’t fight back against criminals, attracting more illegal aliens, and getting a high-speed rail project implemented.
“But we don’t need radicals in those positions.”
No kidding. Couldn’t agree with you more. My point was our having people like we have in those positions is the consequence of all the baloney that’s been pushed in academia for the last fifty or so years. Ideas do have consequences and we’re seeing that in spades.
Gustav thanks for the interesting response, but I believe humor and a sense of perspective is essential for ethical behavior.
Would you rather attend Bahar’s meeting on “Diversifying our Curriculum” and discuss all the micro-aggressions and ciscentric assumptions inherent in the system or have a root canal? Me, I’ll take the root canal every time. If you don’t have a sense of humor about these things, you run the risk of becoming even more absurd. I can’t bring myself to feel outrage about being excluded from a meeting that I would rather have a root canal than attend. So do we really care about the inclusiveness and integrity of a college diversity summit? And if we do care, do we have to insist on government intervention and the forced integration of the diversity meeting that no one really wanted to attend? If this wasn’t a Monty Python skit before, then we are well on our way.
In my opinion the best response is to not take them seriously. Don’t take any of the diversity or tolerance nonsense seriously.
But these are serious problems and these sometimes entertaining whackos can do serious damage. See, eg., Eric Holder, President Obama, the EPA, Mayor DeBlasio. These people and their ideas are dangerous and they’re in power.
I think we laugh them off at our peril.
I think the real peril is in taking these people seriously. In this post the Weiderpass and Reisner’s hotels are being boycotted by “Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS” charity for talking to Ted Cruz. If we take them seriously, we have to conclude that the “gay left” actually believes that talking to a Republican Presidential candidate is worse than the ravages of AIDS. They either: believe this, pretend to believe this out of cynical political calculations or just aren’t very sophisticated. Either way I am not taking any of their institutions, political arguments or claims of moral superiority seriously anymore.
There is one problem with ridicule, well, perhaps two. Ridicule is a false form of argumentation, a lower form that generally speaking most often joins ad hominem attack. If ridicule doesn’t start that way it tends to end that way whether it is used by the Left or by the Right. In the same moment that one has ridiculed one’s opponent, is the same moment when the ‘discussion’ has moved from idea-based conversation to a defence against an attack. Then, it all hinges on who is a more witty humourist. Ridicule is social shaming but there is no guarantee at all that the one wielding ridicule has any leg to stand on at all, rationally, ethically, or philosophically. Once a conversation has devolved to ad hominem ridicule all possibilities for communication seem to come to an end.
Obviously, my argument here is somewhat abstract. I appreciate sharp and acid humour and sometimes use it. But since the general topic is ‘ethics’ it would seem to me that one would be forced to place ridicule of one’s opponent toward the lowest rung of argumentation, if it can be placed in the category of argumentation at all.
It is pretty easy to get people to laugh—even maliciously—but 10 times harder to get them to think.
As long as you are being honest, there is reason not to employ both the low and high forms of argumentation. Besides, the high forms of argumentation are not very effective in a broad democracy. What high form of argumentation is more effective on the left than “The Daily Show?”
Also, it is not like the right hasn’t tried taking the trinity of diversity, equality and tolerance seriously. My first memory of this is in the early 1990s, when the left informed conservatives that Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court didn’t count as “diversity.” This post shows that “tolerance” for members of the gay community is no longer required if they talk to Republican Presidential candidates. Why would ethics require a conservative to take obviously disingenuous arguments of the left seriously? An unethical response would be that the lies of the left justify conservative lies.