Fred Clark writes about the persecution complex behind the NOM ads…

We’ve seen how this plays out on the national scene two, three times a month. Some pious dignitary remarks that homosexuality is just like pedophilia or bestiality — a statement regarded within the hegemony of the sect as wholly innocent and inoffensive. Someone outside the sect will reply, accurately, that this is an offensive lie, a vicious slander. That response will be perceived, within the sect, as "religious persecution." The response — any response other than "thank you, sir, may I have another?" — implicitly rejects the legitimacy of the hegemony and rebels against the privilege enjoyed by the sect. (A big part of that privilege, it turns out, is the expectation that one can say offensive things without others taking or expressing offense. This has become far more important as a hallmark of American evangelicalism than, say, Sabbath-keeping.)

I’d say this isn’t just a religious right phenomena.  You see culture warriors on the right holding the same two mutually contradictory positions that Fred points out in certain American evangelical circles.  On the one hand, we represent the Great American Heartland…the Common Folk…The Moral Majority…The Silent Majority…  And so on…  But on the other, we are oppressed.  Our values and our way of life are in danger of becoming extinct. 

Your gay and lesbian neighbors have been hearing a version of this self contradicting complaint for decades now.  On the one hand, gay people are a teeny-tiny minuscule minority, whose claims of oppression don’t even merit a laugh, let alone any serious thought.  On the other, we are a vast and powerful conspiracy that will soon extinguish any trace of American values.  On the one hand we are contemptible, weak, easily frightened swishing faggots.  On the other hand we are dangerous militants.  Huh?

The thought police are always out to get them.  Political Correctness is always taking away their right to express their deeply held beliefs.  Whenever someone is called out for their cheap bar stool prejudices, they complain that they are being silenced.  It isn’t that people find their knuckle dragging bigotries disgusting.  It’s that a vast liberal socialist communist homosexual conspiracy is out to get them.  When Mrs California endorsed cutting off the ring fingers of all the gay citizens of California, and promptly fell out of favor with the Mrs America judges, a great wail arose from the kook pews, clamoring that she was the victim of political correctness, and that people who opposed the gay agenda were being silenced.

Silenced.  Let me show you silenced…

Ex-Louisiana KKK chief arrested in Prague: police

PRAGUE (AFP) — A former US Ku Klux Klan chief was arrested Friday in a Prague restaurant while he was on a speaking tour here, Czech police said.

Former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana-founded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, was arrested on suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights, police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky told local media.

Regardless of how low in the human cesspool Duke is, that charge sent a little chill down my spine.  It was pure reflex, most likely born of having spent my entire life swaddled in American culture.  But there it was.  David Duke is lower then spit in a urinal in my book, but I am much less afraid of anything David Duke might say, then I am of the charge he was arrested under.  …suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights…   What the hell does that mean?  Suspicion of promoting movements…?  Seeking the suppression…?  What is the fucking criminal act here?  It could be anything.  Today that might mean talking about suppressing the rights of black people.  Tomorrow it might mean arguing against it, thereby suppressing the right of white people to keep black people in their place.  It could be anything.  Totalitarian states love that kind of thing.  It’s the kind of law that can be whatever they want it to be, whenever they want it to be that.  And you don’t have to actually Do Anything to break that law.  Just talk about doing something.  Maybe with one person.  Maybe with a whole roomful of people.  It doesn’t matter.  You open your trap, say the wrong thing, and you’re toast.  And you can never be sure what the wrong thing to say is.  It’s whatever the state wants it to be.  Probably just right then, in order to arrest you and make it all seem legal.  Giving police the power to arrest someone for speaking their mind just greases the skids for fascism. 

Mrs Proposition 8 California and her fans aren’t being silenced.  Critics of same sex marriage aren’t being silenced.  Their freedom to dispense horseshit about morality, religion, family values and same sex marriage does not trump other people’s freedom to call their cheapshit prejudices for what they are, and regard them with disgust.  If you can’t tell the difference between loosing a crown or loosing a tax break and going to jail then go get yourself arrested in some foreign land for opening your trap at the wrong time in the wrong place and find out.

You are not being silenced.  So shut the fuck up.

[Edited a tad…]