how to go from liberal maniac to worse-than-hitler in one post

agreeing with bill clinton is dangerous around here!

i know we're all tired of the anti-gay clinton thread, but i really must respond to the astoundingly viscious responses i got for agreeing with clinton on this topic.

first, let me describe a portion of the things i have done in my life that led me to declare myself as a strong supporter of gay rights.

i have never understood why anyone has an instinctive anti-gay reaction. i accept that some people are bigotted in this way, but i just don't get it. if you're not attracted to people of the same sex, then don't have sex with them. it always seemed to me it should end there. but it doesn't for many people, they feel the need to insult or condemn or get violent whenever the topic comes up, and sometimes even when the topic doesn't come up. i just can't relate to this.

as long as i can remember, i've had gay friends, gay teachers, and so on. i've always felt comfortable around them, and them around me. in high school, i brought a young gay man back from the brink of suicide. in college, i was often a shoulder to cry on for many people, gays included. in the professional world, i have defended gays from being fired, and once i quit a job when asked to avoid hiring gays.

that's right, i quit a 6-figure job as chief technology officer and forfeited a 10% ownership stake the day after being asked not to hire any homosexuals. i would have quit on the spot, but i felt i owed it to mrs. unblock (though we weren't yet married) to discuss it with her first. after doing so, i snuck back into the office late that night and carted away my desk contents. i showed up the next day to give zero day's notice. i've always left employment situations on good terms, with a minimum of 2 weeks notice, but i was quite certain that it was right to exit that situation as soon as possible. i am very proud of that moment in my life. i never before quit a job without first lining up the next gig, and collecting unemployment was a GIGANTIC pay cut, at a time when i had practically nothing in the bank. yet i had to make a stand, and so i did.

oh, i've also attended several gay weddings. well actually, they've all been lesbian weddings. the gay men i've known never seemed to see any need for any kind of external validation of their commitment. in any event, outside of family, i think i've actually been to more lesbian weddings than straight weddings.



but all that changed when i made the unforgivable mistake of agreeing with the evil enemy of homosexuals that is bill clinton.

i thought i was agreeing with a tactical shift in emphasis to neutralize a rotten, slimy, underhanded rovian political trap of making gay marriage a central issue in this election. i see gay marriage as one of the LAST steps in a long term battle for increased rights and social acceptance of homosexuals. we're dealing with a country that STILL can't adequately fund aids research even when it now infects and kills more heterosexuals than homosexuals, just as it always has in every country on the planet with the sole exception of the united states. but it's still tagged as a "gay" disease, so millions suffer and die needlessly. personally, i find such things as aids research, employment discrimination and overt violence against gays vastly more important than gay marriage. and of all the homosexuals i've known over the last quarter century, i've never found anyone to disagree with such priorities.

but in response, if i am to be judged by some here at du, i'm horrible, evil, republican, as bad as george wallace, worse than hitler, or maybe just worse than neville chamberlain. even after saying that i'd risk my life to stop a lynching, some du'ers questioned exactly that. apparently my type of thinking leads to mass extermination of jews and gays and so on. many du'ers seem to have an either-you're-with-us-of-against-us, and 25 years of support is evidently easily undone by one instance of agreeing with bill clinton. so i'm the enemy now, my help and support is no longer desired.

i'm not exactly sure how pridefully ceding power to bush et al. for the sake of a stand on principal for an obvious rove setup issue in any way helps prevent mass exterminations, but i'm quite certain that these republicans are no friend of homosexuals and need to be stopped. i thought, as bill clinton did, that making a strategic decision to remove a politically unpallatable topic from the front burning and to schedule it for a number of years down the road, after you've made progress on more readily saleable areas, would just be good planning. no, apparently, it's throwing gays to the wolves.

evidently, if i compromise my principals once, i'll pretty much turn into darth vader in the blink of an eye. look, if you're philosophically pure and highly principalled, fine. in an earlier post, i stated that we NEED more people to be loudly anchoring the hardcore left, unabashedly and unapologetically shouting and demanding for 100% of what we want. the right has their ann coulters and so on, and we are lacking in this area.

but note one thing about the ann coulters of the right. they do not turn on other republicans who make compromises or strategic decisions or on other ways fail to stick to the 100% pure agenda of the right. because republicans recognize that they need both the philosophically pure and the pragmatists.

so please, do me the favor of understanding that we need each other. we may get frustrated with each other from time to time, and we may have spirited disagreements. i would never have expected gays to be happy with what clinton suggested or what i agreed with, and i fully expected disagreement. but many, in fact, MOST of the responses i received crossed the line from spirited disagreement into out and out hatred. please, save the insults and the hatred and the hitler analogies for the enemy. i am not one of them.

and if you cannot tell the difference, than your world must be a very scary one, with a very tiny number of friends and a vast ocean of people who, if not already enemies, could readily become one in your eyes at any moment.

my pragmatism does not mean i want to turn into rove or atwater. i do not advocate or condone violence or intimidation or voter suppression and so on. what i do advocate is playing smart hardball politics when your opponent insists on that being the game. if you're overly principalled, that may be admirable, but it's an identifiable political achilles heel. a successful candidate, at least in today's environment, with these opponents, must be at least a little bit wily and slimy. rove got kerry's number with the gay marriage issue, but we got all the downside and none of the upside from losing that battle. no white house, no supreme court appointments, nothing. we didn't even get political props, because kerry never made a series of defiant public speeches on the topic, the kind of speeches that may cost an election but start a movement. no, we just LOST.

let us disagree on the tactics. but please recognize whose side i'm on, and save the slippery slope arguments for the other guys. i'm in no danger of turning into a republican.

but I think what you have written here seems intelligent, reasonable, honest and compassionate. I don't agree with everything you say, but you say it in such a way that I fully respect your opinion.

Now I'm going to click the link ;)

but,understand:
"and if you cannot tell the difference, than your world must be a very scary one, with a very tiny number of friends and a vast ocean of people who, if not already enemies, could readily become one in your eyes at any moment"
That is what it is like to be a minority. We learn not to trust.

amount of time and commitment that has been our hallmark as we Democrats have shown in our decades long support of civil rights. I think JK's position was right in this aspect - NO marriage amendment - All persons have the right to civil unions - and REMOVE this divisive topic from our political discourse. Unfortunately KKKKarl and his minions stoked up the bigotry of the uninformed. We must remove the hype from this national discussion and also show some patience. If you give a starving person a few bites of food from a full dinner, he is still hungry, but he is no longer starving. We must continue the fight for equality but also somehow manage to turn the venom of the repugs back onto themselves.