A shame this can’t/won’t get prosecuted.

Support of minority rights is the morally correct thing to do, period. This is not a zero-sum game, nor is it some sort of tit-for-tat, you-scratch-my-back I’ll-scratch yours transaction (though of course those agreements will occur in politics around individual efforts). We should support minority rights because it’s the right thing to do. This is the essence of the christian commandment to turn the other cheek – that one should do the right thing no matter that those whom it helps might turn around and stike you.

And frankly, pulling back support will do nothing to help GLBT rights, and will do everything to hurt them. It will further alienate the minority members of the GLBT community, and would merely make us appear to be petty, self-serving children who refuse to play when the game starts to go against us. We cannot be seen to pull back from our support for full and equal participation in civic life for all minorities. While I understand the urge the pull back, to assess blame, and to point fingers, that’s exactly what we cannot do now.

What is needed is more outreach to those communities, to show how same-sex marriage does not harm them, to debunk the lies told by those who seek to manipulate those communities for their own agenda, and to show how their leaders how their support for anti-gay positions harms members of their own community. We won’t convince all of them, that’s a given. But we will get to some, and we will impress others with our commitment to minority rights.

This is a long-term fight, and pulling away from our natural allies, even where members of those communities vote against us, is counter-productive and will lose us more in the end than it gains us (no matter how good it might feel to be able to point to someone else as the bad guy).

Christopher Hitchens Gets Waterboarded

Link courtesy Saxon.