How dare she speak to gay people about “civil rights”! That’s the MSM take on Ann Coulter’s speech to GOProud, as the magnificent Lisa DePasquale reports:
I was fortunate to be a guest of Coulter’s at a New York City cocktail party where she gave a short speech and did Q&A with GOProud, a group of conservative-minded gays. Unsurprisingly, Coulter stuck to her principles by defending traditional marriage between one man and one woman. They were completely charmed and loved every minute of the repartee. What’s a reporter to make of a crowded room of open-minded conservatives with Ann Coulter at the helm? Lie, of course!
Politico reported that there was “nervous laughter” when Coulter addressed the frequent argument that gay marriage is a civil right and akin to denying blacks their rights. Coulter pointed out, both with truth and in jest, “Gays have the highest income of any demographic group in America. Blacks must be looking at gay rights activists in bewilderment thinking, ‘Why couldn’t we be oppressed like that?’” . . .
Read the whole thing at Human Events.
One of the points I have tried to make — more by example than by lecturing — is that it is possible to be opposed in principle to the Official Gay Rights Agenda™ without being “homophobic” (a term requiring scare-quotes due to its pseudo-diagnostic implications).
Too many well-meaning people are motivated by guilt or fear — and perhaps a desire to pose as morally superior to others — in expressing support for the Official Gay Rights Agenda™ (OGRA), just as many people are motivated by similar sentiments to support other pet liberal causes. Most who have doubts about such radicalism are intimidated into silence, and thus permit the OGRA radicals to believe they can win through suppressing dissent.
Back in the 1980s, for example, it became fashionable on elite college campuses to demand “divestment” from South Africa. Administrations at Dartmouth, among other schools, were besieged by smelly student protesters clamoring for the university to end any investment in any company that did any business with the apartheid regime.
To question the wisdom of such demands was equivalent, in the rhetoric of the protest pests, to being “pro-apartheid.” Pointing out that such an accusation was illogical — e.g., might it not be the case that an economic boycott would hurt the people it was intended to help? — only inflamed the rage of the protesters. It became obvious to rational critics that the entire point of the “divestment” campaign was for the Left to flaunt its obnoxious self-righteousness, without regard for the real interests of black South Africans.
“How dare you . . .?” This is how liberals always answer those who dare question the moral superiority of liberalism.
How dare you doubt that cramming poor people into public housing is a wise and humane policy? How dare you suggest that the Carter-era “deinstitutionalization” of mental patients did more to cause the homeless problem than did the policies Ronald Reagan? And how dare you question whether an all-or-nothing push for goverment-licensed same-sex marriage is necessary to the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” of homosexuals?
Ann Coulter is an intellectual daredevil, and she’s now on Twitter, where you should follow her immediately. Everyone is now breathlessly awaiting the moment when Keith Olbermann takes notice of Ann’s Twitter presence, igniting the final apocalyptic battle of Twittergeddon.
I’ll pop some popcorn . . .
(NOTE: Thanks to the commenter who pointed out that Coulter is an alumnus of Cornell University, where she wrote for the Cornell Review. I had originally described her as an alumnus of Dartmouth College, evidently having confused her with such prominent conservative Dartmouth alumni as Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza.)