Ayatollah You So!

Things are getting pretty bad when mere dialogue about a major contemporary issue has become impossible.

I refer to the news about "leading" (there's that word) social conservatives threatening to bolt from the Republican Party or from George Bush not for any position he has either taken or threatened to take, but for the fact that a Republican leader dared even to "meet" with a homosexual lobbying group.

This is the United States of America, and not Iran, I keep reminding myself. In this country, no matter how much you might disagree with another person's position, simple fairness, common courtesy, and the First Amendment at least provide a way to hear what the other side thinks, and maybe enter into a debate.

It is elementary that where there is no dialogue, debate becomes impossible.

Hmmmmm.

Might it be that the people who want to be the moral leaders of the Republican Party do not want even to debate the issue of homosexuality? Is that their demand? That the Republican Party and George Bush may not meet, confer, talk with, or listen to, ANY homosexuals?

Does that mean that henceforth, only heterosexuals are to be heard on the subject of homosexuality? Or do even the heterosexuals have to agree with the moral conservatives lest they too be silenced?

I remember that the Ayatollah Khomeini used to refuse to debate certain things. People who disagreed with him were marched off.

The way some of these fundamentalists act, you'd almost think they want to lock certain people up!