"I agree. And I say this as someone who has known a lot of gay kids whose parents abused them and threw them out of the house."

Just a minute, Eric. There are two, perhaps three, separate issues in the length of article you cited. If you're agreeing with what she's quoted as saying in those last two paragraphs, yes, wonderful. And I haven't seen enough about the original "I want you to be my mother" question and answer session to know anything about the person who said it. It's possible that it's some kid who's politically aware but just coming out and is still not ready to deal with his sexuality as an adult.

Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, the "Mama T" speech is entirely different. It was a caucus meeting with a room full of gay delegates, people who have taken on the responsibility of publicly representing our interests. In that context, "You'll have a mom in the White House" doesn't sound like an offer of compassion or support from one private citizen to others with a specific need for it. It sounds like a blanket statement: You all need mothering. And the audience's reaction, at least as reported, was not, "We're grateful on behalf of the many gay youth in troubled circumstances who may need someone like you." It was...it sounds to me, at any rate...like, Yes, we all need mothering.

If your take is different, I'd be glad to hear it.

Thanks Sean,

You may be right about what she meant; I only agreed with her to the extent she was referring to understanding and supporting troubled gay youth. If she thinks we all need mothering, that's condescending -- and none of her business!

And in any case, terrorists do NOT deserve understanding!

As to the "room full of gay delegates, people who have taken on the responsibility of publicly representing our interests," who elected these people to take on such responsibilities? I lost all patience with them during the 1993 gays in the military flap:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/000025.html

Yeah, I knew the part about terrorism was your main point--I certainly agreed with that.

"As to the 'room full of gay delegates, people who have taken on the responsibility of publicly representing our interests,' who elected these people to take on such responsibilities?"

I have no idea, but when you find out, let us all know so we can...oh, that's right. Most of our people don't consider that a punishment.

Anyway, I think it's great that people want to do the lobbying and conferencing and negotiating that it takes to win political battles. Heaven knows, I don't want to. And whatever they push for, some of us won't like it. What drives me around the bend--and what I assume you're talking about--is the near-total failure to explore the possibility that there might be gays who don't believe the War on Terrorism is motivated solely by crony-capitalist greed, or aren't DNC hacks, or aren't campaigning for same-sex marriage, or don't want to be in an Exalted Victim category for every aspect of public life. Maddening, but there seems to be little anyone can do except keep calling them on their insularity.

(BTW, if it's any consolation, I run into them plenty as an expat. The sun never sets on the Bush-hating invert contingent.)

Sean and Eric:

Excellent, both of you. We need more men like you, as well as Jeff Soyer.

Terrorists deserve nothing but death. Period.

As for Teresa Heinz-Kerry: Yes, that is kind-hearted of her, and children do need loving Mamas and Papas. But adults don't! Children can't marry or serve in the military or anything else that homosexual men and women are fighting for their rights to do. Homosexual men and women want to be respected, not pitied. They want freedom and dignity, not compassion. The love they want is that which is for equals not inferiors.

The Democratic party wants the federal government to be everybody's Big Mama. The Left hates strength and worships weakness.

When the Jews were persecuted, gassed, burned, and main into soap and lampshades, the Left loved them. Now that they have a nation of their own, wealthy and mighty, which they aggressively defend, the Left hates them and calls them evil Zionist imperialist warmongers.

As long as Negroes live in slums, poor, illiterate, unemployable, addicted to drugs and crime, the Left loves them. As soon as a Negro turns away from that, he is an "Oreo".

When Americans were on our knees mourning our 3,000 dead on 9/11, the Left loved America for one brief second. As soon as we got back up on our feet and started fighting back against the enemy, we were once again the Great Satan.

As long as homosexuals are portrayed as effete, effeminate pansies, dying of AIDS, and being thrown in jail for "sodomy", the Left loves them. Andrew Sullivan wrote an excellent essay on why they chose Matthew Shepard as their poster-boy. Now that they are marrying and joining the military and owning guns, the Left will soon hate them, too, the same way they hate Jews, Americans, "uppity" Negroes, and Western civilization.

Pim Fortuyn was an adumbration of this. When the rest of Europe finally falls to Islam and begins stoning homosexuals to death, whose side do you think the Left will take?

There is one kind of strength the Left does secretly admire, that of murderers and tyrants like Saddam, bin Laden, Castro, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Stalin. They love both the weak "sensitive" wimp and the murdering thug, but they hate the brave warrior who fights the murdering thug. The Left is the party of entropy. Leftism is the ideology of the Suicide of the West.

I prefer the _style_ even of my enemies on the Right such as the "Concerned Women For America" and the "Intellectual Conservative". I totally oppose them, they are at least worthy enemies.