In an earlier post, I made a point of hesitating, ironically, to use the word "savages" in characterizing those Pashtuns who have sex with men who would kill one of their own for admitting homosexuality

I'd say that the British had a word for people like that -- "SAVAGES" -- except I'd be inviting trouble from the people who piled on Sarah Hoyt, and then they'd conspire to ensure that I would never get ahead in life. (Like I care at this point.)

Eric,

You need to brush up on your Koran.

viz your comment about savages "piling on Sarah Hoyt", what are you talking about?

Political correctness deliberately - IMHO - conflates race and culture so you can't point at cultures as dysfunctional and so that anyone criticizing a foreign culture can be called racist.

What I saw today in a post by Donald Sensing that Glenn linked made me decided to return to that remark made in irony.

Only this time, I'm going to claim it for real.

I'm hardly what anyone would call a gay rights activist. I have long criticized the gay rights movement (especially gay identity politics), I don't endorse same sex marriage, in many posts I have questioned the wisdom of using human sexuality to classify people, and it would be dishonest for me to classify myself that way. I believe in sexual freedom, not judging people by the content of their orgasms, and I find sexuality classifications stultifying and oppressive.

I ask very little from people by way of ideological agreement, though. I'm even willing to concede that there is a right -- at least in a philosophical sense -- to be intolerant, even judgmental, about these things. Just because I don't care what consenting adults do with their genitalia doesn't mean I can demand the same from others.

However, there is one thing I absolutely refuse to tolerate (and I don't care what the source is), and that is demanding death for homosexuals. I have repeatedly condemned Christians who do that (as well as those associated with them), as well as Muslims. The difference, of course, is that Muslims don't just advocate killing homosexuals, they do it. In the name of their dreadful interpretation of a religion we are told is peaceful and civilized.

Sorry, but advocacy of killing homosexuals is neither peaceful nor civilized. And killing them is even less peaceful and less civilized than advocacy. It is savagery.

Yes, I consider the hooded thugs who are hanging the two young gay men in this picture to be savages:

So is Vanderbilt's chaplain who said that homosexuals should be killed:

What Chaplain Binhazim said was that [the above] hanging, and countless others in Iran and other Islamic countries, was dictated by the basic tenets of Islam and that he agrees with those tenets. Hence, these executions are right and proper and unobjectionable.

You may recall that when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007, he said there are no homosexuals in Iran. Now we know why. He has them killed.

Let me be clear of my own position here. Asked a straightforward question, Mr. Binhazim gave an equally straightforward answer: This is what Islam says and I am bound by the tenets of Islam to accept it. I personally do not think he should be disciplined or fired for answering the question, even as bluntly as he did.

But the point here is that because the man advocates savagery, that makes him a savage. I'd say that about any Christian who advocates killing homosexuals too.

And would someone then me that I need to study the Bible? I doubt it. So what's with telling me I need to study the Koran?

I would hate to think that we live in a world where it's OK to call Christian savages savages, but we have to tiptoe around the sensibilities of Muslim savages lest we offend them by calling them what they have demonstrated themselves to be.

When we can no longer call savages savages, civilization suffers.

So I'll say it again. Those who advocate killing homosexuals are savages.

Such a point would seem so obvious and unremarkable to most civilized people that it's really not saying much. It requires no more of a moral standard than saying that slavery is evil. And naturally, all civilized people would condemn Islamic slavery just as much as they would Christian slavery, right?

Obviously then, my ironic hesitation in the previous post was unnecessary.