As I was skimming the New York Times this afternoon, I ran across an op-ed piece analyzing liberal and conservative reactions to the announcement of former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman that he is gay. After the relentless campaign against gay marriage that Mehlman abetted, it is not surprising that many on the left are not charitably disposed toward his decision to come out so late in the game. Some voices on the right are more charitably disposed, and one person is quoted as saying that conservative opposition to gay marriage and military service does not equate to "hatred."
So far, so good. Such an opinion split is unsurprising and perhaps even predictable. But a comment from a certain Ralph Dempsey of Pennsylvania reveals the heart of darkness in the conservative position:
Ralph
Dempsey, PA
August 28th, 2010
9:35 am"... because most conservatives don't support gay marriage and don't support gays openly serving in the military, they 'hate' them"
I am so sick of being called a 'homophobe' just because I oppose gay marriage and want to keep homosexuals out of the military. The liberal Left is trying to play the same game they play with the race card. Sincere, honest, loving, genuine people oppose two men or two women attacking the sanctity of those in heterosexual marriages. That is not bigoted any more than people who opposed interracial marriages were racist. Over 85% of the country during the early 60's did not want Black men trying to procure white women - were all these people racist? Give me a break. We should be free to oppose minority lifestyles without being labelled as haters.
Something tells me that Mr. Dempsey will not soon get his wish, given his breathtaking combination of bigotry and moral blindness.
In one sense, Mr. Dempsey does get it right. The left is playing the same "game" it "played" in the civil rights movement, including the Supreme Court's belated recognition in 1967 that legal bars to interracial marriage are unconstitutional. See Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). The name of this "game" is "equal rights for all," something which Mr. Dempsey and the rest of the scrofulous underbelly of American politics rightly recognize as a threat to centuries of white privilege. Mr. Dempsey is all about keeping anyone else out of "his" military, "his" marital institutions," and "his" women. The assumption of white supremacy is so deeply engrained in the consciousness of the Dempsey-ites that they do not even recognize it as such, and the notion that a person with a different sexual orientation or a different skin color could possibly expect the same entitlements is deeply threatening — hence the accusation of "playing the race card." Bizarrely, the implication is that in the world of the Dempsey-ites, it is the white man who is being oppressed by some sort of racial chicanery.
Of course, while the presumably unsophisticated Mr. Dempsey reveals the true ugliness of the conservative positions on race and sexuality, it is after all the smooth sophistication and polished civility of the likes of Ken Mehlman that do far more damage. One hopes, at least, that few in this day and age are likely to fall for the raw bile of a Ralph Dempsey, but far more are comforted in their prejudices by rationalizations honed by the likes of Mehlman's Harvard Law School training. It is not so hard to see why so many might regard Mehlman's belated coming out as "too little, too late."