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4/5/13, "The ‘Vigilance’ Vigilantes," Mark Steyn, NRO, "The tolerance enforcers will not tolerate dissent."
"He
who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the
Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal
immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” the star columnist of the New York Times
fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book
on another fashionable minority. “I am worried,” wrote Maureen Dowd,
“about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some
don’t even seem to realize that most Americans use the word ‘gay’ now
instead of ‘homosexual.’” She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator
of Will & Grace:
“Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the way George Wallace used the
word ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful. I
don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, merely vigilant.”
For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist
Democrat. Whoa, don’t be overly sensitive. There’s no “tone” to my use
of the word “Democrat”; I don’t mean to be humiliating and hurtful: It’s
just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a “fact.” Likewise, I
didn’t detect any “tone” in the way Justice Scalia used the word
“homosexual.” He may have thought this was an appropriately neutral
term, judiciously poised midway between “gay” and “Godless sodomite.”
Who knows? He’s supposed to be a judge, and a certain inscrutability
used to be part of what we regarded as a judicial temperament. By
comparison, back in 1986, the year Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the
chief justice, Warren Burger, declared “there is no such thing as a
fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” I don’t want to be
overly sensitive, but I think even I, if I rewound the cassette often
enough, might be able to detect a certain tone to that.
Nonetheless, Max Mutchnick’s “vigilance” is a revealing glimpse of where
we’re headed. Canada, being far more enlightened than the hotbed of
homophobes to its south, has had gay marriage coast to coast for a
decade. Statistically speaking, one-third of 1 percent of all Canadian
nuptials are same-sex, and, of that nought-point-three-three, many this
last decade have been American gays heading north for a marriage license
they’re denied in their own country. So gay marriage will provide an
important legal recognition for an extremely small number of persons who
do not currently enjoy it. But, putting aside arguments over the nature
of marital union, the legalization of gay marriage will empower a lot
more “vigilance” from all the right-thinking people over everybody else.
Mr. Mutchnick’s comparison of the word “homosexual” with “Negro”
gives the game away: Just as everything any conservative says about
anything is racist, so now it will also be homophobic. It will not be
enough to be clinically neutral (“homosexual”) on the subject — or
tolerant, bored, mildly amused, utterly indifferent. The other day,
Jeremy Irons found himself musing to a reporter on whether (if the issue
is unequal legal treatment) a father should be allowed to marry his son
for the purpose of avoiding inheritance taxes. The vigilance vigilantes
swung into action:
“Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons has sparked outrage,” reported the Independent in London, “by suggesting that same sex marriage could lead to incest between fathers and sons.”
Outrageous! That isn’t exactly what he said, but, once sparked, the outrage inferno was soon blazing merrily:
“Jeremy Irons’ strange anti-gay rant,” read the headline in Salon.
I wouldn’t say he was ranting. He was languidly drawling, as is his
snooty Brit wont, and fighting vainly the old ennui, as if he would
rather be doing anything than another tedious media interview. Indeed,
he even took the precaution of averring that he didn’t “have a strong
feeling either way.”
You sick bigot theocrat hater! Not having a strong feeling is no
longer permitted. The Diversity Celebrators have their exquisitely
sensitive antennae attuned for anything less than enthusiastic approval.
Very quickly, traditional religious teaching on homosexuality will be
penned up within church sanctuaries, and “faith-based” ancillary
institutions will be crowbarred into submission. What’s that? I’m
“scaremongering”? Well, it’s now routine in Canada, where Catholic
schools in Ontario are obligated by law to set up Gay-Straight Alliance
groups, where a Knights of Columbus hall in British Columbia was forced
to pay compensation for declining a lesbian wedding reception, and where
the Reverend Stephen Boisson wrote to his local paper objecting to
various aspects of “the homosexual agenda” and was given a lifetime
speech ban by the Alberta “Human Rights” Tribunal ordering him never to
utter anything “disparaging” about homosexuals ever again, even in
private. Although his conviction was eventually overturned by the Court
of Queen’s Bench after a mere seven-and-a-half years of costly legal
battle, no Canadian newspaper would ever publish such a letter today.
The words of Chief Justice Burger would now attract a hate-crime
prosecution in Canada, as the Supreme Court in Ottawa confirmed only
last month.
Of course, if you belong to certain approved identity groups, none of
this will make any difference. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who famously
observed that Africans of the ancient world had made more contributions
to philosophy and mathematics than all “them Greek homos,” need not zip
his lips — any more than Bilal Philips, the Toronto Islamic scholar who
argues that homosexuals should be put to death, need fear the attention
of Canada’s “human rights” commissions. But for the generality of the
population this will be one more subject around which one has to tiptoe
on ever thinner eggshells.
I can see why gays might dislike Scalia’s tone, or be hurt by Irons’
“lack of strong feelings.” But the alternative — that there is only one
approved tone, that one must fake strong feelings — is creepy and
totalitarian and deeply threatening to any healthy society. Irons is
learning, as Carrie Prejean learned a while back, that “liberals” aren’t
interested in your opinion, or even your sincere support, but only that
you understand that there’s one single, acceptable answer. We don’t
teach kids to memorize historic dates or great poetry any more, but we
do insist they memorize correct attitudes and regurgitate them correctly
when required to do so in public....
Instead, the relentless propagandizing grows ever more heavy-handed: The
tolerance enforcers will not tolerate dissent; the diversity
celebrators demand a ruthless homogeneity. Much of the progressive
agenda — on marriage, immigration, and much else — involves not winning
the argument but ruling any debate out of bounds. Perhaps like Jeremy
Irons you don’t have “strong feelings” on this or that, but, if you do,
enjoy them while you can." via Free Republic
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