Celebrate Conformity!

For the record, I actually do support gay marriage, if for no other reason than that I have no interest in opposing something that has no personal affect on me and doesn't harm anyone. Beyond that, I believe gay marriage is positive in that it engages gay people (no pun...oh, maybe a little pun) as greater participants in society-at-large, and that's good for everyone.

But there are plenty of people who are opposed to it and it is extremely alarming that rather than trying to persuade them, the segment of our society that is inclined to censoriousness does what it always does; it tries to silence any dissent. 

In the long run, that's far more dangerous for us all.

          Mark Steyn:

~It's the thuggishness and bullying that ought to disgust people, even those who support gay marriage. My final appearances at National Review Online were a spat with my editor, Jason Lee Steorts, over "two jokes one can no longer tell on American television" that I quoted in a column on Phil Robertson's suspension for "homophobia". First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

"I've just flown in from California, where they've made homosexuality legal. I thought I'd get out before they make it compulsory."

Second, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin on stage in Vegas throughout the Sixties and Seventies:

Frank: "How do you make a fruit cordial?"

Dino: "Be nice to him."

Mr Steorts thought my resurrection of these ancient "slurs" was "derogatory" and "puerile":

People who used them in different times need not be regarded as monstrous, nor must the canon be censored; we could instead feel good about having awoken to a greater civility and make generous allowances for human fallibility.

Yeah, just like Brandon Eich "awoke to a greater civility" yesterday morning. What Mr Steorts especially disliked about my column was "the slur in its borrowed concluding joke". Which was:

How do you make a fruit cordial?

Be nice to him.

Or else.

But isn't that what's just happened to the Mozilla guy? Nobody's asking him to have a genuine conversion. The gay enforcers don't care if, somewhere deep down in his heart he still believes marriage is the union of a man and a woman; all that matters is that he's not allowed to say so in public. Billions of people around the world believe as Mr Eich does, and they shouldn't be allowed to say so in public, either - not if they want to keep their jobs. I'm currently trying to fund my own free-speech battles at the DC Superior Court through sales of my book Lights Out, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available through the Steyn store - if you like the squaresville hardback edition, that is; but, if you're part of the Mozilla set, you can also get it on Kindle, Nook and Kobo, at least until those outlets ban on it on the grounds of "respect" and "inclusion" and "balancing" free speech with "equality". On page 181 of Lights Out, I write:

Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don't oppose the right of gays to advocate it. But increasingly gays oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. Gay activists have figured that, instead of trying to persuade people to change their opinions, it's easier just to get them banned.

Those words are not as old as Frank and Dean's gag, but sad to say they're likewise prescient. And that's why, pace Mitchell Baker, what happened to Brandon Eich is not an "equality" issue but a free-speech issue.

Read it all at STEYN ONLINE