The shoe pinches when it's on the other foot!

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Ed. note: The printed and distributed version of this full News Tribune on-line article was edited and shortened (additionally snipped here); click on the title to read the entire/full article at the Trib's site.
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Some gay-rights foes claim they now are bullied
By David Crary, June 11TH, 2011 09:08 PM (PDT)

As the gay-rights movement advances, there's increasing evidence of an intriguing role reversal: Today, it's the conservative opponents of that movement who seem eager to depict themselves as victims of intolerance.

To them, the gay-rights lobby has morphed into a relentless bully - pressuring companies and law firms into policy reversals, making it taboo in some circumstances to express opposition to same-sex marriage.

"They're advocating for a lot of changes in the name of tolerance," said Jim Campbell, an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund. "Yet ironically the tolerance is not returned, for people of faith who don't agree with their agenda."

Many gay activists, recalling their movement's past struggles and mindful of remaining bias, consider such protestations by their foes to be hollow and hypocritical.

"They lost the argument on gay people and now they are losing the argument on marriage," said lawyer Evan Wolfson, president of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry. "Diversions, scare tactics and this playing the victim are all they have left."

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"Their beliefs on this issue are very quickly becoming socially disgraceful, much in the way white supremacy is socially disgraceful," wrote Evan Hurst of the advocacy group Truth Wins Out. "They are certainly entitled to cling to backwoods, uneducated, reality-rejecting views ... but their 'religious freedom' doesn't call for the rest of us to somehow pretend their views aren't disgusting and hateful."

However, some gay-rights supporters see the public opinion shift as reason to be more magnanimous.

"The turn we now need to execute will be the hardest maneuver the movement has ever had to make, because it will require us to deliberately leave room for homophobia," Jonathan Rauch, a writer and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, wrote recently in The Advocate, a gay-oriented news magazine.

"Incidents of rage against 'haters,' verbal abuse of opponents, boycotts of small-business owners, absolutist enforcement of anti-discrimination laws: Those and other 'zero-tolerance' tactics play into the 'homosexual bullies' narrative," Rauch wrote. "The other side, in short, is counting on us to hand them the victimhood weapon. Our task is to deny it to them."

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"The power to intimidate people, to make them fear they'll be called a bigot or denied opportunities for jobs, only works if people allow themselves to be bullied," George said. "Conservatives who make themselves out to be victims run the risk of playing into the hands of their opponents, suggesting that their opponents' cultural power is so vast that there's no way it can be resisted."

To professional free-speech advocates - such as Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship - the gay rights vs. free expression cases are fascinating and often difficult.

"It's very volatile - it requires you to parse the issues very closely," she said. "I'm of the school of thought that you should know your enemy. You need to know what people are thinking."
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