Out in the wilderness there are going to be leftists who are hateful and every other leftist isn’t responsible for seeking them out and calling them out on their errors.

Fair enough, but it seems that, out in the wilderness, there are a lot more hateful liberals than they would like you to think.

I’d be more interested in the charge of hypocrisy if was at a specific person rather than the vague and fuzzy concept of ‘the left’. Who is this ‘left’ that is attacking a gay conservative while accusing the right of being mean towards gays? The NY Times editorial page? Rachael M. on MSNBC? Stephen Colbert? Kos?

This seems like an old game. Someone on ‘the left’ attacks something very specific on the right. Maybe it’s a comment by Bill O’Reilly or Rush. Maybe it’s a policy like Prop 8. The comeback is along the lines of “you attack us for being intolerant! Look what Bingobob12345 said on comment 356,211”. Well there’s no leftwing central command headquarters. Out in the wilderness there are going to be leftists who are hateful and every other leftist isn’t responsible for seeking them out and calling them out on their errors.

Yes you may, and I won’t consider it hate speech. And if you don’t think that calling a gay person “delusional” because they’re gay is “hate speech”, then I think all that means is that both you and I are on pretty much the same page as to what should be considered “hate speech”. I think we’d both agree that some speech is inappropriate and/or mean, but that the bar for “hate speech” shouldn’t be lowered every time someone gets criticized.

And yet again, I don’t know the specifics of the e-mails those fellas got, and any attempt to mitigate them by guessing what those specifics were is straw-man arguing at best. All I’m saying is that as much as the Right gets painted with labels like “mean-spirited”, “angry white males” and “intolerant”, it’s the Left that can’t seem to handle dissent or when someone breaks orthodoxy. The vitriol flies more (in this case, far more) from them than from those they accuse of vitriol. (As with that “palin anti-american” Google search.)

I don’t think Bruce and Dan are trying to claim victim status. I think they’re just calling out hypocrisy when they see it.

“If someone called a gay person “delusional” for being homosexual, you mean that wouldn’t immediately be decried as “hate”? ”

1. I think the response would be less about hate and more puzzlement. How could this person claim to know the gay person is delusional about being gay? This is possible. Back when Prop 8 was being debated there was a guy who appeared who claimed to be gay and a regular columnist for a gay newspaper, his schtick was ‘I’m a gay guy against gay marriage’. Some bloggers found that he was never a columnist for a gay paper, he once had a single article published by syndication. If there’s evidence that a person is a troll or being part of a set up then I don’t think it is ‘hateful’ to question his claims.

2. The counter charge of hate, I think, would probably come if the ‘delusional’ accusation was based on a premise that there are no real gay people…that gay people are simply ‘sick’, suffering from some mental problem or just choosing to ‘act gay’. I think here the charge of ‘hate’ would more likely come.

So if you have examples of people saying GayPatriot is not really gay, that he is delusional then yes I’d agree with you that is closer to ‘hate speech’ and if it is coming from liberals then so be it. That is wrong and should be addressed. #2, though, is not really a position held by many liberals so it would be hard to see how the comments you are talking about could fit.

Do I think it is ‘hate’ to call someone delusional? No I don’t. There are people, after all, who are delusional. How about people who maintain Obama was secretly born outside the country and isn’t a natural born citizen? Can I call them delusional? How about Larry Craig, can I say I think he is delusional when he claims he isn’t gay despite the little incident in the airport mens room as well as the men who claimed to have had affairs with him?

Now what exactly did the people who called GayPatriot delusional say? Did they say he wasn’t really gay? Well I’m not sure that’s hate but I’d wonder how someone could claim to know GayPatriot isn’t really gay unless they know him personally. Or did they claim that he is delusional in his belief that the GOP is tolerant of gays. I suspect it’s more of the latter and that type of claim is common in political discourse. All the time people are saying things like “if you believe Obama’s plan will work you are delusional”

Your efforts here to claim the status of victim is, I think, neither correct or very sensible as a political strategy.

And if you do a Google search for “palin anti-american”, you’ll find scores of links to people specifically calling her anti-American. Saying that her remarks about rural American being “pro-American” is, by extension, calling everyone else “anti-American” is a stretch. But it does server to show that the Left is far more vitriolic that she ever was.

What are folks who disagree that homosexuality is just another lifestyle choice called? Homophobic. Disagreeing is equated to fear and Prop 8 supporters are called hateful (or as Tom Hanks did, “un-American”, until he was called on it).

That’s not the Right’s definition. Or maybe it has become that just so we can compare apples to apples, and point out the hypocrisy when we see it. If the GayPatriot blog gets “hate mail” from the left 19 times more often than from the right, that’s probably, as I said, using the Left’s definition against them.

Look if you show me a leftist who is attacking “baby killer” accusations as ‘hate speech’ but then turning around leaving hateful comments on your blog I’ll say he is a hypocrite. I don’t think leftists, though, have any obligation to look for hateful comments from their side in order to proactively denounce them….nor, of course, can they be expected to read the comments your filter captures.