Dean's World

A gay Republican football fan? Wow, talk about your specialty sports....but I'm such a big football fan myself, and conservative, so I suppose I'll watch some gay Republican football as soon as I find the listings in my area.

I'm more or less with Steven Malcolm Anderson on this business of "outing" of homosexuals. I regard this as little more than extortion, which is a felony.

While I am not particularly friendly to the male and female homosexual communities, I have come to increasingly accept the point of view that their sexuality is nobody's business but their own. At least so long as it involves only consenting adults of either gender.

I am not interested in arguments that it is hypocritical for hidden homosexuals to support anti-homosexual legislation. That is no more hypocritical than for practicing Roman Catholic legislators to support abortion rights for women to choose to terminate an unwanted, unsustainable, or medically dangerous pregnancy. In the latter case, practicing Catholics who support abortion rights owe no explanations to the bishops of their church. And similarly, hidden homosexuals owe no explanations to the bishops of the homosexual organizations.

Homosexuals who work at official positions, exactly like practicing Roman Catholics in the same status, have not only a right but an obligation as well to separate their personal interests from the public interests.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Constantly looking for hypocrites is ultimately a futile, if not dangerous, exercise. A heterosexual who wants to criminalize private homosexual relations is every bit as despicable and as deadly as a secret homosexual who suicidally does so. The media condemned William Bennett for his gambling -- while that was the only thing I _liked_ about him. Too bad he stopped -- _I_ condemn him for _that_, for his moral cowardice. (By the way, Bennett is a Catholic, so gambling isn't against his religion.) Ditto (pun intended) with Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction. If he had _never_ used drugs, he's still be just as much an enemy of liberty. It's none of my business what a Bork or a Santorum does in his private life -- what I oppose is that he wants me _not_ to have a private life.

Sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, you're going to run up against a Savonarola (a Hitler, a Pol Pot) who never gambles, never takes dope, never smokes, never drinks, doesn't eat meat, doesn't own a gun, never even masturbates, and never has sex except to produce more children for the State -- and wants to ban all those things. What will you say then?

It's not their inconsistent practice that I oppose, but their totalitarian principle. It's not their alleged secret "vices" that I condemn, but that which they call "virtue". That is what the battle demands. Nothing less will do.