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Posts Tagged ‘Alan Dershowitz’

Charles Winecoff

Note to Andrew Sullivan: Don’t Blame Breitbart For My Thought Crimes

by Charles Winecoff

Dear Andrew Sullivan,

Thank you for your Halloween Daily Dish in response to my Big Hollywood blog about the latest LGBT assault on Mormons.  We actually met once, briefly, at DC Pride, circa 1990.  I had never heard of you or The New Republic.  I do remember liking your accent.

More recently, about five years ago, I shot you an email to say thanks for a column you’d written about the threat of Islam to gays.  You sent a nice thank you back.  I’ve also admired your calling the hate crimes bill “boutique legislation” and urging your readers to stop sending checks to the Human Rights Campaign.

I appreciate the restraint of your posting, “A Gay Voice Against Marriage Equality,” though the title concerns me a little, as the last thing I want is for LGBTers to assume I am some kind of Anita Bryant (she was very active when I was coming out, and we don’t need a repeat of that).  Few things are as terrifying as the thought of becoming the object of gay fury (which I understand you’ve had some experience with).  It’s a sorry state of affairs when people within the gay community no longer feel they can speak freely without risking ostracism or threats.  I sometimes wonder if there should be a hate crimes bill to protect gay people from other gay people.

That said, there are a couple of points in your piece I’d like to address.

First, one does not have to ”search high and low” to find lesbians and gays who are suspicious of the cause formerly known as same-sex marriage.  Contrary to popular mythology, not all of us feel a pressing need for “marriage equality,” nor do we derive our self-worth from the state.  I know gay Californians who voted for Prop 8 last year because they sincerely believe it is in the best interest of children (some of whom will grow up to be gay), and of society as a whole (which includes gay people), to uphold the ideal of the man-woman nuclear family. (more…)

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Posted Nov 5th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 179 Comments

Dan Gifford

Treasonous Teddy: Chappaquiddick Only the Beginning

by Dan Gifford

As Gloucester in Henry VI beguiled like the mournful crocodile, so the political praises and tears for the late Democratic Senator from Taxachusets mouthed by his enemies have diminished and signaled the time for candor. Teddy Kennedy was a cheat, a proven liar, a shameless demagogue and a probable murderer. Those character traits were well known. But did you know he was a security risk dropped from the US Army intelligence school and a genuine traitor who offered Cold War US nuclear arms negotiation secrets to the Soviet Union if it would help the Democrats beat Ronald Reagan and further his own presidential ambitions?

That’s why my blood went to full boil a couple of days before he died when I glanced at the TV in a rural Bates motel — been staying in a lot of those lately — and saw Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz laud the youngest Camelotian as the greatest Senator and humanitarian of all time from the deck of Geraldo Rivera’s berthed yacht in Martha’s Vineyard. Dershowitz went on to tell the FOX mustachioed-one how he had rushed to Teddy’s aid with expert legal skills “in his hour of need” after Kennedy had left his date, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die in a Chappaquiddick Island tidal pond during the summer of 1969. Dershowitz’ considerable skills aside, the fact that full media attention was diverted from Kennedy by the coming Moon landing and walk to take place two days later probably helped the Kennedy fixers regroup and save his political hide. (more…)

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Posted Sep 2nd 2009 at 12:45 pm in Featured Story, Politics | 134 Comments