More than 80% of Tea party members don’t think gay couples should have the right to marry. THAT speaks volumes about these “Don’t tread on me” folks…they only care about THEIR rights, while they urge prohibiting the rights of others.

Where do you get your figures for “Tea party members”, Peter? Because if you get them where most seem to, from public polling of people who say they “like” the Tea Party, you’re using bogus numbers. Probably the overwhelming majority of those people, 18% of the population when I last looked (a while ago) have never done a single thing to actually get involved with Tea Party activism. The number of REAL Tea Party members is probably a very small fraction of that polling demographic.

Another problem with using people’s polled sentiments to make definitive statements about their activism is that mature adults are able to hold sentiments but not want to see those sentiments enacted as public policy. For instance someone who is anti-abortion but doesn’t want to see restrictions on abortion, or someone who is very angry at criminals but doesn’t want draconian “law and order” remedies enacted. Or someone who thinks marriage is for straights only, but due to a laissez faire philosophy, doesn’t want anti-same sex marriage restrictions.

Others might want to see some of their sentiments made into public policy but see that as a far less important goal than what they think should be given effort to. For instance people who think the law should prevent same sex couples from getting married, but that that is a low priority compared to activism in support of conservative economic policies.

As I remember CNN’s investigation into actual Tea Party members and groups, perhaps a year ago, where they contacted many hundreds of grassroots Tea Party organizations and asked for their opinions, there was virtually no interest in socially conservative political activism. Things may have changed since, of course, as the recent Boston Tea Party rally might be suggesting. But it might also be unrepresentative, or just a minority tendency within the movement.

Careful, you’re using a pretty broad brush.

I think that some of the people you are talking about have decided that they oppose gay people (because it really is about people) and that any request for equality will be met with excuses and explanations and irrational rants. For some, it is indeed “I got mine, drop dead”.

But some of the Tea Party people genuinely believe in smaller government, individual autonomy, and freedom. They often have contradictory views because they know what “we” believe on the subject but they have never sat down and asked themselves just what individual freedom means when applied to gay people and gay rights. And you’re right in saying that they don’t intend to apply their ideals to us. But many of them will if we patiently and without anger ask them to do so.

I’m not sure that dismissing them benefits anyone, us or them. But, by golly, that’s what our community seems determined to do.

I think that we have untapped allies. In fact, I know that we do. People like Grover Norquist are not the folk we think as allies. And likely he doesn’t spend much time around gay people or much like them. But from an ideological perspective, he does support some gay rights.

You probably have noticed that one of my recurring themes is that our community needs to accept support where we can find it. And we need to not make enemies out of potential friends.

Yes, it will cost us. We lose the fun of trashing some folk. We lose the rush of righteous indignation. We lose the feeling of superiority that comes from seeing entire classes of people as “bad” or “stupid” or “hateful”.

But ultimately, those are things worth giving up. I really believe that.

They have no interest in applying their ideas to us, and they never will. Because they are less wedded to the principles they claim to stand for than the direction in which those principles point – to themselves. The most common thread is “I got mine, drop dead” or “You got mine, give it back” — the commonality there is “me me me”, not “liberty” or “freedom”.

Go back and look at their idealogy. When their ideas seem to conflict, it’s because you’re looking at the so-called logic instead of at the pronouns.

But yet, the ideas they claim to believe should be benificial to us. If we were able to get them to apply their principles to us, I do believe we could build allies out of enemies.

The problem with shouting down haters is that by doing so you become one.

If what we object to about Camenker is that his ideas are disrespectful and hateful to others, our point is lost when we reciprocate with disrespect and hate.

Then it ceases to be civilized and inclusive v. boorish and exclusionary and instead just is a matter of which group you want to hate.

But with all due respect, I can’t think of anyone in our movement at this point who cares to actually read or hear what Scott Lively and Brian Camenker have to say.

That, I strongly suspect, was the thinking behind the Occupy protesters. The problem is that it has nothing to do with what the “movement” wants to read or hear, but what the greater public should read and hear in order to understand the very particular dangers that people like Lively and Camenker pose. Instead, they got news reports about Occupy protesters versus the Tea Party, and for all they know the argument was about Obama care or tax policy.

Or maybe, I dunno, something about the gays. But not about a man who has re-written the history of the 20th century to claim that gays were behind the rise of the Nazi Party, that gays caused the Holocaust and WWII, that gays ran the gas chambers and were sadistic prison guards who brought about the deaths of 6 million Jews and 6 million others. And had Lively been able to speak without interruption or distraction, I am quite sure that his talk would have strayed onto THAT subject, because it is his favorite subject and he always talks about it.

But ALL of that was lost, and along with that a huge opportunity to clearly define Lively in the newspapers and on the evening news not just as someone who is not very nice, but as someone who is far, far worse than your pedestrian bigot. Because, frankly, as it is right now almost nobody knows who he is or what he stands for, except maybe a vague recollection that gays don’t like him for some reason.

The worst protests I ever saw during the NOM Summer of Hate Tour were the protests when they protested off site at a different location.

The only thing I saw lacking was a drum. You really need to have a drummer to keep the beat going for protest chants. A drummer really adds a to a protest. People will follow a drum.I am very grateful to all the protestors who showed up, each and every one of them.

If some people want to put themselves out there and do something that gets them arrested that is okay, let them do it. I am NOT advocating they take off and slug somebody, but if they get arrested for crossing a line or yelling in a non yell designated area, I am fine with that. The enthusiasm and energy of the Pro Gay Civil Rights Protestors in Boston was uplifting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMPfUOPVaWU

Matthew