According to people such as O”€™Reilly”€”who might be described as a mouthpiece for “€œthe alternative left”€”€”it’s OK to politically intimidate those who aren”€™t sufficiently sensitive to gays. But there was no reason to do so in the present circumstances because Cathy, despite his personal religious views, was making special efforts to be nice to gays and to hide his disapproval of their lifestyle. Is this a “€œconservative”€ approach? It sounds like something one might have read in The New York Times five or ten years ago, before the paper’s hysteria about intolerance toward gays reached its present pitch. If one wishes to know what the left believed until its latest flip or lurch, just check in on the “€œalternative left.”€ It’s simply what the left might have said just before it raised the ante.

The government social engineering that was congressionally approved in the 1960s for advancing blacks and women has now been extended to other victim groups, and there’s no way to stop the process. It just goes on and on, with ever more intrusive tactics being applied to bring everyone into line. This is not fascism, with due respect to my libertarian friends who insist that it is. Mussolini, for all his rhetoric about the state’s majesty, would never have engaged in the present insane attempt to stand society on its head by placing homosexuals beyond criticism and by pushing the private sector into showering them with jobs. The alternative left does not really object to such arrangements provided they can elect Romney as our next president and get on with important things such as carpet-bombing Iran and filling patronage jobs with party loyalists.

The alternative left has endorsed all the steps that got us here, from the 1960s onward. It would look ridiculous for these media Republicans, after having supported the campaign against “€œdiscrimination”€ up until now, to assert a right to discriminate against gays in favor of straights. Cathy should also be allowed to serve or not serve those who come into his business establishments, but since he clearly wants their money, it seems unlikely that he would snub gay customers.

Cathy should have the right to state what just about everyone accepted as the normative definition of marriage up until the 1970s. And he should be able to express that view without having Democratic political thugs come after him and try to ruin his business enterprise. In a decent society, fanatical ideologues like the mayors of Chicago and Boston would hold no public trust at all.