Fair and Balanced Homophobia

So Perez Hilton has decided to stop afflicting  gay people, chastised by the wave of recent gay suicides—or sensing an opportunity to ride the wave of remorse over same. But the Washington Post is remaining doggedly neutral on gay suicides. Or something.

The Post ran an astonishing screed from the anti-gay bigot Tony Perkins—who delivered exactly the kind of hatefulness dressed up as Christian solicitude that drives gay teenagers to kill themselves. That was supposed to be balanced, we’re now told, by the paper’s also running  a live Q&A with Dan Savage sympathetic to the plight of gay teenagers. This is mind-boggling. As Jason Linkin notes on HuffPo, there are now two sides of “Should gay teenagers commit suicide?”

I’m tempted to quote at length from Perkins, who likens being gay to “excessive use of alcohol, drugs, reckless driving, or heterosexual activity outside of marriage.” He says gay teenagers don’t die because they are bullied and tortured by homophobes, but because they are tolerated, or (the really unlucky ones) even accepted, by their parents. Seriously.

This guy is the kind of family-values warrior who turns out to be gay himself, and, like GOP operative and gay scourge Ken Mehlman, thinks all should be forgiven once he becomes “comfortable” enough with who he is to admit who he is. That there are these guys kills me, but what kills me more is that the Washington Post considers this a legitimate opinion.

The radicalization of the right is making this sort of outrageous fire-breathing the new normal. Never mind that yesterday a federal  judge approved an injunction against enforcing  Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on the grounds that it harms both the rights of gay soldiers and the combat readiness of the Armed Forces. The rear-guard action against acceptance of  people who are not aging white heterosexuals with big houses, yards, families, and cars will not be denied. And the WaPo, while it may not need to get elected, still fears their wrath.