What is this posting about?

10% of it is mostly about usage of the following single sentence out of a 900-word newspaper column.

90% of this posting is about a pervasive hypocrisy, a self-defeating and delusive notion of a form of justice called "tolerance" which can be observed, but need not be practiced in this world, or even in our own lifetimes.

The players:

	The Institute for Objectivist Studies, a respectable "think tank" which promotes Ayn Rand’s ideals of reason, purpose and pride to a mixed audience of students, academics, and intellectuals.
	Dr. David Kelley, director of the IOS for many years, and a leading figure and thinker in laissez-faire and libertarian thought, as well as a first-rate philosopher in his own right.
	Robyn Blumner, columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, admirer of Ayn Rand, and skilled political writer on other subjects as diverse as feminism, law, abortion, and Larry Flynt.

The source material:

	The text of Robyn Blumner’s newspaper column "Beyond Left and Right" (November 1998) -- about the IOS and Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, in which left-wing vs. right-wing postures on gays are cited as examples of the same false premise of government regulation of private behavior.
	My Letter to Dr. Kelley, of January 10, 1999, in which I bring him to task for spotlighting an article which uses gay issues as a device of political rhetoric, while proffering only negative stereotypes of gays and lesbians.
	A link to the IOS web site Media Coverage page, expressing optimism that a "broad-based coalition in support of Enlightenment values" is getting exposure in major newspapers such as the New York Post, which reprinted the Blumner article.

About Myself

	It will come as no surprise to observers of this web site that I’m gay, and live openly as a gay male with my partner-for-life. I didn’t originally "choose" this for myself, but at one point decided to get on with the business of living as best as I knew how. In the community and the workplace, I respect the right of others to their own comfort levels, and expect the same respect in return.
	It would make no difference whether we are born with a sexual orientation or "chose" it. Both scientific and anecdotal evidence is pretty clearly in favor of the genetic theories. People should be free to cling to any superstitions they want, but they should not be free to enact them into law. Homophobia is, like racism, an extreme irrationality that is still institutionalized in our society, laws and government. My interest in fighting it is inseparable from my interest in defending individual rights. To say that individual rights are ever "special" rights is profoundly wrong.
	I recognize the extreme personal discomfiture many people experience on the subject of sexual orientation, for I lived with it myself much of my life. But that does not excuse or minimize the denigration or persecution of others.

So, what’s the problem? One might make a case that I am merely over-reacting, to a perhaps regrettable slant, in a column that, to many, might just be another solid piece of mighty damn fine opinion.

he column is wrong for its smirking, stereotyped presumptions about gays. The column is wrong for its salacious approach to attracting "friends" of freedom. The column is wrong for misrepresenting what freedom issues are really about for gays in America, or for any citizen who actually wants an end to systematic persecution and legalized injustice in the United States of America.

The column is not right for the objectivist movement, the libertarian movement, the civil liberties movement, or any other movement. The column is wrong.

All the more so, being reprinted by an institute which studies and promotes individual freedom and happiness. These are people who should know better.

Most people don’t know much about the "libertarian right". In a libertarian world, there would be no "equal opportunity", "domestic partnership" or "welfare" laws. Anybody would be free to like, hate, employ, fire, or marry anyone they chose. What they wouldn’t be free to do is use force against those whom they opposed or disagreed with – firebombing, cross-burning and fag-bashing would be "out" – nor would anyone be free to band together by vote to pass laws regulating or restricting targeted private behavior.

One of the most appealing aspects of the libertarian view of society is personal freedom. If that doesn’t appeal to you, consider that, while do-gooders wouldn’t be muzzled, those that preach your obligation to shoulder the world's burdens would be de-fanged. For better or for worse, they could yap all they wanted about what you ought to do for the good of others, but they couldn’t pass laws to compel you to do it.

The question then becomes: what would you decide to choose to do? All these years, you’ve been told that discrimination is wrong, and it’s been cast in stone that the government would bring an end to this wrong. Alternately, you’ve been told that government intervention into the affairs of others is wrong, and that only certain kinds of political parties could end this injustice.

Depending on whom you believed, maybe you’ve been taken for a sucker. There is no such thing as wholesale, blanket legislation of justice. Each case must be administered, under a fair and even set of rules, one dispute at a time, before a jury of our peers. The problem with the system in the past has been the lack of a fair and consistent set of rules, by which I mean, equally applicable to all.

Suppose, now, that all eyes are upon you, to single-handedly cast your vote or pass ethical judgement, on a matter of injustice. What are you going to choose?

You don’t have to answer that question, but those promulgating radical changes in the law and the means of resolving social disputes do, and "it shouldn’t have been that way in the first place" just isn’t good enough. The libertarian right hasn’t come up with any coherent answers yet.

The stock answer is that "it’s not incumbent upon me to address those problems." True enough.

If the fate of the free world, the "Enlightenment", devolved down to the decisions of a handful of John Galt types, chances are the New World would still inherit all of the baggage of the old. This kind of problem-solving needs a principled consensus to have any chance of a successful implementation, and they haven’t either the consensus or the contingency plans. Unfortunately, this brings into question their grasp of their own principles. They just don’t seem to have thought it through.

They aren’t prepared.

What about the "gay community", or "the black community", or any of the other traditional "minority groups" in such a society? Perhaps the best way to summarize the libertarian right’s consensus on minority groups and "practices" would be to cite the title of the book Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, most popularly published in such circles.

Peter McWilliams’ libertarian classic Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do makes a strong case for "the absurdity of consensual crimes in our free country." This concept promotes "tolerance" by arguing that behavior between consenting adults should not be outlawed. In accepted popular usage, all it means is that maybe it should be legal, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

If you want to be black or gay or whatever, nobody’s going to stop you.

The consistent theme of my web site is that "in the long run, we are all Indians." My argument to the libertarian and laissez-faire crowd is that the sooner this is recognized and aired, the faster we can shake off the shackles of past.

What about these minority communities, then? Aren’t they preaching your moral obligation to shoulder the burdens of the world?

Those of you who are already members of one of more of any of these many communities will recognize the foolishness of such statements. Individual members of these communities are as diverse in their interests, values and political beliefs as any other population group. The idea that "all gays" or "all blacks" can be lumped into one single (and always negative) stereotype is insulting to any thinking person.

That goes for "all libertarians", too, by the way.

The laissez-faire answer is yes, of course this is correct, and in a free society all people would enjoy equal rights. Many advocates of this view are quick, perhaps too quick, to point out that this does not mean that you would be obligated by law to bootstrap others into social and economic equality.

You can see how many friends of liberty frankly resent the "political correctness" of others who express special concerns for the victims of selective murder, rape, beatings, legal repression and institutionalized prejudice.

Some folks will always confuse benevolence with altruism.

Today’s legal, social and cultural problems are so severe, so muddled and so mired in tradition and superstition, that there really are few thinkers who would soil their hands with any plan to extricate us all from this mess equitably. In any social upheaval, there are said to be "winners" and "losers". The plan, at least for the present, seems to be a focus on an age of Enlightenment, and to ignore ethical and moral questions about what ought to be done in the here and now. The "losers" can figure out who they are, we presume, soon enough.

There is a presumption that "the problem" of minorities would fade away in a classless society (as has been predicted for other "classless" societies before). To the extent that it didn’t, it wouldn’t be your problem anyway, unless you wanted it to be.

Look, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I want gay marriage, and I don’t really care whether you want to call it "marriage", or "domestic partnership". I want equal legal recognition and protection of my domestic situation, and I don’t think the law should take into consideration your upbringing and sensitivities, any more than it has mine.

I want hate crime laws, but I want those laws monitoring and scrutinizing equal enforcement of existing laws against existing crimes. When thousands are being beaten or murdered every year, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether the convicted perps get punished "more severely", but if the enforcers let those offenders off with a slap on the wrist, I want the enforcers jailed, too.

I want equality before the law. I don’t want theory, postponement and pontification, I want action, and I want justice, for all of us. And I want it now.

Despite Robyn Blumner’s cheap-shot references to "liberal gay advocacy groups who want the government to grant them special status", I don’t know of others gays who would take serious issue with what I wrote above.

In a land in which gays and lesbians are stripped of certain rights completely, it’s absurd to be characterizing us as asking for "special" rights. We want the same rights as other Americans enjoy. Blumner has succumbed to the temptation to misrepresent by the device of extreme exceptions, to demolish a "straw man", and she should know better.

It should come as no surprise to observers of this web site that someone with my views could feel comfortable in a society in which the law could not be used against us on the basis of our race, sex, color, creed or sexual orientation.

But there are two more pieces to the puzzle.

We do not live in such a society now, but you would not have found libertarians picketing for the death penalty in what is now called the "Texas Dragging Murder", and I have not found students of objectivism publishing principled denunciations of gay-bashing, such as that which murdered Matthew Shepard.

Among the population at large, a sizeable minority would describe themselves as "gay-tolerant". I saw one such study claiming 40% for this group. The remainder of the population shoots the gamut from gay-friendly to outright hatred or loathing. This presumably includes my "Talking Crow", the estimated 10% of the nation already describing ourselves as "sexual minorities". Go figure. There is no evidence the distribution of the "tolerance curve" is any different within the libertarian right spectrum (and there is a spectrum), even if you discount occasional commingling with the rabid "conservative right". The IOS, under Dr. Kelley’s expert tutelage, is promoting a "broad-based coalition in support of Enlightenment values".

The expedient thing to do, then, is to promote broad-based values that everybody (in those circles) can agree upon, such as government waste, excess and taxation.

On the one hand, we find an obvious and immediate catering to the rights and concerns of those who "despise homosexuality". On the other, is it merely sufficient to say that existing laws that deprive gays of rights "should be stripped out" of the books? When? The answer: at some future and vague, indefinite time, when everybody is already free, when all those unseemly gays and lesbians that you and I know are already safely dead.

Read Robyn Blumner’s article. It contains a precise formulation of the political aspects of the philosophy of objectivism. The column does show a clear understanding of the philosophy and an unusual amount of journalistic writing skill. But it was botched. Why?

Ask yourself whether you think the "despise homosexuality" message is a carelessly sloppy faux pas in an otherwise syllogistic dialog, or a subliminal text condoning the homophobia of a few errant collectivists within the party ranks.

I don’t care about the motivation. I care about the skillfully crafted message, and the irresponsibility of those who promulgate it. By default, it’s a sanction of the status quo. Worse, it’s almost a promise that if we move to an Enlightenment society in which your gold is only as good as your race, sex, color or creed, then that’s not a moral or legal issue, because "it’s nobody’s business if you do".

"Human ballast" is a phrase once popularized by Ayn Rand to describe a preponderance of people who never contribute anything of value, to themselves or society over the course of an entire lifetime, in the opinion of whoever is speaking. What was never discussed, that I can recall, is precisely whom those people were. That was left to the imagination and personal prejudice, but everybody knew there were a lot of those folks, and they were the objective enemy. "Human ballast" has become a keyword for dismissing people with whom we merely disagree.

In an Enlightenment society of the future, a caste system, a la India but without the legal superstructure, would probably be perfectly legal. It possibly would be seen by many as a desirable solution to poverty, indebtedness, hunger, lack of schools, and many other social ills.

You may disagree, but in my mind the problem is not that the law would not force people to rent to, hire or fire blacks, gays, AmerInds, Asiatics, drug addicts, prostitutes or Separdic Jews. The law would make no distinction between any of these groups.

Despite the libertarian classic Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, there is a strong libertarian undercurrent of bias that homosexuality is merely aberrant sexual behavior or a "dangerous sexual practice". In view of the culture in which libertarians grew up and bought into, this should not be very surprising.

If homophobia can be sanctioned and even applauded, so can racism and the rest of the cultural-legal baggage libertarian thinkers imagine themselves as having rejected.

What is completely absent, at least to the public eye, is any sense of enlightenment. The past thirty years have been a remarkable period in history for the gay community. For many intellectuals, that meant only a new problem of in-your-face "gay activists".

Why isn't the "libertarian right" intelligentsia happy that gays and lesbians are finally schieving a measure of freedom and equality?

There is no spirit or ethos of free inquiry here. The presumption is that, since you are free to believe whatever you want about other people, nobody should worry about it, unless you are trying to pass a law to regulate human behavior according to your private view of the purpose of life.

There is no sense of indignation against individual violations of individual rights, which reflects a strong undercurrent of popular anarchism. This is ethical and moral indifference, elevated to the status of virtue. Something is rotten in Denmark. There is no plan, agenda or itinerary toward "Enlightenment".

That’s the problem, as I see it. Moral revolutionaries, all dressed up, and no place to go.

Regarding gays "and other aberrance": frankly, a lot of objectivists will still parrot what they were taught in the sixties by Rand and her protege Nathaniel Brandon. Since they were really revalidating the predigested, vested thinking of contemporary society of that time, should we make a moral exemption for them?

Homosexuality per se, according to that school of thought, is not a fit subject for legislation, but it’s still chosen, it’s still immoral, and it’s contrary to the "proper" nature of romantic love, because it serves neither the purposes of reproduction, nor the dominant-submissive male-female mystique.

One would suppose that such thinking might have changed in all these thirty years. Perhaps it has. I have yet to see those thinkers put their money where their mouth is.

My thesis, expressed in my letter to Dr. Kelley, is that to ignore a wholesale injustice which should be a moral outrage today, because the land of milk and honey is supposedly right around the corner, smacks of profound moral cowardice.

I hope somebody can change my mind. I would of course wish otherwise, but it likely won’t be that tiny band of students of objectivism who are struggling valiantly to find a rational way to live in a predominantly irrational world. It’s not the mere possession of your value or belief system that makes you a good person, or bad; it’s what you do with it that counts.

What is happening to the gay community today is (and should be seen as) a moral outrage, just as like the systematic injustices done to the black and other minority community. That doesn’t mean you should rush out and pat us on the head, pass "special" laws, or adopt us. It just means you should speak out when wrong has been done.

Coming as this advice does from a gay man, I hope the above isn’t a big change in the values to which you already hold yourself accountable.

What others and I find so particularly egregious is that, on the dawn of the 21st century, there is still no valid reason to believe gays and lesbians alive today will live to see legal relief or redress.

Dr. Kelley didn’t respond to my letter. I can think of ten very good reasons why a man of his position and standing wouldn’t answer a letter like mine. I can think of ten more very good reasons why his very capable staff might wisely avoid touching such letters, too. As for an overriding concern for systematically discriminatory social injustice in our own time, that just isn’t one of the reasons that come to mind.

You can like gays if you want to. You can not like gays if you don’t want to. It ain’t nobody’s business if you do. The corollary: even if gays rushed to embrace the only political party with a gay rights plank solidly nailed to its bandwagon, they’d have to scrabble like hell just to get on board.

Libertarians are fond of that old revolutionary flag "Don’t tread on me." It really sounds a lot better when the playing field’s already level.

I’m sorry, but despite some very impressive philosophical credentials, many of these folks just aren’t quite ready for prime time.

My point is not, as libertarian critics would say, that with freedom comes "responsibility", some kind of mystical rightist or leftist obligation to serve the needs of others.

My point is that freedom fighters, if there truly were such, would, by definition, fight injustice wherever they found it. And that’s precisely what these folks are not doing.

As much as I dislike government regulation, there’s a monstrous hypocrisy in equating the government’s case against Microsoft with high treason to the economy, while what happened to Matthew Shepard is just another one of those things we can’t control anyway, so why worry about it?

It’s a shame that Blumner chose to compromise her case for personal freedom with cheap shots against the gay community. Which "advocacy" groups was she talking about? GLAAD? Lambda Legal Defense Fund? She never said.

My brief is that her column is a fatally flawed presentation of the virtues of individual freedom and happiness, and that an organization applauding this as an example of "good press" helped propagate a very serious injustice and misrepresentation.

Rights are rights. We either all have them, or none of us do. If all of them aren’t worth defending, none of them are safe. Dr. Kelley could make this case far more eloquently than I, if he so chose. I’ve already made that elsewhere on this page and on this site. I rest my case.

Please read my letter to Dr. Kelley. You will see it contains some subliminal text, also. The "politics of inclusiveness" means that a party of principles has to gain nationwide recognition for its practice of those principles. Let’s hope he gets the message.

Parroting the pronouncements of living apostles and dead patron saints is a lost art, and there’s little evidence we’re ready to be fooled by that again Real Soon Now. There’s just no substitute for living what you preach. Nobody ever said that isn’t sometimes hard and difficult work.