Since we're in the discrediting bloggers business this week. Hey, it's only trillions of dollars to private corporations. Destroying a blogger is the truly important thing here. I do not condone Hamsher's use of blackface. It is a deeply offensive, indefensible act. However, I would note her crime cannot begin to compare to the lurid history of Andrew Sullivan, a man now venerated on this site.

For those who cannot help but approve of Andrew Sullivan and repeatedly post his tripe on DU, but are currently hyperventilating over Hamsher's error, some history, in case you weren't aware:

- Sullivan supported publishing excerpts of the Bell Curve as editor of the New Republic. It is a deeply racist work smothered in pseudo-science. Rather than advance or evolve beyond these views, Sullivan has remained steadfast in his belief over the years that there are genetic racial components to intelligence. As recently as two years ago, he was hawking this racial snake oil on his blog.

- Sullivan spent the majority of his career denigrating the LGBT community. He consistently criticized the "libidinal pathologies" of gay men while presenting himself as morally upright, conservative, Catholic, special, different from those "bad gays". He profited handsomely from MSM work as the one acceptable gay in public discourse.

In the end, however, Sullivan's own libidinal pathologies were far greater than anything he assigned to the community at large. While we struggled for our place in society and equality, Sullivan scrambled onto television and into newspapers to tear down the community in his own image. To this day, it remains one of the greatest disgraces in the community.

- Sullivan is a proud misogynist. During last year's campaign, he polished bizarre, fixated sexism to an ever glossier shine. He has long complained about women being "too in charge" of the LGBT community. The complaint surfaces again and again in his thoughts.

- Finally, there was no greater cheerleader for the war in Iraq than Andrew Sullivan. After 9/11, he referred to liberals and the Left as a traitorous fifth column, while positioning himself as some kind of journalistic McCarthyite.

- Frankly, it is an insult to see Sullivan lavishly praised here after all he has done. Sure, he says nice things about the President, but the damage he has caused is far beyond the power of his blog to repair by simply being somewhat nicer to Democrats than he has been in the past. He is, at heart, a coward who always attempts to be on the winning side. He is untrustworthy and as vile as any right-winger out there. His history speaks for itself.

It's a funny thing how, during campaigns, we might hammer politicians as liars and thieves, but there are occasionally moments where we earnestly hope the politician we support is lying his head off. In supporting Obama during the campaign, there were various issues where I thought "Well, he has to say that now to get elected, but once he is I bet his real thoughts will come to the fore."

Take, for instance, LGBT rights. In the 90s, then state senator Obama was a strong supporter of gay marriage. Typically, a liberal politician evolves towards gay marriage - rarely do they pirouette away from it. So when primary candidate Obama stood there declaring his religious beliefs that marriage was between a man and a woman, that "God is in the mix", I thought, well, he's trying to court religious conservatives here. He thinks he needs their support to win the election. When the McClurkin fiasco hit, I continued feeling that way, and there are heated arguments in my DU posting history to prove it. "Don't worry, he's lying. Once he's in office . . ."

I was wrong.

Oh, I still believe the President is lying about his attitude towards gay marriage. But, not so strangely, it is a lie he has chosen to keep for purposes of political expediency. He has weighed the issue and decided support from religious conservatives both within and without the party is important enough to leave LGBT families twist in the wind, unprotected and assaulted, with nary a word of encouragement when gay marriage came to places as rural as Iowa.

With Afghanistan, I am willing to bet many people hoped Candidate Obama was lying. In American elections, especially in the age of terror, any political candidate who wishes to remain viable must not allow him or herself to be seen as weak on defense. Candidate Obama knew his base opposed Iraq across the board. That left him with Afghanistan. The war of necessity. The place where we needed to win. I will not surrender or withdraw, he declared, but lead the American people to a stirring military victory where we need it most.

I would bet, especially in light of current reactions, much of the anti-war, anti-Iraq base probably hoped Candidate Obama was lying. I would bet there was a hope and feeling that a President of deep intelligence would enter office, look at this conflict from the inside, measure the pros and cons, and declare "This is not worth the blood, the havoc, the empire, the losses."

Those people were wrong just as I was wrong about gay rights.

Sometimes, on the things you really want a politician to tell the truth on, they let you down. And sometimes, when you earnestly hope they're lying out of political expedience, they're unfortunately telling you the truth or are constrained by powers far beyond the mere citizenry.

This is simple reality in our politics. Arguing what a President does or does not promise and behaving as if these are ironclad contracts or straightforward declarations of earnest belief is dishonest folly. We all know a politician will not keep promises, and we all know a politician will not always let slip his or her true beliefs for fear of what opponents might say or how constituents might punish them. In any election, we the citizens must use all the evidence at our disposal to divine what a politician might really do once in office, what promises they truly will keep and those they will not.

I was deeply wrong about the President's commitment to LGBT rights. He wasn't lying with McClurkin or Warren or that DOMA brief. I misread and misunderstood him.

I imagine, right now, many people who hoped Obama's intelligence would carry his administration away from Afghanistan rather than ever further in are feeling betrayed and disappointed. They didn't merely vote for his promises - they voted for his potential. I think many people felt this President had the potential to draw us out of the quagmire.

They were wrong. They are angry. I stand with them. It happens sometimes like that.

I've been debating this post for the past 24 hours. As I read thread after thread after thread about the arrest of Professor Gates, it is very difficult not to notice the vast differences in how people react to and treat discrimination among different minority groups. The following observations are not meant to pit one minority group against any other. No one has to self-identify with any group to realize discrimination is wrong. No one has to belong to any group to empathize with hurt, inequality, and the outrages of injustice.

My hope is that, in highlighting these differences, people who have reacted poorly in the past will give a second think about how they approach others in the future when it comes to how many people in this country suffer discrimination.

1. Being upset with the police's treatment of Professor Gates is not "poutrage". Anyone who would use that word to describe the situation would have to be heartless, uncaring, and deeply wrong.

2. Equal treatment by law enforcement is not a pony. It is not a frivolous demand made by those with an axe to grind.

3. Equal treatment by law enforcement is not a pet issue.

4. The issue of equal treatment by law enforcement is not something that can be shunted aside because we've far too much to do on the economy, health care, and foreign policy.

5. No Democratic President would invite Sgt. Crowley to open his inauguration. No Democratic President would frame such an invitation by saying, "Though we may have deep differences on how law enforcement treats African-Americans, it is important for us to reach out and find common ground. The fact of the matter is that we are all against crime." Any Democratic President who attempted such a thing would be destroyed in his next primary. No liberal would treat such an offense with the blithe response that "Reasonable people can differ."

6. Many people were aggravated and offended when Bill Cosby was brought forward as the "shielding opinion" for people to criticize the outrage expressed at arrest of Professor Gates. When people drag similar figures out to criticize the LGBT community, it's just as aggravating and offensive.

If you faced the above list nearly every single day on DU, would you be upset? Now imagine if nearly every post you made about the Professor Gates incident was replied to by an overwhelming majority who dismissed it as unimportant, belly-aching, selfish, a single issue cause. Imagine if someone told you to stop complaining about unequal application of law enforcement, that it will sort itself out eventually, that you already have a President in office who said he'd address it, that you simply have to trust that those in power will handle it, that any complaint or pressure on your part is simply counter-productive whining.

LGBTers on DU face all this and more. Every. Single. Day. From dozens of the same people who have (rightly) expressed outrage, hurt, and despair over how law enforcement behaves towards ethnic minorities.

Bigotry and discrimination are never acceptable. No one in this country should be asked to suffer it or dismissed when they tell you they are harmed by it. Racism, homophobia, sexism. These are all related, all a cancer in our society, all an injustice that can never be set aside for a time as we turn our attention to other things. They can never be excused, apologized for, or dismissed.

I hope that those who are righteously offended and outraged by Professor Gates' arrest think on those feelings, examine their past treatment of other minorities who face discrimination in this country, and perhaps alter their behavior and attitudes when those minorities express similar hurt, frustration, and despair over their inferior place in American society and the laws and power structures that similarly rob them of their dignity and equality.

Empathy, compassion, and putting ourselves in another's place can never steer us wrong. It is easy to be offended and outraged when it is our own group is under assault by discriminatory practices. It is far more difficult to treat others as we'd want to be treated ourselves.

I think a lot of us could do with a bit of reflection and approach future discrimination issues with all of the above firmly in mind. Our track record on this account, at this point in time, is a pretty poor one.

JMHO.

pa⋅ter⋅nal⋅ism 

–noun the system, principle, or practice of managing or governing individuals, businesses, nations, etc., in the manner of a father dealing benevolently and often intrusively with his children:

There is a meme gaining traction of late that the LGBT community simply isn't doing enough to undo our inequality. At every turn, dozens and dozens of posts are made questioning whether we've petitioned our representatives, made our thoughts known through every available channel, done everything we can do to ensure that pressure is applied to the powerful.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. It is too often implied in threads criticizing the sluggishness of this administration that the community focuses upon the President to the exclusion of all else.

Anyone who believes this does not know the LGBT community very well.

We march, we write our representatives, we donate, we post messages online, we vote, we live openly, we talk and persuade and bear witness and move through a society that has long expressed little more than contempt for our very existence. Every single day that we wake up in the morning, walk out the door, express and work and live and love openly as LGBTers, we are committing a powerful act of activism. Sometimes the simple act of telling our parents who we really are is the most courageous and terrifying thing we will do in our lives. That is a shattering inequality that each and everyone of us has faced and those criticizing us have not.

It is exhausting and dishearting to find nearly every reasonable criticism of the administration met with "Well, what are YOU doing?!"

We are doing everything. What are you doing, outside of constantly picking apart our every word, dismissing our every concern, and protecting the most powerful politicians on the planet from the one of the smallest, most reviled minorities in history?

Truth to power! Remember when that was more than a disingenuous slogan, when it was more than a thinly-disguised clarion call that roughly translated "Truth to (that other guy's) power!"

It is exhausting to be lectured about what we can do. We have done it. So many times over so many years. And so many of us are so very tired. Some of us want to part this world as equals rather than fade from it in despair.

Our lives are not a game, yet we are openly, mockingly taunted every single day as if equal rights are a kind of political sport. Dishonesty and disingenuousness are invoked in brazen attempts to save the faces of our most powerful politicians. Positions and rationalizations and logic shift and transmute before our very eyes because winning a partisan political argument is a more powerful impulse than putting down the sword, taking up the plough, and asking those suffering around you what you can do to help.

We are told to build a movement from the ground up, but then our allies shove us down.

We are told by the President that we must force him to do the right thing, but then we are told to stop pushing.

We are told to put pressure on Congress, but then we are villified and criticized for organizing a boycott against them.

We are told to write representatives and to organize, but then we are ignored when we countlessly inform these advice-givers that we have been doing precisely that for a very long time.

I do try to be civil on this board. I prefer persuasion to condescension. I prefer conversation to shouting. When I have felt dialogue is possible with a poster, I have often tried to engage them as politely as I know how.

What I have received for my efforts are threads full of taunts, daring LGBTers to take issue, to speak out, to create a real ruckus, because they know it might brand us malcontents and disruptors. We are blithely advised to settle down and lectured by parlor advocates on what we can do, as if we are lost children in need of a knowledgeable and enlightened parent to tell us where we have gone ever so wrong.

These are not the actions of allies, progressives, or Democrats. These are the actions of the powerful keeping the powerless in their place. To paraphrase a DUer I admire, "One need not come from privilege to defend it."

Every taunt, every thread meant to rub LGBTers noses in their inequality, every subversive gleeful remark reminding LGBTers that the politicians you support have all the power while our community has none is a disgrace to the idea of support for equal rights.

The politicians are the powerful. The LGBT community are the powerless. It is obvious to me whose side Democrats should be on, but what is obvious to me is tragically not obvious to everyone. Power and victory are intoxicating drugs. It seems to me too many imbibed too much, grabbed up the car keys, and have decided a spinning, drunken jaunt through the neighborhood is the order of the day.

That is not the kind of behavior I hope for in fellow Democrats, and I deeply, honestly wish it would stop.

If recent events in LGBT civil rights are any indication, it seems like too many people on our side are engaged in parlor advocacy. Allow me to define it.

If you say you support equal treatment under the law, but find every avenue and approach to shut down criticism of anti-gay policies and actions, you are a parlor advocate.

If you believe same-sex marriage is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, but take every opportunity to explain why this nation is simply too busy to address inequality, you are a parlor advocate.

If you tell stories of love and affection for gay friends, family, and co-workers, but criticize all and any attempts by the LGBT community to exert political pressure in pursuit of their goals, you are a parlor advocate.

If you claim to believe in civil rights for all, but declare access to American History off-limits and bar LGBT activists from building on the civil rights victories of the past, you are a parlor advocate.

If you never provide material support to the LGBT community when our lives at stake, dismiss our concerns when policies do us harm, never commit yourself to solidarity of action or movement, never have a kind word to say when an LGBT individual is upset by what a government, Republican or Democrat, has done to them, you are a parlor advocate.

When progress is possible, when the opportunity is ours for the taking, and you cannot move but to quiet the cries of those who are less free, you are a parlor advocate.

Twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, many parlor advocates will tell their grandchildren that they supported equal rights back in the day, that they helped make equality happen and brought relief and freedom to millions of families.

Did you?

Really?