We need to do more than just verbally attack people like Coburn, we need to make sure they don’t get elected to public office, thereby removing (or at least minimizing) any power they have to restrict our freedoms.
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Then it’s a pity you posted without finding out where SA wound up in this thread. It takes guts to perceive you’re wrong; more guts to admit it to the people you’ve offended. He’s done both.
I had to jump in again, because this is really, really rich. After pages upon pages of your irritation that people are assigning words to you, and misinterpreting what you said, now you accuse the OP of spreading hate? I don’t recall anyone saying anything about hating the guy, and if you won’t permit the slightest paraphrase of your words because it somehow changes their meaning, you don’t get to do it to your opponents either.
Indeed. Seems things changed before I got to the end. This is why I don’t usually post in any thread that’s vaguely political - they’re too long to participate in.
Hey, Excalibre, no sweat. (I believe SA would say the same, if he reads to the thread end before replying to you. ;)) You’re far from the first or last to jump into a thread with guns blazing, only to discover you’ve been aiming at your foot.
:: Blushes with reminiscent guilt ::
So… you wanna join us for the next chorus of “Kumbaya”? 
Sam Stone is pro-gay-marriage. Let’s not lump him in with scum like the type described in the OP.
Indeed! I must confess though, when I saw Excalibre’s first post earlier this afternoon I was indeed tempted to hop aboard the Vituperation Express, but I remembered, as Miller said, that perhaps he was reacting at least partly out of an impression he had formed of me before. (An excellent point too, Miller, and one I hadn’t thought of.) But then I saw that you had gallantly ridden to my defense, and given that you are, after all, the inestimable EddyTeddyFreddy, I thought your words would carry more weight than anything I might add in my own defense.
Anyway, Excalibre, as EddyTeddyFreddy said, no sweat. And thanks.
(And thanks to you, too, ETF. I appreciate it.)
Aaaaand, now that everybody is up to speed, EddyTeddyFreddy will doubtless be nipping out for a selection of pastry-based confections for all posters of goodwill (and a strawberry Pop-Tart for milroyj).
So what key are we in on the Kumbayah?
I do so admire the assertion by the hatemongers, reiterated here by Starving Artist, that anyone who dares *object * to a hateful statement must simply hate the hatemonger and is therefore the party guilty of hatred. Fortunately most of us here can recognize that typical misdirection tactic from the trogloright.
Get this: This latest example of turkeydom in the OP is unmistakenly spreading hatred of gays and anyone else who’s at all sympathetic to what he lumps into “the gay agenda”. He’s the hatemonger. Those who defend him are defending hatemongering. Those who point it out are *opposing * hatred. SA, you gonna drop this shit now?
Not about gay marriage. Last time anything remotely resembling tension occurred between me and someone with his politics, the results were regrettable, and that was a gorgeous German boy with a tongue pierce.
Have you even read my posts? You will not find one word where I defended him.
As I’m going to start calling people on this kind of crap, I’ll be awaiting your apology.
He dropped it two pages ago. You’re not much of a reader, are you?
Thanks, Miller.
I think that’s enough.
And you did. If you’ve really learned and changed your mind in this brief period, then congratulations. Some skepticism about your sincerity there, given your denial that you said what you said, is, of course, understandable, isn’t it?
Oh, come on, man. Cut the guy some slack, willya? How many other Dopers with such passionate political bents have shown themselves as willing to see error and admit it honestly? SA is eager to debate, often impassioned, frequently (from my perspective ;)) wrong, but open-minded enough to take to heart sincerely expressed cricitisms and alter his expressed opinions accordingly. I don’t know about you, but my perception is that this is a quality rarely found on this board, at least among the ideological heavy hitters.
Yes, I understand why you still feel some skepticism. So does SA, I’m sure. I notice he’s still putting in the effort in this thread to act on the excellent advice Miller gave him, despite the attacks of posters who slammed him before following the thread to the end.
I’m not joining the defend-SA team, but he never agreed with or defended Coburn.
He also eventually acknowledged that people in this thread were not really going overboard before he showed up.
I disagree with him on the “ridiculosity” of Coburn comparing gays to terrorists, because he did say the gay agenda was the greatest threat to freedom, and Bush and most Republicans consider terrorism a threat to freedom. Also, he considers the gay agenda responsible for abortion, which he thinks should be a death penalty offense.
However, Coburn didn’t specifically compare the two, so we don’t know for sure what he meant. I can’t fault SA for making that clear, but he could have been nicer about it.
Agreed.
This is especially true for people like Coburn, who are way out of line with even Republican views.
I can see how attacking a moderate might end up being detrimental, and that kindness could work better on such a person.
But this is a guy who is in charge of the AIDS/HIV advisory council, and he thinks the “gay agenda” is the greatest threat to our freedom, and wants to make abortion a death penalty crime.
I have to believe that going up against Coburn is a winnable fight. If you can’t go up against someone that extreme, what can you do?
All that, I presume, was in answer to SA asking where he’d said “one word defending Coburn,” right? So, er… where’s that one word, again?
I don’t understand. How do you guys define “defending”? To me, his plea for others to stop spreading “hate” and his justification of the Coburn’s phrase declaring us homos to be the country’s biggest “threat to freedom” were defending Coburn. He might not have been defending the views the dude expressed, but he was jumping in to stop the rest of us from pitting the dude. How is that not “defending” him?
Maybe I’m just another hatemonger, but I’m not quite ready to join in the Starving Artist love-fest either.
Miller, you don’t have to be such an obtuse ass, right after suggesting that someone else doesn’t read. You know fucking well what **SA ** meant. You know fucking well what Excalibre means, too - with his advantage of being right.
Eddy, fair enough. Perhaps he’s one of those veteran posters who never did learn to think over what he’s said before hitting Enter. That makes many readers, such as me, tend to scroll quickly past his subsequent posts without giving him credit for admitting, once again, that he’s wrong and for all the wrong reasons. It would be easier not to be highly skeptical if he didn’t keep on doing that, though.
Which was my attempt to say, “Hey, guys, things are getting better. Be of good cheer instead of getting yourself all worked up.” This attempt failed, obviously, probably because of my close, i.e. “So, chill,” but it wasn’t meant in the heavy, belittling way I ultimately came to see that it sounded. That was my bad and it’s one of the things I apologized for.
(Pardon the all-cap bold sentences, but I want to be sure everybody who reads this misleading spew gets the facts):
I DID NO SUCH THING!
Got it? I’ll say it again…
I DID NO SUCH THING!
Let me explain, yet again (sigh) what I said and meant. I said Coburn that Coburn never said by way of his statement that gays were a threat to America’s freedom, that they were worse than al-Qaeda, which is what my comments were in response to. To my mind, freedom and safety and not necessarily the same thing. You can be safe without being free, and you can be free without being safe. I felt the two were being conflated. It had nothing whatever to do with “justifying” Coburn’s statement. How many times am I going to have to say this?
And thanks again to ETF, Miller and at least to a degree, Nightime :D, for coming to my defense. You lend credibility to my battle against the ignorance running rampant about my posts. My regards to you all.