With people like this, no wonder we elect so many idiots

Bigotry continues. Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite writers, is a gay conservative, and when he makes an argument that goes against the thoughts of bigoted conservatives, they immediately accuse him of being a liberal because he's gay, and they don't criticize his opinions on the merits, they mock them and criticize them because he's gay. It is a sad time in America.
For a while there, tolerance appeared to be making tremendous progress, but under the Bushies, the bigots have made such progress, which is awful, considering that Bush is, at heart, a tolerant man. I disagree with many of his stands, because I think he's wrong, but I don't think he's dumb and I don't believe that he is a bigot. I think he played Rove's politics in the last election, and has now backtracked from it since he doesn't have to fulfill his campaign promise of the FMA.
I guess where I'm going with this is that minority opinions used to get criticized because the author was black or Asian or Hispanic. That has disappeared for the most part, except towards Muslims or Arabs. However, homosexuals continue to face this awful scrutiny. Why do we continue to treat good, decent people the way we do all over their sexual identity? What makes us hate so much? Why should a talented writer, an intelligent man like Andrew Sullivan have to face this sort of disgusting nonsense because he makes the sensible argument that the torture (and make no mistake, it is torture) hurts our efforts even worse?
The simple fact is, just because we're not as bad as what Saddam had doesn't mean that it stopped being torture. Geneva is there for a reason, so the atrocities of World War II didn't repeat themselves. We are way too close to that point. This was a war against Saddam's regime, and later become one against terrorists. We don't have an effective way of figuring out who is who in this battle, and it has been consistently proven that the best interrogation is done with kindness. Furthermore, we will get better intelligence if Iraqis don't feel like we're brutalizing their parents, children, cousins, etc. If they feel that way, they will fight us, and the insurgency will become a full-scale war. If we cut this crap out, and do a better job of filtering out the good from the bad, and treat them all humanely, then we are more likely to get the intel we need to break the insurgency once and for all. That's something Heather MacDonald, John Derbyshire and LGF have yet to figure out. They probably aren't dumb, just using tunnel vision.