More on Coulter

Amazingly, the Ann Coulter remark is still in the news.

As usual, I'm of two minds on this.

On the one hand, it seems that many of the Liberals who are complaining the most are usually the "free speech" fanatics that would yell the loudest if, say, an artist who dips crucifixes in urine lost their government funding.

Dan Savage, editor of the Stranger, a Seattle alternative news weekly get it's right:

I don't have a problem with people using the word 'faggot.' I use the word 'faggot' all the time," said Seattle's Savage. He started a public humiliation campaign against former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican, after Santorum made derogatory statements about gay men. But he does not think there should be a campaign to silence Coulter.

"When we start acting like the thought police, it plays into the right-wing paranoia that we are going to force them all to say only nice things about us in public," Savage said. "I think we would gain ground faster in the gay and lesbian civil rights movement if we drop the Sally Field act of, 'You like me! You really like me!' "

On the other hand, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also makes a very effective argument:

Referring to John Edwards by using a word meant to demean homosexuals? What was she thinking? Ann Coulter has never been married. She has been known for once dating Bob Guccione, Jr., son of the Penthouse magazine magnate. John Edwards, on the other hand, has been married for almost thirty years to his wife, Elizabeth. Together they have had four children, Wade, Cate, Emma Claire, and Jack.

Wade died in a tragic car accident at age 16, throwing the Edwards family into a grief that often tears spouses apart. Their marriage not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce Emma Claire and Jack. John Edwards stood by his wife through her more recent fight with breast cancer, and there has never been a scandal associated with their long marriage.

I oppose John Edwards' political platform, but not John Edwards the man, husband, and father. I do not want to see him elected President of the United States, but this has everything to do with his political positions, not his personal life. I do not appreciate his crude oversimplification of the challenges that face our nation, but I must oppose any crude talk about John Edwards the man.