Cathy Young on Gay Rights, Intolerance, and Racial Parallels

Brendan
Eich’s departure as CEO of Mozilla in the backlash over his 2008
donation of $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the
California initiative that limited marriage to opposite-sex
couples, has sparked a new backlash—over free speech. There has
been some absurdly overheated rhetoric on the right, with mentions
of the gulag, fascists, jihad, and Torquemada. But even gay authors
who champion marriage equality, such as Andrew Sullivan, Frank
Bruni, and Dale Carpenter, have assailed a new orthodoxy and
intolerance in the liberal camp. 

There is no question that Eich’s resignation under pressure
highlights a larger trend: the increasingly prevailing view that
all opposition to same-sex marriage is bigotry akin to racism. In
many ways, this attitudinal shift has helped same-sex marriage (for
instance, by advancing the judicial opinion that discrimination
against gay unions has no rational basis). But if it turns to
persecution of dissent, warns Cathy Young, the consequences will be
bad not only for intellectual freedom and the cultural climate but
ultimately, perhaps, for gay equality as well.

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