Replies

All of it is predicated on the idea that one's identity must be limited to groups defined by liberals for their purposes, that there is no legitimacy to any identity or group association not so defined, and that rejection of an assigned group is a false identity.

Lincoln slept in a bed with another man before he was married. This was a common practice on the frontier and near frontier in the days when beds were expensive and bachelors were more common than wives. On this preposterously thin reed we now hear that a man who fathered several children and who had every calumny and disgusting epithet heaped upon him by his enemies -- enemies who would've sent him packing from Washington if there were any hint of homosexual scandal in his past -- was queer.

Meanwhile, his predecessor, a man who never married, was well known for a secret life in Washington in the days before his Presidency, dressed flamboyantly enough to raise eyebrows, and was expelled from the Dickinson Law School for "scandalous behavior" that was never made public, is assumed to be an ordinary single man.

The difference of course, is that Lincoln was a great President, and his predecessor was perhaps the worst ever. Therefore, the great man with no contemporaneous rumor of sodomy must be the gay one. Got that?

Why is it not simply enough for gay Americans to take pride in the fact that, like Lincoln, they are Americans? Or for Black Folks who enjoy or create music to have a common humanity with Beethoven? Beethoven did not identify himself as a white (or black, or red or any other color of) composer. Apparently, being an American is nothing special, but being a homosexual is, and apparently, being a musician or composer is no great shakes, but being Black -- simply by virtue of being born, is.

Thankfully, conservatives don't subscribe to these inane identifications. Our choices -- not accidents of birth -- define us.