Coulter (again)

I realize this is the 2nd post about Coulter in a row which is more credence than I would like to give her, but this whole 'faggot' debacle has got me thinking.

Andrew Sullivan wrote an intelligent, thoughtful piece about it here

One aspect I noticed in some conservative blogs was a spectacularly spurious conclusion that since liberals are 'pro-gay' it is hypocritical of us to complain when someone is called a faggot.

Let's be clear about this, if Person A tells Person B that she thinks B is gay, and B reacts with some kind of disgusted denial, then if B had previously stood up for gay rights B might warrant some accusation of hypocrisy.

However, Coulter did not simply suggest that Edwards was gay, she called him a faggot, which is a word used only offensively. For a parallel we can look at racial epithets. To acknowledge that a person is black is not offensive; to call him a nigger is extremely offensive. Both 'faggot' and 'nigger' are used to denigrate a person based on an inherent characteristic and display the intolerance and narrow-mindedness of its users.

Clearly, there is no hypocrisy in the liberal reaction. We support gay rights and we support the rights of racial minorities, and it is in that capacity that we abhor the use of abusive epithets to describe these groups.