A reader sent in his favorite double standard: For the left, it's wrong to try to change homosexual behavior -- their choice or orientation must be respected and left alone. But this no-change policy does not apply to young boys. It's OK to view their boisterous behavior as a social problem to be solved.
We have reached the point where the public understands and resents the flood of double standards, but hasn't found a way to speak out. Bryant Gumbel's recent adventure with naughty words, for instance, passed without much comment. After interviewing a man from the Family Research Council on the CBS morning show, Gumbel mouthed the words, "What a ----ing idiot!" A prominent TV executive, not known as a conservative, told me: "Can you imagine if a conservative had done that on national TV? He would have been fired in two minutes."
Another example is the new movie "Chuck and Buck," a sympathetic portrait of a creepy homosexual stalking a heterosexual male. New Yorker film critic David Denby wrote: "If the movie were about a hetero man pursuing a woman ... wouldn't it be seen as an obnoxious brief for harassment?" Of course. But a positive movie about a straight male stalker just wouldn't be made.
Hate-crime legislation is the classic example of the double standard mind-set, offering different punishments for similar crimes committed against oppressors and oppressed. Yes, the laws are written so that the oppressed can get extra jail time too, but that rarely happens. Columnist Clarence Page recently wrote that foot-dragging by police and the media on anti-white violence is endangering hate-crime laws. Maybe so. But police, prosecutors and press downplay minority hate crimes because they understand what the law is meant to accomplish. It is intended to benefit members of minorities, not to put more of them in jail.
A lot of readers chided me after my recent column for picking examples only on the left. Fair enough. Many conservatives who say they believe in family unification opposed the return of Elian Gonzalez to his father. And states-rights conservatives are forever calling for federal laws that override states rights, for instance Dick Armey's plan to prohibit state and local taxes on Internet sales.
Inconsistency and hypocrisy can be found everywhere on the political spectrum. But the left has a special problem: Through Marcuse and his disciples, it has a philosophy of double standards hovering over its social programs and the judgments of its people in the news media.
Double standards inevitably erode honesty. The Marcusians at colleges can't say to parents, "Thanks for the $20,000. By the way, we've politicized the university, and we're going to indoctrinate your children and treat whites as oppressors." The program has to be cloaked in concern about hate speech and diversity. Intolerance poses as tolerance and the double-entry bookkeeping leads to strategies of deception. It's all a house of cards, bound to collapse sooner or later. Sooner would be better.