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sirguym -> RE: Christian activists at a gay festival (2/7/2008 8:08:34 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Happilymarried77
Liberals are by far, the most intolerant group in the country. They "accept" your viewpoint, as long as you agree with everything they say. If you disagree with any of their views, they become seething blowhards, and they cannot reconcile difference of opinons w/ their perception of the individual who holds that opinion. The syllogism is as follows: since you disagree with them and of course, their opinion is the only "moral" one, then ergo, you must be a hatefilled nazi or the like, b/c if you weren't you would agree with them. The church of liberalism is more intolerant and hatefilled than it's antithesis. People can protest anything, as long as it does not become violent. We don't have to like or agree with it, but they have the right to express their views. Free thought is not a crime...yet
As a card-carrying Liberal Party member and lifelong liberal, I must say that I find your rant grossly offensive and entirely unjust.
I believe that all parties should enjoy a right to free speech and free assembly, and to make their point in a reasonable way.
Even, and most especially, when I disagree with it.
I cannot comment on this particular event as I was not there and have not read an in depth analysis.
But I have been at events where my fellow marchers and I were the target of violent attempts at intimidation by conservative, fascist, socialist, communist and anarchist groups, in the course of street and other demonstrations and protests. Even, at one point, I now learn, facing concealed American machine guns in their embassy in Berkeley Square, London in the Vietnam era.
In most cases the police were there and did a damn good job of keeping the peace by keeping distance between the two groups; where they weren't the 'rational tendency' of whatever political hue always managed to keep the peace by passive resistance - at such times I have linked arms with political 'enemies' like hard-line Stalinists to hold the line to avoid violent confrontation. I find the idea of a 'violent liberal' something of an oxymoron; I can't think of any I know, besides Paddy Ashdown - and he was never really a liberal anyway!
There seems no suggestion here that either the police or courts are or were partisan in this case. I think that before you assert that the religious nutters, or any other faction determined to publicise themselves, should be allowed to disrupt someone else's event, you should be willing to take your place in the police lines facing an angry mob on both sides. I have been there and done that, and accept that where one side or the other is capable of violence, the authorities have a responsibility to keep the peace.
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