Rather than defend Mitt Romney’s inexplicable u-turn on gay rights (because he can’t), David Frum tries to make the issue about me. Power Line piles on. Surprise! Whenever neocons have to defend the indefensible, they attack the enemy as a form of distraction. But they’re both factually wrong and need to issue a correction. Frum cites my own long-held opposition to employment discrimination laws, as reiterated in Virtually Normal and more recently in the Advocate, a position that does not exactly endear me to the gay establishment. Then he claims I have recanted this. But I have never recanted this as such (and didn’t today), although I have given up fighting actively against ENDA, because the principle of non-discrimination is so widespread, exempting only gays from it seems a somewhat quixotic crusade. Meanwhile, the priorities I have long argued for – marriage and military service – have indeed become central to the struggle for gay equality, and so, in many ways, the central argument in Virtually Normal won out. I wanted to focus on the way the government discriminates against gay citizens, not the private sector. And that should hardly surprise anyone given my libertarian leanings.
But, to repeat: I haven’t recanted anything on ENDA. I was never for it. I’m still not. Mine is a lost cause, as a huge majority of Americans support it, every other minority has employment non-discrimination rights, and only a handful of gays agree with me. So I have reconciled myself to its inevitability, but won’t support it. If I were in Congress, I’d vote against it. No flip-flop here. But both Frum and Mirengoff ignore the central question. My point is that Romney specifically cited ENDA as federal legislation he once supported and now doesn’t. The question is: why? Frum is uninterested in Rommey’s answer. Another surprise.
The Dish 