You’re Doing it Wrong – Page 52

The Minnesota GOP Setting Itself Up to Fail Again

It’s nice to sit on the sidelines and observe the great political competitions as they play out. People often criticize those of us on the sidelines and claim that we’re not pulling our weight. But we see things from our vantage point that those playing the games do not. One example is the apparent inability of those playing for the Minnesota Republican Party (MNGOP) to see how ineffective their strategies are.

The MNGOP is currently putting its weight behind taking Al Franken’s seat. Considering Franken’s political track record this competition should be in the bag. Franken’s track record of supporting draconian intellectual property and Internet censorship laws and defending the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance apparatus should be enough ammunition to get young politicos fired up against him. At that point the MNGOP would only need to run a candidate who could stop himself from saying stupid shit in public, advocated Internet freedom, and demanded the abolition of the NSA to achieve victory.

But anybody with knowledge of Minnesota politics knows that the MNGOP can’t bring itself to use winning strategies. Instead one of the leading candidates for the MNGOP senate candidacy has decided to play the Democrat Party’s war on women strategy:

In a petition published on her Facebook page yesterday, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Julianne Ortman says a recently released secret recording of Al Franken joking around in an Arizona driveway shows he “still doesn’t take women seriously.”

Here is the video in question:

Pro tip: never attempt to use your opponent’s strategy against them unless you actually understand it. The war on women strategy only works when the target has said something in a serious manner that makes him look misogynistic. It’s a strategy that works wonderfully against Republican candidates because they have a habit of saying very stupid shit in public. But Franken has never really said anything too misogynistic so using the strategy against him is foolish. In fact the video, which makes it obvious that Franken was trying to be comical, does more to humanize him than make him look misogynistic.

But the failboat doesn’t only dock at that harbor. Ortman also demonstrates that she’s not opposed to the NSA’s surveillance apparatus:

The FISA Court first was authorized in 1979 and operates in secret and ex parte (only the government gets to present its case). It makes sense that we don’t want our foreign enemies to know how we are gathering information to protect ourselves. However, I am deeply concerned that the court has migrated to granting orders authorizing the wholesale gathering of information about presumably innocent private citizens and residents of the United States under the guise of intelligence gathering against unnamed foreign threats. This is where there must be more transparency. To begin with, we should insist that the FISA Court’s analysis and legal justifications be reviewed and discussed publicly by policymakers, with the right of the general public to be heard and considered.

Justifying secret courts is something only a petty authoritarian would do. So that justification was the first mistake. The second mistake was asking for more transparency instead of complete abolition of the secret court. She could have said that the secret courts made sense at the time but now their time has passed and saved herself from looking like a complete authoritarian. But she chose to justify the establishment of the secret courts and then argue that they are still necessary but a little additional oversight would be nice. Franken’s campaign won’t be able to argue against secret courts due to its candidate support of the NSA surveillance apparatus. What it will be able to do is point out that Ortman also supports the NSA surveillance apparatus and render the issue irrelevant for the race.

To quote my friend, “This is why the GOP can’t have nice things.” The party is flailing in a desperate search for a life preserver. Franken’s seat would be pretty easy to snatch if the MNGOP would use an effective strategy. Instead it’s marketing a candidate who is little more than Fraken lite. I’m not aware of any races where an incumbent was removed from office by a candidate advertising him or herself as a lite version of the incumbent.

What’s even more pathetic is that the MNGOP will likely pull the same stupidity in the governor race. Mark Dayton has burned a lot of bridges and his seat could easily be taken but the MNGOP will likely run another lackluster candidate and use absolutely idiotic campaign strategies to ensure its defeat.

This is one hell of a game to observe but I sure am glad that I’m not playing it.

The Statist Solution is Always More Government

Statists have to be some of the least creative individuals on the planet. For every problem that exists their only solution is more government. The current crusade being waged here in Minnesota is distracted drivers:

ST. PAUL, Minn. – It’s difficult for law enforcement to detect distracted drivers, but thanks to an effort that utilizes a school bus, a pair of Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies lead a crackdown operation that started on Friday.

So we have men with badges and guns driving school buses in the hopes of finding a person looking at their phone so they can be issued a big fat citation. According to their logic:

Distracted driving is a growing problem in Minnesota.

No. The lack of self-driving automobiles is a growing problem in Minnesota (and everywhere else). With a little creativity we can solve the problem of people wanting to utilize their otherwise underutilized driving time by providing a technological solution. Self-driving automobiles would allow drivers to text, tweet, like things on Facebook, and search Craigslist for cheap furniture all while traveling to work, home, or somewhere else.

Instead of sinking resources into sending costume-clad men with guns to fine drivers why not invest those resources into developing more reliable systems for automating automobiles. Hell the damned things already exist and have performed phenomenally in trials. Why not pass legislation that legalizes the use of self-driving automobiles here in Minnesota? The quicker the technology is matured the quicker this problem ceases to be a problem.

Sporting Purpose

Today (well technically a few days ago) is a day ending in “y”, which means somebody in Congress is losing their shit over the existence of firearms and the ability of the peasantry to acquire them. A letter submitted by our rulers in Congress was sent to our ruler in the White House urging him to enforce the ban on importing “military-style firearms” (firearms that have aesthetic features that offend many politicians). What interesting though is the argument made for why the President can prohibit their importation:

Enforcing the import ban would require no congressional action as the President has very broad authority under the 1968 Gun Control Act to prohibit the importation of firearms and ammunition unless they are “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.”

I think it’s safe to say that any claims that “military-style firearms” are not recognized as being suitable for sporting purposes are false. As it turns out “military-style firearms” are used in one of the fastest shooting sports in the country: 3-gun. 3-gun almost necessitates the use of rifles with quickly swappable standard capacity magazines. Anybody attempting to complete with a bolt-action rifle, for example, will find themselves entirely outclassed as well as holding up the entire stage for their extended run.

3-gun scoring is a combination of accuracy and time. The faster you complete a stage the better your score tends to be. Being able to top off your rifle, handgun, and shotgun quickly will greatly benefit your score. Anybody who has participated in a 3-gun match has noticed AR-pattern rifles and other “military-style firearms” dominate. And that, I believe, puts the whole sporting purpose debate to rest.

The NRA

During my textual monologue about the new generation of shooters I said some disparaging things about the National Rifle Association (NRA). This lead to an e-mail asking me why I dislike the NRA (it was actually a very polite e-mail, which I’m not used to receiving in response to criticisms I make). Assuming other people were wondering the same thing I felt that this would make a better blog post than an e-mail response. To save you a lot of reading I will just quote the relevant part of my post here:

I’ve had numerous heated discussions with fellows gun enthusiasts due to my political views (because the only thing more vile than a dirty liberal Democrat to some members of the shooting community is a downright dangerous anarchist). If you ever want to see a political discussion go from civil to yelling just bring up the fact that you think the Constitution is a flawed document that shouldn’t be cited as scripture. My viewpoints and the viewpoints of most of my anarchist friends do not align with the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t derive our ability to own and carry firearms from an amendment to some document written by power hunger individuals who were upset that the Articles of Confederation didn’t allow for monarchical control. Us metalheads aren’t interested in a country music concert and most anarchists and metalheads want to be as far away from a prayer breakfast as we can get.

It’s pretty obvious that I despise the NRA, right? Well my opinion regarding the NRA isn’t that cut and dry. The thing to remember is that the NRA is a large organization composed of approximately four million members. That being the case it’s difficult to make an overall judgement of the organization. I personally have a love-hate relationship with the NRA. While the organization does many things that I don’t like (with my range of dislike of individual things going from mild to borderline disgust) it also does many things that I do like.

Let’s start with the things I dislike about the NRA. The most obvious place to start is with the organization’s politics. In general the NRA uses its political clout to fight for gun rights and the organization has a good track record. However it also does incredibly boneheaded political maneuvers in my opinion. For example, during the last presidential election the NRA threw its political weight behind Mitt Romney. I’m not sure how endorsing a candidate who has a history of being, at best, wishy-washy on gun rights promotes gun rights but that’s what the NRA did. And the organization has endorsed other candidates who have been less than stellar in regards to gun rights.

Another thing I dislike about the NRA, and it is something that I dislike about most large and established organizations, is it’s apparent inability to adapt strategically. Political endorsements and campaign contributions are its hammer and it gets used whether the problem is a nail or a screw. There are many avenues of promote gun rights that the NRA has failed to utilize effective. Social media is probably ones of the biggest avenues that remains underutilized (although that seems to be slowly changing). Like them or not social media tools are probably the best way to reach the new generation. Much of what the NRA does with its barrage of physical mail could be better, and more cheaply, accomplished with Facebook, Twitter, etc. While the NRA does maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts it doesn’t use them much for engagement, which is the real power of social media. It would be nice to see the NRA engaging its online audience to both gather support for gun rights and to refute claims made by gun control supporters.

The third major problem I have with the NRA is it’s habit of taking credit for the accomplishments of others. This ties with the NRA’s inability to adapt. When organizations such as the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) make gains using a strategy left underutilized by the NRA it’s inevitable that the NRA will try to take credit for the success. Taking undue credit is sketchy at best and downright disgusting at worst. Instead of trying to make itself look like the only game in town the NRA should spend time reaching out to other gun rights organizations and try to build an alliance instead of a monopoly. Give credit where credit is due and make a point to work together with other gun rights organizations.

My last major gripe with the NRA is cultural. As was pointed out in Grant Cunningham’s excellent post on the new generation of shooters the NRA culturally appeals to political and social conservative Christians. While this group has traditionally been the biggest supporters of gun rights they are a dying breed (literally, they are getting older and the younger generation isn’t falling over itself to replace them). I don’t believe that the NRA should stop appealing to political and social conservatives but it should also invest time in appealing to other cultures. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the country music concerts and prayer breakfasts but it would go a long way to offer alternatives for those uninterested in such events. A death metal concert may be too niche but a concert by a group popular with the younger generation wouldn’t hurt. How about a workshop on using direct action to fight for gun rights? Some of us political radicals aren’t interested in working for political campaigns or marking boxes next to names of politicians but we love doing hands-on activities.

OK, that is a rather lengthy (although not all inclusive) summary of my criticisms of the NRA. Now let me bring up some things that I like about the organization.

One of the best things the NRA does in my opinion is promote firearm safety. While advocates of gun control spend time and money trying to scare children away from firearms the NRA invests time and money educating children on how to be safe with and around firearms. Children are naturally curious. Scaring them can often discourage them from exploring for a while it seldom works in the long run. Eventually their innate curiosity gets the best of them and they decided to face their fear. Education on the other hand tends to work well. If you want your child to be safe around firearms you need to destroy the mystery surrounding firearms. This is best done by educating children on firearms. Take away the mystery by showing them what a firearm is and how it works. Take your children to the range so they can experience what a firearm truly is in a supervised manner. This is something the NRA understands and directly works on.

The NRA also invests effort in firearm training. If you’ve never been around firearms the NRA has programs that introduce you to the shooting sports in a safe manner. Are you interested in learning how to instruct others on the use of firearms? There are numerous NRA programs for training trainers. I think it’s also beneficial to have a program geared towards teaching women how to shoot. My reason for thinking this is, unfortunately, related to the cultural problem surrounding the firearms community. Woman are sometimes treated as inferior by male shooters (especially traditional shooters). While those of us who aren’t sexist pigs are working to change this it’s taking time. Until things have been changed I appreciate having a mechanism for women to learn how to shoot without having to deal with the potential cultural neanderthal shitting all over their experience.

I also appreciate what the NRA does to promote the construction and improvement of firing ranges. Due to the legal landscape in this country it’s almost impossible to build anything without an army of lawyers to look over your plan. The NRA offers advice on how to build firing ranges in a manner that won’t upset the lawyers. It also offers grants for improving existing ranges. Without firing ranges the shooting sports become difficult to participate in. Any help that can be received for building new ranges or improving current ones is appreciated.

My overall opinion of the NRA changes depending on its current actions. When it does something like endorse a lackluster politician (but I repeat myself) I find myself wanting to burn my membership card. But then I hear about a firing range that was given a grant by the NRA for facility improvements and I’m happy to hold my membership card. As I said, it’s a love-hate relationship. Due to my range’s requirement of being an NRA member I will maintain my membership for the foreseeable future. But I not longer push people to sign up with the organization. If you want to sign up then do so but you shouldn’t feel like being an NRA member is mandatory to enjoy the shooting sports. Do what’s right for you.

The Republican Party Continues Its Downward Spiral Into Irrelevancy

It’s funny how people continue to tout the Republican Party (GOP) as a viable alternative to the Democratic Party. While the parties agree on every important political issue the GOP has been spiraling into irrelevancy for the last several decades. This downward spiral has gone mostly unnoticed until the last decade or so. But the signs of irrelevancy are all around us. Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is at the top of the GOP’s hit list. That being the case you would think the GOP would be pouring everything it has into repealing the legislation. If it is then the GOP obviously doesn’t have much left because all that party has managed to do is lower its standards:

At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama’s health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.

Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

“Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.

We’ve gone from the GOP trying to repeal the legislation and replace it with the exact same thing (Romney’s “repeal and replace” slogan) to improving the law to sliding in minor updates and declaring them as victories (quietly of course since they still want to pretend that they want to repeal the law).

I think the GOP is learning a lesson many businesses have learned throughout history. One cannot compete by being exactly the same as your competitor. You must find a way to distinguish yourself whether it be from different products, lower prices, and better customer service. The GOP has become nothing more than the Democratic Party mixed with religion. Needless to say the American people seem less and less inclined to have a large and powerful government that is mixed with religion so they’re opting for just having a large and powerful government. This choice is making the GOP less relevant every year. I’d say this is also turning American into a one party political system but it already is one so nothing is really changing in that respect.

Racist Fish

Last week I theorized that political correctness may simply be a social phenomenon of the powerless trying to feel empowered (but you didn’t see it because my post scheduler decided to forget to post it and I missed it because I don’t check my post queue as religiously as I should). In summary, for those not interested in reading my previous post, whiny bitches are whiny because it gives them the ability to lord a very measly amount of power over another human being.

Minnesota has to be the capital of butthurt social justice warriors. Our army of whiny bitches are ready to move at any sign of potential political correctness. Whenever a man says something the social justice warriors are there to point out his misogyny. Middle class individuals need not fear of being unopposed in everything they say because the social justice warriors will let everybody know that any wealth is a privilege (from their iPhones and MacBook Pros no less). If a white person say something never fear because Minnesota’s social justice warriors are here to point out that individual’s inherit subconscious racism. In fact our social justice warriors are so effective that they have even found that the name of Asian carp is really thinly veiled racism:

Jean Lee, who testified for the Senate bill Thursday, said she became upset by the term as it was used during a round-table meeting she attended with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officials.

“They were referring to the Asian people in terms of being invasive species. This was offensive,” said Lee, executive director of the Children’s Hope International Minnesota chapter. That St. Louis-based nonprofit organization facilitates international adoptions from countries including China and Vietnam.

Sia Her, executive director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency, also testified in support of calling the fish “invasive carp.” The negative response to the fish “will reflect negatively on our community,” she said.

I highly doubt that the officials in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) were referring to Asian people during the meeting about Asian carp. But nonetheless Jean Lee seems to believe that the best way to fight bigotry is with more bigotry. She proposed that Asian carp be changed to invasive carp.

Invasive carp? Really? These poor fish were kidnapped from their native waters, hauled over to America in suboptimal conditions, and forced into labor for the commercial fisheries! They are no more invasive than African Americas. In fact I’m betting that Mrs. Lee’s entire crusade against these underprivileged fish is due to her inherit speciesism. Mrs. Less probably thinks that just because she’s human that she’s a member of the master species and sees other forms of life on this planet as inferior. I’ve got news for Mrs. Lee, these fish didn’t ask to come here, they were kidnapped. We’re not talking about an invasive species, we’re talking about victims of the fish slave trade! Mrs. Lee should be ashamed of herself for publicly displaying her blatant speciesism.

Prussian Efficiency

Germany is well known for being an efficient country populated by efficient people. This is evident in many things the country does including policing:

German police officers fired a total of 85 bullets in 2011, 49 of which were warning shots, the German publication Der Spiegel reported. Officers fired 36 times at people, killing six and injuring 15. This is a slight decline from 2010, when seven people were killed and 17 injured. Ninety-six shots were fired in 2010.

Meanwhile, in the United States, The Atlantic reported that in April, 84 shots were fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, and another 90 at an unarmed man in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles police department alone requires as many rounds of ammunition to take down one suspect as the entire country of Germany requires for all of its police in an entire year. Talk about German efficiency (or American inefficiency).

But there’s more to this story than mere numbers. Those numbers indicate a potential cultural difference between German policing and American policing. German police appear to turn to the gun more as a last resort whereas American police turn to the gun whenever the magical phrase “officer safety” can be applied to a situation. One of my issues with modern policing in the United States is how quickly it usually turns to deadly force, armed no-knock raids, and general thuggery. The days when a couple of police officers would knock on your door, present a warrant, and arrest you are rapidly disappearing entirely. Instead those days are being replaced with an armed Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team kicking in your door at two in the morning, shooting whatever pets they see, and busting you up or shooting you before handcuffs are even brought out.

Other developed countries manage a less militant take on policing and haven’t fallen into chaos. Perhaps this is due to those countries still treating the police as a civilian peacekeeping force and not paramilitary forces. Either way our police could learn a thing or two from Germany’s police.

University of Minnesota Students Making Effort to Allow Students and Faculty to Carry Firearms

Brace yourselves because the sky is about to fall. A group of students at the University of Minnesota are urging the administration to allow students and faculty to carry firearms on campus:

A string of robberies on the U of M campus late last year escalated on Nov. 11, when the campus went into lockdown because of an attempted robbery at gunpoint, and the suspect got away. A month later, in December 2013, there was another armed robbery on campus.

U of M freshman William Preachuk believes things could have ended differently if he’d been able to pack heat. “I would believe that I have the right to defend myself; I have the right to protect others as well as myself only if the situation allows it,” William Preachuk said.

Preachuk signed a petition Monday that will be sent to the Board of Regents asking to be allowed to conceal and carry on campus.

Susan Eckstine with College Republicans is a permit holder and trained in using a gun. “If I was able to carry a firearm here on campus I’d feel a lot safer to protect myself from a life-threatening situation,” Eckstine said.

As usual advocates of gun control are playing Chicken Little. The most common argument against allowing students and faculty to carry firearms on college campuses is that those areas are high stress environments where emotions run high. This is an interesting argument because I don’t understand where its basis lies. While college campuses are indeed high stress environments and emotions often run high the rate of actual violence is relatively low. Fist fights, stabbings, beatings, and other forms of violence remain low enough on college campuses that when they do occur they are major news items. The linked article mentions that there have been a few robberies near the University of Minnesota campus. Those robberies were big news here in the Twin Cities precisely because such violence is rare. So I’m at a loss as to how allowing students and faculty, who are a pretty peaceful bunch judging by the current lack of regular violence on college campuses, to carry firearms will turns campuses from peaceful spots to veritable war zones.

If the high stress environment of college campuses inherently bred violence then we would already be seeing a great deal of violence. It’s an absurd variation of the “blood in the streets” argument made by gun control advocates whenever a state was planning to pass or further liberalize carry laws. The sky will not fall if college students and faculty are allowed to carry firearms because, as it turns out, college students and faculty members are rational human beings. That means a vast majority of them understand concepts like violence and recognize when it should be used and how much should be used. They’re not likely to pull a gun on a drunken student who is getting overly aggressive but have the option of meeting deadly force with deadly force in a life threatening encounter.

A particularly disturbed anti-gun individual on Facebook made an absurd claim that I want to bring up just because it made me laugh. The individual, who we will refer to as Steve (because that’s his actual first name), said “This will cause a trickle effect and allow weapons of mass destruction into other areas where they shouldn’t be.” Wow. According to his logic allowing students and faculty to carry discriminatory weapons will somehow cause a trickle effect that will result in allowing them to carry nondiscriminatory nuclear and biological weapons. That’s a long leap of logic that is so absurd that it’s barely worth addressing (as I said, I merely brought it up for entertainment value). But it is interesting to see how far advocate of gun control will stretch things in an attempt to argue their case.

Assault Tattoo

Disproportionate responses are standard operating procedure for most law enforcement agencies these days. If an individual calls the police claiming that they saw a man with a gun the appropriate response would be to ask if that individual was acting in a threatening manner. That question never seems to get asked. Instead police will often toss logic to the wind, grab their toys, and head out to harass the subject of the call. That’s what happened to a man in Maine who wasn’t even carrying a gun:

NORRIDGEWOCK — Michael Smith went outside shirtless after being awakened Tuesday morning, yelling at a tree removal company to get off his property.

The workers thought they saw a gun in his waistband and called police.

Smith, who’d gone back to bed, was awakened again minutes later — this time by Maine State Police at his front door, backed up by a group of troopers with assault rifles in his driveway. They were asking him via a megaphone to come out of his house.

Smith did have a gun. It was tattooed on his stomach.

Because Smith was yelling at the tree removal service I can see where a claim of threatening behavior could be made. But even then an appropriate response would have been to send a couple of police officers to knock on Smith’s door and ask some questions. Loading up an entire group of troopers is overkill whether or not Smith had a real gun.

Officer safety has become the go to excuse for police agencies to act like paramilitary forces. Why did so many police officers have to be sent to respond to a call about a man who was merely through to be in possession of a gun? Because officer safety. Either that or I must assume that police officers think so poorly of their ability that they feel the only way they could win a potential gunfight is with overwhelming firepower.

Dishonesty Kills Movements

A lot of drama exploded over Boston’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. According to every account I had read the organizations of the parade had banned gay rights activist groups from participating in the parade. I didn’t bother digging into the story because I had other things to do. Yesterday I decided to read a couple of stories regarding the kerfuffle to see what exactly went down. As it turns out the story has two sides. Every article I’ve come across has given the side that explains how the organizers of the event discriminated against gay activists but then I found this buried in the linked story:

Parade organizers said Monday in a press release that they had been misled by MassEquality, which had applied to march on behalf of 20 veterans, and Mayor Walsh. The application came from an affiliate of MassEquality called LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender] Veterans of Equality.

“We were unable to find any evidence of LGBT Veterans for Equality that would confirm them as a recognized Veterans Organization,” organizers said in the statement posted on their website. “It is our belief that the application submitted to us by LGBT Veterans for Equality was a ploy by them to enter this parade under false pretenses and is hereby denied.”

At a meeting in the mayor’s office Sunday night, parade organizers said, it became clear that MassEquality did not have 20 veterans who wanted to march in the parade. Instead they presented one “supposed veteran” and a group of other marchers carrying rainbow flags, parade organizers said.

“When asked about a color guard, their (lone) veteran replied that he wasn’t sure he could supply any more veterans willing to march,” the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which organizes the event, said in the statement.

Being unable to field the promised number of veterans and provide evidence that your veterans organization is at all recognized as such is quite different from parade organizations denying the applicants from marching on account of their sexual orientation. Were I organizing an event and participants misrepresented themselves I would also deny them participation.

But stories like this upset me because I feel that discrimination is a real problem and real problems are cheapened when advocates lie. Had Mass Equality simply brought up the fact that parade participants were prohibited from displaying their sexual orientation then I wouldn’t care. While I believe organizers of private events have the right to establish such rules I also believe that individuals have a right to speak out against such rules. Pointing out a rule against displays of sexual orientation would open the door for discussion. But, based on the press release by the parade organizers, that’s not what happened. Instead Mass Equality lied to the parade organizers and then lied about why it was denied the ability to participate in the parade to push its agenda.

A movement cannot succeed in the long run by being dishonest. Dishonesty is what ultimately killed the gun control movement, every segregation movement, and is beginning to kill the prohibitionist movement. I would hate to see the gay rights movement collapse due to dishonesty on behalf of some of its proponents.