Re ducks: Camille Paglia wades in . . . “I speak with authority here, because I was openly gay before the 'Stonewall rebellion' when it cost you something to be so. And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech. In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality — as I 100 per cent do. If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again they have a right of religious freedom there. To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by my own party. I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility. This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points.
There is a dialogue going on human civilization, for heaven sakes. It’s not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement. And that is what happened to feminism, and that is what happened to gay activism, a fanaticism.”
