Last night, New York Times reporter Josh Barro tweeted out a disturbing message: \u201cAnti-LGBT attitudes are terrible for people in all sorts of communities. They linger and oppress, and we need to stamp them out, ruthlessly.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
This is rather shocking. Barro is no angry blogger writing manifestos in his basement. He is a respected reporter from a prestigious newspaper that prides itself on equanimity in the face of heated debate. Yet he seems, by any reasonable measure, to be fomenting a campaign to rout out all dissenters from the sexual revolution. Erick Erickson wrote a brief response to Barro\u2019s tweet, to which Barro replied that he thinks that \u201cwe should make anti-LGBT views shameful like segregation. Not saying we should off people.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Okay. But \u201cstamp out,\u201d\u009d intensified by the qualifier \u201cruthlessly,\u201d\u009d means something quite a bit stronger than inviting your interlocutor to tea and crumpets to discuss differences.<\/p>\n