Michael Eden Smackdown

I tried; I really tried, but when Auditus alerted me to our foe’s latest offensive comments my political hiatus came to an end. What, you ask, happened? Michael Eden crassly implied on his blog that homosexuals should not be allowed to adopt children (http://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/just-in-case-you-thought-child-adoption-by-homosexuals-was-a-good-idea/). Why does this conservative crusader and complete waste of time get to claim one group should not be allowed to have children? I could make the same sort of silly request that intolerant, intellectually flawed, and repulsive individuals not be permitted as parents, but who am I to make the rules for the rest of society?

My anger was such that I decided to confront said person on his blog and tell him how stupid I think he is. I even went so far as to tell him that I believed him to be a closeted, self-hating gay man who really had liberal tendencies.

Why else would he spew bile and falsehoods all the time unless he has some seriously repressed desires and attractions? He, as predicted, responded with more personal attacks.

My next act was to do the one thing he claims his blog does: confront opinion with “facts.” In this case, however, I offered him documented research from the Williams Institute, noting “There was a noteworthy absence of parental/caregiver physical and sexual abuse in the self-reports of adolescents with lesbian mothers." (Here is the link: http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gartrell-Bos-Goldberg-NLLFS-Nov-20101.pdf.) This data is in contrast to the 26% “of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.” (Here is that link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/lesbians-child-abuse-0-percent_n_781624.html.) Given these results, gay parents seem like a good idea to me.

So what did the savior of the theocratic right do? He ignored my comments and did not bother to post them. In other words he censors the responses to his blog by approving them (apparently based on their inability to threaten his position) before they are posted online. Such tactics of exclusion clearly mark out a fearful demagoguery because any information contrary to Eden's position must be avoided. This is why I can claim with some confidence that Michael Eden uses unethical rhetorical tactics and cannot marshal compelling evidence to refute opposing claims.

Because of Eden’s behavior I am back in the brawl, and as such I am making a clarion call for all to hear that Michael Eden is a poor excuse for a political commentator, whatever one’s position might be. We have invited him to a respectful debate, we have responded with the sort of evidence he claims he wants to see, and still he will not engage.

You, Mr. Eden, are a small-minded, evangelical nutjob, and as a result you have become our ideological whipping boy. We call you out as the fearful, inarticulate, and unethical rube that you are. Moreover we just want to say that you mislead your readers, harm your fellow citizens, and make us ashamed to have you as part of the electorate. Please do us all a favor and go elsewhere to begin the religious and cultural war that you so plainly want to start. As for those of us not in agreement with you, we think you are a waste of resources, but still defend your right to speak publicly, even though it may consist primarily of falsehoods. And on a personal note, we loathe you. Bring it on you backwater pulpit-banger. We will mop up the page with your cowardly prose and false analogies. Oh, and FUCK YOU!