Robert, do you mean property rights as in, infringement of property rights allowed by public accommodation laws that started in 1964? And the desire to be designated a “protected class” so that one can take advantage of public accommodation laws to violate property rights. Or do you mean something else?

I have been a subscriber to eSkeptic for several years and it is becoming clear to me that you are trading your skeptical credentials for that of an advocate. Instead of raising important and thoughtful questions that make people think and examine more than one side of an issue, you are advocating for causes. It is difficult to buck the trends, I know, especially the politically correct trends of the day. But that is part of the role of the skeptic.

With regard to the current issue, you might have questioned why India, the world’s largest democracy recently re-criminalized homosexuality, why some 75 other counties have laws against homosexuality, how we are going to come to grips with the significantly higher health risks inarguably associated with homosexuality, how the clash between religious groups and the homosexual lobby will impact our culture, and many other pertinent questions that are legitimate for a skeptic to raise.

Your coverage of this issue, along with other advocacy positions you are taking, e.g., that there is a clear causal relation between CO2 and significant global warming, despite nearly two decades of a hiatus in warming while CO2 emissions have continued to rise, is making me increasingly skeptical of you as a serious, science and cultural skeptic.

To return to the current issue, there seem to be many issues driving wedges into the common identity of Americans. The issue of normalizing homosexuality is one of those and a concern for the true skeptic is what long term impact that will have. You seem to have answered that question for your readers rather than raising it for thoughtful consideration. An assertion of a different kind that relates broadly to this issue was made by a former advisor to John F. Kennedy as late as the 1990’s. It is worthy of any skeptic’s thoughtful consideration:

“History is littered with states who have tried to combine diverse ethnic or linguistic or religious groups within a single sovereignty…[E]thnic idealogues…have set themselves against the old American idea of assimilation. They call on the republic to think in terms not of individual but of group identity and to move the polity from individual rights to group rights.…They have done their best to turn a college generation against Europe and the Western tradition.…They have encouraged minorities to see themselves as victims and to live by alibis…They have filled the air with recrimination and rancor and have remarkably advanced the fragmentation of American life.”

— from Arthur Schlesinger’s “The disuniting of America.”