It's pledge week over at AndrewSullivan.com. He apparently raised $80,000 at the pledge six months ago. Maybe pledge-driven web sites can work. I've chipped in.

I think Sullivan mis-interpreted something Alex Jones said on the Jim Lehrer show (disclaimer: I didn't see the show, and I'm just working from the partial transcript below):

THE PERILS OF DIVERSITY: Also from the Jim Lehrer show:

ALEX JONES: And I think these two firings - not two firings, these two resignations, these two... this dramatic gesture that has been made by Howell Raines and Gerald Jordan...
TERENCE SMITH: Gerald Boyd...
ALEX JONES: ...I mean, Gerald Boyd.. is something that has a great symbolic power, and I'm hoping that that is going to say that this is a, you know, a ship that is too important to not do the painful thing when it's required.

Gerald Boyd. Michael Jordan. Michael Boyd. Gerald Jordan. Hard to keep all those black guys straight sometimes, isn't it?

When I read the above and saw Alex Jones' initial reference to "Gerald Jordan" - I didn't think the Jordan he was referring to was a famous black basketball player. I thought he was referring to a famous white newsman who confessed in the pages of The New York Times to shoddy journalism. I'm talking about CNN News Chief Easton Jordan, of course, who covered up Iraq's kidnapping, torture and planned assassinations so that CNN could keep its Baghdad Bureau open.

It's an honest mistake (assuming that Sullivan made the mistake, and not me).

Sullivan is the de facto voice of gays among conservatives, and he does a great job of it. I consider myself open-minded about homosexuals, but one of his recent posts really opened my eyes to a bias against homosexuals that I didn't even realize I had. I hope Sullivan won't mind if I quote the whole thing here:

Some of your email responses to my post about Jonah Goldberg's baby is worth responding to in a post. My point, broadly, is that heterosexuals do not usually realize that they disclose their sexual orientation all the time. Whenever they mention a wife or husband or child or all the other quotidian aspects of being straight, they don't think of it as a declaration of heterosexuality. They just think they're talking about life. And they are. But with gay people, any such references to our partners or homes or joint travels is regarded as somehow bringing up sex. Here's en email that expresses the point well:

I hope the Jonah tiff is tongue-in-cheek. The equating of the birth of a child or a father's pride with your lust for the boyfriend is stunningly stupid.

Note that this reader can only conceive of my relationship in terms of lust. Not love or companionship or respect or shared interests or reading the paper together or taking turns to walk the dog or watching Jimmy Kimmel each night. All my relationship will ever be to this reader is sex. Here's another email making the point more graphically:

I'm not sure you'll get your wish. Heterosexuality is normal and it's about life. Homosexuality is about sex. It's normal and reasonable for heterosexuals to be repelled by implications of homosexual sex.

But homosexuality is no more about sex than heterosexuality. It's a sexual and emotional orientation with exactly the same contours, dramas, blessings and bugbears as heterosexuality. 99 percent of a gay relationship is about life when sex isn't happening. It's about waking up together, getting to know each others' friends and family, getting into a fight on vacation, or complaining about the weak coffee your boyfriend just made. That's what I think of when I mention the boyfriend. I wouldn't dream of talking about our sex life, which is as private as any heterosexual's. And part of the trap gay people are in is that we don't even have a vocabulary to describe our lives. Imagine trying to describe your relationship with your wife or husband without being able to ue the terms 'wife' or 'husband.' Would 'girlfriend' do? Or 'partner'? Or some other either infantilizing or euphemized term? Without the right to marry and the vocabulary of marriage, gay people will be permanently, rhetorically and culturally marginalized, shunted to the side of families into which they are born, uniquely unable to participate in the rituals that bind families together and keep them intact. That's why marriage is so important an issue. And that's why the fight for equal marriage rights does not come from a place that wants to hurt the traditional family. For most of us, it comes from a desire to finally be enfranchised in the traditional family into which we were born. It's a unifying, conservative impulse. And it has almost nothing to do with sex as such at all.

Another fine topic and thread from Plastic.com: some states are re-thinking mandatory motorcycle helmet laws:

Pennsylvania is poised to join the growing number of states that are abandoning helmet laws for adult motorcyclists.

The trend toward letting adult motorcyclists decide whether they should wear helmets can be traced back to Congress's 1995 repeal of a federal law that linked highway funds to such restrictions. Currently, only 20 states still require riders to wear helmets; three states have no helmet law; and 27 allow adults to ride without helmets, though some require additional insurance.

It's good to see a return to sanity. It's OK and even desirable for the government to mandate safety standards for cars. I also don't have a problem with the government requiring adults to make minors wear seat belts, or requiring adults to put small children to be in car seats. Adults have one set of rights, minors have a greatly-restricted set of rights.

It is not OK for the government to tell adults that they have to use a safety device such as a seat belt. I wear a seat belt, and I personally think it's stupid not to, but I wear one because it's a good idea, not because it's the law.

The argument for seat belt laws and motorcycle helmet laws is that they reduce injury, and as a result, they reduce hospital bills and insurance payments. Therefore, they reduce everyone's insurance premiums, and that has to be good, right?

If insurance companies don't want to cover head injuries from un-helmeted motorcycle riders, that's their choice, and they're free to write those terms that into their policies. In turn, motorcycle riders who want to go au natural can choose not to buy insurance from those companies.

I don't buy the insurance argument. It's a slippery slope that can encompass any behavior, including some that you might want to indulge in yourself some day. If the state is going to legally prevent behavior to reduce insurance settlements, let's go ahead and outlaw some other dangerous activities:

• Downhill skiing (see Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono)
  
• Hanggliding
  
• Kayaking
  
• Motorcycle riding. Period. Why don't we make them drive cars like normal people? Think of the insurance money we'll save!
  
• Driving small, fuel-efficient cars. Let's make people who buy tiny cars criminals. After all, they're risking greater injury and driving up insurance rates compared to people who drive Volvos and Cadillac Escalades.
  
• Living within 20 miles of an earthquake fault line, active volcano, floodplain, hurricane center, or tornado alley.
  
• Mountain climbing
  
• Scuba diving
  
• Solo backpacking
  
• Taking a bath or shower. Lots of accidents occur in the tub. Let's make people sponge themselves clean.
  
• Walking down the stairs without wearing a football helmet and safety tether.
  
• X-Treme Sports in all their glory
  

We could try to legislate a risk-free world that no one free person would want to live in, but some people need an outlet for their risk-taking behavior. Let them have it. They're not forcing you to do it, and they're not risking your life in the process. It's their bodies and their lives to do with as they please. Once the state decides that your body and your life belong to the state, all personal liberties end.

The insurance premium argument can be extended to any situation, much like the Federal interstate commerce clause, which I think has been interpreted too broadly.

Society benefits from having a percentage of its members be risk-takers. These are the people who fight in wars, who fight fires, who fight crime, who conquer space, and who conquer mountaintops and other natural obstacles. If they're willing to risk their own bodies and their own lives, who are you or I to deny them the chance to take that risk?