Les Jones

Eric Schieie thinks the gay community is silent on that issue because he is deaf to the gay community. I got links to that news story from gay friends the day it first broke, which was about a week ago.

Well, Eric's gay, so I'm guessing he knows a few gay people, too. Do your friends see the connection between what happened in Iran and the war on terrorism and radical Islam? And are gay organizations reflecting their member's concerns are or do they see the Republican party as a bigger threat than Al Qaeda?

Just to clarify, I'm not questioning whether the gay community knew that the teens were killed. I'm not questioning that the gay community thought that it was a bad thing for the Iranian mullahs to kill two teenagers for being gay (duh!).

What I am questioning is whether the gay community is taking this as a wake-up call. That maybe the terrorists and radical Islamists most burning issue isn't Palestine or McDonalds. That maybe we should take these people at their word when they say they want to restore the Caliphate and enforce Sharia as the law.

I get it now. He's not actually saying the gay community has been silent. It's a strawman argument against hypothetically silent gay activists accompanied by the weak-minded, "with us or against us" conflation of opposing Bush's approach to terror with supporting radical Islam. Typically reactionary nonsense.

As to your question, I think my gay friends feel threatened from too many sides to fixate on any single "biggest" threat. They seem to be more worried about near and immediate threats than remote ones. There is no doubt a gay man is more likely to be killed by some low-life bigot in his own community than by an Islamic terrorist.