On Sunday’s RedState Weekly Briefing (which you should totally check out and also tune in to every Sunday at 7 p.m. EST, as well as listen to our live election night coverage), I gave a brief, rambling statement on progressivism and projection. The main thesis of that rant was simple: The Left is notorious for using any attack necessary to shut down debate, while at the same time claiming to be the sensible ones in the room and accusing the Right of doing it instead. In no argument is this more visible than the homosexual lobby’s efforts to shut down debate and try their damnedest to normalize their lifestyles.

Take, for example, this post over at The Federalist, in which Robert Oscar Lopez, a noted scholar and advocate of children’s rights, is attacked for offering debate on the issue of children raised in same-sex households. Oh, and by the way, Lopez is the bisexual son of lesbian parents. Much like Twitter’s favorite gay conservative, @GayPatriot, a deviation from the Left’s narrative is considered a betrayal and an invitation of the LGBT Inquisition.

But it was really only at the October 3 event that my life as a scholar came full circle. Tenured, well-published, and connected to international allies who could give me a serious chance at disseminating my commitment to the rights of children, I felt I could address a serious gap in research—the question of whether gay parenting as it has evolved is ethical—through the mix of testimonial sincerity and scholarly rigor that I felt had been missing for over 20 years.

[…]

So all that was behind me and I was in an exhilarated mood by Monday, October 6, when I faced a crushing blow at work. I arrived at the office to discover that untold hundreds of people in my office had received an email overnight, which had actually been sent by the nation’s largest gay rights organization to more than a million people. 

Lopez’s crime was to raise a simple question. In the life of a scholar, raising and answering questions is (supposed to be) completely normal. It is through research (statistics, interviews, etc.) that those questions are answered, only to be re-evaluated later when someone else asks the same question or even one that is only slightly related. In this way, we get advancement in scholarly fields and can make breakthroughs that affect our culture as a whole.

But, in the process of raising this question, Lopez, a very successful scholar and noted author, is verbally torn apart by the gay lobby, whose sole interest is to shut down the debate and label Lopez a bigot who doesn’t want to see gays get equal rights. Nevermind that his purpose in asking the question was in no way related to gay rights.

But, that’s where we are. We aren’t allowed to debate things. There is no room for new research or debate. There is only what is accepted by a vocal minority, and any dissent will be labeled as bigotry or ignorance and screamed down. This doesn’t just go for the gay lobby. It is seen in the anti-gun lobby, the climate change lobby, and the Republicans Are Racist Buttheads lobby. You can’t disagree and have a calm, rational debate anymore (admittedly, I am making a blanket statement and I know there are certainly wonderful people on that side of the aisle who will debate these with you at any time).

The side that claims to have all the reason and all the science and all the things certainly doesn’t act like it.