Andrew Sullivan is still capable of intelligent, lucid, honest judgment

And this is so brutally true:

[The gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign is] putting pressure, as they always have, on gay people to go to the back of the line and be grateful a president attends their fundraising event. The only word for this is a racket. And if gay people do not rise up and demand change from this organization and stop funding a group whose goal has always been to sell the Democrats to gay people rather than secure civil rights, then they will continue to suffer the discrimination they live under day after day.

The HRC is now transparently the same "hoax of a sham of a farce" (to use Woody Allen's line from Bananas) that NOW and NAACP have been for so long. The Official Gay Movement, like the Official Women's Movement and the Official Civil Rights Movement, has been co-opted and sold to the Democratic Party, which is always the highest bidder in the identity-politics auction.

This explains why conservatives become so disgusted by Republicans who attempt to placate feminists and other such identity politics Mau-Maus -- racketeers who use guilt-trips, victimhood and accusations of mala fides to extort concessions from enemies and allies alike.

The "two-can-play-at-that-game" approach -- e.g., John McCain's pandering to MALDEF -- doesn't work for Republicans, simply because the essential spirit of the GOP is anathema to the identity-politics conception of politics. The Republican Party has for decades generally, and in the post-Reagan era especially, offered a basic message that ought to be of universal appeal: Prosperity through liberty, peace through strength.

The task of GOP leaders should be to explain to any individual (and the individual is the world's smallest minority) how this agenda is ultimately superior to the corrupt coalition politics of the Democrats. Sometimes the party has lost its focus or blundered through bad leadership, but if they would be true to to their basic message, they would be unconquerable, as they would solicit the support of all who are wise and honest.

"Compassionate conservatism" was a betrayal of that Reaganite spirit, which is what brought the GOP to such a low ebb and has allowed the Democrats to regain (by the usual dishonest methods) the upper hand.

If gay people vote Republican, they might not get the bullet-point agenda items demanded by HRC, but they will at least not have to accept the kind of two-faced, backhanded insults they get from Democrats who claim to be their "friends."

Cythia Yockey has often remarked that she was surprised at how warmly she, as a lesbian, was embraced by conservatives. Cynthia doesn't agree with my opposition to same-sex marriage, and I don't agree with her advocacy of it. So freaking what? At least I'm not playing the two-faced shtick of trying to win friends by lying.

Honesty is always the best policy, which is another reason why the Democrats are always wrong.
(Via Memeorandum.)