I was wrong about something big in my <a href=”http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_03_14_corner-archive.asp#027521

” target=”_blank”> post yesterday about Andrew Sullivan and Federalism. I wrote about the Rhea County anti-gay initiatives: “If you read Andrew Sullivan today, he makes it sounds as if he thinks this measure is completely illegitimate even though it seems its actual intent is to ban gay marriages in their county.”

This is entirely my fault and I was wrong. Andrew is right to think that the Rhea County measure is totally illegitimate. Okay maybe not illegitimate in the strict meaning of the word in that illegitimate basically means illegal and it has always been my position that sodomy laws and the like may be wrong but that doesn’t mean they’re unconstitutional. Regardless, Rhea County’s “crime against nature” law is wrong and stupid. My mistake was in conflating two different efforts while reading too quickly and while trying to do too many things at once. In my defense I did post an email very shortly afterwards which corrected me on this point, which Andrew probably missed.

That said, despite Andrew’s comment that I’m being gob-smackingly obtuse, he’s being sand-poundingly obstreperous. My main criticism stands. Not just on Rhea County but on all measures he considers to be “anti-gay” Andrew invokes the rhetoric of anti-Federalism and moral absolutism. Andrew ignores my point about his use of the word “pogrom” to describe what Virginia is doing. He didn’t use that word about Rhea County. He used it about the legislature of Virginia. As readers know I’m a fan of Sullivan’s but it seems impossible to ignore the fact that on matters gay, he’s grown less tolerant of those who disagree with him and more willing to use Manichean rhetoric in which all of those who disagree with him to his right are purely dark and evil forces: “right wing fanatics,” “theocons” “religious zealots,” and, of course, “bigots.” Having been in the middle of the road on this stuff for a while now — with the the tire marks on my back from some social conservatives to prove it — I find this truly dismaying. Merits aside, Andrew increasingly tends to argue his worldview with the same totalitarianism of the very people he so clearly despises. He may not be all the way there yet, but no one can doubt which way the trend lines point.