A Retroactive Brickbat

I've decided to take umbrage at this post by Andrew Sullivan from last week, starting with this comment:

We lost. They won in a fair fight. No whining.

How you can call a campaign funded by enormously wealthy religious interests and based on deliberate deception (or, to call it what it was, lies) a "fair fight" is beyond me. Is this to say that anyone who sticks to the truth in putting issues before the electorate is somehow ceding the field to those who have no compunctions about waging smear campaigns? Granted, Sullivan has never shown himself to be the most incisive thinker in the blogosphere, but this is way out there. Rovian campaigns may have become the norm, but to call it a 'fair fight" simply means you've sold out -- you're giving approval of their tactics, but how can you use them yourself if you want to maintain any moral authority whatsoever? (Assuming you even wanted to use crap like that.)

Actually, now that I look at it more closely, the post is largely incoherent. Sulivan starts off by saying "no whining" -- and what he means by that is anyone's guess -- but then goes on to say:

My own view is that we can protest and have; we are also within our rights to boycott businesses who bankrolled the initiative, and to confront the Mormon church.

I'm sorry, but how is this different than what the right has characterized as "whining"? Sullivan seems to be trying to have it both ways here, and is only making himself look superfluous, which, considering his long-time advocacy for same-sex marriage, is both bizarre and sad.

And then Sullivan concludes by recommending that we do everything that we're doing, with the for him obligatory swipe at HRC. (I don't disagree with him there: they've been pretty much worthless in the marriage fight, which is, after all, the most important issue we face, both in substance and as a symbol. And after fifteen years, HRC still hasn't figured it out.)