Comments Elsewhere

Kinsella:

For the record, the following quote is mine:

I will gladly go to the mat defending Hoppe’s freedom to be a bigot without retribution from University administrators.

John Lopez quoted it in passing to comment upon it. I don’t know whether you know that or not, but since you attribute his quote and don’t attribute mine, someone reading your comment might not realize you’re actually responding to two different people.

That said, I turn to your reply:

He’s not a bigot, you human scum pipsqueak.

As well as your reply to Ghertner’s similar sentiments above:

Look here you cocky son of a bitch. Disagreeing with Hoppe is one thing. But you are accusing him of being a bigot. This is a horrible, evil, thing. Hoppe is not a bigot, you stupid, brainwashed, punk of a student.

Here’s a common definition of “bigot”:

bigot, n.: One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

I don’t think that’s quite right, actually; “bigot” is a vice term, but not all groupings are such that partiality towards one’s own group or intolerance towards those who differ is a bad thing. (It’s not “bigotry” for someone who doesn’t molest children to be intolerant of those who do.) So let’s add the qualifier: a bigot is one whose partiality towards members of one’s own group and intolerance of those who differ is irrational.

Here’s Hoppe (with emphasis added):

… Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They — the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism — will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

Hoppe is, I take it, a heterosexual and not a homosexual. He is, therefore, demanding that—in order to maintain “a libertarian order” there be no tolerance towards those who have a different sexuality than his own, that they must be shunned, and—if they live in Hoppeville—they should be exiled and their property confiscated.

That Hoppe is vocally intolerant of homosexuals is an open-and-shut case. The only question that remains is whether his avowed intolerance amounts to bigotry. Whether or not it does depends on whether or not it’s reasonable to be intolerant towards someone solely because she or he desires to sleep with people of the same sex.

If you have some other meaning for the word in mind when you deny that Hoppe is a “bigot,” now’s the time to mention it. If so, then you ought to let us know what it is, because I take it that those of us calling Hoppe a bigot mean by it something like what I just spelled out.

If, on the other hand, you take “bigot” to mean roughly what I just said it means, the only question that remains is:

Stephan, do you think that it’s reasonable to be intolerant towards someone solely because of she or he desires to sleep with people of the same sex?