I thought I was a bigot, but it turned out I just had a sense of humor

Granting up front that I'm a callous asshole, I can't quite see why this is supposed to be "anti-gay literature."

Update: Let's expand, shall we?

I generally put the "anti-gay" crowd into three categories. The first is those who dislike (or hate) gays, full stop. The second don't care much about gays, but get their back up at open "gay culture." Sure, fuck other men quietly in your house, but please don't parade through the Castro in leather chaps and waiving a rainbow flag; it's just so tacky! The final group isn't terribly troubled by man on man sex that they don't have to watch, nor by a small group making a foolish spectacle of themselves, but just can't abide the damned excessive whining and grievance mongering that arises among those fighting the first two groups.

I'm firmly in the third group. (Note that I am admittedly an enthusiastic complainer, which I distinguish from "whining" by a lack of any expectation or demand that other people actually change to accommodate my aggravation.) As such, a cartoon with this message titled "Big Bucks Mountain" is guaranteed to make me laugh. The point isn't that gay sex is morally equivalent to bestiality. It is instead the last line: "'cause I'm still working on the script." It's the excessive hype and triumphalism around the movie, not its actual content, that I think is being mocked. That's a message I thoroughly approve of.

Now maybe Danziger didn't mean my interpretation and was engaging in gay = bestiality bashing. That is a problem, but it's mostly one for gays. The legal slippery slope arguments aimed at a Constitutional right to gay marriage leading to legalizing sex with animals aren't absurd. Morally, it's pretty clear that honest libertarians don't see any reason both shouldn't be fully legal but for tactical reasons would never actually say so and risk further pissing off their opponents.

I also suspect that gays find the comparison repulsive because it takes them away from the moral and intellectual arguments in their favor and faces them with the gut level repugnance that motivates those in my first anti-gay category. If you find the idea of a man fucking a sheep deeply weird enough that you don't object to it being outlawed, it must be disconcerting to realize that's the same feeling the bubbas get about you and Gary, Ace.

There are, of course, rational intellectual reasons to reject the comparison: lack of sentience and potential for love on one side of the, ah, relationship; the apparent incredible rarity of bestiality; presumed lack of an actual preference for animals based on biology (but what if that's wrong?); etc. As a matter of strategy, debating this isn't going to help advance gays no matter how strong the arguments, so instead we see knee jerk frothing whenever the comparison is made.

Which I don't think really was in this instance. But even if was, the most it will drag out of me is a curl of the lip. For both sides.

Update II: Following the links from the original linked post, I found this, bemoaning supposed gay hating from assorted liberals over Brokeback Mountain. I find these terrible bits of gay bashing equally as horrifying (and amusing) as the classic Triumph at the Star Wars premiere clip. The very big difference between these two groups isn't that one is funny and worthy of mockery and other, but that one is violently attacked and beaten and the other isn't. You've got my support on that one, but whining about a lack of universal respect is both counterproductive and ultimately doomed. Focus your efforts on what matters.