Word: dismiss
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...intellectual discourse. Time and time again, Peninsula's writers deny that their opposition to homosexuality was motivated by hatred. They affirm and reaffirm that "We have no coercive capabilities; we wouldn't use them if we did." They make arguments--weak arguments, we think, but arguments nonetheless. To dismiss this issue as mere gay-bashing is simply unfair. The virulent ad hominem attacks proferred after the issue's publication, while understandable, were entirely unwarranted...
...SURPRISE notwithstanding, this particular issue of Peninsula would be easier to take if it were a screaming fundamentalist screed against filthy perversions, and a ringing endorsement of Thomism redux. Then we could dismiss the whole exercise as the produce of over-educated and socially nervous young Miniver Cheeveys, forced to live in a world and age neither of their making nor liking, and who unfortunately have their own private magazine in which to publish their tantrums...
Alas, we are not able so easily to dismiss this effort, and the danger is that because it looks serious, and has lots of scholarly apparatus with which to advance and defend its serious positions, we must take it seriously. Its danger is not so much that it confronts a touchy subject and tilts against the currents of political correctness...
...QUESTION WE MUST ask is not the first one that came to mind: That was, "Why are these folks so angry?" No, that is the second question which proceeds from the first: "Why are they so scared?" On the one hand they dismiss the notion of the gay 10 percent as a Kinseyan fantasy, and place the gay population at 1 or 2 percent. And yet on the other hand, they see an organized and successful plot to destroy the family, the Church and the population. There is much less of Paul Revere and a lot more of Chicken Little...
...protecting" their ethnic kinsmen, some Russian nationalists might try to seize other republics' territory. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the spectacularly misnamed Liberal Democratic Party, has even made claims against Poland and Finland on the grounds that they once belonged to the Czars. You're not likely to dismiss Zhirinovsky as a nut case if you're a Pole, a Finn -- or one of the 6 million Russians who voted for him in the republic's presidential election last June...