Do I wake or sleep?

In his fourth paragraph, mysticblaze calls upon "society" to "do something" about the beliefs of the gay bashers and their children. Hiding the responsibility for starting a fight behind "society" does not change the nature of what is being done, or suggested. The problem is, exactly who is society? Society is an abstraction. It is a construct in the minds of the individuals that comprise it. There is no "social brain" that actually exists and thinks -- there is only the aggregate effects of the actions stemming from the thoughts of those individuals that make up society. When the majority of individuals in a society attempt to live by the Golden Rule and respect one another's life, liberty, and property, society flourishes in reasonably civilized harmony. When we attempt to turn society into government and use it as a club for changing our neighbors' minds then civility and prosperity both vanish -- society fragments into what the founders of the U.S. called "faction," collectivized groups jockeying for the influence and power to control each other. It is a scary thing to contemplate that people enamoured of faction never stop to consider that when they empower a government to favor the, when their faction is in power, likewise empower government to persecute them when their faction is out of power.

The last paragraph also contains some ideas with which I must contend. The first such idea is that rights must be limited. Untrue. Rights are absolute, or they are not rights at all. The second idea is that somehow a democratic tyranny is acceptable while a despotic tyranny is not. minstrel70 is right, a dangerous precedent is set whether rights are violated in the name of a minority or a majority. Ten thousand Irishmen can be wrong, and might does not make right. It is not a wise trade to exchange one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away. This clammoring for "society" to control, not just the actions, but the thoughts of individuals betrays a substantial lack of faith in one's own ideas. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Society does not think, only individuals do. Turning society into government and giving it the power to regulate the thoughts of individuals only serves to quash all thinking by individuals equally. Approximately two hundred million people in the former Soviet Union were murdered in the twentieth century for want of understanding that lesson. Do we really want to go down that road?