The New York Times doesn't allow comments on letters

I find that strange. Why not allow people to respond to other reader's responses to Times articles. Considering that comments are hidden from readers by default when they are allowed, this seems only reasonable and in no way disruptive.

This was prompted by this letter from a Catholic priest criticizing Gail Collins' recent column on Planned Parenthood funding. The letter itself is representative of how people of his perspective view the matter, but his criticism of Collins' is unjust. I actually think that both the column and the letter are right, to a certain degree. Undoubtedly, the first and foremost reason for the crusade to defund Planned Parenthood is because the anti-abortion activists view it as morally equivalent to the Third Reich (seriously, Godwin's Law is fulfilled every five minutes, or less, in that world). Giving money to Hitler is naturally unacceptable whatever Hitler wants to do with it.

Second is the dubious claim the writer mentions about how giving Planned Parenthood money for contraceptives, etc., increases subsidy for abortion (which assumes that the federal money will not be replaced with increased donations and that PP or donors would subsidize abortion less rather than let contraception and other things be subsidizes less, which contradicts their own demonization of the organization). Ironically, this contradicts the way the good Monsignor's own Church's organizations get money from the government without violating the establishment clause.Third, though, is the Catholic prohibition on contraception and the Evangelical opposition to anything that makes what they deem to be sexual immorality easier.

That's for the activists. For establishment Republican politicians, they pick fights on things like this to keep pro-lifers on the reservation after more than 30 years of doing uncommonly close to nothing on the issue (including thirty-three years of having seven or more Republican justices on the Supreme Court). Even if they didn't get even the Planned Parenthood funding cut, they can at least use the Democrat's fighting to defend it as a means of renewed demonization of them on this issue.

Is this the sexual equivalent of the one-drop rule?

Leading with "The dead keep getting outed:" Andrew Sullivan quotes a New York Times article speaking of an "early homosexual relationship with a white businessman." This comes after Andrew just had to walk back his absolute certainty that Gandhi was gay and take the position that we'll probably never know his sexual orientation.

The problem, as I see it, is first that Andrew doesn't really believe in male bisexuality, and second that he always favors evidence of homosexuality over evidence of heterosexuality (at least in famous people). In Malcolm's case, his six children (two of which, twins, were posthumous) were a little too much for Andrew (possibly in a more cautious mood after the Gandhi experience), but he still led with "outing" and held it open. Come on, the sexual relationship, if it happened, was when he was young with someone who was apparently powerful (meaning the relationship could have been a power relationship, or done for mercenary reasons, etc.). It is utterly unreasonable, given the weight of evidence against his being gay, to think it's really an open question. Unless one bit of gayness makes you gay as one drop of African blood made you black back in the era of Jim Crow (obviously with the reverse intent).