The Goldberg File: Freedom: It Tastes Just Like Chicken

A few quick points:

Speaking of first wives, I think it's interesting to note that Dan Cathy's original controversial statement is more pointed at the institution of divorce than at gay marriage. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that."

And yet it wasn't the divorced-American or the re-married-American community that rose up in outrage. It was the gay-rights community -- which apparently sees belief or rather vocal belief in "Biblical marriage" as a crime unto itself.

Speaking of gays, I think it's fascinating and horrifying that the political incentives for three big-city mayors are such that they thought this was an easy pander. After all, we know that all gays don't believe that committing such a thought crime should disqualify you from getting a business license, and yet these politicians all thought this was a gimme. One political takeaway from this, I suspect, is that the insider-clout of gay-activist donors and allies is incredibly strong within the mayoral bubble in big cities, so strong that it distorts one's perspective of the larger political climate. For hacks like Tom Menino and that crook who runs D.C. that's not too shocking, but that Rahm Emanuel was seduced by the temptation tells you something.

Last, I don't believe that everybody who waited hours for a chicken sandwich opposes gay marriage, though many surely do. My sense is that a large number of people showed up simply because they despise the glib bullying of the liberal Gleichschaltung. Rahm Emanuel, Tom Menino, and Vincent Gray (the aforementioned crook) looked for an easy way to score some points in the culture war and they inadvertently tipped their hands: They're bullies, like the gay dudes in Seinfeld who insist that everyone wear an AIDS ribbon.