What is logical about backlash is that it is predictable

A regular commenter said something yesterday that I can’t quite put out of my mind:

…when one of the co-bloggers (Gabriel Malor) posted a piece this morning condemning Boston and Chicago for their blatant flouting of the 1st Amendment, yet also noting that he personally did not patronize Chick-fil-A because of the owner’s views, the commenters almost universally excoriated him, calling him everything from a “libtard” to a “Kos Kid” to a “knob-gobbler” and worse. All because he didn’t hew to the conservative line on one single issue.

I used to think that conservatives were more tolerant then liberals regarding such differences of opinion. But after reading the hateful invective that was spewed at Mr. Malor, I realized that the seething, irrational hatred is still there, bubbling below the surface.

It made me realize that there is no party where I truly fit in, no group whose politics match my own. Both sides are bastards, plain and simple.

To quote Professor Farnsworth of Futurama, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

I often feel the same way, but I’m stuck here, at least for the time being.

However, the whole Chick-fil-A affair provides a fascinating lesson in the psychology of backlash, and yesterday Sarah had a great post in which she warned gay marriage advocates (of which she is one and I am not, BTW) that their behavior was threatening to direly harm their cause and make them look ridiculous:

What are you going to do for an encore? Go after every business in this country that’s owned by a religious person? Till – what? – everyone in the nation turns against you and buys a roll of duct tape to shut you up?

Guys, when you get to the point of getting on MY nerves, you’ve lost the plot.

Go ahead, shake your little fists, why don’t you? The people united shall never eat chick-a-filla. Man, those are logical and convincing arguments!

Never mind those strings moving you around and never, never look up to see who’s making you dance. Oooh, you’re so hip and cool now. Just a part of the “in” crowd.

Keep this up and in ten years the only place gays will have a role will be in comedy, as the hysterical, irrational comic relief.

That is the way backlash works. Despite all my best attempts to be logical, I too, am susceptible to letting my anger over an attack (and concomitant sympathies towards the target of it) influence my thinking. For example, a blizzard of anti-gay marriage emails so pissed me off that I asked in the blog whether they were actually trying to get me to change my quirky position.

But it really shouldn’t work that way. The President of Chick-fil-A is brave to hold his ground despite all sorts of public pressure, and it is dreadful to see his business persecuted for it by the government. But that has nothing to do with whether he is right.

Suppose a mob attacked a Muslim woman for wearing a head cover and violently tore it off. That might incline a lot of people to sympathize with her and be angry at the perpetrators. But it would have nothing to do with whether women should wear headgear, would it?

The problem is that in many people’s eyes, it would. I could easily see non-Muslims wearing Muslim headgear in sympathy, and deciding that the wearing of headgear was the right thing to do — simply because a woman was persecuted for it. (That they would not wear crucifixes in support of, say, a nun who had the same thing happen is grounded in oikophobia, but that’s another form of irrationality beyond the scope of this post.)

Last night a friend told me that I was brave for taking a public position against something in my neighborhood that nearly everyone else seems to be for. I don’t want to discuss it here, as the issue is irrelevant. But whether I was brave or not — what does that have to do with the validity or non-validity of my position?

Nearly two millenia ago, wiser Romans warned against the persecution of early Christians — not because they were sympathetic to them but because they understood that persecuting people generates sympathy. And it did. Had the wiser Romans been heeded and had Rome allowed Christianity to flourish unmolested, who knows what would have happened? Did persecution of Christianity render Christianity “right”? I fail to see why it would. An idea, an opinion, or a belief system is either right or it is not.

If someone throws a brick through my window because he disagrees with me, it does not make my opinion right. Violating the First Amendment rights of a speaker doesn’t make what he says right.

This is basic logic, right?

So then, why do people so often see persecution as somehow breathing truth into the persecuted beliefs?

Is it magic?

MORE: In a curious coincidence, I recently stumbled onto something about Chick-fil-A I find more offensive than their position on gay marriage. It seems they think they own the words “EAT MORE” and that only they can use them.

A folk artist expanding his home business built around the words “eat more kale” says he’s ready to fight root-to-feather to protect his phrase from what he sees as an assault by Chick-fil-A, which holds the trademark to the phrase “eat mor chikin.”

Bo Muller-Moore uses a hand silkscreen machine to apply his phrase, which he calls an expression of the benefits of local agriculture, on T-shirts and sweatshirts. But his effort to protect his business from copycats drew the attention of Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain that uses ads with images of cows that can’t spell displaying their own phrase on message boards.
In a letter, a lawyer for Chick-fil-A said Muller-Moore’s effort to expand the use of his “eat more kale” message “is likely to cause confusion of the public and dilutes the distinctiveness of Chick-fil-A’s intellectual property and diminishes its value.”

Chick-fil-A, which trails only Louisville, Ky.-based KFC in market share in the chicken restaurant chain industry, has a long history of guarding its trademark, and the letter listed 30 examples of attempts by others to co-opt the use of the “eat more” phrase that were withdrawn after Chick-fil-A protested. The Oct. 4 letter ordered Muller-Moore to stop using the phrase and turn over his website, eatmorekale.com, to Chick-fil-A.

Muller-Moore, 38, of Montpelier, says he won’t do that.

Well, good for him. If Chick-fil-A does not think we are free to write “EAT MORE KALE,” then I’ll still defend their First Amendment rights, but I find myself less sympathetic to their claim to moral superiority.

It doesn’t make me want to eat more kale though. Must be something wrong with me.

Maybe I should have my backlash mechanism professionally examined.