Intellectual rape

I am outraged by David Anderson's misrepresentation of my article "How Christian is gay bashing?" [10/23/98, YH] in his letter, "Double Intolerance" [10/30/98, YH]. It is depressing that any member of the Yale community is capable of such a blatant breach of intellectual ethics.

According to Anderson, I wrote: "Pegging all Christians as anti-gay would be premature--but not by much.... They are the veritable exponents of an American theocracy in which gays--and indeed all non-Christians--will be relegated to second-class citizens, quashed, abused, or far worse." This is intellectual rape. With his ellipses Anderson leaves out no less than 116 of my original words, connects sentences that as I wrote them were three paragraphs apart, and alters my meaning entirely. In my original column the word "they" clearly refers to the subject "Pat Robertson and cohorts" of the previous sentence; Anderson changes its meaning to "all Christians."

From this dishonestly manufactured evidence, Anderson proceeds to claim that the main purpose of my article was to "attack Christianity," and that I asserted that "the `Religious' Right represents mainstream Christianity." For those unable to refer to my original article, this must have seemed very convincing. But in fact, in the three paragraphs and 116 words Anderson pretends I did not write, I had taken great pains to differentiate between religious extremists ("Pat Robertson and cohorts") and "truly tolerant Christians."

--Chris Mooney, SM '99

Back to Opinion...