At a national conference of gay activists this past weekend, a group whose purpose is to create “LGBTQ connections with Israel” had been scheduled to sponsor a reception—until anti-Israel protesters forced its cancellation. After some outcry the event was rescheduled, but then hundreds of protesters broke up the meeting, taking over the stage and preventing participants from speaking. James Kirchick writes about the lesson to be learned:
This is an edifying moment for gays, Jews, and the broader left. Were they to let this act of blatant discrimination stand, the leaders of the Task Force would have betrayed all these communities by succumbing to the heckler’s veto. In the loftier precincts of progressive journalism, higher education, and the non-profit world, those hecklers tend to be proponents of “intersectionality,” a voguish theory purporting that power is inextricably linked to aspects of identity like race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, and that an individual’s “marginalization” is thus determined by his accumulation of various traits. . . .
Proponents of intersectionality have elevated its categorical paradigms of all-encompassing, omnipresent “oppression,” and its attendant, identity-based hierarchies of virtue, to that of a . . . new morality to replace the classical liberal principles of freedom, individual rights, and equality before the law on which Western civilization is based. . . .
Worse, in the name of “solidarity” with other supposedly “oppressed” groups, it leads to alliances with those actively hostile to one’s cause. This is how a gay-rights organization led by well-meaning progressives can be duped into disinviting private citizens of the one country in the Middle East respecting the humanity of gays, all at the behest of people who use cultural relativism to excuse Muslim societies that throw homosexuals from the tops of buildings.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/196754/intersectionality-makes-you-stupid