Ann Coulter and "Faggot"

You've probably heard that at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) Conference Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot.

Video here.

Pam at Pam's House Blend has an excellent commentary on the reaction to the comment from the left. Reacting to a blast fundraising email sent out by the Edwards campaign in response to Coulter's comments, Pam asks what the Edwards response does to condemn blatant homophobia, and answers:

Nothing. It doesn't even mention "gay," "lesbian," or "homophobia." It doesn't point out that Coulter's use of "faggot" as a slur on Edwards is also what spills from the lips of the kind of people who beat up a gay man for wearing pink pants, or murder a 72-year-old gay man by slamming him with a metal pipe.

She goes on to address the larger Democratic outlook:

If you're a homo, the message from Dems is that we're still invisible (see Dean's statement), the crazy granny in the attic, and only the granny's nearly feeble caretaker is allowed to say anything -- and even HRC never mentions gays or lesbians at all in its release (outside of its irrelevant boilerplate at the end). Even our advocacy organization couldn't find a paragraph to place Coulter's comments into context of the larger issue of homophobia. [Emphasis is Pam's]

And here's my perspective -- while in college, I was one of several faggots who attended the CPAC conference. Hey -- it's not impossible to be a "faggot" and conservative -- especially if you define conservative in the classical sense of limited government, which means government not concerned with the gender of the person I love.

President Reagan spoke at the main banquet that year. Reagan's conservatives were a more genteel brand than today's crass neanderthals. To be sure, Falwell and Robertson were around and powerful in those days and the party gave them their due. But there was a spark of libertarianism that counterbalanced to some extent those extreme voices. Social issues were never on the front burner then and the fundraising whipping boy was communism, not gays. I cannot imagine anyone uttering the word "faggot" from the podium at the CPAC conference I attended back in 1984.

Today, the spark of freedom in the conservative movement has been squashed. It's one reason I left the Republican Party (or to borrow from Reagan, the Republican Party left me).

The Log Cabiners should be denouncing Coulter's comments. Where are they?