...for closing up this letters section with your baseless accusations. Your letter typifies the immature ad hominem attacks I've received.

You are about dozenth person to accuse me without a shred of evidence of being a Republican, Catholic/Christian, NeoCon, Bush supporter, Fox News watcher, etc. I in fact have the exact same criticisms of Laura Bush or any other person who panders to sexist superstitions, regardless of their political or religious affiliation.

I'm a feminist critic of religion and tradition, but I guess seeing all critics of Islam as conservatives comforts some 'liberals', because they don't have to contemplate how irrational their defense of a misogynistic culture and violent, inhumane religion is under their avowed principles. Then again so many 'liberals' today are far more about hating the conservative Christian agenda (and thus embracing any enemy of it) than formulating a consistent progressive agenda which will address our various national and international problems (climate change, health care, etc.).

“But I can't resist pointing out how wildly she misconstrued my comment about "Enlightenment values" and how entirely she misunderstands the Enlightenment itself, which was about nothing at all if it wasn't about toleration of religious and political minorities.”

You are simply fabricating a view of the Enlightenment to accommodate your beliefs, which in fact are much more in keeping with Romanticism. Only certain modern ‘liberals’ seeking to rationalize self-censorship and their patronizing use of minorities as political pawns (see the Mohammed Cartoons affair), have come to imagine the Enlightenment as some multicultural well-spring. The Enlightenment was founded on the supremacy of reason (hence the associated term The Age of Reason).

Any “tolerance’ advocated by Enlightenment philosophers would have been predicated on the minority not being a danger to the rights of others, and certainly would not have absolved them in any case from an unwavering critique of their views. Just see Voltaire’s comments on Jews and circumcision, or Kant arguing against homosexuality or the education of women. These are both interesting examples because they show in Kant’s case the failure to exercise reason outside of his prejudicial traditions and cultural context (Christian and German), and in Voltaire’s case offer a scathing commentary on tribalism and its machinations which is no less valid or applicable today (however uncomfortable his reasoning is to those who espouse ‘tolerance’).

“…and polite acknowledgement that maybe Islam--a faith to which about a third of humanity subscribes--might be worthy of being accorded a little respect.”

So might makes right? 50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong? Your attitude is grossly disturbing. I don’t care how many Muslims there are; Islam must earn respect and when I read the Qur’an, study the life of Mohammed and examine the current state of Islamic societies I see a violent, divisive, exclusivist faith founded on utterly irrational claims. Why would I respect that?

p.s. I am not in any way against all religion only religions based on faith rather than reason. Asking questions of our spiritual purpose and seeking to find answers based in objective evidence is probably the most important and noble things humans can do.

Hey, Joan, please explain how profiling someone based upon their avowed ideological beliefs be it Islam, white supremicism, or Wicca is comparable to "racial profiling" i.e. profiling because of in-born, immutable physical characteristics?

And since Islam as we all know is practised by every major ethnicity, then profiling a Muslim would have no racial dimension. I mean do you seriously think people like Malkin who advocate profiling Muslims are less worried about 'white' Muslims be they Bosnian or German convert as oppossed to predominantly-Muslim ethnicities like Arabs, Malays, etc.

People kill because of what they believe, not because they have different amount of skin pigment. People who are supect of Muslims find concern with what they perceive as a uniquely violent religious doctrine, one which emmanates from the supposedly inerrant revelation of god that is the Qur,an (I am not a Jew or Christian, so don't bother bringing up violence in the Bible). It is time liberals defending Islamic 'civil rights' consider how they are playing the same victimhood game on behalf of Muslims that many Christians use and that defending a grossly illiberal ideology will come back to haunt us in time (just like the use of Muslim extremist by the US in the Soviet-Afghan conflict).

I'm with the first letter, which pointed out the larger issue of the need to label his sexuality at all. Moreover, my view is that many people focus on rationalizing their tolerance like Cary does to an extent, rather than simply observing how irrational intolerance of varying sexuality is. Those may sound similar at first glance, but recognizing irrationality in our actions is far more profound and likely long-lived than often glib notions of 'tolerance' for something we label as different.

"Anyone with an IQ over 40 knows you never, NEVER do anything even slightly over the line until your Moral Character & Fitness Application comes back approved. Get arrested at a protest, even for a good cause? NO. Pose nude and be videotaped getting spanked? NO. NO."

Anyone with an IQ over 40 can see that getting arrested at a protest implies illegal conduct whereas her appearing in the video is perfectly legal. To determine a legal activity with no ill effect on others as 'unfit' would be grave injustice.

Has anyone considered how a male lawyer appearing as the stud in some porn video would be treated in this regard? It wwouldn't even make the news. Deep down this is all about her being a woman with Abrahamic views on women's sexuality at the heart of it. There is no rational reason to disparage or censure this woman's conduct; it says nothing about her fitness a lawyer.