"Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING and MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior."

-- Fund raising mailer, 1996

"Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches."

-- 1995 radio broadcast

"They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro."

-- In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968

"All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."

-- After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986

He sang 'Dixie' to Senator Carol Moseley-Braun in an elevator in one of the Senate office buildings, specifically, he said, to taunt her, to "make her cry".

What would you have folks do?

Black folks?

Gay folks?

Teachers who didn't teach kids to eat their grandparents, but were accused of teaching cannibalism by Helms?

If you're a gay, black man as you coyly suggest and you still muster compassion and restraint, I tip my hat to you. If I could doff my hair, I'd do that too.

Even if you're a staight, white guy, I still admire your restraint.

And I agree that this is a moment to discuss his mean-spiritedness and consequent divisiveness and how that's being replicated here.

Why do you assume that it's gay folks who are "viciously intolerant" in this thread?

Why not black folks?

Hispanics?

Women?

And why would 3 or 4 or 5 angry gay folks in this thread have you assuming that (ALL) gay folks are "viciously intolerant."

If you're saying that agents of violence, like the KKK, are spurred by mouthpieces of violence, like Helms, I agree. In this regard, although no court will uphold it, I consider the mouthpieces of violence to have hands as bloody as klansmen.

"Is it bigoted to point that out?"

No.

Neither is it kind.

Are you enlightening Mr. Beatie? Any of us? I'm sure Mr. Beatie gets that he's missing parts.

Does he need your reminders anymore than a man missing an arm needs me to say, "Hey, you're missing an arm, Stumpy!"

Allie, I'm a big fan of your posts, but I'm think you're missing the obvious in punctuating the obvious, which is that we all have opportunities to tender kindness and in this thread, as Mr. Rodgers notes in his subtitle ("more respect"), too many folks are passing on kindness for the sake of cleverness.

You took a brave stand. The mob was forming and clanging their shovels and were ready to disinter Helms and quarter the corpse and you started clanging Donne's bell.

Incivility does seem viral. When we base our behavior on those who debase us, we are the thing that hates us.

Howard Zinn once talked about the cruelty he saw in the "Good War," on both sides. It's not tit for tat. It's not even an eye for an eye. It's two extended families for an extended families. Today, it's two countries for two towers.

"Congratulations to the father and mother."

I second that.

And I'm sorry that I forgot we're on the same side. I probably am a little punchy at this point. Happy Fourth, Allie, and Happy Fourth, Mr. Beatie, if you are reading this thread...and the all the best to your wife and child.

"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: 'The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life."

— President Bush.

"I'll bet my last nickel that most of those people are polite and friendly to you in public -- as I myself would be, in the name of common courtesy -- and behind closed doors, say exactly what I am saying."

Remember when I urged you to befriend queer people? Well, don't. Please. No queer person deserves someone like you. Likewise, I suspect that no person deserves someone like you...other than someone like you.

Nice post. As I read it, I also thought of people chemically altering themselves with liquor, which produces sometimes lethal temporary changes, as well as sometimes deadly permanent changes. The root of inTOXICation isn't TOXIC by chance.

I also think that this trans-fussing replaces, in part, the gay-fussing. The American Empire is crumbling. America and many Americans are drowning in debt. The day is rapidly coming when a pear will cost $3 and a gallon of milk $10 and this very winter, more Americans than ever will choose between heat and food. But Mr. Beatie comes along and people don't have to worry about their country's sins or the unnatural toxins they swallow or the costly mutilations they suffer to have a few more breaths.

Sorry about your dad.

If you're an Ike Republican, then you're left of the left today. The pendulum has shifted so far that left isn't even centrist.

Like you, I think most people are evil. I know I am. Unlike you, I don't believe in God. So, I should assert that I think most people are bad, since evil is tangled in theology. I think that most of us, in certain circumstance, would man a watchtower at Auschwitz, would swing a machete in Rwanda, and would rape a man with a broomstick in one of Saddam's rape rooms. It is our common proclivity for evil that has me supporting your position in this thread. I too want to publicly denigrate Sen. Helms. I would if it weren't for your thin, fine line, which delineates decency.