Exhuming McCarthy

Matt Yglesias comes out... let me finish the sentence... in favor of outing gay Republicans (I stole that joke from Cass Sunstein, who "outed" Judge Posner as a global warming hawk).

Anyway, I think Matt is wrong. This is at best a cynical mobilization of homophobia and at worst it will ruin people's lives. Conservatives have tried to revive Joseph McCarthy's reputation by arguing that the Communist threat was real (i.e., there were Communist sympathizers in the United States whose activities posed a real danger to us). For the sake of argument, assume that this is true. This might justify anti-Communism, but it doesn't justify McCarthyism. Haphazardly ruining people's lives because they might be Communists doesn't make the country safer, or if it does it's not worth the price.

Similarly, as bad as the GOP might be for homosexuals, that doesn't justify ruining the lives of individual gay Republicans. In the first place, it is unlikely that it hurts the GOP very much, and in the second place it's not worth the price. Liberals are liberals because they have humane instincts and respect people who are different. Liberals should recoil against McCarthyism in any of its guises.