Dissent is the Highest Form of ...no, wait

Maggie, the strange thing about that Molly Redden piece on Mark Regnerus in The New Republic is the way it's written with complete assurance that no one will find it the least bit weird that a supposed journal of ideas is calling for someone to be expunged from polite society for the crime of disagreeing with them.

And what outrage has this fringe wacko - er, sorry, widely-published peer-reviewed fringe wacko - committed? Why, he "traffics in the mid-century notion that the timing of marriage should be arranged around a woman’s 'most fertile years'”! Can't have that, can we? If he wants to traffic in mid-century notions, he should be playing Branson.

Well, there's a lot of "mid-century notions" around - like Social Security and Medicare - and Ms Redden and her colleagues on the left insist that they're inviolable and we having to keep trafficking in them even unto national democracy, notwithstanding that these programs require "mid-century notions" on fertility rates to fund them. Maybe the question of which "mid-century notions" are sacrosanct and which are beyond the pale and any relationship between the two would make an interesting debate. But, like far too many "liberals", Ms Redden feels that's too much of a chore and it's easier just to get everyone she labels "retrograde" banned.

I hate to bring up other "mid-century notions" but intellectual diversity on the left is increasingly indistinguishable from Tupperware night with the Stepford Wives.