STOP ACTING LIKE A HATEMONGER! YOU'RE SPOILING IT FOR THE REST OF US HATEMONGERS WHO ARE TRYING TO PRETEND WE'RE NORMAL PEOPLE!

I'm running into that message a lot on the right these days:

Concerned Women for America:

... Interviewing with a Florida sports radio show, former Miami Heat player Tim Hardaway said that he "hates gay people" and that he distances himself from them because he is "homophobic." ...

"Hardaway's comments are both unfortunate and inappropriate," said Matt Barber, CWA's Policy Director for Cultural Issues. "They provide political fodder for those who wish to paint all opposition to the homosexual lifestyle as being rooted in 'hate.' [....] It's perfectly natural for people to be repelled by disordered sexual behaviors that are both unnatural, and immoral [....] Hardaway's comments only serve to foment misperceptions of widespread homosexual 'victimhood' which the homosexual lobby has craftily manufactured."...

John Podhoretz in today's New York Post:

...[Richard Mellon] Scaife was the key funder of, and [Christopher] Ruddy a dominating figure in, the '90s effort to cast Bill and Hillary Clinton in the worst possible light in every conceivable way. Their efforts went far beyond criticism of Bill's policies and Hillary's questionable business practices to irresponsible and frankly disgusting hints that either or both of them committed unspeakable crimes -- including murder....

These wild, florid and deeply irresponsible allegations weren't just outrageous in themselves. Ruddy and Scaife (who paid for the "investigative research") also undermined those on the Right who were attempting principled critiques.

The scandal-mongering may have stoked vast hatred of the Clintons, but it also gave Bill and Hillary the means to construct a plausible case for their supporters and the media that they were the subjects of crazed and unjust persecution....

The honest ones always ruin it for everyone else, don't they?

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UPDATE: Leonard Pitts of The Miami Herald thinks we should be grateful for Tim Hardaway's bigotry. No, really. Let him persuade you.