It’s clear that the two agree on some issues, the question is how many and how strongly…

To me, it simply appears that the majortiy of observers have come to the decision that McCain and Hagee agree on things that are an acceptable part of the the national politacal dialogue and do not agree on the more outlandish and unacceptable things…

Such as (from Rich):

The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

That’s the thing… very few observers assume, as do you, that there was any real policy agreement… They think McCain was just being cynical because there was no extensive relationship.

To my mind, and it looks like most peoples, it seems more reasonable to believe that listening to sermons on a regular basis means either agreement or infection…

Re: anti-Catholicism, it is true that most people, outside of Catholic circles, tend not to worry about it, and it has become one of the last fashionable prejudices around. At one level, the media don’t care about Protestants bashing Catholics, because they assume that this is just par for the course with religious folks, and some of them will be hard pressed to generate much outrage at claims that the Catholic Church is responsible for modern anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, since many of them already believe something very much like that. For them, Hagee is a sort of evangelical Goldhagen, and they all seem to share a common antipathy to Catholicism that makes Hagee’s outbursts less troubling. Even so, the larger problem with Hagee isn’t that he loathes Catholicism, as he evidently does, but that he cheers on warmongering and engages in warmongering himself. The controversy over Hagee hasn’t been that he exulted in the bombing of Lebanon in a fairly un-Christian way, but that he has said unpleasant things about Catholics, so even within the limited scrutiny Hagee has received we see the same bizarre division between horrible actions that receive little attention and awful statements that receive the lion’s share of criticism. Frankly, I would rather have someone who thinks Catholics and Orthodox are idolaters and what-have-you, but who does not celebrate their bombardment as God’s work, than have someone who “respects” a faith and then cheers on the destruction of actual living members of that faith. With Hagee you get the worst of both.

But my main point had to do with Hagee. I’m not denying that McCain usually gets a free pass from the media, but is Hagee really considered to be that mainstream? I assumed people let McCain off the hook over that endorsement not because they saw Hagee as mainstream, but because they simply didn’t care that much. Enough to be angry for a little while at least, but not enough to keep at it like those who were offended by Wright seem to have done. The biggest issue with Hagee was his anti-Catholicism, and Republicans don’t seem to let that bother than too much. Their candidates can give speeches at Liberty University without too much of a fuss for example. Perhaps I misjudged the amount of anger over these events, but I thought it was more a case of apathy over the cause of the controversy. In my opinion “anti-patriotic” and anti-white sentiment seem to just get people angrier than anti-Catholicism does.

It is still the case that blacks, women, and gays receive far more oppression for their identities then do white, heterosexual, males and that this oppression is maintained and perpetuated through rhetoric. Minorities adduce that one way to end such oppression is to oppose the type of discourse that leads to their marginalization (eg Gays successfully removing homosexuality from the DSM).

Furthermore, this “thought policing” (ie boundaries of acceptable discourse) is by no means a one way street. There is a plethora of rhetoric and behavior that is not acceptable of gays, blacks, and women that will result in censure, punishment, and sometimes violence.

Speaking as a gay man, I must police my words to ensure that I not be fired from my job (I have a room mate, not a partner, while everyone else has a husband or a wife). I also need to ensure that if I hold my partner’s hand or give him a kiss in public that I do so in a safe place, otherwise I risk being physically assaulted.

With that said, I completely agree with you that “thought policing” is universally a bad idea. I’d rather live in a community in which someone can damn me to hell and call me the F-word then one in which people cannot freely share their thoughts and emotions. Thought policing is anti-thetical to free speech and toxic to a democracy.

However, that doesn’t mean that people don’t have legitimate reasons for wanting people to talk and argue differently. Phrenology after all wasn’t just an erroneous scientific theory.

Ah, clarity in its most pure form.