The Death Of Crunchy Conservatism?

Reader Leslie Fain wrote, about the hounding of the organic-farming Childs family, conservative Mormons, out of business for Mrs. Childs’ thoughtcrime about same-sex marriage:

There is just going to be more of this. Sustainable food seemed to be one area where conservatives/libertarians and progressives were finding a lot of common ground. I guess that is over.

Is it? I think she might have a point. If the new thing among progressives is going to be shunning anyone who doesn’t line up with them on same-sex marriage, then this is bad news for the sustainable food movement. How will progressives work with the Amish, for example? Do lefties really grasp where all this may be headed? Some of them would just as soon destroy an organic farm and small business, and in turn destroy all the good work that has been done on the left and the right in building small farms and localist food cultures than learn to live with people who disagree.

Andrew Sullivan has been terrific on the pro-gay lynch mob. He writes, about Brendan Eich:

The ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. … A civil rights movement without toleration is not a civil rights movement; it is a cultural campaign to expunge and destroy its opponents. A moral movement without mercy is not moral; it is, when push comes to shove, cruel.

For a decade and half, we have fought the battle for equal dignity for gay people with sincerity, openness, toleration and reason. It appears increasingly as if we will have to fight and fight again to prevent this precious and highly successful legacy from being hijacked by a righteous, absolutely certain, and often hateful mob. We are better than this. And we must not give in to it.