Mark Steyn writes about "de-normalizing" — being put "beyond the pale of polite society and mainstream culture."

And he's sorry his editor at National Review "does not grasp the stakes" in the "Duck Dynasty" flap.

Indeed, he seems inclined to “normalize” what GLAAD is doing. But, if he truly finds my “derogatory language” offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point — that a society where lives are ruined over an aside because some identity-group... decides it must be so is ugly and profoundly illiberal.

Via Power Line, which says:

As to the terms Steyn used, I understand [National Review editor, Jason Lee] Steorts’ point. I too would have liked the column better without the unfunny Rat Pack joke. And I agree with Steorts that courteous disagreement, devoid of insults, is usually preferable to lack of courtesy, even when one is disagreeing with the dangerous and the uncivil.

The point of the Rat Pack joke — “How do you make a fruit cordial?”/ “Be nice to him.” — wasn't that it's funny. It's that not too long ago junk like that was the norm. It was probably considered sweet, gentle and even gay-friendly. Steyn is paying attention to how cultural norms change. This is something I've been talking about too, and I am confounded by what a hard time people have understanding this subject. (Read my posts and the response in the comments here and here.)

Some things really are beyond what decent people who care about their standing in society want to be caught saying, even in jokes, even in bandying around ideas in a noncommittal fashion. But what belongs in that category of things you don't want to say (unless you're okay with being a pariah)? The content of that category is continually evolving, and some players in the culture — like GLAAD in the "Duck Dynasty" incident — are getting quite aggressive in their efforts to push things into that category.

I don't like this kind of cultural aggression. I'd like to see slower change, with more tolerance of disagreement, and more allowance for debate and expression. I'm not too sympathetic to the homophobes — the mild and the virulent — if when they had the cultural upper hand they squelched the people who are now out to de-normalize them. Turnabout is fair play, and karma is a bitch. But free speech is a higher value, and the greater benefit to all of us lies in keeping the conversation rolling.

ADDED: Here's something a little different that corresponds to that Rat Pack joke, not in the realm of comedy, but in a best selling history book that was published in 1961 and got high praise in places like The New York Times Book Review and won the National Book Award. It's William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Listening to the audiobook, I was struck by the references to homosexuality, made in an offhandedly negative way that you'd never encounter in a book published today by a respectable publisher and an author who meant to be taken seriously. Examples:

A tough, ruthless, driving man— albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual— [Ernst Roehm] helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A., the army of storm troopers which he commanded until his execution by Hitler in 1934....

Such was the weird assortment of misfits who founded National Socialism.... The confused locksmith Drexler provided the kernel, the drunken poet Eckart some of the “spiritual” foundation, the economic crank Feder what passed as an ideology, the homosexual Roehm the support of the Army and the war veterans, but it was now the former tramp, Adolf Hitler... who took the lead....

“I know Esser is a scoundrel,” Hitler retorted in public, “but I shall hold on to him as long as he can be of use to me.” This was to be his attitude toward almost all of his close collaborators, no matter how murky their past— or indeed their present. Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes....

But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can....

No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him.....