I think this news blurb from Yahoo is unfair. [Don't] Think Progress characterized the story the same way. I covered it yesterday in Anatomy of a Smear over at Blogs 4 Brownback.

I hope you'll consider giving it look.

Brownback's letter of support for Pace was circulated among his Senate colleagues for signature with the intent to send the letter to President Bush to show that support of General Peter Pace.

Asked whether he agreed with Pace's comments, Brownback said: "I do not believe being a homosexual is immoral, but I do believe homosexual acts are. I'm a Catholic and the church has clear teachings on this." (Philadelphia News)

Based in what I have seen from other reports and from Brownback's own senate website I don't see that the Yahoo! report was unfair in any way. It quite frankly reported Brownback's actions and his own concerns on the issue.

It is eminently fair. Brownback's claims otherwise are rooted in the "love the sinner, hate the sin" lie that certain Christians like to tell themselves because admitting that your personal religion -- and thus your own self -- is rooted in ignorance-fueled bigotry that it won't let go of no matter how much real world evidence there is to the contrary is discomfortingly too difficult a leap into a spirituality worthy of a human soul for their low courage weak selves to make.

Brownback falls back on RatCo as an excuse, as if the pronouncements in favor of hate of the world's most powerful hate group could ever be an excuse for the personal expression of hate. Brownback is not some little boy who has just run out the Sunday school door. He's a United States senator seeking the highest office of the world's most powerful democracy. His is thus a responsibility not to fall back on the pope to let someone off the hook who would have been fired if he'd said what he did as head of a large corporation in the private sector.

Brownback called the criticism of Pace "unfair and unfortunate" to boot. His "personal moral beliefs" argument is one even the general himself has been forced to admit was inappropriate -- that he should've stuck to the professional merits of the issue, which I suspect neither the general nor Brownback did not want to do because they are on what is by far the weaker side of that one. Fellow bilerico blogger Alex Blaze superbly deconstructed the personal morality argument earlier this week.

The Yahoo piece also rightfully does not let Obama's and Hilary Clinton's cowardly wait-twenty-four-hours-to-see-which-way-the-wind-blows behavior off the hook nor does it slight mention of McCain's continued cowardice in refusing to comment on the general's gross gaffe or his ridiculous claim that DADTDP is working.

BTW, as Yahoo pieces seem to have a shelf life approaching mere nanoseconds, I've captured it and will share it with anyone who feels they need to read it to be able to jump into this discussion. You can e-mail me or any bilerico contributor by clicking on our names in the contributors list and following the instructions from there.