FOR "GROUP THINK."

FOR "GROUP THINK." Elle Reeve has a diarist up today in TNR tut-tutting the tendency of young Washingtonians to screen their roommates for political leanings. She writes,

Julie puts her political orientation in her ad because she's "part of an interracial couple and my housemate is gay, so we like to put this up front so that no NRA white-supremacist homophobes [will] think they might want to live here." (Otherwise, presumably, she'd have to beat back the hordes of gun-lovers desperate to live with her in this handgun-free city.)

But someone could obviously be an NRA member, or an NRA lobbyist, and live in Washington. More to the point, Julie's focus of concern clearly wasn't gun control policy, but racism and homophobia. I think it's quite reasonable for Julie to take the position that her gay roommate should be spared living with someone who doesn't recognize his or her equal rights under the law. Reeve completely avoids this serious concern and goes for an irrelevant side point, perhaps because admitting that liberals might legitimately not want to live with bigots wouldn't fit into the "pox on both their silly houses" construction of the piece.

--Ben Adler