Pat Buchanan

Americas social conservatives seem to have found a new hero: Vladimir Putin.

It doesn't matter that the recently divorced - but newly committed protector of tradition and Christian values - was once an officer in the KGB apparently. Desperation makes for strange bedfellows.

Since the Supreme Court ruled against DOMA, Pat Buchanan and his fellow travelers now have to cast their nets as far as Moscow to find sympathetic fellow travelers.

Oh, how times change.

But Buchanan's sudden admiration is a startling development, even from the thrice-failed presidential candidate, known anti-semite, and fan of Adolf Hitler.

Writing for the conservative World Net Daily this week, Buchanan apparently gave his support to Russia's increasingly menacing war on homosexuals.

'Only yesterday, homosexual sodomy, which Thomas Jefferson said should be treated like rape, was outlawed in many states and same-sex marriage was regarded as an absurdity,' Buchanan wrote. 'Was that America we grew up in really like Nazi Germany? In the Catholic schools this writer attended, pornography – let alone homosexual propaganda – would get one expelled.'

Firstly, the concept of a homosexual didn't exist in Jefferson's era because society hadn't theorized or even recognized homosexuals, the category simply didn't exist. In Jefferson's era there were no homosexual people, there were only homosexual acts.

Secondly, Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime, and isn't always the best reference point when it comes to civil rights.

Thirdly, being gay isn't 'propaganda,' nor is it 'pornography,' but it would appear Buchanan can't look at a gay person without seeing both.

But, not for the first time, Buchanan is determined to find a justification for bigotry.

'Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism,' writes Buchanan.

So that's what he's up to, eh? And to make that omelet the eggs he'll have to crack are the skulls of solitary teenage boys who'll have their torture sessions by gangs of braying thugs posted to Youtube? I see, Pat. I should just think of the greater good should I?

'What, one wonders, is the view of those Evangelical Christians who sustain the Republican Party on homosexual propaganda in the public square?' Buchanan asks himself. 'Do they agree with the Washington Post? Or do they agree with Putin?'

Again, being gay isn't 'propaganda,' nor is it 'pornography.' But that dehumanizing double vision has found deep purchase in Russia - and even among America's social conservatives it seems, now that Buchanan has found common chord with Putin.

Who's side are you on, Buchanan asks, forgetting to note that he finds himself on Putin's. It's probably important to know that he and his fellow travelers would pursue the same policies here too if we were foolish enough to give men like Buchanan half a chance.