> That said, I think you're overlooking a serious problem with Rorty's
> theory of community-enlarging. Yoshie touched on it when he asked you if,
> for Rorty, "gays don't count as people." Actually, I think he might have
> been calling you a homophobe, but I'm going to ignore that.
>
(Yoshie, female; Carrol, male, to avoid further confusion.)
I'm not sure how much of John's post was John and how much Rorty, but I'll assume it's Rorty I'm attacking here. And I think it important, given the history of racism and sexism in the U.S. (and all too much in the U.S. left as well), that we not make allowances in these areas and in that of homophobia for careless expression. And to use the word that has driven many a social democrat crazy, to speak of the community accepting gays or being led to accept gays is, OBJECTIVELY, homophobia. Just as it is objectively misogyny to speak of the need to accept women and objectively racist to speak of the need to accept African Americans. (It would be more germane to speak of the need of the working class to somehow incorporate white males.)