Progressives proceeded to prove Chad Greene's original point -- and negate their manicured image of being a haven of tolerance for LGBT people -- by savaging him on social media.

Last week on The Federalist, Senior Contributor Chad Greene wrote an article titled “The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics Is Worse Than The Stigma Of Being Gay.” Here’s a sample of his argument:

If the left believes surrounding the homes of political figures and threatening their families is justified protest, what would happen to a person with far less of a powerful voice to fight back? Everything I was told to fear about being openly gay has become a reality in being openly conservative. The fear of being fired, harassed, called dehumanizing names, bullied, and denied access to public life (even violence) are all realities I face today as a conservative.

This is an especially shocking observation because Chad has a distressing teenage coming out story. One would think the surprise of reading his statement might make some people pause for a second and consider why on earth he might say it. Instead, progressives proceeded to prove his point — and negate their manicured image of being a welcoming haven for LGBT people — by savaging him on social media.

Pink News wrote up some responses that are unprintable. Sarah Silverman’s angry response went viral.

Here’s the chairman of The Democrat Coalition, “the nation’s largest grassroots Resistance organization.”

Cooper followed that up by alleging that religious conservatives are largely responsible for LGBT teens’ high suicide rates (i.e., he asserted the historic theological beliefs of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are not just inherently bigoted but also accessories to self-murder):

Deadspin had this open and affirming take. In the article, the author also felt free to employ the slur “fag” against Milo Yiannopolous simply because he’s politically non-progressive:

Chad got into it with the former editor and chief of the prominent gay publication The Advocate. For engaging with him, Matthew Breen called Chad a “quisling,” which means traitor.

Here are a few more blue checks inadvertently providing more evidence for Chad’s argument:

“As if being conservative is something you usually have to be super secret about to avoid persecution,” wrote Rose Dommu at Out magazine. ‘”Mom, dad…I don’t know how to tell you this but…I’m a Republican.’ Honey, that’s…not a thing.” Yes, it is (and is, and is). We have several dozen writers who use pseudonyms (and many more who submit articles and wish to use a pseudonym) because they fear retribution by family or their workplace if they’re outed. Most work in academia, but others work for government agencies or in reputation-heavy fields such as law. The stigma is real.

It’s so real Dommu felt completely free to use precisely the same gay slur against Chad that gay advocacy organizations like Human Rights Campaign are out in schools all over the country trying to prevent kids from using on each other. Dommu called Chad “the gayest name.” So I guess it’s bigotry when done against a progressive gay person, but totes fine if done against a conservative gay person? I can’t keep up with the shifting morality lines here. They seem to vary exclusively with political affiliation.

Using this word as a slur (or, heck, at all) will get you run off a college campus. You can't host the Oscars, and some people will basically ask you to return your Heisman Trophy. But I guess it's okay when the left does it? pic.twitter.com/xMJYIQ2jwf — Robby Soave (@robbysoave) December 12, 2018

Since all of these folks obviously live in a very left bubble and not all are gay, it would be difficult for them to see the comparison Chad makes based on their experiences. Federalist contributor Brad Polumbo, however, can do just that, and he wrote in the Washington Examiner that he’s seen the same: “Many progressives are truly beginning to believe that gay men who hold conservative or libertarian views are not just wrong, but traitorous. Living on a liberal college campus in Massachusetts, I’ve personally encountered this attitude many times. It is sick, sad, and fundamentally regressive.”

Polumbo considers it bigoted for people to assume that his sexuality tells them all they need to know about his ideas, politics, and proclivities. Assuming that gay people support Democrats says “gay men have to think with their genitalia, and that their sexual preferences strip them of the same right to reason we afford everyone else. This is ignorant, and frankly, blatantly homophobic…Essentially, progressives expect gay people to be one-issue voters,” he writes.

Today’s left uses identity politics like this in lieu of making good arguments about why people should support their policies and ideas. Instead, they use resentment, fear, and anger to stampede people in their direction, but without a clear statement of where it’s all headed. That’s what their utterly ludicrous constant stream of accusations of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, etc. are: Power plays.

They’re done with public discourse, with meeting fairly on the field of open debate. Instead, today’s left is a band of social media character assassins. They pretend to care about the special identities they’ve manufactured only as a ruse to hook all those identities together into a voting mass that perpetuates their power. They prove that they care more about the power than about the identities by brutalizing anyone of any supposedly “protected” identity that speaks truth to their power.

You can be black, like Kevin Hart or Kanye; you can be gay, like Peter Thiel or Chad Greene. You can be a former transgender, like Walt Heyer, or a woman, like Melania Trump. They don’t really care about any of those fake, identity politics categories unless people submerge themselves inside those categories to serve the modern left’s hunger for power.

This is not only hurtful to public discourse, it is hurtful to the individuals they smear and to themselves. Ideological inflexibility hinders personal and social growth. We saw this break out among the right during the Donald Trump campaign then presidency, with the vicious Never Trump fight. It’s also happening on the left, as countless incidents like Chad’s have repeatedly demonstrated.

Movements die when they refuse to grow. If the mind is like the body, and it needs the food of ideas to grow, by curb-stomping people like Chad rather than listening to their perspectives, the left is denying itself the intellectual food it needs to grow into something new that can serve the needs of the American people. Indeed, it’s an open question whether the liberal left has already died, and today’s dominant intersectional identity politics is merely a zombie leftism out to gnash America to bits, one brain at a time.

People and movements who behave like this are not safe spaces for anyone to be, regardless of what they tell you to get your head within reach.