In case we don't fully understand the qualifier, we get some clarification:

(Quick [and probably unnecessary] explanation of my "almost" qualifier--would any among us find it tragic if Osama, Mugabe or Arafat came down with testicular cancer? Case closed.)

Osama, Mugabe and Arafat, eh? Examples of two murdering terrorists and a homicidal dicatator are put forth to draw a general analogy in a piece about people who have sex for a living. How appropriate. More on this later.

But anyway--is it tragic? Absolutely.

However, I have very little--if any--pity for them.

Now we get to the point, one that I don't find completely illegitimate. We are all free to pick and choose what merits our attention and who gets our sympathy.

These men and women engaged in outrageously immoral and irresponsible behavior. Put as bluntly as I know how, it has long been established fact that sexual promiscuity can be lethal. You can now die from having sex. In short, they took their lives in their own hands when they decided to start bedhopping for a living.

It is of course eminently arguable that "irresponsible behavior" is the cause of the HIV scare in the porn industry. People do indeed take their lives into their hands when they "start bedhopping for a living;" this is the strongest stament in the post. But I have to ask: if we lived in a world where promiscuity had no risk of fatal disease, would the author find the behavior any less objectionable? I mean, sometimes the US Military is the hammer of justice against terrorists and murdering tyrants that step out of line; is HIV then the hammer against "outrageously immoral" behavior? But this isn't my main problem with the post ...

When Rachel Corrie decided to lie down in front of a bulldozer, the blogosphere was overwhelming in its condemnation of her. As far as the blogosphere was concerned, she was asking for it.

These porn actors and actresses are hardly different. In a very real sense, they chose to gamble with death--to play chicken with HIV. So I have a very difficult time feeling sorry for them.

Another ill-fated analogy. Ryan uses the blogosphere's condemnation of Rachel Corrie to buttress the fact that he has no pity for the stricken porn actors. What this analysis fails to grasp is why much of the blogosphere condemned Rachel Corrie. The balance and vehemence of the blame wasn't directed at the fact that she put herself in a dangerous situation, rather, the fact that she put herself in a dangerous situation while defending the interests of murdering terrorists.

In contrast, you have individuals that put themselves in a dangerous situation by having lots of promiscuous sex on film (which is avidly purchased by average Americans), and no one is canonizing their behavior. I'd say that this is more than "hardly different." Drawing some sort of analogy between promiscuity and a woman that aids and abeds murderers is highly offensive, and is something that only weakens the war of ideas by engaging in a subtley different version of the moral equivalence of the left.

Yes, it's unfortunate that life has turned out this way for them. I hope they are able to obtain the much-vaunted protease inhibitors that, according to many, make HIV a manageable condition instead of a life-threatening illness. If they are fortunate, they will be able to move on with their lives.

But like Rachel Corrie, they were pathologically reckless. And, like her, they merit neither pity nor understanding.

A well-clarified qualification is followed by a repetition of the final offensive analogy.

Look, I don't sit around on Sunday, surfing for fisking targets among somewhat similarly-aligned bloggers that have typically good commentary ... but I need to point out that commentary like this cheapens the the condemnation of the threats to Western Civ and strains the alliance between religious and non-religious defenders of the realm.

The key to a successful defense of Western Civilization is going to be tabling our social differences and recruiting as many people as possible to the cause of anti-idiotarianism. This doesn't eliminate debate about social issues, but it does suggest that we should avoid casual, reckless metaphors involving the more deadly struggle. We can scrap like alley cats on the social stuff to our hearts content, but let's just keep Osama bin Laden, Robert Mugabe, Yassir Arafat and Rachel Corrie out of it.