So what's more offensive? A Marine Corps general answering a question honestly, or professional activists demanding he apologize?

I'm going to have to go with those who would try to intimidate someone with dissenting views into self-censorship.

Earlier this week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when asked about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, expressed his personal viewpoint that homosexuality is immoral. Not exactly a fringe view there, and undoubtedly one that is shared by a huge swath of the men and women under his command.

It's also apparently the view of a majority of Americans, if we're to judge recent ballot measures banning same-sex marriage - all of which but Arizona's have passed, often handily.

But all of a sudden political advocacy groups were demanding that Pace apologize.

Apologize for what? is my question. How can you apologize for what you believe and think and feel?

And hasn't a man who's spent his entire adulthood in service to his country earned the right to speak his mind and heart honestly and openly? If not him, then who?

This desire to shut up anyone who disagrees with us seems a universal trait - one we witnessed not so long ago in Poway, where school administrators told a student he couldn't wear a T-shirt opposing gay rights even though other students had held a pro-gay rights event the same week. (The case is still working its way through the courts, although how anyone can believe that this student's free speech rights were not violated is beyond me.)

The passage of laws to ban so-called "hate crimes" and the proliferation of speech codes prohibiting supposed "hate speech" are evidence of the deep-seated human desire to silence those whose views we don't like.

Of course, we all like to think of ourselves as open-minded and tolerant, so before we can allow ourselves to ban other points of view, we have to somehow make those viewpoints illegitimate. Branding them as "hate" is the shortest way, and, indeed, gay rights groups immediately called Pace's comments "hateful."

The willingness of so many to set themselves up as traffic cops of the heart and mind is truly dismaying.

It is particularly egregious on issues such as gay marriage or gays in the military in which there is clearly no public consensus.

To hold that it is offensive when someone espouses a viewpoint that one ethnic group is inferior to others is one thing - we clearly as a society have come to a consensus that such views are odious. (Although any commitment at all to free speech will also hold that using the law to ban or punish the expression of such views is the greater wrong.)

But as the lopsided run of election defeats for gay marriage proponents illustrates, the American public is far closer to the general's viewpoint than it is to the other side's.

Perhaps that simply indicates that gay rights activists are out front of society in bringing about needed progress. Time will tell.

In the meantime, however, demands that the general apologize and efforts to silence teens who think differently ought to be seen for what they are. Offensive.

- Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.