What is with those Danes? Before the smoke can clear from all those embassy burnings, they’re in the headlines again.

US legislators press Rice on UN vote against gays

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration’s support for Iran’s proposal to bar two gay rights groups from a voice at the United Nations sparked a demand from U.S. legislators on Tuesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repudiate the action.

The January 23 vote denying “consultative status” at the world body to the Belgium-based International Gay and Lesbian Association and the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians was a “drastic reversal” of Washington’s previous stand on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives members wrote.

I’m trying to get a handle on the US position on Denmark, because I want to be a good citizen and feel the same way as everyone else. We’d be better off without Denmark making such a ruckus, wouldn’t we? I mean, they’re getting in the way of the world we’re trying to make here. So it boils down to this:

We hate them for their freedom. At least I do.

If it was just the cartoons, that’d be one thing. Those cartoons, after all, opened the door for a world full of nutty mullahs to push their followers into burning stuff, which proves our deeper and essential diplomatic point - “Muslims is krazy people!” Also, the cartoons made it okay for US conservatives to reprint the cartoons, and make new offensive cartoons that were positively guaranteed to rile those mullahs into riling their people into burning more stuff and and getting themselves killed by their governments and once again underscoring the necessary maxim, “Muslims is krazy people!”

So that’s good.

It would’ve been better if Denmark had exercised better timing, though. After all, we’re going to be the ones fighting this next war (to defend those kinds of freedoms), and we’re a little out-of-pocket at the moment. The embassy burning in Syria would’ve been a great “Now that’s the last straw!” moment (comparable to Colin Powell dangling a vial of what definitely might be anthrax that absolutely might look like something that might be being produced in Iraq) if only Denmark had timed its free press a little better. I’d suggest wiretaps to insure better freedom scheduling next time, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t listen. So, we make lemonade, defending our Danish brothers even if the timing isn’t great.

Then, to make matters worse, they try to get this bunch of gays and lesbians into the UN. What is going on here? Now we have to side with Iran (and China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe), because freedom’s great and all but spending our hard-earned tax dollars to protect the rights of gay people is a non-starter. So now we have to be the big “bad guy” siding with the dictatorships, or else we’d have to accept that gays and lesbians are not treated completely well around the world and might require some assistance in protecting their rights. And that might make American gays start with the whole “Hey, why can’t we get married?” thing again, which would of course destroy our culture and our way of life and etc.

Why would Denmark do that to us?

It’s almost like they’re making fun of us.

Let’s remember, in 1989 Denmark legalized gay civil unions that had the exact same rights under the law as straight marriages. 1989, think about that. They decided it wasn’t the government’s place to decide which relationships between adults were “right” and which were “not wrong per se but clearly not as right.” As though their famed storyteller, Hans Andersen, had no middle name.

All the way back in 1989, making us look bad.

And they’re even starting to break with the rest of Scandanavia and us over drug policy! There’s a zone in Copenhagen where drugs have been more-or-less tolerated for years. They’re moving towards a policy of “harm reduction.” Harm reduction. Think about that. Free to do something until it hurts someone. What are they thinking?

So as you’re marching towards Damascus, sneak a peek over your left shoulder. Because there will be Denmark, being all free and high and gay and stuff. Sure they were part of the “Coalition of the Willing.” Because they’re willing to do anything. Because they actually seem to be freer than us, more open than us, and having visted Copenhagen I suspect that they’re having a better time than us. And that is intolerable.

I hate them for their freedom.