B-b-but how can she think murdering gays is wrong if she thinks marriage should be limited to straights?

Mollie Hemingway knows what’s up here. If you can’t understand support for traditional marriage except in terms of “hate” — or, I should say, if that’s how you’re training your audience to understand it — then this makes sense. To everyone else, it’s a non sequitur. The left and its friends in media have already begun touching themselves over this embarrassing grandstanding, though, because it gives them leverage over the right on some tangential part of their agenda, which is always priority one after a horrible calamity. The lowlight is when Cooper asks Bondi if arguing in court that gay marriage creates a “public harm” might be encouraging attacks on gays, never mind that Mateen was an Islamic fanatic who pledged allegiance to ISIS. “Doesn’t that send a message to some people who might have bad ideas in mind?” he wonders. That’s exactly what they said after Gabby Giffords was shot about the “climate of hate” on the right towards the liberal agenda, never mind that no evidence was ever produced that Jared Loughner was influenced by mainstream political rhetoric before he pulled the trigger. Then as now, the point was to exploit violence by an unhinged outlier to try to muscle the other party in day-to-day policy disputes. Except it’s worse in this case because Bondi’s trying to help. She’s warned potential copycats that they’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if they target gay Floridians. Cooper’s response: F*** your help. Where were you on gay marriage?

It’s a nice respite from the gun demagoguery, though, I guess, especially with America now focused laser-like on a weapon that Mateen didn’t actually use. Exit question:

Does @andersoncooper also wonder how Muslims, who overwhelmingly oppose SSM, could *possibly* simultaneously condemn the Orlando slaughter?

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 14, 2016