Our friend from Detroit, Jacob Appel, thinks that gays need government reparations and the Detroit Free Press was so enamored of his idea that it published his plea in its April 7 issue. One has a suspicion that they missed a deadline because this story would have more properly been published on April 1, a day well known as April Fool's Day. This one simply must be a joke.

Appel is so filled with absurd pronouncements, anti-hetero bias, and outright hatred in his piece that one simply cannot take his central thesis seriously. But his mode of thinking here does highlight the illogic of his position on the issue, so it is instructive to review it.

According to New York University instructor Jacob Appel, Kansas' notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller should be looked upon as "a genuine hero who ranks alongside Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of defenders of human liberty." Good ... grief. Just when I thought I've read it all.

Appel formulated his sick view in a letter to the editor in today's Los Angeles Times (Sun. 3/22/09).

Tiller's practice is truly an abomination. His office has reportedly instructed women to expel their late-term unborn babies into a toilet. (See this eye-opening segment from the O'Reilly Factor from 12/12/2006.) Tiller currently faces 19 counts of "violating the state's late-term abortion law." Yet Appel says Tiller should be held "in esteem."