Tolerance. Shmolerance. For years, liberals have been pleading with us obnoxious right wing fanatics to just stop with the politics of personal destruction. They pleaded for us just to get along? They questioned why we couldn’t just be tolerant of people different than us.

Even in their efforts to legalize gay marriage, the whole debate hasn’t been about marriage at all. It’s all been exactly where they want it to be. It’s about how us mean old nasty conservatives can be so hateful as to demonize a group just because they’re not exactly like us.

But they realized something. Attacking traditional marriage supporters head on wasn’t a pathway to success. There were too many of us. So now they’re trying a new tactic. Divide and conquer.

Gay advocates have decided that the best way to get gay marriage legalized in many states is to demonize some of their opponents so as to split us up. That’s right, gay advocacy groups are taking out ads in newspapers screaming, “The Mormons are Coming. The Mormons are Coming.”

The Washinton Post reports:

With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.

“The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!” warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy “borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion.”

“I’m not intending it to harm the religion. I think they do wonderful things. Nicest people,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican campaign consultant who established Californians Against Hate. “My single goal is to get them out of the same-sex marriage business and back to helping hurricane victims.”

The strategy carries risks for a movement grounded in the concept of tolerance. But the demographics tempt proponents of same-sex marriage: Mormons account for just 2 percent of the U.S. population, and they are scarce outside the West. Nearly eight in 10 Americans personally know or work with a gay person, according to a recent Newsweek survey. Only 48 percent, meanwhile, know a Mormon, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

So, it turns out they’re actually cool with demonizing their opponents. Huh, who knew? Look, if they want to play it out there on equal ground I’m all for it. Let’s put up Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck vs. RuPaul and Perez Hilton and see who Americans relate to better. But we’re not allowed to play that game. That’s the funny thing. Everyone I know who’s against gay marriage essentially starts out their argument by saying, “I’m not anti-gay” or “I have several gay friends” and then proceeds to explain why traditional marriage is a benefit to society…etc…

Traditional marriage supporters are like Star Trek fans who have to say that they like Star Trek but it’s not like they were the pointy ears to conventions or anything. Well, in this analogy, the Mormons wear pointy ears.

So much of this comes down to people want to be cool. And much of society doesn’t want to be seen with the pointy eared people. They’d rather go along with the cultural tides. So my bet on the future is that this strategy will probably work.

So I’m thinking that within five years we’ll have House Subcommittee on Mormon Activities and they’ll be dragging people in who said something against gay marriage for questioning. Congressman Perez Hilton will ask questions like, “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Mormon cult?”

And Carrie Prejean will say that on advice of her lawyer she’s not going to answer that question. And she’ll be escorted back to her prison cell.