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You might remember a few of the names associated with the “New Right,” even if you don’t know much about them. Jerry Falwell. Ralph Reed. Richard Viguerie. Phyllis Schlafly. Pat Robertson.

These were names who were a big deal in the late ’70s and early ’80s as a new political movement rose up to challenge the Establishment in Washington and in the Republican Party across the country. They were socially conservative Christians and they were determined to change politics forever.

I still have a copy of Richard Viguerie’s 1981 book, “The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead.” (He was a brilliant pioneer of conservative direct mail fundraising.) I was a conservative Republican at the time and I was also a theologically conservative Christian, so it seemed natural to me that the two would come together in a powerful way and change politics.

I guess you could say that I was young and idealistic enough to be a True Believer.

I was only on the periphery of this movement, but I remember others who were convinced we were going to change the country in a positive way. We were passionately organizing and we were driven from the grass roots. We were disgusted with the cynical “politics as usual” that we got from government and even from our own Republican Party. There were so many of us involved that we were sure we were going to end the ability of the Establishment to continue running things as its members always had.

So what happened?

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We do a very poor job of disagreeing in this country. You’d think we would be experts at it, because we do so much of it. But we’ve developed a culture in which most people are far more eager to tell everyone else why he’s wrong than to understand why there’s a disagreement — much less what to do about it.

I’m never sure whether to be amused or frustrated at the extent to which some people are outraged when I outline a position on a controversial issue that doesn’t stick to the accepted framing of the issue. Some of the nasty email I received about my Monday article concerning the moral right to make your own choices — even if they’re the “wrong” choices — are perfect examples.

Look at comments from two different emails and tell me whether you think these folks read the same article:

“Your just a homo lover,” one person wrote. “You make me sick the way you want to hurt my rights, God not approve the fudgepacker lifestyles and I don’t either. Quit bowing down to the gay agenda and stand up for liberty and religion.”

“It’s obvious you are simply trying to find an excuse to justify bigotry because of your own homophobia and hatred of gay men,” another reader wrote. “Unless the law requires those in the LGBT community be treated with dignity and respect, none of us will live in freedom.”

Try to put aside your own feelings about the issue for a moment and look at the bigger questions. How have we gotten to the point that people such as these can be so certain that there are only two possible positions that they each assume I’m on the other side of their (obviously correct) position? How could both of them have missed my point so badly that they’re angry enough to write this sort of email to a total stranger?

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Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, and he doesn’t want to make wedding cakes for gay couples. In my mind, that makes him a bigot and a lousy businessman. But as a free man, he has the moral right to be a bigot, even if I believe he’s wrong.

It’s easy to support individual freedom when the individual in question is sympathetic and says all the right things. The real test of whether you support freedom or not is whether you support people who want to use their freedom to do things you don’t approve of.

This issue is at the heart of a controversy that’s raging in this country today. The battle lines are generally seen as gay people and their allies on one side vs. social conservatives and some religious people who object to homosexuality on the other side. Those on one side say that business owners must be forced to do business with gay couples against their will. Those on the other side say religious freedom is at stake and that they should be able to decide not to do business with gay and lesbian couples. But framing the issue this way misses the point.

The only real issue is whether human beings have the right to make their own choices about who they want to voluntarily associate with.

If a person has the freedom to decide who he wants to associate with, he’s free to choose to associate only with left-handed green-eyed ex-convicts if he wants. He’s free to choose to associate only with beautiful people. He’s free to choose to associate only with people of his own religious group. He’s free to shun religious people entirely. He’s free to shun gay people or Asians or people who he thinks smell funny.

In other words, a free man has the moral right to make decisions that neither you nor I agree with.

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