Oh, boy. Comment Wars.

Oh, goodie. My first real comment-war. Well, OK, more like a comment-skirmish-between-two-lightly-armed-and-insignificant-scouting-parties, but still--it's exciting.

For those of you joining us late: I posted on Planned Parenthood's story about a "Crisis Pregnancy Center" that tricked at least one girl into thinking she was dealing with Planned Parenthood, and then called the cops on her and harassed her afterwards. The Raving Atheist posted a comment that I believe to be deliberately deceptive--it sounds like he agrees with me, but it actually links to anti-choice blogs that speculate (rather forcefully) that the story is not true, and which offer lots of condemnations of Planned Parenthood in general.

So, I wrote a new post explaining my reasons for believing this [in which I made the mistaken assertion that Raving Atheist was a pseudonym for Dawn Eden, on whose blog he writes]. Raving responded to that one in the comments section, and the battle was joined (Grrr.)

My latest sally ran long (imagine that), so I thought I'd put it up here for all to enjoy. If you want all the gory details, check the comments.

Thus:

Raving: Sorry about calling you "Dawn" again. It's stuck in my head. No malice intended. Feel free to remind me if I do it again.

I was talking about YOU and your unquestioning willingness to spread of Planned Parenthood's highly suspect propaganda...Anybody reading my post at The Dawn Patrol and comparing my analysis to yours would have recognized this.

Yes--once they got to your site, it would be obvious that you were talking about me (that's the whole point of the "Fake Clinics, Fake Comments" post). My suspicion is that you worded your comment in a deliberately ambiguous way so that people who wanted to hear more about the story from a pro-choice viewpoint would go over there, thinking that the evangelical people you were referring to were the CPC workers, not me, and that the "terrible deception" was on the part of the CPC workers, not Planned Parenthood.

[For my part, when I accuse people of spreading rumors and propaganda, I call them by name and let them know what I think they're doing wrong.]

Seriously--If you wanted people to have a clear idea of the content of your posts, you could have said something to the effect of "The Planned Parenthood story appears to be a hoax. Click here for more details."

The word "evangelical" doesn't have strictly religious connotations...your original post on this topic was certainly evangelical.

Strictly speaking, true. But in this context, it's hard to imagine people wouldn't assume a religious meaning to the word.

If, in the middle of discussion about reproductive rights--and the obstruction thereof by religiously-motivated activists--one makes disparaging use of the word "evangelical" without any qualifiers, 98% of the readers are going to assume you mean evangelism of the religious type. I think that's pretty obvious, and it makes the post misleading, deliberately or not.

My post was a balanced review of the existing evidence, which suggests that PP has likely engaged in deception.

We will have to agree to disagree on both of those points. We clearly have different standards of what we consider "balanced" and how much evidence you need to accuse someone of lying. [BTW, I make no pretense that this blog is balanced]

the links I've provided do support a substantial case for lying. They lead to photographs of the CPC, which raise serious question as to whether any reasonable person could have thought they were in an abortion clinic. They also point to the absence of a police report, which would have been routine had the CPC tricked the cops into making a false arrest.

I don't think that either of those counts as substantial. The failure to turn up a police report on the false arrest would be worth following up on (but again, not enough to accuse someone of lying) were it not for the fact that neither the Email PP sent out nor Amanda's article on Alternet make any mention of an arrest.

I think you might have better served your readers if you had reprinted my posts at the Dawn Patrol and done a line-by-line analysis of why Planned Parenthood's version of events is more likely to be accurate than those who are disputing it.

I don't really think they need refuting. I think any of my readers who chose to visit your site will come to their own conclusions. I feel fairly confident I know what those conclusions would be. Anyone want to take me up on that?

I wasn't defending the organization at any cost, in the way you seem to be defending PP.

Neither of my posts defends PP.

The first one simply tells the story and gives my take on it. The second is not a defense of PP, but rather a criticism of what I consider to be deceptive commenting--and an appreciation of the fact that the deceptive comment practices the same deceptive tactic that the CPC's are accused of.

I would defend PP if I thought it necessary and justified, but at this point I don't see anything substantial to defend them against.

And since you didn't directly answer the question (possibly because I asked Dawn instead of you): Raving, do you--for the record--deny that your original post was an attempt to trick people into visiting your blog by making them think that they would be getting more information on the Planned Parenthood story from a pro-choice viewpoint?