Daily Beast's Beinart Says Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage 'Deny the Most Basic Rights'

How's this for intellectual diversity? The panel on Monday's AC360 Later included three NYC liberals and was unanimous in support of same-sex marriage. The topic was the spat between Liz and Mary Cheney.

"I don't think you can actually respect somebody to whom you want to deny the most basic rights," declared The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart, who also teaches journalism at the City University of New York. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Beinart condemned all opponents of same-sex marriage:

"This has been the right wing's kind of line for a couple of years now, basically that 'we just happen to disagree with you about these issues, but of course we love you and respect you and we feel compassion.' No. We get to a stage as a society which says if you don't accept that people have the same basic rights as other people, African- Americans, Jews, Muslims, you don't respect them."

Liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan said Liz Cheney's public opposition to same-sex marriage was a "kick in the gut" to her lesbian sister:

"[Y]ou can talk about political matters in an abstract way. But when it comes to your own family, something like someone's marriage becomes pretty non- negotiable as a matter of respect. And for actually go out there and campaign to deny your sister the very institution that she belongs in, the very marriage that she has cannot but kick Mary in the gut."

Jeff Toobin perfectly summed up the panel's liberal New York bias: "And we all sit here on West 58th Street and think the world is changing so quickly. It's not changing that fast in Wyoming."

GOP strategist Ana Navarro didn't declare her support for same-sex marriage outright, but she's clamored for the party to drop the issue before.