On principles

A time-honored strategy for bullying people you hold in contempt is to assault them in a way that's humiliating, but does little or no injury. You laugh it off as "just a prank", so that the victim will expect to lose face and be further mocked and belittled if he tries to get restitution through the legal system. It's been a standard way of tormenting racial and sexual minorities for as long as we've cared about racial and sexual identity, and this is why the gay rights movement, for one example, is so concerned with anti-bullying campaigns in schools and "diversity training" in workplaces.

Of course, when the victim is a member of a tribe you hold in contempt...

"I think the whole thing is a wonderfully fabulous way to protest," said Diane Anderson-Minshall, executive editor of The Advocate, the gay news magazine. "It’s peaceful and it doesn’t hurt anybody. But it does get a really important point across in a fun way."

It's good to know the cause of equal rights is in the hands of such consistent, intellectually principled people, innit?