Last night on his blog, Greg Gutfeld—in verbiage reminiscent of the Cordoba Initiative’s own—announced that he plans on putting up a gay bar speicifcally marketed to gay Muslims:

I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.

This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance.

As you know, the Muslim faith doesn’t look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why I’m building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world.

The proposal turned out to be quite popular among fellow Conservatives, and led to a hashtag game of proposed names for the site. Many of the names are, of course off-colour, although “Ba’ath House” is a personal favorite.

Gutfeld’s gambit is paying off. A lengthy exchange on Twitter has the official @Park51 account revising their description of the project multiple times. The Cordoba Initiative, whose website is still SEO seeded for terms including “Ground Zero,” has renamed their project from “Cordoba Mosque” to “Park 51,” after the historical significance of Cordoba, Spain and the Caliphate there was laid bare. Today, I’ve seen them call the building a “Muslim modeled YMCA or JCC with a prayer space.” (Screenshot.) The rest of @Park51‘s tweets have taken on a defensive and annoyed character. It’s as if the author forgot that people may challenge him.

This manoeuvre is even doubly effective in its timing. As I tweeted: “Gutfeld’s timing is perfect. After the Prop 8 ruling decreed tat [sic] opposition to homosexuality is bigotry, they have no wiggle room.” @Park51′s tweets in response to Gutfeld had a visible nervousness to them. Perhaps they never imagined that someone would take this line of attack. By opposing this project on the account that it may offend Muslims’ sensibilities, @Park51 has basically refused to extend the courtesy that it demanded.

Today, Greg Gutfeld checkmated Imam Rauf and his terrible Twitter operator. Everything else is detail.