Per this article …I could maybe get being a gay Republican 10 or more years ago, being socially and economically conservative and hoping your party eventually matures and stops with the gay hate, but if anything the Republican party has become more intractable and hardcore anti-gay over the past 6 years or so.
How in the world does it make sense for any gay person to be affiliated with the Republican party in 2013?
Pretty much every last person in the Log Cabin contingent and GOProud turns out to be an affluent white gay man. Lesbians, bisexuals, trans, and otherwise queer folks, and LGBTQ folks of color, are mighty thin on the ground.
My analysis: Privilege calls to privilege. A few gay men hitching their white male privilege to moneyed privilege, leaving everyone else LGBTQ behind in the dust, I got mine so screw you.
Did you guys read the article? The very last sentence:
There are a growing number of people in the Republican party who realize the religious zealots have got to go, and embracing tolerance. It’s not always about money. It would be refreshing if anyone on the left would acknowledge that there are some of us who want this real, meaningful change, instead of the left resorting to the typical, conversation-stopping ranting.
I find this part hard to believe. Support for gay rights has raised in all quarters of American society. The Wikipedia page on the topic seems particularly confusing, but it does mention a 2011 poll in which 23% of Republicans supported gay marriage, compared to older polls with only 6-18% supporting.
That point aside, as for your larger question…I don’t know!
Maybe we should find a Log Cabin member and ask them to explain.
I don’t find the explanations that privilege calls to privilege persuasive, but what do I know.
The knuckle draggers have a firm grip on the Republican party. Obama will, as Boehner has fretted, annihilate the Republican party.
That’s been the refrain of hopeful conservative gays since well.. forever… and I see little evidence the Republican party has given any ground to gay rights because it was the right thing to do. It’s all been one big tantrum while being dragged along the ground kicking and screaming.
To this person, being Republican means more to him than being gay. It makes sense if you think about it. For most of us that are straight, we don’t use our sexuality to define ourselves. I’d call myself Asian, atheist, video gamer, young, or McRib fan more than I’d call myself straight. Its more unusual if you have a quality that’s unique and draws attention, like if you’re a Furry, but for many people that’s not them 100% of the time
Don’t get me started…the Log Cabin Republicans are an odd lot, to say the least. Why you would want to be a member of a political party that basically wants to relegate you to the lowest of the lowest, and consistently does everything it can to make your life miserable, is beyond me.
But if you talk to these people, they claim they are for the financial conservatism and pragmatic foreign policy and hope to change Gay Rights views from within. That was 25 years ago - how have things working out for ya?!
You might as well add the group Dignity - that is an organization of Gay Catholics who apparently meet outside of the church and sneak communion wafers out the church windows and pray in hiding. Nothing says loving like being forced to be a fringe part of a religion that basically says you are going to hell.
What can I say - even Gays have their fringe groups of idiots who just don’t get the concept that they are uninvited, unwanted, not-respected and pretty much hated by the very groups they are so desperately trying to win approval from.
Given the Taliban’s policy towards gays, a gay might regard militant Islam as a greater threat than militant Christianity.
On foreign policy, I don’t think that being gay requires one to be a pacifist. In fact, given the gay community’s desire to serve in the armed forces, I would say that there are a lot of gay war-mongers out there.
On economic issues, I don’t think that being gay requires one to worship Keynes, or to sneer at Friedman.
I don’t think that being gay prevents one from being a capitalist.
I don’t think that being gay requires one to endorse the nanny state.
On the gun-control issue, I would point out the motto of pinkpistols.org “Because armed gays don’t get bashed.” (Check out their website. It has a cool logo.)
I don’t think that being gay requires you to take a particular side on global warming. And even if you do believe in global warming, being gay does not require you to believe that the Kyoto Protocols would be an effective remedy. Or cap-and-trade. Or a carbon tax.
Foreign policy.
Economic policy.
Ecology.
Gun control.
Drugs.
Pornography.
Abortion.
Criminal justice.
Your sexual orientation does not force you to hold a liberal opinion on any of these.
Well, the other major party in the US is the Democrats…not the Taliban.
As a gay man who is himself quite liberal but has many conservative, Republican gay friends, I will relay their answers to you. They care more about money and taxes than the right to marry, serve in the army, or adopt kids. They don’t like welfare or government and they don’t care much about their sexual rights. I don’t understand it but that’s what they say.
I used to hang out with group of very successful older white gay males when I lived in New Orleans. I am not one myself but they treated me like gold so I stuck around and got to understand their mindset plus they paid for everything. They were all Republican and quite bigoted to all outside groups. In fact they were the most anti-gay people I have ever met except when it came to people exactly like them. They absolutely despised lesbians, Nancy boys, fruits, and faggots (their terms, not mine) and it was not pleasant when any members of those groups would approach our table especially when they were drunk at 2 am. I had to break up a couple hate crimes before they got too far. We had a gay army colonel, a few well-known news anchors, and a large hotel manager in our ranks and they wanted nothing to do with anyone they perceived to be less than manly and successful.
That viewpoint is valid as any other. Just because they were gay themselves didn’t mean they gave a shit about other gay people that weren’t just like them let alone any other minority groups. They were Republicans because they cared about business and money and were brought up that way. Being gay alone isn’t sufficient to override everything about a person that makes them follow a particular political viewpoint.
To be fair all the conservative gay friends I have are young but do tend to think of themselves as a different kind of gay and might not have much respect for other types of gay guys or lesbians. They do care about LGBT rights in general but it’s far down their list of important political issues.
Gay rights in this country have also progressed to the point where a lot of the problems associated with being gay can be largely alleviated by having enough money. Employment discrimination isn’t a concern if you’re independently wealthy. Housing discrimination isn’t much of a problem if you own your own house. Marriage discrimination can be worked around if you can afford to hire a lawyer to draft all the legal documents necessary to simulate most of the advantages of marriage - and the advantages that can’t be gained through contract law are, again, mostly things that you don’t really have to worry about if you’re wealthy, such as social security benefits.
Of course, if you’re not wealthy, those are things that can really fuck you over, but if these guys cared about people who weren’t wealthy, they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place.
Indeed. The "un"official republican party slogan really does seem to be “I’ve got mine so fuck you” and my gay republican friends seem to go along with that mentality. They are happy with their personal lives, don’t care or have any sympathy for other gay people who are oppressed by their party, and really hate the poor and hate the government. Their hatred of all the “moochers” and such far outweighs any desire to see progress in gay rights.
I have literally heard variations of, “yeah gay marriage is going to happen anyway, but what will it matter if we’re all broke and starving?” or “I don’t agree with the republican party on their gay rights issues but it’s really about the money and taxes to me.”
Conservative is one thing but do you have any Republican gay friends? Republican no longer means conservative - they have largely become radicals.
Well in Texas you don’t actually register with a political party so in the strictest sense of the word they aren’t republicans. But they certainly are voting for republicans and despise liberalism.
How is any thinking female a Republican? Or black person? Or gay?
Apparently, they’ve all drunk the Kool-aid.
We just have a two-party system in the U.S. A lot of people including myself who support the Republican Party to some degree don’t do it because we like what the most adamant members are doing. We hate that but we can’t ever see ourselves being Democrats either because we hate the general approach and the cluster-fuck it represents. That applies to people of all sexual orientations. You always have to pick your poison and figure out which one is worse to you personally. We have lesbians on this board who say they support Republicans because they value things like gun rights more than sexual discrimination issues. That is just the way politics works.
Or thinking human being?