Peter Thiel stood up and told the republican national convention that he was proud to be gay.
This is a convention that, just a few days ago, agreed to what many are calling the most anti-gay platform in republican history. It stated its position very clearly: gays shouldn’t get married, shouldn’t be allowed to raise children, should not be protected from bigoted discrimination (indeed, other people should be protected in their “right” to discriminate), and should not be protected from predatory, harmful, non-functional “ex-gay therapy”.
But what does Peter Thiel care? All of those things, the fact that Trump’s vice president once voted to redirect funds from fighting AIDS to fighting gays (as in: don’t spend this money researching HIV, spend it researching how to stop people from being gay), the fact that Tony fucking Perkins was a major influence on the platform… None of it matters. It’s all completely irrelevant. Why should it matter to Thiel? Republicans want to strengthen his bottom line.
And after all, he’s not gonna suffer from their policies.
He’s a silicon valley billionaire, what does he have to care? He’s never gonna have to worry about being thrown out of his home because his landlord or his parents decided that being gay was just unacceptable. He’s never gonna have to worry about losing his job because his boss is uncomfortable with him being gay. He’s never going to have to worry about his parents paying people to kidnap him and take him to live in the woods until he stops being gay. He’ll be juuuuuust fine. Why should he care that all these issues on the republican platform are really dangerous for LGBT individuals who aren’t as privileged as he is? He has money! He’s famous! He can make all those problems go away, and if things get really bad, he can just move to Europe!
This privileged, blinkered fuckwit is more interested in the nonsensical non-policies of a racist, shit-flinging howler monkey than the rights and place in society of LGBT individuals - a group he belongs to. He’s the perfect idiot for republicans to take advantage of. Pride? You don’t know the fucking meaning of the word. You should be ashamed. Not of being gay, but of the veneer of respectability you give to the homophobic bigots who still run the republican party.
If it were only him this would be a better thread, but he can join all his pals in the Log Cabin Republicans in voting for people who attempt to criminalize as much of their existence as possible.
It’s entirely possible to be a gay Conservative. I don’t know how someone would thread the needle of being a non-self-hating gay Social Conservative, given this country’s dominant society, but I’m sure it’s been done. However, the GOP went beyond Conservative and into Reactionary a long time ago, and it has explicit policy planks which are fundamentally inimical to existing as a gay person. I just don’t understand some people.
I thought this was going to be a gay version of the 19th Century canard, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” I assumed the perfect gay Republican would be dead. :rolleyes:
Sexual preference and/or orientation ought not to have any bearing on political views. Conservatism is, in my estimation, more a personality trait than a reasoned position, one is conservative, and finds the reasoning from others who share the trait.
There will always be conservatives, most likely. The trick is to change what they are conservative about. Soon enough, conservatives will try to protect Obamacare, that tried and true approach handed down for almost half a generation, from liberal crazies who want single payer.
He’s the perfect gay libertarian. I’ve met his type before. They are perfectly okay with society considering them deviants, as long as it’s legal to be a deviant. They tend to think a lot of other deviancies should be legal too.
“fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline.”
You folks are the people he is talking about. You bash the religious conservatives that you don’t understand, while you are simply the other side of the coin. He dismantled the lot of you, including the religious conservatives, with that line.
It just goes to show you… the richer you get, the more conservative your platform becomes, no matter what you do in the bedroom. Money overrides all social concerns.
Has any liberal rich person ever said they’re glad to play higher taxes?
Other than the facts that our rights to private property and freedom of association haven’t been infringed, we aren’t in economic decline, and that gays and other minorities are actually oppressed, spot on!
Well, I don’t know if he’s a self-professed liberal or not, but Nick Hanauer is a well-known richie who thinks income inequality is going to bite rich people in the ass sooner or later. I don’t think you necessarily have to be a liberal to conclude things like that. I also googled “billionaire who thinks pay more taxes” and got a lot of hits of wealthy people who think they should pay more.
Kelo vs New London is the reference to private property I assume.
Economic Decline - choose which economist you want to talk to about wage stagnation, long-term employment not in a particular set of numbers, etc. Economic decline is in the eye of the worker after all.
Gays have finally gotten more rights in recent years.
He was a conservative becoming a libertarian first.
Then he was a lawyer going into Wall Street hedge fund games.
Then he was a technology entrepreneur.
THEN he came out to himself (and thanks to Valleywag / Gawker - to the world) much after that.
I don’t think he puts gay at the top of his list of things that he is, if that makes sense (regardless of his speech).
Thanks to recent progress by people and causes they vehemently oppose, it’s now possible to be a gay Republican, provided one is white and exceptionally wealthy. It is not yet possible to do so without being an utter shit, but that never stopped anyone.
