Talk to any gay conservative and we will tell you how some (usually just a handful) of his liberal friends stopped talking to us upon learning of our politics. Most are more subtle in their discrimination, like the woman — at an “equality” summit — who quietly left the table where we had both been sitting shortly after I described the nature of this blog.
Others are more in your face about it. And today, thanks to our reader Timothy773, we learn that one self-rigtheous gay leftist wants his Romney-supporting friends to “defriend” him:
If you plan to vote for Mitt Romney, you are putting a nail into my civil rights coffin, and I’d rather not have friends who think I deserve anything less than equal treatment under the law. Romney supports DOMA (which directly and negatively impacts me, restricting my partner Russ, our kids, and my federal protections and tax benefits under the law), and has noted his support for an anti-marriage equality amendment as well. While you may see your vote for him as one about the economy (and we can debate who’d be better for that until the cows come home), what you intend by your vote really doesn’t matter. Your vote means that you are supporting someone who not only thinks I’m not equal to you, but who works vigorously to ensure my “less-than” legal status. Your vote for him means that you are totally fine with me being treated with disrespect.
What a prejudiced man, assuming that because we plan to vote for Mitt Romney, we want to treat him with disrespect. Now, to be sure, given his narrow views of Romney supporters, some might well feel inclined to treat him with disrespect, but not, as he implies, because of his sexuality or his relationship, but because of insistence on distancing himself from those who support a good and decent Republican presidential candidate.
Simply put, he doesn’t want to associate with those who support a different presidential candidate than he. How sad.
And where does he get his notion that Mr. Romney will be working “vigorously to ensure his ‘less-than’ legal status”?
He goes on and on to make assumptions about Romney, bashing that good man on a number of non-gay issues. It’s almost impossible to argue with a guy like this, whose image of Mr. Romney is based more on his own prejudices than on Mr. Romney’s actual record — and expressed attitude. Where, for example, does he get the notion that the Republican “disparages” the role of “art and culture . . . in enriching our lives”?
How can a man with such a narrow view of the world teach his children to appreciate diversity and respect difference of opinion?
I pity those children, being raised by such a narrow-minded man.
FROM THE COMMENTS: Patrick is prepared “to out on a limb and guess that this guy voted for Obama in 2008. You know, when Obama was against gay marriage.” Heh.
I am an old straight woman and I love your blog. I read it everyday and you guys have such insight. So glad I found you!
Back when Prop 8 was being voted on, I made a prediction to a gay friend. I told him that Prop 8 would pass and that it would get dragged to court, that all the marriages done before the election would be in jeopardy and that there was a very good chance that because of the actions of a few far left liberals it meant thousands of others would lose out.
My friend was so incensed he refused to talk to me for a while. After the election when all my predictions came true, my friend came back and apologized. He has let his personal feelings override his reason and logic. He was hurt and angry, he was hurt and angry that I was right. He could not face the facts I presented.
In the end he realized it was stupid to be mad at me, after all I voted against 8 and we are still great friends to this day.
Sadly I don’t think the person who wrote that message will ever realize that a differing opinion does not mean you don’t respect or love some one, it just means you see the world differently. He will lose friends and his world will get that much smaller…. I pity him, because he does not realize he is is being far more disrespectful of other peoples views and opinions than anyone is being of his.
Sadly, this does not surprise me. There are many, many folks (mostly on the left based upon my experience) who have a single-issue “test” to see if you are “worthy” of their friendship.
I could share many such stories, but, I’ll list just one. While in graduate school working on a class project one of my teammates asked if I supported a women’s right to choose (abortion).
This had NOTHING to do with the class or our project. When I pointed this out – she got all huffy and said that she could not work with someone whom she didn’t respect.
WTF? How sad that someone is so narrow-minded that she couldn’t see her own bias. (For whatever it is worth I do support abortion rights – she just made the assumption that I didn’t because I didn’t chime in with her viewpoint right away)
The best thing to do is remember how much THEY are missing out on being so snobbish.
Mr. Kergan Edwards Stout: No worries. I have defriended you. Done and done.
FTR: I have been supporting gay marriage since the early 1990s – WAYYYY before it was cool; probably way before you. And I understand that if somebody disagrees with me about it, it’s not the end of the world. They can still be gay-supportive people. (Not until they support sodomy laws, can they reasonably be called ‘anti-gay’.) They can still be people who do good in the world. I prefer to have, as my friends, mature and reasonable people: which you, apparently, are not.
Not to mince too many words, but the guy who wrote that article comes across like a major drama queen. If he can’t understand why people have different ideas about “rights” as they apply to the issue of marriage, he’s never going to be able to do anything to persuade people who feel differently than he does.
Claims that sexual orientation is just one of many facets of personality are undermined by people who insist that it is the defining aspect and that it also dictates our partisan affiliation and our ability to make friends who think differently on various issues.
Why not force the bigot to defriend you? You can “like” the Official Romney Campaign. Many Romney posts will show up in your feed and some may get filtered into your friends’ feed.
Oh well, I avoided such things. Very little political subjects were posted. Just like I want to avoid obnoxious posts, I don’t do it. That friend isn’t really a friend.
Agreed. And just FTR, in my comment I meant that I have defriended him in intent/spirit.
And Dan – your opening sentence – Did you mean to say “politics”? (“Talk to any gay conservative and we will tell you how some (usually just a handful) of his liberal friends stopped talking to us upon learning of our
sexuality-politics-” seems to flow better.)I too find it amusing that it’s the liberal ‘friends’ who get upset when I give as good as I get. I’ve not had a conservative friend threaten to defriend me for when I post about supporting ‘fred’.
The best bit is when they say “You’re a homophobe, I’m defriending you.” Really? Then I guess you never knew me at all.
The problem with the gay left is they vote their agenda, I, as a gay conservative, vote my pocketbook. As Rock Hudson said in the movie Has Anybody Seen My Gal, ¨Maybe money can´t by happiness but it can buy your own kind of misery.¨ Money can buy me a pretty good gay life. Love that gay gold.
I got defriended by someone back in April (I think) just for saying that Rick Santorum should be accorded the same decency as anyone else.
Wow. When you think about it, this guy is voting for the perfect candidate. His arrogance is equal only to that of the POTUS. (well, the FLOTUS is right up there) My daughter is gay and recently became engaged to her girlfriend of 5 years. They’re planning to come home next Fall to get married. It’s not legal in their state, but it is in ours.
Contrary to what a lot of her friends assume, she’s voting for Romney. Not because her dad and I are… because she’s smart. Her exact words to me were, “Marriage equality and other social issues will come along on their own, in their own time. They already have. Right now, our economy is in the toilet and heading toward socialism. I’d rather not have a legal marriage, if it means the end of our country as we know it. I can’t be a part of putting Obama in the WH for another 4 years”.
As for this asshat? I’d love to see 90% of his “friends” take him up on his offer, just on principle. That wouldn’t leave much of an audience for him to hurl this kind of self indulgent, condescending BS at anymore, would it?
Sorry about the uber long comment, but your post touched on something really relevant to me and mine. Thanks. :~) Mitzi
You’re right, pitying the children of people that teach this kind of intolerance. I do not have one Republican or conservative friend that has posted anything like that on their social media sites. Not one. But I see that kind of bullying bullshit on many of my liberal friend’s sites. And the ones that aren’t that direct post a lot of passive aggressive slighting.
Then they have the nerve to wonder why bullying is so prevalent in schools. Are they kidding? It’s because of them, it’s what they teach. They’re telling their kids by example not to be friends with anyone that disagrees with them, and not to even talk about an issue. Just to make a whole bunch of assumptions, preach that “anyone that disagrees with me must disrespect me,” and then cut all ties.
And once again I want to point out the infuriating double standard:
If someone posted on their social media
“If you are gay or support gay rights, you are putting a nail in my morals coffin, and I’d rather not have friends that think my values and morals are meaningless…”
you can damn well bet it would be all over the news. There would be rallies and law suits and sit-ins with a bunch of Hollywood movie stars and rock concerts and everything else.
This was posted by one of my clients ( I am a trainer, I see him 2x/wk) who is a FB friend. He knows I am a republican and knew I would see the post: “…by the way, in the unlikely event that I actually know someone that is a log cabin republican – please unfriend me as I have little respect for you.” THEN, he tried to backtrack with this “…Eddie, I was speaking specifically about log cabin republicans, not plain old Republicans lik you” ….whatever tht means. This guy is not an idiot. He’s smart and successful. Scary.
Or, phrased differently, “I won’t be your friend unless you do exactly what I tell you to do.”
One can only laugh.
Hmmm, I spoke too soon. I’m pretty new to Twitter and after a tweet of my own and a couple retweets, I noticed that a few people had started following me. (all of them Conservatives) Well, I guess some of them looked at my profile after the fact and saw that it stated I was a proud PFLAG mom and a proud conservative & decided I wasn’t follow worthy after all. Guess this kind of prejudice goes both ways. Makes me sad, but I am who I am and it is what it is.
Perhaps this guy still thinks he is in middle school.
Honestly, while there are some friendship deal breakers for me, very few of them have anything to do with politics and who a person intends to vote for.
I’m tired of this idea that the only way for gays to be “equal” is to have state-recognized gay marriage. If you oppose “gay rights,” then you automatically want gays to be less equal than everyone else. Actually, the idea that “gay rights” make gay people more equal than others is true, I think, because that is inevitable when you divide society into special interest groups (that has always been the problem with some people, such as women and racial minorities, not having equal rights, and that is the problem with the “solution.” This sort of special rights legislation is basically poison as the antidote).
The real solution to this inequality is to treat everyone as equal individuals (at the point of conception, I would argue). There is no need for new legislation to do that, all that is needed is to repeal existing legislation.
I agree.
Furthermore, the response I might give to Kergan Edwards Stout is pretty straightforward: you don’t care if I’m treated with disrespect.
I repeat Sultan Knish’s excellent description of Kergan Edwards Stout and his fellow Obama supporters:
These people do not want to assimilate or participate in society. They want to leech and mooch off society. They in their minds are the royalty with the divine right to rule based on their minority status, and the rest of us in their eyes are serfs to pay for their every whim, put up with their constant abuse and demands, and be constantly reminded of how very blessed we are to be enslaved to them.
One of my friends quoted it and said that she was ~thinking~ about it. I saved her the trouble.
This person has no friends. He/she only has extensions of his narcissistic self that are only allowed to reflect whatever his whims project. How liberal and how narrow.
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that this guy voted for Obama in 2008. You know, when Obama was against gay marriage.
So sad that narrow-mindedness makes people of all stripes feel better about themselves – being narrow-minded is the first sign of chronic insecurity.
It reminds me, though, of an ironic fact. One of my best friends is a Log Cabin Republican. She proudly went to all the events when the convention was here in Tampa. No doubt, many of her friends in the gay community gave her a hard time. Did she care? I doubt it. She also was one of the first gay people to bring her gay partners to staid firm functions at very conservative businesses – back in the 1980’s. She is who she is and is not afraid to show it – those who judge can do what they will.
I don’t happen to be gay and I really don’t care if you are, or not. I happen to be white and I don’t care if you are or not. Why is it that liberals allow themselves to be defined by issues that, frankly, most conservatives (who tend to be much more open minded than liberals) really don’t find relevant? I work for a gay boss, in a racially mixed but generally conservative workplace, and people pulling this kind of stuff baffles all of us.
I guess some people are just determined bo be absolute a$$holes regardless of their race, creed, color, or religion. They seem to have a need to play the “victim game” no matter how well off they are….
I wonder if this person voted for Obama in 2008. But Obama was opposed to gay marriage then so obviously not. I mean… right?
Wow, a new level of self-importance and self-absorption, a high-water mark for other wannabe universe-centers. Paging Pauine Kael!
I mean, could Kergan possibly be any more egotistical without denying the rest of the universe exists?
#24 and #27.. You forgot the rules :
Black person against SSM = Okay, we understand. White person against SSM = hateful, bigoted, uneducated, religious moron of the highest degree.
So, let me get this straight: This guy has a very narrow single-issue test of the candidates and he judges all his friends by whether they share his single-issue voting test. Sucks to be his friend.
I went through something similar to this a couple of months ago. Two FB friends from HS (who happen to be gay) were very vocal Obama supporters (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Anyway, one posed a letter purported to be from a conservative father disowning his son who came out of the closet, and the other commented that he doubted the veracity of the letter and suspected it may have been written by a “right wing operative” to generate anti-gay support. I offered a counter, that IMHO it seemed more like a Democrat plant to generate outrage, since it so closely matches their typical “Republicans want to bring back slavery” scare tactic (incidentally, this was about a week before Biden’s “chains” speech). Next thing I knew, both had unfriended me without any notice.
Now, granted, it’s been a long time since High School and I haven’t seen either of them in meat-space for decades, but they were my friends back then and I have never done nor said anything rude to them or treated either with disrespect, yet they were completely willing to ignore what they personally knew of me and believe their stereotype based upon nothing more than an indication of political opinion. I hate invoking Godwin as much as the next fellow, but this sort of non-thinking is exactly what leads otherwise good folks to support or ignore when the trains roll and the ovens heat up.
#24/27 – You forgot about the memory hole. Obama has always supported SSM, just as we have always been at war with Oceania.
Here’s my story: I live on the west side of Los Angeles where being ‘Progresive’ is the normal and predominant state of mind. About 10 years ago, a new neighbor-let’s call him Bill- moved next door. He was a single dad with three young daughters and I was a single dad with two daughters of roughly the same age. We became good friends, sharing group dinners once a week and going on long Dad’s weekends out of town together with all the girls in tow. After six years, he moved nearby to buy a house. We kept in touch by phone and email and saw each other occasionally, although in 2007 my daughters moved away when my ex got remarried and moved to Dallas (Calif. family courts–don’t get me started!).
One day about a year ago, I called Bill to ask him some advice about caring for a new dog. During the course of the conversation, he made a comment about the “insane” Tea Party people. I proceeded to defend the ideals of the TP, and as I did, he became argumentative, telling me how he reads The Economist magazine and that publication and all his Wall Street buddies agree that Conservative economics (lower taxes, cut spending) are a total sham that only benefits the elite. He even offered to send me some articles. I responded back that I would welcome such a discussion and that I had some articles I’d like to send him about Austrian School economics. He became angrier and angrier and finally told me the following: “I am very surprised at you. You’re a smart guy so I don’t know how you can support the people (Republicans) that are responsible for getting our US debt rating lowered. The resulting higher interest rates will materially affect my borrowing costs and that makes me angry. I cannot remain friends with people who choose to hurt me financially and who hurt the country. Please do not call me again.” I reminded him that he lives in a bubble where everyone already agrees with him and asked would it be so bad to have at least one friend that has different policy ideas for how to solve our country’s problems. No, Bill told me, he just doesn’t want people in his life who make him angry. End of friendship. Luckily, none of my other liberal friends out here have cut me off, (most of my friends are progressive–I try to avoid political debate with them and they with me) but this was certainly a shock at the time.
Same thing happened to me over the Chick Fil A silliness. One of my oldest friends went on an extended, bizarre rant about how she hoped anyone who eats there can taste the blood of gay teens who commit suicide, and it has nothing to do with free speech, and anyone who disagrees should not be her friend. I responded with a calm, methodical post explaining that I do not base my purchases on the political beliefs of company owners. I reward quality work only, and I’ve always found CFA to be very well run and tasty. I added that I was sorry to see her become so strident, as we had been friends for almost two decades despite opposite politics, and that she knew damn well that I support gay rights.
She deleted my reply and defriended me within an hour.
I presume he wants all his Obama-supporting friends to de-friend him, since the DOJ is still supporting DOMA, with Obama as President?
Or is that different?
Christ, does he not understand that it’s Congress that makes and repeals laws?
(Or, naturally, it’s all about posturing and getting compliance by threats…)
I’ve never defriended any of my friends on the Left. The same cannot be said to be true in reverse. There’s a lot of people who wouldn’t support anti-sodomy who oppose Gay Marriage. I’m glad I don’t have to make a decision on DOMA because it is, perhaps, the one issue in my life that I flip flop on. But I do know cutting off communication never settles an argument. That means that party will use brute force to settle an argument, in this case the Courts.
But I do know this:
“He that complies against his will,
Is of the same opinion still.”
Which is why we must have open and honest exchanges about race, gender equality and sexual equality.
Why doesn’t he just “defriend” them all himself, instead of telling them what to do?
This is another reason I’m not on Facebook. I was dreading having to do so, since I’m about to have a major nonfiction book about the music industry published. But a guy volunteered to do it for me and he loves the whole friending/defriending thing. So I let him handle it all.
I’ve decided I’m not going to go on Twitter, either. All my favorite entertainers–and that’s what I am, just an entertainer–talk too much. They’ve lost their mystique. I also suspect that authors who are super chatty and accessible have lower book sales, since familiarity breeds contempt. Who wants to buy a book from your pal?
So my plan is just to avoid the whole shebang and let people who like doing it represent me in the cyber world while I occasionally comment under pseudonyms online (like here) and write books.
This “you must think I’m not equal to you” is getting ridiculous. Timothy of COURSE I think you are equal to me, as is your partner Russ. And that’s exactly the problem, because not one of us is equal to a WIFE.
Please supply us with his name ASAP. I want to “friend” him just so I can immediately “unfriend” him.
I respond to requests like that by citing W.F. Buckley: “Cancel your own damn subscription.”
Thank you for this. I am female, gay, a global health worker, live in Kenya, work in family planning and women’s reproductive health including unsafe abortion issues, and have just submitted my absentee ballot. I voted for Romney this election. I am fiercely independent and I vote the issues. We have an unprecedented global economic crisis that is only just beginning to come home to roost in America. I can also tell you about quiet defriending as I have tried to educate my colleagues on the seriousness of the economic time bombs and ‘forever’ spending policies. (e.g. the Thrive Movement) I do believe that Romney ‘gets it’ about women’s RH, and also the difficult choices around unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. He has a very whacko extreme right to pander to. but he has shown far more skill at reaching consensus than our current president ever has. WE DO NOT NEED polarizers in office right now. Lets give Romney a chance.
I unfriended a lib on Facebook after he claimed Mormon Missionaries were worse than Islamic Terrorists because “Islamic Terrorists don’t knock on my door and annoy me.”
Nine times out of ten, his hetero friends hear this type of nonsense all the time and vote against his “rights” out of sheer spite.
V the K – I have to agree with your lib friend. When I tell the Islamic Terrorists I’m not interested in following their religion they politely wish me a good day and are on their way. When I tell the Mormon missionaries I’m not interested they try to blow me up. Oh wait….
Well, actually, at least this are just “friends” who are acting so childish. Just try having an in-law who is such an idiot.
Just bitting my tongue for the sake of family peace!
I am straight, libertarian/conservative, but am moderate on socon issues, and generally sympathetic to gay rights. I vote repub for fiscal and constitutional conservative reasons. I am very glad to see repubs like you, since if there are enough of us we might change the repubs from within, and moderate their extreme socon views. In any event, I will vote repub, because the dems oppose freedom on far too many issues.
Yep, same thing for me. A guy I had worked with, rode bikes with. The only time in my life I’ve been to Chik-Fil-A was after the Democratic Mayors of Chicago and the other cities decided it was cool to threaten to punish the protected political speech of the owner. (Odd how our Constitutional Scholar in Chief was so quiet about that infringement of the First Amendment) This guy, who happened to be gay, stopping riding with a group of us, and finally sent me an email explaining he couldn’t be around someone who “so vehemently” supported organizations that were trying to infringe on his rights, and how he hoped that some day I would learn to not be so ideologically blind. Going to one fast food joint on one day to support their First Amendment rights was “vehement” support. In fact this fellow had worked with me, seen me hire folks based solely on their qualifications (blacks, Asians, Mexican-American, male, female), yet he was unable to get past his own blindness. In all fairness to this guy, I was told he had only recently come out, and had received a ration of crap from his family about it, so he is a hurting person. I hope he keeps riding, though.
This would be completely lost on the person with the activist mindset, but the “gay rights movement” is going to play out just like the Civil Rights Movement. Oh, yeah they’ll get their rights… just as soon as the politicians who gave them can get their kids in private schools or establish school choice to get away from the PC mindset in public schools that encourages rants like this “de-friender’s”. It’s happened ever since the 1950’s. At the school I work at, that’s exactly what happened when they started all this multicultural nonsense.
After rereading the statement, this sentence perhaps best exemplifies the issue at hand.
Read that again very carefully. No matter what your intentions are, no matter what your thought processes are, no matter what facts or information you bring to bear, no matter what logic you used, if you come up with a conclusion that is different than mine, you are wrong.
This used to be called bigotry. It’s now called science or intelligent thought.
Abby B
You live in Kenya. I saw a photo of a bilingual welcome sign to a village in Kenya, apparently the English translation read, ¨The Birthplace of Barak Obama.¨ Can you confirm this? If this is true than we have a usurper in the White House. What will the defrienders say then? It took a foreigner to give us our gay rights?
“I am straight, libertarian/conservative, but am moderate on socon issues, and generally sympathetic to gay rights. I vote repub for fiscal and constitutional conservative reasons.”
No such thing. What he means to say is he’s a married bisexual who thinks the sacrament of marriage bestows upon him heterosexuality. ROFLMAO
I am consistently pro-liberty. I think individuals should make their own economic decisions, health decisions, and sexual decisions. That said, I realize that I do not have the liberty of voting for people who agree with me 100%. I probably never will. In my opinion, mass unemployment is the greatest injustice in modern day Europe, where I lived most of my adult life. If America follows Europe’s failed leftist policies, we’ll see the same results here as well. I cannot vote for anyone who is willing to lock millions out of the labour market and force millions more to pay for them. I can also never vote for a president that complains about American hillbillies clinging to G-d and guns, yet does not seem to bother than a million of my Jewish brothers and sisters spent last night sleeping in bomb shelters. If this putz wants to live in a leftist bubble with only leftist friends, let him. He’s a putz.
I ran across this myself as well. One of my online friends proudly announced that she was no longer going to communicate with anyone who was conservative, pro life, or who “disrespected a sitting President”, so anyone who subscribed to these viewpoints should get lost. No problem as far as I’m concerned, but I did tell her how ignorant and closed-minded she was before hitting that unfollow button. Those who preach the loudest about tolerance are always the last to follow their own advice.
NDXXX in #51–was reading the comments because I heard they were good. Hadn’t picked that comment up. It is truly Orwellian