GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

The Pavlovian Response to Gay Conservatives

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In studying the digestive systems in mammals, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov made an important discovery about canine reflexes:

. . . he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.

Just as these dogs respond by drooling to the mere sound of a bell, so do some on the left, particularly the gay left, respond to the mere sound of the descriptors, “gay conservative” or “gay Republicans.”  As soon as they hear these words, they shout “self-loathing,” “self-hating,” calling those defined by said descriptors the equivalent to “Jewish Nazis” or “black Klansman.”

So Pavlovian is their response, it’s almost like a comedy routine.

The other day Bruce alerted me to a comment on a blog linking my first piece on the Iowa marriage decision.  I laughed out loud when I read the latest left-wing response to our ideas.  While often claiming to be more intelligent than their conservative counterparts, many on the left insist on insulting conservatives rather than addressing our points.  (Please note that this does not apply to all of our critics as, in the comment thread to my post, a number offered thoughtful counterarguments in a civil tone.)

As I consider the Pavlovian response of all too many critics of gay conservatives, I better understand Barney Frank’s preference of insult to argument when addressing his adversaries.  It’s just part of the political culture in which he was brought up.

Gay Organizations Beholden to Narrative of Intolerant GOP

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Whenever a prominent Republican does something which offends the sensibilities of the politically correct gay élite, they rush to release a statement condemning said individual in particular and the Republican Party in geneeral. At times, they do with good reason as a number of Republicans over the years have said some pretty obnoxious things about gay people and proposed some pretty odious policies.

But, when a Republican shows a degree of tolerance for gay Americans, indicating perhaps that he (or she) believes we should welcome gays into the party’s ranks, he is met mostly by silence from the major gay organizations. Yeah, a few might say something ever once in a while, especially if the MSM picks up on it, but their words seem forced, perfunctory.  And to be sure, some of the left-of-center gay blogs will pick up the story. Towleroad and Queerty have a pretty good record on things like this.

How many gay organizations, for example, praised Mary Cheney for giving more money to defeat Proposition 8 than did Matt Foreman, the immediate past executive director of the far left National Gay and Lesbian Task Force?

On the whole, any openness a prominent Republican shows to gay men and lesbians does not draw the attention as does intolerance. It simply doesn’t fit their narrative of narrow-minded Republicans.

And sometimes, Log Cabin, an ostensibly Republican organization, eager to join the chorus of criticism of a politically incorrect Republican, remains silent when a prominent Republican reaches out to gays.

In today’s Washington Blade, two former Log Cabin officials, Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, provide yet another example of this phenomenon. After the new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele indicated opposition to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage and his support for “legal protections for gay couples,” he was met by silence from leading gay organizations:

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On Rush, the Media, Arianna & the Myth of Deregulation

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I have yet to weigh in on the media-generated controversy about Rush Limbaugh’s speech last week to CPAC.  It seems the controversy lies in the power and effectiveness of this conservative discourse.  Before commenting, I wanted to first read to discover (if I could) the same anger, mockery, bullying and contempt that CNN’s Bill Schneider found in the address.

Yeah, there was some mockery there and even a few expressions of contempt, but there was no anger.  Indeed, whenever I listen to Rush or read his stuff (as is more likely the case nowadays), I don’t find much anger in his words, a lot of humor, a good deal of mockery, but anger, no, not much.

It seems that his critics in the media are eager to portray him to fit their narrative of outspoken of conservatives as uneducated, unrestrained rubes.  He thus becomes a better target for their scorn as well, to borrow a a few works from Schneider, their mockery and contempt.

After watching part of it and reading the whole thing, I pretty much share Hugh’s assessment, disagreeing only about its seminal nature.

What has struck me the most about the speech is not just its quality, but the media’s reaction.  Following the Administration’s playbook, they have been relentless in their attacks, seeking to shift the story from Rush’s uplifting message to his controversial nature.  Despite Rush’s succinct articulation of conservative principles, it did include a handful of over-the-top flourishes that a more judicious orator would have excluded.

But, if Rush were more judicious, he would be less entertaining.

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Easy to Demonize Conservatives When You Don’t Know Any

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In my post yesterday, The Prejudiced Minds of Those Who Call Us, “Self-Hating,” I mentioned the appearance of Janeane Garofalo on Keith Olbermann’s show where the one-time comedienne used the “self-loathing” slur most to describe Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. She told Olbermann that there had to be “something wrong” with people who follow the GOP.

Well, the folk at FoxNews Channel’s Red Eye with Greg Gutfield had fun with that as they wondered why people on the left just have to use the Hitler reference. With great humor, they took on the humorless duo, noting how easy it is to marginalize a group when you don’t know anyone who belongs to it. (We’re talking about liberal attitudes towards conservatives here, not social conservative attitudes toward gays.)

Via Olbermann Watch via RedState.

The Prejudiced Minds of Those Who Call Us, “Self-Hating”

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I can no longer remember the first time someone called me, “self-hating” for being a gay Republican. Such language has become a ready response of many of our critics.  While using the comment section of our posts to offer this standard left-wing view of gay conservatives, they rarely address the arguments actual gay conservatives have made.

In a post yesterday, Michelle Malkin reminds us that it’s not just gay Republicans who are so labeled. She finds that some liberals trot out the slur on a regular basis when describing minority conservatives:

Minority conservatives hold a special place of gutter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person of color rejecting identity politics.

The haters have it bass-ackwards. In fact, “self-loathing” minorities love themselves, their families, and their liberty too much to succumb lazily to Big Nanny, race-card ideology.

One-time comedienne Janeane Garofalo used the “self-loathing” slur most recently to describe Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.  So narrow-minded are these people that they assume that an individual’s skin color, ethnic background or sexual orientation means he or she has to hold a particular point of view.

That’s a pretty prejudiced attitude toward minorities as it assumes individual members of those groups can’t think for themselves.

Once again, I wonder why it is that so many on the left so readily label those holding different points of view rather than respond to (or even recognize) their arguments.  Garofalo thinks there’s “something wrong” with people who “follow” the GOP.  That attitude is not too far removed from that of Soviet Communists who would submit those who disagreed with the regime to psychiatric treatment.

Let me repeat:  why do such liberals choose to insult their ideological adversaries rather than consider our ideas?

“Equality Summit:” Where were the Republicans?

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While I appreciated that the organizers of yesterday’s “Equality Summit” did provide opportunities for participants to offer criticisms of last fall’s “No on 8” campaign and suggestions for improvements in future such campaigns, I was amused to note that they included no Republicans or conservatives on any of their panels.

Please note I say, “amused,” not “upset.”

I’m beyond the point of letting such things get to me as they’re par for the course at such conferences.  Panelists run the gamut from socialist to liberal Democrat with an occasional moderate Democrat or maybe even a Communist thrown in for good measure.  Only occasionally do such gatherings include Republicans and more often than not, such Republicans have earned their place at these tables by criticizing their party on a regular basis and/or donating to the campaigns of Democratic candidates.

At this “summit,” their absence was keenly felt.   When David Binder presented the results of his Prop 8 post-election California voter survey, it became manifest (yet again) that the people gay marriage advocates most need to reach are Republicans and conservative.

According to his findings 81% of Republicans voted “Yes” on 8 as did 70% of moderates who lean conservative, 79% of those who describe themselves as somewhat conservative and 86% of those calling themselves very conservative.   Similarly 86% of McCain voters favored the ballot proposition.

If they want to communicate their concerns to such conservatives, they would be well deserved to include gay Republicans in their conversations.  We better understand the ideas and concerns of our fellow “right-wingers.”  After all, we’ve had experience talking to them.

So, as I reflect on yesterday’s summit, I wonder how gay activists ever solicitous of left-wing viewpoints remain oblivious to right-wing ones.   Given their own left-wing leanings, they’re not going to find it easy to connect with social moderates and conservatives, those they most need to move.  Just talking to other like-minded leftists won’t help them change conservative minds.

Simply put, if they really want to extend the benefits of marriage to gay people, they need to get out of their liberal cocoons and talk to conservatives.

As least a few people yesterday recognized the need to talk about marriage the same way straight people do and to listen to those with a traditional understanding of the meaning of the institution.

On the Hatred of the (Gay) Left

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Welcome Instapundit Readers!  While you’re here, you may want to check out my latest on the president’s stimulus package, The Democrats Must be Crazy, or my post contending that the former president was not polarizing, but his election was because some on the left (including many in the MSM) refuse to accept that the American people could elect a Republican chief executive.

Something just occurred to me as I was going through the comments in our spam filter.  Oftentimes, I find “hate” comments, ad hominem attacks on us, trapped amidst the sex ads.  To be sure I also find legitimate commentary from critics as well as supporters in that file.*

By a margin of at least 19-1, those hate comments come from angry leftists calling us “self-hating,” delusional or whatnot, mean-spirited attacks on us, our party, its leaders or gay Republicans in general.  To be sure, occasionally, I have found mean-spirited missives from anti-gay social conservatives (the 1 (or smaller) in the ratio above).

And that’s what struck me.   We get linked far more often by conservative sites (as we did from Instapundit today) than we do by gay (or liberal) ones.  And yet we get more hate comments from the left, particularly the gay left, a left which constantly derides Republican and their social conservative allies as “haters.”  Indeed, some of them call the GOP the “Party of Hate.”

If conservatives were truly the part of hate, shouldn’t we then get more hate comments from anti-gay social conservatives.

But, maybe they’re just not as mean-spirited as the left contends.

Perhaps, those angry voices on the left call us haters for the same reason they so regularly profess that we venerate George W. Bush while they soon over his successor.  They draw the notion of our hatred from their own psyches, seeing in our behavior what they actually feel, though, of course, they direct their feelings toward different “targets.”

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Politically Correct Hatred of Gays in Canada

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You know those so-called “Human Rights” Commission in Canada.  Have you ever noticed that the only people who seem to suffer for the speech codes those commissions eneforce in the Great White North come from the political or cultural right?

Mark Steyn offers an interesting observation:  why is no one citing the hateful statements of radical Muslims?  They go after anti-gay preachers who merely oppose gay marriage, but ignore anti-gay imams who want to kill us:

If it’s okay for Imam al-Hayiti to say homosexuals and lesbians should be “exterminated”, why is the Reverend Stephen Boissoin under a lifetime speech ban merely for objecting to gay marriage? Why are bald statements of Islamic supremacism cool when an imam makes them but the subject of a week-long trial in Vancouver for an infidel magazine that quotes such an imam?

There’s no logical answer except the one we already knew – that, while the bullies of the “human rights” regime are happy to beat up penniless pastors in Alberta and while Lucy Warman, the CJC and other cardboard crusaders get their jollies hunting down every birdbrained “Nazi” posting witless drivel on unread websites from his mum’s basement, they have no desire to tangle with the most explicit and well-funded source of “intolerance” in today’s world. If the point of the Lynch mob’s draconian powers is to protect “human rights”, they’re useless: “honor killings” will become all but routine but they’ll still be obsessing about some adolescent with a swastika tattoo and second-hand jackboots. What a bunch of fairies.

Read the rest to see just what he means by “fairies.”

Wonder why no left-wing gay activists have noted what this conservative pundit has observed?

Prepare For The Resistance!
Questioning Obama
Is The Highest Form Of Patriotism

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Or stick it on your car for the next two weeks!

BUY IT NOW!  TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

[RELATED:  Secret Service visits anti-Obama voter over “threat” (h/t – GP Reader Mark M)]

[RELATED:  The coming liberal thugocracy – Michael Barone]

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Mr. Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-’02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Mr. Obama’s ties to Mr. Ayers.

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Why It Matters to Come Out as a Gay Republican

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For the past year or so, I have been pondering writing a memoir, not necessarily because my life has been particularly interesting, but because, I believe, lessons I’ve learned, largely by taking the wrong path, may well have some universal significance.

Perhaps the most significant of those lessons is to remain true to yourself, even if you risk the opprobrium of your peers.  As I’ve expressed several times on this blog (here and here for example), when I moved to LA in 1999, I decided (by and large) to hide my conservative politics, that is, to borrow an expression, I went back into the political closet.

I did so, largely because the few conservatives I knew who were familiar with the entertainment industry said it would be career suicide to identify oneself as a Republican.  I learned later it was even a challenge in some segments of the industry for Democrats to be open about their support for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries.

In this town, one does indeed face ostracism for coming out conservative.  As I reported last month, David Zucker said Republican was the “new gay” in Hollywood.

But, just as we gay people find a community where there are others like ourselves when we come out, so too do we gay Republicans, even those of us in Hollywood find a community when we come out of our closets.

When I started coming out to my gay and industry friends in 2004, I learned that being open about my politics offered a window in the character of my friends and acquaintances.  Those who dismissed me because of my politics revealed their narrow-mindedness.  They put ideological conformity ahead of emotional compatibility and much else.

Those who might be surprised by my politics, but considered the relationship unchanged by the revelation proved themselves worthy friends.  They would not let a slight difference get in the way of their affection, admiration and even respect.

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