My new post at Ricochet has been up for a couple of hours and it is causing an interesting reaction for me on Twitter.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Let’s be honest: Collins is an uber-wealthy and talented super athlete in our celebrity-obsessed society.  I doubt he has much to worry about outside of his bubble.  So I’m sorry if I can’t get worked up about this.

<…>

Today, most young people think Lady Gaga is an important gay icon and political influencer, yet hardly any have ever heard of Mark Bingham.

I don’t begrudge Jason Collins; I loathe our news media for making the important irrelevant and the ridiculous praiseworthy.

Please read it.  If you don’t read the whole column, I will delete your comments.  Because I now have ESP powers.  HA!

UPDATE:  Let me add a thought I had after I wrote it:  Barack Obama can call Jason Collins and Sandra Fluke, but not the family of Brian Terry or those he left to die in Benghazi.  That says all I need to know about Obama.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

To follow up on my post of a couple weeks ago on gay athletes in the 21st century, these news items may be of interest.

First, NBA center Jason Collins comes out. Interestingly, he has a twin who is straight. (Studies show that identical twins are somewhat likely, but far from guaranteed, to have the same orientation.) His article has a few odd political shots in it; I wonder if they come from his co-writer?

Next, kicker Alan Gendreau didn’t get drafted. But not many kickers are drafted, so that may be small news. Gendreau was the first openly-gay player to enter the NFL draft. The Newsbusters article (hat tip Peter H) mentions ABC News’ role in having publicized Gendreau for reasons of political advocacy.

UPDATE: Caught a few minutes of Rush, who predicts that the NFL will soon come out with at least two gay players… because they have to trump the NBA.

I hope he’s right. I mean, can we please get the coming-out-in-sports process over with? Like I said in my earlier post, in 1993 or 2003 I cared about celebrities’ “brave personal journeys” in coming out, but it’s 2013 now. The sooner done and forgotten, the better.

I’m late in getting to this, but last week on NBC’s Today, Matt Lauer said:

It’s interesting that in 2013, with attitudes towards homosexuality changing so dramatically in this country, there isn’t a single major athlete in a major professional sport playing right now who has come out and said, ‘I’m gay.’ Why is that?…

I have a possible answer, and a new question.

My answer is: For much the same reason that straight athletes don’t come out and say “I’m straight.” It’s irrelevant. Not every activity or field is one where the customers (spectators) need any information about the producers’ (athletes’) personal lives.

Part of what we love about athletes is their focus on something wonderfully beyond themselves: which is the sport, the game, the discipline it takes to be a winning athlete. Call me crazy, but I find it distasteful when any athlete, gay or straight, insists on my knowing whom they ‘like’ or are dating. I only care about their dedication to (and success with) their sport.

Which brings me to my question: why, in 2013, would Lauer think this is important? This isn’t the 1980s, wherein gays had to battle sodomy laws, or the total absence of gay-straight alliances at schools, or certain professional bans. Today we even have States scrambling to support gay marriage. Lauer’s question itself assumes there are lots of gay pro athletes – so, no real job discrimination.

I must admit that I thought like Lauer did in, say, 1993. Some years later, I came into the 21st century. Join me, Matt!

(Hat tip: reader Peter H.)

V brought this to our attention in another thread, and I thought it worth a quick post of its own: Brown University’s workshop on gay sex will segregate participants by race.

Students at Brown University will host a workshop called “Protect me from what I desire,” which purports to help gay minority students resist their same-sex attractions to white people…

Students will be segregated by race for a portion of the event. White students will be in one group, and persons of color in another. Organizers described this session as “intentional, anti-racist, and feminist.”

Get it? Racial segregation isn’t racist, in the Brave New World, if it’s intentional.

But wait. Segregation that’s intentional – in other words, racial division that you meant to create; racial division that is actually the point of your gay workshop – is almost the definition of racist. Simply asserting that it’s “anti-racist” when you do it, is a (racist) child’s way of denying reality.

Seriously: Lefties, LOOK AT YOURSELVES.

Y’all know I love the economic issues, and sometimes avoid the “gay” issues (as unprofitable – heh). But hey, this is a gay blog, and courtesy of reader Peter Hughes, we have a couple of gay-themed tidbits.

First, the irrepressible, he-won’t-come-out-but-everyone-knows-anyway singer Morrissey enlightens us that if we had more gay men, we’d somehow have fewer wars:

If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.

Where has Morrissey been hiding? Let’s set aside the famous gay male serial killers, let’s even set aside the ancient Greeks: The fact remains that some of the most aggressive (and best) men out there are gays who have made a career of the U.S. military.

And I say, good on them! Real men protect people from evil, and the roughness and aggression of the good men who protect all of us from terrorists, criminals, etc. may (if under good regulation) be a virtue. Sensitive, artistic men are also needed, but I don’t want a world where the type that Morrissey seems to prefer – the effete, self-indulgent eunuch who protects no one except himself and maybe a few cows – is dominant.

Next, we hear that ABC is ready to produce a Reagan-hating mini-series:

The Hollywood Reporter relayed on Thursday that “Mere days after the Academy Awards, ABC Studios has bought rights to David France’s film,” How to Survive a Plague, a hard-left documentary on AIDS activism in the Reagan years, when the Left claimed Reagan wanted them all to die off…

Clearly, the Gay Left’s mythology of Reagan-as-gay-hater is going to be with us awhile. Fortunately, no amount of repetition of a myth can alter the truth.

I was reminded to mention that the now-infamous Chick-Fil-A laser video has been nominated for a Blog Bash Award at CPAC 2013.

Ben Howe and Chris Loesch did all the hard work.  Acting was easy; I just played myself!

Here it is again for your viewing pleasure: Not Without My Chicken.

Imagine opening an issue of Newsweek and reading this:

Hispanic women are today’s version of Uncle Tom. They give their time, money and voices to a political group that aids in oppression. To me, it’s as if, in 2012 you heard of an African American writing a check to support the KKK or of a Jewish person defending the work of skinheads.

There would be outrage, no? This is some of the worst hate-speech you can possibly imagine. It marginalizes and ostracizes people, not unifies and divides.  It continues to Balkanize America, not bring us together to find common ground.

This isn’t a passage from Newsweek, it is from this week’s Advocate Magazine.  And here’s how it really reads.

Do gay Republicans who voted for a party that says marriage is only between a man and woman believe they themselves are not worthy of love? Do gay Republicans who voted for a party that says gay people should not be allowed to adopt children believe they themselves are not worthy of family? And what would gay Republicans, who voted for Mitt Romney’s version of America, do when their beloved jobs that gave them their beloved money were taken away from them because they were gay? Who would they call: Lambda Legal, HRC… Ghostbusters?

I have heard gay Republicans say they vote according to their fiscal needs. So basically a vote is cast for their bank account while they remain spiritually bankrupt. What does it say about someone who puts money and monetary possessions above one’s self, spirit and equal rights?

Gay Republicans are today’s version of Uncle Tom. They give their time, money and voices to a political group that aids in LGBT oppression. To me, it’s as if, in 2012 you heard of an African American writing a check to support the KKK or of a Jewish person defending the work of skinheads.

This type of hate speech against one for one’s political beliefs has got to stop.  “It Gets Better” only if you are a self-loathing American gay liberal who hates his nation and wants to submit to a Government and surrender one’s identity for The Greater Good, or the Savior Obama.  The Gay “Rights” movement is no more than a front for anti-American, left-wing propoganda. 

 The Gay Left and its twisted principles of “tolerance” are summarized perfectly in this vile piece of garbage written by a bigoted, ignorant, closed minded, half-twit actor with no original thoughts of his own.

The Advocate should be ashamed that it is peddling in this garbage — but unfortunately it is merely the megaphone for the Gay Left and it’s angry, never-ending hate toward America.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As you recall, two days after Sarah Palin’s daughter used the epithet, “faggot” on Facebook, the Human Rights Campaign called on that teen’s mother to speak up.  ”As a mother,” said HRC Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz, Mrs. Palin

should know to speak up when a child makes hateful remarks, particularly in this cyber age. Anti-LGBT bullying needs to stop and Sarah Palin should be a part of making that happen.

Four days ago, at a fundraiser in Sunday night fundraiser in Hollywood for former Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, a woman far older than Sarah Palin’s daughter made similarly, by HRC’s standards, “hateful remarks”.  “Comedienne” Sarah Silverman

. . . told the crowd of just under 100 that they must remember that both conservatives and liberals want the best for the country, even if liberals are more “open-minded” and conservatives are “less open-minded” and ” a little more “faggot-ish.”

(H/t:  Reader TGC.)   I searched HRC’s site; they have yet to call on the left-wing comedienne to  ”speak up.”  Wonder why that is. (more…)

In my last post, I noted how my searches for “Kyle Wood” on HRC & GLAAD’s website came up empty.

During my afternoon blog read, I discovered that Ace was on this story as was Breitbart.

Can someone please explain why HRC castigated Sarah Palin for her silence when her daughter used the word “faggot”, but can’t get around to covering a story about a gay Republican who had been beaten and hospitalized after someone spray-painted “faggot” on his car?

FROM THE COMMENTS:  rusty  reports that “Kyle Wood recants assault charges” and provides this link-http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/purple-wisconsin/176334541.html?ipad=y

UPDATE: Kyle Wood has recanted the charges.

I am almost skeptical of these stories, but was less so this time, given the picture of Kyle Wood.  He is not the first person to have staged such a crime and is perhaps the first gay Republican to have perpetrated such a hoax.  Perhaps, he sought to draw attention to the prejudice we gay Republicans face because of or heterodox (at least in the gay community) opinions.

But, he only succeeded in casting doubt on that prejudice.

It has been four days since gay Republican Kyle Wood was beaten at his home — after an anti-gay and other slurs were spray-painted on his car.  And these are what searches of HRC’s and GLAAD’s web-sites yield: (more…)

Yesterday, as we reported here, President Barack Obama whom HRC endorsed back in May 2011, long before the Republican primaries were even underway, “President Obama told MTV viewers that when it comes to same-sex marriage, it would be up to future generations of Americans to implement meaningful reform.”

This morning, I checked HRC’s web-site to see what the gay rights’ outfit had to say about Mr. Obama’s statement.  I could find nothing in their press releases.  A search on their home page for “obama mtv marriage” (without quotation marks) yielded nothing.

I also wondered what they had to say about the brutal beating of gay Republican, Kyle Wood.  Wood, as you recall, had been beaten after his car had been vandalized with mean-spirited insults, including the word, “faggot.”

Here are the results of my search:

HRC, Two Days of Silence on this assault, Will You Speak Up? (more…)

HRC called upon Sarah Palin to “speak up” about her teenage daughter’s use of anti-gay slur, but won’t speak out when a gay Republican is beaten and hospitalized in a politically motivated attack.

The man who attacked “Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer working for GOP House candidate Chad Lee” in Wisconsin said he had “warned” the young man.  Wood believes . . .

. . .  his attacker’s reference to a warning likely pointed to graffiti he found painted on his car last week. The vandalism included the phrases “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

Those slurs, he explained, were references to him being a gay Republican working to help Lee, a straight GOP candidate, defeat the openly gay Democrat Mark Pocan.

The man used the same slur Sarah Palin’s daughter had used, but, unlike the Republican teen, followed it up with a brutal attack.

Yet, HRC called upon a woman who never uttered the slur to “speak up,” but won’t speak up when a vandal uses the term against a gay Republican, then proceeds to beat him.

NB:  Had previously blogged on the matter here.

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. (more…)

This falls in to the “WTF?” category.

“This administration simply can’t be taken seriously when it talks about debt and deficit reduction when it chooses to spend money researching ‘gaydar’,” said Christopher R. Barron, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist for GOProud – a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting freemarkets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights. GOProud is also the only national gay organization to endorse Mitt Romney.

The National Science Foundation spent $30,000 supporting the “gaydar” study conducted by the University of Washington and Cornell University. “At a time when families – gay and straight – are being asked to tighten their belts and make tough decisions about spending because of the disastrous Obama economy it is an absolute insult to hear that federal tax dollars were spent ‘researching’ whether or not you can guess someone’s sexual orientation just by looking at them,” continued Barron.

This study was uncovered as part of the Wastebook 2012, which was released this morning by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). The Wastebook lists 100 wasteful spending projects totaling more than $18 billion.

For crying out loud… Anderson Cooper can just act as a gaydar proxy for the Obama Administration. He does so well being their bitch on every other issue.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“Gay men”, writes a reader from a “blue state”,

. . . are some of the most judgmental closed-minded people you will ever meet. I deal with so much outright intolerance from gay men. Yet if you treat anything they believe in with the same prejudice they’re on the 6:00 news calling for your head on a stick. It’s insane. I realize I’m generalizing which isn’t good, but I can literally count on one hand the gays I have met in my life that were politically tolerant.

Now, although I have encountered the hyper-judgmental gay men (and lesbians), I have met more than a handful of gay lefties who are politically tolerant, indeed, today on Facebook, a left-of-center friend messaged me in response to a quip I had offered to one of his political posts.*  We had a spirited and civil exchange, with him acknowledging he may have to check out Bob Woodward’s book, the Price of Politics.

It is a reminder that there are exceptions to the intolerance we all too often face — and that many gay liberals are indeed liberal in the original sense of the term.

* (more…)

UPDATE 10/16/12 @ 3:24 PM EST Good news: Gallaudet president wants Angela McCaskill to return following gay marriage petition controversy

“Some proponents of gay marriage“, reads the subhead to John Fund’s piece on The New Blacklist, “would rather intimidate their critics than debate them.”  If they believe their case to be so strong, why are they so reluctant to take on those who oppose it?

Jonathan Rauch had no such compunction about taking on one-time gay marriage opponent David Blankenhorn, helping the latter change his mind. There is a real-world example of the power of ideas to persuade, yet other gay marriage activists would rather ostracize gay marriage opponents than make an effort to challenge their opinions.

Fund tells the story of Angela McCaskill, “the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a school for the deaf and hard of hearing”:

She has now worked at Gallaudet for over 20 years, and in January 2011 she was named its chief diversity officer. Last year, she helped open a resource center for sexual minorities on campus. But she has now been placed on leave because of pressure from some students and faculty. Her job is on the line.

McCaskill’s sin? She was one of 200,000 people to sign a petition demanding a referendum on a law recognizing gay marriage, which was signed by Maryland’s Democratic governor, Martin O’Malley, in March. The referendum will be on the ballot next month, and the vote is expected to be close.

. . . .

Gallaudet University’s president, T. Alan Hurwitz, announced that he was putting McCaskill on paid leave because “some feel it is inappropriate for an individual serving as chief diversity officer” to have signed such a petition.

(Read the whole thing.)  Guess, diversity doesn’t mean diversity of opinion. (more…)

in response to an Advocate piece contending that “Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton uses homophobic term to describe President Obama’s foreign policy“, Richard Grenell wrote a letter to the Advocate, taking issue with their assessment.  As the magazine has yet to publish his letter, we are posting it here:

The Advocate’s Michelle Garcia’s latest piece fails to mention that John Bolton has been a consistent defender of gay rights, gay marriage and a critic of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before it was overturned, Garcia also fails to show how Bolton’s comment describing President Obama as a weak leader is in anyway homophobic.

I also find it ironic that while The Advocate has consistently refused to report on John Bolton’s early support for Log Cabin Republicans and gay rights, they jump to write a phony and purposefully deceptive piece about him – all because he is a Republican. Calling a conservative friend of our community homophobic is a self-inflicted wound. Are Advocate writers so in the tank for the Democrats that they attack a supporter of gay rights just because he’s not a Democrat? Garcia’s story is the perfect example of how the old gay guard and its magazine of choice is out of touch with gay Americans today. Yesterday’s warriors of acceptance have morphed into today’s liberal intolerants. This is the exact faux outrage that makes The Advocate the magazine of your old gay uncle. It isn’t a serious place for news or information.

Please note that I merely cut and pasted the letter without adding — or altering a word.

With Chicago’s murder rate surging, you’d think a city alderman would have better uses for his time than to pester a private company, yet Alderman Joe Moreno has garnered national headlines for his attempts to prevent Chick-fil-A from contributing to groups that support traditional marriage.

Even as the chicken chain’s management has “enacted workplace protections for its employees against discrimination“, Moreno wants more:

 A Chicago alderman says Chick-fil-A’s president is publicly contradicting what company executives personally assured him for months — that the fast-food chain is changing its stance on gay marriage — and he asked the company Sunday to clarify. . . .

Moreno said Chick-fil-A executives gave him a letter earlier this year saying the company’s non-profit arm, the WinShape Foundation, will not support organizations with political agendas. “We were told that these organizations included groups that politically work against the rights of gay and lesbian people,” Moreno said.

(Via HotAir headlines.)  Simply put, it is not the business of the government to police the political stands of private companies.

It is one thing for an individual not to choose to eat at the restaurant because of its management’s political stands, it’s quite another for a representative of the government to try to prevent them from taking a stand.

UPDATE:  Just caught this on Instapundit:

NEW VERB:  TO BE “CHICK-FIL-Aed”:  William McGurn astutely observes that the continuing saga of Chick-Fil-A’s skirmish with gay rights’ forces isn’t a political fight about a controversial topic, but instead part of a larger progressive agenda to silence all opposing views.   There’s one small problem that I see with the attempt to vilify CFA:  their sandwiches–oh, the essence of pickle!– are divine.

Yes, pretty much sums it up.  It is about silencing opposing views.  Does seem gay marriage advocates are quite eager to do that.  If they’re so confident in their cause, why don’t they relish the opportunity to debate it?

Many of you have read before about the New Mexico case where a lesbian couple filed a discrimination claim against a Christian photographer who refused to photograph their commitment ceremony.

When the two women filed their claim, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found against the photographer and ordered the company “to pay $6,600 in attorney fees.”  Said photographer, Elaine Huguenin, reported George Will in his column on Friday . . .

. . . says that she is being denied her right to the “free exercise” of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and a similar provision in the New Mexico Constitution. Furthermore, New Mexico’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act defines “free exercise” as “an act or a refusal to act that is substantially motivated by religious belief” and forbids government from abridging that right except to “further a compelling government interest.”

As New Mexico’s Supreme Court prepares to sort this out, Will offers how the cases . . .

. . . demonstrates how advocates of tolerance become tyrannical. First, a disputed behavior, such as sexual activities between people of the same sex, is declared so personal and intimate that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Then, having won recognition of what Louis Brandeis, a pioneer of the privacy right, called “the right to be let alone,” some who have benefited from this achievement assert a right not to let other people alone. It is the right to coerce anyone who disapproves of the now-protected behavior into acting as though they approve of it, or at least into not acting on their disapproval. (more…)

We here at GayPatriot have never been fans of the Family Research Council (FRC).  And much as we disagree with many of that social conservative organization’s policies, particularly its narrow (and often inaccurate) portrayal of gay Americans, we disagree as well with those, including the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, who dub FRC a “hate group.”  As John Hinderaker puts it, “gay activists and their allies have consistently smeared the Family Research Council as a ‘hate group’ because it supports traditional marriage.”

Support for traditional marriage does not, however, necessarily mean hatred of gay people.

Yet, given that the man who shot a guard at the Family Research Center in Washington, D.C. yesterday had volunteered at a local gay and lesbian center, we need to ask if a different climate of hate , a climate that exists within all too many gay organizations and which we read on some gay left blogs, spurred him on.  Indeed, there are reports that the shooter  ”made statements regarding [FRC's] policies, and then opened fire with a gun striking a security guard“.

It is, to be sure, facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Democratic or LGBT activists. But it is legitimate to hold gay organizations and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the a good number of threats against advocates of traditional marriage, setting the nation on edge. Many on the gay left have exploited the arguments of division, reaping media favor by demonizing Mormons (and other Christians), or social conservatives, or Republicans. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that social conservatives are not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

And despite these arguments of divisions, to their credit, a number of gay and lesbian organizations released a joint statement yesterday condemning the shooting: (more…)