Quote of the Day - Andrew Sullivan on the GOP Hatred Towards Gays

Living in Virginia, one has to develop a thick skin and an "I don't give a sh*t attitude" to the often daily insults - over and above the constant legal discrimination - one receives as an LGBT citizen. I've had People yell and call me "faggot" and I've even been intentionally harassed by homophobic Norfolk police officers. But most of the time I can successfully maintain an attitude of "if you don't like me, then it's your loss." But from time to time the hate and bigotry can still find a chink in that mental armour and it can hurt. Especially, the efforts by Christianists and their pandering whore like puppets in the Republican Party who work incessantly to dehumanize both LGBT individuals and the LGBT community as a whole. In a recent blog post, Pam Spaulding, for example reacted to a North Carolina legislator referring to LGBT people as "things" and called for a boycott of North Carolina. I felt much the way Pam did when Virginia passed its vile Marshall-Newman amendment in 2006. It does hurt to be openly treated as less than human. In a post today, Andrew Sullivan goes off and reacts to the booing of the gay soldier during last nights GOP presidential debate and wonderfully expresses views that I find 100% on target. Here are some highlights:

This has nothing to do with sex, as Santorum surely knows. And again, the crowd reveals itself as hateful - even when it comes to those serving their country in uniform. This is one core reason why I cannot be a Republican. So many are bigots - and no one - no one - stands up against them. They're a bunch of bullies congratulating themselves on rooting out the queers.


, to Santorum's obsession: the intrinsic evil of gay sex. Again, this is usual. Gays are used to being reduced to sexual acts rather than being seen as full human beings, like straight people, with sexuality sure, but a whole lot of other things as well.

But somehow the fact that these indignities were heaped on a man risking his life to serve this country, a man ballsy enough to make that video, a man in the uniform of the United States ... well, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that these Republicans don't actually deep down care for the troops, if that means gay troops.

The shocking silence on the stage - the fact that no one challenged this outrage - also tells me that this kind of slur is not regarded as a big deal. . . . . Throughout Republican debates, gays are discussed as if we are never in the audience, never actually part of the society, never fully part of families, never worthy of even a scintilla of respect. When you boo a servicemember solely because he's gay, you are saying he is beneath contempt, that nothing he does or has done can counterweigh the vileness of his sexual orientation.

And then I think of all those gay servicemembers who have died for this country, or been wounded in battle, or been on tours year after year ... and the fury builds..

I have Republican friends who just cannot grasp why I can never again support the Republican Party - or at least until there is a huge turn around in the mindset of not only the Christianist hate merchants in the party but also in those who silently allow the dehumanization of others to go unchallenged. What the far right does to LGBT citizens is in my mind pure evil. And those who are willing to let evil go unchallenged are not those with whom I will associate.