Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Dan Savage on GOProud and the Hate Merchants of the Far Right

I've often equated being a gay Republican to being something akin to being Jewish and belonging to the Nazi Party or being black and seeking to be a part of the KKK.  Why would anyone in their right mind want to engage in such self-defeating masochism?   And the truth is the GOP is NOT going to "change from within" as the puppets at GOProud like to pretend.  Only sustained electoral defeats are going to force a rejection of the GOP's anti-gay agenda (ditto in respect to its racist agenda).  As a former GOP activist, I can assure you that all of the rational people who might listen to reason left the GOP years ago leaving only the crazies and those who are driven by love of their money more than anything else.  Dan Savage has a great piece that looks at the bizarre dysfunctions of those in GOProud.  He also attacks the far right which demonize gays and then point to the fruits of their foul handiwork as proof that gays are inferior.  Not surprisingly, the GOProud crowd isn't happy since Dan's remarks hit all too close to home.  Here are some highlights:

 Gay people abuse drugs, alcohol, and tobacco at higher rates than straight people do. We also commit suicide at higher rates. The haters on the religious right argue that these higher rates of self-harming behaviors are proof that the gay "lifestyle" is inherently dangerous and unhealthy.  

The haters have it backwards. It's not that self-hatred in many gay people causes personally-destructive behavior. It's that the external hatred all gay people have to endure—discrimination, oppression, bigotry, and rejection by family members poisoned by "faith"—can lead to substance abuse, punishing sexual excess, and suicide. Being gay doesn't damage us. It's the way we are treated for being gay that leaves many of us damaged. Johann Hari said it best:
Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state—and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage" it. They create misery, and then use it as a pretext to create even more misery.
[H]ere's something I've noticed about the self-hating, self-destructing gay guys I've known: it wasn't good enough for them to destroy only themselves. They had to destroy other gay men too. Using meth wasn't enough—they wanted their friends to use meth too. Abusing alcohol wasn't enough—they insisted that their friends match them drink-for-drink. And spinning out of control sexually wasn't enough—they wanted their friends to join them down at the bathhouse. 

Which kindasorta brings me to my recent dustup with GOProud. The hard-right gay Republican organization—a rightwing front group that exists to pinkwash the GOP—endorsed Mitt Romney last week. Romney, of course, opposes marriage equality. Romney supports DOMA. Romney has pledged to write anti-gay bigotry into the U.S. Constitution. Romney opposed the repeal of DADT. Romney opposes the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Romney opposes adoptions by same-sex couples. GOProud's endorsement of Romney, while not a surprise, was annoying, and it prompted me to send out this tweet: "The GOP's house faggots grab their ankles, right on cue. Pathetic." The boys at GOProud accused me of using a hate term and claimed that I had bullied them. For the record, boys, this is what the bullying of an adult looks like. Politically-active adults taking the piss out of each other—and you guys have called me all sorts of lovely names—isn't bullying.

Anyway, mixing it up with GOProud last week got me thinking about why a gay man would endorse—much less "commit significant resources" to help elect—a man who has pledged, if elected, to do as much harm as he possibly can to gay people. I mean, what kind of faggot supports a politician who would do him harm?

Oh, right: the same kind of faggot who would harm himself with drugs or alcohol or sex. The kind of gay men who don't like themselves or other gay people much. But while most self-loathing, self-destructive gay men are content to abuse booze, drugs, or dick, the self-hating GOProud boys abuse themselves with politics. And  .   .  .  .   They want to harm other gay people—they want to harm all gay people—by getting Mitt Romney elected. And just like your meth-addicted friend who pushed the drug on you, or your drunk friend who mocked you for stopping at four, or your sexually out-of-control friend who insisted that you were a prude if you didn't play the come dump with him down at the bathhouse, the GOProud boys want you to abuse yourself the same way that they're abusing themselves.  .   .   .   .  Because they're damaged.

Yes, the boys at GOProud are none to happy with Dan Savage, but I'd say his analysis is dead on.  Sometimes the truth hurts, but it doesn't make it any less the truth.  The GOProud ought to save their contributions to the GOP and instead get some good therapy so that they can finally escape their internalized homophobia.  A good description of internalized homophobia can be found here.

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