Marco Rubio Pathetically Plays the LGBT Victim

With Rick Santorum now officially in the GOP nomination race, expect Marco Rubio to prostitute himself to the Christofascists with even more desperation.  Like Bobby Jindal, Rubio seems to think that if he says enough inflammatory anti-gay things that the elderly whites in the GOP base will overlook the fact that he's not "white" by their definition.  Hence the increasing flow of lunacy and pathetic statements of victimization coming from Rubio.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Rubio's pathetic and insulting statements of late.  Here are excerpts:

Poor Marco Rubio. With history rushing past him, its dust gritty in his eyes, he, the bully, resorts to playing the victim.

And so it was on Tuesday, when he tried—in this now-practiced right-wing way—to claim that he and other Christians were the victims of LGBTs and their demands for, er, basic equality and civil rights.

What else can Rubio do? People like him have lost the argument.  All they can do now, after years of fostering a climate of prejudice and persecution against LGBTs, is to claim that with the prospect of equality, it is they, the bullies, who are persecuted.

They cannot argue how equality affects them negatively, so merely claim to be victims.

On Tuesday, Rubio dared to use the phrase “hate speech” when describing how, one day, those who objected to marriage equality would be seen as propagating hate speech.

Does Marco Rubio have any idea of the toxicity of the phrase he is flinging around to score some cheap political capital?

Does he have any idea of the true “hate speech” LGBTs have suffered, not just on political platforms at the hands of people like Marco Rubio in their stoking of their Christian voting base—words like “unnatural,” “pretend families,” words of exclusion that seek to put us outside the boundaries of family, home, and love?

Because “hate speech” doesn’t end on political platforms. They’re the words that LGBTs hear before they are beaten by homophobes on street corners and in schoolyards. Beaten, sometimes fatally. How dare Marco Rubio seek to invoke a phrase like “hate speech” to feed his own pathetic persecution complex? Has he any idea of the true cost of “hate speech” as it has been used against LGBT people?

If you claim that LGBTs do not deserve marriage equality, and your argument has the ring of prejudice about it—and it necessarily would because you are arguing against the principles of equality—then expect to be called out for it.

But you are not being silenced. You are being disagreed with. And now you’re feeling persecuted because it’s not just LGBTs calling you out on it, but all those who believe people should be treated equally under the law.

Simply, Mr. Rubio, when will you stop scapegoating LGBTs to score votes?
In a way, Rubio’s nonsensical words are heartening. They are like the last gasp of a poisonous old world order of determined prejudice and discrimination. How furious and scared he must have been to see Catholic Ireland face down the kind of misinformation and lies he and his cronies propagate against LGBTs on Saturday, and vote instead for a future of equality.

Rubio and others like him know their grip on fear and prejudice is loosening. And so now, he plays the victim: it’s the last pathetic piece of pantomime left to him.