UVA Reinstates Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity

Without admitting that it may have over reacted and been duped by the now widely pilloried Rolling Stone article that claimed UVA harbored a "culture of rape," officials at the University of Virginia has reinstated Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.  As noted in several posts, the Rolling Stone article never rang true based on my years at UVA or those of one of my daughters who had friend who were members of Phi Kappa Psi.  Huffington Post looks at the reinstatement and the University's efforts to undo damage that it wrought.  Here are excerpts:

The University of Virginia reinstated the fraternity at the center of a disputed gang rape allegation following the conclusion of a police investigation into the matter, the school announced Monday.

The UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, a fraternity whose party was said to be the setting for a gang rape in a bedroom of a female student named Jackie, suspended itself following a Rolling Stone article in November reporting the claim. Inaccuracies centering around Jackie's story later surfaced, and the fraternity came forward saying it had not even held a formal social event on the night the gang rape allegedly happened.

UVA requested the Charlottesville Police Department investigate the claim in Rolling Stone's story. The police said they would continue their investigation regardless of the dispute over the article's accuracy.

Charlottesville police spokesman Gary Pleasants told The Huffington Post their investigation has not yet been completed, just that so far they have "found no substantive basis that the alleged incident occurred at that fraternity."

In a statement, Stephen Scipione, president of the UVA Alpha Chapter Phi Kappa Psi, said, "In today's 24-hour news cycle, we must guard against a rush to judgment as we often don’t have all of the facts in front of us."

Last week, the university announced new rules for parties under an addendum to an annual agreement all fraternities must sign. One of the included rules says a sober fraternity member must monitor all the bedrooms in the fraternity house during parties.

The university heaped praise on Phi Kappa Psi, noting the fraternity was the first to sign on to the new, stricter party rules, and pointed out its members helped draft the addendum.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Saudi Arabia and the Missing Pages of the 9/11 Report

As noted recently, the USA continues to treat Saudi Arabia as a key ally even though that nation continues to violate international law on human rights abuses and to foster Islamic extremism.  Now, in the wake of events in Paris last week, some want the pages redacted from the 9/11 report to be released.  What will they show?  Mainly that the USA's supposed ally provided most of the funding for the 9/11 attackers. It's past time that America stop giving a pass to and supporting regimes that in so many ways work against America's - and western modernity - interests.  Here are excerpts from a piece in The Daily Beast:

A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers.

“This may seem stale to some but it’s as current as the headlines we see today,” Graham said, referring to the terrorist attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris. The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security. But as chairman of the Senate Select Committee that issued the report in 2002, Graham argues the opposite is true, and that the real “threat to national security is non-disclosure.”

Graham said the redacted pages characterize the support network that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and if that network goes unchallenged, it will only flourish. He said that keeping the pages classified is part of “a general pattern of coverup” that for 12 years has kept the American people in the dark. It is “highly improbable” the 19 hijackers acted alone, he said, yet the U.S. government’s position is “to protect the government most responsible for that network of support.” 

The Saudis know what they did, Graham continued, and the U.S. knows what they did, and when the U.S. government takes a position of passivity, or actively shuts down inquiry, that sends a message to the Saudis. “They have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.”

Standing with Graham were Republican Rep. Walter Jones and Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch, co-sponsors of House Resolution 428, which says declassification of the 28 pages is necessary to provide the American public with the full truth surrounding the 9/11 attacks. The two lawmakers echoed Graham’s assertion that national security would not be harmed . . . . 

The relatively few who have read the pages come away with varying levels of shock and surprise. Lynch said he was so blown away that the information was being kept from the public that he told the two room monitors he would be filing legislation. HR 428 had 27 co-sponsors in the last Congress.

Quinn told The Daily Beast, “It’s rather bizarre that we would go to these great lengths to air this heretofore confidential information about how we reacted to 9/11, and at the same time we keep secret information about protecting those who helped launch the attack.”  But now the wheels of justice are finally moving. The Senate passed by voice vote in the last Congress JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act). Co-sponsored by Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the bill would strip diplomatic immunity from nation states in cases of terrorism, and open the door to financial compensation for the 9/11 families from the Saudi government.

It all signals that the decades-long bipartisan policy of always keeping the Saudis happy, and never rocking the boat, may be coming to an end. In Sarasota, Florida, a federal judge is reviewing 80,000 pages of documents that relate to a prominent Saudi family and its extensive contacts with three of the hijackers when they attended flight school in Sarasota.

The family abruptly left the U.S. for Saudi Arabia a few days before the attacks, leaving dinner on the table and a brand new car in the driveway “as though they’d been tipped something was going to happen, and they’d better not be in the country,” said Graham. One member of the family is described as a high-level adviser to the Saudi royal family.

All but three Senate Democrats, joined by one Republican and one independent, signed a letter calling on President Bush to declassify the 28-page section detailing the role of foreign governments in bankrolling the 9/11 attackers.

Oh, and let's not forget how Bush and Cheney allowed a plane full of Saudis to leave the country even as all other flights were grounded. 

Coming Out: When Parents Are the Enemy

I have several younger friends who has not come out to their parents.  Why?  Because of fear about how their parents - most of whom are described as "deeply religious" - will react.  Meanwhile, as more and more LGBT individuals come out and refuse to live in the closet, especially in their private lives, these individuals face an increasingly daunting prospect of finding enduring relationships because fewer and fewer of us are willing to be someone's "dirty secret."   The suicide death of Leelah Alcorn has focused a spot light on the deadly results of parents becoming the enemy of their child, usually as they cling to ignorance embracing religion or their own concerns over how people will perceive them for having an gay child.  To me, it's the height of parental selfishness.  An op-ed in The Advocate looks at the problem faced by those whose parents are their enemies and the failure of the justice system to protect LGBT youth.  Here are highlights:

A couple of weeks ago, Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender girl, walked in front of a tractor-trailer on an Ohio interstate in the middle of the night. She left behind a prescheduled-to-post suicide note on her Tumblr page (which has since been deleted, presumably by her family) that explained in explicit detail the abuse she had experienced at the hands of her parents. 

I don't think I will ever forget how it felt to be surrounded by adults who told 17-year-old me that I was "wrong" and that the most important thing was that I be "normal." These adults were the usual suspects — my mother, the adult friends I spent six months living with after I ran away from home — but most disturbingly, I was told I was wrong by the adults put in place by the system to protect me. My "victim's advocate" assigned to me by the court after my mother pled guilty to felony assault, explicitly blamed me for the violence in childhood home.

Even today, nearly 15 years later, queer youth are being told the same damaging messages about themselves that I heard, and those words are killing them.

For LGBTQ people, our parents are often the enemy. This is particularly true for LGBTQ youth, who are generally legally dependent upon their abusers for food, shelter, and other basic needs. Domestic violence survivors and advocates have done incredible work educating about how damaging and dangerous it is to encourage survivors to maintain relationships with or stay living with their abusers, it's past time for us to share the same messages about LGBTQ youth and abusive parents.  It has been refreshing amid the sadness of the last week, to hear queer activists and advocates publicly acknowledge that parents are the problem and not the answer, and that transgender youth should be removed from homes where they are unsafe due to unaccepting and abusive parents. But where will they go?

It is impossible for us to truly understand Leelah's suicide, the dangers of reparative therapy on the lives of LGBTQ youth, unless we understand the intersectionality of child/adolescent abuse, reparative therapy, dysfunctional foster care systems where LGBTQ youth aren't safe, and the epidemic of LGBTQ youth homelessness. It is one thing for us to demand that transgender youth be removed from unaccepting and abusive homes, it's another to provide the services they need not only to survive, but to thrive.

[W]e must remember that 40 percent of all homeless youth across the country identify as LGBTQ. LGBTQ youth homelessness is not just a problem in large urban environments. Although LGBTQ youth run away and are pushed out of homes in every region in this country, many cities and communities (like the county I'm from) don't have any youth shelter beds, let alone any that are culturally appropriate for LGBTQ youth. 

It is not enough to ban conversion therapy and to pay lip service by saying that transgender youth shouldn't live in homes where they are abused. We must open our hearts, our homes, and our wallets. We must work in partnership with youth to create LGBTQ youth centered programs that will care for them, and we ourselves must care about them too — while they are still alive.

We must make Leelah's final haunting words were a heartbreaking call to action.

There is much work to be done, including making adherents of conservative, anti-gay religious belief utterly unacceptable in society.  

Fox News Host: How We Can Tell "Bad Guys" If We Can't See Their Skin Color?

Much of Teabagistan gets its news from Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, and if one wants a glimpse of the racist mindset that predominates the Christofascists/Tea Partiers, a Fox News host just provided it.  It's all about skin color.  The New Civil Rights Movement has details.  Note that the anchor is a Liberty University graduate who apparently doesn't realize that one of the murdered French police officers was a Muslim himself.  Here are highlights:

Ever since the horrific terrorist attack on the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Fox News has been busy at work trying to blame President Barack Obama for it, and trying to turn it into ratings gold by making it their next Benghazi.

On Fox's "Outnumbered" Wednesday, the cast got into a discussion about how Paris police didn't have enough weapons, which enabled – they claimed – the Islamic extremist terrorists to massacre 12 people.

Enter Fox News anchor Shannon Bream, a former corporate attorney and graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

Bream, speaking unscripted, wondered how police would be able to identify "bad guys" if they had ski masks and couldn't "even know what color," what "the tone of their skin was?"

Her commentary – totally unquestioned by the four other Fox News hosts – was in response to co-host Kennedy Montgomery, aka "Kennedy," who had said, "sometimes bad guys don't look like bad guys."

"That's my question about these guys because if we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had, you know, ski masks on, do we even know what color they were?," Bream asked. "What the tone of their skin was," she tried to clarify – as if that were less racist. "I mean what if they didn't look like typical bad guys?"

5th Circuit Seems Poised to Strike Down Gay Marriage Bans

This past week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard gay marriage ruling appeals from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.  From what observers at oral argument report, it sounds as if the majority of the Court panel hearing the case is likely to rule that the bans are unconstitutional.  If such is the case, it is certainly sweet to envisage gay marriages taking place in Mississippi, home of the vile Traditional Values Coalition.  A piece at Towleroad looks at the questions posed by the Court and the ridiculous and non-creditable arguments put forth by the states to justify the bans rather than admit that they were motivated by anti-gay animus.  Here are highlights:

There are several great summaries out there about what happened yesterday at the Fifth Circuit, which heard marriage equality appeals from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Among others, I recommend the summaries from Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade and Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed. I would like to go one step deeper. I have listened to the audio from the oral argument (as you can too, here). As with other oral arguments, I find the most insightful indication of how a judge is leaning is not the number of questions asked or to which lawyer he asks more, but the language and tone of those questions. I found that especially true with Judge Higginbotham. . . .

On all the metrics, it looks like marriage equality will win the day at the Fifth Circuit.

Questions Asked To Lawyers. This metric is based on the notion that appellate court judges tend to ask more questions to the side of the argument they are inclined to oppose. That makes some sense: you ask questions because you are skeptical. As a related point, the side peppered with more questions presumably has the tougher case to make, which makes it more likely to lose.

Judge Higginbotham did not ask a single question to Camilla Taylor, the Lambda Legal attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Louisiana case. However, during a single 20 minute span during Louisiana's argument in favor of its ban, Judge Higginbotham went toe to two with Louisiana's attorney, Kyle Duncan, sentence for sentence. The attorney only barely spoke for more minutes than Judge Higginbotham during that time. Robbie Kaplan, the Paul Weiss attorney who represented Edie Windsor, also faced no questioning for the first part of her argument.

Judges Arguing With Each Other. This metric gets closer to evaluating a judge's views because it's not about the number of questions or statements, but to whom they are directed and the substance of that back-and-forth. This might be helpful in evaluating which way swing judges are leaning, if they talk at all.

Judge Higginbotham spoke a lot, and when he was arguing with anyone other than the lawyers from the states (see above), he was arguing with Judge Smith.

Judge Smith (right) spent his question time on two things: Baker v. Nelson, the 1971 case that ended in a simple, one-line denial from the Supreme Court that said that challenges to state refusals to recognize gay marriage bring up no federal issues, and the level of scrutiny for the bans. We've heard the Baker argument before: it was not only rejected, but laughed out of court by Judge Posner and others.

[B]oth Judge Higginbotham and Judge Graves, an Obama appointee who has a great voice for radio (per the audio of argument), dismissed it. Judge Graves did it with aplomb, suggesting that talking about a case from the 1970s (more than 40 years ago already) made him nostalgic for his afro and eight-tracks!

Judge Smith is a non-starter for marriage equality. He showed himself hostile to equality and, with all due respect, reason. He bore the brunt of Judge Higginbotham's judge-to-judge sparring, which may be an indication of where Judge Higginbotham is headed.

Tone and Language. This is a squishier metric because it doesn't count numbers, it looks at the language a judge uses.  . . . At the Fifth Circuit, you had a smattering of different language uses, but Judge Higginbotham and Judge Graves, the Obama appointee, used language that was considerably more modern and accepting of the equality of gay relationships. That is especially notable given that Judge Higginbotham is pushing 80 years old.

Now we have to wait for the ruling.

Rreasons “White Pride” is Always Racist

With the far right in America and many Republican extremists ready to launch a war against Islam and give the NSA unfettered powers in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, it is important to remember that these same individuals are more often than not supporters of "white pride" and lament the demise of total white privilege in America.  Yes, Christianity and Islam have often been at odds with each other over the centuries, but for the American right, besides religious differences there is the convenient fact that one doesn't find many lily white Muslims.  Most have darker skin shades which, to these "godly" patriots sets the stage for a form of McCarthyism where every non-white is suspect.  A piece in Salon looks at some of the reasons why the "white pride" movement is always based on racism.  Here are excerpts:

The Ku Klux Klan is currently sponsoring a Harrison, Ark., billboard that sends the following message: “It’s not racist to love your people. www.WhitePrideRadio.com.” The message is featured next to an adorable photo of a kitten and a puppy. On the White Pride Radio website, the group further clarifies their mission: “A lot of people recognize that there is an ongoing program of genocide against white people. There are websites, newsletters, videos, and radio shows, but too many talk about family without including the family. It has always been our mission to not just promote the white family, but to make them a part of this cause of white Christian revival.”

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time that a Harrison billboard has gone viral. Following similar signs in Alabama and Eugene, Ore., a message went up that read: “Anti-racism is code for anti-white.” If that doesn’t clear it up for you, let’s put it bluntly: White pride is always racism, always. Here’s why.

Whiteness is an artificial sociological construct which has been used throughout history to exclude certain groups of people from the rights guaranteed others and to justify bigoted attitudes.

As Nell Irvin Painter explains in The History of White People, the notion of “white culture” is a myth. “Our culture was founded in 1789 right about the same moment that Blumenbach was inventing Caucasians . . . . White Americans, however, are not a single ethnic group or a distinct number of ethnicities; they are an amalgamation of everyone who benefits from white privilege, and its boundaries are always shifting.  Before the Civil War, this distinction often made the difference between whether you were a full citizen or a slave with three-fifths congressional representation; afterward, as Edward J. Blum discussed in Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898, the paradigm of “whiteness” was used to forge a new sense of national unity for the American people as a way of healing sectional, regional, and class strife.


Throughout American history, many groups considered white today (e.g., Germans, Irish) were viewed as non-white.

[T]he term “white” has not always meant the same thing. Although WASPs have always benefited from that term in this country, virtually every other European nationality has been considered lesser at some point, from Eastern Europeans (like Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians) and Southern Europeans (like Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards) to long-standing victims of Western persecution (like the Irish and the Jews).  During World War I, a particularly virulent strain of anti-German prejudice swept the nation. When Millard Fillmore sought a second term as president in 1856, he did so as the candidate of the Know Nothing Party which was based primarily in anti-Catholic (and specifically anti-Irish) prejudice, netting 22 percent of the popular vote in the process. Yet as time has gone on, even the Irish and the Jews have gradually been accepted as “white” by the majority of the American population.

It is sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan, which by virtue of its history is a racist organization with a white supremacist agenda.  It’s easy to forget that the KKK was once a politically powerful organization. During Reconstruction (the 12-year period immediately following the Civil War), the KKK was used by Southern whites to subjugate the recently emancipated black slaves and thus reestablish white supremacy for a century. For a long time they were viewed with a romantic tinge by many Americans, including D. W. Griffith in his landmark epic motion picture The Birth of a Nation when it was released in 1915.

The billboard is a symptom of white minority politics.   . . .  Coining this phenomenon “the birth of white minority politics,” former Republican political adviser John Avlon talked to hundreds of Tea Partiers and kept his thumb on the pulse of the radical right-wing surge that occurred immediately after Barack Obama’s election in 2008. “I think there is an anxiety underneath this that President Obama represents the rise of a multicultural elite and the rise of a non-white majority in America,” he observed, adding that “if you talk to many of these protesters in the field, one of the dates that keeps coming up is 2050, which is the date the U.S. census estimates that there will be a non-white majority in the United States.”

I continue to ponder why some people simply cannot see the common humanity in others regardless of skin color or sexual orientation.  Why the sick need to feel superior or to look down on others?  Perhaps being gay and hated by the same segment of society that hates blacks, Hispanics and other minorities makes one less judgmental of others since one finds them self always being judged.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Religious Liberty, Bigotry and Gays

Here in Virginia, GOP homophobic extremist Del. Bob Marshall has introduced a bill that would give broad license to discriminate against gays based on claims of "religious freedom."  The bill is so extreme that discrimination is licensed if gays and/or same sex relationships “violate the religious or moral conviction of such person with respect to same-sex ‘marriage’ or homosexual behavior.”  Marshall's bill is no doubt backed by the hate merchants at The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group. But Marshall's efforts are part of the Republican play book across the country where Republican legislators - yes, it is ALWAYS Republicans - are introducing "turn away the gays" bills under the smoke screen of "protecting religious liberty."  A column in the New York Times takes on these crude, bigoted efforts.  Here are excerpts:

I’VE been called many unpleasant things in my life, and I’ve deserved no small number of them. But I chafe at this latest label: A threat to your religious liberty.

I don’t mean me alone. I mean me and my evidently menacing kind: men who have romantic relationships with other men and maybe want to marry them, and women in analogous situations. According to many of the Americans who still cast judgment on us, our “I do” somehow tramples you, not merely running counter to your creed but running roughshod over it.

That’s absurd. And the deference that many politicians show to such thinking is an example not of religion getting the protection it must but of religious people getting a pass that isn’t warranted. It’s an illustration of religion’s favored status in a country that’s still working out this separation-of-church-and-state business and hasn’t yet gotten it quite right.

Equality is increasingly being enshrined into law, and one response from those opposed to it is that the law shouldn’t apply to them.  Why? Because it contradicts their religious beliefs, which they use as a fig leaf for intolerance.

[L]ast year, more than 10 states considered legislation that, to varying degree, blessed discrimination based on sexual orientation by people claiming that it was a right, a matter of religious liberty. . . . .  A Virginia lawmaker introduced this sort of legislation just a few weeks ago.

But this is only the beginning, especially with the contest for the Republican presidential nomination gathering steam.    Several likely candidates — Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee — get a special gleam in their eyes when they’re denigrating gays

Another probable contender, Jeb Bush . . . . said that America needed to take care to “safeguard religious liberty,” and there are several problems with that formulation.

For starters, it perpetuates confusion, some of which is cynically engineered, about the consequences of marriage-equality laws. They do not pertain to religious services or what happens in a church, temple or mosque; no clergy member will be compelled to preside over gay nuptials. Civil weddings are covered. That’s it.

But also, “religious liberty” sounds disturbingly like a dog whistle to the crowd that wants specified, codified exemption from anti-discrimination laws . . . . As these lamentations about religious liberty get tossed around, it’s worth remembering that racists have used the same argument to try to perpetuate segregation. 

Christian fundamentalists in this country are practiced at claiming marginalization and oppression. “They’re always saying they’re kept out of the public square, and that’s baloney,” said Marci Hamilton, a constitutional law expert and the author of “God vs. the Gavel.” “They’re all over the public square.”  They and their churches inject themselves into political debates while enjoying tax-exempt status. They get public support in questionable circumstances.

 

Would we be content to let a Muslim store owner who believes that a woman should always cover her hair refuse service to women who do not? Or a Mormon hairdresser who spurns coffee to turn away clients who saunter in with frappuccinos?  I doubt it. So why should a merchant whose version of Christianity condemns homosexuality get to exile gays and lesbians?

I respect people of faith.  . . . . And I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes and hearts.  But outside of those places? You must put up with me, just as I put up with you.

Unlike the author of the column,  I don't respect most people of faith.  Certainly not religious fundamentalists who have chosen ignorance and bigotry over knowledge and tolerance to those who are different.   Rather than give them a license to discriminate, we need to restrict their rights in the public square and put religion back where it belongs: in homes and houses of worship and nowhere else.

A Homophobic Double Standard for Gay May-December Relationships?

In the interest of full disclosure, my first long term boyfriend was 22 years younger than me.  It lasted for three years and ended badly, but not because of the age difference.  The husband - who is four years younger than me - and I know several very happy couples where there is a significant age difference.  Yet, seemingly such couples face a double standard all too often compared to heterosexual couples where financially successful men often ditch their first wife for a so-called trophy wife.  There were several such couples in my old neighborhood in Virginia Beach. Think of the reaction from some to the relationship of Tom Daley and Lance Black.  And now, the same homophobia snark is revealing itself over the planned marriage of comedian Stephen Fry, 57, and 27-year-old comedian Elliot Spencer.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this unfortunate double standard.  Here are highlights:

When news broke earlier this week that British actor and comedian Stephen Fry, 57, is now engaged to 27-year-old comedian Elliot Spencer, homophobic social media users suddenly decided they should try to be comedians, too. There have already been innumerable and equally unfunny variations on the joke that Spencer looks young enough to be Fry’s son, as Hannah Jane Parkinson relays on the Guardian. (And yes, someone has already called Spencer a “Small Fry,” har har.) The Internet reaction took an even darker turn when “Stephen Fry disgusting” reportedly trended on Twitter for a brief time following the announcement.

In the media, the couple’s age gap has been treated less like a scandal and more like a spectacle, with headlines predictably highlighting Spencer’s youth. The major outlets have remained more or less respectful beyond these gawking headlines but, as the Advocate reports, tabloid and entertainment sites have taken a more sensationalistic approach which has only been amplified by their comments sections, where people have been calling Fry a “pedophile,” a “pervert,” and a “dirty old man.”

If it’s not obvious by now, the outsized reaction to Fry and Spencer’s age gap is deeply homophobic. Plenty of straight men—especially famous straight men—have wives that are decidedly their juniors: Harrison Ford is 22 years older than Calista Flockhart, Michael Douglas is 25 years older than Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Clint Eastwood is a whopping 35 years older than his ex-wife. George Clooney’s paramours, too, have waxed ever younger over the years. Sure, these Hollywood May-December relationships are surrounded by plenty of hubbub about “trophy wives” and “gold-digging,” but no one thinks that Clint Eastwood is a pedophile just because he married a much younger woman. However much we gossip about heterosexual couples with large age gaps, we at least refrain from calling them sex offenders.

The news of Fry’s engagement, on the other hand, has done nothing but stoke the flames of a particularly virulent brand of homophobia that sees male homosexuality as a synonym for pedophilia and pederasty.
University of California at Davis psychology professor Gregory M. Herek has meticulously documented (and discredited) the history of this unfounded association.  . . . . Today, it continues to circulate freely on the far Right.

When Bradley Cooper, now 40, started dating the now 23-year-old model Suki Waterhouse, the Daily Mirror called them “the sweetest celebrity couple ever” and repeated the old adage that “age is but a number.” This same outlet worked the phrase “engagement to toyboy lover” into the headline of their article on Fry. What happened to true love knows no boundaries and all that?

[F]ew gay eyebrows seem to be rising, likely because large age gaps are relatively common among same-sex couples. A Facebook study from last year found that both gay and lesbian couples tend to have much higher age gaps than their heterosexual counterparts with the difference—or the age gap gap—widening as people leave college and start new relationships in adulthood. The reasons for a gay age gap are as varied as the couple. For some, it’s about finding stability and maturity. For others, it’s simply about accepting love wherever you find it.

As always seems to be the case, gays face a different standard that do heterosexuals.  One can only hope for the day when we are all judged by one standard.