A friend who reads the blog was recently quoted in a New York Times article about lesbian conservatives. I was surprised – it was very tasteful, something I hadn’t expected from the Times. My hope that we might be looking toward actually being respected for once was immediately dashed when Bruce over at GayPatriot linked an op-ed from Advocate.com about “The Mystery of Gay Republicans.”
If I wasn’t angry before, I certainly am now. In fact, I’m downright pissed off.
Broadway diva John Carroll is the author, and considering the fact that I’ve been openly hated (and even threatened) in the comments section of multiple articles on that website – to the point that I no longer post comments there – I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I am appalled at his open hatred and intolerance. I have to ask, where is all of this tolerance the gay left keeps preaching?
Carroll sings the worship of Obama and describes his elation at the President’s re-election, then goes on to detail everything the President has done for the LGBT community. True enough, he ended DADT – it didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. There were Republicans who wanted to see the policy end. I have friends and family in the military who never saw a point to banning gay and lesbian troops from serving, all of them conservative in nature. What else does Carroll claim the messiah has done?
Well, he signed the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law. So what? How many times have I asked why we need a law to make our lives more valuable than the lives of straight people? Why do we need a hate crimes law in cases where the murderers were already sentenced to death? What are you going to do – resuscitate them then execute them a second time? If you’re like most liberals who are against the death penalty, what more can you give Matt Shepard’s killers than life in prison without the possibility of parole? Do you really think that sentencing them to 400 years is going to send a message that people should stop and ask, “hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t beat this guy to death…after all, I might be kept in prison until my corpse has rotted!” It’s one step closer to hate speech legislation. Sorry, but that’s no great leap forward in gay rights.
What about his executive order to all facilities that accept Medicare/Medicaid patients to immediately allow patients to be cared for by their same-sex partners? That wasn’t just for us, kids. It was a blanket order forcing hospitals to allow patients to decide who they wish to see and who will make decisions for them. What that order doesn’t have power over are situations where the patient is incapacitated and there’s no living will in place (I learned in EMT school to have one, and my significant other is listed on it along with my father). If you get into a wreck and you are brought to the hospital in a state of unconsciousness, the hospital still has every right to restrict your visitors to immediately verifiable relatives. We’re still not onto anything major here.
He announced that the Dept of Justice would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. I’m sorry, but how is this supposed to make me happy? He didn’t say he was going to work to repeal it, he just said he wouldn’t defend it anymore. That is what we riding the fence, and it’s a tactic commonly employed by politicians looking to seal the gay vote in their bag. By not openly supporting DOMA the way he did during the 2008 elections, he gets on your good side. It’s his way of making you happy without having to anger the rest of the liberal base. Believe what you will but there are many Democrats who still believe that homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage is an abomination. Ask Bill Clinton, who signed it into law. Ask Democrats Robert Byrd, Dick Gephardt, James Clyburn, Gary Condit, Dick Durbin, John Edwards, Steny Hoyer, Jack Murtha, Chuck Schumer, and Bart Stupak – every single one of them supported DOMA when it was passed, and not a single one has come out to say it should be repealed although most of them are still in Congress (two of them died while in Congress, having never admitted they were wrong to vote for it). Republican Bob Barr, on the other hand, helped write the bill and he has vocally come out in saying he was wrong and DOMA should be repealed.
I’m sorry…that last bit didn’t fit the narrative very well, did it?
He expanded benefits for federal employees to unmarried, same-sex partners. Fantastic. My life is already better. Not much to sing about, since the VERY Republican state I live in, along with the very Republican state that Sarah Palin hails from, allow the same kind of thing for the same-sex partners of State employees as well.
He directed all federal agencies engaged abroad to “promote and protect” the human rights of LGBT people in foreign countries. That’s rich…you mean the rights of 12 men currently awaiting execution in Libya for being accused of being gay? How about the rights of gays in Uganda who face stiff jail sentences or even death for engaging in homosexual sex acts? Oh, I know – they’re talking about protecting the rights of gay people in Egypt, Iran and Gaza! (Meanwhile, back on the farm…) Barack Obama has favored Sharia-led nations and their rights for his entire administration, and we have heard him pay lip service to protecting the interests of gay people abroad, but action is scarce. I sincerely doubt that Carroll (or any other gay liberal) could name a single instance in which any member of Obama’s cabinet has made even a half-hearted attempt to intervene on behalf of any gay person in a foreign country.
Oh, but he came out in support of gay marriage! WOOHOO! Hold on there, Sparky. All he did (yet again) was pay lip service to the issue. He may claim to support our rights to marry, but he currently calls it a “state’s rights issue” (the same thing the gay left got mad at McCain for saying back in 2008, as I recall) and told MTV flat-out that gay marriage was not going to be an issue he is willing to take up in his second term. Here’s the telling part, though: he blathered about his supposedly personal beliefs about gay marriage for a couple of minutes before getting to the part where he said he wasn’t willing to approach the issue. Not one of you have called him out for merely claiming to support it and not being willing to do anything. He was playing every one of the gay liberals who voted for him like a fiddle and they let him get away with it.
Gay liberals talk about how we, as conservatives, are willing to merely take scraps from the Republicans’ table. What on Earth do they think they’re doing? They’re supporting a party that lies to their faces. At least I know exactly where I stand with Republicans. Plus, they’ll sit down and talk to me while they won’t give the likes of Carroll the time of day. Why? Because they know that I care about their rights, too, and I’m not being so brazenly insulting that they can’t stand to be in the same room with me.
Instead of wondering how their bastion state, California, could possibly pass Prop 8, now they’re breathlessly asking what Obama can do during this term to further the rights of gays in America. Sorry, folks. This term won’t be one for the record books. He’s not actively trying to repeal DOMA, he’s not interested in fighting for gay marriage, and he’s not even broaching the subject of adoptions for gay couples.
The comment that really roasts me is where Carroll says, “So basically a vote is cast for their bank account while they remain spiritually bankrupt.” Wait just one damned minute. Is that not the exact same kind of line that the gay community has so despised American Christians for? Super-religious Christians are famous for calling gay people spiritually bankrupt. I listened to it all throughout my childhood. He’s willing to make a moral case out of his arguments, but he dismisses the moralizing of the other side as being…what, irrelevant? Who decides who is right? Whose morality is the right one? How do you know that your brand of moralizing is somehow better than the ones you’re so mad at in the first place? Somehow, in an article written about the desire for tolerance, you manage to come off as a self-righteous, arrogant cretin, especially when you congratulate yourself for turning your back on a gay Republican at a party.
Maybe I should tell myself that it gets better.