My last relationship was actually with a Republican - so I can respect and deal with it to some extent - but at least he was more the fiscal / social Darwinist type of republican, not one the neocon fundie-appeaser morons that seem to have hijacked the party. His type of republicans I can at least understand - staying within budgetary limits makes a lot of sense to me, but I must admit that these days I paint the entire Republican party with the fetid brush of the neocons, because they keep voting with them…

I don’t see race or orientation as a means to get what I want, but I do believe that my race or orientation should not prevent me from being able to ever get what WASPS get handed to them on a silver platter. Incidentally, I’m a white male who can pass for straight if I want to, so I’m perfectly capable of fitting into the “priviliged class” if I choose to. I don’t believe gay people have ever asked for any special or different rights, they just want the same rights as everyone else gets automatically.

Entitlements are not about race or ethnicity, but about income and being down on one’s luck. There are just as many white people who need welfare as there are black, and most legitimately need help, whether due to medical problems, job issues, sometimes problems with drugs or alcohol, or whatever. The biggest lie of the right is the “compassionate conservative” oxymoron - it’s a great sound bite but they have never had any intention of ever living up to it. A lot of people need help sometime during their life, and the Republicans have no desire whatsoever to give it to them (unless they’re rich or a corporation).

Another lie of the right is that Democrats want to give everyone a free ride. What they really want is to help people out until they can get back onto their own two feet again. Republicans are responsible for the huge ranks of homeless mental patients (because they closed down all the state-run mental institutions a few decades back), and don’t seem to realize that by spending a few dollars on someone down on their luck can transform those people back into contributing members of society. One would think a philosophy based on the free market and economics would recognize the concept of return on investment and proactive preventative spending to avoid higher reparational future costs (a la universal health care).

The Republican platform is anti-gay, anti-choice, and, let’s be honest here, racist and xenophobic (why build a 700-foot fence on the border with Mexico and NOT on the border with Canada?). My guess is that gay Republicans are so because they are more interested in wealth and power. After all, the Democrats have always been the party of the poor, the disaffected, and the disenfranchised. Some gay people do not want to be counted among those kinds of ranks. They rather take holidays in Provincetown, wear D&G cargo pants, and sit in the balconies of their million dollar condos in DC while they watch their lesser brethren be led to the slaughterhouse.

The author may emphasize the fact that he only supports moderate and fair Republican lawmakers, but that argument doesn’t wash. This is the party of Bob Dornan, the venomously homophobic congressman (so vitriolic was he that some people questioned his mental sanity) who coined the acronym g.a.y. (got aids yet?) and whose chief of staff was Brian Bennett, a closeted self-loathing homo. How do explain this? How do you explain a homosexual working for a man like Bob Dornan?

And that’s just one example. Many of the anti-gay, anti-choice, xenophobic/racist Republican lawmakers in Capitol Hill employ gay staffers. Gay men (and Republican right-handers) like Kirk Fordham and Jeff Trandahl are accomplices in the dehumanization of gay people; furthermore, Fordham and Trandahl are not in the least concerned about the fate of the gay man at large, the gay men and women who live less glamorous lives in rural (or urban) America. Fordham and Trandahl care about their trips to Cape Code and their elite circle of friends…

That’s what a gay Republican is: a modern-day Uncle Tom…

Here’s an interesting comparison: Colin Powell (who is not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that), who joined the Republican party. They exploited, used and abused him, contradicted and humiliated him, then they tossed him away. Maybe he would have been better off being a Democrat?

Being a conservative used to mean actually conserving, remember? Like conserving the environment, conserving resources, less government, fiscal responsibility, et al. A true conservative would be neither anti-gay nor pro-gay, right? But this Republican party is not conservative at all, they are radical. You could be waiting a long time for them to accept gay people.

Keep smiling, keep writing

from Aunt Cheryl in Chicago

But if you want to speak Irony… my brother just told me about this woman who works with him. Lets call her Colleen. Well Colleen has gone about every angle one can get around being as closed minded as one can be when it comes to immigration, lets not even mention that her husband employs a good line of hispanics who have worked their lives to become established American Citizens. People with good familys who work hard to make it. Well Colleen has always thought herself above such people… never wanting to interact these employees of theirs. Never seeing that everyone struggles… why is colleen so closed minded? I dont know… but I do know kharma is real. For you see colleen hates people who she deems beneath her, unfortunately for colleen, she has become what some call a trophy wife. Colleen has many things of privilege, of which she earned nothing. One of those things is her porsche. It would seem she has had many many indiscrepencies with this car. And when she hit a someone who has no insurance, whom happens to be an immigrant, and with the fact that she has so many problems she requested the authorities to be absent from the issue at hand. So ofcourse, to do so will force her to pay for it all…. I dont think Irony could fit better.
Basically Im just saying that what goes around comes around. And If (heaven forbid) the homosexual end must define the inconsistencies of the family cockiness one gets from the republican party… well then… let another tyrant fall.

Granted, I probably have a similar level of intolerance towards those who want us to be chameleons of straight people, but mostly because I have always resented having other people tell me how they think I should live or think.

Likely it is true, in the vast majority of cases, that the homophobic views of religious fundamentalist individuals in the Republican Party won’t be changed. But that is very different from saying that the view of the Party can’t be changed. Unless everybody just accepts the assumption that it is impossible — in which case it will be.

Being a moderate (or even just a conservative but tolerant) Republican doesn’t win us any popularity contests. But the struggle is worth waging, for the good of the nation as well as the good of the party.

Regarding trying to change the Republican stance on gays…pretty much no chance until their core base the fundamentalists accept homosexuality - in other words, when hell freezes over (or the Rapture arrives - oh PLEASE let the rapture come and take away all the fundies!)

Of course I don’t believe Foley did what he did because he’s gay, but I do believe that internalized homophobia and fear of outing can be motivating factors behind this sort of behavior. Psychologically it is easier to go after young, impressionable types than it is to have a mature adult relationship, especially if you loath in a potential partner what you loath in yourself - their homosexuality. Doing things with teenage kids may also be seen mentally as merely the good-natured playing around that many boys did when they were growing up - it doesn’t fit into the “gay” box and therefore has less negative stigma attached to it in the mind of a homophobic gay person. That plus paranoia about HIV and other such issues also can drive the uneducated into that arena, because young guys are theoretically less likely to have been exposed.

Mind you, I’m not excusing Foley at all, but I’m trying to place the blame properly on the society that made him hate and fear his homosexuality rather than on his homosexuality itself. I am also differentiating his behavior (ephebophilia) from pedophilia, as psychologically one is classified as a mental disorder and the other is not - in many societies even today marriages are performed between older men and women as young as 13 or 14 - our culture considers that to be kinda sick, but the point is that it is not outside the range of common human practices.

I have to admit, though, even though I personally think what he did was more icky than indictable (unless it turns out he actually had sex with a page while they were a minor), I’m definitely gloating about what it’s doing to the Republicans’ chances in the upcoming election.